The Game Changer

by A. G. Lafley

  And that was true. I was now with another good band—do whatever I wanted, when I wanted. And damn sure wasn’t scared of the boss.

  I liked the sound of the new Hayes orchestra: swing, jazz, sweet, popular, everything well balanced in a style between Jimmie Lunceford and Duke Ellington.

  Hayes had one hell of a book—all original arrangements and very tough. We rehearsed those difficult numbers over and over, some seven or eight times until we got it just like he wanted. But once we got it down, we were a smash. Count Basie always said Hayes didn’t know how great he really was—he often hired Edgar as his rehearsal leader and then go home and leave him in charge.

  Like the guys used to say, the Hayes band was the “college,” and when you came out of there it was like graduating. You go anywhere after that.

  Hayes was also a hell of a pianist—played everything, even the classics. Played great stride just like James P. Johnson and had the articulation of Earl Hines. To me he was one of the greatest piano players and band leaders in the business.

  This was the line-up when I joined. I’ll start with the trombone section: R. H. Horton—we called him Robert but his real name was Redius—was the same man I heard in Sam Wooding’s band back in 1923; Wilbur De Paris was there too, but David “Jelly” James replaced him after a few weeks. Jelly and I handled both first and second trombone parts.

  Scad Hemphill was first trumpet. I remember he was always laughing, like a old Cheshire cat, especially at how people all dressed—hell, I thought he looked like a damn dressed-up groundhog himself.

  Bernard Flood was second trumpet and Henry Goodwin, third with some jazz solos; Joe Garland, tenor; and Tab Smith, first alto, but Rudy Powell came in from Fats Waller to replace Smith after a few weeks when Tab went back to Lucky.

  Crawford Wethington was third alto and Roger Boyd, fourth; Kenny Clarke, drums; Elmer James, he pick and slap string bass very well; Andy Jackson, guitar; and Edgar on piano. A solid fourteen-piece band.

  Joe Garland wrote and arranged many of the numbers including In the Mood that Hayes recorded in 1938. That piece was heavy music—had four big manuscript pages just for the trombone parts. We called it his Black Symphony. When Glenn Miller heard the song, he had Garland put stop breaks in, cut out some parts, and recorded his own big hit the following year.

  A lot of people tried to put a claim on that number, but after a lawsuit, Garland won out.

  Edgar and Crawford Wethington had been trying to get a good booking-agent for some time. Often went up to the second floor office of the Lunceford and Oxley Bureau at 17 East 49th Street but kept getting the cold shoulder. Need more experience, they said, do more rehearsing and all that. Promised us a audition someday, but we never got one.

  In those first few weeks, Hayes wasn’t working regular, so I picked up some dance dates with Tommy Lindsay in a white orchestra, the first time I ever worked in a mixed group. There was also some club jobs with Lil Armstrong’s orchestra around New York and New Jersey. She was one beautiful person to work for. Would sit at the piano and play Louis’ big hits, even imitating her husband’s hoarse style of singing. She was a good piano player, but I didn’t think she was as good as Tillie Vennie.

  Hayes was taking whatever work he could find. On some jobs, singer Orlando Robeson fronted and then we be billed as his band. Some of the guys resented that arrangement but Hayes did it anyways. Later, Orlando joined us regular and after he left, Hayes got Ruth Ellington. A lot of people thought she was Duke’s sister, but her real name was Joyce Tucker.

  We did some Connecticut jobs under Fess Williams and played the Astor Hotel under W. C. Handy. Handy’s daughter Elizabeth sang Beale Street Blues and Memphis Blues, but we only allowed to play stock arrangements of his numbers. Gave strict orders not to put any high-powered stuff in his songs while he was directing.

  We also found work playing on the “Sheep & Goat Club” radio show with Ralph Cooper in New York. Amanda Randolph and Juano Hernandez did a hilarious takeoff on a black Romeo and Juliet.

  “Romeo, oh Romeo, where is you at?”

  I still remember how we all broke up at that, missed our cue, and almost messed up the whole show.

  When I think now of all the dialect shows taken off radio and television, I can’t help but call how many black people really liked those programs. And how many black performers got knocked out of work. Didn’t seem right because they were damn funny shows. Yes, they were.

