Reuben Reeves

Reuben "River" Reeves (October 25, 1905 – September 1975) was an American jazz trumpeter and bandleader.

Career Born in Evansville, Indiana, Reeves was the youngest of three brothers. He initially learned piano, encouraged by his pianist mother, but while at Frederick Douglass High School he switched to trumpet. While playing at the Regal Theater in 1929, Peyton featured Reeves, his hot trumpet player, on a night where Louis Armstrong, who had a gig across the street at the Savoy, performed as a guest. The "vicious" gesture from Peyton in an attempt to intimidate Armstrong did not work as the audience begged Armstrong to play five encores. He signed to Vocalion and recorded as a bandleader with his groups the Tributaries and the River Boys; After the war, he worked in a Post Office and went on to join Harry Dial's Blusicians in 1946. He worked as a guard for the Chemical Bank New York Trust Company from 1952, and in 1955 gave up music.

Reuben Reeves died in September 1975.

Reeves' entire output as a bandleader has been released to a single compact disc by RST Records.