Stomp Off

Bud Freeman Quartet 1962

2012-02-03T01:34:00.000-05:00

Teschemacher (glasses), Jimmy and
Dick McPartland, Bud and his brother,
the actor Arny Freeman, in Chicago,1923.

Bud Freeman, the dapper dan of the original Chicagoans, always had about him an air of sophistication. At various times in his life he had wanted to be a professional golfer, a tap dancer, drummer, and even a Shakespearian actor. He looked the part for all of these professions. It is said that Lester Young admired Bud's playing, which should surprise few people—Bud's inspiration was Frank Teschemacher, the enigmatic alumnus of the fabled Austin High School Gang. I don't recall why I decided to do a session under Bud's leadership, except that his extraordinary solo on a 1933 recording, The Eel, by Eddie Condon's band was still glued to the walls of my mind. Bud recorded it again under his own name in 1939. A couple of weeks after this quartet session, I asked Bud to come back for an Elmer Snowden date that put him up front with Roy Eldridge—I will post some of that here, later.

This was not a working group, although pianist Dave Frishberg had been gigging regularly with Bud for awhile. This turned out to be Dave's first commercial recording session—he moved on, as you probably know, to compose and record a slew of wonderfully witty songs like Blizzard of Lies, My Attorney Bernie, and Peel Me a Grape.

Meet You in San Juan, Bud Freeman's own composition, gives all four players a spotlight opportunity, which is something Haggart and Lamont were no strangers to. Bassist Bob Haggart was a founding member of Bob Crosby's highly successful 1935 band (remember Big Noise from Winnetka?) and drummer Don Lamont's eventful career took him way beyond being a driving force in Woody Herman's memorable "Four Brothers" band.

Bud Freeman and Duke Ellington in 1939

Cliff Jackson's Crazy Rhythm

2012-01-28T15:46:00.001-05:00

Here's another keyboard romp by Cliff Jackson. He was a stride pianist and first-class guy who had lived and participated in decades of extraordinary jazz development, making many recordings under someone else's leadership, including Dizzy Gillespie's. He and his devoted wife, the wonderful Maxine Sullivan, owned a house in the Bronx where Cliff would spend hours in his basement lab, experimenting with chemistry while she sometimes played a trombone. Not your average couple!

This is a track from the first of two sessions we did for my own company. This one kicked off the December 30, 1961 date. We had planned a single date, but the piano's baseboard broke, so we ended up doing a second session the following month.

If you wish to know more about the stride piano style that Cliff represented, may I suggest that you visit pianist Mike Lipskin's site. This link will take you directly to his page on Harlem Stride Piano.

Ruby Smith: A cab ride to Columbus

2012-01-25T12:04:00.000-05:00

Tired of their cat and mouse game, Bessie decided to appease her husband, Jack Gee, by making him the producer of her touring show. She knew that Jack wasn't fit for the job, but felt that her brother, Clarence, would guide him. Impressed by her box office success, T.O.B.A bigwig Sam Reevin gave Jack a $3,000 budget for Bessie's next show. Getting Jack involved in her business was supposed to cement the ever-widening cracks in their relationship, but it did just the opposite.

Jack threw together as cheap a production as possible for Bessie and decided to use the remainder of the money for personal gain—not to enrich himself financially, but to win the heart of Gertrude Saunders, a singer of striking looks and impressive past accomplishments. Ms. Saunders had starred successfully in the title role of Irvin C. Miller’s Red Hot Mama show during the 1926 season, and headed the cast of various subsequent editions, but her most successful shows had been Liza and the 1921 Sissle and Blake hit, Shuffle Along (which included Josephine Baker in the chorus line). The latter production would probably have secured Ms. Saunders’ stage future, but she made a fateful decision and allowed herself to be lured away from the original cast by an offer that never materialized. Gertrude Saunders’ bad move opened the door for the ultimate black beauty of the day, Florence Mills, who took over the role and was such a hit that she became the toast of Broadway. Ms. Mills career was cut short in November,1927, when she died at the age of 35, but the bright spotlight Gertrude Saunders so foolishly relinquished was never restored to her.

It is not known when Jack’s relationship with Ms. Saunders began, but Ruby thought it had gone on for some time before Jack produced her show, and that it accounted for some of his “hunting” trips. Gertrude Saunders was the antithesis of Bessie Smith, their personalities and looks contrasted sharply: Gertrude’s complexion was light, her hair long and soft, her disposition gentle. She was also slim and quite a bit younger than Bessie—a typical “Miller beauty.” The artistic gap that separated the two was equally wide: Gertrude Saunders relied more on her looks than on her voice, which had about it an unfortunate Florence Foster Jenkins quality and a range that could have made her the Yma Sumac of her day.

“She was the opposite of Bessie,” said Ruby, making no secret of her disdain. “She had light skin and long curly hair and a gorgeous figure, and she knew it. In fact, she thought her shit didn’t stink."

Jack strikes a Benny pose, Gertie mesmerizes.

In a 1971 interview, I asked Ms. Saunders if she had known that Bessie’s money went to back her show. “No,” she replied, emphatically, “but Jack could very well have put the money in my show without telling Bessie. Naturally he wouldn’t tell me if it was her money, he’d want to act like a big shot.” Which, of course, was exactly what he was doing.

“I don’t know how he thought he could get away with it,” said Ruby, “but he wasn’t never too bright and he didn’t know anything about show business. He should have known that you can’t keep something like that a secret, not with all them blabbermouths around. His show only lasted about five or six months, then it folded up. He couldn't get enough bookings. And,” she added acerbically, “his star wasn’t strong enough to hold it up.” After a short run in New York, Bessie’s own show, Steamboat Days, hit the road again—back to Detroit’s Koppin Theater, then on to the Globe in Cleveland, and, on March 11, a week at the Roosevelt in Cincinnati. That's where we pick up on Ruby's recollection.

And here is Ruby performing live over New York radio station WNYC, February 19, 1949. Her accompanists are trumpeter Gus Aiken, pianist Lannie Scott, Ellington veteran Wellman Braud on bass, and drummer Freddie Moore, who made his recording debut with King Oliver. Ruby complained to me that John Hammond insisted on her singing in Bessie's style, ignoring the fact that Bessie had moved herself into the Swing Era. Determined not to be regarded as a 1920s relic, she renders a couple of songs from Bessie's early repertoire and ends with a "modern" number—she had it all figured out.

Howard McGhee 1961

2012-01-22T13:31:00.000-05:00

As far as recording activity is concerned, 1961 was a productive year for me. Trips to New Orleans and Chicago resulted in several Riverside albums (the "Living Legends" series) and I produced a number of Prestige albums at Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio. In New York, there were sessions with Meade Lux Lewis, Ida Cox and Elmer Snowden, and I ventured out on my own with a one-man production company that yielded four albums, but no income. Had I made money on this, I would have been long gone by now, but the music is still there and possibly to be found on the Fontana or Black Lion labels, but only if you rummage deep enough.

I started that venture with a Howard McGhee date. He was rehabilitating himself at the time and had been off the scene for far too long, but—as you will hear on the sample that now is but a click away, Howard still had it going. He was beginning to get work, and was with Duke Ellington at the time when I contacted him, but great as that looks on a resume, it was possible to play with Duke and never have the spotlight hit you. Many promoters were wary of hiring serious drug addicts, even if they were recovering, and Howard sometimes found himself regarded as a great player gone good, a sideman with name recognition. He liked my suggestion that we should change that image, so my solo walk was off to a good start. Howard knew exactly what he wanted to do and who he wanted involved, so he got together a stellar group. I will, from time to time, post selections from this and other of my own sessions, because I know that these recordings—although actually issued—are not easy to find. Unfortunately, I could not afford a studio whose sound was commensurate with these performances, but Stea-Phillips—located off the lobby of the Wellington Hotel on Seventh Avenue—did a decent job. Here is Howard's own composition, "Sharp Edge," which he had originally titled "Mag-San." Let me know what you think.

For a larger view of this post's heading, please click on it.

Cliff Jackson strides

2012-01-22T00:33:00.001-05:00

Humph and Neva '53

2012-01-06T20:47:00.000-05:00

The first time I heard of Neva Raphaello was March 16, 1953, when I recorded a night at the Lyttelton Club on my new B&O tape machine. I only had about five years of experience listening to jazz, but I knew instantly that this was not a singer whose career I would follow. I still haven't figured out why the Dutch Swing College Band recorded with her or, for that matter, what she was doing with Humph at 100 Oxford Street—she simply was not in their league. That said, here is Neva with the intermission group, Mike McKenzie's trio (he was a decent pianist) in a performance made listenable by Humph's participation.

Another moment of Humph at 100 Oxford St.

2011-11-21T17:15:00.001-05:00

Here is another selection from March 16, 1953, the night I brought my tape recorder to 100 Oxford Street. As usual, Mack's Restaurant had put its tables aside, morphed into The Lyttelton Club, and opened its doors to an enthusiastic crowd of young people who moved not so rhythmically to the music. Farewell Blues, the evening's last performance, became a little jam session when Archie Sempel—from Freddy Randall's band—mounted the bandstand, clarinet in hand. Unfortunately, I was late starting the tape and it ran out before the number was brought to an end, but it's a wonder that any part of this tape is playable almost 60 years later. The balance is not good—Johnny Parker's piano is distant and Bruce Turner is obviously standing closest to my single, stationary microphone.

The tape does capture the atmosphere of this popular club at a time when trad was all the rage in some of Europe's capitals. There is more tape from Lyttelton's hiding in my closet, possibly on unmarked reels. I have Neva Raphaello singing—though not so well—with Mike McKenzie's trio and Humph sitting in, but there should be more with the band and I will share anything when and if I find it. In the meantime, you can ease into Farewell Blues:

Here are links to other recordings from that evening: Shake It and Break It, Chicago Buzz.

Lil Armstrong 1968

2011-11-06T01:02:00.000-04:00

I previously posted two parts of an interview I did with Lil Armstrong when she visited New York with Franz Jackson's Chicagoans in December of 1968. They played at the Village Gate and were on a tour that had taken them to the Caribbean, including Guantanamo Bay. The interview was done in my apartment, in the very room from which I am making this entry, and I knew there had to be a third reel lying around, somewhere in my tape closet.

Click on image to enlarge it.

I was right, so here is the third and last part of this interview. I have not done anything to clean it up (i.e. remove rough spots), because I think it is what it is, and there is a better feel to it this way. I did, however add a piece of music at the end, Clip Joint, because Lil mentions it as being among her favorite recent recordings. It stems from one of the February 1961 Chicago sessions that I produced for the Riverside "Living Legends" project. As I have mentioned in an earlier post, that recording trip was an many ways a disaster, because my recording engineers were more familiar with capturing auto races, dripping faucets, and Shakespearian drama. They did, in fact, not care mush for traditional jazz. You will notice that the balance leaves much to be desired, although this was one of their better efforts.

To be fair, I had scheduled Lil to record with two different groups, but technical problems and inexperience delayed the first session to a point where I had to combine the two. Thus, this is a bigger band than we were expecting to record, so that may account for some of the imbalance. Hearing Lil's effervescent voice on these tapes reminds me of how much I miss her—she was one of the warmest and most wonderful people I had the good fortune to meet and become friends with as I moved about on the music scene.

A caveat: There is a book titled "Just For a Thrill" that purports to be a biography of Lil, but it is not worth the paper it is printed on. The author, James Dickerson, did an appalling job of research—shallow and rife with misinformation that is compounded by his peripheral knowledge of jazz and its history. To make up for that lack, he included pages of filler material about gangsters and other unrelated subjects. When he approached me in his search for material, I quickly concluded that his prime objective was not to document Lil, but to throw together yet another book. Assembly line authors have always bothered me, so I decided not to become his accomplice. The late Leslie Gourse ran a book factory, and I bet you can name a few more. This sort of exploitation puts a dent in jazz literature and invariably does more had than good. from never really works.

This photo was taken by Steve Shapiro during the session:

The circle of horns (l to r): Franz Jackson, Al Wynn, Leroi Nabors, Bill Martin, Preston Jackson, Eddie Smith, and Darnell Howard. Pops Foster is on bass and Booker Washington on drums. That's me seated to the left of the drums. The date was September 7, 1961 and the place was a popular Chicago jazz club, The Birdhouse.

If you wish to hear parts 1 and 2 of this interview, here are the links: Part One, Part Two.

Humph @ Oxford St.: Shake It and Break It

2011-10-30T17:18:00.000-04:00

Following an interview with Lyttelton (my first and possibly worst), I took his suggestion and dropped my equipment off at Mack's Restaurant, spent the rest of the day checking out record stores, including the big HMV on Oxford Street. I returned to the club at seven o’clock, an hour before the band was to start, and did a quick, ad-lib setup. Placing my microphone on its stand in front of the raised platform, I found a spot for my tape recorder behind George Hopkinson's drums, and winged it. The tapes are unbalanced and a bit on the crude side, but they could have come out far worse considering that this was my first attempt at recording live music, that I was unable to make a balance test, and that my vu meter was just a so-called "magic eye" (you have to be up in age to remember those things; they were commonly used as tuning indicators on radios) .

This was my first time seeing the Lyttelton Club in action, I had only been there once, earlier in the day when it was Mack's Restaurant and I had lunch with Humph and his manager, Lyn Dutton. I guess I was expecting something akin to the Storyville Club, my new Danish hangout, so I was surprised when the doors opened and an odd assortment of people began to fill the large room. Young men wearing derbys and tight pin-striped suits with vests, young cigar-smoking girls with hair down to their waists, wearing one-piece black corduroy outfits. George Melly would conduct two of them in a bizarre dance a couple of days later, as I describe here. This crowd was very different from the one I knew in Copenhagen. pale, sickly looking people with enormous noses, sweaters that reached down to their knees and naked, dirty feet. This is not how I am remembering it sixty years later, it's how I wrote it down some sixty years ago.

The "Magic Eye"

I surprised me to see that no alcoholic beverages were served, not even near beer—this would be unthinkable in Denmark. There was a counter at each end of the room was one could purchase a rather brutal cup of English coffee, soft drinks, and hideous little, overly sweet cup cakes in various pastel colors.

I struck up a chat with Molly, who worked the counter nearest the entrance. She wasted no time telling me that she was in her eighties, which I found to be curiously refreshing, considering the environment. Molly knew the name of every musician who wandered in, which instrument he played and whose style he assimilated. She was equally well versed when it came to the British royal family and pointed with great pride to an ugly little greenish lump of pastry that, she said, with obvious pride, had recently been dubbed the “Elizabeth” cake. I had to tell her all about myself and how I had come from Denmark to record the Lyttelton band. I finally managed to get away, and as I was about to disappear into the crowd, Molly shouted, “You can be proud of your Queen Wilhelmina”.
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Before I knew it, Lyttelton stomped off, the band began to play, that little green eye winked at me, and the odd people began moving to the music, a weird, detached sort of dance in which partners never touched each other and people remained in their place, as if treading water. I remember that evening and, indeed, the days that followed, more clearly than I do this time last year. I have described elsewhere much of what took place during the next few days, when I missed my boat train at Liverpool Street Station, so here's a link to that.

And here is another number from that evening, "Shake It and Break It"

A Prez-idential panel in Harlem

2011-10-26T14:26:00.001-04:00

The National Jazz Museum's Afternoon of a Basie-ite panel poses at the museum's visitors center, October 22, 2011. L to R: Lewis
Porter, Ethan Iverson, Ira Gitler, Loren Schoenberg, Chris Albertson, Dan Morgenstern.

It was an enjoyable Saturday afternoon devoted to Lester Young, with first-hand recollections, general discussion, and some amazing film footage and recordings. Museum Director Loren Schoenberg knows how to get it together. I recommend a visit to the museum, which is housed at 104 East 126th St. until work is done on the ultimate location, across the street from the Apollo Theater. The phone number is 212-348-8300 and this link will take you to their web site.

2011-10-24T10:06:00.000-04:00

Lionel and Gladys Hampton celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary in Copenhagen on the night of November 11th, 1953. They were in Denmark on a concert tour with a star-studded Hampton band that included Clifford Brown, Gigi Gryce, Art Farmer, Quincy Jones, and a singer named Annie Ross. The Hamptons and band were staying at the Richmond, which was not the classiest hotel in town, but a decent place that suited Gladys' budget—she was her husband's business manager and—as any sideman would tell you—quite frugal.

Gladys' penny pinching had the band traveling on a bus where others flew, but it did not prevent her from throwing an anniversary party at the hotel. Not an elaborate affair, just the band, tour crew, an ice sculpture and two local guests: Timme Rosenkrantz and yours truly. Timme, who had known Hamp for many years, kindly took me in tow, giving me my first rubbing shoulders experience with jazz greats. I was at that time involved in the running of the Storyville Club, so it occurred to me that some off the musicians might be persuaded to cap the night there. Well, not exactly there, but in a larger place that we could rent. Timme thought that was a splendid idea, so, when the party began to ebb, he helped me herd some of these star players into taxis. Hamp himself decided to make a brief appearance and when I mentioned that I had my tape recorder there, he said it was okay to record the "cats," but he wouldn't be performing.

Once there, surrounded by a youthful, enthusiastic crowd of Danes, he changed his mind and seated himself at the keyboard, next to pianist Jørgen Bengtson. Spotting my recorder on a table next to the piano, he told me to keep "that thing" off while he played. As I confessed to Hamp twenty years later, I did hit the record button, but I kept the lid on. In retrospect, Hamp was delighted to hear that I had ignored his request, and he asked for a copy of the tape. It was eventually destroyed by a fire in his apartment.

You can read more about the morning of November 12, 1953 and hear a couple of numbers from the jam session that took place if you go here. But first, you might want to listen to Hamp and the two-fingered mallet-styled piano performance that kicked off the night session. The other fingers belong to Jørgen Bengtson, who moved to Norway, where he lives in retirement. The sound quality leaves much to be desired, the opening bars are missing, and there is a short skip, but Anniversary Boogie—as I dubbed this piece for obvious reasons—is an engaging rapid-fire blues.

Echoes of Humph at Mack's, 1953

2011-10-23T10:57:00.000-04:00

In March of 1953, I was an apprentice artist in the art department of Fona Radio, Denmark's largest chain of music stores. Fresh out of art school, this was my first job and I loved it, although my salary was insanely low. The art department created window displays for the company's shops, of which about five were in Copenhagen and the rest all over Denmark. As an apprentice, I was not yet entrusted with creative work, but even handling menial chores, such as painting backgrounds and fills, was better than working behind a counter or desk. Given my personal interests, there was much to be said for working in an art environment for a music-related company, and an added attraction was the employee discount that enabled me to purchase a recording machine on time payment.

We owe the principle of magnetic recording to a Dane, Valdemar Poulsen, who demonstrated it in 1898, but it had to wait a couple of decades before electronic amplification made it useful. During WWII, the Nazis began broadcasting magnetically reproduced propaganda—it sounded a lot clearer than phonograph recordings, and it offered enough playing time to capture an entire Hitler or Goebbels rant, but it obviously did not work as these guys wanted it to. Commercial use was another matter—imagine JATP, Coltrane or Cecil Taylor restricted to three minutes.

Humph at 100 Oxford Street, with slightly different personnel.

In 1953, magnetic recordings had just been introduced to Danish consumers via Bang & Olufsen's first wire recorder. I had to have it, and working at Fona made that possible, but before I could do anything useful with this wire contraption, B&O launched its first tape recorder. That was it for me, and it didn't matter that it cost a year's salary, so I was soon dragging a sixty-pound black box up three flights of stairs to the back house apartment where I lived with my mother and her third husband. I had become quite good at smuggling in the occasional new jazz record that should have been a new pair of socks, or a shirt, but the wire recorder and subsequent upgrade posed a real challenge. I would not have gotten away with it if my mother was not also what we have since come to know as a "gadget freak." Of course, I lowered the price considerably when she asked about it, but I was a seasoned fibber when it came to such things.

Let me pause here to apologize for the redundant nature of this entry—some of it has appeared here in another connection, but my approach to this blog is not linear, so it was inevitable that I would occasionally cross my own, previously recollected paths. This one can be found in my earlier reminiscences about Karl Knudsen and the Storyville Club.

As I may have mentioned, I was shy to a fault in my younger days, but that—and matching naïveté—may well have been what drove me to do some rather bold things, such as contact trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton. His Parlophone recordings were among my most prized possessions and, not having the foggiest knowledge of contractual obligations and union restrictions, I dashed of a letter to Humph. In it, I informed him that I would be coming to London for the purpose of gathering material for a jazz program to be aired by Radio Denmark. In that connection, I wished to record his band and an interview.

The truth was that I had no connection with DR (Danmarks Radio), nor, in fact, the fare that would get me to London. Driven, in part, by a strong need to be accepted into the inner circle of Copenhagen's foot-stomping jazz scene, I naïvely took pen in hand. As I recalled in an earlier entry (Melly, Mick...London 1953), the swift response from Humph's manager, Lyn Dutton, came as a surprise:

It had never occurred to me that unions might pose a problem, but I had a feeling that Mr. Dutton was leaving the door ajar, so I began to scrape together money for a third class passage to London. On March 12, 1953, leaving behind a drastically diminished record collection, I boarded a third class car on the London boat train with a round-trip ticket and just enough money to get by—or so I thought. What follows, mostly repeats a previous post.

Customs inspectors gave me a hard time in Harwich, having never before seen a tape recorder and not quite knowing what it was, but I got the nod and made it to London and Mr. Kerpner's Guest House in Earl's Court— £2 a week, with breakfast.

I phoned Lyn Dutton, who suggested that I join him and Humph for lunch at 100 Oxford Street on the following day. It was here that the band played at night. I don't have to tell you that I was a nervous wreck, but I made it through lunch and was delighted when Humph suggested that we do the interview that afternoon and that I record the band that evening, telling anyone who might ask that it was strictly for my own enjoyment.

I have for several decades kept a discography-style list of my recorded sessions. Here are the two

pages documenting the 1953 Humphrey Lyttelton session. Click on image to enlarge.

Nobody asked and I filled two reels of tape that night. It was monaural, of course, but pure luck had me place my single B&O ribbon microphone advantageously, except for Johnny Parker's piano, which was too far away. I can at last fulfill my promise to post actual recordings if and when I unearthed them and acquired a working reel to reel tape deck. Last week, I found the former in a closet and the latter on e-bay, so here is the first of the Lyttelton recordings, Chicago Buzz. Humph also plays clarinet on this one, as does Bruce Turner, and drummer George Hopkins turns to the washboard. I will include a detailed description of the Lyttleton Club (i.e. Mack's Restaurant) when I post more sounds from this evening.

Osman Tyner 1932 - 1993

2011-09-03T21:58:00.000-04:00

Born in Philadelphia to Roosevelt and Estella Tyner on December 5, 1932, Osman Tyner was a self-taught artist of impressive talent. His aunts recall that he began drawing as soon as he could handle crayons and pencils, and that he showed remarkable imagination at a very early age, so it was no surprise that he chose to major in commercial art when he entered high school at South Philadelphia's Edward Bok Technical School.

In 1951, Osman decided to leave Philadelphia and try his luck in New York City. He had yet to decide on a definite career path, but meeting Alvin Ailey in 1951 turned him towards dance. Ailey, who had yet to form his celebrated dance company, taught Osman the rudiments of modern dance for the following year and encouraged him to stay with it, but Osman was more critical of himself. Having danced "awkwardly" in an Ailey revue at the Waldorf Astoria, he concluded that his true calling was in the field of visual arts and design.

One of Osman's cover illustrations (1966)

Between 1953 and 1955, Osman had an opportunity to hone his drawing skills while serving as a Corporal in the 45th Armored Medical Battalion and at Fort Knox. His assignments were somewhat pedestrian, he recalled, laughing at the fact that his Army career culminated with his being promoted to "head of the sign painting department." In the Sixties, when our paths first crossed, Osman had done some wonderful work for rights and review, the magazine published by C.O.R.E. (the Congress of Racial Equality).

Looking back on a long life, such as I have had, I can recall a staggering number of people with whom I shared memorable moments. Some came to my memory to stay, others were just passing through, but that does not mean that they were entirely forgotten. It's funny how we can develop a strong association with someone, share a good slice of life with them and suddenly realized that we both have moved on to another chapter in our lives—what we though was permanent really wasn't. That is an experience I have had many times, but even people who dropped out of my life often left something behind, something that forever says "I was here." I say all this because Osman Tyner did not stay long in my sphere, but neither did he become another blurry figure. He had an exhuberant personality and whenever he came to see me, he was a burst of joy. I recall a time when I was applying finish to my living room floor and not at all prepared for a visit. I think I muttered a curse when the doorbell rang, but my annoyance evaporated when Osman burst into the room. He saw what I was doing and immediately insisted on helping with that chore.

I don't recall how or where we met, but it somehow never mattered. Osman had a presence that made such things seem trivial. He liked jazz and he knew how deeply immersed in it I was, but I think we had known each other for several months before I found out that his uncle was McCoy Tyner. Most people would have made that fact known shortly after the first handshake, but not Osman—he admired his uncle, but he was self-reliant.

There came a time when Osman's calls and visits tapered off and the hand painted Christmas cards he used to send stopped coming. I did not know it then, but he had become a victim of the AIDS epidemic—it was a time when so many of us lost friends to this terrible disease, a timer when the medical world had not caught up with it. When it finally took him away, May 28, 1993, I had neither seen nor heard from him in ten years, and I can't recall how I learned the bad news.

Two of Osman's wonderful Christmas cards were never put away by me. For years, they flanked an old marble clock in my living room and had so much become a part of the decor that I would only have noticed if they disappeared. I want to share them with you, along with a third card that Osman called "Lady in Green." Please click on the images to enlarge them. I hope you like them as much as I do.

Osman's work occasionally makes it to exhibits and auctions. I find the one below to be particularly striking—it was among his last and I am indebted to Archibald Arts for giving me permission to display it here.

"Audience" — Osman Tyner 1993 (Courtesy of Archibald Arts, New York, N.Y.)

Visit to a Buffet Flat

2011-06-07T21:24:00.000-04:00

Buffet Flats, sometimes called Goodtime Flats, were small, privately owned unlicensed clubs where customers could engage in such mundane illegal pastimes as drinking and gambling—for starters. These fun flats also offered erotic shows that featured sex acts of every conceivable kind and were only too happy to accommodate customer participation—for a fee, of course.

Usually owned by women, these establishments were run with admirable efficiency, catering to the occasional thrill-seeker as well as to regular clients whose personal preferences they knew in detail. Often the hostess also served as a bank, a trusted person into whose hands a customer could safely entrust valuables and sizable amounts of cash. Withdrawals could be made at any time in the course of the evening or morning. This probably ties in to the fact that buffet flats were originally set up to cater to Pullman porters, men whose extensive travels, contacts with the white upper class, gentlemanly manners, and good income earned them considerable respect in black communities. Porters had layovers, and what better place to let it all hang out than a neighborhood buffet flat. These establishments had existed for years, but Prohibition gave loose living a boost and made the flats even more popular. In 1970, when I was doing research for my Bessie Smith biography, I learned that the Pullman Porters Club in St. Louis—a staid gathering place for retired elderly men with many stories to tell—once was a buffet flat.

One might describe the flats as earthlier versions of outwardly legitimate “high-class” night clubs, the kind that have tuxedoed maitre’ds discreetly set up sexual liaisons for “important” patrons.

Buffet flats were as much a part of black urban night life of the 1920s as chop suey joints continued to be around the clock into the Fifties, and they were almost as safe. With the right authorities on their payroll, the better flats could pretty much guarantee that any law enforcement men coming through the front door would be doing so as patrons. Police raids were uncommon, as were incidences of violence or theft.

Whenever Bessie Smith appeared at the Koppin Theater In Detroit, she paid a visit to a buffet flat owned by a friend of hers. This lady even sent one or two limousines to the stage door to pick up Bessie and her entourage of chorines, “girls who knew how to keep their mouths shut”.

From various descriptions I received when preparing my book, I pieced together a composite picture of what a typical buffet flat might have been like:

"Drinks in hand, an eclectic crowd of pleasure-seekers packed the house. While some leisurely ascended and descended the linoleum-covered steps, others lined the staircases that connected the three floors. The air was thick with smoke, giggles, and clashing perfumes; two pianists, on separate floors, pounded the ivory competitively, and oooh’s and ahh’s emanated from activity rooms on each floor. Puffed up by their furs, Bessie and her young ladies negotiate their way down one of the corridors, to a room reserved for coats. It was not a cloakroom in the ordinary sense, but rather a bedroom with fur and wool piled high. 'There were so many fur coats that it looked like a zoo,' recalled Ruby.

"As usual, Bessie more or less restricted her participation to voyeurism. She could ill afford to actively exhibit her prurient interest publicly lest word of it got back to Jack. It was bad enough that she was drinking and patronizing a buffet flat, neither of which activity would have come as a complete surprise to her husband. 'Jack knew she wasn’t being no angel,' observed Ruby, 'but Bessie was kinda careful—well, let’s say she would only go so far when strangers were around—but not always. Bessie was well known in that place'.

“Bessie took her favorite girls and, of course, me. We was all dressed up, she had five fur coats. Each one of us would wear one of the coats. It made us feel like we were very important and loaded. I would always wear the mink. The coat was so big on me, I could wrap it around me three times. I didn't care, I just liked to wear the mink. Bessie would have me carry the bad liquor and anything else we wanted to sneak around with, under the mink. By being so big, no one noticed. As usual, when we went into a joint with Bessie it would start jumping; she was like a magnet, she attracted everyone. She wore a white ermine coat and looked like a million bucks. One girl wore Bessie’s chinchilla coat, one had on her black seal. Her nephew’s wife had on her sable. Even the horse had a monkey on her back, what I mean by horse, was a girl named Eva, who reminded you of a horse when she danced—so we nicknamed her horse. We looked very nice.”

Here is—preceded by another of her accounts—is Ruby's colorful recollection of one such visit to the Detroit flat:

Hendrix/Shepp: The night a decade bit the dust

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It was December 31, 1969 and I turned down a couple of New Year's Eve parties to take on an assignment for Dan Morgenstern, then Editor of Down Beat. He wanted me to spend the evening covering a concert at the Fillmore East, which was not how I ideally wanted to usher in a new decade, but I accepted the assignment, knowing full well that a 10:30 show would not leave time to get to a party by midnight. I also had something else to do for Dan that day, a late afternoon interview with Archie Shepp, who lived around the corner from the Fillmore.

A page ripped out of my desk calendar.

The Sixties was an eventful decade and even if you were't around to experience it, you surely are, in some way, bouncing in its wake. It is hard to believe that some of the "suits" who today slip out of Wall Street boardrooms and into waiting limos were once insurrectionary hippies or beaded flower children. Well, that's what they were called, the truth is that some of them would strangle you with their flower necklace for a hit of the "good stuff." Although I traveled in an world of indulgence, I never took to using drugs, because I liked to be in control of myself, but I was curious about one thing: a good joint's alleged ability to enhance the sound of jazz.

One day, the late trumpeter, Charlie McGhee, whom I had apprised of my curiosity, discreetly left a couple of joints on my coffee table. I eyed them for a week or so before making my experiment, which had me place a very familiar Bird disc on my turntable, lean back on my sofa, and light a joint. My intention was to play the recording as soon as I felt some kind of buzz, but when that came, I found myself transfixed, unable to move across the room. I eventually fell asleep without having activated the turntable and it was early morning before I came to, awakened by the sound of milk bottles. Not a sound as I had known it, not that quick clink of the milkman stepping off the elevator, placing a bottle at my door and picking up the empty one. On this morning, what I heard sounded like a dozen bottles in slow motion. Amazing, I thought, these guys weren't kidding. That ended my curiosity and Charlie Parker went back on the shelf.

Getting back to the Sixties, for young people it was a mad scramble to get as far away from the previous decade as possible. The prom queen of the Fifties baked apple pies and found the hills alive with The Sound of Music, the bra-less flower chick of the Sixties munched on watercress and took it all off in Hair. Jazz was still thriving in smoke-filled clubs, but it, too, was on the move, trying to shake the stigma of association with dives and sex. They said that jazz had been a synonym for lewd intimate behavior, so it became a dirty word to some musicians—hence my opening question to Archie Shepp, who represented the new breed of jazz musicians, artists who sought acceptance as musicians rather than entertainers. Earlier in 1969, Woodstock had stirred the pot and given rock music a legitimacy it had not previously enjoyed. Performers and audiences at Woodstock shocked the music industry by throwing off the shackles of propriety and doing their thing, but that shock turned to awe when the money started rolling in. The recording industry—once run by people who knew and loved the music—was in the hands of lawyers and CPAs who increasingly moved it away from the music and and into the realm of product. They wasted no time signing up pop artists with figures and benefits that jazz artists had never seen or known to be possible. More money was spent on press parties than on must jazz sessions, and Miles Davis became the opening act for Blood, Sweat & Tears. It was an insult that NARAS, the Grammy people, carry on to this day, an insult that some of the rock performers became aware of, but did little to correct. Many jazz performers felt cheated and rightly so, and some began to see their rock counterparts as the enemy. You will hear some of that in the hour-long Archie Shepp interview. Mr. Shepp is still very much with us and it would be interesting to hear if the intervening four decades have changed his mind about some of the rock stars he mentions. I suspect so, but that does not justify an industry's dismissal of a musical genre to which it owes its survival. For decades, jazz recordings have served as what the industry calls good "catalog items." That is to say that they have a long shelf life and while they may not initially sell in chart-busting amounts, the accumulated sales figures put many pop records to shame. For example, because it was released under different titles and catalog numbers, an album like Stan Getz's Long Island Sound was never awarded gold status, but it accumulated the required figures a very long time ago.

Getting back on track, this is not so much an interview as it is Archie Shepp talking, with occasional prompts from me. I was preparing to write an article, not produce a radio program, so I approached the task accordingly. I should mention that there were others present in Mr, Shepp's apartment that day, a musician friend of his who I wish had been closer to the microphone, and a Down Beat secretary who I wish had been in another room. If you detect any cuts, rest assured that I did not remove any of Archie Shepp's words, just some of the young lady's intrusive and uninformed questions and giggles.

In 1963, Archie Shepp posed for photographer Ole Brask in the window of a rooming house on New

York's West 82nd Street. It had been my residence until I moved to my present apartment. Ole took

it over.

Here, then, is what I experienced for the rest of the day. This is my Down Beat review as it was published in the March 5, 1970 issue. I have to tell you that reading my old words is enough of a cringe, but actually typing them in and not being able to to make changes is a nightmare.

CAUGHT IN THE ACT

Jimi Hendrix—The Voices of East Harlem
Fillmore East, New York City

It was in many ways a special evening. A new year was about to be rung in, a chaotic decade was coming to an end, and one of the star exponents of the music that so colored that decade was changing direction.

Spending New Year's Eve at the Fillmore is not exactly my idea of a fun way to ring out the old, but I must say the management had done its best to lend a holiday touch to the proceedings—from donning its ushers in greeting-inscribed sweatshirts to placing a small metal tambourine at each seat and projecting, on the large movie screen behind the stage, a caricature of Guy Lombardo, baton in hand.

The press release stressed the group's freedom to drift independently.

The late concert was scheduled to begin at 10:30 p.m., but the doors did not open until 11, and another 20 minutes passed before the houselights dimmed, Lombardo faded away, and the screen showed a film of various black youngsters leaving their respective Harlem homes, gathering by a subway entrance, riding the train, emerging in Greenwich Village, running down Second Ave. and through the doors of the Fillmore East. A quick fade-out and the same youngsters, 20 of them, came running down the aisles of the theater (this time "live") and onto the stage. A cute and effective wy to introduce the Voices of East Harlem and begin the evening's program.

The Voices were formed about a year and a half ago, with the help of urban development programs and an energetic, strong-voice adult Gospel singer named Bernice Cole. Under the guidance of Miss Cole, the group has developed into a spirited choir that can swing, as it certainly did on this occasion, through a repertoire of Gospel and Pop with infectious Vivacity.

It was getting close to midnight when Miss Cole appeared and added her powerful voice to a few Gospel numbers, which had the capacity audience smacking its toy tambourines. The Fillmore East became, for a moment, a gigantic store-front church and 20 youngsters from the streets of Harlem had shared a part of their heritage with 2,639 appreciative downtown hippies and gloriously demonstrated where it all came from.

At three minutes before midnight, a large clock was projected on the screen. The youngsters had danced off stage amid deafening sounds of approval, and the sound of the tambourines grew increasingly louder as the big second hand brought us closer to the new year.

I braced myself as large figures appeared superimposed on the clock for the countdown of the last 10 seconds—10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. It was 1970 and the new decade was roared in by the playing of the awesome opening of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra, popularized by its use in the movie 2001. With its playing, the screen was lifted, revealing the inner workings of the Joshua Light Show, which now projected its multicolored images on the cheering crowd.

After a few thousand "Happy New Years," the screen slipped back into place, Joshua and his gang cast their imagination on it, and the star of the show, Jimi Hendrix, intoned a most unusual rendition of Auld Lang Syne, turning it into a blusey thing of strange beauty.

Hendrix was changing directions—a new group and a new repertoire. It is no longer the Jimi Hendrix Experience but rather Jimi Hendrix: A Band of Gypsys, with Buddy Miles (formerly of the Electric Flag and the Buddy Miles Express), drums, and Billy Cox (an Army buddy of Hendrix's), electric bass. As for the repertoire, the emphasis is decidedly on the blues. The result is promising.

I say promising because Hendrix had not yet had time to fall into his new groove. He is still over-amplified through his three-unit system, and he still resorts to such crowd-pleasing tricks as playing his guitar with his teeth. There was less of this gimmickry than usual, however, and I suspect that he will eventually give it up.

Hendrix and his Band of Gypsys

That ability of his to utilize fully the technical possibilities of his instrument, combined with his fertile musical imagination, makes him an outstanding performer. His feeling for the blues is strong, and his application of electronic sound effects to the most traditional aspects of that music so charged the emotions of the Fillmore audience that nary a tambourine stirred.

Hendrix never really has considered himself much of a singer, and he is right. Perhaps that is why he let his guitar drown out his voice each time he sang while he did not allow it to interfere with Miles' vocals. Miles is a good blues singer, and I think Hendrix would be wise to let him handle that department. His work on the drums is not bad, but it cannot stand comparison with numerous jazz drummers.

It appears that Hendrix is finding where he should be at, and he might well emerge as the greatest of the new blues guitarists. I only hope that he learns that it is not necessary to amplify to or past the point of distortion. Lesser talents might need that: he doesn't.

I did not cherish the idea of spending my New Year's Eve at the Fillmore, but as it turned out, it was a rewarding experience. —Chris Albertson

I don't recall whether Dan Morgenstern edited it out or if I omitted mention of the gallon jugs of wine and very loose joints that passed from mouth to mouth throughout the theater, silencing some tambourines, turning others into a nightmarish metallic clatter. I think I detected cannabis clouds above, but I can't be sure, because an exhaled mist of highs made the visibility low. Miss Cole and her little angels left the theater none too soon.

Talking at the Cookery: Part II

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At this point, Barney Josephson joined Alberta in the booth. She had become very fond of Barney, but her admiration would diminish somewhat when she learned that he had stood in the way of her getting some lucrative outside jobs. If you listened to the first audio clip, you probably gathered that Alberta was not very fond of the IRS. She had worked more than a lifetime, made very good money, and paid a lot of taxes—more than enough. The time had come, she believed, where she had paid in full, so it angered her that the IRS now was pursuing her for more. That's why she instituted a new policy: cash only. She was charging and receiving $10,000 for each performance outside of The Cookery, and it was not because she needed the money—for more years than many of us experience on this earth, Alberta had been making money and spending it prudently. My first inkling of her being well above the poverty line came when she called to say that she would be a half hour late for a Library of Congress interview I was conducting. "You know those ten thousand dollar bonds that are supposed to be so terrific?," she asked me. I had to confess that those bargains had somehow escaped me. "Well, they're really supposed to be very good, so I'm going to stop at the bank a pick up a couple."

