At age 103, New Orleans jazz trumpeter Lionel Ferbos passed away in 2014 as the senior figure and single oldest performer in the city’s traditional jazz community. Throughout most of his life he credited his wife Marguerite, his partner of 75 years until her passing in 2009, for his extended vitality.
His own musical activity likely contributed as well. Rather than studying vintage discs to absorb an earlier style, Ferbos had lived through that period firsthand and carried its living details into his steady appearances at the Palm Court, the French Quarter destination favored by traditional-jazz devotees. Danny Barker, Pud Brown, George Lewis, and Chester Zardis all appeared there regularly; later Ferbos led his Creole Swingers at the Decatur Street venue, presenting numbers such as “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home” and “The Sobbin’ Blues” in the manner Jelly Roll Morton prescribed: “Soft and sweet, with plenty of rhythm.”
Those same qualities appear on the 1987 release At the Jazz Band Ball, where Ferbos is heard on trumpet and vocals alongside Lester Caliste on trombone, Bill Huntington and McNeal Breaux on bass, Les McCutt on banjo and guitar, David Grillier on clarinet and tenor saxophone, and Frank Oxley on drums. The ensemble evokes the era when “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “Pretty Baby” dominated the airwaves. The latter title resurfaced with Louis Malle’s 1978 film of the same name; Ferbos contributed to its soundtrack as a member of the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra directed by Lars Edegran. That ensemble also issued Grace and Beauty (1979) and Creole Belles (1994), both devoted to preserved ragtime repertoire.
Ferbos further recorded with Edegran and the New Orleans Stompers on 5 Minutes More, joined by Freddie Lonzo, Bernie Attridge, and Evan Christopher. He can also be heard, together with Pud Brown, Lester Caliste, Les Muscutt, and Peter Badie, on the New Orleans Jazz Wizards’ Jambalaya album.
Well beyond his hundredth birthday Ferbos continued to appear at the French Quarter Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the Satchmo Summer Fest, often sharing stages with trumpeters half his age. He likewise helped raise funds to restore the Negro Musician’s Music Hall, built during the period of segregated musicians’ unions; he had joined that union in 1932 while working in big bands. His recollections were captured for the Jazz Pioneers series presented by the New Orleans National Jazz Park. After seven decades as a working musician he received the Big Easy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. Lionel Ferbos died on July 19, 2014, two nights after marking his 103rd birthday.
