by Rose, Al;
Many of his friends don’t know that he’s also an excellent painter. Unschooled though he is, he has the eye as well as the ear of an artist. Add to all that his well-known abilities as a composer, plus the universally recognized fact that he’s one of the swing world’s all-time great rhythm guitarists, holds his own as a singer of blues and comedy numbers, and is as spellbinding a monologist as jazz has produced and you have a formidable renaissance man in the Da Vinci mold.
I will not attempt to tell any of Danny’s stories. Nobody can tell them as well as he can, and I’m still hoping he will. But I can tell you I’ve produced Danny on many records, beginning early in the forties, that we’ve worked together on network TV projects, on radio and films. I’ve introduced him from many a distinguished concert stage and never seen him fail to hold the audience in the palm of his hand.
Danny’s wife, as you know, is no run-of-the-automatic-washer housewife, though that’s what she’s always aspired to be. A highly successful singer on phonograph records since her 1938 Decca successes, Blue Lu brought something stylistically new to the chanteuse’s world, and a host of imitators have borrowed her phrasing ideas. By nature she’s not a show-biz person. But being married to Danny for so many years—they must be near a golden wedding anniversary—has forced her to put her delightful vocal skills on display in public.
These days, Danny is a model citizen. He doesn’t smoke or drink. He involves himself in developing talent among kids in the hope of generating a new layer of jazz talent for the future. His Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band has already turned out an inordinate number of professionals who have joined the ranks of our jazzmen. He’s toured the public school system talking about the music and performing it. The city accepts him as a kind of informal spokesman for the jazz community.
But the very first time I met Danny he hadn’t yet become a model citizen. Of course, I remember him when I was a kid in the French Quarter. He’s several years older than I am, and he used to play in a spasm band in the streets. He performed with a cigar box. He sang and danced a strange little second-line style dance. Anyone could see he was a rhythm man. I didn’t meet him then, but I watched him.
Grown up and in college, I read all the jazz publications, which in those days had a lot to say about the New Orleans banjo-guitarist Danny Barker. He was always being nominated for all those hokey awards that Downbeat and Esquire were always giving out. The press made sure I knew who Danny Barker was. I used to emerge from class right across the street from Nixon’s Grand Theater on North Broad Street in Philadelphia. This was a theater that featured black vaudeville. The day Lucky Millender and his Mills Blue Rhythm Orchestra opened there, I went across to say hello to the featured sideman, Henry “Red” Allen, whom I knew and who had already played one concert gig under my auspices. Red and I walked around in the backstage area and came upon a slight figure in a tuxedo, lying on the floor and leaning against a two-by-four. He was snoring loudly, but people just walked around him or stepped over him. It had been twelve years or so and we had both grown up, but I recognized him instantly. The same kid that had played the cigar box and entertained in the streets of the French Quarter.
“I remember him!” I told Red. “What’s his name?”
“You got to know him. That’s Danny Barker, the guitar player. That’s Paul’s [Barbarin] nephew. I hope he comes around before show time. He had a hard night, but he made the first show. Don’t look too good right now—but we don’t go for another hour. Kid drinks too damn much. He’ll learn you can’t do that and stay in the big time very long.”
So I met Danny—though he didn’t meet me. Another time I was having dinner in Frank’s on 125th Street in Harlem with Jimmy Pemberton, the powerful district leader for that area. There was Danny—again dressed formally, but obviously long out of it.
“That’s a musician guy from your hometown. You know him?”
I nodded. “Danny Barker,” I said. “Great musician.” Then I had a recording date with Dan Burley scheduled at Steinway Hall and I needed a guitar player. I asked Dan if he had any suggestions. “Danny Barker,” he proposed. “That’s the best guitar player I know.”
“Do you think you can get him to the hall in shape to play?” I asked, tentatively. “Every time I see him he’s so far gone he can’t see.” Dan guaranteed he’d get him there. And I suppose that’s really the first time Danny Barker met me.
