Interviews conducted by Caroline Crawford in

Transcription

1 Regional Oral History Office The Bancroft Library University of California Berkeley, California Charles Duff Campbell, Leon Oakley, John Gill, Bob Schulz and Linda Jensen, Pat Yankee, William Carter, Carl Lunsford, Richard Hadlock TURK MURPHY, EARTHQUAKE MCGOON S, AND THE NEW ORLEANS REVIVAL Interviews conducted by Caroline Crawford in Copyright 2011 by The Regents of the University of California

2 Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ********************************* All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Charles Duff Campbell, dated December 7, 2007 ; Leon Oakley, dated October 26, 2007; John Gill, dated February 29, 2008 ; Bob Schulz, dated February 5, 2009; Linda Jensen, dated March 4, 2009; Pat Yankee, dated May 12, 2008; William Carter, dated April 6, 2010; Carl Lunsford, dated February 23, 2010; Richard Hadlock, dated April 10, 2010.The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, , and should follow instructions available online at It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Charles Duff Campbell, Leon Oakley, John Gill, Bob Schulz and Linda Jensen, Pat Yankee, Bill Carter, Carl Lunsford, Richard Hadlock, TURK MURPHY, EARTHQUAKE MCGOON S, AND THE NEW ORLEANS REVIVAL conducted by Caroline Crawford , Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2011.

3 Turk Murphy (Courtesy of Charles Campbell)

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5 TURK MURPHY, EARTHQUAKE MCGOON S, AND THE NEW ORLEANS REVIVAL INTERVIEW HISTORY by Caroline Crawford CHARLES DUFF CAMPBELL Interview #1: October 10, 2007 [Audio File 1] 1 Meeting Turk Murphy and Lu Watters, Annie Street, 1941 A family of gold miners: living in Northern Siberia and Shanghai, 1917 to 1932 Los Angeles and the jazz scene in the 1930s and 1940s David Stuart and the Jazz Man Record Shop Nat King Cole s gig on La Cienega in the late 1930s Central Avenue: T-Bone Walker, Jimmie Lunceford, Ella Fitzgerald Interviewing Jelly Roll Morton about New Orleans The L.A. Clubs: T-Bone Walker at the Little Harlem in Watts Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford at the Palomar on Vermont Driving Art Tatum in the 1940s: Jackie Robinson s last game with UCLA Working for General Petroleum and serving in the Coast Guard Moving to San Francisco in 1947 to open the Louvre Art Store Opening the Charles Campbell Gallery on Chestnut Street, 1971, with artists Nathan Oliveira, Robert Harvey, Jim Johnson The music scene in San Francisco: Hangover Club on Bush, Washington Square Bar & Grill with Norma Teagarden and Burt Bales, Pete s Place Setting up the Italian Village for Turk Murphy in [Audio File 2] 18 LEON OAKLEY Meeting Turk Murphy and Paul Lingle Becoming San Francisco neighbors with Murphy and his wives The Italian Village Band: Bob Helm, clarinet; Wally Rose, piano; Dick Lammi, banjo; Bob Short, tuba; Murphy, trombone Thoughts about moldy figs, ickies and dancing A fire at Italian Village and a move to the Tin Angel, 1955 Hambone Kelly s in Emeryville: the possibility of managing the Watters band in 1946 Earthquake McGoon s : 99 Broadway, ; 630 Clay Street, ; 128 Embarcadero; Pier 39 Helping with the gig at the Fairmont Hotel, Eddie Condon, Chicago jazz, and Duff Campbell s Revenge The Campbell Gallery, Nathan Oliveira and Bob Harvey and Paul Thiebaud John Gill and Woody Allen. Interview #1: October 24, 2007 [Audio File 1] 37 Early years in Binghamton, New York A musical family; exposure to music Music in the schools Collecting recordings; Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll

6 JOHN GILL Morton, Lu Watters, Turk Murphy The Armstrong Hot Seven Band Traditional jazz vs. Dixieland: Importance of ensemble playing Forming the Penn-Can Jazz Band King Oliver s Creole Jazz Band: Louis Armstrong and two trumpets The big bands and the New Orleans revival, 1930s-1940s Remembering Honore Dutre and Johnny Dodds Turk Murphy s unique sound and band arrangements Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band, Bob Scobey and Dick Lammi Analyzing Cornet Chop Suey Bob Helm s energies, Jack Crook and Phil Howe Singing with Bob Helm in the band Eddie Condon, George Avakian of Columbia Records and Duff Campbell s Revenge Turk Murphy and the Lu Watters Band; Ma Watters boarding house Hambone Kelly s in El Cerrito Ken Burns on Turk Murphy. [Audio File 2] 55 Terrible Turk and making music with two trumpets Playing trumpet in the band: Earthquake McGoon s, partnership with Pete Clute and running the club Touring and recording on the road Hard times with the band Chuck Huggins and See s Candies sponsorship Turk and Papa Mutt Carey, Kid Ory, Zutty Singleton, Doc Souchon, and support of black New Orleans musicians Arranging Mack the Knife for Louis Armstrong The weakening of the musicians union Earthquake McGoon s at 630 Clay Street: Playing the festivals: Live from Heidelberg Jazz writers: Phil Elwood, Ralph Gleason and Richard Hadlock The Turk Murphy legacy: keeping the torch burning. Interview #1: February 29, 2008 [Audio File 1] 75 Early musical memories: Roy Rogers, Gene Autry Collecting recordings of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis Introduction to the Beatles Playing drums and forming a school band, 1960s Rudi Blesh s Shining Trumpets Remembering Lu Watters, Turk Murphy, Bob Helm, Leon Oakley Hearing Turk Murphy live at Lincoln Center, 1971 New York City banjo clubs: Your Father s Mustache, Red Garter, Red Onion Learning to play traditional jazz: studying Kid Ory, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Buddy Bolden, Freddy Keppard The Creole Band, Larry Gushee, and documenting early jazz performance Joining the Turk Murphy Band, 1977: Bob Helm, Bill Carroll, Pete Clute Turk as arranger and composer and bandleader: a stern taskmaster Traditional jazz and race issues Working at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, 1990 Woody Allen and thoughts about the decline of traditional jazz Turk Murphy and the economics of the jazz band More about Bob Helm.

