Lucius (Lu) Watters (Santa Cruz (California), 1911 - december 19, Santa Rosa (California), november 5, 1989) was an American trumpet player and big band leader of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. This band played traditional Dixieland-jazz.
Watters played trumpet from his eleventh year. He had his first job as a musician on a cruise-ship. He played in the orchestras of Carol Lofner and Bob Crosby and was leader of a big band in Sweet Ballroom in Oakland. Around 1939 he founded Yerba Buena Jazz Band, with members of his group from Oakland. Watters wanted to create music in the style of King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton: he was not interested in the new jazz (swing and bop). The Group took its name from Yerba Buena, an island in the Bay of San Francisco.
His group was a leader in the period of the Dixieland revival on the west coast. Watters and his group played traditional dixieland numbers, but also compositions of Watters ' hand, as ' Antigua Blues ' and ' Big Bear Stomp '. The Group had its own style.
Yerba Buena Jazz Band in San Francisco played in Dawn Club and did so until 1942, the year that Watters in joined the army. During the war led a 20-Member marineband Watters in Hawaii. After the war, Yerba Buena Jazz Band are back on the same, in the same club and with much success. In 1947 he opened his own club, Kelly Watters Hambone, where he played with his group. In 1950 he stopped his band and in 1957 he stopped playing, although he picked up the trumpet again in 1963 to with old band member Turk Murphy (trombone) to play on protest meetings against the construction of a nuclear power plant on the San Andreas fault. Watters was geologistafter his musical life, with a special interest in earthquakes: he taught at the Sonoma State University. He also had a private restaurant.
Discography[Edit][]
- 1942 Series (recordings March 1942), Good Time Jazz
- Lu Watters, Volume 1 1937-1943, San Francisco Trad. Jazz
- Lu Watters, Volume 1: Dawn Club Favorites, Good Time Jazz
- Lu Watters, Volume 2: Watters ' Originals & Ragtime (recordings 1941, 1946), Good Time Jazz
- Lu Watters, Volume 3: Stomps, etc. and the Blues (recordings 1942, 1946), Good Time Jazz
- Lu Watters, Riverside, 1947
- Lu Watters, Volume 2 1946-1947, San Francisco Trad. Jazz
- On the Air (recordings 1946 and 1947), Good Time Jazz
- At Hambone Kelly's 1949-1950, Merry Makers
- Doing the Hambone at Kelly's vol. 1 and vol. 2 (with Clancy Hayes, vocals), Jasmine
- Good Time Music-San Francisco Style, Living Era
- Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band ' vol. 1 and vol. 2, Merry Makers
- Lu Watters Jazz. Mercury, 1951
- Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band and His, Mercury, 1952
- Dixieland Jamboree, Verve, 1956
- Together Again (with Turk Murphy), Merry Makers, 1963
- Blues Over Bodega, Fantasy, 1964
- Complete Good Time Jazz Recordings (all recordings of Jazz Man and West Coast labels), Good Time Jazz