225

Papers of Ellis Stratakos, a Greek-American jazz bandleader in Mississippi.

Various places, bulk 1937-1954
More than 100 items (0.4 linear feet), generally minor wear.

  • Notes: Ellis George Stratakos (1903-1961) was a jazz bandleader and trombone player. Born in New Orleans to a Greek immigrant father who owned a candy store, he moved with his parents to nearby Gulfport, MS as a child. He attended a Jesuit school in New Orleans, where he absorbed the city's vibrant jazz scene. By 1921, he was performing regularly in Gulfport and beyond under a variety of band names, or simply as Ellis Stratakos and his Orchestra. He performed through at least 1940, and was a business agent for Local 174 of the American Federation of Musicians from the 1930s until his death. This lot includes:

    10 letters to Stratakos, 1939-1951, all regarding music and union business. 7 of them are from the Musicians Mutual Protective Union of New Orleans, discussing the union scale for musicians at specific resorts and ballrooms: "Scale for the Broadwater Beach, 45 hours or less weekly, $50.00 per musician, leader $75.00. A girl pianist will open the Beachwater Cafe on September 26th. Scale will be the same as the Broadwater Beach." Dues owed by specific musicians are also discussed: "If Howard Frank does not pay that money, don't worry, Pipitone will take care of him. If he don't pay when he is working, when will he pay?" One postcard is from a musician who played a gig in Biloxi: "The band broke up. The leader failed to pay my transportation back home and also refused to pay my complete salary for the job." The final letter is more personal, from a bandleader and pianist named Ken Harris, discussing his current gig at the Rice Hotel in Houston, a recording contract with Shamrock Records, and the touring life: "Shirl's and Mike's wives are real troupers and they turned out to be the best band wives I have ever had, which consisted of their copying music for us, doing errands. . . . Both wives are thrilled to death with the glamour (???) of being on the road with the band." 

    Also relating to his music and union career: Stratakos's check stubs, 1937--1952, some relating to gigs and union business; the constitution and by-laws of his union local, 1951; and 9 sheets of blank illustrated letterhead for "Ellis Stratakos and His New Orleans Orchestra."

    The other papers are mostly more mundane: utility bills, unused postcards, newspapers, and religious ephemera from a variety of denominations. In 1956, a lawyer sent a long carbon copy summary of "Evidence in Cases of Crimes Committed with a Shotgun."  The Hellenic Orthodox Church of New Orleans sent 4 circular letters in Greek, 1945. 

    Three items may reflect Stratakos's political views or were simply indicators of his time and place in the Deep South: a 1920 pamphlet on "Americanism vs. Roman Catholicism" (though it appears Stratakos and his wife were Catholic); an unsigned typescript of a segregationist poem from circa 1954; and a 1954 circular letter from the committee to elect Senator Jim Eastland, one of the most strident segregationists in Congress.
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November 20, 2025 10:30 AM EST
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