Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Lewis was born Joseph Louis Francois Zenon on July 13, 1900 in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. Learning to play the clarinet he started his professional career by age 17, working with Buddy Petit and Chris Kelly regularly as well as the trombonist Kid Ory and other leaders.
It wasn’t until 1942 that George would gain recognition outside the city, when a group of New Orleans jazz enthusiasts, including jazz historian Bill Russell, went to record the older trumpeter Bunk Johnson who chose him as his clarinetist. Lewis was soon asked to make his first recordings as a leader for Russell’s American Music Records.
While working as a stevedore in 1944 a serious accident almost ended his music career however, while convalescing at home he improvised a blues that would become his signature “Burgundy Street Blues”. Lewis returned to play with Bunk Johnson until 1946, eventually taking leadership of the band after Bunk’s retirement.
Starting in 1949 Lewis had regular broadcasts from Bourbon Street on WDSU, was featured in Look Magazine in 1950 giving him international fame, began touring nationally and eventually to Europe and Japan. George Lewis, who achieved fame later in his life and who influenced the like of Louis Armstrong, played clarinet regularly at Preservation Hall from its opening in 1961 until shortly before his death on December 31, 1968.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sam Wooding, born on June 17, 1895 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania learned to play piano as a child, eventually becoming a bandleader who led several big bands in both the United States and abroad. In 1925 while performing at Small’s Paradise in Harlem, a Russian impresario hired him to be the pit band for the Chocolate Dandies in Berlin. That date led him to a record date for Vox Records with Doc Cheatham, Herb Fleming in the band.
In 1929, with a change in personnel, Wooding’s orchestra made more recordings in Barcelona and Paris for the Parlaphone and Pathé labels. He would remain in Europe, performing on the Continent, in Russia and England through most of the 1930s. He became an expatriate and his overseas stays made him virtually unknown in the States, building staunch jazz fans that liked what his orchestra offered.
Returning home in the late 1930s, when World War II seemed a certainty, Wooding began formal studies of music, attained a degree, and began teaching full-time, counting among his students trumpeter Clifford Brown. During this period he would lead and tour with the Southland Spiritual Choir. By the early 1970s, he formed another big band and took it to Switzerland for a successful concert, but this venture was short-lived. Pianist, arranger and bandleader Sam Wooding passed away on August 1, 1985 at age 89.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pops Foster was born George Murphy Foster on May 19, 1892 on a plantation near McCall in Ascension Parish outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When his family moved to New Orleans he started playing cello at age 10 but then switched to string bass.
Foster was playing professionally by 1907 working with Kid Ory, Jack Carey, Armand Piron, King Oliver and other prominent hot bands of the era. In 1921 he moved to St. Louis and joined the Charlie Creath and Dewey Jackson bands, in which he would be active for much of the decade. He would rejoin Kid Ory in Los Angeles and acquire the nickname “Pops” because he was far older than any of the other players in the band.
By the end of the Roaring Twenties he was back in New York City playing in the bands of Luis Russell and Louis Armstrong till 1940. From that point he would gig with Sidney Bechet, Art Hodes and other various New York bands along with regular broadcasts on the national This Is Jazz radio program.
He toured widely during this period throughout Europe and the United States and was well loved in France. He would return to New Orleans and California regularly. Through the 50s and 60s he played with Jimmy Archey, Papa Celestin, Earl Hines and the New Orleans All-Stars. Bassist Pops Foster, who also played tuba and trumpet, passed away on October 29, 1969 in San Francisco, California. His autobiography was published two years later.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie Irvis was born May 6, 1899 in New York City. He first played trombone professionally with Bubber Miley in his youth and then with blues singer Lucille Hegamin in the “Blue Flame Syncopators” from 1920 to 1921. Following this stint, Charlie played with Willie “The Lion” Smith and with Duke Ellington’s Washingtonians and later with his orchestra from 1924 to 1926. During the years 1923 to 1927 he also recorded occasionally with Clarence Williams.
Irvis, along with friends Miley and Tricky Sam Nanton contributed to the development of “jungle sounds” or “growl effects” in trombone playing. After leaving Ellington’s band, for the rest of the decade and into the early 1930s he recorded with Fats Waller, played with Charlie Johnson and Jelly Roll Morton. Some of his final recordings were in 1931 with Miley again, and shortly thereafter with Elmer Snowden.
After the early 1930s, Charlie Irvis, best known for his work with Duke Ellington’s band, stopped playing and passed away in New York City sometime around 1939 in obscurity. He is pictured 2nd from left in the photograph.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jimmie Noone or Jimmy Noone was born on April 23, 1895 in Cut Off, Louisiana and started playing guitar. By 15 he switched to the clarinet, moved to New Orleans, studied with Lorenzo Tio and thirteen year old Sidney Bechet.
1912 found Jimmie playing professionally with Freddie Keppard in Storyville and over the next five years he performed with Buddy Petit, Kid Ory, Papa Celestin, the Eagle Band, and the Young Olympia Band, before moving to Chicago, Illinois and joining the Original Creole Orchestra. The following year, he joined King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, then in 1920 reunited with Keppard in Doc Cook’s band, which he would remain and make early recordings for six years.
Noone started leading the band at Chicago’s Apex Club in 1926. This band, Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra, included alto saxophonist and clarinetist Joe Poston and pianist Earl Hines. Signing with Brunswick on their Vocalion label her recorded prolifically from 1928 to 1935, then moved to Decca the following year followed with a year at Bluebird.
A move to New York City in 1935 produced a short-lived band and club with Wellman Braud and Noone returned to Chicago. He continued to play at various clubs until 1943, moved to Los Angeles, California, joined Kid Ory’s band, which was featured for a time on a radio program hosted by Orson Welles. After playing only a few broadcasts with the band, the lyrical and sophisticated clarinetist, who would influence later clarinet players such as Artie Shaw, Irving Fazola and Benny Goodman, died suddenly of a heart attack at 48, in Los Angeles, California on April 19, 1944.
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