Having lived through the Great Depression and seen people lose their money as banks closed, she wasn't taking any chances. She kept money in at least four different banks, and had enough tucked under her mattress to keep the Weather Girls eating for a few years. I became aware of her lay-away plan one day when she insisted that I take a cab home from her Roosevelt Island apartment, because I didn't have my usual ride—Alberta was frugal, not cheap. As was her habit, she had laden me down with groceries. Like I said, Alberta could not resist a supermarket bargain, whether she needed the food, or not, and the latter was usually the case, because she ate like a sparrow. Consequently, her three apartments were as well stocked as some neighborhood bodegas. "Let me give you some money for the cab," she said as she walked over to her bed and lifted the mattress.

At least once a month, the mailman brought me an
envelope stuffed with dog food coupons for my
dobermans, Mingus and Bessie.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I had never before—or since, for that matter—seen so much cash in real life. Remember the H.C. Andersen tale of the princess who spent a sleepless night because a pea was placed under her mattress? Well, this reminded me of that and I don't know how Alberta ever got a good night's rest. Recently, when I learned that my friend, Jean Claude Baker, had also seen Alberta's mattress bank, I asked him how much he thought she had under there—I had estimated 60 or 70 thousand dollars, he put it at twice that amount.

On the tape that accompanies this post, you will hear Barney say that Alberta "asked me to look after her affairs," but that was actually not so. The idea of becoming her manager was his, borne out of greed, one might say. She once told me how wonderful Barney was not to charge her for his managerial services, but there was method to his madness. As her extraordinary comeback received more publicity, the demand grew for her to perform at private and company functions. Each time she appeared somewhere else, Barney faced a near-empty room, and lost money, but, as her manager, he would have some control over that. Remember, Alberta was earning much more on these side bookings than she could make at Barney's place, so she wasn't going to turn them down—at least not the lucrative ones. That, however, is exactly what Barney began to do, and Alberta knew nothing of it until I told her.

When the Carters asked Alberta to sing at the White

House, Barney passed the request along, but Alberta

turned the President down. Why? I asked her. "They

wanted me on my day off," she replied. The White

House adjusted to Alberta's schedule.

I discovered Barney's little secret when I received calls from people who had attempted to book Alberta, but either did not have their calls returned or were told that she was already "fully booked." That didn't make sense, so I looked into it and concluded that he was deliberately keeping Alberta to himself. At first, she didn't want to believe it, but then she heard it directly from a wealthy admirer who had wanted her to sing at his daughter's wedding and was willing to pay her price. Of course, Alberta did not need the money, to her, it was a matter of principle; she was most bothered by the fact that Barney, whom she trusted, had been looking out for his own interest at her expense. She was still speaking lovingly of their friendship when this tape was made, but the rapport between them cooled off after she learned of his "betrayal," as she called it. She knew that he needed her more than she needed him, but he had opened the door for her comeback and that counted for much, so she stayed on at the place that had come to mean so much to her.

Barney liked to inflate his own role in the comeback of Alberta Hunter. The truth is that Charlie Bourgeois, the Newport Jazz Festival's PR man and George Wein's trusty right hand, crossed paths with Alberta at one of Bobby Short's parties and was taken by her youthful demeanor. It was her first social outing in many years and she looked radiant as she, Bricktop and Mabel Mercer shared precious recollections of a distant past. "You know something, honey," said Bricktop, "you should go back on the road!" That was Charlie Bourgeois' cue. "You ought to give Barney Josephson a call," he suggested, "I bet he would love to book you."Bricktop and Mercer agreed.

"If that's so," Alberta replied, "let him call me."

Ram Ramirez, Jimmy Rowles and Claude Hopkins were contenders.

Barney called and decided to give her "a try." Shortly after that, Alberta told me that she had decided to "go back to singing." "Are you up to it?", I asked. "I never felt better," she said with characteristic conviction. Then she asked me to recommend an accompanist.

You will hear Barney's version of how Gerald Cook came into the picture, but that is pure fabrication. It was Harry Watkins who brought him in—ironically, as you will see.

I had an old upright at that time, so I suggested that she audition pianists at my apartment. Ram Ramirez (co-writer of Lover Man with Jimmy Davis) was the first contender, but he was having some trouble getting with her repertoire and that did not bode well, thought Alberta. Then I suggested former band leader Claude Hopkins, who had been around longer and had proven quite adaptable when I had him play for Lonnie Johnson on a Prestige session. Alberta liked his work, but with some reservation. She also feared that his name might be too well known and thus could overshadow hers. Someone, I think it may have been Charlie Bourgeoise, recommended Jimmy Rowles and Alberta immediately liked the fact that he had accompanied Billie Holiday, so—when their personalities clicked—she gave her approval and that's who she made her Cookery debut with on October 10, 1977. A bunch of us were there and Alberta's performance—musical and otherwise—belied the many years that had passed since she retired from show business.

Celebrating Alberta's 83rd birthday at The Cookery. L to r: Eubie Blake, bassist Al Hall, Alberta, Bobby Short,

Jimmy Daniels, Chris Albertson (yours truly), and an unidentified gentleman.

Alberta eventually concluded that Jimmy Rowles was "too modern," so her old friend, Harry Watkins, came up with Gerald Cook. He had never heard of Alberta and didn't seem to eager until he found out that she was a lady with a long and very impressive career behind her. Then he took the job and, sad to say, his playing was just what she wanted. What made it unfortunate is that Gerald Cook turned out to be a crook. We din't find that out until Alberta died.

Harry Watkins called and asked me if I had heard of Alberta's death. I hadn't, and he had just learned of of through a friend who happened upon a notice in the papers. It turned out that Gerald Cook, who had a key to Alberta's Roosevelt Island apartment, found her dead, seated in her favorite easy chair—he had gone over there at the urging of Harry, who felt that there was something wrong when Alberta didn't answer her phone. That made Harry wonder all the more why Gerald had not called him back with the news, knowing full well how close they had been since the Dreamland days. Several days later, Gerald finally gave Harry a call with the sad news. That same day, he called me and asked if I would speak at a memorial service to be held at Pastor Gensel's St. Peter's Church. At first, I declined, but changed my mind after some thought, telling him to schedule me as the last speaker. I wanted to base my words, to some extent, on the BS that would inevitably precede them.

I was not really surprised to hear of Alberta's death. She had been feeble for awhile—her memory was no longer as sharp as it had been, she repeated herself and sometimes seemed to drift off. The very quick-minded, never-felt-better Alberta I had known for over twenty years was gone. She would return to something resembling her old self, but only briefly and sporadically, and with increasing infrequency. I first sensed that change on a visit to her apartment, about a year before she started to fade. This lady, who adamantly refused to acknowledge the possibility of her death, asked me to sit down with her at her living room table to discuss "something very important." It turned out to be her will. "I don't need to know about your will," I told her, feeling rather uncomfortable. "Yes you do," she said, placing the papers in front of me.

Alberta had her own radio show
in the late 1930s.

She told me that she had accounts in four different banks and that she had four people in her will, each of whom would inherit the content of one bank. Her four heirs were Harry Watkins, Sam Sharpe, Jr.—her only known relative, who lived in Denver—her old friend, singer Jimmy Daniels, and I. Now I was really embarrassed, but appreciative and surprised. Alberta went on to say that her music copyrights would also go to me, because only I knew how to handle renewals. Then she showed me the will and asked me to take a good look at it, which I did. I was still stunned by the mere fact that she had brought up the subject of death.

A few months later, in June of 1984, Alberta was deeply affected by the death of Jimmy Daniels, especially since an earlier and minor falling out was left unresolved. It had been a year of old friends slipping away, including Mabel Mercer and Bricktop. Alberta felt that she would probably be "the next to go," and the rewritten scenario clearly angered her—she became cranky and annoyed with Barney and Gerald Cook, refusing to speak to either of them. Harry and I were somehow spared, probably because neither of us were involved in her working life. I know it's pure conjecture on my part, but I think she was upset because she finally saw the end of the tunnel. It had been such a great and rewarding life—how dare God stop the show! God? Alberta always said that she wasn't religious and she did not attend church, but she wasn't fooling anyone—the faith was there, but sans hypocrisy.

Alberta and friends at Bricktop's popular gathering place in Paris.

Just as I had predicted, the memorial service was a study in hypocrisy. Jon Hendricks spoke warmly and sincerely, admitting that he was more an admirer than a friend, Rosetta Le Noir laid it on a bit thick, stretching a fairly casual association into a lifelong friendship, John Hammond was characteristically deceptive as he gave the impression of having known Alberta for many years, and Barney? Well, good old Barney was a chip off the old Hammond block. He wanted to be remembered for having brought Alberta back.

When my turn finally came, I set the record straight. Addressing John Hammond, I reminded him of the fact that, "It was not so long ago that I introduced you to Alberta—you didn't seem too interested, but look what happened." The attendees sent a ripple of titter down the aisles as I turned my attention to Barney. "Alberta," I said "turned The Cookery into a shrine for herself and a gold mine for you." More titter, less subtle. I ended my little speech by pointing upwards. "I have a strong feeling that Alberta has been taking all this in from up there, and that she has separated the wheat from the tare."

When I walked away from the microphone, Pastor Gensel approached me. "Wonderful, Chris," he said, placing his arm on my shoulder, "it needed to be said."

Neither John nor Barney spoke to me again.

Performing at The Cookery.

A few days after the memorial service, I received a call from Harry Watkins. He was shaken and almost in tears. He had just received a call from Gerald Cook asking if Alberta had left her iconic gold earrings in the Riverside Drive apartment they had shared. When Harry told him that the earrings were, indeed, there, Gerald raised his voice and said that they had better be there when he arrives to pick them up. "I don't know if Gerald has been drinking," said Harry, but I am scared. I told him to lock the door and be ready to call the police if Gerald showed up. Then I started putting together the pieces of what was becoming a puzzle. Why had Gerald waited several days before informing us of Alberta's death? Had he helped himself to the greenery under her mattress? What became of the will? I called Harry back and he was still upset, but Gerald had not shown up. Had Alberta told him of her will? No, but she had mentioned that he would not have to worry about losing the apartment.

Harry Watkins and Alberta at her Roosevelt Island
apartment. Two months later, she was gone.

I decided to track down Alberta's will and I finally received a copy from the court. This was not the will she had shown me. This one left everything to Gerald Cook! Well, except the jewelry—which in itself amounted to a small fortune—that was all bequeathed to Gerald's sister in Chicago, someone Alberta barely knew! It would not have taken Sherlock Holmes to detect that something didn't add up. The changes were initialed by Alberta—or were they? The fact is that she had been so weak and feeble-minded towards the end that she probably did not know what she was doing. Had she even read the changes? Writing me out of the will would not have been particularly odd, but Harry? Her nephew Samuel? Even if Alberta's relationship with Gerald had not deteriorated, this would not have made any sense. And why did the attorney—a man who specialized in copyrights and had been recommended to Alberta by John Hammond—not find this change to be beyond credulity? He knew that Alberta was no longer of sound mind, but he went along with this.

I shared my discovery only with a couple of friends, including Gary King, who was with me when Alberta showed me her will. It is only because I was in the original will that I did not make an issue of this—people would think that I was looking out for my own interests. Now, decades later, I am not so sure that I should not have spoken up for Harry and, in a sense, for Alberta. Gerald Cook moved to Europe where, I am told, he drank himself to death.

Here, Barney Josephson embroiders the story of his association with Alberta, and she—being a thorough PR pro—goes right along with it. That's showbiz!

I should, however, make it clear that Barney had many real accomplishments that he could be proud of and, rather than list them here, let me give you a link to Wikipedia's entry for the Café Society clubs.

Let me also recommend "Cookin' at the Cookery." a play by Marion J. Caffey that has been seen in regional productions throughout the U.S. in recent years. It is a very accurate depiction of Alberta's final climb to higher ground. I also recommend Frank C. Taylor's biography, "Alberta Hunter: A Celebration in Blues." Alberta met Frank when she performed in Rio and she was very fond of him. Unfortunately, she passed before the book was published, otherwise Gerald Cook would not have been able to wangle a co-author's credit (and, I presume, a cut of the royalties). He was a good pianist, but shed no tears for him.

Talking at The Cookery

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It was December of 1981, Alberta was at The Cookery, seated in the far corner booth that was her favorite, and she was in a great mood. Her décolleté dress was not just off any rack. Alberta was frugal, but she never allowed it to get in the way of her insistence on quality. Her hair was pulled back tightly to form a knot, the way Bessie Smith had it in when she threw away her horsehair wigs. Alberta's makeup—expertly self-applied—lent an extra glow to her youthful face, as it had since the days of Woodrow Wilson. Oversized gold earrings dangled and sent reflections of the Cookery's myriad Christmas lights dancing on her cheeks and shoulders. She had purchased them in Israel many years ago, and they had almost become a trademark.

The distinguished looking little lady in the booth had arrived at The Cookery two hours earlier, hunched over, dressed in a warm coat that might have come from Goodwill's grand opening sale, and carrying in each hand worn paper shopping bags, one stuffed into another. People who saw her on the street, pausing to study the day's bargains on a supermarket window, easily mistook Alberta for a "bag lady," but those ratty old bags were not filled with items retrieved from a dumpster or trash can. Alberta always carried with her a good amount of money in cash and cheques, and that rag she clutched with her right hand actually concealed an ice pick... just in case.

My camera caught this moment at New York's Essex House in June

of 1974. I wanted Alberta and Horton Foote to meet, because mutual

admiration was already in place (she loved "To Kill a Mockingbird") and

Horton was working on a screenplay based on my Bessie Smith book.

This is how this remarkable lady came to work every day. She would straighten up a little as she maneuvered between the tables, dispensing warm hellos and smiles to the restaurant's staff before disappearing down the stairs to a dressing room where she underwent an amazing transformation. Most people of her age would have a problem negotiating that steep stairway, but old age and death were two stages of life whose existence Alberta refused to acknowledge as even a possibility. You will understand her positive outlook when you hear what she had to say to a young film crew that came to interview her for a documentary.

As the camera is being set up, a young lady wants to attach a microphone to Alberta's dress. "Go right ahead, sweet thing," she says, "and have a chocolate." She gives a gentle push to a small, ornate box of frivolous confectionary, "they are very good." That they were, a gift from one of Alberta's many well-to-do admirers. Her apartment on Roosevelt Island had a table laden with neatly arranged fine candies, but she never indulged—they were there for the occasional visitor. In fact, some had been there for so long that the chocolate no longer retained its original color. Alberta was loathe to throw any of it away, but I used to do that when she wasn't looking. Some of the chocolate was so old that it had developed a life of its own, if you know what I mean.

The January 6, 1923 issue of Chicago Defender

carried this ad for Alberta's recording of a song

that would become Bessie Smith's first recording

and biggest Columbia hit.

As you will hear, Alberta talks about her own outlook on life and her travels, but she leaves out the details, so here—to supplement her own words—is a shortcut through the early years of her career. You might want to read it before you click on the first audio.

How Alberta, a sixteen year old girl with only ten cents and a child's railroad pass, managed to run off to Chicago and begin her rewarding nomadic life is a story in and of itself, and best left for another time. Suffice it to say that she was not "running away," in the usual sense of that phrase. She saw this move as more of a business trip, the forging of a new path for herself and her mother, the first step in a series of climbs to higher ground. Her sister, Latoya, and half-sister Josephine would have to fend for themselves. Memphis was a bustling city, even then, but Chicago was where the opportunities awaited such dreamers as Alberta Hunter.

She had been told that a singer could earn ten dollars a week in Chicago clubs, so she figured that it wouldn't be long before she could send for her mother. She soon found herself a less glamorous job—peeling potatoes, for little more than room and board. She made the rounds whenever she could, but she was too young, they said. Ever resourceful, Alberta went to work on her appearance, aging herself to land a job at Dago Frank's. The pay was a pittance, but she hustled up tips and she was, at least, singing. The pianist only knew Stephen Foster tunes, and not too well, but the pickpockets and pimps who kept the joint going were okay with that.

From this ignoble den of iniquity, Alberta gradually moved to higher ground, singing her way up the show-biz ladder until she hit the apex, the swanky Dreamland Café, where the food was Chinese the women richly perfumed, the men tuxedoed, and the music hot. Along the way, she launched her recording career on Black Swan, a label whose ads boasted, "The only genuinely colored record—others are only passing." Alberta's records brought her wider attention and bids from numerous out-of-town places, like New York City. In January of 1919, while appearing in a Cincinnati club, she found herself exchanging flirts with Willard Saxby Townsend, a handsome waiter who had recently returned from fighting in Europe. Two days later, they tied the knot and she took Willard home to mother before consummating the marriage. In fact, they never slept together—in deference to her mother. "Willard was a real gentleman," said Alberta. "We all lived in one apartment and he understood when I told him that I could never sleep with him under the same roof as my mother." Willard had wanted to take a waiter's job in Chicago, but Alberta discouraged that—a man should aim higher, she told him. "What he needed, bless his soul, was a wife who could cook for him and darn his socks. I wasn't cut out for that, so I decided to give him an opportunity to find someone else." Two months later, Alberta declared the marriage over and Willard returned home to his mother in Cincinnati. It had been a silly idea and very unfair to Willard, she admitted, adding that she meant to use him as a shield against other men who had the "wrong ideas."

Lottie Tyler

The real story was that Alberta had fallen in love with Lottie Tyler, a woman of striking good looks whose uncle, comedian Bert Williams, enjoyed the kind of show business success she herself aspired to. She was also ready to climb further up the ladder and, like most black women in show business, she thought of Josephine Baker, a lowly chorine from "Shuffle Along" who had enthusiastic audiences, royalty and millionaires clamoring for her in Paris. If there was higher ground than that, Alberta had not heard of it. She had plotted her next course and it required a bit of money, but, unlike most of her entertainer friends, Alberta did not hang out after work. She began moonlighting at after-hours clubs and she invested in real estate and jewelry. When I met her in 1961, she still had her first trinket, a large solitaire diamond that she had paid nine hundred dollars for in 1920.

Alberta also purchased two steamship tickets—one for herself, the other for Lottie, who lived in New York with her Uncle Bert, and knew nothing of her plans. Then she caught the next thing smoking for New York, leaving her mother comfortably situated in her own house. The following day, Alberta and an overwhelmed but delighted Lottie boarded the steamship De Grasse and slipped across the big pond!

The S/S De Grasse.

Paul Robeson and Alberta pose for a publicity
photo at London's Drury Lane Theatre - 1928

Alberta had not been in France long when she received a telegram from Noble Sissle urging her to come to London. The Thames had risen above its banks and left thousands of Londoners homeless. Sissle was recruiting artists for a star-studded Sunday benefit to be held at the London Pavilion. Work permits were not easily obtained in England, so Alberta jumped at the chance to perform there, as did Josephine Baker, who flew in from Paris at the last moment. In the audience sat Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, who were in England to assemble a cast for their new musical. Unaware of their presence, Alberta sang Just Another Day Wasted Away, but the title could not have been less apropos: four months later, when "Showboat" opened at London's Drury Lane Theatre, she was Queenie, sharing the stage with Paul Robeson, Edith Day, Marie Burke, and a yet-to-be knighted Cedric Hardwicke.

Willard was, indeed, a gentleman, and Alberta's success delighted

him. She was appearing in the London production of "Show Boat"

when he wrote her this letter. (Click on letter to enlarge it)

The show, a huge success, ran into 1929 and did much to enhance Alberta's career. She was now an international star. Even Willard took note and sent her a congratulatory letter.

She had only been in Europe for little over a year, but Alberta easily adapted to her new environment. She never forgot where she came from, musically, but she slipped effortlessly into a sophisticated mode when called upon to do so. For example in 1934, when she spent a season with Jack Jackson's society orchestra at London's Dorchester Hotel. That Alberta Hunter didn't sound anything like the one who only a few years earlier got down with an earthier repertoire, aided and abetted by up and coming players like Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Bechet and Joe Oliver. Fortunately, that version of Alberta was captured on 12 HMV recordings. I have combined a couple of examples here:

You may recognize the last signer on the card, Mabel Mercer. Frank Sinatra said that he learned

breathing from listening to her sing.

