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Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library 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 2007-2009

Copyright © 2011 by The Regents of the University of California 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.

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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, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/cite.html

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 2007-2009, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2011.

Turk Murphy

(Courtesy of Charles Campbell)

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 1952-1954.

[Audio File 2] 18

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, 1960-1962; 630 Clay Street, 1962-1978; 128 Embarcadero; Pier 39—Helping with the gig at the Fairmont Hotel, 1984-1987—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.

LEON OAKLEY

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 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: 1968-1979—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: 1962-1978— Playing the festivals: Live from Heidelberg—Jazz writers: Phil Elwood, Ralph Gleason and Richard Hadlock—The Turk Murphy legacy: keeping the torch burning.

JOHN GILL

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. [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 “follow- me-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

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.

PAT YANKEE

Interview #1: May 12, 2008

[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 Murphy Band, 1968, marrying and moving to Spain, 1972-81—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

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.

BILL CARTER

Interview #1: April 8, 2009

[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 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.

CARL LUNSFORD

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, 1959-1961—Opening at Earthquake McGoon’s on Broadway, 1960—Band requirements: carpentry to performance— Playing with the Turk Murphy Band again, 1971-1977—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

Legacy of Turk Murphy—“Loudest band in the world”—Carnegie Hall and thoughts about ensemble playing—More about Turk Murphy.

RICHARD HADLOCK

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: 1965-1987—Phil Hardymon and music at Berkeley High; Peter Apfelbaum and Joshua Redman—Working with Pat Henry at KJAZ, and eighteen years at KQED: 1969-1987—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.

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 1984. 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 1987. 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 1977. 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

Charles Duff Campbell Interview #1: October 10, 2007 [Begin Audio File 1]

Crawford: 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?

01-00:01:44 Campbell: 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, 1941. 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.

Crawford: It was the Lu Watters band at that time.

01-00:02:39 Campbell: Yes.

Crawford: 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.

01-00:02:50 Campbell: That’s right.

Crawford: How did that happen?

01-00:02:55 Campbell: 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.”

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.

Crawford: It was considered safe for you.

01-00:04:43 Campbell: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Crawford: Where was your father then?

01-00:04:46 Campbell: 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]

Crawford: So you know lots of languages.

01-00:05:54 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Do you still have it?

01-00:06:19 Campbell: 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

not put up with anything like that. So that’s too bad; we could’ve been more fluent.

Crawford: Did you think this was a colorful growing up? Or did you think everybody grew up this way?

01-00:06:54 Campbell: I thought it was normal.

Crawford: [laughs] Well, you made your way back to California.

01-00:07:01 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Why?

01-00:07:51 Campbell: I grew up.

Crawford: No more amahs?

01-00:07:56 Campbell: No more amahs. I had to learn to make my bed. My God! Unheard of!

Crawford: What was your exposure to music when you got to Los Angeles?

01-00:0:07 Campbell: Well, before that, I was collecting records in Shanghai.

Crawford: You were. You already loved jazz.

01-00:08:11 Campbell: 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.

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.

Crawford: How big is your collection?

01-00:09:11 Campbell: I’ve got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Records and CDs and some 78s.

Crawford: While you were in L.A., you got to be very close with the most famous jazz figures. How did you do that?

01-00:09:29 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Who did you know best? I know you knew Nat King Cole, and drove for Art Tatum; how did those things come about?

01-00:10:20 Campbell: 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]

Crawford: That would prompt you to drink.

01-00:10:58 Campbell: That was better. And I got to know Nat Cole and the trio very well. Especially Nat and his first wife, Nadine.

Crawford: You met them just by being in the clubs?

01-00:11:12 Campbell: Yes.

Crawford: What was the club scene like?

01-00:11:19 Campbell: Well, they were just mostly bars, tables around a piano.

Crawford: Was this Central Avenue?

01-00:11:28 Campbell: No, it was in downtown.

Crawford: What streets?

01-00:11:32 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: When Nat King Cole came, how long were his gigs here?

01-00:11:46 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Where did he live?

01-00:12:17 Campbell: 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 37th 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?”

Crawford: I wanted to ask you about that. Because it was a very racially divided city in the fifties and forties.

01-00:13:40 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Were the audiences mixed?

01-00:13:55 Campbell: 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

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]

Crawford: Everyone was there.

01-00:14:43 Campbell: He introduced us, and she sat down for a while. It was a kick.

Crawford: 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.

01-00:15:08 Campbell: That was here?

Crawford: In Los Angeles, and later by a decade, than the time we’re talking about. Did you see much racial division?

01-00:15:22 Campbell: Oh, yes. It was sort of normal.

Crawford: Did somebody like Nat Cole feel that?

01-00:15:30 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: They just worked around it.

01-00:15:50 Campbell: Yes, totally.

Crawford: Talk about Jelly Roll Morton, would you?

01-00:15:57 Campbell: 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.

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].

Crawford: You learned that at business school?

01-00:17:22 Campbell: 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]

Crawford: That’s a nice story.

01-00:18:29 Campbell: Oh, God, he was— he liked the ladies.

Crawford: You interviewed him how many hours?

01-00:18:39 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Are they edited, or are they just the way that you—

01-00:19:37 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: What was distinctive about his music?

01-00:20:02 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Alan Lomax interviewed him, too.

01-00:20:41 Campbell: Yes, for the Library of Congress.

Crawford: How are your notes different from Lomax’s, if you can say? You must’ve been closer to him; you were a friend.

01-00:20:49 Campbell: With Morton?

Crawford: Yes.

01-00:20:52 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: You have the interviews?

01-00:21:11 Campbell: Yes, that Lomax did.

Crawford: How would the subject matter differ, then, from what you did?

01-00:21:21 Campbell: 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

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]

Crawford: What prompted that?

01-00:22:29 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Do you have copies of your notes?

01-00:22:52 Campbell: No!

Crawford: Because you didn’t keep copies.

01-00:22:55 Campbell: I sent them all to Bill Russell and—

Crawford: Do you have the book?

01-00:23:00 Campbell: Yes. It’s on the shelf.

Crawford: Well, you drove around with him on Saturdays. In his car?

01-00:23:19 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: What was Central Avenue like?

01-00:23:31 Campbell: It was ninety percent colored. And we’d go there, and we felt quite normal and comfortable.

Crawford: Were there blues clubs?

01-00:23:54 Campbell: Yes, but they’d be white people going there, ninety percent.

Crawford: Where did T-Bone Walker play?

01-00:24:02 Campbell: In Watts. It was called the Little Harlem Club.

Crawford: And what was that like?

01-00:24:08 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: You walked?

01-00:24:27 Campbell: No way.

Crawford: It sounded like you walked, if you counted.

01-00:24:32 Campbell: [chuckles] No. We counted just on the map.

Crawford: Where did you spend most of your jazz listening hours? Which clubs?

01-00:24:44 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Where was that club?

01-00:25:17 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: It went up that quickly. Was anyone hurt?

01-00:25:47 Campbell: No, everybody got out.

Crawford: That must have been an incredible music scene in Los Angeles. You knew Mary Lou Williams, I think?

01-00:26:00 Campbell: 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

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.

Crawford: Well, back to Los Angeles. What were the club offerings? What did you pay as a cover charge, do you remember?

01-00:27:32 Campbell: Rarely was there a cover charge in the small places.

Crawford: For instance, the Palomar.

01-00:27:39 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: A huge promotion for his career.

01-00:29:41 Campbell: Oh, yes.

Crawford: Before, when you first knew him, he wasn’t doing financially well?

01-00:29:45 Campbell: Not at all. Just happy to get a job like that.

Crawford: What years are we talking about now?

01-00:29:51 Campbell: ’38, ’39, ’40. Then I’d see Tatum, and driving him— December of ’40 and into ’41—that was an interesting period.

Crawford: Was he doing well?

01-00:30:19 Campbell: Yes. He always had a whatever-he-wanted kind of job.

Crawford: He did. What clubs was he in, mostly?

01-00:30:25 Campbell: Well, just small bars. Well-known, respected bars that had piano guys.

Crawford: You like piano, especially?

01-00:30:36 Campbell: Yes.

Crawford: Did you study piano?

01-00:30:38 Campbell: No.

Crawford: What was Tatum like?

01-00:30:43 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: What would that be?

01-00:31:53 Campbell: I mean, he could see very close, a couple of inches away, and then like two- hundred yards. And he would spot Jackie. “Look at that, he got through, past the tackle and the guard. He’s running—” [laughs]

Crawford: So he was a fan of Jackie Robinson. It was Robinson that he wanted to see.

01-00:32:15 Campbell: Yeah.

Crawford: And he was thrilled to be there?

01-00:32:19 Campbell: Oh, yeah. Me, too.

Crawford: And you, too. How old were you then?

01-00:32:31 Campbell: Twenty-five. I was born in ’15. In 1945, I would’ve been thirty.

Crawford: Where did he live, Art Tatum, in Los Angeles? And how long were his gigs?

01-00:32:50 Campbell: They went on, because club owners would love to have him, and he’d stay months and months at clubs.

Crawford: What were his audiences like?

01-00:33:05 Campbell: Piano buffs. Or piano followers, jazz piano people.

Crawford: Would those usually be solo performances? Or would those be more trios and—

01-00:33:21 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: That you didn’t approve!

01-00:34:04 Campbell: Yes, I preferred not the trio. But nobody else dared to say that, I guess.

Crawford: But you were friends after.

01-00:34:14 Campbell: Maybe six months later.

Crawford: Really? He was that unforgiving.

01-00:34:19 Campbell: I’d go in. I’d sit back and listen, and not talk about it.

Crawford: Did they join you during the performance, if they took a break?

01-00:34:32 Campbell: Sometimes, depending on who I was with and how much money I had. [laughs]

Crawford: Did you have money?

01-00:34:41 Campbell: 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—

Crawford: You were wealthy!

01-00:35:17 Campbell: Oh!

Crawford: How many nights did you go out in a week?

01-00:35:19 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: 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?

01-00:35:53 Campbell: 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.

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.

Crawford: When was that?

01-00:37:53 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Did that work out well for you?

01-00:39:34 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: How soon was that after you moved here?

01-00:40:28 Campbell: 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.”

Crawford: You were prepared, at one point, to go to Shanghai and make your life there.

01-00:41:12 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: You would’ve missed music so much.

01-00:41:54 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: What were your impressions of San Francisco when you first arrived here?

01-00:42:15 Campbell: Oh, immediately mad about it. Terrific. It’s something.

Crawford: Talk about the music neighborhoods that you frequented.

01-00:42:30 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Where is the Hangover Club?

01-00:43:09 Campbell: It’s on Bush Street, above the tunnel, Stockton Tunnel was. It’s still there.

Crawford: What about the jazz scene in North Beach?

01-00:43:23 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Did you go to the Fillmore?

01-00:43:43 Campbell: Yes, there were a lot of clubs, jazz clubs, in the Fillmore District and downtown. And there’s virtually nothing now like that.

Crawford: A new Yoshi’s is opening.

01-00:44:02 Campbell: Yoshi’s is opening—keeps going, I guess.

Crawford: 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?

01-00:44:21 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: So you were really promoting jazz then.

01-00:44:44 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: And they did well.

01-00:47:03 Campbell: Well, it was [expected] to go for a month, and it went on for two-and-a-half years.

Crawford: Turk had been having trouble, hadn’t he? He’d taken to touring, because he needed management, I guess.

01-00:47:14 Campbell: Oh, yes.

Crawford: When you came, he’d been with Lu Watters.

01-00:47:20 Campbell: 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]

Crawford: What were your first impressions of Turk Murphy, when you met him?

02-00:00:26 Campbell: 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—

Crawford: What did he drive then?

02-00:00:54 Campbell: Various ones, but they were very fancy cars.

Crawford: I guess he’d thought about selling cars, at one point.

02-00:01:06 Campbell: 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.

Crawford: Bunk Johnson and Leadbelly were said to have asked for Lingle in San Francisco. Well, what was the falling out about?

02-00:02:37 Campbell: It could be incidents of the time. I can’t remember them. I know we had a beef. The next day it was okay. Things like that.

Crawford: Where did Turk live when you first met him?

02-00:02:55 Campbell: He was living in Berkeley with Grace. And they were thinking of moving to San Francisco. At my little frame shop, my Italian landlord—I’ll call him Marco, which is not right—he owned the six-apartment unit next door, in the back of which was a little four-unit one that I was renting for twenty-four dollars a month, my little apartment back there.

He came in one day and says, “Some people are moving out on the second floor.” And he said, “I’ve got somebody coming.” I said, “Wait a minute, I have a friend coming. Lives in Berkeley, wants to move here.” He said, “Well, I don’t know, I’ve got somebody in mind.”

So I called up Grace, I said, “Get your ass over here quick and look at this place. And come dressed neat.” She came over. And she was very, very attractive and perky, terrific. I introduced her to the Italian guy, and he came back thirty minutes and later and said they had the apartment.

Crawford: [laughs] He liked her.

02-00:04:14 Campbell: Turk was there nineteen years and three wives.

Crawford: Who were the wives?

02-00:04:21 Campbell: Well, Grace. And they split up. The second one had been involved with a jazz musician. And the third one, the ultimate one, was Harriet. And with Harriet, he had a child, a son.

Crawford: Where is the son now?

02-00:04:45 Campbell: He lives in Marin County somewhere.

Crawford: Is he musical?

02-00:04:48 Campbell: No. Carson. I said, “How’d you get Carson?” I said, “It’s a nice name.” “Well, he said, “Carson was conceived in Carson.” [they laugh] Carson City.

Crawford: Oh, great story!

Well, let’s talk a little bit about Italian Village, and how that was as a venue.

02-00:05:24 Campbell: We were hoping to stay alive just the first couple of months, because there was very little—An artist friend of mine who was mad about Turk did a little sort of a thing you could put on lampposts and telephone poles around town; we did that. And we just started to stay alive.

And then one day in May that year, upstairs did a huge whole afternoon of musicians, including—the main one was the Firehouse Five, who came up from L.A. That was a popular band.

Crawford: They were Disney folks.

02-00:06:09 Campbell: Yes. Had been on TV programs. And the place was jammed! We opened downstairs, as well. Well, people would come down at intermission to hear Turk. And that built up immensely. Within a couple months, our attendance was like fifty percent higher downstairs. We worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, and Sunday from three to seven in the afternoon.

And then Claire Austin could come down and she could work with us Friday night and Saturday night and Sunday. Because she had an office job up in Sacramento. So then we started making money enough to pay the band and do some publicity and things, and it went on for three years.

Crawford: Would you look at the photograph in Meet Me at McGoon’s and talk about the personnel a little bit? That was the Village—

02-00:07:47 Campbell: Well, it’s Bob Helm, clarinet. And this looks like Don Kinch, trumpet. And Wally Rose, of course, piano. And Turk and Claire Austin. And Harry Mordecai on the banjo in the back, yeah.

Crawford: What was distinctive about that sound?

02-00:08:13 Campbell: It was his version of traditional jazz, and he did not want to have two trumpets and all that because he did not want to have people feel he was trying to imitate the Watters band.

Crawford: So that wasn’t a financial consideration, not to have more horns.

02-00:08:33 Campbell: We used that as a reason. But he never did want to have two cornets. When we decided to get a trumpet player, we got Donald Kinch down from Portland. He had come down for that one Sunday party, with Helm, and Monty Ballou flew in, and Bob Short came down for that thing.

So then Short, who was from Portland, he moved down here. And Bob Helm moved back, and that founded the basic part of the band. Wally Rose was here

in town, was the piano. So it was a five-piece band, and it was a good, strong, traditional jazz band, with the kind of tunes that lots of people like. Was not swing music jazz or anything like that.

Crawford: Moldy figs.

02-00:09:40 Campbell: Yes, I was a moldy fig.

Crawford: There was that controversy over that—

02-00:09:46 Campbell: Yes. The guy that really started that, I think, was Phil Elwood. He wore a moldy fig pin. Which I never got one. [laughs] The moldy figs were jazz enthusiasts who would go to a club and ballroom and not dance. The dancers were “ickies”—we just did not like dancing—we’re just going to stay up close to the bandstand and listen to music!

Crawford: There was dancing?

02-00:10:15 Campbell: Yes. In certain of the clubs, where there was a ballroom. But the dancers, we called “ickies,” and that caught on with other people.

Crawford: You thought they didn’t take the music seriously.

02-00:10:32 Campbell: Right.

Crawford: Where was there dancing?

02-00:10:36 Campbell: Well, in the big ballrooms. Not The Hangover Club, but in the Italian Village basement, where we had the band, there was a dance floor. And what happened was that the band would start and nobody’d be out on the dance floor, because it turned out people did not want to be the first people out there by themselves.

So my wife, Esther, said, “Come on, let’s go out and dance for one tune, and other people will start coming out.” So we did that. And I got to be very fond of dancing. So God, I do it all the time now when I go to jazz clubs. [chuckles]

Crawford: You do now.

02-00:11:20 Campbell: Yes. Once we got people on the floor, the place would be— like ten couples would be dancing. And there’d be a couple of older types, my age, women, “Could you do the Charleston?” Things like that. My God, they couldn’t

believe it. One girl told me, she said, “I was fourteen when I learned the Charleston,” and that’s like thirty years ago. [laughs] Gee, that takes me back.

Crawford: I should say so. Well, what happened with the Italian Village? It lasted for two-and-a-half years.

02-00:12:01 Campbell: Yes. Then Turk wanted to go on the road. We got a travel manager that got him booked for six weeks on the East Coast, Philadelphia and New York. In New York, it was the Child’s Paradise. He was there for a month. And went to Boston and Philly. And then people were coming back to Italian Village, and the place caught fire. It did not burn down, but it was just out of business. And the upstairs, the little second floor— The main floor was a big nightclub thing. And above that were—it’s still there, at Columbus and Lombard—little one- room hotel.

Two of our guys— Dick Lammi had a room up there, and so did Freddie Crews—a piano player who was totally blind. And he’d come down from Oregon, and he’d play intermissions for us and we’d pay him. I was out of town when that fire happened, and Lammi told me that he was up there and the place was smoking and he decided to get out. Freddie Crews was in a room near him, and he said he went to Freddie’s room, and— Lammi told me later he said, “Why don’t you get out of here?” And Freddie said, “I was waiting for you to take me out.” And they got out, and the place was closed. And that’s when Tin Angel, the lady, what’s her name?

Crawford: Dupont?

02-00:13:56 Campbell: No. Peggy Tolk-Watkins and her girlfriend had a place called the Tin Angel. And I talked to her, and that’s when we booked in there for, God, a long time. I was still managing Turk.

Crawford: About four years, I think.

02-00:14:18 Campbell: Yes. I’d go down there frequently, especially Saturday night. I would go down there and get Peggy in this room, and I’d say, “Come on, give me the check.” And she says, “I can’t, but I’ll give you money.” It was getting like $1800 a week for the band and everything. She’d pay me off in as much—Some of them were one dollar bills, C-notes and fifties and twenties. $1800.

That would be like 2:00 a.m., by which time, I was half loaded. I’d come home—Esther and I were living in an apartment on Van Ness—and I had to get that money—God!—home safely. $1800, I could’ve been held up easily.

The next morning, before I opened the frame shop, I’d drive to the Pacific Union Bank with the cash and deposit it. I’d given all the guys a pay check for

their weekly pay. I had to take the money down to make sure that the checks didn’t bounce. That went on and on. It was funny.

Crawford: That was a lot of money.

02-00:15:31 Campbell: It sure was, for cash. [chuckles]

Crawford: What was the entry fee for the club?

02-00:15:37 Campbell: I think it could’ve been a dollar.

Crawford: A dollar to get in. Was there a drink minimum?

02-00:15:45 Campbell: I don’t think a minimum, but people came and they drank.

Crawford: Who were the audiences?

02-00:15:57 Campbell: Who were they, you say?

Crawford: Was it a white audience, principally?

02-00:16:02 Campbell: Yes.

Crawford: And a white band. Was that by choice, or—

02-00:16:09 Campbell: No, just who had worked together. I told you what’s-his-name, the bass player, joined Turk for a while, and he was a colored guy.

Crawford: Vernon Alley. Well, what did your management consist of?

02-00:16:33 Campbell: Not much then, because the band was locked in at Tin Angel. And once in a while they’d get maybe a summer Sunday gig somewhere up country. Bob Short, the bass player, was a licensed pilot. He would rent a plane and maybe four or five of the guys, they’d fly up to Northern California for a Sunday.

Shortly later he became a licensed teacher. Pilot teacher. One time he and another guy bought an airplane that had to be assembled. They knew about this thing, and they had to assemble it themselves. It took them like a month. Short’s pal went up in it and came down and landed. Short took it up, and the wings fell off and he was killed.

Crawford: Oh!

02-00:17:44 Campbell: And boy, that was a shocker.

Crawford: Terrible. Well, it was a rather informal arrangement with the band.

02-00:17:51 Campbell: Yes. For my position, yes. Turk didn’t want to do that part of handling the money and paying the guys. And since I’d been doing it since the Italian Village, I just continued with it. We had a bank account at the Pacific Union.

Crawford: And you weren’t salaried, as a manager.

02-00:18:16 Campbell: No.

Crawford: No. Well, your art store must have been going very well then.

02-00:18:22 Campbell: It was okay, yes. I had like three or four employees. Invariably artists.

Crawford: We didn’t talk about Hambone Kelly’s. When was that at its height?

02-00:18:41 Campbell: That started after the war; in ’46, I think they started. In fact, that’s when I came back from China, and I’d saved up the money. I was very close to Turk. I said, “What about me being a partner in this and managing the club?” And so he said that all seven musicians, all members, they were together making decisions like that.

Turk told me a week later, he said, “Well, I can’t do it because Auggie is going to manage the club.” He had been involved with the Annie Street club. Auggie Teretto or something.

So that’s when I went into the Louvre art store business, because I was turned down running Hambone’s. It was very successful—Turk and Grace lived there. And Lu Watters lived there and Lammi lived there. They are sort of apartments.

Crawford: Where was that?

02-00:20:08 Campbell: Emeryville.

Crawford: Emeryville. Odd place for a club—

02-00:20:11 Campbell: Yes. Then those guys got meeting with each other, and I was sort of out of the loop as far as that. They had a big meeting, and Wally Rose quit. Turk and Helm quit for a while and then—Because they had a fight with Lu. Some argument about whatever.

Crawford: What was that?

02-00:20:44 Campbell: I don’t know what they were fighting about. It happened. They worked together for years and there are beefs. But then Turk and Lu got together again. And Turk came to see me. And he said, “I don’t have—Wally won’t come back. He never wants to play with Lu again. And I need a piano player.” I said, “Gosh, I know this guy very well in Los Angeles, Johnny Wittwer. So we went into the gallery at the frame shop and called him. He drove up the next day, and he was with the band for a year.

And the funny thing is, there was a young woman, a member of some organization, who always had her tape machine, but the band never recorded properly with Wittwer in the band. I never could track down that girl so that I could maybe find a tape with him in the band.

It was then reduced to one trumpet, because [Bob] Scobey left to form his own band. And Lu just was a single trumpet player.

Crawford: Scobey’s very much connected with The Hangover Club, isn’t he?

02-00:22:09 Campbell: Scobey. To some extent, yes. But then when he got his group together, it was in Berkeley. Or Oakland. What the hell’s that called? I don’t know. Can’t remember.

Crawford: Did you ever go to Eli’s Mile High [Club] or Seventh Street?

02-00:22:35 Campbell: Couple of times. And just one time going in and out.

Crawford: That wasn’t your scene.

02-00:22:43 Campbell: No. I was getting more involved with other daytime jobs and everything, the gallery and all that. And I couldn’t do it every night. [chuckles]

Crawford: When Earthquake McGoon’s opened—in ’60, I think it was—you were less involved?

02-00:23:03 Campbell: I was no longer involved with Turk. Pete Clute, the piano player, his family had money, and Pete and his brother were involved, or sort of managing. Pete was off and on, for years, being Turk’s piano player. But the family supported them, to get them started financially. And then the place, the first one, took off and people started coming there. It had a balcony, and I would like to go up there and hear the band. So I’d go in there, but I was no longer in any way involved with the management.

Crawford: But you remained good friends.

02-00:24:00 Campbell: Oh, yes. Turk was still living next door to the frame shop. Then he and Grace split up, and at one point, we were very close, Grace and I. Boy, she was a vain person. She had— I don’t know what it’s called, but she’d lose her—She was very upbeat and everything, and then would just go for days without talking to anybody.

Crawford: Depression, maybe?

02-00:24:30 Campbell: Yes. There were times she’d be next door and she’d be coming out. You’d say, “Grace, come on.” God, we dated each other and everything, but she’d say: “I can’t talk with you. Can’t talk with you.” And I was, wow, I’d get married to someone like this. Because that’s what I then knew was going on with Turk and they couldn’t get along. And then next thing you know, they’re just happy as hell together.

Crawford: What was his second wife like?

02-00:25:00 Campbell: What the hell is her name? She was involved with the music world, too. And that lasted only about a year. Maybe two years. She moved to and got a job in Reno. Then the other one, Harriet, she was a bass player, string bass player in a trio, and was working in Las Vegas. And when Turk was down there for quite a while, they met, and they got married down there. I couldn’t believe it.

Crawford: Talk about the various McGoon’s, if you would.

02-00:25:47 Campbell: Well, the first one was at the Evans Hotel. There was like four others. [chuckles]

Crawford: Moved around a lot. But that was a long period of time, because—

02-00:25:58 Campbell: Well, they’d lose their lease or something. There was one on the Embarcadero, near Mission Street, and a couple others. I’m trying to think of all the locations. And there’s one period that I guess was on one of the piers.

Crawford: Pier 39.

02-00:26:25 Campbell: Yeah, Pier 39. And the trouble with that, people went down there, Fisherman’s Wharf, for daytime fun. You’d go in there, you’d hear Turk around 11:00 p.m., when nobody’s there. Because nobody’s walking around to go in there. Just didn’t work.

Crawford: It wasn’t a welcoming area.

02-00:26:46 Campbell: No. Not for a nightclub job.

Crawford: Did the popularity of the band ever wane?

02-00:26:57 Campbell: I don’t think so. There’s that one picture showing Turk with a patch on his eye; that was at Carnegie Hall in New York. He travelled in Europe with the band, and Australia. So he was getting an international reputation.

Crawford: Did you go with him to New York?

02-00:27:17 Campbell: Never. Esther and I had a— she was able to get away from her work at Western Pacific Railroad, a three-month vacation. We went to Europe, and the day he opened in New York is the day we left to go to Europe, and I didn’t even get the chance to hear that band. But that was all right.

Then he came back and got worse and worse. And he got a good job at the Fairmont, with some help from me, because I knew Dick Swig.

Crawford: How did you know Swig?

02-00:28:01 Campbell: Well, Sissie had a gallery, and she was an art collector. So I knew her through my gallery and the framing. They liked jazz music. And so when they hired Turk for a month, he told me, he said, “I’m going to just do it for a month, but we’ll see what happens.” He said, “I don’t know Turk well, but I know a lot of jazz musicians. They’re all heavy drinkers and they get bad.” I said, “Turk, I’ve known him twenty years, never seen him drunk.” He said, “Okay, we’ll find out.”

I went to hear the band one night, and Dick called me over to his table, says, “He’s going to stay here as long as he wants.” And he did.

Crawford: Good for you.

Campbell: That band did so well there. People came from a lot of foreign places to go hear the band. They’d stay at the Fairmont, in a room, then go down and hear Turk.

Crawford: What a wonderful time it was. Turk was serious.

02-00:29:23 Campbell: He was what?

Crawford: He was serious.

02-00:29:25 Campbell: Definitely.

Crawford: Yes, he was. And someone even said—I think it was John Gill—said he was a taskmaster.

02-00:29:32 Campbell: Yes. No nonsense. Don’t be five minutes late or anything like that. And all the guys went along with it.

Crawford: Did he ever try to defend you, all of the moldy figs? Did it bother him that some people looked down on the kind of music he was doing?

02-00:29:52 Campbell: No, I don’t think so.

Crawford: No. Well, I’ve been waiting for you to mention “Duff Campbell’s Revenge,” and you haven’t mentioned it yet.

02-00:30:05 Campbell: [laughs] I decided to do a birthday party, my ninetieth. We went over to Bimbo’s [365 Club], and Leon and I went to talk to a guy, Gino, who’s really the manager. And we set up a deal, and then Leon put together the band and I rented the place, and it was my party. And there must’ve been 200 people came.

Crawford: When? For your ninetieth birthday?

02-00:30:42 Campbell: Yes. Two years ago. Did you get a copy of that—?

Crawford: No—what I was talking about was the piece Turk wrote for Eddie Condon. And you know what I’d like to do? Well, let’s just turn this off. [audio file stops & re-starts] We’re talking about “Duff Campbell’s Revenge.”

02-00:31:04 Campbell: I can’t remember which record company wanted to record Eddie Condon and Turk Murphy, on two sides of a record. And Turk and a lot of us were not at all fond of or interested in Condon or his kind of music. So he composed a tune that Eddie Condon was to play. But he made it, it’s like seven sharps or something, just very difficult.

Crawford: Who asked for this piece?

02-00:31:39 Campbell: Turk wrote it for Eddie Condon to play on that record. And he called this tune “Duff Campbell’s Revenge,” because he knew those guys were going to have a tough time recording it. Seven sharps or something, and very difficult for jazz musicians to read and play. I always responded to that title. So when I

had my ninetieth birthday party at Bimbo’s nightclub, we called it “Duff Campbell’s Revenge,” and invited as many long time friends as possible, who were delighted with the idea.

Crawford: Why didn’t you like Eddie Condon?

02-00:32:22 Campbell: We didn’t like his style of music, for one thing. I never got to know him. I didn’t dislike him personally. It was not the kind of— Chicago jazz, it was called then, in the thirties and forties. One trumpet, and there’d be a solo and— It was totally unlike the Lu Watters band or Turk’s band or anything like that. We just were primarily opposed to it.

As far as Condon went, his brother, Pat Condon, I got to know very well out here. He worked in the Merchant Marines. And he was a fan of Turk’s, and Turk would ask him to sit in, because he played banjo.

There’s a Pat Condon episode that I’ll bring up. He was living in a North Beach hotel. He’d come back from the maritime, some job he had on ships. And he’d stay for at least two months here in a cheap hotel, and go hear Turk and musicians all the time.

He was a pot smoker, like everybody else. And he called me up one day at the shop, and he said, “We got busted by the narcotics squad here at this hotel. They came to my room and,” Pat said, “for some reason, I didn’t even have any marijuana on me, but the guy across the hall got busted because he had lots of grass with him. And then they came,” he said. “They came in and talked to me,” he says, “Showed me this list. ‘Do you know any of these guys, these names?”

Pat said they were mostly jazz guys, except Charles Campbell. And I said, “Uh-oh. They don’t know where I live, but they know my name.” I had marijuana, and I just dumped it all. I never got involved with it again.

Crawford: [laughs] Good.

02-00:34:33 Campbell: Pat Condon tipped me off in time. Then Burt Bales, the piano guy, got busted, and he spent three months in City Jail here.

Crawford: Really? When would that have been?

02-00:34:44 Campbell: In the seventies, probably.

Crawford: In the seventies. You kept up with Turk until he died, and he kept going strong. Well, let’s talk about your art associations. You have, oh, hundreds of

paintings up in this home. I just walked by a beautiful Wayne Thiebaud painting. I think his son was your partner at one point, was he?

02-00:35:31 Campbell: Yeah, Paul Thiebaud, yeah.

Crawford: When you opened the gallery and the artists came to be shown there, how did that work out?

02-00:35:44 Campbell: It worked out very well, because I was not trying to be a big shot downtown gallery. I started out with showing artists that I knew. As I named, Oliveira and Bob Harvey. Bob Harvey used to work for me as a picture framer. And he got to be recognized and accepted by Gump’s Gallery, which is one of the two major galleries downtown.

Crawford: What was the other gallery?

02-00:36:19 Campbell: It was at the City of Paris. It was an important gallery for an artist to be exhibiting, in City of Paris or Gump’s.

I opened on Chestnut Street, and there were artists I knew that were not shown at galleries. The ones I liked and whose work I liked, I started exhibiting, and this went on and on for twenty-plus years.

Then I, at some point, decided I need help. My age and other physical problems. Paul Thiebaud wanted to have a gallery, and I said, “Why don’t you be my partner?” And he said, “Ah, let me think about it.” He was trying to sell Wayne’s prints, because he was not allowed to sell Wayne Thiebaud paintings—that was exclusively Allan Stone Gallery in New York. But he could sell prints.

So one day he and Wayne and I were having dinner at a restaurant, and I brought this up. And Paul said to Wayne, “What do you think about that?” And Wayne said, “Yeah, it sounds like a good idea.” Paul said, “Well, I’ve got to think about it.” So a couple months later, he called me up, he said, “Let’s go for it.” So we did. And we called it the Campbell-Thiebaud Gallery.

Crawford: What were the years of the Campbell-Thiebaud Gallery?

02-00:37:55 Campbell: We said, “Let’s go for ten years,” and it went on for about twelve. But then Paul got ambitious, and he wanted to expand. He wanted to open a gallery in Laguna Beach. Campbell-Thiebaud Laguna Beach, Campbell-Thiebaud in New York City, and continue the one in San Francisco.

I said, “I just can’t do that. Let’s just split, and you do all that and I’ll just continue on my own and just take it easy.” I had one person come in to help me, a woman to talk to people and answer the phone and do all that stuff. So that went on. We own the property. We did not want to sell it. He wanted to buy it then, twelve years ago. And we said, “Well, when the time comes to sell, you have first option.”

So that has been opened up and it’s pending, because of a problem I’m having with my gallery associate now, who did not want to pull out, and there are legal problems. But that’s how that, we hope, will end, and Paul will take over next year.

Crawford: And you’ll close down.

02-00:39:19 Campbell: In my name, I’ll close down.

Crawford: Are you still active in the gallery? Have you been?

02-00:39:24 Campbell: Not since we had a legal falling out a few months ago.

Crawford: With someone who you employed.

02-00:39:31 Campbell: Yeah. At one point, I made him a partner. And there was a clause in the partnership. It said if any of the partners wants to dissolve the partnership, to provide a written notice and a sixty-day notice.

I did that a year ago, in September. And that was to eliminate my partner. He got lawyers and everything, claiming that there was an agreement that permitted him to go on indefinitely. So we’re having legal problems.

Crawford: I’m sorry. That’s messy. Well, let’s talk about the jazz scene today. What’s going on that you find worthwhile?

02-00:40:21 Campbell: Well, the people I like are some that you’ve interviewed. Leon Oakley and those guys, John Gill, when he comes out from wherever he is.

Crawford: He’s playing with Woody Allen in New York right now.

02-00:40:32 Campbell: Yes.

Crawford: You’re in touch with him.

02-00:40:36 Campbell: With John, yes. I have a Woody Allen story. I went X-number of years ago to New York, and I wanted to hear Woody Allen’s band. I knew John, so I took a photo with me of Turk Murphy Street.

Woody Allen has a custom at intermission: the musicians go to visit people, the bathroom, or outdoors to smoke. He would sit at the stand and people would come up. I went up to him and said, “You don’t know me, but I heard you when you sat in with Turk.” And I said, “I don’t know if you’re aware that this happened.” I showed him this photo. “There’s a Turk Murphy Street.” He said, “How many minutes away is that from Earthquake McGoon’s?” I said, “It’s like a seven- minute walk.” He said, “Okay.” [laughs] That ended it.

Crawford: He just meant he would go.

02-00:41:47 Campbell: Yes. He wanted to know how far it was when he was at Earthquake McGoon’s sitting with Turk, to where the street was named after him.

Crawford: Oh, I see. And that was the extent of your conversation?

02-00:42:00 Campbell: That was it. I told John Gill that later. He said, “That’s Woody.”

Crawford: It was kind of abrupt?

02-00:42:08 Campbell: Yes. Just not nasty or anything, just like, that’s all I want to hear. Suggesting that maybe next time in San Francisco, he might to look at it, but probably not.

Crawford: [laughs] He didn’t ask you who you were and what your association was. Is that a good show to attend?

02-00:42:33 Campbell: With Woody? It was in a sort of a club with a lot of tables and people. It was at one time; I don’t know if he’s there, does that all the time. But I know that he goes abroad, and John Gill relies on that kind of job with Woody, because the pay is very good.

Crawford: I’m sure it is.

02-00:42:59 Campbell: He’s been living with a woman named Kim. They were here together in New York. And Kim, for some reason, wanted to move to Texas. And they went to Austin, Texas. Well, there’s very little jazz music there. [chuckles]

John said, “I was playing with rock bands and jazz groups with Western jazz and all that, to keep alive.” And now he’s been called back to work with Woody Allen for several months. So he’s back in New York, living in his parents’ home. In a suburb.

Crawford: Playing at Café Carlyle, I think.

02-00:43:47 Campbell: That’d be good. Oh, I like that place.

Crawford: Well, what’s being done to preserve the Turk Murphy era in music?

02-00:44:00 Campbell: The bands—like with Leon and John Gill—are sort of following what Watters and Turk were both doing. When they have a seven-piece band, it is with two trumpets. If they can’t do that, it’ll be more like Turk had, with trumpet, trombone, clarinet, piano and a bass or so on.

But it’s all stemming from those days with what we call West Coast jazz. And West Coast jazz was started from those musicians being very taken with Louis Armstrong, Oliver, and Morton, and not with New York or Chicago jazz. Lu Watters really should be credited for founding what’s now referred to as West Coast jazz, and there’re bands in Europe who basically try to follow that kind of music, the way it sounds.

Crawford: What do you make of the fact that a jazz player like Dave Brubeck stayed on the West Coast?

02-00:45:20 Campbell: Because he had a quartet that was unique. I don’t think there are others— maybe some lesser, not even professional musicians that try to go along with that, that were out on the West Coast, but it’s not what we call West Coast jazz.

Crawford: Were you a fan of Brubeck’s?

02-00:45:48 Campbell: I liked what they did, yes.

Crawford: Did you go to the Blackhawk a lot?

02-00:45:53 Campbell: Not a lot, no.

Crawford: You preferred the other kind of music.

02-00:45:56 Campbell: Definitely.

Crawford: Talk about the Jazz Foundation. I think you’re on the board.

02-00:46:04 Campbell: Yes. Leon’s on the board, and the head guy, the leader, is Bill Carter, who was with Turk as a clarinet player once for about half a year. I can’t remember, I think Turk’s clarinet player, Helm then, could not go on this trip. So he hired Bill Carter on that trip to New York and places. I was no longer involved with the band.

All these members of the board, some are lawyers or attorneys that are jazz fans. And they make financial contributions and do very nice things. We try to put together, like we did two weeks ago, the Magnolia Jazz Band, at a club in Oakland. Bill Carter was the clarinettist on that. But the Jazz Foundation sponsored that, and organized it, put out the publicity. And the place was pretty well packed.

Crawford: So the foundation has a staff that will do these things?

02-00:47:31 Campbell: Yes.

Crawford: Where is it located?

02-00:47:34 Campbell: We have a meeting at the office of one of the lawyers. In fact, John Brown— Jack Brown—on California, near the Embarcadero. 50 California, forty floors up.

So we have a meeting three, four times a year, from 11:00 a.m. till about— after lunch—two or three, and bring up all the necessary talk. All the minutes are shipped out to us and everything. It’s a very, very professional kind of organization.

Crawford: How many on the board?

02-00:48:19 Campbell: There’s about eight or ten.

Crawford: Who are the other board members?

02-00:48:27 Campbell: Scott Anthony is a musician friend. Leon. Chuck Huggins was, an owner of See’s Candies. He’s a jazz fan, amateur musician. But he resigned last year. I can’t think; names don’t come up.

Crawford: Are you associated with the Sacramento organization? That’s a large traditional jazz group.

02-00:49:00 Campbell: I’m not, no.

Crawford: Well, last question. We’ve had almost two hours now; thank you so much. What has Turk Murphy meant in your life?

02-00:49:15 Campbell: Well, knowing him, the fact that the two of us were simpatico and worked together, it got me involved with Turk as a professional musician, and getting me involved—getting him jobs, and getting recorded. That helped kick off his career. It certainly needed a lot of help from others. Through—God, what’s his name?—who was on Columbia Records. He came out, and I said, “Come down and hear Turk.” Turk was recording with Good Time Jazz, L.A.

Crawford: Was that Avakian?

Campbell: George Avakian came down, and he and Turk talked together. He said, “Let’s have you record with Columbia.” And he did, for years and years. So that was a kick. I’d known Avakian before Turk did.

Crawford: What was your association with Avakian?

02-00:50:36 Campbell: Well, he came to L.A., and he’d hang out at David Stuart’s store, and I got to know him there. Because Dave and I had a house together. Then I came up here once from L.A. I’m in the Coast Guard, and I got a free trip up here, because I was to return a deserter. A Coast Guard deserter had to be brought back to San Francisco.

So I’m in the personnel department, and I assign myself to bring this guy back to San Francisco. I dumped him at the Coast Guard headquarters, and then I had a weekend up here, and a free round trip on the train. And who the hell is here is a guy, it’s George Avakian. He was a Navy officer. So we went to hear what we could of jazz people, and I got to know him. That was a nice get- together.

Crawford: Recording with a mainstream company like that must’ve meant a great deal to Turk Murphy.

02-00:51:36 Campbell: Well, definitely, because it was Columbia, Victor, and two or three of the biggest names of recording companies.

But being with Turk has had a lot to do with my interest in the music and getting to know other musicians better. And some of them— Like Leon Oakley, I’ve known since he first started with Turk twenty years ago, and it’s ongoing. And John Gill. Made good associations because of my relationship with Turk. So that’s good. That was a big plus. Thank you, Turk.

Crawford: Thank you, Mr. Campbell. It’s a lovely interview.

02-00:52:36 Campbell: Thank you.

[End of Campbell Interview]

Leon Oakley Interview #1: October 24, 2007 [Begin Audio File 1]

Crawford: I’m at the home of Leon Oakley. It’s October 24, 2007, and we are recording a video session for the Turk Murphy Oral History Project. So let’s begin, Leon, with you, and with your background and your exposure to music growing up.

01-00:00:44 Oakley: My exposure to the kind of music that I ended up playing most of my life was slightly affected by what music there was at my home. My dad was a banjo player. My mom played piano for her own enjoyment and loved Fats Waller. They both loved Bing Crosby. And there were always a few of the more popular Louis Armstrong seventy-eight records around that were part of our life. And so that’s where I kind of got a start.

As I said, the music from my mom and dad’s collection was important to me. It wasn’t a heavy-duty jazz collection, but my mom liked Fats Waller, so there were some Fats Waller recordings. There was some Bing Crosby, and a little bit of Louis Armstrong. But not the kind of classic Armstrong that I eventually became interested in.

When I was in school and learning how to play trumpet—because it was something that everybody wanted to do, is play some instrument, play in the band; it seemed like a lot of us did, who weren’t in sports—I found a book of music for small Dixieland combos by the Melrose Brothers. And these people turned out to be the ones who made sure that a lot of the music of Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver made it into manuscript form.

They eventually publicized the music, and it became something that they were making money at. Probably the musicians weren’t making a lot. [chuckles] But anyway, that book had not just what somebody would call Dixieland tunes, but it had some classic jazz material. And the first times I ever saw the name Jelly Roll Morton or Joseph King Oliver were in those books.

That led me to the library, where I said, “Well, Louis Armstrong seems to have recorded a lot of early material in the mid-1920s.” So I started borrowing LPs from the library. George Avakian was the A&R man for Columbia. So he managed to reissue most of the Louis Armstrong classic Hot Five recordings and Hot Seven recordings. Reissued them on LPs, which allowed me then to start hearing them for the first time. Because everyone else before me had to either buy the seventy-eights or whatever. And I had no access to things like that, I was just a teenager.

Crawford: Where were you?

01-00:03:35 Oakley: I was raised in Binghamton, New York. They call it the Southern Tier of New York State, which is right dead center on the border between Pennsylvania and New York State. I was born fifty miles south of there, in a coal mining town called Carbondale. And when I was about five or so, and my younger brothers were small, we all moved up to Binghamton.

Binghamton is part of the Triple Cities area, Endicott, Johnson City, and Binghamton. And that’s where IBM started. General Electric had a big plant. Endicott-Johnson Shoes. And so at that time, it was a relatively busy and probably a somewhat successful economical area. Presently, there’s not a lot going on in Binghamton. It’s still existing, but the economy is way down. It doesn’t have the industry it used to.

But anyway, it allowed me to find the music of Louis Armstrong, and then about that same time, a lot of the Turk Murphy recordings. Well, I never knew who Turk was, except for his recordings, I could find them being sold for a dollar or so. This was after they’d been out on Columbia for a number of years, and most of these were Columbias then, that were finally just being released to be bargain-bin sales at the record stores. One store in particular carried a lot of Turk Murphy’s records.

I found out the music that he was representing on his LPs was some of the same music that I had learned to listen to from the Louis Armstrong recordings, and then eventually the Jelly Roll Morton recordings, etc. Everything I started to accumulate became teaching aids or learning aids for me. They were my teachers on record. And so by happenstance, it kind of connected me with the music of Turk.

And then I discovered I could purchase Lu Watters LPs, and there was a big tie between the West Coast jazz and the early jazz of New Orleans, of course. And this was what Turk and Lu Watters and Bob Helm and that whole Yerba Buena band did, was to keep the music alive, and therefore, by keeping it alive, it kind of kept me interested enough to want to play it and actually work on it as part of my musical training, my own choice.

Crawford: You said you preferred early Louis Armstrong to what you had heard of the later, more modern jazz.

01-00:06:38 Oakley: Well, it wasn’t because it was modern, but it was maybe more commercial, more vocals and things. I thought the exciting, creative cornet playing he did in the early days, and eventually trumpet playing, was something that was new to me. And so I was happy to really discover that.

And there was nothing nicer than the Hot Seven band, because it was very much like a Turk Murphy band. It had a tuba and a banjo player. [chuckles] It was just a very, very exciting type of music to me. And eventually, it became

what everybody was calling traditional jazz—a term that Turk actually created. He created the terminology traditional jazz so it was not to be confused with Dixieland jazz.

Crawford: Talk about that.

01-00:07:33 Oakley: I think the main problem with the association was that Turk felt the music that Dixieland bands often played was sometimes not as respectful to the composers. In other words, if the verse was too hard to remember and nobody wanted to work on it, then the verse got left out, and certain parts of the tunes disappeared. In Turk’s way of doing things, he thought the history of the music was very, very important, and the composer should be considered in all aspects of representing the music again.

And so he felt that the title traditional jazz was better because it meant that there was more respect towards the music itself, and not just a jam session. And traditional jazz was also something he thought should consider the idea of ensemble playing being extremely important and solos being slightly less important. Not to be left out, because there was never a time when Turk ever left any of us out of playing solos. But it was one of the things that he wanted to make sure was always there, that was the ensemble sound; that the voicing of the trumpet, the clarinet and the trombone had a fabulous blend.

So that even when Turk was unable to have an eight-piece band like the Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band—because economically it was very hard to support a band of that size—even his six-piece band had a full sound. It was such a big sound because of the ensemble work. So he created the name “traditional jazz.” The British musicians liked the name, but changed it and called it “trad jazz.”

So traditional jazz was Turk’s invention of a phrase to satisfy the requirements of a style of music. The actual creation of this music on the West Coast really moved beyond just the West Coast. It is all over the world.

It is still kept alive in many different countries around the world with strong support in Australia, England, and France.

Crawford: I know you toured, and we will get to that, because I want to talk about the audiences and the reception. But did you hear live jazz when you were growing up?

01-00:10:21 Oakley: No. Not at all.

Crawford: Just recordings.

01-00:10:23 Oakley: Not in our area. We were not close enough to New York to go and hear live jazz. It was going on. I regret it tremendously. My dad was working hard to make a living, and he was on the road as a salesman a lot of his life. So when it came to going long distances to chase jazz—he loved the music, but had little time to make trips to New York City.

As I said, he played banjo. He played with his father, who was a fiddle player. He didn’t play jazz, but he could play all the pop tunes of the day. He had a very good ear, and he passed it on to me. So I didn’t have to worry about just looking at music to be able to play; I have a fairly decent ear for the music, and I don’t necessarily have to have music to play jazz. Obviously, you don’t really always need it, but you should have [chuckles] some training in it, which I do.

But there wasn’t any place for us to go to listen to live jazz. When I got a little older, I found little jazz groups on my own that were working in the general area of Binghamton. And if you went further north, up around Cornell University and Ithaca and in that general area, I heard that there was a trombone player who was with the Jean Goldkette band.

So there were people like Spiegel Wilcox, and that’s who that was. Spiegel Wilcox was probably the first jazz player who was famous enough to me to have played with Bix Beiderbecke and people like that. Spiegel was up in that area near Cornell. Let me see. The name was Cortland, New York. His family had a coal distribution place, because coal was still being burned in people’s furnaces. So it was called Wilcox Coal and Oil; so that was his family’s business.

So he was working in that area, and not playing very much jazz except in local bands. I think the first time I heard him was at Cornell University, playing for some alumni party or something like that. But in general, there were not many jazz bands playing, and there weren’t many places that I could go hear music.

Crawford: Did your school band perform?

01-00:13:07 Oakley: No, we never quite got that. We used to rehearse that band, but we never got it out to play. Eventually, little bits and pieces of us got into different little jazz bands, but it was never traditional jazz, it was just something that would happen.

Or we’d have some teacher that was interested in a particular style of jazz, and he would play. He’d be a saxophone player and we’d go out and play some gigs. I was pretty young at that time, but I managed to play a few jobs for some small amount of pay. [chuckles] But it really didn’t start to happen until I was old enough to actually help form a band of our own.

I ran into a trombone player who was originally from the Midwest, and he was playing traditional jazz. And we eventually put a group together, named after the highway that they had built. It was called the Penn-Can Jazz Band. The Pennsylvania-Canada highway that ran north and south from below Pennsylvania up to Canada.

So anyway, that was our first band. And we played a lot of traditional jazz. We found people who had records and they’d loan me records that I didn’t have. And we started playing a lot of the music that Turk Murphy performed, from his records. He was very popular with a lot of people that I ran into. But it was all like a little secret group, almost, for a long time, because no one else was too interested in it. But we were. And we had a lot of fun with it.

Crawford: You devoted a lot of time to it. Well, I’d like you to choose some models from early New Orleans jazz and maybe talk about King Oliver’s instrumentation.

01-00:14:54 Oakley: Well, the King Oliver instrumentation of the band that he eventually formed when he left New Orleans, the one that was in Chicago, the one that was the most famous of all, was the King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band.

The Creole Jazz Band started out with just one trumpet player, but King Oliver remembered the young man who had such promise in New Orleans, and he decided that he wanted to augment his band with a second trumpet player.

So that was when he brought a very young Louis Armstrong, who was maybe twenty-two years old at the time, to Chicago to join this Creole Jazz Band, which became the classic two-trumpet jazz band that started the whole revolution of what was interesting about good classic jazz.

To have had an opportunity to record that kind of band— It didn’t happen right away. A lot of the other bands who were not African American bands were recorded. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band was recorded in 1917. But eventually, King Oliver had a chance to record, and did so in 1923. And at the Gennett Recording Company in Richmond, they started turning out many, many classic pieces of music that now formulated the start of what actually Lu Watters’ band became very interested in. The instrumentation, again, with two trumpets, clarinet, trombone, six-string banjo at this time, because it was Johnny St. Cyr playing a guitar banjo, and string bass. String bass or tuba, depending of who was in the recording session.

And then Lil Hardin, who became Lil Armstrong later on, she was the pianist. So that really made an eight-piece band, just like the Lu Watters band became later on.

Crawford: What were the dynamics of the cornets, the clarinet, the trombone? I’ve read differing ideas about that.

01-00:17:31 Oakley: The trumpet was the lead. King Oliver was always the lead in that band.

Crawford: The clarinet would be the high line.

01-00:17:42 Oakley: Yes, that would be more the soprano voice. In the case of two trumpets, the second trumpet played somewhat of a third harmony to the lead trumpet. And that meant that the trombone player had to play a part that didn’t conflict with that. So it was always much harder with a four-piece front line and two trumpets, for a trombone player to find a part to play.

Normally, over the years, even in the earlier days, that part was always usually a third harmony, lower voice to the two trumpets— or to a single trumpet. When the two trumpets came along, they all had to come up with a different place to play. And that didn’t seem to be much of a problem for Honoré Dutre, who was their trombonist. He really found a beautiful voicing to work with the two trumpets.

And of course, Johnny Dodds was usually and most often the clarinetist. And he was true New Orleans in every way and style of playing. And so he always floated out above and found a place to be, where the brass didn’t drown him out. You can always hear him, even on the early recordings.

Crawford: Well, let’s go on to the New Orleans revival of the forties, which seemed to create great passion and a lot of argument. What was that about?

01-00:19:12 Oakley: I think the biggest problem of any argument about any of that was that people in the music business—we’re talking about the late thirties, early forties— most of them were going with the flow of popularity of the music. And the popularity of the music was bigger bands playing swing style.

The thing that probably all of these guys—especially the horn players in the Lu Watters band—were involved with was they already had done all of that. They played nightly jobs with big bands. Big bands, usually if you were a solo player, you wanted to play solos, if you were lucky, you got eight bars to play here and there.

Ordinarily, everything you did was the same thing all the time, arrangements that were critically played note for note, because they were written, and they needed to be exacting for the full sound of a big band. You can’t really ad lib with twelve-plus people. You really need to have a great chart and reading capabilities. This was what was popular. This is what was the popular music of the day.

The popular music of King Oliver’s day was not only the material that he was writing, but the material that they were generally playing. It was all pop music. It became jazz because of the way it was played. Lu Watters, Turk, and Bob Helm, all three for sure—and Bob Scobey—all played in the big bands. And they were generally tired of the repetitiveness of playing the same kind of charts all the time. They wanted some freedom from that.

The only way you could come up with freedom is to come up with maybe revitalizing some music that they really were hooked on because— Well, Lu Watters was a great record collector. His seventy-eight collection was huge. And everybody would go over to Ma Watters’ house, which was in San Francisco, and they would hang out. Even guys that didn’t like the early music as much, they would still be there and put their two cents in.

And as Bob Helm often said to me, because I talked with him mostly about this, they would say, “You guys are really wasting your time. You’re playing music of a past era. It’s not the thing. It’s not the in thing to do. You’re going to ruin your reputations and your ability to make money. This is old, black music. You should probably reconsider kind of catching up with this again.”

But that wasn’t the way they looked at things. They found the music was always very exciting, and it didn’t need to be thrown away, it needed to be revitalized. And because they revitalized it, of course, it then became somewhat popular again in many ways, because now you could hear the music played with not only great players who were already great musicians, but you could hear it with better fidelity.

It was like improving the sound of the music and having it played in a different way, because both Lu and Turk and everyone involved, who were involved with making the arrangements, the charts for their band, never copied Oliver’s band. They always wrote something that was totally different. There’s been accusations [that Watters copied Oliver]—

Crawford: I have seen that.

01-00:23:02 Oakley: And it’s not true at all, because all you have to do is listen to any of the arrangements of Oliver’s as opposed to the same tune played by the Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band. Totally different. Totally different sound. The same tune, with slightly different feeling. Maybe a slightly heavier rhythm section sometimes because of the personnel they had.

They had a very strong tuba player named Dick Lammi. And he did cut through. And it made the rhythm section sometimes sound a little heavier than it needed to be, but the individuals make the sound. That’s why Watters never sounded like King Oliver or Armstrong, he always sounded like Lu Watters. Scobey never sounded like either one of the guys that they were emulating, in

a way; they always sounded like themselves. And I think that made a huge difference.

