by Rose, Al;
Then Dan Burley sat down at the piano, and I thought that would break it up. But he pedaled the upright down and just hit an occasional note with one finger—in exactly the right place. I felt as though I’d been waiting around all my life just to hear this one blues. With a “two can play this game” look in his eye, Jimmy Archey joined the group, his mouthpiece working on an entirely appropriate trombone part. For perhaps three quarters of an hour, George and I listened to the kind of music that makes it all worthwhile.
The musicians didn’t have to signal to each other. They only communicated with the music. Lips sang a verse in what I can only describe as a melodious whisper.
If you lose yo’ money, don’t you lose yo’ mind,
Papa if you lose yo’ money, don’t you lose yo’ mind.
If you lose yo’ woman, don’t mess aroun’ with mine.
When it was all over nobody said anything for a while. George refilled the glasses, and I was still hearing it all in my head. I had the feeling all of us were still hearing it. It was that jazz magic that comes upon us very few times in our lives. After maybe twenty minutes of quiet drinking, Lips spoke up in an ordinary conversational tone that boomed like thunder out of all the silence. “It’s all in the lip.”
Lips Page was an easy guy to like. Drunk or sober he was relaxed and friendly, always generous and considerate of others. There was a nobility about him that inspired trust and confidence. He had all of the leadership qualities except ambition, and there was nothing he loved as much as an audience. He worked many concerts for me, even though he limited my style because he didn’t know most of the old tunes Journeys Into Jazz audiences loved. But then there was nothing wrong with just sitting and listening to Lips playing the blues all night.
I’ve always avoided comparing musicians. Many that I know do the particular things they do better than anyone else in the world can—like Art Hodes doing “Davenport Blues” or Harry Shields playing “Tin Roof.” But as great as Satchmo’ was—and he could do anything, when it came to the blues—Lips could match him thrill for thrill.
He came out of the Kansas City crowd, from Bennie Moten to Count Basie, but all that music was too mechanized to provide the showcase that would let the world know how outstanding he was. He walked with confidence and dignity; he had the bearing of a man determined to be free, and he was free of everything but the damned whiskey that laid him low in 1954. He was only forty-six.
Tony Parenti
The concert was around 1946, at the White Horse Bowling Academy in Trenton, New Jersey. I just can’t remember whom I brought besides Tony Parenti, Max Kaminsky, and the drummer, Arthur Trappier. This wasn’t an auditorium, just a place set up with tables and chairs. It seems to me that drinks were served, but I could be mistaken after so many years. Anyway, it wasn’t a typical Journeys Into Jazz environment. I don’t even recall how I happened to put that particular gig together. But what keeps it in my mind is the fact that it was the first session I ever recorded on wire, and I was overwhelmed with the possibilities of this ingenious device. I couldn’t have guessed how quickly the technique would become obsolete.
Parenti, whom I had literally known all my life, had the daily racing form spread on the table before us and was busy with his pencil in the endless process all horseplayers know so well. “Have you ever thought,” I asked idly, “how rich you’d be if you’d never heard of horse racing?”
Parenti had to play music every day whether he wanted to or not just to keep ahead of the sheriff. He was always broke or in hock and never had anything to show for his labors, though he stayed as much in demand as any musician in New York.
“All of life is an illusion,” he told me grandly. He was not above an occasional muddled philosophical observation. “I have the illusion that someday I’ll parlay a half-dozen of these nags into a fabulous fortune. It keeps me going.”
I was paying him sixty dollars plus transportation for the evening—big money for a jazzman in 1946. In his mind that broke down to ten five-dollar bets, breakfast, and money to get into the track.
“You always get a better shot at Belmont,” he averred. “When the horses are running clockwise they’re not used to it and that kind of equalizes them.” (It seems that all other race tracks run counterclockwise.) Then he said, “You never play the ponies, do you?”
I confessed I’d never seen a race, never been to a track.
“Hell!” he said. “The races are beautiful to see even if you don’t bet! You’d really enjoy it!” He proposed that I join him on the morrow just for the novelty of it. Somehow at that moment, in the smoke-filled atmosphere of the White Horse Bowling Academy, the idea appealed to me. I said I’d go.
