I Remember Jazz

by Rose, Al;

  In 1966, we had a breakdown ahead of us, and the bandwagon was stalled at Lee Circle, where thousands were gathered to watch the parade and grab for the beads and doubloons the maskers throw. The band is too busy playing to throw anything and that makes the street throngs restive.

  Stanley Mendelson was doing the piano chores that day, and he began to play “Alley Cat” right after I had flagged both front lines down for a break. Now, Mendelson’s rhythm is irresistible. It has that subtle, compelling drive to which nobody is immune. The predictable result was that that enormous mass of humanity began to rock to that subtle, syncopated beat. Since there was no square inch unoccupied, I hesitate to describe what was taking place as dancing. From atop the bandwagon it looked like the ocean getting increasingly turbid. Stanley worked that mob up to a feverish heat and held them in his sway for over a half-hour until we got the signal from up ahead to resume our progress. Stanley brought the number to a halt and you could see that entire populace sag. I hope they enjoyed the rest of the parade.

  As we approached the gallery of the Boston Club, where Rex and the governor of Louisiana toast each other, we knew to look for the honored guests, Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of the President, and her swain of that time, actor George Hamilton. Directly behind us was a marine drill squad going through their dazzlingly complex maneuvers. I had my eye on the gallery and the happy couple as the drill squad concluded its routine by firing its rifles simultaneously. Lynda Bird vanished before my very eyes, her escort bewildered by her disappearance. She had been trained well by the secret service, and she knew that if she heard a shot she must drop to the floor. She did it reflexively. I’m sure she must have taken some moments to explain her bizarre action to her distinguished neighbors on the gallery.

  It was the following year that the bandwagon stood in front of Gallier Hall, the old city hall, waiting for the king to exchange toasts with the mayor. I was supposed to cue the band when those two smashed their glasses, and the band’s assignment was to play “If Ever I Cease To Love,” which is the Rex theme. I had my ten good men and true ready to hit it at the instant the glasses were thrown. The musicians, sitting down, couldn’t see the action taking place.

  Unknown to me, right around the corner was the United States Navy Band, eighty pieces strong, which had been instructed to take its cue from me. I had no idea they were there. The only person in their outfit I could see was their drum major, and I saw him with upraised arm in the same stance I had taken. I wondered why he was staring at me. In due course the king and the mayor hurled their champagne glasses to the pavement, I gave the downbeat, expecting my jazz band to respond on cue. Whether they did or not I’ll never know, because the response I got was the blast of that eighty-piece Navy band, which very nearly caused me to fall off the wagon in shock. I’m not sure I recovered during the rest of the parade. Our trombonist Paul Crawford said, “Don’t we get a nice, full sound?”

  • • •

  Bud Freeman wrote a book a few years back entitled You Don’t Look Like a Musician, a sort of autobiographical work full of short anecdotes that involved himself through his career. Of course, I don’t care what he says, he does look like a musician, as you can tell from looking at his picture in this book. But Doc Evans didn’t look like a musician or talk like one either for that matter. When he started on his cornet or trumpet, though, the result left no doubt in your mind about his profession. I sat with him for many hours in Chicago’s Jazz Limited, in the mid-1940s, trying to get him to go on tour with me. He wasn’t steadily employed; and even though the charming hosts of the place, Bill and Renee Reinhardt, were as generous as they could be, he wasn’t going to augment his bank account much playing that job. He refused because he said he didn’t like to travel. It made him feel too much like a professional musician, and when you were a professional musician you didn’t get to play the way you wanted to. I offered him more than twice what he was getting. He’d have had a chance to play with the very best jazzmen. He found every excuse. He didn’t want to go to the west coast. He got car sick riding in Greyhound buses. He had to lay off for a while because something was going wrong with his lip. I understood that for reasons of his own, whatever they were, he wasn’t going to become a part of Journeys Into Jazz. Just then, it was about one in the morning; a pretty little girl with blonde ringlets, about half his age, maybe less, approached the table where we were sitting and asked him, “Will I see you again tonight, honey?” Then, of course, I understood.

