Article: Chappie Willet, Frank Fairfax, and Phil Edwards' Collegians: from West Virginia to Philadelphia.

In the spring of 1934, the Chicago Defender ("Detroit Likes Them" 1934) and Philadelphia Tribune ("Chappie Willet" 1934) ran a publicity photo of "Chappie Willet and His Greystone Ballroom Orchestra." The image not only provides one of the few glimpses of jazz composer and arranger Francis "Chappie" Willet (1907-1976) from his early, pre-New York City career, but it also documents the final chapter in the history of Edwards' Collegians, a West Virginia territory band. Typical of many jazz dance orchestras, the story of Edwards' Collegians begins at the height of the Jazz Age and ends in the midst of the Great Depression. But the group's migration to Philadelphia left a ...

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