A few years ago I was able to participate in the Kansas City Black Archives digitization project: Kansas City Jazz era and the Great Depression. I submitted this rare photo of my Uncle Earl Caruthers who was a local jazz musician that played with some pretty impressive swing and jazz bands including Bennie Moten and Jimmie Lunceford. The photo came from my cousin Candy Caruthers-Morrow’s collection who was his youngest daughter.
My Uncle Earl or “Jock” as he was called was born Earl Malcolm Caruthers on May 29, 1904 in Monroe County, Mississippi. Many accounts have him born in Westpoint, Mississippi in 1910 but he was at least 6 years old on the 1910 US census. The 10th of 11 children born to Jefferson and Mary Caruthers, the lived in rural Muldon, Mississippi where his parents were farmers. Along with other Caruthers family members, Earl’s father would migrate to Kansas City, Kansas to escape the Jim Crow south. Earl attended Sumner High School and played basketball.
My uncle attended Fisk University for two years after graduating from Sumner High School. He married Odia Wilson at age 20. From this union his first daughter Gloria Caruthers was born.
He moved his new family to St. Louis where he had begun his career playing various saxophones in Bennie Moten’s Kansas City orchestra in 1928.
Earl could play several different saxophones. In 1932 he joined the band of Jimmie Lunceford and mostly played the large baritone sax. He recorded with Lunceford often and can be heard on Lunceford’s “I Love You,” the raucous “Harlem Shout,” and the rowdy “Organ Grinder’s Swing.” He would eventually make New York his home base and in 1944 married Constance Collins from New York. Earl remained a member of Lunceford’s orchestra until Lunceford died in 1947. Shortly after he moved back to Kansas City, Ks with his daughter Candace and her younger brother Earl Jr.
Uncle Jock continued to play in various bands in Kansas City and also took up a job as the local milk man. A man with a warm heart, he gave milk to families that could not afford it (much to the dismay of his employers) often paying from his own pocket. He died on April 05, 1971 in Kansas City, KS.
If your interested in seeing Earl Caruthers play, this might be the only video recording of him. “Jimmie Lunceford and his Dance Orchestra with The Three Brown Jacks and Myra Johnson” recorded in 1936. Get ready to snap your fingers and tap your feet!
Uncle Jock is the last Sax on the right Click here
Video and Photo still credit: Jeremiah Ledbetter
Photos Courtesy of Roy Morrow (husband of Candace Caruthers) and Stefanie Caruthers
Orme Genealogy and Consulting 
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