Charles Edward Kerr


Charlie Kerr was an American jazz drummer who led a jazz orchestra bearing his name in Philadelphia beginning in the early 1920s. In 1922, Kerr led orchestra in the first radio remote broadcast of a dance in history from the Café L'Aiglon, Philadelphia, via WIP radio. Throughout the 1930s, his orchestra continued broadcasting on stations WFI and WLIT, which merged as WFIL in 1935. During the summers of the 1930, through World War II years, his orchestra performed in Cape May City, New Jersey.
Kerr retired from music in the late 1940s and opened his own furniture store in Miami.

Members of the Charlie Kerr Orchestra

In 1918, Charlie married Edna VanDusen Kerr . They had two children, Harry Nagle Kerr, D.O. and Edward Allison Kerr.
Charlie’s parents, Henry Nagle Kerr and Mary Emma Kerr were married in 1889.