Tjhe picture you have is most certainly NOT\u00a0 Louis Mitchells Jazz Kings.\u00a0 \u00a0For one thing Dan Kildare is at the piano.\u00a0 Kildare never went to France but stayed in London where he ran a pub with his wife, but ended up shooting his wife and sister in law in the pub and shooting himself..\u00a0 Mitchells jazz kings only existed in Paris and then briefly as Mitchell himself ended up getting out of the musician business and tried to run a restaurant\/bar\/dive as his life became more and more consumed with his gambling addiction,.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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I think this is the initial version of the Ciro Night Club band which would put it at some time before April 1916.\u00a0 The banjoists, or bandolinists\u00a0 if you like, in this picture are George Watters and Seth Jones.\u00a0 On May 3 1916\u00a0 Seth Jones returned to NYC.\u00a0 \u00a0Vance Lowry arrived in London\u00a0 on May 7 to take Jones' place as on April 2,\u00a0 Kildare had gone to NYC to fetch musicians to replace Jones and two other musicians who had lreturned to NYC with Jones.\u00a0 \u00a0What strikes me is that in the height of the U Boat campaign,\u00a0 band leaders were going back and forth from Britain to the US to fetch musicians.\u00a0 \u00a0Kildare\u00a0 Made at least 3 trips across the Atlantic during the Great War,\u00a0 and Louis Mitchell apparently made at least 6 crossings or or back and forth trips in 1914, 1915\/16 and perhaps 1917.\u00a0 Lowry himself crossed in 1914 returned in september, funded the US government evacuation of\u00a0 refugees from the war and did not return to England until 1916.\u00a0 He stayed in Europe until 1941\/42, in France from 1917 at least to 1939, although he may have lived or stayed in Sweden for a time in the late 30s, returning to England when WWII started.\u00a0 He returned to the US via Vichy France thence to Portugal in 1941, and claimed he was roughly treated by German soliders in France until he showed them his perfect command of German\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n <\/dd>\n