The Game Changer

by A. G. Lafley

  We played up there in the dark sky for about two hours, alternating with Rudy Vallee and his Connecticut Yankees that was safely down in the studio. The announcer also gave the names of everyone in the band.

  The next day all the musicians in Harlem and all my friends said they heard the show, and everybody kept talking about it for weeks. I was glad I played that broadcast after I played it.

  We also worked many one-nighters out of town, barnstorming in a private bus. Played the college circuit like Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and Keystone College in Pennsylvania. There was a good two-month stay at the Fawn Barn Club at Lake Placid, New York, late in 1932, another class A place, catering only to rich white people, the very wealthy. We got fifty-five dollars a week there, plus room and board.

  By this time Hardy had replaced drummer Arnold Boling, who left to go with Lucky Millinder, with Tiny Bradshaw and featured him on vocals; Craig Watson, a good alto and clarinet, took over regular for Starks; Don Christian replaced Jack Butler; John Swan for Walter Bennett; and a good bass player, Olin Aderhold, came in for Charley Turner.

  The Alabamians was one of the many bands then that carried a state or city name. And like so many others—none of us was from Alabama.

  Once, when we played a private dance in York, Pennsylvania, this white man walks up to the bandstand—had Alabama written all over him. Spoke very slowly.

  “Where . . . yawl . . . from?” he drawled.

  “We booked out of New York, but the band organized in Chicago,” Hardy said politely.

  “Yawl one of them Yankee bands?”

  “We play all over the South,” he lied.

  “How many of yawl in here from Alabama?” Nobody answered. “I said, how many of yawl in here from Alabama?” We weren’t about to say anything. “Yawl got the name Alabamians and I want to know who they are!”

  By now we were scared to say no, and scared to say yes. The man was getting angry. He pulls out this fat roll of big bills and holds it up.

  “Whoever here from Alabama gonna get ten dollars,” he shouted.

  Everyone raised his hand. Somebody raised both hands.

  “I don’t know why,” he said as he passed the money among us, “so many damn colored boys ashamed to admit they all from the South. Just give ’em some money and they fess up fast.”

  I stayed with the band for over a year. Hardy was a wonderful guy, just like a big brother and very friendly. He was stocky built and fat, a brownskin man born in St. Louis, Missouri. Told me when he was a teenager, he was in Mexico fighting Pancho Villa.

  When the band laid off, I played some pickup one-nighters with Sid Watson, Milton Cole, Alfonzo Steele, and even Cecil Scott when he had some work.

  One time, Ellsworth Reynolds had this black band on a white theater show in New York and needed a fill-in. The band all dressed to look like Arabs, and when I went backstage to audition, the first thing he did was look me close in the face. Up and down.

  “Sorry,” he said, “you take too long to lighten up.”

  I didn’t get the job.

  17. Billy Fowler and His Society Orchestra, 1932–1933

  Billy Fowler was a terrific alto and clarinet player and a handsome-looking guy in front of a band. As far as complexion was concerned, he was so light many whites used to ask if he was Jewish and thought he was just passing for colored. But I only went by what he said, and he said he was black.

  I first saw Fowler when he came through Harrisburg in ’26 working in Mary Strain’s package show.

  I joined him in September of 1932 after he was in France about three years and came back to form this new group. He usually had about twelve to fifteen men and billed as a society orchestra. Can’t call everybody, but Fowler was on reeds. Jack Butler, Cliff Bryant (in later years he dropped the t), and Gus Aiken was all on trumpet. Butler also did some singing.

  Leslie Carr, from Louisville, Kentucky, took first alto and vocals—he used to copy his singing after Russ Columbo; Herbert Johnson was tenor; Lionel Nepton from Oliver’s band, string bass; and Egbert Victor—we called him Sharkey—on piano. Man, he was a shark—could play a whole lot of piano. Wherever he played, people sure knew he was there.

  There was another boy by the name of Blunt that played tenor. Can’t call his first name. Drummer Herb Cowens, who I worked with in 1928, did specialty songs—especially a funny imitation of the famous black pantomimist, Johnny Hudgins. Clarence Holiday, Billie Holiday’s father, came in on guitar later.

