| Brass Bands and Jazz Funerals: Danny Barker's New Orleans Broadcast the week of 6/29/2006
There has always been speculation about the early days of
jazz in New Orleans. Stories and myths abound, but there is not much
historical documentation. Nobody was paying much attention to jazz in the
first two decades of the 20th century, except for the musicians who were
busy making it—and the people who enjoyed listening to it. One of the most
fascinating resources on the New Orleans music scene in the years between
1880 and 1920 are oral histories collected from musicians in the 1940s.
Lincoln Park catered to every kinda people. You had real Respectable, influential colored people -- school teachers, lawyers, the cream of the city's upper crust. They had social affairs in the main dance hall. Brass bands played; and elderly folks sat, listening or dancing to schottisches, quadrilles, one-steps and waltzes. In his book, The Last Days of Storyville, Danny Barker collected
reminiscences from the first generation of jazz musicians in New Orleans,
Based on Riverwalk script ©2001 by Margaret Moos Pick |
 Here
is a tune list for this show.
On the Web:
Photo Credits:
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Native New Orleans guitarist and banjo player Danny Barker was a long-time
sideman with Cab Calloway’s orchestra and a pioneering jazz researcher. In
the 40s, when the first generation of jazz musicians was still alive, Danny
returned to New Orleans and started his Jazzland Research Guild. He sent out
questionnaires and interviewed the older generation of musicians. He talked
with hundreds of musicians including clarinetist George Baquet, a member of
the Imperial Brass Band, and Hamp Benson who recalled playing in Storyville
in the early 1900s. Others remembered Lincoln Park as a focal point of New
Orleans social and musical life. Buddy Bolden played for late night open-air
dances, but there was music of every kind—
Books:
