Tailoress Hardin

Sometimes we are surprised to discover that people whom we hold in high regard for one talent are also to be admired for another. Of course, some people are so creative that they simply don’t recognize genre boundaries. My long-time friend, Geoffrey Holder, comes to mind. I bring this up because I was thinking of Lil Armstrong, as I often do, and a decision she made in the 1940s. Her career in music had gone beyond the success most performers enjoy: Her participation on the historic recordings of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and the celebrated Louis Armstrong Hot Five sides would have been enough to secure for her a prominent place in the history of American music, but the creativity did not end there. Following her divorce from Louis, Lil continued to write enduring compositions and she made noteworthy recordings with her own bands. She kept the famous name, but—as you will see in a future post—not just for its obvious commercial value.

In the 1940s, when the popularity of big band swing was cresting and music magazines like Down Beat and Metronome showed increased interest in the past, Lil's musical career did not seem likely to reach a dead end. Thus it came as a surprise to her friends and admirers when she put away her baton, closed the lid on her piano, and dragged out the old Singer: Lil Armstrong enrolled in a school for tailoring.

When she graduated, Lil threw a party to make it known that seamstress Armstrong was ready to take orders. Her piece de resistance at school, the garment that earned her the graduation diploma, was a tuxedo for Louis. It was displayed prominently at the party, among several other samples of her work.

Many people came to help Lil celebrate. They sipped their champagne, nibbled on their canapes, and admired the displayed fashions, but it wasn’t long before someone suggested that Lil “play some piano”. That’s when she realized that she would never shake off the music. Of course, I don’t think she really wanted to.

Some twenty years later, I asked Louis if he still had that tux. That brought a big grin to his face and he seemed surprised that I even knew about it. “No,” he said, patting himself on the stomach, “but it was a perfect fit.........back then.” No surprise there, for I had by then experienced on my own how meticulously Lil too measurements—a custom-tailored shirt from Lil became something I could look forward to each year on my birthday.

So, Lil did not totally abandon that side of her talent, but she only created clothes for friends and never for profit. Lil’s desire for good, fancy clothes went back to her childhood, but she had to wait a few years before she could indulge herself.

The door to that indulgence opened wide around the end of WWI, when Lil became a member of the New Orleans Creole Jazz Band (her description of its members will be a future post). After a three-week engagement at a Chinese Restaurant, the band was booked into the the Southside’s De Luxe Café, on State Street and Lil started making a good salary that was augmented by tips. Decie, Lil’s mother was deeply religious, so Lil told her that she was playing accompaniments at a dancing school, but the charade only lasted until a neighbor spotted the young girl at the club and told Decie the truth. Lil was as persuasive as she was determined, so she managed to calm her mother’s fears with the promise of adult supervision. One of the musicians would bring her to and from the De Luxe every night.

"A Mr. Quinn came in the place once a month and he had the unusual habit of tearing a $20 bill in half, giving me one half and keeping me worried all through the rest of the night for fear that he’d get too drunk to remember to give me the other half, but he never forgot. With all these tips and my salary, I began to get new ideas as to how to dress after Decie had seen the 'dump' I was working in and given the go sign to keep working. I discarded all my midi blouses and started to spend all my money on clothes. The girls remarked that I sure did cultivate in a hurry, little did they know that I had always had expensive taste and all I needed was the money to satisfy it.

Mr. Schorr, my boss, really help me satisfy my expensive taste by sending me to Madame Marguerite, a place where his wife bought her clothes. The first suit I bought there was a French import, mustard-colored wool, trimmed in navy blue pure satin. I didn’t even bat an eye when she said that the price was $200! I knocked ‘em cold when I came to work in the outfit and from then on I sure made up for all the time I had to wear middies to work to fool Decie. Every week, I had something delivered to the house C.O.D."

I still have some of the shirts Lil made for me. My initials were always either sewn into the lining or onto a breast pocket, and every shirt bore Lil’s own label, with her beloved mother’s name.

