Alcide “Yellow” Nunez

Louisiana Five are appealing today mostly for the current presence of their clarinetist Alcide “Yellow” Nunez. Nunez was created in New Orleans circa 1892 and in 1916 was a charter person in Stein’s Dixie Jass Music group, among the initial from the white Dixieland rings to enterprise north to Chicago. The music group would later on morph into Unique Dixieland Jazz Music group under the command of cornetist Nick LaRocca. Regarding to article writer H.O. Brunn it had been Nunez’s unreliability compounded by large drinking that triggered LaRocca to fireplace him on Oct 31, 1916, a scant couple of weeks before ODJB’s landmark successes in NEW YORK. Nunez came back to New Orleans, changed by Larry Shields, who take action Nunez was hardly ever able to perform or perhaps unwilling to accomplish, that was to discover a place for the clarinet in the cornet led Dixieland ensemble. Nunez produced another music group and came back to Chicago’s Vernon Café but with small success. In regards to a yr after the preliminary success of First Dixieland Jazz Music group, Nunez became a member of with New Orleans drummer and supervisor Anton Lada to create Louisiana Five. Becoming a member of the group had been Brooklyn trombonist Charlie Panelli, who be considered a fixture on the brand new York Dixieland picture through the first ’20s where he’d perform for prolonged periods with the initial Memphis Five and First Indiana Five; pianist Joe Cawley; and banjoist Karl Berger. Beginning in Dec 1918 for just one yr they might record over 50 edges, many unique compositions, for Emerson, Columbia, Edison, Okeh, as well as an unissued check for Victor. Nunez was modestly billed as “The World’s Greatest Jazz Clarinetist” in the many Gotham locations they played. A number of the Columbia Louisiana Five recordings liked modest success however they under no circumstances rivaled the product sales of ODJB Victors. Soon after the demise of Louisiana Five in early 1920, Nunez produced recordings in colaboration with Harry Yerkes, a fresh York documenting pioneer who performed a number of percussion tools. A number of the recordings also presented New Orleans trombonist Tom Dark brown. That association appears to have ceased in the same yr. Anton Lada continued to business lead dance orchestras and record for Emerson. His last recordings may actually have been manufactured in LA in 1925 for the Sunset label. In the middle-’20s, Nunez performed through Tx and Oklahoma along with his very own quartet. You can speculate that Nunez’s insufficient achievement stemmed from his unwillingness to improve his design by abandoning business lead playing towards the cornet. But Nunez unknowingly may experienced some vindication when he was noticed, regarding Charles Edward Smith, with a teenage Pee Wee Russell on the Elks Membership in Muskogee, Fine. The argument could be produced that Russell’s “un-clarinet”-like design may have produced originally in the stubborn previous New Orleans experienced along with his C Albert program clarinet refusing to surrender the lead. Although Smith’s assertions had been predicated on personal interviews with Russell, Robert Hilbert appears to have dismissed a lot of this in his biography of Russell created in 1993. Nunez came back to New Orleans in 1927 where he continuing to utilize local groupings and was an associate of the authorities Band. He transferred way on Sept 2, 1934, a ignored man at the start of the golf swing era. A number of the recordings of Louisiana Five have already been reissued within potpourri pieces like Timeless Historical’s superb From Ragtime to Jazz three-CD series.