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This is the story of a good early-1920s New Orleans jazz musician who eventually became a Keeper of the Flame for Crescent City music at a time when it was commercially viable but put him in the category of being just a flashy entertainer.
The musician in question is trumpeter Joseph Gustaf Bonano, born in the Milneburg section of town near Lake Pontchartrain in April 1902—one year younger than Louis Armstrong and one year older than Bix Beiderbecke. He did not have the improvising genius of either, yet he picked up ideas from both and eventually became a solid, exciting performer who used a great deal of showmanship in his presentation. He was given a trumpet in 1917 by the legendary Buddy Petit and followed Petit, Joe Oliver and Sam Morgan in brass band parades, so he really did go back a pretty far way. He got his first playing experience in his brother-in-law’s Milneburg dance pavilion, Quarella’s.
Although he got his first break in 1921 working with former Original Dixieland Jazz Band trombonist Eddie Edwards in New York, he returned to New Orleans where he played in the bands of Freddie Newman and Chink Martin, making his first recordings with the latter’s band in 1924. Late in that year, Sharkey failed an audition to replace Bix Beiderbecke in the Wolverines because he couldn’t read music, but this spurred him to learn it. After another stint in New Orleans, he worked briefly in the Jean Goldkette Orchestra with Bix himself. By 1928 he had returned to New Orleans again, where he formed The Melody Makers with Louis Prima’s brother, Leon, on second trumpet.
Like Leon’s brother Louis, Sharkey came to adopt a loud, hyper stage persona when performing that made them very popular with audiences. Louis Prima was clearly the more talented and original improviser, but as he focused more and more on his outré stage personality he practiced the trumpet less and less. By the time he became a big hit in Las Vegas in the early 1950s, Prima was barely playing the trumpet at all, and when he did it was just a few phrases here and there.
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But Bonano, who adopted the stage name of Sharkey for reasons which are unclear, never gave up on his trumpet playing. He formed his own band, originally called the Sharks of Rhythm, and moved into the 52nd Street jazz clubs in New York. Like most New Orleans musicians, black or white, Bonano favored hometown sidemen, and even from the beginning had some of the best, particularly Santo Pecora and George Brunies on trombone, Thurman Teague on bass and, briefly, Irving “Fazola” Prestopnick on clarinet just before he joined Bob Croaby’s orchestra. In 1938 Sharkey replaced Nick LaRocca, the cornetist of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, when La Rocca was forced to retire due to his heart condition.
Bonano’s activities between 1939 and 1945 are not fully documented, but he did work for an extended period for Nick Rongetti, the owner of “Nick’s” in Greenwich Village, helping him inaugurate a traditional jazz policy in that club which later benefited Eddie Condon and his group of Chicago musicians as well. After World War II Bonano toured Europe, Asia, and South America, played residencies in Chicago and New York, and then returned once more to his home town where he became a regular on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. In 1949 he returned to New York, appearing at the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blue Room and the Famous Door, and was a sensation with his hyper stage antics, powerful trumpet nd what was surely the liveliest “Dixieland” band of his time. These engagements led to his being signed to a five-year contract on Capitol Records, with which label he had a surprise hit with one of his own compositions, Pizza Pie Boogie.
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During this period and afterwards, Bonano was sometimes billed as Sharkey Banana or Sharkey Bananas. He wore pure white or loud checkered suits, derby hats of various colors, and like Prima he constantly urged his band on with handclapping and shouts of “C’mon!” and “Keep goin’!” All of this, along with the fact that his improvisations, though solidly constructed, were not as brilliant as those of Red Nichols or Bobby Hackett, led to his being dismissed by most jazz critics as just a showman.
But if Bonano was “just a showman,” why did his bands sound so loose and swinging, with such strong solos from most of his sidemen? In part it was because he decided to return to the style of his youth, hire the best available New Orleans-born sidemen, and keep it at a high level. Among his sidemen during the Capitol period were such seminal white and Creole musicians as clarinetists Lester Bouchon and Buji Centobie, who played with a driving, somewhat raspy style modeled on Sidney Bechet; trombonist Pecora, whose style lay somewhere between Kid Ory and Jack Teagarden; his old boss Chink Martin, who played bass, tuba, and occasionally the drums; and Monk Hazel who, along with Paul Barbarin, was one of the most dependable and legendary of early New Orleans drummers. In the piano chair, Bonano used a round-robin of young and enthusiastic players, some of which were fairly pedestrian but some of which, like Jeff Riddick, were excellent. On one live broadcast from New Orleans in 1949, he even had famous society pianist, musical satirist and jazz-classical composer Alec Templeton sit in at the keyboard. In 1951-53 he added a real stellar attraction to the band, the famous Afro-Creole jazz singer Lizzie Miles (1895-1963) who contributed some powerful vocal performances which she often sang in both English and Creole.
