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The Eagle Band

The Eagle Band was a very important band in the history of Jazz. When Buddy Bolden went insane in 1907, Frankie Dusen took over Buddy Bolden’s Band and renamed it the Eagle Band after the Eagle Saloon at Perdido and South Rampart Street in the Storyville district of New Orleans.

The Eagle Band 1916
The Eagle Band 1916. Left to Right: Big Eye Nelson, Chinee Foster, Frankie Dusen, Buddy Petit, Lorenzo Staulz, Dandy Lewis.

The band was very popular in New Orleans between 1907 and 1917 and reportedly continued to play much of the same repertoire as when Bolden was the leader of the group. Many of the musicians that passed through the Eagle Band in the Teens would become the chief proponents of Hot Jazz during the 1920s.

The band made no recordings, but the Eagle Band was the link between the dawn of Jazz as represented by Buddy Bolden and the cultural phenomenon that jazz would become during the 1920s.

Sidney Bechet remembered the band this way, “The Eagle Band was much more of a barrelhouse band, a real gutbucket band, a low down band which really played the blues, and those slow tempos. To tell the true the Eagle Band was the only band that could play the blues. That was really a band”.

Artist Instrument
Sidney Bechet Clarinet
Peter Bocage Trumpet, Guitar
Walter Brundy Drums
Jack Carey Trombone
Tig Chambers Trumpet
Edward Clem Trumpet
Baby Dodds Drums
Johnny Dodds Clarinet
Frankie Dusen Trombone, Leader
Chinee Foster Drums
Pops Foster Bass
Ed Garland Bass
Tubby Hall Drums
Bill Johnson Bass
Bunk Johnson Trumpet
Joe Johnson Trumpet
Frank Keelin Trumpet
Freddie Keppard Trumpet
Brock Mumford Guitar
Big Eye Nelson Clarinet
King Oliver Trumpet
Richard Payne Guitar
John Penerton Trumpet
Dandy Lewis Bass
Frank Lewis Clarinet
Dandy Lewis Bass
Bob Lyons Bass
Big Eye Louis Nelson Clarinet
Willie Parker Clarinet
Buddie Petit Trumpet
Lorenzo Staulz Guitar
Cliff Stones Guitar
Lorenzo Tio, Jr. Clarinet
Wild Ned Trumpet
Henry Zeno Drums

 

St Louis Cotton Club Band 1925

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