Charlie Elgar

Early life and education

Charles A. Elgar was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on June 13, 1879. Elgar played violin as a child from age 5. He also played trumpet. He studied music in Wisconsin and Illinois.

Career

He was a founder and charter member of the local branch of the American Federation of Musiicians, AFL-CIO, Local 2018. He played in Chicago from 1903 with the Bloom Theater Philharmonic Orchestra, returning to New Orleans late in the decade of the 1900s until about 1913, when he returned to Chicago. He put together a band in 1913 Chicago comprising in part musicians he had promised work in New Orleans, including Manuel Perez. His band played at the Navy Pier Ballroom, Hattie Harmon's Dreamland Ballroom from 1917 until 1922 and opened the old Savoy Ballroom in 1928, both as a quintet and as a full 15-member ensemble. This band toured in the revue Plantation Days and traveled to London, though Elgar did not accompany it on this trip. However, he did play with Will Marion Cook's Southern Syncopated Orchestra in Europe. He led later bands in Milwaukee, 1925–1928, making several recordings with Elgars Creole Orchestra that he led at the Wisconsin Roof Gardens in Milwaukee from 1925 until 1927. and again in Chicago, 1926-30.

Aside from the above-mentioned, his sidemen included Lorenzo Tio, Louis Cottrell, Jr., Barney Bigard, Ben Thigpen, Darnell Howard, and Omer Simeon. He recorded only four times in 1926 with the Creole Orchestra for Vocalion Records. He became a teacher in the 1930s and also worked as a union official later in his life.