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Home , 2 Guitars, Allan Reuss, Bee Palmer, Big Bill Broonzy, Carl Kress, Dick McDonough

©Copyright by Kathryn Damaris Hobgood, 2013 All Rights Reserved

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to my Tulane University advising committee, John Baron, John Joyce, and Matt Sakakeeny; and to the friendly Newcomb Department of Music staff, Diane Banfell, Michael Batt, and Kathleen Crago. Thank you to the wonderful staff at the Hogan Archives, Bruce Raeburn, Lynn Abbott, and Nicole Shibatta; and to my friends at the State Museum, Greg Lambousy, Beth Sherwood, and Arthur Smith.

Thank you to the National Film Preservation Foundation.

This study would not have been possible without the patient guidance of John Rankin and Chip Henderson. I am grateful.

Joe Holland, Don Peterson, Claude Blanchard, Jr., Claudia Lee, Kay Kelly, Sam Brylawski, Jürgen Schwab, and Doug Pomeroy have been invaluable resources.

So many others have encouraged me with their interest and given me great boosts in countless ways. The guitarists Leo Kottke, , Lloyd Wells, , Frank Federico, and Marty Grosz have all been inspirational; special thanks to my buddy Steve Howell for lighting the match. Banjoists Jody Stecher and Steve Baughman, and guitarists John Stropes and Marshall Newman, your advice has been so helpful.

Thank you to Mike Peters, Michael Brooks, Guy Van Duser, Tony Russell, Scott Black, Tad and Nancy Kivett, Sue Fischer, David McCain, Karl Koenig, Vince Giordano, George Schmidt, Jack Stewart, Justin Winston, Les Muscutt, Cliff Ocheltree, Don Marquis, George Buck, Charles Chamberlain, Allen Boudreaux, Bob Cassady, Tom Morgan, Dave Raudlaur, Cary Ginnell, Dave Sager, Richard Raichelson, Bill Trumbauer, John Brown, Wiley Hunt, Sara Berensen, Wynona Pollack Mitchell, John Colianni, Rob Hudak, David Garrick, Eric Brock, Joey Kent, and Chris Brown.

Special thanks to Sally Asher, John Haffner, and Tom Stagg for the road trips and for cheering me on; to Adrienne Daly for helping me with the soup; and to the Quinn family, especially Foots, for the family resources, the adventures, and the kinship.

To Mom, Dad, and my husband David Ray: thanks for having faith in me, and for giving me all the love and support I could ever need.

For Eddie.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... ii LIST OF FIGURES ...... iv CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION...... 1 Review of Literature ...... 4 Materials on Snoozer Quinn...... 4 Materials on Jazz History...... 7 Significance of the Present Study...... 13 II. THE GUITAR’S EMERGENCE IN EARLY JAZZ...... 17 III. MUSICAL ANALYSIS...... 28 The Recordings...... 28 “Pea Pickin’ Papa”...... 32 “Out of Nowhere”...... 35 “” ...... 42 Roots of Fingerstyle ...... 46 Film Footage of Snoozer Quinn ...... 49 Implications ...... 54 IV. BIOGRAPHY...... 58 A Music-Filled Childhood in Bogalusa, Louisiana ...... 58 Blanchard’s Orchestra ...... 68 Paul English Players ...... 71 Texas Territory Work ...... 73 , “”...... 81 An Itinerant Career and a Retreat from the Spotlight...... 90 V. CONCLUSION...... 102 APPENDIX 1. Chip Henderson’s Performance Notes and Biography...... 105 2. Concert Transcription of “Out of Nowhere” ...... 107 3. Jürgen Schwab’s Transcription of “Georgia On My Mind”...... 110 BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 111

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Snoozer Quinn with L-5, c. 1927...... 21 Figure 2. Discographical entry for the Jimmie Davis recording session of ...... 29 May 26-28, 1931 for Victor Records. Figure 3. Discographical entry for the Quinn/Wiggs hospital recording...... 30 session of 1948-1949, as released by Fat Cat Jazz Records. Figure 4. “Pea Pickin’ Papa” as performed by Snoozer Quinn, transcribed...... 32 by Chip Henderson. Figure 5. “Out of Nowhere” original melodic line transcribed by Chip ...... 36 Henderson. Figure 6. “Out of Nowhere” embellished melodic line as performed by...... 36 Snoozer Quinn, transcribed by Chip Henderson. Figure 7. Bar 3-4 of “Out of Nowhere” as performed by Snoozer Quinn, ...... 37 transcribed by Chip Henderson. Figure 8. First two verses of “Out of Nowhere” as performed by Snoozer ...... 38 Quinn, transcribed by Chip Henderson, transposed into the key of G. Figure 9. Quinn’s performance of “Georgia On My Mind” transcribed by...... 42 Jürgen Schwab (recreated by Chip Henderson). Figure 10. Top: Quinn in the open chord position. Bottom: Quinn using ...... 51 moveable chords. Figure 11. Eddie Quinn in the 1924 Bogalusa High School Orchestra...... 63 Figure 12. Eddie Quinn in 1924...... 65 Figure 13. Eddie Quinn served as business manager for the high school ...... 66 football team in 1924. Figure 14. Mart Britt’s Sylvan Beach Orchestra of 1928 ...... 80 Figure 15. and Snoozer Quinn in Shreveport, La...... 96 Figure 16. Appendix: First two verses of “Out of Nowhere” as performed ...... 107 by Snoozer Quinn, transcribed by Chip Henderson, concert key of E-flat. Figure 17. Appendix: Quinn’s performance of “Georgia On My Mind” ...... 110 exactly as transcribed by Jürgen Schwab (with finger charts).

iv 1

CHAPTER I:

INTRODUCTION

Eddie “Snoozer” Quinn (1907-1949) was a pioneer of jazz guitar from Bogalusa,

Louisiana. Overlooked in the majority of jazz anthologies and merely footnoted in most guitar history books, nevertheless the sparse information known about Quinn has passed through generations of serious guitar players like mythology, so much so that the great and inventor Les Paul, in his youth, sought Quinn out for consultation. “The only boy alive who has it on , I believe,” wrote the saxophonist Frankie

Trumbauer in his diary on the night he met Quinn.1 Quinn’s fabled abilities have only grown more mysterious with the passage of time; that modern day guitarists of the caliber of Leo Kottke have continued to pursue information about Quinn’s mythic abilities speaks volumes about how his talent impressed.2

What is known about Quinn is that for a brief period of time he performed with some of the biggest names in early jazz—such as Louis Armstrong, ,

Jack Teagarden, Paul Whiteman, and . It is documented that on April

30, 1948, Quinn was inducted into the National Jazz Foundation in ,3 where he shared top billing with Louis Armstrong and Stella Oliver, widow of Joe “King”

Oliver, demonstrating that in his day in New Orleans—the widely acknowledged

1 Philip Evans and Larry Kiner, Tram: The Frank Trumbauer Story (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994), 582. 2 Mark Hanson, “Leo Kottke: Fingerstyle Visionary Learns From Tradition,” Frets Magazine, May 1987. 3 National Jazz Foundation induction letter written to Quinn by NFJ President John Lester, April 30, 1948, courtesy Louisiana State Museum.

2 birthplace of jazz—Quinn was regarded as an important figure of jazz.4 New Orleans banjoist and guitarist considered Quinn “the best of all time.”5

Anecdotes of Quinn paint a vivid picture of an unusual man and an even more unusual guitarist. Slightly deformed from birth, Quinn had an egg-shaped head and was blind in one eye, and these characteristics certainly add to his mystique. But it was

Quinn’s astonishing musical ability that was most unforgettable to those who heard him play. Multiple accounts attest that Quinn could play several parts on a guitar at once, and do it playing with one hand. The hillbilly singer (and Louisiana Governor) Jimmie Davis, whom Snoozer accompanied on a 1931 recording session for Victor, recalled, “The last time I saw [Quinn], he was walking down the streets of Baton Rouge, playing the “Tiger

Rag”—had the guitar on his back, playing it back behind him, see.”6 Although he shunned the spotlight by turning down repeated offers from famous bandleaders after his experience with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Quinn’s reputation has endured through the years.

What Quinn was capable of in his prime, and just what role he had in the evolution of jazz guitar as a solo instrument, has only been speculated about by guitar buffs and jazz historians for decades. Shortly after Quinn joined the Whiteman Orchestra in 1928, he quit, and soon disappeared from the national jazz scene. Quiet and shy, Quinn struggled with alcoholism and suffered from chronic illness from an early age, and began entering sanitariums for extended periods of time before he turned 30 years old. Due to all these factors, Quinn lived in relative obscurity for many years until his death of

4 “NFJ Sponsors Louis Concert,” Down Beat, May 5, 1948, 2. 5 John Logue, “Jazz New Orleans Style,” Southern Living, May 1968, 45. 6 Jimmie Davis, interview by Ronnie F. Pugh, October 10, 1983, transcription, Frist Library and Archive of the Hall of Fame and Museum.

3 tuberculosis at age 42. Lack of information about his life has prevented extensive biography. Adding to the problem of evaluating his legacy, solo recordings Quinn made for Victor Records were never released to the public and have been lost, as has a

Columbia session with Bix Beiderbecke and . Because there are no clear recordings of Quinn playing in the jazz style in his prime, there has not been extensive analysis of his technique.

What was Quinn playing in the that so captivated and impressed his fellow jazz musicians, yet was deemed unsalable to the public by record company executives?

What was it about Quinn’s musicianship that made Paul Whiteman hire him on the spot, yet prevented Whiteman from featuring him in the band or on recordings? Most importantly, what was it about Quinn’s style that thrilled, yet that defied description by his fellow musicians?

This study seeks to answer these puzzling questions, by providing musical analysis of Snoozer Quinn’s unique guitar style and technique. Although there are no clear recordings of Quinn in his prime to work from, fortunately, in 1948 or 1949, the cornetist and New Orleans educator Johnny Wiggs recorded Quinn on an acetate cutting machine inside the tuberculosis ward at a hospital in New Orleans. Though Quinn was gravely ill at the time of the recordings (he died within months, perhaps weeks, of the session), the recordings offer insight into his musicality and style. In addition, silent film footage featuring Quinn playing the guitar in 1932 has recently been recovered. Shot by the jazz musician and photographer Charles Peterson, the film provides visual evidence of Quinn’s technique when he was in his prime. Using these resources, as well as the commentary of other musicians, this study will clarify Snoozer Quinn’s place in jazz

4 history beyond that of a fabled figure among the pioneers of jazz guitar.

Review of Literature

Materials on Snoozer Quinn

Quinn has been discussed briefly in biographies of other musicians such as Paul

Whiteman, Bix Beiderbecke, and Frank Trumbauer, usually to mention his ancillary role in the Whiteman Orchestra or to speculate about his presence on certain recordings.

While brief references to Quinn can be found in some music encyclopedias and general histories of jazz, entries tend to recycle the same scant biographical information. The bulk of material we have on Quinn can be attributed to Johnny Wiggs, Snoozer’s friend and former band-mate.

In 1948, Johnny Wiggs wrote “Snoozer Quinn: Musician’s Musician” for the

Jazzfinder, a periodical published by Orin Blackstone of New Orleans. Wiggs wrote the piece in the final months of Quinn’s convalescence in a New Orleans hospital. The article touches upon the highlights of Quinn’s career.7 Soon after this article was written, sometime between April 1948 and April 1949, Wiggs recorded Quinn in the hospital’s nursing station. These recordings are the most important audio legacy of Quinn known to exist. Wiggs released four of the recorded songs in 1952 on his own label. In 1969, twelve recordings from the session were released as an LP record album, “The Legendary

Snoozer Quinn,” by Fat Cat Records. Liner notes for the album were written in casual, boosting prose. “This is a Snoozer Quinn LP,” wrote New Orleans history buff and author Al Rose. “Musically, to a follower of authentic jazz, that's roughly the equivalent

7 Johnny Wiggs, the New Orleans cornetist and educator, figures prominently in Quinn’s legacy in many ways. His accounts of Quinn serve as the foundation for subsequently published works.

5 of telling Van Cliburn that you've found a Franz Liszt roll.”8 In 1970, G.W. Kay published an interview with Wiggs in called “The Legendary ‘Snoozer’

Quinn,” in which Wiggs talked about the experience of recording Quinn in the hospital.9

These Wiggs interviews and articles and the Al Rose LP liner notes serve as the basis for most everything that has been written on Quinn since.10 Wiggs’ prose tended to be overly sentimental and effusive and his style was more memoir than academic; however, were it not for his efforts all those years ago, Quinn’s story would have long been forgotten.11

In more recent years, a few scholars of music history have attempted to bring

Quinn to light. Tor Magnusson and Don Peak published discographical research in 1992 called “The Recordings of Snoozer Quinn, Legendary Guitar Player.” Written for The

Jazz Archivist, the authors address Quinn's recording career, covering possible sessions with Frank Trumbauer, Bix Beiderbecke, , , Tommy Weir, and

Jimmie Davis, as well as the hospital session with Johnny Wiggs. They also discuss elusive recording sessions from which sides have never been located. However,

Magnusson and Peak do not offer musical analysis of Quinn’s sound on any of these recordings.

In Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, Richard

Sudhalter devotes several pages to Quinn’s time with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra.

8 Al Rose, Liner Notes, The Legendary Snoozer Quinn with Johnny Wiggs, Fat Cat Records, 1969, LP. 9 Later that year, G.W. Kay would reuse sections of the same interview in “The Johnny Wiggs Story" written for the Jazz Journal. 10 Incorrect years of birth and death for Quinn were printed on the LP and have been widely disseminated. Quinn lived from 1907 to 1949 (not 1906 to 1952). In addition to the above mentioned published interviews and liner notes, William Russell extensively interviewed Wiggs about Snoozer Quinn. These are part of the oral history collection housed in the Hogan Jazz Archives at Tulane University. In 1994, New Orleans Style was published by Jazzology Press of New Orleans and includes excerpts from these interviews. All serve as additional resources for this study. 11 Perhaps it was Wiggs who annoyed two English writers named Charles Wareing and George Garlick in his effusive praise for Quinn and the importance of New Orleans in jazz history. Of Quinn and the fabled cornet player Emmett Hardy, they wrote in Bugles for Beiderbecke, “Their very distance from the main-stream of jazz rendered the acquisition of a legendary greatness not hard to come by.”

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Sudhalter’s most original passages on Quinn have to do with the hazy confusion surrounding Quinn’s discography (“Was it Eddie Lang or Snoozer Quinn on records made by Whiteman and Trumbauer units of early 1929?”). Sudhalter explores the issues presented by discographers and chroniclers on both sides of the fence, and compares their passion and intensity regarding the issue to “Talmudic disputations.”12 Furthermore,

Sudhalter includes discussions on the musicality of Quinn as compared to other guitarists, including Lang, , Lonnie Johnson, and Teddy Bunn. Sudhalter also interviews

Les Paul, who said that he tracked Quinn down in Louisiana to hear him play.

Smaller in scope, but worth mentioning, are the contributions of Jas Obrecht and

Tony Russell. Obrecht wrote two brief magazine articles about Quinn, for Frets

Magazine in 1987 and again for Guitar Player in 1998, that summarized his career.13 His articles for these popular magazines served to inform modern day guitarists about their predecessors and have likely led many young players in search of more information about

Quinn. In 1988, the English historian Tony Russell wrote about Quinn in liner notes for

Nobody's Darling But Mine: 1928-1937, a set of Jimmie Davis reissues by Bear Family

Records. Because Quinn played on some of the recordings, Russell included a biography on Quinn. “The esteem in which [Quinn] was held by those who knew him has not impressed the historians of jazz,” wrote Russell, “and this short account of his life is offered partly to compensate for his exclusion from all the standard jazz reference works.”14 Russell also wrote some colorful commentary about Quinn’s country

12 Richard M. Sudhalter, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), 530. 13 Obrecht includes an interview with guitarist Les Paul about Quinn, which offered great insight and led to this researcher to conduct a follow up interview with Paul. 14 Tony Russell, Liner Notes, Nobody's Darling But Mine: 1928-1937, Bear Family Records, 1988, compact disc.

7 technique backing the hillbilly singer’s vocals, but he does not speculate about Quinn’s jazz technique. This is the extent of materials that have been published on Quinn, exclusive of entries in larger works of jazz guitar history that are discussed below.

Materials on Jazz Guitar History

Reviewing the body of work of jazz guitar history is important not only to see how Snoozer Quinn has been represented, but also to show that an important branch of jazz guitar history has largely been underexplored—that of “solo jazz guitar.” The distinction between “jazz ” and “solo jazz guitar” is crucial to understanding the argument of this thesis. A “jazz guitar solo” features the guitarist improvising on the melody while other instrumentalists play the rhythm and for a duration of time.

In “solo jazz guitar” the guitarist plays and improvises on the melody and provides his own rhythmic and harmonic accompaniment. In the book Solo Jazz Guitar, Alan De

Mause defines the idiom as “….music which stands by itself, and rather than being unaccompanied, it is self-accompanied….a style which is complete; missing no essential part. Their [sic] solos are total, whole, and self-supported.” 15 De Mause’s book was published in 1981 and he was among the earliest to define the idiom, but as shall be demonstrated in this study on Quinn, the roots of solo jazz guitar go back much further.

It seems that scholarship in jazz guitar history in general has been somewhat neglected, as evidenced by the relatively small available body of work. Countless books have been written on the history of jazz, but only a very few focus exclusively on the guitar—and scholars within the field have articulated their frustrations. Maurice

Summerfield, in the introduction to The Jazz Guitar: Its Evolution and Its Players (first

15 Alan De Mause, Solo Jazz Guitar (Pacific, MO: Mel Bay Publications, Inc., 1981), 4.

8 version published in 1978), wrote: “For over twenty years I have waited for someone to produce a book which comprehensively covers the subject of the jazz guitar.”16

Summerfield finally decided to write the book himself, and he set about creating an encyclopedia-like listing of hundreds of jazz guitarists since 1900. Summerfield establishes the first three jazz guitar soloists to be Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson, and

Snoozer Quinn. But while he describes the soloing styles of Lang and Johnson, he is not able to offer any information on Quinn’s style: “The only other guitarist of note of the late twenties was Snoozer Quinn. He had a fine reputation amongst jazzmen in the New

York area but due to illness and other reasons never achieved lasting fame.”17

A few years later, James Sallis in his introduction to Jazz : An Anthology complained that “there is no acceptable book on jazz guitar.”18 At that time (1984), Sallis considered both Summerfield’s book and Jazz Guitarists, Collected Interviews From

Guitar Player Magazine19 the leading options, but he described Summerfield’s as “more celebratory than useful.”20 Sallis himself had published (in 1982) The Guitar Players:

One Instrument and Its Masters in American Music—a series of essays on fourteen key players in blues, jazz, country, and rock—but he does not purport either book to be a comprehensive history. In Jazz Guitars Sallis compiled previously published essays and incorporated a few new ones by other writers to recreate his own “voyage of discovery into the contiguous worlds of jazz and guitar.”21 Sallis’ observation on Quinn in Jazz

16 Maurice Summerfield, The Jazz Guitar: Its Evolution and Its Players (Gateshead, Eng.: Ashley Mark, 1980), 9. 17 Ibid., 14. 18 James Sallis, introduction to Jazz Guitars: An Anthology (New York, NY: Quill, 1984), 10. 19 This literature review does not include Jazz Guitarists, Collected Interviews From Guitar Player Magazine, Joe Barth’s Voices in Jazz Guitar, or Charles Chapman’s Interviews with the Jazz Greats and More, three collections of interviews with jazz guitarists. They are included in the Bibliography. 20 Sallis, introduction to Jazz Guitars, 11. 21 Ibid., 10.

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Guitars is limited to a single sentence that begins, “Here’s my list of great jazz guitarists no one’s ever heard of….”22

When Sallis bemoaned the lack of a comprehensive history, he probably had not yet read The History of the Guitar in Jazz by Norman Mongan, which was first published in 1983.23 In his book, Mongan incorporated in-depth first-person accounts (where available) of the players in chronological order, relying on previously published interviews, autobiographies, and other accounts to enrich his narrative. Mongan’s commitment to depth is evident from the beginning, where he discusses the contributions of blues players to jazz and expands upon the accomplishments of players and rhythm guitarists of the 1920s, before introducing the earliest jazz soloists. Mongan discusses Johnson’s and Lang’s innovative soloing styles at length. He says that Lonnie

Johnson “showed, for probably the first time ever, guitar solos that had melodic continuity and harmonic interest that took them far beyond the simple rhythmic backings of early jazz.”24 Lang, who mixed solid rhythm and creative single string solos, “was completely original in his use of quarter tones, chord harmonics and arpeggios in solo passages….He singlehandedly created an important role for the guitar in small jazz groups.”25

Mongan then follows with a chapter called “Jazz Guitar: Three Neglected

Pioneers” (featuring Snoozer Quinn, Teddy Bunn, and Oscar Aleman) that can be

22 Sallis, Jazz Guitars, 141. 23 However, in The Guitar Players Sallis cited an article written by Mongan that appeared in the Winter 1981 issue of the Oak Report. This article, “Jazz Guitar: Three Neglected Pioneers” (pages 14-17 in the magazine), ultimately served as its own chapter in Mongan’s book, as will be seen. Sallis relied heavily on Mongan’s discussion of Quinn for a short summary paragraph in The Guitar Players. 24 Norman Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz (New York, NY: Oak Publications, 1983), 23. 25 Ibid., 28-29.

10 considered one of the more significant resources on Quinn that is widely available.26

Mongan included not just the standard brief biographical information on Quinn, but also described the music from Quinn’s hospital recordings of 1948. Mongan, of all writers, came the closest to establishing what it was that made Quinn so unique:

He can be situated between the first primitive blues singers/guitarists, and the early jazz soloists, Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang. Snoozer, who also sang and played fiddle, used the guitar in an orchestral sense, with a constant rolling bass rhythm, chords on the middle strings, and melody on the top. But he was also familiar with the more linear developments of the single-string style that Johnson and Lang propagated.27

Mongan described Quinn’s style as being orchestral, but he does not associate Quinn with solo jazz guitar. Mongan does not anticipate this branch until much later, in a chapter called “Jazz and Classic Guitar,” when he discusses how players such as

Laurindo Almeida and Bill Harris carried over fingerstyle techniques to jazz in the late

1940s and . (In The Guitar Players, Sallis interpreted Mongan’s analysis and, although he only included one paragraph on Quinn, perspicaciously suggested a similarity between Quinn’s orchestral style and the styles of and Lenny

Breau, two notable solo jazz guitarists.28)

The most recent significant work on jazz guitar history was published in 1999.

