Andy Kirk, 94; Led ‘Clouds of Joy’ Big Band

Andy Kirk, among the first black musicians to form his own big band and among the last survivors of that gentle swing era, has died in New York City.

Kirk, a contemporary of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson, was 94 when he died Friday in Harlem of complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

Although Kirk’s “Clouds of Joy” sound made him a perennial favorite at several of the nation’s ballrooms, particularly the Roseland in New York in the 1930s, his band never achieved the popularity of Ellington, Basie or Jimmy Lunceford, another contemporary.

George T. Simon, in his anthology “The Big Bands,” put some of the blame on Kirk himself.

Kirk was an easygoing man, Simon wrote, and his leniency toward his players may have kept him from getting the most out of them.

Although Kirk hired some of the top musicians of the day, including the legendary jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, the quality of the band varied.

“It could,” wrote Simon, “be wonderful one minute, mediocre the next . . . and then suddenly wonderful once again.”

Despite that, he said, there was a “warm and relaxed rhythmic feel that pervaded” the band.

Andrew Dewey Kirk was born in Newport, Ky., and raised in Denver where he studied saxophone, piano and theory with Wilberforce Whiteman, Paul Whiteman’s father. He was out of music and working in the post office in Dallas when he quit to join Terrence Holder’s “Dark Clouds of Joy” band in Dallas. When that group disbanded, Kirk started his own, modifying the name and relocating to Kansas City.

There talent agents for the Brunswick label put him under contract and by 1930 Kirk had become popular enough to play Roseland, then a mecca for dancers.

The best remembered of Kirk’s recordings include the commercial success “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” and driving arrangements of “Cloudy,” “Froggy Bottom” and “The Lady Who Swings the Band,” still treasured by jazz aficionados.

By the time Kirk gave up his band in 1948 to become a hotel manager and an executive with the New York City musicians’ local, such giants as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Ben Webster and Lester Young had graced the bandstand with him.

Additionally, Kirk’s son, Andy Jr., established himself as an outstanding jazz saxophonist before his death in 1967.