Alphabetical Order

ALBERT, Jeff - Trombone
?: Lafayette, LA
Born and grew up in Lafayette but has lived and worked in New Orleans since 1988. He performs in a wide variety of idioms, from jazz to reggae, Latin, and R&B. He leads his own modern jazz group, and is also a member if the eclectic and innovative Naked Orchestra. Other groups that he plays with regularly include The Other Planets, and Friends of Jabu. He may just possibly play in the nude but I would not bank on it.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

AMBROSE - Trombone
c1900?: New Orleans
It is not known if Ambose was his given name or his family name. George Lewis named him as just “Ambrose”, a member of a group led by Leonard Parker with whom George played after leaving the Black Eagles and before joining Buddy Petit. This info. comes from an article “Play Number Nine” by George published in The Jazz Record. However , I strongly suspect this is Ambrose Powers (q.v.). Not to be confused with Bert Ambrose (1896)

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ANDERSON, John - Trombone
88 According to R&S and NGDJ, but NOM vol.10 - 2 says 1905 which makes more sense of the Bunk reference Mentioned by Tom Stagg in Footnote volume 2-3 as one of the “young men of New Orleans” who are continuing the traditions of jazz playing, but with no other details. A Jerry Anderson played drums with Kermit Ruffins at the Café Brasil, October 1999 (still with him, Nov. 2002, alongside Kevin Morris bass, Emile Venette piano and Corey Henry trombone in Kermit Ruffin’s Barbecue Swingers.)

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ANDERSON, Keith “Wolf” - Trombone; tuba
?: New Orleans
Played with Butch Gomez; also Pete Fountain. Founder member of the Rebirth Brass Band.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ANDREWS, Revert - Trombone; percussion
c1975?: New Orleans?
Revert is mentioned on a Dirty Dozen Brass Band CD “Jelly” (narrated by Danny Barker) as making his debut, after being a young street performer. Nothing else known.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ANDREWS, Troy “Trombone Shorty” “Trumpet Slim” -
Trombone; trumpet; tuba
1986: New Orleans
Started playing trombone when only 4 with the James Andrews All Star Brass Band and was dubbed “Trombone Shorty” by brother James. Tuba Fats lived with the Andrews family for a while and helped Troy on tuba. Troy organised his first band at 7: the Tiny Toones Brass Band. It was around this time that he came under the benign influence of Danny Barker. Later on he played with Trombone Shorty’s Brass Band at Donna’s, and the New Birth Brass Band at Tipitina’s. It was Aaron Neville who gave him the name “Trumpet Slim” after Troy appeared on trumpet with the Neville Brothers at Jazz Fest in 2003. Accepted to study at NOCCA a year early because of his precocious

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

Troy Andrews plays every brass band instrument, has his own CDs out, had a music club named after him, played Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis and just recently graduated from New Orleans' performing arts high school, NOCCA.

How did you get the name "Trombone Shorty"?
At a jazz funeral for Louis Nelson. My brother gave me the name. I was carrying a trombone. I could only play a couple of notes but I could play them loud. I was maybe five years old.

When did you play your first Jazz Fest?
It must have been in the early '90s. I got up on stage with Bo Diddley.

Since then you've picked up a number of instruments?
I play trumpet, drums, sousaphone, piano. Every brass band instrument. I play trumpet when I am out marching. The trombone is too long. People are always knocking into it. It's safer to play trumpet.

What are you going to pick up next?
I am getting into classical. To get my sight reading together. But I also have a funk band. I'm doing a Latin project. I'm always doing the brass band.

What's your favorite brass band song?
Wind It Up. I wrote it. It's a crowd favorite. Do you have a favorite jazz standard?
Four by Miles Davis. What's Louis Armstrong's best song?
Basin Street Blues.

Source: www.bigeasy.com

AQUILERA, Bob “One-Leg” - Piano; trombone; guitar
c1895: New Orleans 1945, Feb 27
A legendary character who paraded on his wooden leg with Fischer’s Brass Band between 1908 and 1911. Prior to WW1 “One-Leg” was with Happy Schilling’s Orchestra, performing at the Pelican Baseball Park between games. He toured the Southwest later as a solo pianist. He turned down the chance to go to Chicago in 1915 with Tom Brown’s Band.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ARCENEAUX, Morris (Maurice) - Trombone
Albert Walters recalled, in an interview with Bill Russell, Morris Arcenaux on trombone with the Camellia Band when Albert first started out on piano. Others were Wooden Joe trumpet, George Thompson (a.k.a. George Stuart) clarinet, John Smith leader and banjo, Johnny Prudence bass, and Joe Alexis drums

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ARCHEY, James H. “Jimmy” - Trombone; guitar
1902, Oct 12: Norfolk, VA 1967, Nov 16
Began playing at 12; played his first gig when 13 years old. An unusually short man, he was barely five feet tall. He moved to New York in 1923 and became famous for his plunger mute work. Played with King Oliver’s band in his New York period, and Joe Steele’s band in Harlem, 1928, and also the Luis Russell Orchestra, with Louis Armstrong, in the 1930s. Toured Europe with Mezz Mezzrow in 1948. Appeared in a Bob Wilber group in the 1950s. He was in Europe with the New Orleans All Stars in 1966. Played regularly until his death. The “This Is Jazz” recordings he made with Wild Bill Davison and his All Star Stompers, in 1947, a group in which the majority were from New Orleans, amply justify his inclusion here. Muggsy Spanier’s wife recalled that, “ He (Jimmy) played the guitar beautifully, too.” Horace Harris (HH) points out that I have failed to mention the excellent biography by Peter Carr, and published by JAZZology: JIMMY ARCHEY: The Little Giant of the Trombone.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ASTOR, Bob - Trombone; trumpet; drums
1915, Oct 5: New Orleans
Listed as a trombone player and a bandleader by Henry Busse Jr. although I cannot find a mention of him anywhere else. There is no mention of him other than his work in the area of Swing orchestras and so-called modern jazz. Later, I find that he worked with several local groups around New Orleans and in Texas, before forming his own band in Los Angeles where he also became a disc-jockey. Went to New York early 1940s and although he never recorded the band was important because it included such musicians as Neal Hefti, Les Elgart, Zoot Sims, Illinois Jacquet, Shelly Manne and others who became top rank musicians in the 50’s .He left the music business in the late 1950’s.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ATKINS, Edward “Ed” - Trombone; tuba; baritone horn
1889, Oct 15: New Orleans c1928
On baritone horn with the Onward Brass Band from around 1905 and later with the Olympia. He joined the Tuxedo Band and also played with Joe Oliver, and Joe Howard’s Band in New Orleans around 1916, after having briefly visited Chicago with Manuel Perez the previous year. He served as a bandsman in the US army during WW1 and after the war, in 1919, he settled permanently in Chicago. What this main entry originally failed to mention (mea culpa) is that in 1923 he probably recorded with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. It certainly wasn’t the regular Honoré Dutrey. Ed Atkins was more positively with Joe Oliver in 1924-25 in Dave Peyton’s Symphonic Syncopators at the Plantation Cafe. In May 1926 he recorded with Erskine Tate’s Vendome Orchestra, and in April 1928 he recorded with Fess Williams and his Joy Boys. R&S give his death as c1926 but I am assuming that the date given by Rust for the Fess Williams session is more reliable.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

AUGUSTAT, Boulboul - Trombone
c1870: New Orleans c1924
Lomax quotes Alphonse Picou (in Mr Jelly Roll): One day Boulboul Augustat the trombone player heard me practising and asked me if I want to come to one of his rehearsals ..… so I played with Boulboul’s string band. However, it is generally accepted that Picou started with Boulboul Valentin, so Augustat was possibly his given name, which further illustrates the perils of oral history.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

AVERY, Joseph “Kid” - Trombone
1892, Oct 3: Waggeman, LA 1955, Dec 9
A pupil of the important early musician, Dave Perkins from 1912. Between 1915 and 1922 he was in the Tulane Orchestra . He spent some time on tour with the legendary Evan Thomas’ Black Eagles, replacing Bob Thomas, and also toured with the Yelpin’ Hounds. In the early 1940s until the mid-50s he led his own band. He played regularly with the Young Tuxedo Brass Band. In 1949 he recorded with Wooden Joe Nicholas. Kid Avery made the early riff melody “Holler Blues” his own, although it later became inaccurately known as “Joe Avery Blues", now performed as “The Second Line” (not to be confused with the Barbarin tune). His funeral was reported as one of the largest held outside of New Orleans.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BARBARIN, Lucien - Trombone
1956, July 17: New Orleans, Louisiana
For five generations the Barbarin family has contributed immeasurably to the music of New Orleans. Their story begins with Isidore Barbarin, who mentored the young Louis Armstrong nearly a century ago; after achieving unprecedented worldwide fame as a trumpeter, Armstrong recruited Isidore's son Paul to play drums with his band. Today, the torch rests in the hands of Lucien Barbarin, whose command of the trombone and love for performing establish him as one of the city's premier musical ambassadors. Raised in the Seventh Ward, he made his debut at age six, playing drums with his Uncle Paul's Onward Brass Band. By high school he was playing trombone and co-leading the Fairview Baptist Christian Church Band with his cousin Danny Barker. Lucien's tastes embraced from  jazz to funk; he drew inspiration from J. J. Johnson's bop virtuosity and played R&B gigs around New Orleans with the groups Stone Mountain and Joy. But an invitation to work six nights a week with drummer Albert "June" Gardner at the Famous Door, in the heart of the French Quarter, drew him toward traditional jazz. Lucien's calendar filled quickly as he picked up jobs with various outfits. One, the Tuxedo Brass Band, began appearing regularly at Preservation Hall in the early eighties; when he started getting calls to play with Willie and Percy Humphrey in the Preservation Hall Band as well, the enduring relationship between the venue and one of its most engaging artists began. Today, Lucien tours internationally, from the North Sea to the White House, with both the Preservation Hall Band and with Harry Connick, Jr. While in New Orleans he performs locally and helps raise his five children, in whom signs of musical talent are -- not surprisingly -- stirring.  

"I grew up a few blocks from the Treme neighborhood. I used to hear the second line [marching band rhythm sections] come up the street; you could hear that bass drum from two blocks away. I'd say, 'Mama! Mama! Second line's coming!' I'd run down the block, catch up with the second line, and join that parade …"  

"My Uncle Paul used to get on the drums and show my brother and me how to play with the New Orleans rhythm. He took us in parades with him; he'd lay out and let me play the snare drum with the band. And when we were done we'd go out on the streets and beat on pots and pans. All the kids in the neighborhood knew that my brother and I were into music."  

"Musicians in New Orleans are born to entertain. There's nothing wrong with that, because I'm happy when I play. I love what I do. Hey, this is it: 'Come on, join with me! Have fun with me, people!' That's what it's about."  

Source: www.preservationhall.com

See website: www.lucienbarbarin.com

BARNES, Harrison Baritone - horn; trombone; cornet
1889, Jan 13: Magnolia Plantation, LA 1960
Normally Danny would have been interred with his mother and other members of his family in St Louis Cemetery #1 but the vault, like many of the older tombs, was not spacious enough to accommodate a large modern casket so he was buried in St Louis #2 with his uncle Paul Barbarin. A pupil on cornet of Professor Jim Humphrey. Harrison played with the Eclipse Brass Band in 1906, and the Henry Allen Brass Band in 1907, with which band he played a funeral with Buddy Bolden on Buddy’s last known job. He was with Chris Kelly to 1918, Harrison being the only proficient reader, and who also managed the band. When the valves on his cornet wore out he switched to playing a trombone sold to him by Sonny Henry In 1923 he was playing in the NOLA Band, led by Pete Lacaze. He also played with John Robichaux and Manuel Perez. He was on the 1946 Original Zenith Brass Band recording, and in 1951 he also recorded with Kid Thomas. See also Alfred Barnes.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BARNES, Jules - Trombone
?: Alexandria, LA ?
A light-skinned (“bright”) musician from downtown in Dave Bailey’s Tulane Archive description. Sammy Penn recalled, as a teenager living in Morgan City, sitting in with a band on tour from New Orleans managed by Jules, including Zeb Lenares, Mutt Carey and Little Dad Vincent. Later, on moving to New Orleans, Sammy gigged with Barnes for about three years. Jules Barnes was known to have played in Duck Johnson’s Young Olympia Band. Emile Barnes occasionally gigged with the band but it is

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BECHET, Leonard Victor - Trombone
1877, Apr 25: New Orleans 1952, Mar 9
Although a musician he was principally a dentist, and is perhaps best known for being Sidney Bechet’s brother, and for making the dentures that “assisted” Bunk in his comeback. However, Emily Mae Evans, Bunk’s stepdaughter, said they were poorly made and never fitted properly! Some later research has revealed that he was at best a rather indifferent dentist. At any rate, Leonard led the Silver Bells Band from 1903 until WW1. He played with the Young Superior Brass Band during the 1920s, and also appeared with Charlie Love. His son, Leonard Bechet, Jr. (born 1927) played alto and soprano sax and clarinet, and was Sidney’s manager for a while. In February 1973 he recorded an album in California with Barry Martyn. Leonard had a younger brother Elmore who fooled around on clarinet “but wasn’t a musician” although he had a tone like uncle Sidney.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BENARBY, Jim - Trombone
c1904: New Orleans c1926
A member of Nat Towles’ Creole Harmony Kings for their tour of Mexico, 1924-25. He was the uncle of Ernest Kelly who played in the first band led by George Lewis around 1924.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BENSON, Hamilton “Hamp” - Trombone; bass
1885: New Orleans ?
Hamp had four brothers, all of whom were musicians. He started on bass in 1901 taught by his brother. By his own account he first played in a trio with Russell Williams on guitar, and Johnny Bradley, mandolin. This was in 1901. In 1903 he was with Andrew Kimball and played in the district until 1905. The following year he was at Tom Anderson’s Annexe along with Tom Brown. He started playing valve trombone in 1906 with Tom Brown, a Creole mandolin player. The same year he organised his own band, the Primrose Band, comprising Joe Johnson; Herb Lindsay; George Williams and Augustin Cato. Hamp appears to have absconded with the proceeds from a date around 1911 and was not heard of until about 15 years later when Pops Foster saw him in St. Louis. Also in the 1920s he was known to have been resident in Chicago for a while because he was reported as playing there sometimes with the Kid Howard Orchestra when it made excursions trips from New Orleans. In the mid-thirties he was a member, according to Father Al Lewis, of a band in Crowley, known rather strangely as the New Orleans Cotton Club Band. See also the entry for Vic Despenza . Then, in the 1940s, he appeared on a date with Sidney Bechet.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BERRY, Mel - Trombone
c1897: New Orleans 1929
In his rather brief life and consequent musical career he achieved fame as a virtuoso performer on his instrument He played in theatre pit bands but his main contribution to jazz was made alongside Tony Parenti in Johnny DeDroit’s Orchestra in the 1920s. He is pictured with them in 1920 on page 177 of R&S. Mel died in Los Angeles. The 1960 Local 496 register lists a drummer, Oliver Berry.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BLACK JOE - Trombone
c1890?
Described by Pops Foster as an untrained but very popular musician who played in the high register a great deal. His proper name is unknown. He played with a band led by cornettist Walter “Blue” Robertson, including Face-O Woods, Willie Joseph and Oscar Kendalls.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BLUNT, Carroll “Cal” Trombone; bass
1908, Feb 17: Carrolton, LA 1970, Jan
Cal studied trombone with Dave Perkins, and his first regular job was in 1929 with Willie Newton’s Orchestra, a reading band. After that he was with Ernie Forman, and then began doubling on bass. In the 1940s he was with Jimmy Jackson’s Brass Band, and also became a founder member of the Gibson Brass Band. Recorded on bass in New Orleans with Emile Barnes’ Jane’s Alley 6, in 1962. He led his own group which recorded in

1963, and recorded on trombone with the Gibson Brass Band in the same year. Pictured on page 48 of Schafer’s Brass Bands & New Orleans Jazz, parading with the Young Excelsior Brass Band at Tulane, 1964. Played on bass with Doc Paulin, 1968. Freddie John, Sven Stahlberg and Per Oldaeus went to the wake and Per took of photos of George Sterling, Doc Paulin, drummer Harold Edwards, John Wimberley, John Henry McNeil, etc.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BOCAGE, Peter - Trumpet, Trombone, Violin
Multi-instrumentalist Peter Bocage was one of the great trumpeters in New Orleans history and ironically did not consider himself a jazz player, rather a ragtime musician. He got his start on the violin, although he did play mandolin, guitar, banjo, trumpet, baritone horn, xylophone and trombone. Listening to the records he made in the 1960’s reveals the differences between the downtown “orthodox” ragtime orchestras and the uptown “syncopators”. Bocage came from the downtown school and preferred soft, melodic playing as opposed to the hotter or as he referred to them “vicious” styles as played by Buddy Bolden, Freddie Kepperd and later work by Bunk Johnson, a former pupil.

Born into a prosperous Creole family in Algiers across the river from New Orleans, Bocage began taking violin lessons at 13. He was soon playing local parties with his father's group, but soon began playing with various groups in Storyville. At 21, Bocage became the leader and violinist for the Superior Orchestra, which at the time was one of the city's most popular ragtime bands and featured Bunk Johnson on cornet. Bocage is considered responsible for Bunk’s learning to read music. During this period Bocage also saw and heard Buddy Bolden’s band, as well as a band led by Freddie Keppard, both of whom he considered inferior to Bunk. In 1910 Bocage joined Frankie Dusen’s Eagle Band on violin which was essentially the Bolden band without Buddy. Bocage began learning the trumpet and with Fate Marable in 1917 formed the first inter-racial band on the Strekfus line.

Throughout this period Bocage played with a who’s who of New Orleans brass and dance bands, many of which contained the most famous musicians ever produced in the Crescent City. In 1918 he played in both the Onward band which included Joe “King” Oliver and Henry Allen Sr.’s band. He also became a regular member of the Tuxedo Orchestra, which included Louis Armstrong. In 1922 he took over leadership of the Excelsior band which he continued to lead up until the band's demise in 1932. He kept the entire working stock of band marching and dancing arrangements and neither he, nor his family after his death have ever let anyone copy the documents.

In 1923 Bocage rejoined Piron's New Orleans Orchestra and with the help of Clarence Williams went to New York for a brief residency at the Cotton Club. The band also recorded for Okeh and Victor. Both songs were rejected and remain unissued. Piron's New Orleans Orchestra did record 13 sides in 1925 and again in 1932 for Victor as the Creole Serenaders.

In 1939, Bocage made his living in the insurance business and briefly left New Orleans to take Bunk Johnson’s place with Sidney Bechet’s group in Boston. As the New Orleans revival of the 1940’s came to a head, Bocage recorded with some of the old-time New Orleans musicians as the Jazz Pioneers as well as playing with Henry Allen Sr.’s brass band in Algiers.

Throughout 50’s and 60’s Bocage led various incarnations of the Creole Serenaders, and released an album on Riverside 60's for Riverside called: "Loves-Jiles Ragtime Orchestra/Creole Serenaders" and was becoming an important part in the early Preservation Hall until his death in 1967 at the age of 80.

Source: Ted Gottsegen

BRAUD, Wellman (Breaux) - Bass; tuba; trombone
1891, Jan 25: St. James Parish, LaPlace, LA 1966, Oct 29
He began playing the violin at the age of seven. According to his oral testimony he moved to New Orleans in 1911, although he never played in the District because he was too young. However, other information had it that his first work was in a trio in the District, at Tom Anderson’s, 1908-1913......! Around 1910 he is said to have played guitar with A J Piron, and also paraded on drums in a brass band. The name change from Breaux to Braud occurred after he moved north in 1917, when he began playing string bass. In Chicago he joined the Creole Band with Lil Hardin, Roy Palmer, Sugar Johnny, Ram Hall and Lawrence Duhé. From around 1920 he had several years in the Charlie Elgar Orchestra, and was with Wilbur Sweatman in 1923. In the same year he was in Europe with Will Vodery’s Plantation Revue, and also toured in a burlesque show. For ten years from 1926 he was a long-time sideman with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. He later played with Jimmie Noone. Wellman left full-time music in the mid-forties, but appeared at weekends with Bunk Johnson in 1947. He resumed playing full-time in 1956 joining up with Kid Ory, and touring Europe. Later, in 1960, he was with Joe Darensbourg. Wellman Braud laid claim to be the creator of the “walking bass” technique. Related to the Marsalis sons on their mother’s side, according to an April, 1999 column in The Times-Picayune.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BRAZLEE, Harrison (BRAZLEY) - Trombone
1888, Oct 25: New Orleans 1954, Nov
Harrison Brazlee began playing as a professional with the Excelsior Brass Band of Mobile, Alabama in WW1. He also toured with the Ringling Brothers Circus and the Rabbit’s Foot Minstrels. Harrison joined the Evan Thomas band in the mid-thirties, replacing Joe Avery, and consequently he was obliged to learn how to improvise. He later settled down in New Orleans and was a regular at Luthjens. Among his recording dates are: Emile Barnes, 1951; Ken Colyer, 1953; Billie and DeDe Pierce (at Luthjens) in 1953. According to Dick Allen ( KCT Newsletter, June 1998) Harrison spelled his name as BRAZLEY . Well, he ought to have known.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BROWN, Octave - Trombone
c1880?: New Orleans? ?
All that I know about him is that he is mentioned in NOM when Robert Goffin is quoted as listing him with Henry Payton at the Big 25 in 1900: Huey Rankin bass; Henry Payton accordion; Jim Gibson banjo; Charles McCurdy clarinet; Buddy Bolden cornet and Octave Brown trombone. Big Eye Louis Nelson took over on bass at the time of the Charles Riots. If you played with Bolden you’re certain of a mention here. The 1960 Local 496 register lists a pianist, Ralph Brown.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BROWN, Raymond “Ray” - Trombone; violin
c1892: New Orleans c1940
The father-in-law of “H .E.” Minor, and the father of Raymond “Clifford” Brown. (Clifford played trumpet with Fats Pichon, according to Lionel Ferbos. A Tulane interview with Alfred Williams says that Clifford was a pupil of Red Allen, and that he could also play drums. Williams and Brown played at the La Vida jitney in 1928 with John Handy, Ernest Kelly, Louis Givens and Sidney Pfleuger.) In the early 1920s Ray worked with Clarence Desdune’s Joyland Revelers. Later, in 1927, he himself joined Fats Pichon (who had a fair line-up with Red Allen, Paul Barbarin and Henry Kimball in his band at the time) and played with Sidney Desvigne in 1928. According to Bill Russell in Preservation Hall Portraits, Twat Butler’s first job was in Raymond Brown’s band that included Sammy Penn at the time. There’s a picture of Ory’s outfit The Woodland Band at La Place around 1905 where the violinist is Raymond Brown.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

BROWN, Tom “Red” - Trombone; bass
1888, Jun 3: New Orleans 1958, Mar 25
He first played violin before starting on trombone. Around 1910 he played with Papa Laine’s Reliance Band. He led the first Dixieland band to go north in 1915, and it was advertised as a “jass” band. During the 1920s he toured and recorded with Ray Miller. Around 1924 he moved back to New Orleans where in later years he was heard frequently in the city and recorded with Johnny Wiggs. Also recorded as a leader during the 1950s with Wiggs and Harry Shields in the line-up. Unfortunately, Tom was given to such ungrammatically racist opinions as, “ ..… niggers ain’t no good on clarinet. Them thick blubbery lips can’t make no tone. They ain’t smart enough to tell where the harmony is neither. After all, they niggers”. Well, I guess we know where you stand, Tom!

