Walter Gabriel Pichon (April 3, 1906 – February 25, 1967)
professionally known as Fats Pichon, was an American
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
pianist, singer, bandleader, and songwriter.
Biography
Pichon was born and raised in
, Louisiana, and began playing piano in his childhood. He also played
baritone horn
The baritone horn, or sometimes just called baritone, is a low-pitched brass instrument in the saxhorn family.Robert Donington, "The Instruments of Music", (pp. 113ff ''The Family of Bugles'') 2nd ed., Methuen, London, 1962 It is a piston-val ...
in
brass bands in his youth, already a professional musician by 1920.
He first went north about 1922, playing at various venues in New York City and
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
before settling in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
for a few years where he studied at the
New England Conservatory of Music
The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a Private college, private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music Music school, conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The ...
.
After touring the United States and Mexico with various bands in the mid-1920s, he settled again his home town of New Orleans for the later part of the decade, leading bands under his own name at dance halls and on river boats on the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
.
On visits back to New York he made some recordings, mostly as a vocalist on novelty numbers, with
Luis Russell
Luis Russell (August 5, 1902 – December 11, 1963) was a pioneering Panamanian jazz pianist, orchestra leader, composer, and arranger.
Career
Luis Carl Russell was born on Careening Cay, near Bocas del Toro, Panama, in a family of African-Car ...
and other New Orleans groups.
In the 1930s, Fats Pichon led what some considered the best
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s an ...
in New Orleans; it also made Mississippi Riverboat excursions. Musicians included young
Dave Bartholomew
David Louis Bartholomew (December 24, 1918 – June 23, 2019) was an American musician, bandleader, composer, arranger, and record producer. He was prominent in the music of New Orleans throughout the second half of the 20th century. Originally ...
. This band never recorded. In the 1940s he began a long gig as the house pianist at ''The Old Absinthe House'', a popular venue on Bourbon Street in the
French Quarter
The French Quarter, also known as the , is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. After New Orleans (french: La Nouvelle-Orléans) was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the city developed around the ("Old Squ ...
, where he remained until about 1960,
with occasional tours of other parts of the U.S., Latin America, and the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
. Pichon moved into the role of Eddie the Waiter, replacing comedian Eddie Green on the NBC weekly radio comedy ''Duffy's Tavern'' during the show's last season, 1950–1951. After several episodes the waiter's name was changed from 'Eddie' to 'Fats'.
He died in Chicago in 1967, aged 60.
See also
*
Lionel Ferbos
References
External links
Answers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pichon, Fats
1967 deaths
Jazz musicians from New Orleans
African-American pianists
American jazz bandleaders
American jazz pianists
American male pianists
American jazz singers
Louisiana Creole people
1906 births
20th-century African-American male singers
20th-century American pianists
Singers from Louisiana
American male jazz musicians