[Dixielandjazz] Ultimate JAzz Wives

[Don Ingle]

Jazz Wives? I have a pair to acknowledge.
My Mother, "Eddie" Ingle,  will be 98 this coming Sunday next. She married
my dad about the time that he joined the Gene Goldkette office in Detroit,
working with a number of the bands in the JG stable, including  a stint with
the Victor band with Bix and Tram et al. As a young band wife (she was a
cradle robber as my dad was 19 when they married and she 21) she knew Bix,
Tram, Challis, Rank, Spiegle (I have pictures of her when she and Spieg were
both in their 80's.) and was among the wedding guests at Jimmy and Jane
Dorsey's wedding in Detroit.
Later she was a band wife with the Ted Weems Orch. (1931 to 1941) then later
with Spike Jones and dad's Natural Seven. She is, as far as we know, the
last of the Goldkette 1926-29 period band wives alive.
My wife, Jean, was 19 and I 24 when we got hitched, in New Orleans1955.
Since her family was not able to be there, Ted Weems (with whom I was
playing) gave the bride away in a ceremony with the whole band in attendance
in Christ Episcopal Church on Canal Street right across from the Vieux
Carre. She managed to keep me on the straight and narrow for all this time,
in L.A., Denver, Aspen, Chicago, and other places where the music took us,
and then made a good switch to keeping up with my work as  full time
writer/journalist and part time player the last 34 years.
I tell you all -- if you are a musician (or a writer), if you find a good
gal, work hard to keep her. It's not a good man that hard to find -- it's a
good women who is willing to put up with a lot of the crap that goes with
these jobs.
Don Ingle