Eddie Condon, 1946
Photo by William P. Gottlieb
Eddie Condon, the jazz banjoist, guitarist and bandleader, was born 115 years ago today.
A leading figure in the "Chicago school" of early Dixieland, he also played piano and sang on occasion.
Born in Goodland, Indiana, Condon was the son of John and Margaret Condon. He grew up in Momence, Illinois and Chicago Heights, Illinois, where he attended St. Agnes and Bloom High School. After some time playing ukulele, he switched to banjo and was a professional musician by 1921.
He was based in Chicago for most of the 1920s, and played with such jazz notables as Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden and Frank Teschemacher.
In 1928, Condon moved to New York City. He frequently arranged jazz sessions for various record labels, sometimes playing with the artists he brought to the recording studios, including Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. He organized racially-integrated recording sessions — when these were still rare — with Waller, Armstrong and Henry “Red” Allen.
He played with the band of Red Nichols for a time. Later, from 1938, he had a long association with Milt Gabler's Commodore Records. From the late 1930s on, he was a regular at the Manhattan jazz club, Nick's. The sophisticated variation on Dixieland music which Condon and his colleagues created there came to be nicknamed, "Nicksieland."
By this time, his regular circle of musical associates included Wild Bill Davison, Bobby Hackett, George Brunies, Edmond Hall and Pee Wee Russell. In 1939, he appeared with "Bobby Hacket and Band" in the Warner Brothers and Vitaphone film musical short-subject, "On the Air."
Condon also did a series of jazz radio broadcasts from New York's Town Hall during 1944-45 which were nationally popular. These recordings survive, and have been issued on the Jazzology label.
From 1945 through 1967, he ran his own New York jazz club — Eddie Condon's — first located on West 3rd Street in Greenwich Village and then 52nd Street near Sixth Avenue (the present site of the CBS headquarters building). Later, it moved to the south side of East 56th Street, east of Second Avenue.
In the 1950s, Condon recorded a sequence of classic albums for Columbia Records. The musicians involved in these albums — and at Condon's club — included Wild Bill Davison, Bobby Hackett (cornet), Billy Butterfield (trumpet), Edmond Hall, Peanuts Hucko, Pee Wee Russell, Bob Wilber (clarinet), Cutty Cutshall, Lou McGarity, George Brunies (trombone), Bud Freeman (tenor sax), Gene Schroeder, Dick Cary, Ralph Sutton (piano), Bob Casey, Walter Page, Jack Lesberg, Al Hall (bass), George Wettling, Buzzy Drootin and Cliff Leeman (drums).
Condon toured Britain in 1957 with a band including Wild Bill Davison, Cutty Cutshall, Gene Schroeder and George Wettling. His last tour was in 1964, when he took a band to Australia and Japan.
Condon's men, on that tour, were a roll-call of top mainstream jazz musicians: Buck Clayton (trumpet), Pee Wee Russell (clarinet), Vic Dickenson (trombone), Bud Freeman (tenor sax), Dick Cary (piano and alto horn), Jack Lesberg (bass), Cliff Leeman (drums) and Jimmy Rushing (vocals).
In 1948, his autobiography — We Called It Music — was published. The book has many interesting and entertaining anecdotes about musicians Condon worked with. Eddie Condon's Treasury of Jazz (1956) was a collection of articles by various writers co-edited by Condon and Richard Gehman.
A latter-day collaborator, clarinetist Kenny Davern, described a Condon gig: "It was always a thrill to get a call from Eddie and with a gig involved even more so. I remember eating beforehand with Bernie (Previn; trumpet) and Lou (McGarity; trombone) and everyone being in good spirits. There was a buzz on, we'd all had a taste and there was a great feel to the music."
Eddie Condon toured and appeared at jazz festivals through 1971.
He died in New York City at age 67 in 1973.