Masters of Jazz Guitar: The Story of the Players and Their Music, edited by Charles

Alexander, features a series of brief articles by numerous contributors that are arranged

(more or less) in chronological order as jazz developed. The book includes information on some of the early pioneers with a brief reference to Quinn as “another ‘what-if’

26 Bunn and Aleman, most often associated with 1930s jazz, would both serve as excellent studies. Bunn came from tradition and had a unique single-string solo technique using just the thumb. Aleman, a native of Argentina, discovered jazz in the 1930s and spent much of his early career in Europe, where he developed a style comparable to that of ’s. 27 Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz, 38. 28 James Sallis, The Guitar Players: One Instrument and Its Masters in American Music (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 43.

11 story.”29 There is nothing about Quinn’s style, except for a single sentence: “Reputable judges said that if he had chosen to make more of his gift, he would have rivalled

Lang.”30

All of these publications share the narrative that jazz guitar can be traced naturally to blues guitar, but that it took considerable refinement of instrumental technique and harmonic and melodic expansion to make the blues become jazz. Lonnie Johnson is generally considered “the first bluesman to come into contact with the jazz world,”31

Eddie Lang is credited as the first to begin “an investigation of the instrument’s harmonic potential,”32 and Snoozer Quinn is widely acknowledged to be there with them as one of the three soloists to emerge in the 1920s—but how he diverged, no historian has ventured to explain.

That is, except for the German scholar Jürgen Schwab, who in 1998 published a doctoral dissertation called Die Gitarre im Jazz. Zur stilistischen Entwicklung von den

Anfängen bis 1960 (The guitar in jazz. On the stylistic development from the beginnings to 1960). In the text of this obscure publication, available only in the German language,

Schwab provides the most ambitious attempt to understanding Quinn’s technique.

Schwab explains how Quinn could have achieved the two-guitar effect by accompanying his own lead lines with rhythm, using as an example a transcription of the first 32 bars of

“Georgia On My Mind” as recorded by Quinn and Wiggs in the hospital. Schwab, working with little information beyond the 1948 recordings and a photograph, ventures guesses as to how Quinn played fingerstyle and his conclusions show remarkable insight.

29 Tony Russell, “The Guitar Breaks Through,” in Masters of Jazz Guitar: The Story of the Players and Their Music, ed. Charles Alexander (London, Eng.: Balafon Books, 1999), 9. 30 Ibid. 31 Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz, 21. 32 Sallis, Jazz Guitars, 81.

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The common narrative among histories of jazz is that over the 1920s and 1930s, the guitar was mainly used as a rhythm instrument in jazz ensembles but that jazz guitarists continued to develop soloing techniques. The emergence of the chord melody style33 by players such as Carl Kress, Dick McDonough, and George Van Eps showed off the great harmonic potential of the guitar. However, this trend was surpassed by the emergence of the and amplified single-note soloing.

Whereas solo guitar styles made great strides in other fields such as folk, country, and, of course, classical, fingerpicking was doomed to fall by the wayside in the era. The era of electric, linear, single-note solos, too, waylaid the advent of solo jazz guitar. Perhaps the idea that in the era of early jazz a player would have developed a solo jazz guitar technique was too unlikely for historians to consider, because the roots of its genesis are not followed back any further than the late 1940s. That’s when innovative

South American artists applied classical guitar techniques to jazz music, and represented the possibilities of back to American musicians. Also in the late 1940s, after spending eight years studying classical guitar, George Van Eps began to pursue fingerstyle in jazz.34 In 1956, the classical guitarist Bill Harris crossed over to record “the first unaccompanied jazz guitar album ever,” wrote Mongan.35

That claim to fame would have belonged to Quinn, had Victor released the solo jazz guitar recordings he made nearly thirty years earlier. The collective literature points to solo jazz guitar becoming donnée only in the 1970s. “The trend toward solo jazz guitar

33 Also referred to as the “acoustic chordal style” and sometimes “block chord soloing” in literature. In this style of soloing, the guitarist plays the melody within the chord progressions, using double stops or triads instead of a single note to carry the melody, giving the solo more volume and heft. 34 Richard Lieberson, “Swing Guitar: The Acoustic Chordal Style” in Jazz Guitars: An Anthology, ed. James Sallis (New York, NY: Quill, 1984), 180. 35 Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz, 149.

13 culminated in the late seventies with several widely varied albums,” wrote Howard

Morgen in “The Fingerstyle Jazz Revolution,” referring to albums by , Ted

Greene, Jimmy Wyble, , and Egberto Gismonti.36 According to the writer

John Fordham, it was who “broke the mould” for solo jazz guitar; he developed a groundbreaking style “that permitted melody, and to be played simultaneously.”37 Summerfield wrote of Joe Pass, “Today he has evolved an incredible and individual technique that allows him to play concerts totally on his own.”38 As will be shown, these descriptions could apply to Quinn.

Significance of the Present Study

The sophisticated, polished sound of a Joe Pass solo certainly is far removed from the bluesy, droning swing of a Snoozer Quinn performance. But there is no doubt that

Quinn was trying to develop back then what impresses people about more modern players such as Joe Pass, Lenny Breau, and Ralph Towner today—a technique that allowed him to play melody, harmony, and bass on the guitar at once, that demonstrated the full capabilities of the instrument and allowed him to play unaccompanied jazz.

While an examination of the literature reveals that Quinn’s place in the established narrative of jazz guitar history is somewhat murky, it also reveals that a fruitful path of scholarship has been neglected through the years: the genesis of solo jazz guitar. A few scholars examined the first recorded jazz guitar solos, but the evolution of solo jazz guitar has yet to be systematically explored. This study will argue that in the

36 Howard Morgen, “The Fingerstyle Jazz Revolution,” in Jazz Guitars: An Anthology, ed. James Sallis (New York, NY: Quill, 1984), 213. 37 John Fordham, “Joe Pass,” in Masters of Jazz Guitar: The Story of the Players and Their Music, ed. Charles Alexander (London, Eng.: Balafon Books, 1999), 82. 38 Summerfield, The Jazz Guitar, 21.

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1920s and 1930s, Snoozer Quinn was pioneering a style ahead of its time, that he was the progenitor of solo jazz guitar.

In order to conduct a musical analysis of Quinn's guitar technique, film and sound recordings have been used. Silent film footage recently found, restored, and digitized with a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation39 features Quinn in his prime (at about age 25) and has been used to describe the mechanics of Quinn’s left and right hand motions. Though only one minute in length, this rare artifact is invaluable evidence of Quinn's technique. Quinn’s guitar work on his end-of-life hospital recordings of 1948 or 1949 and on the 1931 recordings with hillbilly singer Jimmie Davis, which are of very good audio quality, are used to further illustrate Quinn’s technique and style and define him as a solo . Several modern-day jazz guitarists and banjoists were consulted for commentary throughout the creation of this work, especially John Rankin and Chip Henderson, who transcribed Snoozer’s recordings. Both offered detailed analysis of Snoozer’s technique and helped me to really hear Snoozer Quinn. Their input and patient guidance has been invaluable.

Supplementing the film and audio footage are descriptions of Quinn’s musical abilities by his contemporaries, accessed in the oral history collection housed at the

Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University, and from interviews and essays in published works. Their comments reinforce that Quinn was pursuing a solo jazz guitar style in the

1920s and 1930s.

Additionally, this study will offer a partial history of Quinn’s life based on

39 Grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation was awarded to Kathryn Hobgood Ray and the Louisiana State Museum in 2010. The film was made in 1932 with a Bell & Howell 16mm silent camera by Charles Peterson, the guitarist and banjoist of the 1920s and 1930s who performed with, among other groups, Rudy Vallee’s Connecticut Yankees, and who later become well-known as a jazz photographer.

15 resources such as family records, newspaper articles, government documents, and oral histories, addressing his life from childhood through the peak years of his career.

Knowledge of Quinn’s career experiences will give the reader insight into the challenges he faced as an artist ahead of his time. Context on the history and culture of Bogalusa,

Louisiana, where Snoozer grew up, will offer the reader information on where his musical style developed.

Primary resources were used to gather details about the chronology of events in

Quinn's life. The Hogan Jazz Archive, which has records from the Local 174 chapter of

American Federation of Musicians located in New Orleans, has been particularly useful in building Quinn's biography. AF of M meeting minutes, financial records, the Prelude newsletter, and other documents definitively place Quinn in New Orleans or in the region on certain dates, and help to paint a picture of the era in which he was working. Other resources include Victor recording session ledgers, Louisiana and Texas newspapers, and government documents such as census records, Quinn’s passport, and his death certificate. My research concentrated on the years spanning 1920-1935, the years when

Quinn was growing up and most actively performing.

Helpful in fleshing out Quinn’s biography were interviews with Alton “Foots”

Quinn, Snoozer’s younger brother, conducted by Bogalusa newspaper writer Al Hansen in 1976. Alton Quinn’s comments on Snoozer appear in an eight-part series called

“Snoozer’s Song” that ran in the June 1-9, 1976 editions of the Bogalusa Daily News.

These, combined with numerous recollections of other family members, friends, and fellow musicians, found in interviews from magazines and newspapers and the oral history collection at Tulane, as well as original interviews conducted by this researcher,

16 offer valuable insight on Quinn’s personality, musical influences, and career choices.

While it will be apparent that poor health, a retiring nature, and a tendency to avoid the spotlight were all factors in Quinn's elusivity, so, too, was the very thing that made him great.

While this is Quinn’s story, it could also be read as a story of the guitar in jazz.

From technical issues to perception issues, the musical challenges that Quinn faced were shared by all of the early guitarists who were forging for themselves a bigger role in the world of jazz. However, Quinn’s unique solo jazz guitar style, it will be demonstrated, was too far ahead of its time for him to overcome those challenges.

17

CHAPTER II:

THE GUITAR’S EMERGENCE IN EARLY JAZZ

In the years in which Quinn was living, from the 1910s to the 1940s, jazz underwent several stylistic shifts as tastes changed and rapid technological advancements in recording and guitar making occurred. The role of the guitar in the jazz orchestra went from nearly inaudible rhythmic accompaniment to becoming an amplified featured instrument. This very limited overview of early jazz guitar history, which touches on the successive phases of jazz guitar’s evolution until the era of amplification, will facilitate understanding of the rarity of Quinn’s abilities during his time.

When Quinn, still a child, began performing professionally in the late 1910s, jazz as a musical style was only just coming to the forefront of popular recognition. The earliest jazz bands—the pioneers from around 1880 to 1915 who were evolving the style—thought of themselves as dance bands. But their evolving sound was gaining recognition as a distinct musical genre; “jass,” as it was sometimes referred to, was scandalizing certain segments of society with its wildness and growing in popularity with others. The music historian John J. Joyce wrote about the adoption of the term “jazz” by

New Orleans-area musicians in an article for The Jazz Archivist:

....the term “jazz,” it seems, was not used by New Orleans bandsmen until 1913 or 1914, about the time New Orleans bands began regular tours of the North. The term is conspicuously absent from the names of local bands before this time, and thereafter it is found only intermittently, even among the bands active in early “jazz” recordings….It seems likely that such terms, like “jazz” itself, were belated appendages to New Orleans band

18

names for purposes of promotion abroad....Much more common were the simple designations “orchestra” or “band” (with no apparent distinction between these), preceded by either the leader's name or by some word symbolic of perfection.... 1

Quinn was just on the tail end of this generation of pioneering jazz musicians. In

1920, twelve-year old Quinn was in a band alternately called “Blanchard’s Orchestra” and “Blanchard's Kings of Syncopation” that played music for dances in the small towns on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans. By July of 1921 the band had changed its name to “Blanchard's Jazz Hounds”2 to accommodate the popular name for their sound and to ride the wave of public zeal for the exciting new music. The lineup of

Blanchard’s Orchestra in 1920 included Claude Blanchard, Inez Blanchard, Newell

Tilton, and Eddie Quinn.3 In these years Quinn was known primarily as a fiddler and a banjoist, but he also played guitar.

It is often assumed that the configuration of the early had a prescribed instrumentation, but as Joyce wrote, the make-up and ensemble size of these bands were diverse and defied definition:

A common stereotype of New Orleans jazz is of a standard “” band comprising a (or cornet), , trombone, piano, banjo, tuba (or string bass) and drums. While this combination is the norm for traditional jazz bands today, photographs of New Orleans bands from the early jazz era reveal anything but a fixed instrumentation.4

The photos discussed by Joyce are some of the earliest known jazz photographs and offer

“visual evidence of the importance of the string band in the genesis of the early jazz

1 John J. Joyce, “The Same By Any Name? A Look at the Emerging New Orleans ‘Jazz’ Band,” Jazz Archivist, Volume II, No. 1 (May 1987): 1 and 4. The “belated appendages” Joyce refers to include Creole, Dixieland, syncopaters, shakers, footwarmers, etc. 2 The first reference to “Blanchard’s Jazz Hounds” is found in the June 30, 1921 newspaper (on page 1). 3 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, December 2, 1920, 2. 4 Joyce, “The Same By Any Name? A Look at the Emerging New Orleans ‘Jazz’ Band,” 4.

19 band.”5 Moreover, the photos are proof that the guitar has always been an instrument of jazz. Among his examples are a photo of the Woodland Band (from LaPlace, La.) taken around 1905, showing a combination of , guitar, string bass, cornet, trombone, and drums, and a photo of Fran and McCurdy's Peerless Orchestra taken around 1906, showing cornets, clarinet, trombone, flute, piccolo, guitar, and drums. Another example is of the famous Buddy Bolden Band photograph, taken sometime between 1899 and 1905, that included guitarist Jefferson Brock Mumford in the lineup.6

Despite this evidence, the guitar is not usually thought of as an early instrument of jazz. The reasons for this can be traced to the widespread knowledge of jazz music through recordings—of which the earliest sides, for technological reasons, did not include guitar. Indeed, it was the recording of jazz that brought about the rise of the banjo over guitar for a few short years.7 As Tony Russell succinctly explained:

In an age when the sound of an instrument had to be filtered through the thick blanket of the preelectric recording process, it was imperative that it should be loud and resonant. Whether picked or strummed, the wood bodied guitar could hardly compete in this arena with the clangour of the banjo, whose vivid recordability quickly put it on a secure footing with the early record companies.8

The lead instruments—the cornets and , , and the saxophone—played intricate free counterpoint to one other, intertwining their competing melodic lines above the . The banjo was percussive, louder than the guitar, and could compete with dueling horns. That the guitar was not included in the first jazz recordings is why the

5 Ibid. 6 Vic Hobson settled upon this time frame for dating the photo in his article “Buddy Bolden’s Blues” in the Jazz Archivist, Vol. XXI, 2008, with attribution to researchers Don Marquis and Alden Ashforth. 7 The first designated “jazz” recording session, by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, occurred in 1917, before electrical recordings. For more on the evolution of the recording process, Sound Recording: The Life Story of a Technology by David L. Morton offers in-depth history. 8 Russell, “The Guitar Breaks Through,” 4.

20 guitar is not popularly characterized as an early instrument of jazz.

Several technological advancements that occurred in the 1920s paved the way for the growing importance of guitar in jazz. In 1925, record companies began to adopt, en masse, a new electric recording process by Western Electric:

Guitarists could now play without props, pick and fret with their hands, use dynamics for light and shade, accompany voices—including their own—without muffling the interplay of vocal and instrumental lines…. The electric microphone was a gateway through which musicians jubilantly charged, to be heard properly for the first time.9

And in the world of guitar making, experimentation with body size, materials, resonator cones, string size and number had been underway for many years. Gibson

Guitar hit upon success when it issued its first L-5 in late 1922.10 Modeled after the , the L-5 had F-holes and an arched top and back with light internal bracing. A steel truss rod ran the length of the neck to keep it properly aligned, while a rear-mounted metal tailpiece guided the tension of tightened strings downward toward the body of the guitar, allowing for the use of heavier-gauge steel strings. Since heavier-gauge strings are louder, this instrument helped the acoustic guitarist to be heard.11 It had “cutting power,”12 as Norman Mongan described, and was the preferred guitar of Eddie Lang as

9 Ibid. 10 Adrian Ingram, The Gibson L-5: Its History and Its Players (Anaheim, CA: Centerstream Pub, 1997), 13. 11 A feature of the L-5 was a moveable, adjustable that allowed a guitarist to experiment with string action (the distance of the strings from the surface of the fretboard). Bigger distance created higher action, which amplified the sound of the guitar even further, but increasingly strong finger pressure would be required to press heavy gauge strings down to the fretboard. One way a musician could manipulate heavy gauge strings combined with high action was to tune the guitar a few half steps lower, known as “slack tuning,” so that chord shapes were easier to press down. a technique used by Eddie Lang and , as well as Quinn. 12 Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz, 28.

21 well as Snoozer Quinn. (Figure 1 shows Quinn holding a Gibson L-5 around 1927. This is the guitar Quinn became associated with throughout his professional years.13)

Figure 1. Snoozer Quinn with Gibson L-5, c. 1927.

Quinn would have been among the earliest musicians to use the Gibson L-5. Such innovations helped usher the guitar’s ascendancy over the banjo in jazz.

As has been demonstrated, the guitar was there in the formative years of jazz; like the banjo, its role was rhythm instrument. When early performers such as Frank Lewis,

13 Photo dated around 1927 or 1928, according to family members. Quinn is playing the second variant L-5, which was issued between 1925-1930. Cosmetic details that date this instrument include the horizontally placed Gibson logo on the peg head (on the first variant it was diagonally-situated) and the dot-shaped position markers along the fingerboard (the third variant featured wide block shapes).

22

Will Johnson, Bud Scott, and Johnny St. Cyr played the guitar in ensemble settings, they played it as if they were playing the banjo, “strumming simple, unaltered chords,”14 wrote

Leonard Feather. As jazz music evolved, and solos began to emerge from the collective

Dixieland-style of playing, it continued to be wind instruments that carried the melodic solos.

Meanwhile, the guitar was dominant in another genre: the blues. The quiet instrument was ideally suited to accompany a lone voice and an itinerant musician on his travels. The blues, closely tied to the rural South and plantation life of the mid-nineteenth century, was coming of age just as jazz was emerging. At the turn of the century, rural blacks had started moving en masse to Northern industrial centers like and St.

Louis; their musical traditions became more sophisticated and polished. The 1920s are considered to be the period of ‘classic’ blues, when the fluid musical form became standardized at twelve bars and blues singers like and popularized the music through recordings.15 Although the first recorded blues guitar solos didn’t occur until 1923, when Sylvester Weaver recorded “Guitar Blues” and “Guitar

Rag” for Okeh Records16, the guitar has been a featured instrument of blues throughout its evolution.

It is not surprising, then, that the fertile world of blues guitar inspired the first jazz guitar soloists. “Where is the border, assuming there is a border, between blues and jazz?” asked musicologist Dan Lambert,17 referring to how so many jazz compositions

14 Leonard Feather, “The Guitar in Jazz,” in Jazz Guitars: An Anthology, ed. James Sallis (New York, NY: Quill, 1984), 19. 15 Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz, 20. 16 Russell, “The Guitar Breaks Through,” 5. 17 Dan Lambert, “From Blues to Jazz Guitar,” in Jazz Guitars: An Anthology, ed. James Sallis (New York, NY: Quill, 1984), 65.

23 are based on the blues form, and jazz music relies so much on blues expression. Although it cannot be pinpointed to just one musician, one song, or one recording, certain players can be viewed for their important contributions to the increasing sophistication of the blues and their innovative techniques on the guitar, which helped pave the way for jazz guitar soloing.

Alan De Mause holds up Lightnin’ Hopkins as a quintessential example of “early- history jazz guitar” among blues players in his book Solo Jazz Guitar. “His style, along with so many others, such as John Hurt, John Lee Hooker, etc., was an attempt to give a full accompaniment, piano style, to the blues of the 1920s.”18 Dan

Lambert, in his quest, also looked to Hopkins, and to and Blind

Arthur Blake, and most of all, to Lonnie Johnson.

Lonnie Johnson possessed an urbane finesse early on that distinguished him from other blues guitarists, as several writers such as Lambert and Mongan have described. As a young boy he had played on the streets of New Orleans with his father’s spasm band, and as a teen in 1917 he played with a traveling stock company, doing theatre and work in London, making for an interesting musical education. Johnson first recorded in

1925 and his professional style made him an in-demand session player for blues singers.

His merging with jazz was secured when he won a recording contract from that brought him into close contact with some of the biggest names in jazz, including

Louis Armstrong and . Recordings that Johnson made in 1929 with

Armstrong and the Luis Russell band featured him as a single-string soloist, and this was when Johnson, according to Mongan, “showed, for probably the first time ever, guitar

18 De Mause, Solo Jazz Guitar, 9.

24 solos that had melodic continuity and harmonic interest that took them far beyond the simple rhythmic backings of early jazz.”19

Eddie Lang is often called “the father of jazz guitar.” Lang, who was from

Philadelphia and of Italian descent, did not have a blues approach to the music, many critics say. Lang had been brought up on classical music, trained in solfeggio20, and honed his improvisational skills while riffing on polkas and mazurkas with the violinist

Joe Venuti. He first recorded in 1924 with the , a novelty band inspired by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Lang “almost single-handedly…. legitimized the guitar and created roles for it in solo, accompaniment, and ensemble settings,” wrote Sallis in Jazz Guitars.21 Techniques Lang carried over from classical traditions, such as chord voicings, arpeggio figures, and linear single-string solos,

“formed the basic vocabulary of jazz guitar.”22 The guitarist Richard Lieberson noted in an essay exploring the roots of jazz guitar, “Van Eps, McDonough, and Mastren are among the many who specifically credit Lang with having inspired them to switch from banjo to guitar.”23 Lieberson described how “after hearing Lang’s trailblazing work with

Joe Venuti, Paul Whiteman, and others, plectrists en masse began to take up the fuller, mellower six-string guitar.” 24

By the 1930s, the guitar had replaced the banjo as the preferred instrument among players. “Just as the string bass replaced the less flexible tuba and sousaphone….so the guitar added a lightness and resonance which rendered the plunk of the banjo obsolete,”

19 Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz, 23. 20 Traditional Italian method of music pedagogy relying on sight reading. 21 James Sallis, “Eddie Lang,” in Jazz Guitars: An Anthology, ed. James Sallis (New York, NY: Quill, 1984), 60. 22 Ibid. 23 Lieberson, “Swing Guitar: The Acoustic Chordal Style,” 165. 24 Ibid.,164.

