Leon “Leo” Adde

Like many great early jazz drummers, Leo Adde began using a cigar container, rather than because his father was hosting a celebration within the lad’s birth. The original light solid wood cigar container makes a grand percussion device, one that makes a genuine drum set outdated if the principals of adaptability of sound creation versus simple toting are considered. The cigar container was among a family group of instruments, like the washtub or thump tub, the broomstick and jingle stay, the human leg, and frequently any agreement of bones no more connected to a genuine skeleton: all criteria of the so-called “spasm music group.” Adde and partner Raymond Burke acquired a “spasm duo” that performed around New Orleans circa 1914. Adde added his existence towards the Halfway Home Orchestra beneath the path of Abby Brunies, just one single member of a significant New Orleans jazz family members dynasty. The Brunies — whose executing ensemble was such as a shifting class and whose place was frequently the family members veranda — had been like blacksmiths forging rhythmic horseshoes from an assortment of African, Latin American, and South American alloys. Adde was among the percussionists who helped realize the imagine recordings like the useful “Golden Leaf Strut,” carried out for Okeh in 1925. The drummer’s profession continuing at a quick speed, the ’20s completed out together with pianist Johnny Millinder and his New Orleans Frolickers. You will find recordings from your ’20s of Adde with this group aswell much like cornetist Johnny Bayersdorffer and overtaking the drum seat inside a 1925 edition of the brand new Orleans Tempo Kings, adding another little bit of evidence towards the charge that drummer is only going to play in an organization if the name of his hometown is definitely mounted on it. Maybe he devoted the ’30s to the task of showing such criticisms incorrect, devoting his outstanding drumming chops towards the service from the Melody Experts, a combo initially co-led by a set of trumpeters, Sharkey Bonano and Leon Prima, sibling of popular bandleader Louis Prima. The drummer adopted this group to NEW YORK in the first ’30s, where in fact the administration placement was shuffled around inside the group, as well as the name occasionally lengthened towards the — aha! — New Orleans Melody Experts. Adde also experienced a hoot saving with the brand new Orleans Owls, relocating back again to his locale of preference prior to the ’30s had been over. He gets a songwriting credit within the piece “Barataria,” co-written with Expenses Eastwood through the initial Halfway Home Orchestra recording program.