Clarinetist George Lewis was the soul of the New Orleans jazz revival — a self-taught musician of profound feeling whose pure, singing tone and deep blues roots made him the most beloved traditional jazz clarinetist of his generation, and whose recordings brought authentic New Orleans jazz to audiences worldwide.
Biography
Born George Joseph François Louis Zeno in New Orleans in 1900, Lewis learned clarinet largely by ear and spent decades playing in the city's brass bands and dance halls in near-total obscurity. He was rediscovered in the 1940s as part of the New Orleans jazz revival and became one of its central figures — not a technically polished player in the conservatory sense, but one whose raw feeling and authentic connection to the earliest jazz tradition made him irreplaceable. His recordings from the 1940s through the 1960s, often made in informal settings, document a musician who seemed to carry the entire history of New Orleans jazz in his fingers. He toured Japan in 1963 to a reception that bordered on mass hysteria, and his influence on traditional jazz worldwide cannot be overstated.
Discography
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