Frisco Cricket. Published by the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation Spring The Vitality of Memory. by William Carter

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1 Frisco Cricket Published by the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation Spring 2012 The Vitality of Memory by William Carter Word reached us, three months ago, of the passing of our friend, writer and jazz buff Bruce Dexter (see his review of Hot Jazz for Sale: Hollywood s Jazz Man Record Shop by Gary Ginell in the Spring, 2011 Cricket.) Soon thereafter we received, from Bruce s estate, a remarkable letter which longtime Foundation board member Charles Campbell sent him in May, 1995, in which Charles recounts his jazz memories as a young blade living around Los Angeles from the late 1930 s. Although Charles has, now and again, mentioned to us his encounters in L.A. with the likes of Jelly Roll Morton, Kid Ory, and others, this colorful story is the first we ve have seen of that little documented but seminal chapter of jazz history. Growing up in L.A., it was circa 1950 that I met future authors, trumpeter Bruce Dexter and trombonist Jim Leigh that evening they picked me up at Third and Muirfield in what I remember as Bruce s business coupe. I was in 10th grade, aspiring to play traditional jazz, and they (far older, i.e. already out of high school) had a kid band. I joined it, and we rehearsed Friday nights in the back room of Ray Avery s Record Roundup on La Cienega. (Dear old Ray, but that s another story.) We even played some dances. Our sound was, shall we say, erstwhile, authentic... Sixty-one years later, two bombshells dropped. Bruce Dexter passed away on March 30. Then, less than three months later, on June 18, Jim Leigh suddenly died. Jim was widely known in the trad jazz world as an active performer, a columnist in the Mississippi Rag, Costa del Oro Jazz Band, party gig at Charles Eastman s house in Fremont Place, Hancock Park, Los Angeles; probably 1951.Left to right: William Carter, clarinet; Bruce Dexter, trumpet and leader; John Joseph, drums; Bil Dods, tuba; Ellen Hertel, piano; Ed Durant, banjo; Jim Leigh, trombone. Because the front line players were all over six feet, we joked we should start a basketball team; once, we three actually did work out at Beverly Hills High School gym, an experiment as peculiar in the history of jazz as it was brief in duration. Photo courtesy Bill Carter Contents The Vitality of Memory by William Carter 1 Back To The Pier by Jim Leigh 5 New Kid Ory 2-CD Set 9 Membership Application and Product List 11 1

2 and in myriad other ways. Amid our shock we turned again to Jim s 2000 book, Heaven on the Side: A Jazz Life. The Cricket had, in , printed multi-part excerpts of those warm memories. Now, as a tribute to Jim we add herewith a chapter mostly omitted before, about doings at the venerable Pier 23. We are also publishing a remarkable letter found in the estate of Bruce Dexter from our own board member, Charles Campbell, in which Charles details his memories of the jazz scene in Los Angeles in the late 1930 s and early 1940 s -- seminal to the traditional jazz revival. The music goes round and round. Jim Leigh, unknown date and location. Photo by William Carter The Frisco Cricket Issue No. 55 Published by the SAN FRANCISCO TRADITIONAL JAZZ FOUNDATION 3130 Alpine Road, #288 PMB 187 Portola Valley, CA Phone: (415) , FAX: (415) Website: info@sftradjazz.org Publisher: William Carter Editor, Layout, Webmaster: Scott Anthony Curator of the Archive : Clint Baker Special Projects Consultant: Hal Smith Office Manager: Scott Anthony John R. Browne, III William Carter Jim Cullum Charles Huggins Board of Directors Gregg Keeling John Matthews Terry O Reilly William Tooley Honorary Directors William Alhouse, Charles Campbell, Leon Oakley Board of Advisors Philip Hudner, Michael Keller, Paul Mehling, Margaret Pick,Bunch Schlosser, Bud Spangler Unless otherwise noted, all contents copyright 2010 San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation Advertise in the Cricket! In an effort to help defray the costs of maintaining all the varied programs that SFTJF supports, including The Frisco Cricket itself, we re going to begin providing limited advertising space here. We want to be fair to everyone, so there are a few rules we d like to follow: The advertiser should be in a music related (preferably Traditional Jazz related) business (band, club, cruise, radio station, etc.). No more than a total of 2 full pages will be used in any single issue of the Cricket, so ads will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. We need to be able to maintain the right to accept or reject advertisements at our discretion. Please send your ad to: Cricket Editor San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation 41 Sutter Street, PMB 1870 San Francisco, CA Or (preferably) by to: webmaster@sftradjazz.org or santh@comcast.net Advertising Rates per issue 1/8 Page $35, 1/4 Page $50, 1/2 Page $75 2

3 Charles Campbell Letter to Bruce Dexter - page 1 3

4 Charles Campbell Letter to Bruce Dexter - page 2 4

5 Back At The Pier by Jim Leigh Excerpted with permission from Chapter 20 in Heaven on the Side James Leigh 2000 After Bill Erickson took over the gig at Pier 23 the sessions were more popular with musicians than ever before. The regular presence of a trio, rather than just a pianist, provided a real nucleus upon which visitors could augment; as often as not, solid bands of six or seven men played most of the night. Across the street, at On the Levee, Kid Ory went on being (legitimately enough) resentful, but nothing came of it. As I ve said, the basic trio was Erickson, a drummer, and, usually, a clarinetist. Bassists and trumpeters were especially welcome, and trombonists tolerated. Erickson was very picky about drummers: he even wrote a wonderfully clunky song in a rat-atat-tat cadence whose lyrics sang the sardonic praises of one drummer who drove him crazy. The three he hired most often at the Pier were Wally Floyd and Max Leavitt, both light, tasteful, mildly beboppish players, and James Carter, his favorite. Carter had grown up in New Orleans, two doors from trumpeter Avery (Kid) Howard, and his orientation, like Howard s, was to swing at any cost; he worked days as a clothes presser, but he would never say no to a chance to play. Now and then he would get drunk, in which case he might play loud, or his bar count might lapse, but I never saw him too tired, or too drunk, to swing. He had a wonderful time, and people loved playing with him. The two principal clarinetists who worked at Pier 23 Today, actually June 18, Photo by Scott Anthony 5

6 Pier 23 Mascot photo, among the many historical and other photos hanging. Photo by Scott Anthony the Pier were Bill Napier and Frank Goudie...[Napier] was too much in demand ever to stay long at the Pier, and so Goudie, through the early 60 s, was the main man. During my days at the Pier, the Erickson/Goudie/Carter trio was most often on the job. On the rare nights when no one dropped by to sit in, the three of them took care of business. No problem. There was a small group of regulars whose appearance, if not expected every night, was at least hoped for. Two of these stand out in my mind: the trumpetist Ernie Figueroa and the tenor saxophonist Dave Clarkson. They were perhaps as different as any two men could be, and they loved playing together. Fig had played with the Charlie Barnett big band, and he was a great fan of Clifford Brown (to whose music he introduced me), but he was perfectly at home in more traditional groups, and at different times played with small bands led by Earl Hines, Marty Marsala, and Ralph Sutton, among others. Another of those people who was at home in all but the most narrowlyconceived musical circumstances, Fig played so well, so pertinently and centrally, as always to fit in. He was fresh, inventive, and fiery soloist when he felt like it, which was most of the time. As far as I know he never did anything but play music... Clarkson was an amateur, but of the very highest order. His father owned an auto dealership somewhere on the Peninsula, and Dave was in the import-export business on his own. On Telegraph Hill he had a bachelor pad with a sweeping view of the Bay; he dated airline stewardesses and the occasional model. Such a background might be seen by some to disqualify any serious jazz musician; if so, he was one of those exceptions who prove the rule. He was a superb tenor player in the classic Hawkins- Webster-Young manner. If he had begun as an imitator, he had certainly synthesized his own way of playing by the time I heard him. Like Fig, Clarkson swung hard, in any tempo and at all times. He loved to set riffs behind other people s solos, and it was by joining him on riffs at Pier 23 that I got to be friends with him. In the beginning I thought that he didn t trust me to harmonize his riffs; in fact, he kept urging me to play unisons with him because he was so fond of that tenor/trombone sound. A powerful soloist, he was loaded with 6

7 ideas; he generated momentum in any situation, and though he would usually limit himself to three or four solo choruses he gave the impression of being able to go on for a dozen or more, in the manner of the Kansas City Greats. I went once with him to hear Ben Webster playing with a small group. At the first intermission he went straight up to Webster and greeted him familiarly: Big Daddy! As a younger man, Webster had had a reputation for touchiness, even a readiness to use his fists, and I was mightily impressed when all he did was smile at Dave and give him a little pat on the shoulder... Erickson was fond of bassists, and the list of those who played at the Pier, if the big names were included, would impress all but the most blase. The two who showed up most often were Squire Girsback, of whom I have already spoken at length, and a skillful, if somewhat saturnine, escapee from Southern California named Harry Leland...Squire would come in early or late, once or twice a week, whenever he was in town, and he always came to play. But if another bassist was in place, he was perfectly happy to sit at the bar and listen. The other bassist might have been Harry; it might have been Bob Marchessi, or Ray Durand, or Jim Cumming. Fig occasionally threatened to play the bass, but everybody liked him so much on trumpet that he never got the chance. We always hoped that a good rhythm guitarist would drop by, but the only one who ever did was a wonderful player from Phoenix named Edd Dickerman...If he and Erickson and Carter and one of the good bassists were all together, the temptation was irresistible to play Count Basie tunes all night long. On those occasions Clarkson, if present, would soar. Dickerman made only one record that I know if, with Leon Oakley s Flaming Deuces; it is on the GHB label and it s been out of print forever. In his absence we always wished that Billy Newman might drop in, but he never did. We used to talk about kidnapping trumpeter P.T. Stanton and his guitar from his stronghold in Berkeley; he could have done the job. But that crime never took Marty Eggers holding down the fort since August of 2000 at Pier 23 on June 19, Photo by Scott Anthony. 7

8 place, and it s a shame, too, because P.T. played good guitar, and he loved to swing. There were other horn players, including some good trumpetists. Robin Hodes was a regular, at a time when his musical horizons, like mine, were expanding... From time to time there were visits by Larry Stein, who at that time was playing the trumpet with great passion and conviction in the vein of Henry (Red) Allen c We never knew he also played clarinet. Another amazing figure mild, well-barbered, dressed like a young stockbroker turned up at the Pier: the trumpetist Jerry Blumberg, who had played in the late 40 s with the second Bob Wilber band, along with Bob Mielke. He had also taken lessons in New York from Bunk Johnson. (I had heard his remarkable imitation of Bunk on a 78 record of Leadbelly s Jimmy Crack Corn, made about the same time with a young band.) Blumberg had an amazing talent for accurately reproducing the styles of other players and then improvising freely within those styles...his style at the Pier was an eclectic virtuoso conglomeration, in which, from moment to moment, might be recognized influences as diverse as Bunk and Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke, Buck Clayton and Bobby Hackett... Kid Ory was making a lot of personnel changes across the Embarcadero. Early in 1960, well before Erickson came to work at the Pier, he had been in another band Ory had put together along with Bill Napier, and, for a time, Peter Allen. (This had been half of Bob Mielke s band, and the loss of manpower almost put him out of business.) Twenty years after having been a pioneer revivalist in the Bay Area, with Watters, Turk, and Co., the trumpeter Byron Berry had his turn on trumpet with Ory in , and when he was not at On the Levee he was hanging out across the street at the Pier. The preponderant testimony of the musicians in question is that Ory was hard to work with in those days; some blamed this on his new wife s firm hand in personnel matters. One consequence was that he began fobidding his clarinetists to solo much above the low register, as if fearful that their higher flights would distract crowd attention from his bass clef growls. When Frank Goodie took his turn in Ory s clarinet rotation, those were his orders; he didn t stay long. In May 1963 I celebrated by 33rd birthday at the Pier. Early on, Havelock [the owner] broke down and poured me a scotch. There was along shared moment while I debated taking out my wallet. Then Havelock said, It s okay, kid, and raised his own glass... No doubt I m leaving out a good many Pier stories. Another view of the current-day Pier 23. Photo by Scott Anthony. 8

9 New Kid Ory 2-CD Set The San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation provided the original tapes for this 2 CD set from two Club Hangover broadcasts of 1954 of Kid Ory. As readers may recall, the tapes were found in a storage container near the San Rafael dump as described in an earlier cover story in the Cricket, and Acrobat in England just issued the set. Below are the cover and selection list for the new CD set, available on Amazon.com. 9