  • • •

  It was well into the seventies when Jabbo Smith decided to come out of the long retirement that had made all but the most dedicated jazz collectors forget him, and he came to New Orleans to find work. As long as there’s a Preservation Hall, musicians with his credentials will not remain unemployed and Allan Jaffe found room for him.

  “I got to get my lip up,” he explained to me. “You know, that takes some time if you’re a trumpet player. Then I’m gonna go to New York. That’s where the big action, the big money is. New York! Man, that’s the place!”

  In 1980, Jabbo was playing at the Village Gate, and I went down to see the show that featured him, “One Mo’ Time,” which starred the show’s writer and producer, Vernel Bagneris. I had seen the show four times before in New Orleans, but it was new and exciting every time, in no small part because of the jazz band that accompanied it. It included the phenomenal Swedes, Lars Edegran and Orange Kellin; but it was Jabbo who overwhelmed the crowd in his two specialty numbers. I went back to the band room to greet my friends, and Jabbo was sitting dejectedly at a make-up table.

  “Well, Jabbo,” I began, “I see you made it up here to New York. It didn’t take you too long either. Congratulations.”

  Jabbo said, “I got to get out of this damn place.”

  Pee Wee Erwin was another trumpet player who never seemed to be satisfied with his lot. He certainly achieved success in his career, both in the big bands, notably with Tommy Dorsey, and with small Dixieland combinations at Nick’s or Condon’s. He came to Boston one night to play for me as a substitute for Muggsy, who had fallen ill. I commented that he looked very unhappy and asked if he felt all right.

  “Oh, yeah,” he reassured me. “It’s just that I hate music.”

  • • •

  Billy Butterfield was still with Bob Crosby’s Band the first time I met him. He looked like a very large kewpie doll with his chubby cheeks and big eyes. That illusion vanished the instant he began to blow his horn. I had another trumpet player, Sterling Bose, with me, and we dropped in to see Fazola, Eddie Miller, Nappy, and Ray Bauduc backstage at the Oriental Theater in Chicago. Bose listened awhile as we stood in the wings watching Butterfield on stage doing a solo. Then he said, “I used to stay up all day practicing Bix choruses, and now this.”

  Years later, Butterfield and I were on a radio show called “Juke Box Jury” together, and I recalled the incident and Bose’s comment. Billy said, “I’m sure there are trumpet players around copying Bose’s choruses.”

  • • •

  Thomas Valentine, known to the Preservation Hall world as Kid Thomas, was born in 1896 in Reserve, Louisiana. As of 1985, he was still taking his turn two or three times a week with his band and going on the Hall’s scheduled tours. But Thomas had a life before Preservation Hall. I began to be aware of him in the mid-1940s and by the mid-1950s he was playing with a distinguished band of his own every Friday night at the Westwego Fireman’s Hall. Larry Borenstein and I used to go over the river every single Friday to hear him with Louis Nelson on trombone, Joe James playing piano, and Sammy Penn on his drums. As big an attraction as the music was, there was a couple that always joined the dancers and commanded at least as much attention as did the band. This pair had brought the art of jazz ballroom dancing to its very peak, and the other couples always tended to drift off the floor to give them room and to admire their extraordinary grace and rapport. It looked like a union made in heaven and their performance brought out the romantic sighs fro
m the ladies in the house. This couple turned up every place Thomas played. They were a true delight to watch.

  Larry and I never stayed until closing time, but no matter how late we left, those same dancers would still be on the floor, still exhibiting their matchless grace and dexterity. Then one night, we did stay through the final set. Those two superb terpsichoreans were obviously saddened by the fact that they’d have to terminate their activities for that night. Not many people were left in the house and Thomas came over and introduced us. I don’t remember their names, but I remember that we also met her husband and his wife.