Over the years we’ve been to lots of places together—St. Louis, Memphis, New York, Florida, New Orleans, Chicago—and each time he came up with experiences to recount that I’d never heard before. Once when I was driving him to an airport in Memphis he described the ceremony during which he had become a Baptist, and his narrative is one of the great comic monologues of all time. In fact some enterprising record company would do well to issue a record of Danny’s tales of the jazzman’s life. In 1982 we were both panelists in a scholarly forum with Jelly Roll Morton as the subject. The other distinguished panelists were Fred Ramsey, Alan Lomax, Bill Russell, Richard B. Allen, and Dr. Lawrence Gushee. Danny and Lomax left the rest of us little to do as the two of them extemporized a routine, with Lomax as straight man, that left the audience in Dixon Hall at Tulane University limp with laughter.
George Baquet
In the mid-1940s, after my discharge from the army, I lived in Philadelphia for three years, doing publicity work, mainly theatrical and musical. I had a house in Quince Street, which is the heart of the downtown section of the city. Just three blocks away was the Earle Theater, which featured the top vaudeville acts of the day. In that time period, the featured attraction was usually a big-name swing band. As was customary then, theaters of this type always employed a pit orchestra, too, since the featured traveling band wasn’t expected to supply the music for other acts on the bill.
The Earle orchestra was of exceptionally high quality and important to me because it included New Orleans clarinetist George Baquet, who had been a member of Jelly Roll Morton’s first Red Hot Peppers. George used to come by my place almost every afternoon for coffee or, on occasion, a drink. Then we’d sit and talk about music, about old times in New Orleans, about his father Theogene V. Baquet, a preacher who also taught music. George told me he thought his brother Achille, who played in the New Orleans Jazz Band of which Jimmy Durante was pianist, might go back home to live—things like that. Sometimes, when a New Orleans fellow was in one of the traveling swing bands, he’d come by with George. When Jimmy Lunceford did his week at the Earle, he had Omer Simeon with him. Millinder had Red Allen. And, of course, Paul Barbarin and Nicholas were always either with Luis Russell or Armstrong or somebody else. My place became a kind of informal headquarters for Crescent City jazzmen away from home—and I enjoyed it. George was in his early sixties at the time, but he looked and moved like a very old man. And in fact he died in 1949, though he continued to play in the theater and at Pop Wilson’s Bar almost until the very end.
One of the things we talked about at length was the legendary Bolden cylinder. Jazz collectors know that reasonably reliable testimony has indicated that the Buddy Bolden band, hallowed in the history of jazz, was once actually recorded on a cylinder. Needless to say, herculean academic efforts have been made to document that event, not to mention the infinite stratagems that have been employed to locate the cylinder itself.
I had been told by Bob Lyons, Bolden’s sometime bass player who claimed to have performed on that cylinder, that Baquet had been the clarinetist. George told me he had indeed played on the recording. He also added further information, that there had been two clarinet players. He didn’t remember who the other one was, but suggested it would have been either Big Eye Louie (Nelson Delisle) or Picou. (Thirteen years later, Picou would identify himself as the other clarinetist. He recalled Baquet on the session.) George recalled further that they had played “Make Me a Pallet on the Floor” and “Chicken Reel,” both on the same cylinder. (“Chicken Reel” wasn’t published until 1910, years too late for Bolden. But
the tune is nothing but “Turkey in the Straw” in a different key, so it’s reasonable that both Baquet and Picou might have called it “Chicken Reel” since it came to be known by that name later in their experience.)
I always enjoyed providing circumstances that made it possible for the original founders of authentic jazz to get together in later life—to play, if possible, and if not, then just to talk. At one time or another, I had the chance to reunite Baquet with Kid Ory, Mutt Carey, Baby Dodds, Paul Barbarin, Zutty Singleton, and John Lindsay. George said such reunions made him feel young again. It was while I was planning to build a jazz concert around him that he had the stroke that eventually led to his death. I suppose there’s always some unfinished business in every life.
