Danny Barker

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Danny Barker (1909-1994) was a jazz guitarist and banjoist from New Orleans. A grandson of bandleader Isidore Barbarin and nephew of drummer Paul Barbarin, he first took up clarinet before switching to banjo. In 1930, Barker moved to New York City and, in accordance with the changing tastes in jazz at the time, switched to guitar. Over the next thirty-five years, he played and recorded on guitar with a range of musicians, including: Jelly Roll Morton, Benny Carter, Cab Calloway, Baby Dodds, James P. Johnson, Sidney Bechet, Mezz Mezzrow, and Red Allen. He also toured and recorded with his wife, singer Blue Lu Barker.

In 1965, Barker returned to New Orleans and took up a position as assistant to the curator of the New Orleans Jazz Museum. In 1972, he was approached by the pastor of the Fairview Baptist Church, who asked him to lead a church-sponsored brass band for young people; the group that resulted, the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band, became a popular New Orleans band in its own right before eventually morphing into the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. The Fairview band also launched the careers of a number of professional musicians who went on to perform in both brass band and mainstream jazz contexts, including Leroy Jones, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Kirk Joseph, and Nicholas Payton. As Joe Torregano, another Fairview band alumnus, described it, "That group saved jazz for a generation in New Orleans."^[1]

Barker played regularly at many New Orleans venues from the late 1960s through the early 1990s, in addition to touring. He also published an autobiography and many articles on New Orleans and jazz history. In the 1994 New Orleans Mardi Gras season, he reigned as King of Krewe du Vieux.