Eddie Durham; Pioneer in Electric Guitar Jazz

Eddie Durham, credited with being the first jazz musician to play and record on the electric guitar and whose later compositions and arrangements were featured in orchestras led by Count Basie, Bennie Moten, Jimmy Lunceford, Andy Kirk, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw, died early Friday. He was 80 and died after a fall at his daughter’s house in Brooklyn.

Durham is credited with developing the electric guitar in the early 1930s, when he began working with equipment that allowed him to amplify the instrument while he was performing with the Moten band. Charlie Christian, whom many consider the first to play the instrument, was influenced by Durham’s efforts.

Durham worked with a number of bands in the late ‘20s, including Walter Page’s Blue Devils, before joining Moten as musical director from 1929 to 1933. Basie was the band’s pianist during part of that period.

Durham, who also was an accomplished trombonist, is credited with hundreds of composing and arranging credits. Among them are “Lunceford Special,” “Glen Island Special,” “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire,” “Topsy,” “Sent for You Yesterday and Here You Come Today,” “Out the Window” and many more.

For a brief period beginning in the early 1940s he led his own big band. After writing and recording with rhythm and blues groups in the 1950s and early 1960s, he reactivated his jazz career, working with the Countsmen, a Basie alumni group led by Earl Warren, and the Swing Four, besides leading his own small groups.

Most recently he had been involved in the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band, composed of musicians who were active in the Big Band era. The group toured nationally and performed a series of concerts in the Los Angeles area last April.