Paul "Polo" Barnes was a popular clarinet and saxophone player in New Orleans. He performed with some of the city's top musicians and bands for more than five decades. Credit: The William Russell Jazz Collection at The Historic New Orleans Collection, acquisition made possible by the Clarisse Claiborne Grima Fund, acc.no. 92-48-L.331.2950.

Jazz musician Paul “Polo” Barnes was born on Nov. 22, 1901. Barnes was a well-known saxophone and clarinet player who performed with some of the early originators of jazz, including Joseph “King” Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. 

Born in New Orleans, Barnes came from a musical family that included his older brother Emile Barnes, a popular ragtime musician. Barnes followed in his brother’s footsteps and learned to play the clarinet. After learning to play the saxophone, he formed his own band, the Original Diamond Orchestra.

Throughout the 1920s Barnes played with a number of top bands in New Orleans including the Maple Leaf Orchestra and Papa Celestin’s Original Tuxedo Orchestra. According to 64 Parishes, the musician also joined a Navy band and attended the Navy Music School in Washington, D.C.

Barnes lived in Los Angeles for about a decade starting in 1951. There he played with a number of bands including the Southern California Hot Jazz Society. He would make his way back to New Orleans in the 1960s and eventually became a mainstay at Preservation Hall.

Barnes, who composed the popular jazz tune “My Josephine,” died on April 3, 1981 at age 79.  

According to Times-Picayune coverage of Barnes’ funeral, the jazz procession included musicians from Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band, the Young Tuxedo Band, and the Dirty Dozen. Barnes’ coffin was escorted by four grand marshals as more than 100 mourners followed the procession to St. Louis Cemetery No. 3.

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Shannon Stecker is a creative writer, a marketing director, and a lover of stories. She has spent the past 15 years of her career in a creative space – as a print and broadcast journalist, a freelance...