'''Wilbur C. Sweatman''' (Brunswick,_Missouri, February_7 1882 - New_York_City March_9, 1961) was an African-American Ragtime and Jazz composer, bandleader, and Clarinetist. Sweatman started out playing Violin, then took up clarinet instead. He toured with circus bands in the late 1890s, and developed a famous act of playing three clarinets at once. He spent time playing with the bands of W.C._Handy and Mahara's_Minstrels. He led a dance band in Minneapolis,_Minnesota in 1902, where he made his first recordings on (now lost) phonograph cylinders that year or the following one. He wrote a number of rags, ''Down Home Rag'' being the most commercially successful. Sweatman moved to New York in 1913, where he became close friends with Scott_Joplin, and Joplin named Sweatman as executor of his estate in his will. Sweatman enjoyed popularity with both White and Black audiences in New York, and started issuing recordings in 1916 for Emerson_Records, then for Pathé. After the commercial success of the Original_Dixieland_Jass_Band the following year, Sweatman changed the sound and instrumentation of his band along the line of the early New_Orleans jazz bands such as the Original_Creole_Orchestra and the Original Dixieland Jass Band. Sweatman was the first African American to make recordings labeled as "Jass" and "Jazz". (Since Sweatman can be heard making melodic variations even in his 1916 recordings, it might be argued that Sweatman recorded an archaic type of jazz earlier than the Original Dixieland band.) Sweatman's was the leading jazz band for Columbia_Records until his popularity was surpassed by that of Ted Lewis. Sweatman opened the well known Harlem club '''Connie's Inn''' in 1923. He continued playing in New York through the early 1940s, then concentrated his efforts on the music publishing business. De:Wilbur_Sweatman Sweatman, Wilbur Sweatman, Wilbur Sweatman, Wilbur Sweatman, Wilbur Sweatman, Wilbur Sweatman, Wilbur