By Alan Lomax Drawings by Bond Stew Martim MISTER JELLY ROLL THE FORTUNES OF JELLY ROLL MORTON, NEW ORLEANS CREOLE AND "INVENTOR OF JAZZ" By ALAN LOMAX DRAWINGS BY DAVID STONE MARTIN THE UNIVERSAL LIBRARY GROSSET DUNLAP NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1950, BY ALAN LOMAX ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS THEREOF IN ANY FORM BY ARRANGEMENT WITH DUELL, SLOAN AND PEARCE PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To FELISE 6307598 LOUISIANA TOWN 1 My Folks Was All Frenchmans 3 Really Tremendous Sports 11 Money in the Tenderloin 22 Family 27 STORYVILLE 39 Where the Birth of Jazz Originated from 41 Uptown-Downtown 49 Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhytibm 61 UDE--The Boys in the Bands 67 ALABAMA BOUND 111 Half-hand Bigshot 113 Those Battles of Music 120 The Lion Broke Down the Door 127 Jack the Bear 134 Can't Remember All Those Towns 142 Jelly Roll Blues 147 I TOOK CALIFORNIA 157 The Cadillac in Bloom 159 Diamonds Pinned to My Underwear 170 Mama Nita 177 INTERLTOE H#Ho, Central, Give Me Doctor Jazz 179 THE BITTERS WITH THE SWEET 199 Mabel 201 Red Hot Pepper 207 It Like to Broke My Heart 223 Till the Butcher Cut Him Down 243 End Matter 263 In foreign lands across the sea, They knight a man for bravery, Make him a duke or a count, you see, Must be a member of the royalty. Mister Jelly struck a jazzy thing In the temple by the queen and king, AH at once he struck a harmonic chord. King said, "Make Mister Jelly a lordT No one could have guessed that Jelly Roll Morton was down on his luck that soft May day in 1938. His conservative hundred-dollar suit was as sharp as a tipster's sheet. His watch fob and his rings were gold, and the notoriety diamond, set in gold in his front incisor, glittered like gaslight . . . Mister Jelly Lord, He's simply royal at the old keyboard , . . The quiet of chamber-music auditorium in the Library of Congress and the busts of the great composers sightless in tiheir niches disturbed Jelly Roll not at all. He felt at home with great men and with history. He knew that his music had rolled around the world. If he never actually played at Whitehall, if it was only in fancy that the king said, 'Make Mister Jelly a Lord/ he knew that his New Orleans jazz had warmed up the atmosphere all the way from Basin Street to Buckingham Palace . , . xii FRELUDE You should see him strolling down the street, The man's an angel with great big feet! With his melodies, Have made him lord of ivories . . . Just a simple little chord. Now at home as well as abroad, They call him Mister Jelly Lord . . . His diamond-studded grin lit up the sombre haH as he feathered his barrel-house rhythms out of the concert grand. "You hear that riff* he said. "They call swing that today, but it's just a little thing I made up way back yonder. Yeah, I guess that riffs so old it's got whiskers on it. Whatever those guys play today, they're playing Jelly Roll." Creole child of New Orleans in the last days of her glory. Jelly Roll grew up to become the first and most influential composer of jazz. He and his Red Peppers put the heat in the hottest |azz of the '20*s, but the Depression generation, for- got Jelly Roll and his music. He had to pawn his diamond sock- supporters and 1938 found him playing for coffee and cakes in an obscure Washington nightspot. Years of poverty and neglect, however, had neither dimmed his brilliance at the keyboard nor diminished his self-esteem, He came to the Library of Congress to put himself forever on record, to carve his proper niche in the hall of history and, incidentally, to lay the groundwork for his fight to climb back into bigtime. This lonely Creole, without a dime in his pockets or a friend in the world, began by outlining his plans to sue The Music Corporation of America and the American Society of Com- posers Authors and Publishers. There was something tremendously appealing about the old jazzman with his Southern-gentleman manners and his sport- ing-life lingo. I decided to find out how much of old New Orleans lived in his mind. So with the microphone near the piano of the Coolidge Chamber Music Auditorium I set out PRELUDE xiii to make a few records of Jelly Roll, little knowing that I had encountered a Creole Benvenuto Cellini. The amplifier was hot The needle was tracing a quiet spiral on the spinning acetate. "Mister Morton," I said, "How about the beginning? Tell about where you were born and how you got started and why . . . and maybe keep playing piano while you talk. . . ." Jelly Roll nodded and his hands looked for soft, strange chords at a lazy tempo. . . "Well, as I can understand. . . ... a gray and ohve chord. . . "My folks were in the city of New Orleans. . ? ... a whisper of harmony like Spanish moss. . . "Long before the Louisiana purchase. . " ... a chord of distant bugles. . . "And all my folks came directly I mean from the shores of France And they landed in this new world years ago. . " ... a gravel voice melting at the edges, not talking but spin- ning out a life in something close to song . . each sentence almost a stanza of a slow blues . . . each stanza flowing out of the last like the eddies of a big sleepy Southern river where the power hides below a quiet brown surface. ... * That hot May afternoon in the Library of Congress a new way of writing history began history with music cues, the music evoking recollection and poignant feeling history in;* toned out of the heart of one man, sparkling with dialogue and purple with ego. Names of friends long dead and of honkey-tonks quiet for a half century, songs and tunes and: precise musical styles of early New Orleans musicians foe 1 " gotten by everyone but Morton he recalled these things as if they were of the day befoi'e, smoothly filling in uncom- fortable gaps in his own story with the achievements erf hjfe friends, building a tegeacL xiv PRELUDE As the legend grew and flowered over the keyboard of that Congressional grand piano, the back seats of the hall filled with ghostly listeners figures dressed in Mardi Gras costumes, fancy prostitutes in their plumes and diamonds, tough sports from Rampart Street in pegtop trousers and boxback coats, cable-armed black longshoremen from the riverfront, octo- roons in their brilliant tiyons giggling at Morton's tales, old ladies framing severe parchment faces in black shawls, jazz- men of every complexion playing a solid background on their horns for this was their legend that Jelly Roll was weaving at the piano, a legend of the painful and glorious flowering of hot jazz in which they had all .played a part. In New Orleans, in New Orleans Louisiana Town . . * Something came along there where the Mississippi Delta washes its muddy foot in the blue Gulf, something that bullies us, enchants us, pursues us out of the black throats of a thou- sand thousand music boxes. This something was jazz, which took shape in New Orleans around 1900 and within a genera- tion was beating upon the hearts of most of the cities of the world. A half century later the lineage of every fine jazz musician can still be traced back to the handful of half-caste Creoles, who performed the original act of creation. As Jelly Roll is the "father" of hot piano, so black Buddy Bolden opened the way for otter hot trumpet players, and Papa Tio taugjbt "us afl how to play clarinet" All these men knew each other. As boys they followed the parades together or, split into neighbor- hood gangs and fought bloody rock fights in the alleys. Later they wove together the complex fabric of hot jazz, an American creation at first scorned by the aesthetes and banned by the moralists. Meantime the fox-trot became our national dance. Today jazz lends its color to most American music and to a great deal of the popular music of the world, as well. PRELUDE x? Maybe nothing quite like this ever happened before. Maybe no music, no fresh emmanation of the spirit of man ever spread to so many people in so short a time. Jazz, in this sense, is one of the marvels of the century a marvel that has spawned a monstera monster entertainment industry, feeding upon jazz, growing gigantic and developing a score of interlocking colos- sal bodies whose million orifices pour out each week the stuff of our bartered dreams. Jelly Roll's life story spans the whole of the "jazz age," from the street bands of New Orleans to the sweet bands of New York. With him we can leave behind the marketplaces of Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley and return to the moment of germination in New Orleans. In his sorrows and his fantasies we can find the very quality which distinguishes jazz from the many other forms of American music rooted in Africa from the spirituals, from the work songs, from the blues and rag- time. "We had every different kind of a person in New Orleans,** Jelly said, "We had French, we had Spanish, we had West Indian, we had American, and we all mixed on an equal basis. . .** So tolerant New Orleans absorbed slowly over the centuries Iberian, African, Cuban, Parisian, Martiniquan, and American musical influences. All these flavors may be found in jazz, for jazz is a sort of musical gumbo. But the taster, the stirrer, the pot-watcher for this gumbo was the New Orleans colored Creole. There were 400,000 free colored Creoles in Louisiana at the time of the 1860 census. Their capitol was New Orleans, where for a hundred years they raised the most beautiful girls, who cooked up the tastiest dishes and were courted with the hottest music of any place in the Mississippi Valley. It is within the folldife of these Creoles that the emotional character of hot jazz is to be found, for their music was not only an Afro-American offshoot, not merely a complex of many elements, but a new music of and by New Orleans a wordless Creole counterpoint of protest and of pride. Thus xvi PRELUDE New Orleans, in its own small, subtropical way, was a sort of Athens for the popular music of the world. Why did the streets of Athens during one century throng with the brightest collection of souls that the world has ever seen? This must always be a matter for speculation for Athens is lost to us in time. But New Orleans and its time of creativity is close at hand Some of the old men who watched the first awkward and charming steps of the infant jazz are still alive. In their recollections, in their story of the hot music of New Orleans we may come close to the magic and mystery of cul- tural flowering. For Jelly Roll and his fellows were aware that they had par- ticipated in one of the rare moments of ecstasy by means of which cultural transmutations take place. They spoke of this experience with the special feeling of men who have lived through an earthquake or witnessed a dance of the elephants. They were, indeed, the children of a golden age, and, because they were part folk, they recalled the emotions of those bright days in vivid feeling. This volume is, I hope, a testimony to their eloquence and their sensitivity. With Jelly Roll the days of the interview flowed on into a month; scores of records stacked up onstage at the Library of Congress in a rich evocation of underground America.* It has proved vain to try to check or correct Jelly's story. Jazz musicians are strong on downbeats but weak on dates. There are almost as many versions of every happening as there were men in the band. The big outlines of his story are solid and true to life; if there is niggling about facts, there is unanimity among the feelings of Jelly and the other boys in the bands. In fairness to Moxton, I have tried to give his narrative as much inner consistency as possible, something he would cer- tainly have done if he had been able to write this story him- self. Otherwise Morton and the boys in the bands tell the story their own way. Sometimes they brag; sometimes they remem- * Twelve albums of these records Lave been beautifully published by Circle Records* See appendix 2. PRELUDE xvli ber exactly what was said or how things looked; sometimes they remember it the way they wished it; but somehow out of the crossing of misty memories comes truthcomes a hint at great secrets how music grows how artists can be pimps when they have to be and still set the world dancing with fiery notes. Mister Jelly Roll now bends close to the keyboard, his face saddened by a half smile, his soft and powerful hands stroking out tropical harmonies, and begins. . , In New Orleans, In New Orleans, Louisiana town. . . Louisiana Town , . . As I can understand, my folks were in the city of New Orleans long before the Louisiana Purchase, and all my folks came directly from the shores of France, that is across the world in the other world, and they landed in the new world years ago. I remember so far back as my great-grandmother and great- grandfather. My great-grandfather's name was Emile Pechet he was considered one of the largest jewelers in the South. My great-grandmother was Mimi Pechet she traveled quite extensively and died when I was grown, at around one hundred years old. As soon as I can remember those folks, they was never able to speak a word in American or English. My grandmother, her name was Laura. She married a French settler in New Orleans by the name of Henri Monette a wholesaler of fine liquors and cordials that was my grand- father. And neither one of them spoke American or English. My grandmother bore sons named Henri, Gus, Neville and Nelusco all French names; and she bore the daughters Louise, Viola, and Margaret that was the three daughters. Louise, the oldest daughter, so fair she could always pass, married F. P. La Menthe, also an early settler and considered one of the outstanding contractors and demolishes in the entire South. Louise happened to be my mother, Ferd (Jelly Roll) Morton. Of course, I guess you wonder how the name Morton came in, by it being an English name. Well, 111 tell you. I changed it for business reasons when I started traveling. I didn't want to be called Frenchy. It was my godmother, Eulalie Echo, helped to name me the christened name of Ferdinand, which S 4 LOUISIANA TOWN was named after the King of Spain but the King of Spain didn't do anything, it was the queen, Isabella. When I was six months old, my godmother a very dark woman would take me from my mother and, in absence of mother, would pass me off for her child. It seems like she got a special kick out of this because I was a very good-looking baby. One of these afternoons, in borrowing the baby now known as Jelly Roll Morton, my godmother loaned me to one of her acquaintances, some type of sporting-woman. This lady dis- played me in saloons, setting me on the bar and so forth and so on, making mirations. Then, through some kind of fracas or riot, she was arrested. The officers decided not to put the baby in jail with her and her associates, but she raised so much hell that the young Ferdinand, named after the useless King of Spain, was thrown right in jail at the age of sk months. The inmates were singing and making a lot of noise from time to time and it was there young Ferdinand got his first musical inspiration. The inmates would be singing and, as long as they would sing, it would keep the baby happy, and, the minute they would quit, I would go into a frantic rage. When they would start up again and sing, I would smile along with the singing. That was my first inspiration. My first instrument was made up of two chair rounds and a tin pan. This combination sounded like a symphony to me, be- cause in those days all I heard was classical selections. The next instrument tried was the harmonica at the time I was five years old. After trying to play harmonica for two years, I dis- covered I was the world's worst and changed to the jew's-harp, although this instrument sounded more like a bee humming than like music. When I had mastered this instrument, I set out to whip the world and conquer all instruments. We always had some kind of musical instruments in the house, including guitar, drums, piano, trombone, and so forth and so on. We had lots of them and everybody always played for their pleasure whatever ones desired to play. We ... As I can understand, my folks were in the city of New Orleans long before the Louisiana Purchase, and all my folks came directly from the shores of France, that is across the world in the other world, and they landed in the new world years ago. I remember so far back as my great-grandmother and great- grandfather. My great-grandfather's name was Emile Pechet --he was considered one of the largest jewelers in the South. My great-grandmother was Mimi Pechet she traveled quite extensively and died when I was grown, at around one hundred years old. As soon as I can remember those folks, they was never able to speak a word in American or English. My grandmother, her name was Laura. She married a French settler in New Orleans by the name of Henri Monette a wholesaler of fine liquors and cordials that was my grand- father. And neither one of them spoke American or English. My grandmother bore sons named Henri, Gus, Neville and Nelusco-all French names; and she bore the daughters Louise, Viola, and Margaret-that was the three daughters, Louise, the oldest daughter, so fair she could always pass, married F. P. La Menthe, also an early settler and considered one of the outstanding contractors and demolishers in the entire South. Louise happened to be my mother, Ferd (Jelly Roll) Morton. Of course, I guess you wonder how the name Morton came in, by it being an English name. Well, 111 tell you. I changed it for business reasons when I started traveling. I didn't want to be called Frenchy. It was my godmother, Eulalie Echo, helped to name me the christened name of Ferdinand, which 8 4 LOUISIANA TOWN was named after the King of Spain but the King of Spain didn't do anything, it was the queen, Isabella. When I was six months old, my