I Remember Jazz Read online

  As we went back downtown to the Village, Frankie said, “Thanks, Shaz. This job tonight is for a hundred bucks. Tomorrow I’ll pay you all back. It’s good to have friends to help you when you need it.”

  The next day came and went, but Frankie didn’t pay us back. Instead he hocked the new horn and by nightfall was in Bellevue fighting snakes. It seemed as if the jazz world was about to lose one of its better trumpet players. Various people, including me, gave benefit parties and concerts to raise money for him; and in fact several thousand dollars came into the pool to take care of his needs.

  The doctors persuaded him to go somewhere and try to get himself cured of the drinking habit. He lost a lot of weight, but somehow the zest never returned to his trumpet playing. I lost track of him about that time; but when he died in about 1954, I heard it was of malnutrition induced by too much alcohol.

  Jack “Papa” Laine

  It seems unreasonable that I could have had any sort of relationship with Jack Laine when you consider that he led the first documentable jazz band in history as early as 1892 and that he retired from music in 1910, long before I was born. His Reliance bands spawned such talents as the members of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, and the Halfway House Orchestra. The fact is, I spent many rewarding days and hours in his company during the 1950s. From him I learned much about the history of ragtime, jazz, and even about my native New Orleans. (He died in 1966 at the age of ninety-two.)

  I say that he “retired” from music in 1910. For three or four years after that he led bands in carnival parades, especially the fireman’s band. Except for these occasions, though, he removed himself entirely from the musical scene. He had so many other interests in later years that it was hard for him to focus on the fact that he had once been a musician and a bandleader. He thought of himself first as a blacksmith, for that was his trade, then as a fireman—who loved the excitement, the fraternal life and camaraderie of the fire house. He acknowledged his role in early jazz, looking back on it as a bit of frivolity not inconsistent with youth and callowness. He never saw the music as an avenue of artistic expression; it was just a way for young people to have a good time. The day he put away his bass drum, he seemed to give up even listening to jazz.

  My late friend and collaborator, Edmond Souchon (Sou), would join me from time to time in taking Papa on a day’s or evening’s outing. We’d take him to lunch at Commander’s Palace, tour him through the old New Orleans neighborhoods. He especially liked to visit houses in which he’d once lived and places where he’d worked. We’d buy snowballs or coffee at the stands and share the esoteric joys common to natives of the Crescent City.

  One Sunday evening we decided to take Jack into Bourbon Street where a dozen or more jazz bands could be performing at once in the various tourist traps. I hoped he’d be able to find a band that sounded closest to his own historic Reliance bands. That sound, unfortunately, had never found its way to the recording studios. During those years, Papa could walk quite briskly. (He continued to march with his firemen in parades until his mid-eighties.)

  We parked in the lot at St. Louis and Royal streets, where the Royal Orleans Hotel now stands, and walked the block to Bourbon Street. Passing the Paddock, where Octave Crosby led the house band, I noticed that Papa didn’t even turn his head. He was busy talking, but it was clear that the music playing inside didn’t gain his attention. We continued to within earshot of Sid Davila’s Mardi Gras Lounge where Sharkey Bonano’s band was employed. Papa stopped talking and listened alertly. I asked if they sounded anything like Reliance.

  “Hell, no!” he assured us positively. “We could never play that good!”

  Davila, the proprietor, himself a superb jazz clarinetist, greeted us cordially. At break time, along with the bandsmen, he joined us at our table. Papa already knew Sharkey and Harry Shields, though he couldn’t remember their names.

  “Your Daddy used to play in my band,” he told Martin Abraham, Jr. He asked Li’l Abbie Brunies if he was any kin to Henny, Richie, Abbie, Merrit, or George. Li’l Abbie was happy to acknowledge the relationship.

  “There wasn’t no bands in my time to play as good as youse guys,” Jack complimented, “but that’s what we was tryin’ to do.”

