The Game Changer

by A. G. Lafley

  Sometimes those Southern black servicemen came in and let their hair down. They be gone as fast as they got there. Wham and out!

  Once some lesbians got to fighting in the ladies’ room with lots of cussing, battling, and those giant bouncers went right in there and threw them all the hell out. The old gals was rough, but the LaRue crowd was rougher—some of them trained with Joe Louis.

  Anyone made trouble there, never came back. Barred out forever, black or white. Charles Buchanan and his giants saw to that.

  Mr. Buchanan let us rehearse during the day and even allowed bands that didn’t work the Savoy to rehearse there. Some bands come in just to have their picture taken. Dancers always there in the afternoon with record players, practicing new steps.

  When Jay McShann hired me he paid fifty-five dollars a week when the scale wasn’t but fifty. On the road he paid eleven dollars a night, more then a majority of New York bands was paying. We wore special uniforms—tan jackets, brown pants, tan shoes, and dark green bow ties on white shirts.

  Jay had a band that was special. Had unknown stars, guys I was sure was going to make names for themselves some day. Damn good solo musicians and all well rehearsed. The band had a Western style: Kansas City jazz all mixed in with rocking, hard Texas swing.

  After Jay came to New York from Kansas City and got good notice, he hired Skippa Hall to write for him. Skippa was a terrific arranger and pianist and knew exactly what each guy could do.

  My first job with Jay McShann was on the Tuesday after Labor Day, September 8, 1942. Right there in the Savoy. I replaced Frog, who was trying to get in the Army. The first trombonist, Little Joe Baird, was a nice player but was the youngest in the band and wasn’t used to playing those hard New York arrangements of Skippa Hall’s. Didn’t like those numbers with high B-flat and high C and D notes or those straight sweet tunes featuring the brass. Many times I had to alternate the first and second trombone parts with him.

  The great Charlie “Yardbird” Parker was feature alto; John Jackson, first alto; Jimmy Forrest took the hell-fired tenor solos; Freddie Culliver, section tenor; and Bo McCain from Oklahoma City was baritone sax.

  Bernard “Buddy” Anderson took first trumpet parts and Orville “Piggy” Minor, feature and second trumpet. Never did know why they called him that—maybe because he was so small. Bob Merrill was feature and third trumpet; Eugene “Gene” Ramey, bass fiddle; and Leonard Enois, electric guitar.

  Gus Johnson, now he was one hell of a swing drummer. Had a way of soaking his slick hair with a wet towel before one of his wild solos so his hair fly around and water come spraying off like sweat. He was exciting to see.

  Walter Brown was feature blues singer, and Al Hibbler, who was born blind, took mostly the pop numbers. With Jay as leader and pianist, that was one hell of a band. Yes it was.

  After John Jackson took a war defense job in Kansas City, Joe Evans came in on straight and sweet alto solos.

  Walter Brown often sang his Confessin’ the Blues and ’Fore Day Rider. Hibbler was doing Blues in the Night and a lot of sweet pieces. Bob Merrill was also a damn good singer, but most of the time Jay wouldn’t give him a chance. Had to beg Jay to sing his specialty, Wrong Neighborhood Blues.

  I remember one number we did called Bottle It—a real hot, jumping arrangement. All instrumental. Skippa rehearsed each section of the band separately, sometimes as many as six times before we got it down. Some of the fellows was slow readers, so it took a little longer. We also did Hip, Hip Horray; I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire; and Roll ’Em.

  When Jay McShann turned his 1942 band loose in the Savoy, he had hellions working. Just roaring wild men. (Photo courtesy of Frank Driggs collection.)

  Our speciality was Cherokee, featuring Charlie Parker. He was a sensational soloist—I thought he was the greatest alto man of 1942. Parker was playing so much that most people didn’t know what in hell he was doing. Was over the heads of New York musicians, and I’m not going to lie, he was over mine also.

  Parker seemed to be ahead of his time, sort of futuristic, but whatever he was doing, I knew he was doing a lot of it. Plenty of wild improvising but still swinging. Placed his phrases just right, and if he got too far out, got back without getting lost, always on time and it sounded so good. John Jackson could play the same way but had a much prettier, smoother tone then Charlie. Both boys came up together in Kansas City.