  Bandleader Billy Fowler was a damn good director and could bring a band through most any type of show. (Photo courtesy of Frank Driggs collection.)

  For a time, Fowler backed Fats Waller at four different ballrooms in New York’s Astor Hotel and on other jobs until Fats formed his own band. We be billed as Fats Waller and band under the direction of Billy Fowler.

  Even though this was still Prohibition time, Fats never had to worry about drinks when we worked downtown. Always a big table in the bandroom lined up with all kinds of Canadian whiskey, scotch, gin, everything. Don’t know where it came from, but it was always there.

  Fowler was a damn good director and could bring a band through most any type of show. Once we were rehearsing in the upstairs hall next to the Lafayette when the famous Maceo Thomas, of Chilton and Thomas, walked in. He was all excited. Said our music caught his ear as he passed by and wanted us for his first Lafayette date on February 18 next. Benny Carter’s band been booked, but Thomas let them go.

  We often went downtown to work good-paying jobs in those private mansions on Fifth Avenue and also Park Avenue. We arrive in tuxedos and set up in the parlor. The guests wore the latest-styled fashions all the magazines wrote about.

  The homes was decorated expensively, and there was always servants around to keep things going, serving the finest delicacies and mixed drinks. Some of those wealthy families was Irish, some Jewish and Italian.

  We played plenty of hot music, more then we would at a hotel dance where people often just sat and ate. We played what they wanted, and Leslie Carr maybe sing something like When Irish Eyes Are Smiling or we play ’O Sole Mio to make them happy. Those fancy socials was something else again—nothing but the best.

  There might of been a depression going on, but it was going on someplace else.

  Fowler was a good guy to work for, but he had a sweet line of jive that sometimes got too slick. Like the time we auditioned in some downtown place. Nobody was there, but he told us some big shot white man was listening to us on a wire in a hotel room across the street. We played about six numbers, then Fowler went out, and when he came back, said we didn’t get the job. Wasn’t but a few weeks later I heard our numbers playing on this radio show.

  See, we all dumb, didn’t know we made a transcription that was put in a commercial. Of course, the only guy got paid for the records was Billy Fowler. He was a slicker, not as slippery as Charlie Grear, but he had his habits.

  Advertisement for Billy Fowler’s orchestra at the Lafayette Theater, New York City, for the week of Feb. 18, 1933.

  I loved my music so much I often worked jobs on my night off. One was in the spring of 1933 when I went up to the Cotton Club to take Henry “Red” Hicks’ place in the Mills Blue Rhythm Band. Red been working a seven-nights-a-week schedule, and his lip fell out.

  It was the only time I ever played the famous club. Ethel Waters was appearing in her “Stormy Weather Revue” and just wowed the audience. Mae Diggs, a Creole from New Orleans, was suppose to sing, but Ethel didn’t allow her, so she did a dance routine and talked her music. Pete Peaches and Duke was the class-act dancers on the show, and the great precision dancers, the Cotton Club Boys, was also on the bill. Winnie Johnson and Lena Horne was some of the show-girl models—they just walked the stage looking beautiful in their slim, flashy gowns. Lena wasn’t but sixteen.

  Fowler often worked split weeks in RKO theaters in New York and New Jersey, playing behind vaudeville acts like Moms Mabley and Amanda Randolph. W
e played off and on in white theaters in Trenton, Asbury Park, Engelwood, Teaneck, and through New Jersey until April when Fowler decided to disband and move to Akron, Ohio. I heard he became a town alderman.

  I gigged around New York for a few months, taking some one-night pickup work with Cass Carr, Earle “Nappy” Howard, and Edgar Dowell.

  And I did my share of house-rent parties, too.

  Rent parties, chitlin’ struts, or breakdowns as some called them, was popular in Harlem and other places where times was hard.

  The landladies pass the word around, sometimes even print a little card to let everybody know a food party was going on at a certain apartment, maybe a walk-up or brownstone. A couple tables and chairs be set up in the front room and everybody came from all over to get at the great Southern food just waiting to be tasted. Was as good as any restaurant in Harlem. People paid for what they ate and drank, and that went to help pay the rent and other expenses.

