Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joseph Robichaux was born on March 8, 1900 in New Orleans, Louisiana and played piano from a young age and studied at New Orleans University. After working in the O.J. Beatty Carnival, he played with Tig Chambers briefly in 1918, then returned to New Orleans where he played with Oscar Celestin, Earl Humphrey, Lee Collins, and The Black Eagles.
Arranging for the Jones-Collins Astoria Hot Eight in 1929, Joe also recorded with them. He accompanied Christina Gray on record that year. In 1931 he formed his own ensemble, which featured Eugene Ware on trumpet, Alfred Guichard on clarinet and alto saxophone, Gene Porter on tenor sax, and Ward Crosby on drums.
The group journeyed to New York City to record for Vocalion in August 1933, laying down twenty-two mostly stomping, uptempo sides and two alternate takes in a marathon five day recording schedule which included Rene Hall on tenor banjo. Vocalion issued ten records over the next year and two tracks with Chick Bullock vocals were issued under his name on Banner, Domino, Oriole, Perfect, and Romeo.
Working and recording during the height of Jim Crow, problems arose with the musicians’ union in New York that prevented the group from playing live there, so they returned to New Orleans not long after recording. Robichaux expanded the size of his ensemble over the course of the 1930s, with Earl Bostic was among those who joined its ranks.
Touring Cuba in the mid-1930s, the band also recorded for Decca Records in 1936, recording 4 sides in New Orleans, but unfortunately they were all rejected. By 1939 Robichaux’s ensemble disbanded and he found work as a solo performer, mostly in New Orleans. During the 1950s he recorded on R&B recordings and played with Lizzie Miles.
From the late 1950s to the mid Sixties he played with George Lewis, Peter Bocage; and performed at Preservation Hall. Pianist Joe Robichaux passed away of a heart attack at the age of 64 on January 17, 1965 in his hometown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Emile Barnes was born on February 18, 1892 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His first instrument was a toy fife. He soon moved on to the flute, and then the clarinet, which was given to him by the great Bunk Johnson. He studied under Lorenzo Tio Jr., Alphonse Picou, George Baquet, and Big Eye Louis Nelson Delisle. By 1908, at sixteen, he became active professionally in New Orleans, Lousiana by 1908, he was long well regarded locally for his bluesy and distinctively individualistic style.
He played with the Chris Kelly band from the late 1910s through the 1920s. He never became widely known to jazz fans outside of New Orleans until he made recordings during the revival era for American Music Records. He performed at the opening night of Preservation Hall and also in his later years.
In the 1930s he played with Wooden Joe Nicholas, and in the 1940s with Kid Howard. During this time, Barnes also had standing gigs with Lawrence Toca at the Harmony Inn, a New Orleans venue, and with Billie and DeDe Pierce at Luthjen’s dancehall. As a brass band musician, he performed with the Superior and Olympia Brass Bands, among others.
Emile was featured on several Folkways Records New Orleans compilation albums during the 1950s, and again in the early 60s as a solo artist. When British trumpeter Ken Colyer jumped ship and visited New Orleans in 1953, he recorded with a pick-up band including Barnes.
Clarinetist Emile Barnes, ragtime and brass band player, passed away on March 2, 1970 in his hometown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Walter Sylvester Page was born on February 9, 1900 in Gallatin, Missouri on to parents Edward and Blanche Page. Showing a love for music as a child, in 1910 with his mother moved to Kansas City, Missouri and exposed him to folksongs and spirituals, a critical foundation for developing his love of music. He gained his first musical experience as a bass drum and bass horn player in the brass bands of his neighborhood. Under the direction of Major N. Clark Smith, he took up the string bass in his time at Lincoln High School. During that time he also drew inspiration from bassist Wellman Braud, who he had the opportunity to see when he came to town with John Wycliffe.
After completing high school, he went on to study to become a music teacher at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. In college,Walter completed a three-year course in music in one year, in addition to taking a three-year course on gas engines. Between the years 1918 and 1923, he moonlighted as a tuba, bass saxophone, and string bass player with the Bennie Moten Orchestra. In 1923 he left Moten and began an engagement with Billy King’s Road Show, and with Jimmy Rushing and Count Basie, toured the Theater Owners’ Booking Association (TOBA) circuit across the United States.