Next day I hired a car and a chauffeur. I still didn’t know how to drive in 1946, and you could still afford that kind of luxury then. It cost me, maybe, thirty dollars—about half of what Tony would have spent by day’s end. At about 11:30 A.M. I picked Tony up at his place in Long Island, and we proceeded to Belmont. Once inside the gate, I came upon a gentleman I knew whose name was Winfrey (of the Winfrey Stables). He was a horse owner of some stature in the sport, as I learned later, but I knew him through his enthusiastic interest in ragtime. Tony broke away from me to get to the betting window in time for the first race. When he returned, I introduced him to Mr. Winfrey, who then excused himself, explaining that he had business in the paddock.
“You know him very well?” Tony wanted to know.
“Well enough,” I answered, noncommittally. “He was thrilled to meet an authentic jazz legend like you.”
“He have anything interesting to say?” Tony pursued.
“Nothing special,” I told him. “We talked about music and the weather, you know.”
“I’ll bet,” Tony said, suspiciously. If I’d told him he wouldn’t have believed I didn’t know Winfrey was a horse owner. I followed Tony to the rail. To this day I don’t know whether we had seats or not. Going to the track with Tony was an all-day marathon between the rail and the betting window. You wouldn’t think of sitting down. Tony’s horse, by the way, was far back at the finish but he was undaunted.
“You’re not going to place a bet?” he asked incredulously. He couldn’t imagine a race going by that you wouldn’t have something on. Unthinkable.
“Maybe later,” I told him. “I just want to watch ’em run for a while. You’re right, it is beautiful.”
“Somehow,” he confided, “I don’t get any kick out of it if I haven’t got a little something riding.”
Tony lost the first four races and took to muttering curses at the horses and the jockeys. By the time the fifth race came around, I told him I’d decided to place a bet. On the day’s program, I noticed a horse named Microphone.” Since I had just begun my radio series, Journeys Into Jazz, this seemed like a felicitous choice. I told Tony what I was betting on, and he explained to me why Microphone had no chance that day. Having observed the results of Parentis expertise in the earlier races, though, I was not deterred. He instructed me in the betting procedure, took me to the window, and I played $10 to win. Then we went back to the rail, Tony supremely confident that his choice would make him even for the day.
Microphone came in by at least ten lengths, paying $160 for my $10.
“You son-of-a-bitch,” Tony addressed me. “I might have known. You come in here, and the first thing I see is that you know Winfrey personally and, for all I know, all the other owners at Belmont. What the hell did he tell you?”
“I told you,” I reminded him. “We talked about music, you, the weather.”
“Bullshit!” Tony insisted. “He gave you a horse! Great ‘jazz legends’ like me he can hire for what he spends on cigars in an afternoon. You could have given me that horse, too. You’re supposed to be my friend!”
“If I had that kind of information, do you suppose I would only have put ten bucks on it?” I challenged.
He thought about that for a while, but he never said anything.
Later
he asked me if I had any information about the feature race. I told him I didn’t, but that I might put a few dollars on it. “It’s true that having a little money on a horse does make the race more exciting.”
We went to the paddock to size up the horses. I saw one I liked the looks of. He was kind of grey, and I still remember his name—Sunvir.
“I’m playing this one,” I told Tony. We went to the betting window where I placed a $20 bet, and Tony followed me with $10 of his own on my horse.
Sunvir came in and returned about $200 for my bet and $100 for Parentis.
“You’re still telling me with a straight face that Winfrey didn’t tell you anything?” he demanded.
“Not a damn thing,” I insisted.
“Well, anyway,” he said, “thanks for letting me in on this one. It put me ahead for the day.” He didn’t buy my disclaimer for a minute.
