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Kid Bastien Forever 2012 features Toronto’s Happy Pals New Orleans Party Orchestra with Italy’s Piano Wizard Guido Cairo.

Based in Milano, Guido Cairo plays rocking New-Orleans piano in the style of old-school masters like Alton Purnell, Lester Santiago and Joe Robichaux. He has toured internationally and recorded with New Orleans jazz legends Percy Humphrey, Emanuel Sayles, Louis Nelson, Paul “Polo” Barnes, Alvin Alcorn, Thomas Jefferson, Freddie Kohlman, Sammy Rimington, Topsy Chapman and Wendell Brunious and many others.

His 1973 piano & clarinet duets with Polo Barnes have recently been issued by GBH Records in New Orleans, to great acclaim.

Most recently Guido Cairo has toured in Italy with the Happy Pals New Orleans Party Orchestra. Kid Bastien Forever 2012 will be his first Canadian performance, and we are thrilled to have him.

Kid Bastien rocked the house at Grossman’s Tavern every Saturday for thirty-three years, from 1970 to 2003. Kid Bastien’s Happy Pals played New Orleans Jazz, the old-time dancing, stomping music that everyone could relate to. They played hymns blues and and love songs. They played songs by Jelly Roll Morton, songs by Bob Dylan and calypsos by Lord Kitchener.

It's now nine years ago, on February 8, 2003, that Kid Bastien didn’t show up for the gig.

Eventually the rest of the Happy Pals started playing, while one of the musicians and a couple of fans went to Kid’s apartment. They found him in his chair, dead of a heart attack.

Kid Bastien’s funeral was the next Friday, Valentine’s Day – appropriate since he was a disciple of New Orleans trumpet master Kid Thomas Valentine. The church was packed beyond capacity. The thirteen-piece Magnolia Brass Band played New Orleans style: slow hymns, then parade-time out of the church and on to life as the Kid would have wanted it. The wake went all Friday night at Grossman’s, then all Saturday afternoon and night again. Musicians came from all over to play their respects. They even flew in from Florida, France and Denmark.

Every year since, the Kid's wake has been our model for the Kid Bastien Forever New Orleans Jazz Festival to remember the Kid, to celebrate all he did for New Orleans Jazz in Toronto, and to have the kind of kick-ass party he always did.

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