Personnel
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E.O. Huddleston has been playing the trombone professionally since he was 14 and has played everything from the Ringling Brothers Circus to cocktail lounges, pit orchestras, pageants, Wayne King Band, the Ted Weems group, Dick Jurgens orchestra, Guy Lombardo orchestra, the American Swing Band, Creole Jazz Band, and Jan Garber orchestra. He took some time out along the way to form the Happy Tymes Jazz Band™ in 1982. He has played shows for Patti Page, Frankie Laine, Frank Gorshin, the Ames brothers, Frankie Avalon, Connie Francis, and numerous Broadway shows. He has played the Memphis Jazz Festival, the Sacramento Jazz Festival, the Tampa Jazz Festival, and the W.C. Handy Festival. He is a retired music educator, after 28 years as a junior high school band director. |
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Jim Griggs is a woodwind specialist and expert audio engineer. Jim studied music as a clarinet major at the University of North Texas and has been a member of the Miss Arkansas Pageant Orchestra, as well as music director for other beauty pageants. Owner of a contracting/construction company, this unusually talented and versatile individual has performed with the Dallas Symphony, the Arkansas Symphony Pops Orchestra, Mel Torme, the Coasters, B.J. Thomas, Tony Orlando, Ace Cannon and many big bands. |
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Dale Kriner started playing the piano at age four and has been performing in public since his grade school years. He switched to the organ for a few years, and returned to the piano at age eleven. He has a background in classical music, but developed an interest in jazz while in high school. He performed in the Niagara Falls, NY area with a jazz quartet. He was awarded a full scholarship to the St. Louis Institute of Music where he majored in piano performance/pedagogy and theory. He studied under Lyndon Croxford and Miklos Ivanich (Hungarian-born concert pianist). He has played professionally in western New York, and St. Louis, as well as Arkansas. |
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Joe Cripps, tuba, has a BSE in Music Education and a BM in string bass from the University of Arkansas. Presently, he is the orchestra teacher for Booker Arts Magnet elementary school in the Little Rock School District. Doubling on electric and acoustic bass, Joe has played professionally with the Woody Herman big band, the Tommy Dorsey Band, the Les Elgart Band, Herb Ellis, several touring Broadway musicals, and the New York Voices. This versatile musician has been a member of the North Arkansas Symphony, the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Ft. Smith Symphony, and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and toured Europe in 1987 with a bluegrass band. For 10 years he was the bassist with the Art Porter Trio. |
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Ted Seibs, on drums, attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, teaches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and has performed with the Arkansas Symphony, musicals including "Chorus Line," and with numerous artists including Gary Burton, Bob Hope, Chuck Berry, B.J. Thomas, and many others. |
For booking information, please contact E.O. Huddleston
501-470-3791
huddleston@happytymesjazzband.com
Arkansas Arts of Tour