Towles, Nat
Towles, Nat
Towles, Nat, early jazz band leader, bassist; b. New Orleans, Oct. 10, 1905; d. Berkeley, Calif., Nov. 1962. He gigged in the early 1920s with Buddie Petit, Henry “Red” Allen, and others before touring the South and Southwest with his own bands intermittently from 1923-33. In 1934 he briefly led his own band in Dallas; in 1935 took over the Wiley Coll. Students’ Band in Austin, Tex., and resumed leading in Dallas; the following year the band took up residency at the Dreamland Ballroom, Omaha, Nebr. Throughout the late 1930s and 1940s this band toured regularly; in 1943 they played several residencies in and around N.Y. including bookings at the Apollo Theatre in December 1943. Towles continued to lead his own band until moving to Calif, in 1959; he ran his own tavern until suffering a fatal heart attack.
—John Chilton/Lewis Porter