  Next door to the Mardi Gras, on the corner of Bourbon and Conti streets was (and is) the Famous Door. Paul Barbarin’s band was on duty. On Sunday nights they spelled off the Dukes of Dixieland or George Girard’s New Orleans Five, depending on which band had the night off. The instant Papa heard the sound of Paul’s music, he said, “That’s the kind of a band J had!” Considering his comments of a few moments before, this wasn’t exactly high praise. In the fifties, Papa’s vision was failing badly and he couldn’t see the band until we got down front to our table. Then he turned to me and said in astonishment, “These guys is niggahs! They got all the real music jobs—the French Opera, concerts, all that. They never played our kind of music. They was too good. Now I see they taken it up!” He obviously found that amusing.

  Papa invariably spoke of his own musical progeny as though most of them had not won world renown. He was unimpressed by the successes of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, even though they had made the very first jazz record and had performed for more than a year in Europe. I asked him about Nick Larocca, the leader of the ODJB.

  “Oh, sure!” he reported. “You know I had as many as six bands at the same time. But even so, some nights I’d have seven jobs, so I’d hire Larocca. I paid him just like anybody else. Of course, he was a potato man.”

  “A potato man?” Sou asked. “What’s that?”

  Papa explained. “Suppose you got a parade job for, say, thirteen, fourteen men, but you can’t get four trumpet players, see. So you got the extra man, see; but you put a potato in his horn so he can’t play nothin’. That’s a potato man.”

  Sou laughed so hard he had to stop the car to get his breath. He couldn’t see through the tears. When he recovered we drove by a fire-house where Papa knew the company; many were old friends of his. He introduced us around, and’I talked to some of them. They were only dimly aware that Papa had ever been a musician.

  Sou asked Papa about his first music job and he told how Dave Perkins (who was black though you couldn’t tell it) had bought most of the instruments when the Mexican Military Band went home after the 1884–1885 World’s Fair. They could replace them very cheaply in Mexico.

  “I rented instruments off him,” Papa recalled, “and I took a band on Robinson’s Floating Opera House on the river. That’s the first time we ever got paid for playin’. It was a private what-do-you-call-it—a stag party—a smoker. God! The place was full of Customhouse Street whores! Lulu White. You ever hear of her? My God, you shoulda seen what she done that night!” (My forthcoming biography of the redoubtable Lulu contains the account of her horrendous exploits on that historic night as told by Papa and one other eye-witness.)

  We didn’t hesitate to ask Papa about the effect of segregation on the music world of his time, Sou reminding him that at least two Creoles-of-color, Achille Baquet and Dave Perkins, had worked in his bands. “Them guys played so good,” Papa Jack told us, “we couldn’t tell what color they was.”

  As for Buddy Bolden, Papa gave us his very best blank look for a moment, then said, “I don’t believe I ever hired him, but I used so many musicians. What instrument did he play?”

  Since nobody had ever recorded Jack Laine playing his drum, in the sixties Johnny Wiggs got together a group of topflight jazzmen and got Papa to agree to play on the session. At Tulane University they recorded enough for one side of an LP. Though nearly ninety then, Papa kicked that bass drum as well as the best I ever heard. I tried to buy the tape to release, but then I learned Johnny had done it without a union contract.

  Bill Russell

  Like thousands of others, I admire Bill Russell, the dean of jazz researchers and archivists, who, almost single-handedly, brought about the jazz revival that began in the
1940s. His American Music Records company put on wax a host of jazz stars whose sounds would have died with them. A superb musician himself, Russell plays the violin in the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra. He also fritters away endless hours playing with the restoration of superannuated musical instruments when he should be completing his definitive biographies of Jelly Roll Morton and Bunk Johnson. He’s sitting on virtually all of the documentary material on these two jazz giants, and I keep telling him that at seventy-eight he hasn’t got much time left for procrastinating. But you can’t rush Russell—and that’s not his only idiosyncracy.

  Russell is an animal lover. An Eagle Scout by temperament and habit, he has determined that it’s important to be kind to all living things. That’s okay as long as it’s not carried to extremes. But when Bill gets mice in his apartment—which, incidentally, makes Armageddon look like a Japanese garden—he doesn’t trap them. He feeds them!

