This is the Final Chorus column as it ran in the April 2019 print edition. Click on the name or image to be taken to the longer obituary as it originally ran online.
James Dapogny, who led the Chicago Jazz Band since 1976 died in the early morning hours of March 6th, 2019 after a long battle with cancer. He was 78.
While growing up in the Chicago area he met and sometimes played with musicians from the first two great generations of Chicago Jazz, among them Muggsy Spanier, Jimmy McPartland, Mike McKendrick, Bud Freeman, Eddie Condon, and Gene Krupa.
He was a pianist, composer, arranger, musicologist, and multi-instrumentalist. He began teaching music courses at the University of Michigan in 1966.
He was an expert on Jelly Roll Morton and the premier interpreter of his music. He wrote the liner notes for the release of the Jelly Roll Morton Library of Congress Recordings and released a solo piano album of Morton's music on Smithsonian Folkways.
As a writer he contributed chapters on ragtime, early New Orleans jazz, and Chicago jazz to the Smithsonian History of Jazz. He was also editor of the Jazz Masterworks Editions, a collaboration between Oberlin College and the Smithsonian Institution.
The Chicago Jazz Band in addition to recording several albums appeared on Sippie Wallace’
