The 1930s
In 1930, Purvis led a couple of racially mixed recording sessions including the likes of J.C. Higginbotham, and Adrian Rollini. One of these sessions was organized by Adrian Rollini and OKeh A & R man, Bob Stephens.
After leaving Hal Kemp in 1930, allegedly because legal issues precluded his going with the band to Florida, Purvis found work with the California Ramblers. He also worked with the Dorsey Brothers and played fourth trumpet with Fletcher Henderson, although only in a rehearsal capacity.
Purvis' mental stability was always in question, and he attempted suicide on several occasions. Although he was a brilliant musician, capable of either a hot jazz solo or a difficult passage through the hardest of arrangements, he could not be counted on to arrive anywhere on time. This lack of accountability plagued him throughout his life, and can be traced to his earliest years. In many instances, once Jack Purvis showed up to play an extended engagement, not so coincidentally, there was a spike in petty thefts and burgalaries for the vicinity of that gig.
From 1931 to 1932 he played with a few radio orchestras and worked with Fred Waring. In 1933 he toured the South with Charlie Barnet. He even talked his way into a job with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra playing The Carnival of Venice. During this time he also worked in Texas as a pilot perhaps smuggling illegal goods out of Mexico.
He moved to California and was successful with radio broadcasting work. In Los Angeles, Purvis worked for the George Stoll Orchestra as a writer and even worked for Warner Bros. Studios arranging. He composed Legends of Haiti for a one hundred and ten piece orchestra. Afterwards he found work in San Francisco as a chef.
At the end of 1935 he joined Frank Froeba's Swing Band in New York. These 1935 recordings with Froeba were the end of Purvis' recording career. He played a couple of weeks with Joe Haymes' orchestra and then disappeared for a couple of years. There was a confirmed sighting of him working in a diner in the midwest around this time. It is also speculated that he worked as a ship's cook on a freighter at the time.
He was arrested in Texas in June 1937, while working as a cook, for his involvement in a robbery in El Paso, Texas. He was tried and convicted and sentenced to jail time in Huntsville Prison. While in prison he directed the Rhythmic Swingsters, the prison band and also played piano with them. The band regularly broadcast on radio station WBAP in 1938.
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