Frank Fairfax

When Frank Sr. joined Edwards' Collegians, a West Virginia territory jazz dance orchestra, he left his family with his mother and some siblings in Huntington.

"[5] Frank Fairfax contacted the president and secretary of the American Federation of Musicians: Joe Weber and William J. Kerngood, respectively, and after much discussion, was authorized to organize a new local in Philadelphia.

Damon Fisher, James Shorter, Harry Monroe, F. E. Walker, and a few others assisted him in recruiting the musicians to make the required number for the charter.

[11] Subsequently, Local 274's officials filed a legal action in U.S. District Court seeking an injunction to restrain their expulsion from the AFofM on the grounds that such a merger "would deprive its members of control of their own affairs, their meeting house and their clubhouse liquor license.

[12] In his 23-page opinion refusing Local 274's plea to invalidate the expulsion, Judge Becker pointed out that Philadelphia was the last of the 37 cities to end dual unionism based on race in the musicians' field.

[14] In May, 1971, Frank Fairfax moved to Local 77, AFofM and began serving as Assistant to the Project Chairman of the Music Performance Trust Fund.

[2] From July, 1929 through 1934, Fairfax was playing trombone for Phil Edwards' Collegians,[5] a college dancing orchestra formed in 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia, that toured the Eastern seaboard.

[16] At some point in the first half of 1930, Edwards' Collegians landed a job as the house band for Cincinnati's Greystone Ballroom, from whence it regularly broadcast over WLW for a least eighteen months.

[18] According to Cleophas "Chico Hicks, who played banjo and guitar for the band beginning in 1932, Fairfax took a large role in the booking and business management of the Collegians.

[19] Hicks also recalled that the group embarked on an extensive tour of the eastern United States, extending down the East Coast into the Deep South, through Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas.

[19] Crisscrossing the region between performances at country clubs, dance halls, and local radio stations, the orchestra traveled in two 1926 Packards and a "Chevy cattle truck," which carried most of the instruments.

[2] However, a significant portion of the Collegians' repertoire consisted of Archie Bleyer's stock arrangements ordered from New York, including "Too Tired," "Muddy Water," "Just Around the Corner, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and Dvorak's "Humoresque.

Fairfax remained business manager and was first trombonist in Chappie Willet's Orchestra in Philadelphia and also while performing with the same band on the campus of Princeton University in March, 1934.

But according to William Oscar Smith, the bass player for the Frankie Fairfax Orchestra from 1935 to 1937, the band's home base was the Strand Ballroom in South Philadelphia.

The veterans included Whitey Grove and Pete Brown on trumpets; Tasso Richardson and Nelson Wapler, saxophones; Fairfax and Bert Claggett, trombones.

Ably led by the elders, the younger guys reaped the benefits of going on to make names for themselves, not only in Philadelphia but in New York, Chicago, and later the West Coast.

They were Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Shavers, Johnny Lynch, Carl 'Bama' Warwick, and Palmer Davis on trumpets; Harold Reed, John Brown, and Shorty Cawthon on saxophones; Calvin Jackson and Ernie Washington on piano; and Norman Dibble and Shadow Wilson on drums.

The pianist was Marian Murphy; bass player, "Sneaky Pete" Briggs; guitarist, Roosevelt Sherman or Dick Hill, and Frankie played tenor saxophone, trombone, trumpet, and bongo drums.

[25] A delegation of CEPA members led by Mr. Garland Dempsey, International President Max Weiner, executive director, attended the services held on January 30 at the Emmanuel Johnson Funeral Home.

Some of the local musicians on hand were Charlie Gaines, LeRoy Bostic, Jimmy Shorter, Agnew Gary, Danny McCune and Thomas Fleming, who directed the group.

[25] Also present were Douglas Holman, Herbert Alvis, Sylvester Nash, Jimmy Adams, H. Lee Nelson, Alfonso Coverdale, Arthur Russell, Eugene Scott, Selmer Payne, Ernie Ranson, Curtis Wilder, Howard Pettis, James Gorham, Skeet McLane, and Raymond Proctor.