Bennie Wallace

Bennie Wallace began playing jazz in 1959 in a school band under the direction of jazz drummer Chet Hedgecoth. Hedgecoth took the students to hear good jazz bands in the area and once even drove them a hundred miles to hear the Count Basie band. Through Chet, Wallace also discovered the Amvets club, a local black after-hours jazz venue. It was there that he had his first opportunity to sit in and play in a real jazz club. In the summer of 1965, the owner of the Amvets, Seth Crenshaw, gave Wallace his first regular job as a band leader.