Paul Barbarin Biography
5 May 1899, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, d. 17 February 1969, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. The best-known member of a respected New Orleans musical family, Barbarin became one of the Crescent City’s best and most famous drummers. With his father, Isadore, an established brass player and a member of the Onward Brass Band, and his brothers, Louis Barbarin (drums), Lucien (drums) and William (cornet) all playing jazz, Paul Barbarin could hardly have done anything but become a jazz musician. While still in his mid-teens, he was a member of Buddy Petit’s band, then moved to Chicago, where he worked with the bands of King Oliver and Jimmy Noone. From 1928 Barbarin worked mainly in New York with the Luis Russell band, which in 1935 came under the nominal leadership of Louis Armstrong. In 1939, Barbarin returned home and, apart from occasional trips to Chicago in the 40s and 50s when he worked with Henry ‘Red’ Allen, Sidney Bechet, Art Hodes, he also led his own band. It was in New Orleans that he stayed, playing long and successful engagements and enjoying life as an elder statesman of jazz.
Barbarin played with the simplistic drive of the earliest New Orleans drummers; though he lacked the polish of Baby Dodds and the flair of Zutty Singleton, he always swung any band in which he played. One of his notable compositions is ‘Bourbon Street Parade’. In later years he continued the family tradition when, like his father before him, he became leader of the Onward Brass Band. It was while leading this band in a New Orleans street parade in February 1969 that he collapsed and died.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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