The Game Changer

by A. G. Lafley

  As we rode along we usually be drinking our corn, talking loud, jiving or playing our wind-up record players in the back. Oliver called it the “Red Light District” back there.

  On the outside of the bus was a big sign that read: “King Oliver and His New Orleans Creole Jazz Band.” When he worked New York it was called The Harlem Syncopators, but he used the other for this tour.

  Every place we went they put up sign posters with our picture on them and had advertisements in local newspapers.

  We usually opened a dance by playing live on the radio—they put a wire in those big halls and we broadcast all over. The program took a half hour and was transcribed. Then, about two weeks later, they put the transcription on the air to promote our return.

  We did that in Tulsa, Fort Worth, St. Joe, and other places. Sometimes they put on a radio show we did somewhere else, but made sure we didn’t play the same numbers at the dance. We did a lot of that.

  I never made a studio recording with King Oliver, although he wanted me to. That was before the tour, in February of 1931—to be second trombone with Jimmy Archey—but I didn’t take the date. So he got Benny Morton for the session. A lot of people tell me my style is similar to his.

  Morton had a good solo on I’m Crazy ’bout My Baby and after I got with the band, Oliver wanted me to play that exact solo just like the record. So I copied it note-for-note, and to this day people ask if that is me on the record. But it’s not.

  History books say Oliver’s last record session took place on April 15, 1931, in New York. Well, I heard that lie before. I was with Oliver in Wichita, Kansas, on that date, and pop did not leave us at any time to go any place. The recording was much earlier. I say sometime before I joined the band, maybe even 1930.

  His last recording was the one I was suppose to be on but wasn’t.

  Oliver was very critical about a lot of musicians. I heard him say that Fess Williams and Wilbur Sweatman, two highly rated jazzmen, sounded like a bunch of chickens.

  “Hell,” he told me, “if you put ’em both in a damn bag, take ’em out there in the ocean, and throw ’em in the water—I don’t know which one come up first.”

  He also did not like J. C. Higginbotham or Coleman Hawkins. Put Walter Wheeler and Castor McCord over Hawkins, and I did not think either of them blow as much as Hawkins. But to Oliver, they did.

  He always praised Fletcher Henderson but said someday young Duke Ellington get ahead of Henderson, that Ellington’s band was built a lot on the New Orleans style. He was crazy about Bob Holmes, but I never saw the day Bob Holmes play as much as Charlie Holmes, and Charlie couldn’t get a job with Oliver. I think Bob was from Jacksonville, Florida, and Charlie from Boston. They were not related.

  I often heard him say he liked Buddy Bolden. And that Keppard played more trumpet then he himself ever did, but everybody called Oliver the King. Said Keppard and him used to have horn battles back in New Orleans, sometimes for hours, and nobody ever gave up.

  He also liked Jimmy Archey and Big Charlie Green and idolized Louis Metcalf, I know that. But he did not like Johnny Dunn. He had his strong likes and dislikes.

  We had long, relaxed conversations during that tour. Many times while sitting out on the cool front porch at the Johnson Hotel down in Fort Worth, we talked about just everything. Like the time the Oklahoma musician’s union tried to keep us from returning to Tulsa. Or how worried we all were at that fancy white party in Vernon, Texas, just after the Klan lynched a colored man in the next town. I spoke to him about my family. He remembered his early times in New Orleans. And in Chicago. And New York.

  Told me about the time in 1927 when Irving Mills wanted to put him in the Cotton Club.

  “No damn people gonna build a band around me and I just front it.”

  There was few things we did not talk and laugh about. It was like talking to Papa again.

  One time late at night he heard a noise inside the hotel.

  “Who that?” he asked.

  “I didn’t hear nothin’,” I said.

  “Somebody go in your room.”

  I looked around in the hallway, but nobody was there. The next night we both heard the same noise.

  “Nobody gonna play tricks on this old nigger,” he grumbled as he went back to get his big .38. But he couldn’t find anybody either.

