Lu Watters & the Yerba Buena Jazz Band is the name of the Dixieland revival band founded by Lu Watters. Notable members include singer and banjoist Clancy Hayes (from 1938 to 1940); clarinetist Bob Helm; trumpeter Bob Scobey; trombonist Turk Murphy; tubist/bassist Dick Lammi; and Watters himself. The band broke up in 1950.
In the late 1930s, cornetist Lu Watters was playing commercial dance gigs in the San Francisco area. Not satisfied with this music, he assembled a group of musicians to play traditional jazz music. His rehearsal spot was the Big Bear Lodge on Redwood Road in the Oakland hills. Rehearsing with him were trombonist Turk Murphy, trumpeter Bob Scobey, clarinetist Bob Helm, and pianist Wally Rose. His break came when the group landed a job playing at the Dawn Club on Annie Street in San Francisco. When San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen wrote a slightly disparaging piece about the band, supporters sent in many letters, creating publicity that boosted the band's popularity.
The band made several recordings for the Jazz Man label, which were issued in the UK on Melodisc, some which are:
Melodisc 1123 Original Jelly Roll Blues (Jelly Roll Morton)/ At a Georgia Camp Meeting (Mills)
Melodisc 1124 Daddy Do (Fred Longshaw) /Millenberg Joys Melodisc 1125 Muskrat Ramble (Kid Ory)/ Smokey Mokes (Holzman)
Melodisc 1126 Tiger Rag/Come Back Sweet Papa (Russell / Barbarin) Melodisc 1148 Creole Belles (Bodewalt)/ Chattanooga Stomp (King Oliver)
Melodisc 1149 Working Man Blues(King Oliver) / Big Bear Stomp (Lu Watters)
Melodisc 1150 Copenhagen (davis)/ Jazzin' Babies Blues (Jones)
Melodisc 1158 1919 Rag (arr. by Lu watters) / Ostrich Walk (Nick La Rocca) Melodisc 1170 South (Moten/Hayes)/ Richard M. Jones Blues Melodisc 1180 Friendless Blues / I'm Goin' Huntin' (Blythe/Bertrand)
Famous quotes containing the words buena, jazz and/or band:
“I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o’-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“There was a young lady called Gloria
Who was had by Sir Gerald Du Maurier
And then by six men
And Sir Gerald again
And the band of the Waldorf-Astoria.”
—Anonymous.