1934 was also a year in which Alberta made her film debut. "Radio Parade of 1935" was the British answer to "The Big Broadcast," a 1932 film that featured popular American radio stars. The British version tapped the BBC and included Alberta in her own production number, an interesting race-conscious number called Black Shadows whose lyrics might have been too controversial for Hollywood at that time. This was the first British feature film to have a color sequence and it was Alberta's. In the 1980s, when I was writing a documentary film on Alberta, my friend, the late Mark Shivas, acquired a copy of this number from the British Film Museum, and it was in Dufaycolour, a bygone technology. I found this clip on YouTube—it will give you a rough idea, literally.

When I told Alberta that I liked the background, she asked, "What background?"

"The huge drums with women in leopard skin dancing on them," I replied.

She said, "Really?, Well, you know me, Chris, I'm not in the habit of looking over my shoulder."

Alberta (center) on the set of Radio Parade of 1935 for the "Black Shadows" production number. (Click on photo to enlarge)

Here, at last, is the first audio portion of this blog entry.

At this point, Barney Josephson joined Alberta in the booth. We will pick it up there in a few days, when this story continues.

Alberta and Harry

2011-03-29T23:41:00.007-04:00

Alberta Hunter was starring at the Dreamland when a very successful Broadway show called "Strut, Miss Lizzie" came to Chicago and Bill Bottoms, the Dreamland's proprietor, invited the cast to drop by. That's how Alberta and Harry Watkins met, some 90 years ago. Their friendship never faded, they shared an apartment on Riverside Drive, overlooking the Hudson River, and referred to each other as brother and sister. Alberta did not actually live in the uptown apartment, she had her very own on Roosevelt Island, which is also where she worked as a nurse at Goldwater Memorial Hospital. In the 1970s, when the hospital retired her—not knowing that she was well past retirement age (she had lied to get the job), Alberta made an amazing comeback, singing nightly at a Greenwich Village club, The Cookery. To make commuting easier, she rented yet another apartment, this one in Chelsea.

Alberta's biography, written by Frank Taylor in 1987, credits Gerald Cook as co-author, but don't be fooled by that—not a word in there is his. Cook (we used to add an "r" to his last name) was Alberta's pianist, a job he did well, but he was also an opportunist who ended up stealing all her money, jewelry, furs, etc.

Alberta was frugal and her long career had brought her a healthy income, so we are not talking about pennies here. Frank's book is excellent, but—for obvious reasons—it does not contain that part of the Alberta Hunter story. This is the first time I have even mentioned what Cook did after she died, but I will tell that story in the very near future.

Here is the first of several tapes wherein Alberta talks about her fascinating life. This snippet, and that's all it is, was recorded in September of 1981, at her Roosevelt Island apartment. She was 86 and amazingly vivacious, but we who knew her well also knew that Alberta was slowly beginning to fade. This interview with Alberta and Harry Watkins was done for a documentary film, so you will hear me somewhat off mic. They talk about their initial meeting in Chicago and Harry relates a story from a time when they were both in Paris. Alberta also talks about some of the places she worked at in Europe, including Copenhagen's Lorry, which also happens to be the establishment where I first recorded Ken Colyer, Chris Barber, et al.

Click on image to enlarge it

The tape begins with Alberta talking about Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson, who was among the regular guests at the Dreamland.

Around 1970, I interviewed Alberta for Danish TV. We were at Ashford

and Simpson's town house on NYC's West Side. Surprisingly and

regrettably, Danish TV cut up the original film when German TV asked

for some footage.

Here is a continuation of the above. Alberta recalls her first singing jobs, in Chicago. As I said, her health was beginning to deteriorate; I had known her for 20 years at this point and I was trying to have her repeat on camera some of the wonderful stories she had told me, but, at this point, they did not come back to her so readily.

At one point, you will hear Alberta abruptly switch to comments on lasagna. The sudden switch is due to the fact that I edited out several breaks for reel change—that followed one of them.

The second segment begins with Harry Watkins recalling when he and Alberta were both in Paris, in 1936.

I will be posting more of Alberta here soon.

Review: Stan Kenton documentary film

2011-03-20T11:26:00.007-04:00

Back in 1948, when I was 17 and only recently bitten by the jazz bug, all necessities of life were pushed aside and what little money I had went into the purchase of another record. My chance meeting with jazz, via radio, had sparked a preoccupation that totally warped my priorities. When my art school held classes at the Copenhagen zoo, found myself looking at hippos and Peruvian mountain goats, but drawing clarinetists and cornets. I was reminded of my impractical obsession each time I saw my mother darning my socks, of which I had four. It would, as she often reminded me, have been prudent to purchase a new pair, but there was that tempting, slightly worn Okeh Hot Five at Concerno, begging to be given a good home.

Private test recordings were sent out as feelers.

Concerno was a small used records shop in the center of Copenhagen, a place with bulging bins of abundant sounds. It did a thriving business in those years when new releases and pressing material were scarce. Record companies concocted all sorts of mixtures to stretch the shellac base, some even experimented with lamination, embedding a cardboard layer that a heavy needle soon found its way to. When I bought my first records, one had to hand in an old 78rpm disc when buying a new one, a system that stunted the growth of one's collection and gave one an added incentive to buy used records. Dan Morgenstern, who heads The Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers, can identify with that, for he himself was flipping through the bins at Concerno just a few years earlier.

Even with trade-in discs in hand, it was very difficult to find anything new in Copenhagen in the early post-war years, but there was Malmø, a small Swedish city across the water, and almost out of sight. Sweden had been neutral during WWII, so its stores offered all kids of goodies to anyone who had its currency or U.S. dollars, neither of which were readily available to Danes. I, however, also had an Icelandic passport, which was regarded as "foreign" and thus opened a door to currency exchange. There was no yellow brick road to Malmø, so I hopped a ferry whenever I could scrape up the money, which wasn't very often. The mission was to buy such things as real coffee, tea, chocolate, and nylon stockings for my family and jazz records for myself, but all these things soon became available in Denmark.

Before there was a Capitol Tower at Hollywood and Vine, there was

this unimposing building.

Capitol recordings had yet to reach us in Denmark, so I specifically asked the Swedish store clerk to show me its offerings. That's how I came across Nellie Lutcher, whom I couldn't get enough of, and how I discovered Kenton's brass orgies. The sheer volume overwhelmed me and I was intrigued by the dissonance. Then, too, there was that Capitol Records sound, almost cavernous, but never overly so, and unlike any audio I had heard before. The music was already energetic, but Capitol's engineers somehow seemed to give it extra life. Of course, much of it was simply reverb, which was a new thing that eventually would be used excessively by many labels, but on those Capitols it seemed just right. Not an exaggerated echo where notes disappeared into nooks and crannies, but just enough of a boost to enrich the sound of the music. I bought the well-named Artistry Jumps—which then was two or three years old, but none the worse for it—and I became totally hooked. To me, Kenton's music sounded every bit as exciting as Jelly Roll's Red Hot Peppers or Bix and Tram, or Louis at his hottest—it was all jazz, and the fact that there were so many diverse approaches to it only made it more intriguing. We did not have Leonard Feather around to do his "hot versus cool" or "cats versus chicks" polarization-for-profit number. The European ear was open to all of it.

As my passion for jazz developed and my scope broadened, I found myself sneaking an eclectic collection past my mother into the apartment, one disc at a time. I would then wait a few days before playing a new acquisition in her presence. "Is that a new one?," she would ask. "No," I could truthfully reply, "I've had it for some time."

I can understand why some people find Kenton's music too cold for comfort, but I saw it as another kind of listening experience—it was like reading a good story as opposed to having it told to you by someone who had lived it. The brilliance of Kenton's charts made up for their lack of "soul," as it were. If I needed an emotional charge from music, I listened to someone like Bozie Sturdivant or Bessie Smith, or the slam dunk bands of Basie, Herman, Duke and Henderson—there was also Woody Herman, who whipped up an oleo of precision and passion. My ears were new to jazz, and I had a lot of catching up to do, but the initial impact of Kenton remained special, so I was delighted last week when I found in my mail box an advance copy of a new documentary DVD called "Stan Kenton - Artistry in Rhythm: Portrait of a Jazz Legend." The official release date is April 12, 2011, but it is already available at jazzedmedia.com.

Just three minutes short of two hours in length, the film contains much of the music that attracted me to the band. The aforementioned Capitol sound that contributed to that attraction is not in evidence, because the music is mostly taken from film and television footage. It runs in the back and foregrounds throughout the documentary and weaves seamlessly in and out of the narrative. You will not hear complete, uninterrupted performances, but neither will you miss them, because producer/director Graham Carter keeps the information flowing. The basic running commentary is by Ken Poston, a historian from the Los Angeles Jazz Institute whose authoritative account of Kenton's career is helped along by the on-camera comments and recollections of a number of Kenton alumni, including Bill Holman, Jack Costanzo, Eddie Bert, an club owner Howard Rumsey, who played bass with Kenton in the early days. Veteran San Francisco jazz critic/disc jockey/producer Herb Wong also shares his recollections.

Kenton's rapturing reeds.

It was written for him by Pete Rugolo, at Kenton's request, but Costanzo admits here for the first time that he was never happy with Bongo Riff. It made him a star, he admits, but this new Afro Cuban Kenton sound was missing a key ingredient. "It was Latin music played by an American band," he says, adding that the chart severely restricted his creativity. Kenton would later send composer/arranger Johnny Richards to New York with instructions to hang out with the Latin players and find that missing key. Richards did as told and the result was "Cuban Fire," an enormously successful six-part suite released in 1956. Richards was also responsible for the highly successful West Side Story album, and for Kenton's not so warmly received flirt with Richard Wagner. The latter release does not get a mention in the film.

Before he shifted the instrumentation to heavy brass (ten trumpets and ten trombones), Kenton's emphasis favored saxophones and the charts were... well, less progressive. In fact, an included snippet of Reed Rapture brings to mind Raymond Scott, who often teetered on the edge of corn. from a time when sound tracks were of a lower fi. It is not easy to imagine Kenton's music played successfully by a band other than his own, which is probably why he was adamantly against so-called "ghost" bands.

Kenton was upset with the trade press categorizing Bob Graettinger's tightly scored "City of Glass" as jazz.

While the residue of a post-war "trad" fad could still be felt a decade after the war's end, Bunk eventually gave way to Monk and Bebop became something young Danes slipped onto their turntable, even as they continued dancing to the roots of jazz. Some Danes fanatically embraced this "progressive jazz", as Kenton dubbed it, but there were those who were left cold by it—they found the well disciplined brass to be too prescribed. It lacked "swing," they said, it was all precision and no soul, an evaluation many of Wynton Marsalis' detractors have since echoed. Stan Kenton took such criticism in stride and made a joke of it.

Kenton in Berlin.

Arriving in Berlin. It was Kenton's first visit.

Getting back to Graham Carter's documentary, the music itself is almost secondary, which is as it should be, because this is a film about a man's pursuit of a dream, his stumbles, his triumphs, his personality, his constant efforts to reinvent himself. The film's "chapters" cover the many Kenton "eras", his founding of a record company, which he hoped could compete with Capitol, his short-lived but ultra ambitious Los Angeles Neophonic Orchestra, and other phases, each of which reflected the bandleader's quest for acceptance by a public whose taste was ever tenuous. While the music is there from start to finish, the recordings deserve to be heard uninterrupted and as issued. Kenton's discography is sizable and of, uneven merit, but there is plenty of the good stuff available in a variety of digital formats. The significance of this film, its real value, lies in what it tells us about Stan the man, himself, and some of that may surprise you.

Kenton poses with some of his clinic's students. Recognize anyone?

Stan Kenton's most enduring legacy may well be in the field of jazz education. He not only built a succession of orchestras, he also thought it important to lay the foundation for future bands, ones that he himself might never hear, and to develop an audience for all that. That's why he founded the Stan Kenton Music Clinics, which numbered over 100 by the mid-Seventies . Young people were not always interested in his recordings, but they loved to hear the music played live, and it inspired many to follow that route. Kids who attended Kenton's clinics include Keith Jarrett, Gary Burton, Dave Sanborn, Randy Brecker, and Pat Metheny. A roll call that is almost as impressive as his list of alumni, the stars of which are too many to rattle off here—suffice it to mention that Lee Konitz, Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne, Zoot Sims, Gerry Mulligan, Art Pepper, and Laurindo Almeida are among them. Vocalists? Well, there was Anita O'Day, followed by June Christy, who recommended Chris Connor.

The film also gives deserved space to Pete Rugolo, who—as Kenton acknowledged—was to Kenton what Billy Strayhorn was to Duke Ellington: a very talented alter-ego. I don't think any significant arranger was left out, but I wonder why there was not even a mention of Eddie Safranski, whose prominent bass fueled my imagination when I first heard Artistry Jumps, or why saxophonist Vido Musso is all but fluffed over. His association with Kenton dated back to the 1930s, and his rich tenor sound seemed to defy the well organized background. Musso, an Italian, gave Kenton at least one big hit, Come Back to Sorrento. But now I am nitpicking.

A Los Angeles billboard.

Kenton had several wives, two of whom appear in this film's closing segment, a sad account of the energetic, charismatic bandleader's last months, when a fall brought on a brain aneurysm that made him unable to recognize his most intimate associates and even his own music. Stan Kenton died in 1979, at the age of 67.

Kenton has been accused of racial discrimination, but unfairly so, I believe. Yes, the band was decidedly white, with a few late exceptions, but Kenton himself acknowledges in the film his early admiration for Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines and Benny Carter. Do we accuse Duke Ellington or Basie of discriminating against whites? Of course not.

Having but touched the surface as far as the merits of this DVD release are concerned, I recommend that you check it out.

See what you can find in Malmø?

Photos are stills from the film—they can be enlarged with a click..

My "interview" with Lester Young

2011-02-12T22:45:00.001-05:00

In 1958 I was a staff producer/writer at WCAU Radio, a major Philadelphia station with an illustrious history that since has gone from CBS to NBC. At WCAU, which was celebrating its 35th anniversary back then, I caught the tail end of old-time radio, the kind that continued on TV for a while—with cameras added. They gave me two live audience shows: one aired every weekday at noon and had a dead giveaway title, "Hi Neighbor!", the other was the slightly more elaborate but equally horrendous "Surprise Party". I recently found a tape of the latter, which I may one day post a sample from, but it is hopelessly passé and my script was deliberately corny. The host was Ed Harvey, who at that time was quite a popular figure in Philly, and we featured a musical trio, two vocalists (male and female), a resonant announcer with perfect pronunciation, and a guest star, usually some Hollywood idol plugging a new movie. Our audience ate it up, they were mostly ladies with time on their hands, who came for the gratis entertainment and prizes. Each received a bag of sample products, and while that alone would have lured them there, I also had a more substantial carrot to dangle: a refrigerator, stove, or other major appliance. They gave me a budget for give-aways and I could spend it any way I wanted to.

We had what we called the "regulars," women who never missed a show and raised a fuss if someone dared to occupying "their" seat. Frankly, I couldn't stand the regulars and I confess that there were times when I cheated them by rigging prizes. Each seat had a number with a corresponding ticket in a large bowl, so a drawing determined the week's winner. If I spotted new faces in the audience (tourists sometimes came to the station), I might call out their seat number instead of the one drawn. When the big prize was an all-expenses-paid New Year's Eve for two in Paris, I picked out a young couple to win it. I know it was dishonest and unfair to the regulars, but...

As you can imagine, doing these programs was thoroughly dissatisfying, so I managed to talk the Program Director into letting me also do a weekly one hour jazz show, "Accent on Jazz". I wrote and produced it, our deep-throated announcer delivered it, and each week focused on a different artist or subject. Because the show was of a documentary nature, I began conducting interviews with visiting jazz people and extracting from them sound bites for the show. My own voice was not for the air, so the whole idea was to get my guests to say something quotable that could be used in a variety of contexts.

I am offering this detail to explain why the "interview" with Lester Young is so painfully awkward and why I am asking really dumb questions to which I already knew the answers. Were it not for the extraordinary fact that Lester Young—a great player who truly took the tenor sax and the music itself in a new direction—only left behind two known recorded interviews, this tape would have remained unpublished. As it is, transcripts have appeared in books by Martin Williams, Stanley Dance, and Lewis Porter, and the tape is reproduced in a boxed Verve set (The Complete Lester Young Studio Sessions), all with my permission.

Lester Young had recently been hospitalized and he looked frail on August 24, 1958, when he came to the WCAU studios on Philadelphia's City Line. On February 6, 1959, he was in Paris, where he gave his second extant interview to Francis Postif. He recorded his final session during the first week of March, but took ill and returned to New York City. On March 15, 1959, six and a half months after we sat down at WCAU, Lester died in his room at the Alvin, a hotel across the street from Birdland that had become his "home."

1953 Jam Session continued...

2010-11-19T17:01:00.001-05:00

Here, from the jam session I recorded when Lionel Hampton brought his band to Copenhagen on November 12, 1953, is a 24-minute version of Indiana. A few years back, I gave my friend Don Schlitten permission to use about ten minutes of this recordings for a Xanadu album called International Jam Sessions. That snippet marks the only publication of anything from these tape until I posted two selections here almost exactly 57 years later. Here is a link to that post, which contains Perdido (sorry for the missing opening solos) and All the Things You Are. Now, I end this particular glimpse of my past with the full version of Indiana. At the very end, you will hear me or someone else say, in Danish, that Lionel is going to play but that we must not record him. Lionel did perform—seated to the right of Jørgen Bengtson—an index finger version of something I dubbed Anniversary Boogie. Many years later, I confessed to Hamp that I had kept the tape machine running, but under a closed lid. He was happy to hear that and asked me to give him a copy, which I did. The original tape rests somewhere in my closet and I will post it if I find it.

I wish to thank those of you who commented on these tapes in various online forums. They attracted close to 500 visitors in the first two days, which overwhelmed me. I hope Indiana prompts return visits and comments (you can use the comment option that ends this post, or the blog's guestbook). It would also be great if you could help me identify some of the solos.

A 1953 jam session emerges from the closet

2010-11-12T01:45:00.006-05:00

As I post this, Veterans/Armistice Day, November 11, 2010 is coming to a close. Exactly fifty-seven years ago, I was backstage at KB Hallen, in Copenhagen with a new friend, the amiable Baron Timme Rosenkranz. On stage was the Lionel Hampton orchestra, a big band about which there had been much advance buzz, it being said that some of the young sidemen were extraordinary. Earlier that day, Timme called and invited me to go with him to a post-concert wedding anniversary party scheduled to begin around midnight at the Richmond Hotel. Lionel and Gladys had been married for 17 years and she had called for a celebration. "She will probably serve hot dogs and beer," said Timme, half jokingly and knowing what a penny-pincher she was.

The Hamptons. He made the money, she called the shots.

The buzz regarding the band turned out to be correct, but not so Timme's prediction. The party was actually a nice one, complete with a huge decorative ice arrangement and an enormous cake that was brought into the room dramatically, although not with as much fanfare as Gladys herself. Oddly enough, Timme and I were the only outsiders present, but, as far as I was concerned, that just made it more special. When I think back, I still wonder how I so quickly went from being the shy guy seated in the dark back corner at jazz lectures to running around with the esteemed "Baron of bounce" at Lionel Hampton's party.

I should have been in seventh heaven, but I was unable to really enjoy myself, because I knew that a large group of Tuborg and Carlsberg-guzzling jazz fans were assembled in a hall not so far away, anxiously anticipating the promised delivery of jazz stars for an all-night session.

Timme Rosenkranz

You see, I had gone out on a limb earlier in the day when Timme called about the party. I thought this would be a great opportunity for a jam session (musicians still had them in those days), so I asked him if he thought some of Hamp's musicians might conceivably agree to come to the Storyville Club that night. Timme said something about musicians always looking for a good time, and offered to herd them down there. "There," was the Storyville Club, but not at its regular location—we gambled and rented Forsvarsbrødrenes Hus (Copenhagen headquarter for the Danish military veteran's association) for the night. This was a hall larger than our usual one, and it was but a short cab ride from the Richmond Hotel, so I whipped up some flyers and spread the word to spread the word. Now, as we were a couple of hours into November 12th and the anniversary cake dwindled down to the last crumbs, it was time to get busy and round up Hamp's sidemen. I ran behind Timme, reminding him of our mission, but his mind was on the musicians and what was left of the liquid refreshments.

