Anthony Parenti (8-6-1900 to 4-17-72) was born into a musical family and learned as a youngster to play various reed instruments. By the time he was a young man he had secured a job with Johnny De Droit’s Jazz Orchestra, which was the first to play Jazz as we know it for the elite of New Orleans social functions. In 1924 he was leading his own band at La Vida, a restaurant in his native city, and with this unit he made his first records. He recorded sporadically, at least up to the Depression of the early thirties, which found him in New York as one of Irving Mills’ cornermen, sitting in on recording dates with The Dorsey Brothers Orchestra and their associates.

During the early forties he worked with Ted Lewis alongside Muggsy Spanier, and with Preacher Rollo and his Five Saints on M.G.M. Tony Parenti was possessed of a fluent clarinet tone that is more close to legitimate than that of many of his colleagues. In his early records, the delicate lines were often lost in the indifferent recording of the ensemble, but later in his career he can be heard as a brilliant, tasteful soloist whose work is reminiscent of the Creole clarinettists Barney Bigard, Omer Simeon and Albert Nicholas.

Taken from the book Recorded Jazz: A Critical Guide by Rex Harris and Brian Rust.