  Those women were mostly old Southerners that was used to serving large families. They cook chitlin’s, blackeyed peas, rice, candied sweet potatoes, boiled pigs feet, barbecued spare ribs, sauerkraut, and pigs’ knuckles—fresh or smoked—turnip or collard greens, and cornbread. And plenty of bootleg whiskey, hard-cutting corn, home brew, and root beer.

  They charged fifty cents a huge meal, and the landlady still made a profit. In those days, she could go out and buy pigs’ feet for five cents a pound, and spare ribs three pounds for twenty-five cents. You could do a lot with your money in the early thirties. If you had any.

  People didn’t go to rent parties unless they brought their appetite with them. Some ate as much as three of those fifty-cent orders. Oh Lord, could they pack it in.

  Most of the time they had dancing also. Musicians came over or they got hired. Never over four pieces—a piano, sax, trombone, and drums, and if they put in a trumpet, it was muted. The job didn’t pay a hell of a lot, maybe five dollars for the night and all we could eat and drink.

  Sometimes the party start about eight at night—go right through to the next morning. It was always crowded. People wait on line until one came out, so the next could get in. The lines go all the way downstairs and spill out in the street.

  Upstairs, everybody was squeezing around, eating, drinking, dancing between tables, through the rooms, in the kitchen. I rarely saw any fights. Oh, some of them old notoriety women with a couple drinks in them let their hair down and raise all hell. Or maybe a guy be feeling happy, jump up on the table, and mess up all the food.

  Many white gals out of the big downtown shows always came in. So did some of them Park Avenue swells. Taxi cabs pulling up, some limousines. Many black servants that knew what was happening uptown might bring in seven or eight of their white bosses.

  But those parties was illegal, and if you didn’t slip the cop on the beat his twenty to look the other way, he come and raid the place. Then you saw all those dignitaries in tails and top hats, their ladies in evening gowns with diamonds and furs being loaded in the old patrol wagon and taken away.

  We just minded our business. But it was always good for a laugh.

  18. Ira Coffey and His Walkathonians, 1933–1934

  Walter E. Tebbett produced a walkathon that was a popular kind of presentation during the tough Depression years. Was like a dance marathon, only the contestants walked around and around on a circular track until everybody fell out except the last couple. Then they got a prize.

  Tebbett went from city to city and used only locals for his walkathon. It was great fun and entertainment for the many people that needed smiles so badly.

  Ira Coffey had a little six-piece group and worked the walkathon exclusively—was Tebbett’s right-hand man. On the recommendation of Marion Hardy, Coffey hired me, and we all took off for Atlantic City, New Jersey.

  Coffey was no heck of a jazz pianist but could play behind a singer. Edgar Battle was on trumpet and did some singing—we called him Pudding Head, I don’t know why. Norman Mason was alto and Edmund Duff, a light-skinned boy out of Chicago, was tenor and Red Saunders, drums.

  The walkathon opened at the Convention Hall on July 4, 1933. On the first day, the union delegate came in and gave Tebbett a bad time. Didn’t want no black band in Convention Hall, he said. The union was all-white, the management was white, the production was white, and the walkers didn’t take to blacks walking alongside of them, either. So I was not surprised.

  But Tebbett was allowed to keep Coffey because he was the musical director and knew the cues. We all got our two-weeks’ lay-off notice that first day, and white musicians took over under Coffey. Some whites wouldn’t work with him, so they got others that would.

  So I came back to New York and did pickup weekends with Milton Cole, a good pianist. Sid Stratton was well-known in the Jersey area, and we also did some club work together. I took whatever I could, never had no problems making a week’s salary.

  During that time I also got a week with the Whitman sisters at the Lafayette. New York local 802 required the sisters to hire four extra musicians, and Mae was glad I contacted her for the job.

  The Whitmans was still a top attraction. Troy Snapp was there leading the band as was Leslie Towles on drums. George Hunt, the trombone player—we called him Rabbit—said he got his lip vibrato from me when I was with the show in Kansas City back in ’29. Said he practiced damn hard to get the style down. That made me feel good knowing I influenced somebody. He later went with Count Basie.