  The S.S. Capitol

  The Strekfus steamship line, whose boats plied the Mississippi River until late in this century, was well-known to jazz fans around the world. The fascinating photographs published in jazz histories show the Fate Marable band with Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, Johnny St. Cyr, and Pops Foster clearly in evidence in about 1919. I almost missed it all; but in 1932 I had the opportunity to attend a dance on board, along with a large number of my classmates from St. Aloysius High School. The orchestra on duty that night was led by Sidney Desvigne, and there was a kind of pick-up band playing, too. It seemed to be under the direction of the saxophone player, who I later learned was David Jones.

  I had a chance to talk with some of the band members. The drummer I came to know much better later. His name was Sidney Montegue. But most interesting was the tall, dissipated looking trombone player with a Shanghai face, who told me, in a boastful and unconvincing manner, that he had been the regular trombone player in Charles “Buddy” Bolden’s band. He boasted of the musicians he’d beat out for the job. Having heard him play, I would have had to assume that there was a shortage of quality musicians available back then. This fellow’s name was Frankie Duson, and I was not to hear of him again until Jelly Roll recorded his “Buddy Bolden’s Blues” and sang these lines:

  I thought I heard Frankie Duson say,

  Gimme that money….

  I learned from Jelly Roll that Duson had indeed been a regular with Bolden and with Edouárd Clem. It turned out that most of what he had told me was true. Jelly said, “Pimpin’ was his main line of work. He just played music to stay close to the action.”

  • • •

  During the filming of “The Cincinnati Kid” in New Orleans I looked at the “dailies” after every day’s shooting. (“Dailies” are the raw footage shot during the day. The director checks his results and makes decisions on preliminary cutting and other changes.) Sweet Emma, “The Bell Gal,” well into her eighties at the time, was on the movieola screen playing in Preservation Hall. The piece she was playing was Clarence Williams’ “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” to which Clarence held the copyright. The rights belonged to ABC-Paramount. During the day an assistant director had approached Emma and asked her to “play some public domain blues.” Emma, having no idea in the world what “public domain” meant, had played Clarence’s piece.

  When I explained that what she was playing was copyrighted, general consternation followed. It appeared that they had left themselves the choice of either reshooting the sequence or paying ABC-Paramount $35,000 for the rights. Shooting costs being what they are, they bought the rights. I teased Sweet Emma about how free she was with other people’s money, and she said, “Pshaw! If they come out an’ say what they want, I’d a played it for ’em.”

  • • •

  Back in 1918, jazz in New Orleans was still a lower-class diversion. Uptown folks wouldn’t have been caught dead listening to what they called, unself-consciously and inaccurately, “nigger music,” despite the fact that whites and blacks alike had been playing it, sometimes together, for more than a quarter-century. In any case, the form had no acceptance among the local bourgeoisie at all.

  Then one of their favorite restaurants, Kolb’s on St. Charles Street, hired a real jazz band, led by Johnny Dedroit, to play for dancing every night. This decision, once and for all, eliminated the class distinctions surrounding the art form. The Dedroit band was an instant success and stayed on for several years.

  When I was in charge of production for the 1983 Tulane University Hot Jazz Classic, one of my better ideas was to persuade the management of Kolb’s to recreate a night in 1918 by once more featuring an authentic jazz band and having it conducted by none other than Johnny Dedroit, now ninety-two years old. The diners that night (it was the hottest ticket in town) danced to Fred Starrs Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble, conducted by Johnny Dedroit, and they were surprised and delighted by the grace and agility this nonagenarian displayed in joining his wife for dance after dance.

  “Tired?” he laughed. “I haven’t had so much fun in fifty years!”

  • • •

  I was just in town briefly (New Orleans, of course) en route to Mexico City in the early summer of 1938, and there were a pair of old-time jazzmen I was determined to talk with. I wasn’t planning to write or produce anything right then. These were just two gentlemen I’d never seen or heard. They were getting on in years, and I wanted to have some impression of them in my head before they passed on. One of them was Manuel Perez and the other, Emile “Stalebread” Lacoume.

  Perez, renowned as a cornetist in a period before I was even aware of the music, proved to be a gentle, slightly cynical gentleman of sixty, who felt that the musicians of 1938 needed to go back to fundamentals to ever play the music properly.

