Reginald Foresythe

Reginald Foresythe (May 28, 1907, London - December 28, 1958, London) was a British jazz pianist, arranger, composer, and bandleader.

Foresythe's father was West African and his mother was German. He played piano from age eight, and worked in the second half of the 1920s as a pianist and accordionist in dance bands in Paris, Australia, Hawaii, and California. He also wrote music for films by D.W. Griffith, among others, and played in Paul Howard's Quality Serenaders. In 1930 he moved to Chicago, and while there Earl Hines made one of his songs, "Deep Forest", a regular part of his repertory. Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller also recorded Foresythe-penned tunes. He worked in New York in 1934-35, where he arranged for Paul Whiteman and recorded with Benny Goodman, John Kirby, and Gene Krupa. However, he spent much of his career on the dance band scene in Britain, later serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II and working as an accompanist to vocalists and a solo pianist in London in the 1950s. He had been largely forgotten by the time of his death in 1958.

Foresythe did some collaborative work with songwriters Andy Razaf and Ted Weems, including "Be Ready" (with both), "Please Don't Talk About My Man" (with Razaf), and "He's a Son of the South" (with Razaf and Paul Denniker).

References

*Eugene Chadbourne, [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:0nfexqtgldde~T1 Reginald Foresythe] at Allmusic