25 wrote Richard Cook.25 However, it would still be several years before the guitar could really be heard by audience members (and bandleaders), especially in the larger ensembles.26 Notable rhythm players of the 1930s include Freddie Green of the Count

Basie Orchestra, Bernard Addison of the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, Fred Guy of the

Duke Ellington Orchestra, and who played for , Paul

Whiteman and others. Despite being “overlooked, undervalued and sometimes inaudible, the guitar at the heart of the rhythm section was nonetheless crucial to the developing range and complexity of jazz as it moved into the era of the big bands,” wrote Cook.27

When the two-beat feel gave way fully to the smoother four-beat of Swing, guitarists had greater freedom to experiment.

In addition to the complete transition to Swing style among jazz orchestras and guitarists, the 1930s saw other developments in jazz guitar styles. The acoustic chord melody style associated with Carl Kress, Dick McDonough, George Van

Eps, Allan Reuss, and was more than just a technical solution to the dynamic limitations of guitar; the chord melody style allowed players to exploit the potential of the instrument’s harmonic capabilities.

Other notable developments for 1930s jazz guitar include the emergence of the great European gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, who was listening to American jazz recordings and developing his own unique style; and the development of amplification

25 Richard Cook, “Masters of Rhythm,” in Masters of Jazz Guitar: The Story of the Players and Their Music, ed. Charles Alexander (London, Eng.: Balafon Books, 1999), 10. 26 Mongan discusses some of the interesting history leading up to the eventual success of the electric guitar. Gibson technician Lloyd Loar, inventor of the L-5, developed an electric guitar as early as 1924 but it failed to take off. Guitarist started experimenting with amplification as early as 1932. But it would be another ten years or so before the electric guitar was embraced by jazz audiences, bandleaders, and clubs, in large part to the efforts of . 27 Cook, “Masters of Rhythm,” 10.

26 for guitar, which meant that guitarists could finally be heard equally in a full ensemble setting. Eddie Durham, Floyd Smith, , and Charlie Christian were among the first jazz guitarists to experiment with the electric sound.28 In 1939 Christian wrote the call to arms to guitarists in Down Beat29 that, together with his superb musical example, ushered in the era of amplified single-note soloing. Leonard Feather wrote that

Christian’s advent was when “the guitar came of age in jazz.”30

By this time, Snoozer Quinn was no longer a part of the national scene. But where does Quinn fit into the story of the guitar in jazz? How did he contribute to the growing appreciation of the guitar among the jazz community? Though he was less known than

Lang and Johnson, his innovations impressed the biggest names in jazz when he was heard. “I met Quinn, the only boy alive who has it on Eddie Lang, I believe,” wrote the saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer after encountering Quinn.31 Paul Whiteman offered

Quinn a contract immediately after hearing him perform.32 And Les Paul said that

Whiteman described Quinn as the “forerunner of Eddie Lang.”33 “In other words,” said

Paul, “everybody has got to admire somebody, and Eddie had idolized Snoozer.”34

Mongan succinctly summarized that Quinn was a missing link, a pioneer who

“contributed to the consolidation of the guitar’s new-found solo-voice.”35 In an era in which it was considered strictly a rhythm instrument, Quinn’s mastery of the guitar

28 Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz, 82-84 29 December 1939 issue of Down Beat features Christian’s letter, “Guitarmen, Wake Up and Pluck! Wire for Sound: Let ‘em Hear You Play.” Some sources speculate this letter was issued by Benny Goodman’s public relations office as a publicity stunt. 30 Feather, “The Guitar in Jazz,” 22. 31 Evans and Kiner, Tram: The Frank Trumbauer Story, 582. 32 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, November 15, 1928, 1. 33 Jas Obrecht, “Acoustic Roots: The Legendary Snoozer Quinn,” Frets Magazine, November 1987, 61. 34 Ibid. 35 Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz, 36.

27 revealed its great musical versatility and expressive potential. The orchestral sense of

Snoozer’s playing to which Mongan briefly referred will be expanded upon below, along with other distinctive aspects of his sound and technique.

28

CHAPTER III:

MUSICAL ANALYSIS

The hospital recordings of 1948 (or 1949), the recordings that Quinn made with the hillbilly singer (and future Louisiana governor) Jimmie Davis in 1931, and silent film footage of Quinn from 1932 provide the material to analyze his unique two-guitar sound.

By observing what Quinn is doing with his left hand and right hand in the film footage, listening to the interplay of melody, harmony and the bass-driven rhythmic underpinnings, and considering the commentary of firsthand observers, one gains insight into how Quinn created his own unique solo jazz guitar style, synthesizing elements from , rag, and Swing-style jazz.

The Recordings

In 1931, Quinn accompanied Jimmie Davis on a recording session for Victor

Records.1 The three-day session took place from May 26 to 28 in Charlotte, North

Carolina.2 According to the Victor ledger files, the guitarists Buddy Jones and Ed “Dizzy

Head” Schaffer were also present at the sessions. However, it is clear where Quinn was the guitarist in certain passages (both from the ledger notes and by close-listening to the distinctive parts).

1 These were re-released in 1988 as part of the compact disc box set Nobody's Darling But Mine: 1928- 1937, by Bear Family Records. 2 Victor Records Ledgers, 8287-A, courtesy Sony Music Entertainment Archives. 29

Figure 2. Discographical entry for the Jimmie Davis recording session of May 26-28, 1931 for Victor Records (from pages 8287-A, 8290, 8290-A of the Victor ledger files and as formatted by Magnusson and Peak.)

Jimmie Davis singing with guitars by Snoozer Quinn and Buddy Jones The Victor files, “Recording Book” page 8287-A read as follows: DAVIS, JIMMIE (Mr. Peer, present) (Vocal Solos with (“Snoozer” Quinn & “Buddy” Jones).

Recorded in Charlotte, NC, May 26, 1931 BVE 69352-2 Hobo’s Warning [78] Victor Unissued BVE 69353-2 Bury Me In Old Kentucky [78] BVE 69354-2 The Gambler’s Return [78] BVE 69255-2 Wild and Reckless Hobo [78] BVE 69356-2 The Davis Limited [78]

Jimmie Davis Singing with guitars by Snoozer Quinn, Buddy Jones, Dizzy Head Recorded in Charlotte, NC, May 27, 1931 BVE 69357-2 She Left A Runnin’ Like A Sewing Machine BVE 69358-2 Down at the Old Country Church BVE 69359-1 She’s a Hum-Dum Dinger Part 2 BVE 69359-2 She’s a Hum-Dum Dinger Part 2 BVE 69360-2 Market House Blues BVE 69361-2 Get On Board, Aunt Susan BVE 69362-2 Midnight Blues

Jimmie Davis Singing with guitars by Snoozer Quinn and Dizzy Head Recorded in Charlotte, NC, May 28, 1931 BVE 69367-2 There’s Evil In Ye Children Gather Round BVE 69368-2 Pea Pickin’ Papa

The Quinn hospital recordings were made sometime between April 1948 and April

1949.3 Wiggs has described the recording session in several accounts. Here is how he described it to the interviewer William Russell:

He was.…in this little room, about 6 by 10 foot. I was trying to operate the recording machine, keep some of the thread from messing up the needle, keep people out of the room, and play, all at the same time. During one number the telephone started ringing, so I had to throw the phone off the hook.…I didn’t want to tire Snoozer as he was pretty weak then.…He’d

3 Wiggs does not mention the recordings in the article he wrote about Snoozer for the May 1948 issue of The Jazzfinder, and Snoozer died on April 21, 1949, so the session occurred in between these events. Quinn was in this hospital for fifteen months before he succumbed. 30

been working with an amplified guitar a lot and I had an awful time trying to get him to play without any amplification. Unfortunately there was only a couple of choruses of his picking style, for which he was best known.4

Wiggs released four sides from that session on his own label, Wiggs, Inc., in the early

1950s as 78s (2101, 2100). They were “Melancholy Baby,” You Took Advantage of

Me,” “Singing the Blues,” and “Snoozer’s Telephone Blues.” (The sides were reviewed by Down Beat on October 22, 1952.) In 1969, twelve sides5 from the session were released on an LP record album by a small jazz label called “Fat Cat Jazz Records” of

Manassas, Virginia.

Figure 3. Discographical entry for the Quinn/Wiggs hospital recording session of 1948 or 1949, as released by Fat Cat Jazz Records in 1969.

The Legendary Snoozer Quinn / with Johnny Wiggs Fat Cat Jazz Records FCJ104 [LP]

Side One: 1. Nobody’s Sweetheart [co JW] 2. Georgia on My Mind/Smoke Gets in Your Eyes 3. Singin’ the Blues #1 [co JW] 4. Singin’ the Blues #2 [co JW] 5. You Took Advantage of Me 6. Snoozer’s Wanderings

Side Two: 1. Snoozer’s Telephone Blues 2. Clarinet Marmalade [co JW] 3. Out of Nowhere 4. After You’ve Gone [co JW] 5. Lover Come Back to Me/On the Alamo 6. My Melancholy Baby [co JW]

The majority of these titles are considered American songbook standards that were popular in Quinn’s time—harmonically sophisticated tunes favored by many jazz

4 Bill Russell, New Orleans Style, ed. Barry Martyn & Mike Hazeldine (New Orleans, LA: Jazzology Press, 1999), 168. 5 Including two versions of “Singin’ the Blues.” 31 musicians. “Snoozer’s Telephone Blues” is a twelve-bar blues and “Snoozer’s

Wanderings” is an outtake of Quinn’s improvisational warm up. Of the twelve recordings, six feature Johnny Wiggs on cornet. Several of the songs are played with amplification.6

Three songs are analyzed below to explicate Quinn’s technique.7 “Pea Pickin’

Papa” is a country blues with a vocal part by Jimmie Davis. From the hospital recordings,

“Out of Nowhere” and “Georgia On My Mind” are jazz standards that feature Quinn soloing on guitar. “Pea Pickin’ Papa” showcases Quinn’s natural ability playing pure country blues, while “Georgia On My Mind” displays Quinn’s more technical abilities soloing in the jazz idiom. “Out of Nowhere,” a bluesy standard, is the bridge between these two approaches.

6 On the Jimmie Davis recordings, it is unknown what kind of guitar Quinn was using. A photograph taken of Quinn in the sanitarium shows him holding the Gibson model L-0 or L-00 model guitar. This is presumed to be the guitar he used on the hospital recordings. On the Davis recordings, Quinn’s guitar is tuned two half steps lower than standard A-440 tuning for guitar. On the hospital recordings, Quinn’s guitar is tuned four half steps lower than standard A-440 tuning. By drop tuning (also called “slack tuning”) the guitar, Quinn could loosen the action of the strings so that they would be more pliable, and maintaining the swinging four-beat rhythm part and simultaneously playing a separate melodic line would be easier. Perhaps Quinn had his guitar drop-tuned to accommodate Wiggs’ cornet; or perhaps because he was weak; or perhaps he liked the sound of the guitar best when slack tuned, as does the modern day guitarist Leo Kottke. (Freddie Green, Eddie Lang, and other jazz guitarists during the 1930s frequently slack-tuned.) Slack tuning was a technique Quinn also liked to use on the violin. In “Snoozer Quinn: Musician’s Musician,” Wiggs wrote, “He got the most weird effects with his violin which he seemed to like best when the strings were very loose, so much so that they appeared to flop around under his bow.” 7 In these transcriptions it should be taken into account that the written notation does not fully represent the performance. Precise nuances of rhythm, subtle dynamic changes, how certain notes are colored and resound and other artistic choices that convey Quinn’s emotional interpretation cannot be perfectly conveyed on paper. 32

“Pea Pickin’ Papa”

The Davis records exhibit Quinn’s comfort in the pure country blues tradition, where he provides rhythmic accompaniment to the singer in a fingerpicking style. The majority of the songs from the session feature Quinn and another guitarist, either Ed

Schaffer playing slide guitar or Buddy Jones playing a strumming8 style of rhythmic accompaniment, supplementing Quinn’s picking style. “Pea Pickin’ Papa,” however, is one take that features Quinn as the sole guitarist. It will be used here to illustrate Quinn’s technique.

Figure 4 below. “Pea Pickin’ Papa” as performed by Snoozer Quinn, transcribed by Chip Henderson.

8 Strumming a guitar means stroking numerous strings in one motion (either up or down), so that the strings sound simultaneously for a full sound. Pea Pickin' Papa Edward "Snoozer" Quinn's guitar performance accompanying Jimmie Davis (May 28, 1931) Victor Records 23573 Transcribed by Chip Henderson (2013) Intro G C D GD G U # 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w & 4 Œ œ Œ œ œ œb Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ œ œ w ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ w

Verse G C A 7 6 œ œ œ # œ œ œ #œ & Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ ˙Œ œ Œ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙

D G 10 # œ œ œ œ 2 œ 4 & Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ 4 Œ œ 4 ˙ ˙ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ

G C 13 œ œ # 4 Œ œ œ Œ ∑ Œ œ Œ œ & 4 œ œ œ œ ˙. œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙

C A 7 D 16 # œ #œ œ œ & Œ œ Ó Œ œ ˙Œ œ Œ œ œÓ œ ˙ œ œb ˙ ˙

GG 7 C G 19 œ œ # Œ œ Œ nœ Œ nœ Ó Œ œ Œ œ 2 Œ œ 4 & ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ 4 œ 4 ˙ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙ Snoozer Quinn - Pea Pickin' Papa page 2

G C 23 # œ œ œ 4 Œ œ œ œ Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ & 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb ˙ Ó ˙ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙

D G 27 # œ œ œ œ œ œ & Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ Œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ 35

On this performance, Quinn relies on a two-beat rhythmic style (boom chick boom chick), alternating between bass and chord. But he also adds some melodic single string bass runs. The performance is reminiscent of another hillbilly singer/guitarist, Jimmie

Rodgers. Appropriate to the genre, Quinn uses simple harmony, relying on basic triads for the chords, but rather than using a consistent back and forth between tonic and dominant, or tonic and mediant, he mixes up his choices of bass notes, which makes the performance more unpredictable. The single string bass runs, such as at measures 13, 14,

16, 18, 20, 24, and 26, display Quinn’s melodic imagination. These improvisatory bass runs impart linear flow and rhythmic thrust, tying this country blues performance to

Quinn’s jazzier material.

“Out of Nowhere”

With its bluesy opening, “Out of Nowhere” is a showcase for Quinn’s signature style. His aggressive attack and driving four-beat pulse add to the swinging feel of the performance. Quinn doesn’t play the notes of the lead part squarely on the pulse. He pushes and tugs at the melodic timing, hanging on to some notes longer than expected or landing in between beats. This gives the song a relaxed and unpredictable feel.

Examining his melodic line extracted from the rest of the performance and comparing it to the original composition, one sees how Quinn represents the theme with improvisational skill and creativity.9

9 See Appendix for full performance notes by the guitarist Chip Henderson, who transcribed Quinn’s performance of “Out of Nowhere.” The original composition was written in the key of G. Quinn’s concert performance (on a guitar tuned four half steps low) is in the key of E-flat. For ease of comparing the melodic lines here, Quinn’s performance has been transposed into the key of G. The E- flat version is available as an Appendix. 36

Figure 5. “Out of Nowhere” original melodic line, transcribed by Chip Henderson.

Figure 6. “Out of Nowhere” embellished melodic line (extracted from full performance) as performed by Snoozer Quinn, transcribed by Chip Henderson.

37

The original melody is unmistakably built into the performance, but Quinn uses it as a launch pad for his own ideas, favoring runs of eighth notes to the quarter notes. He bypasses the composed whole notes of the original melody, using those reflective moments instead to showcase walking chords leading into the next section (such as at bars 11-12 and 27-28), one reason his performance has so much forward momentum. One can also see how Quinn would occasionally stretch bars in order to support the momentum of his melodic rhythm—such as at bars 12, 14-15, and 18—exhibiting the elastic meter of a country blues player.10

The key aspect of Quinn’s unique soloing style becomes apparent by examining what he was doing from the middle of the staff down, how he drives the rhythm and builds harmonic support. One can see that at certain points, Quinn’s bass line complimented and yet was completely separate from what was going on with his chordal playing. For instance, in Bar 3:

Figure 7. Bar 3-4 of “Out of Nowhere” as performed by Snoozer Quinn, transcribed by Chip Henderson.

Quinn’s full performance in the first two verses appears below. While the harmonic outline of the song “Out of Nowhere” is simple, limited to only five chords, Quinn

10 This is one interpretation of Quinn’s performance as settled upon by the author and Chip Henderson. Another interpretation worth considering is that Quinn, in fact, maintained the strict four-beat meter throughout the performance, and entered a kind of swinging, complex rubato in bars 12-19 where his melodic improvisations floated above a rigid underlying pulse. 38 develops the harmonic interest of the tune—for examples, at bar 11 he plays an augmented E chord and resolves to the A-minor, and at bar 23 he plays the ninth of the E-

7 chord. Some of Quinn’s embellishments—a long-held bent note such as at bar 17, and the sliding transitions such as at bar 6 when the G slides to a D and at bar 20 when the B- flat slides to a C, and the droning effect of low-tuned bottom strings—enrich the performance with the same textures used by country-blues guitarists. Quinn relies on basic double stops, triads, and four-note diatonic -type chords (sevenths, ninths, thirteenths) built off the note. Whereas later jazz guitarists would rely on a bass player to play the root note of a chord, allowing them to explore colorful upper tensions

(such as guitarists from the and modern eras)11, Quinn’s impulse was to play the root note as a supportive bass sound whenever possible—much as the early solo performing country-blues guitarists did. The occasional independence of the lines in “Out of Nowhere” shows Quinn’s remarkable skill, dexterity, and creativity.

Figure 8 below. First two verses of “Out of Nowhere” as performed by Snoozer Quinn, transcribed by Chip Henderson, transposed into the key of G.

11 George Van Eps eventually would pioneer the seven-string guitar in jazz so that he could bypass the need for a bass player. Out of Nowhere Tuned: Words and Music by C - F - B - E - G - C Edward "Snoozer" Quinn's performance (1948) b b Edward Heyman & John Green (Transcription Transposed - from the LP The Legendary Snoozer Quinn with Johnny Wiggs notated for traditional tuning) Fat Cat Jazz Records FCJ104 [LP] (released 1969) Transcribed by Chip Henderson (7/2011) III III 00:06 D 7 G j # œ œ. œ ˙ œ 4 ˙œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ J œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ J œ œ ˙ T

IV 1/2 VI Eb7 3 j j j 4 j bœ œ nœ œ bœ. # bbœœ. nœ œ bnœ nb œ œ b œ œ nb œ. & bœ . œ œ œ bœ bœ bœ ( ) bœ bœ bœ œ œ 3 œ 3 T n¿ T 3 3 T G o VII B III sl. 5 j j j j œ # # œ œ œ # nœ œ œ œ œ ˙ # œ ˙ & ‰ n œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ ˙ 1 œ œ J œ œ 3 œ 3 œ 1 1 VI E7 7 j 3 j œ. œ œ # œ. œ œ #œ œ. nœ ˙ & ‹œ1 sl. #œ œ œ. #œ ˙ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ 3 A m o o o o o IV o B V E7 9 4 2 1 j œ œ j œ #œ œ # ‰ œ nœ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ ˙ & 1 #œ. #˙ ˙. œ œ œ œ ˙. V o o ( E ) A m + III 11 j j œ œ # œ. œ œ. œ œ œ œ nœ œ. œ œ. œ 3 œ œ bb œ 4 & #œ. œ œ œ 4 œ œ 4 3 œ œ 3 3 o o Snoozer Quinn - Out of Nowhere page 2

III B VI Eb7 13 j bœ bœ bœ œ bœ bœ # 4 œ b œ bnœœ nœ œ 5 b œ œ ˙ œ œ 3 & 4 œ b œ b œ œ 4 ‰ J 4 b 1w

D 7 1/2 VII

4 15 1 III 1 œ œ 1 nœ œ 4 2 # 3 n ˙. œ œœ œœ 2 œ 4 . 3 œ œ & 4 n ˙. œ œ œ 4 o 3

III 1/2 IV G 2 2 17 j j j # œ bœ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ b œ & 4 ‰ œ 46 œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ b œ 4 b¿ ¿ œ œ œ Tœ ˙ T

IV III 1/2 VI 1/2 VIII sl. Eb7 19 j j j j j 4 4 b œ œ œ 4 œ bœ œ. n n œ œ œ œ # 4 œœ bbœœ nœ œ. œ œ. bœ œ bœ œ œ & 4 bœ œ œ œ œ. bœ œ œ 3 bœ œ

III VII III G 4 21 sl. 1 œ œ œ j # œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ j j j œ ##œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & œ œ œ 4 œ 4 œ 1 1

IV VI Let Ring E7 23 j . . #œ œ œ œ œ œ # œ. œ œ. j œ. œ œ œ œ & #œ. œ œ. nœ sl. #œ œ œ œ œ o o o o Snoozer Quinn - Out of Nowhere page 3

V III A m 1/2 VI 1/2 V E7 25 4 ˙ œ œ #œ œ œ œ 1 œ # ˙œ.. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & ˙.. œ sl. #œ œ œ 3 J œ œ œ A m VIII o o 1/2 V VI sl. 4 27 1 4 4 j j œ œ ( ) # œ œ œ bœ œ ( ) # œ œ œ œ #3 œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ ‰ # œ & J

VII III IV III G 1 B III D 7 Eb7 29 3 œ œ # œ œ ˙ œ œ bbœœ œœ œœ nœœ œœ œœ œ & ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Let Ring J ‰ bœ œ œ œ 3 J

G III B III D 7 31 j j 4 1 œ œ 2 # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 2 œ 2 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 3 œ œ & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 4 œ3 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 1

III 00:56 G 33 Begin solo section # œ & œ 42

“Georgia On My Mind”

“Georgia On My Mind,” composed by , serves as an excellent example of how Quinn interpreted a ballad in his personal style. Moreover, with its sophisticated harmonic movement, this song showcases Quinn’s chordal vocabulary. In contrast to the up tempo, driving four-beat rhythm of “Out of Nowhere,” this tune meanders slowly and Quinn plays tenderly, using arpeggiated chords to convey and embellish the melody as a pianist or harpist might do, which creates a pleasing patter effect. Yet beneath the melody line there is still the occasional harmonic push, and a suggestion of a drone of rhythmic bass, giving the performance a polyphonic texture.

