Trombonist, bandleader was fixture in San Diego

By George Varga
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 17, 2007

Jimmy Cheatham's trombone playing sounded very much like he did in
conversation - warm, inviting and filled with the joyful spirit he radiated
on and off stage.

A pillar of the San Diego music scene since the late 1970s and a veteran of
the bands of jazz icons such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Ornette
Coleman, Mr. Cheatham died Friday after being taken by ambulance to a
hospital. He was 82. The official cause of death has not been determined.
Mr. Cheatham had undergone heart surgery Dec. 28, said his wife,
singer-pianist Jeannie Cheatham.

Mr. Cheatham's passion never dimmed for the music he had taught for nearly
three decades at the University of California San Diego or for the Sweet
Baby Blues Band, the award-winning group he led with his wife of 49 years.

"Jimmy was getting ready to play some of the gigs we've got coming up," Mrs.
Cheatham said yesterday. "He came in the house from taking a walk. Twenty
minutes later, I had to call 911."

The Cheathams were internationally celebrated for their ebullient brand of
Kansas City blues and jazz with the Sweet Baby Blues Band, which recorded
eight albums for Concord Records. The first, 1984's "Sweet Baby Blues," was
awarded France's prestigious Grand Prix du Disque.

The group went on to perform at major festivals in Europe, Japan, New
Zealand and beyond. Their fans included Miles Davis, with whom they shared a
stage at the Chicago Jazz Festival, and the countless San Diego listeners
and musicians who attended the weekly jam sessions the Cheathams hosted here
in the late 1970s and for much of the '80s.

"Jimmy was an excellent musician and a great representative of the art of
the jam session," famed saxophonist Charles McPherson said. "He'll certainly
be missed."

But Mr. Cheatham made his biggest impact as a jazz teacher - and as a living
link to a vital era of the music his students otherwise would have known
about only through books and records.

"Jimmy was a consummate artist, but I marveled at his role as a teacher,"
said UCSD music professor Cecil Lytle, who brought Mr. Cheatham to teach at
UCSD in 1978.

"He instructed students not just in how to play their instrument, but why.
And he was a remarkable walking history book who provided younger musicians
the atmosphere of the big bands. He knew that music as mother's milk and he
conveyed its excitement, joy and tragedy. I think the people who will miss
him the most are the younger musicians he touched. He was their link to the
foundations of jazz."

Those sentiments were seconded by UCSD music professor Mark Dresser, who was
a student of Mr. Cheatham's in the late 1970s.

"He was vital until the very end," Dresser said. "I saw him give his very
first lecture at UCSD and was completely enamored by the way he spoke to the
spirit of the music. He could be a stern taskmaster, but was always joyful.
He also had an uncanny way of seeing who you were, in a deep way."

Mr. Cheatham was born in Birmingham, Ala., on June 18, 1924. He studied at
the New York Institute of Modern Music and later became a protégé of jazz
drum great "Papa" Jo Jones. In addition to collaborating with jazz
luminaries such as Thad Jones and Chico Hamilton, Mr. Cheatham worked
extensively as a studio session musician and as a teacher who stressed life
lessons as strongly as a sound artistic foundation.

"I'm always very strong about emphasizing the technique of music, but the
most important thing is that we share ourselves," Mr. Cheatham told The San
Diego Union-Tribune in a 2005 interview. "My ultimate focus is to be
constantly open, so that I'm a channel through which the music sounds."

He retired from UCSD, after 27 years, in 2005. But even in retirement, Mr.
Cheatham remained active, performing with his wife and the Sweet Baby Blues
Band, whose most recent local date was at the KSDS Jazz 88 Festival in Ocean
Beach in September. He was scheduled to perform with the band next month at
the annual San Diego Jazz Party at the Del Mar Hilton and in May at the
Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

"I'll just see how that works out," Mrs. Cheatham said when asked if she
would continue working with the Sweet Baby Blues Band. "In fact, Jimmy and I
talked about me getting somebody else (on trombone)."

In addition to his wife, Mr. Cheatham is survived by a daughter, Shirley
Wilcher of Boston, and a son, Jonathan Cheatham of Wisconsin. No services
are scheduled, but UCSD's Lytle said a musical send-off for Mr. Cheatham is
likely in the coming weeks.

Mrs. Cheatham requested no cards or flowers, but suggested donations in Mr.
Cheatham's name to the Lower California Jazz Society's scholarship fund. For
more information, call the UCSD music department at (858) 534-4830.

"He would have loved that," Mrs. Cheatham said. "He lived for those
students."

Staff librarian Merrie Monteagudo contributed to this report.