Turk, obviously, had to change the style of his trombone to play earlier jazz. He was a very smooth trombone player in the big bands. He decided to find some heroes. And one of those heroes was a guy named Roy Palmer from New Orleans. Palmer had this roughhouse style. And Turk, with all his training and everything, was able to take that kind of roughhouse style and turn it into a very powerful sounding trombone style, with all the other ingredients that maybe some of the earlier players didn’t have his musical education and the ability to write music, write compositions, create new tunes.

And so between him and Watters, they just wrote— After they got away from playing some of the tunes from the Oliver book, they decided to write their own material. With all the skills that it took to play the music, they also could write it down, and also keep people from saying, “Oh, well, you’re copying somebody else.”

Crawford: When you say “write down,” what did you receive as an arrangement? Was it a chart?

01-00:25:15 Oakley: Are you talking about the Watters band, or what I was—

Crawford: Turk Murphy.

01-00:25:19 Oakley: Oh, Turk wrote very, very beautiful arranging.

Crawford: Everyone said so.

01-00:25:25 Oakley: Yes, it was absolutely the most beautiful charts you ever saw. He had the ability to put it down in longhand. There weren’t any computers to help him out, he wrote it all by hand.

Crawford: I’d like to get a picture of one of those, if you have it.

01-00:25:40 Oakley: I do have something.

Crawford: Do you? Let’s do that right here.

01-00:25:44 Oakley: This is one of his own. I don’t think we ever had a chance to play it, but there’s one called “Cornet Chop Suey”—[laughs]

Crawford: Let’s talk about this one. What I see in this first staff here, four-four time, I see a lot of ascending thirds. How do you play off that?

01-00:26:12 Oakley: Oh. Yes. Let me see. How would I play? I just took that as an intro that should be played pretty much note for note, as an intro goes. And yes, it is [hums/scats the melody] So that was kind of the intro part, which showed up later on in the tune. But it established the particular style of “Brother Lowdown” that he wanted.

Crawford: All the instruments are playing around what we see here.

01-00:26:50 Oakley: Yes. Let me see. This has got two parts on it, so I don’t know exactly where this came from. It may have been something written for a time when Turk wrote for two trumpets. I see this as two trumpet parts here. But in general— that happened for a couple of recording sessions, but Turk never worked with a two-trumpet band. Only in concert.

Crawford: He wrote that that was a matter of economy, that he would’ve liked to.

01-00:27:25 Oakley: Yes, it was really not because he didn’t want to do that. But if you look at something else, you’ll see— “Panama,” for example. And that shows just— this is a trumpet part, and it just shows the one part. [hums/scats]

He would’ve obviously written parts for everybody for his band. He couldn’t always find jazz musicians to play in his band. There were times in Turk’s band when he had to go to the union hall and say, “Gee, I need a trumpet player tonight. My trumpet player’s sick,” or “I’m between trumpet players,” or whatever.

So when they showed up, he actually had music for them. If they read this music, they read it down, then the band could perform. It wouldn’t sound as much like a jazz band, because it would be like reading the charts note for note. But that was what he had to do sometimes.

So we always had a complete book. When I joined him, he said, “Don’t read those note for note.” He said, “You have a feeling for the style.” His compliment to me—which doesn’t sound like a compliment—but he said, “You’re a throwback.” And that meant to me, and what he explained, was that you’re a throwback to the earlier days of playing jazz. I absorbed it through mostly the recordings that I heard, and then listening to the recordings of his band, for example. So he said, “We have key changes, we have routines.”

This was typical of the Watters band. There weren’t a lot of parts. Watters didn’t write parts for everybody in that band, because they all knew the music. You’d never write parts for Bob Helm, because he knew—there were never any clarinet parts, he just played what was correct. He played it his way, and it was always correct. He was able to fit in with that two-trumpet sound and that

brassy sound of two trumpets, a trombone, and a tuba. You had to know exactly what you were doing to be heard.

So there were never any clarinet parts. But there always were trumpet parts, because two trumpets have to kind of have a feeling about what to play, in relative harmony with each other. Not that you have to read it down perfectly, but you have to have some kind of idea where it went.

The second part was always tricky because not everybody played second-part horns. Everybody seemed to be able to play lead. So there was a reason for combining the two.

Crawford: Is that your phone? You don’t have a jazz ring tone?

01-00:30:26 Oakley: Oh, that’s jazz. That’s the James Bond theme.

Crawford: I know. [they laugh]

01-00:30:30 Oakley: I love that.

Crawford: I wanted to ask you next about Turk’s training, his musical education. If you finished your thought about the two trumpets.

01-00:30:46 Oakley: Yes, where did we leave off there? I guess what I was trying to say is that the Watters band—Lu Watters used to kind of explain and be concerned about the idea that a lot of his charts didn’t seem to be very complete, so he never considered them great manuscripts. They happened to put everything together for the band, because they were good roadmaps. And that’s really what was the most important part, is to have a good roadmap. So everybody didn’t bounce to the second part or the third part too soon. The roadmaps were important to Lu Watters, and the guys he had in his band generally knew how to play the music. He said, “I never really did write any good charts for the band, it was just to get us through the different sessions.”

Turk, on the other hand, wrote complete charts for every instrument in his group, including himself. He had trombone parts written, too. One of the reasons his band sounded so full and, for a small band, having such a big sound is because he wrote trombone parts that nobody else would ever have written. They were designed for him to fill out the space in his group. And it made it an amazing band to play in.

Crawford: Did that mean that there was less improvising than there might’ve been, or than there was with the Watters band?

01-00:32:25 Oakley: It wasn’t a matter of somebody controlling every note that you were doing, it was a matter of keeping people in an ensemble mode. Part playing. But as far as the timing of things, if I was told not to read the music, I certainly wouldn’t play something like it’s written, I would come close to it. I played it the way I wanted to.

The trombone part that Turk created for that was appropriate; what Bob Helm played was appropriate too, when he was in the band. He was in the band not as often as I would’ve liked to have had him. There were other players in Turk’s band beside Bob Helm, but Bob Helm was my absolute favorite.

Crawford: Everybody says so.

01-00:33:15 Oakley: Yeah. Phil Howe was a great clarinetist, a great reader. Even he was a great arranger. His sound was [not] quite as New Orleans as Turk liked, but he was a very, very fine musician.

One person that was in the band when I first joined was named Jack Crook. And he had his own style. He was with Turk for a lot of years playing. When Turk couldn’t get a tuba player, Jack Crook would play bass saxophone. He was a good musician. And he had kind of his own little style. He wasn’t New Orleans, but he was a very, very good musician.

But Helm seemed to have this ability to fold it all together and make it sound like no one else could. And he could put energies in bands that played every night of the week. He put energies there that made it all seem like it was exciting all the time. That’s the way I felt about him, and I think most people who worked with him did, too. [chuckles]

Crawford: Helm said that there wasn’t a lot of ornamentation in what Turk handed out, and if he overdid it, Turk would say, “If I’d wanted it that way, I would’ve written it.”

01-00:34:27 Oakley: [laughs] Yes, there were occasions where that would happen. Turk would have a comment when people ended up stepping on other people’s parts. And in the natural way of playing, I suppose, in New Orleans, they did that all the time, but in a more sophisticated way.

It was good not to have too many people playing the same note at the same time. Otherwise, you kind of ruined what you were doing. I miss that kind of trombone part playing, because the lead doesn’t get into too much trouble. Playing the lead is appropriate to the melody of a tune, and it’s the people that play with you that create the parts that go with that, the proper clarinet part, proper trombone.

It doesn’t happen a lot these days. I don’t find very many trombone players who know how to play the parts. So I think some of the sounds by people who’re not really paying attention to them become a little bit thinner than they ever would with Turk’s band.

Turk’s band sounded full all the time. I thought that was an important part of his contribution to the music. And like I said, he took time to write things out. But we always had solo space, and there was always a way to express ourselves. He wanted everybody to sing in his band. Everybody in his band had to sing. And so even when we didn’t think we were singers, we were singers! It was his way of making sure that everybody was involved.

I think most of us had a good time with it. Bob Helm and I used to do the King Oliver tune, “Hello Central, Give me Dr. Jazz.” We did it all over the world. We were recorded many, many times and issued many times. And I’ll tell you, working with him on the vocal was so much fun. It was such a kick to be part of the band and be part of vocals and things.

So yes, it wasn’t the loosest band in the world. But if you wanted the looser, more solo-oriented bands, that’s what the Eddie Condon band was. And I’ll tell you, I loved the Eddie Condon band, but I would never tell Turk that.

Crawford: I hear that Eddie Condon called the Turk Murphy Band “archaeology.”

01-00:36:50 Oakley: Yes, I think he did. To get even with Eddie Condon— They were all recording for Columbia Recordings at the time. They were all with Columbia Records.

George Avakian was the A&R man for Columbia, so he oversaw what Louis Armstrong did. Not just the reissues, but Armstrong was, of course, recording many, many sessions with Columbia. Two of the more famous ones, “Satch Plays Fats,” that was the Fats Waller one; and there was “Satch Plays W.C. Handy” [sic; “Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy”]. It was the group that they called the All-Stars that did all these things.

Condon was under that same thing; he was working for Avakian. So Avakian oversaw all those recording sessions, the Murphy, the Armstrong, the Condon sessions. But when there was a Columbia session coming up that Eddie Condon wanted some music for from a lot of different sources, he wanted Turk to provide him with a tune that could be part of this record and book combination that they were putting out. He was writing a book.

It wasn’t like today, where you could actually put out a record, a CD and a book at the same time, and make one package out of it. There was a book and then there was a Columbia record. So Turk proceeded to get even with, or try to get even with Eddie Condon’s group by writing a very difficult tune called “Duff Campbell’s Revenge.”

Crawford: Why did he name it after Charles Campbell?

01-00:38:41 Oakley: Because he didn’t dare name it after himself. [they laugh] You’ve already talked to Charlie about this. So yes, Charlie was a guy who eventually got so caught up in what traditional jazz is like, he became one of the kind of moldy figs, in a way. He kind of drifted away from the music of the more modern players—

Crawford: He says so.

01-00:39:07 Oakley: He thought, like Turk did, that Eddie Condon’s group sometimes misused the music and let it become too open and maybe too loose, and maybe leaving out, as I said before, parts of tunes.

And so they had a negative feeling about Eddie Condon’s band. It got to be kind of a revengeful thing, because Eddie Condon’s band was going at the same time the Watters band was going. And they sometimes showed up on the West Coast and would come over and play with the Watters band. And of course, it was a competition thing, in a way.

Nobody played stronger than Lu Watters. [chuckles] So he could just pretty much blow everybody off the stand. And maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do. But when it came Turk’s turn to get even—this was many years later, into the mid-fifties—he wrote a tune, in five flats, called “Duff Campbell’s Revenge.” Various horn players played with Eddie Condon all the time. He had very, very good choices of people to go to. But Wild Bill Davison wasn’t a great reader. And I understand that he wouldn’t be able to play this tune.

But Billy Butterfield played with Condon quite often, and when Condon put his session together, he put Billy Butterfield in as the trumpet player that day. And Butterfield could read anything perfectly. In fact, he read it, he did it and played it so wonderfully loose that it was unbelievable. It’s probably the best recording of “Duff Campbell’s Revenge” ever made. And I don’t think Turk’s band ever pulled it off again—it was quite elusive. It was a hard tune. It was a VERY hard tune. [laughs]

Crawford: I heard it! Well, what was Turk Murphy’s musical training?

01-00:41:10 Oakley: I think Turk’s father was maybe a trumpet player. I think he got into music because of his dad. I honestly can not remember if I actually knew where he got his training, but obviously, he went to school. He went to school some place. Not up in Marysville, where he was born, but more in the Bay Area, I would think.

Somewhere along the line when he was working in the big bands in the mid- to early thirties, I think that he was writing arrangements for big bands at that time. So he got his education somewhere along the line, and I’m not positive where that was. I’m sorry I can’t help you with that.

Crawford: We’ll find out more about that.

01-00:42:09 Oakley: But he really did, he had it all. And apparently, all of them who played in the big bands, all four of the guys— I don’t think Bob Scobey wrote charts, but I know that Helm wrote many, many charts. Original tunes, and he could chart out any tune for you that you wanted, any time. Turk was very great at it, as we know, and Lu Watters was very good at writing tunes and putting them into chart form. They were doing it for the big bands, all three of them, I think. I know that Turk was, and I know that Lu was. And Lu was writing orchestrations for The Bing Crosby Show.

So they all had this education that went along with being a full-time musician of that day. Which went beyond just playing and reading, but also being able to write charts, because there was money to be made in that. I would think arrangers sometimes made more money than a straightforward musician would, because it provided the whole sound of the band, depending on who did the arranging. So I would guess that Turk had some schooling for his musical education. I don’t think he learned that all on his own.

Crawford: Why did he leave the Watters band?

01-00:43:29 Oakley: Well, the Watters band was an eight-piece band. And they were still trying to do something that, for their own enjoyment, didn’t necessarily bring in a lot of money. They struggled almost every place they tried to play, and they didn’t own the Dawn Club, so when things went kind of bad there financially, they said, “Well, we have to run our own club.”

And so Watters, all the guys that were part of that band, Scobey and everybody, they moved over to Hambone Kelly’s, over in El Cerrito. That became their place, and they all worked extremely hard individually to make it happen. Everybody had jobs besides playing music. And the business of what they were involved with— my basic understanding is that they weren’t able to keep an eye on the actual nightly operations, because they were playing music.

There were bartenders and other people working, waitresses and what have you [who] were keeping the money. There was money that was being stolen from the band as they were up there playing. It got to be a point where they were struggling to stay in existence. And really, Hambone Kelly’s only lasted for about maybe two-and-a-half years or so.

Crawford: A strange place for a jazz club, El Cerrito.

01-00:45:06 Oakley: Yes, today it seems like a fairly strange place. But as Bob Helm told me, it was kind of like the Miracle Mile. San Pablo Street was a very long street. In those days, they called it “the strip.” It was kind of, in a way, like Las Vegas. It had gambling, it had girlie shows, it had everything going, until they incorporated the town into Richmond, or the area into Richmond.

Then they cleaned up the whole town, and it left it not a good place to have a club. But timing is everything. If they could’ve been there [chuckles] maybe several years before that, they probably could’ve made it work. But it really ran into a place where they weren’t making enough money, and typically, the leaders always got blamed for keeping money, which they didn’t necessarily keep, they just didn’t have it.

So when things were getting too thin, that’s when Turk said, “Well, I’ve got to do something on my own.” He left, and Bob Scobey eventually did the same thing. Or maybe at the same time, they both went out, formed their own bands, recorded for the same companies.

Lu retired from the business New Years Eve, 1950, and they closed Hambone Kelly’s. Lu retired from the music, and was out of it until the early sixties, when he got back involved with it because of PG&E [Pacific Gas and Electric].

I should say first off, Lu was an amateur geologist. But he was a well-studied individual, and he knew a lot about geology. He knew, certainly, enough about the area where he lived, up in Cotati, to know that the San Andreas Fault was always present in everybody’s mind up there who lived there.

Except for PG&E. They wanted to build a nuclear plant. It turned out that at Bodega, they were going to build a nuclear plant. And they weren’t even thinking about that they were on top of a fault. One of the most exciting faults, San Andreas Fault, in the United States. Probably the most active one.

So Lu got his trumpet out, got most of the guys from Turk’s band and other people that he knew, and put up a big campaign to actually stop PG&E from building this plant. He actually succeeded. After six months of practicing his trumpet, getting it back in shape to be able to play again, he recorded on Fantasy, a very, very good recording session.

Once they won the battle and stopped PG&E, he put his horn [away] again, and he never really pulled it out ever again. He and I used to play. I used to take two cornets up to his house in Cotati, and we’d sit around and talk. Talk about jazz, talk about lots of stuff. But mostly about jazz and the people that

he knew and respected, and his attitude about the music. And we would sit around with two cornets and play for a while.

He would play wonderfully, until his lip would give out. I was playing full- time; I didn’t have that problem. But he had a great, great sound. And so I can honestly say we never played a job together, but we did play together.

Crawford: You mentioned Ma Watters. Where did she live?

01-00:48:47 Oakley: His mom lived in San Francisco. Let me see, what would be the area that they lived in? I’m not positive I remember exactly where that would be. Bob Helm pointed out where he thought the house was. It wasn’t too far off the Civic Center, going west. San Francisco. But I can’t tell you where it is, for sure. Bob wasn’t even absolutely sure if the house was still in existence. He thought what he pointed out to me was correct, but he wasn’t sure. I think it was on Stanyan Street.

Apparently Lu’s dad passed away early. And so his mom ran this house as a boarding house. She had various musician boarders, as well as some other folks that worked on the waterfront and what have you. So she ran a boarding house. And they called her Ma Watters. [laughs] The boys in the band did, anyway.

Crawford: What a nice thing that is.

I wanted to ask you about a couple of things that Ken Burns said about Turk Murphy in his jazz book. Burns said that he was thought of by some as a West Coast purist.

01-00:50:15 Oakley: Mm-hm. Yes, I think the location, West Coast, just indicates where he lived. And many people, I guess, decided that the West Coast jazz was the traditional jazz that the Watters band and Turk Murphy and everyone created here. So it was a location, as well as maybe [being] reminiscent of a style of music that was played on the West Coast of the United States.

Being a purist meant, as I spoke about before, that Turk believed that the music should be not cluttered with too many notes, but be represented in much better ensemble and part playing. And I think that’s where the purist part comes in.

Crawford: That makes sense. He also intimated that the bands played no music later than Jelly Roll Morton.

01-00:51:18 Oakley: That’s incorrect. Turk was still writing tunes up until he passed away in 1987. He was still writing materials that were obviously—he was writing music for

Broadway shows that never came to be in any big way. But the shows were off-Broadway. So he was writing music—and they did a lot of music that had nothing to do with Jelly Roll Morton’s music. When Morton’s music ended, that wasn’t where those guys stopped. They continued.

Crawford: I knew that was true, but he does make that statement.

01-00:52:00 Oakley: Well, I think to talk about Ken Burns in anything but a positive way would be incorrect. I think that he certainly is one of the best organizers of archival films and editing of still shots into archival work of anyone around. Actually, you can’t sometimes tell where the moving pictures stop and the stills start because he’s got such a great technique of editing. I don’t expect anybody would want him to be, or expect him to be an expert in every area.

Crawford: It’s a huge subject—

01-00:52:44 Oakley: In all subjects. He had to depend on other people to fill in the gaps. And unfortunately, he didn’t go very far outside of maybe a half dozen people about jazz. Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis were two prime people he went to. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong about this, but they kind of neglected a lot of things and a lot of people.

Crawford: Jack Teagarden is one example.

01-00:53:21 Oakley: Oh, yes, he was slighted terribly. It almost gave you the feeling he was just kind of a pal of Armstrong, and Armstrong let him play in his band or something. It wasn’t quite as bad as that, but it gave some people that impression. Especially people who knew enough about Teagarden to know.

To kind of back this up a little bit, I can say that one of the times that Louis Armstrong played in Santa Rosa—and this was probably the sixties, in fact— Armstrong was not unaware of Lu Watters. He knew Lu Watters and what Lu Watters was all about.

Many people believe that of the era of the music that was original, like the music of Armstrong and Red Allen, they respected Turk and they respected Lu Watters. They knew what they were doing. They knew that they kept the music alive that would’ve died otherwise. It would’ve been washed ashore with everything else, and only the popular music of the day would have succeeded.

So in Santa Rosa, when Louis was playing there with his All-Star band, Lu Watters went to the concert. And as soon as Armstrong saw Lu—Lu told me this in his own words. He said that on the break, Louis Armstrong took him to

the dressing room, and shut the door against anyone else coming in, and the two of them sat and talked for the entire break.

They discussed the music and the contributions of musicians, and when they started talking about their favorite trombone players, Louis Armstrong said, “Of course, my favorite trombone player of all time was Jack Teagarden.” And Lu Watters said, “He was my favorite trombone player too. Still is my favorite trombone player.” He was still alive at the time; Teagarden was still with us.

So they both agreed that their favorite trombone player of all time was Jack Teagarden. They discussed a lot of things that day, in that short period of time. But it was a great thing for Lu, because he really thought it was one of best things that might’ve happened, outside of him being involved with the music indirectly with Armstrong, to actually have a time when Armstrong was showing respect. Armstrong very seldom shut the door on anybody for those time periods when he was taking a break. But for Lu, he did.

Crawford: Lovely story.

01-00:56:29 Oakley: They had a great, great discussion. But Teagarden came out being their favorite trombone player. I can understand why, because he’s my favorite, too. [laughs]

Crawford: The personality, too. That great Texas ebullience that he had.

01-00:56:47 Oakley: Yes, that helped a lot with Armstrong, because there was an entertainment level that Teagarden had, too. He and Armstrong did so many great tunes together. “Old Rockin’ Chair,” and “Jack Armstrong Blues,” which was Jack Teagarden and Louis Armstrong. And they did a lot of things that really were wonderful presentations of not only great technical skills, played with great soul, but the ability to entertain and make people laugh and think about how much fun, and what the meaning of the words were. And changing the meaning of the words so that they reflect their own personalities, many times.

Crawford: Teagarden was such a generous musician. He would say, when he introduced a player, “He wrote the book.” [laughter] EVERYBODY wrote the book.

I wanted to read something from liner notes that Turk Murphy wrote. [reads] “In the past, I’ve probably said more than was necessary about the limited material of many Dixieland groups. I’ve been a little too vocal on the matter of bands in which the front line is made up of soloists.” That’s what you were talking about. Not a lot of virtuosity, unless it was in the solo part.

01-00:58:24 Oakley: Yes. I think that Turk was trying to [give] attention to the fact that isn’t the way early New Orleans jazz was played by the great bands. If you listen to the Hot Five/Hot Sevens, you’re going to hear a very, very well organized and voiced band.

Armstrong was always a great soloist, even in those early bands. But the attentiveness to playing ensemble was very important to the early bands that Turk liked, and he wanted to maintain that through the years. I love Eddie Condon’s music, and there’s a lot of good stuff out there, and I really do hear a lot of good ensemble playing in Condon bands, as well.

I do hear the elimination of certain parts of tunes. And I do hear a lot of maybe more notes than are necessary sometimes to make the statement, because that’s the way the players play. They play without some of the same control that Turk required in his music.

But I think that’s what Turk was saying there, that he may have been sometimes a little bit too vocal about these things, and probably got himself in trouble with some people. And maybe that’s why Condon would come back and say, “Well, you’re kind of a dinosaur in music,” or whatever. [they laugh]

Crawford: Let me break here, I’m going to change the tape.

[End Audio File 1]

[Begin Audio File 2]

Crawford: Terrible Turk. Let’s talk about the name.

02-00:00:01 Oakley: [laughs] Yes. Everybody wondered what his real name was. And he kept it kind of quiet most of the time because his mother named him Melvin. So Turk Murphy’s real first name was Melvin Murphy. And he was very happy that somehow along the line, as a football player at school, that he eventually had a nickname “Turk,” “the Terrible Turk.” And so it became Turk Murphy at that time, in his young days, before he was ever a musician.

Crawford: That’s great. One more thing from these liner notes, written by Turk Murphy. “The success of filling out the harmony of a given tune by all instruments is dependent on knowledge of the harmonic pattern, a reasonably good ear, and a bit of luck.”

02-00:00:56 Oakley: Yes. The luck part comes in when— I think it’s the part of how lucky are you to maintain control of what you’re doing? And maintaining the ability to stay close to what would be the important part of the tune, without overplaying.

I think the luck is really how lucky are we to have good taste? I think good taste about what we’re doing in music is, how can we maintain, within a framework of a number of musicians—especially like in a four-piece front line, where you have two trumpets and a trombone and clarinet—how do you maintain control over what you’re doing?

So that people who are not reading music, for example— I don’t think ever, hardly ever, when I play second horn parts, do I read music. I may use music somewhere along the line to help me come up with a better note to harmonize with the lead. But the magic part is that, for example, the trumpet player who’s playing lead can’t be too busy. He can’t be playing a whole bunch of notes because we’re playing jazz. And we’re attempting to play together, without knowing what the other person’s going to do.

The only way you can make it work is if you play notes that are a little bit longer; that there actually is a moment for the second-part player to connect with that and play a harmony note to go with it. This takes the right kind of personalities, the lack of ego on either part of the trumpet players. They have to be so respectful of the music and themselves that they’re not in a competition with each other, they’re actually in a process of playing together to fill out a sound that you cannot get with a single-trumpet small band.

Two trumpets made the Oliver band and the Armstrong combination work so well. It made the Scobey and Watters ensemble work so well. But they had to do it a lot. It wasn’t like they just picked it up instantly, they really had to learn how to play together. It was an evolving process of experience with each other. But it had to start out somewheres along the line with people who were, like I said, able to control ego problems without being— It’s not a competition, it’s part playing. And it requires that kind of discipline.

I think when Turk says “luck,” he’s just saying the luck of finding the right people to do this. I don’t think it’s luck that the person actually has. It has to be part of what makes it work in the proper fashion. It’s the ensemble of the thing. We kind of hope we have luck in being able to accomplish what we want to accomplish. But if it was a competition, there wouldn’t be any way to control it.

Crawford: Turk Murphy also said, “It takes guts to play this music.”

02-00:04:37 Oakley: [laughs] Yes, I think the interpretation of that is that for making a living at it, it takes guts to gamble that you’re going to be able to make much of a living playing that kind of music. Because they gambled all the time, and they never made huge amounts of money. It was typically the joy of the music that kept it going. It’s also a powerful sound. The sound of the Watters band was powerful, the sound of the Turk Murphy band was powerful, because the trombone player was a powerhouse player.

When I first joined him, I had no clue of playing six nights a week and how strong I had to play. Obviously, I have to play louder than Turk, in a way. The lead has to be what you hear primarily, and I didn’t know how to do that properly.

So I started having trouble with my lip during the first six months. And I realized that I had to develop a way of playing; not just putting that horn up against my lip and blowing, but using my diaphragm to strengthen the sound that I had. That’s probably what “It takes guts to play” means. [laughs] You have to really put your energies in it to play at the proper volume.

I did that for— I mean, once I got the idea what I needed to do, and how I needed to be there six nights a week, average, I was able to do that. And he was probably pretty surprised about that because not many horn players were quite as strong as he wanted.

Others that had tried in the past failed, and rather than sometimes fire somebody, he’d let them struggle, till they struggled so badly on the tunes that they were having problems with—he would call that same tune every night, and they would struggle on it. He wasn’t able to deal with personal communication as well as maybe he—he might’ve been a better person, if he could have.

As you probably know—maybe somebody’s told you—Turk had a stuttering problem that he developed when he was a kid. This made communication difficult for him in many ways. He sometimes had trouble speaking to you clearly about certain things. And so he would sometimes neglect telling you everything you needed to know about what he was really thinking. Never had any trouble with vocals; he sang them perfectly every time.

Crawford: That’s what I understand.

02-00:07:45 Oakley: But typically, people who have a stuttering problem, they sometimes ran into problems of communication. I suppose it meant that his upbringing wasn’t maybe the best home life that he might’ve had, if things had gone well. And he carried some of these problems with him. He sometimes reflected on himself as being a black Irishman. And that was a good excuse for some of the things he might’ve done and the way he handled things at times.

Crawford: Was he an up/down personality?

02-00:08:21 Oakley: Up and down? [pause] Yes, I would say so. I would say so. He was in the middle ground most of the time. And if he was tired or whatever, you could tell that he was not quite as up. But when he was up, he was really quite interesting.

Some of the most up times we ever had were away from the club. Running a nightclub and putting in the hours required to do so, running it on your own— that’s the only way you could kind of guarantee that you’d have a place to work full-time so that you wouldn’t come in some night and somebody says, “Oh, well, we’re going to get another band. We want to replace you.” Or, “We’re going to pay you less money because we—”

He needed to try the idea that Lu Watters had of forming Hambone Kelly’s and running it as a band cooperative. Turk didn’t want to have a band cooperative, but he did want to have a partner, and he and Pete Clute were the partners in Earthquake McGoon’s for many, many, many years. And they did quite well as partners for a long, long time. But it was a hard job. It meant that you often played until one-thirty in the morning, got home at two, maybe, if you were lucky. And got up at ten o’clock in the morning or earlier to come in and do things around the place.

If Pete was handling ordering all the food supplies, the bar supplies, Turk was there repairing everything that was breaking down, doing electrical work, cleaning out the toilets when they were plugged up. Doing all the nasty work. Which meant that he would take off maybe sometime early in the afternoon and go have lunch, and then he would show up, maybe have dinner later on, have a little afternoon break, when he was probably writing music or doing something like that. And then he’d have to show up about eight o’clock or sooner, at night. And we would be there ready to play at eight-thirty.

Crawford: Did they own the club or manage it?

02-00:10:31 Oakley: They owned the name and they ran the club themselves. But they leased the space. It wasn’t their building.

Crawford: This had to be hard on marriages. Would you say?

02-00:10:47 Oakley: Well, it was. It was difficult. The music business can be difficult on marriages anyway, but when you’re trying to run a business and parallel that with a music career, it has to be difficult for everyone.

But at Earthquake McGoon’s, Pete’s wife was a waitress. She worked there. Turk’s wife worked at the door, taking admissions as they came through the door. And so it often became a family place. Kids kind of grew up there. It was a family. [chuckles] So that helped a little bit.

And then often they went on the road together, too. Families sometimes went on the road when they were younger, when some of the children weren’t school age. I think when the kids got to be school age, especially Pete’s kids, they weren’t on the road as often. But they sometimes did. Sometimes the whole family would go on tour.

But once they had Earthquake McGoon’s, they got rid of the agent. They were tied into the William Morris Agency, Turk’s band was. And so they did have agents that handled their bookings. But I remember they changed the words to “Railroad Blues” one time to reflect the fact that they were kind of left stranded in Asbury Park in New Jersey, because of things that fell through when they were on a tour.

So it was like pioneering, I think, and Turk did some horrific drives across the country. He actually would drive nonstop from West Coast to East Coast, and East Coast back sometimes. I mean, really. He seemed to thrive on it somehow. But that was without stopping, except for gas. Helm did that once with him and said, “I’ll never do that again.” So he and his wife Kay would drive at a more leisurely pace. But Turk would sometimes drive his Hudson Hornet all the way across the country without stopping, except for those moments when he had to stop.

The life of running a club meant that you may not be traveling a lot, but you’re still tied up a lot. You were still tied up in the business of running the club. We were talking about Turk’s ups and downs. I think there’s reasons for ups and downs when you’re maybe kind of beat up.

I started to tell you that Turk was up when we were away from the club, when we were away on tour. We were on tour a number of times, in Australia and in Europe several times. We were also sponsored a lot by Bristol-Myers for things.

We went to almost every Super Bowl game and for the proceedings a week before, as well.

Turk had a lot of fun outside. It meant that they could kind of forget about the club. They would have to keep in touch with it. They would bring in other bands, of course, to play, and somebody else would have to run the place. And I’m sure that it was a good vacation to be away. Only play music, [laughs] and not have to run the club.

So I think there was a lot of happiness. And the recordings we made when we were on the road— I think I told you at one time about the recordings that were done in Heidelberg, Germany.

Crawford: Yes, Live in Heidelberg, I heard that.

02-00:14:54 Oakley: Yes, and that was a real different way of Turk’s playing. He was back to being a full-fledged jazz player then. He wasn’t thinking about using the club as an office. Many times, I think if you play music in a place where you have to run a business, it becomes a different kind of office.

Crawford: It’s like an office.

02-00:15:17 Oakley: You go into your office. I never felt I was going to the office, because I wasn’t running the business. But I think that he felt that way sometimes. And sometimes we would play music and he’d be very concerned about how perfect we were playing the ensembles, rather than allowing it to be a little bit more loose, like it always was in the original days. I think maybe he was kind of putting us under a microscope at the club at times.

I thought the band at times didn’t sound quite as energetic, quite as jazz- oriented as it might have at other times. So people who might have got to only have heard the band in the club might’ve said, “Well, the band seems to be good, and always pretty close to perfect, but is it really exciting?”

Crawford: Whenever I heard it, there was great exuberance.

02-00:16:11 Oakley: Yes, well, it was there. It was good. But there were some nights, if you’d only have a few people in the club, I knew that Turk would let down a little bit. Not that he would play less, but he would be more concerned with maybe looking at what we were doing, and being more concerned with that because his mind was wandering to that area. He created most of his own solos, but I could tell when he would repeat the same solos himself.

These were great solos that he recorded, and sometimes, like they did in the big bands, they repeated them. Because many people said, “Well, that’s not the way you played it on our record.” So I think there was a habit there sometimes where we’re repeating your own solos, which were strictly things you created on your own. You might lean on those so you don’t have to play anything new.

That’s not the way Helm played, and of course, when I was with Helm, I never, ever thought about repeating anything I ever did. I never remembered what I ever played before. So when Helm was in the band, we both added to the energy level, I think, that Turk needed at times when they were beat up because of how much work they had to do. I think it helped the band a lot.

We carried that on the road, and then Turk was more loose and Pete was more loose on the road, and the band sounded really wonderful, especially wonderful, when we played outside of the club. We always sounded good at the club, but we sounded much better, I think, at times.

Crawford: How long were your gigs when you went to Sweden and Denmark and so on?

02-00:17:51 Oakley: A lot of times we actually traveled during the month of December. We tried to always get back for New Year’s Eve, because everybody expected the Turk Murphy Band to be there on New Year’s Eve.

But towards the center part of December, he would come up with bands to play at the club. It wasn’t the busiest time of the year, obviously. It was December, of course, and people were shopping for Christmas, and the scene wasn’t as strong. And so those were the times we would take off, so it wasn’t quite like we left the place in a total lurch all the time. It was usually during the slowest time of year. And it was really our vacations, because we didn’t have any other vacations. We weren’t taking vacations to go any place. There wasn’t any two-week vacation.

Crawford: And you were a full-time engineer, I think, during all these years, weren’t you?

02-00:18:51 Oakley: No, no. When I joined Turk, I gave up everything except playing music. Until the end, where I needed to try to do something to support the lagging— Well, the economy was creating a big problem for me, because the cost of living was so high in San Francisco. And so I needed to try to get something to help me along, without disturbing the band very much. But what happened was, of course, that Turk was feeling bad about not being able to pay people enough, and so he’d rather not see that person in his life. So we actually split up because of that, not because of any playing problems or anything like that, but because I needed to have extra work.

Crawford: Oh, that’s why you left.

02-00:19:43 Oakley: That’s why I had to leave, yes. I was there a long time. He depended on me for a long time.

Crawford: One of the longest-playing members, I think.

02-00:19:55 Oakley: Yes, I truly was with him longer than anyone else in that trumpet or cornet position. Maybe if Turk had lived longer, Bob Schulz might’ve been there longer, who knows? I don’t know. But when Turk passed away, the band, of course, disappeared.

But I was with him when he was in pretty good—he was in very good health all the time, a very strong player. And we stuck together for a long, long time, until the economy really beat us up, really. There wasn’t much I could do about it. I had to make some more money. We weren’t making enough. Only after I left did something come along that actually helped the band out, and that’s See’s Candies.

Crawford: They were the sponsor.

02-00:20:48 Oakley: Yes, Chuck Huggins, who just recently retired as the president of See’s Candies, loved this music, and became a very close friend of Turk’s. And so he, with See’s Candies, sponsored a weekly radio show. They would move all the equipment in. Bud Spangler would come in and be the announcer and be the presenter of the show. And so once a week they would show up at Earthquake McGoon’s. Wherever Earthquake McGoon’s was, for a number of years, there was an income from that, that boosted everybody’s income in the band to an extent that made it comfortable for them to live.

But that didn’t happen while I was there. Turk knew See’s Candies, and we played some grand openings of some of their stores when they were expanding. I think they kind of pulled back a bit, but they opened some stores in St. Louis, and we tended to play the St. Louis Ragtime Festival every year. And so that was my only associations with See’s Candies. We’d play grand openings and things for them.

Crawford: Do you know how much their support was?

02-00:22:13 Oakley: I never knew what the money was.

Crawford: But it was substantial.

02-00:22:16 Oakley: I believe it was substantial, yes. They were a successful company, as they still are. But they could balance it out by donating money for various things, including Turk Murphy’s band, originally.

And then other projects. The Jim Cullum band, the Riverwalk shows, corporate sponsorship was made by See’s, to a great extent, with that particular show that was going on out of San Antonio. And jazz festivals got support. And everybody that came along that had a good story got support from See’s Candies for traditional jazz, because that is exactly the way that Chuck Huggins was.

Once he retired, recently, all of that stopped. And the new chairman has no interest in that. And so things like KCSM, which counted on a lot of the corporate sponsorship from See’s, just had to go out and chase down more individual sponsorship, which is a hard job when you’ve been used to having this wonderful—

Crawford: I should say so. But corporate sponsorships like that are rare, I think.

02-00:23:54 Oakley: Well, they are getting more rare all the time. So anyway, I never knew exactly what the money was, but I knew it was very helpful, because I would know what some of the band members were being paid. Everybody was paid exactly the same amount. No one got paid more than anyone else.

Crawford: Did you get raises for being there ten years?

02-00:24:15 Oakley: No. No, we got money as they could afford to pay us. And it never went down, it just never went up, until something came along, as I indicated. But that was about maybe a year or so, two years after I left. Maybe two years after I left. And all of a sudden, that came up and helped everybody.

Crawford: One of the writers was dealing with race and how trad jazz is quite heavily a white enterprise. He described Turk Murphy as being colorblind, and that when he was playing in Los Angeles, he hired a black player or two, and got in some trouble for it.

02-00:25:01 Oakley: I don’t remember hearing about Turk getting in trouble. And I’ll tell you, most musicians that I know, there’s no color. It’s amazing. There was never any noticeable difference to any of us. In other words, prejudice was never [a] part of any of our lives. Turk was outstandingly not in support of anyone who downplayed the importance of the black musicians.

A case in point is when Turk was recording for Columbia, and they did an LP at the time, when they were in New Orleans, kind of towards the late fifties. Probably in ’57 or ’58 or something like that. They were in New Orleans, maybe the first time the band ever actually went to New Orleans.

I don’t know what created the reason for being there, but [the band] was there. It was actually the band when Pete Clute first joined, and both he and Bill Carter were in the band. And they were both pretty young players. They had just graduated from Stanford, and I don’t think either one of them was quite old enough to even play in nightclubs. But they were in Turk’s band when they went to New Orleans. And this was probably ’56. Maybe I’m guessing correctly now, ’56, ’57.

Turk, of course, once he was in New Orleans, went to find the musicians that he might know there. Turk, in the early days, obviously, knew everybody that was still from New Orleans that was still alive. Not only was he closely associated with Louis Armstrong and wrote the arrangement of “Mack the Knife” for Armstrong to perform, he also was closely in contact in the late forties with Bunk Johnson and played with Johnson.

Crawford: You told me that Turk Murphy was asked to arrange “Mack the Knife” for Armstrong, and he did, and instead of taking residuals, he chose a flat fee of three hundred dollars.

Oakley: Yes!

One of his other favorite New Orleans trumpet players was Papa Mutt Carey. And all of those folks who still lived in New Orleans, Turk made a point of trying to visit with the ones that he knew about. He knew everybody who hadn’t left New Orleans. When people would ask Kid Ory to play that arrangement I showed you on Kid Ory’s Creole Trombone, he said, “Aw, man, go down and ask Turk to play that for you. I can’t play that anymore.” And Turk would rip it off for anybody that came in the door at the Tin Angel.

So Ory and everybody knew who Turk was. He was close friends with Zutty Singleton, the drummer. They almost said their prayers together on a plane flight where the plane went through some bad weather, and they both kind of thought this was the end. And so they were very close because of other things, besides just music. [laughter]

And so when Turk was in New Orleans, he discovered that some of the prominent white musicians, who were fairly wealthy on their own—there was a guitar player named Dr. Souchon, Doc Souchon. Doc Souchon thought it was perfectly okay to ask the black musicians to play for various events for wealthy folks, without being paid.

When Turk found out about these poor guys, who didn’t have much of a living and they lived in very poor surroundings—when Turk found out that some of the elite white musicians and white residents of New Orleans were taking advantage, he went to the union, and he created such a stir in favor of those black musicians that he gained ground for them and corrected the problems.

He was not loved by the folks that were so easily using the black musicians in New Orleans, but he didn’t care about that. He actually cared about their abilities to have a better life. And so he created it by going to bat for them and made a big sound about it. He was certainly used to dealing with unions, and he certainly had to work with unions all his life. So he wasn’t afraid, as a union musician, to go into New Orleans and turn things around for the musicians.

Crawford: Were you all union members?

02-00:30:20 Oakley: Yes. We had to be, yes.

Crawford: The union did well by you?

02-00:30:25 Oakley: Oh, yes. The union lost a lot of strength when they voted, at some time, not to allow stricter control over musical engagements. And this could’ve been something, over the last twenty years, that would’ve helped a lot of musicians out. But musicians themselves are their own worst enemies. The tendency is to play regardless of what the pay is. And so many people who run nightclubs, in not just San Francisco, but all over the place, or places where music can be played, have gotten used to musicians coming in and playing for next to nothing. And it’s created such a habit for them that they wouldn’t know how to pay for anybody in the music business.

The union cannot help anymore. There was something that was passed that took the requirement out of looking at jobs and trying to keep the pay levels up for jobs, and requirement for musicians to ask and get paid properly, and make contracts and things like that.

But that’s disappeared. The union hasn’t helped very much in more recent years for musicians. For whatever reasons that happened, it hasn’t helped us very much. They were very powerful at one time, and they really stepped on a lot of people to make sure that they took care of themselves. They stepped on their own musicians to make sure that they took care of themselves. But that’s not allowed anymore. So the union is not as good as it could be.

But when you were in a full-time band at a place that was in full observations of the union, they knew exactly where you were at Earthquake McGoon’s. Turk ran a very tight ship. He never did anything wrong like that. He followed all the rules and collected everything that he needed to collect on our behalf. And he paid us what he could. It was a tough thing to do, but he never cheated on that.

Crawford: Let’s talk about venues a little bit. The places where you played, Earthquake McGoon’s.

02-00:32:59 Oakley: Well, I was really fortunate, because the only Earthquake McGoon’s I really played extensively at was 630 Clay Street, which was originally the Swiss Hotel, and it was almost on the Barbary Coast. It was around at the bottom of Clay Street, near Columbus. It was actually waterfront, and it had been around a long, long time.

But we never could save the building when they decided to tear it down and build up a high-rise. We never could save it. We had some legal people involved with it, lawyers, but they couldn’t make it a historic site, unfortunately.

Crawford: What was so special about that site?

02-00:33:46 Oakley: Oh, probably the best thing about it, it seemed like it was designed for a good jazz band, even before they had jazz there. They had polka music and things like that. You walked in from the street level, and as you walked in the door, the bar was a long bar, and it was on your left. As you walked to the center of the room and turned to the right and faced towards the bandstand, you saw that there was actually a lower floor, which was a dance floor.

So you were actually on one level, and there was a balcony railing at this one level; and then you went downstairs on each side and you went down to the dance floor, where you could go from your seats and go and dance. There was seating all around the dance floor, as well. Besides that, you went upstairs and there was a true mezzanine kind of level balcony up there, where you could go up and if you didn’t want to dance, you wanted to hear and see the band closely and not be bothered by too much of anybody else moving back and forth, you could go upstairs.

Now, as far as musicians go, it was just an ideal place. Had a great sound, a natural acoustical sound that even with a powerful band like Turk’s band still wasn’t too loud for the room. It actually sounded good at 630 Clay Street. And many musicians that came through from New York, like Yank Lawson and Billy Butterfield and the guys that were part of The World’s Greatest Jazz Band, said, “You know, this is like something that we lost in New York when we lost all those good clubs in New York. We really miss them.”

I know Yank said this was the closest thing to the best clubs he ever played in. He really enjoyed playing there. Everybody loved playing there. So acoustically, it was great to play there. It was great for the audience, because they could sit at different levels, different places. And it was just not a boring square room, it was a very interesting room.

Crawford: It sounds like a little bit like the Village Vanguard.

02-00:36:18 Oakley: I’ve never been there.

Crawford: It’s small and intimate, also has different levels.

02-00:36:25 Oakley: Well, I would say this wasn’t small. It was intimate, but it was medium-sized.

Crawford: How many people?

02-00:36:33 Oakley: Well, I would guess you could get maybe three hundred.

Crawford: Who were the audiences?

02-00:36:43 Oakley: The audiences, starting on Fridays, especially, were regulars. They were people that came in to the club almost every weekend for either Friday or a Saturday. Never both. But a Friday night out, Saturday night out. There were tourists. There were bus tours. It was supported some nights by bus tours that would come in on a Wednesday or Thursday when we were slower.

There were people who drove cabs, people who did all kinds of things. When they were taking a break, they would show up. It had an interesting clientele. And even people like Woody Allen loved to come in and play with Turk. A lot of people loved that place. It was just a great place to go. It was a great nightclub, I think, in every way possible.

I never had to experience very much of any other Earthquake McGoon’s. There was one before it, and there were several after it. But by that time, actually, when I joined in ’68, latter part of ’68 through ’79, by the time we got to late ’78 and early ’79, they had torn down Earthquake McGoon’s on 630 Clay, and we were without a place for a while. We played for a very short time at the Rathskeller, which is now the Culinary Arts Institute, which was Turk and—I can’t remember—Turk and Leavenworth or something in that particular area.

Anyway, that was a short-lived thing. And then the next thing was the Embarcadero Earthquake McGoon’s. And I only played there for maybe a month, at the very most. So I spent most of my time, and feel very fortunate to have done so, at the real Earthquake McGoon’s, that I thought was the best of all.

Crawford: Everybody did.

02-00:39:00 Oakley: Everybody did, as well, yes.

Crawford: Everybody danced.

02-00:39:03 Oakley: Everybody danced that wanted to dance there. [chuckles]

Crawford: Did the audiences dress up, as they did for the blues clubs?

02-00:39:11 Oakley: We had certain people that would dress up. When you say dress up, you mean costume-wise or—oh, well dressed. I think most people were well dressed. Sports dress, sports jackets. And that was kind of a thing that people did, anyway. It was casual. No dress code or anything like that.

Costume-wise, there was a group of fairly young people, married people with children. Drove old-time cars. They drove cars from the Prohibition days,

from the late twenties, early thirties. They dressed up as mobsters. And the gals were dressed up in their twenties outfits. They carried fiddle cases that supposedly held machine guns and things like that.

They thought the music that Turk played was close to backing up the era that they wished to live in. I think they still exist, and still do all those things, except I haven’t seen them for a very, very long time.

Crawford: I saw something like that at the Monterey festival when I would go to hear Norma Teagarden. Did Jimmy Lyons bring the band to the jazz festival?

02-00:40:48 Oakley: Not in my day. No, we never played Monterey. He kind of stopped doing— Monterey was still going on and they were hiring Teagarden and Pops Foster in certain bands. And of course, they had Armstrong in certain bands, as well. And that was through the sixties.

But when Armstrong’s band disappeared because he passed away, it seemed like at that point, they just stopped bringing in too much of other bands. I’m not saying it was totally that there weren’t any kind of mainstream or traditional bands, but Turk never got asked to go there when I was with him, and we certainly were there within the time period it would’ve worked.

Crawford: Why was that, do you think?

02-00:41:44 Oakley: I don’t know. I think that they decided, again, that as the people that Bob Helm was talking about dealing with in the forties, that this music wasn’t the thing in music. Modern jazz was the in music of that time, and whatever status it might’ve had, it seemed like it was always Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald. Great, great players. All players who would be happy to mix with any kind of people making a living making music. But that’s not who ran the festivals. [laughs] They were run by people who decided that old-style music was out, new-style music was in. [The band performed in 1963 at the Monterey Jazz Festival.]

Crawford: Did Turk care about that?

02-00:42:31 Oakley: Well, he was so affected by it that when we went to Europe, he couldn’t believe that the band was accepted on the same level as any other band that was in existence.

The one thing I remember is when we were standing backstage, before we played at the Heidelberg Festival, the crowd was very young, averaging probably twenty-some years old. There was a modern jazz band playing, and they were playing beautifully. They were a mix of American and European musicians. And the crowd was going nuts over them, absolutely loving them.

Turk looked at me and he said, “We’re in big trouble here.” He said, “These people like modern jazz.” He was very sure because of what he experienced in the United States, that if the crowd liked modern jazz, they were going to dislike anything that wasn’t. We were slated to only record a couple of tunes. I think it was a matter of choosing a couple of tunes from our concert, mixing it in with tunes from other bands playing the same concert, and create a single LP at the time—or a CD, as it turns out; it was right on the borderline between LPs and CDs.

As it turned out, BASF (sponsor on their MPS label) was recording all of the festivities, and the band went over so well, with the crowd just going crazy over the band. Turk could hardly believe it. He was just in disbelief. And instead of just putting out a couple of tunes on a record, we did one of the very first jazz CDs probably ever made. We were the first ones out of there on CD. And it was all live from the Heidelberg Jazz Festival.

That was like ’73, I think, ’73. So anyway, I think he was always kind of bothered by those things, but he never talked about it. It would be negative energy, and I don’t think he talked about it very much.

Crawford: What festivals did you play? California festivals.

02-00:44:56 Oakley: Well, California festivals, we played the Sacramento Jazz Festival, probably the first one they ever had, several after that. And we played in oh, I guess Los Angeles. I can’t remember all these—some of these festivals don’t exist anymore.

Crawford: Pismo Beach? Isn’t that a big one?

02-00:45:22 Oakley: Yes, we played Pismo Beach in the days when the—let me see. They had only one festival at that time, and I can’t remember the date of it. I know that they’ve got two festivals; one is in March, and I think they have one later in the year. I think we played the one that was a little bit later in the year. I tend to get a little confused on which ones were which because I played there with many different bands over the years.

But when I was with Turk, we played Pismo Beach. We played the Stockton festival and generally the ones here. But we also played in other places. And we played festivals when we were in Europe. It wasn’t a band that played a lot of festivals, because we needed to be in our club Fridays and Saturday nights, and most festivals start on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So sometimes we’d only go up and play for a Sunday, out of a three-day festival. And maybe that’s the best we could do because that would be our day off, and so we would do it then. But generally, we were not playing a lot of festivals because of our regular job.

Crawford: I wanted to ask you how the critics treated you, Ralph Gleason and Phil Elwood, principally.

02-00:46:44 Oakley: Oh, Phil Elwood and I became very close friends. I never did know Ralph Gleason. I think that Ralph was, from what I understand from talking to other people like Bob Helm, Ralph Gleason liked early jazz but he soon became, like many people, leaving it behind because he wanted to be into the in music of more modern jazz. And so he tended to not support the early jazz as much. He wasn’t a real enthusiast for jazz, I don’t think; he just became knowledgeable about things that were kind of interesting to him.

He did some great things, there’s no question about it. But when you’re talking about two people, like Phil Elwood— Phil Elwood, he was a record collector, he was into the early jazz, and he never stopped his support of early jazz, no matter what. He supported anything that was good in early jazz as best he could. I’ve got wonderful write-ups that he did just on me as an individual, and the bands that I was with, besides Turk’s band. And so I knew him right until the day he died. I was talking to him on the day he died. I knew him for a long, long time. He was a good friend. And it was only because we talked about the music the same way, supported it in the same ways.

Crawford: Was there anyone else?

02-00:48:19 Oakley: Oh, Dick Hadlock.

Crawford: Oh, of course, Dick Hadlock.

02-00:48:23 Oakley: Dick Hadlock’s been an old friend of mine ever since we both ran into each other—primarily after my Turk Murphy days a little bit more than before, because I was too busy working in Turk’s band to be able to get involved with many of the Berkeley musicians, which included Dick Hadlock and Ray Skjelbred and the Berkeley rhythm guys.

But after that, Richard, who came out here originally as a member of Turk’s band— you’ll get a chance to talk to Richard about this, I’m sure, because he should be interviewed about this--but Richard was in New York. I think the magazine may have kind of gone defunct at that time, but it was The Record Changer magazine. He was the editor of that magazine, in New York, and he lived on the East Coast.

A job opportunity came up with Turk’s band, because I think Bill Napier, the clarinetist at that time, had to leave,. It wasn’t Helm. And so Richard stayed with the band for a short time, but he wasn’t the exact right replacement—

Crawford: Why was that? Turk would have his preferences.

02-00:49:51 Oakley: He would have his preferences. And unfortunately for anybody that had to go up against the memories of what Bob Helm did, they were in kind of trouble, in a way. Richard’s style was maybe more of an Eddie Condon style, rather than a Turk Murphy style. I think Richard knew quite a lot about the music. Without question, he knew a lot about the music.

But his playing style was not based on having a love for the King Oliver style of playing or anything like that. But he was a good player, and it opened up a great number of doors for him on the West Coast, and he’s never left the West Coast. He still lives here, over in Berkeley.

Crawford: Does a lot of radio, still.

02-00:50:42 Oakley: He still does—his Annals of Jazz show has been on for, I think, over forty- some years, on different stations. He still does great shows, and they’re very creative, and they cover a multitude of jazz styles and everything. He’s a very interesting man.

He’s writing liner notes for a session that he’s part of right now, an Eddie Condon session; it’s actually a tribute to Wild Bill Davison, a centennial tribute. He’s writing the liner notes, and he is part of the recording. So he’s actively involved.

He just turned eighty this year, maybe a few weeks ago. He’s been a good friend. We’re both East Coasters, so to speak. He lived up around the St. Lawrence area; I lived south of there, in New York State. So we’ve always had a connection like that, and we’ve worked together on a lot of different projects. And when I was available, we did radio shows together, band jobs where he was in the front line, as I was.

Sometimes it was just he and I in some bands, not a trombone player at all. So yes, I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a good friend. He definitely needs to be interviewed. Even though, like I implied, Turk’s music wasn’t his first choice, and obviously, because of that, he may not have been Turk’s first choice, either, as a clarinetist.

But it brought him to the West Coast, and he became the jazz critic for the Examiner. I don’t know if he was with the Chronicle at all; I think it was the Examiner. He was a teacher when he was here, and when he decided, he and his wife, to go to work and teach on an Indian reservation up in the north part of the United States, he turned over the position of the Examiner jazz writer to Phil Elwood.

Crawford: I don’t remember reading him. Phil seemed to be there forever.

02-00:53:07 Oakley: Yes, Phil got his job there because of Richard Hadlock. But of course, they were both on the radio. Richard was on KJAZ for a long time, and Phil was on KPFA, on the radio every Sunday. They did shows, and they were both teachers, and they were both very, very good writers. And of course, Richard still is.

Crawford: Well, what will be the Turk Murphy legacy, in your view?

02-00:53:44 Oakley: Legacy is a funny thing, and difficult to maintain. For those in the know, we all know what the legacy is, is that they kept the music alive. They did their absolute darndest to make it the best sound that they could. They touched a lot of people’s hearts, they touched a lot of people’s ears.

Turk himself was friends with many people, amazingly close friends with people like Walter Cronkite and Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood, and people of that ilk that would come in the club. He would know them all. I remember seeing Andy Griffith— they all came into the club. They liked the music, they liked Turk. And he was close to all of them.

But they liked him for a reason, I think, that went beyond just the playing of the music. He had a special skill. He was a very intelligent man. He was very intellectual about a lot of things. I think people enjoyed the closeness that he generated with them.

The legacy of the music, though, is what those who weren’t that close—I’m talking about the jazz fans, people who were around when they could buy these records and the like—I think those people remember that he just kept the torch burning for as long as he could, and very brightly, because even to the very point of his being so ill that he could barely play, he did Carnegie Hall, and he never showed how sick he was.

I think that kind of fire that he had about the music and keeping it going in its best place, he should be remembered for that. That should be the legacy, that he kept the history of American jazz alive as long as he was alive. We’ve not done a very good job since then.

Crawford: Why?

02-00:55:51 Oakley: Because we don’t teach it in our schools.

Crawford: No, there is very little music in the schools.

02-00:55:56 Oakley: Yes. If you were in Europe and went to school there—a good friend of mine, who’s a nuclear physicist, went to school as a young person in England. He

lives here now, but he’s British. He said they taught American jazz in school. He said that’s what they taught in his school. In most schools.

