Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

Lawrence Duhe’s band at the De Luxe Café, with Freddie Keppard’s band at the Dreamland and
with King Oliver.
In 1919, Bechet joined Will Marion Cook’s orchestra for several years touring Europe. Back in
the U.S., Bechet made his recording debut in 1923 with Clarence Williams and during the next
two years he appeared on records backing blues singers. However, from 1925-1929 Bechet was
overseas, traveling as far as Russia.
The next three decades were spent mostly in Europe, with spells of unemployment in the United
States. In 1945, he was briefly reunited with Louis Armstrong at the Jazz Foundation Concert in New
Orleans, and soon after he made several sides for the Blue Note label with another famous New Orleans
trumpeter, Bunk Johnson. 4
1 Bruce Boyd Raeburn, New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2012), 39.
2 Raeburn, 213-4.
3 See also Rhodes Spedale, Jr., A Guide to Jazz in New Orleans (New Orleans: Hope Publications, 1984), 46.
4 For further reading Sidney Bechet’s memoirs Treat It Gentle:An Autobiography and John Chilton, The Wizard of Jazz.
Thanks also to Information from websites of Scott Yanow, http://scottyanow.com/.
W ALTER
H ERBERT
(1898-1975)
Walter Herbert.
NEW ORLEANS OPERA ASSOCIATION ARCHIVES, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY.
Classical music conductor and opera impresario
Walter Herbert was the guiding light of the twentieth
century’s New Orleans Opera Association, which
resurrected the local opera after its near demise. He
gave continuity to the staging and structure of opera
during his ten-year management, which tragically
ended in dissension. Even so, the New Orleans
Opera organization as created by Herbert lives on,
though seldom comfortably.
German-born Herbert began his conducting
career in Switzerland in 1925 after studying under
composer Arnold Schonberg in Vienna. A career
with the Volksoper in Vienna during the 1930s
ended when the Germans took over Austria in 1938.
By then Herbert was also acclaimed as a bridge player,
participating and winning the world championship
on Italy’s team. Prior to the coming of World
War II he left Europe and was soon in the United
States. From 1940-1943 he was director of Opera in
English for the San Francisco Opera.
In autumn 1943 the fledgling New Orleans Opera
Association named Herbert its first general director, a
position he retained until 1954. His European background had familiarized him with a rich selection of
works that tended to be overlooked in the French Opera tradition. During Herbert’s tenure he staged
166 performances of thirty-nine operas by twenty-four composers. These included first New Orleans
performances of The Old Maid and the Thief by Gian Carlo Menotti, The Abduction from the Seraglio by
Wolfgang A. Mozart, Petrouchka by Igor Stravinsky, Salome by Richard Strauss, and Der Rosenkavalier by
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