godmothera very dark woman would take me from my mother and, in absence of mother, would pass me off for her child. It seems like she got a special kick out of this because I was a very good-looking baby. One of these afternoons, in borrowing the baby now known as Jelly Roll Morton, my godmother loaned me to one of her acquaintances, some type of sporting-woman. This lady dis- played me in saloons, setting me on the bar and so forth and so on, making mirations. Then, through some land of fracas or riot, she was arrested. The officers decided not to put the baby in jail with her and her associates, but she raised so much hell that the young Ferdinand, named after the useless King of Spain, was thrown right in jail at the age of six months. The inmates were singing and making a lot of noise from time to time and it was there young Ferdinand got his first musical inspiration. The inmates would be singing and, as long as they would sing, it would keep the baby happy, and, the minute they would quit, I would go into a frantic rage. When they would start up again and sing, I would smile along with the singing. That was my first inspiration. My first instrument was made up of two chair rounds and a tin pan. This combination sounded like a symphony to me, be- cause in those days all I heard was classical selections. The next instrument tried was the harmonica at the time I was five years old. After trying to play harmonica for two years, I dis- covered I was the world's worst and changed to the Jew's-harp, although this instrument sounded more like a bee humming than like music. When I had mastered this instrument, I set out to whip the world and conquer all instruments. We always had some kind of musical instruments in the house, including guitar, drums, piano, trombone, and so forth and so on. We had lots of them and everybody always played for their pleasure whatever ones desired to play. We 6 LOUISIANA TOWN always had ample time that was given us in periods to rehearse our lessons, anyone that was desirous of accepting lessons. At the age of six I gave up the jew's-harp and took my first lessons on the guitar with a Spanish gentleman in the neighborhood. My godmother paid for these lessons, as she always took an interest in anything her boy did. At the age of seven I was considered among the best guitar- ists around, and sometimes I played in the string bands that were common at the time. These little three piece combina- tions, consisting of bass, mandolin, and guitar used to play serenades at late hours, from twelve to two, at the houses of friends. Naturally, the folks would welcome us when they heard those old tunes like Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight, Wearing My Heart -for You, Old Oaken Bucket, Bird In a Gilded Cage, Mr. Johnson Turn Me Loose, as well as different little blues and ragtime numbers we knew. There was plenty of liquor in these old-time New Orelans homes and they were liberal about entertaining us musicians. Soon the family would be up, all the friends would be informed and a festival would be on. Of course, my folks never had the idea they wanted a musi- cian in the family. They always had it in their minds that a musician was a tramp, trying to duck work, with the exception of the French opera house players which they patronized. As a matter of fact, I, myself, was inspired to play piano by going to a recital at the French opera house. There was a gentleman who rendered a selection on the piano, very marvelous music that made me want to play the piano very, very much. The only trouble was that this gentleman had long bushy hair, and, because the piano was known in our circle as an instru- ment for a lady, this confirmed me in my idea that if I played the piano I would be misunderstood. I didn't want to be called a sissy. I wanted to marry and raise a family and be known as a man among men when I became of age. So I studied various other instruments, such as violin, drums and guitar, until one day at a party I saw a gen- 8 LOUISIANA TOWN tleman sit down at the piano and play a very good piece of ragtime. This particular gentleman had short hair and I de- cided then that the instrument was good for a gentleman same as it was for a lady. I must have been about ten years old at the time. I had already become a very efficient guitarist. In fact, I was biown to be the best, until I met Bud Scott, one of the famous guitarists of this country, but, when I found out he was divid- ing with me my popularity, I decided to quit playing guitar and try the piano, which I did secretly. The only ones that knew was my family. I tried under different teachers and I found that most of them was fakes those days. They couldn't read very much themselves. For example, a colored teacher I had, named Miss Moment Miss Moment was no doubt the biggest ham of a teacher I've ever heard or seen since or before: she fooled me all the time. In those days the new tunes used to come out in the Sunday papers and it would be my desire to play those tunes correctly. When I would take these numbers and place them in front of Miss Moment, she would rattle them off like nobody's business and the third one she rattled off sounded about like the first one. So I began to get wise and wouldn't take lessons any further. I demanded I would either go by myself and learn the best way I knew or be placed under an efficient teacher, which I was then placed under a teacher at St. Joseph's University, a Catholic college in the city of New Orleans. My denomination is Catholic which is how I came to learn under the Catholic tutelage, which was very efficient. Later I taken lessons from a well-known colored professor, who was considered very good, named Professor Nickerson. I tell you, things was driving along then.* In my early youth I thought New Orleans was the whole world. I could speak only French at that time. I had been to * The family isn't sure whether young Ferd left school after the eighth or the fourth grade. My Folks Was All Ffenchmans 9 Shell Beach, Lake Ponchartrain, Spanish Fort, Milneburg, Al- giers, Gretna, all considered New Orleans suburbs, and I was convinced this was the whole world: the names on the map, such as New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Hong Kong, etcetra, were just there to fill the map out that was my idea until my great-grandmother Mimi took a trip around the world. She brought back toys for every one of the feds but me and she told me in French, "Never mind, when I go again, 111 bring you something real nice. 5 * She never did go again and my heart was broken. It was then I decided that I wanted to work for money, see the world on my own, get the things I wanted for myself and not have to ask anyone for anything. My first job was dishwasher after school, with permission from my mother. Just to please me, she agreed. The salary was seventy-five cents a week, three dollars payable monthly. At the end of the month my boss said I ate enough for my pay and would not pay me. That broke my heart, until my mother gave me the money. She said she had collected it, but later I could understand she, herself, had given it to me. I was about eleven years old at the time and used to stay with my godmother, Euklie Echo, who spoiled me and gave me a little freedom. When school closed, she permitted me to go to pick berries at the strawberry farm. I thought I could eat up the whole strawberry farm and ate enough to get sick and so returned back home, about a forty-five mile trip. Then I was convinced that the world was a little larger than New Orleans, My godmother, Eulalie Echo, wasn't a handsome woman, but she was very intelligent, had a pleasant personality and plenty money. She used to monkey around with this spiritual business. There were glasses of water around her house and voices would come out of those glasses. Very prominent people would consult my godmother and she would give them stuff like uncooked turtle heart cowein* she'd have them swallow * Cotoetn means turtle, a dish made o turtle meat, or by extension, a social get-together. W LOUISIANA TOWN that and, afterwards, they had good luck and no one could harm them. Here, late years, I have often thought many of my troubles came from my being around during those seances when my godmother fooled with that underground stuff. New Orleans was a kind of haunted place anyhow, and in those days I was scared to death if I was caught away from home past curfew. I remember one night, when I came back home, I saw a big black man sitting on a fence blowing smoke at me through his nose. The minute I saw him, I started run- ning. Nobody can convince me that there are no such things as spirits. Too many have been seen by my family. My uncle met a girl on his way home one night and tried to flirt with her. He asked her if she didn't think it was rather late for her to be out. They talked for a minute and she asked him to see her home. When they got to the graveyard, the gate opened and she walked in and my uncle started running, I was very, very much afraid of those things. In fact I was worried with spirits when I was a kid. Our family home, lo- cated on the corner of Frenchman and Robinson, seemed to be fuE of them. We heard dishes rattling at night, people walk- ing around y the sewing-machine running, chains rattling, etcet- era, and we used to keep the house filled up with holy water. I had it tied all around my bed. Even then it seemed like those spirits would touch my toes. I'd look up over the covers and see them and take one jump and be in my mother's bed. Those spirits at home was one of the most horrible things that ever happened to me. . . . Those days I often used to like to stay with my god- mother. She kept boxes of jewels in die house and I always had some kind of diamond on. Through her I came to be consid- ered the best dresser, and this caused me to get my invitation to be an honorary member of the Broadway Swells when I was still in short pants. The members figured I was a smart kid, so, in order to beat the other clubs, they decided to dis- play a kid as an aide. "What do you think about it, kid?" they said, "Do you think you could get a horse that would cost you five dollars for the day? You'd have to have a streamer, too. But then you*d be an honorary member of the Broadway Swells." I thought that was a swell idea and I personally accepted. You see, New Orleans was very organization-minded. I have never seen such beautiful clubs as they had there the Broad- way Swells, the High Arts, the Orleans Aides, the Bulls and Bears, the Tramps, the Iroquois, the Allegroes that was just a few of them, and those clubs would parade at least once a week. They'd have a great big band. The grand marshall would ride in front with his aides behind him, all with expensive sashes and streamers. The members that could afford it would have a barrel of beer and plenty of sandwiches and a lot of whiskey and gin waiting at their houses. And, wherever these supplies would be, the parade would stage a grand salute. The grand marshall would lead his boys up one side of the street and down the other while the band played on the front steps. Then the boys would go inside and get their drinks and have a hell of a time. 11 12 LOUISIANA TOWN The day I rode with the Broadway Swells my horse wasn't exactly up to the minute. I thought I should have a small horse, since 1 wasn't nothing but a kid, and so the boys around that was jealous of me called my horse a goat and picked him up by his knees and hollered, "We can truck this horse on our back. . . * You shouldn't be riding the horse ... he should be riding you." I got angry two or three times at the way my poor old pony was moving and I tried to beat him to death to show them that he could run fast. Until this day one of the things I feel most sorry for is the way I beat that poor horse. Those parades were really tremendous things. The drums would start off, the trumpets and trombones rolling into some- thing like Stars and Stripes or The National Anthem and every- body would strut off down the street, the bass-drum player twirling his beater in the air, the snare drummer throwing his sticks up and bouncing them off the ground, the kids jumping and hollering, the grand marshall and his aides in their expen- sive uniforms moving along dignified, women on top of women strutting along back of the aides and out in front of everybody the second line, armed with sticks and bottles and baseball bats and all forms of ammunition ready to fight the foe when they reached the dividing line. It's a funny thing that the second line marched at the head of the parade, but that's the way it had to be in New Orleans. They were our protection. You see, whenever a parade would get to another district the enemy would be waiting at the dividing line.* If the parade crossed that line, it meant a fight, a terrible fight. The first day I marched a fellow was cut, must have been a hundred times. Blood was gushing out of him same as from one of the gushers in Yellowstone Park, but he never did stop fighting. They had a tough little guy in the Broadway Swells named Black Benny. Benny hung around the charcoal schooners at the head of the New Basin, but on Sundays he'd get his broom- * One of the boundary lines between two wards perhaps between a Creole and an American ward. Really Tremendous Sports 13 stick and inarch as grand marshal! of the second-line gang. He was a really tough egg and terrible to get along with, always in some argument. Some of the enemy would say, "Listen, don't cross this line/' "Why not?" Benny would say. "If you cross it, it will be your ass." "Whose ass?" "Your ass" "Well, lemme tell you something, I don't give a damn about you and your whole family." "If I hit you, your old double grandfather will feel it." And about that time the broomsticks and brick-bats would start to fly, the razors would coine into play and the seven shooters which was a little bit of a .22 that shot seven times- would begin popping. I've seen one case when a fellow shot seven times and every bullet hit the other party and none of them even went into his skin. But, anyhow, everybody would move on out the way, because nobody wanted to take a chance with a pistol, because they'd known many of them to die that way. Myself, a razor was something I always moved from if I saw one in the fight. I knew what a razor was, my uncle being a barber. A razor is a very, very tough thing to come up against. Well, if they'd have ten fights one Sunday, they didn't have many. Sometimes it would require a couple of ambulances to come around and pick up the people that was maybe cut or shot occasionally. This didn't happen all the time, but very seldom it didn't. The fact of it is, there was no parade at no time you couldn't find a knot on somebody's head where some- body had got hit with a stick or something. And always plenty to eat and drink, especially for the men in the band, and with bands like Happy Galloway's, Manuel Perez's and Buddy Bolden's we had the best ragtime music in the world. There was so many jobs for musicians in these parades that musicians didn't ever like to leave New Orleans. They used to say, "This 14 LOUISIANA TOWN is the best town in the world. What's the use for me to go any other place?" * Now everybody in the world has heard about the New Or- leans Mardi Gras, but maybe not about the Indians, one of the biggest feats that happened in Mardi Gras. Even at the parades with floats and costumes that cost millions, why, if the folks heard the sign of the Indians Ungai-ah! Ungai-ha! that big parade wouldn't have anybody there: the crowd would flock to see the Indians. When I was a child, I thought they really was Indians. They wore paint and blankets and, when they danced, one would get in the ring and throw his head back and downward, stooping over and bending his knees, making a rhythm with his heels and singing Touwais, bos q'&uwaisand the tribe would answer Ou tendais. And they'd sing on Touwais, bos q'ouwais, Ou tendais, Touwais, bos q'ouwais, Ou tendais** And then they would stop for a minute, throw back their heads and holler Ala caille-t/o, Ala caille toais ... Ouwais bos q'ouwais, Touwais has q'ouwais, Ou tendais** They would dance and sing and go on just like regular Indians, because they had the idea they wanted to act just like * Johnny St. Cyr put it this way . . . "This is a town that would break up a show. What I mean, several shows came in here and the people fall so much in love with the town that they miss their train and didn't even try to catch up. When the Dixie Minstrels came here on their second trip, half the men stayed on in New Orleans just crazy about them Creole girls/* ** Tune 6, Appendix 1. Really Tremendous Sports iJ> the old Indians did in years gone by and so they lived true to the traditions of the Indian style. They went armed with fic- titious spears and tommyhawks and so forth and their main object was to make their enemy bow. They would send their spy-boys two blocks on aheadI happened to be a spy-boy myself once so I know how this went and when a spy-boy would meet another spy from an enemy tribe he'd point his finger to the ground and say, "Bow-wow." And if they wouldn't bow, the spy-boy would use the Indian call, "Woo-woo-woo- woo-woo," that was calling the tribes and, many a time, in these Indian things, there would be a killing and next day there would be somebody in the morgue. In New Orleans we would often wonder where a dead per- son was located. At any time we heard somebody was dead we knew we had plenty good food that night. Those days I be- longed to a quartet and we specialized in spirituals for the pur- pose of finding somebody that was dead, because the minute we'd walk in, we'd be right in the kitchen where the food was plenty ham sandwiches and cheese sandwiches slabbered all over with mustard, and plenty whiskey and plenty of beer. Oi course, the dead man would always be laid out in the front and he'd be by himself most of the time and couldn't hear nothing we would be saying at all. He was dead and there was no reason for him to "be with us living people. And very often the lady of the house would be back there with us having a good time, too, because she would be glad he was gone. Then we would stand up and begin- Nearer my God to thee very slow and with beautiful harmony, thinking about that ham- Nearer t o thee plenty of whiskey in 'the flask and all kinds of crazy ideas in the harmony which made it impossible for anybody to jump in and sing. We'd be sad, too, terribly sad. 16 LOUISIANA TOWN Steal away, steal away, Steal away home to Jesus. I tell you we had beautiful numbers to sing at those wakes. Of course, as I told you, everybody in the City of New Or- leans was always organization minded, which I guess the world knows, and a dead man always belonged to several or- ganizationssecret orders and so forth and so on. So when anybody died, there was always a big band turned out on the day he was supposed to be buried. Never buried at night, al- ways in the day and right in the heart of the city. You could hear the band come up the street taking the gentleman for his last ride, playing different dead marches like Flee as the Bird to the Mountain. In New Orleans very seldom they would bury them in the deep in the mud. They would always bury urn in a vault. . . . So they would leave the graveyard . . . the band would get ready to strike up. They'd have a second line behind urn, maybe a couple of blocks long with baseball bats, axe handles, knives, and all forms of ammunition to combat some of the foe when they came to the dividing lines. Then the band would get started and you could hear the drums, rolling a deep, slow rhythm. A few bars of that and then the snare drummer would make a hot roll on his drums and the boys in the band would just tear loose, while second line swung down the street, sing- ing ... Didn't he ramble? He rambled. Rambled all around, In and out the town. Didnt he ramble? He rambled. He rambled till the butchers cut him down. That would be the last of the dead man. He's gone and everybody came back home, singing. In New Orleans they be- 18 LOUISIANA TOWN lieved truly to stick right close to the Scripture. That means rejoice at the death and cry at the birth. . . . Those boys I used to sing with were really tough babies, They frequented the corners at Jackson and Locust and no- body fooled with them. The policemen was known never to cross Claibome Avenue and these tough guys lived five blocks past Claiborne at Galvez, way back of town! It was a miracle how those boys lived. They were sweet- back men, I suppose you'd call them always a bunch of wo- men running after them. I remember the Pickett boys there was Bus, there was Nert, there was Nonny ? there was Bob. Nert had a burned hand, which he used to wear a stocking over, and he was seemingly simple to me. All these boys wanted to have some kind of importance. They dressed very well and they were tremendous sports. It was nothing like' spending money that even worried their mind. If they didn't have it, somebody else would have it and spend it for them they didn't care. But they all strived to have at least one Sunday suit, because, without that Sunday suit, you didn't have any- thing. It wasn't the kind of Sunday suit you'd wear today. Yon was considered way out of line if your coat and pants matched. Many a time they would kid me, "Boy you must be from the country. Here you got trousers on the same as your suit." These guys wouldn't wear anything but a blue coat and some kind of stripe in their trousers and those trousers had to be very, very tight. They'd fit um like a sausage. I'm telling you it was very seldom you could button the top button of a per- son's trousers those days in New Orleans. They'd leave the top button open and they wore very loud suspenders -of course they really didn't need suspenders, because the trousers was so tight and one suspender was always hanging down. If you wanted to talk to one of those guys, he would find the nearest post, stiffen his arm out and hold himself as far away as pos- sible from that post he's leaning on. That was to keep those Really Tremendous Sports 19 fifteen, eighteen dollar trousers of his from losing their press. You should have seen one of those sports move down the street, his shirt busted open so that you could discern his red flannel undershirt, walking along with a very mosey walk they had adopted from the river, called shooting the agate. When you shoot the agate, your hands is at your sides with your index fingers stuck out and you kind of struts with it. That was considered a big thing with some of the illiterate women if you could shoot a good agate and had a nice highclass red un- dershirt with the collar turned up, Tin telling you were liable to get next to that broad. She liked that very much. Those days, myself, I thought I would die unless I had a hat with the emblem Stetson in it and some Edwin Clapp shoes. But Nert and Nonny and many of them wouldn't wear ready- made shoes. They wore what they called the St, Louis Flats and the Chicago Flats, made with cork soles and without heels and with gambler designs on the toes. Later on, some of them made arrangements to have some kind of electric-light bulbs in the toes of their shoes with a battery in their pockets, so when they would get around some jane that was kind of simple and thought they could make her, as they call making urn, why they'd press a button in their pocket and light up the little- bitty bulb in the toe of their shoes and that jane was claimed. It's really the fact, Now these boys used to all have a sweet mama I guess I will have to tell it as it isthey was what I would call, maybe a fifth-class whore. They got something when they could and when they couldn't, they worked in white people's yards. These were colored girls I'm talking about, but it applied to the white girls, too, of the poorer class. They all practically lived out in the same section together, because there was no such thing as segregation at all in that section in fact nowhere in New Orleans at that time. Well, eveiy night these sports I'm talking about would even go as far as to meet their sweet mamas sometimes they would brave it and walk to St. Charles Avenue where their sweet 20 LOUISIANA TOWN mamas were working; and sometimes it would be okay for them to go in and their sweet mamas would bring a pan out to the servant's room. Some of those pans were marvelous, Tm telling you in fact I, myself, have been in some of the homes, seeking after a pan, and I know. Take a girl working for the Godchaux or the Solarisshe would bring you gumbo, Bayou Cook oysters, and maybe turkey with cranberry sauce this wouldn't have to be on Christmas, because New Orleans is the place where no doubt the finest food in the world prevails. When sweet mama cooks and carves that fowl, sweet papa is sure to eat the choicest portions, no argument about that! I was quite small, but I used to get in on those pans oc- casionally. Always hanging out with older men, anyhow. And sometimes Td be with urn when they all get together a whole lot of sweet mamas and their sweet papas to have a little bit of a ball off to their self. Josky Adams would play the blues . . . See, see, rider, see what you have done, you made me love you, now your man done come. Josky had a beautiful sister and I always had it in my mind I wanted to marry her. Used to take her to these parties and had a wonderful time. It seemed like a family there Josky playing and singing . . . I want a gal that works in the white folks 9 yard, A pretty gal that works in the white folks' yard. Do you see that fly crawling up the wall, She's going up there to get her ashes hauled. I got a woman lives right back of the jail, She got a sign on her window Pussy For Sale. But the one blues I never can forget out of those early days happened to be played by a woman that lived next door to my godmother's in the Garden District. The name of this musician was Mamie Desdoumes. Two middle fingers of her right hand had been cut off, so she played the blues with only three fingers on her right hand. She only knew this one tune and Really Tremendous Sports 21 she played it all day long after she would first get up in the morning. I stood on the corner, my feet was dripping wet, I asked every man I met . . . Cant give me a dollar, give me a lousy dime, Just to feed that hungry man of mine . . .** Although I had heard them previously I guess it was Mamie first really sold me on the blues.* * Bunk Johnson, old-time New Orleans trumpet remembered Mamie . , . **I knew Mamie Desdoumes real well. Played many a concert with her singing those same blues. She was pretty good looking quite fair and with a nice head of hair. She was a hustlin* woman. A blues-singing poor gal. Used to play pretty passable piano around them dance halls on Perdido Street. "When Hattie Rogers or Lulu White would put it out that Mamie was going to be singing at their place, the white men would turn out in bunches and them whores would clean up." ** Tune 1, Appendix I. In . . . You see, my young friends had brought me into the tenderloin district at a very young age, even before we were in long pants. In fact, we used to steal long pants from our fathers and brothers and uncles and slip on in. When the policemens caught us, they would slip us on in jail. One of them, I remember, was named Fast Mail Burwell. He was known to be Fast Mail because he had two legs and feet that couldn't be beat, and he would take the straps on the ends of his club and cut our legs to ribbons. We kids were very much frightened of him and, at times, would climb those high-board fences to escape. In those days we had curfew in New Orleans and, when the curfew bell rung at nine, all the kids was sup- posed to be at home. Of course, it was our ambition to show that we were tough and could stay out after curfew. When I was about fourteen, my mother died and left my favorite uncle as guardian. He was in the barber business and he gave me a job at the fabulous salary of twenty-five cents a week and promised a suit for New Years. My assignments were chambermaid, apprentice and note messenger to his different girls, plus excuses to his wife. He was punctual with my salary, and with the few pennies I made on shines I was able to help my sisters for whom I had a fatherly feeling, since I was the oldest. When New Years came I waited for my new suit. Uncle's wife was very good at sewing and I believe it was agreed be- tween both uncle and wife to cut down one of uncle's suits. This was done and the suit was presented to me, very much to my disapproval Uncle was a very fat man, weighing about 22 Money in the Tenderloin 23 two hundred and ten pounds. So the suit was tried and did not fit me anywhere. All the kids had holiday clothes but me. I was so peeved at my uncle and his wife that I tried to kill their cat, Bricktop. The older generations were passing away and friends were vanishing. The estate was being mortgaged and grandfather was losing his liquor business. My favorite horse, Tom, died during a very drastic September electric storm, and things were generally going bad. I had heard of some boys getting jobs in the cooperage, lin- ing barrels, making not less than two dollars a week, more than I had ever made working. (Lining is the small strip nailed around the head of a sugar barrel to make it securetwo strips to each head five cents to each strip.) School closed. I went to the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, was hired and, positively green to the job, made three dollars the first week. My heart was jumping with joy. I could see success by my own hands. I finally got to be one of the best in the shop and was promoted to higher departments to learn the trade of cooper. By this time I was considered one of the best junior pianists in the whole city. Everywhere I went I was accepted as a king. I was always dressed well by my folks, but I, myself, wanted to dress myself. Of course, my father wanted me to be a hard- working boy in the brick-laying trade, like he was. He was a contractor, bricklayer, making large buildings and so forth and so on. He offered to pay me two dollars a day as a foreman, but I decided, after I learned to play music, I could break more money playing piano in the tenderloin district. This is the story of how I got my first job in music . . , I had leave to stay out at night on Saturday and Sunday till 11 P.M., so when some boys enticed me to go to the tenderloin district, I finally accepted the invitation. I liked the freedom of stand- ing at a saloon bar, passing along the streets crowded with men of all nationalities and descriptions. There were women stand- ing in their cribs with their chippies on a crib is a room about 24 LOUISIANA TOWN seven feet wide and a chippie is a dress that women wore, "knee length and very easy to disrobe. One Saturday night whilst on one of the wild jaunts, we heard that one of the houses was stuck for a pianist. My friends encouraged me to go for the job, but my fear was so great that the only way I would go was if my friends would go with me. I felt sure it was a plot to kidnap me, since I had had a narrow escape when I was younger on Melpomene and Willow streets. So they finally agreed to take the other upstarts along and put them into a rear room where I could see them but their guests could not. I was so frightened when I first touched the piano, the girls decided to let rne go immediately. One of my friends spoke up, "Go ahead and show these people you can play." That en- couraged me greatly and I pulled myself together and started playing with the confidence of being in my own circle. "That boy is marvelous** this was the remarks of the inmates. Money was plentiful and they tipped me about $20, which I did not want to accept because I was not taught that way. They wanted to give me the job of regular professor, but I could not see the idea. I was making about $15 legitimately, and furthermore I knew that if my folks were ever to find out I had even passed through the tenderloin, they would deal with me drastically. I asked what salary they would pay. "One dollar a night is the regular salary," was the landlady's answer. I flatly refused. Then my friends showed me how I had made $20 in tips in maybe an hour's playing. "You see, the $1 is a guarantee in case there happens to be some kind of a bad night, so you will be sure of some salary," the landlady explained. "But I will guarantee you $5 a night, if you don't make it in tips." My friends coaxed me. I thought of all the incidents that might happen, maybe in the thousands. I decided I could tell my folks I had changed to the night watch in the cooperage and I would notify my boss I had taken ill. This plan would possibly make things safe all the way around. Anyhow, I Money in the Tenderloin 25 thought, whatever happens in a family, all you have to do is take some money home and everything is all right. I then ac- cepted the job, but would not stay that night. I reported die next night promptly at the given time, nine o'clock. The streets were crowded with men. Police were always in sight, never less than two together, which guaranteed the safety of all concerned. Lights of all colors were glittering and glaring. Music was pouring into the streets from every house. Women were standing in the doorways, singing or chanting some kind of blues some very happy, some very sad, some with the desire to end it all by poison, some planning a big outing, a dance, or some other Mnd of enjoyment. Some were real ladies in spite of their downfall and some were habitual drunkards and some were dope fiends as follows, opium, heroin, cocaine, laudanum, morphine, etcetera. I was person- ally sent to Chinatown many times with a sealed note and a small amount of money and would bring back several cards of hop. There was no slipping and dodging. All you had to do was walk in to be served. The girls liked their young professor and they worked the customers for big tips for me. I began to make more money than I had ever heard of in my life. I bought a new suit and a hat with the emblem Stetson in it and a pair of St. Louis Flats that turned up, I'm telling you the truth, nearly to my ankles. I was wearing these clothes on my way home to work one Sunday morning when I met my great-grandmother coining from early mass. She looked at me and, I'm telling you, this Mimi Pechet could look a hole right through a door. "Have a good job now, Ferd? Making plenty money?" Being very, very young and foolish, I told her what I was making. My grandmother gave me that Frenchman look and said to me in French, "Your mother is gone and can't help her little girls now, She left Amede and Mimi to their old grand- mother to raise as good girls. A musician is nothing but a bum 26 LOUISIANA TOWN and a scalawag. I don't want you round your sisters. I reckon you better move." My grandmother said all this and then she walked up the path to the white columns of the front porch, went inside, and shut the door. INTERLUDE ONE The boy stood at the gate, hearing the cold snap of the lock inside the door and staring at the pleasant house of Ms childhood. The early morning sunlight gleamed on the white clapboard walls and there, among the little gray railroad cot- tages of Frenchman Street, his old home looked very fine. In his mind it became a mansion with fluted columns and a noble broad gallery, a mansion that hid the real storey-and-a-half house with its narrow porch and its small square columns, For young Ferdinand Morton the door had closed upon the 27 28 INTERLUDE ONE secure, secret, and confined Creole family life. The beauty and glory of this life (indeed, for an American Negro, it was a com- paratively rich one) were forever lost to him. Already an orphan, he became a wanderer, searching for a golden world that existed only in the memories and prejudices of respectable old Creole ladies like his grandmother. He turned and walked away down the sunny street, the poison of Mimfs words entering and taking hold of his heart. She had judged him a danger to his sisters, a threat to the family reputation, and unworthy of the name of a Pechet, a Monette or a La Menthe. Her rejection wakened an unquench- able ambition and drive in the boy. "One of the best junior pianists in the city of New Orleans" would now be the king of ivories, glorifying a new name. Shut out of the warm heart of Creole New Orleans, he would bring the whole world close to the fire of New Orleans music. In the end he would have a respectable Creole girl, whom he would guard as jealously as Mimi watched his sisters. This moment of fantasy prepared the way for later, almost paranoid, feelings of self-love and persecution. Defeated by his family respectability, Morton would never again admit that he had been bested in anything; his epic self-praise antago- nized even his admirers. He met the whole world, including those who loved him best, with a diamond-encrusted and de- fiant smile. Back of this smile were hidden the shame and sor- row of his childhood; these were secrets too painful for him to recall, but along the narrow streets of New Orleans they are still whisperedthey are still to be discovered in bits and fragments during an afternoon of casual Creole gossip. . . . The streets of the Seventh and Eighth Wards-the "best" part of what Jelly calls "Downtown" (actually, the district lies to the west and north of the French Quarter and the Old Cemetery above Claiborne Avenue) have changed little since Jelly Roll rode with the Broadway Swells. La Harpe, Tonti, Rocheblave, Ursuline, Durbigny, St. Antoine all are dusty and quiet with a diminutive grocery and a small neighborhood bar The Family 9 on nearly every corner. These little establishments are flanked by rows of one-storey houses, each joined to its neighbor and abutting directly on the sidewalk. Most of these little houses are unpainted and have grown gray with years of weathering. The two front windows are almost always shuttered and the front door is likewise hooded with shutters. At first one feels lonely there, shut in by this blind and shuttered gray wall. Then delicate strokes of fancy and love begin to stand out, silver against gray. The wooden stoops bear worn hollows for familiar feet. The lintels above the doorways are strung with faded gray pearls. Up along the cornices of the single gables the eye follows the pleasant and rather silly music of scrolls and flowers and acan- thus leaves sawn into the wood. Below, at the level of the side- walk, the shallow cellars breathe street air through delicate medallions of wrought iron. Each house is slightly different in such details and, as one notices these tracings of old-time craftsmen, the blocks of humble and narrow houses take on a distinguished look decorous rows of weatherbeaten and im- poverished old ladies of good family, wearing stained lace fichus and bending with age toward the dusty street. The house on St. Antoine Street, where Jelly Roll's sister lived, leaned gently against its neighbors, but indoors, behind the shutters, where the air was cool and the light was dim, the parlor still had a certain elegance. Amede Colas was neither faded nor decadent. Her smile was warmer than Jelly Roll's and in repose her face was not withdrawn and cold like his, but tender and animated. What secrets belonged to this lady, she enjoyed. She busied about the high-ceilinged room, turning up the lights to show off the family portraits. "Thais my daughter who lives in California, Mister Lomax. She could pass any time she want to but she think too well of herself," Amede said with no irony intended. "My girl look like Mama and Mimi yon- der/' Among the three handsome octoroons in the tinted en- largements on the wall it was quite easy to pick out Mimi the 30 INTERLUDE ONE strong-minded fine old French lady with a determined mouth and a big twist of hair high up, "What eyes she had/'* Amede laughed. "She never had to tell us to do anything. Just open her eyes at us and we'd move. See, when my Mama died we went to live with grandmother Mimi. My real mother I don't even remember . . . You could say the same thing about Jelly ... I hardly knew him. When he left New Orleans, we were just kids and we didn't hear no more from him until 1917 when he wrote and sent us money/' Jelly hadn't spoken about sending money. "He was a won- derful brother," Amede explained. "Do you know he sent me something almost every week for years? It was a holiday in this little family when his letters arrived sometimes with twenty- five and thirty-five dollars whatever he could send, if it was only five. Jelly never told us if he had any hard times, but we would know from the amount of money. Just a week before he died he sent ten dollars, and never even told us he was sick. He didn't have to do that, but he knew I had a husband . . . see, M. Colas has been sick along, not able to work so much. . . " From the bedroom that opened on the front parlor came an apologetic coughing and in shambled M. Colas, wearing his paint-spattered carpenter's overalls. He looked for all the world like a white crane out of a bayou tall and stooped, the hollows of his cheeks and temples showing dark against silvery skin, and up towards the ceiling a swatch of silvery hair a silver crane with a Cajun accent. "That Ferd. He was a gentleman. You know? Sho he was." Tuberculosis has so deepened and softened his voice that M. Colas habitually wags his big, saw-marked forefinger for em- phasis. "When he heard about me, he sent me clothes shirts, suits, socks, everything. One time he sent five overcoats, brand new. Ten pairs of shoes, the very best. Ferd would wear his things a couple of times and buy new and send me the old. I didn't have to buy anything for years. He was a man. He un- derstood I had it hard because of my chest. . . ." The Family 31 Colas stared into my face with a frank, country look, then dropped his eyes to the cigarette he was rolling in his big hands. Amede seemed a little pained by him, a little embar- rassed, and yet every gesture of her wami brown face showed her pride in having caught this tall, soft-voiced Cajun from the western parishes. Sometime later on, when she was out of the room, old Colas chuckled over the days when he had been something of a rounder, "You know what she told the woman who come to her with gossip about me? She toF that woman, "Well, it's a mighty po' rat ain't got but one hole!' " We were still laughing when Amede returned. "I called up Uncle Henry and invited him over/' she said. "He's my mama's oldest brother and he can tell you everything about our family. Uncle Henry is awful old, but he gets around, he really gets around." She threw back her head and laughed a liquid, joy-swollen laugh that swept Colas and myself a couple of inhibited crackers along with it. Presently Uncle Henry popped into the door, like Uncle Rat of the ballad, twitching a Velasquez moustache. Spare, trim, quick, with a hawk-like Roman nose and parchment skin, he was the little Mediterranean gentleman who spread Roman law, wine-drinking, and gallantry to the ends of the earth. Uncle Henry was the kind of a feisty old bachelor who would never take his hat off except in church, yet so dignified that the diamond on his finger somehow matched his faded blue work clothes. Here was the proper family chronicler for Mister Jelly Roll. "I have just attained my seventy-fifth birthday/* said Henry, with comic solemnity, eyes as sharp upon me as if I had been State's Prosecutor, "Rut don't think those boys can get rowdy in my barroom. I handle urn. And some of those guys as tall as the trees they grow in Mississippi . . . feel my strength/* He proferred his arm and his stringy old man's muscle. "The Pechet familylook at me, I'm a Pechet, but old Mimi there, she was "bom Felicie Raudoin. She married in with us Pierre Pechet, a cigar manufacturer and a real Creole. What 32 INTERLUDE ONE I mean by real Creole, lie was French and Spanish and spoke both languages. Like me. I change languages as I change clothes French, Spanish, Italian, English, and back again. , . . "Old Pierre, my grandfather, wasn't never rich, but he was well educated and a man, too. Knocked out two sets of twins among his ten children. Five lived to be men and women and five died. . . ." "I thought hees name was fimile," * Amede remarked. "No, no, Smile was old Pierre's sonhis only son, and a cigarmaker, too," Henry said rolling a cigarette in his clawlike fingers and then passing the makings on to M. Colas, "fimile was the boy and the rest was daughters. That cause old lady Mimi to have to work out. You remember she used to cook for 'the Solaris out on Palmer's Avenue?" "Me remember?" Amede began to giggle. "Times I used to stay out at Solaris! Mimi, she used to tell us, if you want to stay out here with these fine folks and all their money you got to act decent. Mimi was strict, strict! And those Solaris thought a lot of her, used to take her along when they went traveling to The Hague, Paris, Germany, and all them places." (The bitterest hatreds are those of servants for their masters, and the most pitiable pretensions and the fantasies belong to children of servants. Jelly's "rich" grandmother traveled around the world as a ladies' maid. ) Old Henry struck the right note. "Ours was a highly- thought-of family, because Mimi was strict and all her daugh- ters the same. My mama, Laura, was just like Mimi and she married well. Good blood on both sides of the family. My daddy, Julien Monette ** he was a tailor by trade got elected state senator in 1868. Yes, Papa was a big politician (a big racketeer like all these politicians, I reckon) but in his days, he was known. Then he left New Orleans and died of yellow fever in Panama, working on the canal job." * Henry's statement shows that both Jelly Roll and his sister had confused Emile and Pierre. ** Not Henri, as Jelly remembered the name. The Family gg "Well, that's all news to me/' said Amede. "It all happened before I went to live in the Monette home/* "You keep talking about the Monette home! It wasn't ours/' Uncle Henry said. "We rent it so long, everybody think it be* long to us. ... Don't look at me, Amede. This young man want the facts and I ain't gonna lie/ 5 Amede looked embarrassed. "My people never told us chil- dren nothing" she said. "I barely know anything about my own father and mother/' "Well, honey, 111 tell you one thing," said old Henry. "Your mama was a very pretty womannot as pretty as I am because I favor the Pechets but she was handsome, had hair hanging down to her waist, always very gay dispositioned. And I thought she was smart till I found out who she was gonna many." "You mean Ed La Menthe?" said Colas. "That's who, F. P. La Menthe-Jelly Roll Morton s father-a nice-Iookin' light brown-skin Creole, but wild/' Old Henry wagged his head, "Very wild/' "Ed had himself a good living too/* Colas sighed. "Carpen- ter, demolished buildings, and owned a couple of properties, but he was a f ourflusher/* "Sho he was. Do you remember how him and Paul went to Haiti in the big war? Government interpreters. Interpreted so much government money they landed in the pen/' old Henry chuckled. "Is that why Mama left him?" Amede asked. "No, BO, honey," said old Henry. "She left him long before. Louise taken it from Ed till it came up to here." Henry made a vivid gesture across his throat. "And then she threw it off. Ferd was just a kid then. . . /' There was a pause while old Henry squinted back at the past through the curling cigarette smoke, remembering big- timing Ed La Menthe. How close-mouthed Jelly had been about his father! "You couldn't dislike that Ed/' said Henry, half to himself. 34 INTERLUDE ONE "Ed enjoyed himself, he always did. Went to the French Opera House all the time and loved music, loved music. , . ," He slapped his narrow thigh. "Why, that's it, that's it. It just came back to me!" "Hey, old man, what you talking about?" from Colas. "That's where the music came into this boy. Listen Ed La Menthe was a trambone player! Played a slidin trambone! I didn't think of that. Why, I danced to his music many and many an old time." Old Henry laughed with excitement. "That's where Jelly got his music. Ed could cooperate pretty well In a band. Slidin tranibone, too, at that , . . T This was a real discovery. Jelly Roll had mentioned playing trombone occasionally but the influence of his father ran deeper. Obsessively, in almost every line of his compositions, Jelly Roll wrote base figures in tailgate style and sonorous, bursting melodies; trombone phrasing is the Jelly Roll trade- mark . . . _. Jr; 5 (* / fc rm MM dA - f=fT So the man who hardly mentioned his father in conversation never stopped talking about him in his music. Certainly he must have heard the worst of Ed La Menthe. Certainly he was ashamed of him and felt terribly rejected by him. Jelly even claimed to have been "a foundling raised in an orphan's home;" yet, in a sense, his whole career the gambling, the sporty The Family 35 clothes, the fondness for notoriety, and especially the music in eveiy line of which one can find the voice of the "slidln tram- bone" was a search for his lost father and a triumph over *n?ut before I took him over he hadn't never been on a bandstand. . . ." Right from the start, then, Jelly had "played possum" on new jobs. Louis deLisle Nelson knew little about Jelly Roll and cared less. He went on to talk about himself. His father was from one of the up-country parishes, marching to New Orleans with the Yankees, and adopting the name Nelson from his first employer. Louis had worked in the family butcher shop until he was fif- teen, but early had "started fooling with my daddy's cor- . jun. . . . "I come to be thirteen years old and I should have already made my Confirmation/* Louis said, "But I had more music in my head than catechism. Music caused me to miss my Con- firmation at eleven and then at twelve. At last, the priest tell my mama, say, "That boy's gettin too big. He's got to be Con- firmed!' So I went to studyin my catechism and at fifteen I made it. "My sister sent me to Professor Nickerson * to study violin, but after four or five months, I got disgusted: I was paying a dollar a lesson and he just had me holding the violin hadn't let me puU the bow across the strings one time! I told my sister, say, *Shuh, no use to pay out that money. I ain't learning * The same teacher Jelly Roll mentioned. The Boys in the Bands 89 a thing.' But that's the way it was in my time among us Creoles. You had to take lessons before you could touch your instru- ment. "Downtown here, the Creole people are slow. Maybe they depend a little too much on their pride. Don't mix with every- body. Don't trust everybody. They always in for society. But we had better quality musicians down here. Mostly note read- ers. In the best bands, they was Downtown here with us. The American section it was Robechaux's and he use mostly Downtown men. . . . "Uptown, in the American part, other side of Canal Street, the people had different way. They worked in white folks' houses or down along the river. They were more sociable and more like entertainers. They played more rougher, more head music, more blues. . . . The blues? Ain't no first blues. The blues always been. Blues is what cause the fellows to start jazzing/' Louis' ironic speech, his dark skin, his short tight-napped hair, showed a strong African heritage. Probably the Creoles. of the Seventh Ward never completely accepted him. Poor, dark and declasse, Louis understood the blues and felt at home with the Uptown musicians he met in Storyville. "The sporting district come to have all the best musicians because die pay was every night. Just take the comer of Iber- ville and Franklin four saloons on the four comers the 25's, 28, The Pig Ankle, and Shoto's. Those places had eight bands amongst them. Four on day and four on night. And they changed bands like you change underclothes. "It was lively round there. In 25's they had a ham hanging from the chandelier about six feet up. Any woman could kick that ham, she could take it home. I've seen many a one crack their butts trying, but they didn't mind and we sure didn't mind seeing their legs. Very often they got the ham, because they used to have a high-kicking bunch around this old town." Old Louis almost smiled. "Me, I went in the District when I was fifteen and I teH you 90 INTERLUDE TWO how it come about, I was carrying my violin and when the cops stopped me I told them I was taking the fiddle to my daddy. So I pass right on. Charley Payton's * band was play- ing at 25's. I stop and listen. "Jesus, that man could make some pretty music. He wasn't no humbug musician. He come from Alabama, made and played all the string instruments. He'd holler 'follow me' and his bunch would rip out one of those old quadrilles which in- duce so much lively jazz. And he could play the Anniversary Song so the tears would run right out of your eyes. "Well, I stood there and listen at Payton on that corjun. He say, 'Come in, son/ but I was afraid and I told him, *I ain't comin in, but I can play the corjun you got/ He say, 'Come on in and try her/ That way he entice me in. I couldn't make it on that corjun the first time, but I kept comin back till I got so I could fool with it. One of them old musicians passed me off as his son, used to tell the cops, ^That's my boy/ "Pretty soon I had me a job with Payton he was the man brought Bolden in there, too. I learned clarinet from Papa Tio's son, Lorenzo, and I played on in the District till they closed it down in 1916, played with every band you ever heard of and some you haven't. ** 'Course, my people didn't know what I was doing till I was making too much money for them to stop me. They needed me to bring home that money. My papa hadn't been doing so well in his butcher trade. He was just holding on, and we were right poor. I felt like helping him out, because Papa had always been good to me. He hadn't never told me to leave my music and look for a trade. So they never ask me where the money came from and I never told them much." "Some of our Creole boys didn't have my opportunity; their families wouldn't stand for them in the District. Take Manuel Perez one of the toughest comets we ever had, a sight reader and a horse for work well, his people was very, very up to the minute, running back and forth to the church. A little bit of * Jelly mentions Payton as one of the pioneer "bad bands/ 9 The Boys in the Bands 91 this is a sin and a little bit of that is a sinthey'd have died if they'd heard of him being in the District. "See, all kind of people come through those joints iong- shoremens, roustabouts, cowboys, Yankees, and every kind of woman in the world. I seen plenty of knife-and-pistol play. Killings was a common affair, and in 1900 I seen a mass MUing that Robert Charles riot. I remember that night too well. It cause me to dig down deeper in my music more so yet. , . . "Robert Charles got away, but they had his friend in the parish prison. When the jailer refuse to give him up to the mob, the mob said they was going down round 25's and kill all the Negroes. "So a woman came in 25's and told us, 'If I was you, Td knock off tonight!' Lord, I've wished many times I had gone home to warn my people, like I wanted to, but Payton, he was an unbeliever. He told me, *Aah, we never had nothing like that in New Orleans yet and it won't happen tonight.' Then he stomped off the next tune and we kept playing. "When they came I reckon it was an hour later we didn't know how they got there. We heard shooting. Me, I was sitting at the inside end of the bandstand, playing bass. Al them boys flung themselves on me in gitting away from the door and out toward the back. The bass was bust to kindling and I sailed clear across the back of the room, so many of them hit me so hard all at once. "We made it out the window of the gambling house into the alley in back but, man, that alley was already loaded with folks. Me and Bolden and Gipson was together. We thought Josie Arlington might let us through her house into Basin Street. When she saw who we was, she slammed the door, locked it, and start to screaming. So we cut on through the lot next door, made it over the fence and on down Basin. Not one of us had a shirt on him by then and Bolden had left his watch hanging on the wall near the bandstand. We might have been assassinated, but we was lucky enough to get to a friend's house. We locked ourselves in and barred the doors. 92 INTERLUDE TWO "How many they killed that night never has been told, but it was many a one. They claim the police was trying to stop the mob, but fact was the police were worse than the others. These rebels, my boy, are different . . . I The national guard, nothing but a bunch of kids. When the mob came this way, they run the other. This thing went on about two days, until old man Baldwin own the hardware store told them he was going to arm the colored and that word stop them cold. "Next day I found out my daddy was missing. Somebody said I*d better go on down to the hospital it was full of folks all crippled and shot up. One of the sisters there told me a man had been brought in at two A.M. in very bad condition and had died about sun-up. Nobody knew him. When they showed him to me, I knew him. It was my daddy. They had snatched him off his meat-wagon down at the French market and killed him. "Was I angry about it? Well, sure, sure I was. But what could I do?" Old Nelson made a sweeping gesture with his hands, palms up. "It just wash away. It all just wash away." He sighed, "Couple of days after my daddy was killed, I was back there at 25's playing harder than ever/* Louis paused and then half to himself, "They claims Fm the first hot clarinet." "The first hot clarinet" went on to confirm Jelly's analysis of jazz, in fact Louis stated his theory of syncopation, harmony, and tempo in almost the same words that Jelly had used. Yet there was a profound difference in emphasis that corresponded exactly to their contrasting feeling about the Robert Charles riot Jelly thought like a mulatto, Louis like a black. "Jazz," said old Louis, "Jazz is all head music/' He raised himself up on his elbows to get a better purchase on his re- marks. "Some player don't know a note as big as this house, he have an idea he don't know it Mnda sound a little good to him and somebody takes a fancy to that idea and writes it down. That's how riffs come about. You must handle your tone. The Boys in the Bands 93 Happen sometime you can put some whining in the blowing of your instrument There are a whole lot of different sounds you can shove in such as crying everywhere you get the chance. But you gotta do that with a certain measurement and not opposed to the harmony. Don't play Mice you're at no funeral/' Keep a lively tempo but "shove in crying wherever you get the chance." Then your listeners can dance and feel the tears behind. This is the master formula of jazz mulatto know- ingness ripened by black sorrow. Perhaps Nelson began this "whining" through instruments. At any rate the singing through the reeds and brasses the instrumental imitation of the marvelous techniques of Afro-American folksong this is a principal innovation of New Orleans jazzmen, responsible for a new array of orchestral sounds that has traveled everywhere with jazz, opening broad new musical horizons. "That ain't all there is to it/ 7 said Louis. "No, that ain't all." He seemed to have run out of words. He plucked nervously at the covers, pulling them up to the neck of his heavy winter underwear. At last he said, not looking at me, "YouVe got to play with the heart. Picou, he come before me, he's a good enough musician, but they" referring to the note-musicians who had taught him and to all the Uptown folks "They don't play with the heart. . . ." He looked sick and old. Alone and sick. Yet the heart of this man had warmed ten thousand, thousand nights for all the world. "Do you know Sidney?" he suddenly asked, with a smile that had become really warm, as anyone who has ever heard Sidney Bechet blow sunshine out of his horn would have smiled. "Sidney,'' said Louis, as if this explained every- thing. "He wouldn't learn notes, but he was my best scholar. The son-of-a-gun was gifted. Man, he ran away with that thing, playing from his heart. . . ." Mulatto to black, black to mulatto-mulatto Tio to Nelson, Nelson (a bkck by inspiration) to mulatto Bechet: this was the chain reaction that at last exploded into jazz. A new gen- 94 INTERLUDE TWO eration of jazzmen suddenly appeared, blessed with the gifts of both. Uptown and Downtown, and playing it all "with heart/' The golden boy of this golden generation, in the minds of New Orleans Creoles, was their own boy, Sidney Bechet "Sidney, 9 * said one ancient, "had a clarinet all wrapped around with rubber bands, and when he'd begin to play the roaches would all run out of itbut that little devil, just about twelve years old, he could outplay Freddie Keppard!" "I used to see Sidney around Piron's barbershop," said an- other. "Now, Piron had a house full of every kind of instru- ment. So this little boy, he come in one day and pick up the flute, "What is that?' he ask Piron. That is a flute, Sidney/ Piron tell him. So Sidney start right in playing it. Show Piron what is a flute. Put that down. Walk over and pick up a saxo- phone and say, 'What is that?" 'That's a new something they call a saxophone, son.' Well, it look like a pipe to me, I see if this pipe will make a tune/ And be damn if he didn't start mak- ing the thing just talk!" Jelly Roll, too, was such a "natural," but he was a waif who laid cold plans to conquer the world with "original ideas,* 3 " whereas Bechet, whose family loved and protected him, wanted only to sing to people: perhaps the difference between the music of these two great Creole jazzmen may be so explained. At any rate, Sidney Bechet's story, as Doctor Bechet, his brother tells it, bears upon Jelly's history because it shows the final blending of Uptown and Downtown and the unabashed emotional flowering of jazz in Sidney's playing. It is always a hard thing to have a genius right in the family. Dr. Leonard Bechet certainly loves his brother, Sidney, with all his heart (and this heart seems to be as generous as the Missis- sippi), but he still speaks about this prodigious younger brother with considerable nervousness. *. . . It's like I tell you, I think I could have become a fine musician if I had only kept on," Dr. Bechet began somewhere in the middle of a thought. "I took trambone lessons, but then The Boys in the Bands q~ I got so busy with my inlay work and being a voluntary proba- tion officer, you understand . . ." the doctor s voice trailed off. "See, my brother Sidney used to hide his schoolbooks when he was real little and go off and play flute. I never knew he was playing, you understand? And at that time I had a clarinet and I put it up on the araioire, because I wanted to give it to him when 1 was ready. I asked my mother did Sidney touch it and she say he did. So I ask him to show me what he could play. He sound pretty good. "So from then on, Sidney started and I couldn't keep up with him. Sometime I'd look at him and I'd imagine the shape of his mouth just fit the clarinet. Sidney gets everything so easy, you understand?" Dr. Bechet had to wipe his eyes before he could continue. 'We had a fine clarinet player, George Baquet,* who taken a great liking to Sidney and showed him a few little tricks on the clarinet And sometimes, when Baquet wanted to lay off, he used to come and speak to my mother and ask could he take Sidney to play in his place for the evening. "Well, you know, we were very poor. My father had a little shoe shop one time. Then afterwards he got into a little restau- rant and that didn't do so well, so he had to come back with the shoes. Then he did achieve a job in the Mint nothing so big but anyhow he worked there a while. " "He was a Republican and liked politics and helped or- ganize the Citizens League. He had selected friends and he liked to spend a quiet evening with them, playing his flute. He encouraged Sidney in music, but when he thought we kids done wrong, he ? d be a little rough. Grab a shoe strap and beat you almost anyhow. My mother used to intercede because she was very soft-hearted, and she'd talk to Sidney, "My dear child, this, and dear child, that/ "Now, in our family we kept ourselves nice and always be at home, not running around. We didn't want to jeopardize our * George Baquet, Creole, whom Jelly Roll calls "the first jazz clarinet." 96 INTERLUDE TWO family by mixing with the rough element. We worried a lot about Sidney, when he'd be out playing. "So, when Baquet would come for Sidney, mother would insist that he be sure to bring the boy back and not lose him. Baquet would promise and he*d generally bring him back about two in the morning. Sidney would bring money home to mother and tell her don't worry, he was all right. Of course, she'd be worried, but, naturally she would feel, 'Well, that's one time. That's over until the next time come.' "After I found out other men were so interested in his playing abilities, I hurried and organized a band to keep Sid- ney. Called it the Silver Bel Band. One time we invited Bunk Johnson to play with the Silver Bell, and first thing you know, it was hard to keep Sidney with us. See, Bunk needed a clarinet for the Eagle Band, and so he enticed Sidney with him and that's how the Eagle Band broke into the Silver Bell. "Now Bunk Johnson was one of them kind rough and ready. You understand?" The Doctor paused, embarrassed at what he was thinking. He went on apologetically. "Fellows like that, they used to drink a whole lot and we didn't like Sidney being out with them so much, those rough fellows, like Big Eye Louis Nelson and Jimmy Noone. . . r ( Old Big Eye had said, "We never could keep our hands on that Sidney. Regular little devil, always running off down the alley after them little womens.") "Louis and them played that low-down type of music, when us Creole musicians always did hold up a nice prestige, you understand, demanded respect among the people, because we played nice music. So we didn't like Sidney playing with them. "The pimp they call Clark Wade, he liked Sidney's music and he bought him fancy clothes. Sidney began to spread out and feel big, because he used to have a bunch of fans that followed him to know where he was going to play. Many nights he wouldn't sleep home. Then he quit school. "So, you know, I had become a voluntary truant officer, not for pay, but doing what I could in a way to help make things The Boys in the Bands 97 run much better you understand? helping people and little kids that goes wrong. Weil, I went and saw Captain Pierce and explained I wanted them to put Sidney away in a home or something. "I told Sidney one morning I was going to take him to work, had a job for him. I had mother fix him a nice big sandwich and we started out. When we got close to the Juvenile Court building, he began to walk kind of unwilling-like. I walked close to him to see he didn't run away and he went up before the captain. "The Captain said, Oh, that's the boy you have the com- plaint against.* "I said, Yes/ " 'Sonny, why don't you stay home?' "Sidney start to tell him about his music and the Captain say, 1 would not advise you to let him stay out all night, especially in the District.' "Sidney told him about how he always goes with some man. Captain Pierce say, Well, I want you to do this. Listen to your brother. Go to school. You can go ahead and play music. But try and stay in school. . , . Leonard, it's no use to discour- age this boy. He's got some talent. But try to keep him in school/ "I try to explain this to Sidney, naturally, but not long after, some people come and ask him and my brother, Joseph, to go in a band to Texas. So they went and., Sidney being a better musician, they picked him out and kept him and he went away with them. From that on, he continued going, going. I reckon I never seen my brother for something like twenty-seven years. . . " The boy, Sidney, left New Orleans behind him when he was fourteen, carrying with him all the richness and fire of the pure jazz tradition, unstained by the mire of Storyville and untouched by the conflicts that disturbed other jazzmen. Fol- lowing his own sweet-singing reed, he wandered across Amer- ica, astonished New York, charmed Paris, toured Russia, en- 98 INTERLUDE TWO riclied a Berlin cabaret, pursuing his star and ripening into one of the notable virtuosos of our time the poet of jazz. Today this quiet, gray-haired man plays with the passion of a young man in love with love and life, lending the clear gold of New Orleans style to popular ballads or improvising new melodies in the Creole idiom. His brother, Dr. Bechet, after twenty- seven years, is still astonished at Sidney's talent. "Baquet and all them helped my brother/' he said. "But Sidney was just naturally gifted. He was an entertainment all by himself. Folks used to say, 'Who is that playing yonder? 5 And it was Sidney doing all lands of things with the clarinet to soothe himself, playing over whatever his mind was saying/' The Doctor broke off and looked at me with his warm and agonized smile. "Now 111 tell you," he said, suddenly casting aside Creole prejudice," a person have to go through all that rough stuff like Sidney went through to play music like him. You have to play with all varieties of people. Some of the Creole musicians didn't like the idea of mixing up with the well, with the rougher class, and so they never went too far. You see, Picou Picou's a very good clarinet, but he ain't hot. That's because he wouldn't mix so much. "You have to play real hard when you play for Negroes. You got to go some, if you want to avoid their criticism. You got to come up to their mark, you understand? If you do, you get that drive. Bolden had it. Bunk had it. Manuel Perez, the best ragtime Creole trumpet, he didn't have it. "See, thees hot people they play like they killing themselves, you understand? That's the kind of effort that Louis Armstrong and Freddy Keppard put in there. If you want to hit the high notes those boys hit, brother, you got to work for that. Of course, Sidney puts it in with ease, but Sidney's different from all the rest." (Jelly Roll also "put it in with ease." He liked to play with other musicians who could put it in with ease. ) "Now, 111 tell you another thing," Dr. Bechet concluded. "When the settled Creole folks first heard this jazz, they passed The Boys in the Bands 99 the opinion that it sounded like the rough Negro element. In other words, they had the same kind of feeling that some white people have, who don't understand jazz and don't want to un- derstand it. But, after they heard it so long, they began to creep right close to it and enjoy it, That's why I think this jazz music helps to get this misunderstanding between the races straightened out. You creep in close to hear the music and, automatically, you creep close to the other people. You know?" Hot blasts from black Bolden's horn and searing arpeggios from light Tio's clarinet burned away the false metal of caste prejudices and fused tan knowledge with black inspiration. These groups had been separated since their revolutionary re- construction days, but the attraction between black people and mulatto was too strong for the dividing lines. When they met again, surmounting age-old fears and prejudices to do so, a flame leapt high into the muggy heavens above Storyville, a flame and a feeling that has made the music of New Orleans important to America and to the world. Perhaps nothing in human history has spread across the earth so far, so fast, as this New Orleans music. Thirty years after its genesis it was as popular and understandable in New York, Paris, Prague, and Shanghai as in its own hometown. Of course, the phonograph record and other means of rapid communication assisted in the diffusion of jazz, but this cannot explain its triumph over other forms of music, which were also broadcast and recorded. The worldwide impact of an expand- ing American economy undoubtedly lent great (though at times dubious) glamour to jazz in international circles. This, however, would not explain its triumph in America, where the plebeian origins of jazz were familiar to everyone. Jazz is sen- sual and jazz is African, but so are many other available musical styles which have never gained such widespread acceptance. These were all contributing factors but leave the central mys- tery unaccounted for. Jazz became many things frenetic, destructive, hysterical, decadent, venal, alcoholic, saccharine, Lombardish, vapid it 100 INTERLUDE TWO has enriched stuffed bellies; it has corrupted the innocent; it has betrayed and it has traduced; but, everywhere and in all its forms, something jazz acquired at the moment of its origin has profoundly touched all its hearers. What was this thing that set folks dancing and smiling from the slums of New Orleans to all the capitals of the earth? "We had all nations in New Orleans/' said Jelly Roll; "But with the music we could creep in close to other people/' adds Dr. Bechet . . . Jazz was the hybrid of hybrids and so it ap- pealed to a nation of lonely immigrants. In a divided world struggling blindly toward unity, it became a cosmopolitan musical argot. This new musical language owes its emotional power to the human triumph accomplished at the moment of its origin in New Orleans a moment of cultural ecstasy. Two neighborhoods, disjoined by all the sordid fears of our time, were forced to make a common cause. This musical union demanded that there be not merely acceptance and under- standing, but respect and love on both sides. In this moment of ecstasy an interracial marriage was consummated, and the child of this union still jumps for joy wherever jazz is hot. Perhaps it is so wherever peoples share their treasures and a truly fresh stream of culture begins to flow. Such moments of cultural ecstasy may occur prior to all great cultural move- ments just as seeding precedes birth. That this Hack and tan wedding took place in the streets of Storyville, streets thronging with pimps, chippies, rotten police, and Babbitts on a binge, may forever have stained this other- wise lusty and life-giving proletarian art. As Jelly and the others have indicated, Storyville involved all the musicians in its principal trade. It made them guilty on the very score their families so feared dragging the family name in the gutter. Yet there was a toughness in jazz that laughed at all that, the toughness of black-skinned Americans like Bolden and Bunk Johnson who would Toll themselves playing so hard." These black Americans had no music lessons, no family name and no The Boys in the Bands 101 stable community life to support them. They were orphaned by the color of their skins. If they became professional musi- cians, it was only by virtue of exceptional talent and drive, "You got to go some to play for Negroes/' said Bechet. . . , Johnny St. Cyr, Jelly Rolfs favorite guitarist, belonged to this group even though he had Creole blood. "A man around my color Just didn't score with the Creoles,** he said. Besides, St. Cyr's widowed seamstress mother raised her family in the slums "back of town." At fourteen Johnny "took up the plaster- ing trade" and began to play guitar on the side. Years later in Chicago he became the star guitarist of hot music, recording with Armstrong, Morton, Oliver and all the best bands. De- pression brought him back to New Orleans and Ms old trade of plastering. In the normal course of things, he still plays weekend dances and runs a spare-time auto-wrecking business. A big, rangy, philosophical working-stiff, he has his own views on jazz: "A jazz musician have to be a working class of man, out in the open all the time, healthy and strong. That's what's wrong today; these new guys haven't got the force. They don't like to play all night; they don't think they can play unless they're loaded. But a working man have the power to play hot- whiskey or no whiskey. You see, the average working man is very musical Playing music for him is just relaxing. He gets as much kick out of playing as the other folks get out of dancing.' 7 (Here St. Cyr has clearly stated the African feeling about music music as a source of energy, rather than a demand for it. ) "The more enthusiastic his audience is, why, the more spirit the working man's got to play. And with your natural feelings that way, you never make the same thing twice. Every time you play a tune, new ideas come to mind and you slip that on in." St. Cyrs credo brought back the beautiful lines of Jim Rob- inson, black New Orleans trombonist . . . "If everyone is in a frisky spirit, the spirit gets to me and I can make my trombone 102 INTERLUDE TWO sing. I always want people around me. It gives me a warm heart and that gets into my music . . /* Yes, here was the African tradition speaking music as a release of vital energy in repeated rhythmic figures which call for an infinity of variation. Music for the blacks was not pri- marily an avenue of self-advancement, as with the Creoles, but, first of all, sheer, unadulterated joy. "As the saying goes/' Johnny St. Cyr said in his warm, velvety voice, "Back in those days we didn't make a lot of money, but we had a lot of fun." Johnny went on to develop his theory of jazz and it was quite apparent that he agreed with Jelly Roll on every import- ant point. What Jelly Roll had said was New Orleans jazz theory. "In New Orleans we had a system of playing, so as to get all the sweetness out of the music. We play the first theme mezzo- forte, tie second very soft, and the last time we play the sec- ond theme, everybody gets hot." (Exactly the plan of Jelly's records.) "Them times you had to toe the mark. Whatever you did had to be good. No off-key playing. You had to keep within the boundaries of the melody, but our old heads had great ability to beautify a number. "We had our own way of doing. When we'd buy the regular stock arrangements, we would familiarize ourselves with the melody and then add what we wanted till we sounded like we had special orchestrations. Then we'd cut off the names at the top of the music in order to throw everybody off scent. It used to make the music publishers so mad they wanted to tear up the sidewalk. But what could they do ... ?" Johnny's laugh rattled the windows. Black and tan musicians were driving the music publishers crazy, as they pooled their ideas and played them hot, but at the personal level, old prejudices operated. ... "I guess the most popular trumpet player with tie mulatto race was Kep- pard." Said Johnny, "He was brown-skin man, light-brown, but, when you come darker than Keppard, you didn't score with the mulattoes at all. They wouldn't invite us to none of The Boys in the Bands 103 their entertainments; they just wouldn't affiliate with dark people. Wouldn't intermarry. They were actually more preju- diced than many white people back in that time." "Maybe you don't believe that/' said Johnny sincerely, "But it's true. There were mixed neighborhoods of colored and white where we all got along just like one race of people. The white lady and her husband next door used to set on the steps of our house and talk to my mother and stepfather. I even had a cousin married to a white woman and had two children by her. It wasn't until 1902 they began that segregation outfit; then it got so bad around here it made a fellow want to go North if he had the chance." Jelly Roll had preferred to remember New Orleans in the days before "they began that segregation outfit," yet he had left town earlier and younger than almost any of the other jazzmen. Never once did he mention this problem,, nor did he once refer to his Negro status. His attitude made it impossible to ask him the question that Johnny St. Cyr answered readily. "What about segregation in the Tenderloin District?" I asked. "Was there a Negro section?*' 'There was. Uh-huh." "Was it pretty strictly enforced?" "Yes it was." "A colored man couldn't go to the white houses?" "No. That's right. It was only forced on one way, though. White man could go to Negro houses." "Yeah?" "That's the bad part about the South! Should be, if going to be segregation, be complete segregation." "Tell me, did any colored man you ever know of ever go to these highclass houses?" 'Well, not that I know of none ever frequented those high- class houses." "But that was a privilege some of the musicians had?" "Well, yeah; the musicians had more of an opportunity than anyone else, that is, in the colored race, to go to these houses. 104 INTERLUDE TWO But I don't know that they could go there as guests. If they was a piano player like Jelly Roll Morton or Tony Jackson in there playing, an ordinary musician could go and set side the piano and chat with them, in between numbers. . . " "So those piano players were the boys who frequented those houses the most?" "Yes, they were/ 7 and Johnny went on, "And they made the best money. Nothing but money men come in those highclass houses and they just as soon tip you a five-dollar bill as a dol- lar, if they was in the mood and the music was good. So a piano player knock down around fifteen and eighteen dollars a night and not have to work too hard. They were lone wolves; every penny come in, they kept. That way they made better than us boys in the bands. That was Jelly's class. . . /' Here Jelly Roll, the lone wolf, found his road. Piano keys opened doors into a white world where the other boys in the bands could not follow. This bordello world gave him money and fine clothes and raised him above his brother musicians. His notoriety set him apart from the common musicians of Storyville. The Frenchman's, not 25's, became his hangout. And this was why few of the boys in the bands remembered Jelly Roll in his New Orleans days. "Those fellows you been talking to didn't know Jelly," af- firmed Bunk Johnson, who started working in the District in 1897. "See, Jelly played only in white houses in those days. They couldn't play there. But him and Tony Jackson did. They'd have Tony one night and Jelly the next. Albert Cahill, Freddy Washington, Harrison Ford, and Jimmy Arcey played those places, too. All of them boys always wore fine clothes, had plenty money and plenty diamond rings. "Jelly was one of the best in 1902 and after that," Bunk went on, "Noted more so than Tony Jackson and Albert Cahill because he played the music the whores liked. Tony was dicty. But Jelly would sit there and play that barrelhouse music all night blues and such as that. I know because I played with him in Hattie Rogers sporting-house in 1903. She had a whole The Botjs in the Bands 105 lot of light-colored women in there, best-looking women you ever want to see, strictly for white. . , . Well, I was playing with Frankie Dusen's Eagle Band on Perdido Street and some^ times after I'd knock off at four in the morning Jelly would ask me to come and play with him. . . . He'd play and sing the blues till way up in the day and all them gals would holler, 'Listen at Winding Boy!* "He was really a ladies' man, really stylish. But, even when he dress up, he still look like a kid . . ." * One can almost hear what they said behind the back of this handsome young mulatto, dressed in the best, wearing dia- monds, as he strolled down Iberville Street The jazzmen didn't say it to his face, for Jelly could back his brags with plenty of money, plenty of red-hot piano and, when necessary, a "hard-hitting .38." Still they could hardly love him, for Wind- ing Boy had moved into "higher circles" leaving his fellow jazzmen coldly behind, but carrying with him the music that had cost them so much. This music had all the pretty octoroons calling out, "Here comes Winding Boy!" It won him recognition on Basin Street, a half-world, to be sure, but still a white world, rich and power- filled, where notoriety compensated an orphan for the loss of his family and for the painful memories of his mulatto child- hood. Basin Street seemed a possible avenue of escape from a confining Negro status; at any rate, the Md piano wizard ac- cepted this way of life gambling, prostitution, dope-peddling, pimping without reservations. Fifty years kter he still reveled in his Basin Street memories. Things never again looked quite so rosy. It would have been instructive to chat with some of the "inmates'* of those sporting-houses along Basin Street, but the paint is peeling from those antique sybarites. The windows are boarded up and no one knows the present addresses of Lulu White, Josie Arlington, and the other madams of Jelly's young days. There is a little book, however, which has conserved the feel, the style, the smell, and the lingo of those prim bawds. 106 INTERLUDE TWO The Blue Book, a directory of the tenderloin, printed for the convenience of tourists and on sale at Storyville bars for twenty-five cents, carried ads from every madam of reputation. "Read what this little booklet has to say/' the editor suggests with candor and modesty, "and if you don't get a 2-1 shot it ain't the author's fault." While The Blue Book can no longer guide us directly to guaranteed satisfaction, a few excerpts reveal the purlieu where Jelly Roll got his standards and his purple prose. o operate an establishment where everyone is treated exact is not JL an easy task, and Gypsy deserves great credit. Gypsy had always made it a mark in life to treat everyone alike and to see that they enjoy themselves while in her midst. There are few women who stand better with the commercial people than Gypsy, who has always kept one of the best and most refined houses in which a private man may be entertained by lots of hand- some and well-cultivated ladies. .A visit once will mean a long-remem- brance and friendship forever. What more can any sane person expect? w rHlLE still young in years, Bertha has, nevertheless, proven her- self a grand woman and has also made 'good* as a conductor of a first-class establishment. The word of 'able' is portrayed to the full when the name of Wein- thal is mentioned. If it were in my power to name Kings and Queens, I would certainly bestow the title "Queen of Smile" on Bertha. Her 'Chateau' is grandly equipped and lacks nothing to make it the finest in the world. Pretty women, good times and sociability has been adopted as the countersign of Miss Weinthal's new and costly home. The Boys in the Bands 107 FLORA RANDELLA, who is better known as 'Snooks/ the Italian beauty, is one woman among the fair sex who is regarded as an all- round jolly good fellow. Nothing is too good for "Snooks* and she regards the word 'fun' as it should be and- not as a money-making word. 'Snooks' has the distinction of keeping one of the liveliest and most elaborately furnished establishments in the. city, where an array of beautiful women and good times reign supreme. A visit will teach more than pen can describe. 'Snooks' also has an array of beautiful girls, who are everlastingly alert for a good time. NOWHERE in this country will you find a more complete and thor- ough sporting establishment than The Arlington. Absolutely and unquestionably the most decorative and costly fitted out sporting palace ever placed before the American public. Miss Arlington recently went to an expense of nearly $5000 in hav- ing her mansion renovated and replenished. Within the walls of the Arlington may be found" the work of great artists from Europe and America. Everybody must be of some impor- tance, otherwise he cannot gain admittance. . . . Jelly Roll's piano made him a person of "some importance** and "gained him admittance" at fifteen. The "jolly good fel- lows" who ran these palaces haggled for virgins, used them, then threw them into alleys where they were free to sit naked behind their crib doors available for twenty-five cents to any customer. "Fun" was a money-making word; the girls provided the "fun"; the madams, the pimps, the police, and the politi- cians collected the money. Heroin, sadism, assassination any- thing went if you had the price. 108 INTERLUDE TWO No matter how tough they might pretend to be, this cold- blooded world must have deeply wounded the young musi- cians who were sensitive enough to create jazz. "Poor Alfred Wilson, he smoked so much dope till he died . . . Tony Jackson, lie drank himself to death . . . Freddie Keppard, the damn fool, he was a hog for liquor and it Mlled him . . , Buddy Bolden blew his brains out through a trumpet and died in the insane asylum . . . I just don't like to be out after dark any more" these epitaphs could be many times multiplied. Ferdinand Morton, however, thrived. He eschewed the vices of his associates and cultivated their business acumen. He learned to drink moderately. And he worked hard. If, by playing the lowdown blues, Morton could pick up a dollar Tony Jackson scorned, he was ready to oblige. If the white customers wanted a laugh, he had ready "some sensational trick and surprise effects." Whatever he played, however, it had to be good and it had to be Morton. He had nothing but scorn for brain pickers and imitators. The musical currents of Uptown and Downtown came to- gether, joined in Morton's piano. He retained his Creole tech- nique and, unabashed by die hot playing of the black Ameri- cans, his composer's mind brought all the voices of the band under the control of his two perfect piano hands. Outcast and intellectual, he felt none of the finicky reservations and fears of the mulatto, nor suffered from the undisciplined anger and melanchloy of the rejected blacks. Creole finesse and American release were of equal value to him. As his compositions began to flower within him alongside the boundless ambitions of youth, he became the master of New Orleans music. Others it mastered, but Morton, the cool young man with plans and a profound sense of form, had a firm hold on his tiger. "Jelly Roll played piano all night and practiced all day. . . . He never stopped running, always on the go, couldn't seem to rest one place more than a few days . . . He was young, but he was the best pianist we had. . . ." At nineteen young Ferdinand was restless. He could not be The Boys in the Bands 109 content with Ms music, because jazz for aim was power, a way out of a narrow valley of Jim Crow and Creole prejudice. He began to look away from New Orleans, wondering if lie had the key to a larger world. After 1904 he was constantly on the prod, using New Orleans only as a base of operations, and nurturing ambitions mortal strange for America's first jazz composer. Alabama Bound The frequent saying was In any place that you was going you was supposed to be bound for that place. $o> in fact, I was Alabama Bound, . . . Tm Alabama bound, Alabama bound, If you like me, honey babe, You've got to leave this town. She said, "Doncha leave me here, Doncha leave me here, But, sweet papa, if you must go, Leave a dime for beer. . . /* * ' Tune 9, Appendix I. A ... I wanted to be the champion poo! player in the world, so I left New Orleans, where there were too many sharks, to go to some of these little places where I could practice on the suckers. My system was to use the piano as a decoy. I'd get a job at one of these little honkey-tonks along the Gulf Coast, playing piano, then some of the local boys who called them- selves good would ask me to play a game of pool I'd play dumb, until the bets rolled tip high, then I'd clean them out. My system was different from most of the piano players I met along the coast Skinny Head Pete and Florida Sam, they didn't work, because they were kept up by women. From time to time two or three girls fell in love with me, but I didn't pay much attention. I was interested in playing pool. I made a lot of towns those days learning how to be a half- hand bigshot McHenry, Hattiesburg, Jackson, Vicksburg. Greenwood, Greenville but I spent the biggest part of my time in Gulfport * and Biloxi. Biloxi was quite a prosperous little city and a great summer resort. A lot of millionaires used to make it a kind of headquarters during the winter season because the weather, the fishing and the oysters was all fine. Many times I played for big parties of the men who ran the shrimp and oyster boats. But somehow or another I had a kind of a yen to be a halfway smart guy. Since then I have realized * Bunk Johnson ran into Jelly at tills time . . . "I played with him in Gulfport, Mississippi, round in 1903 and 1904. He was real young, then, but he was a really good piano man. Had lots of work at the Great Southern Hotel playing waltzes and rags for the white people. Him and me played a date at the Busy Bee Park on Labor Day. I remember it because the longshoremen had two parades one for the union men and one for the boll weevils, the scabs." 113 114 ALABAMA BOUND that these smart guys were much worse off than I was, But I didn't see that then. All the smart guys wore overalls and a flannel shirt, busted open at the top, with no tie. From that dress you was consid- ered a sharpshooter. One of these sharpshooters named Harry Dunn was a very nice fellow that liked music and taken a lik- ing to me. He was a tall, lanky, light-complected fellow and considered the best Georgia Skin player in that section. He'd clean up on those turpentine men whenever they would come to town for payday, because Georgia Skin was their main game. Of all the games TVe even seen, no game has so many cheats right in front of your eyes, and it would have taken a magician to catch Harry, "Some day I'm going to make a gambler out of you,** he told me. And, of course, that interested me because I wanted to have the other young fellows of my class beat. So Harry taught me some holdout tricks, meaning that you are sure to win if you get the works in, but very dangerous if you can't get the cards back into the deck for the next deal He taught me day by day until one time he decided to make a payday at a rail- road camp at Orange, Mississippi. "What Harry meant by "mak- ing a payday" was that he was going to win all the money from the people that had worked for it. I will always remember Orange, because it almost meant fatal to me. Orange was a little bit of a place close to the Ala- bama linehad a log cabin and two or three houses was all. Harry took me along as his little brother. "I want to let you see how these things is done, because showing you without the actual experience, wouldn't do no good. These holdout tricks in Georgia Skin take a lot of nerve." That's what Harry told me, but he also knew that, by me being able to play piano in the sporting-houses, I always had some kind of money. I tried to convince Harry that I had a lot of nerve and could do these tricks already, but he told me to stay out of the game. However, I secretly decided to get some experience, and that I did. A Half-hand Eigshot 115 After we got to playing in this little bit of a camp at Orange, I noticed that there were three jacks together, and I swung out and kept those three jacks. The next time the deal went around, one jack fell and I said, "That's my card" and I picked up the jack. That meant I had all four jacks-but they didn't know it. So I told the boys, "All right, get down on this card. "Getting down'* means to put some money up. They put down their bets and, because I knew I had the best card I said, "Roll up and make it easy on yourselves." And when we rolled up, I began taking in money so fast it was a shame. Then one of the camp men picked the deck up and turned it over before Harry could do anything he knew I had those three jacks and didn't know how to get them back in the deck. So, since I had won on the jack and they couldn't find the other three, the suspicion was right on me. A fellow pulled out a great big pistol and he said, "You either come in with my money or off goes your head." Harry began to beg them, "Don't hurt this boy. He's only a young brother of mine and don't know what he^s doing. Ill assure you 111 give you back all the money you lost on this deal." So, when they started claiming money, the one that had lost three dollars, he's say "ten" and all of them the same until it taken all the money I had in my pocket, all I had won and practically all Harry had won to straighten the thing out. Then, although a certain suspicion fell on Harry, he told me ? "You stay out of the game. Let me play these boys and maybe I'll be luckier than you." Then he began to iip the cards and sing, Fm gonna get one and go toreckly! Bop! a card would hit. Tm gonna get one and go toreckly! Another card would hit. My baby is down and out, So I'll get one and go torecHy.* 9 Time 10, Appendix I. 116 ALABAMA BOUND "You want anything on that tenspot . . . ? All right, king, come up there. Ten dollars more will catch the king. Okay, boys, it's a bet!' If I can make this one last, If I can make this card last, I'm gonna get one and go toreckly. . . . "Eight more dollars on the eight spot. . . . Let's make it six- teen. Nobody standing here but you and I. I got the ace it's better than your eight spot, what do you say? Twenty dollars more. Okay? Bet . . ? Tm gonna get one and go toreckly. The eight spot fell and Harry taken all the money and we finally got out of that place safe. So I didn't do so good gambling, but beat up on the pool players and got me a few clothes and decided I'd hit the road for awhile, trying out the women. Those days I would land in some little town, get a room, slick up, and walk down the street in my conservative stripe. The gals would all notice a new sport was in town, but I wouldn't so much as nod at anybody. Two hours later, I'd stroll back to my place, change into a nice tweed and stroll down the same way. The gals would begin to say, "My, my, who's this new flash-sport drop in town? He's mighty cute." About four in the afternoon, I'd come by the same way in an altogether different outfit and some babe would say, "Lawd, mister, how many suits you got anyway?" "I'd tell her, "Several, darling, several." "Well, do you change like that every day?" "Listen, baby, I can change like this every day for a month and never get my regular wardrobe half used up. I'm the suit man from suit land." The next thing I know, I'd be eating supper in that gal's house and have a swell spot for meeting the sports, making my come-on with the piano and taking their money in the pool 118 ALABAMA BOUND hall. The police would be unable to pick me up for vagrancy, because I had me a residence in that town with a loving babe that really liked the way I could play piano. One of my instructors at the pool table was a very black gentleman, named Lily White, whom I later wished I had never met. We started out from Biloxi together and he con- vinced me that there wasn't any use to pay train fare; we could ride the train free. I tore both the knees out of my trousers taking my first free ride, but the next one I made successfully. It was a deadhead, an empty mail car. When we reached our destination and got off, Lily White heard someone coming and said, "Look out, let* s run/' which I refused to do. Up came a guy with two big pistols and carried us on down to die jail. They claimed we had robbed a mail train, and, when we proved out of that, they gave us a hundred days on the county gang for carrying weapons. It seems that Lily White had a big razor up his sleeve. When the inmates on the gang saw us, they hollered "New meat in the market!" Then they jumped on us and took our money and cigarettes. I didn't have but one thing in mind- how to get out of there the quickest way I could. It was said that whenever anybody got a hundred days on the gang, they wasn't no more good ever afterwards, I knew if I didn't get out of there, I would ruin my hands and never be able to play again. So I got some money from the outside and bought food for everybody and that way I made plenty friends. Then I watched my chance. We used to travel about eighteen miles from camp to where we worked on the road. I studied the route and picked me a piece of woods where I figured I could lose myself. Then, one afternoon about dusk, I fell over the side of that wagon and started running, They had a system there of sending a prisoner to catch a prisoner and the one who did the catching got a lot of good time added to his record. The man they sent after me could really run, but I managed to keep ahead until we neither one of us could run no more I guess it was some miles I kept in A Half-hand BigsJiot 119 die leadand then I picked up a big log and turned around and told him I was going to die before he'd get me back. I couldn't hardly talk, my tferoat was so dry, but I guess that man must have understood me, because, when 1 began to make my advance with that log, he backed away and left me alone. I went on a few miles further through the woods and just fell down somewhere., finally, and slept. The next day I stole some clothes off a poor farmer's wash line, walked into Mobile to a gal's house I knew, fell down and slept for a week. . . . That cured me of riding the railroad without paying my fare for quite a while. of ... It was about that time, In 1904, that they announced the piano-playing contest at the World's Fair in St. Louis. I was a half-hand bigshot on the piano around Mobile and the girls were willing to finance my trip. I had decided to go until I heard that Tony Jackson was going to appear at the contest. Of course, that kind of frightened me and so I stayed in Ala- bama. Later on I heard that Tony Jackson hadn't gone and that Alfred Wilson had won, which disgusted me, because I knew I could have taken Alfred Wilson, So I kept on traveling around the different little spots, singing my new tune . . . Tm Alabama bound, Alabama bound, If the train dont run, got a mule to ride, Just Alabama bound. Well, that rooster crowed, And the hen run around, "If you want my love, sweet babe, Jou-oe got to run me down, . . ? I'd play it and the girls would do the high lacks and say, "My, my, play that thing, boy." And I*d say, "Well, I'll cer- tainly do it, little old girl." That's the way we used to act down in Mobile around St. Louis and Warren, part of the famous corner. I will never forget that place because if it hadn't been for some of my piano-playing friends, one of those guys would have knifed me right in the back. I had cleaned him playing 120 Those Battles of Music 121 pool and he bad the knife right on me. Said I only used the piano as a decoy, which was true; and, of course, he had it in his mind that I was kind of nice looking. I suppose he was jealous of me. Imagine that! But he wasn't such a good-looking fellow, himself. Had some awful rubber-looking lips, I'm tell- ing you. So I said, Alabama Bound, Alabama bound, One of them good looking girls told me, "Baby? Come on and leave this town!' I always had an inkling to write a tune at most any place I would ever land. So when I hit Mobile in 1905, I wrote Ala- bama Bound and all my friends considered it very good. There was Charley King from Mobile; Baby Grice and Frazier Davis from Pensacola, Florida; Frank Racheal, supposed to be the tops from Georgia; and Porter King, a very dear friend of mine and a marvelous pianist now in the cold, cold ground, also from Florida. Porter King was an educated gentleman with a far better musical training than mine and he seemed to have a yen for my style of playing, although we had two different styles. He particularly liked one certain number and so I named it after Mm, only changed the name backwards and called it King Porter Stomp. I don't know what the term "stomp" means, myself. There wasn't really any meaning only that people would stamp their feet. However, this tune became to be the outstanding favorite of every great hot band throughout the world that had the ac- complishment to play it. Until today, it has been the cause of great bands coming to fame and outstanding tunes use the backgrounds of King Porter in order to make great tunes of themselves.* In 1905, the same year as King Porter and Ala- bama Bound, I also wrote a number called Jou Can Have It, I * As any student of jazz knows, this pride of Jelly's in his King Porter Stomp is warranted by its great importance in the development of jazz. Benny Goodman, for instance, used King Porter as a theme for a number of years. Tune 11, Appendix I. 122 ALABAMA BOUND Don't Want It, a tune which was the first hit of Mister Clar- ence Williams. He got the credit for it, although I happened to be the one that taught him how to play it. You may wonder why I didn't copyright my tunes in the old days. Well, it was not only me, but many others. The fact is that the publishers thought they could buy anything they wanted for fifteen or twenty dollars. Now if you was a good piano player, you had ten jobs waiting for you as soon as you hit any town, and so fifteen or twenty dollars or a hundred dollars didn't mean very much to us. (Those were wonderful days. I would really like to see them back again, because, if I make ten dollars today I think I've got a great day.) So we kept our melodies for our private material to use to battle each other in battles of music. The men who had the best ma- terial in these battles were considered the best men and had the best jobs, and the best jobs meant, maybe, a hundred dollars a day. So we didn't give the publishers anything, but they said, "We know where to get tunes,'' and they would steal our tunes and come out with them anyhow. By now I had developed to be a pretty good pool player. But one day a gentleman cleaned me out and I learned I had been playing the original Pensacola Kid. He thought I looked pretty highclass and agreed that if I would help him pick out some clothes he would show me how to improve my game. We both caught on very fast and a pool table began to look as easy as a piano keyboard to me. So I decided to try what I could do in New Orleans. In the latter part of 1905 I came back into town, met the good players and defeated them.