Willie Bryant was an American jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 bandleader, vocalist, and disc jockey

Disc jockey

A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

.

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...

, Bryant grew up in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 and took trumpet lessons to little success. His first job in entertainment was dancing in the Whitman Sisters Show in 1926. He worked in various vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 productions for the next several years, and in 1934 he appeared in the show Chocolate Revue with Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...

.

In 1934, he put together his first big band

Big band

A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...

, which at times included Teddy Wilson

Teddy Wilson

Theodore Shaw "Teddy" Wilson was an American jazz pianist whose sophisticated and elegant style was featured on the records of many of the biggest names in jazz, including Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.-Biography:Wilson was born in Austin, Texas in...

, Cozy Cole

Cozy Cole

Cozy Cole was an American jazz drummer who scored a #1 Cashbox magazine hit with the record "Topsy Part 2". "Topsy" peaked at number three on Billboard Hot 100, and at number one on the R&B chart. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. The track peaked at #29 in the UK...

, Johnny Russell

Johnny Russell

John Bright "Johnny" Russell was an American country singer, songwriter, and comedian best-known for his song "Act Naturally", which was made famous by Buck Owens, who recorded it in 1963, and The Beatles in 1965...

, Benny Carter

Benny Carter

Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King...

, Ben Webster

Ben Webster

Benjamin Francis Webster , a.k.a. "The Brute" or "Frog," was an influential American jazz tenor saxophonist. Webster, born in Kansas City, Missouri, was considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young...

, Eddie Durham

Eddie Durham

Eddie Durham was an American jazz guitarist, trombonist, composer and musical arranger of the swing music medium born in San Marcos, Texas, probably best known for his work with musicians like Cab Calloway, Willie Bryant, Andy Kirk, Glenn Miller, Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie, among others...

, Ram Ramirez

Ram Ramirez

Roger J. Ramirez was a Puerto Rican born jazz pianist and composer. He was a co-writer of the song "Lover Man ".-Discography :* Ram Ramirez: Live in Harlem...

, and Taft Jordan

Taft Jordan

Taft Jordan was an American jazz trumpeter, heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong....

. They recorded six times between 1935 and 1938; Bryant sings on 18 of the 26 sides recorded.

Once his ensemble disbanded, Bryant worked in acting and disc jockeying. He recorded R&B in 1945 and led another big band between 1946 and 1948. During September and October 1949, he hosted Uptown Jubilee

Uptown Jubilee

Uptown Jubilee was a short-lived American all-black variety show on CBS-TV from September 13 to October 20, 1949. The show aired on Tuesday nights from 8–9 p.m. ET during September and on Thursdays from 8:30–9 p.m...

, a short-lived all-black

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 variety show on CBS-TV . The show aired on Tuesday nights.

In the 1950s he was the emcee at the Apollo Theatre

Apollo Theatre

The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. Designed by architect Lewin Sharp for owner Henry Lowenfield, and the fourth legitimate theatre to be constructed on the street, its doors opened on 21 February 1901 with the American...

 in Harlem

Harlem

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

. He moved to California later in the 1950s and died of a heart attack

Myocardial infarction

Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...

 in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

in 1964.