Ole Brask has died

Perusing the latest issue of Jazz Special, an exemplary Danish monthly, I sadly learned that Ole Brask has passed away, just a few days before his 74th birthday.

Ole was not well known in the U.S., but he contributed many memorable photos to the jazz album. I first met Ole almost 50 years ago, when John Tchicai introduced us. John, too, was new to the U.S., working as a chef at Copenhagen Restaurant. Ole was a quiet, unassuming man, but it didn't take him long to get into the right professional circles. His resume grew fast and impressively included: Richard Avedon, Magnum, ABC's 20/20, CBS' 60 Minutes, etc. When his assignments began to take him all over the world, we somehow lost track. In 1863, when I moved to my present apartment, Ole took over my old place on West 81st Street, just off Central Park. It was a $17-a-week room with bath on the top floor of a brownstone, and it had a v-shaped window that allowed one to look up and down the street. I spent many hours in that little window nook.

Here's a picture I took last year, just before they changed the building's facade.

And this is the little window nook from the inside. Ole placed Archie Shepp there for an album cover.

Many of Ole's wonderful photos can be found in Jazz People, a 1976 collaboration with Dan Morgenstern.

Sailing for America

In 1941, I was nine years old and living with my mother in Reykjavík, the Icelandic capital, where I was born. The British had invaded the year before and my mother decided that it would probably be good for me to spend the summer away from the city. In Iceland, that doesn’t mean a beach house, quaint cottage in a forest, or a nighttime chorus of crickets. I was going to a farm belonging to the family of my mother's second husband, Baldvin. My mother had married him because she felt that I needed a father, and Baldvin was the best father anyone could ask for. My vacation spot was north of Reykjavík and not easily accessed. It was a farm that could only be reached by three successive modes of transportation: a small ship, a rattletrap bus or car, and a long trek on horseback that included crossing a busy little river without a bridge. It was in a desolate region, stark and stunning. If one wanted to get away from it all, this was indeed the place.

I had not been at the farm very long when I received a call from my mother (yes, amazingly, they had a telephone), who asked me if I would like to go to America. She did not have to persuade me, I found the primitive life on the farm boring, although I enjoyed afternoons spent with grazing cows in a field at the foot of mountain. I found it soothing to rest my head on a cow's side as it reclined and lazily chewed the cud. It was a wonderfully relaxing way to spend a few hours daydreaming. After my mother's call, those dreams were mostly about America, as I imagined it to be. That, of course, was solely based on what I had seen in movies and Life magazine. There was no Grand Canyon in my dreams, no Golden Gate Bridge or Mississippi riverboat—perhaps some cowboys and Indians, but, mostly, there was New York City. That big ape on the skyscraper, rich kids in the back of huge limousines, and masses of well-dressed people going in and out of marble-walled office buildings. I think I had seen a lot of pictures from the 1939 World’s Fair.

My 10th birthday party. I'm 4th from right.

My ticket to New York was a father I had never met. He married my mother in Copenhagen when she 17, whisked her off to Marseilles, conceived me, and disappeared. Now he suddenly wanted to have me spend a year with him, his mistress, and her 6-year-old daughter whose father was said to be an English nobleman. I was told that Kanda believed my father to be her father, too, and they instructed me to never tell her the truth. I kept that promise and I know that it all sounds like an unimaginative soap opera scenario, but that’s how it was. I have yet to figure out why my father suddenly decided to recognize my existence, but Kanda and I have stayed in touch. She lives in Iceland.

My mother had my father sign a contract that called for my return to Iceland after one year—it was not honored (as you will see in a future post).

A friend, a cow, and I. On the farm, Summer 1941.

