Pete Fountain, 86, Dies; Clarinetist Popularized Spirited New Orleans Jazz (Published 2016) – The New York Times

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By Peter Keepnews
Pete Fountain, a clarinetist who brought the traditional jazz of his native New Orleans to a national audience through frequent appearances on the Lawrence Welk and Johnny Carson television shows, died on Saturday in New Orleans. He was 86.
The cause was heart failure, said Benny Harrell, Mr. Fountain’s son-in-law and manager.
Mr. Fountain was a mainstay of the New Orleans music scene for more than six decades, a familiar sight at Mardi Gras and the annual Jazz and Heritage Festival. And the appeal of his high-spirited brand of Dixieland stretched far beyond New Orleans, especially after he began appearing on “The Lawrence Welk Show” in 1957.
His outgoing musical style made an odd fit with the sedate “Champagne music” of Mr. Welk’s orchestra — Mr. Fountain often noted that Champagne and bourbon did not mix — but the combination was a hit with viewers, and his segments became a staple of the show. In later years he was also a frequent guest on Mr. Carson’s “Tonight Show.”
Peter Dewey Fountain Jr. was born in New Orleans on July 3, 1930, and was exposed from an early age to the lively small-group jazz that was an integral part of that city’s atmosphere. Inspired by Benny Goodman and the New Orleans clarinetist Irving Fazola — and by a family doctor who recommended that he learn a wind instrument to strengthen his weak lungs — he began playing clarinet at age 12. Before he was out of his teens, he had become a familiar presence in the nightclubs on Bourbon Street.
“When I was a high school senior, my history teacher asked me why I didn’t study more,” he wrote in 2001, in the notes of a CD anthology of his recordings from the 1950s and 1960s. “I answered that I was too busy playing clarinet every night, and when I told him I was making scale — about $125 a week — he said that was more than he made and I should play full time. I guess I was a professional from that point on.”
In 1950, after some local success as a sideman, Mr. Fountain formed his own band, the Basin Street Six, with the trumpeter George Girard. “We clowned around a lot with that group,” he recalled, “but most of the time we played good music.”
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