Paul was introduced to jazz at a very young age, thanks to his brother, and ended up playing in this country and in Europe with many of the great Jazz Players, eventually settling at Cape Cod and playing in this area for over 60 years,  most recently, taking over Lee Childs’ position with the Bourbon Street Paraders on the Cape Cod Canal Jazz Cruise.

Paul began playing clarinet at age 10.  His brother asked Rod Cless, who was the clarinet player in the great Muggsy Spanier Ragtimers recordings, if he would teach Paul.  Rod agreed.  
He went to their house every week and taught Paul the jazz repertoire by ear.  Paul played the melody, while Rod played counter-melody.  After about eight months, Rod said “I’m going to play the melody you play something behind me.”  Paul said in astonishment, “What do I play?” Rod replied “Haven’t you been listening?” That’s how he was thrown into playing jazz.

He continued playing Dixieland. When he was 17 or 18, he sat in at Jimmy Ryan’s on 52^nd Street in New York.  He went off to college and formed a Dixieland band there. He became president of the jazz club at Carlton College in Northfield Minnesota that welcomes people as: “Homes of cows, colleges and contentment.”

Up the hill was St. Olaf College, and everything they say about it is true.  It was a very strict Methodist School that didn’t allow any dancing, which they considered the Devil’s Music, with the one exception of folk dancing. 

He met Doc Evans, a wonderful, professional New Orleans-type player.  A concert had been arranged for Evans’ Band at the college, but the clarinet player didn’t show up, so Paul played the concert with him.

He graduated from college and went on to Harvard Graduate School of Education for his Master of Arts in Teaching.  He planned to be a school teacher.  While in Boston, he put together a Dixieland Band that was hired at George Wein’s Mahogany Hall, a jazz nightclub in the basement of The Copley Square Hotel.  On the top floor, Wein added Storyville.  Both became famous jazz venues, attracting all the jazz artists of the 40’s and 50’s.

Paul received his degree from Harvard and began teaching in Lynnfield, a suburb of Boston. He was playing in a Dixieland band that was hired for a week’s job in Albany New York. He and the band would drive up to Albany every day, and he’d sleep in the car.  That whole week, he taught school, got back in the car and slept, and played.

Then he had a vacation, and after vacation, he didn’t want to play anymore because he felt he had nothing more to say. He didn’t play for a number of years.

He returned to playing Jazz after he moved to Cape Cod, and played there for many years.  He and George Wein opened a nightclub in Harwich called Storyville Cape Cod.  It opened on July 4, 1957, with Louis Armstrong and Phyllis Diller.

Phyllis died August 20 at age 95.  She blazed the trail for all the comediennes that followed.

Over the next four years, Storyville Cape Cod presented Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Ahmed Jamal, Errol Garner, the Kingston Trio, The Limelighters, Shelley Berman, Pete Seeger, Odetta.  Different artists came in every week, sometimes more often.  Eventually they had to close because they lost a good deal of money.

Paul continued playing music all over the cape.  He was with Marie Marcus, famous Cape Cod stride pianist, for 10 years.  They had guests like Teddy Wilson, Jimmy Rushing.  Here he was, a worshiper of Benny Goodman, and wound up playing with Teddy Wilson!

He met Jimmy Rushing when he was married in Newport, Rhode Island.  George Wein gave him the gift of Jimmy Rushing singing at his wedding.  Jimmy sang his wife’s favorite song “I Want a Little Girl”.  Jimmy was wonderful; he even sat in with him in Boston the night his first son was born.  That was very exciting.   Paul was still teaching school. 

He went to London and taught at an American School for ten years.  There he hooked up with Dick Sudhalter, who was writing a book on Bix Beiderbecke.  Sudhalter had permission from Paul Whitman’s widow to use the original arrangements of the Whitman Band that were owned by Williams College.  He received a grant to do a concert with his 25-piece orchestra – it had twin pianos, a tuba, double bass.   Paul was the clarinet soloist.  They made two recordings in England.  When they played a New Year’s broadcast for Dutch Radio, the soloists from the Whitman orchestra each had a huge dressing room with a bottle of Chivas Regal on the counter.  It was a Radio broadcast, but they still wore tuxedos! 

While Paul was teaching school in England, George Wein began The Nice Jazz Festival with Paul as co-producer.  He went to about twenty different countries in Europe, played with Bobby Hackett, Sidney Bechet at Juan des Pins, Le Vieux Colombier, situated between Nice and Cannes.  He could tell hours’ worth of stories! Eventually he returned to Cape Cod. 

He has lived at Cape Cod ever since, playing all over the Cape, sometimes with Dave McKenna.  He gave McKenna as a wedding present to Kurt Vonnegut when his daughter married Geraldo Rivera.  McKenna played at their wedding reception.

Paul sat in at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, playing twice with the band.  He’s played with Wild Bill Davison, Teddy King; he played at a Marie Marcus concert in Milton that featured vocalist Maxine Sullivan.  There’s hardly a place on the Cape that you can name that he hasn’t played.

He says that although he started out as a Mouldy Figg, he was lucky to have met George Wein.  They presented Dizzy Gillespie in concert in Provincetown, just before he died.  He played two sets, afternoon and evening.  They also presented Tom Lehrer.

He’s had a very full and active life, teaching school for 27 years.

Now (2012) he has three groups:  P B & J – a New Orleans Trio with tuba, banjo, and clarinet.  He added a trumpet and trombone for the Original Dissonance Jazz Band – a Dixieland Band, and has a swing group that plays the American Songbook called Gentle Jazz, with a guitar and stand-up bass.

With the recent death of Cape reed-man, Lee Childs, Paul is now playing clarinet and singing with the Bourbon Street Paraders Trio, with Michel Lavigniac on banjo, and either Rick MacWilliams or Stu Gunn on tuba, on the Jazz Boat every Sunday in the summertime, sailing up and down the Cape Cod Canal.

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