[Dixielandjazz] Connie Jones- True to his City (1934-2019)

[Joe Bebco]

By Lew Shaw  https://syncopatedtimes.com/connie-jones-true-to-his-city/

Connie Jones died in his sleep on February 13, 2019. The following
profile ran in the April 2015 edition of our predecessor The American
Rag, it has never before been available online.
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A master trumpeter and cornet player, Conrad “Connie” Jones is
regarded as one of the most talented modern-day musicians to emerge
from New Orleans, the city where he was born in 1934.

At 17, he was a member of the Dixiecats that won the Battle of the
Bands on the Paul Whiteman national TV teen show. His first
professional band was the Basin Street Six that included George Girard
and Pete Fountain. A fishing buddy of trumpeter Al Hirt, Jones was in
Jack Teagarden’s last band and served as a pallbearer at the famed
trombonist’s funeral. One of the founders who served as chairman of
the French Quarter Festival’s entertainment committee for 22 years, he
played all the famous jazz rooms on Bourbon Street and was a regular
performer aboard the Delta Queen and American Queen riverboats on the
Mississippi River. In 2012, he received an honorary degree from Loyola
University of New Orleans.

Coming from a musical family, Connie began his musical journey at the
age of 5, taking piano lessons from a great aunt who studied at the
Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. As a rambunctious youngster, his
parents shipped him off to a military school in Gulfport, Mississippi,
where, as one of the taller cadets, he was assigned to play the bugle.
He took up the trumpet at age 10 and switched to the more mellow
cornet some years later.

Back in New Orleans in 1950, he joined neighbor Tony Almerico’s Junior
Band that played the intermission sets at the Parisian Room and did a
tour of New York City and Philadelphia. He took a respite from the
music business in his early 20s, but resumed his career in 1961,
playing with local groups, including Santo Pecora and the Tailgaters
at the Dream Room on Bourbon Street.

In 1964, Jack Teagarden came to town for a Dream Room engagement,
battling a liver ailment and worn down from too much drinking, too
many cigarettes and too many one-night stands. On January 15, he
failed to appear for the evening performance and was found in his room
at the Prince Conti Hotel where he had succumbed from bronchial
pneumonia at the age of 56.

At the funeral, Connie recalled, “I remember seeing him in that
coffin. The family was going to fly him to Los Angeles for burial. The
coffin was open, and I remember thinking, ‘Boy, he really looks
uncomfortable in there.’ Not that he was that tall – maybe 5-10 or so,
at most. But he was kinda broad across the shoulders, and he gave you
the impression he was a big man in every way. But in that coffin, he
seemed to be scrunched up in a space that was too small to contain
him.”

Connie remembers the “Father of the Jazz Trombone” as “one of the
nicest people you could ever know.” The inscription on Teagarden’s
tombstone at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles reads: “Where
there is hatred, let me sow love.”

1966 found Jones touring with Bill Maxted’s Manhattan Jazz Band and
having the unpleasant experience of being robbed when the band was
playing at the famed Metropole on Times Square in New York City. Back
in the Big Easy and for the next seven years, he was the lead trumpet
in Pete Fountain’s band. He helped to reorganize the Dukes of
Dixieland in 1974, but parted over disagreements with the band
manager. He formed his own Crescent City Jazz Band that had a long
stay at the Blue Angel nightclub on Bourbon Street and performed at
the several local festivals held annually.

He’s toured worldwide, appeared on national TV shows and at festivals,
and recorded on over a half-dozen record labels, most recently with
clarinetist Tim Laughlin. Hurricane Katrina heavily damaged the Jones
residence and temporarily relocated Connie and his wife to Dallas and
then Montgomery, Alabama.

He uses a smaller mouthpiece to produce a unique tone, saying “I’ve
always believed it’s not what you say, but how you say it.” Asked what
he would tell an aspiring young musician, he advised. “Be willing to
work 7-8 hours a day plying your craft, even if it means playing on a
street corner for tips.” He went on to say, “The advent of television
was the great death knoll of live music. It’s increasingly difficult
for a young musician to find a place to play these days. They’ve made
a mall out of Bourbon Street so it’s not what it was when I broke into
the business. Stay away from drugs and alcohol,” noting he has not had
a drink in 42 years and doesn’t smoke.

After 60-plus years of making a living playing music as a bandleader
and sideman, Connie Jones jokes, “I never did a day’s work in my life.
I’m a saloon musician. I go with what I’m asked to do, if possible.
I’ve learned a lot about my instrument by playing with different types
of bands. I never had an absolute goal and have always been a student
of improvisation. I know what I’m doing. I can tell you that I’m not
guessing when I get on the bandstand.”

Asked how he sees his legacy, he thought for a moment and replied,
“That I tried and always gave my best when I came to work”



Joe Bebco
Associate Editor
SyncopatedTimes.com (315) 507-5490
A monthly newspaper covering Hot Jazz, Ragtime, and Swing.