May 27, 2022 | This week’s Beat Café features clarinetist Evan Christopher and writer-musician Kathryn Hobgood Ray who recently published the biography Snoozer Quinn: Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Pioneer with co-author Dan Sumner who transcribed Quinn’s compositions.

Evan Christopher began his musical training on clarinet at age 11. In high school, he received the Louis Armstrong National Jazz Award and was one of the first graduates of the prestigious Idyllwild Arts Academy. He continued studies at the University of Southern California and graduated with honors from California State University, Long Beach. A brief teaching stint at the University of New Orleans saw the creation of a New Orleans music ensemble that performed with guest mentors such as Lucien Barbarin and Marcus Roberts. His highly personal brand of “contemporary, early jazz” strives to extend the legacies of early Creole clarinet heroes such as Sidney Bechet, Barney Bigard and Omer Simeon.

Kathryn Hobgood Ray is the great-great niece of famed jazz guitarist Snoozer Quinn, an early jazz banjoist and guitarist from Bogalusa, Louisiana, whose contemporaries were Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson. The golden years of Quinn’s career, from 1925 to 1932, were mostly spent with dance bands touring throughout the South and Southwest, like the Paul English Traveling Shows, Peck’s Bad Boys, the St. Louis Rhythm Kings, the Louisiana Ramblers, the Mart Britt Orchestra, and Robert E. Lee and His Confederates. While playing for vocalist Bing Crosby in the 1930s, Quinn was given the nickname “Snoozer.” Although he did not record with Crosby, he recorded with vocalist Bee Palmer and country singer Jimmie Davis. Quinn contracted tuberculosis in 1949 at age 42, a fatal condition that cut short his career. In 1948, Johnny Wiggs brought a recording machine and a trumpet to Quinn’s hospital bed and persuaded him to play. Quinn died six months later. Many years passed before his performances were released by Fat Cat Jazz on his only album, The Legendary Snoozer Quinn.

Beat Café is a weekly program on WHIV 102.3 FM that is broadcast on Fridays at 1 p.m. Central. Podcasts of the radio program are uploaded to the OffBeat.com on an ongoing basis.

This podcast was recorded in two segments.

Part One:

Part Two: