Farewell to Bob Mielke: Photo Essay and Rare Audio

This lively tribute to Mielke offers three dozen exclusive photos and music tracks from his personal collection.  Included in this profile of an innovative bandleader and imaginative trombonist are first publication of live performances with Joe Sullivan (1961) and The New Bearcats (1991). Bob Mielke (1927-2020) was one of the most original Jazz trombone players to emerge from the Frisco Jazz Revival of the mid-Twentieth Century. His passing closes a chapter on the second generation of West Coast Traditionalist musicians who built an independent regional Jazz style in the West drawing from New Orleans music and the sounds of Harlem, Chicago and Kansas City as heard on early Jazz records. While music was the strongest element in his life, Bob was a man of many parts encompassing father, photographer, hiker and freethinker. Through the decades Mielke (pronounced “milky”) was associated with numerous illustrious names of Jazz: Sidney Bechet, Joe Sullivan, George Lewis, Muggsy Spanier, Wingy Manone, Darnell Howard, Don Ewell, Jess Stacy, Bob Helm and Lu Watters. His recent death at age 93 was the result of age and fragility, not the coronavirus pandemic. Almost none of the three dozen photos have ever been published, neither in print nor online, except as noted.  I’m deeply gra