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George Lewis

A New Orleans jazz stalwart during the era of the great depression, George Lewis later found fame in the 1950s when a revival of interest in the city's traditional music scene highlighted his elegant, virtuoso clarinet style. Born into a family who first came to America on slave ships from Senegal, he taught himself to play and started out performing in the 1920s with local acts such as Black Eagle Band, Buddy Petit, Kid Ory and the Olympia Orchestra. Times were tough and he worked a day job on the docks to make ends meet, but when folklorists and jazz historians such as Alan ...