by A. G. Lafley
We traveled on and on playing mostly black one-nighters like the Black Club Resort near Gary, Indiana; The Wisconsin Roof Garden Ballroom in Kenosha, Wisconsin; The Oasis Ballroom in Michigan City, Indiana; and Augustus Holtzcamp’s Dancehall near Terre Haute, Indiana. We also played the University of Indiana and stayed right there on campus. We continued through to Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, and Kentucky. From nice ballrooms down to low dives. Right into the winter months when things got worse.
I guess I had no sense to mind all this—it was hard, but I was young and adventurous. The truth was, I didn’t know any better. Everything was one big thrill, lots of laughs. When we drove up to the colored dancehall with our raggity luggage piled high, steam coming out the radiator, and all our black shadows packed tight behind those isinglass flaps, we all treated as heroes. We might of looked like a band of gypsies, but it was just like a trademark. We loved it.
The smiling, young women all come around and follow after us. Offer money. Food. Wanting dates. Some catch the train to the next town and meet us there with a boarding-house room reservation. I sure got lots of experience with that band.
Charlie Grear and his Ramblers was just a little, jumped-up band, a bunch of young black kids blowing and clowning, booting hell out of their instruments. Old Slim Jackson sit up there with his big, flappy feet going fast, just like a machine. Be blowing and stomping until the people got to laughing. Then lay on his back playing his horn and break up the house. Montgomery Morrison took very fast bass tuba solos, more then a lot of trumpet players could do. Between those two blowers, the band always tore things up. And those black customers out on the dance floor would just shake their butts.
We played everything that was popular then and featured Ain’t She Sweet and Someday Sweetheart. Copied Snag It just like King Oliver played it on his record. Also did Where Shall I Go When I Go Where I Go?, a number Hattie Snow sang in clubs as The Song of the Wanderer.
Grear’s Original Midnight Ramblers at the Oasis Ballroom, Michigan City, Ind., July 1927. Left to right: Clyde Bernhardt (tb), John F. Splawn (tp), Montgomery Morrison (tuba), Joe Branch (tp), Shorty Johnson (d), Paul Easley (bjo), Hilary Price (p), Charles C. Grear (as/cl/ldr), Johnny Jackson (ts/cl), Jimmy Cole (as/cl).
Most of the time fights always seemed to break out in the places we went. Lots of hell raising—never knew what would happen in those small out-of-the-way halls.
Once we worked some roadside joint out in Indiana. Just about closing time this heavy black gal appeared. She was as wide as she was tall. Had on a big cowboy hat, a old work shirt, and men’s dirty overalls held up by a pair of red suspenders. Stood back there in the doorway stomping road mud off her boots, complaining like hell about paying the admission charge.
“Hope you boys as good as they say you are,” she grumbled.
“We gonna play our closing number now,” Grear said.
“Say what?”
“Aw mama, it’s 2 in the morning and we been on since 8 last night. Give us a break.”
“I don’t give a sheet if you all playing since last Tuesday. I paid the man a dollar fifty to get in and I damn well better get my money’s worth.”
“We quiting out after this number.”
“The hell you are.”
Before we knew it, out comes this long, black revolver from somewhere down inside her overalls. BANG! BANG! BANG! and all the lights go out. Like a flash, the ten of us jump up and leap out the back window into the cornfield. Morrison still had his big tuba wrapped around himself and was first out. We all landed running and never did play that last number.
We laid off in Indianapolis because Grear was sick, so I went over to the Booker T. Washington Theater on Indiana Avenue to see the Bessie Smith “Harlem Frolics” show. Fred Longshaw was the pianist and leader of her six-piece jazz group.
Before the show I went backstage to see the band. Longshaw heard me with the Ramblers and said Bessie was looking for a new trombone player. Just then, Bessie came in and asked me to join the show. For a few minutes, I saw big things happening for me with her troupe: Clyde Barnhardt working for the greatest blues singer of the time.
Then I thought of Grear, who was sick, the dates we still had to make, and my promise to finish his tour. I turned Bessie Smith down.
