Biography
A cluster of New Orleans instrumentalists emerged from the Baquet family, every one of them a clarinetist. Historians of the music have long credited George Baquet with being the first to adapt the “licorice stick” to jazz, and he exerted a decisive early influence on Sidney Bechet. He also figured among the sidemen who supported blues singer Bessie Smith during her landmark recording dates. His father, Theogene Baquet, had already established himself as a respected clarinetist in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and evidently transmitted his musical inclinations to his offspring. Two of those sons, Achille Joseph Baquet and Harold “Hal” Baquet, likewise took up the clarinet; Hal eventually met a violent end in a stabbing that was, for a brief time, attributed to songwriter, pianist, and publisher Clarence Williams.
George Baquet launched his professional life in 1897 as a fourteen-year-old member of the Lyre Club Symphony Orchestra. P.T. Wright’s Nashville Student Minstrels provided his introduction to touring, yet he parted from the company in Georgia to travel instead with the Georgia Minstrels. By 1905 he had returned to New Orleans, where he sat in with Buddy Bolden’s band and soon earned a permanent chair. Additional engagements followed with John Robichaux’s Orchestra, Freddie Keppard, and the Onward Brass Band, the last group devoted chiefly to parade work. Keppard transported him to Los Angeles for the inaugural tour of the Original Creole Orchestra, and Baquet remained with the ensemble until the summer of 1916. That year the band stood on the brink of producing what might have been the earliest jazz recording, yet circumstances intervened. Keppard later claimed he refused the session for fear others would copy his style; Baquet, recounting the episode to British jazz writer John Chilton, recalled instead that anxiety over unpaid fees kept the musicians out of the studio. With the recording technology then available, the Victor label declined to advance session payments until it could verify that bassist Bill Johnson’s contributions had been captured.
Baquet next settled in the New York metropolitan region, holding forth for several years at a Coney Island inn. In 1923 he traveled south to Philadelphia to join Sam Gordon’s Lafayette Players and made the city his permanent home until his death. There he began fronting his own ensembles, among them the popular New Orleans Nighthawks, which, during the 1930s, was rechristened George Bakey’s Swingsters in deference to local jazz enthusiasts indifferent to spelling. He participated in a 1929 recording date with Jelly Roll Morton and, in the 1940s, joined Sidney Bechet for a reunion concert.
George Baquet launched his professional life in 1897 as a fourteen-year-old member of the Lyre Club Symphony Orchestra. P.T. Wright’s Nashville Student Minstrels provided his introduction to touring, yet he parted from the company in Georgia to travel instead with the Georgia Minstrels. By 1905 he had returned to New Orleans, where he sat in with Buddy Bolden’s band and soon earned a permanent chair. Additional engagements followed with John Robichaux’s Orchestra, Freddie Keppard, and the Onward Brass Band, the last group devoted chiefly to parade work. Keppard transported him to Los Angeles for the inaugural tour of the Original Creole Orchestra, and Baquet remained with the ensemble until the summer of 1916. That year the band stood on the brink of producing what might have been the earliest jazz recording, yet circumstances intervened. Keppard later claimed he refused the session for fear others would copy his style; Baquet, recounting the episode to British jazz writer John Chilton, recalled instead that anxiety over unpaid fees kept the musicians out of the studio. With the recording technology then available, the Victor label declined to advance session payments until it could verify that bassist Bill Johnson’s contributions had been captured.
Baquet next settled in the New York metropolitan region, holding forth for several years at a Coney Island inn. In 1923 he traveled south to Philadelphia to join Sam Gordon’s Lafayette Players and made the city his permanent home until his death. There he began fronting his own ensembles, among them the popular New Orleans Nighthawks, which, during the 1930s, was rechristened George Bakey’s Swingsters in deference to local jazz enthusiasts indifferent to spelling. He participated in a 1929 recording date with Jelly Roll Morton and, in the 1940s, joined Sidney Bechet for a reunion concert.