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

Like most early White New Orleans Jazz musicians, trombonist Tom Brown was a veteran of Papa Jack Laine's Reliance Brass Band. Around 1910 he organized his own band called Brown's Ragtime Band. In 1915 he took the band North to Chicago making him the first to bring a White Jazz band north from New Orleans. Brown claimed to be the first to use the word "Jass" to describe the music that was coming out of New Orleans. The legend goes like this: the word "Jass" was some vague slang for sex, and was associated with prostitution. Tom Brown's band had come North from New Orleans in 1915 and was playing a successful engagement at Lamb's Cafe (located at Clark and Randolph Streets) against the wishes of the Chicago musician's union. The term "Jass" was used by the union as a way to denigrate the band. In defiance of the union Brown and the club owner started advertising the band as Brown's Band From Dixieland . The union's insults backfired increasing the popularity of the group and causing the term "Jass" to forever be used to describe the New Orleans style of collective improvisation. Brown's Dixieland Jass Band consisted of Tom Brown on trombone, his brother Steve on bass, Ray Lopez on cornet, William Lambert on drums, Arnold Loyacano on guitar and Larry Shields on clarinet. The band traveled to New York and had a successful run in 1916, but then broke up. Brown returned briefly to New Orleans, but booking agents in New York were still contacting him wanting a "Jass" band. He recommended another White New Orleans Jazz band, Stein's Dixieland Jass Band that was playing in Chicago at the time. Johnny Stein was under contractual obligation in Chicago and couldn't make it, but the rest of the band decided that this was too good of an offer to pass up and left Stein holding the bag in Chicago. In New York the group became The Original Dixieland Jass Band, an obvious attempt to associate themselves with Brown's Band From Dixieland. Brown got another band together and got a gig at New York's Century Theatre as part of Town Topics revue in 1916 where they were billed as The Five Rubes. Once in New York, Brown's clarinetist, Larry Shields exchanged jobs with Yellow Nuñez who had just been fired from The Original Dixieland Jass Band. Nuñez joined Brown's band. While in New York Tom Brown took part in a number of recording sessions which included the Happy Six, Yerke's Jazzarimba Orchestra, The Kentucky Serenaders and with Ray Miller's Black and White Melody Boys. Brown couldn't keep his band together in New York, and returned to Chicago where he led bands and worked as a sideman before he returned to New Orleans and opened a music shop. In New Orleans he played with Johnny Bayersdorffer and his Jazzola Novelty Orchestra. He continued to play in a variety of bands in New Orleans for the rest of his life while also running his store. In 1955 and 1958 Brown recorded for the first time under his own name. These sessions are available on CD from GBH records under the name of Tom Brown and his New Orleans Jazz Band.

www.redhotjazz.com

BRUNIS, Georg - Trombone
1902, Feb 6: New Orleans 1974, Nov 19
Claimed to have been born in 1900. Self-taught, and never learnt to read. He adopted the unusual spelling of both names on the advice of a numerologist for reasons best known to himself: his original name was George Clarence Brunies, and he became the best known of a musical clan.

He played with Papa Laine’s junior band on alto horn when he was 8, and also played in family bands before switching to trombone. After playing on river boats went to Chicago around 1920 and joined his friend, Paul Mares, in the Friars Society Orchestra, soon to become the New

Orleans Rhythm Kings. In the middle-20s he played regularly with Ted Lewis. He later played in New York with Eddie Condon for 20 years. Made the famous Bluebird sides with Muggsy Spanier in 1939. Still active in Chicago and the Midwest until the 1970s. Many have said that whilst he was not a great soloist his ensemble playing was unsurpassed, although in later years his playing became somewhat uncontrolled and Spanier, for one, had difficulty keeping him in order. Little Abbie Brunies (d), who died on the bandstand with Sharkey’s band in 1955, was nephew to the brothers Albert (c) George, Henry (tb), Merritt (tpt & tb), and Richard © .See also the entry for the Brunies family. Everyone gives 1974 as his date of death, except OMJ with 1975, an obvious mistake.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

Trombone player George Brunies got his start at age eight playing with Papa Jack Laine's band and later went on to play with Laine's son Alfred "Baby" Laine's band. He played in various bands in and around New Orleans including his brother Abbie's Halfway House Orchestra, until he moved to Chicago in 1919. After playing for a while in Chicago he took a job on the Mississippi riverboat the S.S. Capitol. He returned to Chicago in 1923 with his childhood friends Paul Mares and Leon Roppolo and joined the Friar's Society Orchestra which later changed its name to the New Orleans Rhythm Kings after leaving the club. George's brother Merritt took over the gig at the Friar's Inn with his band which was called Merritt Brunies and his Friars Inn Orchestra. George Brunies left New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1924 and signed up with Ted Lewis and his Band that same year. He stayed with Lewis until 1934. Throughout the rest of his career he played with Muggsy Spainer, Art Hodges, Louis Prima and Eddie Condon and many others.

www.redhotjazz.com

BUTLER, Rapp “Guyé” (Butler Rapp) - Trombone; guitar; banjo
c1898: New Orleans 1931 or 1942 (more likely) R&S suggests the date 1931 for his death, but the discovery of a newspaper report dates it in 1942. He is also referred to as “Butler Rapp” in an R&S entry, and often elsewhere but my information is that Butler was his family name, not Rapp. In the early 20s he was on trombone with the Onward Brass Band, and he was on banjo with Sam Morgan until 1925, but also played trombone in the Morgan Brass Band. In the late 20s he worked with Chris Kelly; and also played along with Willie Pajeaud in the Magnolia Orchestra. He played jitney dates also on banjo with Eddie Jackson. He was said to have been a good musician but he was a bully and thus hard to get on with. In 1931, whilst playing in a pickup band, he provoked a fight with Walter Decou, a much smaller man. Decou tried to leave but Guyé went after him. Decou stabbed out blindly with a knife and Guyé died. The contemporary consensus seems to be that he got what was coming to him. In case you are interested Eugene Rapp was a black officer in the New Orleans Confederate Militia at the time of the Civil War although he later sided with the Union forces. He is buried in the St. Louis No. 2 cemetery. Rab Butler was a Conservative British politician responsible for the post-WW2 Butler Act which established free secondary education for all. So that clears up any confusion.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CALISTE, Lester A. ( CALLISTE) - Trombone
1947, Aug 13: New Orleans
Lester is a grandnephew of the celebrated Buddy Petit, although as he has explained himself he is not a blood relative: Buddy was married to an aunt on Lester’s mother’s side of the family. Picked up an interest in music at St. Augustine’s High School in the Seventh Ward. At Xavier University he started playing in local bands but his first real professional excursion was with the Clyde Kerr Sr. Society Orchestra, and also appeared with the Toppers Orchestra. It was whilst with the Kerr outfit that Albert “Papa” French suggested he learnt to play traditional jazz and so it was that in the 1970s he played with the Olympia Brass Band He also turned out with the Young Tuxedo Band and often played at Preservation Hall - I saw him there with Gregg Stafford, Manny Crusto, Jeanette Kimball etc. during the 1994 French Quarter Festival. Also played and recorded with Clive Wilson’s Original Camellia Jazz Band. His exp erience also includes playing R&B with The Music Factory, backing vocalists as a session man at the Sea-Saint recording studio, playing with Sweet Emma Barrett, as well as Kid Sheik’s Preservation Hall Band. In recent years he has recorded with bands led by Lionel Ferbos, Cuff Billett and John “Kid” Simmons.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CAMPBELL, Arthur - Piano; trombone
c1890: New Orleans c1941
A Storyville “professor” between 1908 and 1917, who on occasion played piano with the Joe Oliver band, and also did some solo piano work, at Pete Lala’s Big 25 148 , a gambling place and favourite musicians’ hangout. He also played in Piron’s Orchestra at Tranchina’s at Spanish Fort around about 1915-17, and again in 1918. When he left to go to Chicago he was replaced by Steve Lewis. There cannot be many pianists who also play trombone professionally but Arthur played trombone in the Magnolia Brass Band before WW1. He recorded on piano in Chicago with Freddy Keppard in 1926.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CAREY, Jack - Trombone
c1889: Hahnville, LA c1935
One of the many musical Careys. According to a number of reports Jack may well have originated the “tailgate” trombone style. He was reputedly a rough trombonist but a good musician, and was one of the first to use French melodies for jazz.: the quadrille on which “Tiger Rag” was based was once known as “Jack Carey” . As early as 1910 he played brass band jobs with Henry Allen, and became the leader of a great early jazz band, the Crescent Orchestra, that included many fine players. He was replaced by Eddie Morris when Punch Miller took over. His brothers John and Milton played trombone; Pete and Thomas (Mutt) were trumpet players. Zeb Lenares was their nephew. A Peter Carey taught and led a band in Parks during the early 1900s. Any relationship is unknown, but see mention of Pete Carey below.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

Trombonist Jack Carey was the older brother of Thomas "Papa Mutt" Carey, the leader of the Cresent City Orchestra. He was also the author of perhaps the most popular Hot Jazz song of all time. He adapted the song from a book of French quadrilles that his band had been playing around with it, altering the timing and phrasing, and called it Tiger Rag. Jack worked up the second and third sections to show off his clarinetist, George Boyd. The final strain (the 'Hold That Tiger', section) was worked up by cornetist Punch Miller and Jack.

Jelly Roll Morton would later claim credit for transforming the quadrille, but historians have since proved otherwise. The tune was widely known in New Orleans as Jack Carey by the African American and Creole musicians of the period. Historians tell us, that many of the songs the Cresent City Orchestra developed were later recorded by the Original Dixieland Jass Band and copyrighted as their own. This was not unusual in the early period of Jazz, since musicians often played with more than one group at a time, and switched bands often.

Punch Miller took over the Cresent City Orchestra in 1919 and replaced Carey on trombone. Jack continued to play in parade bands in New Orleans throughout the 1920s.

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CARROLL, Albert (CAHILL, CARRELL etc) - Piano; trombone
c1885: *New Orleans c1910?
A piano player in Basin Street brothels until Storyville closed in 1917, and then worked some of the best band jobs, notably at the Lyric Theatre, until 1927. He was the son of a pianist, Cyrus Carroll of *Donaldsville, LA according to Spriggins who said he was 75 in 1933 which would make Cyrus born c1858. Around 1904 he was on the road as musical director of the New Orleans Minstrels and after returning to New Orleans went with Tony Jackson on tour with the Whitman Sister’s New Orleans Troubadours 153 . The last known mention of him was at a theatre in Jacksonville, Florida where he appeared with the Whitman Sisters. According to Clarence Williams, Carroll influenced Jelly Roll Morton. He sometimes played trombone in parades. His name has been mis-spelt in several books: Jazzmen, and also Mister Jelly Roll, no doubt as a result of oral testimony. As a lesson in checking details I offer the following. Rashly, in the entry for Arthur Campbell, I wrote that there cannot be too many pianists who also play trombone. Then, on reflection I decided to count them and discovered there are ten in this book alone. Look them up for yourself. Percy Cahill (relation?) wrote “Shoo Skeeter Shoo” in 1905 (see the Werlein entry)

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CASSARD, Jules - Bass; trombone
c1895: New Orleans ?
The uncle of Raymond Burke. Jules’ brother, Leo “Dooky” Cassard played banjo and is pictured with Ray Burke on page 305 of R&S. Jules was one of the earliest Dixielanders. He played in New Orleans with those members of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band who eventually achieved fame in New York. He is usually credited with composing the jazz standard “Angry” but see the entry for Blind Gilbert.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CASTIGLIOLA, Angelo J. “Bubby” - Trombone
1924, Aug 28: New Orleans
In R&S it says that he is the only jazzman from a concert-trained family and that he toured with Jack Teagarden, and worked with Irving Fazola, and also Tony Almerico, and was in a WWL studio band. In the notes to the American Music CD “Raymond Burke 1937-1949” it says that Vincent Cass’s real name was Castigliola and he recorded with Ray in 1942. It seems at least possible that they were from the same family and I wonder why Barry Martyn’s notes failed to make the connection or refer to it.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CAYETTE, Roland - Trombone
?: New Orleans?
All I know about this guy is that he replaced Eddie Morris in the Gibson Brass Band, and was replaced in turn by Eddie Noble at some time around 1962. Hear him on AMCD-96.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CHATTERS, Maynard - Trombone
c1935?: New Orleans
Professor of Music at Dillard University. Mentioned by Marcel Joly as with Clive Wilson’s Camellia Jazz Band at Preservation Hall in 1991 having taken over on trombone when Clem Tervalon died. He is referred as one of the “reserve of middle-aged musicians” in New Orleans, and with a son who Marcel Joly remembered with the Onward Brass Band in 1990. A report in The Mississippi Rag (Oct. 1997) names the son as Mark Chatters, on trumpet with Placide Adams playing in Armstrong Park. Currently (2004) is a regular performer at Preservation Hall.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CHRISTIAN, Charles - Trombone
1886, July 25: New Orleans 1964, Jul 11
Elder brother to Emile and Frank Christian. He was in the Christian Ragtime Band with his brothers from 1910 to 1918. He also appears to have been with the Triangle Band, with Tony Magiotta on cornet, from about 1917. Charles also played in the Domino Orchestra which around 1929 listed Tony Burrella, Tony Fougerat, Willie Guitar, Lester Bouchon and Nappy Lamare as well as Charlie among its members.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CHRISTIAN, Emile Joseph “Boot-mouth” - Trombone; trumpet; bass; clarinet
1895, Apr 20: New Orleans 1973, Dec 31
Brother of Charles and Frank Christian. Emile was in Papa Laine’s Reliance Brass Band. Amongst his early jobs was one in 1910 with Morgan’s Euphonic Syncopators in Chicago (all but the pianist were from New Orleans) according to R&S. He played with his brothers in both Fischer’s Brass Band and Papa Jack Laine’s band, as well as the Christian Ragtime Band. He replaced Eddie Edwards in the Original Dixieland Jazz Band on the England tour of 1919-21. “ … I played for the King and Queen", he told Clive Wilson in 1964. Emile left the ODJB to play in Paris, staying for ten years. On his return to New Orleans he played for most of the top Dixieland groups. Earl J. Christian (1908-1999) a member of the famous Christian family of jazz musicians, long retired but once played with Frank Frederico, and Stuart “Red Hot” Bergen, was given a brief obituary in The Second Line but no instrument was mentioned.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CLARK, Joseph “Red” - Trombone; sousaphone; tuba
1894, Feb 12: New Orleans 1960, Nov 30
His father, Aaron, was on baritone horn with the Onward, Pickwick and Excelsior Brass Bands. As a result of his father’s dying wish he did not play until he was in his 30s. He studied trombone with Dave Perkins and joined the Tonic Triad Band in 1928, and was with the Masonic Brass Band in the 1930s. In 1947, when T-Boy Remy was the Eureka’s leader, their sousaphone player didn’t arrive, so Red successfully persuaded T-Boy to let him play it and did so ever afterwards. He was a much loved and respected musician and manager of the Eureka Brass Band continuously from 1947 to 1960. Red Clark was a collector of musical scores and deserves credit as a preserver of the traditions of early New Orleans marching bands. He recorded with the Eureka in 1951.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CLEMENTS, Octave “Big Belly Fob” - Trombone
?: New Orleans ?
A cousin to Isadore Barbarin. He is mentioned by Danny Barker in A Life In Jazz as one of the extended family of Barbarin-related musicians. Feel free to come to your own conclusions as to the significance of his nickname.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CORNISH, Willie - Trombone
1875, Aug 1: New Orleans 1942, Jan 11
An early jazz pioneer and veteran of the Spanish-American War 181 , who played with Buddy Bolden, around 1894. He was replaced by Frankie Duson about 1903. Afterwards he played almost exclusively in brass bands, joining the Eureka Brass Band soon after it was founded. He tried to join the WPA band during the Depression but failed the reading test, whereupon he quit the musicians union, telling the officials: “ KMA” (believed to refer to an invitation to osculate his posterior). In 1931 he suffered a stroke whilst parading with the Eureka and was paralysed down his left side. By devising a strap to hold his trombone he managed to continue playing for a while but his last years were spent in poverty. He is said to have been a rough, strong player using a bottle as a mute, and with a poorer ear than Duson. But Don Marquis, In Search of Buddy Bolden, reveals that he worked as a piano tuner, which rather tends to contradict this. Albert Warner said that he was a poor reader which may have led to the confusion. It is a pity, and something of a mystery, that the pioneering researchers like Bill Russell and company did not interview Cornish more extensively when they made their first trips to New Orleans. Willie died disillusioned with music and gave instructions to his wife that he did not want music at his funeral.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CRAIS, William J. “Bill” - Trombone
1927, Jun 20: New Orleans 1986, May 26
Bill Crais ran the Vieux Carré Record Shop on Bourbon and St. Peter, and was a popular Dixielander who played in the 1950s and early -60s with Pete Fountain, and Sharkey, also Al Hirt. Bill Crais played with Sharkey on his last performance at Mardi Gras in 1972. Bill and his wife Mina Lee Crais were good friends of Ken Colyer on his first visit to New Orleans. Mina was then a librarian and came from Wisconsin, moving to New Orleans in 1950.. With Bill she edited Mecca - “The Magazine of Traditional Jazz", better printed and produced than most, but like so many of the others it only ran to a few issues in 1974. She still turns up at jazz functions in New Orleans. In 1997 she gave me some copies of Mecca and a number of Bill’s snaps of Ken.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CRAWFORD, James Jr. “Sugar Boy” - Piano, trombone; baritone horn; vocals
1934, Oct 12: New Orleans
That is the sum total (bit of a redundancy there, and a trifle tautologous!) of what I know about this cat. Late news: see Davell Crawford. Later still: I find that he is mentioned as “the legendary R&B singer, and leader of the Cha-Paka-Shaws”. So there! However, since I discovered there are eight pages of IHYK devoted to him I am able to pass on what I’ve learnt. He grew up on LaSalle Street and was taught piano at school, and also played drums. It was on piano though that he with a group of school friends caught the interest of a radio dj “Dr. Daddy-O” and a recording session ensued. My source, however, refers to them as Chapaka Shawee. Sugar Boy had his greatest hit in 1954 with the song “Jock-A-Mo” that has been much recorded by a whole gang of artists. In 1963 during a civil liberties freedom march the police in Monroe, Louisiana pulled him out of his car on a phoney speeding charge and beat him near to death: he was paralysed for over a year. Amazingly, in a cover up, the police charged him with drunken driving in a blatant example of Jim Crow “justice”. He tried a comeback eventually but became resigned to his lack of success and since 1969 restricted himself to singing in church.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CRAWFORD, Paul R. - Trombone; bass; tuba
1925, Feb 16: Atmore, AL 1996, Jul 30
He began playing traditional jazz in the 1950s having moved to New Orleans in 1951 after studying music at the Eastman Conservatory, New York, although he had played jazz earlier whilst a graduate student at the University of Alabama. Paul began in the late-1950s with the Lakefront Loungers and in the 1960s was co-leader of the Crawford-Ferguson Night Owls. Some of his earliest experience in New Orleans was with the non-paying jam sessions held at the New Orleans Jazz Club. Other early jobs, this time paid, were a week with Sharkey, and a six-week tour with Doc Evans. Recorded: New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra with Orange Kellin. Appeared periodically with Punch Miller at Preservation Hall, and toured Europe with the Olympia Band. Also recorded with the Eureka Brass Band, alongside Jim Robinson, in 1969, at the Newport Jazz Festival (Louis Armstrong did the vocal on “Just A Closer Walk”) .He helped to prepare the jazz archive at Tulane University as associate curator, and was in the “One Mo’ Time” orchestra on baritone horn. Played tuba in the 1980s at the Court of Two Sisters with George Finola. He was resident for years on the steamer President, and occasionally playing gigs through the 1980s, trombonist with the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra from its founding in 1967, and active on the Brass Band scene playing regularly with Dejan’s Olympia Band. Crawford also recorded with Pud Brown, the Raspberry Ragtimers, and Doc

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

CROMBIE, Alonzo - Drums; trombone
c1895: New Orleans
He played with the Norman Brownlee Orchestra (pictured on page 158 of R&S around 1921) and with Emmett Hardy in the post-WW1 period.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

DEICHMAN, Benny - Trombone
1893: New Orleans 1939, Jan 13
A pioneer Dixielander who played with Papa Laine, and the Barocco brothers band. He also played on the lake steamer Susquehanna. His brother Charles, born October 12th, 1894 and died 1927, who played cornet and violin was a bandleader prior to WW1. Charlie’s Moonlight Serenaders (not to be confused with the Augustin / Piron outfit) were the house band at the Tudor Theatre. He was a concert-trained musician but was low-down enough to have had a Dixieland band in New York almost at the same time as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

DELANEY, Jack - Trombone
1930, Aug 27: New Orleans 1975, Sep 22
Jack was first taught to play by Johnny Wiggs. He later played with the Tony Almerico and Sharkey bands in the 1950s. He was with Leon Kellner’s Orchestra in the Roosevelt Hotel during the 60s, and subsequently with Pete Fountain. In December 1952 he recorded with Ken Colyer.

In the mid 50s he made a number of recordings accompanying Lizzie Miles, and in 1954 did a vocal on a group led by Johnny St. Cyr and recorded by Joe Mares. He is pictured on the centrefold of Footnote vol. 8-4 with Mares and a group including Miles, Sharkey, Monk Hazel etc. (By the way, that is Lizzie Miles, of course, not Miles Davis. I don’t think he ever recorded on the Mares “Southland” label.) (See also Roy Palmer entry.)

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

DELISLE, Baptiste - Alto horn; trombone
c1868 204 : New Orleans c1920
He is known to have been a member of the Onward Brass Band around 1890, and with John Robichaux in 1894. When the entire Onward Brass Band enlisted for the Spanish-American War of 1898, Baptiste went too. He was discharged in 1899, having had a complete mental breakdown, and was committed to an institution. After a long illness, he rejoined Robichaux in 1905, playing better than ever. He was said to be one of the first to switch from valve to slide trombone. Pictured on page 180 of R&S. Also listed there in the personnel of the Excelsior Brass Band although, curiously, this accomplishment is not mentioned in the main entry for Baptiste. Marquis lists him among the Buddy Bolden personnel, probably in the post-war period.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

DEMOND, Frank - Trombone; banjo
1933, Apr 3: Los Angeles, CA
One of the earliest “Revival” musicians to become a fixture at Preservation Hall. Got the taste for jazz on hearing Kid Ory in the 1940s. Played on the West Coast with the South Frisco Jazz Band in the 1960s before a first visit to New Orleans late in that decade, and moving permanently in 1974. Originally he copied Jim Robinson’s style and mannerisms before developing his own style. He replaced him when Jim fell mortally ill on tour in 1976 with the Preservation Hall Band. Played and toured with the Percy Humphrey Band, and also toured with another Preservation Hall group (Ernie Cagnolatti, Manny Crusto, Louis Barbarin, Narvin Kimball, Sing Miller) in 1977. Started the Smokey Mary record label, 1974, named after the atmospherically-challenging train that once ran from New Orleans to Milneburg. Joe Darensbourg recalled working with him “......way back .… he played banjo then”.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

The only member of the Preservation Hall band who was not born and raised in New Orleans, Demond developed his love for New Orleans Jazz  from far away in the American west. In the early forties, after hearing the legendary trombonist Kid Ory, he sought out New Orleans musicians who had settled in the Los Angeles area; the banjo master Johnny St. Cyr, who had played with Louis Armstrong and his predecessor King Oliver, pianist Alton Purnell, who had  been born in the building that would become Preservation Hall, and the great George Lewis, an eventual fixture at the Hall, frequently visited and jammed at his family's home. An encounter during his college years with Jim Robinson persuaded him to switch from banjo to trombone as his main instrument. Ory and Robinson have remained his inspirations -- and through Robinson Frank became friendly with the early Preservation Hall Band during its tours to California. While visiting New Orleans in 1965 Frank was invited to sit in with the group; the experience inspired him to move to the city in the late sixties. Because Robinson held the trombone chair, Frank mainly played banjo with them, though he did play trombone with assorted parade bands between dates at Preservation Hall. When asked how he knew he was a permanent member of  the band , Frank replied “No one ever told me to go home!” For a while he also ran his own  record label,  Smoky Mary Phonograph Company, for which he supervised recordings by Kid Thomas, Albert Burbank, Sweet Emma Barrett, and other giants. When Jim Robinson passed away in 1976, Frank took his place in the front line at Preservation Hall, though ten years would pass before he would play the horn that Robinson had bequeathed to him. Frank and his wife Christie now divide their time between New Orleans and southern California, but his ties to New Orleans are deep, and as the senior member of the Preservation Hall Band he has become an important part of its legacy as well.  

"I must have played 'Just A Closer Walk With Thee' a thousand times before I went to New Orleans. But when you play it there with a brass , at a graveyard, and there's a casket going down, it becomes a whole different experience. The whole city is like that: Everything -- the birds, the automobiles -- have a musical tinge. Going to New Orleans for the first time was like going from spring training with a high school team right to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the middle of a World Series."  

"Billie Pierce used to say to DeDe, 'Play it pretty for the people.' That's the way our music is. You give it to the people, and the people give back. The listener, the musician, and the music become one. It's effortless, a great communion. And each time it happens, it's a miracle. I can feel the hair stand up on my arms right now, just thinking about it."

