Louis Douroux
Home
Band history
CD Hurricane BB
Repertoire
Brass band history
Brass band history CD
Brass band musicians
Brass band book dvd
Instruments
Music of the brass bands
Encyclopedia
Did you know
Links
Guestbook
Mail us

*

As a brass band musician he played with: Excelsior, Pacific, Pickwick, Brass Band

Married with: Olivia Manetta in 1894

235 Pelican Avenue (Algiers) was home to Louis Douroux in 1900. Douroux played cornet in the Pickwick brass band. He married Olivia Manetta in 1894 and was the father of Dolly Douroux (later Adams), another jazz musician.
http://houseoftherisingsunbnb.com/jazztour1.htm

Dolly Douroux, daughter of Louis:

In 1917, when 31-year-old Ann Cook was still a regular at Willie Piazza’s, 13-year-old Dolly Douroux played piano just a block down Basin Street at Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall.

White was one of Storyville’s most successful madams, famous for supplying light-skinned Creoles-of-color prostitutes, considered exotic by white middle- and upper-class men (blacks, and Creoles of color such as Douroux — her heritage was Sicilian, French and African — could work in Storyville but not be customers).

Both of Dolly’s parents played trumpet, Louis Douroux in a brass band. But codes of feminine respectability restricted Olivia Manetta Douroux’s public playing: Only at private parties could guests delight in the stunningly difficult duets she would play with her husband.

Growing up in this musical atmosphere, Dolly Douroux learned to play bass, drums, trumpet and guitar, but her skill as a pianist gave her special cachet. Since the earliest jazz bands were marching units, pianos were out of the question, but when bands began to play in venues with pianos, the instrument became a staple.

Piano chordings helped anchor the improvised, interwoven melodies of the brass and reed players. Thus, an activity considered a respectable “feminine” accomplishment — playing the piano —came to be valued by bands made up primarily of men.

Other women in this formidable generation of early jazz-band pianists include the aforementioned Todd and Bart, along with Margaret Kimble, Jeanette Salvant (Kimball) and Mercedes Garman (Fields).

Douroux soon found herself in demand with bands all over the city, including those led by Peter Bocage, Luis “Papa” Tio, Lorenzo Tio Jr. and Alphonse Picou. She also organized her own ensemble to accompany vaudeville acts at the Othello Theatre on South Rampart Street .

But in 1922, Dolly married Placide Adams, who preferred that his wife stay home. So Dolly Adams bore and raised a musical family, training all seven of her children on multiple instruments.

When the family ran into financial hardship in 1937, however, Placide finally allowed his wife to resume her career. First with her brothers and then with three of her sons, Dolly Douroux Adams continued to rock New Orleans into the 1960s. http://www.msmagazine.com/winter2004/jazz.asp

Sources (internet):

Sources (brassband history):

Last updated: 17-04-2009