Norrie, a native of Brighton, England, emigrated in 1966 to join Cummins Engine
Company in Columbus, Indiana, U.S.A. Although trained as a mechanical engineer
he has had an ongoing love affair with New Orleans jazz music since first hearing
a recording in 1948. His father was a semi-professional musician, a graduate of
the famed Kneller Hall military School of music and Norrie's five siblings were
all musically inclined as children. He says "I was the black sheep of the
family as far as music was concerned" and that his interest in jazz was probably
an unconscious rebellion against the legitimacy of the music all around him. It
was not until he was drafted into the Royal Air Force at the age of 21 that he
became interested in playing the clarinet. He was self taught until 1976 when
he realized that he was not going to progress further without help and studied
for five years with Dan Gilmore, clarinetist, of the Waukesha Symphony Orchestra.
Until the 1980's he saw himself as a jazz aficionada who also played clarinet
but since giving up his full time job he has concentrated on his playing and is
now active with several traditional jazz bands in the Milwaukee and Chicago area.
He is one of the few players in the country who try to emulate the style of the
early Black jazzmen and like them plays an Albert system clarinet. Although busy
as a musician and a consulting engineer he has maintained his interest in the
study of New Orleans jazz and continues to add to his collection of early jazz
recordings. Since 1989 he has been active in teaching teenagers, as a volunteer
with the Boy Scouts and the Milwaukee Boys and Girls club, how to play in the
early jazz style. This group, the Crescent City Stompers
have gone on to play in a variety of settings to enthusiastic audiences.
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Norrie was born in Worthing on the south coast of England. His father, who
joined the army as a boy musician, was trained as a brass player at the prestigious
Kneller Hall Military Music Academy and served as a mounted bandsman. On leaving
the army to follow a musical career he ran head on into the 1930's depression
and although not able to make it as a professional musician he maintained a busy
part time activity upto his eightieth year. All of Norrie's five younger siblings
developed an early interest in music but due to a combination of circumstances
such as a rigid grammar school education and his growing up during the second
world war while his father was away from home he showed no interest in music of
any kind until 1948 when he heard a Humphrey Lyttelton recording. The impact of
the music, that was so different to anything he had heard before, set him to finding
out all he could about jazz and he soon discovered the music of the early jazz
pioneers. Since that time he has actively collected and studied their music. He
enjoys other forms of jazz as long as they are true to the jazz tradition but
does not collect their recordings.
On leaving school Norrie became a Mechanical Engineering Apprentice and was
granted deferment from military service until obtaining his degree. In 1952 he
was drafted into the Royal Air Force as a Wireless Operator and after training
found that he had a great deal of spare time. To combat the boredom he started
"messing around" with a clarinet and on his release in 1954 started
attending basement jam sessions with other hometown musicians who shared his love
of New Orleans music. This was during the early days of the traditional jazz revival
that climaxed, in England in the late 1950's, with jazz records appearing in the
"Top Twenty." In 1958 he moved to Ashford, near London Airport, as a
junior engineer and soon formed the San Jacinto Jazz Band which grew in popularity
until 1960 when he had to choose between taking the band professional and his
engineering career. By this time he was married with a young son and his day job
won out. He continued to play on a reduced schedule until 1966 when he was recruited
by Cummins Engine Company in Columbus, Indiana, sold up and with his family became
part of Britain's "Brain Drain."
He maintained his interest in early and revivalist jazz and continued to play
his clarinet but did no public performance. His engineering career blossomed and
he moved to Muskegon, Michigan and then to Brookfield, Wisconsin where he worked
first at Waukesha Engines and then at Harley Davidson where he was Chief Engineer
of their Test Laboratories. All the time he knew that one day he would again get
back to playing seriously and fate does indeed work in strange ways! In 1975,
through his son's music teacher, he was introduced to the First Brigade Band,
a Milwaukee organization committed to the preservation of music of the American
Civil War by performing on period instruments and using original scores. He became
an enthusiastic member, staying for six years, and playing alongside dedicated
legitimately trained musicians made him realize just how limited was his own self
taught technique. He studied for the next five years with Dan Gilmore of the Waukesha
Symphony and in his own words "finally learned how to play." In 1981
he left Harley Davidson, formed his own automotive diesel repair business and
went back to playing jazz.
Around 1970 he had become friends with Bob Rippey, a noted jazz enthusiast
and promoter, who introduced him to the Riverboat Ramblers and the Chicago Footwarmers
and in 1981 he joined the Ramblers and soon after became their band manager. In
1986 he sold his automotive business in order to concentrate on his jazz playing
and now leads his own groups the New Orleans Stompers and the Norrie Cox Goodtime
Jazz and is a regular performer with Roy Rubinstein's Chicago Hot Six. He supplements
his income by working as a consulting engineer in the field of mechanical failure.
Norrie is one of the country's foremost advocates for the preservation of early
New Orleans jazz music in live performance and is one of the few musicians who
try to emulate the playing of the early jazz pioneers. Like them, he uses the
now defunct Albert system clarinet and will often recreate the solos of his idols
note for note and, while admitting that this is not in the tradition of spontaneous
improvisation, feels that it is a legitimate way of keeping the music alive.
In 1988 Norrie became convinced that in order to preserve the early New Orleans
jazz style in live performance it was necessary to get young people interested
in playing it and after a year of false starts formed a Boy Scout Explorer Post
with the playing of New Orleans jazz as it's focus. In 1999 he took the young
band to New Orleans where they played at several locations around town and on
Saturday evening played the first set in historic Preservation Hall where both
the audience and the regular band gave them a whole hearted reception. The Post
has been in continuous operation since September of 1989 with many youngsters
leaving for college and at least two planning on becoming career musicians. His
teaching style is unconventional in that he does not use written music and youngsters,
who are not normally musicians when they join the post, first learn to play simple
tunes by rote or by ear, are then introduced to harmonic theory and the traditional
part played by their chosen instrument in a New Orleans ensemble, all the while
being taught the correct way to play their instrument. He lost count of the number
of persons who told him he would never get teenagers, especially those of African
American heritage, interested in playing early jazz but his results certainly
belie the outpourings of those nay sayers!
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