by Rose, Al;
Sherwood Mangiapane, one of the best jazz bass players in the world, reminds me of things we did a half-century earlier. Photo by Joe Marcal.
If you saw the Rex parade in 1967 this is the band you heard on the bandwagon. From left to right are Al Rose, director; Leonard Ferguson; Sherwood Mangiapane; Bill Humphries, kneeling; Paul Crawford, Dr. Henry A. “Hank” Kmen, Jack Delaney, Raymond Burke, Jack Bachman, George Finola, Stanley Mendelson, and Harold “Shorty” Johnson. Photo by Edmond Souchon.
Una Mae Carlisle was gorgeous, sang like a meadowlark, and composed the big record hit of 1947, “Walkin’ by the River.”
Willie Humphrey is telling me he remembers when I wasn’t old enough to play a typewriter. Behind me is clarinetist Joe Torregano. Freddie Lonzo is wearing an undershirt of a type that Orleanians call “esplanades.” Photo by foe Marcal.
The shade of Sidney Story telling how it was in the red light district. The theater audience gave the live model an ovation. The professor at the piano is Morten Gunnar Larsen. Photo by John Shoup.
As far as Bob Greene, right, is concerned, Jelly Roll Morton lives. His concert tour, “Jelly Roll Morton Revisited,” brought that music from coast to coast. The guy in the hat, whose name is Neal Unterseher, is a banjo player from the Razzberry Ragtimers. Johnny Donnels only took this picture to show himself on the wall with Jack Nicklaus, who blows a great nine-iron.
Local boy makes it in the movies. Al Rose, as Sidney Story, reads the ordinance establishing the red light district to the board of aldermen in Storyville.
I kept telling Louis to stop fooling around and get down to business (ca. 1946). Photo by Harry Romm,
The beginning of the Louis Armstrong All-Stars in the mid-1940s. By now you recognize the guy on the floor. The others are, left to right, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Satch, Barney Bigard, and Arvel Shaw. Missing from this shot are Jack Teagarden and Sid Catlett. Photo by Harry Romm.
Eubie looked at Claire Spangenberg and said, “I wish I was ninety again. Photo by Johnny Donnels.
Some of my best friends play ragtime piano, especially Max Morath. Photo by Joe Marcal.
Edmond Souchon and I were swamped with customers when the first edition of New Orleans Jazz: A Family Album came out in 1967. Even jazzmen like Monk Hazel (in the checked hat) showed up for copies. Photo by Maison Blanche staff photographer.
Karl Kramer founded the Music Corporation of America and booked King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. In this photograph, we’re on the deck of the S.S. Goldenrod, anchored in the Mississippi River for the St. Louis Ragtime Festival in 1966. Photo by Dr. Charles Riley.
Live and direct from the French Quarter in New Orleans. Left to right are the emcee, Blue Lu Barker, Harry Shields, Martin Abraham, Sherwood Man giapane, and entrepreneur Joe Mares. Photo by John Kuhlman.
Dixieland bands were unknown outside of New Orleans until Tom Brown took his Band from Dixieland to Chicago in 1915. Photo by Mary Mitchell.
When I was very young I was known to associate with saxophone players like Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis who went on to international fame. Photo by Nick Alexakis.
The youngster is Allan Jaffe. Preservation Hall had just opened in 1961, and he didn’t look old enough to operate it. If he’d followed my instructions, the place would have closed in three weeks. Photo by Grauman Marks.
These days you’ve got to pay ’em to rehearse, but back then you couldn’t stop ’em. From left to right are Raymond Burke, your Eminent Authority, Harry Shields, Chink Martin, and Monk Hazel. Photo by Mary Mitchell.
Alan Lomax (with glasses), dean of American Folk Musicologists. Bill Russell told me, “I’ll never call you a musicologist again if you promise not to call me one.” Photo by Joe Marcal.
If you think this wasn’t long ago, look at the playback-speaker. This record session was at Steinway Hall in New York in the mid-1940s. Left to right are John Hardee, a saxophonist; Herman Mitchell, guitar; Jimmy Archey, who said, “They don’t throw trombone players back if they’re under five feet tall.” Then there’s Dan Burley, enjoying his own sound; the Paymaster; Danny Barker, still with a little hair; and Pops Foster, who couldn’t remember being on this gig, plays bass. Photo by David Hawkins.