10 Paid Advertisement About Your New San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation Created as a non-profit in 1981, the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation stated, as its primary mission, the archival preservation of thousands of items related to the West Coast Jazz Revival that began in San Francisco about In 2009 SFTJF completed the transfer of the main body of those materials to the Stanford University s Music Library. Thereupon, your Foundation s Archive was closed; possible donors of jazz materials should now contact Stanford or other public repositories. SFTJF s wider, ongoing aim is to help foster high-quality traditional jazz, regionally and worldwide. That mission is now carried out primarily via electronic media. The Foundation s main window on the world is our website -- www. sftradjazz.org -- where visitors are invited to become members at $25 per year. Benefits of membership include insider information and discounts to special events and products, and a subscription to our lively newsletter, the Cricket, now available electronically. Those wishing to continue receiving the Cricket on paper in the mail should please contact the SFTJF office manager. Thank you for your generous support over the years. Contributions in categories beyond the basic membership level are tax deductible, and the names of those contributors are published annually (unless a contributor specifies anonymity). Donations welcomed The San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation accepts gifts and grants in many forms, including his tori cal items which shed further light on the history of traditional jazz on the West Coast, such as recordings, music, newspaper clip pings, pho tographs and corre spon dence. Contributions of materials or funds are tax-deductible under IRS ruling status 501(c)(3). SF Jazz on the Web The San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation has an ever-expanding web site. The site includes sound files and photos of many San Francisco (and other) jazz figures from the 1930s to the present. Please visit us at Join (or rejoin) the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Founda tion today to begin taking advan tage of reservations to special events, discounts on selected jazz books and recordings, and a year s sub scription to The Frisco Cricket. If you are already a member, give the gift of Founda tion membership to a friend! Use the form at right. 10

11 Product Order Form & 2012 Membership/Renewal Application Name Address Phone ( ) Compact Discs ($13 for members, $16 for non-members) Quantity Amount El Dorado Jazz Band Live At Mr. Fatfingers...(BCD-510) $ The Sunset Music Company Live in Dusseldorf, (BSR-009) $ The Unheard Bob Scobey and his Frisco Jazz Band (BCD-285) $ Firehouse 5 Plus 2 Live at Earthquake McGoon s (BCD-450) $ Clancy Hayes Satchel of Song...(SFTJF CD-108) $ Turk Murphy Jazz Band Wild Man Blues...(SFTJF CD-107) $ Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band, Vol 2, (SFTJF CD-106) $ Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band, Vol 1, (SFTJF CD-105) $ Turk Murphy Jazz Band Euphonic Sounds...(SFTJF CD-104) $ Turk Murphy Jazz Band Weary Blues...(SFTJF CD-103) $ Turk Murphy Jazz Band In Hollywood...(SFTJF CD-102) $ Turk Murphy Jazz Band Live at Carson Hot Springs...(SFTJF CD-101) $ Turk Murphy Jazz Band At The Italian Village, with Claire Austin... (MMRC CD-11) $ Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band At Hambone Kelly s, (MMRC CD-10) $ Bob Helm with the El Dorado Jazz Band 1955*...(SFTJF CD-110) $ *Specially priced two-cd set. Members: $16; non-members: $20. More CDs online at Books Members Non-mem. Jazz on the Barbary Coast, by Tom Stoddard $4 $5 $ Pioneer jazzmen reminisce about old San Francisco and its role as a wellspring of jazz The Great Jazz Revival, by Pete Clute & Jim Goggin $10 $15 $ The story of the San Francisco jazz revival Jazz West 2, by K.O. Ecklund, published by Donna Ewald NEW PRICE! $6 $8 $ The A-to-Z guide to west coast jazz music; a unique source. Complete the credit card information below, or enclose check or money order for Total. Send to: San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation 3130 Alpine Road, #288 PMB 187 Portola Valley, CA Credit Card MasterCard Visa American Express Total Qty: $ California residents, add 8.25% sales tax $ Everyone add shipping (Total Qty X $2.00 per item) = $ If outside U.S., Canada and Mexico, add $5 per order. $ New or Renew SFTJF membership, add $25. $ Donation* $ Total $ *contributions to SFTJF, above the basic membership level, are tax deductible Name (as appears on card) Account Number (16 digits) Expiration Date (mo/yr) Cardholder Signature 11

12 The Frisco Cricket SAN FRANCISCO TRADITIONAL JAZZ FOUNDATION 3130 Alpine Road, #288 PMB 187 Portola Valley, CA Anytime is a good time to renew your Membership! Join or renew online at Support Traditional Jazz! The Frisco Cricket Spring 2012