Dick Wellstood was a boogie-woogie and stride pianist in the 1940s and
performed with amateur and professional Dixieland groups with reed
artist
Bob Wilber, touring Europe with him in 1952. He played under the
leadership of
Sidney Bechet during the same time period before entering law
school in 1953. While in school, he performed intermittently with
Roy Eldridge and
Conrad Janis's Tailgate Five, and for the next decade he played
in New York City as a pianist for swing and Dixieland musicians such as
'Henry "Red" Allen',
Coleman Hawkins,
Wild Bill Davis,
Vic Dickenson, and
Buster Bailey. He toured South
America and Israel with
Gene Krupa's quartet in 1965-66 before
concentrating on a career as a solo pianist. A brilliant scholar who
was fluent in Latin, he was admitted to the bar but didn't practice law
until the 1980s. Dick was at a gig in Palo Alto, California when he
died suddenly of heart complications.