Background
He was named after his mother, Angela Goldkette, a circus performer from Denmark, his father being unknown.
bandleader pianist jazz musician
He was named after his mother, Angela Goldkette, a circus performer from Denmark, his father being unknown.
He spent his childhood in Greece and Russia, where he studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory as a child prodigy.
Goldkette is said to have been born March 18, 1893 in Valenciennes, France. However, there is some evidence that despite what he claimed, he was actually born in Patras, Greece. The family emigrated to the United States in 1911, and he performed in a classical ensemble in Chicago at the age of 15, later joining one of Edgar Benson"s dance orchestras.
He leased a ballroom in Detroit and formed a band which grew to success, and was the foundation for a business empire acting as an agency for twenty orchestras and owning many dance halls.
In 1936 he filed for bankruptcy, but over the next three decades he built up business again as a musician, conductor and promoter. He moved to California in 1961, and the following year died in Santa Barbara, California, of a heart attack, aged 69.
He took a taxi to the hospital by himself, and died that same day. He is buried in the Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
He led many jazz and dance bands, of which the best known was his Victor Recording Orchestra of 1924–1929, which included, at various times, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Chauncey Morehouse, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Bill Rank, Eddie Language, Frankie Trumbauer, Pee Wee Russell, Steve Brown, Joe Venuti, and arranger Robert Ginzler among others
Vocalists included the Keller Sisters and Lynch. the original predecessor to any large white dance Orchestra that followed, up to Benny Goodman." Brian Rust also called it "the greatest band of them all."
Jean Goldkette was also the Music Director for the Detroit Athletic Club for over 20 years, and co-owned the legendary Graystone Ballroom with Charles Horvath, who also performed with the Goldkette Victor Band in its early years. He owned his own entertainment company, "Jean Goldkette"s Orchestras and Attractions", working out of the still-standing Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit. He co-wrote the song "lieutenant"s the Blues (Number 14 Blues)" which was recorded in Detroit and released on Victor.
In 1927, Paul Whiteman, the controversially self-proclaimed "King of Jazz," hired away most of Goldkette"s better players due to Goldkette not being able to meet the payroll for his top-notch musicians.
In the 1930s he left jazz to work as a booking agent and classical pianist. In 1939, he organized the American Symphony Orchestra which debuted at Carnegie Hall.
Frankie Laine worked as Goldkette"s librarian.
Rex Stewart, a member of Fletcher Henderson"s band at the time, wrote that "lieutenant was, without any question, the greatest in the world.