Eli's Chosen Six was the ensemble that appeared in the influential 1959 concert film Jazz On A Summer's Day

Jazz on a Summer's Day

Jazz on a Summer's Day is a documentary film set at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, and filmed and directed by noted commercial and fashion photographer Bert Stern and the film director Aram Avakian , who also edited the movie...

playing Dixieland as they drove around Newport in a convertible jalopy. http://www.albanyjazz.com/concertreviews/roswellrudd-northpointe.html It was a famous Yale College Dixieland band of the 1950s that played the boisterous trad-jazz style of the day. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/arts/music/22rudd.html?_r=1&oref=slogin The ensemble of white college-student jazz revivalists, rose into popular prominence in the mid-1950s, when "college jazz" was a catchphrase. The sextet was founded and managed by Dick Voigt, and counted as members the later-legendary trombonist Roswell Rudd

Roswell Rudd

Roswell Rudd is a Grammy Award-nominated American jazz trombonist and composer....

, bassists Buell Neidlinger (succeeded by Bob Morgan), cornetist Lee Lorenz, clarinetist Leroy Sam Parkins and drummer Steve Little. With the help of the producer and Yale alumnus George Avakian http://www.cilicia.com/armo_article_george_avakian.html, the band recorded an album for Columbia Records in 1955.

Eli’s Chosen Six appeared not only in the 1959 film, but also performed at Carnegie Hall http://www.udel.edu/PR/Messenger/99/1/bill.html, toured most of the major college campuses in the northeast and appeared at many top jazz clubs around the country. After Yale, founder Dick Voigt performed in combos led by Wild Bill Davison

Wild Bill Davison

Wild' Bill Davison was a fiery jazz cornet player who emerged in the 1920s, but did not achieve recognition until the 1940s...

, Vic Diskenson, Bob Wilbur, Henry Goodwin

Henry Goodwin

Henry Goodwin may refer to:*Henry C. Goodwin , U.S. Representative from New York*Henry B. Goodwin , Swedish photographer of German descent*Henry Goodwin Smith, U.S. theologian...

, J.C. Higginbottom and Doc Cheatham. The most prominent alumnus of the group was Rudd, of whom it was said “all his future endeavors--including his landmark collaborations with Cecil Taylor

Cecil Taylor

Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...

, Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp is a prominent African-American jazz saxophonist. Shepp is best known for his passionately Afrocentric music of the late 1960s, which focused on highlighting the injustices faced by the African-Americans, as well as for his work with the New York Contemporary Five, Horace Parlan, and...

, John Tchicai

John Tchicai

John Martin Tchicai is a Danish jazz saxophonist. He was one of the earliest European free jazz musicians. He is of Danish and Congolese descent....

 and Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy , born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone....

--grew out of the lessons learned while playing rags and stomps for drunken college kids in Connecticut.”
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