7 [Audio File 2] 92 Remembering various Earthquake McGoon s Trouble between Turk Murphy and Pete Clute, and band politics Playing at the Fairmont Hotel Leaving the band, 1986 Thoughts about jazz critics A memorable Australian tour Turk Murphy and historical preservation: the library at Stanford University Personal jazz associations: Turk Murphy and Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong, Bunk Johnson. BOB SCHULZ AND LINDA JENSEN Interview #1: January 15, 2009 [Audio File 1] 106 Growing up in Wisconsin and exposure to jazz Coming to Fort Lewis, Washington, and playing in the Thirty-Second Division Army Band Working as a school music teacher Playing Dixieland with the Riverboat Ramblers in Wisconsin and St. Louis Joining Turk Murphy s band, 1979 Marrying Linda Jensen Impressions of Turk Murphy Wynton Marsalis, African Americans and white musicians in jazz Band chemistry: Bob Helm, John Gill, Peter Clute, Bill Carroll Earthquake McGoon s and the venues: Pier 39, 1982 String bass and guitar vs. tuba and banjo: a looser feel Meeting Linda Jensen and her followme-daddy shoes Jimmy Stanislaus, playing at Superbowls, and jazz sponsors David Packard tries to save Clay Street Ray Skjelbred replaces Peter Clute The instruments: not a big band sound Turk s band arrangements Touring with a more relaxed band. [Audio File 2] 132 PAT YANKEE Interview #1: May 12, 2008 Turk Murphy as bandleader: his way or the highway Carnegie Hall Turk Murphy s funeral and taking over the band Critics and Herb Caen Singing with the band Changing musical styles Back to Bob Scobey Trad jazz. festivals. [Audio File 1] 148 Early years in show business: dancing in New York in the 1940s Meeting Turk Murphy, Easy Street, Mary Dupont and marriages Italian Village and Goman s Gay Nineties Smitten with Turk Murphy, touring and hard times Remembering the bands: Bob Helm, Carl Lunsford, Pete Clute, Jack Carroll, Bob Short, Thad Vandon, Ernie Carson, Jack Crook Lu Watters and the moldy figs Dixieland vs. Traditional Jazz Sassing with Turk Leaving Turk Murphy and creating Pat Yankee and the Sinners, 1962 Returning to the Turk

8 Murphy Band, 1968, marrying and moving to Spain, Woody Allen and sitting in with the band The Monterey New Orlean Festivals and playing with Louis Armstrong At the Metropole in New York, with Edmond Hall, Claude Hopkins, Tyree Glenn, Joe Jones, Henry Red Allen, Tony Parenti, Zutty Singleton, Buck Clayton Support from the Duponts and purchase of Easy Street, 2215 Powell Street Enrico Banducci and the hungry i The Bessie Smith and Sophie Tucker Shows Al Capp and the various Earthquake McGoon s Turk Murphy and Peter Clute Support from Charles Huggins and See s Candy Turk Murphy and the press: Phil Elwood and Herb Caen Ed and Marietta Moose, Moose s Restaurant and the Teagarden family The issue of drugs and drinking in the band Recording for George Avakian and Turk s arrangement of Louis Armstrong s Mack the Knife. [Audio File 2] 178 BILL CARTER Interview #1: April 8, 2009 Grace Cathedral and Easter Evensong: Dean Bartlett, Bishop Swing and Jimmy Stanislaus The Turk Murphy Legacy: A man of kindness George Avakian and Columbia Records West Coast jazz and the Turk Murphy legacy. [Audio File 1] 182 Growing up in Los Angeles Jazz on radio: Kid Ory s Creole Jazz Band A case of pneumonia and the clarinet as therapy First gigs: School bands, an all-youth symphony orchestra, the National Guard Band; Costa Del Oro Central Avenue: Hearing Louis Armstrong and his All-Stars Stanford University, Jim Leigh and studies in humanities Fraternity band and meeting Pete Clute Joining Turk Murphy on tour: filling in for Bob Helm, 1955 Recording in New York: Pete Clute, Dick Lammi, Billy Butterfield, Milt Hinton Mack the Knife with Lotte Lenya for Columbia Records Covering the costs: a princely weekly salary of $200 New Orleans: the search for traditional jazz and its musicians Preservation Hall and the revival of traditional jazz in the 1960s Revival: The music of tremendous force: Jazz DNA in their bones More about Lu Watters Thoughts about bebop The Tin Angel and Kid Ory s On the Levee Turk Murphy s roadmap arrangements and instrumentation Adding brass: the issue of two cornets Impressions of Turk Murphy: taking risks and finding Pop Evans Thoughts about ragtime, Ken Burns and jazz series. [Audio File 2] 204 Wynton Marsalis and more about Ken Burns The Barbary Coast and Sid LeProtti Jazz leaves New Orleans bound for San Francisco in the early 1900s Headquarters for the Moldy Figs Other clarinet players: Richard Hadlock, Bill Napier, Robbie Schlosser, Albert Nicholas Narrow scrapes: singing on a radio

