Bill kleppinger 6&7/8s string band

**Bill Foss** · Jul-23-2008, 12:24pm

I have just discovered the great mandolin player Bill Kleppinger of the
6 & 7/8s String Band that played New Orleans style jazz up until the mid 1950s. A search of the message board came up with nothing about him.

The double CD on the American Music label doesn't have all that much biographical information about him. There are lots of players who play swing and more progressive forms of jazz, but this is the only guy I've heard who plays this earlier style with real authority.

Does anyone know what kind of mandolin he played? Does he have surviving family members? Are there more details about his life? Are there more recordings of him or other string bands from the same New Orleans tradition? Has anyone learned his style and carried on his tradition?

**Paul Kotapish** · Jul-23-2008, 5:58pm

I love the 6 & 7/8 String Band.

I have an LP from the '70s with reissues from their original 78s. They were going for a stringband version of a trad New Orleans horn ensemble, with the mandolin playing clarinet parts, the slide guitar playing trombone lines, and so forth. The players were all serious amateurs--professionals and businessmen who played in their spare time--but they developed a remarkably coherent, idiosyncratic style. It's lovely.

You can find the complete liner notes from that LP right here.

I think there are a few different reissues on CD now, but the original LP version is available for download or as a CD at Smithsonian Folkways.

Bill Kleppinger was the mandolinist, and I think he played a nothing-fancy mandolin such as a Kay or Harmony. I'll look tonight at home and see if I can tell anything from the LP.

**Gary S** · Jul-24-2008, 5:38am

Count me in as a huge fan. These guys used to head down to the French Quarter of New Orleans and listen to many of the greatest Jazz players #of all times. Then they would head back up to Tulane and interpret what they heard to there more "Parlor" style background. The outcome was very special. These guys captured the wonderful interplay of instruments that has been (imho)lost in much of music today.
Each instrument in Now Orleans jazz has a unique roll as they all play melodically at the same time while not playing in unison. There is a lot to enjoy and learn from there priceless recordings.
Gary

**Bill Foss** · Jul-24-2008, 9:54am

I guess it is his amatuer status that relegates Bill Kleppinger to a kind of obscurity, but it's nice to know that he is appreciated by those of us who have discovered him. The 6 & 7/8s String Band has an R. Crumb & His Ceap Suit Serenaders kind of a groove. Or I should probably say it's the other way around!

Well, I'm off to slow down some of Kleppinger's licks and try to learn them!

http://www.myspace.com/billfossmusic

**Paul Kotapish** · Jul-24-2008, 11:41am

Hey Bill,

Didn't recognize your screen moniker. Yep, the Cheap Suit lads were definitely in on the 6 and 7/8 String Band magic. Their first album in particular owes a lot to that sound.

**Bill Foss** · Jul-24-2008, 7:48pm

Howdy Paul,
I'll have to go back and listen to the early Cheap Suits. And read my old Zap Comix too!
Bill (Smiley Pockets) Foss

**John Morton** · Jun-26-2018, 10:58am

The most complete story of the 6 7/8 is the liner note essays from a 1956 Folkways LP that Paul cites in a 2008 post. The liner notes can be downloaded from this page:
https://folkways.si.edu/the-six-and-...um/smithsonian