Sid LeProtti (also spelled Le Protti) was a

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, j ...

and bandleader from

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

active in the Barbary Coast. Born to an

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

mother and Italian immigrant father, he was raised by his maternal grandparents. He learned classical piano music as a child from a German immigrant teacher. He first heard

ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...

music around the age of 10. LeProtti led the So Different Jazz Band, the house band of the dance club of the same name in the Barbary Coast, from 1907 to 1917. In addition to classical and ragtime music, LeProtti and other musicians in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

clubs during the early 20th century played round dances like

mazurka The mazurka (Polish: ''mazur'' Polish ball dance, one of the five Polish national dances and ''mazurek'' Polish folk dance') is a Polish musical form based on stylised folk dances in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, with character de ...

waltz The waltz ( ), meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple ( time), performed primarily in closed position. History There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the w ...

es, two-steps,

marches In medieval Europe, a march or mark was, in broad terms, any kind of borderland, as opposed to a national "heartland". More specifically, a march was a border between realms or a neutral buffer zone under joint control of two states in which d ...

, polkas, and

schottische The schottische is a partnered country dance that apparently originated in Bohemia. It was popular in Victorian era ballrooms as a part of the Bohemian folk-dance craze and left its traces in folk music of countries such as Argentina (" chotis" ...

s. Later in life, LeProtti was interviewed by

George Avakian George Mesrop Avakian (; russian: Геворк Авакян; March 15, 1919 – November 22, 2017) was an American record producer, artist manager, writer, educator and executive. Best known for his work from 1939 to the early 1960s at Decca Re ...

and

Turk Murphy Melvin Edward Alton "Turk" Murphy (December 16, 1915 – May 30, 1987) was an American trombonist and bandleader, who played traditional and Dixieland jazz. Biography He was born in Palermo, California, United States. Murphy served in the Nav ...

about his life and music.Tom Stoddard. ''Sid Le Protti’s Barbary Coast''. Stanford University: The San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation Collection: The Charles N. Huggins Project. Retrieved from https://exhibits.stanford.edu/sftjf/feature/sid-le-protti-s-barbary-coast. Accessed November 18, 2020.

References

1886 births 1958 deaths Dixieland jazz musicians 20th-century American musicians 20th-century American male musicians Jazz musicians from California American jazz bandleaders American male jazz musicians Musicians from California Music of California Music of the San Francisco Bay Area Musicians from the San Francisco Bay Area Musicians from Oakland, California African-American pianists 20th-century African-American musicians {{US-jazz-pianist-stub

See also

References