As I've said before, the naked soon learn how to spin new threads, so, when GIadys' romp was finally fizzling out, I mustered up enough courage to corner Hamp and extract from him a promise that some members of the band would come with me to the club. The musicians were tired of looking at each other and, as word spread about a jam session with free booze and plenty of Danish girls, I saw instrument cases and overcoats being grabbed. Now Timme got into the act and soon we were off in three Volkswagen bus cabs. At the last minute, Hamp slid into the seat next to me and said that he wanted to come along, but that he wouldn't stay long.

Clifford Brown

I guess many back and forth phone calls were made by Storyville members that day, because the place was packed when we arrived. I had already set up my B&O recorder, next to the upright piano, and placed the microphone on the small stage. Hamp was greeted with loud cheers and he ended up staying for two or three hours. In fact, he also performed. When he saw my tape machine, he told me that it was okay to record "the cats," but that I had to switch the machine off when he played. When he surprised us all by seating himself at the upright, I merely closed the lid of the recorder. Twenty years later, when I told him of my deception, Hamp grinned and said he would love a copy of the tape. I made him a dub, but a fire in his apartment crudely reduced it to a lump of mylar.

I don't recall everybody who else came along, but I wrote down the names of Gigi Gryce, Clifford Brown, Anthony Ortega, Jimmy Cleveland, Quincy Jones, and Clittord Scott. Of the Danish musicians I recall trumpeter Jørgen Ryg participated, his playing later improved measurably, but he had great success as a standup comic and film actor. Baritone saxophonist Max Brüel also played, as did Erik Moseholm, a fine bassist, and pianist Jørgen Bengtson. The drummers (you hear them both on Indiana) didn't quite have it down, but one of them was considerably better than the other.

The session continued after the tape ran out, until about 7 a.m. With only one microphone, a crude, unscientific setup, and a large room filled with jubilant beer drinkers, it's a miracle anything was recorded at all, and an even greater miracle that the tape didn't get lost during my nomadic days.

Be prepared for chaotic sounds with good and bad intertwined, and please let me know what you think of these recordings and my posting of them.

The above text is a fleshed-out version of my original post, which was made in August of 2009, when I started this blog. At that time, I did not know how to include audio or video files, so I have relegated that one to the deep recesses of my archives.

Addendum: Timme Rosenkrantz was truly an unforgettable person to those of us who had the good fortune of knowing him. He was a witty, delightfully eccentric Baron (the real thing) who often wrote of his addiction to jazz and those who performed it. Timme's writing has now been translated into English and lovingly assembled by Fradley Garner. The book, Harlem Jazz Adventures, is due out by the end of 2011 and you can keep up to date on it by going to The Jazz Baron.

Here is Perdido:

Here is All the Things You Are:

Here is a link to more.

Jimmy Heath 1972 - interview and music

2010-11-08T15:48:00.002-05:00

Notwithstanding the sync problem—which persists, but is being worked on—I decided to post the remainder of the Jazz Set show featuring the Jimmy Heath All-stars. It begins with a brief interview in which Jimmy expresses his aversion to playing jazz in taverns—the TV set replicated such a place—and with the term itself. Reflecting a prevalent attitude of the times (1960s and '70s) he preferred to call it "Afro-American music." Like so many other era-generated notions, this, too, did pass and we are all instinctively able to distinguish between fornication and great music.

Jimmy with Dave Brubeck, Jimmy Heath and Mel Tormé, at BMI event,

flanked by Jean Banks and Burt Korall. (Photo by Gary Gershoff)

Of course, not everyone recognized great music when they heard it. Twelve years earlier, I made a living (though barely) spinning jazz records seven days a week on WHAT-FM in Philadelphia. My taste being eclectic, I played jazz of every kind throughout the week, but I devoted Sunday afternoons to my 78 rpm collection, so you know that it was a sometimes scratchy trek back in time. Philadelphia jazz listeners seemed open to a wide range of styles: older listeners enjoyed the nostalgia as well as the music, and the younger set appreciated hearing where their favorite sounds came from. There was, however, this one guy who didn't like what he heard, so he called me regularly on Sundays to complain. Why, he wondered, did I play all this "Uncle Tom" music? In one of our discussions, he pointed out that he was black and that this "Mickey Mouse" music—as he also called it—was "the kind of thing we are trying to get away from."

Jimmy Heath with his brothers Percy and Albert.

In the early 1960s, calls to radio stations were still off the air, so it was just Bill and I, arguing privately. It would have been interesting had other listeners been able to join in. I have later come to understand why some black Americans wanted to distance themselves from the past, but—with European soil still clinging to the bottom of my shoes—I could not imagine how anyone, especially a professed jazz fan, might regard the Armstrong Hot Fives, Bechet's magical soprano rides, Morton's amazing Red Hot Peppers, or Ellington's extraordinary sound paintings as anything other than stunning examples of creativity. Bill was not to be swayed, but I took comfort in the fact that his were the only complaints.

Percy and Jimmy (photo by Dorothy Tanous)

About four years later, I had moved to New York City and was working at WNEW when our music librarian was giving a new comedian a tour of the station. He was promoting his first album and we all had to meet him. "Chris Albertson!," he exclaimed after our introduction. "Are you the guy who used to play all that Uncle Tom music on WHAT?"

I have had very mixed feelings about Bill Cosby since that day.

I hope you remember to click on images for the Viagra™ effect, forgive me for the sync problem, enjoy this retro glimpse of Jimmy Heath, and leave a comment.
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The Death of Bessie Smith

2010-10-28T23:34:00.007-04:00

Early recounting of jazz history is a weave of truth and conjectures. The music's pioneer chroniclers were unquestionably dedicated to the subject, but they often skipped the tedious task of conducting research, and simply perpetuated whatever sounded interesting to them. One reason for their cavalier approach may well have been the abundance of first-hand accounts available to them. Short of sitting down with Buddy Bolden, there were few stones that couldn't be upturned. Also, bear in mind that one couldn't stick a recording machine into one's pocket, and few writers had mastered shorthand (I only met one, Whitney Balliett). All this to point out that the field was fertile ground for myths.

Forty years ago, when I began work on my Bessie Smith biography, I was determined to bust as many of these myths as I could. Bessie was no singing wallflower or paragon of virtue, but neither was she scandalous by the day's show business standards. Hedonism went with the territory, and she led an active and sometimes outrageous life at home as well as on the road. If Bessie's off-stage adventures seemed a tad wilder than most, it was perhaps because her commanding presence demanded attention and few things she did escaped notice. Still, some writers used their Imagination and came up with such fantasies as her being kidnapped and dumped at Ma Rainey's feet, kicking and screaming her way out of a potato sack, or volunteering as a maid for her bed-ridden record producer, Frank Walker, or forced by Depression economy to take a job as a speakeasy hostess and selling chewing gum and candy in theater aisles. None of this was true, but it made good copy—never mind that even light research would have turned up better stories of exploits that actually did take place.

One Bessie Smith myth was bigger than all the others combined: the story of how she bled to death, the victim of a Southern hospital's racist policy. Initial press reports did not hint of any such occurrence, but there were street whispers, and when they reached John Hammond's ears, he saw in them an opportune irony that could both serve his leftist agenda and sell records. That the tale was riddled with holes did not seem to deter anyone from perpetuating it, not even John, who regarded himself as a member of the press. Had he simply picked up the phone and made a call or two, he could have written a piece that set the record straight, but he chose instead to give the rumor legitimacy in a piece written for the November 1937 issue of Down Beat.

This is when the myth grew legs that would keep it going for three decades, inspire a young Edward Albee to base upon it a one act play, The Death of Bessie Smith, and make Bessie almost as known for the alleged way in which she died as she was for her remarkable artistry.

Richard Morgan and Bessie pose in front of her old Packard in 1937

While John Hammond and others ignored the aforementioned holes in this story, some were justifiably skeptical. They included folklorist John Lomax, who in 1941 wrote a letter of inquiry to Walter Chandler, the Mayor of Memphis. In his response, the mayor correctly pointed out that the accident had not occurred in his city, as alleged by Hammond, but added that the country "is infested by Negro communists who seek to poison their own people against their best friends." If Lomax harbored further doubts about the story's veracity, he does not seem to have done anything about it. However, in 1957, Down Beat's George Hoefer, a jazz journalist of unusual integrity, made an attempt to get at the truth, but his findings were largely ignored—the myth refused to die, even after evidence to the contrary was published.

When I informed John Hammond that Bessie was, in fact, never refused admittance to a white hospital, and played for him the account attached to this post, he appeared to be embarrassed and did not give me an argument. I was therefore surprised to find in his 1977 autobiography, John Hammond on Record, a contrived story of how he was told "a long and convincing story" by "a man who was in a position to know the truth." He added that "there were two other people there nodding agreement as he told it to me." Why had John not told me this when he knew that I was researching Bessie's death? Because, he explained in his book, the man asked not to be quoted. Yes, pigs do fly.

Flo Kennedy, the late attorney, was a good friend of mine, but she stopped speaking to me after the publication of Bessie. A couple of years later, she broke her silence and explained: "I know you wrote the truth about Bessie's death, but you should have left it alone."

Dr. Hugh Smith in the 1960s

It was George Hoefer's 1957 article that sent me on the trail of Dr. Hugh Smith. I knew only that he had been an intern at the Campbell Clinic in Memphis at the time of Bessie's accident and that he had in some way attended to her. "I don't know how far back your personnel records go," I said when I called the clinic in 1971, "but I am trying to locate Dr. Hugh Smith, who was an intern in 1937." The lady on the other end of the phone asked me if I wished to be connected to Dr. Smith. He was still there and had long been the head of the clinic. Sometimes, one call can make a very big difference. Dr. Smith told me that he was tired of reading all these stories about how Bessie bled to death, so he would not give me an interview. However, he recommended that I read the liner notes on Columbia's latest reissue, because that was as close as he had seen anyone get to the facts. When I told him that I wrote the notes, he said that he would be happy to answer my questions and suggested that I mail them to him. He would send me a tape with the answers.

Here is that recording, made public for the first time. If you have read my book, you will notice that this was a valuable source. I hope you listen to the entire tape, including the surprise ending. I won't say any more about that, but your comments are welcomed.

Click on image to enlarge

Bessie's casket leaves the church in Philadelphia for a slow tour through her neighborhood, stopping

briefly at the Standard Theater before heading for Mount Lawn Cemetery in nearby Sharon Hill.

Ruby: Sobering experience in New Orleans

2010-10-23T20:52:00.001-04:00

When I began posting excerpts from my 1971 interviews with Ruby Walker, Bessie's niece by marriage, I warned that some of them would contain explicit language and sensitive subject matter. This is one such segment, a somewhat graphic recollection of the kind that prompted Sony/Columbia Records to slap a "Parental Advisory" label on the box when some of these excerpts were issued on CD as part of the five volume Bessie Smith set.

Essentially, it is about the boy in the boat giving Ruby the nickname, "Hi-top." It wasn't banned in Boston, but I suspect that it might not sit too well with elected officials in Kansas, if you get my drift.

As usual, I welcome your comments, favorable or not.

Jimmy Heath All-Stars - 1972

2010-10-20T06:15:00.005-04:00

I am still trying to figure out why my Jazz Set video clips have been posting out of sync via YouTube, so I processed this one via DivShare, which I have been using for audio. It appears to be in sync, although I have to work on eliminating the stretch. Please post a comment to let me know what you think and whether or not I need to return to the drawing board.

As I lamented in a previous post, I did not have the foresight to have copies of these shows made for myself, so I haphazardly recorded some them off the air on my Sony U-matic machine. Unfortunately, I taped this episode using a timer that turned out to be a late starter, so it kicked in at the tail end of Jimmy Heath's first solo. Sorry about that, but who knew that we would eventually be able to share this stuff with the world, right from our own home? The good news is that the selections that followed, as well as the brief interview, were preserved intact.

Here, with a clipped opening, are the first two selections. The personnel comprises Jimmy Heath, tenor sax, Curtis Fuller, trombone, Kenny Barron, piano, Herbie Lewis, bass, Jimmy's brother, Albert "Tootie" Heath, drums, and his son, Mtume, on congas.

Rashied Ali Quartet - Closing number - 1972

2010-10-13T19:00:00.002-04:00

Rashied Ali

Carlos Ward

Dave Burrell

Norris Sirone Jones

Here is the final selection by The Rashied Ali Quartet, taken from an appearance on my weekly 1972 TV show, The Jazz Set. I am trying out various methods of converting and transferring these shows for the blog,but I'm afraid they either come out sans audio or with an annoying delayed video. As soon as I figure it out, I will re-post all this material in sync. Until then, you can always close your eyes and listen.

Next week I will start posting clips from another Jazz Set show. This one featuring the Jimmy Heath Sextet, with Curtis Fuller, Kenny Barron, Herbie Lewis, Tootie Heath, and Ntume. I will solve the sync problem first.

Stay tuned.

Rashied Ali Quartet - Interview and "Ballade" - 1972

2010-10-12T14:06:00.001-04:00

Here's another selection from the Rashied Ali Quartet show on Jazz Set. This one starts off with a brief interview in which I ask Rashied to talk about Coltrane. Then they play Ali's composition, Ballade, featuring Carlos Ward and Sirone Jones.

There is one more selection from this show still to come. I realize that they have been out of sync, so I am working on that, but it's time consuming, so please bear with me. In the meantime, just close your eyes and listen.

Rashied Ali Quartet - 1972

2010-10-12T03:22:00.003-04:00

In 1972, I hosted and co-produced a weekly half-hour television show called The Jazz Set. It started as a local production of New Jersey Public Television, but was soon picked up by PBS and aired over close to 300 stations, coast to coast. It is difficult for me to believe that these shows are almost forty years old, especially when I think about what the music sounded like and how people dressed that many years earlier, when I was one. Apropos looks, you will understand why I cringe at the sight of myself with long hair, smoking cigarettes as if my life depended on it. Well, I came to my senses a couple of years later and realized that my longevity did, in fact, depend on not smoking, so I quit.

I interview Rashied in the next post from this show.

Rashied Ali

Unfortunately, I did not have the foresight to have copies of these shows made for myself, and I understand that the station wiped most of them to reuse the tapes. I did record a few off the air on my Sony U-matic machine, but this precedes cable, so the quality is rabbit ears poor. Still, there is something there worth taking in—if you don’t mind the saturation. The show featuring the Bill Evans trio somehow made it onto a Japanese LaserDisc and from there to YouTube, and parts of the Mingus show were used in the documentary, Triumph of the Underdog—they included the interview (I did a brief one on every show) but only used a part of one number. That documentary was produced (in the financial sense) and published by my late friend, Karl Emil Knudsen, but the guy who physically produced it ripped him off. The Jazz Set tapes used in that documentary came from original tapes, 13 of which are reportedly housed at the Library of Congress. I wish I could get copies for myself.

Carlos Ward

The set was built to look like a club, complete with bar, bartender, and a vintage jukebox that we filled with great stuff—it was probably the hippest box in New Jersey. Each week, we invited people to become “patrons,” but there were a couple of occasions when we had to scrounge around and recruit some of the station’s office staff. To some people, this all looked so real that we received letters and cards from around the country asked for the club’s address—viewers who were planning a visit to New York wanted to come to the club. After all, it featured some of the best players in any land!

Dave Burrell

Sirone and Carlos

I should mention Peter Anderson, whose concept the series was. He was co-producer, director, and a great guy to work with—he even got the sound right. Laura Nyro once told me that she did not like to do television, because the technical focus always favored the visual and thus musical performers were often seen but barely heard. Peter made sure that The Jazz Set had the priorities right. He treated each show like a recording session—guest artists were asked to run through a number, listen to a test audio recording, and approve of the balance. I’m afraid that my airchecks don’t reflect that approach, but the original tapes did.

Here is the opening selection from a show where the week’s guest was drummer Rashied Ali, whom we lost so unexpectedly last year. He was a sweet person, fine drummer, and close associate of John Coltrane, who had many nice things to say about him. This Ali quartet comprised pianist/composer Dave Burrell, bassist Norris “Sirone” Jones, and, on alto and flute, Panamanian-born Carlos Ward. I couldn’t think of the title of this number, but it is a Coltrane compositionI will soon be posting other selections from this show, as well as the interview segment.

The regular YouTube link may not work (my fault), but this one ought to get you there: link to the video.

Ruby Testifies: Backstage lesbianism

2010-10-05T22:51:00.000-04:00

Here are more stories of life on the road with Bessie Smith, told by her niece and confidante, Ruby Walker in her inimitable way. This one starts with an episode in New York City, and moves on to an event that took place during a Southern tour. Ruby mentions Lilllian Simpson, her schoolmate whom she persuaded Bessie to hire, and speaks of lesbian activities, which were almost de rigueur and remarkably tolerated in touring companies.

Karl Emil Knudsen: Part II (conclusion)

2010-10-04T23:08:00.004-04:00

This continues an earlier post. If you wish to read that first, here is a link to Part I

I don't know if anyone made any money on it, but I also don't think that was ever the Storyville Club's raison d'etre. I do know that it was a success with the public. You may recall from part I of this reminiscence that my co-worker at Dona, Eyvind Lindboe (aka Fesser) suggested that I paint a sign to go above the door at the Hambrosgade facility that now housed the club every Saturday night. I worked hard to come up with an impressive sign and it did, indeed impress Karl Emil so much that I never again had to pay the admission fee. Did that make me feel like an insider? You bet it did, especially when Karl also asked me if I could make the walls less dreary. At that point, he could have asked me to mop the floors and I would have jumped at the opportunity. As it was, I wasted no time getting started on the murals. I decided to paint them on large sheets of paper that could be put up like wallpaper, and, of course, make the motif New Orleans, the city we all loved and knew only from photographs. That was not a problem for me, although I'm sure it would have raised concern among people with first-hand knowledge of the city. In retrospect, it also contained elements that today would be deemed politically incorrect and upsetting to some people. You see, in my naïvité, I created a stereotypical view of black people in a romanticized setting that had little to do with the New Orleans I would visit seven years later. Perhaps it is a good thing that there don't exist any photos of my work. I think some people would have taken offense at the occasional "black fruit hanging from the poplar tree," as Billie used to sing. Morbid scenarios aside, the murals livened up the look of the place—I used every color I could dip my brush into and everybody seemed to like the result. That included Karl, who was already busy getting Storyville Records off the ground.

In March of 1953, the Storyville Club was still going strong and I was ready to take a further step onto the jazz scene. Working at Fona, a chain of music stores, I was able to purchase a tape recorder at a discount and with a time payment plan. Magnetic recorders were new in Denmark but when I saw that B&O had a wire recorder on the market, I immediately lusted for one and, shortly thereafter, when they introduced their first reel-to-reel tape machine, I was able to make the switch. When I think back—as is my wont—I have to marvel at this early machine's quality, the B&O engineers weren't fooling around. Of course it was mono and, of course, it weighed a ton, but the sound was amazing. Still looking back, I have to wonder how even extreme shyness did not prevent me from doing some rather bold things, such as write a letter to Humphrey Lyttleton, stating that I was coming to London and wished to record his band and an interview for a program on the Danish Radio. I had no connection with DR (Danmarks Radio), nor, in fact, money that could take me to London. I did, however, have determination and a burning need to be accepted in the inner circle of Copenhagen's foot-stomping jazz scene. So, I naïvely wrote the letter. To my surprise, I received a response from Humph's manager, Lyn Dutton, within a week. I touched on this in an earlier post (Melly, Mick...London 1953), but here is the actual letter:

It had never occurred to me that unions might stand in the way, but, as I interpreted his letter, Mr. Dutton was leaving the door ajar. That naked woman I mentioned in the previous part of this recollection was about to learn how to weave. After a month of scrimping to save up my Kroner, I still needed to dip into my slowly growing collection of records. I now had an electric phonograph, so not all my labels were worn down to the shellac—I took a bunch of them to Concerno (I think that was the name), a place that specialized in used jazz records. Then, on March 12, I boarded a third class car on the London boat train with a round-trip ticket and just enough money to get by—or so I thought.