Source: www.preservationhall.com

DE PARIS, Wilbur - Trombone; alto horn
1900, Jan 11: Crawfordsville, IN 1973, Jan 3
Sidney and Wilbur De Paris’s father was a musician and bandleader, and taught his sons. Wilbur started out in his father’s circus band on the T.O.B.A. circuit. In 1922 they visited New Orleans and Wilbur recalled, in a Tulane jazz archive oral history interview, playing on C-melody sax with Louis Armstrong, and also working with A J Piron. In the intervening years he played with many prominent groups, and toured Europe with Noble Sissle in 1931, before playing with Armstrong again from 1937 to 1940. He recorded with Sidney Bechet in the mid to late 40s. From 1951 to 1962 he was at Ryan’s in New York, with brother Sidney and the late, great Omer Simeon; also Zutty Singleton. Wilbur, who was extremely “correct” in both dress and speech, neither smoked nor drank and between sets at the original Ryan’s 206 would sit at a table drinking water.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

DUHE, Gil (Duhé) - Valve trombone
c1895?: LaPlace / Reserve area? ?
Uncle of the Hall brothers. Played with the Dejan Alexander band before Dejan drowned in 1915. The band continued as the Lawrence Duhé Orchestra. Since Lawrence Duhé is known to have been another relative of the Hall brothers presumably all these Duhé’s were related. Gil left the band, and the country, some time around 1917, and was replaced by Paul Ben. Lawrence Duhé’s brothers were all in the Duhé Brothers Band c1911, playing blues and hot numbers. I must try to avoid being self-congratulatory but this is another musician who fails to get a mention in R&S.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

DUSON, Frank “Frankie” (DUSEN) - Trombone
1881, Algiers, LA 1936, Apr 1
A slow reader but he had good ear. He replaced Willy Cornish with Buddy Bolden in the early 1900s, and then took over in 1907 after Bolden went insane. He called the group The Eagle Band with Bunk Johnson as lead horn. Frank later went with Buddy Petit and Wade Whaley to join Jelly Roll Morton in Los Angeles but he returned to New Orleans after falling out with Morton on account of Jelly Roll making mock of their unfashionable dress and habits. Played on the S.S. Capitol with Fate Marable but his slow reading caused him to be replaced by Bebé Ridgely. Paraded with the Excelsior Brass Band. Led his own band in cabarets and at Thom’s Roadhouse, and also occasionally played with Louis Dumaine. He remained active musically until the mid-30s although he was partially-sighted. Married to Lila, Gus Fontenette’s aunt, who played piano. Sadly, he is reported to have died in poverty like so many others. Had he lived another decade or so what an addition he would have made to the revival of New Orleans jazz!

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

Frankie Dusen became the trombonist in Buddy Bolden's band in 1906 and took over the group after Bolden became mentally deranged in 1907. He re-named the group the Eagle Band after the Eagle Saloon at Perdido and South Rampart Street in the Storyville district. They were a hot, hard drinking outfit and they were quite popular in New Orleans up until around 1917. It is said that they played the same songs in the same style as when Bolden was the bandleader. Cornetist Tig Chambers replaced Bolden in 1907 and in 1910 Bunk Johnson replaced Chambers until around 1914 when Buddy Petit replaced him. Many up and coming Jazz musicians passed through the band including Bill Johnson, Baby Dodds, Pops Foster, Ed Garland, and a teenager named Sidney Bechet occasionally played with the group. In 1917 Dusen, Buddy Petit, and Wade Whaley went to Los Angeles to join Jelly Roll Morton at Baron Long's night club in Watts. When they arrived Morton ridiculed them so much for their down home clothes and ways, that Dusen and Petit soon returned to New Orleans, angry, and swearing to kill Morton if he ever returned to the city. Wadley stayed on and went on to play with Kid Ory. Ironically, Morton's verse about Dusen in his 1939 recording of Buddy Bolden's Blues has given Dusen a touch of immortality, but it doesn't paint a very flattering picture of him. The lyrics are as follows:

Thought I heard Frankie Dusen shout
Gal give me the money or I'm gonna beat it out
I mean the money like I explain you, I'm gonna beat it out
Cause I heard Frankie Dusen say

Dusen started another band when he returned to the city. In 1918 he played with the band on the riverboat S.S. Capitol. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s he played occassionally with Louis Dumaine's Orchestra. and he recieved money from the WPA during the Depression. As with Buddy Bolden, we have no recordings of Frankie Dusen.

Thanks to Bruce Harris (the grandson of Frankie Dusen Jr.) for the photo!

www.redhotjazz.com

DUTREY, Honoré “Nora” - Trombone
1894 225 : New Orleans 1935, Jul 21
Started in the Melrose Brass Band at 17 with Joe Oliver. Worked with his brother Sam in the Silver Leaf Orchestra; also with the Noone-Petit Orchestra, 1913. His lungs were injured in an accident onboard a ship in WW1. Joined King Oliver in Chicago, 1919-1924. Also worked in the late 20s with Carroll Dickerson, Johnny Dodds and Louis Armstrong. He was forced to retire in 1930 due to ill-health. Recorded: King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band 1923. (Possibly) Johnny Dodds’ Black Bottom Stompers, ‘27. Dodds’ Washboard Band, ‘28, Richard M Jones & his Jazz Wizards, 1928 and Johnny Dodds’ Orchestra, 1929. When New Orleans trombonists get discussed the names of Kid Ory, Louis Nelson, Jim Robinson and Earl Humphrey come to mind but for me Dutrey’s fluent ensemble work in that unique legato style and his supple soloing is the equal to any. Much underrated and almost the forgotten man of jazz.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

In 1910 Honore Dutrey started playing trombone with various bands in New Orleans, including Jimmie Noone's band. In 1917 he joined the navy and was involved in an accident that permanently damaged his lungs causing him to suffer from asthma, which eventually took his life. During the years 1920 to 1924, he played trombone in Chicago with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Carrol Dickerson's Orchestra, Johnny Dodds band, and Louis Armstrong's Stompers at the Sunset Cafe.

www.redhotjazz.com

EBBERT, Tom - Trombone
1919, Sep 9: Pittsburgh, PA
He is mentioned in R&S as a member of Connie Jones’s band, and a founder member of the Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble, with whom he recorded in 1986. Pictured on page 57 of New Orleans Jazz Fest - A Pictorial History. He first came to New Orleans with Roy Liberto’s Band in 1967. Apart from a short sojourn at Las Vegas he has remained ever since. Tom studied piano and violin, and before working with Liberto was on the road with a number of bands. Whilst lined up for the 1994 French Quarter Festival parade he collapsed before the “off” .Later, however, he was seen by me blowing gustily with another group (which included Jacques Gauthé and Bob Helm), hence the unkind suggestion that he got paid under union rules for lining up, but didn’t march! He has played with the Dukes of Dixieland and Wallace Davenport. In 1995 he was in action again at the French Quarter Festival. He played with the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra alongside Ferbos, Edegran and company in 1996 at Jazz Fest. Seen by me still playing in Apr. 2001.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

EDWARDS, Edwin Branford “Eddie” “Daddy” - Trombone
1891, May 22: New Orleans 1963, Apr 9
Originally played violin from the age of ten but took up trombone when he was fifteen. Began with local brass bands, and worked briefly with Stein’s Dixie Jass Band, around 1910, before becoming a founder member of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1916. Apart from a spell with Jimmy , he remained with them until 1925, when he left music but returned to a revival of the ODJB in 1936. He is credited with composing “Fidgety Feet", “Original Dixieland One-Step”, and “Tiger Rag” - although Morton, and others, disputed the claim to “Tiger Rag”.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

EDWARDS, Willie - Cornet; trumpet; trombone
c1895: New Orleans ?
When he was with A J Piron’s Orchestra in 1920 he was described as a young cornet player and accordingly Pete Bocage switched to trombone. Richard Knowles’ Fallen Heroes has a picture of Willie with Piron at the Maison Blanche Department Store on Canal Street in 1919. Since Bocage was born in 1887 the description “young” might conceivably make Willie’s birth around 1895. Bocage recalled in an interview with Bill Russell and Dick Allen that Willie Edwards lived uptown with Jack Carey. He wasn’t a hot player but he read pretty good, it was said. Sonny Henry remembered him with the Tuxedo Brass Band in its early days - around 1915 is my estimate. Bocage also recalled that Edwards moved away from New Orleans in the early-1920s

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

EUGENE, Homer Anthony - Trombone; sax; banjo: guitar
1914, Jun 16: New Orleans 1998, Jun 7
Brother of Wendell, and nephew of Albert Burbank, Paul & Louis Barbarin, and Danny Barker. Louis Armstrong called him “Jamaica”. Took banjo lessons when he was 12 from John Marrero. His first professional job was with Kid Howard in 1931. Around 1933 he played with Octave Crosby at the Dog House on Rampart and Bienville, and later replaced René Hall with Sidney Desvigne. He was also in the Lucky Millinder Big Band on trombone after WW2, then had a long spell with Herbert Leary. Played on the famous Riverside sessions with Kid Thomas and Peter Bocage’s Creole Serenaders both in 1961. Also, appeared with the Barnes-Bocage Big Five; and the Young Tuxedo Brass Band; plus the Kid Howard La Vida Band, 1961 (replacing Manny Sayles on some tracks). He replaced Worthia “Showboy” Thomas in the Kid Thomas band, 1976. Taught Lionel Ferbos to play guitar. Retired some time around 1980 due to a stroke. His death was first reported on the Internet by Mike Owen. Someone called Adrian M. Eugene Jr. is listed in the 1965 AFM Local 496 membership directory a trombone player. Relationship unknown.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

EUGENE, Wendell - Trombone
1923, Oct 12: New Orleans
Nephew of Albert Burbank and Paul Barbarin, etc. His first job was with Kid Howard, 1938. He also played with Papa Celestin, and George Lewis. Pictured on page 10 of Footnote volume 18-3 in 1953 with Laurence Marrero, Thomas Jefferson, Clem Tervalon, Percy Humphrey, and Jim Robinson. He toured with the orchestras of Lucky Millinder and Buddy Johnson. In the 70s he was with the Dukes of Dixieland, alongside Don Ewell. Recorded: Papa French New Orleans Jazz Band, 1965. Dukes of Dixieland, 1970; Kid Simmons’ New Orleans Band 1991; and the Young Tuxedo Brass Band, etc. Appeared in a Chris Burke group that played for the Ken Colyer Trust in New Orleans, 1995, playing excellently. A nephew, Adrian Eugene, played in a brass band organised by Oscar Rouzan in the 1960s, and recorded with the Olympia Brass Band, 1992.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

EVANS, Paul Anderson “Stump” - Alto & baritone sax; trombone
1904, Oct 18: Lawrence, KS 233 1928, Aug 29
Never got anywhere near to New Orleans as far as I’m aware and he was mistakenly known by me in my youth as “Stomp", but he did play for King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in 1923 and again with Joe Oliver in the Dixie Syncopaters in 1926. (His work on Oliver’s “Krooked Blues” is outstanding.) He also recorded for Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers in 1927, so quit beefing. It is said that he was taught by his father. He also worked with Erskine Tate, and Jimmy Wade, before he went down with tuberculosis. Stump Evans sure packed a lot into a few years for a little guy. I still like “Stomp” however.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

EWING, John “Streamline” - Trombone
1917, Jan 19: Topeka, KS
On the recording of the then current Eagle Brass Band in Los Angeles, 1983 alongside UCLA student Alex Iles (a replacement for Louis Nelson who was unavailable). Session photographs show that Alex was a young white musician whereas John was a mature black guy, much the same age as the rest (Joe Darensbourg, Herbert Permillion, Sam Lee etc.) - however, the session recording notes omit to mention any other details, apart from his nickname. However, on a hunch I looked in Joe Darensbourg’s Jazz Odyssey and found two fleeting references to him under “Streamline”. He recorded with Joe at about the time of the success of Joe’s “Yellow Dog Blues”, and they later worked together occasionally at Disneyland in 1966. His varied career is fully covered in the NGDJ: go buy a copy!

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

FILHE, George (a.k.a. Fields) - Trombone
1872, Nov 13: New Orleans 1954
Started with the Coustaut-Desdunes Orchestra, in 1892. Played for eighteen years with the Onward Brass Band, 1893-1911. He also appeared with: the Peerless Orchestra, around 1903-1904; and the Imperial Orchestra, 1905. Sonny Henry said that George Filhe gave him lesson when Sonny arrived in New Orleans about 1913. Later, that year, after several years playing in Storyville, Filhe went to Chicago. In the early 20s he worked with King Oliver, Manuel Perez, Sidney Bechet and Lawrence Duhé. In the late 20s he played in a pit orchestra led by Dave Peyton. He retired at the beginning of the Depression.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

FONTENETTE, Gustave “Gus” (FORTINET) - Trombone; violin; etc.
1888, Dec 15: New Iberia, LA 1967
Gus Fontenette, a multi-instrumentalist, led the nine-piece Banner Band, a dance and jazz band active in the Crowley and New Iberia regions of Louisiana, from 1908 to 1930, having studied music as a child. His father was something of a musician too, and Gus was playing professionally in his early teens. He often had Bunk, Evan Thomas, Joe Avery, Lawrence Duhé, Chester Zardis, etc. in his group. However, in view of the insecurities of music, Gus spent most of his life following his father’s profession of a barber, and only played music part-time. It seems that the Evan Thomas Black Eagle group was interchangeable with the Fontenette outfit when work was slack. Gus’s daughter Mercedes played piano in the Banner and married Harold Potier, and supposedly her sister Maude, according to Christopher Hillman, married Bunk (but see above). Frank Dusen’s wife, Lila, was Gus’s aunt. Ferdinand Fortinet, (violin) is listed in SBC as playing along with Paul Beaullieu in the Crescent City Orchestra. No connection known, though. Mercedes said in an interview with Austin Sonnier that her father used a wooden mute and blew so hard blisters came up on his horn, and sax player Glossey Roy with the Banner band used to kid him about it. However, I think the blisters are apocryphal. Gus’s wife, Jenny was said by their son John to have been of Latin and Indian extraction and was from Algiers, and a first cousin of Leonard Bocage. Gus “Bubba” Fontenette Jr. played alto and appeared with the Guitar Slim Band in the Swing era.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

FORTUNEA, Boo Boo - Trombone
? ?
“The only man playing a slide trombone at that time .….. the first ragtime jazz band I heard” said Alphonse Picou. Apart from that intriguing piece of oral history, nothing else is known.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

FRENCH, Maurice (Morris) - Trombone
c1890: LaPlace, LA ?
One of the great pre-WW1 virtuosi. He played with Kid Rena in the early 20s; and with the Lyons Brass Band, between 1928 and 1930. Louis Armstrong mentions him as a member of the band Louis formed with Joe Lindsey.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

GALLATY, Bill Sr. - Valve trombone
1880, Nov 9: New Orleans 1943, Sep 29
The outstanding player of the Reliance Brass Band. Papa Laine described him as the greatest of all trombonists. He led his own band before WW1. His son, Bill Gallaty, Jr., born 1910, played trumpet and worked with Santa Pecora. Bill Jr. recorded with Ray Burke in a group called the DandyInn Five in New Orleans in 1939.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

GASPARD, Vic - Trombone; bass horn
1875, Apr 14: New Orleans 1957, Apr 27
Vic Gaspard studied music under Professor Piron, Armand’s father, and had trombone lessons from George Filhe of the Onward Brass Band. Vic played with the Onward until 1910, and was also in the Peerless Orchestra. He sometimes paraded with the Excelsior Brass Band. Played with John Robichaux between 1913 and 1917, and also from 1926-30. Co-leader, with Oak, of the Maple Leaf Orchestra. Rust lists him (Octave Gaspard) as recording with Lillian Glinn (a vocalist) in 1927 in Dallas., and probably again in 1929 247 . Retired from music at the start of the Depression.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

GIBBS, Frank - Trombone
?: Port Arthur, TX
Originally from Texas, Frank Gibbs was a much admired trombonist whose skills on the instrument were spoken of with superlatives in New Orleans. He played with a Billie and DeDe Pierce group including George Lewis, that was hired at the Club Playtime in Bunkie, Louisiana in 1939 (see Tom Bethell’s George Lewis, page 119). Nothing else known, unfortunately.

GIBSON The Gibson Brass Band - or more properly the E. Gibson Brass Band - was formed in 1946 by the previous members of the Jimmy Jackson Brass Band. However, Jimmy Jackson was not a player but merely conducted them. (Wait, it gets better!) Thinking it better to elect their own manager the musicians reformed and chose Alphonse Spears for the position. The name E. Gibson came about because no-one in the band had that name and thus if the leadership changed the band’s name would survive. Only in New Orleans! Jim Holmes reported that in 1961 their line-up was Eddie Richardson & Sammy Williams trumpets; Alphonse Spears alto; Robert Davis tenor sax; Carl Blunt trombone; George Sterling snare; Dave Bailey bass drum.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

GORDON, Wycliffe - Trombone
5/29/1967

See website: www.wycliffegordon.com

HARRIS, Joe - Trombone
1909: St. James Parish, LA ?
Moved to New Orleans around the year 1917. He was a New Orleans bandleader of the 1920s: the Joe Harris Dixieland Band. According to Charters the trumpet player was Harry Venet. Baptiste Mosely, Edgar Moseley’s brother, got his first job with Joe Harris around 1924. I am unable to say whether or not there is any relationship between any of the Harris’s.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

HARTMANN, Charles - Trombone
1898, Jul 1: New Orleans ?
Secretary of the (white) local musician’s union for many years. He played with Johnny Bayersdorffer, and also with Tony Parenti, and Johnny Hyman (better known to most of us as Johnny Wiggs). Brother of George Hartman, according to Len Page (Footnote volume 17-2 p.16) soperhaps the difference in spelling is an R&S typographical error.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

HEAD, Sam - Trombone
?
Played trombone with Wingy Mannone, also with Preacher Rollo, and Armand Hug. Nothing else known at present.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

HENRY, Charles “Sonny” (Sonny) - Trombone
1885, 17 Nov: Magnolia Plantation, LA 1960, 7 Jan
He began at 17 on cornet with the Eclipse Brass Band under Jim Humphrey. Started to play trombone and moved to New Orleans in 1913. Played in the Excelsior Brass Band and Hippolyte Charles’ dance band until 1920. He was a friend of Jim Robinson and helped him with his reading.Sonny worked with both Amos White and John Robichaux. During the 30s he was lead trombone in the WPA band under Louis Dumaine. Joined theYoung Tuxedo Brass Band in the 40s and stayed until 1947, when he switched to the Eureka Brass Band and played with them until his death. Although somewhat moody - possibly on account of his stammer - he was one of the best-liked musicians in New Orleans. Recorded with the Eureka Brass Band in 1954-56. Sonny missed out on a small group recording session with Willie Pajeaud, Ray Burke, and Danny Barker, etc. because a visitor called just as Sonny was about to leave and he was too polite to cut the visit short. His brother, Willie Henry, played alto horn with the Eclipse Brass Band: in fact Sonny started out by playing his brother’s instrument whilst he was out working in the fields. Sonny Henry also had a brother-in-law, Effie (FE?) Jones, (q.v.) who played cornet 281 . Jones apparently led the band when Jim Humphrey wasn’t there.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

THE HEAVYWEIGHTS OF THE STREETS

Some notes on Albert Warner, Sunny Henry and Chicken Henry

'I like to play with Sunny Henry and with Albert Warner, because they play their parts, they did not steal the other man's part and did not try to show off, as some of the others do.' (Eddie Summers)

This article is a 'tribute' to the great trombone players who helped make the sound of the great Eureka Brass Band.

CHARLES 'SONNY' HENRY

'It is difficult to think of the Eureka without thinking of Sonny...Two of the choruses that Sonny and Albert worked out, their chorus on "Lord,Lord, Lord" and on "Panama" were almost standard with some of the brass band men, and sometimes younger players would stand around trying to follow the notes, moving their trombone slide along with the music... Because he was a tall man, with a stern, dignified face, strangers usually approached him a little cautiously. He spoke with a stammer too, so he often seemed to bluster at other musiains, but they had learned to pay little attention to his moods, and he was one of the best liked brass band men in New Orleans.' (Sonny Henry - An appreciation, S.B. Charters - Eureka Magazine, Volume 1 Number 3, May/June 1960)

Magnolia Plantation

I was born on November 17, 1885 on Magnolia Plantation, they used to call it Lawrence Post Office and Govenor H.C. Wallace Plantation. My brother played alto in the band, the Magnolia band, called it the Eclipse Band. I was a kid going to school, but him he was in the fields and every day I used to grab hold of his alto and play it. And one day he'd come jump on me. And so what he did , he took his mouthpiece in the field. And so my brother in law, Effie Jones, he was a cornet player at that time and I used to go there and play his horn. That's how I was starting playing. And he took the trumpet away and then I didn't have a thing to play. And so I told my father about it and so he said : 'You go to the store and you tell the storekeeper to go ahead and get you a trumpet.' I told the storekeeper and he said 'Okay, Henry, I'll have it here for you tonight.' And that train came that night and I took it and went home and 'til three o'clock in the morning I was playing the trumpet. My daddy told me, 'Listen here, I got to go to work and you're going to school. But now you put that thing down.' But in the day when they gone out, I'd play!
I must have been around fifteen years old or so.
I didn't go no further to school than the seventh grade. At that time you know, it ain't like it is now, but the seventh grade in them times was work. The school used to be down there on the plantation. It was a big plantation in those days, we used to raise sugar cane.
Bands from New Orleans didn't come to Magnolia, but they used to go down on excursions. But I remember that Pacific Band from Algiers would come down there. They didn't have much dances down there. If they would, the brass band down there would take charge.
The band used to parade only on Sunday, because the men had to work the rest of the week, sun up, sun down. We used to go to a place called Woodland, to St Sophie and to Dear Range. They had funerals, but it wasn't often. At the plantation, we had a society, The Morning Light. There were about two or three hundred people on the plantation. There was just one church. It was called the Macedonia Baptist Church.

Professor Jim Humphrey

They used to have a good band there. Jim Humphrey used to come down there and teach the boys. Jim Humphrey used to come with the six o'clock in the evening train, stay all night and leave with the eight o'clock train in the morning. There were sixteen pieces in that band. Effie Jones, John Anderson, Pierre Anderson and Harrison Barnes were on trumpet, Thomas and Alfred Barnes were on clarinet. They Harrison's brothers. Harrison Barnes is a good musicianer, he came up a little after me. My brother, Willie Henry played alto. Ybo was the other alto player. On baritone you had Freddy Barnes. My cousin, Wright Reddick played the tuba. Jim McGinnis was the snare drummer. And my other cousin, Robert Reddick played the bass drum. They didn't have no wire beater like Son Lewis uses now. They had two cymbals. They had one on the drums and the other cymbal would beat on top of it. they didn't have no ring like they got to beat now. When Jim Humphrey wasn't there, my brother-in-law, Effie Jones, was the leader of the band.
Of course, me, I'd get right in the window there. Jim Humphrey used to show them fellows everything. Then, when Jim Humphrey was gone, I could go there and show them everything what Jim Humphrey had showed them. And after that, I got in the band. Well, after I growed a little more older, they wanted me in the band.
They had only one trombone player, valve trombone, played by a man called Musterfer Johnson. And so, they wanted him to change, they wanted him to take E-flat trumpet. He told them he would take that if they would give me the trombone, because he knew I would make that. So, they gave me the trombone. And then Jim Humphrey came there then, that night and he said 'Where you get him from?' so my brother said, 'That's my brother. That's that little fella used to be in the window all the time.' Jim Humphrey said 'I'm going to see what he know.' The first piece he brought was 'Whislin' Rufus'. And let me tell you, he jumped on me and said 'Comment ça va…' I don't know what he said in French, but he said 'Go on down, let me see.' And I played the whole thing. And then Jim Humphrey told the boys, 'Now look here, that young boy done come in here and look what he did. You fellas been around here for years and he did come in and beat all of you.'
The first way Jim Humphrey would do, he would get the band on its feet and then he would come in with his trumpet and then, he'd get them all straight first, you see. But the first thing he would, that battery, that's the first thing he would do, that's the bass and trombone and the drum and everything. Because that battery, that's the foundation of the band, you see. And so, when he got that straight, then after that the trumpets. And when he got that straight, he'd say 'Come on, let's go, everybody.' The way he taught the boys, I think was the right way.
Jim Humphrey came out there twice a week sometimes.
Humphrey used to write out some things for the band, little light stuff. When I got in the band, I used to write to H.N. White in Cleveland, Ohio for that music and he used to send me samples. And I used to go around the boys and show 'em all their parts. One time, I never will forget it, we had a piece called 'Greater Pittsburgh March' in split time (2/4). And every time he'd come down, the band used to be out there and meet him at the train. And so, we went there one evening with that piece. He turned and looked around when he got it and he said, 'I didn't give you that! Y'all done get y'all another teacher!' Effie, my brother-in-law told him it was 'that little fellow in the window' who had showed them that music.