9 CARL LUNSFORD broadcast from Basin Street East Thoughts about music as a career Music critics Phil Elwood and Ralph Gleason Playing the street funerals in New Orleans San Francisco clubs: Pier 23 and Burp Hollow Turk Murphy s legacy and archives: Stanford University and the Traditional Jazz Foundation. Interview #1: February 23, 2010 [Audio File 1] 223 Growing up on the road in a musical family First gig: The Red Onion Jazz Band, New York City Learning to play the banjo Sitting in with Wilbur de Paris and George Lewis Studying painting at Columbia University Meeting Turk Murphy in 1954, playing with the band, Opening at Earthquake McGoon s on Broadway, 1960 Band requirements: carpentry to performance Playing with the Turk Murphy Band again, Ken Burns and West Coast jazz Earthquake McGoon s on Clay Street Trying to stop the TransAmerica Corporation buyout Turk s best band : Oakley, Helm, Clute, Lunsford, Carroll New Orleans ensemble playing Lu Watters: A sparse, beautiful lead In the hot seat with Turk. [Audio File 2] 246 RICHARD HADLOCK Legacy of Turk Murphy Loudest band in the world Carnegie Hall and thoughts about ensemble playing More about Turk Murphy. Interview #1: March 18, 2010 [Audio File 1] 259 Early years in Connecticut and visits to The Radio City Music Hall The gift of a clarinet A high school band in Brazil; father s RCA-Victor connection Studies with Sidney Bechet: strong, fiery and hot On reading music and jazz musicians; LeRoi Jones and Blues People Playing the horn to simulate the human voice Major players Ray Skelbred, Si Perkoff, Jim Goodwin, Dave Frishbert Remembering Turk Murphy: jazz and show business Managing The Record Changer magazine in New York Performing with Kid Ory and Pops Foster New Orleans jazz instrumentation The Turk Murphy Band: a co-op Band sponsor Doug Wooten The Red Onion Jazz Band, New York An invitation to join Turk Murphy in California, 1957 Teaching on a Pomo Reservation and sharing a flat with Kenneth Rexroth Teaching in Berkeley schools: Phil Hardymon and music at Berkeley High; Peter Apfelbaum and Joshua Redman Working with Pat Henry at KJAZ, and eighteen

10 years at KQED: Race issues since the 1960s, the changing Fillmore, and Crow Jim. [Audio File 2] 280 Ken Burns PBS jazz documentary Jimbo s Bop City The intense U.S. jazz scene vs. recreational playing West Coast jazz: Pops Foster, Earl Hines, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Earl Watkins, Allen Smith.

11 INTERVIEW HISTORY Trombonist Turk Murphy was a key figure in the traditional jazz revival that began in San Francisco in the 1940s. Born in California in 1915, he was a veteran of the big bands of the 1930s, but his passion was the music of King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton and their contemporaries, and he decided to take a longshot at something that needed a shot New Orleans jazz. Murphy performed with Lu Watters legendary Yerba Buena Jazz Band in San Francisco in the 1940s and subsequently formed his own band, eventually playing trad jazz at a number of Earthquake McGoon s clubs from 1960 to The popular clubs were a creation of Murphy s, named after a colorful wrestler in Al Capp s Li l Abner cartoon. Murphy was well connected with New Orleans. He recorded with Bunk Johnson, worked with Kid Ory, and arranged Mack the Knife for Louis Armstrong, regretting later that he had chosen a modest flat fee rather than residuals. Turk Murphy was given the key to the city many times over he seemed to know everyone in San Francisco. By reputation he was a superlative musician, with a robust sense of humor and a strict work ethic. He could be difficult to work with, but was valued by his colleagues for his uncompromising standards. From 1984 to 1987, the band played at the Fairmont Hotel, and in 1987 there was a tribute concert for Murphy at Carnegie Hall, after which the New York Times reviewer reported an enthusiastic and warmly sentimental audience overflowed onto the stage to greet Turk Murphy, a pillar of the traditional jazz revival in California. Murphy died a few months after the concert. Eight interviewees were selected for the Turk Murphy oral history: Gallery owner Charles Campbell s long association with Turk Murphy began in the 1950s, when he served as band manager at Easy Street. Leon Oakley and Bob Schulz (cornet/trumpet) performed with Turk Murphy respectively from 1968 to 1979 and from 1979 to John Gill (banjo/clarinet) was with the band from 1977 to 1986, and Pat Yankee sang with the band at different times from the 1950s to the 1980s. Carl Lunsford played banjo in the band from 1959 to 1961 and from 1971 to Author, radio host and clarinetist Richard Hadlock and clarinetist Bill Carter were with the band briefly in the 1950s. All of the musicians interviewed still play traditional jazz in the Bay Area with the exception of John Gill, who has his own band in New York and often performs with Woody Allen s New Orleans Jazz Band. The Regional Oral History Office was established in 1954 to record autobiographical interviews with persons who have contributed significantly to California history. The office is headed by Richard Candida Smith and is under the administrative supervision of The Bancroft Library. ROHO thanks Leon Oakley for serving as a project advisor and attorney Terry O Reilly for his help with funding the oral history. Caroline C. Crawford, Music Historian Fall 2011

