The Game Changer

by A. G. Lafley

  Most of the clubs liked the name Ed Barron. Was short and fit good on those little signs outside. It was sort of fun being somebody else, especially when I could always go back to being Clyde Bernhardt for band work whenever I wanted. Don’t know if Ed Barron helped me, but it damn sure didn’t hurt me.

  After I returned to New York, I called Derby to find out about my royalty money on Cracklin’. I knew there be a bundle waiting behind this hot record—I never had a hit as big as this.

  The first time I called they had to “check it out.” The next time, there was “expenses” to account for, then some “distribution” problems came up and all that kind of stuff. But I waited and kept calling.

  When I finally got my check, I could barely buy a few loafs of cracklin’ bread with it. Later, a white friend that worked in the office told me five thousand dollars credited to me in the books had gone with the wind.

  I trusted Derby all the way, and this shocked me terribly. It hurt deeply for months and months, and my confidence fell to pieces. Can’t begin to say how ashamed I was of being beat out of that money. Wouldn’t dare tell anyone—friends, musicians, especially my family. Knew just what they say and I was too depressed as it was.

  For a long while I kept to myself. Didn’t care if I ever made any more records, or any more appearances. Or even stayed in the music business. Whatever I touched I was sure to come out with the short end.

  So many good people trying to open doors for me while at the same time others kept shutting them just as fast. I been hurt before, but never so bad as this.

  My bad-luck cycle was getting worse. That was very clear to me.

  * Cracklin’ Bread, by Clyde Bernhardt. Copyright 1949 by Clyde Bernhardt.

  28. Joe Garland’s Society Orchestra, 1952–1970

  I been gigging around New York with Garland’s new society orchestra whenever Luis Russell laid off. By 1950, Garland was doing pretty good on his own and really got rolling by 1951. Three, four, maybe five jobs a week. At times he have as many as three bands working at the same time under the one Garland name.

  Although I was depressed over my failures, he kept calling me for jobs. Always paid over union scale, and that was considered good. But not as good as a single.

  In 1952 I came back steady with Garland and he often let me shout my blues. That made me feel better. Much better.

  Joe Garland was lead tenor and band leader. Moses, his brother, was the business man, booking agent, and sometime trumpet player. They billed either of their names and sometimes both, but I noticed Moses had “M.G.” on all the music stands.

  Charlie Holmes was in there on alto and Leslie Carr filled in when he was out. Gene Mikell, who used to be with the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, came in sometimes and so did the highly rated Hilton Jefferson.

  Sleepy Grider was on trumpet and when he died, Clarence Wheeler replaced him. Clarence told me he was from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but he sounded more like Philadelphia, Mississippi. Bernard Flood was on trumpet; Fred Robinson came in when they needed a second trombone; Freddie Gibbs, pianist, and James “Rip” Harewood, drums. Joe had others in there and bring in more when needed. Guys kept coming in and going out.

  Garland furnished us with four different kinds of jackets for all occasions—one was tan with bright blue velvet lapels, another was brown with green lapels. We always wore black pants, white shirt, and a black bow tie and looked damn good.

  The band worked mostly big-time black social clubs, society dances, formal parties, things like that in top ballrooms around the New York area. The Hotel New Yorker and the Diplomat. The Park Terrace Ballroom in the Bronx and the Masonic Temple over in Newark. People came in from New York City just to hold their private parties at those places. Also worked the Potentate’s Ball at the Convention Hall in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Garland was almost a regular at all those hotels and halls.

  When the band hit it, we played the latest popular songs, ballads, standards, swing, and hit parade numbers. I used to sing Ko Ko Mo, the big Perry Como and Gene & Eunice hits. Also had a jumping arrangement by Skippa Hall on my Cracklin’ Bread.

  But people kept asking what happened to Ed Barron. They liked the records and seemed to like the name, it was so short and catchy. So I got some good musician friends together again and along with Joe Garland went in the Fulton Recording Studio in New York and did Blowin’ My Top, Hey Miss Bertha, and two other vocal numbers of mine. The date was January 12, 1953.

