Art Christmas

Art Christmas ( born December 22, 1905 in Kingston ( Ontario); † September 24, 1961 in Blind River, Ontario ) was a Canadian bandleader, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist of dance music and jazz.

Life

He started with 19 years working professionally as a musician and played trumpet in the United States in Dumbells Orchestra, with whom he came to England. There he played in the 1926 Canadian Club Orchestra, one of the bands of Paul Specht ( both trumpet and saxophone), and in the house band of the New Prince 's Restaurant, Piccadilly, of which he took. In 1926 he took up with them for Columbia Records. He played tenor and alto saxophone, but also clarinet, trumpet and trombone. With it, he was in Berlin, where he accompanied the new Charleston dance was known as a hot band and recorded for the German Grammophon (as The Band from Toronto Canada). In the late 1920s he forwarded his own bands in Budapest, Berlin and London. His breakthrough especially in the UK but also in the rest of Europe was in the band of Roy Fox, where he was from 1933 to 1938 and mainly played alto saxophone. He was the model for many British musician and taught in jazz clinics. Also, his reputation as a multi-instrumentalist, he continued to build out ( with in addition to the mentioned instruments like drums, piano, xylophone, sousaphone, bagpipes, etc.).

1938 Roy Fox had to give up for health reasons and his band played at Christmas Arthur Rosebery (1938 /39), the Nitwits of Sid Millward and 1939 at Joe Ferrie and Jack Jackson. From 1940 to 1946 he was in the band of his friend Jack Payne, who was very popular in the UK and was frequently heard on BBC. He also toured with Payne 's Variety Show For the Fun of it, where he turned out his talents as a multi-instrumentalist. Also present was his wife Maisie, a dancer, who accompanied him on the piano. With her he had a son type junior. He played in several other shows and in the production of Cinderella he appeared before the English king at the Palladium.

In 1952 he retired from the music scene and opened a pub in the East End (The Warburton Arms in Hackney ). After his father had died in Canada in 1954, he returned to his home country. He played with his own bands from 1955 to 1958 in the Kingston area and then moved to Blind River, where he worked as a music teacher, but also in his own band with his son in Elliot Lake ( Ontario) played.