American jazz has been considered important in every other country except the United States. We never bothered to teach it in this country, except if you took special courses in it. But music in general has been totally neglected. To me, an education today is to get to a place where people can earn money to live. And some of the finer parts of life, the arts and maybe history, seem to be thrown away.

I think we are not like the Europeans. Not as old a country. We tend to throw away things that aren’t new anymore. We throw away music. We throw away Bing Crosby. Nobody knows who Bing Crosby is anymore. If you go into a record store and there’s a young lady, you’ll ask about Bing Crosby, she won’t know who you’re talking about.

Crawford: I can’t believe that.

02-00:57:15 Oakley: It’s very true. I’ve seen it happen, I’ve heard it happen, I know it happens. [laughs] It happens all the time. It’s scary. And this is somebody who sold more recordings than Elvis and the Beatles. It’s hard to believe that people would not know Bing Crosby. When he died, nobody founded [a] Graceland, a place to go searching for him to see if he was really there.

Crawford: You’re quite right about that.

02-00:57:43 Oakley: You see? There was a whole different kind of connection to the music. And yet Crosby was a contributor and a helper to the cause. Just like Turk was a helper to black musicians, Crosby was, too.

Crawford: Why do you think somebody like Nat King Cole seems to still have such a following?

02-00:58:05 Oakley: Well, his daughter helped kind of reinstitute Nat’s music by doing that technical duet with him after he had passed away, and created a thing where she did a duet with him. That gets played all the time.

If you have a connection like that, you can start going backward to what he did before. But if somebody asks you, “What kind of piano player was Nat King Cole,” I have a funny feeling that [chuckles] they wouldn’t have a clue that he played piano. And yet he’s one of the great jazz pianists that ever existed.

Crawford: We didn’t talk about vocalists in the band. Do you want to touch on that?

02-00:58:50 Oakley: When I joined Turk—and also she was with Turk before then—but when I joined Turk, Pat Yankee was the vocalist. She was on and off for many, many years, and of course, she still sings and does her things with her Gentlemen of Jazz.

She was a grand part of Turk Murphy’s band, and had been since probably 1957. When I was with Turk, on weekends, primarily—actually, on weekends, we added a banjo player—[chuckles] it was Frank Haggerty, who was a good friend of mine for many years; he passed away fairly recently— and Pat Yankee.

So on Fridays and Saturdays, we would have Pat and Frank come in. We would augment the band to make it a seven-piece band for just that one night, and we would have a vocalist. And of course, people enjoyed the repartee that Turk and Pat had.

Crawford: There was a lot of humor.

02-00:59:59 Oakley: It was a lot of fun. It reminded me of Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton. The idea that they had a great rapport with each other and had a lot of fun. I’m sure they had their little squabbles, too, but it never was part of what was on the stand. And it was never continually a problem between them.

But that was the main part of the vocal. Turk was a great vocalist, and he did many, many vocals. And of course, when Bob Helm was in the band, he had a lot of featured vocals, too. We all did. We all had a few tunes.

Crawford: You said you all had to sing!

02-00:60:35 Oakley: We all did, pretty much. The only one that never sang, that I can tell, [laughs] was his partner, Pete Clute. He must’ve had it written into his contract that he didn’t have to do any vocals. But everybody else did vocals.

Crawford: That’s a leveling field, isn’t it?

02-00:60:49 Oakley: Sure.

Crawford: Well, we’re right at the end of two hours, and I think that’s a good place to stop. Thank you very much.

[End of Oakley interview]

John Gill Interview #1: February 29, 2008 [Begin Audio File 1]

Crawford: This is February 29, 2008, and I’m interviewing John Gill for the Turk Murphy oral history. Let me start by asking about your first exposure to music, and how you became so versatile and learned to play so many instruments.

01-00:00:09 Gill: When I was a fairly young boy, I always was attracted to music on TV. I was a big fan of Roy Rogers and singing cowboys, Gene Autry, when I was very young, in the fifties. At that time, Liberace had a television show, and I used to sit at the window sill and pretend it was a piano keyboard and play along with Liberace. And so I was fascinated by it. That would be when I was about seven or eight, I guess.

In the early sixties, ’61 or so, I became more and more into the stuff. I had gotten a little box of records that included some Sun Records, records of Elvis Presley and some Johnny Cash, and then I had some of those Hank Williams 78s, on the MGM label. I became a fan of that kind of country—they call it rockabilly. They didn’t really call it rockabilly then, but it was that sort of country-infused rock and roll. Jerry Lee Lewis and people like that.

Then around 1963, ’64, I became aware of the Beatles. Another friend of mine, a friend of the family’s, a little older than me, had handed me down another batch of records that included two of the Beatles’ early hits, 45s. And I became a big fan of the Beatles, and then as coincidence would be, it was just shortly before their arrival in America, ’64. So I had these couple of records, and I enjoyed it a lot.

By that time, I had a little drum set that I had pieced together from various things I found—my dad bought me a snare drum, a little cymbal and things like this. So I used to play along with the records. And then the Beatles actually arrived in New York in ’64, and I was wanting to play music. And that continued on. I played with the guys at school, put a little band together and all, and then around 1966, ’67—my father was a fan of Dixieland and things like that. He had some records and he said, “You ought to listen to some of this music.” So I listened to the Dixieland things and I enjoyed it. So I began to do a little research. I read a book called Shining Trumpets.

So I was under the thrall of what they call today roots music—the sound of early Elvis, Johnny Cash, so on; then the Beatles, and it all coalesced. Very related musics. The Beatles were very influenced by the same things when they came along.

So I was doing that, and I discovered the early jazz music. Which again, in those days, there’s not a huge leap of difference between a Chuck Berry rhythmic number and a Dixieland number. There are a lot of similarities, when you begin to look at it. It’s not like today, where popular music is radically different from anything else. It’s radically different from rock and roll of that era. But at the time, you could turn on the radio and you could hear a whole range of things. You would hear a Dixieland number, you would hear a Beatles number, you would hear a Hawaiian number, and Elvis. Popular music was popular music. It wasn’t quite so rigidly pigeonholed as it is today.

So I got into the Dixieland music, and I read. I went to the library. Became interested in learning about the early jazz musicians— I’ve always been interested in the people who make the music I like. So I’ve always looked into them. Over the years, I’m an avid reader on the Beatles, Johnny Cash, ragtime. Everything I like, I read about.

So I went to the library, took out a book called Shining Trumpets. And in Shining Trumpets is where I first saw the name Yerba Buena Jazz Band. In the end of that book, he cites—the book was written in ’46—he cites this band as a very interesting band that’s gone back to square one of jazz, or back to an earlier form. He talks about each guy in the band. And that’s where I first saw the names Turk Murphy, Lu Watters, Bob Helm and what have you.

He said they made a very interesting series of recordings. The way he talked about the band, about the things he liked, I wanted to seek it out. And their records at that time, while in print, were hard to find. You couldn’t find them in the stores. I finally tracked down a Lu Watters record, and the Lu Watters record was volume three of a series. It had a little biographical sketch of each musician on the back. And that’s how I learned about the band. I was immediately taken by the sound of the band, and became a big advocate of the whole San Francisco revival thing.

And then that led to finally, I found, through reading Down Beat magazine, that Turk Murphy’s band actually had a band still working in San Francisco at the time. This would be the sixties. I had heard that they were making a record for the first time in many years, and I found out that the way you could get the record was to write to this guy Leon Oakley, who was the cornet player in the band.

I sent my money—I didn’t really know Leon or anything at the time—and Leon sent me back the record, the new record that had come out, and an eight- by-ten of the band. I was thrilled. Finally then, in around ’71, I had the opportunity to hear the band live. Turk came to New York to play the Newport Jazz Festival. It was called Newport in New York at that time. I went to Lincoln Center and heard the Turk Murphy Band live for the first time in around ’71, and it was exactly what I loved.

From there, I was booked to play a jazz festival with another band, the East St. Louis Ragtime Festival. This would be 1976, I guess. I had mutual musician friends who knew Turk. And one of them came up to me and said, “Turk’s thinking about getting a new banjo player. You interested in something like that?” And I said, “Yeah, sure.” Turk indeed talked to me at that festival, asked me would I be interested in coming out to San Francisco and this and that. So I said I would. And eventually— it took about a year, but by November of 1977, I was in Turk’s band. That’s how I got into Turk’s band.

Crawford: How had you studied up until that time?

Gill: I started out playing drums in the early sixties, and by 1965, I became interested in the banjo. And so I got a banjo in ’65 or ’66, when I was in high school, and just started working on it. And there were really no people to learn from.

Crawford: In your school?

01-00:08:59 Gill: No. No, I went to Catholic school in New York. They had absolutely no music programs.

Crawford: They did in the public schools at the time?

01-00:09:06 Gill: In the public schools they did, yes, but not where I went.

Crawford: So you did it on your own.

01-00:09:10 Gill: I did it on my own. I basically learned the drums by playing along with records and watching guys play and seeing how they did it. I got a banjo instruction book and just started to learn. In those days, you could actually go to a place and see a banjo player play. There’s very little opportunity to see much live music these days, but in the sixties, every hotel had a band. In New York, there were bands playing all over the place. Every kind of band—rock and roll, country, Irish bands, Dixieland.

I found a Dixieland band that played every Sunday afternoon, at a place called Your Father’s Mustache in New York City. And it was mainly a banjo club. The main band at night was what they call a banjo band. Banjos, tuba, and trombone. They played popular music of the 1920s, and people would sing along and drink beer. That was the basic idea of the club. It was a very successful club. Other clubs like it were called The Red Garter. The Red Onion was another one.

So they were these banjo nightclubs. The place that was Your Father’s Mustache was, once upon a time, a famous jazz club called Nick’s, in the Village, where Eddie Condon worked and a lot of other people—Sidney Bechet. All the great jazz people played there. So I got to meet these guys, who were a little older than me, playing Dixieland every Sunday. They would let me sit in, and they introduced me to other musicians.

And then you begin networking. You begin to meet other people. I still work with a lot of those people who I met back in those days. But that’s prior to the Turk Murphy thing. That would be late sixties. I think I started going down to Your Father’s Mustache around ’68. ’67, ’68, right after I had been playing the banjo for about a year. And that’s basically what I did.

I started getting calls to do work and to play gigs. I eventually just practiced hard enough and learned and studied. But no, I never had any formal instruction. Later on, I learned how to do things like read and write, arrange and do stuff like that; but at the time, there was no place to go to learn to do that kind of thing. You had to just go to the old records and learn the tunes.

Crawford: Isn’t that great? Who were your models?

01-00:11:52 Gill: Well, in jazz, I very much liked Kid Ory, a trombonist who had a band, and Ory, of course, made a lot of very influential records back in the twenties, with Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. He was on the famous Hot Five records of Louis Armstrong. And of course, almost everything of Armstrong is of interest to me. Everything of Jelly Roll Morton is a big interest to me. Sidney Bechet is a big point of fascination for me, the King Oliver band.

I’m also very fascinated by the very early days of jazz, the pre-records days. I’m very intrigued by people like Buddy Bolden and Freddie Keppard and those legendary, mythical almost, guys that only exist now in one or two photos, blurry old photos from 1900 or something. I’m very much interested in the role and how the music was performed in those days, roughly 1890 to 1910. I’m very intrigued by how and what they were playing at that time, which is not documented, really, except in the recollections of some of the older musicians.

Crawford: Who does document it? How did Ken Burns do it?

01-00:13:18 Gill: Well, he did the same thing I did. He read books, he found diaries. You talk to other musicians who have studied it. The Tulane Jazz Archives [Tulane University Hogan Jazz Archive] have tapes, and many hours of interviews, like what you’re doing here, with people who played with Buddy Bolden or heard the Buddy Bolden Band. Mostly from musicians. There are also many

descriptions from just general public people who would describe the clubs and the atmosphere.

Jelly Roll Morton, of course, did his big thing for the Library of Congress, where he did his recollections. And a lot of people have researched into that, looked up that, done the names. There was the famous band called the Creole Orchestra, which predates— never made any records. But they were a very big, big hit band. They’re almost completely forgotten today. But they were very wildly popular, and played all over the country at big theaters like the Wintergarden in New York, as part of a revue called the Town Topics, I think. And they just created a sensation by playing these jazzed-up versions of things like “Turkey in the Straw,” these kind of folk tunes and things. So I’ve always been very intrigued with that. But there’s very little.

A guy just wrote a book, a guy named Larry Gushee, who’s a very esteemed researcher into the areas of very early days of jazz. He just wrote a whole book on the Creole band. And with that, it’s mostly about the individuals in the band. They don’t even know what tunes they played, besides one or two.

Crawford: They can’t find them?

01-00:15:18 Gill: It’s not documented anywhere. Nobody knows the whole story.

Crawford: Can they determine the instrumentation?

01-00:15:23 Gill: They know the instrumentation. There is a photo of the band and there are newspaper descriptions from the time. But they only mention a few names. They mention “Ballin’the Jack,” which was a popular tune; they mention the “Chicken Reel,” which was a popular ragtime type of number in those days; and some blues tunes. But nothing seems to have names. It’s the same with Buddy Bolden. People have only cited maybe five or six tunes for sure that we know the band actually played.

Now, it doesn’t take much to figure it out, because you just have to look and see what the popular tunes of the day were. And there are books that tell you what the big selling sheet musics were. Records weren’t really an indicator of how a song was popular. It was more the sheet music sales, because most people couldn’t afford a record or a record player. But a piece of sheet music was a little more affordable, for a few pennies.

A record in those days—because I used to be a record collector—was anywhere from seventy-five cents to $1.25 for a record. Now, they had cheaper records, as well. You could buy them at the five and dime, and they were maybe thirty-five cents. But that was a sizeable amount of money. Sometimes people worked for twenty-five cents a day in those days. Like 1900. A week’s pay might’ve been three or four dollars.

Crawford: It was a lot of money.

01-00:16:53 Gill: So $1.25 to buy a record, if you have children going to school, if you compare it to today’s cost—whatever. A lot of people just didn’t have that kind of money. So records are not always a good indicator, somewhat of an indicator. It’s sheet music sales, usually; that’s how we tell. And so if the Buddy Bolden band was a working band, then they probably played what were the popular tunes of the day. As well as the things they were famous for, playing the blues tunes or playing the ragtime, whatever things they’ve become legendary for. But I’m sure they also played popular tunes.

Crawford: Did you study the blues? Did the blues appeal to you as much?

01-00:17:38 Gill: Yes, a certain type of blues. I like the old New Orleans raggy blues, the brassy blues things. I’m not so much a fan of the Chicago blues or the modern type of blues they have today is very different from how they played in those days. The way they played the blues in those days was actually a bit more kind of almost on the upbeat side. By the 1930s, that had changed. But back in the day, blues and ragtime were almost the same. A tune like The Memphis Blues, which was one of the first big hit blues to sell sheet music, is a piece from about 1912. It’s got this—[sings the melody and snaps his fingers].

Crawford: Very upbeat, as you said.

01-00:18:32 Gill: Yeah, it’s upbeat. It’s not the way this—[sings a melody]—the way they play the blues today. So it’s hard to really know. Now, they did have their slow drag blues, they called it, which were the slow draggy blues. But because the instruments of the day were trumpets and clarinets, and guitars, to a large degree in the days of pre-electricity--acoustic instruments, well, it’s a whole different approach.

Crawford: Well, when did you get here?

01-00:19:11 Gill: I came to San Francisco in 1977.

Crawford: What was the scene like?

01-00:19:16 Gill: There was a lot going on here. I drove out from New York. And there was a lot going on in New York at the time, too. But when I got here, there were several bands. There was Turk’s band, there was a band at the Fairmont Hotel, where Turk eventually ended up in the end. What was the fellow’s name? Jimmy Diamond was his name, and he was the bandleader at the Fairmont Hotel. And he had a Dixieland band there. The Red Garter was open up on Broadway, and there was lots of work and lots of work for Dixieland. Pier 23

was going in those days. Washington Square Bar & Grill had people like Burt Bales playing piano in there. Burt Bales was a Jelly Roll Morton advocate, and that type of bluesy, old time bluesy player. There was a lot happening then. There was a lot going on when I came.

Crawford: Before we get to Turk Murphy, the story about Turk and Lu Watters.

01-00:20:23 Gill: Yeah. It’s just the usual reason. It’s the same reason why I left Turk. It was just time to move on and do some new things. There were some tensions in the Watters band [in the 40s]. Turk left around ’48 or so. But he was a frequent returnee, as a guest. He wanted to strike out and do his own thing. He wanted to get out from underneath— Turk liked a little bit more structure in his music, and Lu was a bit more freeform.

Crawford: How faithful was Turk to Jelly Roll and to the early bands?

01-00:21:10 Gill: He also put his own twist on things, as far as arranging and writing. He would not play things like they were written and recorded. He would take a whole fresh approach to recreate the arrangement, play it in his own way, which was the thing he stood behind.

There were the two camps—still there are two camps, I guess—of people who play exactly like it was on the record, and people who use the music as inspiration to do their own performance. And that’s where Turk and Lu and Bob Helm were. They didn’t think it was the right thing to do, would be to play a Louis Armstrong record exactly the way Louis played. They would be faithful to the music in the chords and the melody, but Turk would do his own thing, his own arrangement with it. Turk was very influenced by Jelly Roll Morton’s music. And we did a lot of that.

Crawford: Who was in the band?

01-00:22:14 Gill: When I joined the band, it was Leon Oakley and Bob Helm, and on tuba we had Bill Carroll, and Pete Clute.

Crawford: What was the chemistry like?

01-00:22:36 Gill: Well, it was a fantastic club. It was Earthquake McGoon’s on Clay Street.

Crawford: The best one.

01-00:22:42 Gill: Yeah, it was. And I had come a few months prior. I had had a job with a band down in Knott’s Berry Farm, which was for a week, and I’d just made contact with Turk. Now, I came out in November of ’77; it was the previous June that

he had asked me perhaps about joining his band. In ’76. It was June of ’77, I think. Let me just make sure I have that right.

Crawford: This personnel list I have says ’78—

01-00:23:25 Gill: I came out in November of ’77. I remember it because Elvis Presley had just died in August, and Bing Crosby had just died, too. I was working out in the Hamptons that summer, on Long Island. I did the St. Louis Ragtime Festival, which I believe was in June, and Turk talked to me. And then around August sometime, I had this gig at Knott’s Berry Farm, and I went out.

I remember I got in touch with Turk, and he was going back and forth. He didn’t know whether he wanted to let the guy he had go or bring me in. And I had stayed in touch with him. And the other guy was trying to behave himself or whatever, not do what was causing him to get himself in trouble with Turk. I said, “Well, I’m going to be out in California. Would it be too weird if I— I’d like to come hear the band and see Earthquake McGoon’s, anyway.” So Turk said, “Yeah, come on up.” And he recommended a place to stay, and I came up and heard the band, and actually sat in with the band.

Turk would drive me back to my hotel every night and everything. At the time, I was a fairly young guy; I was twenty-four, twenty-five years old. I met everybody. I went to McGoon’s and it was fantastic. A beautiful nightclub. It was full of people. At that time, he had lines outside every night, of people waiting to get in to dance and the whole thing. It was fantastic. So I went back to New York and I didn’t think anything was going to come of it.

Then they did a job in October sometime. They went down to Pismo Beach, and there was an incident there which caused the firing of the banjo player at the time. And Turk said, “Well, I’m going to have to make a change, so if you want the job, you can do it.” So I basically accepted it and got my stuff in order and dropped out of school and got in the car.

Crawford: Where were you in school then?

01-00:25:44 Gill: I was at York College. I was a geology major.

Crawford: But you knew you would be in music.

01-00:25:49 Gill: I wanted to be a musician. I was basically in college because my parents wanted me to be there. I wasn’t doing very well. I was working gigs and staying up late, missing classes and the whole deal. But at the time, York College was free. College wasn’t expensive like it is now. It was, I don’t know, $9.00 a credit or something.

Crawford: Oh, you’re kidding!

01-00:26:14 Gill: No, it was dirt cheap— It didn’t cost something to go there, City University of New York. It was called York College, and it’s in Jamaica. It’s still there. And that’s where the geology department was. So I did that for a few years, and I was working gigs. I graduated in history in ’69, in September of ’69 I started at St. John’s University. I was there for a couple years and then switched. I wanted to be a geology major. I switched and I went to City University of New York.

Crawford: Where is St. John’s?

01-00:26:57 Gill: St. John’s is also out in Jamaica. It’s in Queens.

Crawford: Is that where you’d grown up?

01-00:27:10 Gill: It wasn’t exactly my neighborhood. I grew up in a town called Whitestone, which is north, sort of the northeast section of Queens County, just nine miles from Manhattan, close to the city.

Crawford: So you really had access to New York City.

01-00:27:28 Gill: Oh, New York City was always— I lived in city limits there in Queens. Even though it was several miles out, it was still City of New York limits. And yeah, it was always part of my life.

Crawford: Talk about Turk and what he was like as a person.

01-00:27:48 Gill: Well, he was shy. He was a hard man to work for, after a while. I loved his music, and musically, I loved it. He was a stern taskmaster. He expected the music he had to be played a certain way—which I liked. I had no problem with any of that. He was strict, and we had our band uniforms, we had to wear them every night. And there was no drinking onstage, no chewing gum, none of that kind of stuff. You had your tunes you had to do and there was no say in how anything was done. It was done his way. He had all the stuff written out the way he wanted it performed. He was a good guy. He stood behind his guys. But we would all take turns being in the hot seat.

Crawford: I sort of sense that. Taskmaster is a word that comes up when people talk about Turk.

01-00:28:56 Gill: Yeah. And it’s like when I got to town, I came from a fairly casual music— I met musicians. I started going to Union Square and was busking on the street

with musicians, because it was fun to do. Let’s go out and play and make some change. Well, Turk found I was doing that. He didn’t like that at all. Because he said that makes him look like he’s not providing for his musicians.

Crawford: I can see that.

01-00:29:22 Gill: It was something that never even occurred to me. So I got off to that start. I remember on off nights, I went and I played some gigs and things like that. He didn’t care for that. He didn’t like us playing with other bands. I’m trying to think. How else can I describe him?

Crawford: On that BBC tape about Turk Murphy, you said he was somewhat of a father figure.

01-00:29:50 Gill: He was. He was to Leon, I know, and he sort of was to me. He had that demeanor about him of being like a fatherly type. You never really got to— I was way too young to be his pal. He was, at the time, sixty, and I was twenty- four. I was just a little bit older than his son.

He took care to make sure I was settled. He was worried that I find a good apartment in a safe neighborhood. I remember all that. And I remember him saying if I ever got into a jam or any kind of trouble that I needed to tell him, because he knew a lot of people and he could fix things, whatever it was. He was very clear about that. He just expected me to be on time for work and to be prepared to play, and deport myself in a professional manner at all times, which I tried to do. I think I did pretty well. And that was it. Learn my tunes and so on.

He could become stern in areas of tempo and things. Like if the band started to get a little bit ahead of where his desired tempo was, he would not be too patient with things like that. But for the most part, he just wanted everything to go along easy. It meant a lot to him to provide a paycheck at the end of the week for everybody; he was proud of that. He was proud of the fact that he had a band working full-time for many years.

Crawford: Was it pretty steady?

01-00:31:44 Gill: Yes, well, when I came out, we worked at Earthquake McGoon’s five nights a week, and he frequently had one or possibly two other jobs during the week. Like a little appearance somewhere before McGoon’s or a concert on a Sunday. And the money was pretty good in those days. In 1977, when I was living in Marin County, my rent was like $105 a month for a pretty nice one- bedroom apartment in Marin County. We were getting, with the work at McGoon’s and one outside job, maybe $300 a week, which by now, today’s standards, that’s barely scraping by, but that was a lot of money then. When

you think about it, one third of one paycheck paid the whole month’s rent. That was a pretty good ratio.

Crawford: I should say. Well, everybody I talk to outside of this circle seems to have liked Turk tremendously as a person.

01-00:32:57 Gill: Yes, he was a much loved person. And he knew everybody in town. I remember the first order of business with me was he had to take me out and get me a dark suit. We all had these band coats that we wore with black pants, and then this what he called midnight blue, a midnight blue suit, which was a dark three piece suit, which we wore on Tuesday and Wednesday. And then Thursday, Friday, Saturday we’d do red coats, blue coats, tan coats, whatever.

So he took me to Macy’s, down here on the square, to buy my suit. I remember I went to his house and we drove over, and he knew everybody. He knew the guy where he parked the car. He had a five-minute conversation with that guy, the parking lot attendant. Everybody in the store knew him. The guy knew everybody in town.

Then he took me to lunch at Tommy’s Joynt, that place. He used to love to go there. You walk in, and everybody knew him. He was one of those kinds of San Francisco characters that everybody knew. And he knew I liked old sheet music and was interested in the history of things, so he let me go through all his old sheet music and photocopy whatever I wanted. He was really good about all that kind of stuff.

Crawford: I was talking to John Handy about Turk, and he said how much he admired his musicianship. Said he was really a fine musician.

01-00:34:33 Gill: He was a great musician. He had a sort of blustery sound on the trombone, but that was his intent. People have asked, “Well, how come he played the trombone [that way]?” And I said, “He played like that on purpose.” That was his interpretation of old-style jazz trombone playing.

When he started out, he did the Jack Teagarden type thing, or the more fancy playing, when he was playing with the dance orchestras. But it was his vision to play the trombone that way. I think he was a very good musician. He, again, sort of learned on his own. He had some formal training, I think, but not really. Not any real legitimate training. He studied. He was a smart guy, and clever.

And he learned about arranging. He got a job as a young kid with one of the big bands that toured around in a bus, and he learned how to arrange and studied all that stuff. Lu Watters was also a good arranger, as was Bob Helm. These were all things that, in those days, you kind of learned how to do that if you wanted to. You could pick up extra money, you could perform the

material you wanted to perform. And it facilitates the whole process. Most people today don’t write music at all.

Crawford: He also composed, didn’t he?

01-00:36:03 Gill: He did compose a lot of things, yes. He wrote some very good things, yeah. I personally was not wild about some of his latter-day stuff, which tended to reflect maybe a sadness on his part. Sometimes he seemed like a sad guy. He had a lot of—well, he had no troubles, but—

Crawford: A lot of marriages. [chuckles]

01-00:36:29 Gill: He had a lot of marriages, he had a lot of marriages. But his latter-day compositions had a real melancholy about them, which was okay. He wrote his great stuff when he was in the Lu Watters band, like “Minstrels of Annie Street” and “Trombone Rag.” And his theme song, “Bay City,” I think, is as good as anything ever written for jazz music.

He got some DownBeat award for one of his tunes, I think. “Social Polecat,” I think it’s called, “Turk’s Blues.” He won some DownBeat award, jazz composition of the year or something, for that. And then when he did that show—later on in his life, he did that Broadway show. Well, it never made it to Broadway. It was going to be about Storyville, the red light district. He wrote some great stuff for that. He didn’t write the lyrics, he wrote the music. I found the lyrics to be somewhat not the greatest. But his musical stuff— and he wrote some songs for a film called “Alabama’s Ghost,” which didn’t really succeed, but it’s a great bit of writing on that, some great stuff.

Crawford: Is his music available?

01-00:37:48 Gill: You can get “Alabama’s Ghost” on DVD, actually. I just found it. When I have nothing to do, I’ll go on Amazon or eBay and begin to just look for things. I’ll put something in. So I put “Alabama’s Ghost” in one day, and sure enough, there’s a new DVD. It’s just a copy of a videocassette put on DVD, so it’s not great quality. But it shows Turk playing at Earthquake McGoon’s. There are several scenes shot in Earthquake McGoon’s on Clay Street, so you can really see. And Turk does a bit of acting, so you get to see him act—

Crawford: That’s fun. I didn’t know about that.

01-00:39:32 Gill: If King Oliver was to come back today, I don’t know what he’d play or what he’d be doing, or Jelly Roll Morton or any of these guys. But it’s hard for me to just move on beyond that music. I’ve heard very few people that engage me as much as their records. I don’t know why that is, but it is. I don’t know what

to say about it. I would love to work with black musicians and have a band play this old music.

Crawford: You lived in New Orleans. Please talk about that.

01-00:40:34 Gill: I went to New Orleans after I moved back from San Francisco. I went back to New York for a brief time, and then moved down to New Orleans.

Crawford: What year was that?

01-00:40:42 Gill: I moved back to New York in ’88, and in 1990, I moved down to New Orleans and worked with some outstanding musicians. Steve Pistorius was a fine pianist. I heard all the guys. I worked at Preservation Hall.

Crawford: Preservation Hall was largely black, wasn’t it?

01-00:41:25 Gill: Yes.

Crawford: John Handy feels that very keenly that white people have taken over in jazz in a general sense.

01-00:41:57 Gill: John Handy. This is the saxophone player, right?

Crawford: Right, he was with Mingus for many years.

01-00:42:01 Gill: There was a guy from New Orleans— It must not be the same guy. There was a guy from New Orleans that they used to call Captain John Handy. That’s not the same guy?

Crawford: No.

01-00:42:10 Gill: He was a saxophone player, too. But he was more of an R&B guy. You see, that’s the thing. These guys maybe were playing jazz music, and then some guy like—like a black guy’s playing jazz, and then along comes Little Richard, and makes a lot of his records in New Orleans, using a lot of— I worked with a lot of guys who are on Little Richard’s records. Saxophone players and drummers. I’ll think of their names in a minute, but you can’t blame them for not going for it. That’s very compelling stuff, as well. Now, when it comes to Little Richard’s music, I’ve only heard one white guy do that convincingly.

I think Paul McCartney does a great job of the Little Richard stuff, the screaming and all that. He’s very good at it. But that’s about it. That’s

definitely a black area. I do a lot of that music now, I play mostly old-time fifties rock and roll. And a lot of people will come up and say, “Can you do any Smokey Robinson?” I say, “I can’t do that music. I love it, but I can’t do it justice.”

Crawford: That’s fair.

01-00:43:25 Gill: I feel that I can I can do the music of Joe Oliver justice, or Kid Ory— I don’t feel threatened by it at all. But the music of Little Richard, I could play it, but to perform it and vocalize it, I can’t. It’s not in my racial background. There is a difference there. I can do Chuck Berry, because Chuck Berry is not so overtly black in his performance. He’s almost more white than he is black.

So anyway, that’s how it all works. It comes and goes, but in the field of traditional jazz, sadly, it’s a white business now.

Crawford: What are you doing out here?

01-00:44:28 Gill: I’m doing a traditional jazz thing out here. I come out here once or twice a year to do something, to make a recording or do something, or to play a jazz festival. But in New York, aside from the Woody Allen gig, which is kind of like not a normal situation—I play that Monday night thing, and that’s very traditional New Orleans jazz.

Crawford: Talk about that a little bit, while we’re on the subject.

01-00:44:56 Gill: The band is led by a guy named Eddie Davis, who’s a banjo player, who came out and did a stint with Turk at one time when Bob Helm became ill. I went up and played clarinet and Eddie Davis came out and played banjo. Anyway, Eddie Davis is the bandleader and it’s East Coast guys. Simon Whettenhall, Jerry Zigmont, Conal Fowkes on piano. They are musicians that people don’t know here at all. The only well-known person, really, is Woody.

I started working with him in the 1960s in New York. He used to play clarinet with the band, that Sunday band I told you about, at Your Father’s Mustache, as a sub. This was just at the beginning of his film career, when he was just becoming famous. So he was still kind of just a normal person, rode on the train and—he was just becoming recognized at the time. It was right around the time of Take the Money and Run and What’s Up, Tiger Lily? and Play It Again, Sam, was this off-Broadway show at that time. So he would come and I met him then. He’s not a very gregarious, outgoing person.

Crawford: So I hear.

01-00:46:07 Gill: He’s a nice person, but—he’s always been good to the guys in the band. So I started working with him then. Then I went out and joined Turk, and I didn’t see him for the whole time while I was with Turk. And then I went to New Orleans, and went back to New York for a while, and then hooked up with him again because of Eddie Davis.

I started playing with him again. And that’s when I did that. I did the Wild Man Blues film with him. There’s a documentary called Wild Man Blues, which is about the Woody Allen band touring Europe. So I did that with him. That was thirteen years ago, and shortly after that, I decided to come back here, and I went to work at the bar across the street, called the Gold Dust. And then I went back to New York and I saw him. I went back to New York and got back involved in the Woody Allen band again.

Crawford: How do you explain that the audiences for that music?

01-00:47:06 Gill: It’s because of Woody. They just want to gawk at Woody. It’s a celebrity thing. The band’s pretty good, actually. But if he wasn’t there, there’d be no one there to hear us. I feel there’s very little going on right now. There’s very little call. The music has been really marginalized by the media. It’s not considered a serious music.

Crawford: Nowhere?

01-00:47:41 Gill: No. To me, it is, and to the people who play it, it is. But to the world at large, they don’t know who Jelly Roll Morton is anymore. They hardly even know who Louis Armstrong is. They only know him because it’s been drilled into their heads for the past ten years that he’s a genius. He’s gotten a lot of genius press. And deservedly so.

Crawford: But it doesn’t really relate to the music.

01-00:48:05 Gill: But it doesn’t relate to the music, no. And his records will sell because his name is on them. It’s not because they’re intrigued by this music, but it’s because, oh, it’s Louis Armstrong, I better buy it. Or, this will be good. But they don’t look into any of his influences, like King Oliver or his contemporaries, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, whatever. And even the Ken Burns film really didn’t do anything— I didn’t notice any difference, where all of a sudden people were coming around—

Crawford: I’m surprised at that, though, because he treated the music well.

01-00:48:39 Gill: He did. I liked what he did with it. And I was very impressed with the whole—especially the whole New Orleans thing. I’m on some of the soundtrack music that was in that. It was on records I had done. It was a great thing. But I didn’t see any change in appreciation or—it’s not like all of a sudden people were hiring, looking for those kind of bands to play their events and things like that.

Crawford: The film did more for avant-garde jazz?

01-00:49:15 Gill: Yes, there seems to be more of a platform for, I don’t know, this new jazz, which I have no use for any of it at all. I don’t listen to any of it. It does nothing for me.

Crawford: How about the Village Vanguard and some of the old clubs? Bill Charlap and Fred Hersch. Not what you play, but it’s not what you’d call radical, is it?

01-00:49:47 Gill: To me, it’s not far off. I wouldn’t say it’s radical, but I— I can only tell you, as I grew up and as I set my priorities with what I was going to do with music, the music of people like Bill Charlap— I’ve never been in the Village Vanguard. They don’t play any music that intrigues me at all. I’m not trying to be a snob or anything, but if it doesn’t have an earthy, bluesy thing going on, I’m not interested in it. I like Sidney Bechet, I like Joe Oliver, I like Louis, I like Clarence Williams’ music. I like that zestful joy you get from a New Orleans band that’s heavy with brass. I don’t get that from any of these guys. I get this dark, unpleasant odor from all of it. And I don’t dig it at all. But that’s just me. I’m a bit radical in my leanings. But then again, I’ll turn around and play “Blue Suede Shoes.” And I love that just as much. So it’s a little weird.

Crawford: But that’s related, don’t you think?

01-00:51:03 Gill: It is related. I think that there’s a lot in common with what Elvis did early in his career—not the later Vegas things, but the seminal—the seminal Elvis, the seminal Johnny Cash, the seminal Jerry Lee Lewis. There’s a heartbeat for music, and a lot of things come from it. You get the blues, jazz, ragtime, and early rock and roll all come from the same place, to me. So I’m able to accept it all as kin music, kindred.

Crawford: I read some statements Turk Murphy made about his instrumentation, about economics affecting his choices. What would have been ideal for him?

01-00:51:54 Gill: I think that he would say that; but then on the other hand, he did on occasion do some things with two trumpets. But then I think that he found that he really liked working with the six-piece combination with no drums. I think that he really liked that, while it was born out of economics, because it saved him

from hiring two other musicians, it also made it easy for on the road; three rooms, two guys in each room. If he had two more guys, it would be three cars to travel anywhere. And things like that. It all makes sense when you start to look at it numbers-wise. One more hotel room would’ve broken the budget, where we couldn’t make a profit on it.

But I think that he came to like the six-piece combination, and some of his best stuff and writing is for the six-piece band, I think, and the three horns. When you write for two trumpets, while it’s a very exciting thing, you have to have a second trumpet player who really knows how to embellish the part. It’s a unique thing. It’s not so much a written thing as it is—it starts on paper, but then you have to know where to take it. It’s a hard thing, and not a lot of people can do it anymore.

And so Turk just made it easy on himself. He said, “It’s too hard to find guys to do that. And then if I write for two trumpets—”and you have four horns on the front line. There’s only three notes in a chord that you work with anyway, for the most part, except for passing notes and sevenths and different other things that he used in orchestration. But it’s much easier to write for three horns. Not only is it economical in a lot of ways. It’s economically feasible writing-wise, and it’s economical money-wise, as well. So it works out. And a six-piece band with no drums fits on a bandstand good.

Crawford: What was so special about Bob Helm? Everybody talks about Bob Helm.

01-00:54:26 Gill: Yes, Bob was great. He was a guy who really loved this music, just like Turk. He was a big Louis Armstrong fan, and he was just a very creative guy. He could take these tunes and put a slant on them. Totally original. He never, except on—he would quote Johnny Dodds, the New Orleans clarinet player, who was on all the King Oliver records and a lot of the Louis Armstrong Hot Five and Hot Seven records. A wonderful New Orleans clarinet player, a very bluesy clarinet player, with a big, thick, syrupy tone and a heavy vibrato. Like a woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo kind of a sound.

Bechet could play the same way. A slightly different vibrato, but a very passionate sound. But anyway there were one or two occasions where he would copy note for note a Johnny Dodds thing. But for everything else, he was inspired by that to create his own. He had a great mind for music. He could think in terms of—he knew his harmony and he knew his— As a boy, he studied with the clarinet player who was the former principal soloist with Sousa’s band. In those days, to work with a band like Sousa, or Arthur Pryor’s band or whatever, you had to be so good on your instrument. Way beyond requirements of today, where everything slips and slides. Oh, that’ll do, that’ll do.

Those guys were unbelievable. Technically adept on their clarinets and the drums, like you can’t believe. So anyway, that’s who Bob studied with. So he drilled him on the ins and outs of proper clarinet. He knew the right melody to every song, he knew all the harmony parts, and he knew all the chord changes. And he was a very, very thorough, thorough musician and loved the old jazz music with a passion. And so that just came out. That’s what came out when he played, and he was a wonderful guy, and funny and witty, and a very bright guy. And in his youthful day, he was like the tri-state tennis champion from around here a well-dressed, dapper, handsome guy. He cut quite a path, back in the forties and fifties.

Crawford: He was older when you joined.

01-00:57:21 Gill: Yes, he was Turk’s age.

[End Audio File 1]

[Begin Audio File 2]

Crawford: I wanted to talk about the various Earthquake McGoon’s, and the later years at the Fairmont.

02-00:00:21 Gill: Okay. Well, when I joined Turk, he was at Clay Street McGoon’s, Clay and Montgomery. That was November of 1977. And it only lasted until New Year’s Eve of ‘77, so I really only got to play there for a few months.

Crawford: But that was very special.

02-00:00:47 Gill: Oh, it was a great, great place. I remember people telling me that maybe they could’ve fought it a little harder and maybe not allowed them to tear the building down, because behind that building was the final destination of the Pony Express routes from the old West. The Pony Express riders came there, and the office was there, right where Earthquake McGoon’s was. I think the stables were still there, and they thought that was a historical enough reason not to tear it all down, but it didn’t fly. Too much money. So they lost it.

Crawford: They lost it to developers.

02-00:01:34 Gill: Yes. So he lost the club. I remember me and the guys, we all helped to dismantle the stuff. They found a place, of all things, on Turk Street, called California Hall, down in the basement there. So that was going to be the new Earthquake McGoon’s. It was kind of an interesting place. Big giant place, and they had room for all the magic stuff and the Magic Cellar. But that didn’t last, either. We went over there. Took a few weeks hiatus and then launched

back into playing there for a while. But that didn’t work out. And then there was a period of time where we didn’t work for about a year or so. Just private engagements.

Crawford: While looking for a place.

02-00:02:27 Gill: While looking for a place. And they finally found this place on the Embarcadero, which turned out to be a huge disaster.

Crawford: Why?

02-00:02:35 Gill: Well, it was in a bad part of town. Nobody came. It was kind of sad. No one really knows these things ahead of time. You think it’s going to be okay; there was parking. But the people just didn’t come. It was never the same as it was at Clay Street. California Hall, it didn’t work either. People just didn’t come there. At first they did, but then they stopped. That part of town, it was on Turk Street, close to Van Ness, a block or so from Van Ness.

Crawford: That’s the Tenderloin, really.

02-00:03:19 Gill: Yes. And it was much rougher then than it is now.

Crawford: How so?

02-00:03:25 Gill: Well, it was just bleak. There were old parking lots across the street, there was no development there, and all this kind of thing. And people just didn’t like to be around there at night. It was dark and unlit. There was nothing there. There was no other place. There were some coffee shops or something. It was just kind of a rough place.

Crawford: Have you been to the new Yoshi’s—it’s a neighborhood that’s long been quiet.

02-00:03:57 Gill: It’s very hard to take music off the beaten track. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it is that you have to stay where people are. That’s where you have to have music. People won’t come to music; you really have to bring it to them.

The Embarcadero floundered along for a while. And the people at Pier 39 then approached them about coming in there. So they left the Embarcadero thing, got out of there, moved to Pier 39. And that proved to be, unfortunately, a disaster as well, because everything shut down at six o’clock, seven o’clock on Pier 39, so we were the only place open. And it was way out at the end of the pier. You had to park way over on Bay or in that area, Fisherman’s Wharf, then walk all the way out to the end of the pier.

Maybe if Turk had had his business running in the afternoon, if they started at three, went from three to seven or something like that, it might’ve worked. But there was nobody out there at night. And when we finished work at one o’clock in the morning, it was literally—no lights on out there. There’s nothing.

Crawford: That was a couple of years in the eighties, right?

02-00:05:22 Gill: A couple of years in the eighties. And it failed, and the people from the pier, their deal was that if you fail, we’ll take over the club. So that’s what happened. There was a big meeting one day and they said, “Okay, we’re running things now because you’re not making the kind of money that you need to be making. We’re not getting our—” their end of things. They were supposed to get a cut of the business; that’s how you got in there. It wasn’t happening.

So they came in, they rewrote the rules and said, “You will perform from this time to this time, and you’re going to do it for less money now,” and the whole—we had to go along with it for a while. And that was when Turk and Pete had their falling out and lawsuits and all this kind of thing. It was not a happy time.

Crawford: What was that about?

02-00:06:08 Gill: It was over money and mishandling, misappropriation of funds and all that. Pete was absolved of it. It was Turk versus Pete, and Pete was found not guilty. And that was that. Pete always felt bad about it. Pete was a great guy, and he suffered the role of the villain, being the bad guy, because that’s how everyone wanted to see it. No one wanted to see Turk as a bad guy.

Crawford: They’d have to, wouldn’t they?

02-00:06:36 Gill: Pete, to his credit, just said, “Yes, okay, I’ll be the bad guy. I’m not going to—” That’s how Turk was, because Turk was like a father to him, too. You love the guy, is what happens. And for all his faults and his weirdness and his foibles, these are the kind of people that you do anything for. You meet them in your life. That’s the kind of guy Turk Murphy was. So then we went from Pier 39 to the Fairmont Hotel, that was okay for a while, but way out of the price range of our fans. At that time, the drinks were $8.00 apiece or something.

Crawford: You’re kidding!

02-00:07:16 Gill: At the time. And these people were used to paying $1.75 for a drink. So the first week was great guns, but we died up there.

Crawford: That’s really why you left—

02-00:07:29 Gill: Well, I was starting to have— I won’t mention any names, but there was a power— Turk had become ill by this point, with cancer. He was not doing so well. And a person in the band decided to try and take the band over and went to the people at the Fairmont, tried to sell the band, to take over the band. And at the time, Turk asked me to front the band, because he thought that when he couldn’t make it, would I call the tunes? Because he was afraid the other guys wouldn’t call the tunes that he wanted the band to represent, the material.

Crawford: You mean once he left?

02-00:08:12 Gill: No, there were nights he couldn’t come in because he was not well. So when he couldn’t make it, he’d call me up and say, “Listen, would you call the tunes and make sure that the band goes and all that? Because I’m afraid if I give it to this guy, he won’t call the tunes that I want to have you playing.” Because he wanted control of the band. It was still Turk Murphy’s Jazz Band. So he didn’t want us lapsing into jam session tunes. He still wanted us to play the repertoire. You see? You understand?

So I tried to do that, and then I was painted by some people as trying to take the band over, and Turk went for it. Turk kind of believed them. He came in one night, and I knew he was ill. I said, “Turk, what’s the matter?” He goes, “I got a call that you’re ruining my band.” I said, “What did I do?” And he said, “Well, someone said—” And I remember that night. I played a song, [sings] “Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin’ town,” which is the kind of thing he would never play. He hated all that kind of stuff.

Crawford: Why was that so different?

02-00:09:23 Gill: He didn’t feel it had the quality of the music of Joe Oliver. Turk was not one to play things like “Sweet Georgia Brown” and popular things that people wanted to hear. This was one of his problems. He wanted to play for them what he wanted them to hear. He wouldn’t always give them what they wanted to hear. If he gave them what they wanted to hear, then they might listen to what he wanted them to hear; but he wouldn’t give them “Tigeer Rag,” and he wouldn’t give them those tunes.

So someone came up to me, put $20.00 on the bandstand and said, “Play “Chicago,” I had that moment where I just thought to myself, well, this guy seemed like an arrogant kind of a guy, and the Fairmont Hotel was all big high rollers in there all the time. I said to myself—and this all went by in the flash of the thing.I said, “Okay, we’ll play ‘Chicago.’ It’ll take two minutes, it’ll be done, we’ll get a $20.00 tip, split it up, and it’s not going to hurt anybody.”

Well, that was the tune they used to say, “Oh, he’s turned your band into a Dixieland jam session. He’s not playing the material.” So Turk came in, and that was the beginning of the end for me. He began to get real testy and weird and distrusting of me. That’s when I decided—so that would be around ’86—I decided at that point it was time to pack up and get out. I started working with some other people then anyway. But I always felt badly about it, and that I didn’t explain myself for whatever reason; I was immature about it or whatever. I went on the defensive and I said, “It’s not true.” But if I had to do it all over again, I would not have quit. I would have stayed till the end. Because I regretted it. I regretted it then.

Crawford: But all the politics. That can’t have been enjoyable.

02-00:11:32 Gill: No, there were a lot of politics. And it was really the first time I’d ever been in a band where politics were heavily thrown about. All during the course of various intrigues.

Crawford: That goes with performing, doesn’t it?

02-00:12:08 Gill: It goes with it. I was the youngest one in the band, so a lot of that didn’t come into my life. I was young and unmarried and single, so I didn’t have the problems that these guys had, some of them. This person saw me as the perfect foil to take the smoke and take all the attention off the other things in the band. We’ve got this young upstart in the band trying to ruin things. I felt badly about it. The person apologized to me later for doing it, but it just goes to show you how this business works. It’s not a good business that way.

So that was the end. Turk finally passed away, while the band was still at the Fairmont Hotel. I remember the big headlines. I got up and I saw, “Turk Murphy Dead.” It was in the headlines—

Crawford: He’d been ill for a while.

02-00:13:09 Gill: Yes. He had been ill for a year or so, two years, with prostate cancer.

Crawford: Well, let’s talk a little bit about the tours, and how you were received.

02-00:13:22 Gill: I did a few tours. I did a tour of Australia with Turk in 1978, which was a great success. There were those real high points in the band, too. We went from the low points, but there were many—he had a legion of fans in Australia who liked what he did. There was a jazz revival that happened in Australia, coincidentally, at the same time as it did in America.

It was run over there in Australia by people like— Graham Bell was one of the guys, and a group called The Southern Jazz Group, and there were all these bands that were into the same kind of thing that Turk was into, and Lu Watters and those guys, and they put their own slant on it, they were writing their own material. Again, in the spirit, in the same way that Turk and Lu and those guys were. They weren’t just copying the original records, they were doing their own thing with it. Which always gets you higher points from the reviewers and critics, what have you.

Crawford: How about the reviewers?

02-00:14:28 Gill: Well, the reviewers were not always kind to Turk. They didn’t understand what he was doing. Most people who review jazz records don’t know what they’re talking about, if you want my opinion. The only people who understand jazz music are really the people who play it.

Crawford: I feel that way about all music.

02-00:14:47 Gill: Right. It’s put out there for people to listen to, and they can react to it any way they want. But most of the stuff I read about jazz is completely uninformed and—

Crawford: Shining Trumpets—

02-00:15:00 Gill: Rudi Blesh, yes.

Crawford: He was a critic, wasn’t he? A jazz writer?

02-00:15:03 Gill: He was a jazz-writing critic, he did a lot of things. But he was very opinionated and very slanted in the direction of what Lu and those guys did. So his writing is all askew, as well. And if you like that kind of stuff, well, you fall right into it, you start reading it. But it’s like politics. You listen to who tells you what you want to hear. That’s who you vote for. Not necessarily the right person, but who tells you what you want to hear. So that’s the way it is with jazz writing. Turk, I thought he was a great player, and he was a great singer, I thought. But he was always panned for that.

Crawford: For his singing?

02-00:15:46 Gill: Yes, because it was unlike—there’s nothing to compare it to. So people have problems with that. If they can’t say, “Oh, yes, he sings like Bing Crosby,” or, “Oh, yes, he sings like Elvis Presley.” They want to put everybody in these pigeonholes. They don’t want to accept a guy like Turk Murphy, who comes out and has this whole approach, based on a whole tradition of singing that existed in this country.

He’s that old-time, stand-up-at-the-bar-and-sing kind of a guy. Like the very Depression-era kind of a thing. He embodied that whole thing, him and Bob Helm both. There was a guy named Clancy Hayes who sang and played banjo, who was affiliated with them. He was a way more polished singer. So he gets a lot of credit. And rightfully so; he was great.

Crawford: Did you sing?

02-00:16:41 Gill: I sang, too. I was forced to sing. You had to sing with Turk.

Crawford: I know you had to sing.

02-00:16:46 Gill: But Turk was really good. He’d stand up there and sing those tunes like “The Ace in the Hole” and the old vaudeville type of numbers, and he was great at it. I thought terrific. He sang with real conviction and with a big, booming voice. It was exciting.

But the press wasn’t always kind to Turk, and they didn’t understand what he was going for. They had no patience for his interest in the old. That’s what I mean. The media is stupid when it comes to this stuff. They don’t understand the treasures of the musical past. They don’t realize that the reason we don’t have any good music, basically nothing but crap out there today, is because they don’t make this stuff available to the general public. You have to dig for this stuff.

You want to hear Turk Murphy, you’ve got to dig for it. You’ve got to go on Amazon and look for it. It’s a little better than it used to be right now, with him, but for the most part only in recent years has this stuff been available. For years, you had to dig and dig and dig. You couldn’t find a King Oliver record. You had to search. You had to find these little stores that sold—it was like going to find drugs or something. Oh, there’s a store, and it’s down in the West Village, and it’s in a terrible neighborhood, but if you go there, he’s got Turk Murphy records.

Crawford: Is that right? Even in New York?

02-00:18:13 Gill: Yes, that’s how it was. It was a place called King Carroll Records. They had Turk Murphy records, and they were selling them. They were out of print. They were $20.00 each. And he had just walls full of records, of all this kind of stuff.

So here I am in the seventies, the late sixties, and I was thirsting for this stuff. There was a guy named Ed Beach who had a radio show every Sunday night, and he would do vintage stuff. Well, he’d do Dizzy Gillespie and all that kind of stuff too, but like every second or third show, he’d do a traditional thing.

He was a black guy with this deep black-guy voice. [impersonates Beach] “This is Ed Beach. Today we’re going to listen to Jelly Roll Morton.” Had this deep voice and blah-blah-blah. He was on every Sunday, and I listened to him a lot. And that’s where I first heard— before I actually got the records. He would play Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver. He did a whole Lu Watters show. “Here’s an interesting band from San Francisco. They play the music of old New Orleans.” He’d play all this, and I said, “I never heard this. This is fantastic.”

So I used to listen to that, and then finally, in around the early seventies, there was this company that reissued these records. They put out a King Oliver. It was called Louis Armstrong, but it was Louis Armstrong with King Oliver. The New Orleans Rhythm Kings, Bix Beiderbecke. They came out in these kind of like big open—you opened them up. They were those albums that opened up like this. And it was all the story of the guy in there, and all about him.

Crawford: I miss those big, illustrated album covers.

02-00:19:58 Gill: Yes, and then I remember, it was right around the time, they reissued the records of Victor— RCA had a thing called the Victor Vintage Series, which started in around 1967. And they put out the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, which was the first jazz band to make records. A white band, of course, and they played this old ragtime-y music. They made their first records in 1917. Darktown Strutter’s Ball was the first record. That was for Columbia, actually. Columbia rejected it, and then Victor signed them. Then they had a big hit with their first Victor record.

So they reissued this record. So oh, I’ve got to get this. Rudi Blesh wrote about these guys; I’ve got to know about it. So I went down and I saw this other record. It was called Young Louis Armstrong. And that’s where I first heard the King Oliver stuff. But anyway, why am I talking about this? We were talking about records.

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Crawford: Well, we were talking about how this material isn’t out there.

02-00:21:15 Gill: Oh, yeah, how it’s not out there, and how the media, or the press or whatever, they— Herb Caen was okay to Turk. But not early on, he wasn’t.

Crawford: Wasn’t he? I thought he was a great fan.

02-00:21:28 Gill: But he became a great fan, because he realized that Turk was something special for San Francisco.

Crawford: And was maybe more famous than he was.

02-00:21:37 Gill: Perhaps, yes. Herb Caen only played well here in town. No one knew who he was. So what were we saying? Yes, so the press, they didn’t pay much attention to Turk. But Herb Caen mentioned him a lot.

Crawford: And that helped?

02-00:21:53 Gill: That helped a great deal, yes.

Crawford: Anything more about the tour?

02-00:21:59 Gill: Oh, that’s where we went, we went to Australia; that was fabulous. We were there for two or three weeks. We went to Melbourne and Sydney and the Gold Coast. We say in America Brisbane, they say Brisbon. So that was my first trip out of the country. That was fantastic. And then one year we did the Cork Festival in Ireland. Cork. The people loved Turk there. That was really a great place. They loved the music and they loved Turk. It was a great thing to see.

The people loved the band there, and they loved the way Turk sang. They really turned out for us there. So that was a great trip. And the band, in my time, went to Breda, Holland, to play. There was a famous jazz festival there for years. We did that. And that’s about it. We played the St. Louis Ragtime Festival almost every year while I was in the band. We did Sacramento on occasion; Turk didn’t really care to do that too much.

Crawford: Pismo Beach?

02-00:23:13 Gill: We did Pismo Beach once or twice, not too often. The club came first. Being there for Earthquake McGoon’s was a big part. And so we didn’t really travel that much, for that reason. On occasion, he would go, but not too often.

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Crawford: What about the band you’re with now? What kind of reception do you get abroad?

02-00:23:41 Gill: The Woody Allen band? Oh, they’re wildly excited about seeing Woody.

Crawford: It’s still a celebrity thing.

Gill: It’s still a celebrity thing. We played to like 10,000 people in Budapest last December. So we played big, huge, beautiful venues. They’re really nice tours. They’re not like most of your traditional jazz tours, which are very bargain-basement kind of operations. These are big-scale operations. They put us up in the finest hotels.

Crawford: How did Budapest like you?

02-00:24:20 Gill: Budapest seemed to go for it. It was sold out. There were 10,000 seats.

Crawford: That can’t just all be Woody.