  When I told him about all the hants I known in my life, he only laughed. Later, when I asked the maid about the noises, she whispered about how Mrs. Johnson, some seven years before, shot her young lover and that he died right in front of that very room and they been hearing noises ever since. Oliver laughed again when I told him. But I didn’t.

  I can’t call all the things we spoke about, but I found him to be very open with me although sort of shy around other people. I think he had a inferiority complex.

  “Goddamn,” he say, “they only invite this black, ugly nigger to parties ’cause they know they get the whole damn band to come.”

  It was in Fort Worth that I met Barbara. After work, the band always went to eat at this colored after-hours restaurant. I usually had the house special—smothered steak with a couple vegetables. Cost all of thirty-five cents, including coffee and rolls, but the man let us have it cheaper because he drew a better class of business with us in there.

  Barbara followed me back to the restaurant from the Lakeworth Casino.

  “Man,” Oliver said, “she one good looking broad.”

  And I thought so too. Bobby, as I called her, lived in town and worked as a hairdresser in white beauty parlors. Had two years of college, and a young colored girl with that kind of schooling then was somebody. She could of been a teacher but didn’t have the patience.

  Bobby said she liked to be around musicians, liked our band, and especially liked me. I thought she was a hell of a gal, gave her my mother’s address, and they wrote long letters to each other. And to my sister, too.

  Oliver kept getting some repeat bookings around Fort Worth so I got to know her pretty good.

  When we got married in a civil ceremony about a month later, I knew I had myself a special woman. But the band kept moving around so I didn’t get to see her as often as I wanted.

  It was that western weather that finally caused me to quit Oliver. Hot in the summer and so very cold in the winter. In October, when pop told me he was extending the tour through the year, I wanted no part of it. I gave him my two-weeks’ notice.

  “Now, don’t be so damn sure,” he said, looking very serious. “Back when I played the riverboats, if a good musician wanted to quit, he goddamn have to slip off the job.”

  I asked why.

  “’Cause the old boat captain liable to frame you, say you stole somethin’, then make you sign a paper to keep working. If not, he put you in jail.”

  I looked at him.

  “But I don’t think I do that to you,” he laughed.

  Four weeks later, November 10, 1931, after the last set in Topeka, I came off the bandstand and extended my hand.

  “Well, son,” he said, “I damn well hate to see you go.”

  I thanked him, gripped his hand tightly, and looked straight in his face. He seemed sort of tired. I really hated to leave.

  “If those motherjammers in New York don’t treat you right,” he mumbled, “let me know and I’ll send you a ticket to come back.”

  I hesitated a little, then nodded, turned, and walked quickly away.

  Never saw pop again.

  16. Marion Hardy and His Alabamians, 1931–1932

  I kept writing to Bobby to come with me to New York, but she wrote back she meet me there later. Had some business to take care of, she said. So Freddie Moore and I took a bus out for New York.

  On the way, we stopped over in Harrisburg for a couple days. Tillie Vennie was working a dance at the Odd Fellows Hall the next night. She could not pay what Oliver did, but we took the job because she needed us.

  Shortly after I arrived in New York, Bobby came up. I was staying with my people b
ut got her a nice place in a uptown rooming house.

  I was happy we were back together again.

  Wasn’t but a short time she started running her mouth off. “Clyde,” she said, “why don’t you stay here in town regular and get yourself a day job?”

  That’s the way with some women. Get you in a come-on, say they like you as you are, and after they get you, try to make changes.

  “No, Bobby,” I said, “I’m a musician. That’s what I wanna do. Better get used to it.”

  Then lightly and politely she smiled. “Well, I guess I’m the luckiest girl in the whole world.”

  “Why’s that, Bobby?”

  “Because no other girl has two good husbands like I got.”

  I stood for a while and looked at her. I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t. When I finally realized what she said, I knew I been played for a sucker. I felt so very hurt knowing she lied to me, lied to the judge that married us, made a damn fool out of me. I was so ashamed that I never, ever, let my people know I was suppose to be married. Not even my mother.

  Deep down I really liked Bobby and couldn’t just put her down and walk out. So I came and went whenever I was in town but most of the time I didn’t know where the hell she was or what she was doing. We drifted apart in later years, and I heard she died in California in 1944.

