[Dixielandjazz] the great "schnoz"

[Don Kirkman]

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 16:02:57 -0400, Ron L'Herault wrote:


>Durante is probably one of the best, if not the best of the early White
>ragtime pianists according to a reference I read once and now can't recall.
>It may have been in G. Schuller's book.   He did record but not much if I
>remember correctly.   He can be heard in an early Shirley Temple movie I
>think  and I saw him sing and play a bit of piano in a Buster Keaton talkie
>not too long ago.

Durante got a brief mention in Blesh and Janis' _They All Played
Ragtime_, pp. 224-225*.  Risking copyright infringement, here it is:

[Start]
There must always be the exception to the rule [referring to a list of
white performers of "pseudo-ragtime"], and the exception in this case is
The Schnozzle, Jimmy Durante.  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 "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." . . . Only Pete Wendling could even begin to approach
Jimmy's natural rhythm.  Something in Jimmy made the "Great Profile No.
2" feel rhythm as the Negroes do.  Even today the ragtime lilt is still
there--"I kept me attitude," he says.
[End]

*  1971 paperback edition; the original was 1950.

The unnumbered photograph pages have a 1921 picture of Jimmy Durante's
Jazz and Novelty Band, with Jimmy at the piano with four sidemen with
drums, clarinet, trombone, and trumpet/cornet.  An inscription on the
picture reads "A. J. Baquet, Clarinet" under the handwritten name of the
band.

Kernfeld's "The Blackwell Guide to Recorded Jazz" [1991, ISBN
0-631-17164-9, p. 17] says, without details, that Durante was among
musicians who recorded with The Original Memphis Five (perhaps under one
of their many band aliases since it was "primarily a recording band").

>Ron L
>-----Original Message-----
>From: dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com
>[mailto:dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com]On Behalf Of
>rahberry at comcast.net
>Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 2:33 PM
>To: Cebuisle2 at aol.com; dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
>Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] the great "schnoz"

>I just dusted off an old hi-fi LP entitled "Eddie Jackson!"  He's back by
>"his Dixielanders."  No mention that I can find of the musicians' names.
>  ~  Rae Ann

>> The mention of Eddie Cantor reminds me of another great hoofer from  the
>> past, Jimmy Durante Jimmy apparently had a past as a Dixieland jazz
>musician,
>> piano I think. He sometimes joked about his band's ineptness.  Does anyone
>know
>> any information about this jazz group? Did they ever  record?
-- 
Don Kirkman