Mitchell Ayres’s “New Fashions in Music” was a household phrase in the 1930s. He was musical director for many hit radio shows. This one was “Juke Box Jury,” 1948. A speeding auto ended his life. Photo by Nick Alexakis.
While I try to take a picture of Chink Martin, a sixteen-year-old banjo prodigy is playing like a veteran. Thirty years later, he became the ranking studio bassist, backing up all the big-name pop stars on LPs. His name is Bill Huntington.
A typical Journeys into Jazz concert might feature, as this one did, left to right, Sammy Price, Baby Dodds, Albert Nicholas, Wild Bill Davison, and, way down at the end, Bunk Johnson. Photo by Nick Alexakis.
When the initial raucous strains pealed out, Diana and I hurriedly got into our bathrobes to find out what was going on. I was of the opinion that none of that was really happening, but I was going along with the gag my subconscious was playing during my most vulnerable sleeping hours. Once outside in the lividly cold air, I noticed a hundred or so other folks, many of whom I knew, were sharing my bizarre dream. But for the temperature, I could have been convinced positively that Morpheus still had me, especially when George Brunies stepped out on the same balcony with only his boxer shorts on.
Wild Bill, having assembled his troops, proceeded to remind them that we were here in Manassas, the site of the historic Battle of Bull Run. He also described the unfortunate quirk in the action that had led the yankees, damn them, to victory and shouted that the wrongs could yet be righted and that at least a paragraph of American history could yet be rewritten if we in the patio would but take the offensive, follow his fearless leadership, and retake the battlefield in the name of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Confederacy. Brunies, meanwhile, apparently having arrogated to himself the role of adjutant, was yelling, “Right on! Yeah! Rise again! Way to go!” and other less genteel exhortations, all of which had not yet approached their crescendo when the security people arrived, put down the rebellion, and took its fervent leaders into custody.
The next day at breakfast I told Wild Bill I was surprised he didn’t get pneumonia. He said he never did anything like that without antifreeze. Then he demanded, “Where were you when we needed you, you son-of-a-bitch? You too goddamn old to be drafted? I know you’re over the hill because somebody told me you came here with your wife, for Christ sake!”
I reminded him of a balmier night a generation earlier, when we had stood together on the raised railway station at Princeton Junction, after a concert at the university. With us were Sidney Bechet, George Brunies, Sammy Price, Pops Foster, and Baby Dodds. We had almost two hours to wait for the train to New York.
It was always Wild Bill’s restless way to explore every inch of his immediate environment for objects that interest him. On this particular night he found an emergency case, with a glass door, behind which was a fire hose. I don’t know what he used to open the door, but it seemed only an instant before he had the hose nozzle to his lips and was playing what I had to concede was some very hot music. Remonstration was to no avail. I told him to put the hose nozzle back, but he patently assumed that my authority had ended one second after the finale on stage. Regardless of the merits of my protest, there was no doubt that what he was playing was hot and exciting. Brunies couldn’t resist opening his trombone case, getting his horn out, and supplying counterpoint. It doesn’t take jazzmen long to act once they’ve taken a notion, and before a whole chorus was over, everybody was playing except Baby—and that only because it takes a few minutes more to set the drums up.
The dorms were deployed in a semicircle around the trestle, and their windows began to light up one by one until the entire area was illuminated. Students began to emerge from their buildings. In a matter of minutes the terrain was alive with bathrobed undergrads. Th
e concert was even more brilliant than the one we’d had inside. Since I alone was aware that train time was approaching, I reluctantly began to exhort the musicians to pack up and get themselves ready to board. They ignored me. I took the nozzle away from Davison and put it back in the case. In the end we were all scrambling to get Pops’ bass fiddle back in its case. Baby’s drums we had to drag aboard, item by item, plus the cases. I think we got on the train with everything because Baby never mentioned missing anything.
When we were well out of the station, Wild Bill proudly displayed the hose nozzle, which he produced from his coat. After I reminded him of the incident a quarter-century later there in Manassas he said, “You do things like that when you’re young.”