On October 18, 1941, Baldvin—whom she had recently divorced—threw a birthday party for me. It was also, unofficially, a bon voyage affair, for it was only five days later that I boarded the S/S Goðafoss with my father, his mistress, Stella, her daughter, Kanda, and our Icelandic maid, Adda. I had no apprehensions about the trip itself, I knew that there was a war going on and I had watched with excitement as the British troops occupied Iceland and seemed to be preparing for street combat. The day of their arrival, they began putting up sandbag fortifications on street corners. That alarmed the adults, but boys find that sort of thing cool, like that German reconnaissance plane that flew over Reykjavík every Sunday morning. The

British always tried to shoot it down, so there were puffs of smoke all around it, but it was never hit.

The NY Daily Mirror would soon describe the Goðafoss as “a drab chunky one-stack merchantman, flying a blue flag like a swastika,” but I knew it as a freighter that had taken us to England and Denmark a couple of times when I was very young.

The steamship company’s logo was, indeed, a blue swastika, and I recall how the British had stormed their building when they occupied. I also remember seeing smoke come out of the German embassy's chimney. It was all quite fascinating to us kids. The Goðafoss, named after one of Iceland's many beautiful waterfalls, was a 1,542-ton freighter that carried about 27 passengers in its small cabins. The ventilation was poor, the wood-paneled walls creaked and there was a gurgly sucking noise from the sink each time the ship's structure was tested. It was important that we be situated as close as possible to the lifeboats, so, as soon as we reached the open sea, we were told to sleep on the narrow leather benches that lined the walls of the upper deck's smoking lounge. Unfortunately, we also had to sleep wearing a bulky life vest, which only was fun on the first night. As we slowly moved towards the mouth of the bay, the convoy began to take shape. Seeing all these ships, which eventually numbered about fifty, inspired a morbid game. In kindergarten, I had learned how to make boats by folding paper, so I got Kanda to help me make a little convoy for us to play with. Our fellow passengers were horrified as we played out a bloody maritime battle on the floor. 

That battle became all too real a few days later when our convoy was attacked by a U-boat wolf pack. We were immediately herded into the parked lifeboats—just in case. That was seventy years ago and I can still hear two prominent sounds: the hooting of a destroyer's siren and the thud of depth charges, the latter followed by a vibration. It was high drama that scared the adults and had us kids fascinated. About two and a half years later, I would have the same experience on the same ship—I'll recall that one in a future post. This encounter, however, was historic, for we watched as torpedoes all but ripped apart the tanker, Salinas, and another ship, a U.S. Navy destroyer, rushed to its aid. The Salinas made it, but the destroyer did not: The Reuben James took 100 men of the U.S. Navy with it to the bottom of the Atlantic. 

This was the first U.S. warship to go down in WWII and the papers were full of it, but decades passed before I discovered that the ship I had seen go down was the one Woody Guthrie memorialized in a song.

Here's a newspaper photo of the Goðafoss taken November 7, 1941, as we prepared to dock in New York. (Click on image to enlarge) We were met by a pushy, grubby-looking group of gum-chewing photographers and reporters wearing felt hats with their IDs stuck in the band. Flashbulbs blinded us, and the shouted questions were deafening, but I didn't understand a word of it. This was a central casting type of scene that I would later see played played out in many movies.

The S/S Goðafoss as we sailed up the East River.

The manifest. (Click on image to enlarge)

Here I am, Gunnar (my middle name) Albertsson on the ship's manifest. (Click on image to enlarge). The extra "s" in my name is how Icelanders note that one is "son of," but I was not son of Albert, my father was. By rights, I should have been christened Thórðarsson, but someone had the good idea to drop an "s". Just thought I'd throw that in here.

SS Godafoss, The Reuben James, Captain Erich Topp and the U-522 crew that sank the destroyer.










Below is Arlo Guthrie's song, sung by the Kingston Trio—the video includes a scrolling list of the casualties.

More about King Oliver from Lil Armstrong...

Lil Armstrong in 1961, when she visited me in the West 

84th St. apartment I shared with Timme Rosenkrantz.

 And here is more about King Oliver from Lil:

Joe disliked my boyfriend, Johnny, and had him barred from the bandstand after a night when he came up and left with one of my shoes so that I couldn't go home until he returned to take me there himself.

Of course I was even more curious to know how Joe got started in the music business than I had been when I first met the other musicians and they told me their stories. Joe's story was too long, even at that time, for him to tell it all to me on the bandstand, so I went to his house one afternoon and got all the details. He told me that he was born in Algiers, across the river from New Orleans and that he started out playing in a boys band under a Mr. Ketchum, when he was 15. First they had put him on trombone, but he blew so hard that he drowned out the other instruments. Mr. Ketchum then switched him to cornet. He was working for a white woman named Mrs. Myers at that time, and she would pay for his lessons and also let him off to play with the band. When he married Stella Dominique, in 1912, he was playing with various bands and music had become his full-time job. He was paid seven dollars a week, one dollar nightly, that is when he worked for Pete Lala. He laughed when he told me that his wife used to cry because she wanted him to give her money weekly instead of nightly. He told me that Sidney Bechet and Walter Cottrell had played with him at Pete's and that peak had a whistle which he blew whenever he wanted the band to play. This happened about every 10 minutes, whether there was anyone in the place or not.

One Easter morning, four men had been killed in Pete's place and that had thrown Joe out of a job. Then he organized a larger band and started giving dances himself at Economy Hall and Masonic Hall. This hadn't worked out too well, so he took a job at the Palm Gardens where he was sure of a salary. One night, Palm Gardens was raided for some reason in both musicians and patrons were taken to jail. This was the payoff Joe, decided then and there to change towns. Therefore, when Mrs. Majors wrote him to come to Chicago and work at the Royal Gardens, he was prepared to make a deal.

I also heard from Joe about cribs, whores, the famous "second line" of kids marching alongside the grownups with their homemade instruments, and how rival bands hitched wagons together and attempted to outplay each other on street corners when advertising a dance. He also told me about the funerals and how the bands played slowly on the way to the cemetery and "hit it up" coming back.

Joe Oliver never gambled nor drank but he made up for everything by eating. He could consume as much food as three people. After work, the band used to go to a Chinese restaurant in the 34th block on State Street. Joe would order two full meals and one cup of tea. Then he'd use a bowl of sugar, making sweetened water by adding water to that first cup of tea. The proprietor soon got wise to this and, from then on, they moved the sugar bowls from the table every time they saw Joe come in the place. That tickled him so much and gave us all a good laugh. We were all so carefree and happy, little did we know that we were making jazz history. We were all just interested in making money and having fun. Of course, Joe had a family, his wife and stepdaughter, to support, but I had absolutely no expenses at home and I just spent my money on clothes and ice cream. Decie tried many times to make me save my money, but it was no use. I didn't smoke or drink, but I had to have something to show for my work and clothes was the answer. And have many times since wished that Decie had forced me to save money.


In 1921, Lil went to San Francisco with the Oliver band. Here's a link to her recollections of that trip.

Linda Kuehl's Billie legacy - a follow-up

This is a follow-up to a recollection that begins here.

Not long after Linda Kuehl's death, I received a call from her sister, who lived in California but was in New York to perform the sad task that is so often left to friends or relatives. She was in Linda's apartment and she was wondering what she ought to do with all the Billie Holiday material.

I explained to her that we owe much of our knowledge of jazz history to dedicated collectors, but that there are among them unprincipled scavengers who might attempt to get their hands on Linda's material. It turned out that such attempts had already been made and Linda's sister realized that some were simply legitimate efforts to retrieve loaned objects, but it was confusing to her and she asked for my advice. I suggested that she place all the material in a safe place, such as a bank box, until she heard from Harper & Row, Linda's more recent publisher. They had given Linda a healthy advance (by jazz book standards) and might wish to find an author who could complete the book. In such a case, the material would be indispensable. Being a total novice when it came to legal matters and rights in such a case as this, I thought the material should at least be kept safe and intact until the future of the book was resolved. In other words, hold on to it, for now.

There was no question about Linda having borrowed many items, especially photos, and that they ought to be returned to the rightful owners. I was adamant about that, having myself been a victim of a photo collector whose obsession drove him to thievery. Over the years, many people have made me a gift of photos and other items, usually because they were advanced in age and feared that someone might simply throw in the trash that which had been so dear to them over a lifetime. I understand that now better than ever, having myself reached an age where the end of the tunnel looms. Not all the material I have came to me as a gift, some simply happened to be in my possession at the time of the owner's death. What does one do when there are no rightful claimants? One preserves and gives the material the life its original owner sought for it. Well, that's how I see it. That's also how Lil Armstrong's family saw it, which is why I still have so many precious photos from her early years—they and the material Alberta Hunter left me will all go to a collection that gives researchers and other interested parties access.

The importance of that was underlined for me by what happened to Linda's Billie Holiday material.

I don't recall how much time had passed since Linda's death when my phone rang and a producer asked me what had become of the Billie Holiday material. My working relationship with this man had been a roller coaster ride—he had proven himself to be a bit shaky on the business side, but he had a good idea when he formed a company that married quality books and filmed documentaries in a neat package. It was a clever way to milk (utilize is a nicer word) material, because the same photos and interviews could be used for book and film, but it also produced satisfying results and added positively to the jazz and blues library. This producer (who has asked not to be further identified) hired some of the top music writer/historians for these projects, and affiliated himself with established, prestigious distributors. I should disclose that I was involved in two of these projects*, and while getting paid was akin to pulling teeth, I did eventually get my money—at least one colleague had fight more fiercely, but that's another story, which I will leave alone.

Getting back to this man's call, I had in mind his past accomplishments rather than his business practices when I informed him that—as far as I knew—Linda's collection was in California, in the hands of her sister. Almost in the same breath, it occurred to me that I had made a mistake by pointing him in that direction. Of course, I did not know that Linda's sister would sell the entire collection to him, which, I gather, is what she did. I admit to having felt guilty when I later learned that this valuable material—some of which was only on loan to Linda—was being exploited for profit rather than reasonably made available to serious researchers. Linda worked hard to gather together these pieces of Billie's life, so she deserved to have the material used by people who shared her dedication to Billie rather than to have it be offered to the highest bidder.

My second-thought fear was not unfounded, as it turned out. I have recently learned that at least one precious photos was returned to the rightful owners, but through no effort on the producer's part. I hope I'm not being too cynical and that others have managed to get back what belongs with them. The only thing I know for certain is that one can rent access to Linda's collection for a rather steep fee, and I suspect that this arrangement has probably made back many times the initial investment.

While I assume that the entire collection was sold intact, it may not have been. I suspect that there may be missing pieces. Linda never showed me what she had gathered, but she told me about this and that piece, and brought to me one very special item the memory of which I vividly retain. It was a small plastic disc from one of those coin-operated recording booths that in a bygone era often were placed side by side with the photo booths. Greer Johnson, who had been editor of Cue Magazine and a close friend of Billie Holiday, gave or lent the disc to Linda, and it was just too exceptional for her not to share with me.

When she brought it to my apartment, we played it, very carefully. I wish we had made a tape, for this was the most extraordinary Billie Holiday recording I had ever heard—here she was at Christmas time, drunk and alone in a little booth on 42nd Street (according to Greer Johnson), singing "Come All Ye Faithful". It was both poignant and devastating—Linda became teary-eyed and I wasn't far from it. This short moment, captured for a few pennies, almost summed up Billie's life.

It is possible to bind thin plastic audio discs into books, as a tear-out page, and I suggested to Linda that she almost had to do this. She agreed, but her book never materialized and the disc seems to have disappeared. If it is in somebody's hands, I hope they appreciate its worth and don't put it up on e-bay like some discarded celebrity-chewed gum wad.

*  A documentary film and 2 biographical essays in a book.