Short Takes : Jazz Guitarist Barker Honored

Guitarist and author Danny Barker has been named a 1991 Master of Jazz by the National Endowment for the Arts.

“It’s really something exciting,” Barker said Saturday. “For folks like me, music is like water: You can’t live without it.”

Barker, who still performs weekends in the French Quarter, turns 82 Sunday and will receive $20,000 that day at a ceremony in Washington.

“Danny’s musicianship is beyond question,” said Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. “But even more impressively, he’s taken it upon himself to educate the young musicians and keep the jazz tradition alive.”

Barker played with jazz bands in the 1920s and ‘30s, recorded albums with his wife, blues singer Louisa (Blue Lu) Barker, and performed with the big bands of Cab Calloway and others. He also played with Louis Armstrong.