Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lucius Carl Watters was born on December 19, 1911 in Santa Cruz, California and raised in Rio Vista, California. At St. Joseph’s military academy he belonged to the drum and bugle corps. In 1925, he moved with his family to San Francisco, California where he started a jazz band. Teaching himself how to arrange music, he found work playing trumpet on a cruise ship. He studied music at the University of San Francisco with help from a scholarship, but he dropped out of school to pursue a career.

During the Thirties, he went on tour across America with the Carol Lofner Big Band. While in New Orleans, Louisiana he became interested in traditional jazz. Back in California, he assembled jam sessions with Bill Dart, Clancy Hayes, Bob Helm, Dick Lammi, Turk Murphy, and Wally Rose. In 1938, he formed a band that included Hayes, Helm, Squire Gersh, Bob Scobey, and Russell Bennett. The band found steady work at Sweet’s Ballroom in Oakland, California and slipped in pieces of traditional New Orleans jazz into the repertoire until Watters was fired.

1939 saw Lu established the Yerba Buena Jazz Band to revive the New Orleans jazz style of King Oliver. He brought in pianist Forrest Browne, who taught the band music by Jelly Roll Morton. He wrote music and arrangements to add to the traditional repertoire. World War II interrupted their performing and he joined the Navy. After the war they reunited and started playing at different clubs and backing visiting musicians Kid Ory, James P. Johnson, and Mutt Carey.

In 1950 the band broke up and Watters left music. He became a carpenter, cook, and a student of geology. Coming out of retirement in 1963 he performed with Murphy at an anti-nuclear protest in California to prevent a nuclear plant from being constructed at Bodega Bay. He recorded an album for Fantasy with Rose, Helm, Bob Mielke, and Barbara Dane. It included the title track and another song named for the San Andreas Fault, which was consistent with his interest in geology.

Trumpeter and bandleader Lu Watters, who had a mineral from California named wattersite in his honor, passed away on November 5, 1989 in Santa Rosa, California at age 77.

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