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 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.
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.
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.
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.