by Rose, Al;
I said okay. My door was open and there was a lot of excitement in the hallway. “Hang on just a second,” I told Dan. I went out into the hall. By now it seemed news of the suicide had permeated the entire hotel. I found out who the lady was and got back on the phone.
“It’s Billy Daniels’ wife,” I reported. “She jumped out of the window.”
I heard him relaying this information. Then he said, “See you at ten o’clock. Wait in the lobby. I guess we’ve got room on the paper for one ofay reporter.” And he hung up.
The next morning when I saw the headline about the suicide of the famous singer’s wife, I felt like it was my story.
Dan, when I first met him, was as racist as a black can get. He endorsed the Utopian ideals of Marcus Garvey for a National Black Republic, and he was sure that whites were sadistic, untrustworthy, savage, greedy, and, most of all, stupid. His column in the Amsterdam News referred to nonblacks as “greys,” and he was always writing polemics against Harlem nightclub owners who catered to white “slumming” parties. I take great pride in having played a part in modifying and perhaps even curing this extraordinary man’s bigotry. By the time he left New York to return to Chicago, he had a host of white friends; and he had stopped attacking people in print just because of their color.
The most memorable time I spent in his company was on Christmas eve in 1946, when he threw a party, mostly for musicians, in his apartment on Edgecomb Avenue on what was called “Sugar Hill” by envious Harlemites too poor to live in that kind of luxury. It turned out to be the night of the biggest snow storm in the history of the city. Before the night was over we were as snowed in as you could ever get at the North Pole. Drifts were up to the second story of the buildings, and getting out the front door was out of the question. No traffic, of course, could get through. You couldn’t even see the tops of the parked cars in the snow.
Dan had plenty of liquor on hand, but very little-food, especially not for a siege like this. Among the guests were Albert Nicholas, Pops Foster, Lips Page, and an editor of the New York Daily News whose name was Macdonald. There was also a reporter, Ted Poston, who had once been an alto sax player who recorded with Jimmie Noone on those Apex Club Orchestra records. There was only one woman present, Una Mae Carlisle, the only female ever to sing on a Fats Waller record. After it was past the time when we all should have been gone, our resourceful host began a game by singing the first two lines of a blues as he played the piano and challenging anyone who could remember the last line to sing it. The winner got to sing the first two lines of another one. It’s my recollection that this went on for several hours. We all enjoyed it despite our mounting hunger. In the process of fooling around with the music, Dan and Lips Page and I put together a tune and a lyric that would later enjoy a substantial popular success. It was titled “They Raided the Joint” and was recorded by various artists on a half-dozen different labels.
Una Mae sat in the bay window with a writing tablet and composed a piece which she sang and played for us that very night. Called “Walkin’ by the River,” it was destined to be the biggest hit of the following spring.
By now, the sun was shining brightly. Baby Dodds was just sitting and gaping out the window. Suddenly he yelled, “What’s that?”
Dan opened the window and hauled in a huge basket of provisions that some good Samaritan had thoughtfully lowered either from the roof or from an upstairs window. I never did find out who our benefactor was. Una Mae and Dan understood about pancakes, and they spent a couple of hours feeding them to people, along with real maple syrup, apples, and coffee. Bill Chase, the Amsterdam News society editor was pleased that he could now write that it was a great party. The black thespian, Wardell Saunders, said he’d heard about starving actors but never expected to be one. We were able to leave at about three in the afternoon. The snowplows had done their work, and the inevitable subways still ran.
I always enjoyed going with Dan to the Harlem after-hours spots where performers gathered for their own recreation, when the theater lights went out and the night clubs closed. It wasn’t easy for whites to get into these places, and I was fortunate to have Dan’s sponsorship to make my admission comfortable. It was in just such a place, the Monroe Club, that he presented me with a small trophy proclaiming me Harlem’s champion free-style rib-polisher after I had effectively attacked some barbecued ribs. The entertainment wasn’t programmed, but we saw and listened to Milt Jackson and his quartet, which I think was the house band. We also heard Hazel Scott playing her piano boogie woogie and saw Pearl Primus, the modern dance sensation of the day, perform. Bojangles came in and said hello, but he didn’t go on.
