header-solohome
 
 
Douglas on tenor guitar

In a night club, concert or festival  performance the song structure  celebrates 1920s and 30s Jazz and Delta Blues with an occasional nugget from the 1890s or a Ragtime treat. The audience will enjoy tunes such as "Hello Ma Baby", "Sweet Georgia Brown", "The Sunny Side of the Street", and "Dream a Little Dream".
 
 
In the 2003 season Douglas was the artistic director and manager of the Burr Theatre in New Westminster, B.C. where he wrote, produced, directed and performed in three productions. Today when not leading The Genuine Jug Band his solo performance thrills and intrigues audiences in night clubs, conventions, concerts and theatres.
 
 


Professor Douglas Fraser dispensing, with great authenticity, the vintage jazz, ragtime and blues that titillated the clientele of smoky backwater saloons, dens of iniquity, Chicago taprooms, New York gin mills, West Coast speakeasies and sultry Louisiana cabarets. Featuring a voice and musical style that brings it all to life.

His performance delivers a narrated musical tour of songs and stories from the late 1800s to 1940.

Douglas Fraser is the author of the book “Early Entertainment -The evolution of show business in North America”. 

Early Entertainment book

Available on Amazon.ca
Amazon Kindle
(also at Amazon.com)
EARLY ENTERTAINMENT is the Professor's second book published in June 2014.

This book is filled with secrets, surprises and delights. You are introduced to, and become quite intimate with, the creation of everything that makes up entertainment, and the activities that brought smiles to the faces of America.

Covering the roots of jazz, vaudeville, burlesque, big bands, silent movies, ragtime, television, bare knuckle prize fights, minstrel shows, circus and carnivals, bebop, medicine shows, jug bands, bicycles, musicians’ drugs, radio, the Model –T automobile, paddle wheelers, roller skates, the blues, barnstorming, gramophones, dancing, barbershop quartets, stage microphones, Tin Pan Alley, washboard bands, swing, and wild west shows. Lots of photographs and insight on subjects that you thought you knew about.

Click here for television interview by Tim Chung of SHAW TV

Shaw TV interview


Douglas Fraser magazine article
 
Professor Douglas Fraser emcees Canada Day
click here for news article
Canada Day 2014
 

Click here for the Vaudeville Show produced by Douglas
langley times



Douglas Fraser, on tenor guitar


Douglas Fraser is a showman, musicologist, vocalist and performer on tenor guitar and tenor banjo. He hails from three generations of professional entertainers and has been on stage since the age of three. Douglas’s father was a Ringling Brothers Circus star performer, vaudevillian with partner Amos Jacobs (Later to be Danny Thomas), a stand-up comic, and matinee crooner. His mother performed on the Shubert Circuit in vaudeville and his grandmother toured with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

Douglas Fraser

He has played jazz in concert coast to coast. He has been on many television shows, movies and radio shows throughout the years. Douglas was the band leader at Gastown’s “Banjo Palace” in Vancouver, British Columbia for two years with a four to seven piece Dixieland / ragtime band. He wrote, produced and directed the theatrical comedy production, The Heartaches Razz Band in which, as band leader, he sang, played banjo, tap danced (he was hilarious) and did a comedy magic routine. This show toured internationally for ten years playing concerts, clubs and the Canadian university circuit, ultimately performing a total of thirty one times at The Troubadour in Hollywood and at Pasadena’s Ice House Comedy Club.

Douglas has toured with Blood, Sweat and Tears, Brian Adams, Boz Scaggs, the Knack and George Carlin ( to name a few ). Doug played fifteen hundred and fifty –four shows at California’s Knott’s Berry Farm, he also played in Disneyland in Anaheim, California and some thirty shows at Magic Mountain in Valencia, California. Previous manager, Isy Walters, kept him working as an opening act for such greats as Buddy Rich, Earl Hines, Les Brown and his band of Renown, Stan Getz and Eubie Blake. Advice from Hezzie, band leader of the Hoosier Hot Shots and performing with Mousie Garner from Spike Jones & the City Slickers, and who was one of the original Three Stooges, helped hone Douglas’s natural comic instincts. Prof. Fraser has also spent several years as a stand up comic and as a folk singer.
  facebook youtube  

Subscribe to Professor Douglas Fraser's monthly newsletter

* indicates required
Doug Fraser and banjo

The songs that he performs are played on banjo and tenor guitar. His voice is said to be reminiscent of the vintage sound coming from a Blue Wax Edison Cylinder. His playing and presentation is authentic to the time period. His style and swagger denote the eccentric characterization that makes an audience feel that they have been blessed with a glimpse of the past.
 

Please click to view some videos of the music.
 
 
 
 
footer