German scholar Jürgen Schwab transcribed a section of “Georgia On My Mind” for his doctoral dissertation, Die Gitarre im Jazz. Zur stilistischen Entwicklung von den

Anfängen bis 1960 (The guitar in jazz. On the stylistic development from the beginnings to 1960).12 His transcription appears below.13

Figure 9 below. Quinn’s performance of “Georgia On My Mind” transcribed by Jürgen Schwab.

12 Jürgen Schwab, “Die Gitarre im Jazz” (PhD diss., Regensburg, 1998), 56-59. 13 Schwab’s transcription has been recreated (with permission) for this thesis by Chip Henderson for stylistic consistency. There are minor variations from the original. Schwab’s finger charts are not included in this transcription. Schwab’s original version appears as an Appendix. Georgia On My Mind Edward "Snoozer" Quinn's performance (1948) from the LP The Legendary Snoozer Quinn with Johnny Wiggs Fat Cat Jazz Records FCJ104 [LP] (released 1969) Transcribed by Jürgen Schwab (1998)

D G 6 G m6 D C 7 Em7 A # 7 13 6 6 œ ## 4 jœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ 3 œ bœ 3 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & 4 œ œ œ #œ #œ nœ œ ¿ œ œ œ œ

D F#7 B m D Em Bb7 maj7 5 3 # œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œœœœ œ œ œ œ bœœ & œ œ #œ œ œ #œ nœ œœ œbœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ bœ

D C#7 G D Em A 7 9 3 9 maj7 C#7 3 œ j 7 13 œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ ## œ œ #œ œœœ œnœœ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œœ & œ # œ 3 œ œ œ 3 œœœœ œ #œ œ œœ œœ œ 3 œ œ

D F 7 B m G 6 F 7 3 # # 3 3 13 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ## œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ J J œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & œ œ œ œ #œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ # œ œ œ

D C#7 G G m6 D G D F#7 3 17 maj7 6 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ j ## œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ & œ #œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ #œ œ œ 3 ‰ œ œ œ J œ J

B m F 7 B m7 F 7 B m F 7 D C # # # 3 # 3 21 # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ. j & # œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ¿ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ # œ œ œ J J Snoozer Quinn - Georgia On My Mind page 2

B m F#m E7 A 7 9 25 laid back œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ j # œ œ œ œ œnœ œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ #œ # œ 3 œ œ œ œ œ œ & 3 œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ # œ 3 œ œ ‰ J œ œ #œ J œ D F#7 B m Em7 G m6 3 29 œ œ. # œ œ œ œ#œ œ œ#œ #œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ # œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœœœbœ & œ œ œ#œ #œœ œœœ œ œ œ D C 7 Em7 A D D m Em A 3 # # 3 33 13 3 7 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ # œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œœ œ œ # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ 3 œ ‰œ & œ # œ œ œ 3 œ œ œ œœ 3 J œ œ œ #œ J3 45

Schwab talks about how Quinn’s free moving melodic manipulation of the theme of

“Georgia On My Mind” is obviously improvised, and how this song exhibits Quinn’s mastery of single note playing. Yet, at moments on this song, Quinn accompanies himself on melodic runs by strumming deep rhythmic bass notes underneath (as in bar 3).

Elsewhere the rhythm is almost implied, felt if not heard; there is a dynamically controlled beat present throughout the performance. A regular use of suspended tones exhibits Quinn’s grasp of 1920s —a major seventh over D, the sixth over

G-major and G-minor, the seventh over E-minor as well as the thirteenth and ninth over

A-7.

To recapitulate, Quinn had the approach of a country-blues fingerstyle picker from the delta, but one who utilized all the available harmony of popular commercial jazz music of the 1920s and 1930s. Quinn’s performances on “Pea Pickin’ Papa,” “Out of

Nowhere,” and “Georgia On My Mind” are examples of Quinn’s style as it evolves from strict country blues into jazz, with “Out of Nowhere” serving as the bridge between the two. “Out of Nowhere” is a tour de force example of Quinn’s signature soloing style, wherein he plays distinctive parts: a melodic lead fingerpicked on top of vigorously strummed chordal harmony.14 Dominant in this chordal strumming is a four beats-to-the- bar bass line, a rhythm indicative of big band era guitar, creating forward momentum in the performance. Because he tunes his guitar low (an intentional choice), the sound booms with droning bass notes. Altogether, Quinn’s performance gives listeners the impression of two guitar players—one thumping out a swinging rhythm, and one playing

14 For other quintessential examples of Quinn’s signature two-guitar sound, one should listen particularly to his performances of “You Took Advantage of Me,” “Snoozer’s Telephone Blues,” and the guitar breaks on “Clarinet Marmalade” and “My Melancholy Baby.” 46 an improvisational lead part. The polyphonic, orchestral use of the guitar with a country- blues feel but the harmonic vocabulary of a jazz artist is Quinn’s hallmark.

Roots of Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar

In the 1920s, while most jazz guitarists played strictly rhythm or were beginning to pursue a single-note soloing style patterned after the voice of a cornet or clarinet,

Quinn was developing his unique orchestral approach. The only other known players who were using the orchestral approach in the 1920s and 1930s were country blues and guitarists. “Players like , Reverend Gary Davis, and others played melody and chords, while constantly strumming the bass strings with their thumbs. This technique gave great drive to their performances,” pointed out Mongan.15 Country music, too, saw a branch of fingerstyle guitar develop, associated with white players such as

Merle Travis and .16

But it wasn’t until the 1960s that the fingerstyle approach began to trend among jazz guitarists. In his essay “The Fingerstyle Jazz Revolution,” Howard Morgen explored how fingerstyle jazz guitarists began to emerge in the 1960s due to two main factors:

The term fingerstyle came to mean any technique that enabled a player to produce melody, harmony, and rhythm (bass lines), to sound every note in a chord simultaneously, and to voice chords on widely separated strings….By the latter part of the sixties interest in fingerstyle had become

15 Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz, 147. Mongan notes that fingerstyle in blues and ragtime continued until about the 1940s, when the technique was abandoned in favor of the linear electric style of T-Bone Walker. 16 Black musicians such as Broonzy, Blind Blake, , and other ragtime guitarists laid the foundation for “Travis picking,” named for , a white country musician from Kentucky who further developed the fingerpicking style and popularized it. The typical pattern of a Travis pick was to alternate the thumb back and forth between two bass notes, filling in the space between with melody notes picked by the other fingers. Black musicians have been known to refer to this as “old time picking.” Travis was a nationally influential singer-songwriter and session musician, which is probably why he got the credit. Country musician Chet Atkins continued the development of the Travis pick, synthesizing jazz guitar influences to make the technique more complex. 47

widespread for two practical reasons. For one, improvements in equipment had made fingerstyle more feasible on all types of guitars.…and secondly, economic conditions were beginning to cause club owners and restaurateurs to prefer solo performers or duos over larger musical groups. Guitarists were also hired for jobs that had once been the domain of cocktail pianists.17

In Schwab’s analysis of Quinn’s technique he had speculated about whether or not Quinn played fingerstyle. Schwab determined through close listening that Quinn played both fingerstyle and with a . He suggested that on “Snoozer’s

Wanderings,” Quinn does not use a plectrum, but elsewhere he uses a combination of fingers and plectrum.18 For instance, on “Georgia On My Mind” when a bass tone and high melody tone sound simultaneously (bar 4, beat 2) it is probable that the role of the bass tone has been taken over from the thumb by plectrum, said Schwab.

Schwab was correct. Musicians who knew Quinn have said that he was known to play with a plectrum on occasion, but that most of the time he used a pure fingerpicking style—that is, he would use his fingers and thumbs to pick the strings instead of a single pick. The guitarist Frank Federico of New Orleans, who played with the band, said, “[Quinn] used his fingers mostly. Once in a while he’d play with a single pick, but most of the time it was with his four fingers, and thumb. He’d play bass notes with his thumb most of the time.”19 That Quinn preferred to play without a pick has been verified by numerous associates, including the New Orleans jazz drummer Monk Hazel,20 the New Orleans trumpeter George Hartman,21 Johnny Wiggs,22 and others. This was not

17 Morgen, “The Fingerstyle Jazz Revolution,” 211. 18 A “plectrum,” usually a thin piece of plastic, is frequently referred to as a “pick.” 19 Frank Federico, interview by author, New Orleans, LA, July 4, 2008. 20 Monk Hazel, interview by Bill Russell, July 16, 1959, transcription, Hogan Jazz Archive (henceforth HJA). 21 George Hartman, “New Orleans Today,” The Jazz Record, January 1945, 6. 22 Johnny Wiggs, “Snoozer Quinn: Musician’s Musician,” The Jazzfinder, May 1948, 11. 48 the tendency of most early jazz guitarists, who desperately needed volume—but Quinn needed his fingers to play all the parts he wanted to play. Using his fingers allowed him to pick out a melody line separate from the bass line, riding the melody on top of harmonic support.

Fingerstyle approaches among ragtime players of the 1920s and 1930s were highly individualized; each player developed his own tricks and sound palettes. Blind

Blake, for instance, was known for his bouncing ragtime sound created by thumb rolls.

Big Bill Broonzy used a technique called double thumbing, hitting two different notes with the thumb to achieve a two-bass sound.23

Snoozer Quinn shared many traits with these country blues guitarists, such as his improvisatory style, relaxed melodic timing, and bluesy embellishments. Where Quinn widely diverged from country blues was in his expanded melodic and harmonic vocabulary, wherein he exhibited all of the imagination of a jazz musician, and most notably in his development of a distinctive four-beat fingerstyle instead of a two-beat fingerstyle.

In listening to their music, one can hear how country blues players such as Blake and Broonzy played a bass note, then a chord note, alternating—boom, chick, boom, chick (bass, chord, bass, chord)—emphasizing the strong beats with bass and playing chords on the weak beats for a two-beat feel, which came straight out of the piano ragtime tradition.24 Snoozer, meanwhile, had come up with a steady four-beat

23 For in-depth discussion of the guitar styles of Blake, Broonzy, Johnson, and other country blues musicians, listen to the blues guitar workshop series by Woody Mann. 24 Ragtime, in turn, came out of the marching band tradition. One can hear how the two-beat boom chick boom chick guitar fingerstyle interprets piano ragtime music—the bass note (the pianist’s left hand part) is picked by the thumb on the odd-numbered beat, and the syncopated melodic line (the pianist’s right hand part) is picked by the fingers on the even numbered beat. This boom chick boom chick can be 49 fingerstyle—boom, boom, boom, boom—with only slight accents on beats two and four.

In other words, Quinn put the emphasis on each beat of a bar—a hallmark of Swing-era jazz.

Film Footage of Snoozer Quinn

Considering the jazz recordings analyzed above were made in 1948, how can one know if Quinn was playing in his unique unaccompanied style earlier? There are the testimonies of musicians who knew him and played with him, such as , the obscure yet greatly revered pianist from , Texas, who told Down Beat in 1965,

“Snoozer played chords and melodies the way George Van Eps does, and he was doing that in the mid-‘20s.”25 For more positive proof, there is silent film footage of Quinn from 1932.26 Breaking down what Quinn is doing with his hands will shed more light on how Quinn achieved his unique sound.

Quinn does not use a pick in the film. He picked and strummed using the fingers and thumb of his right hand. From the film, it is clear that Quinn does not play with the steady alternating bass and chord style of a ragtime guitarist. Quinn utilizes numerous different attacks in this short clip—fingerpicking, strumming, even what looks like flamenco-style brushing of the strings. At moments, Quinn’s right hand technique seems inspired by a technique used by Appalachian and rural banjoists called “frailing” or

“clawhammer.” Although his hand is looser than a claw hold, he uses the back of his index and middle fingernails to strike notes in a downward motion.

compared to the oom pah oom pah of marching band music, a major source of ragtime, wherein bass instruments such as tuba and sousaphone were rigidly fixed to the two-beat style so that the player could breathe. 25 Richard Hadlock, “Peck Kelley—Jazz Legend,” Down Beat, January 14, 1965, 36. 26 Snoozer Quinn in 1932, YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHPViwpHz4M 50

Quinn seems to use both his thumb (P) and first finger (I) to strike the low-range strings, which would be the bass notes. His index (I) and middle (M) finger pick out the mid- and upper range notes. At some points, thumb (P) and first finger (I) pick simultaneously (such as 1:18-1:25) and at other points they alternate. Augmenting this fingerpicking is strumming, where he uses the back of the nails of his first, second and third (I,M,A) fingers to strike the strings. At one point in the film (:42-:52), Quinn does a succession of seven downstrokes in a row. The downstrokes are an indication of an articulated four-beat rhythm.

One can observe how Quinn maximizes the tonal variations of the guitar. He strikes the strings in several different places between the bridge and the fretboard, most frequently in the middle slightly closer to the fretboard, for what is probably the fullest and richest tone. But he ventures close to the bridge at :57, which would chime a bright sound, and moves closer to the fretboard around 1:03 which would roll out a darker, mellower sound. Additionally, how Quinn uses both the nail and the flesh of his fingers would affect the tone in the same way—nail making a brighter, louder sound, and flesh making a darker, sweeter, softer sound.

Quinn’s ability to simultaneously a rhythm and pick out a melody would not have been possible without skillful coordination with what was happening higher up the neck. He was able to keep the strum going because his left hand was working to chord correct notes, dampen strings as needed, and even augment the melody line by picking with his left fingers.

One can see in the film that Quinn uses both open position chords (e.g., those played close to the nut) and moveable chords up and down the neck. 51

Figure 10. Top: Quinn in the open chord position. Bottom: Quinn using moveable chords.

52

In his movements, Quinn exhibits great agility as he switches through the various positions. It is likely that Quinn’s formative years playing banjo highly influenced his chording technique.27 Banjoists frequently play melody lines on top of chords—as Quinn does—and so must know a wide variety of chord shapes in order to execute the melody.

Quinn’s use of hammer-ons and pull-offs, which can be seen in the film, also points to the influence of the banjo. Using a definition provided by Thomas Adler in the

Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World:

Hammering-on, a term widely used by players of fretted instruments, is a left hand technique in which a given note is sounded by bringing a finger down onto the appropriate noting position on the fingerboard quickly and forcefully. The ‘hammer-on’ is loudest and most pronounced if the string being played by the left hand has just been sounded by a picking or striking motion of the right hand. Hammering-on is therefore frequently used by players of five-string using the ‘frailing’ or ‘claw hammer’ styles in order to vary a repetitious right hand rhythm….Hammering-on is often characterized as the opposite of the left hand ‘pulling-off’ or pizzicato movement, in which a string is forcefully and rapidly unfretted.28

The techniques work well on the banjo, which has a tight percussive body like a snare drum that resonates loudly. But on an acoustic guitar, a hammered or pulled note would have less volume. The techniques are seen in blues and country styles of guitar playing, as well as in classical and Mexican guitar music—but prior to the era of amplification, they weren’t something regularly used by jazz guitarists. Lang, for instance, was not known to incorporate hammer-ons in his soloing, while Lonnie Johnson did.

Quinn was a master of the hammer-on and pull-off. The great guitarist and inventor

27 It is known that Quinn played banjo in his early career, in his high school band, in dance bands and in minstrel shows. In 1926 he was hailed by Houston radio station KPRC as “Dixie’s Banjo King”. and “Dixie’s Premier Banjoist.” It would be useful to know what kind of banjo Quinn played and how he tuned it. Unfortunately, no photographs or in-depth descriptions of Quinn playing banjo have been located. 28 Thomas Adler, "Hammering-On" in Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Volume II, Performance and Production, ed. John Shepherd (New York, NY: Continuum, 2003), 135. 53

Les Paul declared that it was Quinn who taught him the techniques:

I visited Snoozer at his house. He played a couple of records for me, and then he played for me out on the front porch. I thought he was great! A lot better than the records. He played some original tunes, “Marlinburg Joy,” [sic] and something like “Darktown Strutters Ball.” That’s where I learned to pull and hammer strings.29

Despite the volume limitations of the acoustic guitar, Quinn had developed such strength in his left hand fingers that he could augment the melodic line with hammer-ons and pull- offs. Tim Kelly, the clarinetist and former Louisiana Rambler who worked with Quinn at various times in Shreveport and New Orleans, said that “[Quinn’s] left hand is so strong that he can pluck a string so loudly you can hear it at the other end of a fairly large dance hall.30

That highly developed left hand strength and skill explains how Quinn was able to accomplish the handshaking trick that has added color to his legend. According to Johnny

Wiggs, “The stunt that got Snoozer his job with Whiteman was his ability to shake your hand and still play pizzicato, and hold the chord with his other hand.”31 Pianist Norman

Brownlee described the meeting of Whiteman and Quinn that occurred on October 28,

1928 in New Orleans:

Snoozer Quinn came backstage at St. Charles Theatre, and Snoozer could play, you know, play with fingers on the frets you see, without stroking the strings, in some of the passages. And so I said, “Snoozer, why don’t you shake hands with Mr. Whiteman?” He says, “Glad to know you, Mr. Whiteman,” with that hand to one side, and he kept on playing it.…And Paul caught at that quick, and got a big bang out of it, and he said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, keep on playing it and I’ll be right back!” and he went to get Pingatore, see, and he brought Mike over there and he said, “Mike, I want you to meet Snoozer Quinn,” and he said, “Glad to know you, Mr. Pingatore,” and he kept on playing. Shaking hands with

29 Obrecht, “Acoustic Roots: The Legendary Snoozer Quinn,” 61. 30 Fred Higginson, “Jack, Peck, Peewee, Snoozer, Tim,” Metronome, November 1941, 23. 31 G.W. Kay, “The Johnny Wiggs Story,” Jazz Journal, Vol. 23, No. 6 (June 1970), 14. 54

Pingatore and he was still playing! Well that was brand new to Paul, and man, and he went, “Keep on, keep on!”32

In his memoir, Drew's Blues: A Sideman's Life with the Big Bands, the clarinetist Drew

Page described Quinn performing the same trick, with a twist:

He could do things that most modern guitarists would think impossible….Snoozer could play solo passages with one hand as well as he could with two. He had a favorite trick of playing a solo with one hand while lighting a cigarette with the other.33

Powerful hammer-ons and pull-offs explain how Quinn was able to play with just one hand without noticeable decline of sound in his guitar playing, and certainly they were key components of his orchestral style.

Implications

Quinn was a gifted musician and entertainer, able to play dance, jazz, country, minstrel songs, gospel, or whatever was called for. He had a country blues sensibility, but he was moving toward a modern solo jazz guitar style that no one else in his time was playing. This style was what earned him the admiration and respect of fellow musicians, that caused jazz greats to gather round to hear him play at after-hour sessions, that caused

Paul Whiteman to hire him, and that caused Les Paul to seek him out for inspiration. “I was interested in guys that knew the instrument in a modern way of playing,” Paul said in an interview with the author in 2008. “And Paul Whiteman said you ought to hear

[Snoozer].”34

The implications of Quinn’s pursuit of a solo jazz guitar style in the 1920s and

32 Norman Brownlee, interview by Richard B. Allen, May 5, 1961, tape recording, HJA. 33 Drew Page, Drew's Blues: A Sideman's Life with the Big Bands (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 1980), 57. 34 Les Paul, interview by Kathryn Hobgood, New York, NY, September 22, 2008. 55

1930s—the era of big bands—were significant. Quinn’s talents may have amazed, but they weren’t marketable in the 1920s and 1930s. While Quinn was an able accompanist, he never did achieve longtime association with any particular band or the distinction of being an essential part of a band’s sound. Nor was Quinn an in-demand recording accompanist as both Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson were. This was due in part to

Quinn’s own reticence and for other personal reasons, as will be discussed at length in the

Biography section. But it is also worth considering that perhaps Quinn’s unique style, the way he preferred to play, did not lend itself to a group dynamic as well as some of these other artists’ styles. Bandleaders and other musicians may have been wildly attracted to

Quinn’s talents, but they didn’t quite know how to utilize him in a band setting, as shall be discussed in an overview of his time with Paul Whiteman (in the Biography).

In an interview with Dick Allen and Curtis Jerde, the New Orleans drummer

Godfrey Hirsch offered an interesting observation when he described Quinn as “strictly a soloist.” Hirsch described how he worked with Quinn at Suburban Gardens in New

Orleans. Quinn was not in the band with him, said Hirsch. Rather, Quinn was a “stroller” who moved from table to table performing for people: “Snoozer was a great guitarist….He was not a good band player. No….he was a soloist. He wanted to play the solo all the time, himself. So, I mean, you’d let him play, and you’d sit down and just listen to him.”35

Hirsch’s statement that Quinn “was not a good band player” refers to Quinn’s preference for his own solo style. Though he played with many bands, it remains true that

Quinn never did find stable employment for a long duration with a single group. It is also

35 Godfrey Hirsch, interview by Curtis D. Jerde and Richard B. Allen, October 27, 1987, tape recording, HJA. Quinn was playing at Suburban Gardens in 1930. 56 true that when one encounters the rare photograph or story of Quinn playing, usually it is in the context of Quinn alone. The image of Quinn as a lone figure, a man and his guitar, has been reinforced through the years with descriptions similar to this one by Drew Page:

“Snoozer was a retiring sort of person, who lived with his guitar, carrying it around with him wherever he went. He would play it whenever he had a spare moment. Some nights we sat out on a pier, listening to him play until sunup.”36

It seems that Quinn was a musician ahead of his time. He had developed such a unique style that Hirsch struggled to describe it.

