














|
* Dec 24, 1898 New Orleans, La
† Feb 14, 1959 Chicago, Il
As a brass band musician he played with:
Original Zenith
Brass Band.
Baby Dodds was one of first great drummers of
Jazz and the brother of Johnny Dodds. Baby got his start playing in parades in
New Orleans, occasionally with Frnakie Dusen's Eagle Band. He played briefly
with his brother in Kid Ory's Band, but was embarrassed when all the musicians
walked off stage because of his poor playing. This incident spurred him on to
become a better musician. He played in several other bands in New Orleans before
joining Fate Marable's riverboat band in 1918. While working on the riverboat he
played with
Louis Armstrong,
Johnny St. Cyr,
Pops Foster, among others. He stayed in
Marable's band until
King Oliver asked him to
join his band in San Francisco in 1921. Dodds followed
Oliver to Chicago and was
the drummer in
King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band.
After the breakup of that band Dodds worked with
Honore Dutrey at the
Dreamland in Chicago and with several other bands in the city. From 1927 to 1929
Baby Dodds played in his brother's band at Kelly's Stables along with
Freddie Keppard. He was
the drummer on many of the classic Chicago Jazz recordings of
Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers
and
Louis Armstrong's Hot Seven.
Throughout the Depression, Baby played in many of the small groups led by his
brother
Johnny Dodds and helped
run a taxi cab company in Chicago. When his brother died in 1940, he went on to
play with
Jimmie Noone and with
Bunk Johnson. After 1949
Dodds had a series of strokes that left him partially paralyzed, but still
managed to play from time to time up until his death in 1959.i1
Sources
(internet):
i1
http://www.redhotjazz.com/baby.html
Sources
(brassband history):
|