12 1 Charles Duff Campbell Interview #1: October 10, 2007 [Begin Audio File 1] 01-00:01: :02: :02: :02:55 I m sitting with Mr. Charles Campbell, and we re going to talk about Turk Murphy and the Turk Murphy era in San Francisco. My first question to you is, when we started this oral history in the Bancroft Library, everyone said you should be among the first people to talk to. Why is that, do you think? Well, I was very much involved with Turk and in fact, managed the band for a while. I met him just before Pearl Harbor. David Stuart and I. David Stuart had a store in L.A. called Jazz Man Record Shop. He and I shared a house together. And we drove up here because we d heard about this Yerba Buena Jazz Band on the radio one night a week, like a Friday and Saturday night, and we wanted to hear it. So we drove up there Labor Day weekend, And they were playing at Annie Street then. So we went there, and that s how we met all those guys, Turk and Lu Watters, the leader. It was the Lu Watters band at that time. Yes. Well, let s go back a little bit, because you have had a very colorful life. You were born in Santa Cruz, but grew up largely in Shanghai. That s right. How did that happen? My parents were gold mining people, and they d been up in Alaska. My sister was born in Alaska, and they couldn t go up there anymore, so they got this chicken ranch in Santa Cruz, where I was born. And they just, God, they were anxious to get back into mining. My dad got a tip about some property in northern Siberia, and he went by himself and checked it out, and he sent a cable back to my mother. Something like, It looks good. Come on. Come and bring the kids. I m still two years old. And my sister is five years older. And we ended up in northern Siberia. It was around then, 1917, that the Bolsheviks came and they took There s a bluegrass record that goes: They got the gold mine, we got the shaft.

13 2 We had to get back to the port of Vladivostok. My mother told me later she realized she had eight dollars and thirty cents left, that s all the money. But they looked out of the railway station window, and there s an American battleship there. It turned out that the American Red Cross was opening up a barracks for soldiers and sailors in Vladivostok, and so pretty soon my mother s running the Red Cross barracks home department, like the kitchen and servants and everything. So we were there until I was five-and-a-half years old :04: :04:46 It was considered safe for you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Where was your father then? He was also in Vladivostok, but he got involved with the YMCA. My parents were like two American people in Vladivostok that could help a lot with the incoming people from America, who knew nothing about anything Russian. So that s how they were taken care of there. Because my dad was sure that the Tsarist government was going to overtake the Bolsheviks and we d go back and get to gold mining. So I was sent back, my sister and I, sent back to Santa Cruz on an army transport by ourselves, with a Russian nurse. My mother went on another thing, and Dad went to China. About six months later, he agreed he wanted all of us to come there. So my mother joined us, my sister and me; we went from San Francisco to Shanghai. And I was there from kindergarten through high school. [chuckles] 01-00:05: :06:19 So you know lots of languages. Well, I should ve been more efficient. But actually, the first language, virtually, was Russian, because I had nobody to talk to in English except my parents and the Red Cross people. But my nanya, sort of a nurse taking care of me, knew nothing except Russian. And that s how you learn, when you re two, three years old. Do you still have it? No, I lost it. What was bad is that Helen, my sister, and I were living with our grandparents that six months in Santa Cruz. And we d start talking together in Russian, and my grandmother is outraged, and forbade us to talk anything in Russian, because the Russians had taken our gold mine. [chuckles] She would

14 3 not put up with anything like that. So that s too bad; we could ve been more fluent :06: :07:01 Did you think this was a colorful growing up? Or did you think everybody grew up this way? I thought it was normal. [laughs] Well, you made your way back to California. I finished high school and I didn t want to go to college, like most of my classmates did. Most of them are from missionary families, and they sent kids to religious colleges, and I didn t want to do that. A couple of my buddies and I just started drinking and going to little bars. I m only seventeen. One day I came home, the day after Christmas I m still seventeen and Dad said, Well, get packed up, you re going to San Diego. Huh? I said. San Diego Army and Navy Military Academy. I was on a ship in a few days, and I never lived at home again. And it was the [laughs] best thing that ever happened to me :07: :07: :0: :08:11 Why? I grew up. No more amahs? No more amahs. I had to learn to make my bed. My God! Unheard of! What was your exposure to music when you got to Los Angeles? Well, before that, I was collecting records in Shanghai. You were. You already loved jazz. Oh, yes. In fact, my two buddies and I, we finished high school and we went for six weeks to Japan, to the summer home of Chris Moller, one of my classmates, whose parents owned a big shipping line. But they had this house there, and we went there. I took a phonograph record player and all the jazz records I could think of. The Mills Brothers and things that were popular then.

15 4 I found in a record store in Shanghai, a major record store, a record by Bix Beiderbecke, a Victor record. I took that, and that was my first Bix record. I now have everything he s ever blown a note on, on CDs :09: :09: :10: :10: :11: :11:19 How big is your collection? I ve got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Records and CDs and some 78s. While you were in L.A., you got to be very close with the most famous jazz figures. How did you do that? A lot of it was with David Stuart and his Jazz Man Record Shop that attracted a lot of musicians. It was the only jazz record shop in the world that only had jazz records. He didn t like Benny Goodman; he didn t have Benny Goodman records. Jelly Roll Morton, and Armstrong and Joe King Oliver and all that. So jazz musicians would come to town, they d go there just to hear some records or talk to David, and so that s how I got to know some of these guys. Who did you know best? I know you knew Nat King Cole, and drove for Art Tatum; how did those things come about? I went as often as I could to hear him [Tatum] at a club in L.A. And he had a young guy that came from his hometown in Ohio, that had to go home. And I said, Look, I ll pick you up at your apartment and I ll bring you to the club, and I ll go home and maybe take a nap or something, take you back home. So I did that. And he said, I can t pay you. He said, I can pay for your drinks. [chuckles] That would prompt you to drink. That was better. And I got to know Nat Cole and the trio very well. Especially Nat and his first wife, Nadine. You met them just by being in the clubs? Yes. What was the club scene like? Well, they were just mostly bars, tables around a piano. Was this Central Avenue?

