Lucky Millinder

He acquired the nickname "Lucky" in the 1920s while playing in a Chicago dice game. A member of gangster Al Capone's mob rubbed a pair of dice on his back (for "luck") before he made his shot, and wound up winning $2000. He gave Millinder a large tip and said, "You're a lucky guy". The nickname "Lucky" stuck with him for the rest of his life.

Millinder was respected more for his skills as a showman and for being a superb organiser, than for his musical skills (he neither played an instrument, nor was able to read music!). He did have a knack for attracting high quality musicians. Millinder began his career as a master of ceremonies and dancer in the theatres and ballrooms of Chicago during the prohibition era. He led his first musical outfit from 1931, coming to greater fame three years later, upon taking over leadership of the prestigious Mills Blue Rhythm Band at the Harlem Cotton Club. Millinder went bankrupt in 1939, but later reorganised another big band and remained on the scene intermittently until the summer of 1952.

Bandleader Lucky Millinder was born in Alabama and raised in Chicago. He got his start in the music business--even though he didn't play any instrument and, according to some, couldn't even read music--as an emcee, and in 1934 he took over the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, among whom were such respected musicians as Henry 'Red' Allen, Buster Bailey and J. C. Higginbotham.

When the band disbanded in 1938, Millinder worked with Bill Doggett's band, then formed his own group, Lucky Millinder and His Band, which quickly became one of the premier bands on the swing circuit. The band was extremely popular in Harlem, especially when it began to shift away from swing music and more towards R&B. Among the band's more prominent members were Dizzy Gillespie and Bull Moose Jackson.

Millinder secured a recording contract with Decca Records in 1942. Four of their records reached #1 on the R&B charts.

In 1949 he began to reduce the size of his band to become involved in the "combo" music fad that was then sweeping black music.

That was the beginning of the end, as the reconstituted band could not regain the level of success it had in its heyday, and in 1952 he dissolved it. Millinder didn't form another band, and became a disc jockey.

Inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1996.