Fellow Jazzers - this month we’re having a very popular band, THE DEVIL MOUNTAIN JAZZ BAND from the San Joaquin Delta -Oakley. Ken Keeler, the leader, was a former pilot for the USAF and TWA. Ken is retired from an Industrial Sales career in electronics instrumentation and continues as a farmer - and freelance musician/band manager. As a boy, he played banjo and mandolin in the family square dance band, backing his father as dance ‘caller’. His exposure to Dixieland music was Spike Jones’ 1941 recordings. Ken shares many of Spike’s musical philosophies, unlike some members of the band. He studied trombone in high school, but soon became fascinated with early jazz music in college, where he played banjo with several bands. Ken was a featured performer in Japan at the 1988 Kobe Jazz St. Festival; he’s also “guest string man” on several bands.

Ken continues to develop their multi-style approach toward preserving the popular music of the late 1800s through the early 1930s and the West Coast Revival of the 1940s. They’re best known for the two-trumpet sounds of the Joe Oliver and Lu Watters bands and the orchestrated “Hot Dance” music of the late twenties.

You’ll also hear DMJB perform ragtime, blues, Dixieland standards, gospel and novelty tunes - and an occasional ‘duck call’ by Pete Main. This band also recreates the New Orleans-derived hot jazz popularized by Armstrong, Hardin, Dodds, Ory, Morton, etc., in Chicago in the late 20s. At many jazz festivals, they present special historical concerts celebrating the music of these jazz greats.

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