  The owner of the Belmont Record Shop in Newark had a little label called Ruby, and he been after me for a time to put my songs out. So I gave him the masters and told him to go ahead. I figured it couldn’t of been as bad a deal as Derby—nothing could.

  When the two 78-rpm records came out in mid-1954, Ed Barron was alive again.

  The records did pretty good. Bill Young of radio station WABZ in Albemarle, North Carolina, had me down there, kept playing Hey Miss Bertha at least three times a day. But there was no promotion behind Ruby or they have bigger sales. Didn’t bother going out as a single, either. Wasn’t worth it.

  As the 1950s wore on, I kept working regular with Joe Garland all around New York—steady, local hotel work all the way. No more long road trips. Home every night.

  I settled into Garland’s band very comfortably. The few times he let the clubs bill me as Ed Barron, Moses didn’t take to that. I got paid extra, then.

  One time, Garland took the band in the Renaissance Ballroom under bassist Ellsworth Reynolds, one of the officers in the Boys of Yesteryear Club and a veteran musician. He augmented Garland’s group with a few more pieces to make it sound big. Reynolds didn’t play nothing that night, but I noticed he had this big old tape machine sitting there. Told me later he recorded two of my blues and sent them on to Bertrand Demeusy, a French jazz writer and university professor. I got a little 45-rpm disc for myself, but nothing ever happened with the tape. Not as far as I know.

  I was now about fifty-three years of age and been a professional musician for almost thirty-five. My work with Garland was down to mostly weekend dances. But by the late 1950s, the whole bottom fell out of the music business, my kind of music business. Rock and roll was taking over, and experienced bandsmen just not needed. Started hearing over and over how bad things got for a whole lot of musicians, how so many guys over sixty-five had little or no Social Security retirement checks coming in.

  Kept seeing old-timers working day jobs around town—the great Paul Webster, who used to be with Jimmie Lunceford, was working in a change booth down in the subway. Told me he was doing good.

  That frightened me. Like the first time I applied for unemployment checks, I found some of my best gigs never got credited to me. Of course, my money been ducted by clubs and bands, so I guess somebody got his sticky fingers on it. I smelled trouble coming for me a mile away. Worked my mind. Yes it did.

  So, in 1958 I took my first full-time day job since I swept the streets of Harrisburg back in 1926. It was keeping records of textbooks in a local Newark school. Checked them in and out and all that.

  It always bothered me I didn’t go past the eighth grade in school, so I also enrolled in some adult evening courses at Newark’s Central High School. A couple nights a week I studied history, geography, math, and English—even took a touch typing course so I wouldn’t have to pay people to prepare my business letters.

  Kept playing whatever few jobs came along with Garland and on March 30, 1962, when some civil service tests came up, I took them. I remember I took the tests at 6 P.M. and had to run over to a job at the Terrace Ballroom where Garland was playing a dance.

  Left my studies in 1963 with a high school equivalency and on June 3, at the age of fifty-seven, started work as a custodian at the Peshine Avenue School in Newark. My job was washing windows and walls, mopping floors, sweeping the halls. And keeping toilets and teachers’ lounges supplied.

  Many people told me not to take that job.

  “That’s not for you, Clyde,” they sneer, “s
ometimes it get dirty.”

  Hell, when I was cleaning Harrisburg streets, I swept up dirtier then that. They had a whole gang of horses in that town, you know.

  “You don’t have to do that kind of work,” they kept telling me.

  “I know that, but I choose to do it,” I say. If my friends thought I was falling low, they didn’t know how low the band business was. This was honest and good-paying work. Had security, time off, sick days, and all that. And every damn payday I knew for sure the ducts were going toward my Social Security.

  Yes sir, I chose that job.

  Never told anyone in the school I was a musician—didn’t think it was anybody’s business.

  When the dance season started in September, Garland called me for a big party down at the Terrace. Very formal with gowns, tuxedos, flowers. And it happened to be for the Newark teachers’ fraternity.