He was ahead of the game. He was ahead of what music we were playing. And we appreciated his virtuosity, I would say…..He had a style that was….it was not even what we were used to listening to. In other words, it was a new style… Strictly modernistic…not modernistic but I mean, progressive.37

Guitarist Emile “Stalebread” Lacoume, who was part of the New Orleans spasm band tradition, offered his own observation on how Quinn’s guitar style confounded in an interview with Al Rose: “These new guys are sharks. They playin’ stuff we never even thought about. You hear Snoozer or some o’ these dagoes in the hotel bands. They mus’ spend all their time playin’ or practicing.”38

As shall be seen in the Biography section, Quinn’s career led to some thrilling moments where he seemed poised for commercial success, but always, he was disappointed by the outcome. Quinn had opportunities that most musicians would have dreamed of—recording sessions with the leading record companies and job offers from the most famous bandleaders of his time—yet the promise of these opportunities always

36 Page, Drew's Blues, 57. 37 Godfrey Hirsch, interview by Curtis D. Jerde and Richard B. Allen, October 27, 1987, tape recording, HJA. 38 Al Rose, I Remember Jazz: Six Decades Among the Great Jazzmen (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 1999), 241. 57 fell short of fruition. There were low points in Quinn’s career, too; he suffered from health problems from an early age, and alcoholism played no small part in his deterioration. As for the origins of Quinn’s unusual style, one can look to his early musical and cultural experiences, which will also be discussed in the Biography. An overview of Quinn’s early years in Bogalusa, Louisiana and as a musician traveling the

South and Southwest will provide insight on the influences that shaped him as a performer.

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CHAPTER IV:

BIOGRAPHY

A Music-Filled Childhood in Bogalusa, Louisiana

Edward McIntosh Quin1 was born in Pike County, near McComb, Mississippi, on

October 18, 1907. The Quinn family moved to Bogalusa, Louisiana around 1911, when

Quinn was about three years old.2 Father Louis Quinn’s occupation was “car repairer” for the railroad house.3 Bogalusa was a natural move—it was home of the Great Southern

Lumber Company which in 1905 had established a train line called the New Orleans

Great Northern Railroad to transport lumber products. Headquartered in Bogalusa, the railroad served as an important connection between New Orleans and Jackson,

Mississippi.

Some in-depth discussion of Bogalusa will assist the reader in understanding the milieu in which Quinn was raised.4 established in 1906 as a lumber camp and saw mill in the virgin pine forest, Bogalusa exploded into a bustling town and saw such huge population growth in its early years that it earned the nickname “Magic City.” A

1 The spelling changed to “Quinn” some years later. 2 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, July 19, 1923, 7. The article, which is about Eddie’s older brother William Quinn getting married, says that Quinn family had moved to Bogalusa twelve years past (about 1911). The first mention of Eddie Quinn that has been located in the newspaper is from April 20, 1916, when he was eight-years old and in third grade. In that article he was lauded for making one hundred percent in a spelling contest. 3 Federal Census: Year: 1910; Census Place: Beat 4, Pike, Mississippi; Roll: T624_755; Page: 8A; Enumeration District: 0103; FHL microfilm:1374768. 4 The story of Bogalusa is intertwined with the story of the Great Southern Lumber Company. This study of Snoozer Quinn does not seek to go into full history of Bogalusa or the company. A history of the town’s founding, Bogalusa Story, was written by Charles Waterhouse Goodyear, Jr. Goodyear’s father founded the Great Southern Lumber Company.

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newspaper account from 1914, the year Bogalusa was incorporated, describes the population growth:

The growth of Bogalusa from a small town of a few hundred people into a prosperous, thriving city of 10,000 souls in no small measure is due to the generous support given our schools by the Great Southern Lumber Company and the people of this city....where other cities doubled their population, Bogalusa multiplied hers by eight.5

When Eddie Quinn was a child, Bogalusa was a thriving, prosperous community, attracting multitudes of new families each week.6

Bogalusa was a classic company town. The Great Southern Lumber Company built houses for its employees, schools, a hospital, a hotel, churches, numerous public buildings, and a mercantile store. With its major train depot just seventy miles north of

New Orleans and en route to Jackson, the little town was a crossroads for people and culture and a frequent destination for entertainers traveling the region. Chautauqua, circuses, revivals, and other traveling tent shows regularly made appearances in the area.

Social events detailed in the Bogalusa Enterprise & American depict a flurry of wholesome, Norman Rockwell-esque activities such as hay rides, roller skating, swimming, bowling, baseball games, dances, watermelon parties, and picnics. Music was an essential part of every event. Schools regularly put on musical and theatrical programs, while fraternal organizations such as the Elks, the American Legion, and the

Cavalry Troop A hosted dances through the year. Classical music concerts, theater, and minstrelsy were offered on a frequent basis. Beginning in 1915 and running for many years, free weekly concert series were held in Goodyear Park, featuring the

5 Bogalusa Enterprise, December 31, 1914, 2. 6 For example, Eddie Quinn’s mother Philonea Fitzgerald Quinn was one of four sisters, all of whom moved their families to Bogalusa around the same time, to settle within two blocks of one another. Bogalusa was a viable destination for the region in the 1910s when America was transitioning from a rural farm economy to an industrial one.

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Y.M.C.A. Band and underwritten by the Company. In addition to the multitude of public entertainment offerings, the citizens of Bogalusa frequently held private parties and small dances in their own homes, adding to the gaiety and general amusements of the town.

The Bogalusa Enterprise & American documented the local bands in the 1910s, among them the Y.M.C.A. Band, the Bogalusa Cornet Band, the Elks ,

Faber’s Orchestra, Tilton’s Orchestra, Denson’s Orchestra, and beginning in 1920, the

“Colored Y Band” and Blanchard’s Orchestra. Marching band music, minstrel songs, Tin

Pan Alley tunes, light classical, operetta, Irish ballads, and spiritual songs were the repertory of 1910s and 1920s—this was the fare that young Eddie Quinn grew up on.

Bogalusans frequently traveled to New Orleans, and Bogalusan musicians purchased their from Werlein’s Music Store in New Orleans.7 The popular music of that cosmopolitan city would have quickly been transmitted back to Bogalusa. In addition,

Bogalusans were listening to blues and jazz.

The interaction of white and black musicians in Bogalusa during Quinn’s youth is not known to a great extent. 8 Newspaper accounts indicate that it was certainly not

7 Henry E. Sims, interview by William Powell Jones, February 19, 1998, transcription, The Southern Historical Collection. 8 Bogalusa's black community had a rich musical culture, and was an important part of the blues trail and chitlin' circuit. Notable musicians who came from or spent time in Bogalusa include Little Brother Montgomery, James Wiggins, Blind Pete Burrell, Henry Byrd (Professor Longhair), Clarence Gatemouth Brown, and Chicago Bob Nelson. spent a lot of time in Bogalusa in the 1930s, according to fellow blues musicians and (see Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture by Patricia R. Schroeder). The folklorist and anthropologist Zora Neal Hurston visited Bogalusa in the late 1920s while researching black communities in sawmill towns; she wrote about the music and culture in some of her letters (and eventually published Mules and Men). In the book The Star Creek Papers, a 1934 Bogalusa band called King Gulley is described by authors Horace and Julia Mann Bond. Labor historian William Powell Jones wrote about the leisure and recreational habits of black communities in the South in the 1900s in The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South. While conducting research, he interviewed some of Bogalusa’s early black workers and musicians, including Henry Sims and Willie Hump Manning, who were early members of the Colored Y Band and went on to become members of the Rhythm Aces, a band that eventually recorded for Decca.

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unusual for whites to attend dances where the music was performed by blacks.9 In fact,

Bogalusans were dancing to music performed by the some of the best-known black musicians of early jazz. Bands led by the cornetist Buddy Petit, the banjo, guitar and violin player Bud Scott, and the violinist Claiborne Williams made regular appearances in Bogalusa around 1920 and 1921.

Quinn grew up in this musically rich environment, in a musical family. His mother Philonea played piano, father Louis and brother Richard both played fiddle, and brother Willie played guitar—and it was on Willie’s guitar that Eddie first played when he was seven years old. None were considered professional musicians, and the family mostly performed at home together for their own amusement. Willie participated in some local minstrel shows as a guitarist.10 But Willie’s talents were limited: “Ed had to tell him every time to change chords,” brother Alton “Foots” Quinn told the Bogalusa journalist

Al Hansen, who wrote an overview of Quinn’s life for the Bogalusa Daily News in

1976.11

9 The interaction between black and white musicians in Bogalusa, especially in the 1910s and 1920s when jazz was developing, merits further research as it relates to the topic of Snoozer Quinn. It must be stated that the history of Bogalusa is savage when it comes to race relations and equal rights issues, and in later years (1950s and 1960s) it is highly unlikely that Quinn would have been able to engage in mixed jam sessions with black musicians. A 1965 article in The Nation labels Bogalusa “Klantown, USA” and actually mentions an incident where “purported Klansmen whipped two white men during the summer, one a guitarist accused of holding mixed jam sessions in his home.” (The Nation, February 1, 1965, Vol. 200, 112.) However, it was possible during the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s that blacks and whites integrated musically. The Star Creek Papers, by Horace and Julia Mann Bond, explores race relations in Washington Parish during the mid-1930s. The Bonds were a well-educated African-American couple sent down from Chicago to observe the development of black rural schools as part of a project by the Rosenwald Fund. They chronicled their experiences and offered insight on black life and on the complexities of race relations in the area around Bogalusa. While it’s clear from their papers that miscegenation, racism, and, terrifyingly, lynchings, were realities for blacks, there is also evidence that blacks and whites within the community felt deep ties of friendship and affection. 10 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, April 10, 1924, 1. 11 Al Hansen, “Snoozer’s Song: If it could make a noise, Quinn could play it,” Bogalusa Daily News, June 2, 1976, 18.

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Eddie, however, was exceptionally talented and could play music “as soon as he was old enough to walk up to the piano.”12 Growing up, Eddie played piano, violin, , guitar, and banjo—as well as anything else from which he could coax a musical sound, including wind instruments. (According to his brother, “He could take a trumpet and play Bix Biederbecke’s on ‘I Can’t Get Started’ so it sounded just like Bix, but then his lip would give out halfway through.”13)

In addition to sheer raw talent, Quinn exhibited a keen mind and a mechanical inclination in his pursuits:

“He played anything that would make music,” Foots says, recalling how he would turn a cigar box, broomstick and strands of wire into a makeshift guitar, on the order of the one-string basses featured mostly by comedy hillbilly bands nowadays. He made his own ukulele, and he once took the works out of a player piano and rebuilt it to improve the tone. He could play the musical saw, using anything from a bow to a pocket knife…. Young Eddie had a large double-string ukulele that he played with a felt pick and could make sound like an organ.14

Quinn’s primary instrument as a child was the violin. In fact, at Bogalusa High

School, he had the nickname “Fiddler.” In addition to playing violin in his school orchestra for several years, Quinn played violin at the Superior Baptist Church and at the

Magic City Theater (he lost his first violin in a fire that occurred at the theater in the

1910s). Growing up, he took violin lessons from a Mrs. N. S. Young, a teacher at

Bogalusa High School, “but she eventually told Eddie’s mother that he knew more than anyone could teach him.”15 As for the guitar, Eddie taught himself to play when he was

12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid.

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just seven years old.16 Who some of his earliest guitar influences might have been in

Bogalusa is unknown.17

Figure 11. From the 1924 edition of Lumberjack, the Bogalusa High School yearbook: the high school orchestra included Ed Quinn (back row, second from left).

Eddie experimented with ways to make innovative sounds, something he’d do throughout his life. When he played for the church, he would adapt his violin to make a

16 Wiggs, “Snoozer Quinn: Musician’s Musician,” 11. 17 Unfortunately, none of Quinn’s personal guitar heroes are known. According to Tim Kelly, “Snoozer had listened to the Negroes in Lafayette and New Iberia, but he wanted to get more out of a box than they did.” (Fred Higginson, “Jack, Peck, Peewee, Snoozer, Tim,” Metronome, November 1941.) Johnny Wiggs’ composition and recording, “Two Wing Temple In the Sky” was dedicated to Snoozer Quinn, which might suggest Quinn enjoyed Elder Utah Smith (see I Got Two Wings: Incidents and Anecdotes of The Two-Winged Preacher and Electric Guitar Evangelist Elder Utah Smith by Lynn Abbott).

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chorus effect in a most curious manner. According to Hansen’s article, “A unique feature of his church playing was an attachment he clamped onto the bridge of the violin, with a steel ball sticking up from it, which gave an angelic vibrato to the music.”18

As a musician at the Magic City Theater, a combination movie and vaudeville house with a seating capacity of about 90019, Eddie’s job was to score music suitable to the theme of the pictures being shown. He was charged with creating sound effects, as well, which surely was a delightful prospect for a young boy; for example, Eddie used metal sheets to imitate thunder.20

In addition to violin, Quinn specialized in banjo. He played it at football games, though whether with a marching band, a jazz band, or solo is unknown. And he was regularly tapped to play in community minstrel shows. Miscellaneous newspaper articles document his active role in the community. For examples, on May 15, 1923, Eddie gave a violin solo at the Junior Senior Banquet, held at the Y.W.C.A.21 On November 16,

1923, he performed at the Father & Son Get-Together held at the Y.M.C.A (along with musical coordinator Eddie Thornhill, John Melancon, George Holmes and Newell

Tilton).22 On April 4, 1924, he supervised the Lolly-Pop Minstrel at the High School street carnival,23 and on May 9, 1924, he played in the “Y” held at the high school:

J.A. Spekenhier as “Uncle Ephriham” will be supported by Willie Quinn, John L. Harmon, Eddie Quinn and George Holmes. The title of the skit is “A Night on the Levee.” Nearly forty artists are booked for the night,

18 Hansen, “Snoozer’s Song: If it could make a noise, Quinn could play it,” 18. 19 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, November 25, 1920, Special Section Three, 4. 20 Hansen, “Snoozer’s Song: If it could make a noise, Quinn could play it,” 18. 21 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, May 24, 1923, 5. 22 Bogalusa Enterprise & American: November 15, 1923, 1; November 22, 1923, 1. 23 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, March 27, 1924, 5.

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including W.C. Flanders, who made famous “I Ain’t Nobody’s Darlin’” and 1923’s “Down By the River Side.”24

Figure 12. Eddie Quinn in 1924. From the 1924 edition of Lumberjack, the Bogalusa High School yearbook.

The 1924 yearbook for Bogalusa High School, the Lumberjack, depicts Quinn as an engaged young man in his senior year. He was voted “Most Useful Boy” by his class members. In addition to his musical activities, he served on the yearbook staff and was a member of the “H-Y” Club, which had as its mission “to create and maintain throughout the school and community high standards of the Christian Character.”25 Quinn was also the business manager for the Bogalusa High School football team. Beneath his photo in the Athletics section of the yearbook, in which he wears a dark skinny suit and a

Homburg hat, it says:

24 Bogalusa Enterprise & American: April 10, 1924, 1; also see April 24, 1924, 1; May 1, 1924, 1 and 6. 25 Bogalusa High School, Lumberjack 1924 Yearbook (Bogalusa, LA: Graduating Class of 1924, 1924).

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Ed. ever willing and anxious to help in any cause, was elected business manager of the football team, and he strove to do his best for them. He could always be depended upon to do whatever task was given him. Ed leaves us this year, and we will have to look for another business manager. If he fills that position one-half as well as Ed, we cannot kick.26

Figure 13. Eddie Quinn served as business manager for the high school football team. From the 1924 edition of Lumberjack, the Bogalusa High School yearbook.

26 Lumberjack, 1924.

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This comment sheds some light on Quinn’s personality, and echoes of these traits— eagerness to please and sweetness of character—are found again and again in friends’ and family members’ descriptions of Quinn. (Years later, Quinn would be described by a

New Orleans friend as “the kind of guy that never could say no to you.”27)

Something else that the yearbook reveals about Quinn is found beneath his senior class photo: “He puts his worries down in the bottom of his heart, and sits on the lid and smiles.”28 This, no doubt, is an allusion to Quinn’s physical disfigurements. He had a noticeably misshapen head and an ear that stuck out, while the other was small, malformed and flattened against his head. Quinn’s longtime friend, the New Orleans drummer Monk Hazel, explained, “Snoozer was born—when he was born, they had to use forceps, and his head was lopsided like that from forceps; his head came almost to a point; he was a funny looking guy.”29 In addition, Quinn was blind in one eye, “the result of a childhood accident,” according to Alton Quinn,30 and had to wear a glass eye. These features would make him conspicuous to others, and reportedly self-conscious, throughout his life.31

Quinn was obviously well-liked by his peers and admired for his musical talent.

The senior class prophecy predicted that Ed Quinn would “[gain] fame the country over because of his great ability as a musician.”32 Between Quinn’s musical activities at church, school, with friends, and at the Magic City Theater, it seems he was constantly

27 Monk Hazel, interview by Bill Russell, July 16, 1959, transcription, HJA. 28 Lumberjack, 1924. 29 Monk Hazel, interview by Bill Russell, July 16, 1959, transcription, HJA. 30 Hansen, “Snoozer’s Song: The musicians heard Eddie, but the public heard Whiteman,” Bogalusa Daily News, June 6, 1976, 8. 31 The trumpet player tells an anecdote about his band members’ missing body parts in his autobiography Trumpet on the Wing. Snoozer Quinn’s missing eye was discussed. (Wingy himself only had one arm—he lost his other in a streetcar accident as a child in New Orleans.) 32 Lumberjack, 1924.

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performing. In addition to all of that, Quinn was a member of Claude Blanchard’s orchestra, a professional organization that played for dances several times a week from

January 1920 to October 1922.

Blanchard’s Orchestra

On April 15, 1920, the first reference to Blanchard’s orchestra appeared in the

Bogalusa newspaper:

A number of young men have announced a dance for Friday evening which will be held at the Pine Tree Inn, starting at 9:00 to which the public is invited. Music will be furnished by Blanchard’s Kings of Syncopation Orchestra, which has recently made a decided hit in Bogalusa.33

The band was founded by Claude Blanchard, who after being discharged from the Navy in 1919, returned to Bogalusa in January 1920 and went to work managing the family business, the Magic City Theater.34 Quinn, who was twelve years old in 1920 (and who was already employed by the theater as a musician), was listed as a member of the band in an announcement later that year:

The Magic City Theater has secured the services of Blanchard’s Kings of Syncopation, consisting of Claude Blanchard, leader; Newell Tilton, Eddie Quinn and Inez Blanchard, and henceforth patrons of that theater will be entertained with music during the performances.35

Blanchard was a trumpet player who had previously performed with the Bogalusa

Y.M.C.A. Band and with the Marine Band in Jackson, Miss.36 He had considerable business acumen and did all the marketing for the Magic City Theater, and therefore had

33 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, April 15, 1920, 1. 34 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, January 22, 1920, 8. 35 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, December 2, 1920, 2. Quinn and others in the band had been playing for the movie theater for quite some time, but this formal announcement was likely a correction to an article from the week before that had listed Inez Blanchard as the sole musician (Bogalusa Enterprise & American, November 25, 1920, 4 (Section Three)). Quinn had lost his first violin in a fire that destroyed the Blanchard’s original Bogalusa movie theater. 36 Bogalusa Enterprise, June 15, 1916, 6.

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numerous connections that surely helped him to market the band. Claude was considered to be an excellent entertainer, and numerous references to his minstrel performances can be found in papers around the same time he led Blanchard’s Orchestra. One news item, for example, referenced “Claude Blanchard’s far-famed blackface comedy.”37

Claude’s younger sister Inez had studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and specialized in piano (but she also played violin and possibly other instruments).38

Inez, interestingly, was named “Most Beautiful Girl in Louisiana” by the Louisiana department of the American Legion Auxiliary in 1922. Her musical talents were mentioned in the announcement.39 Eddie Quinn, of course, played mainly banjo as well as violin and guitar. Newell Tilton’s main instrument with the Blanchard Orchestra is unknown, but he has been documented in newspapers as playing both guitar and drum.40

It’s likely that the members performed on several instruments with Blanchard’s orchestra—though it’s certain that the band didn’t have a drummer at least until January

1922.41 An article from July of 1921 says:

Blanchard’s Jazz Hounds is the only jazz band in the country attempting to play syncopated symphonies with but four pieces, and those who have heard the strains of the Hound’s musical endeavors admit that they are all there with the goods and they will furnish the music at these dances.42

One can imagine how young Eddie would have developed a heightened sense of rhythmic responsibility in these formative years, as the banjoist and possibly main

37 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, November 17, 1921, 4. 38 By May 1922 pianist John Melancon would be identified as a member of the band (Bogalusa Enterprise & American, May 11, 1922, 1). Frank Tilton, a blind piano player and younger brother of Newell Tilton, was also associated with the Blanchard Orchestra. 39 New Orleans States, August 6, 1922, 1. 40 Several articles from 1916 list Newell as a guitar player in a string band—(for instance, April 16, 1916, 6). One item mentions him playing drum as part of a duet, with Frank Tilton playing piano (June 22, 1916, 1). 41 In January 1922 the group acquired a drummer to some fanfare in the local newspaper (Bogalusa Enterprise & American, January 12, 1922, 4). 42 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, July 21, 1921, 1.

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percussion instrument.

Adding a drummer in January 1922 can be seen as a professional turning point for the band.

Blanchard’s Jazz Band to Play at Magic City: Patrons of Magic City Theater will have the opportunity of hearing Bogalusa’s premier jazz orchestra at every evening performance in the future. Blanchard’s Jazz Band has secured the services of a drummer who is reported to be one of the best ever brought to this city and the other members of the aggregation have improved wonderfully in the past several weeks.43

Newspaper accounts of Blanchard’s orchestra become ever more laudatory over the months of 1922. A key indicator of their popularity is recognized in the fact that throughout most of 1922, Blanchard’s Jazz Hounds was the only jazz band regularly performing in Bogalusa. The group had effectively squeezed out the regular out-of-town competition, which, over 1920 and 1921, had included Bud Scott’s Jazzers, the Claiborne

Williams Jazz Band, the Durand-Humphrey Band, and Buddy Petit’s Jazz Band.44

Within the span of two years, Blanchard’s Jazz Hounds were the dominant band in their area, playing major events such as the town’s Fourth of July celebration and

Mardi Gras balls, and were in demand by other towns in the region, such as Abita

Springs, Ponchatoula, Hammond, Mandeville, Slidell, and Biloxi.

The citizens of Hammond, La., were given a real treat Tuesday night when Blanchard’s Jazz Orchestra, a local organization, filled a dance engagement in that city. The Hammond devotees of Terpsichore say it was the best music ever heard in that city. The Blanchard musical organization is now being offered engagement at Slidely [sic], Covington and on the Gulf Coast. They have been engaged to play every Sunday during the summer at Mandeville.45

43 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, January 12, 1922, 4. 44 In 1920 and 1921 these bands were hired for regular dances and for the larger events in Bogalusa, such as for Mardi Gras masque balls, Christmas benefit concerts, and New Year’s Eve dances. 45 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, July 20, 1922, 8.

