About Us | Contact | Subscribe

Home: 20's Jazz

Hot Stuff

Herb Wiedoeft and his
Cinderella Roof Orchestra

Subscribe to 20's Jazz

Navigation:

Home

Back

More videos like this

This recording was produced in St. Louis, Missouri on October 21st 1924 featuring Herb Wiedoeft cornet & leader, Joseph Nemoli cornet, Clyde Lucas and Jesse Stafford trombone, Fred Bibesheimer, Gene Rose, and Gene 'Ziggy' Sigrist clarinet, bass clarinet, alto, & tenor sax, unknown piano, Jose Sucedo banjo, Gerhardt 'Gay' Wiedoeft tuba, and Adolph Wiedoeft drums.

*"Hot Stuff" is credited to ____ Jackson, Herb Wiedoeft, Gene Rose, and Jesse Stafford.

The saxophone and bass clarinetist playing the solos was Gene "Ziggy" Sigrist. Usually he's the guy listed as "unknown" on the reissue Wiedoeft recordings. On one liner note he's listed as Gene Seacrest. He was French, born and raised in San Francisco and was, at ten years old, a survivor of the '06 San Francisco earthquake. His home was where Coit Tower stands today. Gene was with the Wiedoeft band from the early 20's until 1932 or '33.

I knew another guy from the Orchestra, Dubby Kirkpatrick who played guitar/banjo and left the band around the same period to pursue a career as a cameraman for talking pictures. He went on to work with many film greats continuing throughout the 60's.

They are all gone now but I shall never forget Gene's and Dubby's "road stories" I listened to as a child. Gene was married to a former Mack Senett "bathing beauty. I used to own Zig's old Wiedoeft wardrobe trunk that had "Herb Wiedoeft's Cinderella Roof Orchestra- Los Angeles" painted on the front. They were also the house band at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco and Ziggy told me that they would leave San Francisco International Airport early in the morning on a Ford Tri-Motor, fly to Brunswick in L.A. to record and fly back to San Francisco in time to make their night gig at the Palace.

Ziggy lived across the street from me in Stockton, California and taught me to play sax/clarinet. He saw me play at a session with Brubeck once and his comment to me was: "You play better than Rudy Wiedoeft". From him that was quite a compliment (even though it wasn't true) -Sam Flores