Jean Goldkette
| Jean Goldkette | |
|---|---|
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | John Jean Goldkette |
| Born | March 18, 1893 Valenciennes |
| Died | March 24, 1962 (aged 69) Los Angeles, California |
| Genres | Jazz, dixieland |
| Occupation(s) | Bandleader |
| Instruments | Piano |
| Years active | 50 |
John Jean Goldkette (18 March 1893 – March 24, 1962) was a jazz pianist and bandleader.
Goldkette is said to have been born March 18, 1893 in Valenciennes, France. However, there is some evidence that despite what he claimed, he was actually born in Patras, Greece. He was named after his mother, Angela Goldkette, a circus performer from Denmark, his father being unknown. He spent his childhood in Greece and Russia, where he studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory as a child prodigy. The family emigrated to the United States in 1911, and he performed in a classical ensemble in Chicago at the age of 15, later joining one of Edgar Benson's dance orchestras .
He leased a ballroom in Detroit and formed a band which grew to success, and was the foundation for a business empire acting as an agency for twenty orchestras and owning many dance halls. In 1936 he filed for bankruptcy, but over the next three decades he built up business again as a musician, conductor and promoter. He married Lee McQuillen, a newspaperwoman on March 4, 1939.
He moved to California in 1961, and the following year died in Santa Barbara, California, of a heart attack, aged 69. He took a taxi to the hospital by himself, and died that same day. He is buried in the Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
He led many jazz and dance bands, of which the best known was his Victor Recording Orchestra of 1924–1929, which included, at various times, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Chauncey Morehouse, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Bill Rank, Eddie Lang, Frankie Trumbauer, Pee Wee Russell, Steve Brown, Joe Venuti, and arranger Robert Ginzler among others. Vocalists included the Keller Sisters and Lynch. Rex Stewart, a member of Fletcher Henderson's band at the time, wrote that "It was, without any question, the greatest in the world ... the original predecessor to any large white dance Orchestra that followed, up to Benny Goodman."Brian Rust also called it "the greatest band of them all."
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