Biography
Born on 7 March 1908 in Islington, London, England, Nathaniel Charles Gonella died on 6 August 1998 in Gosport, Hampshire, England. A trumpeter, vocalist and band leader, Gonella stood among the foremost originators of British jazz and ranked among its most warmly regarded figures. Having acquired cornet technique and music-reading ability at school, he first earned his living in tailoring and as an errand boy before purchasing his own cornet in 1923. The following year he changed to trumpet upon joining Archie Pitt’s Busby Boys for the Gracie Fields revue A Week’s Pleasure. Throughout the four years spent touring that production and its successor Safety First, Gonella developed a lasting passion for jazz through discs such as “Wild Man Blues” and “Cushion Foot Stomp,” both showcasing the player who would shape his style most profoundly, Louis Armstrong. After departing the Busby Boys, Gonella performed in dance bands directed by Bob Dryden and Archie Alexander before Billy Cotton engaged him in 1930. Cotton’s broadcasts from the fashionable Ciro’s Club in London brought wider attention to the striking young musician who delivered trumpet and vocals in the Armstrong manner. That same year he began making records, appearing on Cotton releases including “That Rhythm Man,” “Bessie Couldn’t Help It” and “The New Tiger Rag.”
In 1931 Cotton reacted with predictable anger when his entire brass section—Gonella, Sid Buckman and Joe Ferrie—departed abruptly for the Monseigneur Band led by Roy Fox, one of the decade’s most prominent band leaders. Among the Monseigneur Restaurant’s regular visitors was the Prince of Wales, who particularly admired Gonella’s signature performance of “Georgia On My Mind.” Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell’s celebrated composition remained the musician’s lifelong theme and supplied the title for his 1985 biography. Gonella’s recording of the piece with the Fox band took place early in 1932, shortly after his distinctive treatment of the Negro spiritual “Oh! Monah!” Lew Stone, Fox’s pianist and arranger, adopted the latter number when he assumed leadership of the Monseigneur band—still featuring Gonella—following Fox’s move to the Café Anglais. Gonella continued to record with assorted groups and issued several titles such as “Rockin’ Chair” and “That’s My Home” under the pseudonym Eddie Hines. On 14 September 1932 he cut “I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me”/“I Heard,” the first disc to carry the credit “Nat Gonella and his Trumpet.” A few months earlier he had met his idol for the first time when Louis Armstrong appeared for two weeks at the London Palladium; in subsequent years the two often jammed after hours at venues such as The Nest and Bag O’ Nails.
Following engagements in the Netherlands with Ray Noble in 1933, Gonella toured Variety theatres with Stone during summer 1934 and was featured with the Georgians, a five-piece unit drawn from the larger ensemble. He also headed the bill at the Holborn Empire alongside violinist-singer Brian Lawrence and the Quaglino Quartette. In November 1934 Nat Gonella And His Georgians—comprising Albert Torrence and George Evans (alto saxophones), Don Barrigo (tenor saxophone), Harold Hood (piano), Arthur Baker (guitar), Will Hemmings (string bass) and Bob Dryden (drums)—recorded several sides for Parlophone Records, among them “Moon Glow,” “Don’t Let Your Love Go Wrong” and two “Fox Trot Medleys” that included “Dinah,” “Troublesome Trumpet” and “Georgia On My Mind.” When Nat Gonella And His Georgians, billed as “Britain’s Hottest Quintette,” launched their first theatre tour in April 1935, they combined jazz with comedy and crowd-pleasing numbers such as “Tiger Rag.” Throughout the late thirties Gonella recorded extensively—on one occasion backing George Formby on “Doh-De-Oh-Do”—and filled theatres with productions such as South American Joe, which showcased xylophone player Teddy Brown and singer Phyllis Robins. A further success arrived in 1938 with a summer season at Blackpool for King Revel, co-starring Sandy Powell and Norman Evans. After a short but fruitful visit to New York early in 1939, Gonella assembled a larger group, the New Georgians, yet with the outbreak of World War II he was enlisted in the Army and served in the Pioneer Corps and Royal Tank Regiment in North Africa.
Post-war shifts in musical taste quickly reduced his thirteen-piece ensemble to a quartet, after which Gonella performed independently at holiday camps and Variety theatres. Despite the trad-jazz revival of the late fifties and early sixties, engagements declined and he briefly worked in a bookmaker’s office. Heartened by the reception accorded his Salute To Satchmo album, he assembled the Georgia Jazz Band, which made its debut, ironically, at the Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1960. An appearance as the subject of the television programme This Is Your Life accelerated his resurgence for a period, during which he issued The Nat Gonella Story. Later in the decade, however, he again worked solo, and on one of his final recording sessions he portrayed Fagin for the Society label’s version of Lionel Bart’s hit musical Oliver! In the early seventies he returned to the Netherlands, where he recorded “Oh! Monah!,” which reached the Top 5 in the Dutch hit parade. His subsequent retirement to Gosport in Hampshire was punctuated by occasional appearances at the local jazz club, sometimes alongside his longtime friend, supporter and fellow trumpeter Digby Fairweather together with former Georgians Tiny Winters, Jim Shepherd and Pat Smuts.
