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Danny Barker

Danny Barker is an NEA Jazz Master

A jazz banjoist and guitarist with a career that stretched over parts of eight decades, Danny Barker lived the history of jazz in the twentieth century. Then, late in life, he became one of its most qualified chroniclers, drawing upon his recollections of the early days of jazz in New Orleans.

Danny Barker spent his first six years living with his father’s family in a two-story apartment building on Chartre Street across from the French Quarter Ice. His grandfather on his mother’s side was Isidore Barbarin, a founding member of the original Onward Brass Band. And Danny’s uncle, Paul Barbarin, played in bands led by top jazz artists including King Oliver, Henry ‘Red’ Allen, and Sidney Bechet.

Barker would follow in his Uncle Paul’s footsteps, leading to his first gig playing banjo subbing for an intoxicated Babe Son in Kid Rena's band. After this surprising debut, Barker began taking banjo lessons from George Augustin of the Imperial band, and came under the direct influence of Lorenzo Stall, Buddy Bolden's banjoist. It was not long before he dubbed "Banjo King of New Orleans".

In 1930 Barker married the singer Louise Dupont, and the pair followed the migration undertaken by other jazz musicians and moved to New York. They often performed together, as Blue Lu Barker with Danny Barker's Fly Cats. Barker switched from banjo to the more modern guitar.

Barker's excellence as a musician came in the late 1930s, when he played with bands led by Lucky Millinder, Benny Carter, and, for an eight-year stint extending through World War II, Cab Calloway. Barker played sharp melodic solos on the guitar that diverged from the chordal playing that had previously been the norm. He appeared on over 1,000 recordings, and, by some estimates, played with a greater number of jazz bands and artists than any other musician.

Barker left Calloway's band in 1946. He played in the 1940s with bebop pioneers Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and even essayed the new and guitar-heavy rhythm-and-blues style in the postwar years. In 1947 he took a job as guitarist for the "Jazz on the River" weekend cruises up and down the Hudson River where he played with fellow New Orleanians Albert Nicholas, Pops Foster, Baby Dodds, pianist James P. Johnson and cornetist Wild Bill Davison. Barker then worked as a freelance rhythm man around New York playing and recording with Sidney Bechet and Mezz Mezzrow, Bunk Johnson, Edmond Hall and Henry "Red" Allen.

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The Memories Of Danny Barker This Week On Riverwalk Jazz

The Memories Of Danny Barker This Week On Riverwalk Jazz

Source: Don Mopsick

This week's Riverwalk Jazz features interviews with New Orleans jazz pioneer Danny Barker. The Smithsonian Institution opened the vaults of the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History so that we could present Danny Barker’s authentic New Orleans vernacular as he recollects life in the Crescent City in the early 1900s. The program is distributed in the US by Public Radio International, on Sirius/XM satellite radio and can be streamed on-demand from the Riverwalk Jazz website. You can ...

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Thinking of Danny Barker

Thinking of Danny Barker

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

This is neither the anniversary of Danny Barker's birth (January 13, 1909) nor of his death (March 13, 1994). I need no special occasion to write about Danny. He was born in New Orleans, where I served with him on the board of the original New Orleans JazzFest and was lucky enough to become his friend. No one has ever had a warmer, more genuine companion. Danny Barker with drummer Al Harewood at a New York memorial concert for Louis ...

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