16 :11: :11: :11: :12:17 No, it was in downtown. What streets? One was Seventh Street. And Nat Cole was on La Cienega, I think. And I can t remember the name of that club, I m trying to think of it. When Nat King Cole came, how long were his gigs here? Well, like at that place on La Cienega, he was there for almost a year. Invariably, those people hire a group and it s for two weeks. And then if, at the end of two weeks, they aren t doing anything, they re out. But if it s successful, they just continue going. And Nat was there for a year, maybe. Where did he live? Where d he live? In the Central Avenue district. Then I got involved with a girl, a married girl who was not divorced, but her husband had split and she wanted to get a divorce, and I wanted her to, and we couldn t. But we rented an apartment, together with another girlfriend who was married, also. So we had this neat apartment on 37 th and Hoover Street in L.A., and you d go in from the street, there s a garden there and a two-story apartment place, a big U-shaped thing. And we lived there for a long time. Even all the time I was in the Coast Guard, it was there. We d have sort of supper parties, and we d invite musicians. And once Nat and his wife came over. We always had a great time. The next morning my landlady said, I don t want to sound prejudiced, but after this, when you have colored people coming to visit you, can you have them come at night? 01-00:13: :13:55 I wanted to ask you about that. Because it was a very racially divided city in the fifties and forties. Well, the whole damn country was that way. L.A. was Central Avenue was all colored. I d go there often, a lot of times. Were the audiences mixed? Yes. I can t think of the name of the hotel, the major hotel on Central Avenue. They had a little bandstand, and they d have parties and people like blues

17 6 singer T-Bone Walker would be there. And I remember once, we got to know Jimmie Lunceford, the bandleader. He was mad about my girlfriend, Frances. And he once invited us to have supper at this Central Avenue hotel. And we re sitting there and this woman comes over and says, Jimmie Lunceford! And he says, Hi, Ella. And it was Ella Fitzgerald. [laughs] 01-00:14: :15: :15: :15: :15: :15:57 Everyone was there. He introduced us, and she sat down for a while. It was a kick. I interviewed Norma Teagarden years ago, and she told me that she had invited Louis Armstrong s wife to come into the club where she was performing. And she mentioned that to the owner and he said, I d rather not. This was in the fifties. That was here? In Los Angeles, and later by a decade, than the time we re talking about. Did you see much racial division? Oh, yes. It was sort of normal. Did somebody like Nat Cole feel that? Oh, they certainly understood it. And at places where they worked, it was mostly white people came to hear them. They were very fond of the music and the guys, and there was very little racial conflict in those places. They just worked around it. Yes, totally. Talk about Jelly Roll Morton, would you? Well, I was a fan of his, but I only knew his records. And then he came to L.A. when he was living in New York. He drove a Lincoln convertible sedan, towing another one all the way from New York to L.A. Something happened. It was winter, 1940, I think, and one of the cars broke down. He had to sell it for a hundred dollars or something. And he showed up in L.A. and he came to see David Stuart at the record store.

18 7 Morton wasn t working, didn t have job there or anything, and we wanted to talk to him about his whole background in New Orleans and Washington, D.C. and New York, about his memories of music and musicians and everything. I had a job and had Saturday off. So we arranged to meet him on Central Avenue, and we d go to a club, a restaurant. I was a whiz in shorthand. I could take shorthand 150 [words per minute] :17:22 You learned that at business school? Yes, I went to business school, I learned to type and do shorthand. So I d sit there. We d ask Morton a question, and it d take him fifteen minutes to answer it. [chuckles] I was writing down his answers in shorthand and having trouble eating. But it was fantastic. He had a reputation of being sort of haughty and nasty and all that, but it never, never showed up. We just got along very well. He got very sick and was in a sleazy little West Oh, God, what street? It was a little [hotel] where sick people go. And he was in a room about half this big. I took my girlfriend Frances, who was born in New Orleans, and she was a beauty. Morton was in the bed and just very drawn back. And she started talking to him, and in about two minutes, he was real peppy. [they laugh] 01-00:18: :18:39 That s a nice story. Oh, God, he was he liked the ladies. You interviewed him how many hours? Well, maybe five or six weeks, on Saturday. What I did was type up those notes in shorthand. There s a guy named William Russell, who was a big jazz expert. I think he started that whole thing at Tulane University, archives of jazz, and we sent all these typed my notes to him. Six months later, Pearl Harbor started, and we totally lost track of everybody. I just assumed all this stuff was lost, but it was found again about eight or ten years ago, and it came out in a book published in Copenhagen called, Oh, Mr. Jelly [A Jelly Roll Morton Scrapbook. Compiled by William Russell, Copenhagen:JazzMedia, 1997]. It weighs eight-and-a-half pounds. And my notes are in there. I couldn t believe it. Are they edited, or are they just the way that you