02-00:24:29 Gill: No, it is. He’s very popular. He’s way more popular in Europe than he is here.

Crawford: From his films.

02-00:24:34 Gill: Yeah. He’s a film icon. From what he’s done over the years, what he’s done in film, he’s become like a twentieth-century figure. So he’s huge in that way. People just flock to see him. The same at the Carlyle every Monday night.

Crawford: Where else did you go on that Budapest tour?

02-00:25:04 Gill: Oh, we were in Barcelona, Paris, San Sebastian.

Crawford: Where did you play in Paris?

02-00:25:16 Gill: We played at an opera house. I can’t remember the name of it.

Crawford: An old fashioned opera house? Garnier?

02-00:25:28 Gill: I can’t remember. I have it written down. It was beautiful. Sold out. Also we played Athens on that trip. We did Athens, and three cities in Spain.

Crawford: And is that every year?

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02-00:25:52 Gill: About every Christmas, he goes out.

Crawford: Every Christmas. Is that because the club closes?

02-00:25:59 Gill: No, the club’s open at that time, but he likes to go there. I guess we’re going to do two next year. We’re going to do one in December and one in March, apparently. The tour organizer was in the other night, this French guy. I don’t get too involved in that. I’m sort of one of the guys in the band, that’s about it. But it’s a great operation to be part of.

Crawford: I would say so. Because you’re still playing the music you love, and it’s being well received. Last question, and that is, who else should be interviewed? As you know, I’ve talked to Leon Oakley and I’ve talked to Charles Campbell.

02-00:26:46 Gill: Well, God, there’s hardly anybody left. Carl Lunsford?

Crawford: I know about him.I thought of Pat Yankee, of course.

02-00:27:52 Gill: Well, I think Pat would have a very interesting take on things. I’m just searching my— I don’t think there’s anybody else left. There’s Bob Schulz.

Crawford: Bob Schulz, yes, he was in the band with you.

02-00:28;07 Gill: He was there with me. I think he would be good. And he’s the guy that ended up taking the band over briefly, after Turk passed. I think he would be good. He’s a great guy and a great musician. He’s not as deep into the history of the things as—

Crawford: As you are.

02-00:28:33 Gill: Yes, I became a student of it.

Crawford: Did Turk rely on you in that way?

02-00:28:40 Gill: Yes. In a way, he relied on me to stay true to the truth. It was more like that. He did give me some tasks. Like this guy wanted him to record a certain song, and he didn’t want to deal with it, so he asked me to arrange it for him. So my very first arranging experience was with him. He taught me a lot about arranging for this type of music. But he relied on me to stay true, stylistically, to what he was doing, based on what I knew. Based on what I knew about the style.

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Crawford: Good. Anything else?

02-00:29:21 Gill: That’s about all I can think of. The other important thing about Turk is that he preserved a lot of music that might otherwise have been forgotten and not heard, and that was kind of their mission statement, too, early on, with the Yerba Buena Band, was to salvage the forgotten tunes and the things that had been passed over, and to search through the piles of old sheet music in the antique shops and find the gems of days gone by that could be brought back to life again and things like that.

Crawford: What happened to his library?

02-00:29:57 Gill: It was donated to the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation, and just recently went to Stanford Archives.

Crawford: I heard that. I think that Berkeley was up for it, too.

02-00:30:11 Gill: Berkeley was looking at it, but it went to Stanford. I think they just picked it up not too long ago. So his library, his arrangements are all there now.

Crawford: Is that something you’d go to look at?

02-00:30:31 Gill: Yes, I would. My experience with those collections is that they’re never made available to the people who really need them. Or they make it so difficult. They won’t let you copy anything. So I find that the whole point of them becomes moot, because they just sit there.

Crawford: They go downstairs.

02-00:30:49 Gill: And they don’t do anybody any good. They don’t let you look at them, they don’t let you borrow them, they don’t let you copy them. So [laughs] what am I allowed to do with his old papers? They’re going to sit here and rot. I’ve created my own library, based on what Turk did and what Lu Watters did. We get together with guys and play. But it’s a very dwindling thing— There’s not a lot of people interested.

Crawford: So that if you went to Australia, which was so receptive to the band on tour, you wouldn’t find interest there?

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02-00:31:19 Gill: Probably not. The first thing, of course, the main thing that would keep me from going to Australia is that the promoters couldn’t handle the expense of bringing me over there. The airplane tickets and the hotels and there’s no budget. The budget that you need isn’t there anymore. For instance, this job we’re playing on Sunday, we had to rent a piano for it. The whole job pays 1500 bucks, this is a seven-piece band, but it cost 500 to rent the piano.

So the piano is making three times what any of the musicians are making. This is how things have gone. The world, everything’s topsy-turvy. The priorities are all askew. So this is the kind of stuff we’re facing. All this stuff going on on TV, I can’t even look at these people anymore.

Crawford: Anything more?

Gill: One of the things I always thought that was important about Turk is that he had connections with the first-generation jazz people He had physical contact and worked with Louis Armstrong and Kid Ory, and Kid Ory asked him to arrange things for him, and he had correspondence.

Turk was from a time when this music was still popular. He was born in 1914, I think. So when he was ten years old, 1925, it was only two years after King Oliver recorded. So he’s from the era, and then old enough to have had contact with people like Bunk Johnson and people who were from the very early stage of jazz.

Crawford: What was his connection with Bunk Johnson?

02-00:33:05 Gill: Well, Bunk was discovered as someone who was still around. He was only, at the time, like fifty years old or something like that. He was working at the Worcestershire Sauce place down there, and he said, “I can still play. I don’t have a trumpet anymore. I need some false teeth and all.” So they got together, and Lu Watters gave him a trumpet, and they got his teeth, and he came out here and they made records with him.

Crawford: Turk was part of that?

02-00:33:39 Gill: Yes, Turk was in the Navy, and at that time, the Watters band was in hiatus because of the war. The various members were drafted or whatever. And so Turk was in the Navy, but he was stationed in Alameda at the time. So when Bunk came to town, he took part in a lot of the concerts at the AFL-CIO hall. They used to have a weekly meeting, and they had a big concert at the Geary Theater, which has been out on record now. Turk didn’t play on that, but they put a band together with Bunk. Kid Ory’s band, actually.

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Now, Bunk goes back to the days of Buddy Bolden and the very early days of jazz. So that’s the other important thing about Turk, is that he had contact with the original people. He knew what he was talking about, right. So that’s all I wanted to say.

Crawford: Great story, thank you for the interview.

02-00:34:36 Gill: Okay.

[End of Gill Interview]

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Bob Schulz and Linda Jensen Interview #1: January 15, 2009 [Begin Audio File 1]

Crawford: This is January 15, 2009. Interview with Bob Schulz for the Turk Murphy oral history. Good morning.

01-00:00:11 Schulz: Good morning.

Crawford: This session is for the UC Oral History Office, the Turk Murphy oral history project. I’m talking to Bob Schulz, longtime member of Turk Murphy’s band. I’d like to start by asking you what was your early exposure to music?

01-00:00:26 Schulz: Well, my dad played a horn, a cornet. And it was one of those things. He was in the First World War. We had four children in our family. He passed it down.

Everyone started out playing the cornet. He played the cornet when he was growing up, and passed it all the way down through all the children in our family. I was the last one in line and I was the only one that actually went on in music. My older brother and sister both played cornet and were very good at it. Went to the state competition, got firsts, but they didn’t continue on in music.

I went on and I became a high school music teacher. Taught back in Wisconsin for seventeen years. I always loved music, whether it was singing or whether it was playing the cornet.

Crawford: When did you come to California?

01-00:01:27 Schulz: 1979. July.

Crawford: What was your exposure to jazz?

01-00:01:35 Schulz: Well, let’s see. I think like anyone else, I always loved Louis Armstrong. I think everybody loved him. I didn’t really know a lot about jazz, I just—in fact, in the early days, when I was in high school, I didn’t know much about it. But I liked it.

I really didn’t identify with anyone special at the time. It wasn’t till I got into college and I met some other people who liked jazz—and they introduced me to different musicians, via records. At that time, besides Louis Armstrong, I started to listen to Bob Scobey, Clancy Hayes. I had an early experience listening to Turk Murphy, as well as Lu Watters at that time.

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Crawford: How was that?

01-00:02:34 Schulz: That was great! I thought, gee, this is [laughs] really nice stuff. I didn’t know much about it. It wasn’t until I graduated from college, in 1960, that— I was in the National Guard in Wisconsin, 32nd Division--and we got called up for the Berlin crisis. They were putting up the Berlin Wall. That was in ’61.

And so we got called to active duty and got stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington, of all places. And they needed music in the various places, because we got put in the old fort. They needed music. And I happened to be in the 32nd Division band at the time. And so they picked groups out of it. They wanted some Dixieland, because Dixieland still was in back then. And so we would perform at the NCO, non-commissioned officers club, which was the sergeants and below.

Crawford: That was at Fort Lewis.

01-00:03:46 Schulz: Fort Lewis, Washington. I met some other guys who were real jazz buffs and knew a lot more than I did. And we got heavily into Scobey and Turk and some of the Watters stuff at that time, as well as Eddie Condon, which I loved, too, from New York.

Eddie Condon and my old Wisconsin ties with Bunny Berigan, who was not very far from where I grew up, in Fox Lake. That’s where he lived and died. So we started playing, formed a little group called the Riverboat Ramblers. And we played every Sunday afternoon at Fort Lewis, at the NCO club. And it sort of carried through. I learned more stuff, came back to Wisconsin, resumed my teaching career.

Crawford: You never went abroad with the Army.

01-00:04:48 Schulz: No. Luckily, didn’t have to. They took the 4th Division out of Fort Lewis; they went over to Germany. We were the next one in line, but everything sort of settled out after about eleven months.

So we all went back to our regular jobs again. [clears throat] Excuse me. And I continued teaching. I taught and we had our Dixieland band, the Riverboat Ramblers, that played around Wisconsin, and even in St. Louis—that’s where I met Turk—until I moved out here. So that’s kind of my introduction to jazz.

Crawford: And why did you move to California?

01-00:05:34 Schulz: Well, I had gotten married, had three children. My wife and I got divorced in ’78. I was playing in St. Louis with the Riverboat Ramblers, and John Gill,

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who was playing banjo with Turk at that time, suggested that Turk listen to me because he was looking for a horn player. Leon Oakley had been out of the band since January of ’79, and Chris Tyle replaced him on cornet.

Then I have the privilege of replacing, of all people, George Rock, [laughs] who was Spike Jones’ trumpet player. I always thought that was a pretty nice thing because I love Spike Jones’ band. I used to really enjoy it.

Crawford: We all did. Yes, of course.

01-00:06:31 Schulz: Yes. So Turk heard me playing, and it just so happened that another trumpet player, by the name of Ernie Carson, he heard me playing was when I was— I put a paper bag on my head and Ernie put a paper bag on his head, and we snuck in and started playing with the Purdue Salty Dogs, which was another group back in the Midwest who loved Turk and that same kind of music.

John just happened to bring him out here, and he heard me play and he said, “Sounds okay. I don’t know what he looks like, but [laughs] let’s see what happens.”

He talked to me and then he sent me a letter, wanted me to come out. At that time, I was divorced. I asked my superintendent if I could have a leave of absence and he said no, because he says, “Band directors are hard to find. And for a year, who knows? The program could go down hill.” We had a great program. Nice class A band.

Crawford: What grade levels?

01-00:07:41 Schulz: It was first grade through twelfth grade. General music, chorus, band, history. And then eventually into junior high, and the last eight years was just the high school band.

Crawford: Do they still have those, by the way, in the Midwest?

01-00:08:01 Schulz: Oh, yes.

Crawford: It’s a big tradition there.

01-00:08:04 Schulz: No, they support the arts back there, whether it’s sports, whether it’s music, arts, just plain art, painting and et cetera. They support them. When I got out here, I was really surprised when I saw the lack of support. There’s nothing.

We got here in San Anselmo, said, “Let’s go to a football game,” a high school game, and they’ve got a little fifteen-piece band playing in the

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bleachers. And I said, “Well, do you have a marching band?” They said, “No, that’s the entire band.” [laughs] I said, “What?” So it was kind of an eye opener.

Crawford: You taught out here?

01-00:08:51 Schulz: No. I did some private lessons for friends and kid’s friends.

Crawford: You made a living playing jazz!

01-00:08:59 Schulz: Well, kind of, I guess. When I got out here and started playing at Earthquake McGoon’s, the one I played at was on the Embarcadero. And so when I started there, it was great. I was enjoying it because all the old records that I had of Turk’s, you’re sitting there playing and it sounded exactly like the record.

I thought, oh, this is great! And at that time, I met my present wife. She was a waitress there, Linda Jensen.

I moved out here, first of all—I’ve got to backtrack a little bit—and I didn’t have anything. I was making— Is it okay if I tell you what I’m making?

Crawford: Sure.

01-00:09:48 Schulz: [laughs] Okay. Well, Turk had said, “Hey, we’re making $275 a week, soon to go up [to] $300.” I said, “Okay.” Well, I was paying $500 a month child support at that time.

I got out here, we were making $250 a week. So if you work out the figures, I was making $1000 a month and paying $500 of that [laughs] out for child support. Luckily, my good friend Hal Smith and his wife were living in Oakland. So he took me in. I lived with him and June, his wife June, for about a month and a half.

And then Linda and I started dating, getting together there, and we ended up— I moved in with her. After a little over a year and a half, we got married. And Turk was my best man. And that helped a lot. So the two of us—

Crawford: You managed.

01-00:10:54 Schulz: Yes. [chuckles] And this was the funny thing. She worked four days a week at Earthquake McGoon’s and made twice as much money as I did, being a waitress. [they laugh]

Crawford: Such is a musician’s lot.

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01-00:11:09 Schulz: Oh, yeah. She could never figure this out. I said, “Well, just keep working, [laughs] because—”

Crawford: Were you a member of the union?

01-00:11:16 Schulz: Oh, yeah.

Crawford: Did they fight for you?

01-00:11:19 Bob Schulz: No. The union was worthless. They still are and they always were. It was always take, take, take. You’d pay them money and as far as them helping you get any work, they never did.

The only thing they would do is if they saw you working some place and you maybe didn’t have a contract, or the person you were working with didn’t have a contract, they would come and strong-arm you or strong-arm the person you were working with and make sure they paid their dues. But as far as them helping you, doing anything, no.

Crawford: You don’t think they helped the classical musicians either?

01-00:11:58 Schulz: Oh, classical, yes. No, the union support for classical was there. And it’s because the classical musicians had a little bit more power. They had lots of people behind them in the city, lots of money behind them. Whether it’s the opera, whether it’s the symphony. Lots of supporters, whether it’s the Gettys or whomever, that poured a lot of money in.

And so consequently, they were the ones that were not going to fail. There was no way. They knew that if they were going to do anything and help anybody, it was going to be the classical musicians. Which is fine. But they could’ve maybe just thrown a little breadcrumb over to the jazz musicians. [laughs]

Crawford: What were your first impressions of Turk Murphy?

01-00:12:52 Schulz: Oh, it was great. First of all, when I got onstage, it was wonderful. I loved playing with him. And all the guys in the band were really neat. At the time, it was Pete Clute on piano; and Turk; Bob Helm on soprano sax, clarinet; John Gill on banjo; and Bill Carroll, Willie, on tuba.

We all got along just great. Pat Yankee would come in every weekend, when she was back from Spain at the time, and sing with us. And Jimmy Stanislaus, a black man over from Oakland, was just a wonderful sweetheart.

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Crawford: He sang at Grace Cathedral a lot, too.

01-00:13:30 Schulz: Yes. It was so much fun. We just had a great time. I got along great. Especially the first two months. And then I wasn’t used to playing five nights a week and I kind of blew my lip. I could only play— Well, if I had a chance to rest a little bit during songs, I could play eight or sixteen measures, and then—but if it was continuous, I’d have to take it down, take it off my mouth.

So I was having problems with that, and Turk had a way of not being quite as nice. [laughs] Let’s put it nicely. I could hear him laughing back there, talking to the other guys in the band, if I was struggling and having trouble.

But unlike some other people who worked with him, when he would do that— I’d been a bandleader before, and so I wasn’t going to complain, I wasn’t going to say anything and get back at him or talk back to him or anything, because it wouldn’t do any good. And besides, I was enjoying doing what I was doing and I was just hoping to work through it.

Crawford: And you did.

01-00:14:52 Schulz: And I eventually did.

Crawford: Everybody says he could be crusty..

01-00:14:56 Schulz: Oh, yeah, he was hard. But you’ve got to face it. Geez, if you’ve got a band and besides him, you’ve got five different personalities in a band, and the age group could’ve gone anywhere from the twenties to the sixties, you’re going to have bad times with somebody sometimes. So he couldn’t really become good friends and drinking buddies with everybody, because if he did, he’d lose that respect and the power that he’s got.

I learned a lot from that. I learned that you have to be true to yourself and you’ve got to put yourself in his position. Which I did. If somebody gets drunk or does something that’s embarrassing to the band, I wouldn’t want to be the person in charge of the band. So you just have to put yourself in that position. And there’s lots of time for fun. [laughs]

Crawford: Somebody has to be top dog.

01-00:16:06 Schulz: Somebody’s in charge, yes.

Crawford: Well, I want to tell you some things that Ken Burns said about Turk and just get your reaction, because he paid a high tribute to Turk in his book Jazz: A History of America's Music.

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Burns wrote that Turk was one of only two people who succeeded with the revival business, and the other one was Lu Watters. But he said something kind of unkind, too, about Dixieland, quoting a musician who said that it was once revolutionary; now it’s just a straight Republican ticket kind of music.

01-00:16:46 Schulz: Hm. Well, that’s interesting.

Crawford: What do you think about that?

01-00:16:49 Schulz: Oh, I don’t think that’s true at all. The only thing that I could even closely think he’s referring to is the fact that black musicians don’t play Dixieland anymore.

Crawford: You never called your band Dixieland.

01-00:17:12 Schulz: No. Louis Armstrong says there’s two kinds of jazz, good or bad, period. And that’s it. Once people—and it usually is the “learned,” quote/unquote, [chuckles] people who try to dissect music and put it into categories that are the ones that cause the problems. I don’t care. I like all kinds of jazz. I don’t care if it’s modern or whatever you want to call it. If the guys are good in it, it comes across great, I love it.

Crawford: Why did he feel that way about it?

01-00:17:44 Schulz: Well, [chuckles] I hate to say this, but I don’t mind because I think it’s a racist thing. I think because the black guys don’t— There aren’t any black musicians down there playing— there are some, but not like there used to be. And it’s not the music of the negro or black persuasion anymore.

Crawford: Okay, so what he was feeling was that the music had been taken over.

01-00:18:06 Schulz: Yeah.

Crawford: And so it wasn’t pure, maybe.

01-00:18:09 Schulz: Well, that’s really hard to say, too, because the original Dixieland Jazz Band was playing the same time as the New Orleans musicians were doing this stuff, the blacks were doing this.

There’s always a little, I don’t know, not tension but one thinks they’re better than the other. But I think the whites learned an awful lot, white guys learned an awful lot from the black musicians. And back at that time—let’s say the

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twenties, and even in the thirties—there was no black and white. They were playing together.

The only time they couldn’t play together is if they were hired by some white hotel or something who said, oh, no, segregation; you can’t do this. But as far as the blacks playing with the whites, there was no problem. In the clubs, in the bordellos, wherever they were, they played together. And if you were good, you were good. That’s it.

There was no such thing as black and white. It was just if you played good jazz you were accepted.

Crawford: Jack Teagarden said something similar to that. It was merit.

01-00:19:25 Schulz: Yes, it really was merit, it wasn’t on anything else. And they all respected each other. As far as Ken Burns is concerned, I don’t know.

I think Wynton Marsalis is finally coming around a little more. He plays great. And when he first hit the scene, he was really racist.

Crawford: How do you mean that? Oh, I see.

01-00:19:53 Schulz: Yes. In other words—

Crawford: If it wasn’t black, it wasn’t jazz.

01-00:19:55 Schulz: If it wasn’t black, it wasn’t good.

Crawford: How has he come around?

01-00:20:00 Schulz: Whether he had been talked to, whether by his father or his brothers or other people, he always had like a chip on his shoulder, like he had something to prove. And he didn’t have anything to prove. He’s great, whatever he played.

But I remember hearing some of his first little talks that he would give—when he was talking about jazz. And it was almost like he was talking down to the general public and making the point that he wanted you to know that if it weren’t for blacks in New Orleans, the white guys would not have anything to work with. It was a better-than-thou thing.

But later on—and I’d say within the last couple years—he seems to be more open. He can actually laugh when people talk to him and kid with him. I think he’s matured. I don’t know how old he is, but maturity comes with age and life. The older you get, the more you understand what has been happening, instead of what you’ve been told is happening. That make any sense?

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Crawford: Sure, yes.

01-00:21:36 Schulz: Because kids come out of high school and they’re taught to believe one way. And sometimes it takes them years of living with people and living with the world. Then they start forming their own opinions and deciding for themselves—

01-00:21:56 Schulz: They say, yes, well, that wasn’t really quite right.

Crawford: That’s a good point.

01-00:22:02 Schulz: I don’t disrespect him in any way, shape or form, because he’s a great musician. There’s nothing he can’t play. And I envy him for that. In fact, I hate him for that. [laughter]

Crawford: So he’s loosening up a lot.

01-00:22:18 Schulz: Yes, he seems to be loosening up. And he is becoming more worldly, I think. There were a lot of great white cornet players and trumpet players that came along the way that [laughs] he’s going to have to respect, whether it’s Bunny Berigan, whether it’s Wild Bill Davidson, Bobby Hackett. Anyway, there’s a lot of them— Bix Beiderbecke and Harry James.

There’s so many guys that are out there that have been just unbelievable. In fact, I have to say that there’s probably more white guys that play great trumpet than there are black guys. There were great black guys, but— I’m even sorry I got into that because that’s not how I think about it.

Crawford: I did want to ask you about the chemistry in the band, as you remember. Talk about each of the players. Bob Helm, of course. Everyone talks about Bob Helm.

01-00:23:28 Schulz: I loved him. We used to room together when we’d go places. And he was just wonderful. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you. He was the sweetest man, and he played great. [laughs] That’s all I can say.

He was an inventor. No one ever played like him. People tried to copy him, but no one still played like him. He was like a reed man of the caliber of Louis Armstrong. He would paint himself in the corners and get out of it and you’d say, how’d he do that? [laughter] No, he was a sweetheart, really nice.

Crawford: Leon said he just had incredible energies that he brought into the music, so it was always exciting.

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01-00:24:12 Schulz: Yes, oh, yes. Any time you played with him— and Leon was lucky; he played with him longer than I did. But he was great. And John Gill, I really enjoyed.

Crawford: Talk about John. I loved his story; I interviewed him.

01-00:24:28 Schulz: John is a wonderful guy and a good friend, and we got along great. It’s one of these things where John Gill, myself and Bill Carroll, the tuba player, we were the ones who—whenever we traveled some place, we were the ones that always hung out together, because we were younger. And we were young at heart, too. So we hung out, rather than hanging out with Turk or Pete, or even Pat.

Crawford: Turk and Pete had a special relationship, didn’t they?

01-00:25:07 Schulz: Yes, they did. Well, they were business partners. And unfortunately, that deteriorated at the end when Pete got in a little trouble there, with a place down at Pier 39.

Crawford: Tell me what happened.

01-00:25:25 Schulz: Oh, I don’t know. At that time, we were playing St. Louis, like we always did every year, for the Ragtime Festival. And partway through the festival, something happened. Turk was not as jovial and Pete and him weren’t talking.

He apparently got a letter or a message or something from Pier 39, where we had our club at that time, that the bills weren’t being paid. They owed a lot of money, and I think that’s the first Turk really knew of it. He realized that something was awry.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but that caused a split with Turk and Pete. And so we had about a week off after that, where they had to rearrange whatever was happening at Pier 39. And I think what was happening there was that Pier 39 was taking over Earthquake McGoon’s.

Crawford: I read about that in the history.

01-00:26:37 Schulz: Yes. And so it was out of their hands. The only good thing that happened from that was that then we were being paid union scale. [laughs]

Crawford: How did you get that?

01-00:26:50 Schulz: Oh, because Pier 39 was a union gig. And so in order to work there, the union had to get involved, and so we were being paid by the union. Before this, all

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our paychecks were coming from— It was just cash. The club stuff was all cash from Pete Clute.

Crawford: Did you get benefits with the union?

01-00:27:19 Schulz: The only benefits we got is when we did outside work, Turk always ran it through the union. And so he always paid the taxes, Social Security, the union dues. He paid all of that. Pete never did.

All the years we worked there, everything was paid under the table. I have no idea how he did it, why, and who he paid off. Or maybe he didn’t pay off, but who he knew, [chuckles] so he didn’t get raked over the coals on it.

But anyway, so that changed everything. And then it was kind of a sad thing. The camaraderie between the band was kind of broken down for a while. But the good thing that happened is Ray Skjelbred came onboard, starting playing piano. He was great.

Crawford: Talk about him.

01-00:28:30 Schulz: Well, Ray is completely different than Pete. Pete plays ragtime piano. So all the time during the solo or the ensemble work of any song, Pete was always playing ragtime piano. In fact, I always used to say—I’m probably pretty close to being right—but whatever solo he would play during his chance to play a solo, he was [chuckles] doing the same thing during the ensemble. There was a lot of the same thing going on all the time.

So it was kind of bothersome because you could hear a piano solo; but after a while you heard it and then after a while, you just blocked it out.

But Ray Skjelbred was and is still so inventive that he never plays the same thing twice, ever. And he just made the band swing. Pete kept it a little bit more structured, but when it came to hearing the accompaniment of Ray Skjelbred in the band, you just felt much more at ease, and you could just play what you wanted to.

Crawford: The band always seemed happy, for those of us in the audience.

01-00:29:50 Schulz: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s the one thing that people don’t realize. You play this five nights a week and you want the band to sound the same, because sometimes you’re playing for somebody for the very first time and they’ve heard you on records.

So it was important to play the music the same way, except when you played your solos; so that the arrangements were the same, but the solos— you would

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always play a little different solo. And so the band always sounded good because it was arranged.

Crawford: Did Turk pretty much let you play your solo as you wanted to?

01-00:30:34 Schulz: Oh, yes.

Crawford: The thought was that Eddie Condon was much looser with those kind of virtuoso displays.

01-00:30:40 Schulz: Oh, he was, yes, but Condon was from a different school. It was in between modern and— Well, it was more swing. I should not say modern. It was more like a swing band, only watered down to—my impression—watered down to a seven-piece or a six-piece band.

When you use a string bass and a guitar in a group, it has a completely different feel. Four beat, you’re going, bum-bum-bum-bum-bum— And you play differently when you play with a guitar and a string bass than you do with a tuba and banjo.

Turk wanted the tuba to always go bum-bum-bum-bum-bum, don’t go bum- bum-bum-bum— don’t play extra notes. And John Gill had to go on the opposite beat. So boom-ch, boom-ch, boom-ch, boom-ch. It was good dance music, but it kept the rhythm in one way, so it never changed. So John couldn’t go chung-chung-chung-chung.

All the swing bands, the orchestras, whether it’s Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, whoever, they had string bass and guitars. And it was a much looser feel. So you had liberties, you could take liberties and you could venture into unknown stuff that would fit. If it even got into bebop, it would fit.

Crawford: You were limited by the instruments.

01-00:32:26 Schulz: And we were limited to stay within a time period. Which was fine. If you have Bix Beiderbecke, if you play a song that he played, you stayed within that time or that feel. And the same thing happened with Louis Armstrong and King Oliver bands. If you’re playing a song that they made famous or popular back in the twenties, you want it to sound like that. So you couldn’t get out of that.

Crawford: Let’s stop and say hello to Linda here. Linda Jensen is Bob’s wife. How did you two meet?

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01-00:33:01 Jensen: Okay, let’s see. Bob came to work as expected, and arrived early on a Saturday night. I was working, we met. He doesn’t remember it.

01-00:33:14 Schulz: I was really impressed. [they laugh]

Crawford: This was ’79.

01-00:33:15 Jensen: He was really impressed! July 14, I believe, 1979.

Crawford: Bastille Day.

01-00:33:22 Jensen: And he doesn’t remember. Of course, I took one look at him and I went, [sighs] uh-oh.

Crawford: That’s the one?

01-00:33:30 Jensen: Because John Gill had been warning me. He said, “Oh, wait till you see this guy, he’s really—” And I said, “Oh, John, please. The last thing I need is an older, divorced father of three—trumpet player!”

01-00:33:37 Schulz: Who was a musician. Who could ask for more?

Jensen: Yes. That’s what you want to bring home to mom and dad. Working in a nightclub.

Crawford: But it didn’t take long, right? He may not remember the exact moment--

01-00:34:02 Schulz: She probably does.

Jensen: Well, yes, I do. I remember when we met. But no, we were friends for quite a while. In this day and age, anyway. And just friends.

Crawford: Talk about the audiences and the feeling that you got at Pier 39. I know that it wasn’t Clay Street. Never was.

01-00:34:27 Schulz: Well, you asking me?

Crawford: Both of you. Just your reactions.

01-00:34:32 Schulz: Well, first of all, my feeling at Clay— or not at Clay Street because I wasn’t there, but at Embarcadero was, I loved it.

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Linda would start work on Wednesday through Saturday, and the band started playing on Tuesday through Saturday. Tuesday was generally dull. There was hardly anybody there, unless there was a Gray Line tour coming in. And sometimes they would do that.

Later years, it sort of fell by the wayside and there wasn’t any of that. But Tuesday was kind of slow. Wednesday, a little better. I think Wednesday got better because Linda was there. Then Thursday and Friday, Saturday. Friday and Saturday’s always pretty good because you either had— Well, Jimmy Stanislaus was there on the weekends.

Crawford: Talk about Jimmy. Where did he come from? We thought he was an angel from New Orleans.

01-00:35:25 Jensen: Wasn’t he a fireman in Oakland?

Schulz: Yes, he was an Oakland fireman. And a boxer. He was undefeated in all his boxing.

Jensen: A real ladies’ man. Very gentlemanly. Definitely a gentleman, but he loved the girls. And—

Schulz: He loved his wife.

Jensen: —he named my shoes.

Schulz: [laughs] Yes.

Jensen: I have a pair of shoes I still have to this day, that Jimmy called my follow-me- daddy shoes. [they laugh] A term we still use today.

Crawford: Go get those shoes. [they laugh]

01-00:35:58 Jensen: They are upstairs.

Schulz: But Jimmy, he was great. He was really, really nice. We used to travel. For Bristol-Myers. Turk had an in with them and they would always hire the band to go play wherever the Super Bowls were playing. We would go to the Super Bowls, and Jimmy was always with us, and we had great times, just wonderful times. And he was just in his element, parading around with us.

Jensen: Very social.

Schulz: Yes, very, very social.

Crawford: Well, how did that work out with Bristol-Myers?

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01-00:36:32 Schulz: Well, it worked great. John Wyler was the—

Crawford: Can you spell that for me?

01-00:36:41 Schulz: I think it’s W-Y-L-E-R. Or maybe it’s W-E-I-L-E-R. But anyway, he was the guy who was the contact person that really was a good friend of Turk’s. He lived in Upstate New York. And he would come out every year at various times, whenever Bristol-Myers was doing something, and we’d play for parties for him. We played for golf outings with him. He’d hire us to play. We put on plus fours, which are those old golfing outfits with vests and—

Crawford: Oh, I hope you have a picture.

01-00:37:35 Schulz: I have someplace, in all the travels. I still have my own uniform that I can’t fit into anymore. But Turk would have it so that every time a group would be teeing off, we’d play.

We’d stay up on the first hole and we’d just wait there, and then we’d play until they teed off, and then we’d wait for the next foursome to go through. [laughs] It was just crazy. And then they’d have a little dance afterward and everyone would stick around and drink. We didn’t have to play then, after the dance was done. We’d just sit around and drink and socialize.

Jensen: Can I just say—can I just say that as with any artist, whether you’re a painter or a musician, you need to have benefactors. And that’s especially true with jazz, especially from the beginning. Maybe it was the mafia in the beginning, but now we have people like Chuck Huggins—

Crawford: The See’s [Candy] man.

01-00:38:36 Jensen: The See’s guy, yes.

Crawford: Is he still supporting music?

01-00:38:40 Jensen: Well, yes, but it’s personal now, rather than just through the company, which he’s no longer leading. But the point is, is that a lot of these gigs are by people who love the music and want to see it keep going. Their help for the musicians is good-paying gigs like the Super Bowls—that are actually kind of fun—like the cruises that we do. He works, but we get a cruise and we get to relax and enjoy ourselves and—

Schulz: And scuba.

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Jensen: Yes. And we’re there with 700 people on a ship and they get to know him. It’s more personal. It’s real nice.

Crawford: Oh, I’ll bet.

01-00:39:24 Jensen: But there’s always got to be somebody behind the arts to help them along, unless you’re one of the 1 percent, it’s not a profitable— [laughs]

Schulz: Yeah. We were talking about how the musicians union doesn’t support our music. But they really are heavily into supporting the opera and the classics.

That’s the reason as you’re saying, that there are benefactors. Like I said, whether it’s the Gettys, whether whoever. They’re giving millions of dollars to help.

Crawford: What happened with this man with Bristol-Myers? When he left the company, did this support stop?

01-00:40:09 Schulz: I don’t even know when that stopped. I can’t remember.

Jensen: And then Turk got sick.

Schulz: It might’ve stopped a little bit, maybe, when he went to the Fairmont Hotel. Because we still were doing— I know we did a party down at Pier 39 for Bristol-Myers, because I remember us getting all kinds of bags of [laughs] whatever the product was, brought home.

Jensen: Oh, that’s right. They’re well-to-do.

Schulz: Yes

Crawford: Well, you left Pier 39 to go to the Fairmont next, is that right?

01-00:40:43 Schulz: Yes. That would’ve been ’84, because we were in— No, no, that’d been ’85. Because we stayed in the Fairmont for two years. So ’84— or ’85, eighty— Yes, ’86.

Crawford: And that seemed like a good gig.

01-00:41:05 Schulz: It was a good gig.

Crawford: Did you go, too?

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01-00:41:08 Jensen: No. No, no, no, no. In fact, I wanted to say something about a question that I was thinking that you asked, and that was the different types of people that were attending the different venues. I thought that’s what you were asking.

Crawford: Very interesting, yes.

01-00:41:23 Jensen: I worked on Clay Street, I worked them through to the Fairmont. Clay Street was Clay Street because everyone there came there for one reason, and that was to hear the music and to dance. And everyone knew what was going on there. It was an old-fashioned San Francisco nightclub.

I waited. I waited to get a job there. I waited months, treading water somewhere else, because people didn’t leave. I worked there eight years, Suzie worked there fifteen years. And everyone in between that, people didn’t leave, because it was a great place to work. The customers were great. They understood nightclubs, they understood tipping. They were there to dance and see the music.

01-00:42:17 Schulz: It wasn’t a meat market.

Jensen: No! I was working in a disco, waiting to get my job there. And training. That was my training. [laughs] So that was the clientele on Clay Street.

And then we moved. Well, from Clay Street, we moved to the Rathskellar, down on California and Turk for a while. I don’t think we were there for very long. You weren’t there yet. That was like ’78, maybe.

Schulz: Yes, had to be ’78, because you were only there six months or—

Jensen: Yes. And that was still people who really wanted to see the band. Because there was nothing there but us, and we were down in the [laughs] rat cellar. We were down in the bottom. So it was a really slapped-together venue. Terrible. But we worked through it. Off work again, and then we opened at— Was it 123 The Embarcadero? Was that it?

01-00:43:20 Schulz: 127.

Jensen: 127. 127 The Embarcadero, which, although that was another just stinky, terrible place, at least— [Schulz laughs]

Crawford: People didn’t go there. Right?

01-00:43:32 Schulz: Yes.

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Jensen: Well, they were kind of afraid to go there—but it was a better venue. It was a better place to dance, to see the band. It was a way better setup for the customers. Terrible for the waitresses, because the bar was here and— But whatever.

For a place to go to dance and be, that was a great place. And that’s where he came. And we still got bus tours at that time, and we got a lot of people from concierges and of course, the normal people looking to dance and see Turk and the regulars.

Crawford: So what happened?

01-00:44:05 Jensen: Beautifying the city, all those blocks kept getting revamped by urbanization, whatever you want to call it. And the tale is that Turk had the opportunity to stay on Clay Street, through the Packard—

Schulz: David Packard, yes.

Jensen: —connection. David Packard. Because the story from Turk was that he was telling David Packard, “We have to move out of Clay Street because it’s been sold. They’re going to tear it down and rebuild.” And he reached over, opened the door, took out his checkbook and said, “How much do you need to stay? What do you need?” And Turk said, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can’t take that from you,” putting thirty people out of work.

Crawford: Oh, I never heard that story before.

01-00:44:57 Schulz: Oh, yes. Well, it’s interesting because you hear different stories from people who worked with him.

Jensen: Yes, there’s all kinds of things. That’s one.

Schulz: There’s a lot of stories you don’t want to tell. But that’s a true story.

Crawford: He didn’t want to take it. I don’t understand.

01-00:45:13 Jensen: Oh, Turk was— He was a great musician, but not such a good businessman. Which is why the club was unsuccessful. It should’ve been successful. It was successful, but it was mishandled.

Schulz: He had great friends that had money.

Jensen: Well, and that led to his downfall on many different levels. Medically, personally, and business-wise.

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Schulz: Oh, yes. Yes.

Jensen: You and I, if we have a problem, we have to go to the doctor and get an exam and then he gives a prescription to us. But for Turk, he had so many good friends that if he had a problem, he’d call them and they’d say, “Oh, here’s a prescription.” Which I believe is what led to his prostate cancer—

Schulz: Not being taken—

Jensen: —being the way it was and not being taken care of. Because instead of having the normal things, everyone was helping him. Well, instead of making him do what they needed to make him do, which was have an exam, they calmed him. Because he was Turk. They loved him.

Crawford: That’s [an] interesting perspective. But that’s really too bad, about the Clay Street—

01-00:46:31 Schulz: Yes, because they had the—

Jensen: The Magic Cellar—

Schulz: —Magic Cellar down there.

Jensen: —the balcony.

Schulz: It turned out great.

Jensen: It was just— Were you at Clay Street?

Crawford: Yes.

01-00:46:39 Jensen: Yes, it was just a magical place.

Crawford: It really was. Nothing ever quite like that again. Well, let me ask a question here about instrumentation, because Turk Murphy lamented that the economics that Linda’s talking about didn’t allow him to have the full instrumentation, the Lu Watters instrumentation of four horns. So talk about that, would you?

01-00:47:04 Schulz: I don’t know if I can.

Crawford: Did he talk about that?

01-00:47:08 Schulz: No. Not to me. As far as I know, he really didn’t like drums, unless you were just simply playing rhythm and not being a showoff, so to speak. In other

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words, outplaying lots of cymbals and drum solos. He liked someone who just played—you could feel him, but he didn’t stand out. Watters was that way with his band.

And Lu Watters, as Turk told us, when his drummer came in at first and they started playing, every day that the drummer came back, the next day Lu would take one of his cymbals away. [Linda laughs] Until finally, he was down to bare bones of just playing— He might’ve had a high hat, a snare drum, and a bass drum, and maybe woodblocks and that was it. [they laugh]

He wanted the music to be the ensemble playing, the horns playing. That’s what he wanted to come across. He didn’t want the big band thing like Buddy Rich or Gene Krupa, like the swing bands had. Turk sort of shied away from it.

He did have a drummer one time, Thad Vandon. Thad played like he liked. And there’s a drummer back in Chicago who Turk liked, who was a wonderful drummer. He just played very simply. Hal Smith is another guy who plays like that.

Crawford: Where is Hal Smith now?

01-00:48:52 Schulz: He lives in La Jolla.

Crawford: Will he be coming this weekend?

01-00:49:01 Schulz: No. I don’t think so. He would be an excellent interview. Historian-wise, he’s great. Because he reads everything, he knows everything.

But anyway, I think a lot of it had to do with keeping his arrangements simple. And by putting drums in, it complicates things. And six people is a lot easier to handle, pay-wise, than seven.

So the one that he didn’t need, because he’s got a strong piano player, was heavy rhythm; then he’s got a banjo and he’s got a tuba, he’s got a heavy rhythm section; and all you need is the front line. And so that was economics, I’m sure.

Crawford: Every review says what a big sound the band had.

01-00:49:55 Schulz: Yes. Well, you could identify a Turk Murphy arrangement, no matter who’s playing it. You just knew.

Crawford: Really? How?

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01-00:50:05 Schulz: It was how he orchestrated things, how the sum of his chords went together in the rhythm section. You just knew what it was. I don’t know if it was completely that, or if it had something to do with the fact that you heard that song played [the] exact same way on one of his records somewhere along the way. Because most everyone, whether it was the Salty Dogs, whether it was somebody trying to learn a song that Turk played, they played it the same way he did.

When you do that, you also start playing some of the solos the same way. Especially the trombone player. Whoever he is, he’s going to copy Turk’s solos. So if you copy Turk’s solos, it’s going to sound like Turk’s band. And if the cornet player copies Leon or whoever’s playing before, their solos, it’s going to sound like Turk’s band. [chuckles] And so he had a sound and it just was strong.

Crawford: [laughs] It was big.

01-00:51:07 Schulz: It was full. The thing that Turk did that a lot of people don’t do, especially Condon and other groups like that, they just didn’t— He just didn’t play an ensemble and then everyone played the solos, even though a lot of us do that. And then they play an ensemble out, after five minutes. [chuckles]

He broke it up. He made it interesting. So there’d be maybe eight measures of a clarinet solo, and then someone else, then an ensemble, then eight measures of a trumpet solo. Or maybe just everyone wouldn’t play a solo; maybe only one person would play a solo in a song. Made the song shorter. But it’s more interesting. You didn’t have to sit there and look at your watch.

Jensen: And the dancers weren’t dying on the floor.

Schulz: [laughs] Yes.

Jensen: See? As a waitress, I always thought Turk was very scheduled. I always knew what was going on at what time, depending on what he was playing. If it was the “Saints,” it was eleven o’clock, Friday or Saturday night.

Schulz: [laughs] Yes.

Jensen: If it was “Bay City,” of course, it was [chuckles] the end of the night. I never even heard the whole tune for years.

Crawford: What were the traditionals?

01-00:52:22 Jensen: If it was “Kickin’ Off,” it was “Mandy” or “Santa Claus Blues”— Just very specific things that he did. And plus you always, in the back of your mind,

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after so many years, four nights a week, if somebody made a mistake, you were like, oh. Because it was always the same. The songs were always the same.

Schulz: I always tell the story when Helm and I eventually— You’re playing the same things over and over for years. Helm and I would switch solos. He’d play eight measures where I was supposed to play, and I’d play eight measures— or vice-versa. And Turk would finish off and he’d be all ruffled. Said, “Well, you might as well take that out of the books, if you can’t play it right.” [they laugh] It didn’t make any difference to anybody except—

Jensen: Except him.

Schulz: Except him.

Crawford: Are both of you saying that there wasn’t a lot of impromptu playing?

01-00:53:22 Schulz: There was none.

Crawford: None.

01-00:53:26 Schulz: No, no. The only impromptu—

Jensen: You knew what was coming.

Schulz: Yes. But it was good.

Jensen: Arranged. That’s the word I’m looking for.

Crawford: It wasn’t boring for you, as a player.

01-00:53:36 Schulz: No, it great for the musicians because you knew exactly where you stood, you knew exactly what was going on. And even when you played the ensembles, as long as you played it, you could improvise a little bit on the ensemble. It wasn’t like you had to play every note like he wrote it down. You could take liberties with it.

The important thing is when you had modulations where we’d change key or if you go from one phrase to another. Everyone had to play that the same. Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom, or whatever. You just couldn’t go onto the next thing.

Crawford: What did he give you normally, with his arrangements?

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01-00:54:22 Schulz: Well, he gave me a book. I had a book of a couple-hundred songs or more. All the arrangements for trumpet.

Crawford: But they were totally notated?

01-00:54:30 Schulz: Totally notated—including solos. So everything was notated. And when he put a solo in, he just put the melody of the song. He wrote the melody of whatever.

Crawford: And you filled it.

01-00:54:46 Schulz: And then you’d just embellish on it.

Jensen: But if he didn’t like it—

Schulz: Yes, he would tell you. Oh, yeah. He was touchy.

Crawford: What did he mean when he said that it took guts to play this music?

01-00:54:59 Schulz: Took guts?

Crawford: That’s what he said.

01-00:55:01 Schulz: Oh. Turk said that?

Crawford: Mm-hm. I have that from the BBC interview, I believe.

01-00:55:07 Schulz: I don’t know, unless— [laughs] Well, it took stamina, that’s for sure. It took a lot of stamina. Especially when you played a lot of the rags that he has, because when you were playing the rags, the piano player didn’t do the entire rag. You were playing the entire rag most of the time; the piano would come in and play a little solo here and there. [laughs]

But it took stamina, definitely. I think maybe he’s referring to the fact that— Don’t quote me on this, [chuckles] but he might be referring to the fact that the music was not as popular as it used to be and in order to try to sell it, it took guts to actually—or lack of brains to try to push this across to the public, so they knew—this was good music, I don’t know.

Crawford: That could be. That’s a good explanation. Well, what about touring. What do you remember of touring?

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01-00:56:09 Schulz: Oh, gosh. Touring was always fun. We’d get on the plane— The only bad part about touring was, no matter if we left a day in advance, we always left at about six or seven in the morning. [laughs] I don’t know why. He’d always get the earliest flight he could.

Crawford: Economical, probably.

01-00:56:31 Schulz: Probably. It probably was.

Crawford: Did you go, too?

01-00:56:34 Jensen: No.

Crawford: You were still working.

Jensen: No, not really.

Schulz: And if we played at the club the night before, we’d leave— [chuckles] We’ve done this a few times. We’d play Saturday night, get off work at one o’clock, and you can’t go home, so you just go out and get a bite to eat and maybe Linda’d drive us to the airport. And we’d sit around the airport until six in the morning and just wait for the plane. We didn’t do that often. And that wasn’t always on the night that we finished playing, sometimes it was—he’d get somebody to play, if we were going away for any length of time, whether we were going overseas— He’d get a band to come in there and play the week while we were gone.

Crawford: Would that be a low time of year, normally?

01-00:57:29 Schulz: No, I don’t think so.

Jensen: Not necessarily. If he had an opportunity that he wanted to do, that’s what it would be. And I’ll tell you, as a waitress [chuckles] there, it was a bummer.

Crawford: Because it was quiet?

01-00:57:43 Jensen: Yeah. We were so used to Turk and his sound that the band that would come in couldn’t compare, for us. And it didn’t bring the crowds in, either.

Crawford: Do you remember Woody Allen ever coming in?

01-00:58:04 Jensen: No. I met Clint Eastwood, I waited on Jackie Gleason, but I never saw Woody Allen in the spot myself.

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01-00:58:16 Schulz: Woody never came in when I was there.

Crawford: Maybe that was earlier— John Gill plays with him now, doesn’t he?

01-00:58:21 Schulz: Yes.

01-00:58:24 Jensen: I will say that we used to have a group of deaf and hearing-impaired people that used to come in. When you talked about the sound—it used to be interesting to me.

They came in to dance, because they could feel the music. And this one woman told me how lucky she was to have a place like this to come with her father, because it’s the only place she could dance with her father. He could feel the music and dance.

Schulz: That’s interesting.

Crawford: Why, though?

01-00:58:54 Jensen: Because they’re standing right in front of Turk’s trombone. You could stand right— from here, the trumpet, the trombone, the brass, you could feel the vibrations.

Crawford: He was receiving vibrations.

01-00:59:05 Schulz: Yes.

Jensen: Oh! You could feel the vibrations fifteen feet away from Turk! In front of him. [Schulz laughs] That’s what I’m saying. When another band came, it went from here to here. They were good. It’s not that they weren’t good, they were just so different.

01-00:59:22 Schulz: Going back to touring. The touring was fine. He was much more at ease when we toured.

Crawford: Everybody said so.

01-00:59:26 Schulz: Yes. For him, it was like a breath of fresh air, getting away from the club. So he was actually fun.

Crawford: But that’s understandable, because he did all the work, didn’t he?

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01-00:59:42 Schulz: Yes.

Crawford: Somebody even said he cleaned the bathrooms. That’s probably an exaggeration.

01-00:59:50 Jensen: No, that’s not an exaggeration. We all did all kinds of things there. But he ran the band and Pete ran the club, pretty much. I worked for Pete and Turk, but I worked [mainly] for Pete. If I had a problem with the club, I went to Pete.

Crawford: So it wasn’t Turk’s headache, completely.

01-00:60:07 Jensen: No, no, no. No.

Crawford: What was it, then? Why was he so relaxed?

01-00:60:12 Jensen: I don’t know, but he didn’t want me there. The last thing he wanted was having the band wives or girlfriends on these things.

Schulz: I can’t tell you exactly why he was more relaxed, completely, but— [laughs] You can probably guess.

Crawford: Well, Turk had a number of women in his life, didn’t he?

01-00:60:27 Schulz: Yes. Well, he would travel and he had a girlfriend that went with him on some of these things. But anyway, he just was more at ease. He was happier. She was a very nice lady, and he had somebody to hang out with, instead of with the band. [laughs]

And she was supportive, too. In other words, everybody in the band liked her and she liked them. It was just nicer.

Crawford: What did it mean for the music?

01-00:61:09 Schulz: In what way? What do you mean?

Crawford: Did the music change?

01-00:61:13 Schulz: Well, it was a little looser, yes. He was not as critical if you did something not quite like it was written. No, he was just more at ease. Like you say, he didn’t have the pressure of the club, he was with somebody who he was very happy to be with. And the musicians, we didn’t mess up. We had a great time. We were just enjoying ourselves.

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Crawford: I’m at the end of the tape here.

[End Audio File 1]

[Begin Audio File 2]

Crawford: We’ve just been talking about Turk Murphy’s personality. There was apparently a little bit of stubbornness?

02-00:00:07 Schulz: Well, he was stubborn. Like I explained earlier, he had to have a strong personality. And regarding his stubbornness, I think a lot of that had to do with how he wanted everything done.

He wasn’t somebody who you could reason with. It was his way or the highway. Which was fine. At least I think everybody in the band knew where they stood. You did what he said and how he wanted it. If you did it, everything was going to be fine. Period.

Jensen: It was not a democracy.

Schulz: Yes. And it was fine. But you go through history with all kinds of guys, whether it’s Buddy Rich, whether it’s the Dorseys or any of the people who had successful bands or orchestras, they were strong. You did what they told you and that was it.

Everyone had their special persons, especially in the swing bands, who were the soloists, who could really shine, and the rest of the band was just sort of robots. They’d play their parts and do the job. He could always count on those guys, the leader.

But the only ones he ever had to really worry about were those specialized people who could make the thing swing and play the great solos, because they were the ones that always got in trouble, whether it was Bunny Berigan or— [laughs]

Crawford: Who were the people who came into the band during your years, and what do you remember of them?

02-00:02:00 Schulz: When I got into the band, it was, like I said, Pete, Turk, John Gill, Bill Carroll, Bob Helm and myself. Bob Helm went out, after a year or so, to— He had to have cataract surgery, and he never really came back after that.

Phil Howell on clarinet came in and filled in for quite a while. And then eventually, Lynn Zimmer came and filled in, and the last one on the reeds was Ron Deeter. He was the one that came at the very end, in September, before we went to Carnegie Hall.

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John Gill was banjo almost the entire time, until just before we went to Carnegie Hall. [chuckles] He quit the band then. He had some issues with Mrs. Murphy. And Pete Clute, of course, got out of the band right after the episode at St. Louis and we were at Pier 39. Ray Skjelbred came in. And Ray was playing great, and he played all the way up until just before Carnegie Hall. He didn’t quit for any other issue than he wanted to get tenure. He was a school teacher at Marin Country Day School.

Crawford: Who was this?

02-00:03:33 Schulz: Ray Skjelbred. He was an English teacher, or communications or whatever, and he had a chance maybe to get a permanent job, so he didn’t want to take the chance. Being September, that’s when school started; he wanted to stay there. So he quit.

And Jim Maihack, who used to play tuba with Turk back in the early seventies, Jim was out in Florida, playing at— What’s the name of that place, Linda?

Jensen: Rosie O’Grady’s.

02-00:04:06 Schulz: Rosie O’Grady’s. He was playing out there and he came back, played piano. And he came in not knowing exactly— I don’t think he really knew Ray Skjelbred, as far as how he played or anything. So he came back thinking that he wanted ragtime piano, so he [chuckles] starts playing ragtime piano on the first night that he was there at the Fairmont. And Lynn Zimmer quit right after the first set was done.

Crawford: No ragtime.

02-00:04:38 Schulz: No. Lynn was so used to the relaxing piano and the stride piano of Ray Skjelbred that he [he and Linda laugh] just up and quit.

Jensen: There was alcohol involved.

Schulz: Well, of course there was.

Crawford: Does that kind of go with the music?

02-00:05:01 Schulz: It does. And so he quit, and that’s when Ron Deeter joined. That was in September of ’86, just before Carnegie Hall. Then when John Gill quit, he was replaced by Bill—

Jensen: Armstrong.

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Schulz: Armstrong, thank you. And Bill is a nice guy and he plays nice banjo, but he wasn’t John Gill, either. So that’s pretty much what happened right there.

Jensen: Three key players.

Schulz: Three key players, just before Carnegie Hall. And Turk was on his deathbed.

Crawford: He was.

02-00:05:42 Jensen: He had shingles.

Schulz: And he almost died at Carnegie Hall, the night before. But he made it. And when he came back, he never was the same. He only played one night. Because when we returned from Carnegie Hall, then he came back on occasion to play washboard, and then finally he never came at all.

Crawford: He died shortly after that.

02-00:06:04 Schulz: Yes.

Jensen: Well, May 30.

Schulz: May 30 of ’87, yes. So I was leading the band, actually, from January into September. And in September, they didn’t want a ghost band, even though the band sounded really good. But it was okay, because I was—

Crawford: When you say they, you mean—

02-00:06:28 Jensen: Fairmont.

Schulz: The Fairmont. Dick Swig. He didn’t want the band without the actual leader not being around anymore.

Crawford: That happens a lot, I suppose.

02-00:06:40 Schulz: It does. But anyway. There might’ve been something else going on. At least that’s how it was explained to us.

Crawford: How did Carnegie Hall come about?

02-00:06:55 Schulz: Well, the person who put the thing together was Jim Cullum. And so Jim got the ball rolling. And he got hold of the Hot Annex Jazz Band from France, also to be involved, so it was going to be a tribute to Turk with two bands,

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plus Turk’s band. The thing was all Jim’s doing and undertaking. So he got together with Turk and they made it happen. Because he loved Turk.

Jim Cullum has the same problems as Turk does with musicians, because he has to be tough. He’s got to be a tough guy. Some musicians love to play with him, some don’t like to play with him because he’s got to be the guy. You’ve got to play everything just the way he wants it and that’s it. But anyway, he was the one who got the thing rolling for us.

Crawford: So he booked the band into Carnegie Hall. How do you proceed with that? Who does the publicity?

02-00:08:12 Schulz: I don’t know who did it. I don’t know. Seems to me there was a lady by the name of Greenwood, from Denver, Colorado—was involved with this. And whether she did some of the publicity, I don’t know. That would be a question you’d have to ask Jim Cullum—

Jensen: It was packed, though.

02-00:08:35 Schulz: It was packed.

Jensen: On the stage.

Schulz: Yeah, they had 200 people sitting on the stage behind there, too.

Crawford: That’s incredible.

02-00:08:44 Schulz: Linda went with me. Of course. [laughs]

Jensen: Yes, that was fun.

Crawford: Oh, that had to be fantastic. Your Carnegie Hall debut.