In later years, Dan wrote me occasionally from Chicago. I got a wedding invitation, and toward the end of his days he became a father. I always had a hard time picturing Dan Burley as a family man.
Allan Jaffe
In the jazz world I’ve known all kinds of musicians—hustlers, pimps, drug addicts, band managers, entrepreneurs, and booking agents. I’ve met my share of dilettantes, philanthropists, political proselytizers, politicians, cynics, and innocents. And very few people don’t belong under one or another heading. There were and are people for whom I have felt deep and abiding personal respect, people who remain in my personal gallery of sainte. For none of these individuals do I feel more admiration and affection than for Allan Jaffe, the proprietor of Preservation Hall and now the best jazz tuba player in New Orleans. He’s one of the rare ones who thinks of a whole lot of other people before he thinks of himself.
I met Jaffe and his lovely wife Sandra the first week they were in New Orleans in 1961. They were newly married and Allan was fresh out of the University of Pennsylvania. He was just beginning his career as an efficiency expert in D. H. Holmes Department Store. Larry Borenstein owned the building that is now Preservation Hall; he had but recently invited me to take the place over and run it as a jazz “kitty hall.” I persuaded him, quite properly, that there was no way I could make a success of it. I didn’t have the patience, the business acumen, the inclination to relate to people in the fashion that was necessary to build Preservation Hall into the international shrine it has become. Allan Jaffe did, and I shared Larry’s pride in watching the Hall grow in world stature and become an economic bonanza in Jaffe’s hands. I could never have established the personal loyalties the musicians feel for Jaffe. I don’t have the temperament to share their lives, their deaths, their domestic difficulties, to steer them through devastating illnesses and other personal crises. Jaffe doesn’t tell, but I know the medical bills he’s paid, how he’s buried them and how he’s helped their families financially afterward. And I know that my telling all this will embarrass him. But it needs to be told. I’ve seen talented but duplicitous musicians, knowing Jaffe wouldn’t retaliate, doublecross and exploit him. They’ve flagrantly violated contracts, stolen jobs, ignored agreements when it suited them to do so—only to have Jaffe forgive and forget. He’s able, apparently, to overlook any fault if the guilty party is a great jazzman.
I share with him the historian’s interests, the social views, and the collector’s passions. We have, for instance, had lots of fun going to auctions, rarely bidding against each other, but enjoying the game and acquiring treasures. One of our biggest laughs we found at an unclaimed freight auction where everything is in sealed, unmarked boxes. I think this one was at the Railway Express warehouse in New Orleans. One was not permitted to open any purchases on the premises. I bought a rather large box for fifteen dollars that contained a high-quality leather suitcase worth, today, maybe $150. I found in it a sterling silver cigarette case, which I later sold at auction for $70; a half-dozen superb Sulka neckties; a quart of Ballantine’s 30-year-old scotch whiskey; and two quarts of Beefeater Gin.
Jaffe went to twenty dollars on a larger carton, approximately five cubic feet in size. He and Sandra took it home—all of us, of course, curious about the contents. Later in the day he called me and told me he had bought six thousand pair
s of chopsticks. He was giving away chopsticks at the Hall for months afterward.
Once in 1970 I asked him to rent me the Hall for my wedding reception. Characteristically, he wouldn’t permit me to pay him. Apparently one doesn’t offer Jaffe money for anything. I’m happy for him that he can afford to refuse. Diana and I haven’t thrown that big a party since. There were jazzmen everywhere. Alvin Alcorn led the band and Bill Russell recorded all the music.
Punch Miller didn’t stutter when he sang, only when he talked, and he sometimes got out of hand in casual conversation. But there was never a stammer when he talked about Jaffe. “That man! I don’ know—he’s like a father, a son, a brother. I love that man. He got the feelin’ when somebody else hurts. My God, the things he done for me!—what I seen him do for other people—not even musicians—. He come from heaven, Allan Jaffe. What would we all be now without him?”
