Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Girard was born October 7, 1930 in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana and in high school he studied music under Johnny Wiggs and immediately after graduating in 1946 he became a professional musician. He played and toured with the bands of Johnny Archer and Phil Zito before co~founding the band The Basin Street Six, made up mostly of friends he had grown up with, including clarinetist Pete Fountain.
The band got a regular gig at L’Enfant’s Restaurant in New Orleans, as well as regular television broadcasts over WWL. The band started receiving favorable national attention, but being dissatisfied with it, broke up the band in 1954 and founded his own band, George Girard & the New Orleans Five. Landing a residency at the Famous Door in the French Quarter, he recorded for several labels, and got a weekly broadcast on CBS’s affiliated local radio station WWL.
His ambitions to make a national name for himself were thwarted when he became ill and had to give up playing in 1956. Trumpeter George Girard, known for his great technical ability, passed away from colon cancer in New Orleans, Louisiana on January 18, 1957. He was twenty-six.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marvin Ash was born Marvin E. Ashbaugh was born on October 4, 1914 in Lamar, Colorado. Growing up in Junction City and Emporia, Kansas he started playing with bands during high school. He worked with Count Basie, Wallie Stoeffer, Con Conrad, Herman Waldman and Jack Crawford. On a visit to Abilene, Texas in 1931 he found inspiration when he heard pianist Earl Hines perform. A fortunate encounter at Jenkins’ Music Store afforded him the opportunity to hear Joe Sullivan play his Little Rock Getaway for Fats Waller and Arthur Schutt, seated at two other pianos. He adapted his style similar to the three of them.
Moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma at 22 he worked in radio as a studio pianist, musical director, and announcer at KVOO-FM. This allowed him to learn about different piano styles, his favorite musicians being stride pianists James P. Johnson and Waller, Pete Johnson, Earl Hines, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, and long-time friend Bob Zurke.
1942 saw Marvin in the Army, assigned to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where he remained for six months after the end of the war. After the end of his service he moved to Los Angeles, California where found work with trumpeter Wingy Manone’s band. This resulted in some of his earliest ensemble recordings, performances at Club 47 led to sessions with Clive Acker’s Jump Records as a soloist in late 1947, and with Rosy McHargue’s Memphis Five.
Ash’s playing caught the attention of Capitol Records producer and A&R man Lou Busch who hired him to record a few more sides in 1949 with a small ensemble. In the 1950s, he played in cocktail lounges in Los Angeles but had few recording dates as a soloist, instead working as a sideman with Jack Teagarden, Matty Matlock, Pud Brown and Pete Daily. Ash’s sessions resulted in a suite for Decca Records entitled New Orleans at Midnight.
He found employment at Walt Disney Studios music department as a performer on movie and television soundtracks, and acting as the resident arranger and pianist for the Mickey Mouse Club. Marvin frequently performed with George Bruns’ group or with his own small ensemble at Disneyland.
Retiring in the mid Sixties, Ash spent his last few years playing vintage jazz, stride, and ragtime in the cocktail lounge of a large bowling alley in Los Angeles. He continued to be hired for special appearances until his death. Pianist Marvin Ash passed away on August 21, 1974 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 59.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Louis Nelson was born September 17, 1902 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Both parents and his sister played the piano, his brother played the saxophone. In December 1902, his parents moved to Napoleonville, Louisiana because his father couldn’t get medical patients after the July 1900 Robert Charles Race Riots in New Orleans.
At the age of fifteen he started playing the valve trombone and switched to the slide trombone, studying under Professor Claiborne Williams. Graduating high school in 1919, Louis’ first band was Joe Gabriel’s band playing in dance halls for a dollar a night.
While in New Orleans in the 1920s, Nelson played jazz with Buddy Petit, Kid Rena, Kid Punch Miller, Sam Morgan, Chris Kelly, Papa Celestin, Willie Pajeaud, Kid Howard, Sidney Cates, and Kid Harris’ Dixieland Band. He would go on to join the Sidney Desvigne Orchestra. During the Depression, he joined the Works Progress Administration and became first chair in the WPA band, then volunteered for the U.S. Navy during WWII. Post Navy he played with Sidney Desvigne’s Orchestra, Kid Thomas Valentine, and Herbert Leary Orchestra. To make ends meet he took numerous day jobs from the post office to a janitor. In 1949, made his first recording with clarinetist and leader Big Eye Louis Nelson Delisle. This recording, by jazz historian Bill Russell of AM Records, marked the beginning of an extensive recording career for him.
Preservation Hall gave Louis permanent work, exposure to a new audience, and provided numerous opportunities for travel abroad as both a soloist and band member of the Billie and De De Piece and Kid Thomas Valentine’s bands.
He toured extensively from 1963, beginning with the George Lewis Band in Japan, Eastern and Western Europe, South America, Australia, Canada, and Mexico, as well as throughout the United States. Nelson appeared at every New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, joined the Legends of Jazz and was featured in many New Orleans jazz documentaries.
Trombonist Louis Nelson, who in 1981 received a NEA grant and developed a program in which he played for New Orleans public school students and discussed New Orleans jazz history, passed away on April 5, 1990 of injuries suffered from a March 27 hit-and-run automobile accident. The driver was never caught.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alvin Elmore Alcorn was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 7, 1912. Learning music theory from his brother, in the early 1930s he was a member of the Sunny South Syncopators led by Armand J. Piron.
He worked in Texas as a member of Don Albert’s swing band, but he spent most of his career in New Orleans in the dixieland bands of Paul Barbarin, Sidney Desvigne, Oscar Celestin, and Octave Crosby.
During the 1950s, he moved to Los Angeles, California and joined Kid Ory’s band, then a couple years later returned home to New Orleans. After going on tour in Europe with Chris Barber in the late 1970s, he continued to perform into the 1980s.
Trumpeter Alvin Alcorn passed away on July 10, 2003.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Phil Napoleon was born Filippo Napoli on September 2, 1901 in Boston, Massachusetts. He began with classical training and was performing publicly by age 5. In the 1910s, he was one of the first musicians in the northeastern United States to embrace the new jass style brought to that part of the country by musicians from New Orleans, Louisiana.
At 16 with pianist Frank Signorelli he formed the group The Original Memphis Five in 1917. He became one of the most sought after trumpeters of the 1920s and the group became one of the most prolific in New York City at the time. In 1922-1923 they made over a hundred recordings. Napoleon’s 1927 version of Clarinet Marmalade was a particular success. The group split up in 1928.
During the 1930s, Phil mainly worked as a session trumpeter, working in the RCA Radio Orchestra in the early 1930s, and in 1937 unsuccessfully tried to form his own orchestra. He recorded with the Cotton Pickers and the Charleston Chasers and also worked with blues singers Leona Williams and Alberta Hunter.
Napoleon joined Jimmy Dorsey’s then Los Angeles, California based group in the mid 1940s, and he appeared with the band in the film Four Jills in a Jeep. Parting with Dorsey in 1947, he moved back to New York City and worked as a studio musician at NBC until 1949-1950 when he reformed The Original Memphis Five. During the early 1950s the group became noted for their performances at Nick’s in New York City. He worked frequently with his nephew Marty Napoleon, a jazz pianist. In 1959, Napoleon and The Five performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, later released as an album.
In 1966 Phil opened up his own club named Napoleon’s Retreat in Miami, Florida and continued to perform Dixieland jazz in the club up until the 1980s. Trumpeter and bandleader Phil Napoleon passed away on October 1, 1990 in Miami.
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