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Taken from the book Recorded Jazz: A Critical Guide by Rex
Harris and Brian Rust.
Anthony Parenti was born into a New Orleans musical family and learned as a youngster to play various reed instruments. By the time he was a young man he had secured a job with Johnny De Droit's Jazz Orchestra, which was the first to play Jazz as we know it for the elite of New Orleans social functions. In 1924 he was leading his own band at La Vida, a resturant in his native city, and with this group he made his first records. He recorded occasionally, at least up to the Depression of the early thirties, which found him in New York, sitting in on recording dates with men such as the Dorsey Brothers and their associates. During the early forties he worked with Ted Lewis alongside Muggsy Spanier, and with Preacher Rollo and his Five Saints on M.G.M. Tony Parenti had a fluent clarinet tone that is more close to natural and legitimate than many of his colleagues. In his early records, the delicate lines were often lost in the recording of the ensemble, but later in his career he can be heard as a brilliant, tasteful soloist whose work is reminiscent of the Creole clarinetists Barney Bigard, Omer Simeon, and Albert Nicholas