  We all had on our dark, neat uniforms. I sang Don’t Leave Me Baby during the first set and broke up the house. Everybody whooping and hollering.

  After taking my bow, I sat down to see this white teacher from my school walking up sort of slow-like. Stood looking at me for a while.

  “Excuse me,” she finally said, “I notice that you look so much like someone who works at my school. I know you couldn’t be that man, because he’s not a musician. But you could be his brother—or double.”

  “What’s his name?” I asked innocently.

  “His name is Mr. Clyde.” That’s what the teachers and students all called me. “I don’t know his full name,” she said, “but he’s an excellent worker and a very nice man.”

  “It’s me, Mrs. Cranford,” I said. “Clyde Bernhardt is my name.”

  “What? What in the world are you doing working at Peshine with a talent like yours? Mr. Clyde, please come over and meet my friends.”

  I sat at their table telling them all about the music business. About those long weeks without work. Nowhere to play and knowing damn well I was still capable. A man had to eat and pay his rent, I said.

  After that, word got around the school. The personnel man for all of Newark’s school system called and wanted to put me in Peshine’s music department.

  “Never had a practicing musician in your school,” he told me. “Those kids need someone like you.” When I told him I never went to college, he said he’d pull some strings.

  But I didn’t want any part of it. Hell, I was tutoring two young kids at the time and they were mad they couldn’t play like me after a couple lessons. They didn’t want to practice. Or play scales. No routine—just start right out to play, that’s what they wanted. Damn sure weren’t made out of the same material as the kids when I went to school.

  No. I was going to keep doing just what I was hired to do. Didn’t need more problems being a teacher.

  Late in 1963, bassist Hayes Alvis, who sometimes worked in the Garland orchestra, wanted me to go with him on a European tour he was setting up. But I had as much work as I wanted now, with my new day job and all.

  Garland lost almost all his jobs by 1965—they just faded away. I think many of the older people that kept those private-club dances going were dying off. Things were different—people were different. The music was different. This was all new times.

  I was glad I had my day job.

  Sammy Scott, who I knew in Harrisburg in 1919 when he was a young kid playing drums in the high school band, kept giving me encouragement. He was living out in Queens, New York.

  “Clyde, you a good musician. There’s always another job comin’ along.”

  He sent some material on me over to the British writer, Derrick Stewart-Baxter. We started up a long correspondence, and after a while the Englishman began publishing a series of articles in the popular Jazz Journal magazine about me and my career.

  Never before in my life had that much been written about me. When he came over to the States in June of 1968, I got together a few guys and rented a rehearsal hall so he could hear me play and sing. I think the hall cost six dollars a hour. It was on Broadway and 52d, and Derrick brought along his tape machine. It was damn difficult to get anything, so he didn’t take back much.

  In September, I got other musicians together for a studio session and sent him off tapes of eight songs—instrumental and vocals. Said he try to interest some British record company.

  I kept working with Joe Garland off and on until November 1970. One night, traveling home by subway after a job up at the Fountainhead Inn in New Rochelle, I saw a man get mugged. Two big, ugly black men got beside this guy that was sleeping and took every damn thing out of his pockets. Grabbed his watch, tore his ring off, roughed him up. When the doors opened, they both took off. I was so nervous and scared, I could hardly speak.

  The minute I got home I called Joe Garland and told him what happened. I said from then on he was to drive me direct to my house after each job and pick me up for the next. I been riding trains all around New York and in and out of Newark since 1928, but sure didn’t feel safe in them no more. But Joe gave me the run around, said it be too far out of his way, didn’t have the time, and couldn’t be bothered.

  The choice was mine and I made it. I would not take any more pickup work that came my way. From anybody. I was finished. Things have to end sometime, and I knew my playing days was over. And I was left with just memories. Damn good memories. The Midnite Ramblers. King Oliver. The Alabamians. Andrade. Hayes and going to Europe. McShann and Parker. The Whitman Sisters and all the others. Even the Blue Blazers.

  All just memories now.

