I Remember Jazz Read online

  “It wasn’t what you call a ragtime band,” he recalled. “But they done some fakin’ jus’ like anybody else. And they taught me how to fake. I could already play the clarinet when I was twelve years old.”

  Pike spoke in accents Orleanians identify instantly as “Creole”—not French, or not pure French. He used French words like banquette for sidewalk and gallerie for porch or veranda.

  His bar, in those segregated days, was for blacks only. In fact, interracial fraternization such as might normally have occurred was actually prohibited by local ordinance. The police were very rigid in their enforcement policies, too, which meant that a pale-face like me actually ran the risk of arrest for merely being the dinner guest of a black family. All this was still going on as late as the mid-fifties, unbelievable as that may now seem.

  A movie star named Zachary Scott, who died quite young but who was an avid jazz fan, called me one evening, told me he was in New Orleans at the Roosevelt Hotel (now the Fairmont), and asked if we might be able to find some old-time jazzmen. He even mentioned Picou by name as a special interest. I told Zach that Alphonse played at the Paddock with Papa Celestin on Tuesday nights only, but that he sometimes played at his own bar during the week.

  After checking with Picou, who said he was going to host a “li’l jam session” in the afternoon, I picked Scott up. We parked on St. Philip Street at 4 P.M. and walked inside. I noticed that a trumpet man named Walter Blue was blowing on the little bandstand. Since there weren’t many people there yet, we found a good table and sat down. We were the only whites in the place, but we weren’t in there long. Within two minutes, the police had entered and arrested us. Of course, I was indignant, but Zach thought it was very amusing.

  Anyway, I called the mayor, Delesseps S. Morrison, to whom I was distantly related, and told him where I was and what had happened and who was with me. Chep Morrison was committed to anti-segregation, but in those days it was an uphill fight. He asked to speak to the district police captain, who quickly became contrite, even sheepish. He let us go forthwith. But the flap following Scott’s arrest while in pursuit of the innocent joys of jazz was enough to effect the repeal of certain relevant ordinances. After that it became the least bit easier to socialize with musician friends regardless of their color. Thereafter I would stop by to see Picou occasionally to pass the time of day and to remind him, the police, and others that I wasn’t breaking any laws by just being there.

  Late in the fifties, after the Tulane Jazz Archive was instituted, its first curator, William Russell, was collecting interview tapes of the surviving early jazzmen. One evening, I think in 1958 or 1959, he told me he was having difficulty getting a taped interview with Picou.

  “I’ve had several appointments with him in the bar,” Bill explained. “He’s always very polite. He lives upstairs above the bar. When he gets up he comes down the stairs into the barroom. Then he comes over to the table where I’ve got the recording equipment set up and he says, ‘Good morning, I’ll be with you in a minute.’ Then he goes over to the bar, sits on a stool, and gets so drunk he forgets I’m there, and by then he’s in no condition to interview.” He asked me if I had any ideas and I did.

  Bill had a young Canadian friend in town, Ralph Collins, who was studying clarinet with exceptionally little success. I suggested that we bring Ralph and his clarinet to an appointment with Picou. By prior arrangement with Alphonse, the three of us got to his bar at the appointed time. Bill set up the recorder and pretty soon Picou came downstairs. He came to the table and said, “Good Mawnin’, gennel men, I be wit’ ya in a minute,” and proceeded to-his customary barstool.

  I told Ralph to get out his clarinet and play the solo from “High Society.” Ralph did his best, but the resulting squeaks and squawks were as villainous an assault as that passage had ever been called upon to withstand. Even Ralph was embarrassed. Picou turned on his barstool, drink in hand, got up, and approached us.

  “Turn on the machine,” I instructed.

  The first thing on that tape is Picou’s tiny voice saying, “That ain’t the way, boy!”

  The interview itself turned out to be a comedy classic, sounding as though Picou and I had rehearsed it as a vaudeville routine. As the playback shows, Alphonse didn’t want to talk about jazz; he wanted to reminisce about the amorous exploits of his salad days. He was eager to add to the record an explicitly detailed account of his most memorable forays into many boudoirs. In each tale, just as he approached the end of his story, after weaving a complex fabric of suspense, I—loth to waste the opportunity to document some scrap of jazz history—interrupted, steering him back to the subject. So intent was I ón realizing our pristine purposes that it never entered my head listeners might possibly be as interested in Picou’s lurid accounts as in anything he might have had to say about music.

