made a lifetime out of music starting out in the days, and more importantly, the places, where the end of his slide was likely to wind up tangled in tumbleweed or an over-eager lasso. In his later years, the trombonist was still serving up a taste for folks who hadn't tired of traditional swing sounds, as in the audiences who bought tickets for '60s and '70s editions of the
bands. He would then often be surrounded by much younger players, this veteran of outfits such as the Dandie Dixie Minstrels, a group
.
In the fall of 1930 the trombonist had made it as far east as Kansas City and the
George E. Lee band; not bad considering he had started out in an Oklahoma town named after a snake and had only proceeded to move further west initially.
Crumbley worked with western swing pioneer
Tommy Douglas in Nebraska in the early '30s as well as another of that state's bandleaders,
Bill Owens. But he continued to work with
Hunter as well as players such as
Jabbo Smith and a Chicago hit with
Erskine Tate. The trombonist called up his own ensemble in Omaha in 1934, but by the end of the year he'd joined up with the
Jimmie Lunceford band. He was like many players who had the experience of playing in this wonderful band -- totally satisfied, or at least contented enough to stay on the band for the next 13 years.
Subsequently,
Crumbley blew, sometimes bursting into song, with
Eddie Wilcox as well as
Lucky Millinder and
Erskine Hawkins. European audiences enjoyed the trombonist in the late '50s on tour with
Sammy Price, a period when he also became part of the scene at the Apollo in Harlem with a lively combo led by
Reuben Phillips. By the middle of the next decade, the seemingly indestructible careers of both
Calloway and
Hines were keeping
Crumbley in slide oil.
–
Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi