[Dixielandjazz] Pete Fountain dies at 86

Sun Aug 7 12:53:27 EDT 2016

To:  Musicians and Jazzfans list, DJML

From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Pensacola

Thanks to Pensacola's Mike Lynch;  Portland, OR Steve Chesebrough and New
Orleans/Richmond VA's Mike Gorrier "Mr. Jazz of New Orleans" who alerted me
to this yesterday. There will be numerous, I hope, obituaries for Pete.

When I moved to New Orleans in 1959 for continuing medical training at
Charity Hospital ( Tulane service), Pete had just come back to town after
two years with Lawrence Welk.  His record, "Just a Closer Walk with Thee"
was a big hit ( see obituary comment)  and was playing frequently on many of
the radio stations.  He opened with a group on Bourbon Street for a few
years before he got his own room at the Hilton at foot of Canal Street on
the Mississippi River.

My connection was with his guitarist, Lloyd Ellis, a Pensacola native who
played with Pete for 14 years.('74-'88)  When Pete would take vacation,
Lloyd would come to Pensacola and visit with friends.  Pete was a frequent
guest on the Johnny Carson show and, of course, his regular band would not
travel with him, but he'd always take Lloyd with him! After Lloyd retired
from Pete's band, he came to Pensacola and played intermittently here until
his death from cancer 4-4-'94.

( There are a couple of excellent bios of Lloyd, searchable on line.)

Music <http://www.nytimes.com/section/arts/music>    New York Times 8-7-16

Pete Fountain, a Clarinetist Known for His High-Spirited New Orleans Jazz,
Is Dead at 86

By PETER KEEPNEWSAUG. 6, 2016 

Pete Fountain, a clarinetist who brought the traditional jazz of his native
New Orleans to a national audience through frequent appearances on the
Lawrence Welk and Johnny Carson television shows, died on Saturday in New
Orleans. He was 86.

The cause was heart failure, said Benny Harrell, Mr. Fountain's son-in-law
and manager.

Mr. Fountain was a mainstay of the New Orleans music scene for more than six
decades, a familiar sight at Mardi Gras and the annual Jazz and Heritage
Festival. And the appeal of his high-spirited brand of Dixieland stretched
far beyond New Orleans, especially after he began appearing on "The Lawrence
Welk Show" in 1957.

His outgoing musical style made an odd fit with the sedate "Champagne music"
of Mr. Welk's orchestra - Mr. Fountain often noted that Champagne and
bourbon did not mix - but the combination was a hit with viewers, and his
segments became a staple of the show. In later years he was also a frequent
guest on Mr. Carson's "Tonight Show."

Peter Dewey Fountain Jr. was born in New Orleans on July 3, 1930, and was
exposed from an early age to the lively small-group jazz that was an
integral part of that city's atmosphere. Inspired by Benny Goodman and the
New Orleans clarinetist Irving Fazola - and by a family doctor who
recommended that he learn a wind instrument to strengthen his weak lungs -
he began playing clarinet at age 12. Before he was out of his teens, he had
become a familiar presence in the nightclubs on Bourbon Street.

"When I was a high school senior, my history teacher asked me why I didn't
study more," he wrote in 2001, in the notes of a CD anthology of his
recordings from the 1950s and 1960s. "I answered that I was too busy playing
clarinet every night, and when I told him I was making scale - about $125 a
week - he said that was more than he made and I should play full time. I
guess I was a professional from that point on."

In 1950, after some local success as a sideman, Mr. Fountain formed his own
band, the Basin Street Six, with the trumpeter George Girard. "We clowned
around a lot with that group," he recalled, "but most of the time we played
good music."

The Basin Street Six broke up in 1954, and he then worked briefly with the
Dukes of Dixieland in Chicago before teaming with the trumpeter Al Hirt to
lead a band that had a successful extended engagement at a New Orleans
nightclub, Dan Levy's Pier 600.

Photo 

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/08/07/arts/07FOUNTAIN/07FOUNTAIN-blog42
7.jpg

Pete Fountain at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2009. He
lived away from New Orleans for only two years. Credit Cheryl
Gerber/Associated Press 

A talent scout for Mr. Welk heard him there in 1957 and flew him to Los
Angeles for the first of his many featured appearances on Mr. Welk's popular
ABC variety show. He soon moved to Los Angeles, but he moved back home after
two years. It was the only time in his life that he was away from the New
Orleans area for a significant period.

While living in Los Angeles, Mr. Fountain began a long association with
Coral Records. Most of his albums for the label were closer to instrumental
pop than to traditional jazz, and the critics were unimpressed, but sales
were healthy.

He is survived by his wife, Beverly; a daughter, Darah Fountain Harrell; two
sons, Kevin and Jeffery; a sister, Del Materne, six grandchildren; and five
great-grandchildren.

In 1960, shortly after returning to New Orleans, Mr. Fountain bought a local
nightclub, the French Quarter Inn, and began a residency there with a small
group. Eight years later, he opened a larger room on Bourbon Street, Pete's
Place. The club moved to the Hotel Riverside in 1977 and remained in
business until he reluctantly shuttered it in 2003, citing a decline in
tourism after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"I needed a change. I didn't want it, but I needed it," he told The
Advocate, a newspaper in Baton Rouge, La. "It's been a real good ride, and
we've still got a lot of riding to do." He continued to perform regularly at
a casino in nearby Bay St. Louis, Miss., for many years.

Mr. Fountain struggled to get his life and career in order after Hurricane
Katrina in 2005. The roof was blown off his house in New Orleans; a second
house, in Bay St. Louis, was destroyed. Most of his possessions were lost.
Over the next year and a half, by his estimate, he moved eight times.

He was hospitalized shortly after the hurricane, complaining of dizziness
and other symptoms. He later told The Associated Press that doctors could
find nothing physically wrong with him, and he attributed his illness to
"depression about all the stuff that happened."

His health problems caused Mr. Fountain to miss Mardi Gras in 2006; it was
the first time in 46 years that his whimsically named Half-Fast Walking Club
participated in the festivities without him. Shortly afterward, he suffered
a heart attack and underwent quadruple bypass surgery. But he was well
enough to perform at the Jazz and Heritage Festival that May (his
cardiologist was in attendance in case of an emergency), and despite
continuing health problems, he remained a mainstay of that festival, and of
the city itself, until 2013.

His performance at the 2013 Jazz and Heritage Festival turned out to be his
swan song. "Last year was his last public performance," Mr. Harrell
announced shortly before the 2014 festival. "He's fully retired now."

Correction: August 6, 2016 

An earlier version of this obituary misstated part of the name of a group
Mr. Fountain led at Mardi Gras for many years. It is the Half-Fast Walking
Club, not Marching Club.

Christopher Mele contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on August 7, 2016, on page A19 of
the New York edition with the headline: Pete Fountain, New Orleans
Clarinetist, Dies at 86. Order Reprints <http://www.nytreprints.com/> |
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F.Norman Vickers

5429 Dynasty Drive

Pensacola, FL 32504-8583

Home 850-484-9183; cell 850-324-5022

Jazz Society of Pensacola 850-433-8382

www.jazzpensacola.com

nvickers1 at cox.net

Member Jazz Journalists Association

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