Alcide Louis Pavageau played string bass and guitar. It was his extraordinary dance moves, however, that earned him a nickname: “Slow Drag”
Popular in the late 1890s and early 1900s, the slow drag is an intimate blues dance where partners embrace and move in a sensual, swaying motion. It was perfect for the “suave” musician who “spoke in Patois,” Gallatin Street Records states. “He danced well in competitions held on Basin Street.”
Born in New Orleans in 1888, Pavageau began playing guitar in 1906. His teachers were his father Ferreol “Joseph” Pavageau, who played multiple instruments, and his cousin Ulysses Picou. The younger Pavageau didn’t start playing bass until he was 39. His wife, Annie, was a pianist and vocalist.
Pavageau began his career playing at dances, parties and on Basin Street. In the 1940s, he played with trumpeter Bunk Johnson in New York. He toured the U.S. and Europe with clarinetist George Lewis in the 1950s.
According to All Music, Pavageau’s percussive 4/4 bass lines helped make Lewis’ rhythm section a driving force.
“Although not really a soloist,” Syncopated Times states, “he could be counted on for a solid beat and a big sound that drove Lewis and others. “‘Drag’s Half Fast Jazz Band’ contains Pavageau’s only album as a leader, a set from April 21, 1965 that ironically was his final recording.”
In 1961, Pavageau became the Eureka Brass Band grand marshal and played at Preservation Hall.
“A popular figure with a larger-than-life personality, Pavageau is often said to have been the most photographed musician at Preservation Hall during the 1960s,” 64 Parishes states. “As one writer at the time noted, ‘He does so many interesting things that everyone who has a camera wants his picture.’”
Pavageau died in New Orleans in 1969.
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