19 :19: :20: :20: :20: :20: :21: :21:21 It s pretty much edited down, but it s Morton talking about early musicians in New Orleans that I d never heard of. They were sort of raggy old-time piano players that were highly admired down there, but it was before recordings were made and So that was fascinating. What was distinctive about his music? Well, his piano style was unlike any contemporary. He did not have any imitators. Just one or two. The bands that he recorded with, he generally put together for a recording session. Those 1926 or 27 Victor records, and they hold up beautifully today, just great. Alan Lomax interviewed him, too. Yes, for the Library of Congress. How are your notes different from Lomax s, if you can say? You must ve been closer to him; you were a friend. With Morton? Yes. Well, at that time, when Lomax did it, Morton was in Washington, D.C., with a job. And Lomax found him and got him recorded on discs. I have it all, all of those records. You have the interviews? Yes, that Lomax did. How would the subject matter differ, then, from what you did? Mine is far more limited, just talking about certain guys we were curious about, that we d heard these names and asked him about, because otherwise, nobody had ever heard of them, because they d never recorded. It d be like 1900 or late 1880s. With Lomax, he d come and go there for hours. Lomax would ask a question and he d talk for twenty minutes, reminiscing. They re very revealing. I have them all. They were issued, made available, about thirty, forty years ago. And I of course got them on LP. Then lately, a few years ago, a complete set was

20 9 issued, made available. And on some of those, Morton was just talking very dirty and using foul language and everything. It was pretty funny. [chuckles] 01-00:22: :22: :22: :23: :23: :23: :23: :24:02 What prompted that? Well, he was being reminded of something, about what certain lyrics meant those lyrics are in there, but when the records were made, they were cleaned up. So he was telling us what they originally were. Do you have copies of your notes? No! Because you didn t keep copies. I sent them all to Bill Russell and Do you have the book? Yes. It s on the shelf. Well, you drove around with him on Saturdays. In his car? Yes, we did that in his car. But we d go to a place off of Central Avenue, just to sit and talk and eat. What was Central Avenue like? It was ninety percent colored. And we d go there, and we felt quite normal and comfortable. Were there blues clubs? Yes, but they d be white people going there, ninety percent. Where did T-Bone Walker play? In Watts. It was called the Little Harlem Club. And what was that like?

21 :24: :24: :24: :24: :25: :25: :26:00 That was something, yes. I was living with two other girls and we drove from the house we shared. It was 104 blocks each way from where we were living in Hollywood to this Little Harlem Club. You walked? No way. It sounded like you walked, if you counted. [chuckles] No. We counted just on the map. Where did you spend most of your jazz listening hours? Which clubs? Well, mostly piano bars, like for Nat and Tatum. And Morton, of course, I couldn t because he never had a job in L.A., the last eight months of his life. Before that, I used to go to the Palomar and hear big dance bands. Benny Goodman s band and all those guys, and Ellington and Lunceford. Where was that club? There was one off of Vermont Street in L.A., the Palomar. It burned down one night that I was there. I left at midnight, because I had to go home. It was a Sunday; I had to be at work at eight-fifteen in the morning. And the place burned down after I left. It was Charlie Barnet s band. Those guys all got out. They were out in an intermission, and most of them lost their instruments in it. It went up that quickly. Was anyone hurt? No, everybody got out. That must have been an incredible music scene in Los Angeles. You knew Mary Lou Williams, I think? Yes, but here, later. It was about twenty years ago, here. I heard her with the Andy Kirk band. But I didn t get to know her or anything. Andy Kirk s band was in L.A. a short period. And then there was an artist friend of mine here in town named Hayward King, a black guy. And he was helping in the gallery. I rented him the second floor of my where the gallery is now was an apartment then. The first floor was a frame shop and a thing where they sell pictures. Hayward was interested in jazz, and he said, Mary Lou Williams is at the Palace Hotel, at the bar there. Let s go. So we went. They got talking at

22 11 intermission, and she d come over and sit with us, and so I got to know her that way. And then later, we had a party that we were invited to, like God, thirty people for this party for Mary Lou. It was near Hawthorne Street or somewhere. That s the last I saw her. She moved out :27: :27:39 Well, back to Los Angeles. What were the club offerings? What did you pay as a cover charge, do you remember? Rarely was there a cover charge in the small places. For instance, the Palomar. I don t remember paying anything to get [in] there. Another pal of mine named Carlos Gastel, he and I were in military school together, and he and I and about two others were the only ones interested in jazz. Somebody d come, Get the radio on! So-and-so s on the radio. And so we d listen together. He moved up to L.A., and we got to see each other, and we d go to places together. And then he got into the business of managing small groups of people, musicians, and that became his career. I wanted to take him to hear Nat Cole. I took his sister, Chiquita, but Gastel was not very interested in that kind of stuff. When I took Chiquita home, she was just raving about Nat Cole. And so he said, Okay, I ll go next week with you. Nat Cole had a manager who also ran that club, and that was ending. Nat asked if I would manage the band. And I said, Geez, I have a day job. And I said, How much does the band get, the trio get? He said, Well, we d be happy with 150 a week for the trio. I got Carlos involved, and within a year, Nat Cole was in fancy clubs in Hollywood, getting a thousand dollars a week, and he was taken to places on Sunset, a big club on Sunset. Hollywood people would come into those places all the time, and Nat s career took off :29: :29:45 A huge promotion for his career. Oh, yes. Before, when you first knew him, he wasn t doing financially well? Not at all. Just happy to get a job like that. What years are we talking about now?