We had a great dinner that night in Luchow’s. I paid off the driver and Tony went on a gig. I didn’t see him for a couple of years after that. I bought a home in Hollywood, Florida, and shortly thereafter Tony left New York and moved to Miami where he worked in Preacher Rollos excellent little band. I’d drive down to see him from time to time. (If you decide to live in Florida, you have to learn how to drive.) His job didn’t pay too badly, but Hialeah and Gulfstream Park were siphoning off his money. He’d ask me occasionally, “Do you know any owners down here?” and I’d tell him I didn’t think so, which was true. I’m the kind of a guy that goes to Hialeah just to look at the flamingos.
I sold my Hollywood place and moved back to New Orleans in 1954, and about that time Tony called me. “I’m sick of this place,” he announced. I assumed the Florida racing season was over. “I want to go back to the city [New York], but I’d like to spend a few weeks in New Orleans. I haven’t been home for twenty years. You think you could find me a job for a couple of weeks?”
It so happened that the Bourbon Street scene was in flux at the time, and I arranged with Frank Assunto to feature Tony on clarinet with the Dukes of Dixieland at the Famous Door. “He can stay with us as long as he wants,” Frank said. “It’s an honor to have him in our band.”
When Parenti arrived, I picked him up at the airport and the very first thing he wanted to do was to go to Felix’s Oyster Bar in the French Quarter. “I’ve been dreaming about this for years,” he told me, as the two of us put away seven dozen oysters on the half-shell. “Nothing in the world like New Orleans oysters.” Since the New Orleans track was closed until Thanksgiving, he could save up a little money to get to New York.
After that I’d see him around, either in New York at Jimmy Ryan’s where he worked for some time or at jazz festivals in New Orleans or places like Manassas, Virginia. Some years later, maybe in 1965 or so, Edmond Souchon called to tell me he and Tony and Knocky Parker were going to make a ragtime band session for George Buck in Columbia, South Carolina. He Wanted to know if I could be there. He said he didn’t think George Buck had ever run a session of his own before. Since I was due at the University of Georgia for several weeks at about the same time, I agreed to drive over to Columbia in case I could add anything to the session. He told me they were planning to do a dozen or so classic rags.
I arrived at the high school auditorium where George was recording before Tony did. I greeted George and the musicians and then drove out to the airport to meet Tony’s plane. He was his usual dapper, businesslike self, and he was carrying a briefcase. He was very happy about doing this LP, because he dearly loved to play the old rags, music of the pre-jazz era.
“Hey!” he yelled. “I’m glad to see you on this date. I didn’t know you were going to be here. I’m always worried that these record people don’t understand rags. Anyway, I’ve got it all here. Right here.” He patted his briefcase.
“You’ve got all what right here?” I asked, innocently.
“The arrangements,” he told me confidently. “The charts.”
I suppose I laughed when I told him I didn’t think he could use them because the great ragtime piano player, Knocky Parker, couldn’t read music. And neither, for that matter, could Doc Souchon. I said I didn’t know about the other musicians. (The others were Larry Conger, trumpet; Charlie Bornemann, trombone; Pops Campbell, drums.)
“You never stop putting people on!” Tony complained. “Why are you telling me Knocky Parker can’t read music. The man played a Scarlatti concert in Hollywood Bowl, for heavens sake. He’s already recorded the complete piano works of Scott Joplin and James Scott. You can’t play that stuff without being able to read.”
I continued to insist that Knocky couldn’t read until Tony said, “What’s the use of talking to you. You’re so thick-headed. Ah, well, if you were a musician, you’d know he has to read!”
When we arrived at the high school, I introduced Tony and Knocky. “All the way down here,” Tony reported to Knocky, “this guy has been trying to tell me you can’t read music. He doesn’t understand that if you can’t read, you can’t play this stuff. It’s not like the blues or something. If I didn’t know he always put people on, I’d have been plenty worried. Imagine going into a ragtime session with a piano player that can’t read!”
Knocky broke the news as gently as he could. “It’s true, Tony,” Knocky said. “I can’t read music.”
“You guys made all this up between you!” Tony charged, trying to laugh. “That can’t be.”
