Banjoist Neil Unterseher, a mainstay of the New Orleans traditional jazz scene for over half a century, died June 20 at his home in Kiln, Mississippi; he was 86. Born February 6, 1940, in Lincoln, Nebraska, Unterseher relocated to New Orleans in the 1960s and quickly became a fixture of the city’s trad jazz rooms, holding down the banjo and guitar chairs at Preservation Hall, Mahogany Hall, Fritzel’s, Maison Bourbon, the Palace Café, and Your Father’s Mustache. He toured internationally with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, appearing on the ensemble’s 1988 recording alongside Frank Fields, Michael White, and Wendell Brunious, and also worked the Mississippi riverboat circuit.
Over the decades Unterseher’s résumé grew to include work with an unusually deep roster of New Orleans jazz leaders: Bob Adams and the Levee Ragtime Band, Michael White’s Original Liberty Jazz Band, Banu Gibson and the New Orleans Hot Jazz Orchestra, Jacques Gauthé’s Creole Rice Yerba Buena Jazz Band, Duke Heitger’s Steamboat Stompers, Orange Kellin’s New Orleans Deluxe Orchestra, and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. He led his own group as well, the Razzberrie Ragtimers, and remained a frequent presence at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
In 2005, while touring Japan with the Wendell Brunious Jazz Band, Unterseher lost his Victorian New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina, a setback that didn’t slow his playing schedule for long. As late as 2020, at 80, he was still active on the bandstand. In an August 2020 TST article, pianist Steve Pistorius recalled Neil Unterseher showing him the “good chords and changes that most of the New Orleans musicians played” after they met at a 1972 Metairie, Louisiana, gig early in his own career. Unterseher was also a Flamenco player and a wonderful painter, often of New Orleans and musical themes, and many posting about his death were proud to own his paintings.
Joe Bebco is the Associate Editor of The Syncopated Times and Webmaster of SyncopatedTimes.com
