Pete Fountain, the famed New Orleans jazz clarinetist whose 60-year career was marked by performances for presidents and a pope, making him an worldwide ambassador for the music and culture of his hometown, has died.
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Fountain’s son-in-law and manager Benny Harrell said Fountain died Saturday morning of heart failure.
Fountain’s recording of “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” became the unofficial anthem for traditional New Orleans jazz.
He also became a favorite of Johnny Carson and made dozens of appearances on “The Tonight Show” during Carson’s long tenure as host of the late-night talk show.
Pete Fountain performed for Pope John Paul II in 1987. “Today I have been able to hear it and admire it personally”.
Pete opened the French Quarter Inn in New Orleans where he would often play with his own band where he would often have artists from Frank Sinatra to Brenda Lee sitting in for a set. His parents chose the clarinet and, even though he couldn’t play it at first, his lungs slowly grew stronger.
Musically, Fountain traced his style to Benny Goodman, for drive and technique, and Irving Fazola, for the round, full tone.
Pete Fountain and his members of his Half-Fast Marching Club parde Mardi Gras day dispite the rain on March 4, 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Before joining “The Lawrence Welk Show” as a headliner, he toured with the Dukes of Dixieland and the late trumpeter Al Hirt. The breakup came in 1959 after Welk chastised him for jazzing up an arrangement of “Silver Bells” in a Christmas performance. “That’s really what you would call downsizing”, he told the Daily Star shortly after relocating.
Despite the loss of many possessions and mementos, including photos of jazz great Louis Armstrong with whom he had performed, Fountain said he recovered “two of my best clarinets, so I’m OK”.
“I’m too slow and too nervous to steal, so I have to keep tootin'”, he said during a WWL-TV interview. He performed his last show at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 2013.
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This past February, he kept up his annual trek with his Half-Fast Walking Club, parading along the Uptown parade route on Mardi Gras, as the group has done since Fat Tuesday 1960 when Fountain debuted the club.
