became a national star by infusing
popular music with the swinging sound of New
Orleans jazz, died Tuesday after a
long illness.
Hirt, 76, had been in poor health for
the past year but died of liver failure, friends
said.
"He was aging and things were starting
to fall apart. They couldn't put them all back
together," said friend and associate
Georgie Stegman. Hirt had been in a local
hospital for several weeks but died at
home, she said.
Like Louis Armstrong before him and
Wynton Marsalis later, Hirt was a New
Orleans native who played the trumpet
with passion and power but always with an
ear toward popular taste.
He could belt out traditional blues
and jazz with the best of them, but -- to the
dismay of jazz purists -- he would
also record pop tunes that sold millions of
albums.
He won a Grammy for the bouncy hit
"Java" and played a standing-room-only
concert at Carnegie Hall in 1965. He
became a Las Vegas star, a television regular
and, occasionally, a movie actor.
Playboy Magazine named him World's Top
Trumpeter 15 times.
"He was a trumpet virtuoso. ... He
could do it all," said New Orleans booking
agent Jimmy Maxwell.
Born Alois Maxwell Hirt, he got his
first trumpet from a pawn shop when he was
six years old and eventually went on
to study classical trumpet at the Cincinnati
Conservatory in the early 1940s.
After a stint as an army bugler during
World War II, Hirt played with swing bands
led by Benny Goodman and Tommy and
Jimmy Dorsey, among others.
In the 1950s, Hirt returned to New
Orleans where he formed his own band, played
occasionally with good pal clarinetist
Pete Fountain and became a French Quarter
fixture.
In 1960, he signed a contract with RCA
records that helped put him in the national
spotlight.
Hirt's fame diminished after the
1960s, but he kept pumping out albums -- some 55
in all -- and putting on shows,
particularly in the French Quarter nightclub he owned
for 23 years. He closed the Bourbon
Street club in 1983 because he felt the area had
become too dangerous and dirty.
Fountain and Hirt were good friends
who, in the early days in the Quarter, hired
each other to play as sidemen whenever
the other got a gig.
"What we used to say was whoever had
the bow tie got to lead the band," said
Fountain, also a New Orleans native.
"There was never any jealousy."
Even after they became stars, the two
stayed close friends and fishing buddies. "He
and I have been knowing each other 55
years. I play clarinet and he toots a horn and
our careers took off at the same
time," said Fountain.
"There will never be another like him.
He was loved by trumpet players all over the
world," Fountain said.
Hirt is survived by wife Beverly and
six children from a previous marriage.