Biography
Leroy Satchell was born in Elizabethtown, New York, to William Satchell and Sophronia Davis. William formerly enslaved in North Carolina and joined the Union Army in 1864 serving as a cook until the war's end. He and his wife moved north to New York, later moving their young family to St. Albans, Vermont.
Leroy lived amongst a thriving Black community in St. Albans where he tried his hand at many jobs throughout his life. He was a laborer and a boot black; he operated a car wash station and served as a chauffeur. His prowess as a boxer and the leading hitter for the local baseball team was noted regularly in the papers. Despite his athletic success, Leroy's true passion and calling was as a musician.
Leroy was a gifted drummer and percussionist. He performed with the St. Albans Brigade Band and played timpani for the St. Albans Symphony Orchestra. He played regularly at dances, glee club events, winter pageants and ceremonies. He made his living at the time by accompanying silent films with a small orchestra at two of St. Albans silent movie theaters, the Bellevue and Empire Theatre. It was here that he met Ora, Lorenzo, and Sterling Weed, the leaders of Weeds Imperial Orchestra, a jazz band of some note.
As a member of Weeds Imperial Orchestra, he traveled around Northern New England, Southern Quebec, and up and down the East Coast playing music for thousands at local dances and events. As with many musicians, he supplemented his evening work by giving drum lessons during the day to young up-and-coming percussionists. After an automobile accident in 1930 left him unable to play or travel for a number of months, he brought in a young protege named Robert Williams to substitute for him so that Weeds Imperial Orchestra could fulfill it's performance schedule. Robert Williams, a young Black man with whose family Leroy had boarded in his younger days, was a student of Leroy's. Eventually the two men would trade dates with the group back and forth until the band stopped playing in the 1950s with the onset and popularity of "cowboy music".
In his later years, Sterling Weed recalled Leroy as an "artist on the drums whose playing was distinctive and very musical." Leroy died on July 9th, 1962, but his student, Robert Williams, went on to play with Weeds Imperial Orchestra after it regrouped in the 1970s and 1980s.