  So Hayes kept scratching for jobs until Easter Sunday, March 28, 1937, when he took the band in the Renaissance.

  There was three bands there that day: Jimmie Lunceford just back from Sweden, Vernon Andrade, and Edgar Hayes. It was a triple Battle of Music. The place was packed to capacity. Big shots sitting up in back of the bandstand. Booking agents, club owners, important white people. Didn’t know them all, but somebody pointed out Mr. Harold F. Oxley of the Lunceford and Oxley Booking Bureau to me. The very important white booker.

  Vernon opened the show and played the first hour. Then Hayes came on—he knew this be a good opportunity to show his stuff so he pulled out his hot numbers. Opened with Stomping at the Renny, and I’m not bragging, but we blew Andrade away. Old Henry Goodwin, he was screaming on trumpet, Edgar was stomping, just playing his ass off, and the band was riffing like crazy.

  Man, those dancing jitterbugs went wild—all hooting, hollering. People started standing up to watch the band.

  Sy Oliver, who was working in the Lunceford band then, came over and asked who did the arrangement.

  “Joe Garland,” I said.

  “Man, I’m telling you,” he whispered, “you cats got something.”

  Next we did In the Mood, then let it all out with Meet the Band and other great swinging numbers. We wrapped it up with Swinging in the Promised Land, and the audience was so hot they wouldn’t let Vernon come back on. We had to do a encore and still had to beg off. Made such a impression that Andrade never did come back, and we alternated with Lunceford for the rest of the show.

  One of those white fellows in back of the stage got hold of Oxley and asked who was booking our band. He quickly said he was, but he wasn’t. This was the same Oxley that kept putting Hayes off and promised him a audition some day. Now he couldn’t get Hayes signed up fast enough. Jimmie Lunceford, who was partners with Oxley, came over and shook Edgar’s hand.

  After we got with Oxley, he sent us down to London Tailor’s to have new uniforms made, then booked us a week in the Apollo, and we came back there two more times during the year. A hell of a lot of good bands couldn’t get in there but one time.

  And Oxley got us a one-year contract with the Decca Record Company. About a month before, we recorded some numbers under Orlando Robeson’s name for Variety Records. Did that in the same New York building where the Brunswick Studios was located. Irving Mills was at that session too, but Robeson selected all the songs.

  On May 25, 1937, we all went in the New York Decca studios over at 50 West 57th Street and made our first sides under Hayes’ name. Leonard “Ham” Davis replaced Scad Hemphill on first trumpet.

  We put down some of our best numbers: Stomping at the Renny, Edgar Steps Out, and Caravan. Now, here’s something I never did understand about that session. Bernard Flood took a vocal on the fourth number, Laughing at Life. There’s no doubt in my mind about that, only the record books credit Ralph Sawyer as singer. I never heard of such a person.

  When I later listened to that Sawyer record, it was not Flood, it was Jimmy Anderson. I think somebody slipped that fake name in, because I know it is not a legit recording—was never done in a studio—and definitely not at that May session. Anderson’s first job with Hayes was early in 1938, so he couldn’t possibly recorded with the band in 1937.

  The cut must of been taken from a aircheck or one of the many radio remotes the band was always doing in 1938.

  We also made Satan Takes a Holiday, Queen Isabella, and other records during 1937 that helped the band tremendously. Sold like
hot cakes in the United States and Europe.

  Sometime in July I made another vocal test record. Edgar backed me on piano. Just something I wanted to do for myself because I had some original numbers. One side was called Without You, a song I wrote in 1936 (and dedicated again to Bobby). The other side was Gate You Swing Me Down. Didn’t take it serious, but Hayes sort of liked them. Rudy Powell made a big band arrangement of Without You, and Hayes featured me as singer on it occasionally. Went over big at dances and in those days it was unusual for band singers to get a hand for anything.

