Articles by Mark Sampson

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Roger Glenn: A Lifelong Latin Heart

by Mark Sampson
January 15, 2026

The photograph shows the hero of this tale, Roger Glenn, sometime in the late 1940s when he was five or six, learning to play the marimba with his father, Tyree. An alumnus of the Swing Era, Tyree Glenn played trombone with Cab Calloway during the orchestra's “Hi-De-Ho" prime between 1939 and 1946 and with the small-group-within-a-group, the Cab Jivers. He was even implicated in the notorious “spitball" incident that led to a young disruptive Dizzy Gillespie getting his marching orders. ...