  Now, in the sixties Russell became the parent to a parakeet, which he permitted to fly freely around the apartment, despite the discomfort of his occasional visitors. One of these unhappy guests was me. I would rail at him about his damned sport-model sparrow, and he would chide me for being insensitive and brutal. Nevertheless, he would then be considerate enough to round the abominable thing up and herd him into his cage so he wouldn’t fly about my head. Then he would waste a lot of our valuable time relating to me all the clever things this damned budgie had said that day.

  “You’re a fool, Russell!” I chided him. “That creature doesn’t say a thing. He never has when I’ve been here. You just imagine these things.”

  “If you weren’t such a narrow-minded dolt,” he insisted, “and if you’d keep quiet long enough and listen when I put him up near your ear, you’d hear him. After all, he’s only a little bird with a little voice and he’s not amplified.”

  I agreed to participate in this demonstration. Russell held the bird next to my ear and said, “Talk to him, baby!”

  Clearly and impeccably the bird told me, “My name is ‘Pretty Boy.’ I live at 600 Chartres Street.”

  I said to Russell, “See! That stupid bird doesn’t even know you moved!”

  Russell didn’t speak to me for many months.

  Mezz Mezzrow

  When Mezzrow got out of jail, where he spent some time because of his indiscretions with illegal sùbstances, he was broke and had no prospects for work. I produced three concerts just so he’d have a little encouragement. If you’ve read his autobiography, Really the Blues, you know all about his travails and that most of his problems were brought about more by stupidity than by criminal character.

  In Harlem, Eubie Blake told me, “You could get in real trouble hangin’ out with that guy. That guy ain’t finished gettin’ in trouble.”

  I insisted Mezzrow had learned his lesson, that he’d do anything in the world to stay out of prison, that he’d never go near the stuff again.

  Eubie just said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He found my confidence in Mezz’s intentions naïve enough to be funny.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said, “I never even take aspirin.” But Eubie wasn’t convinced.

  About those concerts, though. The truth is I normally wouldn’t ever have hired Mezz to play. He wasn’t a very good clarinetist. To play it safe, I engaged Sidney Bechet, too. Mezz and Bechet liked each other. In a weak moment, at Mezz’s request, I also hired Bill Coleman for one of the concerts. Although Bill was an excellent musician, he just wasn’t involved with my kind of music and didn’t fit well with bands I presented. But this was all for Mezz. I wanted him to get his confidence back, and if he wanted Bill we’d have Bill.

  You might well ask why I’d go to all this trouble for a guy who wasn’t a close friend and who wasn’t really much as a musician. It was because I knew, as did all authentic jazz musicians in those days, that Mezzrow had almost single-handedly kept the fire burning through the dark ages of this music. He had scrabbled for jobs and found them for dozens of musicians. He’d found things to sell to get their instruments out of hock—and sometimes he’d found things before they were lost. He shared anything he had with any colleague that needed it—food, clothing, housing. Among the many legendary things about him the most legendary were his generosity and his total devotion to the music we called jazz.

  After these concerts, Mezz did feel better and he went on to an unexpectedly successful late career playing in jazz bands and, surprisingly, as the proprietor of King Jazz Records, which produced some better-than-average discs. But right at the time I’m talking about, Eubie was unconvinced.

  Eubie and I were having dinner in the Theresa Hotel, Harlem’s showplace, when Mezz walked in scanning the place. I realized he might be looking for me. As the only other paleface in the crowd, I wasn’t hard to find. He came over to our table and paid his respects politely to Eubie. Then he handed me a square package, about the size of a deck of cards.

  “This is just to show my appreciation, Pal,” he said. “I just want you to know I’m stayin’ straight and I’m going to do the best I can to stay out of trouble and play jazz.”

  Eubie said, “Anybody who’s playin’ jazz is already in trouble.”

  I thanked Mezzrow and wished him well. He said, “Don’t open the package until you get home.” Then he told us goodbye and left.

