deParis, Sidney - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

His father was a minstrel, travelling each summer with his Plantation Show with all kinds of acts.  Sidney and his brother Wilbur began playing with their father and others in the Paris family band, the boys “playing so early they could hardly hold their instruments up (Zach, Karen. Crawfordsville: Athens of Indiana p 44).  

In March, 1912, local papers noted Sidney was in NY in a show.  The De Paris boys were active in the AME Church and attended high school in Crawfordsville.  He spent some time in Morton’s New Orleans Jazzmen, made several albums with his lively trumpet finesse, the instrument at time muted as he was quite the expert with that technique, was with Wilbur “in the Uprorious 20’s with the Rampant Street Ramblers” in Dixieland who made noteworthy and long-living contributions to the idiom.” (louisianamusicfactory.com). Also, they worked with Charlie Johnson in Paradise (wikiwand).  

Henry Randal noted in an Indiana Recorder article (7 April 1951) that “the DeParis brothers are among the top figures in the Jazz Hall of Fame.”  Sidney was often on the Buffalo NY radioi with his “flashing trumpet.” (Buffalo Courier 1 Nov 1942 p 47)

From 1947 until the early 60s when forced to retire because of ill health, Sidney worked almost completely with Wilbur in the De Paris Brothers Orchestra playing for 10 years 4 months and 14 days at Jimmy Ryan’s Club on 52nd St (Nassau Newsday 27 Aug 1964 p 104).

On his WWII draft card, Sidney Gibbon De Paris was indeed born 30 May 1905, age 38 on 16 Feb 1942 when he filled out the information.  He was employed by the Music Corporation of America, listed as 5’10”, 212# with dark skin, black hair and brown eyes.  His next of kin was listed as Nannie Paris Echols, whom I assume is his sister Nannie Paris Brown Echols remarried or possibly a daughter named for his sister.

At his death in NY on 13 Sept 1967, the jazz organization gave an all-night benefit for his family with over 50 jazz stars performing.  In the Daily News 6 Oct 1967 article, it noted Willie the Lion Smith was heading the evening’s festivities and noted Sidney was not only one of the best trumpeters of all time but Smith’s idol as well.  Certainly, he had a “powerful delivery and one of the best pos-Louis Armstrong trumpeters of the New Orleans School.”

In a 1 June 1969 Democrat and Chronicle Sun (p 98) article by Hollie West, she sums-up what I have thought all along since I was first introduced as a researcher to the De Paris boys over 25 years ago that, “The shame is he is not more widely recognizable!”