My friend the trumpeter Norman Bowden, who has died aged 101, was among the last of the instrumentalists of his generation to have been active in the 1940s heyday of Central Avenue, Los Angeles, then crammed with clubs and known as the West Coast Harlem. His lengthy career in jazz encompassed everything from dance halls, after-hours clubs and touring road bands to rhythm and blues, the occasional film appearance and Dixieland. He recorded only rarely but hearing him in person confirmed his status as a musician of considerable worth and exceptional longevity.
Norman was born in Vancouver, Canada, and migrated with his family to Los Angeles in 1921. He remembered his father, Norman Bowden Sr, a Canadian citizen, serving with the Canadian military in the first world war, and recalled kilted soldiers parading and “the bagpipes wailin’”. His mother, Della, who was a Texan and the driving force in the family, saw to it that her son received a good education, albeit in a strictly segregated community. As he told me: “I’d never gone to school with black children before – it was a different experience for me.”
A student of the violin at first, Norman started on the trumpet in his mid-teens, inspired by Louis Armstrong, then a fixture at the classy, whites-only Cotton Club in Culver City, California. Progressing quickly, Norman immersed himself in Central Avenue’s vibrant music scene, taking his first significant job with the pianist Sonny Clay’s band, then resident at the heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson’s Chez Paris club, before taking his chances with the many “10-cents-a-dance” halls then operating in Los Angeles.
Norman married in 1936 but a series of lengthy road tours, running from October 1938 through to February 1940 and culminating in a period with Boots and His Buddies, then a prominent band, put paid to the marriage. He then netted a long-term residency at Clarence Moore’s Memo Club on Central Avenue before working with Harlan Leonard’s Rockets big band and the Bardu Ali band at the prestigious Shepp’s Playhouse, while briefly playing with Kid Ory’s traditionalists on the Orson Welles radio show in 1944.
Thereafter, Norman stayed closer to home, taking jobs with the pianist Nellie Lutcher and guitarist T-Bone Walker or rehearsing with the jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton. While playing at a club with Lutcher, he met Levetta Stephenson, who became his second wife.
He was also on call to play commercial jingles and occasional sideline jobs in the movies, appearing on screen in Martin Scorsese’s 1977 film New York, New York and turning his hand to Dixieland jazz when required. I was able to present his career story in a book devoted to players who had been prominent in black Los Angeles, and we stayed friends. Norman played his final job at La Louisanne creole restaurant in 2007.
His marriage to Levetta lasted 65 years. She died at the age of 104 in 2015. He is survived by their son, Ronald, and four grandchildren.
