Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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LEWIS, George [New Orleans]

(b George Lewis Francis Zeno, 13 July 1900, New Orleans; d there 31 December 1968) Clarinet; also alto sax. Given a toy fife at age six, he saved his money and bought a clarinet at 16, from the next year playing with local bandleaders including Kid Ory, also in brass marching bands. Played in Evan Thomas's band with Bunk Johnson when Thomas was murdered on the bandstand '32; was rediscovered a few years later with Johnson and played on his records.

The same critics who were sure that Johnson was past his prime said that Lewis was no better, but in fact they were not playing New Orleans music c.1920 but the New Orleans music of the 1940s, which was not what the mouldy figs wanted. He made his best recordings in the mid-'40s; his style was based on arpeggios, but he was always going somewhere, and his irregular phrase lengths were interesting. Three CDs of George Lewis And His Ragtime Jazz Band in concert '54 from Ohio State U. originally on a Disc Jockey label were later on American Music (in the ten-CD 'Oxford' series, apart from several other Lewis sets); Lewis told William E. Jaynes on that occasion that he preferred an unrehearsed, ragged sound: the band started playing without tuning up, doing it as they went along.

Lewis's warm vibrato was much loved around the world: he worked mostly in New Orleans but at Hangover Club in San Francisco with Lizzie Miles '52 etc, also toured Europe and Japan, working until '68 despite ill health. He appeared in a scene for New Orleans '46 but it was cut from the finished film. Call Him George by Jay Allison Stuart was published '61, George Lewis by Tom Bethell '77. An astonishing number of albums were still listed in Schwann '96 on Good Time Jazz, Delmark, Jazzology, Biograph, Storyville; Mosaic issued The Complete George Lewis On Blue Note on both LP and CD, the limited editions soon sold out. Listings in catalogues often muddle this George Lewis with the modern trombonist of the same name (below).