Danny Barker

Danny Barker (born Daniel Moses Barker, January 13, 1909, in New Orleans; died there on March 13, 1994) was an American jazz guitarist, banjoist, singer, songwriter and author. He came from a musical family: his grandfather was the bandleader Isidore Barbarin and his uncles were the drummers Paul and Louis Barbarin. He started on clarinet and drums, moved to the ukulele and finally to the banjo, playing as a boy with the street band the Boozan Kings and touring Mississippi with Little Brother Montgomery.

In 1930 he moved to New York and switched to guitar, working with Fess Williams, Billy Fowler, Albert Nicholas, Lucky Millinder (1937–38) and Benny Carter (1938); between 1939 and 1946 he recorded frequently with Cab Calloway. After leaving Calloway he formed a group around his wife, the singer Blue Lu Barker, and on September 4, 1945 he recorded on the same session as pianist Sir Charles Thompson, Dexter Gordon and Charlie Parker.

Through the 1950s he worked as a freelance musician, recorded The Fabulous Banjo of Danny Barker for Period in 1959 and appeared at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival with Eubie Blake. In 1965 he returned to New Orleans as assistant to the curator of the New Orleans Jazz Museum.

In 1970, commissioned by Reverend Andrew Darby Jr. of Fairview Baptist Church, he founded and led the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band. The church youth band produced Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Leroy Jones, Kirk Joseph, Nicholas Payton, Shannon Powell, Lucien Barbarin and Michael White, among others, and is regarded as the forerunner of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band — in Barker’s phrase, it kept jazz alive for a generation in New Orleans.

He wrote two books on New Orleans jazz, Bourbon Street Black (1973, with Jack V. Buerkle) and the memoir A Life in Jazz (1986), and played in the city’s clubs into the 1990s; in 1991 he was named an NEA Jazz Master.

This entry adds The Fabulous Banjo of Danny Barker (1959, Period SPL 1205) and Save the Bones (1988, Orleans OR10188): the first is a Dixieland session with clarinettist Joe Muranyi, bassist Wellman Braud, pianist Don Frye and drummer Walter Johnson; the second, produced by Carlo Ditta, has Barker singing and playing guitar on standards such as St. James Infirmary and Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.

Cover photograph: Infrogmation of New Orleans, CC BY 2.5, Woldenberg Park, New Orleans, c. 1991, via Wikimedia Commons (File:DannyBarkerWoldenbergArmstrong1.jpg). Body photograph: same photographer, CC BY-SA 4.0, duet with Kermit Ruffins at the French Quarter Festival (File:Danny Barker and His Jazz Hounds – vocal duet with Kermit Ruffins – French Quarter Festival.jpg).