Goldkette, Jean
Goldkette, Jean
Goldkette, Jean, French-born American pop-jazz bandleader, agent, and pianist; b. Valenciennes, France, March 18, 1899; d. Santa Barbara, Calif., March 24, 1962. After living in Greece and Russia, he and his family moved to the U.S. (1911). He began playing profession-ally in Chicago, then with Andrew Raymonds’s band in Detroit (1921). He soon formed his own band; by the late 1920s his organization controlled over 20 bands, none of which involved him as performer. He is chiefly remembered as an employer of Bix Beiderbecke, Steve Brown, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Ed Lang, Danny Polo, Joe Venuti, and others. He also appeared as piano soloist with the Detroit Sym. Orch. (1930). By the early 1930s had relinquished nominal interest in all his bands and activities on behalf of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers; he worked as an agent for many years. While he reformed bands in the mid-1940s and 1950s, he was mainly active as a classical pianist. He moved to Santa Monica in 1961, and died a year later.
—John Chilton, Who’s Who of Jazz/Lewis Porter