[Dixielandjazz] bio--Charles Suhor

[Charles Suhor]

Bio, Charles Suhor

Here's the short version, hiding the warts.--

I was born in New Orleans in 1935 and started playing drums around '48--did
weekends with numerous Dixielanders over the years--Tom Brown, Armand Hug,
Pete Fountain (before he was famous), Dutch Andrus, Papa French, Roy
Zimmerman, Raymond Burke, Murphy Campo, etc., and with modernists Bill
Huntington, Buddy Prima, Joe Burton, Ronnie Dupont, etc. My brother Don, a
great clarinet & alto sax player in all styles of jazz, brought me into
jazz drumming to accompany him in front-room jam sessions. Don died in
January at age 70 and is sorely missed by me and the N.O. scene, where he
played his entire career.

My main career was as an English teacher in N.O.Public Schools but besides
my drumming I started moonlighting as N.O. correspondent for DOWN BEAT in
1961 when deejay Dick Martin stopped sending in copy. After a decade of
bi-monthly coverage of clubs and musicians' activities and a couple of
articles a year, I concentrated my writings on English teaching and moved
in '77 to Urbana, Illinois, to work with a national English teachers'
organization.

I played weekends there with dance combos that also did Dixieland and swing
standards but turned more strongly to jazz in around early '90s when I
helped start a jazz and poetry group in Urbana. Plus I did jazz and
language talks at universities and conventions with Ellis Marsalis, John
Mahoney, Tony Garcia, and others.

I still do those programs plus a few others in semi-retirement in
Montgomery, Alabama. My first retirement project in 1997 was a book called
JAZZ IN NEW ORLEANS: THE POSTWAR YEARS that tried to set the record
straight on the much-neglected post-WWII years of my youth. Scarecrow
Press/Rutgers Jazz Institute published it in  2001. It has done well, with
only one critic, a jazz purist, slamming it because of my praise for some
of the Dixieland and traditional New Orleans Jazz artists (especially,
Sharkey Bonano and Papa Celestin) who sparked the local revival in the late
forties. You can't win 'em all.

I  don't have another book about jazz in me but I'm having fun lately with
jazz poetry, talks in Montgomery and New Orleans about jazz history, and a
list of other projects that will probably outlast me. I'm getting into
mischief now with the recent article griping about the widespread practice
in jazz radio of failing to announce tunes and artists until a long "set"
is completed. Great feedback from listeners and musicians, but a couple of
some deejays became irrationally defensive.

Finally, I'm drumming with a vintage swing era band in Montgomery. But to
my surprise and dismay there's virtually so Dixieland or small dance combo
work here, and a very small cadre of modernists. Rock and blues and Top 40
stuff rule in this town. So it goes.

Well, as the song says, that's-aplenty, so I'll sign off here.

Charles Suhor
csuhor at zebra.net