Big Boy Goudie

Frank "Big Boy" Goudie (September 13, 1899 – January 9, 1964) was an American jazz trumpeter, alto and tenor saxophonist and clarinetist.

Goudie was born in Youngsville, Louisiana, 150 miles west of New Orleans in the area of the state known as Cajun country, where he lived until age 8. (It is likely he learned to speak French while growing up there, which would be useful later in his life.) His family then moved to New Orleans, where he began playing cornet, possibly studying with Bunk Johnson. He became proficient enough to find work with local bands such as Papa Celestin's Original Tuxedo Band and the Magnolia Band - two top bands in New Orleans at that time. He began studying clarinet and tenor saxophone, which would eventually become his primary instruments.

Goudie's arrival in New Orleans circa 1907 meant he had a tantalizing front-row seat to the blossoming of early jazz. Musicians such as King Oliver, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Freddie Keppard, Jimmie Noone and a host of others, were in their prime and working at many venues throughout the city, in everything from duos, to six-piece jazz bands, to brass bands. Goudie may even have worked with, or crossed paths with, a young man close to his age, blowing up a storm on cornet - Louis Armstrong.

Between the years following the 1918 closure of "The District" (aka Storyville) and the early 1920s, New Orleans experienced a diaspora of musicians, one of whom was Goudie. In 1921 he joined a band accompanying a traveling minstrel show, and for the next four years he performed in Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and California. He joined another traveling group, Frank Matthews and the Louisiana High Browns, ending up in Tampico, Mexico in 1925.

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