Charlie Creath

Who was Charlie Creath?

Charles Cyril "Charlie" Creath was an American jazz trumpeter, saxophonist, accordionist, and bandleader.

Creath played in traveling circuses and in theater bands in the decade of the 1900s, and moved back to St. Louis, Missouri around 1919. There he led bands playing on the Streckfus company's riverboats traveling on the Mississippi River between New Orleans and St. Louis. His ensembles were so popular that he had several bands under his own name at one time in the 1920s. A young Gene Sedric, later a mainstay of Fats Waller's combo and orchestra, played with Creath on riverboats in the 20s, perhaps early 30s. He co-led a group on the SS Capitol in 1927 with Fate Marable. Late in the 1920s he suffered from an extended illness, and primarily played saxophone and accordion instead of trumpet afterwards. He and Marable played together again from 1935 to 1938, and toward the end of the decade Creath opened a nightclub in Chicago. He worked in an airplane manufacturing plant during World War II and retired in 1945. His last years were plagued with illness.