Albert Nicholas (May 27, 1900 – September 3, 1973) was an American jazz clarinetist and saxophonist.
A superb clarinetist with an attractive mellow tone, Albert Nicholas had a long and diverse career but his playing was always consistently rewarding. He studied with Lorenzo Tio, Jr. in his hometown of New Orleans, and late in the 1910’s he played with cornet legends Buddy Petit, King Oliver, and Manuel Perez while in his teens. It was in his late teens that he learned to play alto sax and led his own band at Tom Anderson’s Annex in 1922. After three years in the Merchant Marines, he joined King Oliver in Chicago for much of 1925-1927, recording with Oliver's Dixie Syncopators.
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He spent a year in the Far East and Egypt, arriving in New York in 1928 to join Luis Russell for five years. Nicholas, who had recorded in several settings in the 1920s, sounded perfectly at home with Russell, taking his solos alongside Red Allen, J.C. Higginbottham, and Charlie Holmes. He also played with Chick Webb and would later re-join Russell when the pianist had the backup orchestra for Louis Armstrong a few years later. Nicholas also worked with Jelly Roll Morton in 1939 (he had recorded with Morton previously in 1929).
Things slowed down for a time in the early '40s, He played in a series of bands until 1941 when he took a job as a guard on the New York Subway, but the New Orleans revival got him working again in the mid-'40s with Art Hodes, Bunk Johnson, and Kid Ory. Nicholas recorded and performed widely during the New Orleans revival of the 1940s and 50s, including documenting a number of Creole songs (such as Salée Dame and Mo Pas Lemmé Ça) for the Circle label in 1947.
By 1948, the clarinetist was playing regularly with Ralph Sutton's trio at Jimmy Ryan's. In 1953, Nicholas followed Sidney Bechet's example and moved to France where he happily remained until his move to Switzerland in 1970. Aside from two brief visits to the United states in 1959 and 1960, he spent the rest of his career in Europe, playing concerts and touring twice a year with the Dutch Swing College Band.
Nicholas must be considered one of the outstanding clarinetists in the New Orleans tradition, and the recordings from the last two decades of his life show a sensitivity to the changes that had taken place in jazz. His style was influenced by the blues and he frequently made use of the rich, lower register of his instrument and, in the higher register, dirty “whiskey-toned” inflections.
Nicholas died on 3 September 1973 in a hospital at Basel, Switzerland, after failing to recover from a recent operation. He was 73.
(Edited
from AllMusic, Music Rising at Tulane, New Grove Dictionary Of Jazz &
Wikipedia)