Joe Mares
Strictly speaking, you couldn’t really call Joe Mares a musician, though I know for a fact that he did play a little clarinet in his youth and once or twice might even have been paid for it. But he did have the opportunity frequently to sit in with the key members of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings—Leon Ropollo; Joe’s brother, Paul, who was the leader; George Brunies, the trombonist; and the bass player, Steve Brown.
However, somebody had to carry on the family business, so Joe directed his attentions to the buying and selling of furs and alligator hides, from his location at 520 St. Louis Street in the French Quarter. The musty old warehouse contained within it a large studio that was the office and musicians’ lounge of Southland Records, which was Joe’s pride and joy through the fifties. He divided his time between dealing with Cajun trappers and hosting and recording the great stars of New Orleans jazz.
I was fascinated by the men coming in from the Louisiana swamps with their bundles of gators, and I enjoyed the selling and buying game Joe played with them. Gator skins are bought by length, and Joe had a calibrated table with a spike on one end to facilitate measurement. The trapper would slap the snout of the saurian onto the spike. Then he had the prerogative of pulling the tail of the reptile as far on the board as it would go without splitting. If it split, he’d only get half-price for it. The trapper usually brought a consultant with him, whose role was to advise on whether the hide was extended to its maximum length or if there might still be an inch or two before the breaking point. The dialogue would go:
“What you t’ink, Placide? You t’ink maht be wan, two mo’ inch in dees sunnumbitch?”
“Lemme see, Telesfore. Lemme see if he twang.” Then he’d pluck the sunnumbitch like a harp string. “She tight, dat goddam bastidd. Maybe you tak’ you money on dat wan, you.”
Joe would pay them off, gator by gator, as they repeated the ritual. No running a tab. Cash per gator.
This phase of Joe’s daily operation usually took place in the morning. Afterward we would retire to the studio, which was decorated with blown-up photographs of his favorite things—the Bob Cats, his brother Paul, George Girard, naked ladies, Louis Armstrong, Irving Fazola. Musicians would begin to arrive—Santo Pecora, Monk Hazel, Sharkey, Johnny St. Cyr, Raymond Burke, Stanley Mendelson. They didn’t play at that early hour; they just sat around and talked about their jobs of the previous night. The joke-tellers told jokes. Joe is good at that. They reminisced. Joe would send out to Johnny’s Po’ Boys across the street and the incredible sandwiches and drinks would appear. He never let the musicians pay for anything. If they’d get to talking about something musical, Stanley or Armand Hug or Jeff Riddick might go to the piano and play a chord or two—maybe Raymond would by now have his horn together, its parts maintaining unsteady liaison with each other with the aid of rubber bands and chewing gum—and run down a melody, maybe helping someone to associate a tune with a title.
All this might end up in a snappy treatment of “Underneath Hawaiian Skies” or some such esoteric melody, performed by a jazz band that would command a fortune at a concert in Copenhagen or Kyoto. At its conclusion, Joe might say, “You guys know ‘Of All the Wrongs You’ve Done To Me’?”
There’d be much shaking of heads. Jazzmen don’t remember titles well. Raymond, of course, knows every tune ever played. Sherwood Mangiapane might nod and say, “It goes like this,” then whistle it. Sherwood is a great whistler. Then maybe somebody would ask, “How does the bridge go?” and Sherwood would whistle that Finally, Joe might say, “Let’s try it out and see how it goes. You know, it could be pretty to have the whistlin’ in it,“too. That sounded nice.”
So then whatever musicians were present might have a go at it. On the particular occasion relating to this tune we had three guitars—Edmond Souchon, Danny Barker, and Johnny St. Cyr. There was a bass fiddle, Sherwood; a tuba, Chink Martin; a pair of clarinets, Raymond Burke and Harry Shields. Raymond also had his soprano saxophone with him. Jeannette Kimball played the piano. Not your typical jazz band instrumentation by any means. But this assemblage of master jazz artists could never feel any limitations. Sherwood whistled. The effect was so captivating that it expanded itself into a truly rewarding LP.