As a kid in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Allan used to listen, he tells me, to Journeys Into Jazz on his radio. I take more than a little pride in having contributed to the taste development that led him to settle in New Orleans and establish the framework that has provided a new life and prosperity for so many aging jazzmen.
When the history of the last days of authentic jazz is written, I have no doubt that the authors will think of those years and write of them as the Jaffe years. If all of the people who brought jazz to the public in the past had had Jaffe’s qualities, jazz might still be a lusty and thriving art form.
Louis Prima
Outside of the years I spent in college, a few of my adult years were spent in Philadelphia. In 1946 and 1947 I was doing the Journeys Into Jazz radio shows and concerts there, supporting these vices by working in the advertising and publicity business. My favorite account was The Click, an enormous nightclub that contained the world’s longest bar. The proprietor of this huge posh enterprise was the legendary Frank Palumbo, celebrated among band musicians as the most generous of all saloon keepers. He engaged me to publicize the place a couple of months before its opening on Labor Day of 1946.
My old New Orleans friend, Louis Prima, was booked as the opening attraction. The Click had a revolving stage, and its policy was to have two bands, for continuous music. As part of my initial public relations salvo I created the Frank Palumbo Award to the most valuable Philadelphia baseball player. After I went over the details with Frank, he said, “Hell, if you can get them to accept an award publicly from a saloon keeper, go ahead and do it.”
As it happened, it wasn’t all that easy to do—but I managed. I polled the sportswriters on the four daily papers, and they selected a pitcher, Schoolboy Rowe, for the honor. I had hoped they’d select one of the Phillies. The town had two major-league teams then, and the Phillies were going to be playing at home on Labor Day. I wanted to have Louis Prima make the presentation and play the Star Spangled Banner. All of this was fine with the Phillies.
I then went to Frank Dailey’s Meadowbrook, a primary big-band spot in Caldwell, New Jersey, to talk over my plan with Louis, who was filling an engagement there. I hadn’t seen him in quite a few years, and when I entered his dressing room he looked pale and exhausted. He was cold and withdrawn and it occurred to me that he might not recognize me. I was about to refresh his memory when his face brightened with the realization that I was someone from home.
“Al Rose!” he told himself. I nodded and we shook hands. He acknowledged that he wasn’t feeling too well. Then he said, “I need to do a set before I come to life. Stay and watch and we’ll talk later.”
It was never easy to get used to the suddenness with which Louis’ personality changed the instant he stepped on stage. He suddenly became an energy bomb, a whirlwind of action. His performance was always in high gear, filled not only with music but with wit, slapstick comedy, and at times some acrobatics. When he came off he was soaked with sweat, calm, and even sleepy looking.
I explained that I’d like for him to come into Philadelphia early enough to make the double-header so we could execute the ceremonies as planned. He agreed without apparent enthusiasm, though he was certainly aware that this kind of publicity could do him nothing but good. He was just exhausted after his appearance.
Back in Philadelphia I let the papers know he’d be on hand to play the national anthem at the game. But as soon as the paper came out the union called and told me he wouldn’t. There’s a rule that an out-of-town artist may only appear in the one place he’s booked for. After some frantic telephoning, I actually got through to the czar himself, James Caesar Petrillo. “It’s just the damn Star Spangled Banner!” I complained. “Who the hell listens to the Star Spangled Banner? The publicity will do Prima as much good as it does us.”
Petrillo offered a compromise. “You got a decent reputation,” he complimented me. “I know you never promote any nonunion jobs. I got a suggestion. He can walk out on the field. He can carry his horn. He can sing the Star Spangled Banner. The union has no jurisdiction over singing. That way the people get to see him and hear him. He can give away the car or the golf clubs or whatever. Okay?”
It was a tolerable compromise, and that’s how the baseball fans got their first look at Louis Prima. I had arranged with sportscaster Byrum Saam to avoid radio commercials while our thing was going on. Between games I got out to the pitcher’s mound and blew a police whistle to call the players into an infield conclave. They surrounded Louis and Schoolboy Rowe while the news photographers clicked away. A plane passed overhead trailing a streamer that announced, “Tonight … Louis Prima … The Click.”