  “Put that away, Shazzam. (That’s what Eubie and some other people called me in those days.) It’s probably some kind of dope.” I laughed and so did Eubie.

  When I got home, though, which was in Philadelphia at that time, I opened the package and found a beautiful sterling silver cigarette case full of—you guessed it—marijuana joints. Or, as they called them in those days, “muggles.” I called Eubie on the phone. “I opened Mezz’s package and what do you suppose it is?”

  “I already told you, Shaz. Dope.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “But how did you know?”

  He said, “What else would Mezzrow give to somebody he really liked? Don’t smoke any of it. It ain’t good for you.”

  I confess that I did smoke one—first time in my life. It scared the hell out of me and I flushed the rest. I had seen enough muggles smoked and knew how to do it. I did get high and it did feel good. After all, it was Mezzrow’s celebrated “golden leaf.” But I knew I didn’t want to do that anymore.

  Bobby Hackett

  We were having coffee in a cafeteria on Sheridan Square in the Vil lage—Pee Wee Russell, Bobby Hackett, and I. I just happened to meet them in there. They were due on the bandstand at Nick’s in forty minutes or so, and Hackett had promised Miff Mole he’d keep Pee Wee out of Julius’ Bar across the street from the job. I was just in for a hamburger. I had a really strong stomach in the late thirties.

  Hackett says, “Anybody hear anything from Bunny [Berigan] lately?”

  Pee Wee says, “Not since they put him in jail for beating up his wife. She couldn’t take it any more. I guess that’s why she called the police in.”

  Hackett was aghast. Pee Wee could say things like that completely dead pan. You couldn’t tell he wasn’t serious—but anybody who knew Bunny had to know he was the least likely wife-beater in the universe. And anybody who knew Bobby Hackett knew how easy it was to take him in with such a story and that he himself would never utter a word of gossip or censure against anyone.

  I said, “You never know what quiet guys like Bunny are liable to do.”

  “For God’s sake!” Hackett began wildly. “How badly is she hurt, the poor girl—and my goodness—how terrible for Bunny! Shut up in jail for God’s sake!”

  Pee Wee said, “Her arm is broken and I think her pelvis, too, from his throwing her down the dumbwaiter shaft.”

  I said, “The electric fan he threw down after her must have weighed fifty pounds. I don’t know how it missed her. He’s been treating her like that for years. It’s a wonder she’s still alive. He deserves whatever he gets, the skunk!”

  Pee Wee continued to lay it on. “Oh, yeah, I almost f
orgot that he cut her throat and tried to saw her in half with a bread knife.”

  Bobby’s eyes popped with this detail.

  I said, “In time she may get some vision back in her left eye, and they said they could repair her jawbone.”

  “What hospital is she in?” Bobby asked, the faintest trace of suspicion beginning to dawn in his innocent face.

  Pee Wee told him, “She’s in the mopery ward at St. Moishe’s.” Hackett patted the sweat from his brow. He always had an exaggerated response to the misfortunes of others.

  “You fellows haven’t heard from Bunny at all, have you?” he accused.

  I shook my head. “Not for the past year or so.”

  And Pee Wee said, “Bunny who?”

  Alphonse Picou

  Anytime you hear someone play the clarinet solo in “High Society” it’s either a copy or an adaptation of the original treatment created by Alphonse Picou. Picou crafted it himself, out of the piccolo part in Porter Steele’s classic. For the rest of his life Picou reveled in the flattery of imitation.

  He was already a vain old man when I first talked with him. He drank more whiskey than could possibly have been good for him, a habit which was not alleviated by his ownership of a bar on the corner of St. Philip Street and Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans.

  Though he identified himself with the black community, Picou’s complexion was very fair, his eyes a twinkling blue, his features delicate. He had a high-pitched little voice that always seemed to be coming from another room, as though it were being thrown by a skillful ventriloquist.

  “Pike,” as fellow musicians called him, was a part of the earliest jazz scene, having broken in with a nondescript musical group led by Bouboul Valentin in 1892.