Career
Born in Pass Christian, Mississippi, Kimball came from a family with French Creole roots and was the niece of blues pianist Isadore "Tuts" Washington. At seven, she began playing the piano. As a teenager, she performed as a professional musician with classical string formations, then on the field of jazz.
She played in the course of her 70-year-long career in traditional jazz bands, first in 1926 in a "Society" dance band, Papa Celestin"s Original Tuxedo Orchestra, with whom she went on tour in the southern United States.
After her divorce, she used the name Kimball further and started in the mid-1940s. Among other things, she worked with Buddy Charles, Herb Leary and Sidney Desvigne.
In the 1950s, Kimball worked again with Papa Celestin, when he reactivated his band, which then was under the guidance of Papa French. She appeared in 1976 on the Jazz Festival Breda live album Jeanette Kimball Meets the Fondy Riverside Bullet Band.
Their album Sophisticated Lady (with Frank Fields and Freddie Kohlman) was released in 1999.
That same year she was honored with the Black Men of Labor Jazz Legacy Award. In the field of jazz, Kimball worked between 1953 and 1991 with 72 recording sessions, among others with Alvin Alcorn, Paul Barbarin, Papa Celestin, Punch Miller and Johnny Saint Cyr. She left New Orleans in the 1990s to live in Ohio and South Carolina.
She died in Charleston, South Carolina, at the age of 94.
