DAVE BENNETT
Dave Bennett doesn’t fit the mold. For starters, you don’t find many jazz clarinet players who name Alice Cooper, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Chris Isaak among their influences. You won’t find many musicians who are equally conversant with the music of Benny Goodman (the “King of Swing”) and Roy Orbison (“The Soul of Rock and Roll”). In fact, you may not find even one other clarinet virtuoso who breaks from his Swing Era repertoire to sing rockabilly hits while accompanying himself at the piano or electric guitar.
SEATING TIMES:
Wednesday – Thursday
2 Seatings
1st Seating: 6:00pm-8:00pm
Band Performs: 6:30pm-7:30pm
2nd Seating: 8:30pm-10:30pm
Band Performs: 9:00pm-10:00pm
Friday – Saturday
2 Seatings
1st Seating: 6:00pm-8:00pm
Band Performs: 6:30pm-7:30pm
2nd Seating: 8:30pm-10:30pm
Band Performs: 9:00pm-10:00pm
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alcide Patrick Nunez was born on March 17, 1884 in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana of Isleño and French Creole descent. The family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana when he was a child. Growing up amid the Marigny and Bywater districts of New Orleans, he joined several bands in which he played guitar, although switched to clarinet about 1902. He soon became one of the top clarinetists in the city. By 1905 he was a regular in Papa Jack Laine’s band, in addition to playing with Tom Brown and sometimes led bands of his own.
Though he could play several instruments, he mainly played the clarinet and was able to improvise variations on the songs he heard. Before he was able to make music a full-time profession, Nunez worked for a while driving a mule-drawn wagon with fellow musician Chink Abraham.
In early 1916, he went north to Chicago, Illinois with Stein’s Dixie Jass Band, but he left the band shortly before they made their first recordings. After spending some time playing with Tom Brown’s band in Chicago, he went to New York City with Bert Kelly’s band and became his bandleader. He went on to help form the Louisiana Five, led by drummer Anton Lada, becoming one of the most popular bands in New York that recorded for several record labels.
In 1922, after Bert Kelly replaced him with Johnny Dodds, he returned to Chicago to lead the house band at Kelly’s Stables and played with the band of Willard Robison. Soon thereafter Nuñez began to lose his teeth, impairing his ability to play clarinet. He returned to his family in New Orleans, but after getting dentures he regained his ability to play the clarinet. He joined the police department to join the Police Band and at the same time was a member of The Moonlight Serenaders band and several other dance bands that played in New Orleans.
For a time in 1921, he settled in Baltimore, Maryland where he bought a large house but eventually returned home to New Orleans. Clarinetist Alcide Nunez, who was also known as Yellow Nunez and was one of the first musicians of New Orleans to make audio recordings, transitioned from a heart attack on September 2, 1934.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert Sage Wilber was born on March 15, 1928 in New York City. He became interested in jazz at the age of three when his father brought home a recording of Duke Ellington’s song Mood Indigo. In 1935, the family moved to the affluent suburb of Scarsdale, New York. At the age of thirteen he began formal clarinet study under his first teacher, Willard Briggs. He began listening to jazz from New Orleans, Kansas City, and Chicago by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Eddie Condon, and Frank Teschemacher. He played jazz in high school and with his friends formed a hot club, listening and jamming to records and graduated from high school in 1945.
Set on becoming a musician he attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York in 1945. After one term however, Bob dropped out and moved back to New York City to hang out on 52 Street and in Greenwich Village. He formed the Wildcats, with pianist Dick Wellstood and trombonist Eddie Hubble and they became the first jazz group in New York to do what Lu Watters and Turk Murphy had been doing on the Coast. They played the music of the Hot Five, the Red Hot Peppers and the Creole Jazz Band. The group performed regularly at Jimmy Ryan’s club over the next two years and was recorded in 1947 by Ramp-art Records.
Wilber worked with some of the best traditional jazz musicians of the era, including Muggsy Spanier, Baby Dodds, Danny Barker, Bud Freeman, Pee Wee Russell, George Wettling, Jimmy McPartland, Wild Bill Davison, and James P. Johnson. Fascinated with Sidney Bechet, in 1944 at sixteen, he met Bechet through Mezz Mezzrow and became Bechet’s pupil. He began studying both clarinet and soprano saxophone under his tutelage and eventually lived with him for several months.
Bob recorded for Columbia Records, Commodore, and Circle with Bechet and with his own group in the late 1940s. 1948 saw him forming a trio and playing Dixieland at intermissions at the Savoy Café in Boston, Massachusetts. Eventually, he expanded the band to a sextet and gained a strong following in the city, leading to opportunities in New York City.
Clarinet and soprano saxophonist Bob Wilber, who continued playing right up until 2017, transitioned on August 4, 2019 at age 91 in Chipping Campden, England.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frank Teschemacher was born on March 13, 1906 in Kansas City, Missouri. A was a member of the Austin High School Gang, a group of young, white musicians from the Chicago, Illinois West Side, they all attended Austin High School during the early 1920s. They rose to prominence as pioneers of the Chicago Style in the 1920s, which was modeled on a faster version of New Orleans jazz.
Strongly influenced by cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, he was mainly self-taught on his instruments, clarinet and saxophone. Early on he also doubled on violin and banjo. He started playing the clarinet professionally in 1925. He began recording under his own name in 1928 and made what are believed to be his final recordings two years later, although there is now reason to believe (via sine wave recording research, aka Smith/Westbrook Method) that he appeared on unidentified recordings as late as 1932.
He first recorded with Red McKenzie and Eddie Condon’s Chicagoans in 1927 for Okeh Records. Two sessions produced Sugar, China Boy, Nobody’s Sweetheart and Liza. The players included Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, and Jim Lanigan, as well as Chicagoans Eddie Condon, Gene Krupa and Joe Sullivan, led by Red McKenzie.
1928 saw him recording with two other Red McKenzie and Eddie Condon groups, the Chicago Rhythm Kings and the Jungle Kings. The same year he made his debut as a leader recording for Brunswick Records. The group recorded under the name Frank Teschmacher’s Chicagoans. Frank’s solo work laid the groundwork for a rich sound and creative approach that is credited with influencing a young Benny Goodman and a style of which Pee Wee Russell. He also made recordings on the saxophone and would later return to the violin during the Great Depression. Although well known in the world of jazz, he did not live to enjoy popular success in the swing era.
Clarinet and alto saxophonist Frank Teschemacher, who was killed in an automobile accident while being driven by Wild Bill Davison, transitioned on March 1, 1932 at the age of 25.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pete Clark was born on March 10, 1911 in Birmingham, Alabama. His brothers Richard and Arthur “Babe” were trumpeter and saxophonist respectively. Like his brothers he studied music at the Fess Whatley School. He would learn to play both alto and baritone saxophone as well as clarinet.
He began his career playing with Montgomery’s Collegiate Ramblers, followed by a stint with Wayman Carver. He would go on to find membership in the orchestras of Chick Webb, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Teddy Wilson, Rex Stewart, Don Redman, John Kirby, Happy Caldwell, Jimmy Jones, Teddy Wilson and others.
Alto and baritone saxophonist and clarinetist Pete Clark, also known as Pete Clarke, transitioned in New York City on March 27, 1975.
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