LionelFerbos

Lionel Charles Ferbos was born on July 17, 1911 in New Orleans' Creole 7th Ward. He was told as a child that his asthma would prevent him from playing a wind instrument — but at fifteen he saw an all-girl orchestra at the Orpheum Theater, decided anything they could do he could too, and bought a cornet at a French Quarter pawn shop. He was playing professionally by the early 1930s with the Starlight and Moonlight Serenaders and the WPA jazz band of the Depression era, of which he would eventually become the last surviving member.

His career encompassed every era of New Orleans jazz: he played with Captain John Handy and blues singer Mamie Smith; he performed in the original cast band of the off-Broadway hit One Mo' Time; and he made eight tours of Europe with Lars Edegran's New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra, recording on the soundtrack of Louis Malle's 1978 film Pretty Baby. He played at every New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival from its 1970 inception.

For the last two decades of his life, Ferbos held a regular Saturday night residency at the Palm Court Jazz Café on Decatur Street, leading his Palm Court Jazz Band and Creole Swingers with a gentlemanly elegance and impeccable technique that belied his age. He won the Big Easy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. He practiced his trumpet for at least forty-five minutes every day until the end. He died on July 19, 2014 — two days after his 103rd birthday — and was given a traditional New Orleans jazz funeral.

Ferbos made few recordings relative to his stature, but those he left — particularly At the Jazz Band Ball and Place of My Dreams — preserve a voice of rare authority and warmth, the last direct link to the earliest generation of New Orleans jazz.