Huey Long, R. I. P.

Huey Long, Guitarist for Ink Spots, Is Dead at 105 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com: "Frank Davis and his Louisiana Jazz Band were booked to play at the Rice Hotel in Houston in 1925. The banjo player never showed. For Huey Long, who shined shoes outside the hotel and occasionally got onstage to announce the bands, this was the unmistakable sound of opportunity knocking. Putting down his ukulele, he ran out to a music store, got a banjo on credit and stepped into the breach.

And so began an 80-year career in jazz and popular music. For the rest of the century Mr. Long, who took up the guitar in 1933, performed with an extensive list of greats in a journey that began with Dixieland, moved into swing and jumped forward to bebop. Along the way, he spent nine months in 1945 as a guitarist and singer with the Ink Spots, the enormously popular and influential vocal quartet that paved the way for rhythm and blues and rock ’n’ roll."

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.