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It’s worth repeating that during his time with the Blanchard orchestra, from January 1920 through October 1922, Quinn was only twelve through fifteen years old. Alton “Foots”

Quinn told Hansen that one of their older brothers was required to travel with Eddie to the out-of-town dances to act as chaperone.46 The band’s run ended when Claude

Blanchard took a job with Southern Pacific railroad and moved to Houston, Texas.47

Paul English Players

In summer of 1924, Quinn graduated from Bogalusa High School. On April 9,

1925 the paper reported that “Eddie Quinn, one of Bogalusa’s most popular young men, left Bogalusa with the Paul English Players, with whom he has accepted a position as musician.”48 The Paul English Players were a popular territory act that traveled the region, setting up tents and attracting audiences from miles around. (This was the same group that featured country musician Jimmie Rodgers as a star attraction in 1929.) The

Paul English Players had an upstanding reputation. The following description appeared in

1922 in Woman’s Enterprise, a newspaper based out of Baton Rouge, La.:

The Paul English Players have made a big hit everywhere they go by giving people good, clean, wholesome amusement and by their fair, honest business policy. They seem to have a company of ladies and gentleman who conduct themselves in a way as to reflect credit upon their organization and upon the community in which they appear.49

46 Hansen, “Snoozer’s Song: If it could make a noise, Quinn could play it,” 18. 47 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, November 9, 1922, 8. 48 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, April 9, 1925, 1. 49 Woman's Enterprise, June 1, 1922, 6.

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The group worked in Ellisville, Mississippi, and Laurel, Mississippi, in the month of

April, performing dramatic productions and musical-comedy concerts.50 An advertisement from the Laurel Daily Leader offers a description of the outfit:

Carrying their own beautiful scenery, gorgeous silk and velvet drapes, unique and artistic lighting effects, a mammoth stage and equipment whereon real productions will be offered, a palace tent theatre with seating capacity for the entire town, the famous Kansas City Radio Orchestra, and big time Chautauqua features, the Paul English players come to Laurel highly endorsed by the press, public, and pulpit of the larger cities. ….During the week Mr. English will present four late Broadway successes, and two beautiful book plays, featuring high class Chautauqua numbers each night.51

This tour continued through December. An article from the Shreveport Times announced that Paul English’s theatrical company closed a “successful 1925 season on December 20 and have taken up their winter quarters in New Orleans.”52 However, it is possible that

Quinn had already exited the Paul English Players for work in Texas. In the book

Trumpet on the Wing, the trumpet player Wingy Manone described a band he put together for a three-month job at the Somerset Club in , Texas, that took place in the summer of 1925.53 Billed as “Joe Mannone’s New Orleans Rhythm Band,” it featured Don Ellis on saxophone, Snoozer Quinn on guitar, on clarinet,

Joe Lamer on piano, and Claude Humphries on drums.

50 Laurel Daily Leader, May 2, 1925, 8. 51 Laurel Daily Leader, April 24, 1925, 6. 52 Shreveport Times, January 8, 1926, 7. 53 Wingy Manone and Paul Vandervoort, Trumpet on the Wing (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1948), 66-67. After this gig at Somerset Club, Wingy went on to join up with Doc Ross and the Jazz Bandits in Albuquerque in the fall of 1925, where he first met . This effectively dates the Somerset Club gig to Summer 1925. It could be that Manone’s recollection of chronology was incorrect. If Quinn was already using the nickname “Snoozer” by 1925, then it means he was already working with Peck Kelley in 1925 (a possible scenario).

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Texas Territory Work

Texas was a logical career move for Quinn. Fellow Bogalusa musicians Claude

Blanchard and Frank Tilton, a blind piano player, were finding considerable success in

Houston. Blanchard had debuted a new “Blanchard’s Orchestra” in Texas and was broadcasting from the KPRC radio station on Thursday evenings. From the Bogalusa

Enterprise & American:

Tonight will be a good time to test out your radio and at the same time hear a local boy broadcast, as the orchestra which Claude Blanchard has organized at Houston, Tex., and known as Blanchard’s Orchestra, will be on the air from 7:30 to 8:30 this evening.54

KPRC was a brand-new radio station owned by the Houston Post-Dispatch newspaper.

Broadcasting at 500 watts, the station’s inaugural broadcast was on May 9, 1925 and could be heard as far away as Columbus, Ohio (according to laudatory telegrams received by the station).55 Blanchard, Tilton, and Quinn were among its earliest rosters of artists.

While in Houston, Quinn established himself as a full member of the Local 65 chapter of the American Federation of Musicians.56 In March 1926 a hometown article reported on his success, too:

Eddie Quinn, who left here a few weeks ago for Houston, Texas, writes that he enjoys his work very much and his services are greatly in demand in that city. Eddie is now broadcasting regularly appearing on the program from 7:30-8:30 and his legion of Bogalusa friends always tune in to hear

54 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, September 19, 1925, 1. 55 “Station KPRC ‘Goes On the Air’: Thousands Praise New Post-Dispatch Radio Program,” Houston Post- Dispatch, May 10, 1925, 1. The article mistakenly lists the wattage as 500 kilowatts, but other sources confirm it was 500 watts. 56 The August 1926 issue of The International Musician (a publication of the American Federation of Musicians) lists an “Edwin (Pat) Quinn” under new members for Houston’s Local 65. Whether that entry refers to someone else or is a corruption of Quinn’s name is not positive. However, meeting minutes from August 31, 1928 of the Local 174 in New Orleans confirm that Quinn was a indeed a Houston member on transfer in New Orleans. Efforts to access primary documents from the Houston Local 65 have been unsuccessful.

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him.57

It was during this era that Quinn was promoted by KPRC as “Dixie’s Premier Banjoist”58 and “Dixie’s Banjo King.”59

Through Quinn’s association with Blanchard he came to know to a circle of musicians who crop up again and again in the Texas era of his career, who played together in several different configurations and under different band leaders. For example, an early incarnation of Blanchard’s Orchestra featured Blanchard on trumpet,

Quinn on banjo and violin, Johnny James on saxophone, Lavelle “Red” Stuart60 on trombone, Roy Riley on drums, and Benny Guzzardo on clarinet.61 Every member of this lineup except for Blanchard would be featured in Mart Britt’s Sylvan Beach Orchestra in

April 1928, to be discussed below. And several of them were also featured, at different times, as members of a band called the Louisiana Ramblers, as well as Peck’s Bad Boys led by the pianist Peck Kelley.

Peck Kelley was an important mentor to Quinn and figured prominently in his musical education. A trained musician who had studied harmony, music theory and classical piano, Kelley was widely admired by jazz musicians for his abilities, but he was also known for declining record contracts and for his refusal to leave Texas despite offers from Whiteman, the Dorseys, Benny Goodman, , Rudy Vallee, ,

Guy Lombardo, and numerous other famous bandleaders. An in-depth essay on Kelley’s legend was written by Allen Schrader for the Southwest Review. Said Schrader:

Once any conversation they participate in had shifted to the subject of jazz

57 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, March 4, 1926, 1. 58 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, July 8, 1926, 1. 59 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, December 23, 1926, 4. 60 Elsewhere spelled as “Stewart” 61 Card for Blanchard Orchestra from the Claude Blanchard, Jr. Family Collection.

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pianists, Jack Teagarden, , , Ray Bauduc, Sonny Lee, et al., readily cited Kelley’s name….and, without exception, ecstatically pointed up the multiple dimensions of his talent.62

Kelley worked around Texas for most of his life, leading bands that featured notable players such as the trombonist Teagarden, the saxophonist Pee Wee Russell, and the clarinetist . Peck’s Bad Boys were considered one of the greatest bands of the Southwest and won many band battles during marathon dances.

One of the “band battles” that Kelley recalls winning was a musical duel between the “Bad Boys” and a band from Austin, Jimmy Joy and his Sole- Killers. Winning a “band battle” from Joy’s “Sole-Killers” could be termed an achievement for any band; Joy at the climactic moment of a “battle” would pick up two clarinets and perform simultaneously perhaps not a contrapuntal study but nevertheless, by any definition, a one-man duet.63

(Schrader does not note that Kelley had his own trick clarinet player in Johnnie “Red”

James, who also could play two clarinets at one time.64)

Quinn looked up to Peck Kelley and considered him “his greatest inspiration in musical matters,” according to the cornetist Johnny Wiggs, who first met Quinn when they were playing together in Peck’s Bad Boys. Wiggs quotes Quinn as saying, “Peck was completely over my head. Completely. It was some time before what he was doing began to sink in with me. When I finally did realize it hit me hard.”65 According to

Wiggs, Snoozer said:

I was with Peck a good while and I have played with a lot of other top- notch musicians. I can say that I got more pleasure out of hearing Peck play, more inspiration, than from any other musicians. Not that I haven’t gotten a terrific amount of pleasure from Louis, Bix and others, but Peck

62 Allen Schrader, “The Man with Twenty Fingers,” Southwest Review, Volume XLIX, Number 3 (1964), 215. 63 Schrader, “The Man with Twenty Fingers,” 213. 64 News-Record, September 18, 1927, 8. 65 Wiggs, “Snoozer Quinn: Musician’s Musician,” 12.

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Kelley was the top. You can take all the other pianists, put them together and that’s where Peck starts, for me at least.66

Kelley was famous for his great technical playing, his ability to improvise and maintain contrapuntal melodies, harmony, and multiple inventive rhythms, all with great expression. “The more he played, the more it sounded as though he had twenty fingers,” said the jazz drummer Herb Brockstein.67 Pee Wee Russell described Kelley’s playing as clean and authoritative:

Peck not only played an awful lot of piano, he played so positive and clean. He had a “this is mine” style, with plenty of authority. And he wasn’t like other fast pianists up north, who didn’t know the blues. Peck played real blues….he was very advanced harmonically.…68

Quinn, an impressionable seventeen- or eighteen-year-old when he was working with Peck’s Bad Boys, was a pupil to Kelley’s harmonic tutelage. (According to Alton

Quinn, Kelley was the person who gave young Eddie the nickname ‘Snoozer,’

“supposedly because he was so good he could sleep and play at the same time.”69)

On April 29, 1926 the Bogalusa Enterprise & American gave an update on Quinn:

Eddie Quinn, the versatile entertainer who has been located at Houston, Tex. for the past several months, where he has been broadcasting for the Houston Post-Dispatch station, arrived home this week for a few days’ visit with relatives and friends before going to Shreveport where he has secured a much better position with the broadcasting station of that city.70

66 Ibid. 67 Schrader, “The Man with Twenty Fingers,” 217. 68 Hadlock, “Peck Kelley—Jazz Legend,” 21-22. 69 Hansen, “Snoozer’s Song: Peck Kelly gave Eddie a nickname and a style,” Bogalusa Daily News, June 3, 1976, 9. (The film footage also shows that while Quinn played, he gave the appearance of ‘snoozing’— nodding peacefully over the guitar and playing effortlessly even through difficult passages. And, interestingly, in his memoir Trumpet on the Wing, Wingy Manone told an anecdote about a guitar player in Shreveport that, logically, seems like it would refer to a guy named “Snoozer.” Wrote Manone: “Another character who knocked me out was a guitar player who used to come around and sit in with the band. This guy would go to sleep right while he was playing. I couldn’t get over him sawing wood right while we were cutting some righteous jam. When I couldn’t stand his snoring any longer I’d lean over and let him have some cornet blasts in the ear.”) 70 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, April 29, 1926, 1.

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Throughout May and June 1926, Peck’s Bad Boys were the house band at the

Washington Hotel in downtown Shreveport, La., where they gave concerts twice a day.

Many of these shows were broadcast over radio station KWKH. Additional radio work occurred several times a week, on various instrumental and novelty shows. The musicians also picked up side gigs playing private dances and parties for fraternal organizations.

An ad from May 23, 1926 shows the complete lineup of musicians in Peck’s Bad

Boys: “Every member of this orchestra is an artist and a soloist.…all formerly of the

Louisiana Ramblers and selected by Kelley on account of their outstanding musical ability.”71 The members were Peck Kelley, Jimmy Cannon (saxophone), Eddie Quinn

(“Banjo, Violin and Guitar: An artist without peer on these instruments”), Sidney Brown

(drums and vocals), Joe Mannone72 (trumpet), Dick Richardson (unknown)73, Pat Decuir

(trumpet), Bobby Decuir (trombone), Don Ellis (saxophone), and Paul Huffer

(saxophone).74 The band provided daily concerts in the Washington Hotel lobby at noon and in the evenings, and was available for hire for private events.75

Schrader describes a lineup of Peck’s Bad Boys (from 1927, which is when

71 Shreveport Times, May 23, 1926, 7. 72 Appears as both “Manone” and “Mannone” throughout his career. 73 Unreadable in the advertisement. 74 Note that Johnny Wiggs is not listed in this incarnation. The differences between the style of jazz being played by Texas jazz musicians and New Orleans jazz musicians in the 1920s has been briefly addressed by jazz musicologists, but has been underexplored. It’s widely acknowledged that Southwest jazz music has gotten the shrift in terms of study as compared to New Orleans, Chicago, and New York developments. In Schrader's article, Kelley described the Houston Dixieland style as “more of a technical music” than New Orleans Dixieland. “We always had four in the front line,” he said, referring to clarinet, trumpet, trombone, and saxophone (the latter an instrument that was not associated with early New Orleans jazz bands). Kelley also pointed out that early incarnations of Peck's Bad Boys did not use a bass. 75 Shreveport Times, May 23, 1926, 7.

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Johnny Wiggs says he worked in the band76) in a most interesting fashion—offering commentary not only on their great musicality, but also their appearance:

That Kelley has never been preoccupied with outward appearances is perhaps best exemplified by his selection of the group of “Bad Boys” which, during 1927, played an engagement at the Washington-Youree Hotel in Shreveport. According to several reports, he selected for his trip the most competent group of jazz musicians available in Houston. And according to several reports….the “Bad Boys” whom Kelley selected, including the late Wingy Manone who was forced to manipulate his trumpet with one arm, represented the most heterogenous group of physically disabled and disfigured musicians ever to congregate on a single bandstand. One of the “Bad Boys,” it’s said, “walked with an elaborate limp.” Another “looked as though a flat iron had been used on one side of his head to straighten out any uneven surfaces.” Despite…. their various disabilities and appearances, Peck’s Bad Boys did bring to Shreveport a quality of Dixieland stimulating to the most knowledgeable critics.77

The Decuir brothers and Quinn were musical associates for many years. They were in Peck’s Bad Boys together as well as a band called the Louisiana Ramblers.

Hansen’s article described some of the venues the Ramblers played: “Snoozer toured

Southwest Louisiana with an outfit headed by ‘the DeCuir Boys,’ Pat and Bobby, playing for bayou dances in open-air sheds, drawing their patrons from miles around by Model T and pirogue.”78 Of the Louisiana Ramblers, the clarinetist Tim Kelly has said:

The Ramblers was a little band (nine pieces)….originated by Bob and Pat de Cuir as the Original Dixieland Six, it was famous all over Louisiana before any other white band had played there. They played in competition with the fine colored bands and members of this group helped materially to influence any of the present-day southern musicians who heard or played with the Ramblers.79

76 Wiggs, in the article “The Legendary ‘Snoozer’ Quinn,” as told to G.W. Kay, recalled that he met Snoozer when he joined Peck’s Bad Boys in Shreveport in 1927. (In the article “Snoozer Quinn: Musician’s Musician,” he wrote it was 1924, which is before Quinn left Bogalusa.) 77 Schrader, “The Man with Twenty Fingers,” 215. 78 Hansen, “Snoozer’s Song: Peck Kelly gave Eddie a nickname and a style,” 9. 79 Fred Higginson, “Jack, Peck, Peewee, Snoozer, Tim,” Metronome, November 1941, 23.

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In May 1927, “Eddie Quinn’s Louisiana Ramblers” performed at the Somerset

Club in San Antonio.80 In June 1927, the Louisiana Ramblers went to Mexico, where they performed for several months at the Bohemian Club in Nueva Laredo.81 This gig lasted through September 24, 1927, when the club advertised, “Tonight is Farewell Night of the Louisiana Ramblers…Come and Bid the Boys Goodbye.”82 The band that performed at the Bohemian Club included Pat Decuir on trumpet; Quinn on banjo, guitar and fiddle; Joe Bishop on tuba; Red Stewart on trombone; Lee Henry, Mac Ferguson, and

Roy Young on saxophone; Rupert Biggadike on piano; and Johnnie Brent on drums.83

By December 1927, Quinn was performing with fellow banjoist and singer Mart

Britt on KPRC radio. Britt had previously worked with the Bell Hops dance orchestra. A station advertisement described their duo: “Mart Britt, singer and banjoist and his pal,

Eddie Quinn, master of several plectral instruments, will entertain in their somewhat different manner as the final part of the hour of interest.”84 By April 1928, Britt expanded the act; Britt’s Sylvan Beach Orchestra worked over the summer at a resort and amusement park in La Porte, Texas, thirty miles outside of Houston. The personnel:

Mart Britt, Director & Voice; Terry Shand, Piano & Arranger; Bennie Gazzardo, Sax & Clarinet; Kenneth McGarrity, Trumpet; Roy Riley, Drums & Asst. Director; Johnnie James, Sax & Clarinet; Ed Quinn, Banjo, Violin, Guitar & Voice; Joe Bishop, Sousaphone, Trumpet & Voice; Lavelle Stewart, Trombone & Voice.85

80 San Antonio Express, May 19, 1927, 19. 81 Laredo Daily Times, June 3, 1927, 8. Details about Quinn’s person are listed on his passport, including the fact that he was six feet tall and had green eyes. 82 Laredo Daily Times, September 24, 1927, 6. 83 Frank Kelly, “Reminiscing in Tempo: Researching the Down South Bands (Exploratory),” Record Research, No. 63 (September 1964), 11. 84 Houston Post Dispatch, December 1, 1927, 12. 85 The members and their roles in the organization are included exactly as written on the back of a photograph owned by the Quinn family. It’s interesting that Britt is not listed as an instrumentalist, which should be considered by discographers in identifying personnel on Britt Orchestra recordings.

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Figure 14. Photograph of Mart Britt’s Sylvan Beach Orchestra of 1928, from the Quinn family collection.

Many of these members had been part of the Claude Blanchard Orchestra. Stewart,

Bishop, and Quinn had all been part of the Louisiana Ramblers incarnation of June-

September 1927. Johnnie James (the trick clarinet and saxophone player) had also been a featured member of the Jack Willrich Orchestra, another group that Quinn was associated with during his time in Texas.86

On May 21, 1928, Quinn recorded four guitar solos in San Antonio, Texas: the famous “Tiger Rag” and three of his own compositions, “Snoozer’s Blues,” “That’ll Get

86 Miami News-Record, September 18, 1927, 8.

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It,” and “Rambling Blues” as documented by the Victor ledger entry.87 Quinn’s hometown newspaper reported on April 26, 1928:

Eddie Quinn, Bogalusa’s noted banjoist, now associated with Mart Britt’s Sylvan Beach Orchestra near Houston, Tex., has reached the goal of all jazz musicians of the day—that of making phonograph records. Eddie has made several records accompanied with Mart Britt, a vocalist, but has now been solicited by the Victor Company to make a series of records with his trusty banjo. Four records have already been completed and will be released in the near future. Eddie has been heard over the radio for the past two years, and is recognized as one of the most talented banjoists of the professional stage, and his services are much in demand.88

Victor never released these recordings. Whether or not they still exist remains unknown—according to Victor records they were “held” for further evaluation. The fact that Quinn was solicited to record an album of solo jazz guitar in 1928 is a testament to his extraordinary talent. That the recordings were ultimately deemed unsalable by Victor is a commentary on the lack of interest in guitar music at that time (the era of big bands).

Paul Whiteman, “King of Jazz”

Quinn returned to Bogalusa in late September of 1928.89 According to meeting minutes from the Local 174 chapter of the American Federation of Musicians in New

Orleans, Quinn had begun the process of depositing his transfer to that chapter from

Houston in late summer. (His status was discussed at the August 3190 and September 1491

87 Victor Records Ledgers, 6671-A, courtesy Sony Music Entertainment Archives. 88 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, April 26, 1928, 3. It’s interesting that the newspaper reports at this time that “four records have already been completed,” but there is no Victor documentation of an additional session. Additionally, the newspaper indicates that Quinn had made banjo recordings for Victor, when the Victor logs of May indicate he made guitar recordings. Perhaps there was an additional session known as a “trial” or “audition.” Quinn’s discography is an area of research I do not cover in this thesis; however, I will mention here that the Britt recordings referred to are most likely from a Victor session that occurred on Feb. 9, 1928 in Memphis, Tenn. 89 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, September 20, 1928, 4. 90 Meeting minutes, August 31, 1928, AFM174, HJA. 91 Meeting minutes, September 14, 1928, AFM174, HJA.

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meetings, but he failed to appear for either date.) On October 19, 1928, his transfer was accepted.92

That was just in time for him to be in New Orleans to make his “big break”— meeting Paul Whiteman, who was then the most famous bandleader in the nation and who was called the “King of Jazz” by the popular press. On October 28, 1928, the Paul

Whiteman Orchestra played two shows, a matinee and an evening performance, at the

Saint Charles Theatre in New Orleans. A group of New Orleans musicians attended the matinee performance and invited several of Whiteman’s band members out to the trumpet player ’ house in Metairie. An impromptu took place where

Quinn’s talents impressed the famous musicians. The clarinetist Frankie Trumbauer recorded in his diary that, “I met Quinn, the only boy alive who has it on Eddie Lang, I believe.” 93

Some accounts say that Trumbauer arranged for Quinn to meet Whiteman; the

New Orleans drummer Monk Hazel claims that he was the one who arranged the meeting. Here is Hazel’s recollection:

[Norman] Brownlee and I called Paul and told him we wanted him to hear this Snoozer….We had Snoozer play for Whiteman. He knocked Whiteman out….He’d play a thing, especially that—did you ever see how he used to play “Tiger Rag”?....He’d wave his hand like this, and he’d pick with his fingers, wouldn’t even touch the strings with this hand; he’d be waving it in the air, and he’d make a break, you know. And the damnedest things would come out of that thing….Whiteman would listen, man, and he’d run up—the theatre was brick walled—he’d run up and he’d hit his shoulder up against it, boom, against that brick wall like that, every time Snoozer would knock him out. So he told Snoozer, he said, ‘You’ll hear from me.’94

92 Meeting minutes, October 19, 1928, AFM174, HJA. 93 Evans and Kiner, Tram: The Frank Trumbauer Story, 582. 94 Monk Hazel, interview by Bill Russell, July 16, 1959, transcription, HJA.