New Orleans

I came to the city around 1913 or 1914, something like that, before the war, the First World War. It must have been before the 'Big Storm'. The Big Storm was in 1915. When I came here, I played a little with Amos Riley. Riley led the Tulane Brass Band.
George Fihlé showed me the positions on my trombone. I knew the valve trombone already, but not the slide. Course, I had a book for it, but I wanted to be perfect on it. I wanted to know exactly what I was doing. And I was living back at 2315 Orleans Street and George Fihlé was living in the twentieth block of Orleans Street. And so, I went to there and George showed me and he charged me $0.75 for about twenty minutes. And I went to him twice and he showed me the positions.
Well, I hadn't joined no band at all, but they used to come and get me sometimes. The first funeral I played was with the Excelsior Band. They came here one day to play and I didn't have no uniform, because I wasn't interested in playing, I was working, you see. Vic Gaspard came around with George Moret, they came to get me to play. I was back in the yard and my wife called, 'There are some musicianers out there they want to see you.' I told Vic Gaspard I didn't have no uniform. And he asked me if I could read and I told him I could. So he said Well, I don't want the uniform, I want the man!'
So I went with Vic. I got on the pieces, but I couldn't hardly walk, since it was my first time. I was playing, but I was a little afraid I was going to fall sometime. So Vic showed me the step. August Rousseau was the one who made me play first trombone. He was on me so tight, I had to get out of the way.
Vic Gaspard was good, he played trombone and baritone. And a fellow they called Georgie Hooker, he was pretty good. And this old man, he played baritone, Adolphe Alexander sr, he used to be good. Vic had a beautiful tone, he was so sweet. Let me tell you, that 'West Lawn Dirge', there ain't but one man that ever played that thing on the baritone like it should be played. He was the first one and the best one, that fella called John Porter. When he first got that piece, that man made everybody cry around the church. He had such expression, in the tone and when he'd hold them notes to the value, get off it so nice and smooth. It tore your heart out. Of course Manny paul, he plays nice, but the real baritone is nicer. Old Man Barbarin was good on alto horn. And then in Algiers, they had Joe Pyan. And a man called Flowers, he was good too. George McCullum was outstanding for trumpet solos. And this other fellow, he used to be pretty good too, Lionel Ferbos. Manuel Perez was a strong man on the trumpet. Joe Howard was an outstanding on bass horn too. Because he used to play trumpet.

Sonny Henry and Albert Warner (photo Alden Ashforth - courtesy Terry Dash and Footnote)

Tuxedo

Then, Celestin came for me and then I got in the Original Tuxedo and I stayed in that band until it went down. Ernest Trepagnier was on bass drum, Henry Martyn used to be on snare drum, Eddie Jackson on bass, Isidore Barbarin on alto, George Hooker on baritone, Bébé Ridgley on trombone, Louis Dumaine, Celestin and Willy Edwards on trumpet. Peter Bocage used to play with us too. Lorenzo Tio jr on clarinet. Johnny Dodds used to play clarinet with us too. He played B-flat clarinet. In that band, we all had to read. You couldn't play in that band if you couldn't read. Celestin used to bring the music.
Louis Armstrong left here, playing with us up on Colapissa Street, somewhere up there. He came in and told us Joe Oliver had sent for him and he was going. He was a sweet trumpet player, he could put in anything there.

Henry Allen sr

I played with Joe Oliver with the Henry Allen sr band across the river in Algiers. Old Man Allen had Buddy Johnson and also Yank Johnson. Course Buddy played with the Excelsior. Many times the Excelsior had a job and Buddy had to go with the Excelsior and he sent me to play with Allen. The band played strictly written music. See, Allen wasn't much, but he got good men to play. He paid you like he want. He paid one fellow one thing and the other fellow another. If he's a good man, he'd pay him good, and other fellows that didn't play so well, didn't get no money hardly. But me and him used to get along good.
His son, 'Red' came up playing with us in his daddy's band. He was just a little kid. He used to come there with an alto all the time. He had a little cap and come on in. Of course, we were trying to help him, we didn't care. And then he got a trumpet and he got a little band. Well, I played with him in his little band over in Algiers. I played with him a couple of times. It was a little dance band. I used to help him out. I used to look over his card and I used to play his part on my trombone. He was about four times better than the old man.

Well I played with any band that would come to hire me. If our band didn't have no job, I'd go and play with any of them. When I'd get a job, I didn't work, just lay off and go and play the job and the next day go back to work. When I first came to the city, I used to work for the Sewerage and Water Board. I used to be a flagman. I wouldn't get off that often because it would have made bad business. One day a week I used to get off like that, sometimes two.
I used to play with the Onward too. Manuel Perez had the Onward. I loved to play with them, all them good bands. But them bands where you got nothing but heads, I didn't fool with them. A long time ago, no I couldn't play nothing by ear. In the first place, because I didn't want that. I wanted to learn it the right way. And I always did love to read. Let me tell you : in the Excelsior, the Tuxedo and the Onward Band, you just had to know your stuff. Them people used to put them old heavy marches on you, and you had to jump. I also used to play some with the Terminal Brass Band, a band that Willie Parker used to play with.

WPA

When the Tuxedo went down, I went with the WPA band. Louis Dumaine was director at that time. Then after him they got another guy they called Pinchback. Pinchback had double crossed Louis Dumaine first. Later he himself was replaced by Old Man Martinez.
At the time Martinez joined the band, they had about twenty-five trombone players and Martinez looked all around and said, 'Well, I'm going to have an examination. All them can't make the grade, get a wheelbarrow.' That meant that they had to roll a wheelbarrow instead of playing to remain on the WPA payroll. And one day the old man came in with about fifty different pieces. And he said, 'Now listen, now the ones who can't make the grade, go get a wheelbarrow, because I can't use you!' He jumped on the trombones first. Out of the twenty-five trombones, he kept only four. Louis Nelson, Harrison Barnes, Oscar Henry and I. Them guys had been fooling around, they were just there to make the money. But the old man got in there and he made a band. He made them play overtures and everything.

Dance bands

Sam Charters mentions Sonny as an occasional member of the Chris Kelly Band.

I used to play with Wendell McNeal and Hyppolyte Charles. McNeal played violin. Old Man George, that's George Moret, used to play with us too. And Paul Beaulieu. We played strictly written music. All kinds of music, schottisches, waltzes, polkas, mazurkas and fox trot. We played the 'slow drag' too. That were just any slow blues. I used to play that 'Red Book', 'Maple Leaf', 'Frog Legs' and all them things from that book.'

The Family Album mentions that he played with Professor John Robichaux at the Lyric Theatre until 1927. And that for years, he worked in a taxi dance hall at Carondolet an Canal.

Charters gave the following personnel of the band Hypolyte Charles took into the Moulin Rouge in New Orleans in 1919 : Sonny Henry, Joe Welch, drums, Sam Dutrey, clarinet, Emile Bigard, violin and Camilla Todd, piano. During Piron's second New York tour, they replaced Piron at Tranchina's and they went into the New Orleans Country Club. The only change in personnel was Robert Hall who replaced Sam Dutrey. Hypolite Charles gave up playing in 1925.

'My band went into the Moulin Rouge which was opened by an ex-waiter at Tranchina's. I had the following musicians in my band who came from the Maple Leaf Band, Camilla Todd, Sam Dutrey and Henry Martin who had switched from drums to banjo. I added Sonny Henry on trombone and later Albert Glenny on string bass. Joe Welch was the drummer with the band. Red Dugas was the original drummer with my band, but some of the other members criticised his playing so much that he quit and so Welch came in. My band was also the first band to broadcast on the radio, WSMB, from New Orleans.
When Piron took his band to New York, we had been playing the dinner dances at the New Orleans Country Club and I took over the afternoon tea, although the people there insisted on strings only. I played a number, 'The Rosary', very softly on my cornet with Camilla 'Chick' Todd accompanying. After the number, the people seemed to go wild. We played at the New Orleans Country Club until my health forced me to quit playing altogether. The people who were attending these afternoon teas were old and very rich.' (Hypolite Charles Tulane interview)

Charters mentions that Sonny was playing with Amos White in 1923 at Spanish Fort, occasionally with Professor John Robichaux until 1927 and at the jitney with George McCullum, Eddie Jackson and Butler Gué Rapp on banjo. They played there for three or four years after 1926.
Charters stated that Amos White organised the New Orleans Creole Jazz Band with Red Dugie, drums, Barney Bigard, clarinet, Willie Willigan, second cornet, Sonny Henry, trombone, Wilhelmina Bart, piano and José Ysaguirre, bass.

Sonny Henry, Shorty Johnson and Harrison Barnes were all good readers. At the request of Armand Piron, I organised the Imperial Orchestra for the City of New Orleans. In it were such men as Barney Bigard, Jose Ysaguirre, Albert Nicholas, Sonny Henry, Willie Le Boeuf, Ethel Finney on piano and George Moret played second cornet for a while. We played for the circus acts in the park and at the pavillion for dancing. Across the way was Piron's Orchestra at Tranchina's Restaurant. I used eight pieces except on Sunday nights when I added tuba, besides the regular string bass and banjo, played by Charlie Bocage. Sometimes I would bring in a sax player from Texas, who was a mail carrier. The pay was good.' (Amos White)

In his book 'With Louis and the Duke', Barney Bigard only mentioned that "Meanwhile Amos White had landed a job playing a 'jitney' dance out at Spanish Fort. Lorenzo Tio was playing on the same nights as us at Tranchina's Restaurant at Spanish Fort. We would wind up before them each night so I would be able to go over to hear Tio play every night.'

The Eureka Brass Band May 1960 - Black Happy Goldtson(snr dms) Sunny Henry (tbn) Manny Paul (tnr sx) Albert Fernandez Walters (tpt) - Ernest Cagnolatti (tpt) John Handy (a sx) Chicken Henry (tbn) Fewclothes Lewis (bs dms) Red Clark (b bs) (photo Mona MacMurray collection

Eureka Brass Band

Albert Warner came for me to get in the Eureka. I didn't wanted it, but he insisted. That must have been about 1946 or 1947, I believe. My son, Bernell used to pick both Warner and me up with his automobile. See when they needed a bass player, they put Joe Clark on bass. Dominique Remy put Joe Clark on bass and said he wanted a trombone player. So Warner told them he wanted to play with me and convinced Remy and Clark.
Warner and I were the men who got Sheik in the Eureka. One day Sheik helped us out. We went on a job and we didn't have no trumpet player. We waited for the trumpet player, nobody didn't come. So Sheik held up the band the best he could. So that day Albert and I got together and we said 'Sheik gonna stay in the band because he did a favour for the band.'

A missed opportunity

'Because Sonny's playing was so much a part of the New Orleans tradition, it seemed important to record him with a smaller group. An informal session was set up with Willie Pajeaud to play trumpet, Ray Burke, clarinet, Danny Barker, banjo and guitar and a small rhythm section. The others came and played for three or four hours, but Sonny never arrived. The next day, he came to apologise. Someone had come to visit him that he didn't feel he could bring to the small party. The other person would not go home, so Sonny had sat there with him in his room, his trombone case out on the bed ready to take with him in case the other person had left. There was never again a chance to record him' (Sam Charters, Eureka Vol 1 N° 3 May/June 1960).

Charles Sonny Henry died in New Orleans on January 7, 1960.

Sources : Tulane Jazz Archive interviews with: Adolphe 'Tats' Alexander, Ricard Alexis, Louis Barbarin, Paul Barbarin, Peter Bocage, Ernie Cagnolatti, Jessie Charles, Louis Cottrell jr, Lionel Ferbos, Earl Humphrey, Willie E. and Willie J. Humphrey, Eddie Johnson, Alfred Williams, Charles Henry, Oscar Henry, Albert Warner

Magazines: FOOTNOTE, Jazzinformation, Downbeat, Basin Street, Storyville, The Second Line, Mississippi Rag, Eureka
Family Album, Rose and Souchon
Jazz New Orleans, Charters
The End Of The Beginning, Barry Martyn
Pops Foster
Jazzmen
Jazzmasters

Thanks to: Sue Hall, Mona MacMurray, Louis Nelson
I would like to thank the people from Tulane Jazz Archive in New Orleans, Alma Freeman - Williams and Dirk Van Tourenhout.
Bourbon Street Black, Jack V. Buerkle-Danny Barker
The Baby Dodds Story, as told to Larry Gara
Bill Russell's American Music
New Orleans Style, Bill Russell

The information came from thejazzgazette made by Marcel Joly and
Jempi de Donder

http://www.thejazzgazette.be/march2004.htm

HENRY, Clarence “Frogman” - Piano; trombone; vocals
??
In an interview Sonny Henry said that Effie Jones, John Anderson, Pierre Anderson, and Harrison Barnes all played trumpets at the Magnolia Plantation but I think it was more likely he meant cornets 1937, Mar 19: possibly LA Started out on trombone when he was sixteen, the family having moved to Algiers when he was eleven. Took formal piano lessons, and used to sneak into the Pepper Pot at Gretna to hear Professor Longhair. When he got out of high school he formed his own band. Paul Gayten, at that time an A&R man, signed him for the Chess label and he had a number of vocal hits. His career was in somewhat of a slack period when the Beatles chose him for an opening act on their 1964 tour of the States. He played five nights a week on Bourbon Street through the 1960s and 70s and became a perennial favourite at Jazz Fest.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

HENRY, Corey - Trombone
1976: New Orleans
The grandson of drummer Chester Jones. Tremé Brass Band leader Benny Jones is his uncle, and his father is Grand Marshal Oswald “Bo Monkey” Jones. Began playing drums in Jackson Square when he was but 10 encouraged by Tuba Fats. Played with the Tremé Brass Band, and the Little Rascals, also Derrick Shezbie in 1994, and Kermit Ruffins - with the latter’s band at Café Brasil as recently as October, 2000, on this latter occasion with one, Emile Vinette, on piano. 2002: leads the L’il Rascals, and plays with Kermit’s Barbecue Swingers.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

HENRY, Oscar Joseph “Chicken” - Trombone; piano
1888, Jun 8: New Orleans ?
When he was 10 his father bought him a piano and he had tuition for five years from Mrs Louise Edler, a French Opera House performer. In 1906 having learnt the plastering trade he pursued this profession all over the country, as well as Cuba and Panama, although in between times managed to perform as a bordello “professor", playing at Hattie Rogers’ sporting house in 1906. In 1920 someone gave him a trombone which Charlie Clay taught him to play in Detroit. Whilst playing second trombone with Charlie Elgar he studied theory and technique in Chicago. In 1923 he joined the Elks Concert Band in Chicago and toured with them in a carnival show. He left them in 1929 and subsequently joined a New Orleans large band, the Tonic Triad Band, in Hot Springs, Arkansas. On return to New Orleans he joined the WPA band and at this time began to be known as “Chick” or “Chicken Henry” because - true! - he knew all about chickens.. He sometimes worked with Kid Howard during the Depression days. In the early 1940s he became the alternate trombonist with Eureka Brass Band, filling in for Sonny Henry (no relation) or Albert Warner as required. When Sonny died in 1960, Chicken replaced him. Also played on occasion with most of the other brass bands. R&S claims he switched to trombone after burning his hand in an accident in 1931, but this would seem to be inaccurate. Chicken Henry played at Preservation Hall in the 1960s, and he recorded with the Eureka Brass Band 1960-69, and the Young Tuxedo Brass Band, 1960. R&S list both a Son Henry drums (no other details), and a Trigger Sam Henry, born New Orleans around 1875: one of the best Storyville Professors, 1898-1914, much admired by JellyRoll Morton.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

THE HEAVYWEIGHTS OF THE STREETS

Some notes on Albert Warner, Sunny Henry and Chicken Henry

'I like to play with Sunny Henry and with Albert Warner, because they play their parts, they did not steal the other man's part and did not try to show off, as some of the others do.' (Eddie Summers)

This article is a 'tribute' to the great trombone players who helped make the sound of the great Eureka Brass Band.

OSCAR 'CHICKEN' HENRY

My name is Oscar Joseph Henry, and I was born June 8, 1888 in New Orleans at 4729 Coliseum Street. My nickname, 'Chicken' or 'Chick' came from the W.P.A. days. I knew more about chickens than any of the other men working in the field as a labourer and at one time I could name all the parts of a chicken. I was first called 'Chicken Man'. And when I went into the musicians union, they called me 'Chick'. I am more known by that name than by my real name.

In my family, only my younger brother and I played music. Our first instrument was the piano and we began studying with Mrs Louise Elder. I was ten or eleven when I took up piano. We knew all our scales before we were twelve years old. My brother did not like the music and didn't continue his studies. Freddie Keppard was a playmate of mine when we were young, but I never did play in a band with him. With my family, we attended St James Church on Roman, between Iberville and Bienville and there was always music in church.
Since piano was not much used then in orchestras, they favoured violins more, I gave up playing piano and I became a plasterer. I took up learning the trade when I was fifteen or sixteen years old. And I became a plasterer when I was twenty-one years old. I liked plastering. I was a plasterer's apprentice under Johnny St Cyr. I alternated plastering and playing music depending on finances.

In 'Bourbon Street Black' by Jack V. Buerkle and Danny Barker, Chicken gave the following details : 'My mother bought a piano. There was a lady that taught piano at the Old French Opera and she was the one that taught me all my scales and chords and arpegios. I was around eight or nine years old. Before I was twelve I could play all the chords on the piano. But I didn't like sitting down on the piano stool for the simple reason the girls liked their dancing and I didn't get to dance with the girls while I was sitting on that stool, so I just quit playing. Later a band was coming down the street and I told a friend of mine as we was standing on the side listening to the band go by, I say 'Emma, I'm gonna learn how to play one of them instruments.' She say, 'Oh, you can't do that', I say, 'Oh, yes I will, you'll see me and I'll be playing' and two and a half year after I told her that I was in a band playing.'

The Family Album mentions that Chicken Henry worked as bordello 'professor' playing piano at Hattie Rogers' sporting house in 1906. He gave up playing piano after his hand was severely burned in an accident.

The bands I heard when I was young were those of Al G. Fields Minstrels, Primrose and Dockstader, Primrose and West, Barnum and Bailey Circus and Dandy Dixie Minstrels. All the minstrel shows played at the Crescent Theatre, (actually the Crescent and Tulane Theatre) which was at Baronne Street. The men in the Al G. Fields band were all white. Those in Pat Chappell's Rabbit Foot were all coloured. In Old Kentucky show was a white show, but they had a coloured pickaninny band that was very good.
Once I carried the flag for Al G. Fields show, to be sure to get a pass.
Every instrument in the band would take a solo. Some of the musicians doubled in the show. Manzie Campbell, a drummer, was a comedian on the stage. In the Al G. Fields show, both Doc Healy and Doc Quigley played trombone, but they were also comedians on the stage. A lot of the band musicians also sang in the chorus on stage. The Six Brothers, a stage act from the Orpheum Circuit, featured saxophones then. The Six Brothers played at the Palace Theatre, which was then the Greenwall, which was behind Maison Blanche on Iberville and Dauphine. The Lyric was on the next corner.
One year Al Jolson came to New Orleans with Fields' band and Jolson had such a good time in New Orleans that his stay with the show was terminated.
Shows never stayed more than a week in New Orleans. The town has never been able to support any show for over a week. The minstrel bands played a parade every day before the matinee. They also played a concert outside the theatre. The minstrel parade bands swung like the New Orleans bands. They sounded as good as the Onward. But they had more men. The parades stayed in the business district and they had some performers in them.

In 'Bourbon Street Black', Chicken gave the following story : 'But those bands we heard and second lined to, was minstrel bands. Like Primrose and West, Primrose and Dockstader. The Dirtz Dixie Minstrels - R.G. Fields, Lew Dockstader. When I was a kid, I heard and saw every band that come to the city of New Orleans. And I watched the trombone players, the baritone players and the brass players. They were the instruments I was interested in. I watched the trombone players - how they'd stand - how they'd play - how they would breathe. I watched everything a professional man did. I used to go to the Orpheum Theatre which was on St Charles and watch the men in the orchestra pits rehearsing Sophie Tucker. I was in the Orpheum Theatre when Sophie Tucker sang 'Some Of These Days'. I studied under a man that really knew music. There was one time in my life I could take the 'William Tell Overture' and just look at the key it was written in and go from the introduction down. And, when it changed key, I'd just look at the key and keep on playing.'

I also heard and followed the parades by the bands led by Old Man Robichaux, Freddy Keppard, Manuel Perez and Bab Frank. And also the Onward. Manuel Perez was supposed to be the king at that time. When you said Manuel Perez, you said everything.

I began liking trombone through hearing Doc Quigley, Billy Fields and others, who played with the minstrel shows. I took up trombone when I was in Detroit in 1918 or 1919. Actually, I always wanted to play trombone, but I didn't had an opportunity until then. When the husband of my first wife died, he left a trombone. Someone stole it, but I recovered it. My wife gave the trombone to me. So I started studying with Charles Clay, who was playing with the 'In Old Kentucky' show. Clay played trombone, baritone, bass, in fact everything.

Trombone players in New Orleans I liked were George Fihlé, Vic Gaspard, Batiste Delisle, who was from uptown, but who was very good, Zue Robertson and another guy who went to Chicago, Roy Palmer. Then, trombone players didn't play solo work much. The trombonists played more a vamp behind the bass. New Orleans is the only place with a second line. I wonder why there are no second lines in other cities. Music in New Orleans is better and swings more than the music played in other cities.

I began playing trombone well when I was thirty-one years old. The first parade I played with a band was in 1920 for the opening of the first Studebaker automobile plant in South Bend. The band was the only one in South Bend and had twenty-five pieces. I came to South Bend, Indiana after leaving Detroit.
Next I went to Chicago where I played with such bands as the Knights Templars and the Elks. I went to Atlantic City, New Jersey, with a band and we remained there for six weeks.
Upon my return, I went to Hot Springs, Arkansas with a bunch out there.

The first time I played in the same band with Johnny St Cyr was at the Autocrat Club in New Orleans in a pick-up-band. The first time I played on the same program with Johnny St Cyr was in Chicago in 1926. I was in the Elks Band which opened the program and St Cyr was with Louis Armstrong's band.

I left New Orleans in the early part of 1913 going from place to place, Chattanooga, Cincinnati, Birmingham, etc, working as a plasterer. I was in Dayton, Ohio at the time of the Dayton flood in the Spring of 1913. After leaving Dayton for Chicago, I started playing music.

'One of my friends played when I began playing. It was old man Peter Davis. He taught Louis Armstrong how to play. This was in the Jones home. Davis and I were friends. We played together and played by ear. I began playing with a group when I was thirty-one years old. It was after the first World War. One time in Chicago, I played on the same floor of a building as Louis Armstrong. This was in 1923. The first time I played for money, though, was in Sound Bend, Indiana. I was playing for a man by the name of Henry Gordon. He had a band. I used to play there for money and from there I came to Chicago. I used to see a drum in the window of a barbershop. I went in, asked the fella, 'You have a band here?' and he said 'Yes'. I told him, 'I can play a little bit, I'm a student on the trombone and I'd like to sit in with you'. He told me then to come and I came around there Tuesday night and he put the music up there and we played it and he invited me back and we commenced to get some jobs. So, because of the trades was down there wasn't enough to make a living, so I began playing music.' (Bourbon Street Black).

I have played all kinds of music jobs, from dance work to pit bands. I learned so I could play any kind of job. I have played several times in dance bands with Paul Beaulieu. I have played a concert with Alphonse Picou.

Sam Charters gave the following details on the symphonic orchestra, The Crescent City Orchestra, conducted by Paul Beaulieu : they gave a concert at Xavier University in December 1932. There were 20 musicians in the orchestra : George Carrière, Ferdinand Fortinet and George King, violins, Etienne Nicholas and Peter Marine, violas, L. Duvegnon, cello, Tom Gaspard, bass, Beatrice Stewart Davis, piano, George Kifer, C-clarinet, Alphonse Picou and Willie Kerr, clarinet, Henry Pritchard and George Humphrey, saxophones, Joseph Bloom and George Collins, flutes, Clyde Kerr and Jospeh Ursin, trumpets, and Oscar Henry, trombone.

