Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bud Scott was born Arthur Budd Scott on January 11, 1890  in New Orleans, Louisiana. He played guitar and violin as a child and performed professionally from an early age. His first job was with New Orleans dance band leader John Robichaux in 1904 and as a teenager he played with Buddy Bolden. In 1911 he was playing guitar with Freddie Keppard’s Olympia Orchestra. In 1912 he left New Orleans with a large travelling show.

As a violinist he performed with James Reese Europe’s Clef Club Orchestra at a historic 1912 concert at Carnegie Hall, and the following year worked with Europe’s ensemble on the first jazz recordings on the Victor label.He would go on to play on a number of Victor Talking Machine Company ragtime recordings with James Reese Europe’s Society Orchestra in 1913.

A graduate of the Peabody School of Music, he was a notable rhythm guitarist in Chicago, Illinois’s Jazz Age nightclubs of the 1920s. Moving there in 1923, he became a member of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, originating the now traditional shout, Oh, play that thing!, on Oliver’s recording of Dippermouth Blues. He also worked with Johnny Dodds and Jimmy Blythe, Erskine Tate, Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers and Richard M. Jones’ Jazz Wizards.

Scott was the first person to use a guitar in a modern dance orchestra, in Dave Peyton’s group accompanying Ethel Waters at Chicago’s Cafe de Paris. After performing and recording with Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra in 1928 he moved to California. Making a living as a professional musician through the 1930s, when traditional jazz was eclipsed by big-band swing music, he formed his own trio. In 1944 Scott joined an all-star combination that evolved into Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band. This was an important force in reviving interest in New Orleans-style jazz in the 1940s, and he wrote the majority of the band’s arrangements.

In 1944 Bud joined an all-star traditional New Orleans band that was a leader of the West Coast revival, put together for the CBS Radio series The Orson Welles Almanac. He arranged most of the songs for Kid Ory’s band, of which he was a part. His talent for arranging earned him the title of The Master.

A stroke in 1948 forced his retireent from music. Guitarist, banjoist, violinist and vocalist Bud Scott, whose obituary ran on the front page of the Los Angeles Sentinel,  transitioned in Los Angeles, California on July 2, 1949, aged 59.

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