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According to the Bogalusa Enterprise & American, Quinn was hired on the spot.

Friends of Ed Quinn, whose home is Bogalusa, who is well known as an accomplished banjo and guitar player, will be delighted to learn that he has been given a position in the orchestra of Paul Whiteman, the.…jazz king. Whiteman is to return to New York from a tour of America, which [will close] December 6th, and Eddie is contracted to be in New York on that date. The Whiteman Orchestra has won the distinction of being the finest in America, and on a recent trip to New Orleans, Mr. Whiteman was told of Eddie. He sent for the Bogalusa youth, who played several selections for the great orchestra leader, who immediately offered him a contract, which was accepted.95

The significance of Quinn’s hiring by Whiteman cannot be overstated. Whiteman was perhaps the most famous and well-respected bandleader in American at this time. He had the distinction of commissioning ’s jazz concerto “Rhapsody in

Blue” which premiered in Aeolian Hall in New York in 1924, an event that is considered a defining moment of the . That Whiteman hired Quinn underscores Quinn’s immense talent.

On Saturday, December 8, 1928, Quinn left Louisiana to join the Whiteman

Orchestra in . He received a wire from Mr. Whiteman on the Friday before, “ordering him to report to New York Monday morning….to begin rehearsing at once for Victor records.”96 (In fact, at this time Whiteman was working for .)

Reporting to friends back home, Quinn was well received upon his arrival in New

York. Interestingly, a recording session may have occurred sometime between December

10 and 20 in which Quinn himself was the featured act. According to the Bogalusa

Enterprise:

95 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, November 15, 1928, 1. 96 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, December 13, 1928, 7.

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Records reproducing the steady strumming of a guitar in the hands of Eddie Quinn, local boy who recently joined Paul Whiteman’s orchestra in New York City, will soon be on sale in Bogalusa. This is according to a letter Quinn has written to H.E. Rester, of the Rester Motor Company, stating five of his guitar selections have been reproduced on records since he arrived in New York City. Quinn says he is receiving treatment befitting a king by other members of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, and that he is having the time of his life in Gotham.97

The details of this session are a mystery. Since it was not documented in the Columbia logs, it could have been an impromptu session organized by the musicians themselves.

Such events were called “wildcat recordings,” in which the band members would record

(sometimes for other labels) using pseudonyms since they were usually violating the terms of their contracts.98

This session could have been the one described by Quinn later to his friend

Johnny Wiggs. According to Wiggs, Quinn told him that he had recorded some sides with

Beiderbecke and Trumbauer:

Beiderbecke, Trumbauer and the others decided that they must have a recording session without delay. Snoozer had been singing along in his peculiar sort of way, a humming accompaniment to his guitar playing somewhat in the fashion of the later-day Slam Stewart, and they wanted to put that on wax. Snoozer’s memory is not exact, but he believes the session was arranged for Columbia. He recalls that four sides were made, including “Singin’ the Blues”….On each side he did a humming chorus, but he remembers none of the other titles. And he remembers only Bix and Trumbauer among the other musicians who took part. The records were never released.99

Regarding Quinn’s “peculiar” humming style of singing, Wiggs said in another interview that “Snoozer was the one who taught Jack Teagarden how to sing, the way that sounds

97 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, December 20, 1928, 5. 98 In Bix: The Leon Bix Beiderbecke Story, the clarinetist Irving Friedman revealed that wildcat recordings were fairly common among the Whiteman musicians. Said Friedman: “Regarding 'wildcat recordings,' yes, on many occasions while I was with the band, Bix, Tram, Venuti, Lang and myself would do recordings with different groups. We would not let them use our names for the 'Old Man' would really raise hell.” (Philip Evans and Linda Evans, Bix: The Leon Bix Beiderbecke Story (Bakersfield, CA: Prelike Press, 1998), 426.) 99 Wiggs, “Snoozer Quinn: Musician’s Musician,” 12-13.

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like their teeth are together.”100

It was at after-hour jam sessions, away from the listening public, where Quinn earned a reputation among musicians for his greatness. Accounts by Wiggs romanticize how famous jazz musicians crowded into small hotel rooms late into the night to hear

Quinn play. “[Snoozer] told me that during his year with the Whiteman band he did more playing just for the entertainment of the bandsmen after hours than he did as a member of the orchestra itself,” wrote Wiggs.101 According to Hazel, other guitarists, including

Eddie Lang, Dick McDonough, and Carl Kress, were among the listeners.102

One of Quinn’s biggest fans was Bee Palmer. Palmer was a chorus girl in the

Ziegfeld Follies who also had a notable solo career. Called the Shimmy Queen, and for a time associated with the , Palmer was well-known for her sensual and naughty performances, her famous dance, and her unusual voice. She regularly hosted parties and jam sessions in her New York apartment. Wiggs told the story of a late night jam session at Palmer’s apartment where she was so impressed by

Quinn’s abilities that she told the other musicians to stop playing, including Bix and

Tram. Said Wiggs:

Snoozer, in his lazy and apparently effortless way, was hunched over his guitar, his big hands fluttering over the strings. Miss Palmer stopped her singing, to listen….For the rest of the evening, she would let no one else play. To the instrumentalists she said: “As much as I like you boys, and as much as I enjoy your playing, this is something I’ve got to hear more of. So you get yourselves some drinks while I listen to this boy play the guitar.” 103

100 Johnny Wiggs, “The Legendary ‘Snoozer’ Quinn” as told to George W. Kay, The Second Line (March- April 1970), 293. 101 Wiggs, “Snoozer Quinn: Musician’s Musician,” 11. 102 Monk Hazel, interview by Bill Russell, July 16, 1959, transcription, HJA. 103 Wiggs, “Snoozer Quinn: Musician’s Musician,” 11.

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Quinn appears on a Bee Palmer recording session that took place for Columbia on

January 10, 1929.104 Songs recorded were “Don’t Leave Me Daddy” and “Singin’ the

Blues.” Other Whiteman personnel included Bill Rank, Irving Friedman, Frankie

Trumbauer, Charles Strickfaden, , Min Leibrook, George Marsh, and Bix

Biederbecke.105 Though these sessions were never issued by Columbia, in recent years test pressings were discovered and have been released.106

Quinn was with the Whiteman Orchestra from December 8, 1928 until approximately March 7, 1929. In this time frame, recording sessions occurred on thirteen dates: December 11-14, December 19, December 22, January 3, January 10-11, January

25, February 7-8, and February 28.107 Whether or not Quinn participated in any of these sessions is unknown. The only session from this time period in which Quinn is credited on Whiteman recordings by the discographer Brian Rust and the Whiteman biographer

Don Rayno is the Bee Palmer session of January 10, 1929.

Why Quinn would be ordered to New York for work on December 11 and not be included in the recording session is unclear, but that is the belief of Rust, Rayno, and other discographers. Magnusson and Peak, who compiled the discography on Quinn for

The Jazz Archivist in 1992, came to the conclusion that Quinn did not make any recordings with the large Whiteman orchestra based upon their listening experiments:

We have listened carefully to all the issued Whiteman recordings from the pertinent period, and, with the exception of “Blue Hawaii,” (mtx 148085),

104 Don Rayno, Paul Whiteman: Pioneer in American Music (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003), 658- 659. 105 Biederbecke’s presence on this session is debated by musicologists, as this was around the time when he suffered a breakdown due to alcoholism and fatigue. The only cornet to be heard on this session is a single note, just after the opening instrumental choruses on “Singin’ the Blues,” that effectively ushers in Palmer’s vocals. 106 The Bee Palmer recordings featuring Snoozer Quinn are commercially available on the Mosaic Records Limited Edition Box Set: The Complete OKeh /Brunswick Bix, Trumbauer & Teagarden #211. 107 Rayno, Paul Whiteman: Pioneer in American Music, 654-662.

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there is no guitar audible. The guitar on “Blue Hawaii” is a steel guitar, and we judge it unlikely that this is played by Quinn. The conclusion thus is that although he was employed by Whiteman for several months, Quinn is not present on any of the recordings by the Whiteman orchestra.108

It’s possible that Quinn’s guitar could have been present on those larger orchestra sessions, but was unamplified and therefore inaudible. As Wiggs described it, “Whiteman promptly buried him under a million reeds, fiddles and brasses, hardly to be heard any more except at those musicians’ parties.”109

Rust, Rayno, Sudhalter, Magnusson and Peak and others have included Quinn in certain Whiteman-associated sessions from March 7, 1929 through May 16, 1929, including ones with singers Bing Crosby, Willard Robison, and Tommy Weir. However, the Bogalusa Enterprise & American reported on March 7 that Quinn had returned to

Bogalusa:

Eddie Quinn, who has been playing his guitar and violin in Paul Whiteman’s orchestra for the past several months, is expected to arrive home today for a visit with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. L.B. Quinn, of Superior avenue. 110

And a week later, on March 14:

Eddie Quinn, son of Mr. and Mrs. L.B. Quinn, 125 Superior Avenue, is back home on a short vacation after spending the past few weeks in New York where he has been playing in the orchestra of Paul Whiteman, renown syncopated artist. Eddie expects to join the famous musicmakers in New York after a few weeks when the orchestra returns from California. Mr. Whiteman and his orchestra will go to Germany upon their return from the West Coast, and Eddie expects to be with them.111

108 Tor Magnusson and Don Peak, “Snoozer Quinn, Legendary Guitar Player,” The Jazz Archivist, Vol. VII (December 1992), 3. 109 Wiggs, “Snoozer Quinn: Musician’s Musician,” 11-12. 110 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, March 7, 1929, 4. 111 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, March 14, 1929, 1. The Whiteman European tour of 1929-1930 didn’t occur after all, due to the worldwide economic depression that developed.

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Follow-up accounts in hometown newspapers and other reports indicate Quinn did not make that trip back to New York. Quinn was a passenger in a car wreck on March 28, while driving back from Columbia, Miss. to Bogalusa.112 He was seen parading through the streets of Mandeville with the Red Cap Orchestra on May 10,113 and on July 8, he performed at a Midnight Frolic at a Bogalusa hotel.114 It seems highly unlikely that Quinn was on those sessions from March 7 through May 16.115

It did not take long before the excitement of being in New York, in the most famous orchestra in the country, wore off for Quinn. The most revealing information about Quinn’s experiences with the Whiteman Orchestra comes down to personal recollections. While Quinn’s letter to H.E. Rester in the immediate days after his arrival in New York showed great excitement, other accounts show that Quinn was disappointed with his role in the Whiteman organization.

In Drew’s Blues: A Sideman’s Life with the Big Bands, the clarinetist Drew Page wrote about meeting Quinn in Galveston, Texas. Page said that Quinn had quit the Paul

Whiteman Orchestra because “Whiteman had worn him out taking him around to parties and other off-hour affairs.”116

The New Orleans pianist Norman Brownlee recalled that “Paul had Snoozer on parties more than he had him in the band.”117

He’d go around with Paul and partying at night with Jimmie Walker up in New York, and it pretty much killed Snoozer! Snoozer had to come home,

112 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, April 4, 1929, 1. Quinn was not injured in the car wreck, but his friend H.E. Rester, who was driving, lost his arm. 113 AFM 174, Prelude, Vol. III, No. 19 (June 1929), 6. 114 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, July 4, 1929, 6. 115 Discographers of Eddie Lang’s recordings should find of particular interest those sessions that have been incorrectly attributed to Snoozer Quinn. 116 Page, Drew's Blues: A Sideman's Life with the Big Bands, 57. 117 Norman Brownlee, interview by Richard B. Allen, May 5, 1961, tape recording, HJA.

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or he’d a died! It’s hard to hold a pace with some of those fellas.118

According to the New Orleans drummer Godfrey Hirsch, Quinn was Whiteman’s

“play toy.”

Snoozer was a great guitarist....and he had a technique of playing guitar and he’d be shaking hands with somebody and he’d still be playing the guitar with his fingers like that….After he was with us out at Suburban Gardens—well, he didn’t play with the band—he was strictly a soloist— and he’d go over to different tables, and he’d play for people at tables.…a stroller…..And then he went with Whiteman, and it was the same way. When Whiteman found somebody like that well, that was his child, you know, his play toy.119

In addition to shedding some light on why Quinn was perhaps not utilized in more recording sessions with the Whiteman organization, this statement by Hirsch speaks to

Quinn’s dissatisfaction with the Whiteman organization.

How truly unhappy Quinn must have been is revealed by Monk Hazel, who said that the late night after-hour sessions were a great burden to the shy guitarist.

Furthermore, says Hazel, Snoozer never even got to play with the orchestra:

That’s another thing that I had [once], that I wish I had [now]; it’s the most pitiful letter you ever heard in all your life….[Quinn] wrote to me, it must have been ten or twelve pages, after he got to New York. They never did put him in the band; all Whiteman used him for was to take him around to these parties, and entertain Whiteman’s friends at these parties….The guy couldn’t get any sleep at all….Cause guys like—all the musicians—everybody that ever heard him, the musicians, they’d want to go up to his hotel room, and the poor guy could never sleep. Guys like Eddie Lang and all those guys, Dick McDonough, Carl Kress, and all those guys were the big ones then. They had the guy playing night and day, and he was the kind of guy that couldn’t say no, you know: never could say no to you….in this letter, he was telling me, after he was up there about a month, a month and a half, that he was going to quit, that he just couldn’t take it any more. They wouldn’t let him sleep; he wasn’t making any records, or things like that. So he quit Whiteman, and he come

118 Ibid. 119 Godfrey Hirsch, interview by Curtis D. Jerde and Richard B. Allen, October 27, 1987, tape recording, HJA.

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on, come on home and never did go out of town any more after that.120

Additionally, during this time period, Quinn’s father Louis was suffering from pneumonia, and was in and out of the hospital.121 This certainly could have been an additional factor in Quinn’s decision to leave the Whiteman Orchestra, and was the reason given by the Bogalusa Enterprise & American a year later, on May 9, 1930:

“Eddie left the Paul Whiteman orchestra a year or more ago when that organization went to Europe, on account of illness in his family.”122

An Itinerant Career and Retreat from the Spotlight

Throughout the 1930s, Quinn moved around Louisiana and Texas, filling feature spots with a string of different orchestras and bands or performing solo, sometimes traveling the country for tours but always returning to his home base of Louisiana for periods of extended rest. New Orleans Local 174 records show that in late 1930 and early

1931, Quinn worked intermittently around New Orleans. Quinn was granted another transfer status by the Local 174 (from the Local 65 in Houston) on December 24, 1930.123

The Decuir brothers appeared again in Quinn’s life during this period (fall 1930- spring 1931) as they were all working around New Orleans. One of Quinn’s regular jobs was entertaining at the Suburban Gardens where the drummer Earl Crumb led an orchestra.124 As mentioned by Hirsch above, Quinn was not in the band—he played the floor as a stroller. (Meeting minutes from the Local 174 indicate there was some controversy surrounding Robert DeCuir, Pat DeCuir, and Quinn playing at the Suburban

120 Monk Hazel, interview by Bill Russell, July 16, 1959, transcription, HJA. 121 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, February 23, 1928, 5. 122 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, May 9, 1930, 1. 123 Meeting minutes, December 24, 1930, AFM174, HJA. 124 Ibid.

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Gardens and on the radio due to their status with the local.) In 1930 and 1931 Pat DeCuir was leading another successful incarnation of the Louisiana Ramblers, also called the

“Studio Orchestra,” that was the house band at the Studio Club.125 Whether Quinn performed in this lineup is unknown.

An example of how scattered Quinn’s performances and commitments were in these years: an advertisement in the Baton Rouge State Times Advocate on January 23,

1932 promoted a vaudeville show featuring Quinn as a performer. “Jerry Heinz and the

Tivoli Dancing Dolls dance to the music of Dick Dixon and his Orchestra featuring Eddie

‘Snoozer’ Quinn formerly with Paul Whiteman.”126 Just days later, Quinn was in San

Antonio kicking off a six-week engagement at the Blue Willow Inn with a novelty orchestra called Robert E. Lee and His Confederates (and possibly had been with them two months prior).

Prior to returning to Texas two months ago the Confederates made an extensive tour of the east during which time they were featured for some time over Station WTAM, , by the National Broadcasting Company while playing in Wille’s Famous Lakeshore Gardens. Later in Dayton, while engaged at the Dayton Biltmore Hotel the Confederates won unusual distinction....The orchestra features an unusual type of ensemble music including negro , glee club singing and novelty sets…Following their engagement here the Confederates are billed for an engagement in New York during which time they will meet Rudy Valee’s [sic] Connecticut Yankees in a revival of the Civil War with music to be used as the cannon fodder.” 127

Among the band members of the 12-man orchestra were “some of the country’s outstanding individual musical stars,” including “Snoozer Quinn, guitarist and singer;

Roland Chastain, saxophone star; Earl Dragoo, saxophonist and singer; Bill Mullen, guitarist, saxophonist, and comic; Chuck Pearse, trombonist and singer; Joe Valentino,

125 Times-Picayune, October 26, 1931, 34 126 State Times Advocate, January 23, 1932, 12. 127 San Antonio Express, January 31, 1932, 22.

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bass; and Harry Gody, drums.” 128

Whether or not Quinn had been with the group on the Eastern tour to Cleveland is unknown. However, it’s certain that Quinn accompanied Robert E. Lee and His

Confederates to New York in the Spring of 1932 to do the musical Civil War reenactment with Rudy Vallee’s Connecticut Yankees. This was the time when Quinn had the opportunity to visit the home of Charles Peterson, Vallee’s banjo player, who filmed

Quinn playing guitar on the back porch of his country home in Laurelton, New Jersey.129

In May 1931, Quinn recorded again for Victor records, this time as an accompanist to Jimmie Davis. The three-day session took place in Charlotte, North

Carolina.130 An interesting aspect of this recording session is that Davis and Quinn worked with Oscar “Buddy” Woods and Ed Schaffer, both black guitarists. This session would have been one of the earliest integrated recording sessions in the South.131

Quinn most likely met Davis in Shreveport, as Davis worked as a clerk for the

Shreveport Criminal Court from the late 1920s throughout most of the 1930s (and performed for KWKH radio). Through the 1930s and 1940s Quinn spent several extended periods of time in Shreveport, where his brother Willie had established a barbershop.132 Quinn had numerous friends and musical connections in Shreveport and

128 Ibid. 129 According to Don Peterson, Charles Peterson’s son, his father filmed Eddie Snoozer Quinn around 1932 when he was a toddler. Don’s crib is visible in the film footage. 130 Victor Records Ledgers, 8287-A, courtesy Sony Music Entertainment Archives. 131 The topic of integrated musical collaboration among white hillbilly musicians and black musicians in Louisiana is explored at length by Tracey Laird in Louisiana Hayride: Radio and Roots Music Along the Red River. 132 In 1941 the Quinn brothers lived at the Savoy Hotel in downtown Shreveport, according to the Shreveport City Directory.

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could always find work. (Interestingly, Quinn even had a short stint as a cocktail pianist in Shreveport.133)

Joe Holland, who was a child prodigy drummer growing up in Shreveport (he was born in 1927), recalls Quinn with exceptional clarity. Holland and Quinn played in at least two bands together, including with the Rice brothers134 backing Jimmie Davis in the early 1940s.

I got to play some with Snoozer when Hoke and Paul Rice decided they needed a drummer when they started playing political rallies for Jimmie Davis….wanting to run for governor....A lot of what we did involving the Rice Bros. and Jimmie Davis was simple experimenting because I don’t think Davis was certain about anything except that he wanted people in attendance to think of us as a group of sober, clean cut guys who played music. I never understood why they wanted a drummer because hillbilly bands of the time didn’t use them, Bob Wills notwithstanding.135

But the Rice brothers were not typical hillbilly musicians, according to historian Stephen

Tucker, who wrote a doctoral thesis on the history of country music in Louisiana. “Hoke and Paul Rice recorded some of the finest examples of hot hillbilly string band jazz in the

1930s,” wrote Tucker.”136 He suggested that the Rice Brothers were much closer to than other hillbilly acts in north Louisiana, and that “much of the Rice

Brothers’ music....mirrored the work of Texas musicians such as [Bob] Wills and

[Milton] Brown.”137

It is worth noting that Quinn’s work with the Rice brothers entrenches him with the echelons of pioneers of Western swing, a form of music he is not known for playing.

Certainly the territory dance bands Quinn performed with throughout Louisiana, Texas,

133 Richard Quinn, telephone interview by Kathryn Hobgood, March 15, 2010. 134 Not as the formally-named “Rice Brothers” band. 135 Email correspondence between Joe Holland and Kathryn Hobgood. 136 Stephen Tucker, “Louisiana Saturday Night”: A history of Louisiana country music (PhD diss., Tulane University, 1995), 128. 137 Ibid.

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and down into Mexico could be considered progenitors of Western swing, such as Peck’s

Bad Boys, Blanchard’s Orchestra, etc., but these were horn-driven bands that identified as jazz. Quinn’s professional associations with both jazz bands and hillbilly bands, particularly the Rice Brothers, casts him as an active participant in the musical allogamy—of jazz, country, polka, etc.—that made Western swing.

The music was good, said Holland: “I knew that when we played some of the stuff that the Rice Bros. played (some of which they had written) we were producing high quality music.” While Holland played drums, one of the Rice brothers played bass, and the other played guitar.

