Horace Kirby Dowell (May 24, 1904 – July 22, 1974), known professionally as Saxie Dowell, was an American

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

saxophonist.

Biography

Dowell was born in

Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Sout ...

, and attended the University of North Carolina, where he met

Hal Kemp James Hal Kemp (March 27, 1904 – December 21, 1940) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, bandleader, composer, and arranger. Biography Hal Kemp was born in Marion, Alabama. He formed his first band in high school, and by the a ...

. He joined Kemp's orchestra as a reed player (tenor saxophone, clarinet, and flute) and vocalist in the fall of 1925. Dowell composed "I Don't Care", which was recorded by Kemp for Brunswick in 1928. When the band's style changed in the early 1930s to that of a dance band, Dowell became the group's comedic vocalist for novelty songs. After "Three Little Fishies" became a hit in 1939, Dowell was involved in a legal dispute with lyricists Josephine Carringer and Bernice Idins. In 1940 he wrote the song " Playmates". Dowell left Kemp in started a big band in 1940. During World War II he was drafted and served as a bandleader aboard an aircraft carrier, the ''U.S.S. Franklin''. The band survived a torpedo attack by Japanese forces, then performed while the wreckage was cleaned up. He wrote and sang the novelty song "

Three Little Fishies "Three Little Fishies", also known as "Three Little Fishes", is a 1939 song with words by Josephine Carringer and Bernice Idins and music by Saxie Dowell. The song tells the story of three fishes, who defy their mother's command of swimming only ...

" and recorded for Brunswick, Sonora, and Victor. Around 1946 he led a naval air station band with 14-year-old

Keely Smith Dorothy Jacqueline Keely (March 9, 1928The reference work ''The Encyclopedia of Native Music: More Than a Century of Recordings from Wax Cylinder to the Internet'' gives Smith's date of birth as March 9, 1932. – December 16, 2017), profession ...

as a singer. After the war he reunited his orchestra, performing mostly in Chicago. In 1949 he became a disc jockey for WGN radio in Chicago. He retired in the late 1950s and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. He worked as a disc jockey part-time for KTAR in Phoenix during his retirement.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dowell, Saxie 1904 births 1974 deaths Jazz musicians from North Carolina Musicians from Raleigh, North Carolina 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century American singers American jazz bandleaders American jazz singers American jazz songwriters American male songwriters American male jazz musicians