Jazzman's Daughter at a Loss Over Sale
Memories: Chatsworth storage company auctions off the belongings of her late father, 'Kid' Ory, and she wants them back.
The Valley
May 20, 2001|PATRICIA WARD BIEDERMAN | TIMES STAFF WRITER
Babette Ory is beside herself.
The only child of legendary jazz trombonist Edward "Kid" Ory, she learned recently that personal effects of her late father, which she thought were safe in a Chatsworth storage facility, were sold at auction in March, because of unpaid rent.
"I went to do my income tax, and my bookkeeper said she thought I had been paying the rent," said Ory, 46, a chef who lives in Santa Monica.
"No questions asked," she said. "I just want to buy the stuff back." Ory said she contacted AAA Self Storage in the 9100 block of Jordan Avenue and was told by one of the staff that she had been sent certified letters, as required by law, telling her she owed back rent and, later, that the goods would be auctioned.
Woodland Hills attorney Vin Fichter, who represents AAA Storage, said, "There were many attempts made to notify her of this."
The certified letters were sent to Ory's last known address, Fichter said, as required by the Cal. Self-Service Storage Facility Act within the California Business and Professions Code, which deals with the legal obligations of storage facilities.
"There was no response, and there was no response to the many phone calls that were made," he said.
The rent on the unit was $68 a month, and the account was several months in arrears, Fichter said. Ory said she never received the correspondence.
Ory said she learned last week that the contents of the storage unit she first rented in 1988 had been auctioned off March 22. She said she asked for the name of the buyer but was told that the firm could not reveal that information.
Considered one of the fathers of New Orleans jazz, Ory is best known for composing "Muskrat Ramble" and for giving a teenage Louis Armstrong his first professional gig playing trumpet in Kid Ory's Brownskin Babies.
A Louisiana Creole whose first language was French, Ory began playing homemade instruments at the age of 10 and later performed in the sporting houses of Storyville, New Orleans's red-light district. Early in the 20th century, he left New Orleans for Southern California, where, in 1921, Kid Ory's Creole Jazz Band made the first recording by a black New Orleans jazz band.
"He would have been 115 this Christmas," Ory said of her father, who was 86 when he died in 1973.
BABETTE ORY MEMORABILIA