  The great Edgar Hayes band of 1937. Front row, left to right: Andy Jackson (g), Kenny Clarke (p), Rudy Powell (as), Crawford Wethington (ts), Roger Boyd (as), Joe Garland (ts); back row, left to right: Edgar Hayes (p), Ruth Ellington (v), Elmer James (sb), Henry Goodwin (t), Bernard Flood (t), Leonard Davis (t), Clyde Bernhardt (tb), R. H. Horton (tb), David James (tb). (Photo courtesy of Frank Driggs collection.)

  During 1937, Hayes made extensive road tours playing one-nighters through Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Washington, D.C. Everywhere we went the band was a sensation.

  I remember one black place in Columbus, Ohio—it was a jammed-packed Sunday night, just as many people outside as inside, and they was still coming in. The dance floor was so crowded you couldn’t stir those niggers with a stick—many dancers was right up on the bandstand next to us, and I could hardly leave to go to the toilet.

  They had us back there about ten days later and it was the same thing all over again.

  One restricted white place, somewhere in Ohio, had us in three different times in a six-month period. They loved us. But the owner made it clear we could not have our girl friends or wives come in the hall, or anywhere on his property. Said if they did try to come in, he make them all stand outside. We were not to fool around with any white girls either, even if they made passes at us first. Said if we didn’t go about our business, he let the whole damn band go. Oxley told us to put our jobs first, and we never had no trouble.

  Lodging was usually a problem for bands on the road. Places always filled up or the band having to split in different hotels. Many times they were nothing but ratty old flea bags.

  But I solved that problem by joining the Harlem branch of the YMCA, which had a traveler’s aid service. It recommended private families all over the country that took in boarders. I go out and find these homes and have some of the best rooms in town for myself. Private. Quiet. Some owned by doctors and teachers and I was treated like family. Served me breakfast. Got drives to and from the job.

  Guys in the band all thought I had relatives living everywhere.

  “That old Clyde knows somebody in every town,” they moan. “Goddamn!”

  When we came back for a October eleventh Decca session, Bob Stevens had a hell of a time with Ruth Ellington. He was the head studio engineer—recorded Ella, Bing Crosby, and others—and was trying hard to tell Ruth what he wanted from her. Said her volume was wrong. Diction wasn’t clear. Stuff like that. Couldn’t tell her a damn thing, and finally Oxley told her to leave. Right then and there in the studio. Ruth was finished with Hayes.

  So Bill Darnell came running down and took over Ruth’s part just as if it was written for him. This white singer looked like Willie Smith, the first sax with Lunceford—they could have passed for brothers, only Smith was a light-skinned Negro.

  Around the first of 1938, Hayes brought in young Earlene Howell to handle the girl vocals. Earlene just won top prize in a Apollo amateur contest and it was her first band job. I called her Tater Mae—a name all the guys called a ugly chick. We had a good laugh over that. She liked the name, but one day Henry Goodwin told her what Tater meant and she got mad for a couple days. But she kept the name. Yes, she did.

  Shortly after, Jimmy Anderson was added as male singer. Hayes also replaced Crawford Wethington with William “Happy” Mitchner, Elmer James with Frank “Coco” Darling, and Andy Jackson with Eddie Gibbs.

  After a heavy Midwestern tour, we got back to New York on Sunday, February 13, and went right in the Renaissance.

  Now, I hadn’t been doing much singing since I left King Oliver except when Edgar let me do my Without You. I never went in bands pushing myself—just kept my mouth shut and did the job I was hired for.

  That night, Edgar called my song in the first set and it went over good. During our break, Oxley told me he wanted to record the song.

  “But Mr. Oxley,” I said, “Edgar thinks the number is too weak and I have no name as a singer.”

  “I’ll fix that,” he said.

  At the next record session on February seventeenth my song was recorded even though Edgar’s lip was dropping down his chin. It was my first vocal record and opened plenty of doors for me, all due to Mr. Oxley. The band recorded a total of eight numbers that day, including a Hayes instrumental arrangement of Star Dust that became his biggest-selling hit.

  Two days later we were all on the big Swedish luxury liner S.S. Drottingholm heading for a European tour.

  The newspaper reporters and photographers from the black press was there to see us off. Big buffet spread, sandwiches, drinks, all you wanted. Lots of flowers. My mother, brother, and his family came down to give me courage. I never been on a ship before and read all about them sinking and things like that. Kept thinking of the song about the Titanic and sixteen hundred people going down when they hit that iceberg. So I was deathly afraid of boats.

