After 52 years of playing and promoting traditional jazz around the world, the curtain finally came down on the Natural Gas Jazz Band at a farewell concert and celebration in late August in San Anselmo, California. There aren’t many bands that can claim to have maintained a stable lineup of competent musicians for over five decades; performed, recorded or rehearsed on 2,300 different days; been invited to a total of 104 jazz festivals, traveled on 24 international tours; and been recognized as the first American jazz band to play in Siberia.
This is a band that started out as a group of professionals in the San Francisco Bay area that was organized as a neighborhood jazz band. A banjo-playing Marin County surgeon and a dentist who played piano had been providing informal entertainment at cocktail parties and fundraisers when in 1970, they backed up a vocal quartet that included lawyer Bob Murphy at a testimonial dinner for a retiring county official.
After the event, Bob mentioned to Dr. Elmer “Bud” Weden that he played clarinet in high school, but hadn’t touched the instrument in 19 years. Doc Weden was unfazed by that admission, and the dis
