Pete Fountain was born Pierre Dewey LaFontaine, Jr., on July 3, 1930, in New Orleans. Young Pete was very sickly, frequently battling respiratory infections due to weakened lungs. A doctor advised his father to try an unorthodox treatment: purchase the child a musical instrument, anything he has to blow into. Pete chose the clarinet.
He took private lessons but also learned to play jazz by playing along with phonograph records of first Benny Goodman and then Irving Fazola. By the time he reached his teens, he was playing regular gigs in the nightclubs on Bourbon Street.
One of Fountain’s early engagements were with the bands of Monk Hazel. Fountain founded the Basin Street Six in 1950 with his longtime friend, trumpeter George Girard. In 1954, after the Basin Street Six folded, Fountain briefly went to Chicago to play with the Dukes of Dixieland, then returned to New Orleans and teamed up with Al Hirt to lead a band, playing an extended residence at Dan Levy’s Pier 600.
A talent scout for Lawrence Welk, saw Fountain performing at the Pier 600, brought him to the attention of Larry Welk, son of television bandleader Lawrence Welk. Welk invited Fountain to join the Lawrence Welk orchestra in Los Angeles, where he relocated and lived for two years. Fountain became well known for his many solos on The Lawrence Welk Show. During that time Fountain was signed by Decca Records and went on to produce 42 hit albums for the label. Fountain left the TV program after a jazzy rendition of “Silver Bells” on the 1958 Christmas show upset Welk.
Fountain returned to New Orleans, played with the Dukes of Dixieland, then began leading bands under his own name. Fountain opened his club, the French Quarter Inn, located in the heart of the famed French Quarter district, at 800 Bourbon Street, in the spring of 1960. Outside NOLA, Pete notably appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 56 times.
Pete’s soulful clarinet was a New Orleans fixture until his retirement in 2014.
Pete Fountain died of heart failure in New Orleans on August 6, 2016, at the age of eighty-six. – adapted from Wikipedia
See also: Pete Fountain: Clarinet Personified
