Snoozer Quinn, guitar - Out of Nowhere

Anyone who ever heard Snoozer Quinn said that he was the best guitarist they ever heard.

Quinn was without peer which has been attested to by many who heard or knew him. Among them were the superlative Jazz guitarists of the late-1920s and 1930s like Eddie Lang who heard Snoozer during his brief stay New York City.

Quinn came within a whisker of disappearing from music history altogether. But a recording at his deathbed shortly before his passing has left us a tiny fragment; a mere glimpse of his fading brilliance.

The nickname “Snoozer” was, according to his brother Alton Quinn, “because he was so good he could sleep and play at the same time.” This reflects his well-known ability to strum guitar while reaching out and shaking your hand without interrupting himself. It may well have been this very trick which prompted bandleader Paul Whiteman to hire Snoozer upon first meeting.

A musician’s musician, Quinn was well received in New York. His colleagues were blown away crowding into his hotel room day and night urging him to play. Whiteman took Snoozer around to parties showing him off like a trick pony.

He made a few band recordings, but they failed to capture his sound, inaudible in the band context. And the handful of solo discs he made were lost and never recovered.

By March 1929 Quinn had returned to his Louisiana stomping grounds around Bogalusa near New Orleans. He was employed at a Goodyear Tire garage and played for local bands, theaters and parties.

His health was never robust and severely impacted by his chronic alcoholism. In 1940 Quinn was hospitalized for tuberculosis.

Not long before his passing Snoozer was visited in his New Orleans hospital room by local trumpet player Johnny Wiggs. Using a portable disc-recording machine he made the only surviving examples of Quinn’s gift.

Recently, authors Dan Sumner and Katy Hobgood Ray (his great-great niece) have vividly portrayed and thoroughly documented this obscure musician for the first time in print: Snoozer Quinn: Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Pioneer, 2021 found at Snoozerquinn.com.

Find more at:
http://www.jazzhotbigstep.com/70001.html
http://www.jazzhotbigstep.com/74101
Snnozerquinn.com