WALDRON, FRANK

Homebase: Seattle
Stats: (1890-1955)
Misc Notes: Frank D. Waldron was born in San Francisco to a mother who was a piano teacher, the Waldron home was lost to the great earthquake, and subsequent fire, of 190 and he soon moved to Seattle. By 1911 Waldron had settled into “Bessie Young’s boarding house (at 1242 S Jackson Street). Around 1912 Waldron began performing with Seattle’s proto-jazz dance band, the Whang Doodle Orchestra. In 1919 Waldron published his first original composition as sheet music, and also opened his own Waldron School of Saxophone and Trumpet in his big upstairs room at Bessie Young’s place. Then, by 1925 Waldron was playing cornet with one of Seattle’s finest Black crews, the Odeon Jazz Orchestra. Waldron also served as an elected officer with the "Negro Musicians Union" AFM Local No. 493. But, Waldron really made his mark by inspiring and mentoring a couple generations of aspiring young Seattle musicians. Among them were Jimmy and Wayne Adams (who were members of another pioneering local 1920s jazz band, the Garfield Ramblers), Buddy Catlett (who went on to play with bands led by Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Coleman Hawkins), Dick Wilson (who went on the play with Andy Kirk’s famed dance orchestra), Terry Cruise, Ulysses “Jabo” Ward (a Kansas City kid who became a be-bop champion and worked regularly with Seattle’s jazz diva, Ernestine Anderson), Floyd Standifer (a jazz trumpeter who also played sax on Seattle's first rock 'n' roll single by Joe Boot), Barney Hilliard (ace sax-man with the Dave Lewis Combo), and Quincy Jones.