Biography
During the flourishing era of New Orleans jazz, vocalist and banjoist Narvin Kimball came of age and ultimately outlasted nearly every peer from that period. He participated actively in the local Louisiana scene throughout the 1920s, then enjoyed an extended resurgence that started at Preservation Hall in 1960 and extended through 1999. His father, Henry Kimball (1878-1931), ranked among the earliest musicians to perform jazz on string bass. As a child, Narvin fashioned a ukulele from a cigar box, a form of ingenuity typical in New Orleans, where young George Murphy (later known as "Pops") Foster and his brother Willie assembled a homemade bass from a flour-barrel section, scrap lumber, nails, and lengths of twine coated with rosin and wax. Foster would later cite Henry Kimball as a key influence. The Kimball household embraced music across the board, and Narvin quickly mastered banjo and piano, making his initial public appearances with a school group at the Pythian Temple. By 1926 he was working professionally with jazz and dance ensembles across the region, which led to an engagement alongside his father in Fate Marable's orchestra aboard the S.S. Capitol, the steamboat that plied the broad Mississippi. A precise taskmaster who demanded clarity and exactitude, Henry Kimball urged his son to position himself always to perform with pride and dignity, counsel Narvin continued to repeat at the end of the twentieth century.
In 1927 Kimball joined Oscar Papa Celestin's Tuxedo Jazz Band as banjoist, touring and recording phonograph discs with the group. He married the band's pianist, Jeanette Salvant, and kept working the riverboats, where he began a lifelong association with clarinetist Willie Humphrey. When musical tastes shifted in the early 1930s, Kimball set aside the banjo for the more contemporary guitar and also performed on string bass in trumpeter Sidney Desvigne's large ensemble. To endure the economic hardships of the Great Depression he began a thirty-six-year career with the United States Postal Service, sorting mail during daylight hours while continuing to perform at night, frequently leading his own unit billed as Narvin Kimball's Gentlemen of Jazz. In 1945 he received a telephone call from Louis Armstrong seeking an immediate substitute for indisposed bassist Arvell Shaw; when Kimball mentioned he was recovering from a tonsillectomy, Pops answered, "You don't play the bass with your tonsils! I'll give you a drink and you'll feel fine." After the Second World War, Kimball joined Alvin Alcorn, Louis Barbarin, and Fred Minor to create the vocal quartet the Four Tones. Anyone attempting to understand Kimball's notably old-fashioned chortling in his final professional years must consider this phase of his work as well as the longer African American vocal-harmony lineage that predates jazz itself.
Throughout the 1950s Kimball directed a compact swing outfit that also performed what was then labeled Dixieland (a designation he never endorsed) at Bourbon Street venues crowded with visitors, among them the Paddock Lounge and Dixieland Hall. In 1960 he returned to the banjo and soon became a regular presence just around the corner at Preservation Hall on St. Peter Street. A charter member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band alongside his longtime friend Willie Humphrey, he traveled with the celebrated group for many years, astonishing listeners with his left-handed single-string approach and endearing them through his period vocal style; his signature number remained "Georgia on My Mind." His last appearance with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band occurred in 1999 at age ninety, after which a series of strokes concluded an exceptionally long career. In 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans, Kimball and his second wife Lillian were first relocated to Baton Rouge and then to his daughter's home in Charleston, South Carolina, where he died in exile on March 17, 2006; he was buried back in New Orleans one week afterward.
In 1927 Kimball joined Oscar Papa Celestin's Tuxedo Jazz Band as banjoist, touring and recording phonograph discs with the group. He married the band's pianist, Jeanette Salvant, and kept working the riverboats, where he began a lifelong association with clarinetist Willie Humphrey. When musical tastes shifted in the early 1930s, Kimball set aside the banjo for the more contemporary guitar and also performed on string bass in trumpeter Sidney Desvigne's large ensemble. To endure the economic hardships of the Great Depression he began a thirty-six-year career with the United States Postal Service, sorting mail during daylight hours while continuing to perform at night, frequently leading his own unit billed as Narvin Kimball's Gentlemen of Jazz. In 1945 he received a telephone call from Louis Armstrong seeking an immediate substitute for indisposed bassist Arvell Shaw; when Kimball mentioned he was recovering from a tonsillectomy, Pops answered, "You don't play the bass with your tonsils! I'll give you a drink and you'll feel fine." After the Second World War, Kimball joined Alvin Alcorn, Louis Barbarin, and Fred Minor to create the vocal quartet the Four Tones. Anyone attempting to understand Kimball's notably old-fashioned chortling in his final professional years must consider this phase of his work as well as the longer African American vocal-harmony lineage that predates jazz itself.
Throughout the 1950s Kimball directed a compact swing outfit that also performed what was then labeled Dixieland (a designation he never endorsed) at Bourbon Street venues crowded with visitors, among them the Paddock Lounge and Dixieland Hall. In 1960 he returned to the banjo and soon became a regular presence just around the corner at Preservation Hall on St. Peter Street. A charter member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band alongside his longtime friend Willie Humphrey, he traveled with the celebrated group for many years, astonishing listeners with his left-handed single-string approach and endearing them through his period vocal style; his signature number remained "Georgia on My Mind." His last appearance with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band occurred in 1999 at age ninety, after which a series of strokes concluded an exceptionally long career. In 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans, Kimball and his second wife Lillian were first relocated to Baton Rouge and then to his daughter's home in Charleston, South Carolina, where he died in exile on March 17, 2006; he was buried back in New Orleans one week afterward.
Albums