Freddie Keppard

Dixieland, Musical Artist

1889 – 1933

62

Who was Freddie Keppard?

Freddie Keppard was an early jazz cornetist.

Keppard was born in the Creole of Color community of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. He grew up and worked as a shoe shine on Basin Street before he was a musician, His older brother Louis Keppard was also a professional musician. Freddie played violin, mandolin, and accordion before switching to cornet. After playing with the Olympia Orchestra he joined Frankie Dusen's Eagle Band, taking the place recently vacated by Buddy Bolden. Soon after Bolden was off the music scene, Keppard was proclaimed "King Keppard" as the city's top horn player. This was mostly because he kept Buddy's style, which was popular but had not been recorded.

About 1914 Joe "King" Oliver won a musical "cutting contest" and claimed Keppard's crown. Soon after Keppard accepted an offer to join Bill Johnson's band in Los Angeles, California.

Johnson and Keppard's band formed as the Original Creole Orchestra which toured the Vaudeville circuit, giving other parts of the USA a first taste of the music that was not yet known as "jazz". While playing a successful engagement in New York City in 1915 the band was offered a chance to record for the Victor Talking Machine Company. This would probably have been the first jazz recording. An often repeated story says that Keppard didn't want to record because then everyone else could "steal his stuff." Another well known story is that he worried so about being copied that he sometimes played with a handkerchief over his hand to conceal his fingering. The recording company offered him $25 flat fee to make a record, far less than he was earning on the vaudeville circuit. His retort to this offer, according to Lawrence Gushee, was: "Twenty-Five dollars? I drink that much gin in a day!" The reminiscences of the other members of the Creole Orchestra reveal that another factor was that the Victor representative had asked them to make a "test recording" without pay The band balked, fearing it was a ploy to have them make records without being paid.

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Born
Feb 27, 1889
New Orleans
Also known as
  • Freddy Keppard
  • Keppard, Freddie
Siblings
Ethnicity
  • African American
Nationality
  • United States of America
Profession
Died
Jul 15, 1933
Chicago

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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