02-00:08:50 Jensen: Yes, it was.

Schulz: Yes, well, it was exciting. I was nervous.

Jensen: It was fun to go there in the rehearsal because that was the only way I was getting onstage at Carnegie Hall, was at his rehearsal. [they laugh]

But it was beautiful. They’d just finished remodeling it, and it opened three weeks earlier. And behind the stage, there are holes behind there. You can look through and see the audience, through the stage, from behind that wall. Who knew?

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Schulz: And they couldn’t see you.

Jensen: Right. It’s in a picture. You can pull this thing and see from the back of the stage. It was amazing.

Crawford: I hope you have pictures.

02-00:09:28 Jensen: Well, yes and no. No pictures allowed.

Schulz: No pictures allowed in the hall.

Crawford: Did you get reviewed?

02-00:10:03 Schulz: Yeah, the review was great.

Crawford: And who wrote it?

02-00:10:06 Schulz: I don’t know. I don’t remember who wrote the review, but it was very good.

Crawford: Do you have a copy of it?

02-00:10:23 Schulz: No, if I do, I have no idea where it is, but I could— I have to go look for it.

Jensen: John Gill might be more likely to have it.

02-00:10:30 Schulz: Yes, it was very good. But John wasn’t there, though.

Crawford: What did you think of the critics here? Elwood and—

02-00:11:11 Schulz: Oh, Phil Elwood. Phil was great. He loved Turk. He really did like Turk.

Crawford: Yes, he did. And Ralph Gleason?

02-00:11:24 Schulz: Ralph, yes, he liked him, too. Herb Caen.

Herb was great. Like I told you, he followed me wherever I went. Maybe it was because I kind of reminded him of Bob Scobey. Because he liked Scobey and he liked—and Clancy Hayes, and I sang like him, in a way, because he was kind of my mentor.

But wherever I played, he was there, and he was always very positive. We were fortunate, naturally, to play for Herb Caen’s funeral. That was after Turk had died, and he had asked to have Turk’s band play for that, and I was lucky

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enough to be leading the band at the time. Played for the funeral at Grace Cathedral. And we played for Turk’s funeral, of course, too.

Crawford: You arranged Turk’s funeral, according to Leon. Did you?

02-00:12:21 Schulz: Yes.

Crawford: Do you want to talk about that?

02-00:12:25 Schulz: The only thing I arranged for Turk’s funeral was the music we were playing, and that was pretty much it. They sort of gave it to me. I didn’t arrange his funeral, per se; I just arranged the music that we played for him at Grace Cathedral.

Crawford: What was it like?

02-00:12:47 Schulz: Oh, it was great because the place was packed. And the boys’ choir was singing and they had—

Jensen: Turk’s trombone was on a chair in the front.

Schulz: Yes, the trombone was sitting on a chair. It was very—

Jensen: It was nice.

Schulz: It was very reminiscent of when I first joined Turk, we played for a bass player down in L.A., for his funeral at that famous cemetery. I can’t remember what the—

Crawford: Forest Lawn?

02-00:13:25 Schulz: Forest Lawn, yes. And we played for him and his bass was sitting right next to the coffin. [chuckles] And Turk’s was sitting up there at the altar.

Crawford: What music did you program?

02-00:13:38 Schulz: I don’t know. I can’t remember. We played one of his songs.

Jensen: It was a long time ago.

Schulz: Twenty-one years. We played one of his songs, I know. But other than that, I don’t remember. And the only thing I remember about Herb Caen’s funeral— I remember that, we played “San Francisco” at the end of the funeral. [laughs] That was one of the highlights.

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Crawford: Did you play at The Embarcadero, for Herb Caen’s day down there.

02-00:14:26 Schulz: Oh, yeah.

Crawford: The big public gathering.

02-00:14:27 Schulz: No, we didn’t play at Embarcadero, we played in the cathedral, yeah. They had bands all over the city playing, but we were the band for the cathedral.

Jensen: Hey, Turk’s band was the band for the Super Bowl, the first Super Bowl win, too. Remember? When they had the parade for the 49ers and they went down at City Hall and Turk’s band was the band for that.

Schulz: Oh, boy, yes. That would’ve been ’82, when we had the parade. That’s right, I forgot about that. Played at City Hall for that.

Jensen: That was fun.

Crawford: I’ll bet. Well, you mentioned singing, and I know that you all had to sing.

02-00:15:12 Schulz: Yes.

Crawford: What did you think of that?

02-00:15:14 Schulz: Oh, I loved it. I love singing.

Jensen: He’s a great singer.

Schulz: I’ve sung all my life.

Crawford: Lyric tenor?

02-00:15:21 Schulz: More of a baritone right now. [Linda laughs]

02-00:15:27 Schulz: I used to sing, and I was a tenor, in the church choir. [laughs] That was my forte, so I— [raises pitch of his voice] I had the high voice. Now I’m losing that, and I’m more in the mid-range. But I love to sing, and I loved Clancy Hayes’ singing. He was just great with Scobey.

But anyway, I sang probably six or eight songs, at least. Or more. I know I sang more than that with Turk. Probably a dozen songs with Turk. And so anytime he needed a singer— I probably sang three or four times a night—

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Jensen: Oh, easy.

Crawford: More than most, then.

02-00:16:11 Schulz: Yes. I think it was probably because people liked it and they requested it.

Jensen: Well, he had a good voice. He sang songs that if you have a good voice, they were—

Schulz: They were the ballads. I love to sing ballads.

Jensen: Yes. Nice tunes.

Crawford: Was anybody reluctant to sing?

Schulz: No.

Jensen: Yeah, Willy didn’t like to sing.

Schulz: Bill Carroll, who is dead, he didn’t like it. He’d get up there and do it. He was more or less of a comedian, a comedy [they laugh] reprieve, I guess, because , he’d come out like that singing. He didn’t have a good voice, but he could sing the ones that are concerned with drinking and [laughs] whatever. “Red Eye”—he’d do that. But anyway, yes. John Gill had a good voice, he sang. I never heard Pete Clute sing. Never.

Jensen: Well, his only vocal was—

Schulz: “Oh, play that thing.” But he’d just yell out, that’s all.

Jensen: “Oh, play that thing.” Or “Chalk my cue.” He’s the only one I know who ever said, “Chalk my cue,” instead of “Oh, play that thing.”

Schulz: And then Turk would sing. I loved his voice.

Crawford: I liked his voice, too, very much.

02-00:17:29 Schulz: It wasn’t a pretty voice, but it was appropriate [Linda laughs] for everything--

Crawford: That’s a good word for it.

Jensen: In spite of Turk’s favorite joke about that, about his singing, he said once he was on the bandstand [Schulz laughs] and he was singing a tune. Have I got this right?

Schulz: Yes.

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Jensen: Someone was dancing by and he heard the husband say to the wife, “Because he’s the leader, that’s why.” [they laugh]

Crawford: You didn’t have to know what the question was, right?

02-00:18:01 Jensen: No, [laughs] we knew it was, “Why is that guy singing?”

Schulz: I’m sure she said, “Why is he singing?”

Bob Helm was a good singer.

Jensen: Yes, and a prolific writer.

Schulz: Yes. A good writer of tunes, music-wise. And Phil Howe came in, he wasn’t. He didn’t sing. Lynn Zimmer came in, he hated to sing. He would be forced to sing. So I was the one that did most of the singing. John Gill, myself, and Turk. That was it.

Crawford: How has your own music changed?

02-00:18:41 Schulz: How what?

Crawford: How has your music changed in the last, say, twenty years? Your approach to playing.

02-00:18:45 Schulz: You mean how I play? Well, first of all, I’ll go back. When I took over the band after Turk actually wasn’t there any more, when he was either at home or whatever, we played the same songs and played them all the same, same arrangements, but we loosened them up a little bit.

As he was getting older—and you knew he was ill in the last three years of his life, especially—the music was getting slower. Tunes that we used to play [snaps fingers or claps quickly], like they were going [snaps or claps slower]. He just wasn’t quite up to it. I don’t know that it was his ability to play, but he was just feeling down.

So I picked the music up like I remembered it when I first joined the band. Because it was happier. They still could dance to it. And so I did that with his music.

When he passed away and I would lead the band— In fact, I led the band for both David Packard and Bill Hewlett; I played for their funerals down at Stanford and at the Menlo Club, when they both died, too. They wanted Turk’s band to play for it, so it was one of those special things.

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We played there when Hewlett was ill and he had to be wheeled in. It was the Menlo Club, I believe, and he was very happy. He liked it. But David Packard was the one that really liked the music. He was the biggest supporter.

But anyway, after everything was said and done, I formed my own band, I got more into the Bob Scobey, Clancy Hayes genre. They played with banjo and tuba, also, but it was peppier. [chuckles]

Crawford: Peppier.

02-00:20:51 Schulz: It just was happier. Scobey played the same things, but he wasn’t quite as structured as Turk was. He would break up the solos. But it just seemed to be happier music. And he didn’t care what everybody did. Everyone did their own thing in the band, and they played however they played. And that’s how he picked the musicians. He didn’t pick them to reform them to play exactly what he wants to play. He was a little looser on the scene.

In later years, he had an electric bass, he had a string bass; I don’t think he had a guitar. And so I formed my band after that feel. Some music, if I played a Turk arrangement or Turk music, I maybe didn’t play exactly like Turk, but I stayed fairly close to how Turk played it because you just play it that way because you remember it.

But I’ve changed to the extent that I can play the old traditional jazz, whether it’s Lu Watters; I can stick with Turk’s arrangement-type on certain tunes; I can do Bix Beiderbecke; I can do the Scobey thing, which I liked.

Crawford: Talk about Scobey because we really didn’t go into his style at all.

02-00:22:17 Schulz: Well, he was very driving. He had a strong horn. Very strong. He and Lu Watters both were very strong. Like a lot of the trumpet players back in that period—Harry James was very strong, Bunny Berigan was extremely loud and strong; Louis was strong when he was playing with his orchestra. When he was playing back with King Oliver, he played cornet, he played a little lighter back then.

But anyway, Scobey. I heard Scobey play and I fell in love with him when I heard some of his records, also, back in the fifties. And I just liked what he did. I loved his clarinet player, who was Bill Napier at the time.

Bill, I was fortunate enough to have him record with me on my first album and my second album. Bob Mielke was playing with him on a couple recordings that he did. And I had a friend of mine, Jim Beebe, who was a trombone player from Chicago that played with Scobey in his later years, the last three or four years that he was alive.

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And I had a chance to play with Jim Beebe back in Chicago one summer, at Flaming Sally’s, at Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. It was Barrett Deems on drums and Jim Beebe on trombone and myself. And so that was a thrill. Did some recording with him. And Beebe knew I played kind of like Scobey.

So twenty-five years after Scobey’s death, which was in ’63, they put together a reunion band. I was the trumpet player; Bill Napier was the clarinet player; Jim Beebe, trombone. I still do Scobey’s stuff that he did because I love that. Dave Black, from out here, was the drummer. And he was just [chuckles] unbelievable. He was— Oh, not Duke Ellington, Count Basie’s first white drummer.

Crawford: Oh, really?

02-00:24:43 Schulz: He was just a monster drummer, wonderful. And Jimmy Johnson played electric bass, a black man from Chicago. Great guy, nice player. Bob Ringwald, Molly’s dad, was doing the Clancy stuff and playing banjo. I can’t remember the piano player at the time.

So we went to the L.A. Jazz Classic and played down there. And Toni Lee Scott was singing. She sang with us there. She sang with Scobey in later years. And then after we did that one, we went out to Chicago and played for a jazz festival out there, the Big Horn Jazz Festival at O’Hare. That was the two things we did in tribute to him. And all of my recordings that I do— I’m going to give you some. I think you’ll enjoy them. I have one; it’s a complete takeoff on Turk, and the other ones are more of what I’ve done because of Scobey.

Jensen: Well, you have the Clancy one, thanks to Turk.

02-00:25:58 Schulz: Well, yes. But Scobey was Turk’s first trumpet player after the war, after Lu Watters broke up. And then they went back, they started forming their own bands. Lu had his own little group, Bob Scobey had his band after Turk. But Turk had him first.

He left Turk—this was way before Earthquake McGoon’s—and then he formed his own band and got Clancy Hayes to perform with him. And Wally Rose was playing with him, too, at that time. And he just sort of went in a different direction. He was a little looser than Turk was.

Turk was writing his own arrangements, he was doing all the stuff in preparation for his style— Because he liked what Watters did. Watters had charts written out. and Scobey went the other way. So that’s the person I kind of followed after.

Crawford: There were so many recordings. How did that come about?

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02-00:27:19 Schulz: Well, the funniest story, which is the saddest but the funniest, is when he was commissioned to do—in the fifties, when his band was very popular, he was commissioned [to do] a recording for Columbia Records. And so he was putting things together for Columbia, and somewhere along the way in that time period, Louis Armstrong was doing things for Columbia, too. And they wanted to have Turk—they knew he did arrangements—they wanted him to do an arrangement from the Threepenny Opera.

Crawford: “Mack the Knife!” Oh, I know that story.

02-00:28:07 Schulz: Yes. [laughs] That’s the craziest—

Crawford: That would’ve made all of your fortunes.

02-00:28:12 Schulz: Yes, and so after he did the thing, he opted not—

Jensen: The flat fee, rather than royalties.

Schulz: To take the flat fee.

Crawford: Why do you suppose he did that?

02-00:28:21 Jensen: Because he was a stubborn guy.

Schulz: He didn’t think it was going to be [big]--well, at the time, Louis didn’t really think it was going to be, either.

Jensen: He was not a gambler.

Schulz: That was just prior to Armstrong doing his Ambassador Satch things. He was traveling overseas and going to different countries—Africa, France, Germany, Spain—and performing with his band. And this was after he had done the recording of “Mack the Knife.” And he came back and it was a big hit.

It was a big hit in the States, but he didn’t know anything about it. He got back, and this might be, or this is what I was told, he was performing some place--I think they told me Florida, but whether this is true, who knows--but he had to relearn the song. He was getting requests for it when he came back.

And so he and his band went and started plugging the jukebox because it was on the jukebox. He was putting the nickels in there, and he was sitting there practicing, learning the song all over again so they could perform it for their next concert. [laughs] And it became a big hit. Bobby Darin did pretty much the same recording, or same arrangement. And Turk’s sitting back there, I’m sure, thinking, oh— [laughs]

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Crawford: Can you imagine? Oh, that’s great.

02-00:29:50 Schulz: —what did I do? But he told it later that he was kind of proud of the fact that he messed up. But it was important to him, too.

Crawford: Well, maybe that’s a good place to end. Do you have anything to add? Maybe you could talk a little bit about Turk and his legacy.

02-00:30:12 Schulz: Well, I think—I don’t think, I know—there are people of all ages over here that love Turk’s music and what he’s done to keep this music alive. Even more so overseas. You can hear Turk’s music being played overseas by hundreds of bands. Way more than are here in the States.

Crawford: That doesn’t surprise me.

02-00:30:44 Schulz: No. The music over there will live on forever because they grabbed hold of the jazz, and they love it over there for what it is. They are not influenced by media on what they should listen to and what they shouldn’t listen to. They hear everything and they can pick and choose over there. Over here, we can’t. If it’s old music, it’s old music. Every month, something new is coming up.

And the media—television, MTV or whatever, the radios—they play whatever’s hot now, and that’s the thing that constantly goes, and so that’s what everyone hears. You don’t have any stations playing some of this old stuff. If you do, it’s probably a ten kilowatt station [laughs] that goes from here to San Francisco, that’s about it. I don’t know.

Crawford: Where does that support come from in Europe? Germany, especially?

02-00:31:53 Schulz: Germany, oh!

Jensen: Well, we just got a thing from England when we were on the cruise. And there is not a day that you can’t go to ten venues a day, whether it’s Wednesday or Sunday, and see jazz.

Crawford: In London?

02-00:32:06 Schulz: Any place in England.

Jensen: It’s unbelievable. We’re going.

Schulz: It’s about fifty pages thick, and it’s got music every night from bands I’ve never heard of.

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Crawford: Oh, so maybe especially England, more than elsewhere?

Schulz: Yes.

Jensen: Well, and you know what? The thing about it is, you don’t have to be great, you can just be a fan, you can just play and you can have a good time. And you don’t have to have a lot of equipment, you can just have your stuff. It’s acoustic.

Schulz: It better be fun, because you can’t make a living with it! And like I always say, if you want to become a millionaire playing music, start with two million [they laugh] and you’ve got it.

Jensen: And also, behind every successful jazz musician is a wife with a good job.

Crawford: There you are!

02-00:32:55 Jensen: You know?

Schulz: That’s right, dear.

Crawford: But what a life. You wouldn’t change anything.

02-00:32:59 Jensen: It helps, so that they’re happy and they can produce their art. It’s art. So that’s a good thing.

Crawford: Do you tour and play in Europe?

02-00:33:09 Schulz: No, I haven’t been over there for a long time. But we’re going to do it. I’ve got enough work here. Here, I’m playing from now until June; I travel around playing jazz festivals all over. But the good thing is, I don’t have to take every job I’m offered anymore. I’m retired.

Crawford: What are the festivals that you like best?

02-00:33:32 Schulz: We’ve got Fresno coming up. That’s the second weekend in February, where they have a king and queen elected every year. Donna and Chuck Huggins were king and queen three years ago. We followed them; we were the king and queen the year after. So we go back there every year.

Jensen: I’m still the queen. [Schulz laughs] I’m not giving up that title.

02-00:33:59 Jensen: Once a queen, you’re always a queen.

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Schulz: Always a queen.

Jensen: Kings may come and kings may go, but queens are queens forever.

Crawford: Good for you.

Schulz: We used to do Seaside all the time, in Oregon, but we haven’t done that for a while. We play Three Rivers, which is a nice festival.

Jensen: Well, I love the cruises. She asked which ones you like, not where you’re going. So the cruises. Any time you can go on a cruise and listen to music, [laughs] be fed, travel, and have people wait on you and have music—

Crawford: Sounds like you’d like to live on a cruise.

02-00:34:34 Jensen: Oh, my God!

Schulz: I’m happy to get home.

Jensen: Well, the tonnage that you acquire is another thing.

Crawford: A pyramid of food.

Jensen: But it’s a nice way for a festival because it’s very relaxed, I think.

Crawford: Have you ever done the Mississippi River festivals?

02-00:34:47 Schulz: No. Wish we could.

Crawford: Why don’t you?

02-00:34:49 Schulz: They’re not doing them.

Jensen: They’re not doing them anymore. They’re not in business right now. And they contacted them and they don’t have a music venue anymore.

Crawford: Some of the blues people I talked to did those every year.

Schulz: Oh, they would’ve been great. We never got the opportunity to do it. But other festivals, Port Angeles has a real nice one and we go back to Madison and do that. Madison, Wisconsin, Capital Jazz Festival.

There’s one, I’m doing Redding this year, which is a small, little festival. But I go back every year to do the Bunny Berigan Days in Fox Lake, Wisconsin. That’s very small-town Wisconsin. The town has got 1700 people, maybe 1300. And I love it. I end up playing “I Can’t Get Started” maybe six or eight

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times [they laugh] during the time. And then there’s Sacramento, which is a nice little festival. Big festival. It’s actually too big. And then Olympia, Washington. And Chandler, Arizona.

Jensen: You can’t get farther apart than Sacramento and Fox Lake. Fox Lake, the band is right there. You’re in the veterans hall. It’s just so American.

Schulz: It’s fun.

Crawford: I’m so glad you’re keeping on.

02-00:36:15 Schulz: Oh, yes. Anyway, I love to go to festivals, I love to perform. And I’m thankful—

Jensen: And he’s available for weddings, parties--

Schulz: Yes. I’m thankful for Turk, because he was an inspiration of what to do and what not to do.

Crawford: Good. Let’s end there. Thank you very much.

[End of Schulz and Jensen Interview]

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Pat Yankee Interview #1: May 12, 2008 [Begin Audio File 1]

Crawford: This is an interview with Pat Yankee for the Turk Murphy oral history.

I’d like to begin with your early years. I know that you weren’t always a singer, that you were a dancer first, and you grew up in Lodi, California. And I think you danced with Sophie Tucker.

01-00:00:49 Yankee: I didn’t dance with Sophie Tucker. I was with Ted Lewis Revue for a couple years when I was a kid in New York City. And then I met Sophie Tucker in 1946, when we were playing the Strand Theater on Broadway and she was across the street at the Latin Quarter for Lou Walters. It was Ted Lewis’ birthday, so she came over to pay tribute to Ted Lewis. And that’s when I first met Sophie Tucker, in 1946.

How I met Bojangles was when he came over to pay tribute to Ted Lewis, also, his fiftieth birthday. I looked in the wings and there he was. I was onstage at the time. He came onstage and did a dance called the Shim Sham with me, which was kind of nice. I was, I think, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old.

Crawford: You were in show business early on!

01-00:01:39 Yankee: Yes, I was. I’ve been in show business, really, about sixty, sixty-five years.

Crawford: When did you start singing?

01-00:01:47 Yankee: I didn’t start singing, basically—I used to do maybe twenty-four bars of singing, and then go into a little tap dance. That was the thing that you did. But singing wasn’t my primary thing. I studied ballet for eight years. I went to the Metropolitan Opera ballet classes. That was opera, but they also had a ballet corps.

Crawford: Where was this?

01-00:02:12 Yankee: In New York City. I went to New York City when I was about fifteen years old.

Crawford: By yourself?

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01-00:02:17 Yankee: No, I had a chaperone. And then I studied at children’s professional school [Professional Children’s School] there until I graduated, and then I went on the road.

I was at the Latin Quarter with Ted Lewis in Chicago, and I traveled all over with him. We traveled in train cars and played all the places. A lot of gambling, they had a lot of gambling places in the back. So I had to sit in the kitchen because I wasn’t of age. But that was quite a life.

Crawford: Your folks were behind that?

01-00:02:48 Yankee: Oh, yes, most definitely. It’s a matter, too, of trust that my father and mother had in me. They had trust in me. I wasn’t a wild child and I wasn’t drinking.

I was around a lot of marijuana— I tried it once and it did nothing for me, when I was about twenty-one years old. Because I couldn’t inhale, and all it did was make me hungry. And I left that, forget that.

Crawford: You were singing when you were met Turk Murphy.

01-00:03:24 Yankee: Yes.

Crawford: And when was that?

01-00:03:26 Yankee: I met Turk Murphy in Alaska. I knew Turk because he had the Italian Village here in the fifties. And I was at Goman’s Gay Nineties in 1952 to 1956. I sang there. The old time Gay Nineties tunes. And then I left them and I got an act with Jack Cathcart. I go back so far. This is a sign I’m getting old. [laughs]

Anyway, it was Judy Garland’s brother-in-law that gave me an act, and I went to Vegas with it. Turk and I had the same agent, and I didn’t know Turk and I had the same agent. His name was Milton Deutsch, in L.A.

I was already up in Alaska; for two or three months, I played all the sights, and played the nightclubs. And he came up for the Fur Rendezvous.

I happened to be there, and the agent called me and said, “Turk is looking for a singer. Why don’t you just stay up there and be his singer?” And I said fine. So that’s when I first encountered Turk Murphy. I knew of him and I had met him once or twice, but never to sing with him.

Crawford: But you’d heard him.

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01-00:04:44 Yankee: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I used to go down to the Italian Village and hear Claire Austin when Claire was with him.

Crawford: Claire was his singer.

01-00:04:53 Yankee: She was with him for about six months, I think, and I don’t know what happened there. But anyway, so Turk wanted me to join the band right away, and I said I couldn’t because I had a six-month contract to go to Las Vegas to play the Silver Slipper. So I did that, and when I finished the Silver Slipper, I went with Turk.

When you’re in one place, like say San Francisco, you don’t make that kind of money, of course. But I was home, and that was nice. I established myself in San Francisco. People knew who I was from being at the Goman’s Gay Nineties, so they knew who I was.

Anyway, I started with Turk in 1958, and started traveling with him. And the first thing I know, he was at a place called Easy Street, as you probably know. And then they lost that. That was supported by the DuPont family.

Crawford: On Powell Street, right?

01-00:05:53 Yankee: Yes. That was supported by the DuPonts. And Mary DuPont—I shouldn’t say this—just fell in love with Turk. And of course, Turk wasn’t married at that time, but Turk was frightened. He was frightened of money. It was the strangest thing.

Crawford: Frightened of money? Nobody I’ve talked to has said that.

01-00:06:08 Yankee: Well, I’m saying it. We went to New York. Doris Lilly, Dorothy Kilgallen, all these women absolutely adored Turk, and would come in to see him. And he’d say to me, “Go over and sit with Dorothy,” because then somebody else was on the other side of the room. [laughs] And so you’d go over there and he’d go somewhere else.

But these women just adored him. He had that Irish bashful-boy-type thing. And they all just loved him. And it frightened him to death. It scared him for some reason. There were people who wanted to sponsor him, like Mary DuPont. And she couldn’t get to first base with him, so she fell in love with his trumpet player, and they married and were married a long time. Now he handles all the real estate for the DuPont company.

Crawford: Who is that?

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01-00:07:04 Yankee: Larry Conger was his name. But isn’t that strange that he would be that way? He was quite bashful.

Crawford: I know that he was shy, that’s true.

01-00:07:11 Yankee: Oh, yes. And all the women just loved him. I think he was married four or five times, something like that.

Crawford: Yes, I wanted to get your perspective on that. That’s a lot of marriages in one life.

01-00:07:26 Yankee: But I always feel like Turk wanted to do the right thing. Instead of just sleeping with women, he’ll marry them. [laughter]

Crawford: Was there one marriage that seemed to be more solid?

01-00:07:38 Yankee: I think the one with Harriet was very solid, because they had a child, Carson. The others weren’t, I don’t think, so solid. Because first of all, he wanted to be a musician, play his music, be on the road.

It’s very hard, I found out. Until I met my husband, I was starting to do big things. I had my own band, I was playing the lounges, making 10,000 a week at that time. I left Turk the first time. I had my own band.

I was just on the way, and I met my husband. As a matter of fact, he started my band for me. And I was playing all these places. And it’s hard to be in love and run a band and travel and do everything, because if you want to do anything, you have to eat, sleep and breathe it, and you don’t have time for marriage.

If you meet somebody you like, so you meet them and you go steady with them or you see them, and that’s about all. But you really don’t have too much of a personal life, you really want to be a star.

I knew a lot of people in the profession, when I lived in New York. Some of them have gotten to weigh 200 pounds. At my age, they live in some little one-room thing in New York, and they get dates once in a while, singing dates. But what a life. No husband, no family, no nothing.

I opted for the other, and I am glad I did, because I was married to a wonderful man. Just wonderful.

Crawford: You were, and you’ve never stopped performing.

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01-00:09:10 Yankee: No, no.

Crawford: So it’s not as if you sacrificed your music or gave up your life.

Yankee: No, no. Well, because he liked my music. He was one of Turk’s friends.

Crawford: You met through Turk?

01-00:09:20 Yankee: Turk. One of his best friends. He walked through the door of Earthquake McGoon’s and I just—it was love at first sight. He looked at me and I looked at him. It was love at first sight, just like that.

Crawford: Good story. Well, what were your impressions of Turk Murphy when you first met him?

01-00:09:35 Yankee: Well, first of all, I liked the music. And of course, I was singing some of the songs that his band played, like “See Your Mama Every Night.” “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” and some of those tunes.

So I just sang, and he wrote out little sketches for the charts. I thought of the music first, but as a person, I found out he was very shy. He did like the women, and he tried to get smitten with me a little bit, and I said, “You know, Turk, I want to be with your band.” I said, “But you know, the first time another gorgeous woman comes along,” I said, “I won’t be singing.”

So I said, “I want to sing.” And so that’s how I put it. Because you couldn’t help but like him. You could be smitten with him, too, because he was a wonderful man, a wonderful person. And he always treated women very well, I have to say.

Crawford: Everybody seemed to love him. At the same time he was said to be difficult to work with at times.

01-00:10:59 Yankee: Oh, well, let me tell you something. If a fellow came in his band, and say that he had talent, Turk would work with him to see if he could bring that talent out. If they didn’t cut it, after a while he’d let them go.

But once you joined Turk Murphy’s band and you had the talent, and you did what he told you to do, you could go to any other band or play anything you ever wanted to. In other words, you’d improved so much you can do everything. You could do anything, you could play anything.

Crawford: Everyone sang.

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01-00:11:36 Yankee: Oh, yes, oh yes.

Crawford: And how did that work out?

01-00:11:38 Yankee: Well, John Gill sang and, let’s see, Bill Carroll sang. Jim Maihack sang. There were so many different people. I was probably the second band, after the Watters band, to play with Turk, or the third band, because I’m the one that came in 1958, before anybody.

I met Leon [Oakley] and his family in Binghamton, when we came through with the Turk Murphy band. Because Turk was a good friend of the people from Corning, so we would do some things for Corning, because Turk knew Cam [Campbell] Rutledge, who was the vice president there.

Crawford: Sounds like you toured a lot.

01-00:12:18 Yankee: Oh, I toured a quite a bit, yes. Oh, an awful lot. See, the rest of the fellows didn’t tour as much with Turk as I did. We toured all over.

We were in North Carolina, we were in Detroit. When things got really rough, there’s one fellow that just had us always come to Detroit. It was a club attached to the international bowling alley, which was— They do all the television for the bowling. It’s the professional league of bowling.

I’m trying to think of the name of the place. It was wonderful. The Lettermen used to work there, all the big acts used to work there—and we used to go to Detroit.

When things got really down and we couldn’t find a booking, they sent us to Detroit. I’ll never forget that. Once we were stuck in Asbury Park. Asbury Park. And I’m trying to think who was on in the band at that time. Bob Helm—

Crawford: Why do you say “stuck in Asbury Park”? Cole Porter writes about “only Asbury Park.”

01-00:13:16 Yankee: Because we got fired. [laughs] We got fired by this lady. There was some, not ruffians, but people on the bill that were rockers. And they came on and sat in front when we did our set, and started making fun of our music.

Turk didn’t like that, and Turk said, “I will not play any more.” And the lady said, “Well, you don’t have to come back. That’s it. Period.”

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Turk said, “Why don’t you just have them go some place else and we’ll do our show?” And so she fired us. So we had no money. We absolutely had no money.

Crawford: No traveling money.

01-00:13:51 Yankee: No, we had no money. I knew a person I was going with—this is way before my husband—out of New York City, a wonderful man.

I went to New York and I said—his name was Julie Bean. He had a place on Wall Street, one of the trading houses. I called him, I said, “We have no money.” And I said, “We need money for food. I’m coming to get some money for food. Or could you send us some money?” I don’t know how it worked.

But he sent us some money and we bought food and everything then. Turk got enough money together, and then we could get gas. Because we were all in cars. We weren’t on railroads or planes, we were all driving cars.

And so I’ll never forget that. We rented this old funny old house. We all stayed there for a couple weeks, until we got our bearings. It was so funny. We went to the beach every day. We had a ball. We really had a wonderful time.

Crawford: And it was hard times. There wasn’t a lot of money, was there, for the band. I guess that’s one reason Turk traveled as much as he did.

01-00:14:52 Yankee: Yes. And those days, if I made $150 a week, it was great.

Crawford: It was enough.

01-00:15:00 Yankee: Yes, exactly.

Crawford: And who was in the band then?

01-00:15:02 Yankee: I think Bob Helm, Carl Lunsford, Pete Clute, Jack Carroll. Let me think. Was it Jack Carroll? Yes, Jack Carroll. And Bob Short.

Crawford: Who was outstanding in the band?

01-00:15:31 Yankee: Well, the trumpet player was very outstanding, which was Ernie Carson, but Turk fired him at one point. He was a wonderful cornet player. Was fabulous. He was fabulous. When I left Turk— Well, that’s getting into another thing. Where am I now with this whole thing?

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Crawford: We’re talking about personnel.

01-00:15:54 Yankee: Well, that was when we were on the road, we had that personnel. Oh, and Thad Vandon was on drums, I think, at some other time, too. That’s right. I’m not quite sure, it’s been so long ago. I’m talking about 1960s, 1958, ’59, ’60.

Then they had Jack Crook, who played sax. But then they opened Earthquake McGoon’s, I think, in 1961, I guess it was. I always thought it was ’61 because we were traveling for two years.

Crawford: I have 99 Broadway, September ’60.

01-00:16:38 Yankee: Somebody always says ’60, and I always thought it was ’61.

Crawford: I can check that [Earthquake McGoon’s opened at 99 Broadwaay in 1960]. What about Bob Helm? Everybody thought he was so important.

01-00:16:48 Yankee: Well, Bob Helm started with Lu Watters. Both he and Turk started with Lu Watters. And of course, they’re the ones that brought the old tradition, the revival of traditional jazz. Turk is the one that gave them the name traditional jazz, you know that.

Crawford: Yes.

01-00:17:03 Yankee: You got that. And he’s the one that coined the phrase salt— Not salty dogs. Moldy figs.

Crawford: Oh, he was the one?

01-00:17:17 Yankee: Yes, he was the one.

Crawford: Interesting, because that was a pejorative thing, a negative name that I thought originated with modern jazz players.

01-00:17:24 Yankee: No, no, Turk did that. Turk did that. We were called “moldy figs” because that’s what we were called. But Turk was the one that coined that as traditional jazz.

Crawford: Oh, I thought it was Eddie Condon—Eddie Condon called the band “archaeologists,” I remember.

01-00:17:43 Yankee: Yes. And you know that story about Turk got mad and he [wrote] this thing to see if Condon could play it? That was “Duff Campbell’s Revenge,” you know.

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Crawford: Yes. I have it!

01-00:17:53 Yankee: And you see, people that weren’t there can say certain things, and I was there. [laughs] So I know. Well, certain things I wouldn’t tell you because you don’t tell things from the band. In fact, the funniest stories.

Crawford: How was it to be a woman in a man’s band?

01-00:18:15 Yankee: Well, you had to take all the jokes, if they were off-color. You had to be strong. And nobody was carrying my suitcases; I always carried my own. Turk packed them in his car, but I always carried my own suitcases.

I used to have two hat boxes. I always carried hats when I went to New York. I knew a lot of people in New York. I’d worked there for a long time in my younger days. People would ask me to come here and come there. And I’d get these Mr. Fredericks hats. I’d pay a lot of money for my clothes.

Crawford: I hope you still have them.

01-00:18:50 Yankee: No, I gave away some. But my mother was a big hat collector. I have some of hers. I had Mr. John’s [hats], too.

So anyway, Turk used to say, “These damn hat boxes!” He said, “Why do you have to have these hats?” Because he used to put them in the station wagon; they never fit— [laughter]

I had a wonderful mother. When I needed extra money my mother always sent me extra money for something. I always paid her back, if I needed an extra dress or an extra something.

And then Jack Crook, who was in the band, played baritone sax, he’s the one that always had money for everybody. So if I’d borrow $75, I’d say, “Oh, God, I need a new dress, Jack.” He’d say, “Here, I’ll give this to you. Next time you pay it back to me.” And I always paid him back.

But they took care of me very well. They were very good to me. And we always got a place on the road where we could cook somewhere.

Crawford: Who was a good cook?

01-00:19:54 Yankee: Turk wasn’t, but Bob Helm was the best cook. He was a wonderful chef. When sometimes the wives didn’t go along, he used to cook these big things for all the people in the band. It was wonderful.

Crawford: What did he like to cook?

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Yankee: Hot spicy dishes.

But usually the wives went on the road. We took one little girl on the road, she was six weeks old. That was Judy Clute, Peter Clute’s little girl. Did they tell you that, too?

Crawford: No.

01-00:20:20 Yankee: Oh, yes, we took her. It was in the middle of January, in the middle of a snowstorm, and we all took our own cars. Nobody flew. She was the only one; there were no other babies.

Crawford: I read that Bob Helm felt he had to go back to New York.

01-00:20:35 Yankee: Bob Helm did?

Crawford: Because he felt that jazz was moving out of where it should be, the kind of venues that it should be, into big concert halls. And he said that isn’t jazz. Did that happen? That’s in this book. Why did he leave the band?

01-00:21:08 Yankee: There’s a story why he left the band. Well, these are things that—

Crawford: Well, there are always feelings and things that you can’t discuss.

01-00:21:18 Yankee: Well, he left the band in— I think it was Carson City.

Crawford: And what year would that be?

01-00:21:26 Yankee: Oh, God. I wasn’t with the band, but I’m trying to think. Probably in the seventies sometime. No, not the seventies, it was in the sixties. In the sixties, yes. [Bob Helm was with the band off and on in the 1950s until 1965, then again from 1972 to 1981.]

Crawford: Everybody praises his musicianship.

01-00:21:46 Yankee: This is what was so good about Turk. He hated the word Dixieland. Couldn’t stand that word Dixieland. It’s New Orleans jazz, it’s our one heritage thing that we have in the United States. The only thing we can call our own is jazz, in the United States. The rest of it all came from Europe or someplace else. We called jazz our very own. And he hated the word Dixieland.

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We used to go on radio shows, and he used to fight with people about calling it Dixieland. He said Dixieland came out of the South as popular tunes. They made popular tunes, which they called Dixieland. [hums melody of “Dixie”]

All those things like “Dixie” and even “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?” Those were all popular songs; they were not New Orleans songs. I mean, the Hot Five, Hot Seven, King Oliver or anything like that. They were all written later. They called them, actually, “Tin Pan Alley songs.”

Crawford: And he didn’t want to be associated with that.

01-00:22:53 Yankee: No, he liked the real jazz—King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Clarence Williams, all those people.

Crawford: You were talking on the BBC tape about you and Turk—that he did sass for you.

Yankee: Well, sass is when we used to do double numbers. And the blacks call it sass, like Butterbeans and Susie and all those black duos, they used to say— Like Turk and I used to do a number called “Go Back.” [sings] Well, you stayed last night. I don’t want you no more. Another baby’s my regular. And he’d say, “What’s the matter with me, honey? I’m right here.” All those kinds of things.

That’s called sass. You sass back and forth. You talk back and forth. So that was called sass. We had several numbers that we did like that. And that’s what it was called. And people enjoyed hearing those tunes.

Crawford: That was a lot of fun.

01-00:24:06 Yankee: Yes. Oh, it was great.

Crawford: You created a lot of humor between you.

01-00:24:09 Yankee: Oh, yes! We were just falling down laughing, and nobody ever knew why we were laughing half the time. He was a lot of fun. He was a lot of fun. He was a disciplinarian, definitely, but— when I left the band— I left the band two or three times, but came back. And I learned a lot when I went on my own, or I’d be with my own band.

Crawford: You went on your own for the first time in ’62, I think.

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01-00:24:37 Yankee: Yes, right, exactly. I got my own band called Pat Yankee and the Sinners. And I did a terrible thing. I took his trumpet player and his banjo player away from him.

Crawford: How did you do that?

01-00:24:49 Yankee: Well, I was very upset with him, and I just gave them more money, that’s all.

Crawford: Oh!

01-00:24:53 Yankee: I was very young. I feel badly about that. I wasn’t married to my husband at that time, but he had backed me, gave me the money to start a band. He gave me the money to do it. I practiced for six, seven weeks in my little apartment over in the Marina. And my first job was Harvey’s Wagon.

We had the agents come down, and they booked it immediately. I auditioned at the hungry i-—I was a good friend of Enrico’s, and I worked the hungry i about six months, before I even met Turk.

Crawford: Were there bad feelings because you took the two players?

01-00:25:37 Yankee: Oh, very bad feelings. He was very upset with me. But then all of a sudden, he must’ve missed me. I went on the road, and I came back—let’s see. I went on the road a lot with that band, and I came back in, oh, about ’68, around that time, and something had happened. I’m trying to figure out, remember what happened at that time.

Anyway, I had a different kind of a band that I started out with. I had an agent, I had a manager. I was playing Vegas and Tahoe and everything. And my band started to go in sort of the wrong direction, and I didn’t like what I was doing.

I said, “I’m just going to start over.” And then I went down one evening just to see Turk. And he said, “Gee, why don’t you get up and sing a song?”

It started like that. And then we sort of got back together and I went back with the band in ’68. It was wonderful. Then I left again in ’72 because I got married. I left in ’72, got married and went to live in Spain for ten years.

Crawford: What prompted that?

01-00:27:00 Yankee: Well, my husband had a business there. He owned a lamp factory, he owned a decoration store, he owned a ranch, a big ranch out of Madrid, with twenty- five sows. [laughter] I mean 2500 sows. And so my 4-H training in Lodi came

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in handy because when they started to get sick, I used to give them vitamin B shots.

Crawford: You did! Didn’t you miss—

01-00:27:31 Yankee: Oh, yes. But let me tell you what happened then. What happened was I was over there. I was Mrs. So-and-so. I joined the American Women’s Club. I was going to get away from the whole thing, so I could get away from the— you know. Did you take this off?

Crawford: Yes, I took it off. Because your voice is so big, you’re like a spinto diva, so I don’t need to have the mike.

01-00:27:52 Yankee: So anyway, where was I now? What did I do now?

Crawford: You were in Spain.

01-00:27:55 Yankee: Oh. I went to Spain, and I’m going to be the housewife. I joined the American Women’s Club, and I wasn’t going to sing for a while.

I meet the ambassador’s wife, Mrs. Stabler. And I was chairman, co-chairman of—there were two people—we were both chairmen and co-chairmen of the British American Hospital Ball. I’m sitting with Mrs. Stabler one day in a little cafe, and somebody went by and stopped and said, “Aren’t you Pat Yankee?” And I said yes. “I used to hear you sing ‘Careless Love’ at Earthquake McGoon’s.”

We’re in Madrid now, and Mrs. Stabler looked at me and said, [with exaggerated accent] “My Dear, are you a jazz singer?” [laughs] I was in another world. I was in another world.

But anyway, so that started it up. And then I started doing things for the American School. Benefits. And then someone said, “Why don’t you sing at the jazz club here, Whiskey Jazz?” So I sang at Whiskey Jazz for six weeks. Then I went to the Hilton for three months. And my husband let me do this.

Crawford: He was happy for you to do it?

01-00:29:03 Yankee: Oh, yes. Then I went to Barcelona, and one of the stories is so cute. He said, “You can go to Barcelona,” because I had a wonderful guitar player with me. He said, “But you have to pay for it yourself.” I said, “All right, I will.”

Our salary wasn’t anything, it’s just that I wanted to sing. Our salary was $35 a night in Barcelona. He did give me some money to go, but I’m saying— He

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said, “If you’re going to do it—” He didn’t do that in Madrid, but he did that in Barcelona. I think he did it to see what I’d do.

So anyway, we got there and I’m in a pensione, and paying 250 pesetas a night in a little place on the Ramblas. The gal that was the maid on the floor used to iron my gowns.

I had a wonderful time, and when my friends came down from Madrid, they were paying $500 a night at the El Presidente Hotel [laughs] to come and see me. I love that story, I love that story. And my husband flew down with them. The nerve of— Oh, I never got angry with him. I loved every minute of it. I loved every minute.

Crawford: And then you came back and joined Turk again?

01-00:30:11 Yankee: I came back and joined Turk in— I came back periodically and would sit in with him. I came back to do Grace Cathedral, and I came back to do special things with him.

And in ’78, we were in Newport Beach. We were in Newport Beach, and then I would come back and forth. I would drive from Newport to San Francisco on weekends. That was in ’78.

And then we moved up here permanently in ’81. And I was with him then. It was mostly weekends, when we went to the Fairmont Hotel. But I used to drive my ’59 Rolls-Royce right in front of the Fairmont Hotel and park it there. [laughs] A little ego there. There was a little ego.

But anyway, Turk— he was wonderful at that time. And then he got very ill, as you know. He got very ill at the Fairmont. But he and I had a good relationship.

But anyway, so I came back and I was with him until 1987— on and off, I was with Turk almost twenty-five years, on and off.

Crawford: Well, talk about the different Earthquake McGoon’s, would you?

01-00:32:01 Yankee: Well, I loved the one on Broadway, down at the end of Clay.

Crawford: Everybody did.

01-00:32:07 Yankee: Yes, it was wonderful. The Earthquake McGoon’s on Clay was wonderful. My husband had an office straight up from it [laughs]. He was in the mortgage business. Anyway, I liked that very, very much, too. Like you probably knew, Woody Allen used to stand in the doorway of Earthquake McGoon’s.

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Crawford: Talk about that.

01-00:32:25 Yankee: When he was filming a picture, he used to stand in sort of a little doorway down from the thing and kind of peek in, and never come in. Turk met him outside. Turk wanted to get some air, and saw Woody Allen standing there one night. He said, “Why don’t you come in and play with me?” So that’s how that started.

Crawford: And he played often?

01-00:32:47 Yankee: Yes. Well, he was doing Don’t Drink the Water then. I have a picture of Woody Allen, a sketch in there, of him and Turk and me. Somebody did a charcoal sketch of us; it’s in the den.

Crawford: You have to show me. A good musician?

01-00:33:01 Yankee: Woody? No. He was very— Woody was learning at that time. I’m sure he’s fine now. He’s not, I would say, the greatest musician. But his enthusiasm for the music is the way he makes up for a lot of it.

But Turk’s music, nobody could understand why, when I left Turk, I didn’t [play] his kind of music. It’s because he studied a lifetime on that music. And for me to go out and try to get a band like Turk Murphy was crazy. You couldn’t get the good musicians.

Crawford: What did you do?

01-00:33:40 Yankee: No, I did all the old songs, but I didn’t have banjo and tuba. When I first started out with the Sinners, I did; but after that I didn’t, because you just can’t emulate someone like Turk, who was the best in that kind of music.

He and Lu Watters and Bob Scobiy were the best. And Louis Armstrong. Of course, Louis Armstrong went into other things, like I did. My band was sort of like a Louis band, with straight-ahead music and that kind of a thing, and no banjos and tubas. But where am I?

Crawford: Did you hear any of the great old-timers when they played here? Louis?

01-00:34:26 Yankee: Oh, we played with Louis. We played with Louis when we went to a couple of festivals in Monterey. Monterey New Orleans Festival.

Crawford: Did you go more than once?

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01-00:34:42 Yankee: I think we did twice. And then we played with Louis once with the Dukes of Dixieland and all those people. We played at Disneyland, and then once we played at the Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles. Louis was on the bill with Jack Teagarden and all these people.

Then when I went to New York with Turk, at the Metropole, we played with all the old guys. Edmond Hall, Claude Hopkins on the piano, Tyree Glenn, Joe Jones on the drums, Henry “Red” Allen, Tony Parenti. Not Nick— Well, we played with Nick, too. Zutty Singleton.

I’m trying to think of the one fellow. He used to be after me all the time. I tell you, [laughter] I think this guy was always after me. What was his name? Oh, God, he was so good. Buck Clayton. Good-looking man. Just beautiful.

Crawford: Just wouldn’t fall for him?

01-00:35:41 Yankee: Well, no, I was going with somebody that I liked. It’s nice to be admired, let’s put it that way.

Crawford: Talk about the clubs in New York. I know you played the Village Vanguard.

01-00:35:50 Yankee: Oh, yes, we went there several times, to the Village Vanguard. And we worked for— I’m trying to think of his name now; I can’t think of his name. Oh, it will come to me. I’m remembering pretty well for eighty, right?

Crawford: I think so!

01-00:36:06 Yankee: Oh, what was his name? He was wonderful. He and his wife were wonderful people. We played there a few times, and I loved it very much. We got good reviews from them.

Crawford: Who wrote about you?

01-00:36:23 Yankee: The Times and the New Yorker. And we always got good reviews.

Crawford: That was Whitney Balliett?

01-00:36:29 Yankee: Yes, and then the other time it was Popsie Whittaker, a reporter from the New Yorker. Honey, this goes back to 1958, ’59.

We used to follow people like Anita O’Day or somebody like that. It’s so funny because when I opened the paper, there was my picture in the New York Times: Come to the Metropole. This lady sings with Turk Murphy and that

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kind of thing. And now you can’t even get a byline in New York, because nobody knows who you are.

Crawford: Did you have good audiences?

01-00:37:03 Yankee: Yes, and Turk had a tremendous following. All the stars used to come in. Charles Addams from the New Yorker was a friend of his. Conrad Janus, when he played there at one of the places there, he used to bring in Paul Newman and his wife. All those celebrities—John Chancellor—all these people used to come in.

All these people, we knew. And of course, all the DuPonts. One night was the thing of my life, when Turk took me up to the Hampshire House, where Mary DuPont had the whole floor of the Hampshire House—this beautiful place—to meet Mary the first time. A wonderful lady, and she had a gorgeous apartment. And she just was crazy about Turk, as I told you. And that was exciting.

Crawford: Did she put a lot of money into the band?

01-00:37:55 Yankee: She and her brother bought the Easy Street for them.

Crawford: Was it true that they wanted to have several Easy Streets in different cities all over the country?.

01-00:38:02 Yankee: Yes, you’re right, they did. It just never worked. You can’t be a musician and run a club. You have to have somebody run your club and do the accounting and do everything—that, I found out.

I had a club myself after I left Turk. I went into Mike’s Pool Hall, and I lost $60,000 the first six months of my husband’s money. [laughs] And you know why? I was doing fine until Carol Doda opened across the street on Broadway.

Someone said, “Oh, Pat, you could go topless, sing jazz topless.” I said, “I don’t think so.” [laughs]

Crawford: That should have enhanced your performances—

01-00:38:44 Yankee: No, people were coming to see Carol Doda on Broadway. It was fine to have jazz in the pool hall. The first month I was doing fine. But after she opened, it was very difficult.

Crawford: You just didn’t get your audiences?

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01-00:38:57 Yankee: No, no, because you got walk-in trade, too. You got the walk-in people in Broadway at that time.

Crawford: What did you charge to come in?

01-00:39:05 Yankee: Five dollars or something like that.

Crawford: That was some money in those days?

01-00:39:08 Yankee: Yes. I rented it from Enrico Banducci, because he was my friend. I rented it from Enrico. I knew a lot of people socially. A lot of these people, I met through Turk. Of course, my husband knew a lot of people, also.

Crawford: What was Enrico Banducci like?

01-00:39:23 Yankee: Wonderful. He died, he didn’t have any money. He gave the store away to people. He helped people all the time. He was just wonderful. Wonderful man.

Crawford: I remember he gave a piano to Donald Pippin when Donald Pippin came to San Francisco.

01-00:39:37 Yankee: Honey, Donald Pippin, we used to pay twenty-five cents to get in to hear Donald Pippin underneath— not the original— the original hungry i.

I was working at Goman’s Gay Nineties. I used to walk around the block when he used to come. We used to go to the hungry i, of course, after work, and Enrico used to give us booze at that time.

One night there was Victor Borge, Donald Pippin, what’s her name—what was her first name? She was singing there at the time. Enrico said, “I just feel like smashing glasses against the brick wall.” He got out boxes of champagne glasses, and we threw glasses at—[laughs] And Victor Borge was there playing. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. We had a ball. [laughs] Can you imagine people so stupid? It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? It sounds absolutely crazy.

Crawford: Sounds like a lot of fun.

01-00:40:30 Yankee: Yes. I met a lot of nice people. I met a lot of people. Through Enrico, I met a lot of people while at the hungry i for almost six months, the new place on Jackson.

Crawford: Great club. Well, when you were in New York, you earned better money. Was it better money?

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01-00:40:51 Yankee: Not necessarily. Not necessarily. You made a couple hundred dollars a week or something like that, two or three. Maybe $300 a week.

Crawford: And you were well known in New York?

01-00:41:04 Yankee: Oh, yeah. I could go to New York, it was fine. Well, especially Turk was. And of course, I was sort of on his coattails, that type of thing. I will admit that. But I met a lot of nice people. And we went to the Friars Club and all. We did a lot of things.

Crawford: In New York you were at Village Vanguard and Basin Street West, weren’t you? Did you go to the Apollo?

01-00:41:20 Yankee: Yes, I went with Turk to the Apollo.

Crawford: But you didn’t play there.

01-00:41:23 Yankee: No. I’m trying to think, was it Henry “Red” Allen took Turk and I to the Apollo? Did you get that story, too?

Crawford: Somebody mentioned going to the Apollo. What’s the story?

01-00:41:36 Yankee: Well, the story is we just went to the Apollo. I can’t remember whether Turk played or not. I can’t remember whether he played or not.

Crawford: You went to Carnegie Hall?

01-00:41:48 Yankee: No, I didn’t go to Carnegie Hall.

Crawford: The last year of his life.

01-00:42:17 Yankee: When he went to Carnegie Hall, I went to Spain. My husband and I went to Spain for three or four weeks. Came back, and they had this big thing on Turk Murphy. They had all things of Turk at Carnegie Hall. It was on ABC, I think, Channel 7.

I’m trying to think. It wasn’t just him. Then they had a picture of me at the Fairmont Hotel—and it looked like I was at Carnegie Hall—in an interview or something. They just left it in, and someone said, “Gee, we saw the interview at Carnegie Hall.” I said, “Yeah, wasn’t it wonderful?”

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After Turk’s death, I got my own band and I did my own thing. I did the Bessie Smith show and I did at the Alcazar here for two months. I won the Bay Area Critics Award for that, for the best female in a musical.

Crawford: Going to do that again?

01-00:43:27 Yankee: No, but I’m doing Sophie Tucker now. I just got back three weeks ago. I did it at the Performing Arts Center in Palos Verdes. I did it for about—almost 500 people came. It only seats about 500 people.

I’m doing that now. So it was kind of nice. I have a fellow that I work with, Frank Reilly. He writes a lot of shows for me. And he’s bringing out something in me that I never did before.

Crawford: Oh?

01-00:44:01 Yankee: I studied ballet and I studied dramatics, I studied everything. But I think it all helps when you do your hand motions and things like that. The singers that stand there like this, they don’t know what to do with their hands. That’s why they can’t do anything like that.

Anyway, it went over very well. The show now is going very, very well. I talked to Marie Gallo day before yesterday [of the Gallo winemaking family]. They have a new performing arts center there. So I talked to her and she’s going to try to see what she can do to get my show at the center.

Crawford: Where is that?

01-00:44:35 Yankee: In Modesto. The Gallos. I met her through Turk, twenty-five years ago. And the lady that called me back—She said, “I’ll have this lady call you back that’s booking it, Pat.” And this lady said to me, “Gee, Pat, where did you get Marie Gallo’s private number?” One of the Gallos. I said, “I’ve had it for twenty-five years, but I’ve never used it.”

Crawford: Well, what was the fortune of all the various Earthquake McGoon’s? Oh, and I wanted to ask you, too, about the Al Capp connection.

01-00:45:05 Yankee: Well, the Al Capp, from what Turk told me, he had to get permission from Al Capp to use Earthquake McGoon’s. “You can use the name, but just keep your nose clean.” That’s what he said to Turk.

Crawford: The name?

01-00:45:23 Yankee: Yeah, Earthquake McGoon’s.

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Crawford: That was a character, a wrestler I think, from his comic strip.

01-00:45:26 Yankee: Yes, exactly. And so he used that, Earthquake McGoon’s. That’s what Turk told me at that time. And I think the best club was 99 Broadway. It was 99 Broadway, wasn’t it?

I liked that best. And of course, I liked the one on Clay Street, too. Of course, the others, I wasn’t there. I came back periodically and worked there, but I didn’t work at the Rathskellar — I worked in the Embarcadero. I did work at Pier 39.

Crawford: What happened there?

01-00:46:06 Yankee: That was no place for us. No, it wasn’t the place for us. It was too much of a hassle to get there for the fans. Too much of a hassle, I thought.

Crawford: Did that make Turk unhappy?

01-00:46:19 Yankee: Yeah, well, that’s when all the problems started to happen between him and Peter Clute. Actually, it wasn’t Peter [laughs] and Turk, so much as their wives. When the whole family gets into it, you can’t do this.

Crawford: It’s very intimate.

01-00:46:35 Yankee: Yeah, it’s very intimate. If they had just stayed out and let the two work it out. Turk treated Peter like a son. Peter loved him. Absolutely. Till the day he died, he loved him. Peter died.