That night, 38,000 people triggered the electric eye counter at the entrance to the saloon, 3,000 more than the attendance at the ball park. Louis said, “When you were a kid I never thought you’d have the guts to pull off something like this.”
“When you were a kid,” I replied, “I didn’t think you’d ever be able to memorize the Star Spangled Banner.”
When Louis was very young, perhaps 17 (he was four years older than I), he was already a featured soloist in a theater pit orchestra. I can’t remember whether it was Loew’s State or the Strand. He was already the boy wonder of New Orleans jazz. I remember sitting in the theater and watching the single spot pick Louis up as he blew his hot chorus of “The Sheik of Araby.” Later I asked him, “Have you ever thought of having a band of your own?”
He answered, “I already had that.”
Adrian Rollini
All jazz collectors know the name of Adrian Rollini, who was not only an expert bass-saxophonist and xylophone virtuoso but also had the knack of getting jobs for himself and whatever group he happened to be performing with. For a time he was the proprietor of Adrian’s Tap Room, a thirties jazz spot in New York. Some spectacular records that included Wingy Mannone were issued under the name of Adrian and His Tap Room Gang. He made countless records with Red Nichols, Bix Beiderbecke, and the California Ramblers. Toward the end of his musical career he was featured leading his own cocktail trio in New York at the Roosevelt Hotel. (Guy Lombardo was in the main room.)
On more than one occasion he told me he was going to “quit the music business and go fishin’.” Since I’d heard that story from scores of musicians who never seemed to actually do it, I paid him no attention. However, Adrian did leave New York, and I never heard any more about him, musically.
In 1960, I bought a house in Key Largo, Florida, on Buttonwood Sound. I could catch snapper, grouper, tarpon, and lobsters from my dock. I was living alone at the time, which has always been easy for me to do as long as I had something to write on. I’d been in the place for maybe a week when I found it necessary to drive to Tavernier, about twelve miles down the road, to a tackle shop. On the edge of town I was startled to see a fairly large sign that advertised Adrian Rollini’s Fishing Camp.
On my way back from the store, I pulled off the highway and took the indicated road to his place. He must have been out fishing. The premises were deserted and there was a padlock on the door. There was also a note that just said
“7 PM. “ I left a note, too, telling him I’d been there and would stop by one day soon. My phone hadn’t been installed yet, so I couldn’t leave a number.
Several times I stopped by, taking a chance on catching him, and at last I did. I couldn’t believe how different he looked. In his playing days, he worked so much you rarely got to see him in anything but a tuxedo. He wore his hair slicked down and parted in the middle, very shiny. His mustache looked like it had been made with an eyebrow pencil. He was the typical jazz age sheik, right out of a John Held, Jr., cartoon. Looking at this unshaven face under a disreputable fishing hat, I couldn’t believe it was the same Rollini.
By that time I wasn’t drinking anymore, but he was. We talked awhile about old times and our mutual friends. As we talked, I realized that he had really put the music business out of his mind. What he was genuinely interested in was fishing.
So here he was, renting small boats and equipment, apparently having the time of his life. After that we’d see each other now and then. Once we went to a bowling alley in Tavernier, but after we got there he changed his mind about bowling. I think, though, that it was the atrocious music on the public address system that chased him away. We spent a lot of time fishing off my dock, and several times we went bonefishing in one of his skiffs. He was quite expert and much more animated than in his performing days.
“Ah, the music!” he said one day. “The music is gone. The people who could play it, the people who understood it—they’re all gone. The dancers are gone. What they want now is Beatles. You ever hear those four schmucks? But money! They can make more in a night than I made in a year. It would be different if they could play or sing or any goddamn thing. Ah, well. Whatever it is, we went through it before with Rudy Vallee. But no—this is something else. It’s like a sickness, and this time I’m not sure the world will cure itself for a long time. In ten years you won’t be able to find any real jazz—just a few schmucks with clown haircuts singin’ stupid songs out-of-tune and making millions.”