  I had many girl friends since, some very compatible and some not worth two dead flies. But I never thought of marriage again. Never.

  Just before Thanksgiving of 1931 I went over to the New Amsterdam Club at 107 West 130th Street where Marion Hardy was trying out different trombone players.

  Hardy had a organized band he called his Alabamians. It had good readers that could play any rehearsed arrangement, had style and appearance. The band featured novelty, show, and entertaining songs as well as jazz numbers and special concertized pieces.

  Hardy used some hard arrangements by Benny Carter, the same ones Fletcher Henderson and Don Redman used. Also had a difficult Bob Sylvester arrangement on Rhapsody in Blue with about five manuscript sheets full of crescendos and decrescendos, different tempos, and all that stuff.

  This was new to me and I don’t mind saying, it stopped me cold. Hardy laughed, told me not to worry and go over it a few more times to get it under my fingers.

  Told me it stopped even the sharks. He meant trombones like J. C. Higginbotham, Lawrence Brown, Jack Teagarden. They were the sharks. Never considered myself one, just a regular player that could read, fake some, play a good solo—take care of business.

  Hardy once gave me a little background on the Alabamians. Said when they backed Blanche Calloway at Chicago’s Sunset Club, it was known as Lawrence Harrison’s Alabamians. He was the son of Richard B. Harrison, the great Negro stage actor in “The Green Pastures.” Blanche asked the club owner to give her brother Cab a chance—he was a strong singer, light-skinned, made a nice appearance, and had good hair. When Cab got in there, those people went crazy over him. So they fired the regular singer, Roscoe Simmons. I heard Simmons got hot and jumped Cab and gave him a hell of a fight.

  After Cab got in, he began directing certain band numbers, clowning around, jumping and shouting while he sang. Soon it was Lawrence Harrison that got fired, and Cab took over. Marion Hardy—he was a sideman then—became the real leader because he was the coolest one there, very quiet and conservative. But Cab was the front.

  I remember seeing them in the Savoy Ballroom in 1929 billed as Marion Hardy and His Alabamians, featuring Cab Calloway. They were advertised as having a Battle of Music with Lockwood Lewis and the Missourians. Lewis was a very popular entertainer at the Savoy, but nobody knew nothing about Cab.

  We all went up to see Lockwood teach the new boy a lesson, but it was the other way around. Cab had salesmanship that was out of this world—got up in his slick white tux, waved his long baton, tossed his head, let his hair fly around—and the audience just went wild. When he sang Minnie the Moocher, his jiving, smooth walking, and shouting just upset the Savoy.

  The Alabamians won the battle that day, and it was the making of Cab Calloway. Cab left the band after that and Sonny Nichols took over fronting. Later, Cab got hired by the Missourians and Lockwood Lewis got let go.

  When I got with the Alabamians late in November, Jack Butler was on first trumpet—he was known as Jacques after he went to Paris; Walter “Jock” Bennett was on second with some singing; Artie Starks, from Fort Worth, first alto and clarinet; and Warner Seals, tenor and some singing. Seals was always clowning around, carrying on, talking foolish at times, making the guys laugh. But he was a nice guy.

  Ralph Anderson, a good reader, was on piano; Charles “Fat Man” Turner, who later opened his own Fatman’s Club in Harlem, bass fiddle; Arnold Boling, drums; Leslie Quarles from Texas but looked Mexican, on guitar; and Sonny Nichols, front man and singer. Marion Hardy was third alto—he could read anything but was not a good soloist.

  Man, that was one entertaining band. We used to do a number, Oh Lord, Oh Lord, Let Me See the Light Again. All the light got put off and Sonny Nichols sang under a single spot. The band had on radium gloves, and we chanted in the dark while our radium-lit hands moved in circles and back and forth in rhythm. It was a heck of a specialty for a theater and always went over big.

  When we worked the Lafayette, we did a funny bit where Hardy came out dressed as a handkerchief-head mammy and Seals the old pappy. One of the guys was suppose to be their daughter in a tight, short skirt and blonde wig. The band rolled its pants up and were the “children.”

