Myron “Tiny” Bradshaw, 1905-58

Myron “Tiny” Bradshaw lived a lifetime in fifty-three years as a singer, drummer and bandleader. Born in northeast Ohio’s Youngstown, he was schooled there and at Wilberforce University, where the school had a tradition called the Wilberforce Collegians. Led by Horace Henderson, the greater talented brother of noted bandleader Fletcher Henderson, the Collegians were a fundraising organization that in 1925, had saxophonist Benny Carter and trumpeter Rex Stewart as student musicians. Later alumni of the Collegians were Ben Webster, Ernie Wilkins, Coleman Hawkins, Snooky Young, George Russell and Frank Foster.

After playing with the Collegians through the end of the 1928, Bradshaw went to New York and performed with Duncan Myer’s Savoy Bearcats, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, and Luis Russell’s Orchestra. Marion Hardy's Alabamians had given its young front man, Cab Calloway a springboard to his fame and Bradshaw took on the legend with them as “Super Cab Calloway.”

In 1933, during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Bradshaw formed his own band and they headlined the Harlem Opera House. In January, 1935 Ella Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Bradshaw band at the Opera House.

The band recorded two sessions for Decca Records in 1935, but sales must have been disappointing. However, the band continued to be popular in performance until the War. Bradshaw was commissioned a major in the U.S. Army and led a twenty-five piece USO orchestra.

Tiny’s big break came in 1949 when he signed with King Records and his recording career took off. Headed by owner Syd Nathan, King Records started out as a county and western label, but successfully moved into jump blues with artists like Benjamin “Bullmoose” Jackson and Wynonie Harris. Nathan employed Henry Glover as talent scout and songwriter and Glover wrote many of Bradshaw’s hits.

Bradshaw pared his unit from a large orchestra to a flexible septet and King released his first recording, “Gravy Train", in January, 1950 and in May, 1950, “Well Oh Well” rose to a respectable No. 2 on rhythm and blues charts. In that year, Bradshaw appeared at Cincinnati’s Cotton Club and Tiny continued to be a major attraction in the early 1950s because “the kids want that music with a beat to dance to and at the present time ...Tiny Bradshaw’s unit is giving it to them.”

Tiny was felled by a stroke in November, 1954, paralyzing his legs. After recuperating in Florida, he returned to performing and recording in January, 1955, but it was three short years later, November 26, 1958 that Tiny Bradshaw died of a heart attack at aged fifty-three.

Though forgotten through the ensuing years, Westside Records released a compact disc entitled “Walk That Mess: The Best of the King Years,” and Tiny Bradshaw can be remembered by fans. The above photo was given to me by Lucien Wright in 1980. It is inscribed to his sister, Iona, “To Iona, I wonder what you think of every time you look this way. Tiny B.”