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A Musical Genius, Remembered

Photography n/aPhotos 26Issue May 2016
Music prodigy Edmund Thornton Jenkins (circa 1913)Edmund lived next door to his father’s orphanage, where the Reverend Daniel Jenkins started what would become a world-famous band.A Musical Genius, RememberedEdmund T. Jenkins, circa 1913The popular Jenkins Orphanage Band (pictured here in St. Petersburg, Florida) regularly toured the country.A group of flappers doing “The Charleston” alongside the Jenkins band outside the orphanage on Franklin Street, circa 1920.The Reverend Daniel JenkinsA number of Jenkins Orphanage Band alumni, including Freddie Green (guitarist in the Count Basie Orchestra), went on to greater musical fame.As did Jabbo Smith...Cat Anderson...and Tommy Benford.A postcard billing the Jenkins band as “The Famous Piccaninny Band”A 1914 article in The State newspaperA 1914 ad in The London Times.An exposition postcardAn exposition postcardLondon’s Royal Academy of Music, from which Edmund graduated in 1921Jenkins’s 1920 passport allowed him to travel to ParisA Musical Genius, RememberedJenkins edited this 1919 issue of The Academite, the Royal Academy of Music’s student publicationHe led a popular dance band, The Queen’s Dance Orchestra (pictured here in May 1921), which cut several records.Edmund T. JenkinsEdmund, driving with a friend (city and date unknown).With the parents of fellow student Winifred Small at their north London home, circa 1920Edmund took this photograph of his stepmother, Eloise Harleston Jenkins, in Charleston in 1924.In Jenkins’s notes for “The Charleston Revue” sequence of Afram ou La Belle Swita, he envisioned a cabaret singer and dancer in the style of Florence Mills, pictured here in costume for the stage production Blackbirds in 1926.

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