John Curry Spikes (July 22, 1881 – June 28, 1955) was an American

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

musician and entrepreneur. Along with his brother

Reb Spikes Benjamin Franklin "Reb" Spikes (October 31, 1888 – February 24, 1982) was an American jazz saxophonist and entrepreneur. His composition with his brother John, "Someday Sweetheart", has become an often-recorded jazz standard. Biography Spikes w ...

, John ran a traveling show band in early 1900s. At one point,

Jelly Roll Morton Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (later Morton; c. September 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a gen ...

was a member of the band.''The Rough Guide to Jazz''. Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestley and Charles Alexander. Rough Guides, 2004. pp. 752-753. The Spikes brothers were performing in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

around 1915, under the name The Original So-Different Orchestra, with Reb Spikes billed as the "World's Greatest Saxophonist".Floyd Levin: "The Spikes brothers - a Los Angeles saga", ''Jazz Journal'', December 1951 Around 1919, they settled in Los Angeles, where they started a music store, a nightclub, an agency and a publishing house. They were the first to record an all-black jazz band in 1922. In 1927, they shot a short

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that predated ''

The Jazz Singer ''The Jazz Singer'' is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolated ...

'', the first full-length sound film. Their most enduring musical collaborations were writing the lyrics to Morton's ''

Wolverine Blues ''Wolverine Blues'' is the third studio album by Swedish death metal band Entombed, released on 4 October 1993 by Earache Records. The album displays a completely different sound from previous releases, combining elements of hard rock, heavy ...

'' and their own composition, ''

Someday Sweetheart "Someday Sweetheart" is a jazz standard written by Los Angeles-based musicians John and Reb Spikes in 1919. It was the biggest hit the brothers wrote, and was performed by many recording artists of the period. The first one to record the tune was bl ...

'', which has become a

jazz standard Jazz standards are musical compositions that are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive lis ...

.Someday Sweetheart
at ''jazzstandards.com'' - retrieved on 7 May 2009

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spikes, John 1881 births 1955 deaths American jazz musicians