Bonnie Wetzel

Bonnie Wetzel (* as Jean Addleman on May 15, 1926 in Vancouver, Washington, † February 12, 1965 ) was an American jazz bassist of swing and modern jazz.

Life and work

Bonnie Wetzel is one of the few jazz instrumentalists of the 1940s and 1950s on the American jazz scene. You first learned as teenagers to play the violin and taught himself then even the game on the bass instrument in when the band needed a bassist her high school. With her ​​classmate Norma Carson, she was a member of the women's big band of Ada Leonard; then she played in a trio of guitarist Marian Grange. In 1949 she married the trumpeter Ray Wetzel; the couple then played in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. After premature accidental death of her husband she left Dorsey and played with the drummer Elaine Leighton in the trio of pianist Beryl Booker; They toured 1953/54, also through Europe where they accompanied Billie Holiday and recordings with Don Byas. Upon her return to the United States Wetzel worked as a freelance musician and took plates with Herb Ellis, Charlie Shavers and Roy Eldridge on. Wetzel suffered the last years of life from cancer.

Selected Discography

Literature and links

  • Richard Cook & Morton, Brian: The Penguin Guide To Jazz on CD, 2nd Edition, 1993, 6th Edition, London, Penguin, 2002
  • Linda Dahl: Stormy Weather. The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazz Women. Quartet Books. London 1984. ISBN 0-7043-2477-6
  • Bielefeld catalog 1988 & 2002
  • Jazz bassist
  • American musician
  • Born in 1926
  • Died in 1965
  • Woman
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