Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 62) George Lewis In the 1960s, the New Orleans musician led a revival of “Trad” jazz in Europe Imagine yourself sitting in Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England, in April 1957, waiting to behold a musician billed as “the world’s greatest entertainer.” The house lights come down, the curtains part, and out walks a frail-looking, diminutive black man in baggy pants holding a clarinet. He’s elderly and weighs less than 100 pounds. Ain’t no way this man is going to live up to that hype. The clarinetist mumbles a few indistinct words by way of introduction and then begins to play. At first it seems amazing that he can draw enough breath to make a sound, but then the lyrical beauty and power of his playing begins to manifest itself. He works his way from “Basin Street Blues” to his specialty solo, “Burgundy Street Blues,” then covers “Over the Waves,” a waltz; “Ice Cream,” a children’s rhyme; and ends with “Home Sweet Home,” the most maudlin song ever written. Yet, somehow, it all works. Everyone is spellbound — they have become true believers in the space of an hour. We have all heard about the “British invasion” of the 1960s, but less well known is the fact that many contemporaries of the Beatles, Cream, and the Spencer Davis Group became acolytes in what was called “Trad,” a revived version of traditional New Orleans jazz that held a special fascination for young people in Britain. Instead of responding to the blues the way John Lennon, Eric Clapton, and Dave Mason did, they found their inspiration in New Orleans jazz. Clarinetist Sammy Rimington, drummer Barry Martyn, and trumpeter Ken Colyer (who accompanied the clarinetist in Manchester that night) were among the movers and shakers on the British Trad scene. But it wasn’t Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, or even Bunk Johnson who served as the catalyst for this movement. It was primarily George Lewis — the world’s greatest entertainer. Born George Joseph Francois Louis Zeno in New Orleans on July 13, 1900, George time trapping and doing odd jobs in the piney woods near Mandeville, on the northshore of Lake Pontchartrain. George’s first instrument was a penny whistle provided by his mother, but by the time he was 18 he had taught himself to play clarinet, modeling his style after the Mandeville clarinetist Isidore Fritz. In the early 1920s he performed with the best trumpeters in New Orleans, including Buddie Petit, Chris Kelly, and Henry “Kid” Rena, and then formed his own band, the New Orleans Stompers, with Henry “Red” Allen. George’s musical experience during the Depression, a tough time for most New Orleans musicians, was erratic but lively. He was with Bunk Johnson on the bandstand in Rayne, Louisiana, when Evan Thomas was murdered by a jealous bar owner in 1931. Later on he joined Billie and DeDe Pierce at The Popeye on Decatur Street (nothing to do with chicken), where the all-night dancing and fighting took an equal toll on patrons and musicians alike. Lewis’s fortunes changed dramatically in the 1940s thanks to the jazz historian and record producer Bill Russell, who brought Bunk Johnson out of retirement, and George along with him. Recordings with Bunk for Russell’s American Music label beginning in 1944, and especially the documentation of his own “Burgundy Street Blues” at his home with a trio that year, placed George at the center of the New Orleans Revival that coalesced during World War II. After touring with Bunk in 1945-46, he returned home and formed the George Lewis Ragtime Band, using essentially the same personnel (trombonist Jim Robinson, banjoist Lawrence Marrero, and bassist Alcide “Slow Drag” Pavageau, ILLUSTRATION BY TOAN NGUY EN Lewis was the son of Alice Zeno, a domestic worker in the household of the writer Grace King, which gave her a generous exposure to European salon culture, in tandem with an appreciation of her Senegalese roots inherited from her grandmother. His father, Henry Zeno, part African American and part Native American, was never around much after George turned five, preferring to spend his 62 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2009
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