  “These young fellas nowadays,” he assured me, “can’t hardly read a note. They can’t learn no new tunes and they don’t know nothin’ about tempo or harmony.”

  Louis Armstrong?

  “He got a lip like iron. Strong as a bull!—But he got a lot to learn. When he was a kid around here he never wanted to learn nothin’.”

  White musicians?

  “They makin the best music now. Used to be we made the best music. ‘Course we still got some people playin’ good right here in New Orleans, but our people don’t take that music serious enough. The good ones, they tryin’ to play opera.”

  His favorites?

  “Guy Lombardo! I always wanted my bands to sound like that! And you ever hear this Casa Loma? That’s real music!”

  • • •

  Stalebread Lacoume was younger than Perez—only 53. But he was blind and generally incapacitated. Many had claimed for him the honor of having been the originator of jazz, but he was not among his own claque.

  “Me? Not me! We had this little spasm band—you know—most all homemade instruments. We were really lousy but we had good rhythm—just kids, you know. I guess I was ten, twelve years old. We played around in the district and people used to throw us money. Even them whores. Sarah Bernhardt—you know—the French actress—she come by an’ give us a dime. The whores tipped better than that.

  “There was plenty kids before us done that. We copied off somebody, I don’t remember who. We didn’t make up all the dirty songs, neither. We heard ’em in the streets an’ we sang ’em in the streets. Now they say we invented jazz. Ain’t nobody invented that music.

  “Later on I really became a musician. Played for a livin’! I never knew no music, but I worked playin’ the guitar. Good bands, too! Charlie Fishbein, Max Fink. Good bands. I was the onliest one couldn’t read in them bands. ‘Course at the Halfway House, that was all fakin’. None o’ them guys could read. Mickey Marcour, Red Long—maybe Roppolo could read a little bit. Not Brunies or Hook [Loyacano] or none o’ them.”

  Would he still be playing if he were able?

  “Not no more. These new guys are sharks. They playin’ stuff we never even thought about. You hear Snoozer [Quinn] or some o’ these dagoes in the hotel bands. They mus’ spend all their time playin’ or practicin’. We played for fun, y’see.”

  • • •

  Larry Borenstein owned the Associated Artists Gallery, which was right where Preservation Hall is now. I spent many an afternoon during the fifties hanging out with him on his premises, talking about the innumerable subjects he was abl
e to discuss with sometimes-startling competence. Now and then Lemon Nash would drop by for a glass of water or to use the rest room. He’d put his ukelele down, satisfy his immediate need, and then, to repay Larry’s hospitality, he’d play and sing a tune. Lemon knew hundreds of pop tunes of the twenties—“June Night,” “Linger Awhile,” “Swingin’ Down the Lane.” Not jazz pieces, just melodic pop tunes. If customers were in the gallery, it didn’t make any difference; he’d just go right into his number, and anybody that was around would usually tip him afterward. His regular occupation was playing in the street or wandering around the tables in night spots that permitted him to, doing the troubador thing.

  Apparently the art gallery patrons and Larry’s friends were more generous than the world outside, so Nash took to playing longer there. Pretty soon he started to bring friends along, other musicians. Harrison Verret, Sam Rankins, Kid Thomas, Noon Johnson, and others began to show up regularly, and lots of people with no interest in paintings began to come around in the hope of hearing some of this spontaneous, good-natured jazz. They encouraged the performers with really generous gratuities. And Larry, whose expertise in business surpassed even his mastery of art and collectibles, noted that the entertainers were taking in more than the art was.

  So Larry determined to improve the use of his space by moving the paintings out and the music in. That’s how Preservation Hall was born. During the middle sixties I was standing outside the Hall one night with Lemon, watching the long line of people waiting to get in. He said, “Nobody knows but you and me how all this started.”

  • • •

  Lawrence Duhé was a very early jazz clarinetist from Lafayette, Louisiana, who toured in vaudeville with King Oliver’s band in the early 1920s. I had a long talk with him at his home in Lafayette, in the late 1950s. I think it was 1957. I never heard him play, to my knowledge, but among his contemporaries he had an excellent musical reputation.