Shelton "Scad" Hemphill (March 16, 1906 – January 6, 1960) was an American
jazz trumpeter whose career lasted from the mid 1920s through the late 1950s.
Born in
Birmingham, Alabama, Hemphill was still in his teens when he played in the band of
Fred Longshaw, which accompanied
Bessie Smith on recordings in 1924–25. Also in 1924, at age 18, he enrolled at
Wilberforce University in
Ohio, and was a member of
Horace Henderson's student band alongside
Ted and
Castor McCord. He moved to New York City late in the 1920s, where he played with
Benny Carter and
Chick Webb before joining the
Mills Blue Rhythm Band, playing with this group from 1931 to 1937. He was in
Louis Armstrong's band from 1937 to 1944 and
Duke Ellington's from 1944 to 1949. In the 1950s, he played occasionally in New York City but left music due to mounting health problems later in the decade.[1]
Hemphill died in New York City at age 53. His demise, along with that of blues singer
Gladys Bentley, who died twelve days later, was noted in the syndicated column of music critic
Ralph J. Gleason.[2]
He is the father of Barry Shelton Hemphill, who spent a career as a vocal artist in the US Army Chorus, retiring at the rank of E-9. Barry Hemphill was also the Artistic Director of The Metropolitan Chorus in Arlington Virginia for 38 years (1977-2015), and has been the Conductor of the renowned Kennedy Center Messiah Sing along every December 23 in Washington, DC, for over 20 years.
References
^"Shelton Hemphill". The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, ed.
Barry Kernfeld, 1991, p. 514.