GEORGE GUESNON

 

Creole George Guesnon (May 25, 1907, New Orleans, Louisiana – May 6, 1968, New Orleans) was an American jazz banjoist, guitarist, and singer.

When he was twelve years old, Guesnon bought a ukulele under the influence of an uncle who played guitar. After completing school, he worked for his father, who was a plasterer. At twenty, he began substituting for banjoist Earl Stockmeyer at a cabaret. He received banjo lessons from John Marrero and then took his spot in the Papa Celestin band. Soon after, he took Danny Barker's place in the Willie Pajeaud band. He worked in Sam Morgan's band from 1930–35, then played briefly in Monroe, Louisiana with Lou Johnson's Californians.

In 1936, he moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where he played and recorded in a band led by Little Brother Montgomery. He recorded for the first time in 1936 on his song "Goodbye, Good Luck to You" with Montgomery. He did two tours with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, then returned to New Orleans in 1938. But he found little work there and moved to New York City. In 1940 he recorded four songs in New York for Decca in addition to playing with Trixie Smith and Jelly Roll Morton. He worked for Pullman trains, then enlisted in the Merchant Marines when World War II started. He played locally in Louisiana in the 1950s, with the Mighty Four at the Melody Inn from 1953 to 1955, and toured with George Lewis in 1955. On several occasions he recorded with Kid Thomas Valentine and performed at Preservation Hall in his native New Orleans.

One of the most forceful characters in Tommy Sancton’s young life was banjo player, Creole George Guesnon. A close friend of Olympia Brass Band leader, Harold “Duke” Dejan, Guesnon (1907-1968) had attended elementary school with the reknowned banjoist Danny Barker.

Many of the young Sancton’s mentors had urged him to spend time with African-American musicians; to apprentice with them and absorb lessons that would improve his clarinet play. But Guesnon (pronounced: GAY no) was intent on teaching Sancton specifically about African-Americans of Creole descent in New Orleans, a group that he called “a race within a race.”

“He taught me a lot about all this history and about attitudes,” Sancton says. “ … He’d put a stocking on his head. He had wavy hair and he had this pomade. He said a lot of Creole musicians wouldn’t talk to anybody that didn’t have silky hair.”

What separated Creole and non-Creole African-Americans socially in New Orleans went far beyond differences in physical features, Guesnon told Sancton. The story is rooted in colonial Louisiana and the Code Noir, which recognized Creole free people of color. And distinctions between Creole and non-Creole black people were still being made long after the Americans came. In the 1960s, Sancton says that even he noticed “a kind of discrimination within the colored community.”

“But when they were all together on the bandstand they were actually just jazz musicians, New Orleans jazz musicians playing together. So the music really was a kind of cultural melting pot.”

Guesnon was a serious writer and composer, but could never achieve commercial success. Before he died, Guesnon burned much of his original material.

“The tragedy of George Guesnon is he was this man with all this talent and ability and ambition, locked in the body of a man of color in the South, in New Orleans, in the time he grew up,” Sancton says. “All his doors were just locked.”

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