About Lu Watters
Hometown
Santa Cruz, CA, United States
Born
December 19, 1911
Genre
Jazz
When Lu Watters organized the Yerba Buena Jazz Band in late 1939, the New Orleans jazz of King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton was considered old hat. Over 60 years later, countless trad bands patterned themselves after the two-beat Watters group. Watters formed his first jazz band in 1925, but he spent most of the 1930s playing in San Francisco in his own big band. By 1939, he had met fellow trumpeter Bob Scobey, trombonist Turk Murphy, and pianist Wally Rose. In December 1939, his new band started playing regularly at the Dawn Club and, by 1941, when they made their first recordings, the Yerba Buena Jazz Band was building up a large following in San Francisco. The eventual departure of Scobey and Murphy weakened the Yerba Buena Jazz Band slightly, but the vocals of its banjoist Clancy Hayes were a crowd pleaser and the band remained a powerful force.
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