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All Music Guide:
A major propagandist for freewheeling Chicago jazz, an underrated rhythm guitarist, and a talented wisecracker, Eddie Condon's main importance to jazz was not so much through his own playing as in his ability to gather together large groups of all-stars and produce exciting, spontaneous, and very coherent music.
Condon started out playing banjo with Hollis Peavey's Jazz Bandits when he was 17, he worked with members of the famed Austin High School Gang in the 1920s, and in 1927 he co-led (with Red McKenzie) the McKenzie-Condon Chicagoans on a record date that helped define Chicago jazz (and featured Jimmy McPartland, Jimmy Teschemacher, Joe Sullivan, and Gene Krupa). After organizing some other record sessions, Condon switched to guitar, moved to New York in 1929, worked with Red Nichols' Five Pennies and Red McKenzie's Blue Blowers, and recorded in several settings, including with Louis Armstrong (1929) and the Rhythm Makers (1932). During 1936-1937, he co-led a band with Joe Marsala.
Although Condon had to an extent laid low since the beginning of the Depression, in 1938, with the opportunity to lead some sessions for the new Commodore label, he became a major name. Playing nightly at Nick's (1937-1944), Condon utilized top musicians in racially mixed groups. He started a long series of exciting recordings (which really continued on several labels up until his death), and his Town Hall concerts of 1944-1945 (which were broadcast weekly on the radio) were consistently brilliant and gave him an opportunity to show his verbal acid wit; the Jazzology label reissued them complete and in chronological order. Condon opened his own club in 1945, recorded for Columbia in the 1950s (all of those records have been made available by Mosaic on a limited-edition box set), and wrote three colorful books, including his 1948 memoirs We Called It Music. A partial list of the classic musicians who performed and recorded often with Condon include trumpeters/ cornetists Wild Bill Davison, Max Kaminsky, Billy Butterfield, Bobby Hackett, Rex Stewart, and Hot Lips Page; trombonists Jack Teagarden, Lou McGarity, Cutty Cutshall, George Brunies, and Vic Dickenson; clarinetists Pee Wee Russell, Edmond Hall, Joe Marsala, Peanuts Hucko, and Bob Wilbur; Bud Freeman on tenor; baritonist Ernie Caceres; pianists Gene Schroeder, Joe Sullivan, Jess Stacy, and Ralph Sutton; drummers George Wettling, Dave Tough, and Gene Krupa; a string of bassists; and singer Lee Wiley. Many Eddie Condon records are currently available, and no jazz collection is complete without at least a healthy sampling.
Wikipedia:
Albert Edwin Condon (16 November 1905 – 4 August 1973), better known as Eddie Condon, was a jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in the so-called "Chicago school" of early Dixieland, he also played piano and sang on occasion.
Biography
Condon was born in Goodland, Indiana, the son of John and Margaret (née McGraw) Condon. He grew up in Momence, Illinois and Chicago Heights, Illinois, where he attended St. Agnes and Bloom High School. After some time playing ukulele, he switched to banjo and was a professional musician by 1921. He was based in Chicago for most of the 1920s, and played with such jazz notables as Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden and Frank Teschemacher.
In 1928 Condon moved to New York City. He frequently arranged jazz sessions for various record labels, sometimes playing with the artists he brought to the recording studios, including Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. He organised racially-integrated recording sessions - when these were still rare - with Waller, Armstrong and Henry 'Red' Allen. He played with the band of Red Nichols for a time. Later, from 1938 he had a long association with Milt Gabler's Commodore Records.
From the late 1930s on he was a regular at the Manhattan jazz club Nick's. The sophisticated variation on Dixieland music which Condon and his colleagues created there came to be nicknamed "Nicksieland." By this time, his regular circle of musical associates included Wild Bill Davison, Bobby Hackett, George Brunies, Edmond Hall and Pee Wee Russell. In 1939, he appeared with "Bobby Hacket and Band" in the Warner Brothers & Vitaphone film musical short-subject, "On the Air".
Condon also did a series of jazz radio broadcasts from New York's Town Hall during 1944-45 which were nationally popular. These recordings survive, and have been issued on the Jazzology label.
From 1945 through 1967 he ran his own New York jazz club, Eddie Condon's. In the 1950s Condon recorded a sequence of classic albums for Columbia Records. The musicians involved in these albums - and at Condon's club - included Wild Bill Davison, Bobby Hackett (cornet), Billy Butterfield (trumpet), Edmond Hall, Peanuts Hucko, Pee Wee Russell, Bob Wilber (clarinet), Cutty Cutshall, Lou McGarity, George Brunies (trombone), Bud Freeman (tenor sax), Gene Schroeder, Dick Cary, Ralph Sutton (piano), Bob Casey, Walter Page, Jack Lesberg, Al Hall (bass), George Wettling, Buzzy Drootin, Cliff Leeman (drums).
Condon toured Britain in 1957 with a band including Wild Bill Davison, Cutty Cutshall, Gene Schroeder and George Wettling. His last tour was in 1964, when he took a band to Australia and Japan. Condon's men, on that tour, were a roll-call of top mainstream jazz musicians: Buck Clayton (trumpet), Pee Wee Russell (clarinet), Vic Dickenson (trombone), Bud Freeman (tenor sax), Dick Cary (piano and alto horn), Jack Lesberg (bass), Cliff Leeman (drums), Jimmy Rushing (vocals). A nice touch was that Billy Banks, a vocalist who had recorded with Condon and Pee Wee Russell in 1932, and had lived in obscurity in Japan for many years, turned up at one of the 1964 concerts: Pee Wee asked him "have you got any more gigs?".
In 1948 his autobiography We Called It Music was published. The book has many interesting and entertaining anecdotes about musicians Condon worked with. Eddie Condon's Treasury of Jazz (1956) was a collection of articles by various writers co-edited by Condon and Richard Gehman.
A latter-day collaborator, clarinetist Kenny Davern, described a Condon gig: "It was always a thrill to get a call from Eddie and with a gig involved even more so. I remember eating beforehand with Bernie (Previn; trumpet) and Lou (McGarity; trombone) and everyone being in good spirits. There was a buzz on, we'd all had a taste and there was a great feel to the music."
Eddie Condon toured and appeared at jazz festivals through 1971. He died in New York City.
He is survived by his daughter Maggie Condon and his only grandchild Michael Repplier, who both live in Greenwich Village in New York City. It has been falsely reported that he has another grandson, Zach Condon, lead singer and instrumentalist of the band Beirut, but this is incorrect.
References to Condon are common in the BBC Radio 4 parody series Down the Line.