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Miles, whose real name was Elizabeth Mary Landreaux, was a star on Victor Records from 1923 to 1929 (she recorded two sides with Jelly Roll Morton at the piano), but suffered off and on from illnesses which curtailed her career. Her recordings with Bonano are practically iconic. The band gave her center stage, playing few if any solos in her songs because they wanted the focus to be on her singing. Woody Allen used her 1953 recording of A Good Man is Hard to Find in the soundtrack of his 2013 film, Blue Jasmine. After Bonano helped revive her career, Miles went on to sing with clarinetist George Lewis’ band, then with Bob Scobey’s Frisco Jazz Band in Nevada before returning to New Orleans in 1959, where she sang with Paul Barbarin. But at that time she joined a religious order and refused to sing anything other than Gospel music before her death.
In a way, then, this period of the Bonano band was almost an early version of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, showcasing some of the top talent from his home town. And unlike the PHJB, many of whose members were past their musical prime, Santora, Bouchon, Centobie and Hazel could still produce traditional jazz at a very high level. All of these musicians were still vital and exciting with solid techniques; Bonano’s bands never sounded as pathetically old or infirm as such other older jazz musicians as Kid Ory, Mutt Carey, Kid Rena or Louis “Big Eye” Nelson, all of whom were on their last legs when they made their 1940s recordings.
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As for Bonano himself, although his solos were never so exceptional that they stunned you, they were good enough that he never bored you as the lead trumpet players of the Dukes of Dixieland or the Firehouse Five Plus Two did. He had a bright tone and tongued his notes in such a way that at times his timbre and attack bore an eerie resemblance to that of Beiderbecke himself. Of his contemporaries, only Red Nichols sounded more like Bix than Sharkey did, in part because Nichols was an excellent improviser himself—but Nichols never swung as hard as Bonano. Although Sharkey was more of a “lead” trumpeter than a “hot” soloist, his sense of rhythm was so acute that at times he was the one who actually drove his bands, even more so than his rhythm sections.
The bottom line is that Bonano’s 1949-53 recordings and live performances were accurate reflections of the way the best white New Orleans musicians played during the 1920s, a time when Sharkey himself made few recordings and the others almost none. On top of all this, his performances are really fun to listen to. They have so much joy and energy in them that the playing practically explodes off the records. Yes, there are a few duds in his output, particularly when he himself seemed to be lacking inspiration, but for the most part they are on a very high level.
There are a surprisingly large number of Sharkey Bonano’s recordings (most of them live performances) available on YouTube. Here is a list of my favorites:
Hindustan, Tin Roof Blues and Indiana from 1949 with Alec Templeton on piano.
From Sharkey Bonano and the Kings of Dixieland:
Angry
I’m Heading Down South
Peculiar Rag, his first composition, which he originally recorded in 1924, in an excellent 1949 Capitol recording
Solo Mio Stomp, a fun arrangement of the classic Italian song (on Internet Archive)
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From the album Sounds of New Orleans, Vol. 4: Sharkey Bonano Live at the Perez Club:
Bugle Call Rag
Stick Out Your Can
Royal Garden Blues
North Rampart Street March
Clarinet Marmalade
Farewell Blues
Please note that, in the playlist, all of these songs are mistitled by one. The first track, listed as Bugle Call Rag, is actually Clarinet Marmalade, thus the rest of the tracks are all off by one title.
From the studio album Midnight on Bourbon Street:
You Are My Sunshine
Way Down Yonder in New Orleans (contains a gorgeous muted solo by Bonano)
Somebody Stole My Gal
I Ain’t Gonna Give You None of My Jelly Roll (Lizzie Miles song)
Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue
Pizza Pie Boogie (the “live” version, even better than the studio recording)
I’m Going Home
A Good Man is Hard to Find (w/Lizzie Miles)
Lizzie’s Blues (w/Lizzie Miles)
Happy listening!
—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley
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