Louis Armstrong
In 1966, Life magazine published a large cover story about Satch. Richard Meryman put the piece together, but it consisted almost entirely of Louis’ tape-recorded reminiscences about his career, plus a large number of old photographs, many of which I was able to supply. The editors sent the piece to me for comments before publishing it, and I was very glad they did. Louis frequently had the most colorful and detailed recollections of things that never happened, and their publication could have easily led to unnecessary embarrassment for him. Several months later I happened to be in Macon, Georgia, at the same time Louis and his All-Stars were doing a concert there. I went backstage to see him. Properly, there was an efficient screening process for people wanting to see Louis. It began with Ira Mangel, his band manager. You had to ask for Ira, and if you didn’t know that name you just didn’t get to see Satch.
“I hope you didn’t mind, Louis,” I said, “that I made so many changes in the story in Life. Some of those things are wrong and you wouldn’t want them printed.”
Louis said, “People ask me about things happened fifty years ago. I can’t remember what happened yesterday.” Then he asked, “What did I tell him wrong?”
“That stuff about playing in Storyville. You never played in Story-ville,” I said.
“Sure I played in Storyville,” he insisted. “I played in Henry Ponce’s saloon.”
I shook my head. “That I know, but Ponce’s saloon wasn’t in Storyville.” I continued, “Do you know where the district actually was?”
“Do I know where it was? Sure, I know where it was! I grew up in the district! Perdido Street, South Rampart Street—all in there!”
I sat shaking my head.
“Why you shakin’ yo’ head? Dat’s the district!”
I explained to him where the district actually was and that the neighborhood of his youth wasn’t it. He seemed shocked to learn this information. Then he said, “I depend on guys like you to know that kinda stuff. Jeez. I wonder how many people I told dat I was a kid in Storyville?”
Tyree Glenn came into the dressing room and Louis said, “Al jus’ told me that where I grew up—what I been tellin’ reporters an’ magazine people for forty years—well, that ain’t Storyville at all.”
Tyree said, “Everybody tells me you’re ignorant and I tell ’em you ain’t—but I guess I’ll have to stop that.”
It wasn’t too long after that the band came to play in New Orleans at the Municipal Auditorium. I didn’t plan to attend because it bothered me to hear how the music had deteriorated, to see Louis relying on all his novelty devices and singing so much. I knew it was difficult for him to play the horn, certainly not on the level that had earned him his fame in the jazz world. I just sent him a note of greeting. I did receive an invitation to a party at the Royal Orleans. It was being given for him at the Royal Orleans Hotel, but I didn’t plan to go. I never enjoyed these social activities.
I knew lots of people were planning to go out to the airport to welcome Louis home, but again, it’s not my kind of scene. I stayed away. Louis wouldn’t miss me.
That evening, Allan Jaffe called me on the phone. He told me that Punch Miller had asked to be taken to the airport to watch Louis’ arrival. He hadn’t seen him in thirty years, and he was proud of his old friend’s success. Allan took Punch. When Louis got off the plane, he recognized Punch in the crowd. Being unable to reach him through that mob, he turned to his beautiful wife Lucille and instructed her to stay behind and get hold of Punch, to invite him to the party the New Orleans Jazz Club was giving for him. Lucille did as Louis had asked her, and Allan said Punch went home walking on air.
Allan took Punch, dressed in his good suit, to the Royal Orleans for the party, and the people at the door wouldn’t admit him. Allan explained about the invitation direct from Satch, but to no avail. They had then tried to call Louis from the lobby, but whoever answered the phone refused to call him. Allan took a very much disappointed Punch back to his apartment. Then he called me. I’m sure he was at least as distressed as Punch.
“You know Louis,” Allan said. “He ought to know about what happened up there. Punch is convinced they wouldn’t let him in because he’s black.”
“I’ll get Louis on the phone right away and call you back,” I promised. So I called Ira Mangel at his hotel and asked for Satch. Ira said he wouldn’t be available for an hour but that he’d call me then.
