[Dixielandjazz] Fifty year and holding.

[tcashwigg at aol.com]

Congratulations Don & Jean:

Seems I can faintly hear a great band with Jim Beebe, Charlie Hooks, 
Bob Craven  and Don Gumpert playing,
   The Anniversary Waltz for you two.

May you live to dance it for another 50 years :))

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins


-----Original Message-----
From: dingle at baldwin-net.com
To: Dixieland Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 10:58:43 -0500
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Fifty year and holding.

    Good day friends of the list. I just wanted all to know that my wife 
Jean and I are celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary today. And a 
lot of those years were road years -- so we are survivors for sure. 
  We spent the evening talking about the places and people we have known 
over these years, especially the many musicians and entertainers we 
have been fortunate to know and call friends, from my mentor and first 
teacher Red Nichols to the gentle gentlemen Matty MAtlock and Eddie 
Miller, and the "mythical beast" as Jean called him before she met him, 
Joe Rushton. Moving about from Michigan where we met to New Orleans 
where we were married when I was with Ted Weems and played a WHOLE 
month at the Old Roosevelt Hotel. Jean's folks couldn't be there so Ted 
was proxy father and gave the bride away. A nervous Jean had breakfast 
the day of our wedding in the New Orleans Hotel and a friend named 
Merwyn Pogue sat with her to calm her down -- you might better have 
known him as ish Kabibble. His small group was playing a club in town 
at the same time. 
  Characters galore. We worked a season in Aspen in ;59 and'60 with 
Freddie Schnicklefritz Fisher, and with Joe and Adele Marsala. Freddie 
was the character of characters. Joe was a great clarinetist but has a 
quick fuse Italian temper after a few toddies and he once got in a 
fight with the bartender at Trader Ed's ii Aspen and I had to peel the 
two apart, getting a fat lip from a stray waving arm in the process. 
  Worked in House bandf at Jazz Ltd. in Chicago for five years with our 
late listee Jim Beebe for part of that time and with drummers Freddy 
Kohlman and Barrett Deems. Deem goes to the top of the character list, 
but could drive a band. 
  So many places, so many moves, L.A., Denver, Aspen, Chicago, Vegas, 
Reno, and "One Thousand and One-nighters," the title of the book I may 
get a round to writing some day. Through it all, with support and TLC 
is my little gal from way up north in Michigan that I was fortunate 
enough to meet, curt, convince to marry me, and keep me for making too 
big a damn fool of myself over the fifty years we've been hitched. 
  I have been blessed in wife, friends, experiences and through it all 
the music we share. 
  A most happy and wonderful Thanksgiving ahead this week to all. For 
me, my biggest reason to give thanks is my wife and my best friend 
Jean. 
 May you all be so lucky. 
 Don Ingle 
 
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