About Me
John Jean Goldkette was born on March 18th, 1893, in Patras, Greece. His mother, Angelina Goldkette, was born on June 20th, 1879, in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was part of a theatrical troupe in Europe. Jean’s father is unknown, but he is reported to have died when Jean was just a child. Angelina remarried a Russian journalist in 1900 by the name of John Poliakoff.
After the marriage, Jean and his mother moved to Moscow to live as a new family. Jean’s stepfather believed that musicians and waiters were about the same, except that waiters made more money than musicians. He opposed Jean’s idea for learning music, so, when Jean wanted to attend a Josef Hoffman recital, he forged a check with his step-fathers signature to allow him to go.
Before you were permitted to enroll into the Moscow Music Conservatory, you had to pass an exam that would last 30 days. Each year, the conservatory would accept fifty new students out of the thousands that applied, and Jean was accepted at the age of 10 in 1903. It took nine years to receive a diploma from the Conservatory, and Jean was two years shy of receiving his when he came to the United States in 1910.
Jean moved to Chicago, Illinois, to live with his uncle. He found a job on a farm in Indiana where he would plow fields and serve as a clerk, just to make some money. During his late teenage years, Jean lived in a town called Plymouth, Indiana. This town was so close to South Bend that he would walk from Plymouth to South Bend to practice his piano at the Elbel Brothers music store. He also had a playing job at a silent movie house in Chicago. This is where Stephen Horvath, a string-bassist in the Chicago Symphony, heard Goldkette perform for the first time. He noticed that Jean’s shoes were in bad shape and worn out, so, he invited Jean to move in with his family, where they both would perform duets several nights a week. This is also were Stephen’s brother, Charley, and Jean would meet for the first time, and also team up to perform and work together for many, many years.
In 1914, Jean found work with a small concert ensemble at the Lamb’s Café in Chicago, Illinois. When this gig folded, Jean found work with some with the Edgar Bensen agency and was sent to Detroit as a sub-leader. He didn’t like Detroit that much at that time, and returned to Chicago, where Bensen made him a front man. From here, he found work with Professor Andrew Raymond’s group at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. While performing with this group, Charles A. Hughes, the Detroit Athletic Club secretary and editor/publisher of the Detroit Athletic Club News, heard the group and invited them to perform at the DAC in October of 1916. In August of 1918, the DAC News called Jean the “outstanding star of the outfit.†Jean served six months in the service in 1918, and in the fall of 1920, he returned to the DAC and was named as the club’s musical director.
In 1921, he organized his first dance band, which was a five-piece band that played weekends at the DAC. He was also in charge of the club’s concert ensemble. Jean would always perform with the DAC group, but he would rarely perform with his Graystone Orchetra.
While running and operating these groups in Detroit, Jean was the founder and President of the Detroit College of Music. This college would help musicians secure a musical education that would cover as much ground as ordinarily could be covered by a student. To make sure Jean received his cut of all revenues, he put his Uncle Frank in charge of the finances.
By the early 1930’s, Jean’s life was starting to fall apart. In 1933, Jean had disbanded all of his groups, and with doing so, left Detroit to lead a group on a Caribbean cruise boat. In 1934, Charlie Horvath’s lease on the Graystone was up, and also the booking for McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. In 1936, Jean filed for bankruptcy with $238,740 in debts, and only $.45 in assets. But, his life quickly turned around in the late 30’s. He was the organizer and conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, an orchestra that was composed entirely of American musicians performing American compositions on American-made instruments. This orchestra had its inaugural concert at Carnegie Hall on Thursday evening, June 8th, 1939. The concert was for the benefit of the MacDowell Association. Working by his side during this time was a New York newspaper woman and publicity counsel named Lee Marea McQuillan. On March 4th, 1939, Jean and Lee were married in Leesburg, Virginia. The marriage was not made public until July 28th.
The 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s found Jean promoting bands again like the Charioteers and Tito Guizar, and Jean had also hired a librarian by the name of Frankie Laine to help with the music for the American Symphony. He also toured the Midwest as a classical pianist. On January 29th, 1954, Jean appeared as a concert pianist in the Scottish Rite Cathedral of the Masonic Temple in Detroit. In 1959, Jean came out of retirement to organize a 14-piece dance orchestra for a special recording session for the RCA Camden label. The album was titled “Dance Hits of the 20’s,†and the orchestra had many well known musicians, including Carl “Doc†Severinsen on trumpet, and Chauncey Morehouse on drums, one of the original drummers for the Goldkette Victor Band in the 20’s. The album did not receive that much publicity, and it never really took off like it was anticipated to do.
Jean founded the National Artists Foundation in 1953, which was endorsed by then Michigan Governor G. Mennen Williams.
On March 24th, 1962, while in a hotel room in Santa Barbara on business for the National Artists Foundation, Jean complained of stomach cramps and took a taxi to the hospital, where he later died of a heart attack.
