Bassist and Music Entrepreneur Mitchell Player has died

Mitchell Player, a bassist and music entrepreneur who became a fixture of the New Orleans traditional jazz scene, died September 9 in New Orleans of complications from a recent kidney transplant.

A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Player started on string bass at age nine and added electric bass at 16. He studied classical bass under Johnette Parker Le Blanc and jazz under Larry Parnell at Northwood High School, then toured with the Grambling State University band, playing the Coca-Cola Bowl at Tokyo Dome in 1988. He’d later say the choice between music and a steady job came down to his mother’s advice: “What are you going to do, be a musician or work at Pizza Hut all your life?”

After Grambling, Player settled in New Orleans and learned the city’s traditional repertoire directly from the musicians who mentored him. He became a regular with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans Jazz Vipers, and worked as a sideman for a long list of New Orleans royalty, including Dr. Michael White, Wallace Davenport, Leroy Jones, Wendell Brunious, Dave Bartholomew, Dr. John, Shannon Powell, Allen Toussaint, and Ellis, Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo, and Jason Marsalis.

In 1999 he formed his own group, The Players New Orleans Jazz Band, and later led The Players Ella & Louie Tribute Band, honoring Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. He also ran Player Productions, working as Leroy Jones’s booking agent and taking the trumpeter’s band on national and international tours, and produced the 504 Festival, which benefited The Jazzy Hideaway, a music-training program for young people in rural Louisiana. His travels took him to Japan repeatedly, where he kept up a longtime friendship with the New Orleans Jazz Club at Waseda University.

Preservation Hall remembered him simply as “the consummate musician and bandmate.” Friends also recalled a New Orleans birthday custom Player loved: pinning a five-dollar bill to a friend’s shirt at Preservation Hall, prompting the rest of the room to add their own. A homegoing celebration was held September 19, followed by a traditional second line and burial in Clinton, Louisiana.