On September 30, 1946, the State of Texas released John “Jack” Purvis from prison for the last time. The Kokomo, Indiana, trumpeter had been one of the earliest players to take up Louis Armstrong’s innovations, recording with Hal Kemp and the Dorsey Brothers and cutting sides under his own name between 1929 and 1935. In 1937, while working as a cook in Texas, he was arrested for his part in an El Paso robbery and sent to Huntsville. There he led the prison band, the Rhythmic Swingsters, from the piano, and in 1938 it broadcast regularly over WBAP. A conditional pardon came in August 1940; he broke parole almost at once and served six more years. (One account puts his final release in May 1947.) Afterward he worked as a chef, a carpenter, a pilot and a radio repairman, and died in San Francisco in 1962, of liver disease or gas depending on whom you believe. The cornetist Jim Goodwin later said he had met and talked with him around 1968.
Sources: Jack Purvis (musician) — Wikipedia (arrested June 1937 over an El Paso robbery; Huntsville; directed the Rhythmic Swingsters, broadcast on WBAP in 1938; conditional release August 1940, parole violation, six more years; final release September 30, 1946; later a chef, carpenter, aviator and radio repairman; died March 30, 1962, conflicting causes of death; reported 1968 meeting) , Scott Yanow, “Some Fun Thoughts” — scottyanow.com (conditional pardon August 1940; “six more years in prison until being released on Sept. 30, 1946”; later pilot, carpenter and radio repairman; 1968 sighting) , “Jack Purvis: a jazz cat with at least nine lives” — Bruce Crowther, Jazz Journal, July 16, 2020 (arrested in Texas on robbery charges in mid-1937; Rhythmic Swingsters on WBAP; paroled 1940, returned to prison until late 1946; death certificate vs. suicide by gas; reported meeting with cornetist Jim Goodwin six years after his death) , “Birthday Spotlight: Jack Purvis!” — On This Day In Jazz Age Music (gives the dissenting final-release date of May 1947)
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