28 Facts About Freddie Keppard

Freddie Keppard was an American jazz cornetist who once held the title of "King" in the New Orleans jazz scene.

Freddie Keppard was raised on Villere Street in New Orleans in a home environment filled with music.

Freddie Keppard played violin, mandolin, and accordion before switching to cornet.

Freddie Keppard did not begin playing cornet until he was sixteen.

Louis Freddie Keppard led the Magnolia Orchestra, which became the regular band at Huntz's and Nagel's cabaret on Iberville in the District.

Indeed, many contemporaries have testified that Freddie Keppard's playing style was the closest to Bolden's that can be found in the history of jazz recordings and can be considered a more musical and sophisticated extension of Bolden's style: rugged and forceful, clipped and more staccato, and rhythmically closer to ragtime than later New Orleans jazz.

Freddie Keppard invited players from his hometown of New Orleans, including Freddie Keppard, to join him in this enterprise.

In 1914 Freddie Keppard's band performed in Canada, at the Pantages Playhouse Theatres in Winnipeg and Edmonton, the first ever jazz performances outside the United States.

Freddie Keppard, who signed one photograph of himself with a caption describing himself as the "star cornetist" of the "Creole Ragtime Band," probably considered himself the star of the Original Creole Orchestra.

About 1917, Freddie Keppard settled in Chicago, which would remain his home.

Freddie Keppard worked in Chicago both as a soloist and with the bands of Jimmie Noone, Johnny Dodds, Erskine Tate, Doc Cook, Don Pasqual, Lil Hardin Armstrong, Ollie Powers, and John Wycliffe, all of which were highly respected local bands.

Freddie Keppard was one of the first to bring jazz to the West Coast.

Freddie Keppard really gave the band a lift and then we really went to town.

Sidney Bechet believed it was because Freddie Keppard was a "good-time guy" that he refused the Victor Company's offer to make the first jazz recordings while he was still playing with the Original Creole Orchestra.

Freddie Keppard didn't have very much formal musical education but he sure was a natural musician.

Freddie Keppard had a different style altogether from Joe Oliver.

Some commentary on Freddie Keppard's playing is admittedly quite contradictory.

Additionally, while qualified listeners like Jelly Roll Morton were full of praise for Freddie Keppard's playing style, others like the younger Louis Armstrong is said to have described Freddie Keppard's playing as "fancy".

Freddie Keppard made all his known recordings in Chicago from 1923 to 1927.

Freddie Keppard's "Stockyard Strut" is an improvisation on the chords of "Tiger Rag".

Freddie Keppard contributed to the Doc Cook recordings, where he plays the 'walking-talking' style of Stomp Cornet that pre-dates jazz by about a half generation.

Freddie Keppard was widely imitated both in New Orleans and Chicago, including contemporaneous and highly regarded players such as Louis Panico and Frank Guarente.

Several musicians with clear memories of Buddy Bolden said that Freddie Keppard sounded the most like Bolden of anyone who recorded.

Freddie Keppard did not have a sound of his own and he came up in between Buddy, Oliver, and Armstrong.

Many contemporaries said that either Freddie Keppard was past his prime when he recorded or that his recordings do not do him justice, as Freddie Keppard's health was already declining by the time he recorded in 1926.

Freddie Keppard's style is much more raggy and characterized by a "brusque and staccato style" compared to Oliver's blues-tinged style.

Freddie Keppard suffered from alcoholism and tuberculosis in his final years, although he continued performing despite illnesses.

Freddie Keppard was still playing loud in the early 1930s in Chicago, although, according to contemporaries, no longer very well.