Peter Bocage

Peter Bocage

Peter Edwin Bocage , called Red Brown (* 4. August 1887 in Algiers , Louisiana ; † 3. December 1967 in New Orleans ) was an American jazz - cornet of early New Orleans jazz . He also played the violin and sometimes the trombone , banjo , guitar , xylophone and other instruments.

Life

Bocage was born to a well-off Creole family in Algiers (across from New Orleans on the other bank of the Mississippi ). He learned violin at the age of 13 and played first in his father's band, then in various bands in Storyville .

In 1908 he became director of the Superior Orchestra , in which he also played the violin (and Bunk Johnson cornet). In 1910 he played the violin in Frankie Dusen's “ Eagle Band ” (a marching band ) . He then taught himself to play the trumpet and in 1917 worked in the orchestra of Fate Marable on paddle steamers.

He played in many well-known bands at the time, such as the " Onward Brass Band " (with King Oliver ) and in the " Tuxedo Orchestra " of Papa Celestin (with Louis Armstrong ). From 1922 until its dissolution in the Depression in 1932, he took over the management of the " Excelsior Brass Band ". In 1923 he joined " Armand Piron's New Orleans Orchestra", with whom he briefly played in 1923 at the Cotton Club in Harlem and with whom he made 1925 and 1932 recordings.

In the late 1930s he worked for an insurance company, but played again with the start of the Dixieland Revival in the 1940s (and for a short time in 1939 in Boston with Sidney Bechet as a replacement for Bunk Johnson , who was fired by Bechet for playing wrongly ), e.g. B. in the brass band of Henry Allen senior and with the "Creole Serenaders" from the 1950s. In the 1960s he was also a member of the band in the " Preservation Hall ".

Throughout his life he did not describe himself as a jazz musician, but as a ragtime musician of the style traditionally cultivated in "Downtown" New Orleans (in the predominantly Creole district including the French Quarter of New Orleans). He rejected the "Uptown" (the more "English" part on the other side of Canal Street) by the "syncopaters" cultivated hot style of Buddy Bolden , Freddie Keppard or Bunk Johnson (whom he taught to read music) as vicious ( "Vicious").

Web links

• Bocage at Redhotjazz