I went out front, sat down, and watched the show. Even imagined seeing myself there in the pit, working in her band. But I told the famous singer no.
I regretted that decision to this very day.
Wasn’t to see Bessie again for many years. That was up at Aunt Emma’s house on 133d Street in New York. She was the first cousin to Bessie’s husband, Jack Gee. Bessie was staying at the Olga, Harlem’s leading black hotel, but was renting a room at my aunt’s. Bessie called it her “quiet place.”
I was there for a birthday party and saw her give Aunt Emma a thousand dollars to hold because she was going out to a hot poker game.
“Don’t gimme it back,” she said, “even if I holler.”
It wasn’t long before Bessie was back, hollering—she lost her playing money and needed more. Aunt Emma let her have a hundred, and I never did see her again that day.
But let me get back to Grear and the boys. Everything about him and his band was not all laughs. Many times I noticed things that bothered hell out of me. Some of his guys was smart alecks—thought they knew everything. Come out of the five and dime store with pockets filled with soap, shoe laces, and other stuff I knew damn well they didn’t pay for. When I asked about it, they only laughed, called me dummy, said there was something wrong with me. I wasn’t raised like that and didn’t take to that dirty business, no how.
One time, we had a blowout near Louisville and pulled off near some white people’s house. As we patched the tire, Jimmy Cole noticed a clothesline in the backyard.
“Man, looka that sharp tie hangin’ on the line.”
“Yeah,” said Grear, “ain’t but one light in the house.”
“Wouldn’t be much to sneak over and slip off with it.”
I was scared. “Don’t do it Jimmy, don’t do it,” I said.
“They ain’t got no dog,” he said, brushing me aside.
“They’ll catch you,” I pleaded. “We all be put on the gang. Please don’t do it.”
He laughed, ran over, grabbed the tie, and we all roared away. I knew then this band was going to come to no good. God punishes the bad. It was Jimmy Cole got burnt up in 1940 with Walter Barnes in that Natchez club fire, and was not surprised when I heard the news.
But this problem of Grear deducting for this and deducting for that was the worst. Never knew what some of the ducts were for, there was so many. Guys usually had no money left to buy food after his ducts came out, but Grear was always ready with a excuse, tears coming to his eyes while he explained. He was a smooth, sweet-talker.
We were supposed to work on a percentage of the door with a guarantee of twelve dollars per job if they had no cover. All over twelve dollars we promised 50 percent of gross. On every job we played, the place be packed but when it come time to pay us, there was not much to go around. And after Grear finished with his ducts, I got maybe two dollars.
If he was short-changing us, he did it very smooth.
When we worked a long stay at Bill Boswell’s Paradise Club in South Bend, Indiana, Mr. Boswell let me work in his restaurant during the day for a few extra dollars.
That’s when one of the strangest things that ever happened to me, happened.
One day this man comes in the restaurant and sits down. I kept looking at him, because I was sure I met him before. He was a brownskin American Indian, had black hair, a high-bridge nose, and beady eyes. Every time I look around, those beady eyes was staring at me.
“Where’s the regular waiter?” he asked, staring at me again.
His voice even sounded familiar. I was positive I knew the man, but although my memory is good, just couldn’t call his name.
After I quit work I was still wondering. It was b
eginning to work my mind when later that night, it struck me. And then a cold chill went up my back. It was the very same Indian I seen in my dreams back when my Papa was sick some fifteen years before! It was him exactly, no doubt about it.
“I will admit,” he said the next day, “I think I met you someplace before also.”
He didn’t seem surprised about my story at all. Told me about what happened to him in 1915, about the very time my Papa died—how he been poisoned and declared dead, and the bad Galveston flood came up some twenty-five miles away that kept him from being buried. Then, after three days stretched out with mourners all about, he woke up with the memory of being in Galveston helping to rescue women and children.
“Life certainly is mysterious,” was all he could say.