Joe Mares could maintain this kind of informal, relaxed, creative environment that produced such little masterpieces. Jeannette, superbly gifted as a band pianist, sang on that LP, which is remarkable because Jeannette doesn’t sing.
Joe was always proud to have the Who’s Who of New Orleans jazz on his label, but he was equally delighted to be able to put some extraordinary musicians on wax for the first time. Mike Lala, Al Hirt, Dutch Andrus, Pete Fountain, and Kid Avery all made their recording debuts on Southland, as did the gospel star, Sister Elizabeth Eustis. Tom Brown and Johnny St. Cyr both had their first records with themselves listed as leader under Joe Mares’ auspices. He also brought Papa Celestin back to the recording studio after a hiatus of decades.
One of the hottest and most charming tapes he produced couldn’t be released for contractual reasons. Rosemary Clooney, while she was playing at the Blue Room in the Roosevelt, expressed the desire to hear herself on records with a genuine New Orleans jazz band. Joe invited her to do just that. She came to the warehouse and sang a half-dozen things, with accompaniments she had never dreamed were possible. Joe, in his customary generosity, offered to present the tapes to Columbia if they’d issue them. But Mitch Miller, then their talent and repertoire director, felt that the record wouldn’t be consistent with the image they were trying to build for her and thus commerce frustrated art once again.
That kind of thing isn’t easy for Joe to understand. He relates to the music with an intensity you never see among musical entrepreneurs and rarely even among fans. Many a time I’ve seen him weep copiously in response to really well-performed music. I’m satisfied that he’s never motivated except by his own taste. He developed into a real master recording director by knowing exactly what he wanted. His superb musical ear proved to be the best instructor, and he learned the mechanics of balance and tone in an era before electronics and multi-track devices homogenized and sterilized the nation’s music. The atmosphere around Joe was brought home to me one night in the fifties when he gave a wedding reception for Li’l Abbie Brunies and his, bride, Jerri. His patio was alive with the great names in the New Orleans jazz world, many in from faraway places. They milled around eating Helen Mares’ renowned crab salad, jambalaya, gumbo, and red beans and rice. Tony Parenti sighed with satisfaction over his third plate, turned to me and said, “It’s good to be home.”
Harry Truman
Sometimes things happen that don’t take very long and they’re so far outside of your regular routine that in retrospect they seem unreal. Such events seem more frequent among jazz people than among the members of saner society. I mean the average working citizen can live an entire lifetime without anyone ever calling him from the State Department. One Friday morning I received such a call. It seemed that there was going to be a sort of social function at Blair House in Washington, D.C., that night. Blair House was where visiting VIP's were usually put up when the President had them as guests, but right then Harry and Bess Truman were in residence there while certain remodeling was in progress across the street i
n the White House. What the President wanted me to do was to put together an all-star jazz band to perform. It was then 9 A.M., and we were expected to be at Idlewild to be picked up by a government plane at 7:30 P.M.
I may have stammered a little, expressing less than complete confidence that I could put such a band together on that short notice. My communicant, however, ignored my reticence. When I suggested he call and ask Satchmo’ he said he’d done that. He said Satchmo’ was booked and had proposed that somebody call Al Rose, who always knew where everybody was and could surely accommodate the President of the United States.
That’s how it came about that on a chilly evening in 1947 I shook hands with a State Department attaché in the unimpressive air terminal of Idlewild (now Kennedy) Airport and introduced him to Muggsy Spanier, George Brunies, Pee Wee Russell, Brad Gowans, James P. Johnson, Lee Blair, Pops Foster, and Baby Dodds. We were guided into a luxuriously appointed plane and turned over to a half-dozen gorgeous flight attendants. (Pee Wee said later that they were so beautiful he almost forgot they were the ones that served the gin.) The trip took no time at all.
So now we’re set up in the Blair House. There’s a little bandstand, possibly set up for the occasion. Baby went about putting up his drums, a process that took him longer than any other drummer I knew. James P. ran a few arpeggios on the grand piano and said the action was okay. The tuning-up process began, and a very pleasant, formally gowned lady whom I recognized at once as the First Lady approached me with a few welcoming remarks. Then she said, “You know, nothing in the world would make the President happier than a chance to play the piano with your musicians.”