Walter Page and the Blue Devils was a territory band founded in 1925, based out of the Oklahoma City~Wichita, Kansas area that included Basie, Rushing, Buster Smith, Lester Young, and Hot Lips Page. By 1929 the Blue Devils faced defections of key players, booking problems and musicians’ union conflict, he relinquished control to James Simpson and joined Moten’s band in 1931, staying until 1934. After his second stint with Moten, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri to play with the Jeter-Pillars band. Following the death of Moten in 1935, however, Basie took over the former Moten Band, which Page rejoined.
Staying with the Count Basie Orchestra from 1935 to 1942, Walter was an integral part of what came to be called the “All-American Rhythm Section. Together with drummer Jo Jones, guitarist Freddie Green, and pianist Basie, the rhythm section pioneered the “Basie Sound”, a style in which Page, as bass player, clearly established the beat, allowing his band mates to complement more freely. Until this point, the rhythm of a jazz band was traditionally felt in the pianist’s left hand and the kick of the bass drum on all four beats. In a sense, the classic Basie rhythm section were liberators.
After his first departure from the Count Basie Orchestra, Walter worked with various small groups around Kansas City. He returned to the Basie Band in 1946 for three more years. Bassist and multi-instrumentalist Walter Page, best known for his groundbreaking work with Walter Page’s Blue Devils and the Count Basie Orchestra, passed away of kidney ailment and pneumonia at Bellevue Hospital on December 20, 1957 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tiny Parham was born Hartzell Strathdene Parham on February 25, 1900 in Winnipeg, Canada. The pianist and bandleader grew up in Kansas City and worked at The Eblon Theatre, mentored by ragtime pianist and composer James Scott. He would later tour with territory bands in the Southwest before moving to Chicago in 1926.
He is best remembered for the recordings he made in Chicago between 1927 and 1930 working with Johnny Dodds along with several female blues singers and with his own band. Most of the musicians Parham played with are not well known in their own right, though cornetist Punch Miller, banjoist Papa Charlie Jackson, saxophonist Junie Cobb and bassist Milt Hinton are exceptions.
His entire recorded output for Victor are highly collected and appreciated as prime examples of late 1920’s jazz. Tiny favored the violin and many of his records have a surprisingly sophisticated violin solos, along with the typical upfront tuba, horns and reeds.
After 1930 he found work in theater houses, especially as an organist and his last recordings were made in 1940. The cartoonist R. Crumb included a drawing of Parham in his classic 1982 collection of trading cards and later book “Early Jazz Greats” of which Parham was the only non-American born so included in addition to the book’s bonus cd containing a Parham track.
Tiny Parham passed away on April 4, 1943 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alonzo “Lonnie” Johnson was born on February 8, 1899 in New Orleans, Louisiana into a musical family. He studied violin, piano and guitar as a child, and learned to play various other instruments including the mandolin, but concentrated on the guitar throughout his professional career. By his late teens, he played guitar and violin in his father’s family band and with trumpeter Punch Miller in the Storyville clubs.
In 1917, Johnson joined a revue that toured England, returning home two years later to find that all of his family, except his brother James, had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic. Settling in St. Lois with his brother James the two embarked on a duo performance, though Lonnie also worked the riverboats in the orchestras of Charlie Creath and Fate Marable.
Johnson would go on to enter a blues contest in 1925 winning a recording contract with Okeh Records, record in New York with Victoria Spivey and tour with Bessie Smith’s T.O.B.A. show. By 1927, he recorded in Chicago as a guest artist with Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, and in 1928 he was in the studio recording with Duke Ellington and with the group The Chocolate Dandies playing 12 string guitar solos on many these early recordings.
With the temporary demise of the recording industry in the Great Depression, Johnson went to work in the steel mills. However, post WWII he revived his career and would record for Decca, top the Billboard “Race Records” charts, tour England, move to Philadelphia, and record for Prestige Records. He settled in Toronto, Canada until he was sidelined when hit by a car, injuries from which he never fully recovered.
Lonnie is credited with pioneering the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos and who influenced such guitarists as Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. Guitarist, songwriter, jazz and blues singer Lonnie Johnson passed away on June 16, 1970.
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