A pioneering bandleader and drummer from New Orleans, Papa Jack Laine's career reached back to the beginnings of jazz. Laine played drums, tuba and alto horn as a child. He formed his first band in 1888 and a few years later founded and led the Reliance Brass Band in New Orleans, a group that lasted for over four decades although Laine himself retired around 1917. Later called "the father of white jazz" because of the many top players who passed through his bands (including George Brunies, Sharkey Bonano and the future members of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band), Laine was not technically a jazz musician himself but he was a masterful talent scout. Unfortunately none of his groups (at one point in time he led five different versions of the Reliance Brass Band) ever recorded although Papa Jack Laine's voice was captured on a Southland lp in 1951, introducing a New Orleans group that for the occasion took the name of Papa Laine's Children. ~ Scott Yanow, Rovi