23 :29: :30: :30: :30: :30: :30:43 38, 39, 40. Then I d see Tatum, and driving him December of 40 and into 41 that was an interesting period. Was he doing well? Yes. He always had a whatever-he-wanted kind of job. He did. What clubs was he in, mostly? Well, just small bars. Well-known, respected bars that had piano guys. You like piano, especially? Yes. Did you study piano? No. What was Tatum like? He was very reserved. But we got to be very good friends. [He had] a kind of blindness that if I d give him a drink, he d hold the glass up to about two inches from his eyes and then drink it. There s another Tatum story. I was taking him home one Friday night and he said, Can you pick me up tomorrow, and we ll go to a football game? I said, What? He said, Well, it s Jackie Robinson s last game with UCLA. And God, let s go. So I picked him up, and two of his buddies, and we went. And he said, I want to sit far in, because I can not see midfield, I can see the far end of the field, looking all the way up the field. And his vision was not bad that way :31:53 What would that be? I mean, he could see very close, a couple of inches away, and then like twohundred yards. And he would spot Jackie. Look at that, he got through, past the tackle and the guard. He s running [laughs] So he was a fan of Jackie Robinson. It was Robinson that he wanted to see.

24 :32: :32: :32: :32: :33: :33: :34: :34: :34:19 Yeah. And he was thrilled to be there? Oh, yeah. Me, too. And you, too. How old were you then? Twenty-five. I was born in 15. In 1945, I would ve been thirty. Where did he live, Art Tatum, in Los Angeles? And how long were his gigs? They went on, because club owners would love to have him, and he d stay months and months at clubs. What were his audiences like? Piano buffs. Or piano followers, jazz piano people. Would those usually be solo performances? Or would those be more trios and Both, for Nat and for him. Tatum was a single guy. And then he suddenly Well, the hint was that Nat Cole had a trio and was doing well, and Tatum decided to have a trio. I went to hear them, and at intermission well, this is an example of Tatum he asked, What do you think? And I said, I d probably rather hear you by yourself. And he just turned around [laughs] and stomped off. That made him mad. That you didn t approve! Yes, I preferred not the trio. But nobody else dared to say that, I guess. But you were friends after. Maybe six months later. Really? He was that unforgiving. I d go in. I d sit back and listen, and not talk about it.

25 :34: :34: :35: :35: :35:53 Did they join you during the performance, if they took a break? Sometimes, depending on who I was with and how much money I had. [laughs] Did you have money? I was making ninety dollars a month. I worked for General Petroleum Company, and before the war started, my salary was $125 a month. But in those years, I was living in a boarding house, paying thirty dollars a month for a room. I was sharing with a guy, and having breakfast there. So I had like fifty, sixty dollars You were wealthy! Oh! How many nights did you go out in a week? Well, mid-week, rarely. Just Friday and Saturday nights. Sometimes I d go mid-week and come home. Because my job was eight-fifteen in the morning to four-thirty. I saw somewhere in the notes that when you became an art dealer, and a very prominent one, you said, The first art I knew was Art Tatum. [laughs] What made you decide to leave Los Angeles? I got out of the service, the Coast Guard for four years. I did not want to go back to an oil company office job, or anything similar. And I met an artist one of the two girls I was living with Mary Margaret s husband came back from the Navy. He was a saxophone player in a Navy band. He came back and moved in with us, because they couldn t find an apartment. And he said, I ve decided I want to be an artist. I can do musicians playing if I want to, also. I heard of an art school called Chouinard in Los Angeles. Well, it was the major art school. And he said, I m going there, because I can go for free. So he went to Chouinard. And one time he came home and he says, I met this girl that was teaching there, and we got talking about jazz. And he said he told her, I m in this apartment with this guy, and he has all these jazz records, so come on over. A week later she came, Pauline Annon, through artist friends who were involved with that school, and we became I mean, that turned my life around because she got me interested in artists.

26 15 She knew an owner of an art store in Los Angeles, the major art store, called the Louvre. I went on a trip to China to meet my cousin there; we were going to go into business, automobile sales in Shanghai. And everything started falling apart there :37:53 When was that? It was in 45, I guess. Yeah, 45, 46. And so I came back and got together with Pauline again. I, during the war, had saved a lot of money. Oh, and also, when I went to Shanghai, I took a car, a Nash sedan, that I bought from a guy that had been in the Coast Guard, and he had his own auto sales place. I put it on the ship, to Shanghai, and the ship got damaged. We were in a terrible, terrible storm. One of the guys on the ship s staff said, Half of the hold is full of water. And I said, There goes my car. We got to Shanghai, and it turned out my car was safe, and I had it pulled out. About two weeks before I left to return, a man I knew who was the head waiter at a restaurant my mother had and who had a ton of money I sold him that car for $6,000 US. And I came back with that money, and with that, I came to San Francisco to open the Louvre Art Store. It was an art supply store. And eventually, because it was a block from the Art Institute, I met a lot of the guys who were artists, and that s how I got involved with those guys :39:34 Did that work out well for you? Yes. After about twenty years, I got kicked out of where I was, and I was able to buy the gallery place where I am now, and started a gallery, with the suggestion of artist friends of mine. Robert Harvey, Nathan Oliveira, Jim Johnson. Nate Oliveira and Johnson were teaching at Stanford, and they were showing at Gump s art department, gallery in Gump s. And they said, We want out. If you open a gallery, we ll move in with you. So I opened with these guys that already had some reputation in town :40:28 How soon was that after you moved here? Twenty years, exactly. I opened in September 47, the art store, the Louvre. I got this building in 67. And in 71, I converted it, the top floor as a gallery. I told you that my colored friend Hayward King had the apartment there. And one day I said, Hayward, I ve got to evict you because I m going to [chuckles] have an art gallery up here. But I said, You have six months to move out.

