[Dixielandjazz] Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 206, Issue 19

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QZlgUaLJ7Y

Omer Simeon Jazz a la Creole 

Our listmate Ken Mathieson has a theory about how far listening to Omer Simeon and Darnell Howard on Earl Hines broadcasts from the Grand Terrace might have influenced Charlie Parker ..  A little while back Ken's friend and mine Dick Lee (cf. Ken's "Blues for Kenny Davern") passed on some Fletcher Henderson recordings ...

These date from the same period as the one complete recording known to me of an Earl Hines Grand Terrace  broadcast, and represent the case where visiting a city an established major band engaged substitutes normally in local employment and a match for the guys who couldn't manage the travel.  I'm not sure what Darnell was doing at the time, but during the period when the Hines show was recorded Omer Simeon was a Henderson sideman!  On record 

No general loss that, with I am sure Budd Johnson on alto on the broadcast...  But perhaps more will emerge of recordings made at the latterday plumbing emporium  --

and what a happy inspiration on the evening of a day me old malady kept me horizontal, to be lifted by Omer Simeon, the guy who stayed at the YMCA and played with Wilbur de Paris to see his daughter through her formal education, when the option was a job with Duke Ellington

Robert R. Calder