  I always say that nobody teach a musician to play jazz—he needs something within him to work on. He got to feel it. Got to know. Play around with the melody but don’t lose it. Improvise on chords too. That’s how to create ideas of your own.

  I liked talking with Charlie Parker. He thought it was very funny when I told him how so many people always mixed up my name.

  Like the time in 1937 at this mucty-muck party, you know the kind—think they so damned high-toned, get a little too close and they move away slightly. So the old hostess was high on spiked punch and kept introducing me as Mr. Bradhurst. Then as Mr. Brandywine. Finally as Mr. Barnyard.

  I couldn’t stand it no more. “Please! My name is Bernhardt. Bernhardt! B-E-R-N-H-A-R-D-T.”

  “Well,” she said sort of stiff-necked, “everybody makes an error sometime.” Then with this blank face she introduces me to a white gentleman standing there. “Mr. Davis, I’d like you to meet Mr. Cornbread.”

  When I told that to Parker he near fell out laughing. After that, he started calling me Cornbread.

  Told me he got the name Yardbird because he was crazy about eating chicken: fried, baked, boiled, stewed, anything. He liked it. Down there in the South, all chickens are called yardbirds. Every house had some.

  Most of the time Parker was broke and kept borrowing money. He lay a line of sweet talk on me and get it everytime. But I knew he was a good-hearted guy and do anybody a favor if he could.

  Jay McShann was one of the best, down-to-earth guys I ever wanted to work for. Just like any other musician in the band. In fact, he was too good, and guys took advantage of his easy nature. But he always tried to keep peace and harmony.

  We all socialized on our time off, only it was in two groups—the Lushies and the Users. Jay, Joe Evans, Freddie Culliver, myself, and others that liked their whiskey, wine, or beer was the Lushies. I didn’t drink much, but sometimes a little whiskey now and then after work.

  Charlie Parker, Walter Brown, Little Joe, and some others was in the second group. They didn’t drink but was messing with dope and usually kept to themselves. I never been around any musicians in New York that used the stuff, because good bands there wouldn’t want them if they got wind of it. No matter how good they were, they just wouldn’t hire them.

  But Jay didn’t give a damn what anybody in his band did as long as it didn’t get in the way of the job. And I think he was right. A person has to respect his job and not do those kind of things in the open. When it got in the open, the man had trouble.

  I used to talk with Parker about his habit. Told me he been smoking reefers as a kid in Kansas City. Now, he said, he tried everything and it had him good.

  “You New York guys,” he said, “you got more sense then these Western musicians. You don’t mess with this goddamn shit.” I really felt sorry for him. “I know it’s gonna out me one of these days,” he continued, “but man, I’m not a bad cat, this is just my life and I can’t do without it.”

  After we closed the Savoy, the band went out playing the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., for a week, the Royal in Baltimore for another week, then the Paradise in Detroit.

  It was at the Paradise that Parker got in trouble. The band played its first show that Friday night. After we did Mary Lou Williams’ Roll ’Em, a hell of a band number, Walter Brown sang a blues. When we hit Cherokee, Parker walked down front as usual and began blowing real hot when all at once he just fell over. Down on the floor, out cold.

  People in the audience screamed. We kept playing but I was dumbfounded—thought he dropped dead. They pulled the curtain
and the stage manager dragged Parker off, put him in a back room, and tried to revive him while we continued the show.

  After the set we all ran back and Parker was sitting there laughing. “What in hell happened, man?” he was saying. We were wondering the same thing. “Goddamn, must have had too much of that shit.”

  Jay didn’t say anything. He was easygoing.

  The next day some guys came up to where Parker and Brown was staying, a rooming house run by a big 250-pound feminine guy, out there on Adams Avenue. Tore the place apart, ripped carpets up, cut open mattresses. Didn’t find what they looking for, but that gay guy came running backstage to see Jay.

  “I wanna see that damn McShann,” he kept shouting.

