Duke Heitger grew up in Toledo, Ohio, absorbing jazz from his father’s record collection — Louis Armstrong, Bunny Berigan, Roy Eldridge, Red Allen, Bobby Hackett, Bix Beiderbecke — and playing and touring with his dad’s Cakewalkin’ Jass Band, a Toledo institution that held a weekly engagement at Tony Packo’s restaurant from 1968 to 2001. He was playing professional jobs by age twelve and touring jazz festivals while still in his teens. In 1991 he moved to New Orleans to join Jacques Gauthe’s Creole Rice Jazz Band, and in 1998 he took over his own band, the Steamboat Stompers, on the Steamboat Natchez — one of the longest runs in the history of Mississippi River bands.
Heitger has recorded prolifically, with the Stompers and in his own groups, and as a sideman across the jazz and pop worlds: Dick Hyman, Scott Hamilton, Bucky Pizzarelli, Dan Barrett, Banu Gibson, John Gill, Maria Muldaur, and Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen. His trumpet-playing and arranging is a highlight of the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ million-selling Hot (1996), which earned him gold and platinum records. His horn can also be heard in the films Double Jeopardy and Six Feet Under and on HBO’s Treme.
He has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, Judy Carmichael’s Jazz Inspired, and Jim Cullum’s Live from the Riverwalk; played the Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center, and New York’s 92nd St Y; and toured festivals from Edinburgh to Ascona to the Caesarea Jazz Festival in Israel. He is also an active teacher and clinician.