I used to go up to Jackson once in a while, just for old times sake, and sing with Peter up at a festival there. As a matter of fact, I was there just a little while ago. I saw Carl Lunsford, and I sat in and did some tunes. Pete used to have me come up and I used to do the old things that we did at McGoon’s.

Crawford: Where is Jackson?

01-00:47:13 Yankee: Jackson, California. Up in the Gold Country up there. Peter just didn’t feel well. He stopped at the side of the road and died. So sad. But he loved Turk. He loved Turk until the day he died.

Crawford: It was a very close relationship, wasn’t it?

01-00:47:27 Yankee: Oh, yes, very. I saw Pete’s brother up there. He’s the head of a museum up there.

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Crawford: I wanted to talk to you about See’s. You seem to have gone to all the See’s shows.

01-00:47:40 Yankee: Yes, I did, yes.

Crawford: That was great support for Turk Murphy?

01-00:47:43 Yankee: Well, you couldn’t get a better person than Charles Huggins, than Chuck Huggins. My God! He loved the man. He promoted the man any time he could.

And of course, he used to sit in and sing a few songs, which was fine. He was always on key and he was fine. He used to have us open stores in Illinois, where they had See’s Candy.

Crawford: Is that the headquarters?

01-00:48:17 Yankee: No, I think the headquarters is in Los Angeles, but the second one is here, on El Camino. Charles Huggins, as you know, retired after twenty-seven years. He retired. And the man that’s in there now doesn’t like jazz.

Crawford: That’s what somebody told me.

01-00:48:32 Yankee: Yeah, it’s terrible. Chuck used to sponsor my band all the time, for anything I ever wanted. This is after Turk died, actually. He did a lot of things for me. And not only me, but he sponsored other festivals. Other festivals. We’re talking about some big money there.

Crawford: Is there a corporate sponsor like that now for you?

01-00:48:56 Yankee: No, no. When I did my Bessie Smith show, it was almost an $800,000 production at the Alcazar. And who gave me the money were jazz fans. Ten, fifteen-thousand dollars at a time. They were jazz fans that believed in what I did.

It broke about even. Because the Alcazar was not the right place for it. But it won some accolades from the critics.

Crawford: That’s a nice theater.

01-00:49:30 Yankee: Yeah, it’s a wonderful— But it was just off the beaten path too much.

Crawford: A little bit off, yes.

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01-00:49:35 Yankee: And then we had somebody that wasn’t good for our PR work. She was a drinker, and she forgot to put the PR things out to the public and the media.

We did well, but we didn’t have the right kind of publicity for the show. We spent a lot of money. There’s one person who was wonderful with me, was Jim Pollock, who was the producer of the show. Jim Pollock Financial, from Portola Valley. He and his wife are wonderful. I just had them over here for dinner not too long ago.

Anyway, I have a lot of jazz fans that believed in me. At least we were put up, with 200 shows around the Bay Area, for the Bay Area Critics award.

I even beat Bebe Neuwirth, out of Threepenny Opera—I always felt good about that. And you know why? Because she’s so good— She’s in a lot of Broadway shows, and she is good. She’s a very good dancer and a very good actress. But I was kind of proud of that. [laughs]

Crawford: Do you think that a lack of money affected Turk?

01-00:50:48 Yankee: Oh, yes! Oh, definitely.

Crawford: That he would’ve wanted more horns?

01-00:50:52 Yankee: Well, no, I don’t think he wanted more horns; he wanted just his band the way it was. But it just wasn’t a popular jazz, let’s put it—certain people liked it, like doctors and lawyers, and people that were high in education liked Turk’s band.

People always gravitated to Turk, those kind of people always did. It wasn’t that the music was a popular thing, you have to remember.

Turk liked me because what I did with the band, I kind of brought out the entertainment part of the band, instead of having it sometimes so much one song after another, I added an extra thing to the band, of being an entertainer as well as a singer.

Crawford: Oh, yes. And a beautiful one.

01-00:51:40 Yankee: Yes, so that’s what he liked. He liked that.

Crawford: Were there other female vocalists while you were there?

01-00:51:47 Yankee: No. No, I don’t think so. No, there wasn’t, no.

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Crawford: Well, let’s see, where are we? Oh, you mentioned critics. Let’s talk about that. Phil Elwood and—

01-00:52:03 Yankee: Oh, Phil Elwood was wonderful. He wrote me up in my show this last time at the Alcazar. Wonderful glowing report. And the little man was clapping in the Chronicle, too.

Crawford: Was he out of his chair?

01-00:52:17 Yankee: No, he wasn’t out of his chair, but he was clapping.

Crawford: That’s good. [laughter] Was that Joel Selvin?

01-00:52:24 Yankee: I don’t know. I don’t know who it was. I’d have to go look.

Crawford: How about Herb Caen.

01-00:52:32 Yankee: Well, Herb was— This is after when he had that big thing in front of the Ferry Building. Remember? He had the big party and he called me and said, could I have my band play? He and the Martini Brothers, myself, and Huey Lewis and the News.

I played that day onstage with my band, and it was wonderful. There must’ve been 75,000 people or more there. The martinis were twenty-five cents apiece that day. But any time Herb wanted to know what was going on with our band or Turk’s band, he’d call me.

Crawford: He wrote about Turk constantly, didn’t he? He always fit it in.

01-00:53:12 Yankee: Yes. Oh, he did. This is one of the things that Mrs. Murphy didn’t like, if I were in any columns or anything. And before— I won’t go there. I’m sorry.

Crawford: Okay, that’s fine. I remember Herb would write things like, “Well, guess where Turk Murphy was on Friday? And as usual, I was not there. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

01-00:53:38 Yankee: The thing is, we used to meet him at the Super Bowl all the time. Herb Caen used to go to the Super Bowl. And one time he was in one part of— not Armand’s. What’s the name of the thing up there? The big restaurant in New Orleans. I can’t think of it now. He was in one room and he heard Turk’s band playing in the other. He came and he went, “My God, you’re here!” [laughs] And he wrote about that.

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Crawford: It was like his hometown band.

01-00:54:01 Yankee: Yes, he was very nice that way. He liked Turk and he liked—Turk was part of San Francisco. And I always felt like I was part of San Francisco, because I got a lot of publicity when I was at Goman’s Gay Nineties. They were wonderful to me. The Gomans were wonderful to me. And I always felt like I was part of San Francisco. Then the last ten years, I’ve been doing one show a year at Moose’s for Marietta and Ed Moose.

Crawford: I didn’t know about that.

01-00:54:34 Yankee: I come in with my whole band at the Moose’s on a Sunday afternoon and do like maybe saloon songs, or do Sophie Tucker, or I do Bessie Smith or something like that. For the last ten years, I’ve been doing that. My whole band.

Crawford: The Mooses were great San Franciscans.

01-00:54:57 Yankee: They were wonderful. Well, they’ve sold it now. Two fellows own it. Did you go?

Crawford: I went for my anniversary.

01-00:55:06 Yankee: What was it like?

Crawford: It’s not the same. It’s too bad. But Ed was a great supporter of jazz.

01-00:55:19 Yankee: I talked to Marietta a few days ago and she said, “Ed is sort of depressed right now.” They took the sign down. All his life—It’s sad. It’s very, very sad.

Crawford: Why did he sell it?

01-00:55:35 Yankee: I think he’s tired. He sold it to those Chinese and that Japanese fellow, and they—the last show I gave was very good there. I packed the house. But the owners weren’t there. Marietta and Ed were there, and they helped me do all this. But the owners weren’t there to meet and greet the people. This is what you have to do! They didn’t do it.

Crawford: We did Norma Teagarden’s oral history, which is charming, and Moose always supported her.

01-00:56:12 Yankee: Oh, I loved Norma Teagarden. Norma played for me a couple of times. Not in my band, but when we played with some of the jazz clubs. We’d go to some

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of the jazz clubs, I’d sit in with her and she’d play for me, a song she knew and I knew, we both knew. She was just a delightful, wonderful woman. She really was. I just thought she was wonderful. And she’s missed, because she was so genuine.

Crawford: Incredible family.

01-00:56:44 Yankee: Yes, right. I worked with Charlie Teagarden in the lounge at the Silver Slipper when he had his band. Charlie, Charlie. He wasn’t like Jack. Oh, I worked with Jack, too, with my band, at the Nugget.

At the Nugget, I worked with him, Jack Teagarden. He had Gene Schroeder on piano, he had Jerry Hall on clarinet—I played back-to-back with him with my band. In the lounge. We were playing in the lounge at the Nugget. In Sparks.

He drank every single night. I drank every night, too. [laughs]

Crawford: Did you? Was there a lot of drinking in Turk Murphy’s bands?

01-00:57:59 Yankee: Oh, honey. No, not so much onstage, but we made up for it when we got offstage.

Crawford: Turk wasn’t part of that?

01-00:58:06 Yankee: Turk never drank. Turk only drank when he didn’t have to work or go to work that night or something. And he didn’t drink a lot. Used to maybe have—one time we weren’t going to do anything for two or three days and we’d go some place for Bristol-Myers. We did a lot of things for Bristol-Myers.

They took us to the Dominican Republic, they took us to Ireland, they took us here, they took us there, they took us all over. One time Turk and I, we had two or three—the whole band was staying in the same place, so we drank margaritas. We just put pitchers of margaritas by the pool, and all got sloshed. [laughs] But we weren’t working, of course.

I can’t drink to this day. I have maybe a glass of wine, like I had last night. I feel like I had my drinking for the rest of my life, in my younger days. Especially in Spain. You know how in Spain they do.

Crawford: How did that affect you?

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01-00:59:06 Yankee: Well, it didn’t affect my singing, for some reason. I have my vocal chords checked every year, and it seems to be fine. Of course, I haven’t had any hard liquor for thirty years.

Crawford: Were there drugs in the band?

01-00:59:19 Yankee: No. In the band, no. Not that I knew of. Not that I knew of.

Crawford: Well, how about Wally Rose? That’s another great one.

01-00:59:32 Yankee: Wally Rose was wonderful. I didn’t work with him in Turk’s band, but I worked with him in a little place called Crystal Lil’s. That’s before I went back with Turk in 1968, and he played for me there.

We were close friends, Wally and myself. But he wasn’t sort of my type of piano player. He was more ragtime. And I had gotten out of that sort of ragtime thing at that time.

Crawford: What about Ralph Sutton? He played with Turk.

01-00:60:02

Yankee: Oh, he was wonderful. I played opposite him a lot in festivals. I played opposite him a lot in festivals. He passed away. Of course, he played the intermission for Turk at Easy Street, as you know.

He was very nice. His sister, Barbara Curtis, is a wonderful piano player. I used her at one of the dates in Sacramento.

Crawford: Where is she?

01-00:60:27 Yankee: She lives up in Ukiah. Barb Curtis. I think I have her phone number. I think I have her phone number someplace, if you want it, Caroline.

Crawford: My brother was a friend of Sutton’s.

01-00:60:44 Yankee: Oh, I loved Ralph. Oh, he drank. He drank. Oh!

Crawford: Big drinker? It kind of goes with the—what do you do? It’s three in the morning, and you need to celebrate a little.

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01-00:60:59 Yankee: Yes, exactly. I have nothing but good things to say about Turk. He was a hard taskmaster. He didn’t mind you going out and doing things, as long as you did your work well.

Crawford: Everybody says that if he didn’t like something, he would say, “I didn’t write it that way. If I wanted it that way, I would have.” That he was tough about that. Was he tough with you vocally?

01-00:61:26 Yankee: One time he said to me—which doesn’t help your confidence—he said, “We’re doing a thing for RCA Victor.” This was down in Los Angeles. We’re here, but we’re going to Los Angeles. And he said, “Now, George Avakian wants you to sing.” Because I did Roulette Records with him in New York and I did some other things with him.

Crawford: How many recordings did you do with Turk?

01-00:61:51 Yankee: Maybe six or seven. Maybe six or seven. I wasn’t with him that long.

Crawford: Where did you record?

01-00:61:58 Yankee: New York. Mostly in New York City. New York and then in Los Angeles. And then Ted Shafer had the Merrymakers records here, too. But what was I going to say about this other thing? Where was I?

Crawford: Talking about recording for George Avakian.

01-00:62:14 Yankee: Oh, he said to me, “We’re doing this for George Avakian. George Avakian did all my Columbia albums,” he said. He said, “Now, I don’t know whether your voice is good enough now, Pat, to sing on these albums, so we’re going to make a demo record for George and see what he thinks.” And I thought, oh, my God! I think why he tried to hold me down is that he didn’t want me to get the idea that I was good enough so I’d leave him. Honest to God.

I made the record. [laughs]

Crawford: You made the record. That was another story I wanted to ask you about. Apparently Avakian had asked Louis Armstrong to do “Mack the Knife.”

01-00:63:03 Yankee: Yes, and Turk wrote the arrangement.

Crawford: Turk did it. Louis didn’t think it would be a hit.

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01-00:63:09 Yankee: No, he didn’t think it was going to make it. As a matter of fact, when they came back from Europe, he didn’t even take the score with him. They had to sit around, they had to listen to a jukebox, because it was rising to become one of the biggest numbers ever for Louis.

They had to sit and listen to the jukebox because Louis’ band started to get requests for this and they didn’t know it. They didn’t have the arrangement. So they had to sit around and listen to a jukebox to get the arrangement.

Crawford: I think it was you who told the story, in the BBC interview, of Turk deciding to take $300 for the arrangement instead of royalties.

01-00:63:52 Yankee: Oh, yes, that’s right. I don’t know how many times he took $300, but I know he took— at least it was $300 of that. Turk says, “Nobody thinks this song is going to be a hit.” And that’s the way it was.

Crawford: That could’ve made him a very wealthy guy, it seems to me.

01-00:64:12 Yankee: Oh, honey. Definitely.

Crawford: You said he was kind of shy about money.

01-00:64:30 Yankee: I don’t know. I think it comes from his humble background. I think he didn’t have much confidence, because he stuttered most of his life. And that would give you not much confidence. When that thing is off, I’ll tell you a few little other things that I don’t want to—well, anyway, you can ask me your questions.

Crawford: We were talking about money.

01-00:65:03 Yankee: Yes, oh, money. Money, money. No, for some reason, he never made it in the big, big money. Never made big money. It’s like I am now doing with my band now. But now when I play the big performing arts centers, I get thousands. Not big thousands, but maybe ten, fifteen big ones.

Crawford: That’s pretty good. How many band members to pay?

01-00:65:25 Yankee: Seven. There’s eight with my narrator, director and the whole thing,

Crawford: So you might be making a thousand dollars per night.

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01-00:65:32 Yankee: I might be making a couple thousand and that’s it for me, or a thousand. Because I’ve got costumes, this last thing. I’ve got costumes, you’ve got to pay the guys something. Their transportation, their lodging, their whole thing.

So that’s why, few and far between, if I could just play three or four, maybe four, performing arts centers a year, it’d be fine. Or do a few things like that, it’d be fine at this age. First of all, Caroline, I’m not out to make a lot of money now at this age. I just want to sing and be out there once in a while.

Crawford: Describe to me what you’re doing. What is your show?

01-00:66:13 Yankee: Oh well, I’m going to sing saloon songs for this party I’m going to do. I’m going to do singers of the past and saloon songs. They’re making it into a cabaret.

And I’m going to wear something like the thirties, with the flower here and the hair like this, and then give them that kind of thing, with the gloves and the whole thing.

I’ll do songs like “One for My Baby and One More for the Road,” “Hard- Hearted Hannah,” “S’Wonderful,” “Piano Man,” “Gimme a Pigfoot and and Bottle of Beer”—all the things that Bessie Smith did, I’ll do a couple of her tunes.

Then I’ll do a couple of things of Sophie Tucker. “The Lady is a Tramp,” “Some of these Days” and “Darktown Strutters’ Ball.”

Crawford: How about Billie?

01-00:67:01 Yankee: Oh, I’ll do Billie, too. I’m not sure what I’m going to do of hers. I don’t know whether I’m going to do “God Bless the Child” or “Fine and Mellow.” I haven’t decided yet. One or the other.

I say, “This is what she sang in Pete Kelly’s Blues,” the motion picture Pete Kelly’s Blues. And do not too much talking, but just a little bit. That kind of thing. I’m only doing it with a piano player, so it’ll be kind of nice. Not a whole band.

Crawford: You’re like Bill Charlap and his mother. Do you know that they have a gig?

01-00:67:41 Yankee: No, I didn’t know that.

Crawford: In New York. At the Village Vanguard. Anyway, it’s the same kind of thing. I like that idea.

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01-00:67:50 Yankee: Gee, I wonder if the Vanguard would like some of the things I do. See, now, I got a call from somebody. It’s called the Metropole. Not the Metropole. Oh, Metropolitan. But you have to rent the place, you have to do all the publicity, and you have to get—you can take the door and he takes the booze and the whole thing.

Crawford: How about Carnegie Hall now?

01-00:68:17 Yankee: No. [laughs] I don’t know—I don’t want to do that because I’m not going to put out thousands for publicity. And publicity in New York is a lot of money, honey. You have to spend thousands.

We got ready to go back, Frank and I, and we’re all excited. Once I went and I saw Gil Weist. Woody Allen was helping me get that, in Michael’s Pub.

I was going to go in there with Bessie Smith. They were going to pay us four or five thousand dollars a week. But when we figured it all out, we’d get the musicians there; but when we figured it out, the lodging every week in New York City—you’d have to stay in a terrible looking place. And all the expenses. . We couldn’t make out, the two of us. If you split $5,000—we couldn’t even make out in a week with that.

[End Audio File 1]

[Begin Audio File 2]

Crawford: This is tape two with Pat Yankee. We’re talking about Turk Murphy and the involvement at Grace Cathedral, all the years.

02-00:00:17 Yankee: Right. I think Turk first started having the Evensong on Sunday, Easter Sunday. Started at three o’clock, three-thirty, between three and three-thirty. His son used to go to Grace Cathedral School for Boys.

I think it was he and Dean Bartlett, who was from New Orleans, and then there was another gentleman there, who was also involved in this. Turk started this, I think in the seventies, in the early seventies. And it went on and on.

And of course, when Turk passed away in ’87, it still went on. I’ve been doing it there for twenty-some years. Twenty-seven years, almost, with Bob Schulz’s band, and I’ve been singing with the little boys’ choir.

Crawford: At Evensong?

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02-00:01:04 Yankee: At Evensong, and doing gospel numbers. And I even did “Three Dog Night.” I did [sings] “Joy to the world—” [scats] “Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea—There’s joy for you and me.” I did that with the boys’ choir, which is kind of nice.

Turk would roll over if he heard me do that. But anyway, then I would come back from Spain— I was living in Spain at the time Turk started all this. I would come back especially to Grace Cathedral to sing Easter with him at Evensong. People used to come from all over.

Crawford: Did Preservation Hall sing too?

02-00:01:44 Yankee: Now, I don’t know. I think they came to Earthquake McGoon’s, but I don’t think they sang in—they could be coming now, I don’t know.

Crawford: Turk wrote something for the Easter Evensong, didn’t he? Didn’t he write a piece?

02-00:01:57 Yankee: He wrote a couple of things for Easter. But we did all jazz. We did strictly jazz and gospel things. And Turk and I sang. And of course, Chuck Huggins, who was the CEO of See’s Candy, president, he sponsored it. He and Turk got together, they started the whole thing.

Well, anyway, after Turk passed away—I guess it was in ’87—it still kept going on and on. And of course, when Bishop Swing left, then it stopped. And we have people calling all the time, wanting to know what’s happened to the Evensong—

Crawford: The new bishop—?

02-00:02:39 Yankee: Does not like that particular thing. And maybe it was a time for change. Who knows? But we were getting a thousand people every Easter Sunday.

Crawford: I remember it so well.

02-00:02:49 Yankee: And then we’d go out in the courtyard—

Crawford: And dance.

02-00:02:52 Yankee: —and dance afterwards. And not only that, when the doors opened, they would play—[sings a melody]—and the bishop would come, with the long hat, and the whole thing. It was just something to see. It was just really—

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Crawford: Miter? John Fenstermaker was playing.

02-00:03:11 Yankee: Playing the organ, yes. It was just really marvelous.

Crawford: And Jimmy Stanislaus?

Yankee: Well, he was there for a time, and then when I came back he wasn’t there anymore. He became ill. But he sang with Turk for a good ten years.

Crawford: I can see him swinging down the aisle. Well, who else do you remember? Julian Bartlett was very involved with this.

02-00:03:35 Yankee: Oh, yes. He was from New Orleans, and he and Turk started that whole thing. And I guess sold the idea to Bishop Swing, about it.

Crawford: And Alan Jones.

02-00:03:54 Yankee: Alan Jones. Oh, he loved it. I got a beautiful letter from him last year saying how much he appreciated all the things that we did. And that was very, very nice.

At Turk’s funeral, it was really something to see, Caroline. There were a thousand, 1500 or more people standing outside. I sang “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” It was very difficult. But it was a beautiful service for Turk.

And then we still went out in the courtyard and all, the whole thing. At that time, they didn’t have the courtyard but they had the things downstairs, before they had the stairs going up. And everybody danced. Even at his memorial.

Crawford: Who played at the memorial?

02-00:04:43 Yankee: Bob Schulz. Turk’s band. Turk’s band. Not Bob Schulz’s band, but the regular band played. Peter Clute and all. Peter came to play, I’m sure, at that time, too. And it was something to see.

I’ll never forget that. I always got a chance to see Bishop Swing. And his wife used to say, “All right, Pat, you get one dance with him and that’s all.” [laughs] Of course, she was teasing me. She’s a delightful woman, Mary, she’s delightful.

Crawford: Are you in touch since he retired?

02-00:05:11 Yankee: Well, no. A couple of times people have sent messages back, they said to say hello and whatnot. I think they live off the golf course at the Burlingame

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Country Club, [laughs] because I think he wants to play golf. But he’s still going with his International Church. International Church is trying to get peace amongst the churches and the people of different countries. He’s still working very hard on that.

It was fun to do that. It really was something. I loved singing with those little voices, from the seventh grade on up.

Crawford: My son started in the fourth grade.

02-00:06:14 Yankee: Oh. Did he sing in the choir, too? Maybe I knew him!

Crawford: He knew Turk. Well, what did Turk leave behind?

02-00:06:44 Yankee: Well, he left behind a lot of happiness. A lot of people admire him for some of the things he did. He was a very generous man about giving the band and doing things for charity. We used to go out to the Shriner’s Hospital every Christmas and do a whole show for the little children out there. Every Christmas, we went out there. He was very kind.

Crawford: And you did a lot of benefits for musicians who were ill.

02-00:07;09 Yankee: Not only that, every time— I remember staying up til five-thirty in the morning on the back end of a truck in front of City Hall and doing the Earthquake Days. I remember doing that. Turk did that. We were out in the cold playing.

He was always doing something like that. We did a lot of charitable things. That’s the way he was. He left a wonderful legacy of music, and he was a man of kindness. He was a man of kindness.

Crawford: Thank you, Pat.

[End of Yankee Interview]

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William Carter Interview #1: April 8, 2009 [Begin Audiofile 1]

Crawford: This is April 8, 2009, and I’m interviewing Bill Carter for the Turk Murphy oral history. Let us start by talking about New Orleans jazz, the instrumentation and perhaps some of the musicians whom you most admire.

01-00:00:36 Carter: Okay. I can sort of make it chronological, if you like. I grew up in Los Angeles, and I became interested in New Orleans jazz in my teens.

There was a wonderful band from New Orleans living and playing in Los Angeles, Kid Ory’s band. They were not very far from where I lived, and they also had a radio program. So I became hooked on that and read a lot of books about New Orleans jazz and was very much of a purist on that one style of music. I played clarinet, played since I was eight years old, and so I began playing with a band in L.A.

Crawford: What part of L.A?

01-00:01:32 Carter: Well, south of Hollywood. It’s called Hancock Park.

Crawford: Sure. Was there music in the family?

01-00:01:39 Carter: My mother taught piano a little bit. She had half a major in music, and her father, my grandfather, played a lot of instruments. So there was music to that extent. But it wasn’t like one of those musical families, where there are instruments all over the living room all the time.

Crawford: You mentioned radio right away—was that important?

01-00:02:06 Carter: Yes, I think that’s something in jazz history that’s sometimes left out. Before television, and let’s say after vaudeville, radio was a really primary way of transmitting the music—and a lot of other music, popular music in general— to the world, from the thirties and forties, particularly. There were live radio broadcasts of jazz quite a lot. There were some here in San Francisco and there were some in Los Angeles.

Crawford: Do you remember what, specifically?

01-00:02:47 Carter: Well, there was half an hour on Friday nights. I don’t remember the station, but it was Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band every Friday night.

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I was too young to get into the places where they played—except I think if you went with your mother, you could get in, but what teenager wants to do that? [laughter]

Crawford: Where was that?

01-00:03:10 Carter: It was called the Beverly Caverns, not far from Hancock Park. These were some of the old, original guys from New Orleans in the very beginning.

Crawford: Who do you remember?

01-00:03:24 Carter: Kid Ory’s band, including Ed “Montudie” Garland on the bass and Ram Hall on the drums, and of course Ory on trombone.

He had a succession of great clarinet players. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear the greatest of them, which was Jimmie Noone. But I collected records a lot. I’d go on Saturday mornings and listen. In those days, they had little booths where you could go and listen. I’d check out about fifty records on Saturday morning at nine o’clock and then come out at twelve, and I might buy one, if the guy looked at me.

Crawford: You were good. [they laugh]

01-00:04:08 Carter: You could do that kind of stuff. He was a very nice man. And I ended up with a nice collection.

Crawford: What did a record cost in those days, do you remember?

01-00:04:16 Carter: Eighty cents for the 78, something like that. It’s funny how you remember things like that. Don’t ask me what something cost last week. [laughs]

Crawford: Why did you choose clarinet?

01-00:04:31 Carter: A strange story. I had a little bit of background in piano, but not much. But anyway, I had pneumonia when I was six or seven, and the doctor told my mother, “To strengthen his lungs, he should blow up a paper bag fifty times a day.”

She said, “He’ll never do that. It has to be something with a purpose.” So he said, “How about a musical instrument?” And she said, “Fine.” So he said, “How about a trumpet?” She said, “It’s too loud.” “How about a clarinet?” So they settled on that.

Crawford: Great story.

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01-00:05:06 Carter: Yes.

Crawford: That’s serendipity, isn’t it?

01-00:05:07 Carter: It is. I wouldn’t want to play any other instrument, I mean as the choice instrument in a jazz band, because the clarinet has vast freedom to go all over the place and play this arabesque line and fill in, where the other instruments, their role is much more specifically defined.

Crawford: True. Well, what about your studies?

01-00:05:33 Carter: What did I study? You mean in college?

Crawford: I’m talking about music now. What direction did you take?

01-00:05:38 Carter: When I started, I took lessons, like most kids. I think that the music lessons were somewhat like learning to type. It was a sort of mechanical way of learning your horn along with learning your embouchure. I think that there should be more of ear training and harmony going with it. Maybe there is more today.

Anyway, then I played in school bands. I played in the grammar school band and then in high school, I was in the marching band. It was a military-type band. I went to Harvard School, a military school, and the band was the best deal because instead of walking around with a rifle, you walked around with your horn.

Crawford: More serendipity.

01-00:06:33 Carter: Yes. [laughs] And then eventually, later, much later, I played in the National Guard Band, which was also better than working with rifles and things. I was also in a California all-youth symphony orchestra, which— grand name, but it was a nice little—not little, big—orchestra in L.A.

Crawford: Classical?

01-00:06:55 Carter: Classical, yes. Philharmonic-type stuff. I learned to read well enough for that, but I was never a great reader. I didn’t stay with that in a very professional way, like some did. I moved more, much more into jazz by the time I was a junior, senior in high school. We were playing little gigs around L.A. for dances and things, in the Costa Del Oro Jazz Band.

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That was led by a guy named Bruce Dexter, and Jim Leigh was in the band. Jim has since become a well-known trombone player and English teacher and so forth.

Crawford: Who was the director of the orchestra, do you remember?

01-00:07:43 Carter: Of the symphony orchestra? I forgot his name. Can’t remember.

Crawford: Remember what you played?

01-00:07:57 Carter: I know we played a Mozart symphony, because Mozart wrote not only for clarinet in B-flat, but for clarinet in A. You had to transpose the music half a step. I got an A clarinet, which was hard to find, but I found one.

Crawford: For that piece?

01-00:08:19 Carter: For that and then some other things, yes.

Crawford: The A refers to a particular key tuning.

01-00:08:24 Carter: Yes. The C on a normal clarinet is the same as a B-flat on the piano. On the normal clarinet, everybody’s used to playing in the key of C. It’s the simplest key in a jazz band.

So you’re playing this in the key of C. But Mozart would be writing for A clarinet. That meant you were playing all kinds of sharps and flats all the time.

What happened was that the A clarinet—some of the bars and joints we played in jazz bands, the pianos were so out of tune that it was really flat. It was hard to tune the clarinet down. So I used the A clarinet. [laughs]

Crawford: And it worked?

01-00:09:19 Carter: It worked. [laughs]

Crawford: More or less.

01-00:09:22 Carter: Sort of, yes.

Crawford: You could play in the clubs. You couldn’t go in them, but you could eventually play in them?

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01-00:09:28 Carter: Yes. By the time I was— Sometimes these were private dances, they weren’t bars, and some of us, by the time we were seniors in high school, we had fake IDs anyway.

Crawford: What clubs did you go to, do you remember?

01-00:09:45 Carter: There was a little place called Aldo’s. Nobody will ever have heard of that. That was actually after I was a freshman in college, I think. I had my own little band there. That was on Melrose. I wasn’t playing in the regular professional clubs when I was in high school; those were for guys that were working full-time.

Bands would play five, six nights a week. It’s unheard of today, but there would be three or four around L.A and four or five around San Francisco going all the time. In traditional jazz, I’m talking about.

Crawford: There was a big blues scene, too, on Central, wasn’t there?

01-00:10:43 Carter: Oh, in L.A, yes. There was.

Crawford: All the great blues people played there, I think.

01-00:10:48 Carter: Yes, they did. Including Louis Armstrong. I went down there to hear him one time.

Crawford: Where did he play?

01-00:10:54 Carter: On Central Avenue. I forget the name of the place, but it was great. That was one where I got my mother to take me and— [laughs] She was a little bit scared about this black area.

Crawford: What did it look like, Central Avenue?

01-00:11:13 Carter: Well, the street had a lot of nightclubs and rundown places and people standing around. It was a small, amazingly small nightclub that probably could’ve had a dance floor, but they had all the chairs there because it was Louis Armstrong and they could seat everybody.

Crawford: What year would that have been?

01-00:11:35 Carter: 1950 or ’51. Jack Teagarden was in his band, Barney Bigard was in his band. It was a great band.

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Crawford: It was. The All-Stars.

01-00:11:48 Carter: The All-Stars, right.

Crawford: Well, then you went on to Stanford.

01-00:11:53 Carter: Went on to Stanford, and the guy that I had played with in Los Angeles a lot also moved up here about that time. I mentioned him, Jim Leigh.

He was very serious about the music. He had a band in San Jose that I sometimes played with, and I was in a fraternity at Stanford that had a jazz band in the fraternity. That was an era when every college campus in America had a Dixieland band somewhere.

Crawford: Is that right?

01-00:12:35 Carter: I’m exaggerating. Let’s say 80 percent of them did. Yes.

Crawford: What fraternity?

01-00:12:44 Carter: It was Alpha Delta Phi, and the band was called the Alpha Delt Jazz Band.

It was a pretty amateurish group. They were sort of in awe of me because I had a lot more experience than the rest of the guys in the band. But it was fun.

At Stanford I also met Pete Clute. Pete was in a different fraternity there. I can’t remember; we’d have to look it up to remember what it was. But he was very interested in ragtime piano playing.

I think it was before graduating or about when he graduated he got a job with Turk Murphy’s band. His teacher had been Wally Rose, and he replaced Wally in that band. Pete eventually—that became his career. He was many years with Turk Murphy’s band.

Crawford: He was with Turk for thirty years, wasn’t he?

01-00:13:44 Carter: Yes. He and Turk were business partners for much of that time, as well, in the music world that they were playing in and the nightclubs that Turk owned and so forth.

So, well, I’m sort of skipping forward. While I was in college, I did meet more and more of the infrastructure of jazz musicians in the Bay Area and began to play a little here and there.

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Crawford: At Stanford you weren’t in music.

01-00:14:15 Carter: No. I was a humanities honors program major. I eventually became a photographer and writer. So that’s how that happened.

But the interesting point about Pete was we knew each other at Stanford. And then when I was a junior, 1955, Turk needed a clarinet player to go on tour because Bob Helm couldn’t go on tour. Pete suggested me and I got the job. So I went on tour with Turk’s band out of college, for about five or six months.

Crawford: Was that the New Orleans tour?

01-00:15:05 Carter: That was one of the stops, yes. First of all, we started in San Francisco for about two weeks. Then we went to New York. We did all kinds of amazing— I was twenty years old. For a guy to have that unbelievable sudden level of professional publicity and all that.

We recorded for Columbia in New York and in New Orleans, for Columbia. We were in New York, Columbus, Ohio, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Chicago— at the Blue Note in Chicago—and a place called London, Ontario, and in Toronto, and in Detroit.

I eventually left the band, for different reasons. Partly because I had a deferment for the draft, being a student, and if I stayed out of school too long I’d lose my deferment.

More fundamentally, everyone I was around was a professional musician, and that was not really— I could see that that was not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. But it it’s been a very strong avocation ever since.

Crawford: How long did you stay?

01-00:16:30 Carter: Let’s say five and a half months.

Crawford: That was the total of your time there.

01-00:16:35 Carter: Yes, with Turk.

Crawford: Who else was in the band then?

01-00:16:40 Carter: Doc Evans on the cornet; Pete Clute was on the piano; Turk, of course, on the trombone. Dick Lammi was in the band, and he played either banjo, most of

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the time, or else bass—string bass, actually. Thad Wilkerson was the drummer. I think that’s all. Six pieces.

Crawford: It was usually six.

01-00:17:11 Carter: Yes. Yes. We made a record in New York, under the A&R man George Avakian, who worked for Columbia, and this was kind of a special record. Avakian was very supportive of Turk. But this was a special thing for a 45 RPM. It was “Mack the Knife” on one side, and then “Maryland, my Maryland” on the other side.

When we got to New York, we didn’t have a trumpet player. It was a crazy thing. That was before Doc Evans came in the band. Columbia found Billy Butterfield, who was very famous, and doing a lot of studio work, to play the part in that band. And a great bass player, Milt Hinton, also came in to fill out the band for that recording.

Okay, there were those sides, and Lotte Lenya sang “Mack the Knife” with the band. This is a hardly known recording, because it wasn’t distributed in the United States. What had happened was— You’ve probably heard this story.

Crawford: I’ve heard the story that Turk accepted $300 for his arrangement of “Mack the Knife” and no rights.

01-00:18:56 Carter: Yes, that’s right. That’s right. At that point, Columbia didn’t realize what a big hit they had on their hands with Louis’ recording of it, which was Turk’s arrangement. But that took off.

This is the same company that had recorded Louis and recorded us. Columbia never put out the Turk record—except in a very minor way for jukeboxes or something—because that would be like competing with themselves. That’s another part of the story.

But I remember meeting her when she came in. She was a very famous sort of diva.

Crawford: Was she married to Kurt Weill?

01-00:19:44 Carter: I don’t know if she was married, but yes, she sang the Threepenny Opera and all his work. She was German and performed it in the United States.

For me, it was very interesting to see how professionals operated in a studio. They’d come in and, like professionals anywhere, they’re polite and

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everything and pay attention to their work, and usually get it right the first time. Except not in her case.

Crawford: When you record like that for a major company, do you get residuals after that?

01-00:20:40 Carter: Maybe you do now, but you didn’t then.

Crawford: You weren’t a union member?

01-00:20:44 Carter: Yes, yes. With Turk’s band, we got paid by the week. We were getting paid $200 a week, and in those days, that covered everything. So then you knew that you had— It was unusual for jazz musicians to know where their next meal was coming from. So for me, at twenty years old, that was fantastic.

Crawford: Quite a gig.

01-00:21:19 Carter: Yes, we drove [to all the cities] actually. Turk and Pete had driven their cars back east so it was a great education in life, as well as in music. I grew up in a fairly sheltered environment, but suddenly to be in the middle of New York and these strange hotels in Toronto and all this kind of stuff was quite educational, let’s say. [laughs]

In the course of it, I met a number of famous jazz musicians who had been distant gods to me up until then—Zutty Singleton was one.

Crawford: I heard a story, and I don’t know if it pertains to this visit to New Orleans, but that Turk was upset because black musicians weren’t being fairly treated, he felt, in New Orleans. And he went to the union and got them some rights. Was that the same trip?

01-00:22:17 Carter: I’m not sure.

Crawford: I think it was Leon who told me this story.

01-00:22:20 Carter: Well, Leon would know, yes. I didn’t remember that happening. He may have been back there more than once. New Orleans had separate unions for black and white musicians, and it was actually on the books that it was illegal for them to appear on the same stage, at the same place.

Crawford: Although Jack Teagarden was in Louis’ band and toured the South.

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01-00:22:46 Carter: Yes, there was some stuff about that, and I don’t want to go on record because there are people who know better about that. But I think Louis was on a high enough level so that he came in as an out-of-town band, and probably the local musicians unions weren’t all that involved. It was in concert format.

Crawford: That’s right. Well, what were your impressions of New Orleans?

01-00:23:20 Carter: I’m trying to remember because I don’t want to mix up two things. I was also there at a different time many years later. You see, Turk’s music was based on New Orleans music, but it was a little different—San Francisco jazz had its own style. My basic interest was the New Orleans music from which Turk’s was derived, with these easy crossover areas.

I wanted to find some of the older original guys, the black musicians of New Orleans, and I couldn’t find them. We didn’t have all that much time, but I looked around.

There was some commercial stuff going on on Bourbon Street, but I couldn’t find [the original musicians]. The town had sort of forgotten about its own historic jazz at that time.

Only later, through Preservation Hall and some other efforts by other people, were the old original musicians found and brought back and given a place to play.

Then that became a tourist item, and when there was a tourist item, New Orleans woke up to it. But it was kind of like—what is that word? The prophet in his own country.

Crawford: Yes.

01-00:24:44 Carter: They don’t care about— A lot of foreigners were coming in looking for these people, a lot of English.

Crawford: Why? Why did they stop playing, the black musicians; why did they stop playing this jazz?

01-00:24:57 Carter: Several reasons. Musical styles had changed. These are guys were grounded in the styles of the 1920s, maybe 1930s.

The scene had shifted, and they kept doing things their own way, which was their way, but only a few aficionados, at that time in the history, appreciated them. These guys were like anachronisms.

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There was the racial thing—black and white musicians weren’t allowed to play together—and another thing that happened in the 1920s, or after World War I— lot of the best black musicians moved north with the music, to Chicago and New York. And to California. Kid Ory’s band came out here.

So some of the talent had already gone, long since, out of town. But there were others who didn’t move, and they were sort of consigned to playing one night a week in some obscure bar or something. You had to really be an insider to find out where these people were playing.

Crawford: Too bad.

01-00:26:17 Carter: Yes. This is a whole other story. I did a book called Preservation Hall, in which I went into all of this. [Preservation Hall: Music from the Heart, W.W. Norton, 1991]

Crawford: A photographic book?

01-00:26:26 Carter: Yes, it’s photo and text. I have copies of it.

Crawford: Talk about that, if you would. About the book project.

01-00:26:35 Carter: We’re jumping way forward in time.

Crawford: I realize that, but about Preservation Hall.

01-00:26:44 Carter: Preservation Hall was founded around 1961, and by 1970, I was living in California again. I had been living abroad and worked as a photojournalist overseas and so forth, but I returned to California. I told you I was working for Sunset magazine.

The Preservation Hall started in a little joint in New Orleans, on a shoestring, and in some miraculous way, they found a lot of the older musicians and started having a place for them to play once or twice a week.

It was sleepy at first, but it got going more and more. It soon caught the public fancy and got a lot of write-ups and publicity. So they started having bands that would tour around the United States, in addition to having a place for those musicians to play in New Orleans.

Every summer they used to come and play throughout California, and they would come and play for two weeks at Stanford, five nights a week or something like that. And so we got to know them. We went to hear them play, and I became friends with them over a period of time. They played at Stanford

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for twenty-five years, every summer. Not only Stanford, they played at Stern Grove, they played—

Crawford: They played at Grace Cathedral sometimes, didn’t they?

01-00:28:28 Carter: Yes. Not that often—Turk played there a lot. But they played at Mondavi Winery, and they had a California tour every summer and a lot of them would bring their wives or cousins, and it was sort of a family event.

People fell in love with these old guys with their own style. You couldn’t intend to create the way that they were and the way they played. They just had folkways that were theirs. They would bring their own cook with them, because they knew what kind of food was real. [laughs]

One of them knew that you change times when you fly. But it wasn’t real time to him, so he had two—he was a drummer—and he had two watches. One was the time in California, but the other one kept the real time, which was in New Orleans. [laughs]

Crawford: Good idea.

01-00:29:30 Carter: In the same spirit, they kept their own food and their own way of playing. That was what was so great about them

Crawford: What was different about that sound, would you say, different than Lu Watters’ or Turk’s sound? Their approach to the music.

01-00:29:50 Carter: I think that—how to say it? These guys knew jazz in their DNA. They came out of a background of marching bands playing in the streets, and they were not general, professional musicians who elected to play this one kind of music.

That’s another reason why they weren’t working much in New Orleans. When that style went out, most of them couldn’t suddenly shift to bossa nova or the waltz or whatever else, playing for dances on boats or something. They just did that one thing. But 100 percent of their being went into that, so it had tremendous force.

Turk and Lu and all were very interested in traditional jazz and they really put themselves into it. But they came from a background, as Clancy Hayes and many of them did, of dance band music in the thirties, and general professional-level music. And they were better trained, from a pure musical standpoint. That is, the San Francisco guys.

Crawford: They were well trained, weren’t they?

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01-00:31:05 Carter: I’m making a generalization, because some of the New Orleans guys were also well trained, but as a rule, they were just rough and ready. They had come from the place and the time when jazz was born, and so they had that right in their bones.

The blues was very much a part of that, too, and a lot of their gigs would be— Like Dee Dee Pierce, he played cornet accompanying his wife, who was a blues singer. And so they had that deep, long background. Some of them were country people, too, not just city people. There was country blues.

Crawford: It’s amazing that they could travel so much, as they did. But that was the cook, I suppose. [laughter]

01-00:32:04 Carter: The cook was part of it. And the leader of the whole thing was a guy, Allan Jaffe, who kept it going, kept it together. If you dig into stories of many bands—not just them, but Ellington or anybody—traveling together and getting along can be a challenge.

Crawford: Let’s back up. How did you do? You had replaced Bob Helm. That was tough. Of course, they knew that he was coming back?

01-00:32:36 Carter: Right—now we are going back from 1980 to 1955—nobody ever knew from week to week. From hindsight, we knew he was coming back, though.

Crawford: Where did he go when the band went on tour?

01-00:32:45 Carter: I think that he just—one of the previous trips had not gone well and he just said, “I’m not going again,” or something like that. I’m not sure why he didn’t go. He had a history of playing for many years with Turk, but then of just wanting out for a while, for some reason.

Crawford: Lu Watters, too.

01-00:33:11 Carter: Well, the reason Lu and some others were out for a while was because of the war, because these guys were drafted and they went. That broke up the band for a while, World War II. But I think Helm loved playing with Watters.

The other one was Ellis Horn, with Lu Watters. But anyway, there’s a lot of history in the late thirties and forties of how the two of them were back and forth with Watters. But it was principally Helm.

Crawford: Why do you think Turk Murphy broke away from Lu Watters?

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01-00:33:51 Carter: Watters quit. He just folded the band. I think it was the New Years Eve of 1950, was when it just stopped.

Crawford: I understood that Turk Murphy broke with him about that time because they didn’t agree about things—

01-00:34:11 Carter: Yes, there was a lot of that.

Crawford: He wanted to do his own thing.

01-00:34:14 Carter: Yes. I think Leon would be more precise than I about exactly what happened. But both Turk and Bob Scobey went away to form their own groups, after Watters retired and dissolved his band.

Crawford: Why did you personally gravitate to traditional jazz when bebop was developing?

01-00:34:45 Carter: Well, I understood the music; I didn’t understand bop when I listened to it. It was fairly new, bebop was. There was a kind of partisan fervor about this thing. It’s hard to describe.

There were people who believed that this was the true jazz, the true music. When you’re a teenager, it’s really easy to get enlisted in a crusade. [laughs] And I was swept into that by reading these very books that called this “the real jazz.”

Crawford: So there was some resistance and some controversy about bebop.

01-00:35:30 Carter: There was a lot. It was like the Grand Canyon, down between the modernists and the so-called moldy figs.

Crawford: Moldy figs, yes. [laughs]

01-00:35:36 Carter: Yes. I later got over that sort of partisanship. I can enjoy some modern music now and so forth, but I don’t play it. I didn’t ever educate myself musically as a clarinetist, and my ear and so forth, to play with Stan Getz or somebody like that.

Crawford: You understand it, though.

01-00:36:07 Carter: I understand some of it, yes. Mm-hm. And I think a lot of the controversies between those two camps were more between the followers of the music than

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they were between the musicians themselves. But new converts to anything carry a torch.

Crawford: Very gung-ho. Well, so you stayed at Stanford, and you met Turk Murphy in what year?

01-00:36:44 Carter: I think I had met him by going and listening to his band at the Italian Village as a student. I came to Stanford in ’52, so I probably went up to the bandstand and shook hands with him once in ’52 or ’53. And then that was ’55, I believe, when we went on the tour.

Crawford: You were just on the tour and didn’t play at Italian Village?

01-00:37:12 Carter: No. No. Oh, well, before the tour we were playing at the Tin Angel for two weeks.

Crawford: Talk about the Tin Angel. Nobody’s talked much about that.

01-00:37:28 Carter: Well, there are people around who know the whole history of it and all. It changed hands, it changed names later, became On the Levee, after we were there and after Kid Ory moved up to San Francisco from Los Angeles and took over that club.

It was owned by a lady named Peggy Tolk-Watkins, the Tin Angel. She was quite a character, with her own distinctive lifestyle. Probably others could tell you better about it than I could.

It was right across the street from Pier 23. Pier 23 is still there, where Burt Bales played. I was really struggling to get with the band. Turk’s was not an easy band to play with because he had a vast repertoire. He had a lot of music written out on sheets. You weren’t supposed to just read the music, but for the benefit of somebody coming new in the band, like me, I stayed in a hotel in San Francisco for that two weeks and I would borrow a few tunes every day and try to go home and learn these things.

With many traditional jazz bands, it’s a standard repertoire that everybody knows; but Turk’s whole thing was to push it beyond, into much more interesting and complex arrangements and very precise ways of doing things. So as a new guy who hadn’t been around the professional scene at all, I was really running to catch up.

Crawford: What was the music? It was not notated music.

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01-00:39:25 Carter: No, it was like— Turk called it a roadmap. It sort of showed you that there would an introduction and then the first chorus and then a break somewhere, and that would be a trumpet break, so you knew to stop. Or if it was a clarinet break, you’d know to come in.

Then there’d be the second chorus, and that might repeat twice. It didn’t tell you what notes to play, but it told you sort of where you were in the pattern of the music.

And there were certain things that were—it would say, “Play as is.” That would be underlined in red on the music, and then you knew to play those notes. You had to know how to read music well enough to do a few of those things.

Crawford: Your musical line wasn’t there.

01-00:40:09 Carter: No, only the lines and the staff were there. For the clarinet part, it would show you what the trumpet part was, lightly, so that you knew how to avoid playing that. But what you played was up to you entirely. You had to stay within the written chord sequence and know whose solo was coming up, or if it was sixteen-bars of piano, you knew to stop.

Crawford: That sounds pretty challenging. Much is made of the band having two cornets, and I think I read that Turk Murphy always wanted to have that, as they did in the Creole Band.

01-00:40:52 Carter: No. No, that’s not correct. The Watters band had two trumpets or two cornets.

Crawford: Louis and King Oliver did not?

01-00:41:02 Carter: King Oliver did, yes, and the Watters arrangements and sound were connected with King Oliver’s band, and they played a lot of King Oliver’s songs.

The way the two cornets played together was a very distinctive sound to the Watters band. But when Turk started his band, he only had one trumpet or cornet. And sometimes he had none. Sometimes there was only trombone and clarinet. Mostly for economy reasons.

Turk and Bob Helm, at the Italian Village, a lot of times would play with no trumpet at all. But so there’s a sort of fierce partisanship about that, with people that say, well, only the Watters band’s sound was the right one, with the two trumpets and so forth.

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So when Turk and Scobey formed their own bands, they cut it down to one trumpet or cornet.

Crawford: What would be the ramifications of two cornets for you, for the clarinet?

01-00:42:14 Carter: It’s a thicker texture, so you have to find your part a little more carefully. That is, one of the ideas is you’re not stepping on the other people’s notes. The trumpet player’s the lead, the melody. So in the back of your ears, you know where that is.

So what I’m playing is either above or below that. If I go below it with two cornets, the second cornet is also below it, so I might be stepping on his part, too.

Crawford: More difficult for you.

01-00:42:50 Carter: It’s much more difficult. It limits your range. And it also limits the flexibility of the lead trumpet. The two trumpets have to kind of keep together. So they’re not really allowed to go all over the place, like Louis Armstrong might go up or down or all over the place. Those guys have to stick together. So it gives the band a more formalized sound, if they have two cornets.

Crawford: Difficult for the trombone too.

01-00:43:31 Carter: Yes, that’s right. It limits his range, his notes. Let’s see. I was going to say something else about that. Oh. It just raises the volume that much more. A clarinet player really has to worry about volume, because the brass instruments—typically, you’re playing with trumpet, trombone, and clarinet.

Just natively, the clarinet isn’t as loud as the trumpet and trombone. Especially if they’re playing forté a lot of the time. So the clarinet— I had to develop a lot of ways to—you force more air through the horn than it’s really made for. And that’s part of the sound. But if you play it high, that helps. You can be heard if you’re playing high. If you play in the low register on the clarinet—

Crawford: You get lost.

01-00:44:31 Carter: You get lost. Well, you can do it if you’re playing a solo or if everybody’s playing softly or at some other special time. But in most of the ensemble work, you have to be above to be heard. Okay, that problem is just magnified one more time, if you add one more brass instrument.

Crawford: The same would be true of tuba, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t tuba force you to a heavier sound?

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01-00:44:55 Carter: Tuba does. It pushes up the overall thing, too.

Crawford: Would you talk about the substitution of the tuba for bass?

01-00:45:07 Carter: That’s a long story. When jazz was invented in the late nineteenth century, it came out of marching bands. It came out of two streams: marching bands on the street that had a tuba; then the other strain were stringed instruments, which played indoors.

Stringed instruments included the piano sometimes and the guitar and the string bass. So jazz was a fusion of the rough-and-ready street musicians, coming together to play at party or something, with the string musicians, who tended to be more Creole, and the piano was a nice parlor instrument. So some bands ended up with the tuba as the bass, and some ended up with a string bass as the bass. One didn’t come before the other one.

Crawford: That makes a lot of sense. Tuba for the street. I like that.

01-00:46:18 Carter: Yes, you can’t walk around with a string bass. [they laugh] Or a piano, for that matter.

Crawford: Well, let’s talk more specifically about Turk Murphy and your impressions of him, when you met him and how it was to work for him.

01-00:46:36 Carter: He was very serious about the music. He was very professional about how he wanted his band to come up to a certain level, because he had a responsibility for running this organization.

He could be very temperamental. I had enormous respect for him because of his musical knowledge and his deep scholarship in the music and what he brought out of it. He found all kinds of great material of the past that had been lost, and brought it out and played it in his style again.

He was a good arranger. I was twenty, and here’s this guy I was looking up to. And he was kind to me and nice. I wasn’t a guy that was going to come and challenge him, right? I was a neophyte on the block.

He kept the band working for years, and he was very proud of that. That was not easy to do. He would do some really dumb things, from one time to another. [laughs]

Crawford: You mean in business or in music?

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01-00:48:06 Carter: In business, primarily, but the two were not separable. We left from California to New York. We left. We did not have a trumpet player.

Crawford: Yes. [laughs] That’s risky.

01-00:48:19 Carter: And we were going to play in some high-profile places in New York, like Basin Street East and for Columbia. But he was relying on George Avakian at Columbia to find him a trumpet player for New York.

Crawford: Wouldn’t that be difficult for recording, to have a new player?

01-00:48:37 Carter: That’s right. He found Billy Butterfield, who was good enough to do it. And there was another guy named Johnny Glazelle, who was— New York would’ve been the place to look, if you had to find somebody.

Eventually, we went on the road out of New York and Doc Evans was brought in to make the tour. He was a very well known Dixieland trumpet player from Minneapolis. And that worked quite well for the band.

But I’ll give you an example of impulsive, dumb things that sometimes Turk could be known to do. When we were leaving New York, we did not have a trumpet player. We’d managed in New York, by these different ringers that came for one or two nights, but we were playing at some sit-in session down in— I think it was the Lower East Side or someplace.

A young kid came and sat in with the band, and he played, I think, one tune or maybe two tunes. He played “Panama” and he played it fantastic. Solos and everything. Turk hired him immediately to go on the road with us. And the next appearance with this guy would be with us in Columbus, Ohio.

I think he was even younger than I. He was an Alaskan, an Alaskan Eskimo. He was eighteen years old. I can’t remember his name. There’s pictures, some rare pictures of him somewhere floating around.

I knew enough about this band to know that you really did have to read music to some degree, because there were a lot of tunes in there that nobody knew, if you weren’t— this kid, he knew a few standards and nothing else. And he could absolutely not read music.

I remember driving in the car on the way to Columbus, and I was sitting next to him, and to tell you how naïve he was, he said, “Do you have music in this band? You read?” He’s already hired and we’re almost in Columbus.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Do you read music?” “No, no, I don’t read music. But,” he said, “why don’t you come up to my hotel room for a couple of hours before

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we go on and show me how to read music?” [laughs] I mean, this is impossible.

Crawford: If he didn’t read music at all, he played completely by ear?

01-00:51:40 Carter: Yes! But Turk didn’t even know that. He had hired him like that [snaps fingers] because he’d heard him play one tune. That’s what I mean about these snap decisions.

Crawford: Please finish the story. I’m on pins and needles.

01-00:51:51 Carter: Well, we got on the stage and I just—it was like one of those Greek tragedies, where you know what’s going to happen. He got on the stage and Turk unfolded this music and the kid played nothing. He bleeped around and halfway through the first set, Turk just told him to get off the stage.

This was the first professional job of this kid. I felt so sorry for him, and I could see the whole thing coming. There was nothing I could do to—so Turk and I finished out the set, and maybe another night or two, just without a trumpet.

He sent him home, and Turk got really mad at him. But Turk should’ve been mad at himself for doing such a dumb thing as to hire this guy and bring him all the way over—

Crawford: He just assumed that he could manage.

01-00:52:45 Carter: He played the tune “Panama” and I remember it was a tune everybody knows, almost like “The Saints” or something. So eventually, Turk put in some distress calls and got Doc Evans to come down.

Crawford: Pete Clute was on the tour with you.

01-00:53:09 Carter: He was the pianist, yes.

Crawford: What was his style of playing? He was essentially a ragtime player, did you say?

01-00:53:18 Carter: He was a ragtime player. He was derived from ragtime, in exactly the same way as Wally Rose, who had been his mentor, his teacher. Wally had been Turk’s piano player for many years before that. So it was like a young Wally Rose coming into the band, as far as the sound.

Crawford: What in your view is the relation of ragtime to Dixieland?

