Red Saunders

Theodore Dudley "Red" Saunders (March 2, 1912 – March 5, 1981) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He also played vibraphone and timpani.

Life and career Saunders was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and after his mother's death moved to Chicago with his sister. He took drum lessons while attending a boarding school in Milwaukee, received a music scholarship to the University of Texas, and became a professional musician in 1928, playing in Stomp King's band. He then spent several years touring the country as drummer with Ira Coffey's Walkathonians, a band that played at competitive walkathon events, before joining a revue, Curtis Mosby's Harlem Scandals. On returning to Chicago in 1934, he joined a band led by Tiny Parham at the Savoy Ballroom, and thereafter became a well-known drummer in Chicago clubs and hotels. In 1937, Saunders joined the house band at the Club DeLisa, initially led by pianist Albert Ammons, and then briefly by saxophonist Delbert Bright, before taking over as bandleader himself.

Saunders remained in control of the Club DeLisa house band, playing four to six shows nightly, until the club closed in 1958, apart from a hiatus between 1945 and 1947 when he led a smaller band at other venues in Chicago and Indianapolis. and Sun Ra. In 1956, he recorded with Guy Warren on Warren's album Africa Speaks—America Answers! Saunders and his wife and their two children were the subject of a series of photographs taken in Chicago by Security Administration photographer Jack Delano in April 1942 where their last name was mistakenly transcribed as "Sounders."

Saunders died in Chicago in 1981, aged 69.