  The net effect of all this was to frustrate both Picou and his listeners regarding the endings of his accounts of adulterous derring-do and to abort our serious efforts to find out much of what we wanted to know about early jazz.

  Picou died and was buried during the 1961 Mardi Gras season. His enormous funeral attracted large numbers of international journalists. Russell invited them to crowd into his little record shop on St. Peter Street opposite what is now Preservation Hall, to listen to the tape.

  The interview affected them like a Mack Sennett two-reeler. Roars of laughter could be heard out in the street; it was an act that could have been a hit in Minsky’s.

  Many of the newsmen refused to believe the whole thing hadn’t been set up for laughs. I was widely congratulated for my till-then-unknown ability as a straight man. The tape remains at the Jazz Archive, available to all listeners. It may be one of the greatest all-time jazz-comedy classics. Listening to it ten years later, I found that it had lost none of its spontaneity. But I also found myself wondering how those erotic recitations of Picou’s might have come out if I hadn’t been trying to redirect his comments.

  Irving Fazola

  Irving Fazola was a physical wreck by the midforties. (He was only thirty-seven when he died in 1949.) He had already established himself in the front rank of all-time great jazzmen. A student of classic teacher Jean Paquay, who was a mainstay of the French Opera Orchestra in New Orleans, Faz’s real name was Prestopnik. Because he was the only one among the musical kids he grew up with who could really read music, they called him “Fa-sol-la.” That’s how he came to be Fazola. Those same kids formed a highly successful band, led by twelve-year-old trumpet virtuoso Louis Prima and featuring Faz, age eleven, on clarinet. His clarinet already had that mature New Orleans tone which was the envy of musicians everywhere, jazz and classical alike.

  Eventually, Faz became famous for his irresistible records with Bob Crosby’s “Bob Cats.” He didn’t live long enough to realize his full musical potential, succumbing to the pleasures of the flesh at what should have been the beginning of his prime. By the time he died he weighed over three hundred pounds, despite a short, stocky frame. He often drank himself into complete insensibility and consorted with as unsavory a class of ladies-of-the-evening as the tenderloins of the northeast could muster.

  Once he invited me to his room in the Picadilly Hotel in Manhattan where I found him en deshabille in bed with a pair of seriously battle-worn chippies. A third superannuated Venus slept noisily on a nearby rollaway bed. Faz generously let me know I was welcome to participate in the festivities, but I explained that I had too much business to take care of. I managed to get him out of bed long enough to say, “Look, Faz. You’re supposed to play a concert for me in Philadelphia a week from Friday. That means you don’t drink anything that day, understand? No beer, no wine, no whiskey. Nothing!” I reminded him how scarce jobs were and vowed that if he showed up with alcohol on his breath I’d never hire him again.

  He favored me with a stream of selected, uniquely New Orleans-style expletives, the utterance of which was his second most noteworthy achievement. But in the end he pledged himself to ab
jure all intoxicants on the Friday in question. I didn’t hesitate to remind him of the times he had reported to me in no real condition to perform, and although, in justice, I freely admit he was never an actual embarrassment to me, he didn’t play those dates like Faz could play.

  Came the Friday evening of the concert. At about 7 P.M. I got a call from a Horn & Hardart’s Automat Restaurant—the one an earlier generation of Philadelphians had nicknamed “The Heel” for reasons not known to me. The manager was on the line and wanted to know if I knew a Mr. Fazola. He went on to explain that Mr. Fazola had eaten more than he had intended and as a result had found himself wedged, apparently forever, in one of those captains’ chairs. He apparently could not be pried loose, even with the efforts of the manager and a strong pair of busboys. I immediately sent an ambulance to “The Heel” and hurried over there myself. It was only a few blocks away.

  The manager hadn’t exaggerated. There was Fazola, clearly jammed into the chair. “What the hell happened?” I demanded, concerned for his condition and for my concert.