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01-00:53:51 Carter: Well, ragtime, number one, is basically piano music, although it can be played by ensembles. It was a very particular kind of music in the nineteenth century that came down the Mississippi from Missouri and so forth.

It was a polite kind of orderly music, whereas jazz was a fusion of many, many influences. Ragtime was one influence in jazz, but jazz came out of the street bands, it came out of the blues. And ragtime was a written music. It was meant to be played as written; it was not an improvised music.

Crawford: I’m curious about that because Leonard Feather defines traditional jazz as largely orchestral ragtime, and that doesn’t seem to equate to me.

01-00:54:59 Carter: No, that’s wrong.

Crawford: He adds “with rhythmic complications.”

Carter: Well, yes, it has rhythmic complications, but— Leonard Feather, I guess, was a fine reviewer of mainstream and modern jazz, but I never had the impression that he knew much about the origins of jazz.

Crawford: What did you think about the Ken Burns treatment of jazz on television?

01-00:55:31 Carter: I was of two minds about it. I wrote a long and very carefully written article about it in the Mississippi Rag. I can provide you with that.

Crawford: I would like that.

01-00:55:44 Carter: That’s great, because I expressed the view of a lot of traditional musicians in there. I think that he dug up a lot of great footage, pictorial stuff, and he gave it a national audience.

Jazz really deserves a major place in the American canon, lexicon; it was our most original art form in this country. So for that, he had $10 million to work with, from GM.

But he was naïve. He came at it as a non-musician, and he had a chip on his shoulder. Two chips on his shoulder. One of the chips on his shoulder was that there were lots of people around who knew a lot more about jazz than he did. But he had to talk like the authority.

And the main thing is, Ken Burns, if you looked at the totality of his work, he was really on a “black is beautiful” idea. He did a thing on baseball, and Jackie Robinson became the most important baseball player for him. Jackie Robinson is important. The history of black and white relations in America is

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a massively important subject. But that didn’t mean that Jackie Robinson should be the center, more than Babe Ruth or many other people.

And so Ken Burns carried that into jazz. The first jazz band we know about in New Orleans was a combination of white and black players. This is before the laws in New Orleans changed to not permit black and whites to play together.

There’s been a lot of cross-influence between white and black musicians. I would say personally that blacks are probably 60, 70 percent of the history of jazz, the best players and have the most influence. Certainly, more than half.

But not 100 percent and not the way Burns said. Burns came under the influence of Wynton Marsalis and a couple people around him in New York that he talked to, and he got all his information from those guys: Stanley Crouch, and there’s a lady named [Margo] Jefferson—and they’re interviewed on camera a lot in those series.

There’s a steady drumbeat of black supremacy [that] comes through the thing, and it doesn’t do jazz a service. It also doesn’t do black musicians a service, because he makes them victims in the society, and the black musicians, the great ones, certainly didn’t need anybody to promote them. Coleman Hawkins or those kind of guys.

Coleman Hawkins was the king of the saxophone in the forties and fifties. He’d walk into a place and everybody would cheer and celebrate this guy. So he didn’t need Ken Burns to have these endless scenes in this— He had wonderful shots of people dancing and the jazz things. He dug it all up.

Interposed, intercut with all these things, he’d have endless shots of poor black communities and guys sort of hanging around on the streets. I don’t know how much of jazz he cut out in order to have this social message under the surface.

If you’re a filmmaker, there’s a lot of techniques you can use, like the tone of the guy that’s speaking, like the music in the background. I don’t know if you want me to go on about this.

Crawford: Equal coverage would be difficult, but as I remember he mentioned musicians such as Jack Teagarden only briefly.

01-00:60:12 Carter: Well, that’s exactly— that’s a perfect example. In my article, I quoted a white trombone player whose favorite was Jack Teagarden, and he was livid about that.

[End Audiofile 1]

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[Begin Audiofile 2]

Crawford: We’re talking about Ken Burn’s television series on jazz.

02-00:00:16 Carter: Yes. It’s interesting to think about now because this whole question of white and black relationship has been an unfolding, evolving thing now for a lot of years. I’m no expert on the subject, but we have a black president. This kind of victimization-of-the-blacks story would be much harder for Ken Burns to tell to a national audience today.

Crawford: You think it was overstated.

02-00:01:02 Carter: Overstated and inaccurate, that’s the main thing. It’s supposed to be historic and it’s—Bix Beiderbecke, a famous white musician, is universally acknowledged to have been a creative genius. He died at a young age and all that.

Burns works with a lot of interviews and patches them together and intercuts with— I think it’s Margo Jefferson. She admits that Beiderbecke was very good. She said, “But it’s too bad he didn’t play with any black bands.”

Well, his sound and the way he played and the bands he played with were completely integrated. That’s the wrong word. [chuckles] They work together very well. His way of playing was not a black way of playing. He could’ve played very well, I’m sure, with black musicians. I think that he and Louis played together in private; they were never recorded together.

Crawford: Beiderbecke never played with black bands?

02-00:02:20 Carter: He played probably after hours in Chicago and on boats and things, but to my knowledge, not on records. But this is a sort of condescending way of talking about it, and Burns is clever enough to make it sound like he’s not being biased, while he is being biased. He’s very smooth, and he’s got a great technique in how he goes about all this.

Another thing, he gives a lot of prominence to Wynton Marsalis. Wynton Marsalis has done a lot of good about educating the New York public about jazz, and he’s a very polished, expert player, and he’s got good credentials on both [the] classical and jazz side. He’s a modern— jazz modernist.

The guys that are really into modern music don’t pay any attention to him at all. He has zero influence on them. If you get the inside of the musicians’ story on Burns’ thing, it’s nice that he popularized something that needed popularizing, but they don’t take him seriously.

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Marsalis has gone through a big controversy at Lincoln Center about hiring only black musicians, and he finally kind of got straightened out.

I don’t know where he is now, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not that big an authority. He grew up in New Orleans and he talks with a great measure of confidence about some early musicians in New Orleans that died long before he was born. But he starts telling you exactly how they played. “And this is the Buddy Bolden—”

Crawford: You can’t know this?

02-00:04:23 Carter: He can’t know it. I know guys, historians in New Orleans, including the curator at Tulane jazz archives—they are people who’ve studied and delved into this in great detail and it’s no simple answer. It’s like trying to find out who were Shakespeare’s influences or something. It’s a subject of deep academic study. And to just [snaps fingers] come out with these snap judgments—

Crawford: Would Europeans treat this more academically?

02-00:05:00 Carter: Yes, that’s another interesting subject. The British particularly are very, very connoisseur-like about jazz. The French are very individualistic, and the Germans are very orderly, so [laughs] what do you want? As for the Italians, it’s to have a party. [laughs]

Crawford: Well, that took me off my subject a little. Okay. Who would you have liked to have Ken Burns bring in to the programming?

02-00:05:30 Carter: Well, just on the academic side, he brought well-known academic people from all over the country to copy edit. I don’t know what the word is in television, but to get the wrong things cleared out of it.

I know that the curator from New Orleans, Bruce Rayburn, was brought to New York for that; [Dan] Morgenstern came from Rutgers, they were brought there, all expenses paid, and they spent a week and they went over everything, and they gave him all their information and they went home.

Most of the recommendations were not carried out. Some of them were just detail, flyspeck things that are just easy to fix. Others amounted to interpretation differences.

I’ll give you an example. Burns’ series is divided into a chronological area of sequences. Okay, there’s a New Orleans-in-the-beginnings-of-jazz period, on the riverboats and the whole deal. The music behind the dialog in a big part of that is being played by a band in New York from a different period.

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Ninety percent of the people watching this will not know that, and in a way, it doesn’t matter that much. But if you’ve got a $10 million budget, you might well get that kind of stuff right.

Crawford: Has Morgenstern written anything indicating that his advice wasn’t taken?

02-00:07:16 Carter: I don’t know. I haven’t checked.

Crawford: I think that the only two New Orleans revival bands mentioned were Lu Watters’ and Turk’s. Burns quoted a musician who said that New Orleans revival music was straight Republican ticket kind of music.

02-00:07:39 Carter: Who said that?

Crawford: Ken Burns, in his narrative.

02-00:08:06 Carter: I can see how he would say that. The subject is the traditional jazz revival. That’s something that happened starting about 1940. Murphy and Watters were in the vanguard of this. The cutting-edge history of jazz was moving on. It had already passed swing; it was moving toward modern jazz. It was moving away from dancing music to concert music, and a lot of changes.

These periods all overlap, so you can’t make exact dates. I mentioned when I got interested in music, that was the revival period, jazz revival.

Watters may have been the very first one to start deliberately playing music of an earlier period. Jazz history was mostly a period of progress from one style to the other, almost like classical music went from Baroque to Classical to Romantic and so forth.

But in about 1940, 1939 or something, a group of record collectors on one hand and musicians on the other began to say, hey, we’re tired of these sloshy hotel bands or big band sounds, and we have nothing to do with modern jazz, because we like ensemble music and dancing music and so forth.

So the revival period was a movement as a whole, which Ken Burns would’ve dismissed out of hand because it does not follow his script of the historical evolution of jazz.

Now, the black musicians were not part of the revival mentality at all because partly it was the sophisticated black musicians that wanted to move toward modern jazz, and also that old Uncle Tom stuff seemed to them socially regressive, in terms of where they were trying to go.

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They wanted to be regarded as artists, not as entertainers who came in the other door and came to the stage and then went back through the other door and couldn’t stay in the same hotel. Progressive was a big term of jazz, and then progressive was also a political term.

Crawford: Okay. I see where you’re going with that. That didn’t necessarily have to mean that the music was stolid.

02-00:11:29 Carter: No.

Crawford: It isn’t what he meant. In fact, it’s probably not derogatory at all, then, the way that you’re explaining it.

02-00:11:39 Carter: The way he’s explaining it.

Crawford: Well, to say what you’re saying. It’s not progressive, if you look at political parties with that dichotomy.

02-00:11:47 Carter: Right, right, and it had nothing to do with the emerging black power, disregard for audiences. Miles Davis would sometimes play with his back to the audience. There’s all this kind of edgy stuff that was going on. So to apply the term Republican to the music is even pushing the political implications that much further.

It’s, again, a case of an outsider, a fan, applying terminology extraneous to the music—“Republicanism”—in his struggle to understand the music by setting up cartoon-like opposites. If he had a fifteen-minute segment to fill after the evening news, okay, but his series ran around seventeen hours.

There were a surviving group of musicians who had always played traditional jazz, particularly in New York, Eddie Condon and that group. I don’t know what he thought of them, but he certainly didn’t feature them either.

Crawford: Not much, no. Well, I’m glad to have that.

Why do you think San Francisco was such a home for traditional jazz?

Carter: I have a little pet theory about it that’s kind of— it’s true, but it’s a little bit made up. The Barbary Coast, around World War I, had a kind of ragtime and ur-jazz or proto-jazz going on in those years, just like New Orleans was a perfect seedbed for the music because of its seaport and hell-for-leather, anything-goes atmosphere. Girls that you’d pay to dance with and the whole thing.

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That was reproduced in the Barbary Coast. Very shortly after jazz was invented in New Orleans, a mini version of that was going on in San Francisco. That’s very early, and that’s not in jazz histories, but that’s my little thing.

In the Jazz Foundation, we have tape recordings that Turk Murphy made, interviewing a guy who played there, was a bandleader there for many years. A guy called Sid LeProtti.

It’s a fascinating story. It didn’t really lead anywhere very fruitful in overall jazz history. When jazz first left New Orleans—and this is, again, not in most of the histories—it came to California before it went to Chicago or New York.

It didn’t have a huge efflorescence here because there was no recording industry in California. The official histories of jazz tend to follow the recordings, because that’s the primary scholarly source material.

There was a lot going on in Chicago, but there was a recording industry in Chicago, and that blasted the music to the whole world. There was essentially none in California. Jelly Roll Morton came to California, blah-blah-blah.

Crawford: They all came, didn’t they?

02-00:14:54 Carter: They did. Way back. In between LeProtti and the Barbary Coast, which probably ended before 1920.

This is a very long-winded answer to your question. But I don’t think there was a lot of jazz in the San Francisco area. There’s always been a good-time- Charlie kind of atmosphere in San Francisco, but I don’t think the guys that started the jazz revival in San Francisco—Lu Watters and Turk Murphy and Clancy Hayes—I don’t think they were directly drawing on any living tradition in this area. I think they were professional musicians that were bored with their hotel gigs and they started messing around at night, all night long in a roadhouse near Berkeley somewhere, and they found that they really enjoyed improvised jazz.

With a small band, you play your own inventions all the time. You’re not just reading off somebody else’s charts. And so that’s how it got going. It came in with this record-collector thing.

Collections of the old records of the 1920s was sort of a subterranean thing all over the United States from the thirties onward. That’s why I mentioned that as an influence on me, twenty years later in L.A. Each city had one or two record stores that were like headquarters for these moldy figs. [they laugh] And actually, most of the moldy-fig collectors were leftists, not Republicans.

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A lot of Turk’s fans wore ties, and so did Turk and so did the Modern Jazz Quartet.

But there was a booksore in San Francisco called Jack’s Record Cellar.

Crawford: Where was Jack’s?

02-00:17:34 Carter: I don’t remember. But it’s in the books. I don’t know.

There was the Yerba Buena Music Shop, which was named after Watters’ band, in Berkeley or Oakland, around there. On the line between the two somewhere. But the whole black/white thing is such a fake thing. It’s another one of those theories about the music that is much more about the fanatics, who are not musicians, than it is about the musicians.

There’s a great clarinet player named Albert Nicholas. He played for a long time with Bob Scobey’s band. I know he and other black musicians sat in with Watters’ band from time to time. They’d come through, they were greatly honored—Bunk Johnson was a musician, a very early jazz musician.

Crawford: That’s right. Turk recorded with him.

02-00:18:50 Carter: Yes, in the Yerba Buena Band. That’s Watters’ band, and the musicians mostly didn’t make a big deal out of race. It was people working in the same field. If you know people and you respect people, those barriers go away real fast. But if somebody is making all these categories and looking at something from the outside, they construct the sandcastles about the music—

Crawford: You feel that Burns wasn’t knowledgeable as a jazz historian.

Carter: Yes, I do. He was a latecomer to the scene. Good in his field.

Crawford: And Marsalis kind of pushed that scenario?

02-00:19:38 Carter: Yes. Definitely. And there’s a sort of strain in the American character that wants to find a way to feel guilty about things, and Burns and Marsalis played on that. Riffed on that.

It is sort of pyrrhic and I don’t know what it is. Well, our ancestors did horrible things to the blacks—no doubt about it. But you don’t have to go on and on about it.

Crawford: Let me ask you about other bands you played with, other clarinet players. I know Dick Hadlock played for a while and I think Bill Napier.

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02-00:20:16 Carter: Napier died, I don’t know, four or five years ago, I think.

Crawford: Do you remember them as musicians?

02-00:20:25 Carter: I’ve only shaken hands with Napier a few times. He was very important in the overall Bay Area jazz scene, along with Bob Mielke and so forth.

There’s one guy that I know very well, called Robbie Schlosser. You probably don’t know him, but he employed Napier for many years because Robbie runs trios and larger ensembles every day of the week.

Under the radar of the jazz world, a lot of the work is in the small groups that get hired for one hour for a convention or something. I’ve known Robbie for many years.

Now, Hadlock, I know. I’ve played with Hadlock a number of times over the years, and he did play with Turk for a while. He didn’t really like playing with Turk, I don’t think, but I’d rather let him speak for that.

Crawford: I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to talk to him.

02-00:21:47 Carter: His background was in New York and he came out here, and he has had a radio show on KCSM every Sunday, for many years now, Richard Hadlock. Richard’s primary background was in New York and his taste reflects that. But he is far from narrow.

He’s a very good writer and very intelligent. His depth of understanding of the music is very impressive. He doesn’t follow the official lines of anybody. Because if you’re working at something—musician, journalist, whatever— you know things in a way that it’s got more authenticity to the way you know it than somebody writing about it from the outside.

Crawford: Very true. Well, how about singers? Was Pat Yankee around on tour?

02-00:22:41 Carter: No. She came somewhat later. I know Pat, but I’ve never worked with her. I think I’ve played on a stage with her eight or ten times in my life, briefly.

Crawford: I understand that Turk wanted everybody to sing, made everyone sing. Was that the case early on?

02-00:23:00 Carter: I guess that’s true. Maybe that’s an overstatement. I can’t imagine Dick Lammi singing, but I can tell you that I’d been in the band about three weeks, maximum, and there’d never been anything said about me singing.

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We were playing in a very high-profile place in New York called the Basin Street East, and our appearance for one set there was going to be on Monitor, which was a national radio show. Live national radio— I think it was NBC. Major thing. In those days, they didn’t edit everything first and then put it on, it just went straight out on the network.

This place had at least two, maybe three different acts that were coming on, one after the other, on this small stage. The stage was set in the middle of the club and there were tables all around it, those little tables, and they make you buy more and more drinks.

Bobby Hackett, a very famous musician, with his small group, is on right before us. But Turk had put our music up first, our roadmap music, because there was a very tight timing thing. You had to get on and off the stage quickly, and he stuttered when he spoke. He never stuttered when he was on the mike or sang.

He said, “B-b-b-b- by the way, Bill, y-y-y-you’re singing ‘Saints’ tonight.” “What?” He’d never heard me sing— [they laugh]

Crawford: Where did that come from—so unusual for Turk?

02-00:24:50 Carter: Well, right. That’s just exactly the kind of decision, like I told you about the trumpet player.

Crawford: You thought that was really a dumb decision?

02-00:24:57 Carter: I think I got through it okay, but he could’ve gotten in real trouble putting a guy on national radio he’d never heard before.

02-00:25:04 Carter: So what happened, Bobby Hackett, while he was getting his group off the stage before we came on the stage, he accidentally kicked the music stand and the stand fell over, and all the music fell all over two or three tables in the front. Some of the music—this was hand-written music, in ink, India ink— was down on the floor. It was in somebody’s beer, which was starting to smear the ink. I was down there on my hands and knees between people’s feet trying to collect this music.

Crawford: Your music?

02-00:25:42 Carter: Yes! My music! It was my stand. [laughter] Turk was all nervous about getting everybody out on the stand. He saw me—excuse my language—poke my head out and he said, “Wha- wha- what the f-f- fuck are you doing down there?” You can edit that out.

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Crawford: Was that broadcast?

02-00:26:05 Carter: No, no, but it might’ve been. So then— I was twenty years old and I had told my aunt in L.A. to listen to the program. It was kind of a big deal. So she did and it went off fine. But those kind of narrow scrapes, those things stay in your mind— [laughs]

Crawford: What a time to test you. On recordings, how did he project?

02-00:27:16 Carter: That’s a completely different way of singing. Turk did project very strongly in person, I think, when he sang. He had an intense vital energy that was just very apparent to everybody, if he’d walk in a room or something.

That came out really strong when he sang. His face would be very serious and very committed, even if he was singing some joke thing. He had a natural spotlight of your attention, and that particularly applied to women. [laughter]

Crawford: I guess so.

02-00:29:05 Carter: Yes.

Crawford: Well, he certainly was Mr. San Francisco. Herb Caen wrote about him again and again and again, making him a very warm public figure.

John Gill said in his interview—because he was young, as you were, when he joined the band—that he was really a father figure to him. Was that true of you, as well?

02-00:28:30 Carter: Much more for Gill. His complete commitment to music. Music was a part of my life— maybe 20 percent or 30 percent. I had other things in mind, so I would’ve probably chosen a professor if I needed a father figure. [laughs]

Crawford: I’m surprised, though, that this incredible tour didn’t swing you over to music as a profession.

02-00:29:03 Carter: You know what it did? It was pure love for me, the music. That’s where I was coming from, and I experienced for the first time that it was work. Any job is work. On a Tuesday night, with three people sipping a coke out there or something, you’ve got to get through it. Just like you do any job.

So the love began to be sort of mixed with learning about the real world, and I looked around at guys fifty years old standing next to me that were making exactly what I was making and hoping they’d have a job the next month—

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Crawford: Ah, you saw that.

02-00:29:54 Carter: —and didn’t see that as much of a career, either. I don’t know, and also just the associations, places you’re hanging around in and all, didn’t turn me on.

Crawford: Did you see a lot of drinking and carrying on? That kind of goes with it, I guess.

02-00:30:13 Carter: Yes. The popular music business has got a sort of vibe to it that’s just not my vibe. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Crawford: Oh, that’s interesting. How much more did you play? Or have you played over the years, performed?

02-00:30:38 Carter: Well, there’ve been intense times and nothing times. I lived in London for three years; I hardly played at all. I lived in Beirut for two years, and I played with— I found a couple of guys, an AP correspondent that played the trombone and a guy from the Dutch embassy that played the guitar, and we played maybe once a week.

Right now, I play maybe once every two months. There was a time when I went on two summer tours for six weeks each, in Germany, about 1979, when I was playing every night and traveling on a bus. So it was these in and out kind of deals.

Crawford: Could you be doing that if you wanted to?

02-00:31:29 Carter: Yeah. Yeah. If I committed to a band and they said, okay, next week we’re playing a festival in Idaho, then we have two weeks off, but then we’re going to do this and that, and you’re of course, expected to— A lot of it’s about traveling. Even more today than it ever was.

02-00:32:13 Carter: So it’s even harder today, in that sense.

Crawford: What do you think of people who wrote and supported the jazz in the time you were playing, the critics and so on? Was the music well represented in the Bay Area?

02-00:32:36 Carter: Yes, the Bay Area was. Phil Elwood was really good. And he was very supportive of all phases. I’ve never known of a critic who really understood early, middle and late, right across the board, without any of this sort of tribalism about which side are you on?

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Crawford: He understood that.

02-00:32:58 Carter: He did. He was wonderful. Yeah. Did you know Phil?

Crawford: I did.

02-00:33:03 Carter: He was great. He was on our board of the Jazz Foundation for a while, until his death. Yeah. The other guy that was very good, writing for the Chronicle—but there were somebody before that, too.

Crawford: Ralph Gleason was there.

02-00:33:31 Carter: That’s the one I was trying to think of. Yes, right. My book on Preservation Hall was nominated for the Ralph J. Gleason prize [Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award] in New York. It didn’t get it, but it was nominated.

The Bay Area’s always had much more of it than you would think of, it’s representation of jazz enthusiasts and knowledgeable jazz people. Orin Keepnews is a great example. And Charles Campbell. Anyway. I could go on, but—

Crawford: I had a nice interview with him. What a life he’s had.

02-00:34:08 Carter: Oh! [they laugh] I’m glad you did.

Crawford: Crazy. Just wonderful. Well, what do you think is left of Dixieland jazz? What is the status of it today?

02-00:34:20 Carter: These festivals are dwindling. They have been the mainstay of it for years. The jazz clubs that have their little shindigs, they’re still around. The quality’s not always great. But in—how long have I been around this music, sixty years?—every five to ten years, it’s very clear that the music is finally about to end. And it never does. [laughs]

Crawford: It never does, no.

02-00:34:52 Carter: There’s something about it that—it gets under people’s skin. It’s got a natural—for one thing, it makes you move your feet and clap your hands. It’s a visceral body thing. The music was built as a dancing music. The people in New Orleans that walk behind, beside those bands, they don’t just walk. Especially coming back from the graveyard. They dance. And it’s a very functional thing, that way.

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I’m playing next month for a swing dance group. Well, swing dance is a thing that’s come along because there are many dancing styles. It’s not necessarily Dixieland, but Dixieland, traditional New Orleans jazz— We played once before for this group, and the people absolutely loved it. I love playing it, because you visually see what you’re doing being enacted in front of you.

It’s a two-way street. So I’m not going to give up on it. I don’t believe in this whole thing of jazz as being a linear history that moved from this to the other to the other, that, by the 1980s or so, that had sort of stopped. That modern jazz didn’t progress any more.

People started looking back and digging into their own history, and in the fusion and the world music, there’s a lot of styles combining, a lot of things going on.

The amount of regular local activity has declined everywhere—but YouTube and the Internet have brought in many more listeners worldwide. Someone put us on YouTube from Pier 23 last week, and there were letters from Azerbaijan and Sweden!

So you can’t say history is condemning traditional jazz to an antique status because it won’t stay there. Except in academia. Most of the courses start with bebop, unfortunately.

Crawford: Did you get a chance to photograph the funeral procession in New Orleans?

02-00:36:50 Carter: Oh, yes. I did. There are pictures of funeral procession in the book. I also played in several of those on the streets in New Orleans. I was invited to play for Willie Humphrey and Percy’s services, and also played in one wake in the funeral home, just a little small trio, around Manny Sales’ coffin that was draped in flowers that were in the shape of a banjo on his coffin. He was a great banjo player.

So to me, that was a big honor to be sort of welcomed into the fold of these guys looked up to as minor gods. So it was just a natural part of the thing.

Crawford: I don’t know if you go to jazz clubs now, but maybe you’d talk a little bit more about the Tin Angel. That was the San Francisco venue that you played in.

02-00:38:00 Carter: Well, I told you about playing with Turk’s band at the Tin Angel. Do you go back long enough here to remember what they used to call the International Settlement? That was the name for that strip of Broadway. It was just the sort of PR name. There was a big archway over it.

Crawford: I don’t remember.

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02-00:38:36 Carter: There was a place called the Sail ’N. This cute name: Sail, and then apostrophe-N. And a lot of sailors would actually come there. I played there for a year or two, every weekend, when I was living in Berkeley, because I lived in Berkeley for three years after Stanford.

I’ve played at Pier 23 any number of times, different ways. Still today, we sometimes go there and jam.

Crawford: What’s the ideal setting for the music, do you think?

02-00:39:13 Carter: The one I just told you about, a dance. People dancing. But Pier 23 is pretty close to ideal because it’s so compact and the energy is contained. And people, they’re having a good time. But they’re seriously listening, too. But they’re not like taking notes or something. They’re not frozen like you’re in some—

Crawford: I think that’s what’s people love about the music.

02-00:39:44 Carter: Yes. And there’s plenty of beer flowing and it’s— That’s where the music came out of, was kind of a let-the-good-times-roll kind of atmosphere. There’s no one. I’ve played in different countries, and every country has its style. Have you ever heard of the slow food movement?

Crawford: Yes.

02-00:40:10 Carter: That started in a medium-sized town in Piemonte, in Italy, called Bra, B-R-A. Funny name for a town. In the middle of Piemonte, where they have a wonderful wine and food tradition. Every two years they have a celebration of slow-food movement, so I played in an Italian jazz band that was marching through the streets of Piemonte, and people were dancing in the balconies and waving.

This music transplanted itself all over the world. And here and there, you know little clutches of jazz musicians. And in some cases, you don’t speak the language very well or whatever, but you communicate completely via the music. It’s a wonderful lingua franca. There’s no one place that’s right. It’s just the music and the environment have to kind of harmonize.

Crawford: Do you remember Enrico’s and if anything was going on there?

02-00:41:24 Carter: I’ve played there a couple times in the last twenty years. I don’t think it was there in the late sixties or seventies. I played at a place, a really little joint on Broadway, called Burp Hollow. It was almost across the street from— [laughs] Do you remember that one?

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Crawford: No.

02-00:41:48 Carter: Well, man, that’s not one of the best kind of places to play. It was run by a gangster in a wheelchair, with a blanket over his knees and a gun under his blanket.

Crawford: [laughs] No. Really?

02-00:42:01 Carter: I’m not kidding you. This guy, out of a Richard Widmark movie. It was a little joint. And there was a manikin sitting on the barstool right near the door. A really sexy manikin, with a dress up to here and with a drink in her hand. And these drunken sailors would come in there and the bartender would get them to buy her a drink, before they even knew what was happening. That was the kind of place that was. [laughs]

If we went on one minute later than when we were supposed to after the break, this guy, the owner, would yell right across the place. Like, [gruffly] “You guys want to keep working here or not?” [laughs] So if it wasn’t so funny, it would be— That’s one of the worst kind of joints you can work in.

Crawford: Burp Hollow on Broadway.

02-00:43:04 Carter: Yes. Just about across the street from Enrico’s. There’s probably a strip joint in there. That was before all the strip joints were in there, on Broadway.

Crawford: Did you play on Fillmore?

02-00:43:23 Carter: No. That was a different scene. It was modern jazz and also more, I don’t know, rock and roll or blues or something like that.

Crawford: Did you go to any of those clubs?

02-00:43:36 Carter: I went to one of the late, late, after-hours joints, where there were modern cats playing. Bop City or something like that.

Crawford: Everybody played there, I guess.

02-00:43:48 Carter: Yes. There’s a photograph of Bob Scobey sitting in at Bop City, if you can believe that. That’s in the collection in San Francisco of that foundation on the second floor above Herbst Theater.

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That is the most perfect answer to somebody that says that that was Republican music. That was a pretty deep black area and modern, pushy, edgy stuff.

Scobey was a very traditional player. And there he was, sitting in there. And that’s why the musicians— they’re not ideologists, they’re musicians.

Crawford: They’ll play where they play.

02-00:44:42 Carter: Yes.

Crawford: I interviewed John Handy. I did his oral history.

02-00:44:52 Carter: Oh, God, he’s a wonderful guy. Fantastic musician.

Crawford: Fantastic. And he said the same thing about Turk Murphy. That he was just a fantastic musician.

02-00:45:05 Carter: Is that right? That’s the answer, if a guy like Handy can say that, because he played with Dizzy Gillespie and so forth. He was right in the forefront. Still is, as far as I’m concerned.

He flows from some other source. He’s really got it. And I don’t know if you ever met his wife, Del.

Crawford: Oh, very much, yes.

02-00:45:33 Carter: She’s a dynamo.

Crawford: Yes, we’d like to do her story, as well.

02-00:45:37 Carter: Oh. Save plenty of time. She’s got a lot to say.

But that’s a very good example of— I’m not a Republican or a Democrat or anything, but I probably look like one to Ken Burns. [they laugh]

Crawford: Well, what will Turk Murphy’s legacy be, do you think?

02-00:46:13 Carter: In a kind of objective way, our Jazz Foundation that I’m chairman of, when Turk died, we received his papers and his instruments and things like that. I don’t know if you know about this.

Crawford: I do. I know something about it.

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02-00:46:35 Carter: Leon’s on the board and Gill has been much a part of it.

Crawford: And Terry O’Reilly?

02-00:46:42 Carter: Terry, that’s right. Terry’s sponsoring a concert of Pat Yankee’s, coming up in May, by the way, in San Francisco.

Anyway, we have an archive. I’m trying to get [chuckles] out from under it because it’s expensive to maintain. And John Gill was actually curator of it for a while, and Clint Baker is the curator of it. I don’t know if you’ve heard this name, Clint Baker.

Now, there is a guy that’s an embodiment, perfect example of why this music is not going to go away. He’s a wonderful musician. And he’s in his thirties. And when he was in high school, he was already organizing a band. That band is still going and I play in it sometimes. That’s the swing dance. He’s a full- time professional musician and a wonderful teacher. A very talented guy.

That’s the best example of the younger traditional jazz musicians coming along. He lives in San Bruno. How’d I get off on that?

Crawford: Well, we were talking about the legacy.

02-00:48:19 Carter: Clint is now the curator of this archive. And anyway, I worked, and worked hard, to try to find a proper repository for our holdings. We have all of Turk’s six- or seven-part arrangements— you know those music papers that I told you that had fallen on the floor.

Turk wrote arrangements incessantly his whole life. He was an incredible worker. You’re out on the road, he’d be working all day, writing arrangements in his hotel room, and then playing at night. I don’t know, hundreds of them. Maybe 600 or 800 arrangements they ended up with.

They didn’t keep all of them in their working book, but these arrangements were in fiber cases, in seven big cases they carried around with them on the road. Our jazz foundation ended up with all of those and a bunch of un-issued recordings of Turk’s, and a lot of stuff, after he died.

Eventually, eventually, I found a home for these. At one point, Terry wanted us to get them into the new music building in Berkeley, when they— We thought that was going to happen, but it didn’t.

Crawford: Oh, that’s interesting. I wonder why.

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02-00:49:36 Carter: The more I find out about this—archiving stuff is a big space eater-upper in universities, and they have to pay for every square yard of it. And it’s a lot of curatorial time and effort to catalog all these things, so— I have some involvement with the Getty Museum and I have learned that they don’t— libraries, especially today, they don’t just take in a lot of bulky stuff without some idea of how much use it’ll have and how much it’ll cost to store it and everything.

Crawford: Stanford was approached as well?

02-00:50:12 Carter: Stanford has now taken it, finally.

Crawford: I thought I heard that.

02-00:50:16 Carter: Yes, now, that’s a great story because it brings our story right around to the beginning again.

As I told you, I was at Stanford when Pete was there. Pete and I are both graduates of Stanford. And one day Pete told me—I don’t know when, but maybe in the seventies—he and Turk went down to Stanford to see about the ultimate destination of Turk’s collection. Not only of his original work, which is unique, one of a kind, but a lot of other things.

But they somehow didn’t connect there and it never happened. But then later on, after I became chairman of the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation, Pete came here to my home and we talked a few times.

Pete was a very enthusiastic supporter of the foundation, and he also said, “That stuff should go to Stanford.” And I said, “Yes, but we’ve tried and—” Oh, you know how all institutions— There was Archive of Recorded Sound and the lady that was interested, and then she left.

And then they didn’t get any funding for a while and the space was used up. Different things kept happening for like fifteen years. Finally, the head of the libraries, Mike Keller—

Crawford: Oh, I know Mike. He came from Berkeley.

02-00:51:45 Carter: Yes, right. And he was at Yale somewhere before that, I think. He loves traditional jazz, so he got on this case, and so our stuff, within the last six months, has been archived. So it has archival standards of preservation and of cataloguing and it’ll be there long after the rest of us are forgotten about.

So after fifty years, Pete and my stories came home. [laughs]

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Crawford: That’s a good way to go. As chair, what do you do with the foundation?

02-00:52:27 Carter: Right now? Well, like many nonprofits, we are suffering from financial questions. That’s not a very positive answer, but we run on a small budget, and we’re trying to get out of the archive business, but we [chuckles] keep getting more in the door before I can shrink the thing.

We have publications. We have a newsletter that’s quarterly, and I think it’s got some interesting things in it. And we have put out CDs, recordings.

We put out some of Watters’ recordings that were never out before, and a whole bunch of Turk Murphy stuff, we issued. The hard part today is getting a CD distributed.

There’s one guy left in New Orleans that we partner with, and he has a wide distribution. There’s no point in producing a thousand copies of something and 900 of them are left under your bed or don’t sell. We’re a nonprofit, and our charter is to try to get the music out into the world.

We’ve had some concerts. I did a thing at Herbst Theater, in partnership with a group called Humanities West, about the New Orleans in the year 1900, the birth of jazz. We brought out scholars from Tulane and various other people and I gave a talk and wrote the script. I had a band there.

Crawford: Who sponsors Humanities West?

Carter: Humanities West is a longstanding nonprofit group in San Francisco that mostly has academic lectures at the Herbst Theater about four times a year, around three or four times a year.

I was on the board there for a while, so I came up with this idea and they said, “Great.” It was a little more on the entertainment side than they’re used to. They’re used to more academic lectures, but we balanced it out. A two-day program. That was one of our highlights of things we’re able to do.

Crawford: Well, I always like to ask, who else should I talk to?

02-00:55:11 Carter: Yeah. Clint Baker, that would be good. Like many musicians, he’s traveling a lot.

Crawford: Because he’s archiving this.

02-00:55:22 Carter: Archive is what he does for the foundation, yeah. But no, most of the time, he’s a professional musician, and he’s working all the time.

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Crawford: In traditional jazz?

02-00:55:30 Carter: Yes. And swing dancing and swing stuff.

Crawford: They would still be using the Turk Murphy arrangements?

02-00:55:38 Carter: He wouldn’t, no. His style is a little different. I don’t know anybody that’s using the Turk Murphy arrangements. A lot of people are using the Lu Watters arrangements. That’s what John Gill does. John Gill has a band. Although he lives in New York, his band appears a few times a year all over the states.

Crawford: Is that the Woody Allen band, that he plays with? Or John Gill’s own band?

02-00:56:06 Carter: Yerba Buena Stompers, it’s called, John Gill’s group. And that’s a straight Watters sound. I think I have a CD or two I can give you of these things.

Crawford: I talked to Bob Schulz, and somebody said I should talk to Carl Lunsford.

02-00:56:32 Carter: If you’re focusing on Turk people, he certainly would be. I don’t know how widely you’re spreading the subject matter, because jazz can go out sideways in [chuckles] so many different directions.

Crawford: Yes. Well, the focus here is Turk Murphy, the man and the music.

We are coming to the end of our two hours. Is there anything you’d like to add to what we’ve discussed?

02-00:57:07 Carter: I can’t think of anything more right now.

Crawford: Well, you’ll see the transcript and you can add, as you like. Thank you so much.

[End of Carter Interview]

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Carl Lunsford Interview #1: February 23, 2010 [Begin Audiofile 1]

Crawford: I am sitting with Carl Lunsford in his Sausalito houseboat, and we’re going to talk about Turk Murphy. Start with your family and your first exposure to music, if you would, Carl.

01-00:00:26 Lunsford: My dad played piano by ear, and my mother played piano. My sister is a concert pianist. And I’m a banjo player.

Crawford: Talk about your sister. What was her career like?

01-00:00:40 Lunsford: I don’t know much about her. [laughs] She was a concert pianist in Cincinnati.

Crawford: Is that where you grew up, in Cincinnati?

01-00:00:50 Lunsford: I was there for four years. And then I took my parents on the road because I couldn’t stand Ohio.

Crawford: You took them on the road!

01-00:00:57 Lunsford: I did, yes. I was four years old. [laughter]

I’ve spent my life all over the country. My dad was in the government during the war. I went to seventeen grade schools. So I don’t know what you want to hear [laughs] about seventeen grade schools.

It was a trip, I must say. But my musical education started when I was, oh, a youngster. I took piano lessons. My sister and I both took piano lessons. She continued on; I stopped, started playing football and baseball and stuff like that, as an eight-year-old boy would do.

I went to college. I was going to be a doctor. Changed my mind and changed my major to painting. I worked my way through college playing banjo with the Red Onion Jazz Band in New York City. I went to Columbia.

Crawford: When did you have your first gig?

01-00:01:57 Lunsford: My first gig? Oh, God, I can’t remember. I’ve got to say it’s probably 1953. Somewhere in there. I don’t remember exactly the year. Early fifties.

Crawford: What music did you hear at home? Hold on for a second, let me give this to you so it’s picking up.

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01-00:02:33 Lunsford: I have to think about these questions you’re asking because I haven’t thought about them in fifty years or so. First gig I played was New York City, I guess. And I played with the Red Onion Jazz Band and we played a party for the Art Students League in New York, a pretty wild, crazy bunch. Women and men. And that was my first gig.

I played in a loft for an artist in New York City. I can’t remember his name. But it was an Art Students League ball, party. I was nineteen, eighteen, something like that. I’d never seen anybody at a party painted black on one side and white on the other, nude. A couple came in that way.

That was ’53, ’4, 1954. I guess it was right in there. It shocked me so much I stopped playing. [laughs] I was very naïve. Anyway, that was my first gig. It wasn’t a very important one.

Crawford: Why the banjo?

01-00:03:31 Lunsford: Why? I love the sound of it.

Crawford: When did you first hear the banjo?

01-00:03:37 Lunsford: I heard a banjo from a guy playing on a TV show out of Schenectady, New York, play with a band at six o’clock at night, dinner-time at night. Black-and- white TV.

This guitar player would pick up the banjo once in a while and play. It was a half-an-hour dinner show. They used to have shows like that. They were all live. That was kinescoped, it wasn’t recorded. But any time he picked up that banjo— I love the sound of a banjo, and that’s what I wanted to do.

I couldn’t get anybody to teach me banjo. They said, “Why don’t you learn guitar, kid?” And I said, “No, I want to learn— I like the sound of a banjo.” So I taught myself. That’s what I did.

Crawford: How much piano had you had?

01-00:04:20 Lunsford: Not much. Maybe a year, less than a year.

Crawford: How did you teach yourself?

01-00:04:28 Lunsford: I bought a book and read it, and applied what I learned in the book to what I was doing. Plus I listened to Louis Armstrong records and Jelly Roll Morton records and things like that, so I got an idea of the style, how to play it. Rhythm playing.

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Crawford: What was it about their music that you liked, as opposed to modern jazz or—

01-00:04:59 Lunsford: I like modern jazz, some of it; some of it I don’t like. It never really grabbed me. I don’t do anything unless it really grabs me. Banjo really grabbed me.

Modern jazz doesn’t grab me. I appreciate it, I didn’t want to play it. I wanted to play traditional jazz, as the old, early jazz musicians did.

Crawford: From New Orleans. Did you have a big collection of recordings?

01-00:05:29 Lunsford: I had a fairly good size. As a kid— I’ve seen huge collections—nothing in that area. I probably had, I don’t know, twenty or thirty records, probably, LPs and stuff. Maybe more.

Crawford: Did you get out to hear jazz?

01-00:05:43 Lunsford: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Crawford: You had moved to New York by now?

01-00:05:48 Lunsford: Yes. I was going to Columbia.

Crawford: Your father was on Wall Street, you said.

01-00:05:54 Lunsford: Right. The bands that I heard back in those days don’t exist anymore. But in those days, you could walk down almost any street in New York and hear a band. It was kind of like that, because there were a lot of jazz clubs in those days. I listened to all of them, all the way from Thelonious Monk— I used to go and hear him at the Five Spot.

Crawford: You liked him as un-trad as he was.

01-00:06:28 Lunsford: I was interested in the way he played, yes. It’s modern, of course. I can remember being in there late at night, I’d be the only one that listened to him play. Until two in the morning, you know. But I heard these guys there.

Crawford: That was his place, the Five Spot.

01-00:06:42 Lunsford: That’s where he worked. I heard some modern jazz, but I heard Eddie Condon and all the Dixie bands. I lean, actually, more towards black bands, like Wilbur de Paris, George Lewis, from New Orleans. Those guys were all great guys. They were friends, and I played with them occasionally.

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Crawford: Was it easy to sit in?

01-00:07:12 Lunsford: Yes.

Crawford: If you had an instrument, you might just be invited to come up?

01-00:07:18 Lunsford: I would probably ask; I probably wouldn’t be invited, back in those days.

Crawford: You were forward enough to ask.

01-00:07:26 Lunsford: Yes. In fact, one time Bill Rank, who was a trombone player— I don’t know if you know Bill Rank, but Bill Rank played with Beiderbecke and guys back in those days.

I had a banjo in my hand—I was in Cincinnati, at a hotel, Sinton Hotel, I think—and I wanted to sit in with his band.

He said, “No, kid.” He says, “We’re doing something different.” So he wouldn’t let me sit in. I carried my banjo, and if I could sit in, I would. I went to lounges. And I’d stay up all night. But I’d go to various lounges and play banjo with whoever I could play with.

Crawford: How versatile is the banjo?

01-00:08:05 Lunsford: How what? How versatile? I never thought of it as a versatile instrument.

Crawford: You wouldn’t have played in big bands, for instance.

01-00:08:14 Lunsford: Not really. No, the guitar was used in big bands. The banjo, I guess, is versatile. Depends on how you use it.

Crawford: You studied at Columbia, but not music.

01-00:08:30 Lunsford: No. Painting.

Crawford: You wanted to be a professional painter?

01-00:08:35 Lunsford: Well, when I discovered that in order to make a living with it, I would have to be painting pretty much all the time for about ten years before I’d make any money— that’s the way artists have been— back in those days, for sure. The first big break I got is what I took.

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I was interested in painting, I was interested in music, and I was interested in racing automobiles. So the first thing that happened to go my way was music. That was Turk.

I met Turk in ’54. That was the first time I met him, and I was very impressed by him. So any other bands I’d play with, I insisted they play in the Turk Murphy style.

Crawford: Had you heard Turk Murphy before you met him? Had you heard recordings? Well, tell me about your meeting with him.

01-00:09:33 Lunsford: I was invited by some friends, some jazz club members, to go hear Turk Murphy play in New York City, at Child’s Paramount. It was in 1954, the fall of ’54.

They were looking for a banjo player. I had just joined the Red Onion Jazz Band, and Turk was looking, possibly, for another banjo player. So these friends of mine from this jazz club took me in to hear him play, and I just loved it. I just liked the style.

Crawford: What was it that you liked about it?

01-00:10:08 Lunsford: I liked the style, I liked the head-on, no crap, no slick— There was nothing slick.

Crawford: Everybody says that.

01-00:10:16 Lunsford: Well, it’s true. Yeah. That’s what I like. I like it rough. I don’t like it real— I mean, I like Benny Goodman and really super players; they’re slick, smooth. But in my playing, I like them all rough, with rough edges. I liked the rough edges because it meant more to me.

Crawford: So Child’s Paramount, New York City. Who was in the band?

01-00:10:54 Lunsford: Well, Ev Farey was the trumpet player, Turk, Bob Helm, Wally Rose, Bob Short, and a guy named Al Lyon on banjo.

Crawford: A regular player.

01-00:11:07 Lunsford: Yes. He was a regular player. He’s long gone now. He had big ears, stuck out like that. He was a neat guy. What a character. He was a total character. Anyway, Turk was looking to replace him. I came in as a kid and I sat in for one tune, and that was what I did. I didn’t really play all that well.

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So he did let me play one tune. But the band really impressed me. That’s what I wanted to do. So five years later, I joined. 1959.

Crawford: Did you keep in touch with Turk?

01-00:11:41 Lunsford: No.

Crawford: He didn’t get back to you.

01-00:11:42 Lunsford: Well, no. I wouldn’t be in touch with him; I knew where he was and what he was playing, but he didn’t know me, really.

He played in New York City during the middle fifties. And I would go hear him there, I met him there again.

For a while, I was the leader of the Red Onion Jazz Band, and I took the band into the Sutton Hotel for Turk’s night off, a Sunday night in New York City.

He was there for quite a long time in fifty—Oh, I don’t know, ‘6 or ’7, somewhere in there. And I got to know him. That was a different band from the first one in ’54. It was a different band. In ’55, he added drums. He had the Conger brothers on trumpet, tuba. Bill Napier on clarinet. Bill Napier quit Turk—

Crawford: Bob Helm was gone by then?

01-00:12:47 Lunsford: No, he stayed here. Turk took the band on the road—

Crawford: He didn’t like going on the road.

01-00:12:58 Lunsford: Yes, right. Well, Helm, at one point, stopped and was doing stuff for poets. What is it called? Festival, a Gay Nineties thing. And it was in the city. Weldon Kees was a poet. I don’t know if you know Weldon Kees or heard of him.

He was a great guy. And he and Bob Helm were friends, so they did some stuff together. Then he wasn’t in the band at that point, in the middle fifties. He joined again in ’59.

Crawford: Was the band pretty steady during your years?

01-00:13:30 Lunsford: Steady?

Crawford: Yes. Did you have few personnel changes?

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01-00:13:35 Lunsford: When I was with Turk, there were a few. There was always changes going on, really. When I was with Turk the first time, no, the band was consistent; except the trumpet player that we used on the road in ’59 decided not to move out here. So we got Ernie Carson on cornet, in 1960.

We opened up Earthquake McGoon’s in the fall of 1960. That was the first one, on Front Street. The best one was on Clay Street.

The first time it was on Front Street. We opened it up. I banged my thumb, putting carpet on the bandstand the night we opened up.

Crawford: I have heard that the band members were expected to do everything from housecleaning on.

01-00:14:23 Lunsford: Yes, we did. The guys in the band put it all together because we were on a shoestring, pretty much. To open a club is pretty tough. So we all did a lot of carpentry work, painting, nailing, rubbing down the bandstand, that kind of stuff. I smashed the end of my thumb with a hammer about an hour before opening night. But I played!

Crawford: Your strumming hand?

01-00:14:50 Lunsford: No, it was my left hand. [they laugh] But no, we tried to all make it, because we were all dedicated to it.

Crawford: Who, during your years in the seventies, impressed you musically?

01-00:15:06 Lunsford: Impressed me?

Crawford: Mm-hm. Who did you think was really strong? Everyone talks about Bob Helm. Did he have special qualities for you?

01-00:15:16 Lunsford: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Turk is probably the strongest, most powerful individual, and an influence on me. Helm was, also. And he was also a very close friend.

But when I came back in ’71, he was not in the band at that point; Phil Howe was playing clarinet. But Helm came back with Turk in ’73, I think it was. Right at the beginning of ’73.

Crawford: How about Clancy Hayes?

01-00:15:54 Lunsford: He was playing intermissions. He was incredible. He was an incredible banjo player, a great singer, the greatest.

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Crawford: That’s what I’ve heard.

01-00:16:10 Lunsford: The greatest.

Crawford: Why was he such a good singer? People have said better than Turk.

01-00:16:12 Lunsford: I don’t know. No, I wouldn’t say that.

Crawford: You wouldn’t say that?

01-00:16:17 Lunsford: No. I don’t say he’s better than Turk. Turk was the greatest barroom ballad vocalist I’ve ever known.

Crawford: What does that mean?

01-00:16:24 Lunsford: Shout vocals. Not smooth, not saccharine. I don’t know. You never heard him sing?

Crawford: I did hear him sing.

01-00:16:35 Lunsford: Well, yes.

Crawford: I think he could reach the audience in kind of the same way, maybe, that Jack Teagarden could. There was a personal warmth.

Well, you were going to say something about Jack Teagarden.

01-00:18:22 Lunsford: I talked to Teagarden. He was a nice guy. I talked to him in Boston three weeks before he died. But I didn’t really know him personally. I knew Turk personally. I knew Turk personally probably as well as anybody, because I spent, particularly in the seventies, we spent a lot of time together. We were good friends. It was a love-hate relationship, basically.

Crawford: How so?

01-00:18:47 Lunsford: Well, he was very tough in his ways. He was very difficult to work with. You didn’t know you had a job from one day to the next. Well, it’s basically how insecure everybody felt. Not everybody, I guess, but pretty much. Not Pete [Clute], because Pete and Turk were partners.

Crawford: Pete left.

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01-00:19:12 Lunsford: Yes. They had a hassle going on. That was the end of McGoon’s.

Crawford: What was the basis of the insecurity that you felt?

01-00:19:27 Lunsford: Turk’s personality. Very strong. Very strong. I’ll tell you, he was so strong that when he died, nobody was strong enough to pick up his lead. No one. Not a soul could do what he did. Truly. Because he was such a dynamic person. Will power. He was very willful. And could be very biting. And could be very loving, too.

Crawford: How about your music? Focus on that for a minute. How did he deal with you musically?

01-00:20:02 Lunsford: How did he deal with me? Well, you couldn’t play in that band unless you were a good player. That’s how he dealt with me. He never had any complaints about my playing. And I tried to make sure that he wouldn’t. But he had control. He controlled everything, Turk did. He was very controlling.

Crawford: There were lots of politics in the band?

01-00:20:27 Lunsford: Politics? How so?

Crawford: Rivalries?

01-00:20:32 Lunsford: I don’t think so. I never saw any jealousies in the band at all. I don’t know anything about that.

Crawford: We were talking about singers. You all had to sing.

01-00:21:00 Lunsford: Yes.

Crawford: Were you comfortable with that?

01-00:21:02 Lunsford: Sure.

Crawford: He didn’t criticize anybody’s singing, because he was a very good singer.

01-00:21:09 Lunsford: No, no, he didn’t. If he didn’t like your singing, you wouldn’t be singing. Or if he didn’t like you, you might not sing. If you were on his shit list, so to speak, your repertoire might get cut down. He did that with Pat Yankee. He cut her repertoire down till it was like five or six tunes, when she had a repertoire of twenty or more. With the band, I’m talking about.

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Crawford: Permanently?

01-00:21:34 Lunsford: No. No, just how he felt.

Crawford: She had no complaints about him. I think that was a real love match.

01-00:21:42 Lunsford: Yes, I don’t know. I don’t have any complaints about him either, outside of the fact you never felt very secure with him. If you were on his good side, yeah, you did. But if he was kind of standoffish, you’d start thinking, well, now, what’s going on here?

He always had to have a scapegoat in the band. I’m not bad-mouthing him. I love him. I love the man.

Crawford: One word kept coming up, and that was taskmaster.

01-00:22:07 Lunsford: Yeah, he sure was. You have to play that style of music or you don’t play in that band.

Crawford: But that’s fair, isn’t it? He’s the bandleader.

01-00:22:16 Lunsford: Right. Oh, yeah.

Crawford: I read in Ken Burns that—

01-00:22:21 Lunsford: Burns ignored him.

Crawford: He didn’t say much about him. In fact, he was one of only two revivalists that he mentioned, I think. Lu Watters and Turk.

01-00:22:28 Lunsford: Ken Burns did nothing for West Coast jazz.

Crawford: There’s a lot of feeling about that, isn’t there?

01-00:22:34 Lunsford: He just missed us. He skipped us. Well, he’s the jazz authority. He tried to do his homework through researchers and— It’s such a huge task.

Crawford: I read Bill Carter’s piece about that. About how slighted a lot of musicians felt, including West Coast musicians.

Lunsford: Oh, yes. Yes, right. Okay, yes. Carter’s right. Ken Burns did miss the San Francisco scene. Well, you can’t cover everybody. That’s okay.

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Crawford: Did you know Harry Mordecai?

01-00:23:32 Lunsford: Yes, I took classic guitar lessons from him for a couple months.

Crawford: Were you thinking of playing guitar with the band?

01-00:23:43 Lunsford: No, no. I just wanted to learn a little bit about classic guitar, so I took some lessons from him, back in 1960 or ’61, somewhere in there.

Crawford: How about the venues, first of all, where you played. Clay Street was apparently very special.

01-00:24:03 Lunsford: Yes, it was. It was a nightclub that had a nice ambiance about it. It was comfortable to play in. The people liked it because it wasn’t too big. It held I don’t know how many people, hundreds of people. Three hundred maybe, somewhere in there.

But the bandstand was nice, with a dance floor in front and a balcony up above. So it was just acoustically, a good place to play; and it was comfortable for people to come in. There was a bar when you came in, on the left-hand side. You could stay at the bar or you could come down to the tables. That was McGoon’s on Clay Street. That was the best one.

Crawford: What happened to that one?

01-00:24:42 Lunsford: TransAmerica bought the entire block when they were building the TransAmerica Pyramid.

We tried to get that hotel. It was the William Tell Hotel originally, back in the 1850s and ‘60s or whatever.

They used to shanghai sailors in there, get them drunk and ship them off to the Orient. They’d wake up on the high sea. But anyway, that was the history of that place.

And so the historical society, and Pete Clute was instrumental in trying to stop TransAmerica Corporation, or whatever it’s called, from buying, taking over that block because the hotel was a historical place. He fought it. Pete fought it for like, I don’t know, five years, six years, something like that, and lost finally.

Crawford: Didn’t they come close to saving it?

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01-00:25:44 Lunsford: I don’t know. I wish they had saved it, actually. Because after that place closed, the rest of them weren’t that good.

Crawford: Which ones did you know?

01-00:25:55 Lunsford: I knew them all.

Crawford: You left in what, ’79?

01-00:26:01 Lunsford: I left in ’77. But I played with them until the early eighties, on and off.

Crawford: And what did you do then?

01-00:26:12 Lunsford: In the early eighties?

Crawford: Yes—after you left.

01-00:26:14 Lunsford: Oh, after I left, I played with the Golden State Jazz Band, which is a band made up of Ev Farey and Bob Mielke and Napier, Bill Napier—it was a great band —myself and Mike Duffy on bass, and Hal Smith on drums. Six-piece band. That’s what I did after that.

Crawford: Why did you leave?

01-00:26:37 Lunsford: I left because I got sick and tired of Turk’s behavior. Well, let me just explain something to you. He was such a dear friend of mine, and we loved each other. And he would go down to Monterey, and if I wasn’t with him, he’d bring back artichokes for me because I love them.

