Cheatham was born in
Birmingham, Alabama on June 18, 1924, the son of Isabelle (
née Steen) and Andrew Cheatham, who was a
conductor on the
Louisville and Nashville Railroad. At various times, his colleagues in the band included
Eddie Chamblee,
Chico Hamilton,
Jo Jones,
Lester Young, and also
Harry White, whom Cheatham said had been "like a mentor" to him. Taking advantage of the
G.I. Bill, Cheatham was able to attend the
New York Conservatory of Modern Music in
Brooklyn from 1948 to 1950, then from 1950 to 1953 studied at the Westlake College of Music in
Los Angeles, where he developed a lifelong friendship with one of his instructors,
Russell Garcia. Cheatham met his wife,
Jean Evans, in 1956 in
Buffalo, New York, when the local
musicians' union chief called them separately to replace two musicians who could not make a job at the local Elks Ballroom. They married in 1959, and their son, Jonathan, was born the same year His wife also had a daughter from a previous relationship, Shirley, who was born in 1951. During the 1970s, Cheatham taught jazz at
Bennington College in
Vermont, and also at the
University of Wisconsin in
Madison, Wisconsin. In 1984, Cheatham and his wife won a bronze medal at the
New York Festivals Film and TV Awards for the 1983
KPBS television special
Three Generations of the Blues, which featured
Sippie Wallace,
Big Mama Thornton, and Jennie Cheatham. Also in 1984, the Cheathams formed the Sweet Baby Blues Band, reviving
Kansas City-style
blues. The first of the eight
studio albums they released between 1985 and 1996,
Sweet Baby Blues, was the sole recording to receive a from the in 1985. Their fifth album,
Luv in the Afternoon (1990), was also voted amongst the best blues albums of the year in
Down Beat magazine's 39th annual poll of international music critics, as published in 1991. In 1998, the band was described as "an earthy jump blues combo that plays funky, hard-swinging, boogie-busting music". Cheatham's legacy is carried on by several students who went on to become, like him, prominent composer/performer/educators: flutist
Nicole Mitchell, bassist
Karl E. H. Seigfried, and drummer Vikas Srivastava. Cheatham died in
San Diego,
California on January 12, 2007, aged 82, having undergone
heart surgery the previous month. ==Discography==