  “Well, I gave you my promise,” he reminded me, prepared to put as much of the blame as possible on me for the inconvenient circumstance. “I told you I wouldn’t drink nothin’ today and I didn’t.” But he went on to tell how he’d gotten into town on the train a little too early and had just decided to while away the time over a hamburger or two.

  “How many did you eat?” I asked him.

  “Thirty-six,” he admitted. “I still feel okay. I just can’t get up out of the chair.”

  So the two ambulance attendants, the two busboys, the manager, and I carefully loaded him, with the chair, into the ambulance, drove to the Academy of Music, and unloaded him carefully right at centerstage of the auditorium. I paid everybody off and sent them on their ways.

  Patrons of Journeys Into Jazz who remember that night may recall thinking it odd to come to their seats promptly at 8:30 and see one of the great stars of jazz sitting contentedly on the stage putting his clarinet together. Those who were present may be pleased to know, at last, how that came about.

  During the first half of the concert, Faz kept his seat—playing magnificently, but not standing for his solos as was customary. At intermission time, pianist Joe Sullivan, a trombone player named Munn Ware, and I pulled him loose. The second half of the concert went off without a hitch, though I did substitute a chair without confining arms. Faz then got up to do his solos, and nobody could tell we had started the evening with an emergency.

  After the concert, Faz sheepishly suggested he’d like to go somewhere to eat. I took him to Billy Yancey’s. (He was once a black major league baseball star.) And Faz ordered—you guessed it—hamburgers.

  Once back in New Orleans, Faz was relieved to be away from the pressures of music in the east and of what he saw as the restrictive environment of New York. At home, though, his beloved red beans and rice, Creole hot sausage, and gumbo got the better of him. He had some decent music jobs, but that great New Orleans cooking in those huge quantities, that alcohol, and the ravages of his indiscriminate amours brought his career and his life to an untimely conclusion. His proteges and admirers have kept the sound of Fazola from vanishing into the mists of history. Listening to Pete Fountain playing the blues, you sometimes feel you might as well be listening to Faz.

  Oran “Hot Lips” Page

  “It’s all in the lip,” he explained. “You see these valves and all this plumbing—the only thing you really need is the mouthpiece.” If that had been anyone but a really great jazz trumpet man like Lips Page speaking, I probably wouldn’t have been paying the close attention I was.

  We were sitting at the bar in George Brodsky’s saloon in Philadelphia. The place was named after Harlem’s more famous Cotton Club, but shared no other characteristics. George did, from time to time, bring in some New York musicians. He really loved the sound of jazz.

  Al Rose, 1936. This is the suit, the tie, the collar, etc.

  Jack “Papa” Laine was the leader of the first documented Jazz Band (1892). Here, at eighty-eight, he had a difficult time remembering he’d ever been in the music business. Photo by Johnny Wiggs.

  Dan Burley could do many things well, including running a newspaper. The other guy liked the way Dan played piano. Photo by David Hawkins.

  Dan Burley shows Beryl Booker the sound of real jazz piano in my living room in Philadelphia, in 1946. She got famous playing the other kind.

  In the 1950s, Percy Humphrey was the leader of the Eureka Brass Band. He said, “Being the leader sounds good, but that’s a music word for bookkeeper.” Photo by Mary Mitchell.

  Al Rose and Percy Humphrey, some years earlier. Photo by Joe Marcal.

  Young George Girard was on his way to the jazz summit, but he was just twenty-seven when I went to his funeral. Photo by Mary Mitchell.

  Eubie Blake said of nineteen-year-old Morten Gunnar Larsen, “I been sittin’ here all afternoon waitin’ for this kid to make a mistake.” Photo by Diana Rose.

  Morten Gunnar Larsen, the debutantes’ delight, came to New Orleans from Norway and at nineteen was spellbinding audiences with his interpretations of Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and Scott Joplin. Photo by joe Marcal.

  Merrit Brunies was a redneck sheriff in Biloxi, Mississippi, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way he played valve trombone. Photo by joe Mares.

  Doctor Leonard V. Bechet, Sidney’s brother and an excellent trombonist, filled my cavities as well as he filled out a harmonic chord. Photo: The Second Line.

