Raymond Burke

Raymond Burke had an extended profession and was considered a trusted participant in his local New Orleans where he spent virtually his whole career aside from a limited period in the past due 1930s when he is at Kansas Town. Although three of his uncles performed music, Burke was completely self-taught. He became a specialist musician around 1920 and used Blind Gilbert’s music group in the middle-’20s and Henry Walde’s Melon Pickers the next 10 years. Among his many musical organizations during the pursuing decades had been Sharkey Bonano, Johnny Wiggs, George Hartman, Wooden Joe Nicholas, the Dukes of Dixieland, George Girard, Johnny St. Cyr, Punch Miller, and Child Thomas Valentine. Burke, who often led his very own rings, was a fixture at Preservation Hall after it opened up in 1960, and continued to be active (and an area legend) in to the middle-’80s. Raymond Burke documented some isolated game titles in early stages (including “Solitude” in 1937) and led albums for NOR (1949), Paramount (1952), Southland (1953 & 1960), Property O’ Jazz (1975), 504 (1979), and Smoky Mary (1983). Among his sidemen on those recordings had been Wooden Joe Nicholas, Johnny St. Cyr, Johnny Wiggs, Alvin Alcorn, Thomas Jefferson, and Butch Thompson.