  I think the song was called Lackawanna. We all chorus, “Hello ma, hello pa,” and Hardy and Seals answer in song. Then we chorus questions about Lackawanna and they answer again. The “daughter” kept wiggling and smiling all the time. Finally, “pa” ask her if she been good in Lackawanna.

  Taking out a fat roll of bills she squealed, “Pappy, with a roll like this, you gotta be damn good in Lackawanna.”

  We did that specialty in New York when we worked six weeks in the Florentine Grill of the Park Central Hotel and got loud laughs. Noble Sissle picked the Alabamians to replace his band there, and we broadcast live coast-to-coast over WEAF in the evenings and WMCA at night.

  For a little over a month we worked the Arcadia Ballroom, Broadway and 53d, right across from the Broadway Theater. Then the Renaissance Casino, alternating with Vernon Andrade’s orchestra. We also played the Savoy Ballroom and the Lafayette, where we knocked them out with our Rhapsody in Blue arrangement.

  Some time in the spring of 1932, Walter Bennett and I went down to the Wurlitzer Music Store on West 42d Street, off Sixth Avenue. They had a recording booth in the back and I thought I might make a demonstration record to see how my voice sounded. Bennett also played damn good piano and backed me for the session. The studio and a two-sided disc cost me about three bucks.

  I did two numbers: Some of These Days, that I sang with Oliver’s band, and Waitin’ for the Evenin’ Mail, a hot blues Sissle and Blake used to do.

  The record sounded better then I thought it would. I took the demo home and played it over and over on my record player, then tossed it in the drawer.

  The most unusual gig I ever had took place in May of 1932. Marion Hardy got some of the boys together one day.

  “Fellows,” he smiled. “I got a great job lined up next week.” I always liked great jobs. “We booked for the ‘Lucky Strike Cigarette’ radio show!” That did sound good. “But,” he added, “we not broadcasting from the studio, we gonna be up in a airplane flying around over New York.”

  Now, that scared the living hell out of me. Yes, sir. I never been in a airplane and told him he would definitely, definitely have to get someone else in my place. No way would I go up.

  When my mother heard I turned the job down and it paid thirty-two dollars, I thought she take a switch to me again.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said. “People all scuffling for jobs, men in bread lines, and my boy turning down work.”
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br />   “But Mama,” I said, “I could die on this job.”

  “Nobody dying until He want you to die—then nothing you can do about it.”

  So I went up in this little old single prop airplane that didn’t hold but twenty-six people. Hardy had a few other guys up there that day. I saw Doc Cheatham on trumpet; Craig Watson, alto; Leroy Harris, another alto; and Mack Walker on bass. The rest was the regular guys: Hardy, Jack Butler, Warner Seals, Arnold Boling, Leslie Quarles, and Ralph Anderson on a little piano.

  I was nervous as hell and everybody else seemed to be shaking and sweating, too. We went up so high I was afraid to look outside. Then the light plane hit a air pocket and drop two hundred feet down and then shoot right back up again, maybe three hundred feet. Oh Lord, I knew it was my time for sure.

  A space been cleared, and we sat on folding chairs around a single standing floor mike while the engineers gave us instructions. I tried to play the parts but my tongue kept getting in the way.

  After about two hours of sweating and struggling, I was happy to see the plane landing—but the man said it was all just a balance test and the live show was in a few hours.

  I had to do it all over again.

  After a nervous wait, we took off from Newark Airport and circled over Manhattan. I peeped out the window this time and saw what looked like little toy trains going back and forth in the dark. The plane went up higher and higher and then the announcer came on.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said in the floor mike, “we are broadcasting high over the Metropolitan area of downtown New York. Marion Hardy and his Alabamians are up here circling twenty thousand feet in the air, and all the boys seem to be smiling and nobody’s scared.”

  He was telling all those sweet lies about us. I been scared for a week and when he said that, I felt worse.

  “This,” he continued, “is the first coast-to-coast remote ever broadcast from an airplane to be heard by radio all over the great United States, from Canada to Florida, from New York to sunny California.”

  I heard later some foreign countries picked up the program, also.