I cannot remember which brother played bass but I know he played well and each note was the appropriate one for the chord progressions of the tune. That made me very happy because that was how I wanted it to be; I loved that sound! The brother who played guitar was no slouch, so he and Snoozer complemented each other.138

In addition to guitar, Quinn also played violin with the Rice brothers. However, he played it straight. “I never saw him play the violin with slack strings [as Wiggs described]. Davis wanted everything to be ‘middle of the road’ as he was fond of saying, no novelties or comedy stuff,” explained Holland. 139

Holland recounts anecdotes of a colorful cast of musicians who he says were drawn to Shreveport by the presence of the saxophonist Albert “Pud Brown” (who was known in the 1970s for his active role in the New Orleans jazz scene). Holland says most of the interactions between musicians occurred at a music store owned by Bubber

Broyles, that was located near the Local 116 musician’s union at the Inn Hotel in downtown Shreveport. (In Trumpet on the Wing, Wingy Manone discussed Bubber

138 Email correspondence between Joe Holland and Kathryn Hobgood Ray. 139 Ibid.

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Broyles, calling him a “brass man.”140) According to Holland, the famous trumpeter

Louis Armstrong and Snoozer Quinn had the opportunity to play together in Shreveport during a period of time when Armstrong was hiding out from the mob:

One day, probably in the spring of 1938-39….Pud told me to come down to Bubba’s music store “about 3 o’clock today so you can meet Louis.” I did exactly that…he was sitting in that corner of the store with Snoozer Quinn. There were only six or seven of us in the store to hear what must have been some of the greatest sounds ever played anywhere. Just a poor, sad, disfigured genius supplying chords of perfection for another genius who had to get far away from some thugs in Chicago who had threatened to “mess him up” if he didn’t honor his contract…Pud would put him up for as long as necessary.141

140 Manone, Trumpet on the Wing, 101. Manone includes a few entertaining anecdotes about Bubber Broyles. 141 Email correspondence between Joe Holland and Kathryn Hobgood.

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Figure 15. Undated photograph of Louis Armstrong and Snoozer Quinn in Shreveport, Louisiana. From the Local 116 AFM collection.

Quinn’s health began to seriously decline in the mid-1930s. The first documentation of sickness is found in AFM Local 174 meeting minutes from February 3,

1936: “The charges preferred against Brother E.M. Quinn….held in abeyance due to

Brother Quinn being ill and confined to bed for at least two weeks.” 142 Quinn was only

28 years old at this time. He would be in and out of hospitals for the rest of his life, suffering from both tuberculosis and alcoholism.

142 Meeting minutes, February 3, 1936, AFM174, HJA.

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It wasn’t unusual for musicians to be heavy drinkers. Monk Hazel tells a colorful anecdote about a big gig in New Orleans featuring Quinn and others:

It’s New Year’s Eve night, and we’re playing the dinner where the Blue Room is now—it was the Venetian Room, then, I think. We’re up there, and the band’s all knocked out....But the whole band, New Year’s Eve— Freddy Neumann’s, man, almost under the piano—everybody’s loaded, you know, and nothing you could do about it. So I look at the entrance, and here comes somebody’s got a big overcoat on; he’s got the collar up like this: it comes all the way down to his ankles, you see. And he’s coming across, coming to the bandstand, and he reaches in his pocket, and he’s got a pint of gin in each pocket, like that. I say, oh, that’s all I need. It’s Snoozer.143

Peck Kelley, in an interview with Richard Hadlock, talks about Quinn and then segues in a discussion of alcoholism among jazz musicians:

There used to be some wonderful musicians in this part of the country.…I worked with Snoozer Quinn for example, a good entertainer and a great guitarist. You know, it seemed like all the nice guys were lushes in those days. Leon Rappolo was one….Jack and Pee Wee drank a lot then too.144

And Jimmie Davis said, “Snoozer Quinn….was one of the greatest that’s ever been in the business….He was inclined to drink a little, as some people are. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. But a fine person.”145

Certainly Quinn’s alcoholism affected his career, though to what degree is unknown. Whether he was fired from bands because of his drinking habit has not been discovered; however, it obviously was an issue early on, as he was working with Kelley as a teenager. That alcoholism was indeed a problem was documented in meeting minutes from the New Orleans musicians’ union in 1936, when Quinn was fined for missing work due to intoxication. From January 20, 1936:

143 Monk Hazel, interview by Bill Russell, July 16, 1959, transcription, HJA. 144 Hadlock, “Peck Kelley—Jazz Legend,” 22 and 36. 145 Jimmie Davis, interview by Ronnie F. Pugh, October 10, 1983, transcription, Country Music Foundation Oral History Project.

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Secretary reports that Brother E.M. Quinn was obligated in the office in the presence of several members. Brother Ray Teal appears before the Board explaining that Brother E.M. (Snoozer) Quinn has been intoxicated and has hardly put in an appearance since he was engaged for the Jung Hotel, and therefore requests that Brother Quinn be erased from the membership of this Local and the deposit ($30.00) which he advanced for Brother Quinn’s initiation fee be refunded to him. After discussion, the Board by MOTION CARRIED ordered that Brother Quinn be cited to appear before the Board on Monday January. 27, to be questioned in this matter.146

The saga continued on into the next month, when Quinn failed to appear before the

Board. From January 27, 1936:

Brother E.M. Quinn failing to appear as per summons regarding his non- appearance on a steady engagement at the Jung Hotel, by MOTION CARRIED fined $3.00 for violation of Art. (1) Sec. (6) of the By-Laws. CHARGES: Brother E.M. Quinn ordered to appear before the Board on February 3, to answer charges preferred against him for failing to appear on a steady engagement at the Jung Hotel.147

On February 3, 1936, Quinn missed the meeting again due to being ill and bedridden.

Ultimately, Quinn was suspended from the New Orleans union on February 24, 1936.148

Quinn was only 28 years old in 1936 but already his health had deteriorated to a very serious point. In August 1941 he was permanently dropped from the union for failure to pay his debts.149

Quinn’s alcoholism and poor health were likely interrelated; together, these conditions were factors in an irregular career. Also a factor: Quinn carried the psychic burdens of his physical disfigurements that added a layer of difficulty to his life. Though

Quinn was never interviewed or asked about his feelings, it’s apparent from comments by people who knew him that his physical disfigurements were disturbing to him. Said

146 Meeting minutes, January 20, 1936, AFM174, HJA. 147 Meeting minutes, January 27, 1936, AFM174, HJA. 148 Meeting minutes, February 24, 1936, AFM174, HJA. 149 Meeting minutes, August 5, 1941, AFM174, HJA.

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Hirsch, “His head was real cockeyed. He looked like a misfit.”150 Said Les Paul: “His head was on crooked and his body was deformed so he didn’t want to go out and play in public where people could see him.”151 Said Joe Holland: “Snoozer hated any kind of lighting on stage….His deformity bothered him far more than it bothered other people.”152 John Brown, the son of Pud Brown, recalled this about Quinn, too: “He would hide in the background in the dark so people couldn’t look at him.”153

Quinn’s misshapen head, glass eye, and crooked appearance generally shocked people upon meeting him. His musical talent might have left many listeners blown away, but it was undoubtedly a tiring battle he faced in playing for new audiences from city to city. Terry “Foots” Quinn (son of Alton) shared a family story about the night Quinn played for an audience at a nightclub outside Baton Rouge, La. A crowd of his hometown friends went down for the show. During a set, a group of rowdy Baton Rouge boys started heckling Quinn. At that point, the Bogalusa contingent collectively scraped their chairs back to stand up in Quinn’s defense, and a massive brawl ensued. It’s no wonder that Quinn finished out his years in his hometown of Bogalusa, where he was much beloved by friends and family.

It was in a tuberculosis ward that Quinn was finally recorded for posterity. Johnny

Wiggs recorded Quinn just before he died. The setting was unusual, noisy, and distracting; the recording equipment was second-rate. Yet these recordings of Snoozer

Quinn are vital to his legacy. Wiggs said recording Snoozer was “one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.”

150 Godfrey Hirsch, interview by Curtis D. Jerde and Richard B. Allen, October 27, 1987, tape recording, HJA. 151 Obrecht, “Acoustic Roots: The Legendary Snoozer Quinn,” 71. 152 Email correspondence between Joe Holland and Kathryn Hobgood. 153 John Brown, telephone interview by Kathryn Hobgood, December 11, 2007.

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What a lucky blessing it was that the recordings came out so well. They were made on an acetate cutting machine before tape recordings came out. They were made in the nurse’s room on Snoozer’s ward at the hospital where he was a patient.…I had to sweep the threads off the cutting needle and the nurses and orderlies were opening the door to see what all the racket was about. I was trying to keep the door shut and run the machine and play the cornet with one hand. I was playing with a cold lip after being off the cornet for eighteen years, and I didn’t have a chance to warm up in that room. I’m not proud of my playing, but there was too much great Snoozer on the tunes.154

Eddie “Snoozer” Quinn was only 42 years old when he passed away at 1:17 a.m. on April 21, 1949. The death certificate said that Quinn had been hospitalized for fifteen months; cause of death was listed as advanced pulmonary tuberculosis.155 “He never effected a complete cure because he often got up too soon, against the advice of his doctors,” wrote Bob Landry, Quinn’s friend and former classmate (and one of Quinn’s pallbearers) for the Bogalusa Daily News.156 The many obituaries and articles that ran in the Bogalusa newspapers reflect that Quinn was as beloved for his kind and gentle nature as for his musical talent. From the Bogalusa Daily News:

Eddie Snoozer Quinn was buried in Ponemah Cemetery this dreary Friday afternoon at 3. And even though overcast skies cast their pall, the friends who knew Eddie remembered him as one of the happiest, smilingest fellows who ever crossed their path.157

From the Bogalusa Enterprise & American: “Despite his lingering illness Eddie, as Mr.

Quinn was known to his many friends, was cheerful until the time of his death and was a

‘favorite’ among the patients and staff of the hospital.”158 Wrote Bob Landry, “Those

154 G.W. Kay, “‘The Johnny Wiggs Story’ as told to George W. Kay,” 14. 155 Death certificate for Edward M. Quinn, 21 April 1949, File No. 2388, Louisiana State Department of Health. Certified copy in possession of author. 156 Bogalusa Daily News, April 21, 1949, 1. 157 Ibid. 158 Bogalusa Enterprise & American, April 22, 1949, 1.

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who knew him will never forget his slightly misshapen head cocked to one side as he strummed an instrument, a happy, far-away smile on his lips.”159

159 Bogalusa Daily News, April 21, 1949, 1.

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CHAPTER V:

CONCLUSION

When Eddie “Snoozer” Quinn emerged in the mid-1920s, he helped to liberate the jazz guitar from its established role of rhythmic accompaniment. Along with a handful of other jazz guitarists, namely Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson, and Django Reinhardt, Quinn exploited the instrument, featuring its melodic and harmonic capabilities in groundbreaking ways. But whereas his pioneering contemporaries were developing a linear style of soloing that emulated the single note voice of a trumpet or clarinet,

Quinn’s style was more akin to the ragtime piano tradition; he had a fingerstyle approach that enabled him to play a melody line, harmony, and a rhythmic bass all at the same time. Years before it was written, Quinn fulfilled De Mause’s definition of a solo jazz guitarist, one who “plays music which stands by itself, and rather than being unaccompanied, in the literal sense, it is self-accompanied.”1

Although specific examples of Quinn’s earliest musical influences are unknown, certainly his country-blues approach to jazz can be explained by his upbringing in

Bogalusa, Louisiana. Nestled in between the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans,

Bogalusa was fertile ground for musical development. By design as a company town,

Bogalusa in its heyday featured a rich cultural landscape that inspired its citizenry and nurtured musical ingenuity among its most talented. In the interesting little “Magic City,”

1 De Mause, Solo Jazz Guitar, 4.

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Quinn learned and performed in churches, theaters, minstrel shows, and tent shows under the stars. At the same time, he was exposed to some of the greatest jazz music to come out of New Orleans. Quinn synthesized all of these musical influences, black and white, and fused techniques for banjo, violin, and guitar to develop his own personal style, including highly impressive solo tricks for the vaudeville stage.

From a very early age, Quinn was absorbed in making music and was rarely seen without an instrument in his hands. His total immersion in music—first in the family parlor, at school and church, on the minstrel stage, and working in the movie theater— meant hours of practice cultivating his natural talent every day, for years. Perhaps Quinn dove into music wholeheartedly as an escape from the psychological issues that he carried due to his physical disfigurement. Quinn had the heartfelt desire to entertain, perhaps partly as a defense mechanism; nevertheless, his unique talents as a soloist can be attributed to this sensitivity and to the vast amounts of time he spent developing his technical virtuosity.

By the time Quinn was twelve years old he was playing professionally with the

Blanchard Orchestra and delighting local audiences. Still in his teens, Quinn was touted by KPRC as “Dixie’s Banjo King” and was a featured member of arguably the best jazz band in the Southwest, Peck’s Bad Boys. He was recorded by Victor Records when he was just twenty years old. When Paul Whiteman hired him, he had just turned twenty- one years old.

In the mid-1920s Quinn was performing to wide acclaim as a radio performer in

Texas, and good health and vigor allowed him to tour the country with the many bands that sought his talents. But disappointment lay in wait. His recordings for Victor were

104 deemed unsalable and were never released. As a working musician in the era of big bands and before guitar amplification, Quinn was destined to go mostly unheard by the public.

And though he had standing job offers from famous bandleaders, Quinn never found true satisfaction in the performance opportunities of big band jazz, nor could he maintain the lifestyle of a traveling musician as his health deteriorated. That the 1949 recordings

Quinn made in the tuberculosis hospital ward only offer a hint of his talent is both marvelous and tragic. These recordings are now out of print, and the Fat Cat LP is difficult to find, available only through collectors to the most ardent of searchers.

Ultimately, Snoozer Quinn was a man out of time with his signature style.

Whereas today the guitar has a position of dominance among jazz instruments, during

Quinn's time the guitar was novel and was seen as expendable by bandleaders. A guitarist taking an improvised solo during the 1920s was groundbreaking in itself; Quinn was avant-garde in his pursuit of a solo jazz guitar style. The fingerstyle approach would not be undertaken by another guitarist until the late 1940s when classical guitarists began experimenting with jazz (and vice versa); a solo jazz guitar movement would not come about until the late 1960s and 1970s, when Lenny Breaux and Joe Pass entered the studio.

It is hoped that this study and the accompanying website2 will bring about a revival of interest in Snoozer Quinn, whose legend, for too long, has been shrouded in mist.

2 http://snoozerquinn.com

APPENDICES

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Performance Notes for “Out of Nowhere” By Chip Henderson

The purpose of these performance notes is to explain the specifics of the notation style used throughout this transcription (fingerings, slides, slurs, etc.). This transcription is presented in two versions: concert (in the key of E~) and transposed (in the key of G). The primary reason for the two transcriptions is because: 1) ease of reading without the excessive leger lines, and 2) most guitarists will not be able to readily set up their instruments to accommodate the tuning used by Quinn (C, F, B~, E~, G, C – low to high).

Notation Specifics:

In preparing this transcription the first thing that needed to be addressed was notating the difference in dynamics between Quinn’s melodic and accompaniment ideas. After much thought and discussions with other guitar educators and music publishers, I settled on what I feel is an original way of notating the performance where one can see not only the separation of the melodic statement and the accompaniment but also the dynamics without excessive dynamic markings in the part. Throughout the transcriptions notes that appear smaller are less emphasized than the full sized notes. This not only alleviates the clutter from extraneous markings but also helps the reader see where the melodic material falls. Below is an example of this notation.

Symbol Definitions:

T – Thumb. Where this is used the performer needs to wrap their thumb around the neck and fret the note(s) on the 6th string.

½ – Half-Barre. Using a finger to hold across 3 or more strings. The finger used will be outside the bracket.

B – Full Barre. Using one finger (usually the index finger) across all six strings.

– Bend. This will appear between two notes. Strike the first note and bend it to the next pitch. sl. – Slide. Strike the first note(s) and slide your finger(s) to the next pitch or set of pitches. This is done while maintain pressure against the strings.

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– String Number. This will only be used when there are a couple of reasonable options to play a specific note.

< – Open String.

– Muffled Note. This indicates a note that was intended but due to some reason it did not come out clear enough.

* Slurs and other traditional markings such as left hand fingerings and fretboard positions follow traditional guitar notation.

Other Notes:

Throughout the transcription there are several meter changes (bars 12, 14-15, 18, and 32). This is very common among solo players of this era. One of the reasons for the meter changes is that the performer (in this case Quinn) changed the meter up based on the melodic rhythm he was playing. This was purely unintentional and could change slightly from performance to performance. It has been notated in this manner to preserve the integrity of the performance and to give some insight into Quinn’s musical choices as they happened.

Chip Henderson is a graduate of the University of Memphis with a Bachelor of Music (1997) and a Master of Music (2002) in Jazz Guitar Performance. During his time at Memphis he studied privately with former guitarist Charlton Johnson as well as took part in lessons and master classes with jazz guitar greats Calvin Newborn, Attila Zoller, Peter Leitch, Freddie Bryant, Mark Elf, Mundell Lowe, and . Henderson currently teaches guitar at Belmont University and Tennessee State University (Nashville, TN). Prior to accepting these positions, Henderson taught jazz guitar (class and applied), jazz history, jazz theory and directed the jazz guitar ensemble at the University of Memphis from 2002 to 2011. Along with his teaching duties in Nashville, Henderson is also a freelance arranger for Hal Leonard's Jazz Guitar Division and has been a regular contributor to Just Jazz Guitar Magazine since 2007. Out of Nowhere Acoustic Guitar Tuned: Edward "Snoozer" Quinn's performance (1948) Concert Pitch - Notated C - F - B - E - G - C from the LP The Legendary Snoozer Quinn with Johnny Wiggs for altered "C" tuning b b Fat Cat Jazz Records FCJ104 [LP] (released 1969) Transcribed by Chip Henderson (7/2011) III III 00:06 Bb7 Eb j b 4 œ œ. œ ˙ œ & b b 4 ˙œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ J œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ J œ œ ˙ T IV 1/2 VI B 7 3 j b j j 4 #œ œ j #œ. b b nnœœ. #œ œ n#œ #n œ œ n#œ œ #n œ. & # œ . œ œ œ . n œ #œ nœ #œ nœ #œ ( ) #œ #œ #œ nœ 3 T n¿ T E 3 T 3 3 b VII B III o sl. 5 j j j # œ œ b j œ œ œ œ ˙ n œ ˙œ & b b ‰ nbœ nœ œ œ. œ œ œ œ n œ ˙ 1 œ . œ J œ 3 3 bœ 1œ 1œ VI C 7 7 j 3 œ. œ œ j bb œ. œ œ nœ œ. bœ ˙ & b 1 . #œ sl. nœ œ œ. nœ ˙ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ F m o o IV o o o 3 B V C 7 o 9 4 j 2 œ œ j b œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ ˙œ nœ œ b b 1 œ œ œ œ œ & ‰ ‰ nœ. n˙ ˙. œ œ œ œ ˙. V ( C ) F m o o + III 11 j j b œ. œ œ. œ 3 œ œ œ #œ 4 & b b œ. œ œ. œ 4 œ œ n œ 4 nœ. œ œ œ œ œ # œ 3 œ œ 3 3 o o Snoozer Quinn - Out of Nowhere page 2

III B VI B 7 13 j b 4 œ n#œœ n#œœ #œ #œ 5 # #œ #œ ˙œ #œ #œ #œ œ 3 & b b 4 œ # œ # œ œ 4 ‰ n œ œ ˙ 4 # 1w J B 7 1/2 VIIb

4 15 1 III 1 œ œ 4 1 nœ œ 2 b 3 n ˙. œ bœœ œœ 2 4 & b b 4 b ˙. 3 œœ œ 4 œ œ œ b ˙. 3 œ o

III 1/2

E 2 b 2 17 j j œ bœ œ nœ j bbb 4 œ œ 6 œ œ œ œ œ n nœœ 4 & 4 ‰ 4 nœ œ œ œ # œ 4 œ œ œ b¿ ¿ œ ˙ T T IV III 1/2 VI 1/2 VIII B 7 sl. 19 4 4 4 j j j j j . # œ #œ œ œ b 4 #œ œ # # œ # œ œ œ & b b 4 œœn nœœ #œ œ. œ œ. n œ œ nœ œ nbœ nœœ # œ œ œ œ. nœ nœ œ 3 #œ œ III VII III Eb 4 21 sl. 1 œ œ œ j b œ n#œ œ œ nœ œ œ j j j & b b œ n #œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 4 œ 4 œ 1 1 IV VI Let Ring C 7 23 j b nœ œ œ œ œ œ b b œ. œ œ. j . œ œ œ œ & nœ. œ œ. bœ sl. nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ o o o o Snoozer Quinn - Out of Nowhere page 3

V III F m 1/2 VI 1/2 V C 7 25 4 ˙ œ œ œ œ 1 bb œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ & b ˙.. bœ sl. nœ œ œ œ 3J œ œ œ F m VIII o o 1/2 V VI sl. 4 27 1 4 4 j j œ œ ( ) n œ œ œ bœ œ ( ) b œ œ œ œ n 3œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ & b b œ œ œ œ ‰ nœ œ œ ‰ n œ J

III IV III E B III b B 7 Bb7 29 b œ nœ œ ˙ œ b b bœ œ œ œ n nœœ œœ œœ bbœœ œœ œœ œ & ‰ œ œ œ œ œ # œ œ œ n œ œ œ œ Let Ring J ‰ #œ œ nœ œ 3 J E III B IIIb B 7 31 b

j 1 j 4 2 b œ œ œ œ 2 2 & b b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 4 œœ 3 œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ3 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 1 III 00:56 Eb 33 Begin solo section b & b b œ

111

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BIOGRAPHY

Kathryn Damaris Hobgood was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana in 1977 and was raised in

Shreveport. She is related to Eddie Quinn through paternal lineage. A graduate of

Carleton College in (BA, English, 2000), Hobgood returned to Louisiana with a renewed appreciation for its culture, and began writing and producing articles about musicians for SB Magazine and Red River Radio. She also launched an online local music journal called NeonBridge. In 2003, Hobgood moved to New Orleans and joined the communications staff at Tulane University; she's been employed at Tulane for ten years. In 2005, she served on the university’s emergency administrative team during

Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. She has pursued graduate studies in her spare time.

In addition to researching Snoozer Quinn, Hobgood avidly promotes of

Huddie Ledbetter, and performs his music with north Louisiana musicians several times each year. A singer-songwriter, fiddler, and guitar player, Hobgood has been playing music since childhood. She is also known as Trixie la Femme, roller derby skater for the

Big Easy Rollergirls. She is married to David Eugene Ray and is mother to Louis

Bienville Ray.