Brad Gowans

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(Front, from left :) Eddie Condon , Tony Parenti , Wild Bill Davison , Brad Gowans, (back :) Jack Lesberg and Freddie Ohms, performing at Eddie Condon's , New York, circa June 1946.
Photograph by William P. Gottlieb .

Brad Gowans (born December 3, 1903 in Billerica / Massachusetts as Arthur Bradford Gowans , † September 8, 1954 in Los Angeles ) was an American jazz musician ( trombone , valve trombone , clarinet , cornet , alto saxophone ) and arranger .

Live and act

Gowans began his career as a clarinetist and valve trombonist with the orchestras of Perley Breed, the Rhapsody Makers Band and the Tommy DeRosa's New Orleans Jazz Band . In 1926 he made his first recordings under the band name Brad Gowan's Rhapsody Makers . In the same year he took part in the recordings of Red Nichols and was employed as a cornet player with Joe Venuti , then in the Jimmy Durante Jazz Band. Between 1927 and 1929 he played with Mal Hallett and Bert Lown . In 1936 he worked temporarily outside the music scene before playing with Bobby Hackett . In 1938 he was in Boston with Frank Ward, then with Wingy Manone and again with Bobby Hackett. In 1939/40 he was a member of Bud Freeman's Summa Cum Laude Band .

After that he was one of the musicians who regularly appeared in New York's Dixieland jazz club Nick's ; 1945/46 he played in the Ray McKinley Big Band and Art Hodes ; During this time he reactivated the Original Dixieland Jazz Band , in which he played the clarinet and with which he recorded a number of records. He recorded as Brad Gowans' New York Nine in April 1946 with Billy Butterfield , Arthur Rollini , Jack Lesberg and Dave Tough in Los Angeles. He then worked with Max Kaminsky and in the Jimmy Dorsey Big Band, in 1949/50 with Nappy Lamare . After the end of the big band era, Gowans worked as a freelance musician in California and Las Vegas . During a performance with the Eddie Skrivanek Sextet, he suffered a circulatory collapse in January 1954, from which he no longer recovered; he died eight months later.

During his career he wrote arrangements for recordings of Bud Freeman and Lee Wiley . He also invented the instrument Valide , a combination of slide and valve trombone, which however did not catch on. Under his own name he recorded a total of four pages of records in 1926, 1927 and 1934; also an album for Victor Records in 1946 .

Lexical entries

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charles Delaunay : Hot discographie encyclopedique 1952 Volume 3 (El-He) . Paris, Éditions Jazz Disques, 1952.
  2. ↑ a b Scott Yanow : Portrait at Allmusic
personal data
SURNAME Gowans, Brad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gowans, Arthur Bradford (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz musician and arranger
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Billerica , ( Massachusetts )
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1954
Place of death los Angeles