Σάββατο, Αυγούστου 10, 2019

Billie & DeDe Pierce : οι πιονιέροι της Τζαζ


Joseph La Croix 'DeDe' Pierce was born on 18th February 1904 in the Treme section of New Orleans – a Creole section next to the French Quarter. He grew up speaking both French and Creole patois as well as English.  ‘DeDe' was the nickname given to him by a young cousin he grew up with, and the name stuck, for many years written variously as  'Dede',  'Dee Dee', or 'De De'. By the 1960s, his business card was reading  ‘Billie and DeDe Pierce ‘. The same 'DeDe' was adopted in the Membership Directory of the American Federation of Musicians in the 1960s and since.

DeDe Pierce started playing trumpet when he was 17. His first professional job was around 1924 with Arnold DePass's Olympia Band. A year later, in 1925, DeDe made a home recording with the great New Orleans clarinettist Emile Barnes. According to Sam Charters, this recording was still in DeDe's collection in the 1950s but it was cut on an aluminium disc and was no longer playable.

For a short while in the early 1930s, DeDe worked with Paul Barnes' touring band. Throughout most of the Depression years, however, DeDe worked as a brick mason during the day – following the trade of his father – and at night played the rough dives in and around Decatur Street near the New Orleans dockside. It was during this time that DeDe first met Billie – he was working with Billie ‘s sister Sadie Goodson while Billie was working in an adjacent block on Decatur Street. Before long Billie and DeDe teamed up. Pleasant 'Cousin Joe' Joseph gives the flavour of Billie and DeDe's show at the Kingfish on Decatur:

'That's the only place I ever worked at that I was scared to go to work . . . Every Saturday night the sailors used to come off the riverboats and they used to come in the joint. They used to drink their beer in those glass mugs with a handle on them. Glass! When they'd get full of that beer, when they'd start a fight, you talk about the biggest free-for-all you ever seen in your life! Mugs would be flying all over the place. They'd be busting them and blood would be jumping from people's heads. Me, I'd be under the piano, myself. Hiding. I was so scared I didn't know what to do.'

'Willie Madison 'Billie' Pierce, nee Goodson, was born in Marianna, Florida on 8th June 1907. She left Marianna as a baby and was raised in Pensacola, Florida. All her family were musical. She was picking out the blues on the piano when she was still too young to talk properly. The best New Orleans bands came to Pensacola – Papa Celestin, Buddy Petit, Kid Rena, Kid Punch Miller, King Oliver – and Billie would sneak out of the window at night to hear them play. Her father wouldn't allow her to go. In 1922, Billie first accompanied Bessie Smith at the Belmont Theatre in Pensacola and toured Florida with Bessie when Bessie's regular accompanist, Clarence Williams, fell ill. In those years, Bessie Smith and Ida Cox were the only singers that Billie liked. Later, in 1929, Billie got to play with Buddy Petit in New Orleans when she took sister Sadie Goodson's place as Buddy's pianist. Billie played with various travelling shows in Florida and Alabama before settling in New Orleans around 1930, when she started with Alphonse Picou, working at the Rialto every night. After a couple of years she moved on to Luthjen's, where she played off and on for about twenty-four years.
See more:La Croix Records


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