Peter Davis

Peter Davis (October 25, 1887 - April 29, 1971) was an American musician who gave musical training to disadvantaged youths, including Louis Armstrong, at the Colored Waifs' Home for Boys in New Orleans, Louisiana. Early years Peter Davis was born on October 25, 1887 at Conti and Robertson Streets in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. Scant census information listed his father as a widowed day worker. Professor William J. Nickerson was a performer and educator who taught many New Orleans musicians including Jelly Roll Morton, Sweet Emma Barrett, and Manuel Manetta. Davis took lessons from the acclaimed master in the 1890s, learning the piano and the cornet. His took first job teaching music when hired as a warden at New Orleans' Colored Waifs' Home for Boys, a juvenile detention institution. The Home was encircled by barbed wire fences and abutted a cemetery and farmlands. Boys attempting to escape were harshly disciplined. Teaching Davis instructed his charges on musical instruments, and also led the choir and quartet singing. According to Waifs' Home superintendent David Dahlgren, he was proficient on multiple instruments and familiar with brass band and dance music. Dahlgren remembered that Davis "gave his entire life and almost every waking moment of his day to working for music for young people." Drummer Abbey Foster, who left the Waifs' Home in 1912, recalled Davis starting a brass band there in 1911. He recalled, "Old man Dave (Peter Davis) got the idea of building up a band." In the beginning the band was made up of snare drum, bass drum, clarinet, two cornets, and bass horn, with Davis later adding additional instruments. He taught the rudiments of reading music to his pupils. Foster (March 20, 1902 - September 12, 1962), also known as “Chinee Bébé”, would go on to play in Storyville with William Ridgley's Tuxedo Orchestra, with Buddie Petit in the Eagle Band, and recorded with Papa Celestin’s Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra in 1927. While most of Davis' students were taught trumpet or cornet, many others took instruction on piano, clarinet, tuba, saxophone, drums, and trombone.