I returned to New Orleans on March 11, 1930. Since I didn't find work here, I left again. When I returned to the city, I got on the E.R.A.. Then I got into the F.E.R.A. and finally in the W.P.A. The WPA began with eighteen men. Some of them were Adolphe Alexander, Frank Crump, Frankie Duson, Wilfred Ledet and Joe Mitchell. Duson and I were the first two trombonists in the band. Sonny Henry joined when the band had been organised for three months. The band grew until there were 167 men in it. Old Man Martinez who was sent to break up the band, found so many readers that he decided to develop it. He got rid of the non-readers and proceeded to make it into a group which could play anything, from 'William Tell' with the music to ragtime, without music. Martinez was more a music supervisor and Louis Dumaine was the director. Martinez was a professional piano player.
During the first Music Week in New Orleans, the WPA band marched on Canal Street, playing many difficult marches. At that time, there were fifty-seven musicians in the band. When the band folded, I returned to my trade.
Some of those in the band were Louis Dumaine, Lionel Ferbos, George McCullum, trumpets, Big Head Eddie Johnson, Little Eddie Johnson, Israel Gorman, Willie Humphrey, Joe Mitchell, Sidney Cates who played banjo, Sidney Montague, Cie Frazier, Ernest Trepagnier, Joe Howard, William Brown, Sonny Henry, Harrison Barnes, Louis Nelson, Gilbert Young and Ricard Alexis.

Eureka Brass Band end 1950's - Percy Humphrey - Kid Sheik - Peter Bocage (tp) - Black Happy Goldston (sn dms) - Robert Lewis (bs dms) - Manny Paul (tnr sx) - Willie Humphrey (alt sx) - Albert Warner - Chicken Henry (tbn) - Red Clark (bs horn) (Jempi De Donder collection)

Jempi De Donder

Sources : Tulane Jazz Archive interviews with: Adolphe 'Tats' Alexander, Ricard Alexis, Louis Barbarin, Paul Barbarin, Peter Bocage, Ernie Cagnolatti, Jessie Charles, Louis Cottrell jr, Lionel Ferbos, Earl Humphrey, Willie E. and Willie J. Humphrey, Eddie Johnson, Alfred Williams, Charles Henry, Oscar Henry, Albert Warner

Magazines: FOOTNOTE, Jazzinformation, Downbeat, Basin Street, Storyville, The Second Line, Mississippi Rag, Eureka
Family Album, Rose and Souchon
Jazz New Orleans, Charters
The End Of The Beginning, Barry Martyn
Pops Foster
Jazzmen
Jazzmasters

Thanks to: Sue Hall, Mona MacMurray, Louis Nelson
I would like to thank the people from Tulane Jazz Archive in New Orleans, Alma Freeman - Williams and Dirk Van Tourenhout. Bourbon Street Black, Jack V. Buerkle-Danny Barker
The Baby Dodds Story, as told to Larry GaramBill Russell's American Music New Orleans Style, Bill Russell

This information came from thejazzgazette made by Marcel Joly and Jempi de Donder see: http://www.thejazzgazette.be/march2004.htm

HIGGINBOTHAM, Jay C. - Trombone
1906, May 11: Social Circle, GA 1973, May 26
JC had two brothers who were also brass players. He first played the bugle until his sister bought him a trombone. Worked in the Neal Montgomery Orchestra, 1921. Jobbed around until signed by Luis Russell on a visit to New York in 1928. He was in the Russell band that made records under King Oliver’s name. Mainstay of the Luis Russell Orchestra until 1931 when he joined Fletcher Henderson. He had long stint with Henry Red Allen through the 40s and was widely recorded with many groups. Played with Red Allen and Joe Oliver; what more do you want?

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

HILL, Scott “Scotty” - Trombone
1947, Oct 7: New Orleans
Inspired by seeing the Dorsey Brothers on television. Started playing in a high school band, the Fortier High School Band, conducted by Peter Dombourian; graduated in music at Loyola University. Said to have been a protégé of Frog Joseph’s. Had a spell with the original Dukes of Dixieland at the Famous Door. Played at George Lewis’s funeral. At one time he was a respected brass band musician but, unfortunately, is reported to be a heavy drinker now. He was mentioned as leader of the French Market Gang at one time when Les Muscutt, the Lasties, Frank Minyard, Wes Mix, Pete Vriondes and Otis Bazoon completed the line-up, although that position is usually accredited to Albert Artigues. Willy Henriksen told me that he is on records with trumpeter Frank Trapani (at least that’s what Willy’s notes looks like!). He was leading the French Market Jazz Band, including Gregg Stafford, at the Mediterranean Café on Decatur in 1987. Freelances quite a lot. Sometimes seen lately in Jackson Square with Doreen Ketchens. Has played with Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Jordan, Danny Barker, Ellis Marsalis, Henry Butler and Dr John.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

HUMPHREY, Earl - Trombone; bass
1902, Sep 9: New Orleans 1971, Jun 26
Brother of Percy and Willie Humphrey. He was taught ‘cello and string bass by his celebrated grandfather, Professor Jim Humphrey, and began playing lakefront jobs when he was only 15, having switched to trombone. Made his first trip to California in 1919 with his father (Willie Eli Humphrey) playing in his band which was with a travelling show. He came to be thought of by some as the greatest of all New Orleans trombonists. He continued to be on the road frequently but played with Buddy Petit; Chris Kelly; and Louis Dumaine, and also with his brothers, as well as parading with the Onward and Eureka Brass Bands. In 1927 however, after recording with Dumaine’s Jazzola Eight, he lapsed into obscurity. He married and settled in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1939, retiring from music and working as a school janitor. After his wife died in 1963 (and he became very ill) he moved back to New Orleans and became a tardy but significant part of the jazz revival there. Recorded: Kid Sheik, 1966; the Eureka Brass Band, 1968; with his own band, 1966-67; Earl Humphrey-Andrew Jefferson Four: the Preservation Hall Band, 1967; Percy Humphrey’s band, 1971, etc. Of the Humphreys, Earl was said to have been the friendliest, with a great sense of humour. In the 1920s he was the best known of the Humphrey brothers but unfortunately possessed a drink problem.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JACKSON, Albert “Loochie” “Little Albert” - Trombone
1898, Mar 13: New Orleans 1978, Mar 3
Real name: Leonard Albert, the son of trumpeter Tom Albert from Algiers (Tom was only 16 when his son was born). Albert began playing in 1913 with the Elton Theodore Orchestra of Algiers, and became a member of the Kid Thomas band after they broke away from Theodore. He sometimes played with the Tuxedo Brass Band in and around 1920. From 1932 he was regularly with the Young Tuxedo Brass

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JACKSON, Ovette - Trombone
c1890?: New Orleans ?
According to Pops Foster, Ovette Jackson played with him in Rozelle’s Band. The band included Pops’ brother, Willie, and Roy Palmer, also Joe Johnson. Nothing else known.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JACKSON, Preston - Trombone
1902 294 , Jan 3: New Orleans 1983, Nov 12
His real name was James Preston McDonald but he took his stepfather’s name. He never played in New Orleans in the early years because his family moved to Chicago in 1917 according to R&S, but OMJ says it was when he was nineteen, that is 1921. Roy Palmer gave him lessons on the trombone. Although he never actually worked for Joe “King” Oliver he did sit behind Honoré Dutrey on the stand and took over for a number or two when Dutrey had to use an atomiser for his breathing problem. He also sat-in with Richard M Jones in Chicago. Recorded with Louis Armstrong 1931; Jimmie Noone 1936; Johnny Dodds 1940; Richard M Jones 1926, etc. During the late-1950s he worked and recorded with Lil Armstrong. He returned to New Orleans joining Alvin Alcorn’s New Orleans Jazz Band (Alcorn, Jackson, Clarence Hoke clarinet, Dave Platman piano, Frank Fields bass, and Louis Barbarin) and toured with Kid Thomas in the New Orleans Joymakers in the early-70s. He also played at Preservation Hall during the 1970s and early 80s. (I saw him there with Jabbo Smith, Fatha Al Lewis, Orange Kellin, etc. in 1977). He wrote articles on jazz in magazines for over forty years, revealing his deep interest in the history of the music. What is believed to be the first mention in print of Bunk Johnson in comparatively modern times was in a March, 1935 issue of Ballroom and Band written by Preston Jackson. (This was brought to my attention by fellow enthusiast Horace Harris.) Preston died on tour with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JACKSON, Ulysses - Trombone
c1880?: New Orleans? ?
The brother of John Jackson, both the sons of Frank Jackson. Emma Barrett spoke of Ulysses Jackson living across the road from her when she was little. His wife, Olga, was the sister of Honoré Dutrey. Unfortunately, she omitted to say whom he played with, except that he practiced with the Dodds brothers. My information is that Olga was the wife of Dutrey, not his sister and that Ulysses was a close friend of Eddie Atkins. Just to complicate matters, Albert Warner claimed Ulysses was his half-brother, and that he was Honoré Dutrey’s pupil and brother-in-law, and that they played at the same time in the Excelsior Brass Band. It seems Ulysses was invited to join the army in 1917 and settled in Chicago after the little unpleasantness with Germany was over. Well, I’m glad that’s all cleared up.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JACQUET, Frank - Trombone
c1900?: Broussard, LA
Said by Herb Hall in Storyville 113 to have been with him in a band in New Orleans around 1926 led by D. L. Holmes (Professor Holmes?). This band rehearsed but never got started, however. Frank Jacquet later played with Don Albert from 1929 and was the uncle of Baptiste (see below) Illinois Jacquet (a famous swing and tenor saxophonist, born 1922) and Russell Jacquet. Russell’s full name was Robert Russell Jacquet, born Dec 3rd, 1917 in Broussard (near Lafayette), Louisiana. He played trumpet. Their father played bass: they all came from Broussard too. There was also a trombonist, Eddie Jacquet, who led a band in which Andy “Jug” Anderson played.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JOHNSON, Arthur “Yank” - Trombone
c1878: New Orleans 1938
Younger brother of Buddy Johnson. Both were popular and played with almost every band in New Orleans at least once. Worked with the Imperial Orchestra, 1906, and the Superior Orchestra, 1910. In 1920 he was in a band with Chinee Foster and Big Boy Goudie. After WW1 he worked mostly with Sam Morgan until 1925 when Sam had a stroke. The band continued as the Magnolia Orchestra with Willie Pajeaud, then broke up. He was with Chris Kelly for while, then worked at the Alamo on Canal Street with Willie Pajeaud for years. Both Yank and his brother Buddy Johnson worked with Kid Thomas, as recollected by Thomas in an interview.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JOHNSON, Awood “Magic” - Trombone
1930: New Orleans 1993, Aug 11
Tom Stagg mentions him as probably best remembered for leading the Fairview Baptist Choir Brass Band at the Breda Jazz Festival in 1977. Earlier, he played and recorded with Roy Brown. Recorded as a vocalist in 1960 under the name of Awood Magic. Played in many brass bands around New Orleans Pictured on page 90 of New Orleans Jazz Fest - A Pictorial History with Sherman’s Young Tuxedo Brass Band, 1977. Recorded on an album called “Side by Side: The New Orleans Music of Walter Payton” that included some tracks of some undistinguished Dixieland by the Exchange Alley Six with Michael White clarinet, Edmond Foucher trumpet, Quentin Batiste piano, Walter Payton bass and tuba, and Frank Parker drums.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JOHNSON, Buddy - Trombone
c1870: Algiers, LA 1927
The elder brother of Yank Johnson. Described by Charters as a fine musician. Isadore Barbarin rated him as the greatest parade and reading trombone player who ever placed a trombone to his mouth. Played with the Allen Brass Band; and Pacific Brass Band around 1900; also, the Onward Brass Band, about 1910. He was in the Imperial Orchestra under Manuel Perez about 1905; and with Billy Marrero’s Superior Orchestra with Bunk Johnson and Big Eye Nelson, 1910. Played in the Perez dance orchestra in the mid-20s. In a 1942 conversation with Bill Russell in New Orleans, Bunk said that Buddy was his cousin.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JOHNSON, Musterfer “Moses” - Valve trombone; trumpet
c1890: Magnolia Plantation, LA? ?
A member of the Magnolia Plantation’s Eclipse Brass Band. Cinderella Johnson Reddick in a 1981 interview spoke of him playing alongside Harrison Barnes under the tuition of Professor Humphrey. “He went to New Orleans and played some.”Originally played valve trombone, but was persuaded to change to trumpet and let Sonny Henry have the trombone. Sonny Henry mentioned his cousin Wright Reddick (q.v.), who played tuba , and another cousin, Robert Reddick, bass drum, with the Magnolia Plantation Band

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JOHNSON, Ronell - Trombone; tuba
?: New Orleans
Mick Burns mentions him in NOM volume 9-3 as a trombonist who with his brother Steve made up the trombone crew with the Coolbone Brass Band, and the Soul Rebels. Ronell plays tuba on a recording in 1998 with Oscar Washington’s New Weave Brass Band (really the Paulin family outfit).

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JONES, Ed - Trombone
c1869?: New Orleans? ?
Mentioned by Don Marquis as having played trombone for Buddy Bolden around 1898, after Willie Cornish left for the Spanish-American War. In an interview, an old neighbour of Bolden’s recalled seeing Jones with Bolden at the Odd Fellows Hall in 1906. Sam Charters mentions him as a friend of Bouboul Valentin, and that Jones played valve trombone, and used to sit in at Tom Anderson’s saloon with Tom Brown’s string trio. An Edward D. Jones was listed with the volunteers who enlisted in the Ninth Volunteer Infantry Band in 1898.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JOSEPH, Charles - Trombone
1955: New Orleans
Son of Frog Joseph (q.v.) and only reluctantly took an interest in music, unlike his father and brothers. Eventually started on trombone at junior high and later played with the Olympia Brass Band, and Doc Paulin. Also sharpened his chops with Burnt Toast and Coffee, a rock group. Later, he joined the Dirty Dozen Brass Band in the 1970s travelling widely before leaving in 1990. Currently (2004) plays in the Treme Brass Band, and the Forgotten Souls, plus other outfits.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JOSEPH, Gerald “Tadpole” - Trombone; sousaphone
c1940: New Orleans
Son of Frog Joseph and taught by him. He is on the 1966 recording by Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band at a concert shared with an International Band. Also recorded with Harold Dejan in 1969 for a V.O.A. broadcast, and for a BBC television “Three Faces of Jazz” programme, broadcast in 1970. His brothers Charles (trombone, also with the Olympia Brass Band) and Kirk (born 1961) (sousaphone in the Onward Brass Band and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band) were also taught by Frog. Kirk and Charles are both pictured on page 101 of New Orleans Jazz Fest - A Pictorial History. Lyndia Green-Faust, the late Jerry Greene’s daughter, and a friend of the Josephs, told me that when Gerald was young and impecunious Gerry helped him get started by lending him his sousaphone.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JOSEPH, Waldren “Frog” - Trombone
1918, Sep 12: New Orleans 2004, Sep 19
Waldren “Frog” Joseph comes from a musical family. Arthur Joseph, his father, a good friend of Slow Drag and Albert Glenny, played bass. Frog’s brothers: were also musicians and performers. Arthur (the oldest) played drums with both Leonard Bechet and Kid Rena. Andrew Morgan mentions Arthur playing with the Young Superior Band. Ferdinand sang with Oscar Celestin. William (Wiltz) played drums for Herbert Leary in the 1940s, and was also with Harold Dejan. It was Wiltz who was responsible for Dejan’s nickname, “Duke”. Clarence acted with the Silas Green Show. Frog Joseph was crippled by polio at 13 months of age and was taught piano by his sister. Frog’s wife was a cousin of Johnny Dave. Herbert Leary used to rehearse in the Joseph house. Frog was a popular and skilful trombonist. His first professional job was on bass with Kid Howard around 1932. Liked to play drums but an attack of polio stopped him. Occasionally played piano with Big Eye Louis Nelson, and Kid Shots Madison; and he also occasionally replaced Boots Young at jitneys. Toured with Manny Crusto in a group accompanying Ida Cox in 1937. Got his name, “Frog” from a phrase from “Frog-i-more Rag 313 ” which he used as an intro when playing with Joe Robichaux in the 1930s. (I heard Clive Wilson tell this story in Frog’s presence at a gig at the Landmark Hotel in 1992.) He has played with most of the Bourbon Street bands including Octave Crosby and Oscar Celestin. In the 60s he was with Albert French and Paul Barbarin. He has been in Clive Wilson’s New Camellia Jazz Band from the 1980s. Still active in the late-1990s but slowing down somewhat. His son, Charles Joseph, also plays trombone. April 2002 news is that Frog is severely depressed and reclusive. The announcement of his passing was made on WW0Z by Bob French, heard by Claire Reid via the Internet and passed on to me.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

JULES, Lawrence - Trombone
? ?
Mentioned in Schafer as with the Youka Brass Band, around 1905. Also mentioned is a Henry Jules on baritone horn. R&S says that they are brothers and that Lawrence played valve trombone.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

KAHN, Marcus - Piano; trombone; baritone horn
c1890: New Orleans c1946
An early Dixielander who frequently played with members of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. He was also with Ernest Giardina, the Brunies and the Fischer bands.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

KEELING, Frank (Keelen; Keely; Keelin) - Cornet; valve trombone?
c1880?: New Orleans ?
Rated by Lee Collins as a top New Orleans cornet player. Played in the Eagle Band around 1907 until 1915. Photographed in Francesco Valteau’s Band playing at Pete Lala’s Café around 1915. He was described as hard to get on with by both Pops Foster and Zue Robertson. Foster believed that Keeling played valve trombone with Buddy Bolden before Willie Cornish. If so this would make him older than I had previously guess-timated. Keeling toured the South with Sidney Bechet and Louis Wade in 1917, in the Bruce & Bruce Stock company.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

KELLY, Ernest - Trombone
c1886, New Orleans c1927 (R&S)
Kelly was in Tig Chambers’ Magnolia Sweets in 1910, and with the Bob Lyons Dixie Jazz Band in 1918. He played many jobs with Chinee Foster. He played in the first band organised by George Lewis in about 1924 according to R&S. However, both Tom Bethell, page 61, and Dorothy Tait, page 151 say the trombonist was Harrison Barnes. It seems that Kelly, in fact, replaced Barnes. Danny Barker mentions Kelly as on trombone with Lee Collins after Danny got married in 1930, which suggests a later date for his death, unless Danny was mistaken, which seems unlikely. Alfred Williams said he played with Kelly at the La Vida in 1928 alongside John Handy, Raymond Brown, etc.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

KLEIN, Craig “Sparky” - Trombone
1964: New Orleans
New Orleans-born Craig “Sparky” Klein received his first trombone at the age of six from his musician uncle, Gerry Dallmann. His formal musical training began in grade school, under the guidance of Papa Jac Assunto, founder of the Dukes of Dixieland. After college graduation, his professional musical career began in 1979 when he started playing with a traditional New Orleans brass band, meeting and playing with some of the New Orleans greats, such as Kid Sheik Colla, Father Al Lewis, Danny Barker, Chester Zardis, Frog Joseph, and many more. More recently has worked with Harry Connick Jr. Fats Domino, and Dave Bartholomew. His wide experience has made him a top trombonist in New Orleans, capable of many musical styles and line-ups, from trios to large orchestras.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

See website: Craig Klein

KNECHT, Henry - Cornet; trombone
1898: New Orleans 1968, Jul 21
This cat was said to have been a brass instrument virtuoso and the fastest reader in the city. He played both in dance bands and with Happy Schilling’s Brass Band (1910 - 1917). He also played in a ragtime band led by Schilling at Heineman’s baseball park, home of the New Orleans Pelicans. He was pictured there in 1936. Heineman’s Park, situated at Carrollton and Tulane, later became known as Pelican Park. Tom Brown, Johnny Fischer and Punch Miller all played there as well.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

LAINE, Julian “Digger” - Trombone
1907: New Orleans 1957, Sep 7
Digger Laine started out at the old Fern Café and Dance Hall No. 2 at 1017 325 Iberville Street, a dime-a-dance joint where many Dixielanders learnt their trade. He is said to have been mainly associated with Johnny Wiggs, Irving Fazola and Sharkey. Had a spell in Chicago with Muggsy Spanier. Digger Laine was not related to Papa Laine.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

LANDRY, Tom - Valve trombone; tuba; bass
c1870: New Orleans ?
Occasionally with the Onward Brass Band before the Spanish-American War. Before 1900 he played along with Alphonse Picou and Edward Clem in bands led by Oscar Duconge. As early as 1894 he was in Charlie Galloway’s band. Charters mentions a Tove Landry on bass with Oscar Duconge, perhaps either a nickname, or a typographical error for Tom. George Landry (“Big Chief Jolley” - born 1917 and died 1980 -3 was Big Chief and founder of the Wild Tchoupitoulas) uncle of the Neville brothers may be related.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

LEWIS, Foster “Forstair” - Trombone
? : New Orleans ?
A simple entry in R&S merely says “Bandleader of the early 1920s.” Tom Bethell reports George Lewis as playing with the Lewis brothers (Dude and Foster) and that “Forstair” Lewis was the best trombonist he had ever heard. On hearing an Ike Rogers recording for the first time George Lewis exclaimed that he sounded somewhat similar to Foster Lewis. Footnote volume 12-1 page 14 suggests that Foster Lewis and Dude Foster were in reality the Foster brothers, Dude and Lewis. Dick Allen (Footnote volume 9-3) mentions a Dude Lewis as on trumpet with the Avery-Tillman band in 1945 (tracks issued on AMCD-75). A picture in R&S on page 153 shows a Foster Lewis as the bass player with Ory’s Woodland Band of 1905.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

LINDSAY, John (LINDSEY) - Trombone; bass
1894, Aug 23: Algiers, LA 1950, Jul 3
Brother of Herb. Started in the red-light district in 1910 playing bass at the Hanan Saloon with Herb on violin, his father on guitar and Freddy Keppard, cornet. He was in the army in 1917 and afterwards switched to trombone. He played in Papa Celestin’s Tuxedo Band and through the 20s worked with John Robichaux and A J Piron. In 1924 he left for Chicago where he played with some distinction in the bands of King Oliver, Willie Hightower, Carroll Dickerson, and Dewey Jackson. Recorded with Piron; Jelly Roll Morton; Johnny Dodds; Sidney Bechet; Louis Armstrong; Hightower’s Night Hawks; Punch Miller, etc. As you might surmise from all this he could play a bit. After his move to Chicago although he continued to play and record on trombone (with Hightower for example) he began to concentrate on playing string bass in order to get more jobs, thus recording with the Harlem Hamfats.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

LONZO, Frederic “Freddy” - Trombone
1950, Aug 20: New Orleans
Whilst at junior and high school he got his first experience with the Fairview Baptist Band. Played his first gig during the 1970s with Bob French. He attracted attention working with Alvin Alcorn’s Imperial Brass Band in the early 1980s. In his teens he played with Doc Paulin’s band, from 1968. He was also with the Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble, 1981. The pit band for “One Mo’ Time” included Freddy Lonzo. He has also played with the Young Tuxedo Brass Band; and the Olympia Brass Band, 1968-69; the Original Storyville Jazz Band, 1971-76; and the Excelsior Brass Band, 1983. He toured with Barry Martyn’s Legends of Jazz from 1986, having replaced Clyde Bernhardt who in turn had replaced Louis Nelson in 1979. Lonzo has worked with practically every band of note in New Orleans and is capable of performing eloquently in traditional style, in brass bands, rhythm and blues, as well as modern outfits. His musical ability combined with his affability make him a popular favourite.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

LOPOSER, Avery - Trombone
c1898: Mobile, AL
A member of the mid-1920s group the Arcadian Serenaders active on the Gulf Coast, and the recording group the Crescent City Jazzers. They occasionally played in New Orleans.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MARGIOTTA, Joe 'Red' - Trombone
c1900: New Orleans
Mentioned by Whitney Balliett in The Jazz People of New Orleans. In 1966 Whitney was taken by Dick Allen to see Tony Fougerat playing a one night stand at Munster’s in the Garden District and Margiotta, a white musician, was Fougerat’s trombonist and “ … about the same age.”