  In 1929, Ed Swayzee, Joe Hayman, Herb Flemming, and that bunch wanted me to go over with the Blackbirds’ show. Begged out of it, wouldn’t go. No sir.

  But I couldn’t get out of it this time although I damn sure tried. Held up getting my passport and my mother raised all hell. Told me not to make her ashamed and said everybody wanted to see if I was good enough to play in Europe.

  So here I was. I was happy to see so many people all going to Europe but was still scared as hell.

  The trip over was scheduled for eight “easy” days—like the travel advertisements said. Two days out of New York we ran through a awful storm. The wind and rain started blowing hard, the thunder was rumbling terribly, and bright lightning kept shooting through the sky. I was with Edgar in a outside stateroom, and stewards came running in to lock up those little portholes where the water kept smashing in.

  The ship rocked and twisted all around, and I could hear the propeller spinning out of the water every time the back end came up. Then the boat fell fast and I try to grab hold of something, anything. Then, up it came again. Knew for certain I was going down—there was no doubt about it.

  After three very rough days, the storm moved away and things got calmer. Walked in the dining room that morning, but weren’t many people eating, maybe only a dozen or so. Ate me a nice breakfast and felt much better.

  A few days later, the captain invited the whole band to dine at his table. We put on our tuxes and became honored guests for the evening. All the people came out. Had a Swedish band there but we took over and played some of our best dance numbers—damn near got that ship rocking again.

  Then the captain took us on a tour, showing us everything from the control room down to the shining boiler in the engine room. It was a beautiful, grand old ship. I wasn’t afraid any longer.

  After eleven days at sea we arrived in Göteborg, Sweden. That’s when the road manager told us the trip took three days longer because we gone four hundred miles off course to avoid some big icebergs sitting out there. If I known that before, damn if I wouldn’t of had a heart attack. That’s for sure.

  After our first job in Göteborg, we bussed on to Stockholm for some theater dates and played a special party for King Gustavus. When we walked in that long hall, the Swedish band struck up the American national anthem and everybody stood up, including the king. People bowing—thought their noses was going to hit the floor. As we sat at our special table, there was a great big American flag hanging above us.

  Later they asked us to do a couple American
jazz numbers and we almost set the place on fire—the people all dancing and clapping to hot jazz. I saw the king back there applauding along with everybody else.

  When he came up to shake our hands, I felt proud to be a American.

  It was while I was staying at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm that I had one of my terrible dreams. Just as clear as ever, I thought I received a cablegram that Mama died. It was a shock and I felt very bad. The message said they couldn’t keep her out of the ground until I got back so they had to bury her. The dream continued with me going out to the cemetery to pay respects. It was nice grounds, and Mama was buried right there next to a medium-size tree. Saw lots of flowers on her grave. Someone was telling me the ground was too soft to put up a stone so I should remember the spot next to the medium-size tree.

  When I woke up, I was sweating and crying. It was dark and I was still in Sweden. Knew my people at home let me know if anything really happened so I tried to get back to sleep. But it worked my mind bad, and I couldn’t.

  The next morning, R. H. Horton wanted to know why I was making noises and was so fitful all night. I couldn’t tell him. I had enough strange dreams as a kid so I tried to take it off my mind. When I later returned to the states, I couldn’t rush over to Newark fast enough to see Mama. She was fine—it was only a bad dream.

  Or so I thought.

  So we kept working in and out of Stockholm and for longer trips chartered busses. We rode over to Oslo, Norway, then down to the National Scala in Copenhagen, Denmark. Never saw a club as large as that in America—was so big they featured circus acts in there. Played many theaters and concert halls through Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland.

  When we went to Belgium and Holland, the band traveled by train, riding through Germany to get to the lowlands. I remember there was a lot of military activity going on at the time. Soldiers everywhere—coming, going, marching, lining up. Sometimes the train stopped and we get off to allow the military on. When we get back, our seats be gone. Once, we got put off in Frankfurt and they packed in soldiers and took off without us. Waited two hours in the cold for the next train.