Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Wilbur de Paris was born on January 11, 1900 in Crawfordsville, Indiana to a father who played trombone, banjo and guitar. By the autumn of 1906, when he was five, de Paris had started playing alto saxophone, and a year later was working for his father in one of his plantation shows that mainly worked the TOBA circuit in the South.
De Paris heard jazz first at age 16, as a member of a summer show that played at the Lyric Theatre. He met Louis Armstrong whilst playing the saxophone at Tom Anderson’s Cafe with A. J. Piron. After high school, de Paris worked for his father for a time, then worked for more travelling shows in the east. He followed this period with a move to Philadelphia in the early Twenties and started his first band – Wilbur de Paris and his Cottonpickers.
Post Wall Street Crash in 1929, Wilbur disbanded his second group and went to New York, playing and recording for many years with the jazz greats.In the late 1940s, together with his brother, Sidney, he started a band called New New Orleans Jazz, featuring legendary jazzmen including Jelly Roll Morton, Zutty Singleton and Omer Simeon. This band became an institution in New York City during the 1950s, recorded extensively and toured the world.
Trombonist and bandleader Wilbur de Paris, known for mixing New Orleans jazz with swing, passed away on January 3, 1973, eight days shy of his 73rd birthday.
More Posts: trombone