Unusually, Red had one arm amputated just below the elbow. Apparently he sounded like Kid Ory. However, I wonder if the name was misheard, and should have been “Magiotta” - a relative perhaps of Sol Magiotta ,the clarinettist and bandleader, or Tony Magiotta, cornettist with the Triangle Band around 1920? Quite possibly this is the case since Sol also played with Fougerat (pictured on page 189, R&S) in Dominick Barocco’s Band in 1958.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MARTENS, Layton Patrick - Cello; trombone
1943: New Orleans 2000, Mar 18
Originally and mistakenly I had this guy down under Martens Layton (q.v.) but spotted a reference to his passing in Offbeat. A ‘cello player in local symphony orchestras he heard a group rehearsing in 1980 and found they were short of a trambone-phone so he went out and bought a beat-up instrument from Werlein’s the next day for $80 and taught himself to play by listening to Kid Ory records. He subsequently formed the Spirit of New Orleans Brass Band. He also played ‘cello with the New Leviathan Orchestra.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MARTIN, Lawrence - Trombone
?
His only known recording was with Paul “Polo” Barnes in 1947 alongside Billie and DeDe Pierce, Emile Barnes, and Willie Wilson on drums. Nothing else known.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MARTIN, Milton - Trombone
1896, Nov 24: Algiers, LA 1977
Milton was with the Sam Ross Orchestra in Cut Off, Louisiana for a number of years. He retired in 1913 to play professional baseball. Bandleader Sam Ross played mainly dances, and was noteworthy as the first to employ Jimmie Noone.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MATTHEWS, William “Bill” (Mathews) - Drums; trombone
1889 358 , May 9: Algiers, LA 1964, Jun 3
Youngest of the three Matthews drummers, Bebé, Bill and Remos. The other two were taught by Bébé. There were 13 children, all musicians, including Irma - a singer - in the family. Bill made his debut in 1917 with the Excelsior Brass Band; and was also in Jack “Pie Eater” Williams’ dance band. He played with Sidney Desvigne in the District before it closed. A couple of years later he was snare drummer with George McCullum. He then was with Frankie Duson; also Sam Morgan; and Joe Howard, and turned out for Joe Oliver’s Onward Brass Band as well as Henry Allen’s Brass Band. In 1921 he went on a vaudeville tour up North with Mack & Mack, and had a spell with Charles Creath in Tom Turpin’s Jazzland in St. Louis. In the 1922 he began to play the trombone and studied with Vic Gaspard. He toured with Nat Towles and also with Jelly Roll Morton. Back in New Orleans by 1925 Bill played on the steamer Island Queen. He later played with Bebé Ridgley. From 1945 to 1963 he was busy at the Paddock, up to 1952 usually with Oscar Celestin. He made early appearances at Preservation Hall where he became a regular. It was previously thought that he had been born in 1899 until his marriage certificate was discovered. A brother of Bill’s, Samuel Matthews, was mentioned by him in an oral history as having served in Cuba and “got killed”. Another brother, Harry, was a music teacher (listed in Wood’s City Directory of 1912-14 . The 1960 AFM Local 496 register lists a drummer, Allen Matthews at 2825 Fourth Street.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MAXWELL, Kenneth - Trombone
?: New Orleans
Pictured on page 151 of New Orleans Jazz Fest - A Pictorial History in 1986 with Doc Paulin’s Brass Band. Nothing else known.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MELLO, Leonce - Trombone
c1888: New Orleans c1941
A great trombonist by all accounts although he only occasionally worked in dance bands. He is noted for his work with the Reliance Brass Band prior to WW1. He also played with Fischer’s Brass Band in 1907, and with the Baroccos in 1919.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

METCALF, Gus - Trombone; baritone horn
c1895?: New Orleans? c1929?
Gus Metcalf was a pupil of Professor Jim Humphrey, and was said to be a cousin of Bob Lyons. Edmond Hall spoke of Metcalf as coming from uptown and resembling Kid Ory. Hall played with Metcalf after moving to New Orleans. It seems that Metcalf never had a regular line-up but would assemble a pickup band for his jobs. Octave Crosby is reported by Bill Russell to have made a tour of Arkansas playing carnival dates with Gus Metcalf’s Melody Band. Earl Foster mentions Gus with the Tulane Brass Band in the 1920s. Earl and Gus worked a lot in a band across the lake at Abita Springs and Covington. Punch Miller spoke of him as being able to play lead: “Baritone always played lead, just like a trumpet ...… used to hear guys talk about Gus Metcalf so. That guy could take a baritone and lead a band.” Louis Dumaine’s wife was the daughter of Gus Metcalf. According to Little Dad Vincent, he and Gus were in Louis Dumaine’s Band at the end of the 1920s

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MILLER, Freddie “Boo Boo” - Trombone
?: New Orleans ?
Played with the early jazz band known as the Liberty Bell Orchestra, c1919-20. Pictured on page 292 of R&S, touring in Texas with a group including Octave Crosby, Lee Collins and Percy Darensburg. Narvin Kimball recalled playing in a group led by Charlie Love in the mid-twenties that included Freddie Miller.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MOODY, Dan - Trombone
c1890: Mandeville, LA 1959
A popular bandleader who worked mainly in the resorts of Lake Pontchartrain post-WW1. In the R&S entry for clarinet-playing entertainer Johnny Brown it says he worked in Moody’s group “from Bogalusa and Mandeville”. Little Brother Montgomery recalled working with him and Al Lewis in Slidell during the early 1920s. Frank Lewis, a Bogalusa clarinettist, is listed playing with Moody until 1924. George Lewis played with Moody in Leonard Parker’s band in 1919 according to Charters. Parker played trumpet and could “......spell a bit....… Other musicians at that time I never saw with no music", according to George. Dr. Karl Koenig mentions a Bogalusa newspaper report of 1929 reporting “Moody’s six-piece jazz band will play all the latest dance music at Pace’s Skating Rink.”

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MOORE, Robert “Buster” - Trombone
1905, Aug 5: New Orleans 1966, Oct 24
A left-handed player, and a cousin of Sam Lee and Harrison Verret. His musical career began in 1917 when he became a member of Johnny Brown’s band, but he was little known until he made a comeback in the early 1960s at Preservation Hall, and with the Gibson Brass Band. From the late-1950s he played with George Williams, and he also recorded with the George Williams Brass Band, as well as with Sylvester Handy’s Rhythm Band in 1963, and John Henry McNeil’s Crescent City Crystals, also in 1963. He is pictured on page 48 of Schafer’s Brass Bands & New Orleans Jazz, parading with the Young Excelsior Brass Band on the campus at Tulane University in 1964. A Clive Wilson article in NOM volume 7-3 mentions going to a party in 1964 at Leon Vageon’s house where Clive was particularly impressed by Buster’s accomplished tailgate style.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MORRIS, Eddie - Trombone
1896, Jul 19: Algiers, LA late-1960s or 1970*
Although he had cornet lessons as a boy, when 19 he bought a trombone after hearing Vic Gaspard and Baptiste DeLisle. In 1920 Punch Miller hired him to replace Jack Carey in a successful band until 1927 when Punch left New Orleans due to marital problems. Eddie was with Kid Rena, 1927-28 (including a few trips to Chicago). He also played with Buddy Petit until Buddy’s death in 1931. In mid-Depression, he was with the ERA Orchestra and the WPA Brass Band. He also led his own dance band, Eddie Morris’s Serenaders during the 1950s and marched regularly with the Gibson Brass Band until he hurt his leg working at home in 1959. However, (that word again!) I learn from Orange Kellin - via Per Oldaeus - the following: Yes, I did meet, and played with, Eddie Morris … at a private party in the late ‘60’s, with a lot of old time musicians attending. I have a photo or two from the occasion, probably taken by Hans Lychou - if not, then probably Yoshio Toyama. So, Eddie Morris was around at least until then. My recollection is, that he might have died around 1970. At the time .… he had been inactive for a few years - at least - and was barely able to play. He was by then big and fat and didn’t seem very talkative. I only knew him from the Icon recordings where he was pretty rusty. At that party he was a lot worse, but basically the same stuff, when he could get it out. As a person, I didn’t really get any sense (from) him.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MORRIS, George - Trombone
c1900: New Orleans?
Named by Manny Sayles as in the band he started with - “they were all older fellows than me” - that got work in Pensacola, Florida, around 1925, and acquired the name there of The Pensacola Jazzers. The others were Thomas Mack on trumpet, and Edmund Washington was on clarinet.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MULLEN, John (Mullin) - Trombone
c1900?: New Orleans ?
Schafer lists a “ - Mullin” amongst the trombone players in the Eureka Brass Band. However, neither R&S, nor Charters makes mention of anyone of that name. But stay, what is this? Knowles lists him as John Mullin, quoting John Casimir. Wilbert Tillman said in an interview that a trombone player called Eddie Mullen lined up with Willy Cornish as the other trombonist with the Eureka at the end of the 1920s, but the probability is that he was really referring to Knowles’s John Mullin. Our man Mullin was also a founder member of the Eureka Brass Band.

However, in Robert Florence’s New Orleans Cemeteries there is a photograph of sisters Cecilia Mullen Fagan and Jean Mullen Lee tending the grave of their father, John Mullen, in Holt Cemetery, and the accompanying text refers to him as a member of the Eureka Brass Band, so I think that settles it. Unfortunately, in the photograph the writing of the grave stone is indecipherable. Next time I’m in Holt Cemetery I will look for the it and get the dates.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

MULLINS, Mark - Trombone
c1964?: New Orleans
Played with Harry Connick Jr. for 15 years. Leads the all-trombone group Bonerama, and has also played on stage and recorded with the Radiators.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

NAUNDORF, Frank - Trombone
1940: Dresden, Germany
I ought to know more but I don’t, apart from the fact that he reorganised the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1961, and that they later (including Chris Burke) accompanied Danny Barker on his last recording shortly before he died. R&S just says, rather cryptically, “Society Jazz Band", although elsewhere it dates the group (including Reg Simpson and Andrew Hall, plus Tony Fougerat, Melvin Yancey and Ernest Poree from New Orleans) as playing regularly at the Maple Leaf Club in New Orleans from 1974. Frank is also pictured on page 211 with the New Young Tuxedo Brass Band in 1974. In 1996 I saw him with Alvin Alcorn at a Margaritaville film presentation. Unfortunately neither of them were playing at the time! The publication in 2001 of Mick Burn’s excellent The Great Olympia Band reveals that he was the only European to work regularly with the Olympia ((1972-1978, and again 1985-1992) having lined up jobs for the band on a European tour in 1968 although the U.S. State Department tried to put the mockers on the tour. But why don’t you buy the book and find out what happened?

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

NELSON, Louis Hall “Doyle” - Trombone
1902, Sep 17: New Orleans 1990, Apr 5
He was raised in Napoleonville (where his father 380 , one of New Orleans’ first black doctors, was in medical practice) from the age of two. His mother, an accomplished pianist trained at the Boston Conservatory, gave him his early training in music. He began to play the alto horn and was taught by Claiborne Williams, but later switched to trombone, whilst his brother George played sax. Louis first worked with Joe Gabriel’s 10-piece band in Thibodaux. He also played with the Original Tuxedo Orchestra, and Kid Rena, in his early years. He recalled in an interview that in the 1920s he played a couple of times with Buddy Petit, and alongside Sammy Penn in the 1920s. In 1926 he was with the Kid Harris Dixie Band in New Orleans. He played alongside Manny Sayles and Louis Barbarin with Sidney Desvigne on the riverboats where he developed his style of playing the melodic line on trombone. He also played again for a time with Buddy Petit. During the Depression he played in the WPA music scheme, under the direction of at that time of Pinchback Touro and Louis Dumaine. It was in 1944 he joined the Kid Thomas band. After the war he played with Kid Howard, Kid Sheik, and DeDe Pierce. Louis Nelson was one of the musicians who were regularly at the art gallery sessions on St. Peter Street, although at that time his playing suffered because of his indulgence in drink, a weakness he was later to overcome. His enthusiastic involvement was one of the factors that led to the development of Preservation Hall. Having played for years across the river he and his melodic style had been somewhat forgotten but it was to prove the perfect foil to many “hot” stylists. However, when the occasion called for it he could . Most of company A of the 9th Immunes formed in 1898 - including much of the Onward Brass Band (q.v.) - to serve in Cuba came from an independent militia in New Orleans,the Faith Cadets, formed by Dr. Nelson, father of trombonist Louis Nelson NGDJ suggests, “1885 or 1880” However, if Louis was playing in Storyville at the age of 15 that would seem to rule out 1880 as the District as such did not “open” for business until 1897. However, as Michel Laplace points out there was activity in the Storyville area before and after it was sanctioned, and the 1880 date is generally accepted now. 378 I n the early 1920s Arnett Nelson, composer of the number , played in Jimmy Wade’s Orchestra at the Moulin Rouge Cafe on Wabash Avenue, Chicago. The tuba and bass saxophone player in the band was a musician named Buddy Gross who used to drink large amounts of beer. Buddy’s Habit was that at the end of each set he would rush off the stand to relieve himself. Buddy Gross has been identified by John Steiner as being the person on the far right of the photograph in the centre of page 37 of A Pictorial History of Jazz. roar and tailgate with the best. He was to tour extensively both at home and abroad, often with George Lewis, and was a regular at Preservation Hall. Louis Nelson earned love and respect for his musicianship and dignified bearing. He died, tragically, from hit-and-run car injuries, whilst still in reasonably good health for his age. They still hold annual parties in New Orleans to commemorate him.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

NOBLE, Eddie (a.k.a. Eddie King) - Trombone
1937, Mar 26: New Orleans
Real name, according to TGOBB: Eddie Noble King, Jr. and played for a number of years with the Olympia Brass Band in the 1950s. Learnt to play trombone whilst living in Ohio, where he was raised. Only known recordings: Chief John & His Mahogany Hall Stompers, 1964; and the Gibson Brass Band, 1963. He played with the Gibson for about a year, replacing Roland Cayette. Perhaps Wendell Brunious (present as a child singer on the Chief John session) knows more. Tom Stagg (1994) volunteered the information that after playing in R&B bands, Eddie injured his elbow and had to give up music. However, in the 1950-2000 anniversary edition of The Second Line there is a recent picture of the Treme Brass Band with someone listed as Eddie King on trombone, confirmed in the TGOBB interview.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

OCHSNER, Dr. Alton -
1896: Kimball, SD 1981: New Orleans
Dr. Ochsner, a cardiologist, founded the Ochsner Medical Foundation Research Center in 1942 and was its director for 42 years. He is credited with being one of the first to have recognised in the 1930s the connection between smoking and heart disease. In 1936 he began studying a possible link between smoking and heart disease whilst Professor of Surgery at Tulane University. His report in 1938 established a causal link. It was he, of course, who attended Muggsy Spanier at the Touro Infirmary 391 early in 1938 and undoubtedly saved his life: Muggsy had a perforated ulcer and peritonitis but was continuing to drink pink cocktails to ease the pain! An interesting account of this episode, and his subsequent lifelong friendship with Dr. Ochsner and his family 392 can be found in Bert Whyatt’s excellent biography, Muggsy Spanier: The Lonesome Road. I think it also worth mentioning that recently (in May of 1999) there were a series of postings from musicians on the Dixieland Mailing List scoffing at the consequences of secondary tobacco smoke inhalation. The following day there came a detailed report in The Guardian of a long-term scientific investigation confirming the ill-effects. Since so many musicians have suffered and died from lung cancer I thought it worth mentioning. See also the entries for Tommy Sancton and Muggsy Spanier. Sadly, there is convincing evidence that Dr. Ochsner was a racist. (See Race & Democracy, page 165) In 1965 he was one of those associated with attempts to hold a jazz festival.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ORY, Edouard (Edward) “Kid” - Trombone; bass; alto sax; clarinet
1886, Dec 25: LaPlace, LA 1973, Jan 23
Grew up on the Woodland Plantation at La Place. A good example of the precarious nature of being a musician is illustrated by Ory having to run fish fries when gigs were hard to come by. Started on home-made banjo and then began on trombone when he was 14, before, according to some sources, moving to New Orleans some time around 1912. However, in NOS , Ory says that he finally got to New Orleans when he was twenty-one, and first played with George Jones at Pete Lala’s, which would make it 1907/08. Well, he should know. R&S says that Ory’s first band was a hometown group, the Woodland Band, which Ory took to New Orleans in about 1913. He had his own band at Pete Lala’s with Mutt Carey, and later Joe Oliver, then Louis Armstrong, and Johnny Dodds in 1914. He moved to California for health reasons in 1919, sent for a number of New Orleans musicians and had a band which, in 1921, was the first coloured jazz band to record. (Floyd Levin established this date as correct, not the usually quoted 1922.) Ory also made a pioneering broadcast in 1923, probably the first on radio by a black jazz band. Later, in 1925 he was with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in Chicago, briefly playing alto sax until George Filhe worked out his notice. He was on the celebrated Armstrong Hot 5 & 7 sides; and with Jelly Roll Morton. He was with King Oliver’s Dixie Syncopators at the Savoy Ballroom in New York in 1927 but was back in Chicago later that year with Dave Peyton’s Band. In 1930 he went back to Los Angeles, joining Mutt Carey who had taken over his old band. He retired from full-time music to work on a chicken farm according to legend but the truth seems to be that he merely kept a few backyard birds. Although most accounts refer to him as giving up music in 1933, in fact he did play occasionally after that date, mostly on string bass, and also alto sax with Barney Bigard, in the 1930s, and he recorded with Jelly Roll Morton in New York in 1938. He later played an important role in the New Orleans Revival on the West Coast when he resumed playing in 1942, especially after regular appearances on the Orson Welles radio show in 1944. A year’s residency playing six nights a week at the Jade Palace in Los Angeles marked the pinnacle of his comeback. Interestingly, Ory played trumpet for the first few nights as Mutt Carey was on holiday! He finally retired in 1966 and moved to Hawaii. He was not finished even then because he came out of retirement in 1971 to perform at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. Kid Ory was a master of the tailgate style in which smears, glissandi and rasping tone coupled with a mastery of mutes combined to generate exceptional rhythmical momentum. It’s basically a very simple technique but the critical subtlety of timing has eluded many a rival or imitator. There has been some speculation about Ory’s date of birth, but this has been finally settled by the discovery of his certificate of baptism, in which he is named as “Eduard Ory” (see The Jazz Archivist volume IX , 2). According to Greatest Slideman Ever Born, Ory seems to have had a younger brother (not mentioned in other histories) who “potato-headed” with him on clarinet at a Labor Day parade. This is a means of making up band numbers by having “musicians” blowing silent (blocked with a potato) instruments. I think a small turnip would have the same effect. Ever eager to provide a lagniappe to my readers: in April 2000 Kid Ory’s daughter, Babette, staying with John McCusker, is expected to cook red beans and rice for the Ken Colyer Trust in New Orleans. Don’t tell anyone, it’s to be a surprise! There are as many stories about “Muskrat Ramble” - the number invariably associated with Ory - as there are versions of it. Most New Orleans old timers remember the melody as the tune “The Old Cow Died” which the Bolden Band played. Ory and his mates as well as the Eagle Band, their main rival, played it. Ory later changed it to “Old Frankie Duson Died, Little Chif Cried” and played it as a parody. This prompted Frankie Duson’s bassist to punch Johnny Dodds in the eye, though the reasons for this remain somewhat obscure. Latest research has revealed that Kid Ory’s ancestor Nicola Ory came from France on the ship Princess Augusta and moved to Louisiana in 1769 via Philadelphia, having signed Oaths of Allegiance on Sep. 16, 1736. Private recordings of Ory on clarinet exist:: I’ve heard the name Sid Bailey mentioned in this connection.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

Kid Ory was probably the most outstanding trombone player in the early years of Jazz. He originally played banjo, but then switched to trombone. Perhaps his banjo playing helped shape the "tailgate" style of playing he later developed on the trombone. In the "tailgate" style, the trombone plays a rhythmic line underneath the trumpets and cornets.

From 1912 to 1919 he lead one of the most popular bands in New Orleans. Ory's Band featured many of the great musicians who would go on to define the Hot Jazz style. At various times, King Oliver, a young Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, and Jimmie Noone all played in Ory's band.

In 1919 Ory relocated to California for health reasons. He assembled a new group of New Orleans musicians on the West Coast and played regularly under the name of Kid Ory's Creole Orchestra. In 1922 they became the first black jazz band to record. They used the name of "Spike's Seven Pods of Pepper Orchestra" and recorded the songs Ory's Creole Trombone and Society Blues.

In 1925 he moved to Chicago, and played regularly with King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and Hot Seven and with Jelly Roll Morton and several other Chicago groups.

When the Dixieland revival occured in the 1940's, Ory found his style of music back in vogue. He revived Kid Ory's Creole Orchestra in 1943 and was able to continue to play, tour, and record Jazz until he retired in 1966.

Source: www.redhotjazz.com

PACK, Edward - Trombone
?
Mentioned by Tom Stagg in Footnote volume 2-3 as one of the “young men of New Orleans” who are continuing the traditions of jazz playing, but with no other details.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

PADDIO, Albert (Padio; Padéo; Pattio) - Valve trombone
c1879?: New Orleans ?
Reb Spikes in Jazz on the Barbary Coast says that Will Johnson’s Creole Band had a trombone player from New Orleans called Padio 398 . “He went to Vancouver with them … and I heard he died there. A lot of those New Orleans fellas you never knew nuthin’ but one name.” Jelly Roll Morton is quoted as referring to him in Mr Jelly Roll: “I sent for Padio, my trombone-playing friend who lived in Oakland .… he’s dead now, never got East so none of the critics ever heard him ......” I have heard it suggested that “Padio” in American pronunciation would sound like “Pajeaud” but I am not convinced. An unpublished interview with bassist Bill Johnson by someone called Averty in 1959 said that in 1908 a “get-up” band was organised and travelled to California. The line-up according to scribbled notes was Bill Johnson mandolin; Alphonse Ferzand (from Biloxi) bass; Padéo valve trombone; Charles Washington guitar; Ernest Carquet (probably Ernest Coycault). Mamie Johnson (Bill Johnson’s wife) told Bill Russell that the original trombonist of the Creole Band was a certain “Pattio” (sic) “who later lost his mind.” According to Gushee in POJ an Albert Paddio was listed as a musician in the 1899 New Orleans city directory and tends to think he is our man.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

PAGE, Anthony - Valve trombone
pre-1861: New Orleans c1905
A founder member of the Excelsior Brass Band, 1880. He was a French Opera musician who also taught. In 1888-89 he played regularly with the Tio-Dublais Orchestra at Francs Amis Hall. Vic Gaspard was one of his pupils. During the later 1930s the St. John’s Brass Band had a trombonist, Adam Page. The band broke up during WW2 and evolved into the E. Gibson Brass Band. A tuba player, Henry Page, was with the Young Tuxedo Brass Band in the late 1930s (John Casimir recalled, “.… a fellow Uptown they call Page on sousaphone” when the Young Tuxedo started.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

PALMER, Royal “Roy” - Trombone; guitar
1892, Apr 2: Carrollton, New Orleans 1963, Dec 22
He began on guitar and worked in the Rozelle Orchestra in 1906. Played in the Richard M Jones Band along with Freddie Keppard, and was also with Sidney Desvigne. Recalled in an oral history interview playing with the Onward Brass Band. Played in an early hot band on riverboats with Sugar Johnny, cornet and Lawrence Duhé, clarinet. This band toured and got to Chicago in 1915. Later, Duhé, Palmer and Sugar Johnny were in a band with Lil Hardin, Wellman Braud and Ram Hall. He also played with Johnny Dodds; King Oliver; and Jelly Roll Morton. He was described as anti-social by some of his contemporaries and he was to be replaced by Honoré Dutrey in Oliver’s band for his scruffy appearance and for falling asleep on the stand. Preston Jackson and Al Wynn were his pupils. Roy had an uncle, Charles Henderson, who played trumpet and led his own band. Many have claimed Roy as the greatest of New Orleans’ trombonists. However, Preston Jackson said that he was told by King Oliver that someone called Baptiste Delaney was the greatest of them all. Delaney was from New Orleans but not much is known about him other than he appears to have had a mental breakdown.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

