Word: band
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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After playing in oblivion for the first 30 years of his career, George Lewis became so popular in Europe that the arrival of his band was sufficient to touch off riots. There were maybe a hundred European jazz bands trying to copy the Lewis sound. Even young men in Italy, Australia, and Japan were crowding around their record players, religiously copying all the Lewis imports they could get their hands...
...when Bunk's, band was recorded in 1942, people realized that there was another half to the story. Many musicians stayed in the city after 1917, and continued playing the same pure style of jazz that had developed around the turn of the century. When Storyville closed up, the music went on as it always had--on the streets of the black sections, in the back yards, in the little churches, at parades, picnics, dances, funerals. The culture which produced these men and their music didn't change very much in those 50 years or so, and the music...
Bunk was a symbol of the perseverence of that music and the culture which had engendered it. His career stretched all the way back to the 1890's when he had played with the famous Buddy Bolden band. Bunk had been the idol and teacher of many great New Orleans trumpet men, including Louis Armstrong. "They was all crazy behind old man Bunk's playing" he said himself in 1942. He had worked in every joint in Storyville, and played countless parades and funerals throughout the city. And now in the 40's, ten years after his "retirement" from music...
BUNK'S clarinetist, George Lewis, was to become the focus of that revival. When Bunk died in 1949, George Lewis took over the leadership of the band. The Lewis band, all previously unknown New Orleans veterans, became internationally famous during the next decade, and George Lewis was halted as the greatest living exponent of New Orleans style clarinet playing...
...went back to the hall night after night. The Lewis band played there three nights a week at that time, and although they were all old men, I think they must have been playing close to their peaks...