During the eighties renewed interest emerged in both the man and his music. Fairweather mounted a concert tour with A Tribute To Nat Gonella, while several collections of Gonella’s work were reissued on album. In September 1994 Gosport Borough Council named an area of the town after him—Nat Gonella Square—although one jazz-loving councillor noted the illogic of placing the words “Gonella” and “Square” in the same sentence. Three years later, devotees of contemporary music heard a brief fragment of vintage Gonella when computer musician Jyoti Mishra sampled part of his trumpet introduction from the 1932 Lew Stone disc “My Woman” for the UK chart-topper “Your Woman,” released under the name White Town. Just a week before his ninetieth birthday, Gonella joined Digby Fairweather and other friends at the Pizza on the Park in London. Although he had long since ceased playing the horn, the years fell away as this inventive and influential musician delighted listeners with “Shine,” “St. James Infirmary,” “When You’re Smiling” and, inevitably, “Georgia On My Mind.”
In 1931 Cotton reacted with predictable anger when his entire brass section—Gonella, Sid Buckman and Joe Ferrie—departed abruptly for the Monseigneur Band led by Roy Fox, one of the decade’s most prominent band leaders. Among the Monseigneur Restaurant’s regular visitors was the Prince of Wales, who particularly admired Gonella’s signature performance of “Georgia On My Mind.” Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell’s celebrated composition remained the musician’s lifelong theme and supplied the title for his 1985 biography. Gonella’s recording of the piece with the Fox band took place early in 1932, shortly after his distinctive treatment of the Negro spiritual “Oh! Monah!” Lew Stone, Fox’s pianist and arranger, adopted the latter number when he assumed leadership of the Monseigneur band—still featuring Gonella—following Fox’s move to the Café Anglais. Gonella continued to record with assorted groups and issued several titles such as “Rockin’ Chair” and “That’s My Home” under the pseudonym Eddie Hines. On 14 September 1932 he cut “I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me”/“I Heard,” the first disc to carry the credit “Nat Gonella and his Trumpet.” A few months earlier he had met his idol for the first time when Louis Armstrong appeared for two weeks at the London Palladium; in subsequent years the two often jammed after hours at venues such as The Nest and Bag O’ Nails.
Following engagements in the Netherlands with Ray Noble in 1933, Gonella toured Variety theatres with Stone during summer 1934 and was featured with the Georgians, a five-piece unit drawn from the larger ensemble. He also headed the bill at the Holborn Empire alongside violinist-singer Brian Lawrence and the Quaglino Quartette. In November 1934 Nat Gonella And His Georgians—comprising Albert Torrence and George Evans (alto saxophones), Don Barrigo (tenor saxophone), Harold Hood (piano), Arthur Baker (guitar), Will Hemmings (string bass) and Bob Dryden (drums)—recorded several sides for Parlophone Records, among them “Moon Glow,” “Don’t Let Your Love Go Wrong” and two “Fox Trot Medleys” that included “Dinah,” “Troublesome Trumpet” and “Georgia On My Mind.” When Nat Gonella And His Georgians, billed as “Britain’s Hottest Quintette,” launched their first theatre tour in April 1935, they combined jazz with comedy and crowd-pleasing numbers such as “Tiger Rag.” Throughout the late thirties Gonella recorded extensively—on one occasion backing George Formby on “Doh-De-Oh-Do”—and filled theatres with productions such as South American Joe, which showcased xylophone player Teddy Brown and singer Phyllis Robins. A further success arrived in 1938 with a summer season at Blackpool for King Revel, co-starring Sandy Powell and Norman Evans. After a short but fruitful visit to New York early in 1939, Gonella assembled a larger group, the New Georgians, yet with the outbreak of World War II he was enlisted in the Army and served in the Pioneer Corps and Royal Tank Regiment in North Africa.
Post-war shifts in musical taste quickly reduced his thirteen-piece ensemble to a quartet, after which Gonella performed independently at holiday camps and Variety theatres. Despite the trad-jazz revival of the late fifties and early sixties, engagements declined and he briefly worked in a bookmaker’s office. Heartened by the reception accorded his Salute To Satchmo album, he assembled the Georgia Jazz Band, which made its debut, ironically, at the Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1960. An appearance as the subject of the television programme This Is Your Life accelerated his resurgence for a period, during which he issued The Nat Gonella Story. Later in the decade, however, he again worked solo, and on one of his final recording sessions he portrayed Fagin for the Society label’s version of Lionel Bart’s hit musical Oliver! In the early seventies he returned to the Netherlands, where he recorded “Oh! Monah!,” which reached the Top 5 in the Dutch hit parade. His subsequent retirement to Gosport in Hampshire was punctuated by occasional appearances at the local jazz club, sometimes alongside his longtime friend, supporter and fellow trumpeter Digby Fairweather together with former Georgians Tiny Winters, Jim Shepherd and Pat Smuts.
During the eighties renewed interest emerged in both the man and his music. Fairweather mounted a concert tour with A Tribute To Nat Gonella, while several collections of Gonella’s work were reissued on album. In September 1994 Gosport Borough Council named an area of the town after him—Nat Gonella Square—although one jazz-loving councillor noted the illogic of placing the words “Gonella” and “Square” in the same sentence. Three years later, devotees of contemporary music heard a brief fragment of vintage Gonella when computer musician Jyoti Mishra sampled part of his trumpet introduction from the 1932 Lew Stone disc “My Woman” for the UK chart-topper “Your Woman,” released under the name White Town. Just a week before his ninetieth birthday, Gonella joined Digby Fairweather and other friends at the Pizza on the Park in London. Although he had long since ceased playing the horn, the years fell away as this inventive and influential musician delighted listeners with “Shine,” “St. James Infirmary,” “When You’re Smiling” and, inevitably, “Georgia On My Mind.”