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* 1883 New Orleans La.
† January 14 1949 Philadelphia Pa.
Instrument: clarinet
As a brass band musician he played with:
Excelsior,
Imperial,
Onward Brass Band
George Baquet, son of
Theogene V Baquet, older
brother of Achille was the teacher of Sidney Bechet.
George Baquet founded the Excelsior Brass Band,
composed of black musicians. He also played with the creole-of-color
bands, such as Manuel
Perez's Imperial Orchestra
and the Original Creole Orchestra. He worked with Buddy Bolden and
recorded with Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers.i1
1903: Without telling his family, he practiced
secretly on his brother Leonard’s clarinet. During a family party he
played along side Freddie Keppard. His playing was heard by George Baquet
who was amazed by his promise and decided there and then to give him free
lessons. i2, i3(mention it as 1905)
George Baquet said that he first "sat in" with Bolden's band at the
Oddfellows Hall in 1905. i4
For instance, of his first clarinet teacher, Creole
George Baquet, Bechet remarked,
Baquet was a hell of a fine musicianer; he played awful fine. But he wasn’t
exactly a real ragtime player. What he played, it wasn’t really jazz . . .
he stuck real close to the line in a way. He played things more
classic-like, straight out how it was written. And he played it very
serious. . . . When Baquet played it, there wasn’t none of those growls
and buzzes which is a part of ragtime music, which is a way the musicianer
has of replacing different feelings he finds inside the music and inside
himself. . . all those interpreting moans and groans and happy sounds.
There wasn’t none of that in the way he played. I don’t know if it was
that Baquet couldn’t do it, all I know is he didn’t do it.
(Bechet, Treat it Gentle 79 (emphasis in the
original). Again, note the use of the term "ragtime" to denote the music
we now call "jazz." Bechet also preferred "musicianer" to "musician.")
Bechet respected Baquet’s smooth and "straight"
Downtown-style playing, but felt that it lacked the "interpreting sounds"
preferred by Uptown stylists. Similarly, Richard Hadlock’s descriptions of
his lessons under Bechet suggest that his teacher believed that a jazz
musician finds his or her "voice" by learning to manipulate pitch and
timbre:
"I’m going to give you one note to play today," he once told me. "See how
many ways you can play that note—growl it, smear it, flat it, sharp it, do
anything you want to it. That’s how you express your feelings in this
music. It’s like talking."
(Richard Hadlock. "Sidney Bechet: How to Live
Music," San Francisco Examiner (January 17, 1965)i5
There was literally a bouquet of
musicians from the New Orleans Baquet family, all clarinetists. George
Baquet has been considered by musical historians as the earliest player to
use the so-called "licorice stick" as a jazz instrument, and was an
important influence on the great Sidney Bechet. He was also one of a group
of players who accompanied blues singer Bessie Smith on her historic
recording sessions. His father Theogene Baquet was an established
clarinetist in the latter decades of the 19th century, and certainly seems
to have championed passing musical interests along to his children. Sons
Achille Joseph Baquet and Harold 'Hal' Baquet also played clarinet, and it
was Hal Baquet who met his death in a stabbing incident that for a short
period was blamed on songwriter, pianist and publisher Clarence Williams.
George Baquet began his performing career in the Lyre Club Symphony
Orchestra in 1897, only 14 years old at the time. P.T. Wright's Nashville
Student Minstrels was the first group to take the clarinetist on the road.
He left this group in Georgia to become one of the Georgia Minstrels but
returned to New Orleans in 1905 where he sat in with the Buddy Bolden band
and was subsequently considered good enough to become a regular member. He
also began playing with John Robichaux's Orchestra (1903
16), Olympia orchestra16
Freddie Keppard and
the Onward Brass Band (in 1900 16), the latter group specializing in parades. Keppard
took him to Los Angeles to join the first Original Creole Orchestra tour
(1914 16),
and Baquet stayed with this revue until the summer of 1916. This was the
year that this band might have been able to make the absolute first
recording of jazz known to mankind but didn't, for reasons wrapped in
controversy. Keppard says he wouldn't record because he didn't want to
make it easy for someone else to steal his style; the way Baquet
remembered it in interviews with British jazz writer John Chilton, it was
the possibility of not getting paid that kept the band out of the studio.
With the technology available for recording in 1916, the Victor label
didn't want to shell out session fees until it was sure the microphone had
picked up the sound of the bassist, Bill Johnson.
Baquet's next home base was the New York City area, where he held forth
for several years at a Coney Island inn. In 1923 he swung south several
hours to join Sam Gordon's Lafayette Players in Philadelphia, and wound up
becoming a resident of this city, remaining there until his death. Baquet
began leading his own groups there, including the popular New Orleans
Nighthawks, which in the '30s evolved into George Bakey's Swingsters in a
nod to spelling-deprived local jazz fans. Baquet recorded with Jelly Roll
Morton in 1929 and in the '40s took part in a reunion concert with Sidney
Bechet and in pit band at Earle Theater in Philadelphia
16.
Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide i6
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