  “That’s me,” growled Jay.

  “Those goddamn men come in my place looking for some shit and tore your niggers’ room apart. If I knew they using dope they never get their fat asses in my hotel.”

  “What in hell I got to do with it?”

  “Those mothers are in your band, man. You gotta pay damages.”

  “The hell with you,” Jay said. “What they do off the stand is their business. Everybody here is three times seven. Why in hell don’t you see the FBI? They the ones messed you up.”

  And Jay left the guy standing there cussing.

  I think Jay was right about the FBI. I remember a young white guy always hanging around the Users bunch. Once saw him working in Charlie Barnet’s band back at the Golden Gate in New York but never heard him play a note—never knew who he was, never saw him before. When the same guy showed in Detroit, I began getting suspicious. After the raid, he was gone with the wind.

  Might have pulled the wool over those KC boys’ eyes, but I knew the FBI was sniffing close and didn’t nobody know it.

  So Parker played the rest of that weekend, but by Monday he was high again. The owner of the theater told Jay to get rid of him, and the next day Parker was on his way back to New York. Peck Austin replaced him.

  Walter Brown ran into some other kind of trouble in Baltimore. He was a hell of a blues singer, but in the Royal he wasn’t accepted.

  When he came out singing that line, “Baby, baby, don’t you want a man like me?” those old black gals sitting down front laughed. “Hell no,” they shouted, “you too black and ugly, child.”

  That’s how ignorant some Negroes were in 1942. His records went over big, but when people saw him in person, they didn’t take to his looks or color. It happened in the Howard Theater, too. Those bitches ratted him so, Jay had to take Walter out and pay him for the whole week. I heard Bull Moose Jackson had the same problem.

  Never did understand that kind of stuff. No sir.

  The band continued traveling, playing mostly one-nighters in the Deep South through the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, back to New York state, then out west to Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin.

  We played mostly dances and the band was a smash. Drew more then Louis Armstrong, the Ink Spots, and other top names wherever we went. Sometimes we played radio remotes, and when we worked the Band Box in Chicago, broadcast at least four times a week for a month.

  While we were in Chicago, Russell Smith, who was first trumpet with Cab Calloway, tried to get me to come over to Cab. But I liked the McShann band. Yes I did.

  We were deep in wartime then, so it was almost impossible to charter a band bus because the Army was using them all. We had no choice but to go as regular passengers on the train. Some of the guys never did get used to not having a private bus for themselves—they get to balling around in some city, messing up, and the train be gone. Sometimes they missed three or four straight jobs before somebody thought to call the New York office and find out where the band was. Then they scramble to meet us at the next job.

  Trains was so damn crowded in those war years. We wouldn’t of gotten on the train at all if our road manager hadn’t paid off some of the station masters. When we get on, there barely be room to stand in a corner. Many times I sat on my suitcase for three hundred miles—sleep on it, too. Other riders, mostly soldiers, slept on the floor, and when the conductor came through he had to step over everybody.

  In the South many trains be segregated and the problems even worse.

  Food wasn’t available, so most of the time we did without. Bring on sardines and crackers or maybe some bread and bologna, but the bologna didn’t stay fresh long. Sometimes we run outside for a candy bar when the train pulled in a station. But it pulled right out, so we hop back fast. We paid for our own food and accommodations—that was our expense.

  Schedules were always getting loused up due to late trains and midnight missed connections. When we got in a town we search for a cab to take us to a hotel that was always filled up. Even my YMCA rooming houses were not always available. Man, it was rough.

  I ran into my share of woman trouble one time down in Dallas.

  During our last set, this six-foot, 350-pound woman stomps up to the bandstand. She was mahogany color and had jet black hair hanging down her back in two long braids. Man, was she big. Her head was big, she had big shoulders, big arms, big old awkward-looking legs, big feet—everything she had was big.

  I looked around and she was standing next to me, smiling. She had big teeth, too. I tried paying her no mind, but she kept smiling, like a old, fat Buddha.

  “Where yawl come from, honey?” she said sweetly.

  I was still playing the set. “We in from Houston,” I said between puffs.