  Don Marquis and I won the only two Louisiana Library Association annual awards given for books on jazz subjects. His In Search of Buddy Bolden won in 1978, and New Orleans jazz: A Family Album, by Edmond Souchon and me, won for 1967. Photo by joe Marcal.

  Not Napoleon, but pianist Bob Doyle, who always tuned the pianos for my New Orleans recording sessions. He would never play on them, though, because his brother-in-law, Armand Hug, was too good. Photo by joe Marcal.

  During my second appearance on Joe Franklin’s TV show in New York, did Sammy Kaye and I talk about our current projects? Hardly. We reminisced about how I had gotten him into the above mess with Philadelphia Eagles backs, Bosh Pritchard and Steve Van Buren. Sammy, center, failed to score. Photo by Nick Alexakis.

  Sammy Kaye, looking more like himself. Photo by Nick Alexakis.

  Don Perry’s behind-the-scenes work in the jazz world made many things happen that wouldn’t have been possible without him. We always needed a friend in TV. Photo by joe Marcal.

  George Schmidt gained fame in the forefront of the New Orleans art world with his paintings and hotel murals. But he’s also the guy who sings those art deco vocal choruses with the New Leviathan Oriental Fox-Trot Or chestra. Photo by Joe Marcal.

  Johnny Wiggs insisted that I could play the piano—and you never argued with Johnny Wiggs. He hated to play cornet alone. Photo by Mary Mitchell.

  Al Rose and Johnny Wiggs. Photo by Johnny Donnels.

  Paul Crawford’s first recording session. You can see I was more confident than he was. We turned out the best “Tishomingo Blues” I ever heard. Photo by Edmond Souchon.

  Real skiffle music for a public library function. Raymond Burke, on the left, is playing a piece of bamboo and a funnel with a sax mouthpiece. You can’t see the bell of Paul Crawford’s plungerphone, but you can guess what it is. Art Marshall is doing rhythm on a suitcase that’s hidden in the shrubbery, as is the washtub at the end of my rope. (I swear I can make an octave and a half.) Photo by John Kuhlman.

  Four museum pieces—from left to right, Al Rose, Johnny Wiggs, Joe Mares, and Bill Russell—at the New Orleans Jazz Museum when it was in the Royal Sonesta Hotel. Photo by Justin Winston.

  Most record sessions don’t look like this one in the Esplanade Room at the Royal Orleans. Sherwood Mangiapane, bass; Armand Hug, piano; the impresario himself; and Bob Lawton, the electronic genius who made most of the tapes for the state of Louisiana sessions; then Paul Barnes an
d Alvin Alcorn. The kid is my son Rex, and on the far right is trombonist Wendell Eugene, wondering if he’s come to the right place. Photo by Johnny Donnels.

  Kerry Price (Gower) is celebrated as a singer of authentic blues, but she’s as good a jazz band pianist as there is in the world. In this picture, as usual, my wife has come between us. Photo by Joe Marcal.

  Stevenson Palfi, on the right, is the TV producer of such successful documentaries as “This Cat Can Play Anything” and “Piano Players Rarely Get to Play Together.” I’m hiding behind a post at the Miami Seaquarium, but Diana laughs at killer whales. Photo by Polly Palfi.

  There had just been a Journeys Into Jazz concert at Town Hall, and Lips had invited the musicians and me down to his place to unwind. It wasn’t commercial opportunism. He closed the place as soon as we came in and let us know all drinks were on him.

  “All that fancy fingerin’,” Lips was saying, “ course you can do a few frills with it, but here’s where the music is.” He was removing his mouthpiece from his coat pocket. “See?” He put it to his lips, reached for an empty beer glass, and began to blow the hottest, dirtiest blues I could remember. Very quietly, of course. You can only get so much volume out of a beer glass. If anybody had been talking, that music would have been drowned out. Baby Dodds found two swizzle sticks and began to tap rhythm on the bar. He decided it was too loud and covered the spot on which he was tapping with a wine list to muffle the noise. The complicated, whispering beat was just perfect. Elmer Snowden had removed his banjo from its case and was playing beautiful chords more softly than I thought a banjo could play.