[Dixielandjazz] Jimmy Durante - Panio Player was celebrities

[Don Kirkman]

On Sat, 29 Nov 2003 17:12:21 -0500, Stephen Barbone wrote:

>Jimmy Durante was a lot more than a celebrity who also played a little
>jazz. He was one of the FIRST JAZZ RECORDING ARTISTS and like many
>others of that era, first became a celebrity as a jazz musician. Below
>is an excerpt from one of his bios.

>"Before Jimmy Durante became one of the most famous and lovable
>entertainers of the Twentieth Century, he was a hot piano player and
>bandleader. Durante was greatly influenced by Scott Joplin and had his
>first success in show business as a Ragtime piano player starting around
>1911. He was billed as "Ragtime Jimmy" and played in New York City and
>Coney Island."

>"Durante was part of the same wild crowd of early White jazz musicians
>as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and Johnny Stein. When the New
>Orleans Jazz style swept New York by storm in 1917 with the arrival of
>the Original Dixieland Jazz Band Durante was part of the audience at
>Reisenweber's on Columbus Circle. Durante was very impressed with the
>band and invited them to play at a club called the
>Alamo in Harlem where Jimmy played piano. The band was soon the hottest
>thing in show business and Durante had his friend Johnny Stein assemble
>a group of like-minded New Orleans musicians to accompany his act at the
>Alamo."

>"They billed themselves as "Durante's Jazz and Novelty Band". In late
>1918 they recorded two sides for Okeh under the name of the New Orleans
>Jazz Band, they re-did the same two numbers a couple of months later for
>Gennett under the name of Original New Orleans Jazz Band, and in 1920
>the same
>group recorded again for Gennett as Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band."

There's a 1921 photograph of Durante and the band in my copy of "They
All Played Ragtime" [1971 revised paper edition]; right under the band
name is "A. J. Baquet-Clarinet."  The photo is by Delacroix of New York.

On pages 224-225, "Before World War I, Jimmy at fifteen was playing
ragtime at Kerry Walsh's in Coney Island and around Fourteenth Street
and the Bowery.  He recently told us [Rudy Blesh and Harriet Janis] "My
perfesser tried to make me play "Poet and Peasant."  I played "Maple
Leaf", "Popularity", and "Wild Cherries.  I couldn't do nuttin' else
den, and I can't do nuttin' else today."  With a nod to Durante's
"natural rhythm, they quote him "I kept me attitude."

[...]
-- 
Don
donkirk at covad.net