  “You look tired.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Feel like a drink?”

  “No, not particularly.”

  She dragged over a chair and sat herself down heavily next to me. By the time the set was over, this fat old broad had ordered a setup, pulled out a bottle of Old Grand Dad, and put it in front of me.

  The guys all started to laugh. “Man, old Clyde done trapped himself a bear!”

  I didn’t want any part of this deal. Hell, no.

  But she looked determined. “My husband in the Army two months now,” she said, pouring out a tall drink, “and here I done found myself a new boyfriend.”

  “Hold on there, gal.”

  “Drink all you want, honey, we take the rest home with us.”

  “I ain’t goin’ no place with you.”

  “I got salted-down chicken in the icebox I’ll fry up.”

  “Listen woman, I can’t go with you.”

  “What you mean, yawl can’t?”

  “I’m married,” I lied fast, “and my wife’s at the hotel right now.”

  “The hell with her,” she said, turning nasty and loud. “I’m married also and yawl gonna park your hips in my bed tonight.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said, raising my voice, too.

  “Don’t tell me what you ain’t gonna do. Yawl too damn little a runt to talk that way to me.” She was shouting now.

  “I’ll talk any damn way I please, woman.” I tried to sound tough.

  “You talkin’ like you want me to whup you good, nigger.”

  People turning around to see what was happening. The band guys were all breaking up, never seen me lose my cool before.

  Suddenly, the woman grabs my collar with her big paw and lifts me right up out of my chair. I was just shaking and hanging, damn near choking. Her bloodshot eyes looked straight in mine, waiting for a answer.

  “No way,” I gasped out.

  With that, she hit me upside my head with her other fat fist. WHAM! Then WHAM! again. Stars started moving around inside my eyes. Music stands got knocked down. Chairs fell over. Sheet music flying. With all my strength I hauled off and hit that damn bitch as hard as I could. My hand stung from the blow.

  She just grunted. “Now you done made me real mad. I’m gonna take your ass apart right now!”

  Somehow I twisted away, grabbed my horn, and made a run for the door. All the guys laughing so loud they must of thought this was a damn old Pigmeat show at the
Apollo.

  “You big, old ugly grizzly bear,” I shouted over my shoulder, “your daddy’s a hairy gorilla, and your mama’s a goddamn baboon.”

  “Don’t dozens me, you little shrimp,” she bellowed as she started after me. “Come back here. I ain’t finished with you yet!”

  As I ran out the front she come bouncing behind me like a heavy sack of mush. Jay McShann’s cousin was sitting out in her big roadster in the shadows.

  “Lemme in! Lemme in!” I shouted. “Open the door quick.” As the rear door swung open, I dove in and laid flat on the floor, pulling my horncase on top of me.

  Just then Jay came out and looked in the car. “Hey Cornbread, what in hell you doin’ down there?”

  “Man, get in the car,” I whispered, “that old bear is after me and she liable to whup me some more. Let’s get outa here fast.”

  As we drove out past the front of the dancehall, I peeped over the car window, and there she was looking up and down the road. Jay drove me straight to my rooming house, but I was sure that crazy woman followed me, so I was too nervous to sleep that night.

  I heard later she showed at the hotel where I was supposed to be staying and whupped hell out of the desk clerk, smashed open some rooms, and punched the guys around.

  “Where’s the damn slide-horn player?” she kept shouting. “Wait’ll I get my hands on him.”

  Man, she was like a cage of apes.

  By daybreak I was at the railroad station looking in all directions in case she was still waiting for me. I spotted a white Texas Ranger and explained my situation. He escorted me to my train section and right to my seat. It wasn’t until I got to Fort Worth I stopped shaking.

  The band caught up with me there, but a month later Jay scheduled a return dance at the same hall in Dallas. I told him I was sick and took the next train out to San Antonio. Never did go back to that town. Ever.

  Since that time, I always been afraid of “bears” hanging around the band—even the medium-size ugly gals we called “taters” scared me. I liked the “yams,” the real pretty girls, but the “bears” and “taters” always scared the “yams” away.