His name was John Sol and we got to be friends. I often helped him write letters to a lady in town he later married. And every time I returned to South Bend, I stopped in to visit him and his wife. We remained friends for years.
I never told anybody I met John Sol in my dreams back when I was a little boy, because they liable to think I was crazy or telling a lie. But it happened just that way. Yes it did.
Most of the boys in Grear’s Midnite Ramblers came from Virginia, West Virginia, and other southern places. They thought Grear was just a yellow Jesus—anything he said was gospel. I never did believe his hard-luck stories, and John Splawn didn’t neither. But we kept our mouths shut, just went along, and even after I quit the band, still didn’t say nothing.
That happened when we returned to Huntington to play a double homecoming dance at the fancy Prichard Hotel on Christmas Day, 1927.
The place was sold out. Must have been at least a thousand people there. The dance promoter, Mr. Sylvester Massey, told us Fletcher Henderson worked that hotel and we out drew him.
We played the early dance from three in the afternoon till seven that night and were preparing for the late show. I was getting out my instrument when suddenly the place filled up with bulls. The police. And they looked mean. A few even had their pistols drawn and were coming up on the bandstand.
“Don’t take nothin’ out of here,” the white officer shouted.
They were all over us, grabbing at our instruments.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” somebody hollered.
“We not gonna have trouble with you boys, are we?” he said, raising his club.
They were pushing, talking loud and nasty. People all started coming around to see what was happening. I was getting embarrassed. This was the finest white ballroom in Huntington. Somebody put his hand on my horn.
“Hold it!” I said. I must have looked like I meant it.
“This your instrument, boy?”
“Yes sir.”
“Where’d you buy it at?”
“It was at J. H. Troupe’s Music Store on Market Street in Harrisburg.” I spoke nice and calm. And plain. Then I opened my wallet and pulled out the receipt. Something always told me to carry my receipt.
The policeman took it and passed it around to the other officers. “Alright, boy, hold on to it.” He handed it back and walked away.
I found out later what this was all about. Some of the boys got their instruments on credit in Huntington and hadn’t been paying on them. And Grear was one of the boys.
So the man just came in and took them all back, right in the middle of the dance. Mr. Massey was doggone mad and promised to pay all the money owed the next day if the police let the dance go on. Everyone respected Mr. Massey. He was a light-skin colored man and was known all over town. Even the bulls called him Mr. Massey.
So he guaranteed payment and the late dance went on as scheduled, 9 to 2 A.M.
The next day Mr. Massey paid for everything, but it was with all our money for the dance. Nobody ever saw a penny for the nine-hour gig. The band broke up after that.
Grear was crooked as a barrel of snakes.
8. Henry P. McClane’s Society Orchestra, 1928
The best dance orchestra in Huntington, West Virginia, was rated to be Henry McClane’s Society Orchestra. He was a wealthy black man about forty years old, well respected, owned four homes, and was considered class. Had at least two or three years of college. His wife, Minnie, was a music teacher. Although McClane was a good concert violinist, he never played in his orchestra—just managed the business.
After I quit the Ramblers, I heard that McClane wanted me for some good New Year’s jobs coming up. He was living in his nine-room house at 803 Seventh Avenue and nearly died laughing when I told him about Grear’s ducts. Said I had nothing to worry about with him—he paid what he promised.
Also said if I stayed in Huntington and worked his jobs, I could live and eat at his home with some of the other guys, and wouldn’t charge me nothing. That sounded good.
We rehearsed right there in his big front room overlooking a large porch where the wooden swing was. Sometimes we worked all day getting down a hard number, and he have to stop us, we worked so hard. But it paid off.
McClane’s Society Orchestra played three or four nights a week, sometimes five, in and out of Huntington. I was getting eight dollars a night and got what he promised every time. Sometimes we went out working clubs in Ohio and Kentucky, but only in the best rooms, many of them private. Like that big millionaires’ club that sat high on top of a mountain. That was very private. And very white.
Some weeks we came back and worked three nights at the Prichard Hotel, where I kept hoping Mr. Massey would not call the bad time I had with Grear.
