FM
History
A talented and consummate musician, Todd Rhodes was a professional jazz veteran of some 26 years standing before he began recording with his own septet in the summer of 1947. Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, young Todd was raised by his widowed mother in Springfield, Ohio, and studied at the Springfield School Of Music and Pennsylvania's Erie Conservatory Of Music. Upon graduating in 1921 he returned to Springfield to hook up with drummer William McKinney, and he remained with McKinney's bands - notably McKinney's Cotton Pickers - for the next thirteen years.
Leaving McKinney in late 1934, Rhodes played with various local bands in the Detroit area until he formed his own small unit in late 1943. By late 1946 the Todd Rhodes Orchestra was doing lucrative business at Lee's Sensation Lounge, and it was after seeing them there that Bernard Besman and John Kaplan decided to record the band for their new Sensation label in July 1947. By the end of that year the band had become known as "Todd Rhodes & His Toddlers" and their first four Sensation 78s had been picked up for the local Chicago market and re-released on Bill Putnam's Vitacoustic Records.
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