Background

Oscar Celestin was born on January 1, 1884 in Napoleonville, Louisiana, United States. He was one of six children of a sugarcane cutter. When he was five years old he heard a cornet player on a showboat and decided that he wanted to be a musician, but ten years passed before he got his first cornet, a battered instrument on which he taught himself to play.

Career

When he was twenty-two he moved to New Orleans and got a job as a longshoreman. At night he played his cornet in what was known as the tenderloin district, working for Josie Arlington, Countess Willie Piazza, and Lulu White (Lulu White's establishment is celebrated in the jazz tune "Mahogany Hall Blues"). In 1909 Celestin became a full-time professional musician in Tom Anderson's saloon. The next year he formed his first band to play at the Tuxedo Dance Hall, the fanciest resort in Storyville, New Orleans' red-light district. By then he had established himself not so much as a musician but as an entertainer, leading the band with funny facial expressions and physical antics to amuse his audience. Although he surrounded himself with hot jazz musicians in his Tuxedo Hall Band (including George "Pops" Foster on bass and Warren "Baby" Dodds on drums), Celestin tended to play a straight horn himself. By day Celestin's Tuxedo Hall Band became the Tuxedo Brass Band, a marching band that played for parades, for advertising, and for funerals. In 1913, after a gunfight at the Tuxedo in which the owner of the dance hall was killed, Storyville was closed down, but the Tuxedo Brass Band continued to play, rivaling the well-established Onward Brass Band and Excelsior Band in popularity. At times the band included two of the greatest New Orleans trumpeters of the period--Joe "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong. It was Armstrong who gave Celestin his professional nickname, "Papa" (earlier he had been known as "Sonny" Celestin). In 1922 Armstrong left the Tuxedo Brass Band to join King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago. Many of the major jazz musicians were leaving New Orleans at that time, and Celestin received several offers from jazz bands in other cities, but he preferred to stay in New Orleans. In 1917 he had organized another Tuxedo dance band with William "Bebe" Ridgeley, a trombonist who had played with the Tuxedo Hall Band; it made its first recordings in 1925 for the Okeh company. Shortly afterward, Celestin and several other members of the band split from Ridgeley to form Celestin's Tuxedo Jazz Band, while Ridgeley continued with the Original Tuxedo Orchestra. Celestin's band continued to play through the 1930's, but, as swing bands became popular, it was more difficult to get jobs. By the end of the decade, he had become a longshoreman once again in order to support himself. Later he drove a truck, and during World War II he worked in a defense plant. With the help of the New Orleans Jazz Club, Celestin organized a new band and started playing again in 1946. As part of the New Orleans jazz revival that occurred after World War II, he became a favorite of tourists on Bourbon Street. He appeared on television and in 1952 played at the White House before President Eisenhower. After Celestin died in New Orleans his band continued under the leadership of his trombonist, Eddie Pierson, and later under his banjo player, Albert French.

Achievements

• In view of the tremendous contribution Celestin made in jazz throughout his lifetime, the Jazz Foundation of New Orleans had a bust made and donated to the Delgado Museum in New Orleans.

Works

More photos

• book

  • 1950's Radio Broadcasts
  • Marie Le Veau
  • Oscar 'Papa' Celestin 1949-1953

Connections

In 1922 Celestin married Sarah Jackson.

Spouse:

Sarah Jackson