[4] Jack's behavior became uncontrollable after his mother's death in 1912, and, as a result of many acts of petty larceny, he was sent to a reform school.
This also enabled him to leave the reformatory and continue his high school education, while he was playing paying gigs on the side.
For a short time he played trumpet with Arnold Johnson's orchestra, and by July 1928 he traveled to France with George Carhart's band.
It is reported that he had an early brush with the law when he cheated a tourist out of his travelers checks and was forced to leave the band and flee France.
[1] Ship's passenger list information reports "Jacques F. Purvis" returning to New York, from Le Havre, France, on November 19.
From 1929 to 1930 Purvis recorded with Kemp, Smith Ballew, Ted Wallace (a pseudonym for agent Ed Kirkeby), Rube Bloom, the California Ramblers, and Roy Wilson's Georgia Crackers.
On December 17, 1929 Purvis led his own recording groups using Hal Kemp's rhythm section to produce Copyin' Louis, and Mental Strain at Dawn.
[5] In 1930, Purvis led a couple of racially mixed recording sessions including the likes of J.C. Higginbotham, and Adrian Rollini.
[3] After leaving Hal Kemp in 1930, allegedly because legal issues precluded his going with the band to Florida, Purvis found work with the California Ramblers.
Although he was a brilliant musician, capable of either a hot jazz solo or a difficult passage through the hardest of arrangements, he could not be counted on to arrive anywhere on time.
In many instances, once Jack Purvis showed up to play an extended engagement, not so coincidentally, there was a spike in petty thefts and burglaries for the vicinity of that gig.
Cornetist Jim Goodwin claimed that a man who looked like (and introduced himself as) Jack Purvis showed up at a band date a couple of times in about 1968 and that they had a long talk about his life.