PARIS, Eddie “Boh” “Funky Chops” (Parish) - Trombone
1962, Nov 3: New Orleans
Eddie Paris grew up mainly in the Seventh Ward spending summers with his grandfather, Isaac “Porkchop” Mason, a tap dancer who was half of the duo Porkchop & Kidney Stew ( Ollie Anderson) regulars at the Famous Door on Bourbon Street. Started on Sousaphone in Danny Barker’s Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band. A few years after Paris had started on the sousaphone, an elderly woman donated an old trombone to the Fairview. Barker handed it to Paris and said, “Clean it up; learn how to play it.” Having switched to trombone he became a member of the Young Tuxedo Brass Band along with Michael White and Gregg Stafford. Danny Barker called him ‘the trombone player with nine lives’ because he’d been shot twice. In 1986, he was hospitalized for three months after being car-jacked and shot in the abdomen with a .44 Magnum. Prior to that, on March 22, 1981, on the way home from playing the Super Sunday parade, two guys ambushed him for his new leather shoes and gold chain. One gunshot entered by Paris’ upper right jaw and came out near the left side of his left eye. The bullet ruined his left optic nerve; he now has an implanted pupil. Recorded with the Olympia Brass Band and the Chosen Few Brass Band in the mid-1980s. Eddie has a bizarre, erratic but technically brilliant, “street music” style. I noticed him playing with Michael White’s Liberty Street Jazz Band, 1992 (also mentioned by Marcel Joly in the same line-up in 1991) in the French Quarter Festival. Pictured on page 160 of New Orleans Jazz Fest - A Pictorial History in 1987 with the Chosen Few Brass Band. Reported in 1996 with Merv Campbell in All That Jazz at the Palm Court, and in 1997 as playing at Linda Young’s funeral parade. Also has his own band which is a more modern group. Toured extensively with various brass bands to many places. He was selected by Tuba Fats and Big Bill Bissonnette to record with the newly-named Chosen Few Jazzmen in 2002. He’s now playing music full time, leading two bands, a brass band Chops’ Original Funky Seven Brass Band, named for the Seventh Ward, and his jazz band Eddieboh Paris &Friends.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

PECORA, Santo Joseph - Trombone
1902, Mar 31: New Orleans 1984, May 29
Real name: Pecoraro. The maestro of Dixieland trombone. He played and recorded with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1924-1925. Later, he played in large swing bands, as well as with small Dixieland groups such as Sharkey and Wingy Manone. After 1942 he worked mainly in Baton Rouge, and in New Orleans on Bourbon Street at the Famous Door. His nephew, Santo Pecoraro (born 1906) was drummer with Johnny Wiggs for a time up to 1962.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

PENDLETON, John - Cornet; trombone
c1875?: New Orleans? ?
A neighbour of Pendleton’s told Don Marquis that John used to sit in for Buddy Bolden when he didn’t turn up at the Odd Fellows Hall in 1906. Knowles also mentions him possibly substituting for Bolden. Tom Albert reported that Pendleton sometimes played in the cornet section of the Henry Allen Brass Band. Doc Souchon said that John worked on occasion with the George McCullum Sr. Marching Band. McCullum died in 1920 so it had to be before then. Bunk Johnson mentions a John Pendelton as playing with him in Adam Olivier’s band in 1894.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

PERKINS, Dave - Trombone; trumpet; drums; euphonium
c1868: New Orleans 1926
One of the great music teachers in New Orleans for both trombone and drums. An active brass band player from the early-1890s to about 1912, working with the Reliance and the Toca Brass Bands. Red Clark had lessons from Dave who told Red that he’d played in the Pickwick Brass Band with Red’s father. Aaron Clark died in 1894 so it had to be before then, obviously. It was recalled by Tom Albert that Dave played in Algiers with the Jim Dorsey Band. He also played over in Algiers with the Pacific Brass Band . Perkins was light-skinned and played with both white (he was a regular member of Jack Laine’s Ragtime Band for instance) and coloured groups. He played with Buddy Bolden several times. At some time before WW1 he began concentrating on teaching rather than playing. Baby Dodds was one of his pupils from 1912. After an illness he married a coloured woman who had taken care of him and thus for his pains the white musicians’ union took away his card, an action all too typical I am afraid. If Tom Brown gets an entry so too does brave and loyal Mrs Perkins if I have anything to do with it.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

PETIT, Joseph - Trombone
1873: New Orleans 1946
Stepfather of Buddy Petit, and a famous valve and slide trombonist who continued playing after he lost his teeth. He started playing about 1896 and was once leader of both the Olympia Orchestra and the Security Brass Band. In the early 20s he was in the Camellia Orchestra and Brass Band. He also played in the Jefferson City Buzzards Mardi Gras Parades. He recorded on an American Music session in 1945, with Wooden Joe Nicholas, late in life. According to Johnny St. Cyr, “doing the Joe Petit” was to riff during the last chorus as a novelty effect.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

PIERSON, Edward “Eddie” - Trombone
1904, Aug 1: Algiers, LA 1958, Dec 17
Mainly associated with Oscar Celestin from 1951 until Celestin’s death. He took over the leadership in 1954. Played with Sidney Desvigne on the riverboats in the early thirties, and worked in a group that included Louis Barbarin and Manny Sayles. Also with the Sonny South band, and with Armand Piron, and the Young Tuxedo Orchestra. Recorded in 1950 with Herb Morand and in 1951 with Paul Barbarin & His Band. John Handy says that Earl Pierson, who was with Celestin at the time, showed him the fingering when Capt. John got his first saxophone. Earl played alto and tenor sax and Charters mentions him as recording with Celestin in 1926. Jeanette Kimball says he joined Celestin when Paul Barnes left to go with King Oliver but this does not tally since they both recorded together on “My Josephine”, etc. My guess is that Eddie and Earl were related, brothers perhaps?

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

In 1922, trombonist Eddie Pierson lived at 423 Homer Street.

Eddie Pierson played on the riverboats with Sidney Desvigne in the early 1930’s and worked with a group that included Louis Barbarin and Emanuel Sayles. He was also in the Sunny South Orchestra, Armand J. Piron’s Orchestra, the Young Tuxedo Brass Band, the Great Lakes Naval Station Band and the Abby Williams Happy Pals. The Abby Williams Band performed from about 1948 until 1952

Abby Williams´ Happy Pals Brass Band (1949).
Eddie Pierson (tb), Ed Noon Johnson (sousaphone), Jim Robinson (tb),
Adolphe "Tats" Alexander (clar), Jesse Charles(sax), Dee Dee Pierce (trp), Kid Howard (trp), Kid Clayton(tp), Abby Williams(sndm), Chester Jones(bassdm).

In the fiftees, he played with the famous Paul Barbarin Band with among others Lester Santiago and Albert Burbank. He is mainly associated with Oscar ‘”Papa” Celestin from 1951 until Celestin’s death in 1954, when he took over the leadership of the Young Tuxedo Brass Band’s remnants. Eddie Pierson died in 1958

Jasper van Pelt

POWERS, Ambrose - Trombone
c1895?: New Orleans? ?
Paul Barbarin mentions him in an oral history interview. He was in a band led by Walter Blue Robertson that included Emile Barnes, Ambrose Powers, Tit (Tete) Rouchon, Buddy Manaday and Paul Barbarin. Tete Rouchon ceased working in the late 1920s so it would have to have been before then, probably closer to 1915. In an interview Albert Jiles remembered Powers playing funerals with him in the Kid Rena Brass Band. This would probably be at or before the mid-1930s because Rena quit playing parades then, and Kid Howard took over. R&S has a picture on page 203 of what is alleged to be a Kid Rena parade band in 1937. However, George Lewis identified in the picture, said that Rena was not present on what was a pickup job. Eddie Powers was a white saxophonist who is mentioned as playing with Charlie Fishbein at Club Forest in the late-1920s (see below).

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

RAPHAEL, Bernard “Benny” - Trombone
c1883: New Orleans ?
Bernard Raphael was with the Melrose Brass Band from about 1907 and with the Excelsior Band in 1913. The Melrose was the first brass band Joe Oliver led, according to Paul Beaulieu, who also said that Raphael introduced him to Oliver. Honoré Dutrey was the other trombonist alongside Raphael in the Melrose outfit. According to Robert Goffin the Imperial Orchestra under Perez played a gig at Shreveport, around 1902, where a fracas resulted in a trombone player, Raphael Beving, being knocked out. Knowles speculates that this is almost certainly Benny Raphael. It is not known if he was related to Peter Raphael; probably not I would say.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

RIDGLEY, William “Bebé” - Trombone; string bass; drums
1882, Jan 15: New Orleans 1961, May 28
He tried to play clarinet as a boy, and in 1911 he studied under Professor Jim Humphrey, but his first job was to be on bass with the Silver Leaf Orchestra. He was a founder of the Tuxedo Brass Band and the Original Tuxedo Orchestra in which he worked for many years; with or without Celestin. A white man, Sim Black, suggested dressing the band in tuxedos and calling it the Tuxedo Orchestra as a promotional stunt. They even wore the tuxedos in the fierce summer sun! Bebé began playing drums in the early 30s and remained active until 1936 when he retired through ill health. His last public appearance was as a mourner at the funeral of Alphonse Picou, February 4, 1961. The nickname “Bebé” is mostly found in print with the one accent, but I fear that pedantry should insist on two: Bébé - French for “Baby", my dictionary informs me, unless I am missing something.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ROBERTSON, Alvin Cornelius “Zue” - Trombone; piano; bass
1891, Mar 7: New Orleans 1943
Credited by many as setting the pace on slide trombone, but was said to have been irresponsible. He thus never had any lasting fame, although he was rated very highly by Bunk Johnson. After starting up on piano he learnt to play trombone when he was 13. He was with Freddy Keppard’s Olympia band around 1913, and also with Joe Oliver. Sonny Henry recalled playing alongside Zue, and Joe Oliver, in the Allen Brass Band. He frequently appeared at Pete Lala’s. Around 1917 he was out of town playing in a Wild West Show band that was said to have featured the frontiersman, Kit Carson. After a spell back in New Orleans with Manuel Perez, also John Robichaux at the Lyric, and Richard M Jones, he settled in Chicago, playing with Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. During much of the 1920s he was on the road with touring outfits, notably P.G.Lowery’s Circus, the Ringling Brothers, and Barnum and Bailey. Recorded with Morton’s Stomp Kings in 1923 with Natty Dominique. From 1929 he was a resident of New York, and in 1931 he gave up trombone for the piano. Finally in 1932 he settled on the West Coast and remained there for the rest of his life, occasionally working on piano and string bass.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ROBINSON, Archie - Trombone
?
Played with the Camellia Brass Band in the early 1920s under the leadership of D’Jalma Ganier and continued with the group after Wooden Joe lost interest and it became the D’Jalma Brass Band. He was still with this latter outfit in 1929 according to DeDe Pierce who became leader after Ganier died.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ROBINSON, Isaiah “Big Ike” - Trombone; guitar
1891, Mar 16: Thibodaux, LA 1962, Oct 8
Played guitar in the Thibodaux band, 1911-20. Also played in Joe Gabriel’s number 2 band playing in places along the Bayou Lafourche, playing guitar. He started on trombone about 1918 after WW1 and went to New Orleans in 1920 and played a few jobs with Kid Milton, and also with both Wooden Joe Nicholas’s Camellia Brass Band and Orchestra. He studied with Dave Perkins on trombone and joined Chris Kelly in 1924, remaining until Kelly’s death in 1929. Also played with the Arnold DePass Olympia Band. For a while he worked in dance halls with Kid Milton again, and was also with Kid Rena’s Brass Band. During the Depression he was fortunate enough to be able to take a steady day job and eventually retired from music about 1938 after joining a church.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ROTIS, Joe - Trombone
1917, Oct 30: New Orleans 1965, Apr 24
He played with what some regarded as the best new group in the 1950s revival of interest in jazz in New Orleans, George Girard’s Basin Street Six, alongside leader Girard on trumpet and clarinettist Pete Fountain. He also played with Sharkey, and Phil Zito.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

ROUSSEAU, August - Trombone; alto horn
c1894: New Orleans c1956
A member of the first Tuxedo Orchestra before WW1. Sam Charters describes him as “a fairly regular trombone player.....” with them. However, he must have been rather more than fairly regular since he recorded with Papa Celestin’s Original Tuxedo Orchestra in 1926, although this seeming ambiguity is no doubt due to the tendency of both Bebé Ridgley and Oscar Celestin to each lay claim to the “Tuxedo” title even after they split up. August Rousseau sometimes played alto horn with the Tuxedo Brass Band.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

SAWYER, Henry - Trombone
c1890?: Lutcher, LA?
A member of the Holmes Brass Band of Lutcher, a small town roughly halfway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. They are pictured in R&S on page 213 - the date 1910, and the caption credits Sawyer with being said to have been New Orleans’ first jazz slide trombonist. The leader, Professor Holmes, once employed Buddy Bolden on a parade and was amazed that he played without music.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

SCHILLING, George Sr. “Happy” - Trombone; guitar
1886, Apr 26: New Orleans 1964, Feb 28
Happy Schilling is credited with being an important and influential early Dixielander. He led his own dance and brass bands, and he and Johnny Fischer frequently played in each other’s groups. George was also the leader of the band that played at Heineman’s baseball park for the home games of the New Orleans Pelicans.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

SCIONEAUX, Louis “Lou” - Trombone
c1931: New Orleans 1986
Some of his earliest experience was playing with Eddie Bayard over in Algiers. He was a popular player with George Girard’s New Orleans Five during the 1950s. Also played with a rock and roll outfit - Sam Butera’s Witnesses - that occasionally featured Louis Prima. Master Butera was a pupil of Johnny Wiggs. The name is pronounced “Seeno”. See also the entry for Lou Sino: one and the same, it seems! New information informs me that he changed his legal name to Sino.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

SHEPHERD, -? - Trombone
?c1900: New Orleans?
Schafer lists a “ - Shepherd” amongst the trombone players in the Eureka Brass Band. However, neither R&S, nor Charters makes mention of anyone by that name.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

SINO, Lou “Red Blunt” - Trombone
c1933: New Orleans 1986, Jul 30
I am reliably informed that Lou played with Louis Prima and made many records with him. These must be after 1942 since he is not mentioned in Rust. He also fails to get a mention in Stagg & Crump. Have I been given duff information by Mr Henriksen we ask ourselves? However, had I known that his name was pronounced as “Seeno” and that the name Scioneaux was also pronounced the same way I might have made the connection that Lou Sino and Louis Scioneaux were the same person Thanks to Algiers correspondent, Kevin Herridge, who put me straight, sayingthat Lou / Louis lived in Algiers as a child. where he played in a band with Eddie Bayard. Kevin also came up with the information that his name was originally Scioneaux until he had it changed to Sino. Lou also led a band known as the Bengals., and also turned out with a band led by Norman Brownlee’s son, Henry French Brownlee.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

SMITH, Joe - Trombone
?
Listed by Willie Parker as a member of the Terminal Brass Band he organised prior to WW1, playing trombone alongside Sonny Henry. George Lewis said that someone called Smith had replaced John Mullin on trombone with the Eureka Brass Band in the 1920s and it has been speculated that he may have been referring to John Smith.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

STEPTOE, Tom - Trombone
?
A member of the short-lived Lyons Brass Band which existed for a few months in 1928. Leader was Pop Hamilton and Willie Parker was the manager. Morris French was the other trombonist. Steptoe must have been a competent reading musician because he was also in the Tonic Brass Band, a concert band of some thirty pieces organised by Professor Henry Pritchard in the late-1920s.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

STEVENS, Arthur - Trombone
?: New Orleans ?
A member of the Bulls Club Brass Band alongside Joe Oliver, etc., under the leadership of Manuel Calier from around 1915 to 1925. In the early 20s he was the manager of the band, which was named after an uptown saloon located in those days on Chippewa and Philip, although it later moved to Harmony Street. Have you got that New Orleans street map yet?

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

STRATAKOS, Ellis - Trombone
1904, Dec 1 !961, Jan 25
Played with Tony Parenti and Johnny Wiggs. Led his own band, the Ellis Stratakos Orchestra at the Jung Hotel Roof in the late 1920s-early 30s, with notables such as Irving Fazola, Louis Prima, Frank Frederico, etc. in the line-up at various times. He was also popular with dancers along the Gulf Coast resorts.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

SUMMERS, Eddie Milton (SOMMERS) - Trombone; bass
1903, Sep 15: Port Allen, LA 476 1977, Oct 27
His father, Allen Leon Summers (born 1876, Moreau La - died 1956) played string bass with Claiborne Williams until 1916-17, plus bands from Port Allen. Eddie learnt to play his father’s string bass when he was 14 but never played any jobs. Hewent to New Orleans in 1919 and in 1925 he bought a trombone and studied with Vic Gaspard. (Jack Teagarden, in New Orleans playing at the Plalace Theatre, studied with Gaspard at the same time.) Eddie began by playing in neighbourhood bands, including Kid Sheik’s band in 1926, and then joined the Augustin-Snaer Moonlight Serenaders in the late 20s. Later, he was to work with the same group under the leadership of A J Piron. He was with both the Young Tuxedo and R&S say New Orleans, but when Barry Martyn interviewed Eddie in 1963 he said he was born 1903 in Port Allen which is the yon side of Baton Rouge, about 100 miles from New Orleans. I have also seen 1913 quoted.

Miller could not understand why there were criticisms of his music and the quote is from something he said to John Hammond the Eureka Brass Bands, and also played with Chris Kelly. Eddie was occasionally with the Camellia Brass Band early on, and paraded with the Anderson Minor Brass Band in the early-1950s, and Kid Howard’s Brass Band in the early-1960s. He recorded on the “Live Opening Night At Preservation Hall” session (June 13, 1961). Eddie also recorded with the Eureka in 1960; Emile Barnes, 1961; Kid Sheik Cola, also Kid Howard’s La Vida Band, 1961; and DeDe Pierce’s New Orleans Band, 1963. He was fitted with an artificial leg in 1966.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

TERVALON, Clement Louis “Clem” - Trombone; bass
1915, Nov 13: New Orleans 1989, Dec 2
Albert Burbank’s nephew, (Stella Burbank was his mother) and cousin to Wendell & Homer Eugene, and Charlie Burbank. Clem played with Kid Howard in 1935, and in 1936 he was with Irvin C. Miller’s Brown Skin Models. He was touring with Bessie Smith at the time of her death in 1937. He played with most of the leading brass bands in New Orleans and during the 1940s and 50s he was at the Paddock with Octave Crosby, or with the Young Tuxedo Brass Band. He also led a group on Bourbon Street. Recorded on bass with Freddy Kohlman; also with the Original Camellia Band, and the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra with Kellin, and with the Excelsior Brass Band.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

THOMAS, Bob - Trombone
1898: New Orleans 1960, Feb 26
Given advice about the trombone when he was seventeen by George Washington, and took lessons from Professor Jim Humphrey. Started out with Jack Carey. Also played with Toots Johnson in Baton Rouge. In the early 20s he was with Evan Thomas’ Black Eagles (no relation), touring Louisiana and East Texas. A long-time popular musician, he was most often to be seen in later years with Paul Barbarin with whom he recorded and went on tours in 1955. Also recorded with Kid Howard’s Jazz Band, 1950; Percy Humphrey’s Band, 1953; George Lewis Band, on tour 1956-57. One of my favourite trombone players. Sometimes when I haven’t listened to him for a while and then play one of his tracks it comes as a shock to hear how good he was.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

THOMAS, John - Trombone
1902, Sep 18: Louisville, KY 1971, Nov 17
Began his professional career in 1923 and toured with a burlesque revue in 1925. He worked with Dave Peyton in 1928 and also toured with Freddie Keppard. Also played with Erskine Tate. Recorded in May 1927 with the Louis Armstrong Hot 7 whilst Kid Ory was in New York with Joe Oliver. Also recorded with the Original Tuxedo Orchestra, 1928, and Ruben Reeves And His River Boys, 1933. After retiring in the mid 1940s he made a comeback in 1960 with the Franz Jackson Original Jazz All Stars.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

THOMAS, Worthia George “Showboy” - Trombone; drums
1907, Feb 26: Napoleonville, LA 1994, Aug 8.
Began playing drums when he was fourteen and continued on drums for about twenty years. His first band job was at a baseball game in Napoleonville, and interestingly, Louis Nelson was on trombone! Worthia had four uncles who were musicians, two of whom were conservatory trained, and these saw to his musical education. One of them, August Leblanch, started him on trombone. In 1923/4 he went to New Orleans aftern his mother died and had lessons on trombone with David Jones, and also learned from Bill Matthews. He continued to play drums though and was often working as a parade drummer, sometimes with Jack Carey. From 1929 onwards he travelled widely with show groups: Rabbit Foot Minstrels; the Clyde Beatty circus band; the show band at Barnum & Bailey circus; and the Jay McShann band from Kansas City with whom he spent more than six years. His nickname came from his willingness to leave town with show bands, although he gave up travelling and remained in New Orleans after 1960, apart from the Kid Sheik tour of Japan in 1967. He was known to Preservation Hall audiences as the trombonist playing fewest notes and hating flash photos. (He wasn’t too keen on the little red light on video cameras either!) He was also with the George Williams Brass Band. Recorded: Paul Barbarin 1956 and 1965; Kid Sheik 1967; Harold Dejan 1969; Percy Humphrey 1969; the Onward Brass Band 1971. He played regularly in his later years but his ability, unsurprisingly, fell away considerably in 1993 when he seemed tired and in indifferent health.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

THOMPSON, Freddie - Trombone
?: New Orleans
Listed in Stagg & Crump in section A: “New Orleans, the coloured personnel” .He recorded in 1968 with the Doc Paulin Band consisting of Doc Paulin trumpet and vocals, Freddie Thompson trombone, Floyd Ankle tenor sax, Willie Baptiste banjo, Cal Blunt bass, and Harold Antoine drums.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

TOMS, Ricky - Trombone
c1880: New Orleans ?
An old circus trombonist who also played parades. Spoken of by George Brunies as having a reputation for triple tonguing. Ricky gave lessons to George and his bother Abbie.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

VALENTIN, Bouboul - Valve trombone
c1870: New Orleans c1924
Boulboul ran a little shoe repair shop in the District during the day and entertained in cabarets at night for tips. He led his Accordiana Band in 1894 and later, in 1897, he played in Alphonse Picou’s Independence Band at Hope’s Hall. Sometimes he worked with Henry Peyton at the Big 25, a musicians’ hangout originally on Crozat Street, run - according to Zutty Singleton - by someone called Arnold Duforseau. Boulboul also frequently sat in with bands on Iberville Street.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

VERRET, Irving “Cajun” - Trombone; vocals
c1906, Alexandria, LA
R&S give Alexandria 493 as his place of birth although Joe Darensbourg said Cajun came from New Iberia (possibly correct since New Iberia is “Cajun” country whilst Alexandria is well to the north 494 ). Also, Austin Sonnier, Jr. refers to him as a “Southwest Louisiana musician”. Irving Verret was best known as a big band musician and studio artist for many years, who played with Sidney Arodin and many others. He made records with Wingy Manone, and also recorded for Octave Crosby’s Original Ragtime Band, with Alvin Alcorn and Albert Burbank, in 1954. In 1958 he was with Muggsy Spanier on a number of recordings made on broadcasts from the Dixieland Jubilee in Pasadena over in California. His given name is sometimes seen as “Irvin” but I believe it should have a final “g” as here.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

VINCENT, Eddie (also Vinson, Venson, Vincon) - Trombone
1879, Jul 3: Algiers, LA 1935, Oct 23
Most sources quote c1885 as the birth date, but his WW1 draft registration seems a more reliable piece of information. In 1910 he was a member of the Olympia Orchestra and the Excelsior Brass Band, and in 1912 he was with Freddie Keppard in the Original Creole Orchestra, (Keppard, Vinson, Baquet, Bill Johnson, Dink Johnson, Jimmie Palao, Norwood Williams). He left New Orleans with the Original Creole Orchestra led by Bill Johnson for a vaudeville tour and remained in the North. In Chicago 1923 he was with Tommy Ladnier in Ollie Power’s Harmony Syncopators, and Milton Vassar’s Scale Steppers at the Lincoln Gardens. He is pictured on page 166 of R&S with the Original Creole Orchestra at sometime around 1914. According to Frederick Spencer’s book Jazz and Death, whilst going down a rickety staircase in Chicago, Eddie dropped his trombone case and fell to his death whilst trying to retrieve it. Unfortunately, he gives the date as 1927 which conflicts with the date I have. Also, Kevin Herridge has tried to obtain information about the Vincents in the relevant Algiers census and civic records but nothing seems conclusive.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

WALKER, Stephen - Trombone
c1975?: New Orleans
Stephen Walker is a trombonist from New Orleans, often seen at Donna’s Bar. Appeared at the Harrogate Festival in August of 1999 with Lars Edegran’s Band.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

WARNER, Albert - Trombone
1890, Dec 31: New Orleans 1966, Sep 10
Biography and Discography see: www.norriecox.com
His father was a bass player but although Albert liked music it was not until he was in his twenties that he started on trombone, having lessons from Ulysses Jackson (his half brother) and Honoré Dutrey. He had his first job with the Bull’s Club band in the early 1920s. He became a brass band expert and veteran who was with the Excelsior, the Columbia, the Pacific Brass Bands; Kid Rena’s Brass Band; the Young Tuxedo; and the Eureka Brass Band with whom he was a regular for the last thirty-three years of his life. When Sonny Henry joined the Eureka in 1947, he and Albert worked out some distinctive trombone passages that set them apart from other bands. Albert also played at times in dance bands, among them being Louis Delisle, Kid Rena, Wooden Joe Nicholas, Buddy Petit, Chris Kelly, and the Camellia band with Elmer Talbert. He recorded: Bunk’s Jazz Band, 1942; Kid Sheik’s Storyville Ramblers, including Steve Angrum, 1961; Mile Barnes Joymakers, 1960; Casimir’s Young Tuxedo, 1962; Dejan’s Olympia, 1962; Eureka Brass Band ‘55-62; Charlie Love ‘59-60; Punch Miller ‘62, etc. In the early days he played in dance bands, notably with Big Eye Louis Nelson. However, he was not rated very highly by Percy Humphrey. Abert’s son “Piccolo” Warner played clarinet alongside Albert in Joe Benoit’s Band (see entry for John Benoit).