McClane was one of the best band leaders I ever worked for. Treated me just like family, in fact often called me “son.” Put me up in a large upstairs room with some of the other fellows, and I ate Minnie’s good cooking right there with him every day. All I had to do was pay for my laundry, and the lady that did that lived a few doors away, charging me fifty cents regardless of how much I had.
The orchestra had McClane’s younger brother Freddy—he looked like a Mexican—playing banjo and calling numbers; Montgomery Morrison played fast bass tuba; and Frank Fairfax, a college man, was second bass horn and trumpet. Ed Belton on first alto and Walter Minor—he was out of the TOBA—on tenor. Edwin Black was the other alto.
Henry McClane was one of the best band leaders I ever worked for. (Photo courtesy of Frank Driggs collection.)
Thomas Grider took feature trumpet. Everybody called him Sleepy because he nodded off just about anyplace, sometimes during a number. But he was wide awake when it was time for his solo. There was also Lloyd Saunderland, a sensational drummer, and Jack Mayes, piano and musical director.
McClane handled the bookings, made all arrangements, and usually sat nearby while we played.
We worked a lot of social clubs, society affairs, and high class parties, both black and white. McClane’s book had many heavy jazz numbers such as Black Maria, Beau Koo Jack, and Brainstorm. Whites loved to dance to real black music, and the class colored dancers wanted hot, lively music. Sometimes as a gag I would slip my shoe off and take a couple solos with my toe working the slide. I saw Claude Jones of the Synco Septet do that back in 1923 and all those funny minstrels, years before that. The people all laughed, crowded around, stopped dancing. It was quite a novelty but I quit bothering with it because my slide kept getting out of line.
Other times I would scat a chorus of Mississippi Mud—I liked that number—get up with this old megaphone and sing like Louis Armstrong when he was with Fletcher. Even bought a A-flat harmonica and learned to play a jazz solo on Tiger Rag. McClane was good that way. Never held his men back.
He ordered his music and stock arrangements from Feist & Feist of New York City, the same as Odie Cromwell did. Sometimes we alternated with big-name bands from Detroit and New York, and that gave me confidence because I noticed they be playing the same stock arrangements as McClane.
This was a good reading band. If you didn’t read by 1927 or 1928, you got left out. No place for you in a good-quality band. Even the stoc
k arrangements of 1928 was different then four years before, and the pressure was starting to hit nonreaders hard.
When Jimmy Harrison went with Fletcher Henderson, he wasn’t up on his reading and Fletcher had to let him go. But Jimmy got wise, went to the woodshed, came back reading, and got with Henderson again.
Even the advertisements in the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier warned you: Get wise and learn to read or by next year you won’t have your job. And that was the truth.
One time McClane alternated with the Lloyd and Cecil Scott band. Cecil remembered me when I was a kid in ’23 standing next to his band with my mouth open. He was surprised to see me working with McClane after only five years.
Trombonist Dicky Wells was now with Cecil. Bill Coleman was on trumpet. They asked why I didn’t come to New York.
“Kid, you gonna miss out on a whole lot of stuff,” Coleman said.
“I don’t think I can play good enough for New York,” I said shyly.
“You kiddin’?” he laughed. “You not Dicky Wells but you read better’n a whole lot of them cats working steady in New York.”
I thought they telling me a whole bunch of lies. But I did know no matter how much money a musician made working country towns, New York City was where the big names were. You had to be someone to get there.
Sometimes I wrote my uncle in New York and say I’m coming up. He always said to wear my Sunday suit because it was not right to come out on the streets of New York with old clothes on. Even musicians in Harrisburg used to tell me I couldn’t get a job up there unless I had a new tuxedo.
When we went to Cincinnati on a job, I bought myself two new tuxedo suits: a black single-breasted and a midnight blue, double. These were good suits. I paid twenty dollars apiece for them—the same kind that was selling for thirty to thirty-five dollars in New York and maybe fifty dollars in Harrisburg. I wore those tuxes often with McClane because the band always had to look class.