It's New Year's Eve, 1953 and I am dancing with Rita. This is the

only photo of my B&O tape recorder that I have.

Before I left, I ran up my employee account at Fona by purchasing a B&O ribbon microphone and a stand. You can imagine how much I now had to carry, the recorder weighed about 65 pounds and the stand was nearly that. They gave me a hard time in customs at Harwich,never before having seen a tape recorder and not quite knowing what it was; it didn't help—or perhaps it did—that this was where customs inspectors were trained and carefully monitored by their superiors. Well, I made it past that hurdle and to Mr. Kerpner's Guest House in Earl's Court— £2 a week, with breakfast.

I phoned Lyn Dutton, who suggested that I join him and Humph for lunch at 100 Oxford Street on the following day. It was here that the band played at night. I don't have to tell you that I was a nervous wreck, but I made it through lunch and was delighted when Humph suggested that we do the interview that afternoon and that I also record the band, informing any inquiring minds that it was for my own enjoyment.

That afternoon, I came back and managed to engage two flights of steep stairs with my heavy load. Then Humph and I sat down and I conducted my first interview, ever. I think it was also my worst ever, and that is really saying something. The tape is probably somewhere in the recesses of my catch-all closet, and it should stay there. Here, recalled verbatim, is a sample of the embarrassing exchange:

Humph: "I don't believe Bechet ever heard the sides we recorded with him.

"Don't you?"

"No, he didn't even ask for a playback in the studio."

"Didn't he?"

I have for several decades kept a discography-style list of my recorded sessions. Here are the two

pages documenting the 1953 Humphrey Lyttleton session. Click on image to enlarge.

I think you get the picture. Things went better that evening and I still marvel at the job B&O's engineers did on their first tape recorder, It was mono, of course, but the sound was remarkably good and I was very fortunate to have placed the single microphone so that the balance was almost perfect—only Johnny Parker's piano was slightly lacking in presence. The band was in good form and when clarinetist Archie Sempel joined in and challenged Wally Fawkes on "Farewell Blues", the place erupted. Humph also played on a couple of numbers by Neva Raphaello and pianist Mike McKenzie's trio (see tape information pictured above). Those tapes are also mislaid, but very likely in my apartment. If I ever get another functioning reel-to-reel player (I'm working on it), you will hear some of these recordings, which I have never made public. Well, that isn't entirely true, because my little lie about coming to London to record material for a Danish radio show became a truth when a call to the jazz department resulted in a program featuring my London tapes. It was my very first radio experience, so the letter to Humph actually started two career paths that now have led to me doing this blog. One never knows, do one?

I was leaving to return to Denmark the following morning, so Humph suggested that I leave my tape recorder in the cloakroom at Mack's overnight and pick it up on my way to Liverpool Street Station. Great idea, but not one without consequences.

When I came to pick up the recorder, I was asked for my cloak room check, but none had been issued me, so they called in one of those uniformed retirees that always seem to work at these places. He looked at the machine and decided that it was probably expensive, whatever it was. I explained what it was and why I had left it in the cloakroom, but the old man wasn't really buying my story. I told him that I could describe in detail what we would see when the cover was removed, but he held his ground. Then a young waitress popped up and solved the problem. She had been there the night before, as a guest, and she had seen me with Mr. Lyttleton and that machine. The old man was convinced by her testimony, so I had my machine back, but valuable time had been lost, so I arrived at Liverpool Street Station just as my train was pulling out!

Liverpool Street Station

I checked my recorder, stand and bag at the station, this time making sure that I had a receipt, and went to the Cook travel bureau to have my ticket changed for the next train. Here's where the consequences of Humph's suggestion began to manifest themselves—it was the winter season and so the next boat train was three days hence. Furthermore, while I could still go third class on the trains at either end, only first class passage was available on the ship. By the time I had paid for my upgrade, I was down to my last shilling. That naked lady needed to take out the old spinning wheel and get busy, so I spent half of my money on a tube ticket to Charing Cross Road and the other half on a cup of tea at Rex's restaurant, a Greek musicians' hangout which I knew Chris Barber frequented. My idea was to borrow some money from Chris, knowing that Karl was bringing him and the Ken Colyer band to Copenhagen the following month.

I nursed my tea at the restaurant for two hours and the Greek waiters didn't seem to mind. There was an old wind-up gramophone on a table in the corner and a small pile of jazz records, in case anyone felt like feeding it. They also had a storage room where musicians parked their instruments, sort of like Jim and Andy's in New York, but without the booze. Chris finally arrived, along with the entire band. This had actually been his group, but Ken Colyer, a merchant seaman, had recently returned from New Orleans, where he was jailed for abandoning ship and overstaying his welcome in the U.S. This made him an overnight hero in the eyes of British jazz fans and placed him way ahead of other European trad musicians. New Orleans? Jail? How perfect was that in the eyes of jazz romantics? The Barber band became Ken's and on this day they were off to a pub called The Fishmonger's Arms, where they would hold their third rehearsal in an upstairs room. Would I like to come along?, Chris asked. What a silly question!

Chris gladly lent me five pounds (good money in those days) and generously offered me shelter at his house while waiting for the next boat train. I won't go into it now, but my trip back to Copenhagen was, indeed, a "trip"—in a more current sense. I will save it for another time, so let me fast-forward to my triumphantly return to Copenhagen with two reels of Lyttleton tapes.

I don't recall the exact circumstances, things happened so fast and everything was done in such an informal manner, but—perhaps somewhat inspired by my surprising success in London and the fact that my tapes and I were going to be featured on a radio show—the Storyville Club people decided to put me in charge. Karl was becoming too busy with his record label and they needed someone at the helm. Me? I couldn't believe it then, and I still can't, but there I was, deeper into the inner circle than I had imagined possible. My extreme shyness was also becoming less so, but if I was aggressive, it was in a quiet way. In April, the Colyer band arrived and Karl asked me to record it for his new label. I was the only one in our group who owned a tape recorder, so it wasn't for any other reason that I he asked, but it helped to validate my purchase of such an expensive machine, at least in my mother's eyes. Imagine how many shirts and pairs of socks that money could have bought, she once said. Besides, my interest in jazz was but a passing fancy—why not let it pass in a more practical way. A it turned out, my mother's view changed as she developed a fondness for the likes of Errol Garner, Nellie Lutcher, and Louis Armstrong.

Someone, I think it was Karl, had come up with a brilliant idea for promoting the visit by Ken Colyer's Jazz Men: stage a "riverboat shuffle." They rented one of the ferries that sailed between Copenhagen and the Swedish port of Landskrona, a rather large multiple-deck boat that easily accommodated the Colyer band on one deck and two Danish groups elsewhere. Even on a chilly April night, dancing on the deck had its charm, and a further lure was the fact that sailing into a foreign port rendered liquor and tobacco tax free. Ticket sales were as brisk as the Spring air and I don't know why "riverboat shuffles" did not become regular events. It wasn't a paddle boat on the Mississippi, except in our minds, and, sure enough, the press loved the idea and hopped aboard with their cameras and note pads.

Extracts from the press clipping.

I had called in sick, so you can imagine how I felt the next morning when I came to work and spotted on by boss' drawing board a newspaper opened to the above photos. Mr. Bang was a nice guy, however, so I got off with just the embarrassment.

I included the Colyer band's "Tiger Rag" in the first part of this recollection. A recording that I made almost accidentally, it was a prelude—as it were—to a more purposeful session planned for April 19. In the meantime, however, Karl and I spent the next day, a Sunday afternoon, with Chris Barber, Monty Sunshine and Lonnie Donegan at the home of clarinetist Henrik Johansen. His father was I had recorded that almost accidentally, but a more formal trio session took place the following day, at he home of Henrik Johansen. His father manufactured toilets and other bathroom fixtures, so there was in the house a rather large bathroom with desirable acoustics. That's where my tape recorder captured this rendition of St. Phillips Street Breakdown as played by clarinetist Monty Sunshine with Donegan on banjo and Chris Barber on bass. Of course it is very much in the George Lewis vein, but I think they did a good job. What do you think?

The following Sunday, we went to Gentofte, a Copenhagen suburb where Karl had done some scouting to find a large room that might give us a San Jacinto Hall-like sound. Bill Russell's recordings of Bunk, One-eyed Louis Nelson, et al had that hollow acoustic and, well, European trad musicians were emulating every clinker made by their aged idols, so why not also try to capture what had become known as the American Music (in in the label name) sound? The ballroom of the Gentofte Hotel was perfect, so Colyer's Jazz Men mounted the bandstand and I placed my microphone on the dance floor, about 30 feet away.

As I listen to these recordings now, almost sixty years later, I have to agree with The Gramophone's reviewer, Oliver King (a made-up name, if ever there was one), who in the January 1956 issue gave not a single star to an EP containing some of these recordings. He explained why:

"Again I have refused to award stars for these performances, as they are so badly recorded as to sound woolly and almost pre-electric. If I Ever Cease is a little better in this respect, but although some fine jazz undoubtedly went into the recording microphone, precious little idea of it comes Out; the band might be playing in a room draped with felt two blocks away..."

Having myself spent about three decades writing monthly record reviews, I have to admit that I have been equally harsh in my views. Mr. OK (if you know his identity, please tell me) had a good point, but he didn't know that the "bad" sound was deliberate—he should have been able to figure that out, however. Here is a sample of that "almost pre-electric" sound:

The Colyer recordings were issued in 78 rpm format on the British Tempo label, as well as on Storyville—later, of course, the found their way to vinyl and are currently available on a CD issued in England by Lake Records. "I never received a thank you or a penny," Ken said a few years later, "I hear that Knudsen is now a rich man. Bad cess to all parasites." Well, I don't think Karl made much money from these tapes, and I have never complained over the fact that I, too, never received any payment. Karl did become rather well off, but that was because he was a good businessman, loved the business he chose to enter, and worked tirelessly.

In March of 1954, I left it all behind and sailed for Iceland, the country of my birth. More eager than ever to return to the land of jazz, where I had spent close to three wartime years never hearing a note of it. Having dual citizenship, I discovered that I could apply for an immigration visa on either the Danish or the Icelandic quote, and my chances were better if I opted for the latter.

I sold my beloved B&O machine to finance my move and boarded the steamer Dronning Alexandrine to head for a very uncertain but enticing future in the Promised Land. As we all know, jazz continued to thrive in Denmark, the Montmartre became a world-class venue for jazz, Karl expanded his business and took it far beyond traditional jazz, although that remained his favorite, and such icons of the music as Stuff Smith, Dexter Gordon, Thad Jones and Ben Webster were among the many Americans who took up residence in Denmark. Had that happened before I left, I might have stayed.

Karl sometimes parked at my apartment while in New York, and it was always a pleasure to have him around, although he was constantly on the phone, talking to widows, sons and daughters of jazz musicians, making deals. He entered the film business as well, issuing some wonderful jazz videos, and he became a book publisher. It was all a labor of love, even when it brought him money, which it often did not do.

The last time I saw Karl was when he stayed with me in September of 2001 and we watched together in utter disbelief as the World Trade Center drama unfolded. The following day, we walked over to Broadway to have lunch with Maxine Gordon and that's when the impact of the attack really hit us. The actual attack was horrible beyond description, but it looked like something we were used to seeing as staged for a blockbuster movie. The immediate after effect hit harder, emotionally. You could see it in the faces of New Yorkers as they tried to go about their business—eyes met and an eerie recognition came over faces of passing strangers. For someone who was used to New York, a city where one might never really get to know one's next-door neighbor, this sudden, unrehearsed kinship became particularly surrealistic. And then the pictures appeared everywhere, snapshots and posters of missing loved ones, taped and pinned to bus stops and lamp posts by people who desperately sought any news. Karl and I had planned to attend a jazz collectors' meeting in New Jersey on the following day, but I was in no mood, so I bowed out. I told Karl that roads were blocked and the meeting had probably been called off, but he was determined to go, so he did, and found the meeting, although it too showed the effects of September 11. I spent the morning of the 12th visiting a sick friend at Columbia Presbyterian and I shall never forget the sight of literally hundreds of photographs with names and phone numbers that framed the hospital entrance. It was an extraordinary time, a moment when the melting pot that is New York finally seemed to have come together. How sad that it didn't last and sadder still that it ended up polarizing us as never before.

Two Septembers later, Karl Emil Knudsen passed away at age 74. Gone, but far from forgotten by his many friends, some of whom meet regularly as the KEK Society, to honor his memory. They even have a dedicated web site. I recommend that you pay it a visit, some of the text is in Danish, some in English, but you don't have to read any of it to see how much our friend, KEK, is missed.

The post WWII revival jazz scene that brought Karl and me together some sixty years ago is long gone, so are many of our mutual friends, but the work that Karl so exhaustively pursued will forever bring the music he loved to new ears. Storyville Records now belongs to an international music company and the number of releases has dwindled considerably, but the record business itself is fast becoming a memory. If you have ever dealt directly with Storyville Records, you probable came into contact with Mona Granager—she was Karl's right hand for more years than she might admit to, and she continues, along with another long-time Storyville asset, Anders Stefansen, to issue CDs that Karl would have been proud of.

There is so much more to tell about Karl and jazz in Denmark, but it will have to wait. You have probably surmised that I can go on and on and on, and that I often do just that. Hope it's okay.

Karl on his last visit, September 11, 2001. It is as
if he is looking at the text above and wondering
what all the fuss is about.

Lunch with John Hammond

2010-09-28T21:51:00.000-04:00

For at least two years, John Hammond and I saw each other on a daily basis, but only once was our conversation recorded—this is it. I had recently started work on my biography of Bessie Smith and John was one of the many people I interviewed. If our exchange seems to lack the kind of depth one might expect, it is because John and I had so many conversations about Bessie that I pretty much had it covered.

John and Aretha Franklin at Columbia's 30th Street studio, 1960.

(Columbia publicity photo)

So, while you probably will not learn much from this taped lunch conversation, it will at least give you an idea of what John sounded like when not standing on a stage or at a lectern. If you have read my previous posts on John Hammond, you might have the impression that we did not get long, but we actually did. Yes, there were some nasty bumps along the way, but neither of us carrie a grudge for long. John was prone to exaggerate his own accomplishments, which he certainly did not need to do, and sometimes his need to live up to an embellished image got in the way of his consideration for others. Somehow, annoying as that could be, one tended to shrug one's shoulders and fluff it off as John being John. We all knew that he had, indeed, played a major role in shaping jazz history, and that earned him a large measure of respect that made the negative aspects of his personality more tolerable.

The tape was made in November, 1970, in a midtown Manhattan luncheonette. There is background noise and there are a few times when the cassette machine cuts out or slows down for a few seconds, but these are fleeing glitches that did not seem to warrant a fix.

Karl Emil Knudsen and N.O. fever hit Copenhagen

2010-09-26T20:29:00.004-04:00

We were romantics, young Danes who saw early 20th Century New Orleans and its amazing musicians and singers almost in the same light as we had just a few years before seen Ali Baba, Tarzan, that flute-playing guy from Hamelin, and H.C. Andersen's steadfast tin soldier. We didn't grow up with Batman, Superman, or Mary Marvel—our childhood heroes were much older. But then we grew a little and for some odd reason, quenched our thirst for heroes by turning to legendary jazz players and their music. It was real, but still sufficiently distant from our world to trigger the imagination: An old, toothless man of color, rescued from a rice field and led into the spotlight to play a donated horn through donated teeth. It allowed our imagination to wonder how his music had sounded before dire circumstances silenced it. There was the key. Past personal calamities were important factors, that fueled our need to romanticize and made any comeback all the more stirring. Promotion people took full advantage of that human trait and, although we were smart enough to know what they were doing, we fell in line and did as hyped.

It was amazing, when you think about it. Young people in a Nordic land embracing and fantasizing over a culture that couldn't be more different from their own, and it came complete with a musical score. We loved these sensuous, rhythmic sounds that made our bodies move like no Danish music ever had, and our new pied pipers conjured up all kinds of fantasies. We found magic in such names as Kid Ory, King Oliver, Johnny Dodds, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. Some of us became as familiar with the street names of New Orleans as we were with our own. We wanted to be there, to stroll through Congo Square, breathe in the air of what had once been the Storyville district, or just walk down Toulouse Street and make a right on Dauphine.

Some wanted to take the new obsession beyond fantasy. No, there weren't any attempts to start rice fields, nor did ornate iron balconies alter the look of our neighborhoods, but there were upstart local bands that tried to capture the right sounds, fluffs and all. The relatively sedate Trumbauer-inspired Swing Sweet and Hot Club Band had satisfied a certain need, but it lacked the nitty gritty of newer groups, like the Ramblers and the Bohana Jazz Band, two foot-stomping groups that gave us reasonable simulations of New Orleans music, sans the surface noise.

Karl in my cluttered computorium on one of his visits to NYC.

And then there was Karl Emil Knudsen, a young employee of the Copenhagen telephone company (KTAS), who perhaps was more smitten than the rest of us, but somehow managed to maintain his composure as he made tangible his own fantasies. His first step was to start a record label. Storyville Records made its inauspicious start with three or four re-re-reissues. We are talking 78s here, and, physically, these were about as thick they come, and the sound as bad as it gets, but if you listened carefully, there was Ma Rainey, her voice barely penetrating the surface noise, and James P. Johnson on a roll, a piano roll that someone had pumped at the wrong speed, and there, too, were Louis and Sidney Bechet with Clarence Williams, drowning out the voice of Alberta Hunter as they all played their derrieres off in glorious sub-fi.

When I said that these were re-re-reissues, I meant it. Karl had simply lifted them from Riverside Records, a new American label that had achieved the seemingly impossible: making the sound quality of Paramount and Gennett 78s twice as muddy as anything we had heard before. It didn't matter to us, not back in those early postwar years. We loved what was coming out of those grooves, even though we only heard the half of it.

Karl's next step was to find a place where we all could let our hair down and defy our genes with slightly artificial body motion. Take a look at any early, all-white American Bandstand kinescope and you will see what I mean—some of us just ain't got rhythm. Karl found the perfect spot on Hambroesgade, a dinky Copenhagen street in a dock area. The one-story structure looked like it might have been a place where dockworkers assembled. With its well-worn wood floors, drab cement walls and general lack of color, the place was about as uplifting as a Bozie Sturdivant lament, but, like Bozie's singing, it also had an unmistakable inner beauty. I mean, we wouldn't have wanted it to look like the Copa, or even the Cotton Club—the place was almost tailor-made and Karl made it come alive on Saturday nights.

Diplom's 1953 Winter catalog. The cover was designed by yours

truly, GA, the "G" standing for my middle name, Gunnar.

There were no roving searchlights, furs or shiny limos on the November night in 1952, when it all started. Word had quickly spread about this new club, a place where one could actually dance to live New Orleans music, dress casually, and spend no more than a tram fare. Tax laws required 24-hour advance membership enrollment, which took place at record shops, like Diplom Radio, a favorite hangout where Bent Haandstad guzzled beer, burped, and passionately recommended records. It cost but a pittance to become a member, and the price of admission to the club was equally affordable.

To give you an idea of the interest in Karl's Storyville Club, I signed up immediately and became member number 299. On opening night, I pointed my bicycle in the direction of Hambroegade, where I added it to a fast-growing tangle of wheels and handlebars. We never talked about it, but I think Karl and his fellow entrepreneurs must have been overwhelmed by the initial turnout—I know that I was. Although I had been consumed by a love for jazz for almost five years, I did not know anyone who shared my interest, and I was too shy to strike up a conversation when I attended lectures on the subject. In fact, I always found a seat way in the back. It's hell to harbor a burning interest in something and not be able to share it with anyone, so I found this new club to be more than just a place to spend Saturday nights, it was a wonderful remedy for my loneliness. Oh, I had friends from art school and work, but they saw my passion for jazz as a passing fancy that surely would dissipate with maturity. My mother thought so, too—when she felt a need to explain why I seemed glued to my HMV gramophone, she assured visitors that it was something I would soon get over. Of course, the real reason for my physical attachment to the old machine was that the spring had broken and I could not afford to have a new one made (the world had moved on to electrically powered turntables). There is an old Danish saying that "the naked woman soon learns how to weave" (i.e. necessity is the mother of invention) and it didn't take me long to realize that I could play my records at the correct speed, 78 rpm, by placing my index finger on the label and pushing as hard as I could, making a circular motion. Of course, this meant that I could not walk away from the machine without the music stopping, but there was also an advantage to my unpatented, manual method: I was forced to give every note of the music my undivided attention. Soon, all my record labels were worn, some to a point where the information could no longer be seen, but I recognized matrix numbers and the visual character that audio frequency lends to a disc. For example, the surge of brass that follows Francis Wayne's vocal on Woody Herman's "Happiness is Just a Thing Called Joe" tried the limits of the groove's ridges and made that particular side readily identifiable. Yes, it's silly, and so is the fact that I had a callus in the middle of my index finger from passing over the spindle 78 times per minute.

