Eddie Locke

01 / The Detroit story

The Detroit story

Eddie Locke came of age in the Detroit jazz scene of the 1940s and early 1950s, the same world that produced the Jones brothers, Kenny Burrell, Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris. With fellow drummer Oliver Jackson he built a variety act, Bop & Locke, that mixed dance, comedy and drumming and was booked as far as the Apollo Theater in Harlem. In 1954 he moved to New York, worked with Red Allen, Willie "The Lion" Smith and Teddy Wilson, and became a disciple of Jo Jones, known for solid, swinging time. His two key partnerships began in the late 1950s: with trumpeter Roy Eldridge, with whom he made his recording debut in 1959, and with Coleman Hawkins, whose quartet of the 1960s also included Tommy Flanagan and fellow Detroiter Major Holley. He appears in Art Kane's 1958 photograph A Great Day in Harlem. In 1977 he recorded Jivin' with the Refugees from Hastings Street with his Detroit friends, and he later taught young drummers at New York's Trevor Day School.

Highlights

1. Co-created the Bop & Locke act with Oliver Jackson
2. Drummer in the Coleman Hawkins Quartet in the 1960s
3. Long association with Roy Eldridge, including 1970s gigs at Jimmy Ryan's
4. Appears in the 1958 photograph A Great Day in Harlem
5. Album Jivin' with the Refugees from Hastings Street (1977)