Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Darensbourg was born Joseph Wilmer Darensbourg on July 9, 1906 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He received some of his earliest training from Alphonse Picou. After playing with local groups, and traveling with a medicine show and a circus band, he settled in Los Angeles, California and worked with Mutt Carey’s Liberty Syncopators.
He worked in Seattle from 1929 to 1944, working on cruise lines, playing in after-hours clubs and roadhouses, and backing several non-jazz entertainers. Darensbourg resumed playing jazz in 1944, in a traditional group with Johnny Wittwer. When he returned to Los Angeles, he recorded with Kid Ory and worked briefly with R&B bandleader Joe Liggins.
From 1947 to 1953 Joe worked solely with Ory, then spent the rest of his career in traditional ensembles, working with such musicians as Gene Mayl, Teddy Buckner and Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars. He led his own groups, and had a hit with the song Yellow Dog Blues, and toured with the Legends of Jazz from 1973 to 1975. He also worked with Buddy Petit, Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Creath, Fate Marable, Andy Kirk, Johnny Wittwer and Wingy Manone. Clarinet and saxophonist Joe Darensbourg, one of the purest soloists in traditional jazz, passed away in Van Nuys, California on May 24, 1985.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pete Fountain was born Pierre Dewey LaFontaine, Jr. in a Creole cottage style frame house on July 3, 1930 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father later changed his name to Peter and added Junior. He started playing clarinet as a child due to suffering from weakened lungs from a respiratory infection. Choosing the clarinet, his lungs became strengthened after receiving a doctor’s advice to play an instrument that he would have to blow into.
He took private lessons but also learned to play jazz by playing along with phonograph records of first Benny Goodman and then Irving Fazola. Early on he played with the bands of Monk Hazel and Al Hirt. Fountain founded The Basin Street Six in 1950 with his longtime friend, trumpeter George Girard . Four years later the band broke up and he was hired to join the Lawrence Welk orchestra and became well known for his many solos on the television show, The Lawrence Welk Show.
Post Welk, Pete was hired by Decca Records A&R head Charles “Bud” Dant and went on to produce 42 hit albums with Dant. He returned to New Orleans, played with The Dukes of Dixieland, then began leading bands under his own name. On the Sixties and Seventies he owned his own club in the French Quarter and later acquired Pete Fountain’s Jazz Club at the Riverside Hilton. He would lead a quintet comprised of bassist Don Bagley, vibist Godfrey Hirsch, pianist Merle Koch, and double bass drummer Jack Sperling. He played the Hollywood Bowl and appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 56 times.
Over the course of his career his club would host Cliff Arquette, Jonathan Winters, Frank Sinatra, Phil Harris, Carol Lawrence, Robert Goulet, Keely Smith, Robert Mitchum, Brenda Lee, among many others. He would play and/or record with Oliver “Sticks” Felix, John Probst, Paul Guma, Godfrey Hirsch, Jack Sperling, Don Bagley, Morty Corb, Godfrey Hirch, Merle Kock, Stan Wrightsman and Al Hirt, who had a club down the street. He performed his last show at the Hollywood Casino in 2010.
He is a founder and the most prominent member of the Half-Fast Walking Club, one of the best known marching Krewes that parade in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day. He has been honored with induction into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, given a star on the Delta Music Museum Walk of Fame, and received an honorary degree from Loyola University New Orleans. Clarinetist Pete Fountain, who played jazz, Dixieland, pop jazz, honky-tonk jazz, pop, and Creole music, passed away in his hometown on August 6, 2016 from heart failure at the age of 86.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kenny Ball was born Kenneth Daniel Ball on May 22, 1930 in Ilford, Essex, England. At the age of 14 he left school to work as a clerk in an advertising agency, but also started taking trumpet lessons. He began his career as a semi-professional sideman in bands in addition to being a salesman and continued working at the ad agency.
Turning professional in 1953 Kenny played the trumpet in bands led by Sid Phillips, Eric Delaney, Charlie Galbraith and Terry Lightfoot before forming his own trad jazz band, Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen in 1958. His Dixieland band was at the forefront of the early 1960s UK jazz revival.
Ball’s 1961 recording of Cole Porter’s Samantha became a hit and they reached No. 2 by the end of the year on the UK Singles Chart. The following year they hit the Hot 100 with Midnight In Moscow, selling over a million copies, earning them a gold record. Further hits followed such as March of the Siamese Children from the King and I, however crossing to the U.S. though making the cover of New Musical Express along with Cliff Richards, Brenda Lee, Joe Brown, Craig Douglas and Frank Ifield, they remained a one-hit wonder.
By 1963 Ball became the first British jazzman to become an honorary citizen of New Orleans and appeared in the film Live It Up!, featuring Gene Vincent. In 1968 the band appeared with Louis Armstrong during his last European tour and later appeared on BBC Television’s review of the 1960s music scene Pop Go the Sixties. His continued success was aided by guest appearances on every edition of the first six series of the BBC’s Morecambe and Wise Show and performed at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
Kenny enjoyed one of the longest unbroken spells of success for trad bands and over the course of his career he charted fourteen Top 50 it singles, reached Number 1 collaborating with Acker Bilk and Chris Barber on a joint album, The Best of Ball, Barber and Bilk. In 2001 he recorded on the album British Jazz Legends Together that also featured Bilk, Don Lusher, John Chilton & The Feetwarmers, John Dankworth, Humphrey Littleton and George Melly.
