Earl Watkins

Earl Thomas Watkins Jr. (born January 29, 1920 in San Francisco ; † July 1, 2007 ) was an American jazz drummer.

Live and act

Watkins father was a singer and his mother a classical pianist. As a teenager he listened to traveling bands in the Ambassador Auditorium (later the Fillmore Auditorium ). Watkins began playing professionally in Jimmy Brown's dance orchestra at the age of 17 and became a member of the musicians' union. During the Second World War he played in a band of the Kriegsmarine under the direction of Marshall Royal ( Clark Terry was also a member of the band ), initially in Chicago, then in California. After the Second World War, he stayed in his home region of San Francisco, where he also became a prominent member, initially of the racially segregated and from 1963 unified musicians' union, where he was one of the few African American on the board of directors. He has been present in public with statements on ethnic issues in San Francisco and at jazz heritage events. He also performed (after Tom Lord , however, after a recording with Earl Hines in 1963, he did not record again with the singer Susie Butler until 2005).

After the war he played in a quartet with Buddy Collette , whom he knew from his time in the Navy, and in the house band of the Slim Jenkins Club in Oakland . He played in various clubs in San Francisco (with his own trio in the Gay & Friskie Club and with the Five Knights of Rhythm in the Say When Club in the Fillmore). He played bebop in the Black Hawk (in the house band of Vernon Alley ) and with Bob Scobey (with whom he also recorded a lot) in the Dixieland Revival . This led to his most famous engagement: from 1955 he played for seven years in an all-star band of Earl Hines at Club Hangover in San Francisco. With this group he made a lot of recordings (the all-star band also played Muggsy Spanier , Pops Foster , Darnell Howard , Jimmy Archey ) and in 1957 he recorded with Muggsy Spanier and Kid Ory .

He made his first recording with the pianist Wilbert Baranco in Los Angeles in 1946 ( Wilbert Baranco and his Rhythm Bombardiers , with Dizzy Gillespie (under the pseudonym John Burk), Charles Mingus and Howard McGhee , among others ).

Web links

• Peter Vacher: Earl Watkins, The Guardian, August 3, 2007
• Jason Ankeny: Earl Watkins, All Music Guide
• Michael Slaughter: The end of an era: Earl Watkins 1920-2007, Musicians Union Local 6, 2007