  And the places I played—the Arcadia with its mirrored walls. The exciting Savoy and those wild Lindy Hoppers. The Renaissance. Roseland. The Roosevelt, Statler, Commodore, Hotel Pennsylvania. The fine old Astor. Most of them gone, too.

  So, it was time to retire from my musical life. Time to reflect. Stick to my custodian job—that was my life now.

  But I kept practicing my trombone every night for two or three hours. Just to keep my lip up, of course.

  29. Hayes Alvis and His Pioneers of Jazz, 1972

  When I finally retired from my custodian job on February 1, 1972, at the age of sixty-six, I hadn’t worked a music gig for about fourteen months. The longest I been out of music in my entire career.

  I was now on Social Security and also getting a little extra pension. At that time, civil service workers at the Board of Education had to pay into the Teachers’ Pension Fund, so I got that coming in also.

  Yes sir. Taking a full-time day job people said “wasn’t for me,” was the smartest thing I ever done in my life.

  In 1971, a album called “Blowing My Top” came out in England on the Matchbox label. It was my 1968 session all put together with my Derby and Ruby sides. Even two of my ’48 Tru Blues. After years of hard work, Derrick Stewart-Baxter finally came through, and I had my first LP record album.

  People started sending me magazine reviews. Said my album was “tasteful,” “richtoned,” “delicate,” and “sensitive.” Had they only said it was good to hear old Clyde again, that be good enough for me. Started getting fan letters from England, France, and Germany. White people writing, wanting to know more about me and the bands I worked in. Europeans remembering me from the ’38 Hayes tour. Said they also saw me during the war years at the Ubangi and up at the Savoy.

  All nice letters. So friendly. And every letter that came in, I answered. Some wrote more then once. I figured if they take the time to write, I do the same for them.

  I began to realize how much my music meant to me. How much I missed it. Performing. Singing. I got so encouraged by all the publicity off Derrick’s articles and my new record that when Hayes Alvis called me for some work in March, I didn’t turn him down. Hayes been playing string bass with Garland and before that with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. He was now working a day job down at local 802 and gigging some at night.

  “Clyde,” he said, “I like to use you on some white concerts I’m doin’. Nothing steady, but it pays good.”r />
  I wasn’t sure I was up to doing those loose jam-session type concerts. Did all that stuff back in ’25 and with Tillie Vennie and Odie Cromwell. Take those trombone solos by ear—long, loud swoops like in Tiger Rag and get everybody excited.

  But that old ad-lib stuff kind of died out in the Big Band era. Organized bands had all those special arrangements and heavy manuscript sheets with not much space for improvised solos.

  “Songs from the twenties just what bands are playing these days,” he added. “And it’s all new music to a whole lot of young people out there.”

  So he wrote out the titles and key signatures of the numbers he was playing. Classics like Yes Sir, That’s My Baby; Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue; and Hard-To-Get Gertie. Still had a stack of them on the bottom of my trunk and since I kept my lip up, wasn’t much to get back in it.

  It was like being young again.

  We did a concert in Worcester, Massachusetts, on March seventeenth and the next day in Meriden for the Connecticut Traditional Jazz Club. Hayes called his band the Pioneers of Jazz—Doc Cheatham was on trumpet; Herb Hall, the brother of Edmond, played clarinet; Wilbert Kirk, drums; Jimmy Evans on piano; Hayes, string bass; and me on trombone.

  Played those good old songs and it went over real big, just as Alvis said. Lots of applauding and loud whistling. I realized he was right: Those people liked the old music played by the old-timers. And the young kids thought they discovered something.

  My good friend Hayes Alvis relaxing at the home of Dr. Albert Vollmer, Larchmont, N.Y., 1972. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Albert Vollmer.)

  After that, I took other jobs with Hayes and also with Mel Morris, a white drummer that worked clubs and restaurants up and down New Jersey with his Marauders group. I was the only black in his band, and I’m not bragging, but those white people just ate up my blues—never sat on their hands like some black audiences do. And after every job, Mel drove me right back to my door.