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Ed Penner also began his musical career as a violinist. From the mid-to-late '20s he studied violin, musical theory and also art. He abandoned the violin in 1930 and went to work as a staff artist with the Chicago Daily News. In 1935 he moved to California and became an artist and writer for Walt Disney Studios. Inevitably, he began to play jam sessions with the nucleus of the Firehouse Five Plus Two and joined the band, on bass sax, in 1949. He was on tuba by the time of the band's second recording date.16 Penner was not a virtuoso soloist, but played with a terrific beat and, consciously or not, his playing often resembled Dick Lammi's, with booming glissandos (as on the outchorus of the FH5's recording of San Antonio Rose17). Penner died suddenly in 1956 and his replacements in the Firehouse Five were, chronologically, Ralph "Zulu" Ball, then George Bruns and finally Don Kinch.
Published in the The Frisco Cricket, which is available when you Join the Foundation (only $25!).
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