A re-enactment sixty years later.

Getting back to Hambroesgade and the jazz hub that Karl spearheaded into existence. It wasn't the Mocambo, Stork or Cotton Club, but the glitter was there. No, a photo would not have captured it, for it was in our eyes and minds: a glow of anticipation and excitement that lit up this dreary dockside place on opening night. If there were stars, they were the members of Copenhagen's inner circle of jazz, men (pictured below) whose love for the music drove them to plan great things for the rest of us. Others—not pictured here, but certainly at the forefront of things—were Torben Ulrich, a tennis star who handled a clarinet with as much ease as he did a racket, Arnvid Meyer, his trumpeter and a future jazz archivist of great importance to jazz in Denmark, and Børge Roger-Henrichsen, a fine pianist who headed the Danish Radio's jazz department. There were others, like Anders Dyrup, and the circle was ever growing—the spark that seven years later would ignite the almost legendary Jazzhus Montmartre had been lit.

Of course, the Montmartre became known throughout the world, it was a place that began with New Orleans clarinetist George Lewis on the bandstand but soon became a venue that booked top contemporary players, like Dexter Gordon and Stan Getz. As we stood in line and slowly moved toward the entrance to Karl's club, we couldn't have imagined players of such stature paying Copenhagen more than a quick concert visit. But we weren't even thinking of such things, our minds were on this new adventure. The entrance, as I recall it, was a nondescript wood door, probably one step up from the street. It led to an outer room with a table on which sat a membership roster and a small cash box. A couple of people checked names and sold admission while Karl paced nervously and supervised the mounting of a crude sign over the door. It identified the room beyond as the "Storyville Club." If I remember correctly, there was also a hastily drawn sign with a magic two-letter word: "ØL" That means beer, which was about all any of us could afford, but it was also a drink of choice. Here it was sold by the bottle, straight out of the wooden box.

The room itself was fairly large, with tables and chairs scattered about and a raised platform with an upright piano. So far, it was all anticipation, but that was thick enough to cut with a knife. Then something began to happen, guys were turning the raised platform into a bandstand. A month earlier, Karl had quietly entered the record business by recording trombonist Chris Barber with a young Danish group, The Ramblers. The four selections were released on a new label, Memory Jazz, around the time of the club opening. The band's leader was trumpeter Jeppe Esper Larsen, who quickly became the hottest local musician round, and now he was mounting that raised platform, instrument case in hand. Chris Barber was there, too, so you can imagine the excitement. I think I saw Karl smile, but I can't be sure.

Soon we all felt that we were, indeed, down by the riverside. At the time, I was working as an apprentice in the art department of Fona, a chain of music stores that covered the country and had several branches in Copenhagen. There were thus many display windows to be made attractive, and we did the artwork, which rotated among the branches, excluding the two huge windows of the main store, which were given special consideration.

One of our assistant branch managers was a guy named Eyvind Lindbo, nicknamed "Fesser". I had seen him a few times, when he came through the art department, but we never spoke, Imagine my surprise when I saw him at the Storyville Club opening, not just as a member, but as one of the "in" people. It took me a while, but I finally got up enough courage to approach him at the club and suggest that a more professional sign would look better over the entrance. He suggested that I make one.

The following Saturday, having spent a good part of the week working on it, I brought the club a new sign. Now the smile on Karl's face was unmistakable and he liked it so much that he asked if I might be able to come up with something to liven up the drab walls. This proved to be my ticket to the inner sanctum.

The inner circle. On the far left is Boris Rabinowitsch, he was our first post war "modern" pianist, today he writes about the music. Behind him stands Jeppe, whose band performed with Chris Barber at Storyville's opening. That's Karl Emil Knudsen in the center and Bent Haandstad standing behind him, holding his magazine, Jazz Parade. The man seated on the left is J. A. Lakjer, he owned a jazz record shop and published a magazine called Jazz Revy. This was a December, 1952 summit meeting and I was still very much an unknown outsider.

Next week I will conclude this recollection of Karl and reminisce about the time when he brought to Denmark the Ken Colyer Jazz Men band, which I recorded for Storyville's first original release. I will also recall the "Riverboat Shuffle" that Karl created on Øresund, the sound that separates Denmark and Sweden at their closest point (there is now a bridge).

Here is the first recording I made of the Colyer band, April 11, 1953, when it made a one-time appearance at Lorry's 7-9-13 Club, part of a Copenhagen entertainment complex that featured Alberta Hunter and other notables in the 1930s. This tape was not meant for release, I was really just testing the equipment (a B&O home recorder and a single ribbon microphone), but Karl and I found it worthy of distribution.

Enjoy "Tiger Rag":

L to R: Monty Sunshine, Lonnie Donegan, Ken Colyer, Ron Bowden, Chris Barber, Jim Bray

Elmer Snowden's Harlem Banjo

2010-09-24T11:45:00.002-04:00

I have brought this post back up front because I added another selection by this Elmer Snowden quartet. Here they are Doin' the New Lowdown, which was quite different from doing the Down Low, as we know it today. I also found the only photo I have from the session, the quality is not the best, but it was scanned from Se & Hør, a Danish TV/Radio magazine that probably no longer exists. (BTW, the depicted packet of guitar string is from Elmer's shoebox)

If you have done some browsing on this blog, you may have come across the name of Elmer Snowden. He was the listener who called me during a show at WHAT and informed me that Lonnie Johnson was in Philadelphia. I subsequently recorded Lonnie and Elmer for the Prestige label and they appeared on my WHAT-FM show.

Elmer's name is not as well known as Lonnie's, but he was a man without whom the history of jazz would be different. That is mainly because it was Elmer who brought Duke Ellington to New York, from Washington, D.C. and eventually allowed him to take over his band, The Washingtonians. That was nearly ninety years ago. More recently, fifty years ago, I suggested to Bill Grauer—my boss and founder of Riverside Records—that we do an album with Elmer.

Bill had a passion for early jazz and Elmer's name was one of those mystical once people read after blowing the dust away. Thinking of him as an old man who hadn't been heard from in several years and at this point probably had only his memories to offer, Bill suggested the kind of album one was most likely to find on Moe Asche's Folkways label. "Have him talk about the old days and strum a few examples," he said. I knew that we could come up with an album that would surprise and delight him, so I just nodded and began thinking of a suitable group.

Click on image to enlarge

It wasn't as easy as I had thought it would be. It seemed logical to have Ray Bryant on piano, for Elmer had been a mentor to him and his older brother, Tommy, back in Philadelphia. "Elmer always booked me when he had a gig," Ray once told me. "We played weddings and all kinds of parties, and when there was no piano, Elmer had me banging on the bongos." As it turned out, two sessions with Ray's working trio didn't work out. I added Garvin Bushell and Gene Sedric on one of them, but the sound I had in mind just wasn't there, so I aborted both sessions, leaving six hitherto unissued tracks. They are probably boxed in some dark corner of a Concord Records vault.

Then I remembered that Elmer had spoken of The Red Hot Eskimos, a trio or quartet that he led and did rent party gigs with during the Depression. That led me to the idea of having Cliff Jackson play piano, Elmer's eyes lit up. "That's it!", he said, "Cliff knows what to do." He explained that he used to hire Jackson to front a Snowden band back in the days when business was booming and he had as many as four running concurrently. Before long, we had Tommy Bryant, Ray's older brother, on bass, and Jimmy Crawford the old Lunceford drummer moving it all along. This was the group we did our third session with, and it worked—we hit our stride, so to speak.

A few months later, I did get Elmer and Ray into the studio for a successful session, with Bud Freeman and another Snowden alumnus, Roy Eldridge, as well as Tommy on bass and Jo Jones on drums. I also did a solo album with Cliff Jackson (whose wife was Maxine Sullivan) and we did a couple of Prestige sessions at Rudy Van Gelder's studio.

Getting back to the Riverside album, I named it "Harlem Banjo!" and Bill Grauer was, indeed, happily surprised when he heard it. I have to confess that I never cared much for the banjo as a jazz instrument, but I had never before heard it played the way Elmer did it—he took it to another level. Well, you be the judge. Here is Running Wild from that session. I would really like to hear what you think, so please leave a comment.

Here is the second selection, Doin' the New Lowdown:

My interview with Bill Evans - 1972

2010-09-21T00:16:00.004-04:00

This interview with Bill was taped in 1972, when he brought his trio to my weekly TV show, The Jazz Set. Bill and I first met at Riverside Records in 1960. Back then, he looked more like an accountant than a jazz musician, but times change and we try to keep up by adopting trendy looks that eventually become laughable. Here, our long hair is a dead giveaway and my outfit is cringe-inducing. For some reason, I am not smoking during this interview, but most of the shows (we did 26, I think) show me puffing away on that Tareyton with the smoke all but obscuring the face of my guest. Giving it up about 35 years ago was one the wisest decisions I ever made.

The clip I originally posted here came from somebody's account on YouTube. It was subsequently withdrawn due to the uploader's copyright infringements, I think. Thanks to my good friend, John Francis, that situation has now been remedied. He managed to find a copy and gave me my very own. This is from a Japanese DVD release and it looks like it is legitimate, although I was never contacted. At least the credits are correct. One problem, however, I still have not figured out how to post properly synced videos from a DVD. On my computer, video and audio are perfectly matched, but when I get it here, there is a problem. Hope you can enjoy it, anyway. If anyone can tell me what I am doing wrong, please don't hesitate.

Ruby Walker: The Van Vechten party

2010-09-19T17:50:00.000-04:00

This relates to a previous post wherein I include a segment from my Bessie Smith biography that describes a party that Bessie and Ruby attended at Car Van Vechten's midtown apartment. You can read that post here: Ruby and Bessie Meet Carlo, so I won't repeat that, but here is that party described by Ruby in the series of interviews I did for the book, forty years ago. It is one of four recollections that I studied and from which I pieced together my own account of that festive, surprise-filled April evening in 1928.

Before you listen to Ruby's account, read Van Vechten's own description of Bessie's appearance, which is taken from a 1947 issue of Jazz Record magazine and, understandably, leaves out a few details:

George Gershwin was there and Marguerite d’Alvarez and Constance Collier, possibly Adele Astaire. The drawing room was well filled with sophisticated listeners. Before she could sing, Bessie wanted a drink. She asked for a glass of straight gin, and with one gulp she downed a glass holding nearly a pint. Then, with a burning cigarette depending from one corner of her mouth, she got down to the blues, really down to ‘em, with Porter at the piano. I am quite certain that anybody who was present that night will never forget it. This was no actress, no imitator of a woman’s woes; there was no pretense. It was the real thing—a woman cutting her heart open with a knife until it was exposed for us all to see, so that we suffered as she suffered, exposed with a rhythmic ferocity, indeed, which could hardly be borne. In my own experience, this was Bessie Smith’s greatest performance.

Porter Grainger

You will hear Ruby mention Porter Grainger several times. He was Bessie's pianist and musical director at that time and he was anxious to get in with the Van Vechten crowd, so Bessie made her appearance as a favor to Porter, who she had regarded with more than professional interest. Mr. Grainger was flexible, but he did have his preferences. I should point out that Ruby had never met Carl Van Vechten, but when I mentioned his name, it triggered her memory of the party. In her mind, the event had taken place at one of the posh midtown hotels—"the Waldorf or the Astor"—because Ruby had never seen a private home so luxuriously appointed. This was also the first time she saw a white maid, it shocked her.

Letters from Stanley Dance

2010-09-15T15:45:00.004-04:00

Stanley Dance was born in Braintree, England, September 15, 1910. This anniversary affords me the opportunity to honor his memory and say how much I have missed his presence since his passing, almost twelve years ago.

I did not see as much of Stanley and his wife, Helen, as I would have liked to, but we always kept in touch, even after they moved to California. Helen would call me just to make sure that I was in good health, and Stanley periodically sent me little notes and letters. We had more in common than our love of the music, for we shared a somewhat cynical view of our profession. While we took our work with the seriousness it merits, we were both ever mindful of the fact that we were bit players sharing a stage with real stars: the creative forces of jazz.

We took off the rose-colored glasses when it came to viewing the many of our colleagues and the business side of jazz. It was something we often couldn't help discussing, something that we tended to view with a touch of humor. I mean, how could anyone take someone like Leonard Feather seriously—yes, his "blackmail" was not to be lightly dismissed, but he was a pathetic little man who had an all too lofty opinion of himself. Let me give you an example of Leonard's modus operandi, which was, indeed, "blackmail" of a sort. I was not at all surprised when Carl Jefferson (Concord Jazz) told me that Leonard required liner note assignments in return for a mention in his syndicated column—he did that sort of thing all the time. It was not something our colleagues talked about in public, but Stanley and I never played Leonard's game.

I bring up Leonard, because Stanley loved the letter exchange I had with him regarding my liner notes for a Dinah Washington CD set . Here is a link to an earlier post containing the Feather exchange (you have to scroll down to the picture of Dinah).

Nobody loved LF more than LF himself, so the cartoon Stanley sent me as a response was right on the mark (click on images to enlarge)....

Stanley and Earl Hines (Photo by Brian Kent)

Some of Stanley's letters are reproduced below. There really is no need for me to add text, they speak for themselves and indicate why Stanley and I got along so well. He left us a legacy of books and recordings that will outlast all of us, he let me with many memories of a true gentleman with a wonderful sense of humor, impressive knowledge and insight. Some people thought Stanley's scope could have been wider, but he had been contributing to jazz since 1933, when I was two years old. Stanley made many friends among the musicians and singers whose music he so respectfully fostered. That should tell you a lot. So will these letters.

I was an early computer user/enthusiast (1979). Stanley found that interesting and often referred to it.

That's it. Remember to click on the images, the better to read them.

Scranton 1962

2010-09-11T19:20:00.002-04:00

It was the day before Christmas Eve, 1962, a cold and snow-filled day. Elmer Snowden had scrambled up a booking for a concert at Scranton's Everhart Museum of Natural Science and gathered together a small band, a vocalist, and an emcee—yours truly. We were going there in Ray Bryant's station wagon, seven of us plus a set of drums, a tenor sax, banjo, and upright bass. Fortunately, the singer, Pearl's sister, Eura Bailey, came in from Philly, so nobody suffocated, but it was tight like that, as Thomas Dorsey sang before he became heavenly and rich. This was before the law required seat belts, but they would hardly have been necessary—by the time we had piled in and managed to close the doors, there was no room in which to move.

In order to be in Scranton by noon, we had to get an early start, so we figured we'd pick up some breakfast along the way, but that was before we squeezed ourselves into Ray's wagon. If you have ever taken a cigarette from a full pack and tried to put it back, you get the idea: stopping along the way would have been insane. Apart from that, Ray was not finding it easy to negotiate the icy road, so we wouldn't have had time to stop for anything anyway.

Somehow, we made it in time, worn out and hungry. But it was lunch time, wasn't it? There would be something there to eat. There wasn't. We were led to a table that held every kind of liquor you could imagine, but there was not a pretzel or peanut in sight. According to the notes I scribbled down the following day, Herman Autrey, Jo Jones, Elmer, and Ray's brother, Tommy were quick to forget breakfast, "This is the wrong thing to put in front of a man with Indian blood," said Budd Johnson as he scooped ice cubes into a glass, and Eura Bailey declared that this was just what we all needed on such a cold day. Sure, the perfect thing to have on an empty stomach. I never was much of a drinker, but neither did I run away from the stuff. I had knocked myself out only once, when some of my friends took me to a lively Copenhagen joint on my 18th birthday. That was also the only time I was ever thrown out of a place by a bouncer and I do mean thrown, literally. My good friend, Ib Clausen had to bring me home, but he had a difficult time finding a cab driver who would take me. The experience was sobering and I swore never to get that drunk again. Eura seemed to have a different idea.

The place was packed and, of course, there had been no rehearsals, nor had anybody made up a list of tunes to be played. It really didn't matter, this was a band of seasoned individuals who all spoke the same language, and by the time Elmer stomped the intro to the first number, the audience, too, seemed to be up there with us.

Jo Jones

The first set went well, the people applauded enthusiastically—perhaps too much so—and our little backstage "breakfast" table had frequent visitors. There was a man going around with a microphone, interviewing us and getting slurred, happy responses. When he came to me, I wondered why I didn't see a tape recorder, but Eura's liquid breakfast had shortened my attention span considerably, so I only wondered for a fleeting moment.

Elmer Snowden

Soon thereafter I spotted Jo Jones seated in the back and asked him why he wasn't mingling with the audience, like the rest of us. Jo gestured toward a dark corner with his head, and I heard Budd Johnson's voice coming from a small radio—we were on the air, live!

We had not been told that our audience would extended far beyond the museum auditorium, nor had we agreed to any such arrangement. Even the intermission interviews were being broadcast live and without any of us being told that fact.

By the time of this discovery, I was well on my way to a more careless state of being, so I put it aside, but on the following day, when I was back in New York, I allowed myself to become sufficiently angry to dash off a letter to the concert's producer, let him know how he had placed himself and the station in jeopardy, and demand a copy of the tapes. I received an apology to all and two reels of tape.

Having not seen the tapes in a few years, I was glad to find an aircheck of one of my WBAI jazz shows that contains, in full, the concert's closing number. You can hear it here, preceded by the lovely ending Budd Johnson gave to "Talk of the Town" and followed by a bit of my show's theme and a plug for the following week. When I find the tapes, you will hear it all, including Eura and sans my voice.

Ray Bryant

After the concert, we headed home to New York, still on an empty stomach. As you can hear on the tape, I was still standing when I announced the final number,but barely so. I believe I passed out in the car, regaining consciousness as Ray Bryant literally carried me through the chilly air and into a diner, Frankenstein style. Strong black coffee brought me back and allowed me to walk on my own into the building where I still reside and where, in some dark corner of a closet, the rest of the concert is tightly wrapped around two reels. Odd to think that Ray and I are the sole survivors at this point.

Let me hear your comments.

Clifford Jordan 5 - Outhouse

2010-09-11T09:19:00.001-04:00

Here's a re-post (substitute, actually) of a performance donated by the Clifford Jordan Quintet to WBAI in the wee hours of the morning. Again, this is from the first fund-raising marathon, You will hear me announce the tally, so far: $10,602, which is a pittance by today's standards, but our entire goal was $25,000. We reached that in pledges and exceeded it handsomely in actual money.

The tune is "Outhouse", which to me brings back memories of youth spent on Christiansø, a tiny island in the Baltic Sea. It was great, having to use an outhouse was not.

Ruby Tapes 3 - Running from Jack

2010-09-06T19:01:00.001-04:00

Here are more of Ruby Smith's recollections of life on the road with Bessie Smith, her aunt by marriage. Please be forewarned that this segment get rather raunchy as Ruby uses explicit language and describes a sex act.

Since mainstream hotels did not open their rooms to black people, touring companies, like Bessie's either stayed on the train (if they owned the car) or at theatrical rooming houses, like Kate's, in Detroit. This extract begins at Kate's, where the show stayed while appearing at the Koppin Theater, and ends in the apartment of a friend of Bessie's in Cincinnati.

In a future segment, Ruby takes us back to Detroit and a buffet flat. Don't know what a buffet flat was? Bessie sang about one and Claude McKay's 1928 novel, Home To Harlem, has many mentions of these interesting establishment.

As usual, Bessie's husband, Jack Gee pops up and everybody scatters. He loved the money Bessie was making, but he never got used to the show business environment.

Let me once again alert you to the fact that Ruby told it like it was, so this audio contains explicit language and descriptions.

