And all that jazz - Remembering one of Fleming County’s most accomplished musicians

By K.L.King

“Herman started playing the piano with one finger at the age of 4. By the time he was 8 years of age, his mother had encouraged him to play church hymns. The first tune he learned was an old hymn entitled “Trust and Obey”. He eventually learned seven or eight hymns which he played at the Strawberry Methodist Church, wrote James Doran in his book Herman Chittison: A Bio-Discography.

Born in Fleming County on Oct. 15, 1908, to Charles and Sarah Jane Chittison, Herman “Ivory” grew up to become a talented jazz pianist.

He began his career in Zack Whyte’s territory band in Ohio in 1928.

In the early 1930s he moved to New York and found work as an accompanist to Ethel Waters, Adelaide Hall, and Clarence Williams.

He also visited Boston for the first time with a traveling show headlined by comic actor Stepin Fetchit.

In late 1933 he went to Europe with the Willie Lewis Orchestra and the following year he recorded with Louis Armstrong in Paris.

Chittison was one of the earliest and most important ambassadors of American jazz in Europe.

Later he and Bill Coleman led the “Harlem Rhythm makers”.

Chittison and trumpeter Bill Coleman left Lewis in 1938 and formed a band that worked extensively in Cairo and traveled as far east as India.

In October 1959, Chittison arrived in Boston and was employed as the resident pianist at the Red Garter bar in the Lenox Hotel.

He then moved to the Mayfair Lounge, in Bay Village.

His stay in Boston lasted two years.

In an interview with John McLellan in March 1960, Chittison noted that “Some clubs will spend $150,000 on decorations, and then they want to put in a $20 piano. They were going to put a spinet in here, but I asked them if they’d have their cook work on a two-burner stove. They got the point. And I got my piano.” He must have been persuasive, because that piano was a Mason & Hamlin concert grand.

McLellan, then hosting his Jazz Scene show on WHDH-TV, staged a notable reunion when Chittison and Louis Armstrong were guests on his May 4 program. The two recreated some of the music they had recorded in Paris in 1934. “There was no rehearsal,” McLellan wrote later. “Armstrong would just look at Chittison and say, ‘Let’s Do Confessin’, and he’d name a key. Off they’d go with “I’m Confessing That I Love You.”

Chittison played in the lounge, and Abby Lincoln, Cab Calloway, and other singles worked the big room in the back. (Trumpeter Al Natale led the house band, with Chick Corea his sometimes pianist.) But business was poor, and the name-band policy ended in May.

Chittison returned to the Lenox that same month.

By September, Mayfair was featuring belly dancers in a show called “Harem Delights,” and the club, which started as a swank nightspot in the last days of Prohibition, expired not long after.

Chittison was still working Boston lounges in spring 1961, but later that year he returned to New York, and a few years after that he moved to Cleveland. He died there, of lung cancer, in March 1967 at age 58”. (The Troy Street Observer)

In the spring of 2002, a ceremony to honor the accomplished musician was held at the Fleming County Public Library and a historical marker was unveiled with a large crowd in attendance.

During the reception, guest speaker James Doran said his research into Chittison’s life started with an idea for a magazine article, and with the help of former Librarian, the late Lyla Humphries, the idea turned into a book.

Doran, a jazz music fan, said he first became interested in Chittison’s music after hearing selections played on a radio station near his home in New York, according to an article written for the Advocate Messenger.

“I found out about him from a radio announcer named Jim Lowe in New York. He played Chittison all the time in 1976. I started to buy his records and started to get very interested in him,” Doran said.

Doran called the Fleming County library to get a birth date for Chittison and was surprised to find Humphries had never heard of Chittison.

Over the next several years Humphries helped Doran with research.

During one of Doran’s visits, he spoke to a Fleming County High School class, which led to the idea for the historical marker.

The Fleming County Public Library now houses a near complete collection of Chittison’s works thanks to Doran’s generous donation of his entire collection of records and research materials.