27 :41: :41: :42: :42: :43: :43: :43:43 You were prepared, at one point, to go to Shanghai and make your life there. Right. My cousin, Ed Parker, about fifteen years older he was in Siberia with us and he was married to a Russian girl. He came to Shanghai, or to China, near Nanking, with a Dodge agency, and he ended up running that. So then after the war he said, Let s go back and I ll start a car agency. And I was ready to go. I had not gotten involved in the art thing. You would ve missed music so much. Well, there were bands there. It was a different kind of music, but there was one great jazz band, they were all Filipino musicians. That was a kick. What were your impressions of San Francisco when you first arrived here? Oh, immediately mad about it. Terrific. It s something. Talk about the music neighborhoods that you frequented. Just, it would be any neighborhood that maybe a musician I knew I d go to the ballrooms that had bands I liked. Armstrong would come and play for a couple of weeks, and then there was a club on Bush Street called The Hangover Club. Primarily for a piano, but there was enough room for four musicians. It was up behind the bar, and I would go there all the time. Where is the Hangover Club? It s on Bush Street, above the tunnel, Stockton Tunnel was. It s still there. What about the jazz scene in North Beach? There was some going on. In fact, at the Washington Square Bar & Grill, known as the Washbag Norma Teagarden worked there for a long time. And Burt Bales. Those were only single piano guys, but it was our favorite hangout. Did you go to the Fillmore? Yes, there were a lot of clubs, jazz clubs, in the Fillmore District and downtown. And there s virtually nothing now like that. A new Yoshi s is opening.

28 :44: :44: :44:44 Yoshi s is opening keeps going, I guess. I ve talked to people like the Alleys, Vernon Alley and also Allen Smith, Earl Watkins. That s a different kind of jazz. Did you hear them? Yes. I knew Vernon very well. And one time Turk needed a bass player, when he was at the Tin Angel Club in the Embarcadero area. And he knew Vernon, and Vernon needed a job. He was with the band for at least a month. So you were really promoting jazz then. Well, in a way. I was Turk s manager. I got the job at Well, first job was at the Italian Village. That was in 52. I got that basement of the Italian Village, which was not occupied, and a dance floor, a bandstand, and a bar. I got to know those three guys that were running it because of going to the bar at the corner, Pete s Place. I talked to them and said, Look, let me take over the basement and bring a jazz band. Well, what do you want to do? I said, I want to do one Sunday afternoon party for just guys like Turk Murphy. And they said okay. So Turk, we put together a five-piece band. And three of the guys came down from Portland that Turk and I knew. And God, that Sunday thing. We were going to have dancing available. There were so many people they just had to put chairs on the dance floor and everything. The guys that owned the club couldn t believe it. And Christ, they ran out of liquor at the bar. So the next day or so I meet up with them again. I said, What if I could put together this band and work four days a week, four nights a week? And they said fine. I said, I can t pay you rent. They said, Okay, we ll give you a percentage in the bar. Fifteen or twenty percent, it was. And then we ll just take care of everything else. I decided to charge at the door. You went down the stairs from the main supper club upstairs. And we charged seventy-five cents for people to get in. God, nobody complained a bit. I never made any money. And my pal, my partner in that, Bill Mulhern and I I had a job of my own, and he worked at the Bank of America. So we never got any money. We just got enough to pay the band :47:03 And they did well. Well, it was [expected] to go for a month, and it went on for two-and-a-half years.

29 :47: :47:20 Turk had been having trouble, hadn t he? He d taken to touring, because he needed management, I guess. Oh, yes. When you came, he d been with Lu Watters. Yes, but then after that, he had his own group, and he d go to L.A. and play. [End Audio File 1] [Begin Audio File 2] 02-00:00: :00: :01:06 What were your first impressions of Turk Murphy, when you met him? The first time I met him was that Labor Day weekend. David Stuart and I came up from L.A. He wanted to take us around in his car, Turk did. Turk was very nutty about good cars. He had a big Chrysler car, and he wanted to take us What did he drive then? Various ones, but they were very fancy cars. I guess he d thought about selling cars, at one point. Yeah. Or actually, he was a mechanic. And at one point, he couldn t get a music job; he got a job at Ellis Horne, a Chevrolet place, for about two weeks. But that trip, Dave and I came up and he wanted to take us to hear and meet Paul Lingle, who turned out to be my favorite piano player, who was then living in Santa Cruz. Turk picked us up, David and me, he and Helen, and we drove to Santa Cruz and met Lingle. He didn t have a piano; we didn t get to hear him play then. Then we went to San Jose to hear some musicians he wanted [to hear], and that was part of that weekend, before Dave and I drove back to L.A. So then Turk came down to Los Angeles before he had to go into the Navy. And so we got to see him down there. We became very close, admiring friends. And it went on and on. We did have falling outs, of course, when we were in business together. But nothing that lasted long. Bunk Johnson and Leadbelly were said to have asked for Lingle in San Francisco. Well, what was the falling out about?