I had to go out for just a few minutes, but I knew I had plenty of time to get back before Satch returned my call. Well, he called back a minute after I’d left, and Georgia Dabney, who worked for me taking care of my young son Rex, answered the phone. He asked for me and said, “This is Louis Armstrong.” And Georgia, that lovely lady, passed out. I was back in about fifteen minutes. When I asked Georgia if there had been any calls, she told me there hadn’t but that she’d found the phone off the hook (which obviously happened when she fainted). A few minutes later, Louis called and said, “I just called you and a lady answered but then she didn’t talk no mo’. I was worried your phone might not be workin’.”
I then related all that Jaffe had told me about his efforts to get Punch admitted to the party. Louis said, “Al, I got to ask you to do somethin’ for me. It really means a whole lot to me and I wouldn’t ask you to go to no trouble if it wasn’t real important. Could you get a hold of Jaffe and Punch and make sure they come to the concert tomorrow night? Tell ’em there’ll be tickets with Punch’s name at the box office. Then make sure they come backstage at intermission. They can get in because they ain’t gonna let nobody else but them back there. I got to let him know I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that.”
So I called Allan and related the conversation. He said Punch was pretty upset but that he’d try to get him there. This is one of the jazz stories that has a happy ending. When Jaffe and Punch arrived at the box office, there was a message for Punch to come right backstage. Allan took him. There was Louis, getting ready to go on. He had a photographer there who took dozens of photographs of Punch and Satch together. There was a table laden with catered delicacies for Punch’s enjoyment. He proposed that Punch remain backstage through the whole performance so they could visit. The cash customers got to see very little of Louis that night. He’d blow or sing a chorus, then he’d disappear behind the curtain and talk with Punch. He got the band to extend the ensemble parts, the musicians to take extra solos. Most of the time he and Punch talked over old times.
There was a line of people waiting to get to Louis for autographs during intermission, many of whom had attended the party at the Royal Orleans. Louis just let them wait—never even acknowledged them.
After his final bows he came back to Punch and stuffed several hundred dollar bills into his breast pocket and told him how much he had enjoyed seeing him again. Punch was virtually speechless. He told me later how thrilled he was with what Satch had done for him.
Louis called me later that night and said, “I want to thank you for getting Kid Punch over there tonight. I really appreciate it. I hope I squared everything with him. Them other people never did get backstage and I didn’t give no autographs.”
I was glad to have had the opportunity to help make things right between these two.
&
nbsp; Knocky Parker
Don’t let anybody tell you that Knocky Parker isn’t one of the all-time jazz greats, because he is. That does not say he isn’t a strange one, because he’s that, too. He lives in Tampa, Florida, where he teaches various courses at the University of South Florida under the alias of Dr. John W. Parker. And he’s never tried to discourage his highly individual and charming son Johnny from continually filling the house with snakes.
Knocky has many talents. One of his best is vanishing. You might be attending a jazz or ragtime festival with him. Everybody’s having a great time planning the rest of the weekend, catching up on gossip, going to dinner—all the things you do at a festival besides listen to music. And then Knocky vanishes. Nobody sees him again until the next festival, if then. Only recently, Knocky and I were booked to be interviewed during a festival on the New Orleans public radio station, WWOZ. He vanished, and I haven’t heard from him since.
Anyway, the reasons I say he’s one of the all-time jazz greats are many. One of them is that he knows every tune you or I can think of. He has that remarkable talent for knowing, as though it were genetic, what chord to play in any situation. His remarkable, sometimes dazzling ragtime virtuosity is rendered even more amazing when you get a chance to look at his hands, which are tiny, especially in proportion to his six-foot frame. Most of all, what he plays is satisfying. Now that’s hard to explain—but when Knocky plays something you enjoy it so much. You have the feeling that you’re hearing the tune the way it’s really supposed to be played, for the first time. His novelty act in which he shows a silent film and supplies the old-style piano accompaniment is both ingenious and hilarious. His ability to fit in with other musicians in virtually any context cannot, I’m sure, be matched by any other piano player.