Once the fact sunk into his brain I thought we’d lose him. Of course, Knocky can’t read music, and the session came off magnificently—one of the most satisfying orchestral ragtime LP’s ever. In the beginning, I thought Parentis fears might scuttle it all. But he was fine, beaming in fact, after the first number.
In 1971 I was planning a complicated session to be entitled “The Oriental Twenties,” featuring Harry Shields on clarinet. Harry related so well to those far-Eastern tinged numbers that had been very popular when he started playing jazz in the taxi-dance halls of New Orleans. Before we actually got around to making the record, though, this irreplaceable jazzman passed on. I postponed the session, of course, to think out what kind of adjustments I’d need to make. After a couple of months, I decided to invite Parenti down to cut the disc for me. But once more I was too late. Tony died on April 17, 1972.
I abandoned the project.
Dan Burley
I don’t know how many jazz fans remember Dan Burley. He came out of the rent-party tradition, which in Chicago spawned such stars as Pinetop Smith, Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Jimmy Yancey, besides Cripple Clarence Lofton, Pete Johnson, and so many more. Dan, though, was different. He didn’t play jazz for a living, though he was always a concert attraction and made many exciting records.
Dan Burley was a newspaperman whose résumé included editorial stints on Ebony and Jet. In Chicago he worked on the Daily Defender and at the time of my association with him he was editor-in-chief of the Amsterdam News, Harlem’s big-circulation daily paper. He was also the author of a hilarious and informative little book entitled Dan Burley’s Handbook of Harlem Jive. During the forties this volume was “in.” It sought to establish etymology and lexicography for the fugitive jargon that virtually became a complete and arcane language.
Besides recording for me, he was also on Decca with Lionel Hampton, and he made some great Circle records for Rudi Blesh with Pops Foster and Brownie McGhee. We did a few things that included Pops, Danny Barker, and Jimmy Archey.
Dan and I would frequently convene late at night with the great jazz piano players of the world at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, where he’d occasionally take a turn playing his distinctive “skiffle” music, as he called it. Others who often turned up there were the stride giants, Eubie Blake, Luckey Roberts, James P. Johnson, Willie “The Lion” Smith, and, on some memorable nights in 1939 and 1940, Fats Waller. Unbelievably, there were times when they all showed up at the same time. For a time, the house pianist was Luckey Roberts, who later opened a posh place of his own. On some Saturday mornings
, just as the sun came up, we’d all leave the Chicken Shack and trail after Fats, who had a deal with St. John the Divine Cathedral where they let him play on their pipe organ from 6 to 7 A.M
I can’t convey how exciting Harlem was during these years. There were several weeks when I was involved with Dan in the promotion of various enterprises, both his and mine. During these times I stayed in the Theresa Hotel, the lone Caucasian on the premises. I was there with Dan’s endorsement, so if the other people had any prejudicial attitudes concerning my presence, I never felt them. Many black show people sort of headquartered at the Theresa. Cab Calloway, the Mills Brothers, and bandleader Lucky Millinder were frequent breakfast companions in the coffee shop.
One Friday night I checked in and had barely reached my room when the telephone rang. It was Dan.
“I need a favor, Shaz!” he said tensely. “Will you go out in the hall and turn left. There’s a window at the end. Hurry to the window, put your head out and look down. Then hurry back and tell me what you see. I’ll hold.”
I assumed I had just become a reporter as I ran through the hall. Down in the street I saw a shocking spectacle; but I took in as many details as seemed pertinent, then dashed back to the room and breathlessly picked up the phone.
“There’s a woman lying on the sidewalk on her back. Lots of blood. I’m sure she’s dead. She seems very well-dressed—a fur coat, I believe. But I’m on the fifth floor and I can’t make out details too well. There are lots of cops, lots of sirens. I think an ambulance pulled up just as I left. Maybe five hundred people around the scene.”
“That’s the problem,” he said. “I can’t get a reporter through the mob.”
“Anyway, I’m sure she’s dead,” I told him.
“You sure enough so that I can stick my neck out and write that she’s dead? Hold on. I’m going to be dictating this so I’m not always talking to you. Okay?”