I look forward to reading your comments and/or questions,

Ruby Tapes 2 - Bessie's stormy marriage

2010-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00

Bessie Smith and Jack Gee radiated happiness on Thursday, June 7, 1923. Papers in hand, they rushed from Philadelphia's Orphan's Court to the home of the Reverend C. A. Tindley, who performed a simple wedding ceremony. Then it was off to a photo studio where the camera captured the happiness. Bessie is said to have been married once before, to a soldier named Love whose life ended on a European battlefield. That may be just a story, said Ruby, adding that "marriage" was a term used very loosely in Bessie's circles. She, for example had been married—with papers—"thirteen times, to nine different men." How was that possible?, I asked. She explained that, when it came to black people, clerks didn't waste any time checking old records. "And we all looked the same to them," she added, "so nobody recognized that I had been there before." Whether it was a first or second marriage, Jack was her last certified husband, but certainly not her last liaison.

Bessie and Jack on their wedding day.

I won't go into details here, suffice it to say that this was an often explosive roller coaster ride that lasted a remarkably long time, all things considered. Of course my book on Bessie goes into all that, at length, but my words don't come close to conjuring up a picture as vivid as Ruby's recollections.

As her recordings spread her fame, Bessie began spending much of her time touring with her own shows. She did the T.O.B.A. theaters in the winter months and worked under canvas in the summer. To make the latter go more smoothly, she bought her own railroad car, a big one that could accommodate her entire cast, including musicians, as well as props, costumes, and even a huge tent. The car was parked on a side track at each stop and the cast lived in it.

Bessie had just made her first recordings when she married Jack, but it did not take long for "Downhearted Blues" to establish her as a major act and have the Columbia dealers demand more "product." This resulted in a busy recording schedule and occasionally required Bessie to leave her show on the road for a few days while traveling to New York for recording sessions. In this brief clip, you will hear Ruby recall a time when Bessie rejoined her show after one such trip and learned that Jack had been unfaithful. This was a common occurrence, but the guilty party was more often Bessie herself.

Lil Armstrong interview - 2 of 3

2010-09-04T21:43:00.001-04:00

Lil poses for me with Louis' old trumpet in front of the house on East 41st Street. This is where they lived as newlyweds and where the Hot Five and New Orleans Wanderers rehearsed. Joe Oliver sometimes slept over in an upstairs room. I spent many nights in that same room.

Here is the second part of my interview with Lil. She talks about the King Oliver band's six-month stay in San Francisco, playing for white audiences that complained about not being able to dance to the music of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. A local musical authority sought to remedy that by bringing in a metronome!

This interview is posted in three parts. Here is a link to the 3rd and final part.
As always, your comments and/or suggestions are welcome.

Ruby rescues Aunt Bessie

2010-09-03T22:08:00.003-04:00

It was a timely call I received from Sol Stein one morning in 1970. He had noticed a lot publicity in connection with Columbia Records' plan to issue the complete recorded output of Bessie Smith—160 performances on ten LPs. It was not something one expected a major label to do, especially when the material was almost 40 years old. If Columbia saw a market for this, Sol reckoned, surely there it was time for a book on Bessie Smith.

Someone had recommended that he contact me for the job, and when I label it as a timely call, it is not just because a Bessie Smith biography was overdue, but because Ruby Walker had just resurfaced. Of course, Sol did not know that, but I told him that my accepting his request was contingent on Ruby's willingness to cooperate. They were having an editorial meeting the following morning and he would get back to me.

Ruby, then close to seventy, neither looked nor acted her age, but she knew it would eventually catch up with her. "You know," she said to me, "one day you wake up and look in the mirror, and your face has dropped."

I feigned surprise. "Really?"

"Of course!", she said, "and my dream is to get to California before it drops."

When Sol Stein called back to report the nod from his editorial board, I called Ruby and asked the obvious question: "Has it dropped yet?"

"Has what dropped?", she said.

"Your face."

She let out a shriek followed by an emphatic "NO!"

"That's good," I said, adding that she might just make it to California with her face in place. She liked that.

I gave her the choice of taking a percentage of the book or $3000 in cash, which was the amount of my advance. She opted for the latter, life having taught her that "a bird in hand" was no mere adage.

On the road: Bessie and Ruby with The Dancing Sheiks.
The man in the middle is Arthur "Eggie" Pitts.

Shortly thereafter, she came to my apartment for the first in a series of interviews, parts of which I will share with you here. We sat at a small table in the very spot from which I now write my blog posts, and I used a cheap cassette recorder, because our conversations were never meant to be listened to except by me as I worked on the book. I must say that, although I had known Ruby for a couple of months, she totally surprised me with her candor and delighted me with her concern for remembering things correctly. After each session, she would call me upon her return home to her somewhat converted garage in Jersey City and let me know that she had arrived safely. She also always corrected any slip of memory that might have crept into the interview. The name of a town or person, a detail from an incident. It was very important to her to get it right. After the publication of the book, I was sometimes asked if I didn't think Ruby had made up some of her stories. The answer is that I don't think so. There were numerous times when I brought up something that would have provided a teller of fanciful tales with the perfect opportunity to be creative, but Ruby just said, "I guess I wasn't there."

When you think about it, life on the road with Bessie Smith was simply too eventful for Ruby to have seen a need for fabrication. I think you will agree when you hear the tapes.

In 1996, when my old friend, Larry Cohn, called and asked if I would write the notes for a new 10-CD Columbia release of Bessie's entire output, he mentioned that the set would include the soundtrack of "St. Louis Blues," the two-reeler Bessie filmed in 1929. When he told me that they might fill up some space with Bessie's alternate takes, I explained that I had decided against that when I produced the LPs, because they were too similar to the issued takes, but it occurred to me that he might want to add a snippet of Ruby talking about Bessie. Larry liked that idea and asked me to send him a tape. I had put together about seventy minutes where I removed most of my own comments and questions, so I thought he might find about five minutes that he could use.

Larry was floored by Ruby, so he decided to use it all and fill the 10th CD with it, even if he had to put one of Madame Gore's parental advisory stickers on the box. So be advised, Ruby did not mince her words.

So there it is, you may have heard these Ruby tapes before, but I am putting them here because I think most people will not have heard them. Besides, my friend Ruby was anything but dull, so her stories bear repeating. There is also more material from these sessions, so I will probably post some of that, later.

The first story is almost clean enough for prime time. It has Bessie finding herself in a precarious situation after having spent a week in a small Harlem hotel with one of Fletcher Henderson's musicians. She called Ruby for help. Since most people are unfamiliar with Bessie Smith's family situation, let me explain that she married a security guard named Jack Gee in 1923, the year in which she made her first recordings, and that Ruby Walker was Jack's niece. Ruby, however, was not very fond of Uncle Jack, but she loved Bessie and became her confidante, as well as a chorine. Ruby's recollections give us an insight to Bessie that we otherwise would not have—she had many extraordinary stories to tell and she told them with a cadence that in and of itself commanded one's attention. In the course of the many interviews we did over a brief period of time, Ruby's mood often changed. She became downcast at times only to snap out of it when remembering a good time. Well, you'll hear what I mean.

I am not doing this to plug my book, but neither would I complain if you decided to give it a look. Just be sure that it is the extended 2003 edition (Yale University Press) and not my original 1972 attempt (Stein & Day). There is an Amazon link if you scroll down and used paperbacks are as low as five dollars.

As usual, I welcome any comments.

Jimmy Rushing interview at Half Note

2010-09-02T11:51:00.000-04:00

It was a Sunday afternoon when Jimmy and I sat down for an interview at the old Half Note on the corner of Hudson and Spring Streets. Jimmy frequently performed there, feeling comfortable in the unpretentious decor and informal atmosphere created by the Canterino family, who owned it.

If memory serves me right, it was 1968 and the film you hear me refer to at the beginning of the interview is Gordon Parks' The Learning Tree, which had yet to be released. I had been on the air at WBAI a couple of years earlier, playing some of Jimmy's records and talking about him, when Gordon Parks called. He told me that he was in the early stages of turning his book into a film and that hearing Jimmy had given him the idea to cast him as Chappie Logan, a singing saloonkeeper. He needed to know how he could get in touch with Jimmy, and that's how I became a one-line footnote in Jimmy's film career.

Recording with Brubeck - 1960

I don't know why, but Gordon credited Jimmy on the screen as "James" Rushing, which seemed somewhat formal and foolish. After all, Jimmy had spent decades establishing his name and one would have thought that billing him as such could only benefit the film.

As the interview winds up, you will hear someone very loudly announce the presence of trombonist Al Grey and Fred Miles, a somewhat eccentric record producer from Philadelphia. Then there's Patsy Wilkins, I don't know who she was nor where she came from, but she was in luck that afternoon, winning one of Jimmy's many albums in the door prize drawing. So, with competition from the bandstand, the interview does not end gracefully, but think of it as a Half Note moment—atmosphere.

Leukemia claimed Jimmy on June 8, 1972. The following day, Whitney Balliett painted an eloquent word picture, as only he could:

"Jimmy Rushing, the great blues singer, died yesterday, at the age of sixty-eight. He was a short, joyous, nimble, invincible fat man who shouted the blues as if he were wearing kid gloves and carrying a swagger stick. His diction was faultless; in fact, it had an elocutionary quality, for his vowels were broad and sumptuous, his "b"s each weighed a pound, and he loved to roll his "r"s. His lyrics had a pearl-gray, to-the-manor-born cast to them. His voice - light, tenorlike, sometimes straining - was not much, but it was hand-polished and could be, despite his dandyish style, extraordinarily affecting, as in the mourning, deep-blue "How Long Blues" he recorded in memory of his friend Hot Lips Page. But most of the time Rushing's blues were elegant, lifting celebrations of life, and he sang them that way - his voice finally almost threadbare - until the day he died."

Lil Armstrong interview - 1 of 3

2010-08-31T23:57:00.001-04:00

As anyone who has given my blog a modest going-over knows by now, Lil Hardin Armstrong and I were good friends in the last ten years of her life. We met in September of 1961, when I was in Chicago producing a series of session for Riverside Records' "Living Legends" series, a continuation of a project started in New Orleans nine months earlier. I have posted my recollections and reflections on both trips elsewhere on this blog. You will find links at the bottom of this one.

This time I am posting the first of three tape reels containing a very casual audio interview with Lil, done in 1968 as an initial step in our collaboration on her autobiography. As you may know, unforeseen circumstances halted that project and I have already posted a few excerpts from the manuscript here. I recently came upon this tape and thought it might be of interest, although Lil reminisced about some of the same things for Bill Grauer in 1956. That became a Riverside LP called "Satchmo and Me," which may be difficult to obtain today. Anyway, the Grauer interview was heavily edited and it had unnecessary narrative bridges. A transcript of that release has since been made available for $14 by someone trying to cash in on it. This interview, on the other hand, is unexpurgated and free.

Here is a link to Part 2 of this three-part interview.

Additional links that pertain to Lil:

The Jones Music Store, Jelly Roll, and Handsome Men
Louis, Lil, and the Little Gangster

Clifford Jordan Quartet The Highest Mountain

2010-08-28T19:37:00.000-04:00

Here is the last of three performances by the late Clifford Jordan, recorded during a live broadcast from WBAI as the sun rose over New York City. The tune originally appeared on Jordan's Atlantic album, "These are My Roots," a tribute to Leadbelly, which was released that same month. He subsequently recorded it for the Steeplechase label.

Clifford was also one of the many musicians who took command of a two-hour Saturday afternoon time slot that had a long line of guest hosts from the jazz scene. They could spend the two hours as they wished. Some came alone, with a pile of albums, others brought friends along—Eddie Condon dragged George Wettling in for an absorbing dialogue and some good music, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis shared the time, talking—among other subjects—about the big band they had just started, then there were afternoons with John Coltrane, Toshiko (then) Mariano, Zoot Sims, Blue Mitchell, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, and many others. Most of them played records or tapes, interspersed with reminiscences and opinions, but Bill Dixon spent the entire two hours ranting against WBAI, which he said had a policy of not playing "avant garde" jazz. He was very wrong and he wasted two hours of air time that he could have spent playing the most avant garde sounds ever heard. Oh, well.

I think we represented jazz better than any other New York station at the time, and when it came to helping us out, the jazz community was overwhelmingly responsive. Take, for instance, the night of December 27, 1965, when an amazing number of jazz performers showed up to play for us at the Village Gate. The crowd was so big that Art D'Lugoff had to open another room, the Top of the Gate, and each of these great musicians appeared in both places! Monk's manager, Jules Colomby, helped get it all together. Monk came early and fell asleep in the kitchen—it was a somewhat hectic but memorable night. They don't do that for WBAI anymore, and the station has only its management to blame for that. The spirit is gone, as is the energy that once was generated by enthusiasm and noble purpose.

Don't get me started on that! Listen to Clifford Jordan and his group do their thing for WBAI.

Jimmy Rushing at Pep's

2010-08-28T01:17:00.003-04:00

It was in 1959 that I first met Jimmy Rushing. He was appearing at Pep's Lounge, a popular jazz spot at Broad and South Streets in Philadelphia, I was at WHAT-FM, the city's 24/7 jazz station. Between Pep's and The Showboat Lounge, there was rarely a week when one could not catch a major jazz act in center city, so I tried to get interviews as often as I could, but not always at the clubs. This was a club interview, made in the small wreck of a dressing room that was reserved for the headliners and showed the owner's disrespect. You will hear juke box music of the day (organs were in vogue) seeping through the thin wall that separated Pep's from a bargain eatery next door. When I sat down with Billie Holiday in that same room, she snapped her fingers and sang to the bass line somebody's quarter had paid for. Billie also showed me how that ball of facial tissue next to her makeup box was loaded with razor blades—just in case. I thought that to be rather unusual, but it really wasn't—women had to be tough to survive on the road in those days. Alberta Hunter used to walk around looking like a New York bag lady, with a shopping bag in each hand, and one day she showed me how she always had a her grip around a cloth-covered ice pick—just in case.

Jimmy and I in dressing room at Vassar - 1961

Back to Jimmy Rushing. I would later get to know very well, but this was our first meeting. He talks about his early years and his first trip to England, which had occurred the year before. He met Humphrey Lyttleton and George Melly, and had his first—perhaps only—encounter with skiffle, which he likened to hillbilly. We also talk about Billie Holiday and how her voice underwent a change in her last years. I should mention that I have long since reversed my opinion on that—what I once identified as "deterioration" was really not that. Billie's voice simply absorbed the the hurt and abuse of years spent being mistreated by her men, her government, and herself. The smile was gone, the soul remained.

Here and there, you will hear references to recordings that I later spliced into the tape, but removed from this post to comply with copyright laws—the interview itself is intact.

About a year later, just two days away from 1960, Jimmy and I sat down for another interview, this time at the legendary Half Note, in the bowels of Manhattan. I will post that soon, but now I hope you find something interesting in this one. Please post a comment and let me know what you think.

Hatred in America

2010-08-22T09:29:00.000-04:00

The Un-American "Mosque" Controversy

Yesterday a section of my city turned ugly. Spurred on by that wing of the GOP that calls itself Fox News, hate mongers like Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and Sarah Palin, and cowardly Democrats like Harry Reid and all who have spoken with their silence. They came to lower Manhattan and, in a sense, that is what they did. There was a much smaller, disorganized chorus of decent people there, too—they had come to counter the ugliness, but were outnumbered and their words drowned out by amplifiers and music. The latter included Sousa, for these misguided anti-Americans delude themselves into thinking that their intolerance and venom is patriotic. They also played Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, which I am sure did not sit well with Mr. Springsteen.

As might be expected, the TV coverage bared an equally misguided press—not that these pretend journalists necessarily sympathized with the bigots, but he who shouts the loudest gets the attention. So, we saw much footage of ugliness, people who never stopped to think, people who seemed unaware of the facts: The proposed community center will not be a mosque any more than a "Y" with a chapel is a church; if "Ground Zero" is "hallowed ground," it is also so to the many innocent Muslims who were victims of the 9/11 attacks; if a building containing an area for religious worship is a sacrilege, why is there no protests in the area over the presence of a strip club, which seems to be doing rather well?

As I viewed the TV footage—that sea of human ugliness waving racist, hateful signs at the cameras—a much earlier picture came to mind, one that showed black bodies at the end of a rope and a milling crowd of smiling white faces taking obvious pleasure from an unspeakably inhuman act. Time has not blurred that despicable image, nor should it, but we saw a reenactment of sorts in downtown Manhattan on a rainy Sunday. Physically, the still warm bodies were not there, but you knew that they were in the minds of many—you could see that in their faces.

Harry Reid, Archbishop Dolan, Howard Dean and other well-meaning "good guys" have stepped forward to suggest that the Islam community center be built elsewhere, but they are also guilty of fomenting the ugliness that we are seeing all over the country. Yes, this protest against building a "mosque" was launched under the pretense of "protecting sacred ground," but why, then, are these screams of bigotry and religious intolerance being raised in many other parts of the country? Why do the Ugly Americans not want to see any mosques, anywhere? That's because the "Ground Zero" protest movement was just an excuse—the object of all this hatred is not a building, it is a people and its beliefs. It is also, in many ways, the outrage over having a man of color at the country's helm.

I was going to relegate Keith Olbermann's commentary to the blog archive today, but what I saw on my TV screen yesterday tells me that it needs to stay here longer. In fact, I will add to this post a link to Frank Rich's op-ed from Sunday's NY Times, How Fox Betrayed Petraeus—it is characteristically perceptive.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ronnie Matthews' "Dorian" - 1965

2010-08-21T23:15:00.001-04:00

Here is another performance by pianist Ronnie Matthews, taken from the first fund-raising marathon held in July, 1965 by New York listener-sponsored radio station, WBAI. This time, he is joined by bassist Michael Fleming and drummer J. C. Moses. The voice you hear at the very end belongs to writer A. B.Spellman, who was at that time working on his noteworthy book, Four Lives in the Bebop Business.

Here is a link to a previously posted Matthews performance, a solo version of Duke Ellington's Prelude to a Kiss. It is from that same marathon.

Clifford Jordan Quartet @ WBAI, 1965

2010-08-19T21:30:00.000-04:00

Here is another performance by Clifford Jordan, Ronnie Matthews, Eddie Kahn and J.C. Moses recorded in WBAI's tiny 30 East 39th Street studio during the station's first fun-raising marathon, July 1965. On the right is a New York Times editorial that appeared in the July 7, 1965 issue a few days after the marathon ended and we returned to normal programing. I wonder if the writer of that editorial is still around and how he would react to the station as it sounds today—not positively, I suspect. You can still hear good things at 99.5, but the station is currently run by people who lack the kind of integrity and intellect that made WBAI stand out. It is truly a shame and while you are probably tired of reading my observations regarding the decay of an extraordinary radio station, I hope you understand.

As I tune in and hear scam artists pushing their wares to an unsuspecting listenership, I am reminded of a fable written by the late Gene Lees for the pages of Stereo Review. It was many years ago and I wish I could bring it to you here, but I haven't a copy, so I will give you the gist of it, in my own words.

Gene's story was about a very fine restaurant, a singular establishment known for its exquisite cuisine. It was also about the new owners of that restaurant and how they gradually altered the menu until the sauce—which no longer contained that decisive dash of Chateau Beau-Sejour Becot—had a brand name. Poured on thick, it all but obliterated a chopped patty that now sat on plates once occupied by exquisite slices of choice Wagyu. Ah, that steak! It lingered in one's memory and the very thought still brought moisture to one's mouth.

The establishment had not changed its name, finding it advantageous to coast on its reputation, but as the cuisine morphed from the memorable to the mundane, so had the patronage and munchies for the masses had a nice ring to it at the cash register.

The story brought in much mail and while most readers wondered what it was doing in Stereo Review, others actually got it. This, they surmised, was a tale inspired by Columbia Records. Indeed, it was, and some people at Blackrock were none too pleased.

Here is Clifford Jordan with a sample of what brought us the pledges and money 45 years ago. Hearing original music played live by extraordinary performers conveyed the message: WBAI was no ordinary radio station. That said it all, and it was very real.There was no need to push fake cures or tabloid-type stories.