[Dixielandjazz] Will Connelly Biology

[willc]

The last time he let the shabby little thing out for air, it appeared to
Will Connelly that he was male, although God knows there were no signs
of recent wear.

Wait! What's all that racket in the rear of the hall?

What? BIOGRAPHY, not BIOLOGY?  Oh. All right. Sorry.

Will Connelly was born in the bulrushes of the Chicago River 73 years
ago yesterday, sailed down the Chicago Sewage Canal until he was pushed
ashore by an obscene object (probably a ward heel) and was raised by
lampreys. He has been leaving snail like marks on the world ever since.
Among his more notable accomplishments were his services as Vice  Pope
and his single-handed repainting of the Red Sea.

When Connelly was in third grade, his father, a dedicated wino, essayed
a several barrel run of home made wine in the basement of the family
manse  which his entrepreneurial son flogged to neighborhood children
for 2 cents a glass.  He was discharged from grade school when he
endeavored to expand his business to the schoolyard with a glass and a
gallon jug. The zeal to sell produced an identical result in fifth
grade: this time, the product were art study nudes run off in his
father's basement photo lab. 

By the time Connelly was 17, he had been separated from Todd School for
Boys, a one=room school in Lake Calcasieu, Louisiana and Maine Township
High School, which he proudly announces was Hillary Clinton's alma mater
later.

"I think I was gone early enough to avoid the taint," he remarks. 

By seventeen, Connelly had already proven himself to be an indifferent
cornet player and during  three years in the Air Force, expanded upon
this remarkable lack of skill by playing in a band comprising an
accordion, bass, guitar and tenor sax which sold its marginal services
to farm country church socials, a strip joint in Calument City and a cat
house in Peoria. At $5 a night, Connelly made nearly as much from bad
music as he did with his $90 per month radio repairman corporal's pay. 
The pinnacle of the band's fame came when it performed on the Post
Broadcasting System at Chanute Field with a then star guest accordionist
named Dick Contino, and evidently set his career back four years. 

Honorably severing his connection with the government, Connelly went to
San Diego and began a life of toil as a research lab analyst, tech
writer, technical sales correspondent, and electronics  manufacturer's
representative. He moved to Los Angeles about 1952 and learned of the
blessed  existence of the Southern California Hot Jazz Society. There,
and in many marvelous saloons,  he learned jazz at the feet of Joe
Darensbourg, Johnny St Cyr, Harvey Brooks, Alton Purnell, Chet Jaeger,
Roy Brewer, George Probert and many other extraordinary players. It was
then that he met and formed what has been a lifelong mutual admiration
society with Whoopee Zeckendorf. 

In 1961 or so, he accepted Bill Bacin's draft to serve as music director
of the New Orleans Jazz Club of California (NOJCC), In 1964, worn to a
nub by the toughest, least appreciated and sometimes most dangerous job
in any not-for-profit jazz club, he fled to Miami and whetted skills at
separating the U.S. Government from very large amounts of money as the
marketing VP for an organization that owned and operated oceanographic
research ships. Back to California in 1970, he developed diarrhea to a
fine art form during travels to 30 odd countries to flog military radios
to unsuspecting third world governments.

In 1980, back in Florida for some years,  he and cornetist Hal Donovan
and lawyer Bill McNaughton founded in Fort Lauderdale the Hot Jazz and
Alligator Gumbo Society (for which K.O. Eckland created Snort
Swampquaffer, the club's alligator logo) following the collapse of John
Dengler's New Old Jazz Society of Everywhere. 

There's more, but Connelly's out of time.   
-- 
Will Connelly
River Liffey Saloon Jazz Band
Fort Lauderdale, Florida