Trumpeter Percy Humphrey, the oldest active jazz musician in New Orleans, died Saturday at 90.
Humphrey had performed until late March, when congestive heart failure ended his weekly appearances at Preservation Hall. Relatives said he died at home in his sleep early Saturday.The peak of his career came in the 1940s and 1950s, when he led the Eureka Brass Band, the premier marching band for parades and funerals.
"I loved hearing that trumpet soar on top of it," said jazz historian Dick Allen, who first met Humphrey in 1946. "Percy never relied on cheap vaudeville tricks. Percy always came up with some-thing original."
In recent years, with some of the power and most of the stamina gone, Humphrey enthralled fans with vocals on old-time tunes. Lifting himself from his chair and lumbering to the microphone like an old bear rising from hibernation, he would growl a fierce - and fiercely subdued - version of "Tiger Rag."
No one ever talks about other musicians having influenced Humphrey, Allen noted. "He is himself," he said.
His grandfather, Jim Humphrey, was a music professor who organized a brass band on a plantation in 1900, and his father, Willie, was a clarinetist. His two older brothers were Willie, a clarinetist who appeared on the radio show "Prairie Home Companion," and Earl, a trombonist.
His career spanned the history of traditional New Orleans jazz.
He started out as a drummer and first performed publicly with brother Willie in their grandfather's band when he was 6. In his 20s he shifted to trumpet and led dance bands through the Depression and prohibition.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete Saturday.