Broadmoor Records

Early life

He was born Davis Bartholomew on December 24, 1918, in Edgard, Louisiana, to Mary and Louis Bartholomew. He learned to play his father's preferred instrument, the tuba, then took up the trumpet, taught to him by Peter Davis, who had also tutored Louis Armstrong. Around 1933, Bartholomew moved with his parents to New Orleans, where he played in local jazz and brass bands, including Papa Celestin's, as well as Fats Pichon's band on a Mississippi riverboat. He took charge of Pichon's band in 1941, and after a stay in Jimmie Lunceford's band, joined the US Army during World War II. He developed writing and arranging skills as a member of the 196th Army Ground Forces Band.

Early music career

At the end of the war, Bartholomew returned to New Orleans, and by November 1945, had started leading his own dance band, Dave Bartholomew and the Dew Droppers, named after a local hotel and nightclub, the Dew Drop Inn. The band became locally popular, described as "the bedrock of R&B in the city", and according to the music historian Robert Palmer, was a "model for early rock 'n' roll bands the world over". A local journalist wrote of the band, in June 1946: "Putting it mildly, they make the house 'rock'." In 1947, they were invited by club owner Don Robey to perform in Houston, Texas, where Bartholomew met Lew Chudd, the founder of Imperial Records.

Bartholomew and his band made their first recordings, including "She's Got Great Big Eyes", at Cosimo Matassa's New Orleans studio for De Luxe Records in September 1947. Their first hit was "Country Boy", credited to Dave Bartholomew and His Orchestra, which reached number 14 in the national Billboard R&B chart in early 1950. Prominent members of the band, besides Bartholomew on trumpet and occasional vocals, were saxophonists Alvin Tyler, Herb Hardesty, and Clarence Hall, bass player Frank Fields, guitarist Ernest McLean, pianist Salvador Doucette, and drummer Earl Palmer. They were later joined by saxophonist Lee Allen.