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

THE HEAVYWEIGHTS OF THE STREETS

Some notes on Albert Warner, Sunny Henry and Chicken Henry

'I like to play with Sunny Henry and with Albert Warner, because they play their parts, they did not steal the other man's part and did not try to show off, as some of the others do.' (Eddie Summers)

This article is a 'tribute' to the great trombone players who helped make the sound of the great Eureka Brass Band.

ALBERT WARNER

'We wanted Albert Warner on trombone. He had been one of my favourite trombonists from the moment I first heard him - along with Sonny Henry - in the Eureka Brass Band funerals and parades I got to in the late fifties. He was one of the last and most exciting exponents of an earlier tradition in which the trombone combined its fonction of sustaining rhythmic foundation with that of providing the bass voice in the polophonic melodic line. The firmness of his rhythm became melody in itself. It made one want Albert to play more solos but with a shy smile he wouls always insist that wasn't really his role in the band." (Walter Eysselinck - liner notes American Music CD - AMCD-81 - De De Pierce and his New Orleans Stompers in Binghamton, NY Vol. Three)

Albert Warner was born in New Orleans, Louisiana around St Ann and Roman Streets on December 31, 1890. He was brought up in the famous Trémé section. "I was christened at the oldest church in here, this St Boniface… Catholic. It was back on Galvez, Galvez and Onzaga. I went to school at Robertson School. I first went to Bayou Road School at Derbigny and Govenor Nicholls. After that they moved us from there up to Bienville and Robertson, the old Robertson School, across from the cemetery. They used to teach you music, but they didn't have any bands then. All they did was teach you the notes and things, you know. Well, I heard this fellow, he was a young fellow here, he left here, … Zue Robertson. Well, Zue was a good friend of ours, you know, he was a good musicianer. Zue could read and play barrelhouse, he played down in the District sometimes. And I heard this other boy, Vic Gaspard. And Baptiste Delisle, he used to play all these halls around here."
He first started learning music with one of his half brothers, Ulysses Jackson. Ulysses had learned to play trombone with Honoré Dutrey. "Well, when he left, before he left, he bought him a new trombone and a boy wanted to buy his old trombone from him and he refused to sell it to him. He say he wanted it for his brother. Well, he sent downtown and got me, and I went on up to his house to see what it was all about. I got there and he gave me this little old brass horn, with about a bell the size of a saucer, little French horn. When, then, I told him I didn't have time to be worried with that thing. He says, "Well, you got to learn!" He says, "I'm getting ready to leave New Orleans", he says, "and I want you to take and learn this thing." I said, "Oh, I don't have time with that." Well, what he did…he went and put it together and handed over to me, says, "Well, blow on it." Well, when I first picked it up, I couldn't blow it. so, he say, "Well, keep on." I just took the thing, kept a blowing first position. So, finally, I made a note in there. I said, "What note is that?" He said, "Well that's B-flat." So he said, "Keep on blowing." So after I made that note, well, he pushed it in the second position. He held my hand and showed me the second position. Well, I made that note. Then he turned around and shoved my hand in the third position. I made that note. Well, after that, that kinda made me kinda like the thing. I said, "Well, shucks, this thing ain't as hard as I thought it was." So, finally, before I left there, he had me making those three positions. He said, "Now, all that I want you to do now, go down and buy you a method and come up here twice a week. I'm gonna give you lessons. My half-brother Ulysses went to Chicago and he died in Chicago. He used to play with the Excelsior Brass band then and he played with Honoré Dutrey. My daddy used to play bass, that's string bass. He played with some of these old musicianers like himself. Freddy Keppard was kind of a little cousin of mine, you know…well, they used to call me Freddy Keppard. Everywhere I went, people used to call me Freddy Keppard, I looked just that much like him, you know. And his brother, Louis, live around on Villere Street now, well that's my cousin, you see. "
I was about twenty two at the time. Before I never worried with music. I had the opportunity to play piano, but I was a fast man at the time and didn't have time to worry with the music. So, after that, I went and bought the method and started going up there twice a week."
After having had his lessons from his stepbrother, Warner went to Arthur Steve for some lessons. Steve was also a trombone player, who lived on St Philip Street. Afterwards, he bought himself a self-instructor. A friend wrote a company in New York to get Warner a self-instructor.
"So, at that time, I was in the pressing business and so every time I'd blow the horn, I'd lay it down, I'd go press a piece, I'd come back, blow the horn, go back and press another piece. And my wife say, "Gee whiz, you make me sick with this thing." I say, "Well, I might make you sick now, but some days this thing'll come in handy." Finally, after I'd kinda got good with it, Jiles came along. He wanted me to join a little band he was putting up, a little brass band, back on Conti Street. They called it the Bull's band. So I used to rehearsal with them every Sunday. And I used to go by Pete ('Peapicker' Pierre), and Pete helped me out a whole lot, you know. And he'd showed me different things."
The Jiles brass band used to rehears at a barber shop on Bienville Street. Amos White joined the band and he would write out some music for Warner to practice.
"So, the first job they had, for Carnival day, Steve say, well, I wasn't good enough, he wouldn't take me out. So, the boys say, well, they say, "You better take him with you so you'll have some kind of help." So he went on out there and he came out there, he fell down on the job! Next job that we got was down at the Holy Ghost Church, there…Holy Redeemer…down on Royal and Elysian Fields."
"And I started playing with Louis Dumaine and Eddie Jackson. So, they'd send downtown and got me…they was living uptown..so they said they wanted me to play with them. So, I went on and started playing with alittle band they had up there. So, after this, I left them and I went with a fellow by the name of William…the Columbia Band. Then I went with the Camellia Band led by Wooden Joe Nicholas. Well, the Camellia had a pretty good pull around this town. They had work in the countries and down in Violet and all these different places….Bertrandville…they was going pretty good. Johnny Prudence used to play with me in the Camellia Band. So, I went with Chris Kelly, and different fellows, you know, I would go around playing with…next band I got with was Kid Rena…well, I stayed with Kid Rena a good while…this was his dance band. Then I'd leave him, and well, when I left him I went with another fellow who had a band around here. Well, I played with him a pretty good while until I got around depression time. When it got around depression, then I just give up playing…stopped altogether."
In 1928, Albert Warner was a member of the Tonic Triad Brass Band with Isidore Barbarin, Red Clark, Albert Francis, Chicken Henry, Willie Pajeaud and Alcide Landry. The Tonic Triad was led by Professor Pritchard.

The Tonic Triad Band - Albert Warner is on the second row forth from the left, next to him is sitting Red Clark and Chicken Henry is the sixth from the left (Courtesy of Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University)

"Kid Rena's dance band? Well, they played music and by ear too, but they was better on this routine stuff than they was on music. You see, because a lot of time they had music up there, they just was guessing at it, see…especially the sax, you know. Well, the time I was playing with them, they had Kid Rena, Edna mitchell, Joe René, myself, Manny Gabriel, John Handy, Henry Harding, who played tenor saxophone. And they had another boy from Bay St Louis…he played sax. And they had this other boy playing bass…'Lizard'…Chester 'Lizard' Zardis…was playing bass. It was ten pieces. Son Thomas was on guitar. We was playing up on the Astoria…around about 1927-1928…we played up there, it must have been about a year and a half. Lee Collins used to come up there…well you see, after we left from up there, then they started playing what you call 'percentage' jobs. Then they was using different bands.
Then Remy had a band. He used to come up there, you see…that's Ti Boy Remy.

"To get back to the Eureka Band here, see, way back, as far as I can remember, Cornish had come to get me to play with the Eureka Band. Well, Cornish, he wasn't no kind of reader, but he always wanted somebody that could help him out. So, he came and he got me to play one job. After he got me to play one job, well, he did just liked what I did. Well, then, he say, "You stay here." So, I said, "All right." So, I continued playing with them. The band was going down, they wasn't doing much work. And Wilson was running a little candy stand and he didn't have time to rehearse. So, I say, "Well, you run your candy stand, I'm going to play music." So, they didn't want me to play, I told him, "Well, I'm going to the country." So, he say, "Well, I have to get somebody to play." So, I say, "All right, you get somebody to play. Well, get Red Clark, Red plays trombone." That's how they got Red in the band you see. I was in the band before Red, you see. Well, at that time we used to rehearsal up and down Rampart Street, see, sometimes they rehearsal in the back of one barroom and then the next time they rehearsal in the back of a restaurant. See they didn't have no regular place. I'm the only old man in there. I was playing with them then at the time Louis came down here to play that "Peanut Vendor", when Louis was at the Suburban Gardens, that was way back in 1931. When Louis came in, why, then, we went and picked up Louis at the L&N depot there. And Louis had that "Peanut Vendor" out then, that's the time he was playing the "Peanut Vendor". And we brought him through Canal Street there. It had to be the Eureka because that was the Zulus band then, you see. Well, they had one bras band and, if I'm not mistaken, they had a band in a wagon, you know, playing on a furniture wagon. We played through Canal Street, brought him on up to the hotel, The Patterson on Julia and Rampart. When Buddy Petit died, cause we played Buddy Petit's funeral, you see. At that time in the band were Willie Wilson, Johnny Wilson, myself, Cornish, Flowers, I think 'Little Jimmy', 'Groundhog', and George Lewis was playing clarinet, Shots, Alcide Landry. I remember Landry because I used to kid him about begging cigarettes. Lick his finger, he meant for somebody to give him a cigarette. And Verret on tuba.

Over the years, the Eureka Brass Band was recorded many times. In the Summer of 1951, David Wyckoff and Alden Ashforth came to New Orleans with the idea to make some recordings. During their stay they recorded Kid Thomas with Milé Barnes (Hope Hall, Algiers, La September 3, 1951)(American Music -AMCD 10), Billie and DeDe Pierce with Milé Barnes Louisiana Joymakers (August 30, 1951)(American Music-AMCD 13) and the Eureka Brass Band in August, 1951 (American Music AMCD-70).
David and Alden wanted to record the Eureka as their top priority because they thought that the brass bands that were recorded so far did not represent the real brass band tradition since they had been specially assembled for the occasions and because of the fact that the band had made such an impression with its power and finesse. Percy Humphrey, Willie Pajeaud and Eddie Richardson were on trumpet, Sonny Henry and Albert Warner on trombone, Ruben Roddy, alto sax, Manny Paul, tenor sax, George Lewis, E-flat clarinet, Red Clark, sousaphone, Arthur Ogle, snare drum and Robert 'Son' Lewis, bass drum.
Another jazzenthousiast and researcher who wanted to record the Eureka Brass Band was Sam Charters. Since he had heard the band in December 1950, he was decided to record the band. With the help of Frederic Ramsey jr and Moses Ash from Folkways records, in January 1956, he was finally able to realise his dream. Charters recorded the Eureka Brass Band in rehearsal on three occasions on January 12, 19 and 26, 1956. Warner is present on the latter two and Kid Sheik replaced Eddie Richardson. (American Music AMCD-110/111) On March 3, 1958, Charters recorded finally the Eureka Brass Band for Folkways. Alfred Williams had replaced Arthur Ogle.
In 1962, Atlantic made some recordings in New Orleans for their series 'Jazz At Preservation Hall'. On July 2, 1962, they recorded the Eureka with the following personnel Percy Humphrey, Kid Sheik and Peter Bocage, trumpets, Albert Warner and Chicken Henry, trombones, Manny Paul, tenor sax, Willie Humphrey, clarinet, Wilbert Tillman, sousaphone, Cie Frazier, snare drum and Robert Lewis, bass drum. (Mosaic Records MD4-179)

In the Autumn of 1942, Albert Warner was present on Bunk Johnson's second recording session. Others in the band were George Lewis, Walter Decou, Lawrence Marrero, Chester Zardis and Edgar Mosley. In his liner notes, Eugene Williams wrote "a trombone player who also works in these bands (Original Tuxedo N°1 and the Tulane), Albert Warner, was called in to make the records at the last minute, when Bunk's first choice couldn't make the date. In spite of this disadvantage, Warner - a former member of Joe Nicholas' and Kid Rena's jazz bands - made a fine showing with his reliable foundation playing."

Our fellow countryman, Walter Eysselinck made some important contributions to the preservation of New Orleans music. He was the man behind the Love-Jiles Ragtime Orchestra. Albert Warner was a stronghold of this band that played the music from the famous Red Back Books. Charlie Love was on trumpet, Peter Bocage, violin, Albert Warner, trombone, Polo Barnes, clarinet, Manny Sayles, banjo, August Lanoix, bass and Albert Jiles, drums. In June, 1959, The Love-Jiles Ragtime Orchestra was recorded at a rehearsal at Milé Barnes house on Metropolitan and Louisa Streets in New Orleans. On this occasion Bocage was not present and McNeil Breaux was on bass. These recordings were issued on Sounds Of New Orleans SNO 1 LP, and are not issued on CD so far. The orchestra was recorded by Riverside in New Orleans on June 12, 1960. (Riverside OJCCD-1835-2) A few weeks later, in August, Walter recorded the band again at a private party. Kid Sheik and Love were on trumpet, Warner, Milé Barnes, clarinet, Louis Gallaud, piano, Sayles, banjo, Jiles, drums. (504 Records 504 CDS 21). This band was also recorded as Emile Barnes and his New Orleans Joymakers on August 21, 1960 at Tulane University. Until now this session remains unissued. On August 17, 1960, Albert recorded again with Charlie Love, Milé Barnes and Ernest Roubleau. This session has never been issued on record.

In the pre and post Preservation Hall days, Albert Warner was one of Ken Mills' favourite artists. He was recorded on August 13, 1960 with Billie and DeDe Pierce, Milé Barnes, Slow Drag Pavageau and Albert Jiles. Albert was a member of Kid Sheik's Storyville Ramblers that were recorded on August 6, 1961 for Mills' Icon label. (American Music AMCD-56). In the band were Kid Sheik and Punch Miller, trumpets, Warner, trombone, Steve Angrum, clarinet, Harrison Verrett, banjo, Slow Drag Pavageau, bass and Alec Bigard, drums. In the Spring of 1962, Mills recorded a band he called Albert Warner's Brown Buddies with Kid Sheik, Milé Barnes, Warner, Ernest Roubleau on banjo, John Joseph, bass and Albert Jiles, drums. (American Music AMCD-66) Another live recording that Mills made at the hall he ran at that time, Icon Hall or Jeunes Amis Hall, in July, 1962 of a band called Harrison Verret's Fern Dance Hall Band (Sheik, Warner, George Lewis, Harrison Verret, Slow Drag Pavageau and Alfred Williams) was issued on American Music AMCD-65. On August 31 and September 2, 1962, Albert Warner was present on a recording session of a band led by Punch Miller (American Music AMCD-57). Members of Punch Delegates of Pleasures were Punch, Warner, Israel Gorman, George Guesnon, Wilbert Tillman and Alec Bigard. On September 5, 1962, recorded Warner again, this time as a member of John Casimir's Young Tuxedo Jazz Band. (American Music AMCD-61). Kid Howard was on trumpet, Warner, trombone, John Casimir, clarinet, Manny Sayles, banjo, Wilbert Tillman, tuba and Alfred Williams, drums.

Albert Warner was also member of one of the few New Orleans bands that went on a concert tour outside the city in the early sixties. In September 1961, Kid Sheik's Storyville Ramblers, Sheik, Warner, John Handy, Louis Gallaud, Papa John Joseph and Cie Frazier, played at the Empress Room of The Hotel Tudor Arms in Cleveland Ohio. The band was recorded on September 28, 1961. (American Music AMCD-69)

On February 5, 1962, the Harold Dejan's Olympia Brass Band was recorded for the first time. Barry Martyn recorded the following band for his M.O.N.O. label, Sheik and Ernie Cagnolatti, trumpets, Albert Warner and Louis Nelson, trombones, Harold Dejan, alto sax, Jessie Charles, tenor sax, Louis Cottrell, clarinet, Anderson Minor, sousaphone, Cie Frazier, snare drum and Booker T Glass, bass drum. On May 3, 1963, Warner was also present on another recording by the Olympia Brass band. This session remains unissued.

Walter Eysselinck was a cultural jack-of-all trades. He wrote and directed plays, taught drama, documented the folk music of New Orleans, was director of the Flemish National Theatre, organised the Gent Jazz Club and helped starting musicians in finding the 'true gospel', etc. And above all, he loved the music from New Orleans. And where ever, he had his assignment, he invited musicians who played New Orleans music, whether he was working at the State University of New York at Binghamton or in Cairo, Egypt.
In the Spring of 1962, Walter had already invited Billie and DeDe Pierce up to Harpur College for a series of concerts. (American Music AMCD-79 and AMCD-80) In the Autumn of 1962, he invited Billie and DeDe again for another series of concerts. This time, he wanted them to come with the band they used to play at Preservation Hall at that time, with George Lewis, Albert Warner and Albert Jiles. For different reasons, Lewis and Jiles could not make it and were replaced by Willie Humphrey and Cie Frazier. The result of these concerts can be found on American Music AMCD-81 and AMCD-82.

Albert Warner was also member of one of the first bands that went on tour under the name Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Billie and DeDe Pierce, Polo Barnes, Warner, George Guesnon, Cie Frazier and Allan Jaffe went to Memphis in 1965. During that tour Albert got sick and was taken to the E.H. Crump Memorial Hospital in Memphis and therefore he missed 3 concerts.

Sources : Tulane Jazz Archive interviews with: Adolphe 'Tats' Alexander, Ricard Alexis, Louis Barbarin, Paul Barbarin, Peter Bocage, Ernie Cagnolatti, Jessie Charles, Louis Cottrell jr, Lionel Ferbos, Earl Humphrey, Willie E. and Willie J. Humphrey, Eddie Johnson, Alfred Williams, Charles Henry, Oscar Henry, Albert Warner

Magazines: FOOTNOTE, Jazzinformation, Downbeat, Basin Street, Storyville, The Second Line, Mississippi Rag, Eureka
Family Album, Rose and Souchon
Jazz New Orleans, Charters
The End Of The Beginning, Barry Martyn
Pops Foster
Jazzmen
Jazzmasters

Thanks to: Sue Hall, Mona MacMurray, Louis Nelson
I would like to thank the people from Tulane Jazz Archive in New Orleans, Alma Freeman - Williams and Dirk Van Tourenhout. Bourbon Street Black, Jack V. Buerkle-Danny Barker
The Baby Dodds Story, as told to Larry GaramBill Russell's American Music New Orleans Style, Bill Russell

This information came from thejazzgazette made by Marcel Joly and Jempi de Donder see: www.thejazzgazette.be

WASHINGTON, George - Trombone
c1896: New Orleans 1942
Worked on his first job with Louis Armstrong in Kid Lindsay’s group in 1916. He was with Buddy Petit in the 1920s, and also in the second Marrero brothers’ Golden Rule Orchestra, being replaced by Paul Ben when it became the Young Tuxedo Orchestra. In late 1937 he played in the Chester Zardis band: “Little Chester & his Gold Diggers", with Elmer Talbert, Johnny Dave and Roy Evans.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

WATTS, Hugh - Trombone
? 1998, Mar 28: Quebec, Canada
Included in the Stagg & Crump “C” list: the non-New Orleans personnel where he is listed as recording in New Orleans with George Lewis-Keith Smith and their Pals in 1965, and under his own name, Hugh Watts’ Jeunes Amis Jazz Band along with Alvin Alcorn, Capt. John Handy, Dave Williams, Placide Adams and Chester Jones, also in 1965. Assuming Keith Smith and Hugh Watts were Brits visiting New Orleans, which indeed proved to be the case, I thought I might find a mention of Hugh in Jim Godbolt’s History of Jazz in Britain or Chilton’s Who’s Who of British Jazz but not a word. However, latest information on Keith Smith can be found here under his own entry. Wake up you two! Hugh, by the way, had a hit with The New Vaudeville Brass Band on the recording of “Winchester Cathedral”. Equally by the way, Hugh is listed in the membership list of musicians for Local 496 in 1965 and as far as I can see is, along with Barry Martyn, one of the only two whites in the black musicians’ union. A drummer, Alvin Watts Jr., is listed in the AFM Local 496 directory of musicians for 1960, but obviously no relation.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

WILLIAMS, Joseph “Shotgun Joe” - Trombone
1982: New Orleans 2004, Aug 3
In the second police shooting in three days in New Orleans, Joseph “Shotgun Joe” Williams, was shot and killed by three police officers after authorities said the man hit one officer and attempted to run over another with a stolen pickup truck in Treme on Tuesday afternoon. Just before he was shot, he was on his way to pick up a fellow member of the Hot 8 Brass Band, which was to play in a second-line to honour the memory of Spencer Richard, a beloved Treme teen who died of a seizure last week. “He was a real talented trombone player,” said Jerreau Fournett, a band member and trumpet player. “He was probably one of the best trombone players in this city. I played right alongside him.” At one point Dinerral J. Shavers Sr., a Civil Sheriff’s Office deputy, became so angry that he took off his uniform and threw his gun belt down in a brief confrontation with police. Shavers, a drummer, and Williams were close friends. They played in the Hot 8 Brass Band (q.v.) together. Walter Ramsey, also a trombone player and a cousin of Williams, remained calm. Joe Williams’ great grandfather was Deacon Frank Lastie, and his maternal grandmother was singer and pianist Betty Ann Lastie-Williams.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

WILLIAMS, Ronell - Trombone, etc.
?: New Orleans
Ronell based his style on trombonist Kid Ory, and has to performed all types of traditional New Orleans jazz including small ensembles, duos, and brass bands of the city. He has recently (2004) completed his General Studies degree at Southern University in New Orleans. Over the years he has served as music minister for the Christian Faith Ministries, Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church and the Greater Zion Field Baptist Church. He is also an accomplished organist, pianist, saxophonist, and drummer.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

WYNN, Albert “Al” - Trombone
1907, Jul 29: New Orleans 1972
Although he never actually played in New Orleans he was closely associated with New Orleans musicians during his career. He moved to Chicago when a child where he became a pupil of Roy Palmer. Al played for over 40 years in Chicago with the best of New Orleans’ musicians, and he is said to have acknowledged George Brunis as an influence. He played with Charlie Creath, also Ma Rainey, and Jimmie Noone, as well as Richard M. Jones, and others. The date of Al’s death was in doubt but seems to have been settled by the entry in OMJ. A Joe Wynn played drums with Manuel Perez (see Footnote volume 5-3). I do not know if there is any relationship.

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood

YOUNG, William “Willie” - Trombone
? ?
Charlie Love mentions William Young as in his Caddo Band in Shreveport, 1917 and that he was Bunk Johnson’s uncle. (see Christopher Hillman’s book, Bunk Johnson, page 18). Martin Williams, Jazz Masters of New Orleans, mentions William Young as Lester Young’s father, and appearing in Allen’s Brass Band of New Orleans. Was Bunk, then, related to Lester - unlikely - or were these two separate William Youngs? Charters lists a Willie Young as playing cornet with the Youka Brass Band in Thibodaux around 1904 - this would most likely have been Lester’s father..

Source: The Song For Me - Brian Wood