From the !930s
Nat Gonella
Rare footage of Great Britain’s top trumpeter of the swing era
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Nat Gonella (1906-98) was one of England’s first significant jazz musicians.
A professional by 1924, he began to cause a stir in the early 1930s as a Louis Armstrong-inspired trumpeter, a personable and good-humored singer, and a stage personality.
Gonella led the Georgians starting in 1935, made many recordings into the early 1940s, had a variety show in the ‘50s, and continued performing as a singer into the 1990s, although he stopped playing trumpet after the mid-1970s.
Nat Gonella was not filmed very often in the 1930s but these snippets from a mid-1930s film show how dynamic and colorful he could be onstage as a trumpeter.
-Scott Yanow
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