  One of the top headliners on the show that week was Princess White. She been with them for a couple years. The last time I saw the lady was in 1920 when I delivered telegrams to her at the Brooks Dreamland Theater in Badin.

  She didn’t remember me at first, especially since I was small for my age as a boy. But after I told her it was me, I got grabbed and hugged. Just about squeezed to death.

  “This old boy,” she said to her husband, “used to be one of my children when he was growing up. I knew him as a little snot-nose rascal,” she laughed, “and here he is playing in the show band.”

  Princess White was still a very attractive woman, about fifty-two years of age, but easily passed for thirty. She was a true legend in black show business, played in New York before I was born, and worked internationally before that. In 1933 she was still performing like hell, doing lead-offs and solo spots of three numbers in a row.

  Her feature with the Whitmans was Stormy Weather, and every time I looked out in the audience, Ethel Waters be sitting right up there in the front box seat.

  Princess was one of the greatest jazz, blues, and popular singers I ever heard, and I heard most of them.

  Early in October, when Coffey’s Atlantic City job finished, Tebbett opened another walkathon at the Airport Inn in Camden, New Jersey. All the guys came back except Red Saunders, and he was replaced by Harry Dial. Coffey also didn’t like Pudding Head—his attitude was bad, so he later sent to Milwaukee for Joe Thomas.

  The Airport Inn was actually a big hangar at Central Airport with a large track going around inside on the ground floor. A bunch of local youngsters, maybe seventy or eighty of them with numbers pasted on their back walk as partners around the track and with only short rest periods try not to fall out so they might win the hundred-dollar first prize. And in those days, that was some money.

  Everybody started out fast and kept at it twenty-four hours a day, day after day, week after week. But soon their legs got weak and gave out. They stagger about trying to fight against the pain, sleepiness, and all that, bump into people, fall down unconscious. Their partners try to pull them up, drag them a while.

  Then guys ran out with stretchers and carry them back to the dressing room where the doctors were—and nurses too—but they were finished. Others stronger kept going, sometimes for a month or two months, even longer. These were all young kids, nobody over thirty.

  The audience paid admission to come and watch and have a good time. The bleachers always packed with people cheering their favorites, bet
ting on who fall out first or who would not, and they laugh and scream. The whole family be there, kids and all. Eat lunch and supper right in their seats—spend all day, maybe all night too—while the walkers kept walking around and around. Even local newspapers reported what was happening, just like a race report.

  Sometimes people not walking come out and pose for pictures. Once, during the walkathon, they had a full-dress formal wedding with flowers, flower girls, bridesmaids and all. A big event. Another time, everybody got dressed up in Halloween costumes. Even the band. And all the time the walkers kept on walking.

  Ira Coffey and his Walkathonians, Camden, N.J., 1933. Left to right: Clyde Bernhardt (tb), Harry Dial (d), Norman Mason (as), Ira Coffey (p/ldr), Edmund Duff (ts), Edgar Battle (t).

  The band sat up in the back and entertained the audience. We got forty-five dollars a week sideman pay and worked from 2:30 to 5 in the afternoon and from 8 to 11:30 at night.

  They usually had about three regular masters of ceremony on the show to keep the fun going. Earl Fagan and Johnny Cahill was two. But the top M.C. was young Red Skelton, who was only twenty at the time. Oh man, could he put on a show. Make funny announcements, joke and clown around with the audience, talk to the walkers, fool with the band.

  I remember one time he came out dressed in evening tails, starched white shirt, white tie, top hat, and carrying a long baton. Supposed to be a concert maestro billed as the “Mad Genius.”

  Our little band struck up Poet and Peasant Overture and Red led us with great flourishes. Then, gradually he started making mistakes—changing tempo, misdirecting, getting confused. Soon he was tripping over chairs, knocking down music stands. His hat kept falling off, and he chase it around while leading the band with his other hand. The people all hysterical laughing, rolling out of their seats.

  After a fast and furious finale—his hat lost, coat torn, tails hanging—he take a low bow and one of the guys in the band blow this rubber “bronx raspberry” toy real loud just as he bent over. The audience fell out screaming, kept laughing long after he left the stage.