Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Achille Joseph Baquet was born on November 15, 1885 in New Orleans, Louisiana into a musical family whose patriarch, Théogène, led the Excelsior Brass Band. He learned the clarinet from Luis “Papa” Tio and was thought to have been a member of the Whiteway Jazz Band.

Moving to New York City in 1918, then ragtime pianist, vocalist, and leader Jimmy Durante, the only member not from New Orleans, hired him to play with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band that was founded by Johnny Stein. He would go on to work with Papa Jack Laine’s Reliance Brass Band and was part of the clarinet section of the Happy Schilling Dance Orchestra.

Baquet’s credits as a composer include Why Cry Blues, written with Jimmy Durante. According to Papa Jack Laine, he co-wrote Livery Stable Blues with Acide “Yellow” Nunez.

Clarinetist and saxophonist Achille Baquet, who was a light-skinned black man able to pass for white, passed away on November 20, 1956 in his hometown.

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