[Dixielandjazz] Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 49, Issue 2

[Charles Suhor]

I used to hear Spargo the radio from N.Y.--with Phil Napoleon, I 
think--in the 50's. He was still swinging well in the Dixieland style 
even then and his kazoo playing was a nice novelty.--Charlie

On Jan 1, 2007, at 7:57 PM, Steve Barbone wrote:

> Charles Suhor <csuhor at zebra.net> wrote (polite snip)
>
>> Just informational, and checking...As I recall, the son of ODJB 
>> drummer
>> Tony Spargo (Sbarbaro) is a DJML listee. If you're out there, I hope
>> you're enjoying this strand. Tony was surely one of the great drumming
>> pioneers, a fact known to many but unfairly dimmed by historians' and
>> critics' rightful unhappiness with Nick LaRocca's grandiose claims
>> about originating jazz and racist comments. Jack Stewart's article on
>> the ODJB in the current issue of the (Tulane) Jazz Archivist has some
>> fine, though in some ways odd, new perspectives on the ODJB.
>
> That's Tony's Spargo's grandson. We've corresponded off list now and 
> then
> and he sent me some early pictures of his grandpa as well as some 
> during his
> years at Nick's in Greenwich Village with Pee Wee Erwin, Chuck Traeger,
> Kenny Davern, Andy Russo, et al, as well as some with Pee Wee Russell 
> and
> others. We were hoping to find one with me but no luck.
>
> He was researching Tony's association with ODJB and then later in NYC 
> and I
> put him in touch with a guy who took drum lessons from his grand pa in 
> the
> late 1950s. He was looking for people who knew Tony and wanted some
> assurance that Tony Spargo was a good drummer, given some of the ODJB
> criticism that he had run across in some publications.
>
> As I heard it, Tony was a great jazz drummer. When he was there, the 
> bands
> at Nick's always swung and they had a lot of fun with his "famous" 
> kazoos.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
>
>
>
>
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