* That made Winding Boy into a hot sport in New Orleans. My tunes had become to be very well known. My services were in demand. * Johnny St. Cyr said. . . . "Yes he was a very good pool player. Played for real money. He was in the class with Pensacola Kid, couldn't beat him but he could give him a hell of a game . . . Jelly Roll was on the hustling side. He*d gamble, play pool, play piano I have even known him to hop bells in a dull season when they close the dance halls down." Those Battles of Music 123 Fortunately, I was popular right at that time, because some guys were going hungry. There was a big slump in business; they was handing around drafts that were supposed to be as good as a dollar but weren't. The work in the highclass mansions fell off and so I had to take gigs and small-time band jobs. It seemed tough at the time, but, looking back now, I know that a depression was a good break for me, because I learned the band business. Some guy would come up to me and say, "Winding Boy, there's a parade coming up in such and such a club. Do you want the job? It means five dollars for the leader and two-and- a-half apiece for the men." So I would elect myself leader and go around and get me a band. That wasn't much trouble, be- cause the boys knew there would be plenty to drink even if the pay wasn't nothing. All we had in a band, as a rule, was bass horn, trombone, trumpet, an alto horn and maybe a baritone horn, bass, and snare drums just seven pieces, but, talking about noise, you never heard a sixty-piece band make as much noise as we did. Sometimes I would play trombone, sometimes bass drums or sometimes the snares, but it really didn't matter; the main part was the swell time we hadthe girls giving us the hurrah when we passed, the boys getting drunk and picking up the horses, and the fights which we enjoyed watching. Sometimes the big organized bands would get the jobs fellows like Emanuel Perez or Buddy Bolden and then they would always arrange to meet and have a battle of music in the streets. Those battles of music were something that has never been seen outside of New Orleans. In fact, we had the kind of fun I don't think IVe seen any other place. There may be as nice a fun, but that particular kind there never was anywhere else on the face of the globe. Rain didn't stop nobody. It never got cold enough to stop nobody. We musicians stayed there because we felt it was the town, I might name some of the jazz musicians I heard around that period, because these boys taught everybody the style that 124 ALABAMA BOUND has now spread New Orleans music all over the globe. . . . Papa Tio, who taught all the best clarinet players in New Orleans was not a hot man himself. He played straight classical clarinet, sometimes at the opera house, but he and his son Lorenzo Tio taught Omer Simeon (my favorite of all clarinet players), Sidney Bechet, Pops Humphrey, Albert Nicholas, George Baquet, and Big-Eye Louis Nelson. These were the men who taught all the other guys to play clarinet. George Baquet was the earliest jazz clarinetist. He played with Bill Johnson's Creole Band, the first jazz band to tour East out of New Orleans, but now he is just a corn-fed player in a Phila- delphia movie house. Lorenzo Tio came along next. He taught the New York boys all they knew about jazz, used to play on a riverboat running from New York to Albany, drank too much whiskey and caught a cold and died in New York. He was a real swell Creole and wore his high-top shoes till the day he died. I guess the best trombone players were Frankie Dusen, Eddie Vincent, Kid Ory, and Roy Palmer. Roy, who was no doubt the best who ever lived on the hot trombone was a funny guy, very ugly and very good natured and never on time. His main idea was not the trombone, but to be a first-class auto mechanic, and he was always so greasy on the job that, in later days, we used to pull the curtain so you could only hear the trombone and not see him. Every time you wanted to have Roy play a job, you would first have to find him; you'd look for a sign in a window that said "Music Taught On All In- struments" that was Roy, although he couldn't play anything in the world but a trombone; and you would always have to help him get his old, beat-up trombone out of hock. Even then he wouldn't play anything but little short jobs, because he wanted to get back to his mechanic work. He was the idol of George Bruneis, the original trombone with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, and the best white trombone I ever heard. Of course, George was just a kid back in 1908. Those Battles of Music 125 To recount some of the other fine instrumentalists I came to know back at that period there was Ding Johnson, Joe White, Hilaire and Deedee Chandler (he was the best and played mostly with Robechaux) on drums. There was Bill Johnson, Ed Garland, Billy Marrero and Pops Foster on bass fiddle. Bud Scott was, no doubt, the great guitarist, although Gigs Wil- liams and Buddy Christian could fake when the music wasn't too hard. Then on trumpet there was Buddy Petit, Mutt Carey, and later on Oliver, but, at the period I'm talking about, the great man was Freddie Keppard. I first heard Freddie Keppard in 1907. He wasn't well known at the time because he wasn't playing in the tenderloin district. Freddie thought my playing was different and he was crazy about the Indian Elites I had just wrote. This tune enticed him to play in my style and in a year he had a big reputation and the women were swelling his head. He became to be the 126 ALABAMA BOUND greatest hot trumpeter in existence. He hit the highest and the lowest notes on a trumpet that anybody outside of Gabriel ever did. He had the best ear, the best tone, and the most marvelous execution I ever heard and there was no end to his ideas; he could play one chorus eight or ten different ways. Freddie was a very fine fellow with plenty of cheap notoriety always was after women and spent every dime he ever made on whiskey. In the end he died broke in Chicago. It was under Freddie Keppard in 1908 that there happened to come into existence the first Dixieland combination. Freddie was playing at the time at a big dance hall called the Tuxedo, located in the tenderloin district on Franklin Street between Custom House and Iberville. Billy Phillips' joint was close-by and it created such a scandal when Lefty Louie's gang out of New York killed him that business fell off in the place for a while. At that time Freddie had seven pieces violin, bass, drums, guitar, trombone, clarinet, and trumpet. To save money he dropped the violin, bass, and guitar and added a piano. This was the first Dixieland combination: five pieces, composed of Edward Vincent trombone, Freddie Keppard cornet, George Baquet clarinet, D. D. Chandler drums, and Bud Christian piano.* Then I wish you could have heard those boys ramble on. * Whatever Ms pet prejudices, Jelly Roll never lost sight of his main point: hot jazz was the creation of New Orleans Negroes. In his view "the light, two-beat jazz" which has come to be called "Dixieland" was the creation of the Keppard combination. One can understand his insistence on this seemingly small point when one remembers that the all-white Original Dixieland Jazz Band of 1917 (by chance the firsthand to record jazz) is generally reckoned the originator of "Dixieland." And in this lies the reason for Jelly Rolfs telling this circumstantial tale of ICeppard's all-Negro Tuxedo band, which antedated the white group by a decade. . . . Those years I worked for all the houses, even Emma Johnsons Circus House, where the guests got everything from soup to nuts. They did a lot of uncultured things there that probably couldn't be mentioned, and the irony part of it, they always picked the youngest and most beautiful girls to do them right before the eyes of everybody. , . . People are cruel, aren't they? A screen was put up between me and the tricks they were doing for the guests, but I cut a slit in the screen, as I had become to be a sport now, myself, and wanted to see what anybody else was seeing. All the highest class landladies had me for "the professor", if they could get me Willie Piazza., Josie Arlington, Lula White, Antonio Gonzales, Hilma Burt, and Gypsy Schaeffer, the biggest-spending landlady. Their houses were all in the same block on Basin Street, stone mansions with from three to seven parlors and from fifteen to twenty-five women all clad in evening gowns and diamonds galore.* The minute the button was pushed, that meant a new customer was in and the girls came in the parlor looking like queens, "Why hello* boy. Where you from?" Then I would hit lie piano and, when I'd played a couple of my tunes "Got some money for the professor?" If the guests didn't come up with a dollar tip apiece, they were told "This is a highclass place. We don't want no poor Johns in here.'* Matter of fact, no poor men could even get in those mansions. The girls charged high and made from twenty dollars to a hundred a night. * Jelly Roll added, "There was a Blue Book with all the information about the tenderloin district. My name was in that book which they now call The New Orleans Guide. (See Interlude II, p. 106.) 127 128 ALABAMA BOUND Oftentimes die girls would ask me to perform my Animule Dance. I wrote this in 1906 and ten thousand lias claimed it; it's never been published and it never will be, because nobody can do it but myself . . . Ladies and gentlemen, we are now in the jungle. Everyone of you are animules. You should be walking on four legs, But youre now walking on two. You know you come directly from the animule famulee. Yes, we're right here in the animule field. And I want to tell you people with clothes on You have tails just the same. But you wear clothes and you cant see them . . . Way down in jungle town, For miles around . * . They used to give a ball every night at the animule hall The band began to play, they began to shout Youd hugh Haw-haw-haw 9 Lord, till your sides would crack. How they'd call them doggone figures out! The monkey hollered, "Run, I say!" The wildcat did the bambochay; The tiger did tJw mooch; The elephant did the hooch-ama-cooch; The pariter did the eagle rock and began to prance, Down in the jungle, At that animule dance. Well, the lion came through the door, Ugh, you could tell that lion was posilutely sore. "Let me in the hall.' 9 "What you gwine do?" fe Tm gonna break up this doggone animule ball Yes, dont you think I want to dawnce? Give me one more chawnce . , .* The Lion Broke Down the Door 129 The lion give a roar, Broke down the door, Broke up the animule ball. The monkey hollered, "Run, I sayf The wildcat did the bambochay; The tiger did the mooch; The elephant did the hoocha-ma-cooch; The panter did the eagle rock and began to prance? In the jungles, At that animule dance.* Then Td carry on some of my scat . , . Bee-ki-bah-bee-bab-a-lee-b. People believe Louis Armstrong originated scat. I must take that credit away from him, "because I know better. Tony Jackson and myself were using scat for novelty back in 1906 and 1907 when Louis Armstrong was still in the orphan's home. Those days I hung out at Eloise Blackenstein and Louise Aberdeen's place the rendezvous of all the big sports like Pensacola Kid, who later came to be the champion pool player of the world. Bob Howe, the man who didn't know how many suits he had, and his wife, Ready Money, were regulars, also the Suicide Queen, who used to take poison all the time. Tony Jackson also hung out there and was the cause of me not playing much piano. When Tony came in, the guys would tell me, "Get off that piano stool. You're hurting the piano's feelings." One day we were al up at Lala's saloon. Pensacok Kid was playing Buster Brown for ten dollars a round and they asked me to keep the game. In came Chicken Dick, the Uptown rough neck, and started yelling, "Keeping the game, hey, little boy? You don't know what you doing. Tm going to keep game." He hit me hard and I fell on the table with * Jelly Roll never entered the "highclass mansions" as a customer. Instead tie sat at the piano and watched the "anlmules" dance, perhaps dreaming of the lion breaking down the door. 130 ALABAMA BOUND my bands on some balls. I hauled off and hit him with a pool ball and he jumped like he was made of rubber. Then I laid into him with more balls and some billiard cues and they finally had to haul him out of there. That gave me a name. "Don't fool with Winding Boy. He like to kill Chicken Dick." I had sense enough to know it wasn't healthy to wear a name like that around New Orleans where some tough guy might decide to see how hard I really was. So I decided to accept Tony Jackson's invitation to visit Chicago. I went North on an excursion train, landed in Chicago in 1907 and found that nobody in that town could play jazz piano. There were more jobs than I could ever think of doin^, but these jobs paid so much less than in New Orleans I decided not to stay. Tony stayed on because he didn't care about money, but liked his kind of diversion and felt more free in Chicago than in his hometown. Myself, I dropped down to Houston, Texas, to see whether they had anybody could shoot a game of pool. I did a good bit of winning and then I started shooting left-handed so I could get more bets. They slipped a shark by the name of Joe Williams in on me, but right at the end of the game I switched over to my right hand and ran the game out. His backer, who had lost heavily, said I was robbing him (which was true), pulled out a pistol and started shooting. Somehow I got under the pool table, but that cured me of playing pool in Houston. I moseyed around Texas awhile with a new girl in every town, finding nobody could play jazz in Texas. Then Nick, a sporting-life friend of mine, persuaded me to go to California with him. I went along although I knew that Nick wanted to get in with the sporting women through me. California was a nice place at the time, no discrimination, but I played very little piano except in Oxnard, a very fast-stepping town. In fact, things was so dead that I headed back to New Orleans, stopping off in Texas and Oklahoma to see my young lady friends. By now I was beating up all the best pool players, includ- The Lion Broke Down the Door 131 ing all the good cheaters. I played the Pensacola Kid at the Astoria Hotel and somehow all the breaks were with me that day and I beat him. When I turned to get the stakes, the guy holding them was gone, 1 told the Kid to get that $40 quick or I would knock his brains out with my cue aad, quite naturally, the $40 canie up fast. The manager told me to stay on out of the place, I was too rough for him. Yes, I had become quite a hard boy by then, in fact so hard that it nearly cost me my life. I told you that I had known about Aaron Harris, but had never personally seen him. Well, Aaron like to play pool and, like many others, thought he could play me for a sucker because I was a musician. So I played this guy every day for $2 a game, and nobody tells me it was Aaron Harris, who at the time had eleven killings to his credit. Finally, 1 had Aaron down to his last money and he told me, "If you make this baH on my money, I'm going to take every bit of money in your pocket." I said, "A lot of people go to the graveyard for taking I've got what it takes to stop you.** He said, "What is that?" I said, "A hard-hitting .88 Special, that'll stop any living human.* In a minute youll have a chance to try to take my money, because if I can make this ball, in the pocket she goes." I raised my cue high in the air, because my taw bal close under die cushion and I stroked this ball and into the pocket she went. It was then that Aaron Harris found out he had been playing a shark all the time. For some reason lie de- cided to treat me square, "Okay, kid/* he said, "YouYe the best. Loan me a couple of dollars/* "Now that's the way to talk," I said, "If you want a couple * "It was a law in New Orleans a person could carry a gun If they wanted to almost. Of course, there was just a ten-dollar fineso it didn't make very muck difference. If they found you didn't liave ten dollars, your sentence would be SO days in jail; but they put you to clean up the market la the morning and there most prisoners would ran away." 132 ALABAMA BOUND of dollars. 111 be glad to give it to you. But don't try to take anything away from me. Nobody ever does/* After he left, Bob Rowe walked up to me. At that time Bob was one of the big gamblers in New Orleans. He wore a diamond stud so big that he never could get no kind of tie that would hold it straight up, When he died some years ago, he owned strings of race horses. Bob was a good friend of mine and he said, "Kid, don't play that fellow no more/' "Why should I eliminate playing him? He brings me money here every day. Why should I pass up money?" Bob said ? "You know who youVe playing?" "Certainly I know he's my sucker, that's who he is." "Ill tell you his name/* said Bob, "And then you'll know him better." "Okay/' I said, "Let's have you divulge it/' He said, "That's Aaron Harris. . . /* I came near passing out. Aaron Harris was, no doubt, the most heartless man I've ever heard of. He could chew up pig iron the same thing that would cut a hog's entrails to pieces and spit it out razor blades. That man was -terrible. A ready killer. I wouldn't be saying this now, but he's dead and gone. Old Boar Hog killed him. Aaron pawned, his pistol one night to play in a gam- bling game, He pawned his pistol one night to play in a gambling game, Then old Boar Hog shot him and blotted out his name. But even Boar Hog was scared to come up to Aaron's face. He waited till he knew Aaron was unarmed and then shot him from ambush as he was crossing an alley in the early hours of the morning. Well, I knew I wasn't no tough guy and I told Bob, "I will never play that gentleman no more. He can keep his money.* Bob looked at me a minute and then he said, "Why don't you The Lion Broke Down the Door 133 take a little trip to sort of rest Aaron's nerves? He might decide tie wanted to discuss something with you." * I decided that Bob was right and I should travel for my health. * Johnny St. Cyr remembered Aaron Harris . . . "He was a big man and a real bully, stood six feet, weighed two hundred pounds and would draw a knife on a police officer. He was a bad, bad actor- killed bis brother-in-law, and then beat the rap. I heard I don't know it to be a fact, but I heard that he had some protection from a hoodoo woman. He must had something a guy could beat a cold-blooded murder rap. Then in later years he slapped Toodlum he was a banker of the Cotch game. Toodlum and Boar Hog waited for him at the place he always got off the street car on his way home and let him have it." . * . You can understand why I was feeling rather jumpy witt all the things that had hap