Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tom “Kid” Albert was born on December 23, 1877 on a plantation field in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.. He later relocated to New Orleans, Lousiana sometime in his early childhood, settling in the Algiers neighborhood. Living in a run-down shack on Saux Lane, an impoverished strip near the Naval station. He initially played the guitar before learning how to play the violin and was taught basic methods for each instrument by Jimmy Palao.

In the 1890s he began working with the bands with violinist Johnny Gould, and with “Big Eye” Louis Nelson Delisle on clarinet. Soon after he mastered the cornet and the violin Albert’s first band in 1908 was his own which included Papa Celestin and Manuel Manetta. In 1920, he founded the Eureka Brass Band and during the earlier years his band played in Algiers with Henry Red Allen Sr. Band.

In his late thirties, Albert moved across the river to the French Quarter and reformed his band, branding it the Kid Albert Band. The band then began performing in several halls around the city, mostly in the Storyville and Treme sections. For a decade the Kid Albert Band played alongside jazz pioneers Louis Armstrong, Kid Thomas Valentine and other small brass bands but never recorded.

In 1949 trumpeter, violinist and bandleader Kid Albert retired from the bands and died on December 12, 1969, at the age of 91.

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