Jeff Chaz

Jeff Chaz delivers high-voltage blues guitar from his New Orleans base. The instrument once left him uninterested, prompting him to explore the trombone instead, and he even tested his skills in country music before recognizing that the blues suited his abilities, an endeavor he found particularly demanding.

Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Chaz spent his childhood in Creole, Louisiana. His father, a physician, sometimes reached patients by pirogue instead of automobile and accepted payment in ducks along with other provisions. Although their surroundings remained modest, the physician’s musical preferences showed no narrowness, exposing the young Chaz to Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Jack Teagarden, and Duke Ellington.

During his early years Chaz performed on jazz trombone before switching to trumpet, participated in the school band, and completed high school in California after his family relocated there. The hours spent performing at local dances and weddings caused his academic performance to decline. After graduation he joined a traveling ensemble on trombone; when that group’s vocalist and guitarist departed without notice, the remaining members recruited Chaz for the role.

Returning to California, he enrolled in music studies at San Bernardino College. Following another attempt at country music, he identified his true focus as the blues and headed to Memphis, where he performed in back-road blues clubs and also rendered gospel material. He has since shared stages on guitar with Cab Calloway, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Albert King, received a Beale Street Blues Award in the ceremony’s first year, and performed vocally at the National Civil Rights Museum. By 1996 he had returned to New Orleans and taken a steady engagement at the Famous Door on Bourbon Street.