Although known for years among jazz musicians from coast to coast, Billy Krechmer was hardly remembered by anyone outside of Philadelphia when he passed away on March 11, 2002, at the age of 92. Krechmer was born in 1910 in Millville, NJ, by the banks of the Maurice River near Union Lake. He studied music at the Curtis Institute and started performing professionally in 1926. During the late '20s and much of the 1930s he worked in bands led by Herb Gordon, Red Nichols, and Ted Lewis, touring the U.S. and Europe before settling down in Philadelphia, where he racked up many hours of experience as clarinetist in a burlesque house and in the orchestra pits of the Earl and Mastbaum theaters.

After a jaw ailment forced him to put aside his instrument for a little while, Krechmer opened a jazz club in 1938 and christened it the Jam Session. Located on cobblestone-covered Ranstead Street between Chestnut and Ludlow near Independence Square, the club, later known simply as Billy Krechmer's, became famous for its all-night jam sessions in which musicians from all over the country made a point of stopping to participate. In 1947 guitarist Tal Farlow gigged there regularly with Krechmer and pianist Freddie Thompson. It was at Krechmer's that Farlow, in order to compensate for the absence of an upright bassist, is said to have developed a technique of playing basslines on the guitar. Ray Bryant played piano with Krechmer from 1951 to 1953, and his brother Tommy Bryant began his career plucking the bass with Krechmer's band. As a young man, Philadelphia sculptor and mixed-media artist Frank Root spent three years as the house drummer at Krechmer's club.

Billy Krechmer is known to have recorded only thrice. Two sides were waxed for the Gotham label in New York on April 13, 1950, with Freddie Thompson, guitarist Joe Kuhn, bassist Frank Szetek, and Harold Doc Bagby (talent scout and A&R director for Gotham) playing the novochord, an early electronic keyboard instrument. Krechmer recorded again in 1954 with a band whose personnel have not been identified. Six titles were waxed on this occasion, including two Dixieland standards, issued on the Collector's Club label, and four original compositions, at least two of which were briefly made available to the public on 20th Century Records. Krechmer's repertoire combined Dixieland and swing tunes with pop melodies and pleasant jazz modes of his own devising. He recorded and produced his own LP, Billy Krechmer + 5, during the early '60s, releasing it on his own Ranstead record label, which he named for the street on which his club was in operation until it closed its doors forever in 1966. Krechmer's entire recorded output would fit nicely onto one compact disc if someone would only take the time to compile a tribute album. ~ arwulf arwulf, Rovi