Trumpeter Kenny Ball continued to tour until shortly before his death, performing his last concert with Bilk and Barber at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall on February 21st, two weeks before he passed away on March 7, 2013 at age 82 in Basildon Hospital in Essex, where he was being treated for pneumonia.
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Born Arthur James Singleton on May 14, 1898 in Bunkie, Louisiana, Zutty” Singleton was raised in New Orleans. By the time he was seventeen he was working professionally with Steve Lewis in 1915. He served with the Navy during World War I and after returning to New Orleans he worked with Papa Celestin, Big Eye Louis Nelson, John Robichaux and Fate Marable.
Leaving for St. Lois, Missouri, he played in Charlie Creath’s band before moving on to Chicago, Illinois. There he played with Doc Cooke, Dave Peyton, Jimmy Noone as well as theater bands. He joined Louis Armstrong’s band with Earl Hines and between 1928-1929 performed on the landmark recordings Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five. He then moved to New York City with Armstrong.
During the next decade he would play with Armstrong and also Bubber Miley, Tommy Ladnier, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton and Otto Hardwick. He also played in the band that backed Bill Robinson. In 1934, Singleton returned to Chicago but by 1937 was back in New York playing with Mezz Mezzrow and Sidney Bechet.
1943 saw Zutty moving to Los Angeles, where he led his own band, played for motion pictures, and in 1944 was featured on Orson Welles’s CBS radio series, The Orson Welles Almanac. He later worked with Slim Gaillard, Wingy Manone, Eddie Condon, Nappy Lamare, Art Hodes, Oran “Hot Lips” Page and Max Kaminsky.
Between 1943 and 1950 he appeared in the films Stormy Weather, New Orleans and Young Man With A Horn. Retiring after suffering a stroke in 1970, drummer Zutty Singleton passed away in New York City on July 14, 1975, aged 77.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
King Oliver was born Joseph Nathan Oliver on May 11, 1885 in Aben, Louisiana. He was also known as Joe Oliver and moved to New Orleans in his youth. He first studied the trombone and then changed to cornet. From 1908 to 1917 he played cornet in New Orleans brass and dance bands, and also in the city’s red-light district known as Storyville.
Oliver co-led a band with trombonist Kid Ory that was considered to be New Orleans’ hottest and best in the late 1910s. He gained great popularity in New Orleans across economic and racial lines, and was in demand for music jobs from rough working-class black dance halls to white society debutante parties.
With the closing of Storyville, Joe packed up his wife and child and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1918. There he found work with clarinetist Lawrence Duhé, bassist Bill Johnson, trombonist Roy Palmer and drummer Paul Barbarin, eventually becoming the leader. By 1922 he was billing himself as King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band at the Royal Gardens cabaret. His band included Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, Johnny Dodds, Lil Hardin, Honoré Dutrey and William Manuel Johnson. The following year they recorded for Gennett, Okeh, Paramount and Columbia record labels, bringing Dixieland to the attention of a much wider audience.
The mid-Twenties saw King enlarging his band to nine musicians, began performing more written arrangements with jazz solos, disbanding to do more freelance work in New York, Over the course of his career Oliver pioneered the use of mutes, including the rubber plumber’s plunger, derby hat, bottles and cups but his favorite mute was a small metal mute made by the C.G. Conn Instrument Company. He performed mostly on cornet, but like many cornet players he switched to trumpet in the late 1920s.
Oliver was also a talented composer, and wrote many tunes that are still regularly played, including Dippermouth Blues, Sweet Like This, Canal Street Blues, and Doctor Jazz. His recording Wa Wa Wa with the Dixie Syncopators can be credited with giving the name wah-wah to such techniques.
As an educator he influenced young New Orleans and Chicago players like Tommy Ladnier, Paul Mares, Muggsy Spanier, Johnny Wiggs Frank Guarente, Louis Panico and Louis Armstrong. The latter he taught, gave him his job in Kid Ory’s band and then summoned him to Chicago to play in his band.
As a businessman his acumen was often less than his musical ability losing jobs at the Savoy Ballroom and the Cotton Club by holding out for moe money than they were willing to pay. Ellington took the Cotton Club job and catapulted to fame
Oliver’s managers stole money from him and then the Great Depression hit losing his life savings to a failed Chicago bank, and bookings became lean.Oliver also had health problems, suffering from the gum disease pyorrhea, caused by his love of sugar sandwiches. He began employing younger musicians to play solos like up-and-coming trumpeter Henry “Red” Allen. Coupled with health problems suffering from periodontitis and his diminished capacity to play left him no choice but to stop playing by 1937.
Cornetist and bandleader King Oliver died in poverty of arteriosclerosis in a Savannah rooming house on April 10, 1938 at age 52, too broke to afford treatment. His sister spent her rent money to have his body brought to New York, where he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. In attendance were his friends Louis Armstrong, Clarence Williams, Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, W.C. Handy, Milt Jackson, and Max Roach. In 2007 he was inducted as a charter member of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame in Richmond, Indiana.
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