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Re: Pete Fountain's

Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-07-03 21:07

Pete Fountain played and promoted the Leblanc LL clarinet before he had the modified Dynamic = Pete Fountain model. Around 1959 I attended a little presentation at Werlein's Music Store at 605 Canal Street (now a hotel) in which he represented the Leblanc company and their LL. I was in high school then and recall asking him to play La Vie en Rose, which I had heard him play on the Welk show. He played that on the LL upstairs in the music room, and downstairs at the counter, they were selling LL clarinets and books of Pete Fountain transcriptions. That's when I asked my parents to help me buy a LL, my first "good" clarinet. In his early appearances with Welk, when he still wore dark frame glasses, Fountain played the old O'Brien; then Welk reworked his TV image getting him contact lenses, a toupee, and a Leblanc LL clarinet. (Buddy De Franco and Jimmy Hamilton had already been playing the LL). Fountain's early recordings with the Basin Street Six, Tony Almerico, and Al Hirt (including that great version of Tin Roof Blues) were on the O'Brien. Some of the work he did in Los Angeles for Coral Records was probably on the Leblanc LL but I think Vito got Charles Houvenaghel Dynamic models for him to try pretty early on while they were looking to tailor an instrument for him. (Houvenaghel was working on his Dynamique models back in the 1950s--there were several iterations, and the H was one of the latest). After returning home to New Orleans and ditching the toupee, Fountain pretty much played only the gold key, articulated G# Pete Fountain (modified Dynamic H) "1611" model instruments that Leblanc made for him.

Post Edited (2020-07-04 05:58)

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