Well, he knows my interests in life and sciences. He brought me back a nautilus shell, for example. We exchanged gifts. I have his grandfather’s tool chest here. It was made in the 1800s, I guess. Wooden tool chest. He gave it to me.

So we exchanged a lot of things. But he had an uncanny way of just totally unnerving you, if he wanted to do that. [chuckles] And he would put somebody down in the band. Not all the time, but if he had some reason to say, oh, he’s not playing well or something, he would bad-mouth them.

He’d bad-mouth them to me, while they’re playing a solo. And I don’t think anybody knows this. I don’t even think Leon knows this.

Crawford: While you were performing?

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01-00:28:00 Lunsford: Yes. Yes, yes. I’ll give you one example. There’s thousands of things, but I’ll give you one example. Phil Howe was playing something and Turk came over and said, “He’s trying to sound like Benny Goodman. I can’t stand it. It’s too smooth. It’s too—” And Phil Howe was a wonderful musician.

He was always doing that, talking with me. I’m trying to play, a lot of times. And come on, I want to play! And he’d be talking.

Crawford: But he wouldn’t say it to the musician.

01-00:28:34 Lunsford: No, not head on. No, not face to face. He wouldn’t do that. No, he just kind of poured out his thoughts to me. Actually, in this period of time, with McGoon’s on Clay Street, when I played there— And so I saw what he was doing. So then when I would get up and sing or play a solo, I’m thinking to myself, son of a gun, he’s doing that with me, he’s thinking about that with me.

Crawford: Was he?

01-00:28:56 Lunsford: I don’t know. I just assumed that something was going on that way. Because he did it with everybody.

Crawford: And it was too stressful for you.

01-00:29:03 Lunsford: Very. Well, it wasn’t stressful so much, it was irritating. And he’d try and screw your mind up. He was very good at that.

Crawford: By that, you mean?

01-00:29:21 Lunsford: Well, I can’t use any bad words on this, so I’m not going to do it. [chuckles] But if he wanted to psych you out—he could psych you, he could get right into your head and twist it around to whatever he wanted to do.

Crawford: Why would he want to do that?

01-00:29:37 Lunsford: I don’t know. You’d have to ask somebody else.

Crawford: That wouldn’t be good for music, for it?

01-00:29:42 Lunsford: I don’t know. I don’t think it has anything to do with music, actually.

Crawford: Well, it must be a good thing to perform in a tranquil setting, where you can focus on—

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01-00:29:52 Lunsford: Well, yeah. You can’t play jazz if you’re all agitated. You can’t do that. I remember back when I was a kid, when I was twenty-five playing with him, I was the youngest guy in the band.

I’d come in with Ernie Carson, here at Front Street, come in five minutes ahead of time. And Bob Short would say, “How can you guys come in five minutes to nine and start playing and expect to play something good?” Well, we were just wild, young kids, you know?

But Bob Short— He was a terrific guy. He would come in a half hour early so he’d calm down; get everything ready with his tuba and calm down, so he’s ready to play. But we used to, as— some of us just ran right in. As kids. We were young, full of energy.

Crawford: Do you think that Turk had the instrumentation that he wanted?

01-00:30:43 Lunsford: Yes, he did when I was there. In fact, he called the band that Phil Howe, the guy I was just telling you about, and Leon several times during concerts, like in Atlanta, Georgia, and some other places, he said, “This is the best band I’ve ever had. Best band I’ve ever, ever had.”

He had a lot of different issues of his band. I believe he’s right. I don’t want to say he’s right, but that was certainly one of the best bands. We recorded an album in Heidelberg, Germany, in ’74, and it was great. It was a great album. It was his favorite album. He told me of all the albums he’d ever done, that was his favorite. It was live.

Crawford: Why was that?

01-00:31:22 Lunsford: It was live. Everybody was [snaps fingers] right on.

Crawford: Is that unusual?

01-00:31:29 Lunsford: No. No, you have to do that. But it was a recording that happened to catch that spirit that the band had.

Crawford: Talk about that, would you? Who was in the band and—

01-00:31:37 Lunsford: Leon, Helm, Turk, Pete Clute, myself, and Bill Carroll. And it was a wonderful band.

Crawford: What did you play, do you remember?

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01-00:31:48 Lunsford: What’d I play? Oh, my God. We had a huge repertoire, just—

Crawford: Everybody mentions that, so it must be so.

01-00:31:57 Lunsford: When I joined Turk in ’59, there were 600 tunes in the repertoire. Six hundred tunes. And I was the only guy with sheet music. I memorized it in three weeks so I wouldn’t be the only one reading music when we were on the road. [chuckles] But there were so many tunes.

Crawford: Turk’s arrangements were apparently wonderful.

01-00:32:15 Lunsford: He was a great arranger.

Crawford: What was special about his arranging?

01-00:32:19 Lunsford: I really never thought about that. He could write really great intros and endings for tunes, codas. Intros, codas, arrange a tune with space in it. All the compositions were arranged based on ensemble playing. That’s what made it great. Anybody had a solo, it was just like a little vignette for that soloist.

Crawford: He felt that balance to be right, didn’t he?

01-00:32:54 Lunsford: Yes.

Crawford: That was more New Orleans.

01-00:32:56 Lunsford: Yes, New Orleans ensemble playing. He wanted to keep it as an ensemble. The whole thing was an ensemble, with soloists here and there. Just like Oliver was, King Oliver. And Jelly Roll Morton, too. So a lot of our music was their music.

We played a different way, of course. It has to be that way. The music was special, in that he was honest to the music. He didn’t change a lot of things. He wrote great tunes. He was, I don’t know, just a great arranger. He arranged “Mack the Knife’’ for Louis Armstrong.

Crawford: It’s a great if sad story.

01-00:33:50 Lunsford: Well, George Avakian— Well, you’ve heard it already, though. Okay, I don’t need to tell that again. [they laugh]

Crawford: Was Turk fairly strict about following Jelly Roll and King Oliver, would you say?

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01-00:34:37 Lunsford: Yeah, I would say Turk was a purist. Traditional jazz purist. In a sense, yeah. I’ll tell you how pure he was.

We were in New York in 1960. We were in Washington, D.C. in ’59. And Pete Clute and I went to the archives in Washington, the National Archives, and dug down in there, and we spent— We were there a week, at this club.

In the daytime, Pete and I went into the National Archives and researched a whole bunch of stuff. And I found a verse to a tune, of a tune that we played. We only played the chorus, but I found the verse. And I copied it. You’re not supposed to copy, but we copied stuff while we were in the building. And found a verse to “Drop That Sack,” was the name of the tune.

After I found the verse to that he stopped playing it, because he couldn’t figure out the chord structure for it, because it was just written— No chords, just single notes, so you could’ve done anything to harmonize that verse. So he never played it after that, until I finally said, fifteen years later, “What ever happened to ‘Drop That Sack’? We never play it.”

He told me that he couldn’t figure out the verse. I think Johnny Dodds wrote it or somebody; I can’t recall now. So he just dropped it. Because if he wanted to play it, he wanted to play it completely.

We played tunes that had verses— We played the verses and choruses. A lot of jazz bands just play the chorus of tunes. But he’d want to have the verse, because that sets it off. And so that’s what he strived for. We played very few tunes that were just choruses. He never liked to have anybody play any more than one chorus. You couldn’t play two choruses, really.

Crawford: Why was that?

01-00:36:36 Lunsford: Well, because it was not a soloist’s band.

Crawford: Right.

01-00:36:39 Lunsford: It was an ensemble band. So no, he never allowed that. Or maybe you’d get a half a chorus. Some guys didn’t like that at all. But my philosophy—and I think his, too—was if you can’t say anything in one chorus, you’d have to take two or three. You’re reiterating or— You must have a lot to say. If you can’t say everything in one chorus, then hey.

Crawford: Yes. That is fairly purist, isn’t it?

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01-00:37:08 Lunsford: Yes. Oh, yes. Sure. Instead of having guys go on and on, which guys do today— A lot of bands, if you want another chorus, you take another chorus. Take another chorus, if you feel like it. It gets to be boring, actually. And it gets to be egotistical.

Crawford: Well, how about Lu Watters? Do you know much about him?

01-00:37:56 Lunsford: A little bit.

Crawford: How would you say he differed stylistically?

01-00:38:08 Lunsford: Watters and Turk, you mean?

Crawford: Yes.

01-00:38:10 Lunsford: Different stylistically?

Crawford: Mm-hm.

01-00:38:13 Lunsford: Well, I’ll tell you, I don’t believe there was a lot of difference stylistically, because when Turk wasn’t with Watters’ band, the Watters band didn’t perform very well, in a sense.

Lu said to me, he said, “Nothing really happened when Turk was out of the band, musically. When Turk was in the band, it was fantastic, but when he was out, it wasn’t the same.” That’s how powerful Turk was.

I think stylistically, they melded. I don’t think there’s any difference in style. One guy played trumpet and the other guy played trombone— But they played ensemble. And they played sparsely. Watters played a very sparse, beautiful lead that left room for other instruments to improvise in, including Turk, of course. And all those things were not show-off-y things.

Crawford: That was true of both of them.

01-00:39:02 Lunsford: Yes.

Crawford: I’ve read something that surprised me, which was that Bing Crosby loved Lu Watters, and had Watters arrange for him. They played for the big bands.

01-00:39:41 Lunsford: Yes. They got tired of it, that’s why they went to traditional jazz.

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Crawford: Would you say something more about the clubs that you remember. Not necessarily where you played. But others--it was a pretty vital jazz scene.

01-00:39:57 Lunsford: In San Francisco?

Crawford: Yes. In the Bay Area.

01-00:39:59 Lunsford: Yes. Yes. The only club I ever went to was McGoon’s, basically. I can’t tell you anything about any other jazz clubs, because I was always playing. I never went out on an off night to go to another jazz club. Never.

Crawford: Do you know much about the Barbary Coast history?

01-00:40:16 Lunsford: A little bit, not much. A little bit. Barbary Coast was before me.

Crawford: Of course. But isn’t it curious to you that such a vibrant scene in black music existed here before the 1920s.

01-00:40:40 Lunsford: I’m not so sure that’s true. I’m not so sure. I know that Jelly Roll Morton played here on the Barbary Coast for a short time. And then he went to L.A., or went to back to L.A. or something. But as far as traditional jazz, there was nothing really— What black musicians were playing was not traditional, it was modern. Like the Fillmore, like some of these other modern places, the Black Cat.

Crawford: Kid Ory was here, wasn’t he?

01-00:41:03 Lunsford: Yeah, Kid Ory, that’s right.

Crawford: Bunk Johnson played here, also in Oakland. There’s a new book out about that time in music, Barbary Coast. It was a very small black population in the city. Not much over a thousand. So just the fact that King Oliver came and Jelly Roll came and played here—

01-00:41:32 Lunsford: I don’t think Oliver came here.

Crawford: The author claimed that Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band performed here.

01-00:41:39 Lunsford: Oh, really? Well, maybe. I don’t know. That, I don’t know about. I know that Jelly played. On the Barbary Coast somewhere. I don’t know where. Again, that was way before my time in 1939; I was only four years old or five years old. I remember when he died, actually.

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Crawford: So you knew that music that early. That’s pretty exceptional.

01-00:42:07 Lunsford: No, I just remember Jelly Roll Morton dying in 1939. It was in the news. I recall that. I just remember it. I remember Jimmie Lunceford back in those days, during World War II, only because of his name. It’s the same as mine. Different spelling.

Crawford: That’s right.

01-00:42:36 Lunsford: I remember him playing, too, the Lunceford band.

Crawford: Big band.

01-00:42:39 Lunsford: Big band. Wailing big band, yeah.

Crawford: Did you like that music? You did. But you didn’t want to play it.

01-00:42:47 Lunsford: No.

Crawford: As a banjoist, you wouldn’t.

01-00:42:51 Lunsford: Probably not. I could play guitar. But I don’t have any interest in it, really. I don’t do anything I don’t like to do. Sorry. [laughs] That’s true.

Crawford: Let’s talk about touring with Turk Murphy. One of the interviewees told me that on tour, it was quite wonderful to be with Turk because it was so much more relaxed. Was that your sense?

01-00:43:19 Lunsford: Yeah. Yeah, it was a lot more fun on tour. We went to Europe a few times, and that was fun. Went to Australia. They were business trips, really. We didn’t do a lot of sight-seeing. We did some.

But yes, it was more relaxed on the road. Turk liked to go on the road, actually. And Turk started to go on the road again when I rejoined the band because I said, “Turk,” I said, “Back East”—and this is New York and Boston—I said, “Your name is diminishing because you haven’t been back there in years.”

It was true. And so I guess he started thinking about that and thought, well, let’s try and get something to go on a tour or something. Pete didn’t like it because we left McGoon’s. And every time we left, Pete hated it because we lost money.

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Crawford: Would you go at holiday slack time?

01-00:44:13 Lunsford: Holiday slack time? No. [chuckles] The tours were fun. They were fun to do. They were hectic sometimes, but I liked it.

Crawford: Turk loved to drive, I heard. You did, too. Did you drive back and forth across the country?

01-00:44:35 Lunsford: Yep. I was the only one that Turk— He had several cars. He had an SS100 Jaguar and he had a Mercedes and he had an Alfa Romeo. And I’m the only one he would let drive the Alfa. He wouldn’t let anybody touch it, including his son, Carson.

Later on, he wanted to drive and Turk would never let him drive. But he let me drive because we’d go up to Sea Ranch once a year, and he’d take the Alfa out. I lived right behind him, on Chestnut Street. So he’d get the Alfa out and we’d get in the car, put the top down and drive up 101 like this, to Sea Ranch. You know where Sea Ranch is, right?

Crawford: Sure.

01-00:45:14 Lunsford: I would drive the whole way. And I would four-wheel drift the car about eighty miles an hour around some of these curves, these turns. You know how those roads are? Try some of those turns at seventy, eighty miles and hour; it’s exciting. And Turk just sat there and loved it. He just loved it.

Crawford: That you were driving.

01-00:45:30 Lunsford: I was driving, yeah. Yeah, he liked the way I drive.

Crawford: He was much loved in San Francisco, there’s no doubt about that.

01-00:44:40 Lunsford: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Crawford: You were his best friend?

01-00:45:43 Lunsford: I was probably as close to him as any musician, over a period of time. I lived right behind him, and we used to do a lot of things socially. Drink a lot.

We used to drink a lot together. We’d go to Southern California together on a vacation. All kinds of different things. But as I say, it was a love-hate relationship. I had some arguments with him and we made up. We made up after a big one.

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Crawford: How about the marriages?

01-00:46:19 Lunsford: Whose marriages?

Crawford: [laughs] Not yours, his.

01-00:46:22 Lunsford: Well, his marriage was just— Well, he married one woman in 1959, Harriet. And they were married the whole rest of his life. In fact, I got married at the same time he did, and we had a dual wedding reception in New York City. Turk’s wife and my wife.

Crawford: Want to talk about that?

01-00:46:48 Lunsford: Do I have to? [laughs]

Crawford: No. How did that come to be? Were you playing?

01-00:46:53 Lunsford: Oh, yes. We were playing in New York City. That’s what we did. He got married and I got married, and we had a party in New York. Various people showed up. That was about it— I don’t remember too much about that particular thing, because that’s not a big thing to me.

Crawford: What year was that?

01-00:47:16 Lunsford: ’59. I joined Turk in ’59. Played ’59, ’60 and ’61. I left for ten years. Came back in ’71.

Crawford: To ’78 or ’77.

01-00:47:44 Lunsford: ’77, the fall of ’77. John Gill started playing in 1978.

Crawford: I have a quote here from one of the band: “We took turns in the hot seat.”

01-00:48:07 Lunsford: Yeah, that’s kind of a good quote. “In the hot seat,” yeah. I was in the hot seat for while. I won’t do it. That’s why I left. That’s why I got pissed and left, I’m sorry to say.

Crawford: Are you sorry?

01-00:48:18 Lunsford: I made a mistake.

Crawford: You would’ve stayed. You wish you had stayed.

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01-00:48:22 Lunsford: I wish I had handled the situation a little differently than I did. But I saw what he was doing to me, that I saw him doing to other guys in the band. I said, “You’re not going to do this to me, Turk.” And I quit. Because I didn’t want him getting to my head that way. And he knew what I was talking about. [chuckles].

Crawford: Did that happen often, that you know of? Did other people react that way, too?

01-00:49:30 Lunsford: Well, let’s see. I know Bill Napier left. He just walked out on the band, in New York, for personal reasons. And Turk called me because I, at that time, was leading the Red Onion Jazz Band in New York City. They were playing in New York. And Turk asked me if I knew of any clarinet players and I said, “Yeah, Dick Hadlock.” So I’m responsible for Dick Hadlock being on the West Coast.

Crawford: Oh, he was there and you brought him back.

01-00:49:57 Lunsford: Dick Hadlock played clarinet in the Red Onion Jazz Band that I played— He was one of the clarinet players.

Crawford: How long was he with Turk?

01-00:50:08 Lunsford: Well, let’s see. He joined Turk in ’57, the last part of ’57, ’58. Probably a year, maybe. Not very long, actually. Well, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. I don’t really know.

Crawford: Well, I do hope I get to talk to him. In fact, I’ll take a number from you, if you have it.

01-00:50:25 Lunsford: You better get to him quick because he’s eighty-something and he’s going to forget some stuff. You better do that one. [laughs] He’s an awfully nice guy.

Crawford: Yes, I know. I know him from the radio.

01-00:50:37 Lunsford: Yes.

Crawford: Someone said that Turk was not happy about taking audience requests. He would reject that; he wouldn’t play “Tiger Rag,” for instance.

01-00:50:58 Lunsford: We played “Tiger Rag.”

Crawford: Well, maybe that’s not the right example. But do you think that’s true at all?

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01-00:51:03 Lunsford: Well, he wouldn’t take requests that were out of the idiom. [phone rings] He wouldn’t do that. [he takes the call; audiofile stops and re-starts]

01-00:51:18 Lunsford: Well, where were we? [they laugh] You don’t know.

Crawford: I had just asked you about how Turk felt about taking audience requests.

01-00:51:27 Lunsford: Oh, requests. Yeah, he’d play requests, if we knew them. He wouldn’t take a request of a tune that would be out of the idiom or—

Crawford: Like what?

01-00:51:38 Lunsford: Great tunes, maybe, but he won’t— Like “I Cover the Waterfront,” for example. Teagarden did that, a great job. He wouldn’t play ballads like that, particularly.

There were a lot of tunes he wouldn’t play because we were in our groove, so to speak. And why would you? I agree with Turk. You can’t have the public telling you what to do; you’ve got to tell the public what’s good musically, what you think is good. So you present your best music to the public. You can’t have the public telling you how to do it or what to do.

Crawford: I agree with that. But what if I was in the front row and I said, please play “My Funny Valentine”?

01-00:52:17 Lunsford: Forget it.

Crawford: How would he deal with it?

01-00:52:20 Lunsford: He would totally ignore you, or he would— I don’t know, he would do something to you.

The audience came in, our customers all knew the tunes. And they would send up requests of the tunes that we’d play, usually.

Crawford: What were the favorites? Just give me five.

01-00:52:41 Lunsford: Favorite tunes?

Crawford: Yes.

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01-00:52:43 Lunsford: Oh, God. [laughs] Probably “Doctor Jazz,” a couple fast tunes like that. A lot of Turk’s vocals—“Ace In The Hole”—were very popular. Stuff that he sang was always really good.

Crawford: Why has the traditional jazz revival been mostly white?

01-00:53:13 Lunsford: Boy, you ask me some funny questions. Tough ones. Why is it mostly white? I’ll give you my opinion. I think it’s too reminiscent of times when it was really bad for black people. And so who wants to duplicate that? I wouldn’t.

If I were a black musician, only because of my race, I wouldn’t be particularly interested in playing Jelly Roll Morton, when I’d rather be playing Miles Davis, for an example, or something different.

Crawford: That’s a pretty good answer.

01-00:53:58 Lunsford: But I will say this. Wilbur de Paris, that band was an exception. And they did use the music of traditional New Orleans. That was an exceptional band. He played Jelly Roll Morton tunes, he played Oliver tunes, he played a lot of stuff. It was a pretty swinging little band.

But that was one group of black musicians that stayed with traditional jazz. And oh, George Lewis. That was a little bit different. But there weren’t very many.

Crawford: Good. I’m going to change the tape here.

[End Audiofile 1]

[Begin Audiofile 2]

Crawford: Okay. Well, what I want to ask you about now is the legacy of Turk Murphy.

02-00:00:30 Lunsford: The legacy of Turk Murphy. Well, he left quite a legacy of music, of original compositions and style of playing trombone. So his legacy’s quite large. I think he’s influenced a lot of musicians. Or he did at one time, anyway. Not so much anymore.

Crawford: How is that?

02-00:01:02 Lunsford: How do I see this? Disappearing. This is disappearing.

Crawford: Where is trad jazz right now?

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02-00:01:11 Lunsford: Nowhere.

Crawford: Nowhere. Not in Europe?

02-00:01:14 Lunsford: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, sure. I thought you meant here. Oh, yeah Europe, sure. Traditional jazz is still alive over there.

Crawford: Why?

02-00:01:25 Lunsford: A prophet is unknown in his own country. Turk is a prophet. He’s unknown in his country.

Crawford: Would you say the same of blues?

02-00:01:33 Lunsford: Of what? Blues? No. Blues has been around all the time. Blues is the human condition. It will never go away.

Crawford: The music you think is more popular in performance than trad jazz is?

02-00:01:48 Lunsford: Yeah. Blues? Oh, sure. Rock and roll; there’s a lot of blues in rock and roll. Different style of playing, but yes. There’s a blues structure to the music. Compositions, it’s three chords, four chords. Basically, three.

But traditional jazz has basically disappeared. And the reason for that is probably because every generation has to make its own statement. So they don’t stay with something for two or three generations, usually. You know what I mean?

Crawford: Sure.

02-00:02:26 Lunsford: Now we have hip hop and all that. I love hip hop, don’t you?

Crawford: You do?

02-00:02:29 Lunsford: Don’t you? I can’t stand it, actually. That’s the one form that I— It’s so repetitive to me—

Crawford: It’s more about lyrics than music.

02-00:02:45 Lunsford: Yeah, I know.

Crawford: It’s not my music of choice, but I want to know what’s going on.

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02-00:02:52 Lunsford: I disagree with you on that. I will not listen to it, because I don’t want my ears being stuffed with that kind of stuff. If I want to listen to music, I want to listen to good music; I want to listen to something that’s well done, that is artistic.

Not to say that hip hop isn’t, but I won’t fill my head with that. I have other music to fill my head with. There’s no room for that for me right now.

Crawford: You could say it’s more a kind of poetry than it is music.

02-00:03:17 Lunsford: It’s poetry, yes. It’s more that, stuck to a metronome drummer. You know what I mean? A side man. [mouths beats] And then they’re talking over this rhythm pattern. It’s not even someone playing; it’s a mechanical thing, a lot of it.

Crawford: Well, you say that trad jazz is nowhere, and still the festivals go on around the country.

02-00:03:42 Lunsford: No, they’re dying. They’re dying. The guy who called me just a little bit ago, he’s been playing at Sacramento, his band—I played with that band, with him—since ’76 or some, somewhere in there.

The audience has gone downhill until it’s nothing now, for traditional jazz. Everybody’s graying out, dying off. The audience is dead, dying. People are disappearing all around, including musicians, even. [they laugh]

Crawford: Even.

02-00:04:15 Lunsford: I hate to think of that, but it’s true.

Crawford: Well, didn’t Turk Murphy play with Bunk Johnson—that goes way back.

02-00:04:26 Lunsford: I think he played with Bunk during World War II. Just a session or something.

Crawford: So much is made of Bunk Johnson and his rehabilitation. You know that story?

02-00:04:38 Lunsford: Yes. Well, he got some new teeth, I’ll tell you that. Kay Helm, Bob Helm’s wife, I think was involved somewhat in bringing him out of obscurity. He was in New Iberia, Louisiana during World War II. I don’t know what he was doing, but hopefully, not picking cotton.

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But he had no teeth. And I think that Helm and some other people bought him a new set of dentures so he could play. And then he started coming back that way. And then he came out here and did record a couple things on, I think, Good Time Jazz or something; I can’t remember the label.

Crawford: How about your recording career?

02-00:05:39 Lunsford: My recording career? I haven’t made a career out of recording.

Crawford: No, but your career with Turk in recording.

02-00:05:46 Lunsford: Well, I like it. You mean how do I feel about it?

Crawford: Yes.

02-00:05:51 Lunsford: Wonderful. I feel great. I’m glad I’ve done that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have recorded anything, probably. Hardly. Yeah, I feel great about it. I felt that the bands I played in, recorded with, all the guys did great. Good jobs. Loved it. I’d do it again right now with them, if I could.

Crawford: What made Turk the musician that he was?

02-00:07:55 Lunsford: Turk? Determination. Stick to it. That’s the most important thing. Through thick and thin.

Crawford: Talk about his standards.

02-00:08:10 Lunsford: Turk’s? Well, for one thing— Let’s see. Let me think about it. These are fascinating questions you’re asking me. Some of them are irritating, because I don’t know the answers to those things.

It was such a specialized thing. The Turk Murphy Jazz Band was a very specialized, very small group of people in the jazz scene. So I don’t know. Ask me the question another way.

Crawford: Well, people who knew the band in its heyday were passionate about it.

02-00:08:55 Lunsford: Yeah, very.

Crawford: And that’s my question. Why? What was the basis of the passion?

02-00:09:03 Lunsford: Of their passion, the audience’s passion? They liked the music. They liked the straightforwardness of it, they liked the rhythm of it. They liked it loud. We

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were the loudest six-piece band in the world. And they just liked it. They could dance to it. A lot of dancing. A lot of people liked it because of the dancing, and a lot of people liked it for the dancing and the music.

Crawford: How much of the passion for it was Turk’s own personality?

02-00:09:32 Lunsford: How much was his own warm personality, you say? Quite a bit. Quite a bit. As I say, when he died, nobody could step forward and take the position he’d been doing since he started playing, since he started the band.

Crawford: Did someone try?

02-00:09:53 Lunsford: Oh, yeah, sure. You have to be totally dedicated. You have to be a one-track mind. And that’s what Turk was, basically a one-track mind. He knew what he wanted, and he got what he wanted. Usually, most of the time, he did.

He was such a dynamic individual. And I’ll tell you this. This is one statement I’ll say about Turk. And I’ll say it until my dying day. Anyone who ever met Turk, associated with Turk for a bit, knew him a little bit, their lives would totally change through knowing him. Totally, totally change. Can you understand that?

Crawford: How so?

02-00:10:39 Lunsford: Because he was so powerful. He was such a powerful individual. And he was so controlling that he was dynamic. He was not fair sometimes; sometimes he was fair. But if you’d never met him— You never met him.

It’s too bad. It’s too bad. Because then you’d know these things about Turk, if you knew him. He was powerful. He was Attila the Hun, if he wanted to be. I’m not kidding. But he could also be the sweetest, most loving guy you’d want to know.

Crawford: The Attila part, did it serve the music? When he turned on that sort of fierce character.

02-00:11:28 Lunsford: Oh, I just used Attila the Hun as an example of something powerful or over- running. No, he wasn’t like that musically. That’s just the way he was personally.

Crawford: And who did he turn that on to? The band, specifically, to correct something?

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02-00:11:51 Lunsford: Probably for his own business, for his own reasons, I don’t know. I can’t answer that. I don’t know. If I tried to answer, I’d be lying. I’d be making something up. So I can’t tell you.

Crawford: Anything more you’d say about the music itself?

02-00:12:09 Lunsford: About the music itself?

Crawford: Mm-hm.

02-00:12:17 Lunsford: Well, that music, what I played in the band, was the best thing that ever happened. That’s all I can say to you, as far as I’m concerned. I was very narrow-minded, too. I was very narrow-minded, as far as — I’ll tell you this. Back in the seventies, we felt we were the best jazz band in the world! In the world! And we were. We truly were. And we knew it. But we didn’t flaunt it.

And that’s something that Turk appreciated, too because he didn’t like grandstanders or showboating, or play two choruses or three choruses or something to show how well you played, any of that. It was just the way we played, what we liked.

That was the appeal of that band. It was immediate. It was absolutely immediate. There was no fudging around. It’s like you do it or you don’t do it. And he persevered at that. Perseverance is the main thing for Turk’s success, actually. He told me. When you persevere, you finally get there. Just keep persevering. That’s the thing.

Crawford: When you were playing, was there a feeling of community, of communal joy amongst you?

02-00:13:31 Lunsford: Communal joy? [they laugh] Well, I’ll tell you, we were in Japan one time, and we were all in a hot tub together, the whole band. And I said, “Turk, this is a great opportunity for an album cover. We’ll do ‘Turk Murphy, up to his neck in hot water,’ and do an album from Japan.” But he didn’t do that.

Crawford: That wouldn’t have been Turk.

02-00:13:53 Lunsford: Hm?

Crawford: What I’m trying to get at is—when I play in an ensemble, there can be an intimacy that you feel that is overwhelming, almost. Is that something you experience when you play with other band members.

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02-00:14:14 Lunsford: Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Well, it should be that. It’s not good if it’s not like that. Not good. You’ve got to have that kind of thing, that kind of feeling with everybody. Then the music gets off the ground. Even in classical music, the same. Different way, but the same kind of idea.

Crawford: Anything else you’d add?

02-00:14:41 Lunsford: No, I’m just trying to answer your questions. [they laugh] Your coming-out- of-left-field questions. Oh, gosh. Which is okay. Oh, gosh. I’ll tell you one thing. As far as my own career, my career was started and ended with Turk. Now, I joined the band in New York in ’59, after I came back from Europe with another band. But that was the band for me. And it’s always been. And it was that way even when I left. I had to leave because I chased a bad marriage. And Turk didn’t want me to do that. And so I missed out—

Crawford: What does that mean?

02-00:15:21 Lunsford: That means my wife was [chuckles] a bad marriage with me. You see? Okay?

Crawford: And he didn’t approve of it?

02-00:15:32 Lunsford: Of my marriage?

Crawford: No, of your chasing it, you said.

02-00:15:34 Lunsford: Yeah. Yeah, right. I’m not basically San Franciscan, see. I’ve been all over the country. New York, Boston, that kind of thing.

When I came back from Europe— He tried to get me in the band when I was in Europe, but I said, “I can’t join you.” I’d just gone to Europe with another band called The Chicago Stompers, in the spring of ’59, and he was needing a banjo player.

I said, “Turk, I can’t.” He sent me a telegram in Düsseldorf, Germany, where I was. And I said, “I can’t.” I said, “I just joined this band. I can’t let these guys down. I can’t do that.” And I didn’t. Because I wouldn’t do that. So he honored that. He has integrity, and so he honored that.

And I thought, okay, that was my one shot. I have to stay with what I have here with these guys in Germany. And we finished the tour, came back; and then out of the clear blue sky he called me—I’d just gotten back a couple weeks previous—to join the band, and I did.

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So my whole musical thing, basically, is the beginning of Turk until the end. When I quit Turk in 1977, I was mad because he was treating me the same way he treated other guys. And I said, “You’re not going to treat me that way.”

So I made a mistake myself. Okay? You catching this? Okay. I made a mistake. And it was all because of my own sensitivities. So I handled the situation in an entirely inappropriate way. And when I did it that way, even though Turk forgave me— He forgave me, and I still played with him later on.

But my career actually ended at that point, my professional career. Even though I continued on. But I hurt myself professionally by acting the way I did. And you know how I acted.

Crawford: How was it when you went back with him after you quit—

02-00:17:49 Lunsford: Okay.

Crawford: Just okay?

02-00:17:50 Lunsford: All right, fine. Oh, it was fine. Just okay? No, it was more than okay. It was much more than okay. When I left for ten years, Turk used about twenty or thirty banjo players, trying to find the right guy. So yes, it was okay.

Crawford: Why did you leave again?

02-00:18:14 Lunsford: I left Turk the first time— I was with him three years, ’59, ’60, ’61. I had a lot of marriage problems. So she went back with my son and I stayed here. But I decided I wanted to go back East and try to save my marriage, which was rotten to begin with. I shouldn’t have done it.

Turk says, “Don’t do that. Stay here.” I said, “I’ve got to go.” And he said, “Okay.” He wanted me to stay. And the band actually had a record date in L.A. called Let The Good Times Roll that was done about a week or two after I left. He wanted me to stay for that recording, and I didn’t do it. He had to get a drummer down in L.A. to play for me, play my part.

I should’ve stayed, actually, instead of chasing after a real bad thing. Divorce is not all a good thing. Sometimes it is.

Crawford: But then when you came back, you were with him for almost ten years. Then you quit and then you played with him some more.

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02-00:19:22 Lunsford: I quit him in ’77. And then I think I started playing with him again off and on in 1980. ’79, ’80. ,’81, ’82, right in there. I played with him up until about ’82. But not all the time in McGoon’s. Sometimes, but on private jobs and stuff like that.

John Gill was playing banjo again, and he went to clarinet, started playing clarinet. And then I got back on the banjo. And that was in the early eighties.

Crawford: That kind of a versatility is hard fathom, that one can transfer from instruments as different as—

02-00:20:12 Lunsford: Oh, like John? Yes. Well, you could do it if you wanted. I don’t have any desire doing something like that. I’m more focused—I couldn’t play clarinet.

Crawford: Did you play the Carnegie Hall concert?

Lunsford: I should’ve. I actually should’ve. Helm should’ve played it, also. In fact, people said that that should’ve been that way. And Leon should’ve played, too. Turk had cancer. They carried him out of the plane on a stretcher, as I recall.

Crawford: Did you go to that concert?

02-00:20:55 Lunsford: No.

Crawford: But it had to be pretty special.

02-00:21:00 Lunsford: Sure. Oh, he cried. Did you ever see any of it?

Crawford: No.

02-00:21:08 Lunsford: You didn’t see the Carnegie Hall concert? I’ve seen videos of it, of that concert and the presentation to him and stuff, and the band. And it was great.

But I wasn’t there. Should’ve been. As I say, I should’ve been. Helm should’ve been there, also. Leon should’ve been there.

Crawford: The veterans.

02-00:21:42 Lunsford: Pete Clute should’ve been there.

Crawford: Why was it so special?

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02-00:21:47 Lunsford: Carnegie Hall? Oh, there’s nothing special about Carnegie Hall, dear. [laughs] It was the epitome. It was set up for Turk. Everybody knew he was dying, and they did it. It was a tribute to him. That’s why it’s special. A lot of people. It was full. A lot of people — he had a lot of fans back there. And they showed up.

Crawford: What would happen today if a trad jazz band booked Carnegie Hall? Is there one that could?

02-00:22:21 Lunsford: Well, I don’t know. I doubt it. You mean in the sense of the way a Turk Murphy jazz band was, or Lu Watters Yerba Buena band? No, I doubt it. I don’t think so. Not to my knowledge. It’s just there’s not that kind of thing going on.

Crawford: It’s sad, isn’t it?

02-00:22:37 Lunsford: Yeah, it’s sad. Yeah. It’s aggravating, actually.

Crawford: Aggravating. But someone told me, “I don’t worry too much about it, because I know that in ten years it’s going to come back again.”

02-00:22:50 Lunsford: That’s wrong. Whoever said that’s incorrect. It’s not going to come back.

Crawford: No way to bring it back.

02-00:22:58 Lunsford: I almost guarantee it. And it is too bad, because there’s a lot of great stuff in that music, and a lot of open territory in the music. With the band you can be able to express yourself in an ensemble way. And it’s a beautiful way to do it. It really is.

What you’re talking about, you play in a trio and you get that intimate feeling; it’s the same thing in a jazz band. When it’s good, you get that. It only takes one person to screw up a band. Only takes one person. And then you can’t do anything with it. You have to have everybody in the band on the same page. Same feeling, same emotion, same direction that Turk had, for example.

You have to go in his direction, because that’s where he’s leading you with his trombone. And that’s what you do. And that way, the band really gets off the ground and really means something. Not only to you, but to the audience. Because the audience will pick up on it, for sure.

Crawford: You can’t fool an audience?

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02-00:23:57 Lunsford: No. You can’t fool a musician, either.

Crawford: That’s right. You said it just takes one person to mess things up—

02-00:24:08 Lunsford: What happens? Well, no, I don’t know. [chuckles] Any kind of musical group, a small group particularly, if you have one person that, ability-wise, is not quite up to the standards of what everybody else is, it just holds everybody else down, that’s all. And so the band doesn’t sound as good with a lesser musician. That’s all.

Crawford: But Turk could get to that problem.

02-00:24:43 Lunsford: Oh, you bet! Oh, and if you were that way, you didn’t stay in the band. You couldn’t be in that band unless you played the way he wanted you to play. And there’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever. You’ve got to want to do that and be able to play it. If you can’t play in that direction— So if you were a banjo player, couldn’t play what he wanted— I know a lot of guys that tried it with Murphy, and they just couldn’t make it.

Crawford: He wouldn’t know that when he had listened to you, auditioned you?

02-00:25:16 Lunsford: No, not really. Well, he auditioned guys and they played well at the beginning, and then he— Al Lyon is an example of that. He was a banjo player back in the early fifties. And he auditioned for the band down on Powell Street. No, not on Powell. At the Italian Village.

There were several, three, four banjo players, I guess auditioned. And this guy won the audition and then played with the band, but he didn’t— He played great in the audition, but then when he got with the band, he wasn’t in the direction that Turk wanted him to be in, wanted him to go. He didn’t do it. He just didn’t. So he got rid of him.

That’s when I walked into Child’s Paramount in 1954, as an eighteen-, nineteen-year-old kid playing the banjo, he wanted to hear me play. Because he wanted to get rid of Al Lyon and get somebody able to go his direction, you see?

So that’s why Turk was so difficult to work for, because you didn’t know exactly what he was aiming for, what he wanted to hear out of the various instruments, you see.

Crawford: You knew when it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

02-00:26:20 Lunsford: Yeah. Well, I don’t know that, actually.

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Crawford: It has come up several times, Turk Murphy’s stuttering; that perhaps he was less communicative with his musicians, in the way you’re talking about, because of it.

Lunsford: Yes, he stuttered because he was insecure.

Crawford: You think?

02-00:26:45 Lunsford: I know. His insecurity was masked by this great willpower that he had. As I say, nobody’s been able to duplicate anything he’s done. There’s no trombone players that are playing that could sound like him. They try. A lot of guys have tried; don’t get it. They try, but it’s not the real thing.

Turk wanted the real thing out of guys, the musicians. Pat Yankee, too. He called her a musician. She’s a singer. But there are certain qualities he had to have out of these various— And if you didn’t have those qualities, you’re not going to play in that band. It’s this totally unique kind of thing.

Truly. It was something he had an iron hand over. In fact, you could take a picture of the band and have Turk in the picture, and have him with strings, like puppets, like everyone else was puppets [chuckles] kind of thing. That’s how controlling he was. How beautifully controlling he was.

Crawford: You’re smiling.

02-00:27:50 Lunsford: Oh, yeah. I didn’t mind. I loved it. Are you kidding? I loved it. That was my band. It was his band, of course, but it was— As I say, my musical life started with him when I was nineteen, and ended with him in ’77, when I quit. And how old was I then? I was forty-three. So my whole lifespan from nineteen to forty-three, that’s my whole career right there.

Crawford: Right there.

02-00:28:18 Lunsford: You see? And I ended it the way I ended it. I knew I ended it, too. I’ve been playing professionally since then, but as far as like the real cream of the crop, the pièce de résistance, it was Turk, really. Everything else has been less. It’s the same thing with the traditional scene here in San Francisco. It’s been greatly diminished since his death. And it will never come back up to that, ever. He was just too unusual, too much of an unusual man.

Crawford: I gather.

02-00:28:49 Lunsford: I have never met anybody— as I say, anybody who’s met him, their life has changed—turned around, changed, everything—because of his dynamic,

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dynamic personality. He was strong, he was tough, he was sentimental. All that in one.

Crawford: That’s good. And a good place to end. Thank you so much.

[End of Lunsford Interview]

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Richard Hadlock Interview #1: March 18, 2010 [Begin Audiofile 1]

Crawford: March 18, 2010, interview with Richard Hadlock, for the Turk Murphy oral history. I’m sitting with Richard Hadlock at the university, and we’re going to talk about your life as a musician, and also Turk Murphy and your association with the band.

You’ve had a very colorful life. I know something about your early life, so let’s begin and I’d like you to talk about your first exposure to music and your family.

01-00:00:36 Hadlock: I didn’t come from a terribly musical family, but there was music in the house. My sister took classical piano lessons and I heard her practicing a lot. And my mother played old-timey hymns that she learned from her father. My dad wasn’t very musical, although he still had a mandolin, left over from his college days, and we had a lot of records because my father was in the business; it was connected to the Victor Company.

Crawford: RCA?

01-00:01:18 Hadlock: RCA Victor. They sent him a lot of their new releases. So in the early thirties, we had piles and piles of old 78s up in the attic, and I would go through them looking for things that I liked. Not many, but a few. There were occasionally Duke Ellington or Louis Prima records or somebody like that. I think when I was ten, possibly nine, my parents took me to the Radio City Music Hall in New York.

Crawford: You were born in New York?

01-00:02:00 Hadlock: Yes, Schenectady, New York. I grew up in Connecticut, about seventy miles from New York City. And it was a big deal, going down to the big city and going to the Radio City Music Hall.

But what absolutely floored me was this one man came out and played the pipe organ—his name was Dick Leibert, famous organist—and filled that huge hall with sound, like a huge orchestra. So I said to my mother, “That’s what I want to play.” [laughs] She said, “There’s no way we’re going to get a pipe organ in our house.” I said, “Well, how about we narrow it down a little and how about an accordion? That gets a big sound.”

And so she went to the music teacher that used to come to our little school. It was a country school, four-rooms, eight-grades school. And he said, “Oh, he’s

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too young to handle that big accordion. Why don’t you get him a smaller instrument like a clarinet?”

So she did, and she came home with this clarinet. I was in tears; I was so disappointed. And here I am, all these years later, still struggling to play the clarinet. [laughs]

Crawford: Oh, not from what I’ve heard.

01-00:03:26 Hadlock: [laughs] So that’s how it began. I found friends who wanted to make music, in the eighth grade, let’s say. And later in high school, we had a little band. Not much, but something.

Crawford: How about Brazil? You didn’t mention Brazil.

01-00:03:42 Hadlock: That’s where I went to high school.

Crawford: Yes?

01-00:03:45 Hadlock: Yes. I had a few friends who played instruments there. It was a small school, with a graduating class of eighteen kids.

Crawford: Your father was stationed there.

01-00:03:58 Hadlock: My father was with RCA there. And it was a very international school. You got used to everybody knowing three or four languages.

Crawford: Did you learn Portuguese?

01-00:04:14 Hadlock: I learned a little, just to get around, but it’s pretty sketchy. I’m not very proud of the fact that I didn’t really learn it. I was there four years. But at age fourteen through eighteen, you can be pretty dumb. Your values are much more skewed than they would be now.

Crawford: Were your parents part of the Brazilian community, or was it a kind of international situation?

01-00:04:48 Hadlock: Well, it was an international community. My dad knew other people who were executives of big companies. A lot of them played golf together. I had to learn to play golf, just in self-defense. And I loved it.

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But I was only there four years, then I went back to go to college in the States. Dad was there seventeen years, so he and Mother spoke Portuguese pretty well.

Crawford: Well, you’re the only musician that I’ll ever talk to who studied with Sidney Bechet.

01-00:05:30 Hadlock: Yes, that was a special experience, all right. Sidney was playing in Philadelphia; I was still in college.

Crawford: Where were you in school?

01-00:05:42 Hadlock: At the University of Pennsylvania. I almost flunked out because I was down in this club every night listening to Bechet, and arranged to take lessons from him. I think I paid him $10 a lesson. [laughs] But I quickly found out that he just assumed I wanted to play like him, that I wanted to sound like him. And I didn’t. I loved his— I still love his playing. But it’s not me, it’s him. He’s the one that plays that way. I play my way.

Crawford: Talk about those styles.

01-00:06:27 Hadlock: Talk about?

Crawford: His style of playing.

01-00:06:29 Hadlock: Oh, Sidney had a very assertive style. He was a man of strong opinions, strong feelings. He put it all into his instrument.

He was kind of like an opera star who steps out and takes command of the stage with this wonderful, strong, lyrical, in-command quality that if you were to see [Enrico] Caruso or [Luciano] Pavarotti, you’d just stop and listen. You can’t walk away.

Sidney had that kind of presence. And he used to tell me, he said, “When you play a note, put your whole body into it.” And I’d listen to him. I’m a kind of diffident New England guy; I don’t do that.

Crawford: Two very different types.

01-00:07:29 Hadlock: Yeah. So we called it off after a while. He was going back to Europe, anyway. But I wrote something about it once and I said you could hang around Sidney and be consumed by his fire. He was so strong and fiery and hot. And all about himself. He was all about Sidney. And you could get swept up in that. So I thought it better that we went our own ways.

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Crawford: Was he versatile? Did he play different instruments?

1-00:08:17 Hadlock: Well, he wanted to play more than just one or two. He started as a clarinet virtuoso in New Orleans. And then around the time right after World War I, he discovered the soprano saxophone. And that became his dominant instrument, although he stayed a very fine clarinet player.

And then once in a while, he’d pick up a tenor. He even said he’d played trumpet at one time. Or he’d pick up a string bass. He could play a little string bass, he played a little piano.

Crawford: That’s very versatile, I’d say.

01-00:08:55 Hadlock: He was versatile, but he couldn’t read music.

Crawford: Was that fairly common?

01-00:09:02 Hadlock: Fairly, yes. Although not so common for somebody who was a member of a big band in the thirties. You had to be with a leader who could forgive you for that.

Crawford: He couldn’t read at all?

01-00:09:21 Hadlock: No, he couldn’t read—But his ear was so great. He knew the routines, he knew what to do. There’ve been a number of players like that. Eddie Lang, the guitar player, couldn’t read but he recorded with Paul Whiteman, with those complicated arrangements. I suspect Bechet could read more than he let on. He wrote a pretty sophisticated ballet, very dramatic, for symphony orchestra. He didn’t write it down—he got an orchestrator to put it together.

Buddy Rich, the drummer, was a star with Tommy Dorsey’s band. Couldn’t read, but Tommy didn’t care because he just made the whole band rise up off the stage.

Crawford: A wonderful thing. I know opera singers who’ve had long careers without learning to read.

01-00:09:57 Hadlock: Yes. Sidney was fond of opera. Louis Armstrong was, too. I think the New Orleans people—Jelly Roll Morton talked about opera—were taken by that kind of music. It was very powerful and expressive and lyrical, and it moved people. I think that made some horn players, especially, say, “I think I could sort of do that on the horn.”

Crawford: Play the horn so that it sounded like a voice.

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01-00:10:33 Hadlock: Yes. I interviewed Louis and he said he was always aware of operatic arias. Bechet too loved the projection of melodic expression in that way. By thinking as a singer you got that personal, expressive sound.

Crawford: LeRoi Jones wrote in Blues People that Bird imitated the human voice but that Paul Desmond didn’t—that Desmond separated personal expression from the instrument, implying that blacks and whites play differently.

Hadlock: LeRoi is an old friend but we part company on that. I think Paul Desmond was very expressive and sang beautifully on his instrument. That’s what is wonderful about the music: each musician plays in his own way. You can’t be dogmatic in jazz.

Crawford: You’ve played with virtually everybody. The list is so huge I can’t read it all. But I’d ask you just to name some of the remarkable musicians that you’ve known and worked with.

01-00:10:47 Hadlock: Well, my history isn’t all that star-studded. I’ve played with people that I admire a lot, but they aren’t terribly famous, I think.

Crawford: Name them, if you would.

01-00:11:05 Hadlock: Pianist Ray Skjelbred. He’s a wonderful pianist, and so understanding. Easy to play with. The guy I play with now, pianist Si Perkoff, he’s made several albums of Thelonious Monk pieces. He’s a wonderfully versatile guy. Always swinging, always supportive. You just couldn’t get a better piano.

Skjelbred was a very close friend of Jim Goodwin, and I always felt privileged to play with him. He was a gifted cornet player. And he recorded with a lot of people, including Dave Frishberg, who is a very well-known piano player and entertainer. Frishberg said, “This guy’s a genius,” referring to Jim, the cornetist. And Dave Frishberg is someone else I played with that I enjoyed.

Crawford: Ralph Sutton, I see you played with.

01-00:12:22 Hadlock: I’ve played with Ralph.

Crawford: What would you say about Bob Helm?

01-00:12:24 Hadlock: Bob Helm is very gifted. A very special guy.

Crawford: Talk about that a little bit, even though we’re not quite ready to talk about Turk Murphy.

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01-00:12:36 Hadlock: Well, I was thinking mostly about Turk when you mentioned that that was the center of your focus here, but I was remembering a time when I was playing with Turk in San Francisco. That was at a club called Easy Street. Helm used to come in and sit in. And I couldn’t figure out, why doesn’t Turk just give me a pink slip and get Bob Helm back? He’s the perfect [clarinetist] for this band.

Crawford: This would’ve been on one of his leaves that you were with the band?

01-00:13:14 Hadlock: Yes. When I left the band, I said, “Turk, Bob Helm was born to play with your band. He’s just made for you—” And Turk was a strange man in a lot of ways, and he admired Helm. Whenever Helm sat in, Turk would say, “Oh, you’re taking a clarinet lesson.” I said, “That’s right.” [laughs] I’m taking the lesson from Helm. And also he had a record date and he knew I wasn’t really up to being ready for that. He got Helm to do it. It didn’t bother me, because I thought that was what he should’ve done.

But what did bother me was that in later years, Helm had some problems. He had to have a couple of surgeries. And Turk never even called to say, “How are you,” or anything. I thought, that’s a strange relationship, with this musical love but this kind of apartness, too.

Crawford: Maybe he didn’t get down and personal.

01-00:14:27 Hadlock: If you got personal with Turk, he might get tongue-tied. He had a bad stammer. And whenever something like that was a problem, he would try to walk away from it.

He actually wrote letters to people in the band. He wrote one to Leon Oakley saying, “I’m not sure about this or this.” It bothered him to have face-to-face discussions.

Crawford: Because of the stammer?

01-00:14:59 Hadlock: Partly. It made the stammer worse, whenever he got flustered. He could stand up and sing or announce a tune, never miss one syllable; but in a spontaneous conversation, it was dangerous.

Crawford: I’ve only heard one musician say that he thought they were very close friends, and that was— Oh, help me out here.

01-00:15:28 Hadlock: John Gill?

Crawford: Possibly. No, Carl Lunsford , I think.

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01-00:15:36 Hadlock: Oh, Lunsford, of course.

Crawford: He said they were very close.

01-00:15:40 Hadlock: Yes, Carl got along well with Turk, I think. And there was a kind of a good old macho kind of feeling that Turk had with his good friends. I wasn’t a very macho guy. I wasn’t really made for that sort of— A little bit of back slapping, telling a joke, that kind of thing. Pull out a rubber chicken and get everybody to laugh. I’d be looking kind of off in the distance, on the end of the bandstand, and I wasn’t much help to the band [chuckles] visually.

Crawford: I think you’re too modest.

01-00:16:25 Hadlock: Well, I hope I was okay musically, but I wasn’t visually. [laughs] Because Turk came from the old days when jazz was still show business. And you’d do a little bit of humor. And he would tell the same joke every night and the piano player and the drummer would laugh as if they’d never heard the joke before.

Crawford: Well, I’ve heard that he was tough, he was very tough; he was musically very demanding.

01-00:16:59 Hadlock: He was pretty demanding, yes.

Crawford: Did you ever go on tour?

01-00:17:06 Hadlock: I never really toured with Turk. He was on tour when he hired me, in New York. And we did a TV show, a Polly Bergen show.

Crawford: You were living in New York then?

01-00:17:21 Hadlock: I was living there. I was filling in for somebody for a couple of weeks. I was flabbergasted when he wanted me to come to California.

Crawford: Were you working for The Record Changer magazine then?

01-00:17:35 Hadlock: I was trying to.

Crawford: Not quite making a living.

01-00:17:39 Hadlock: It was terrible. The Record Changer was a losing thing. Which is one reason the owner sold it to me, because he knew it wasn’t going anywhere.

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Crawford: It was pretty unique, though, wasn’t it?

01-00:17:55 Hadlock: It was a special magazine. And I thought I could maybe turn it into more of a jazz journal and not so much lists of auctions of records. If you’ve ever looked at The Record Changer, the back part is all about lists of records that are auctioned. And that’s where the magazine made all its money.

Crawford: I can imagine.

01-00:18:21 Hadlock: Any money they made. And I thought I could turn it into a real jazz publication, with interesting articles, new writers. And that’s the disaster.

Crawford: Did you think of yourself then more as a writer than a musician?

01-00:18:42 Hadlock: Probably so. At the moment that I got the magazine, I was writing reviews, liner notes. I was still working for RCA, and I was writing letters all over the world, in business.

Crawford: Oh, you were working for RCA, as well?

01-00:19:01 Hadlock: I did, up in the RCA Building. And I would arrive with my attaché case, which had a clarinet in it, [chuckles] and go to my clarinet teacher right after work. And it was kind of fun to be around midtown Manhattan and just walk by a jazz club and stop on the sidewalk and listen to Red [Henry] Allen and Bud Freeman. Guys would just be playing in the afternoon there. That was pretty nice.

Crawford: Well, you played with Pops Foster and Kid Ory, among others. Would you say more about Kid Ory?

Hadlock: His band had the discipline and formality imposed by the precise style of ragtime piano.

I knew Kid Ory, went out to his house and interviewed him, but only played with him two nights. I found out he was strict in some respects. Tone was very important to him. A friend of mine played bass with his band and Kid Ory let him know that he wanted a rounded tone, as opposed to slap bass. He was very fussy about that.

Crawford: Please elaborate on what you mean by formality.

Hadlock: He wasn’t a great technician, but the notes were in the right places. He was rather conservative, played the same repertory all the time and included his own compositions, especially “Muskrat Ramble”—that was a big deal. He had

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a New Orleans kind of outlook, but there were grudges. I found there was a pettiness that made you not sure where you stood.

Kid Ory had a lot of old folkways. He spoke some New Orleans creole, and like Jelly Roll Morton he considered his relatives French, and didn’t talk about being black. He liked to impress people by carrying a roll of bills with a hundred-dollar bill on the outside. He wore long johns in the winter—very traditional! I played with him at On the Levee on the Embarcadero. It was okay but I was kind of nervous. He was friendly enough but I didn’t ever get a deep interview because his wife was saving that for [their] book. I used one of my interviews for liner notes.

Crawford: Did you always love New Orleans jazz best?

01-00:19:47 Hadlock: I guess I always felt quite relaxed with it. What I really liked best was New Orleans jazz that was expressed in terms of swing. Bechet did that and I could name a lot of people—Albert Nicholas and Irving Fazola and Edmond Hall— these are all New Orleans people—Louis Armstrong—who didn’t want to sound like 1920, they wanted to sound— They were swinging, but they were swinging with that New Orleans feel. I always just thought that was the greatest.

Crawford: That would not be Lu Watters.

01-00:20:33 Hadlock: Lu was, to me, a little stodgy. He had the two banjos for quite a while. There’s a story about Lu; I can’t swear it’s true. That he kept taking pieces of the drummer’s kit away from him until he was only left with a woodblock. [laughs]

A woodblock is about all you could hear on those old King [Joe] Oliver records, because they were acoustic recordings and they didn’t allow bass drums or even tom-toms; they would jar the stylus on the wax. So they could only take sort of sharp percussive sounds, and woodblocks would fit into that.

Crawford: What do you think of as the ideal instrumentation?

01-00:21:28 Hadlock: Instrumentation? I’m not going to be sure about that because the ideal for a New Orleans Dixieland band is obviously three horns upfront, sometimes four, and three-four rhythm; but some of my happiest moments have been with only two rhythm and two horns. And you get, let’s say, a guitar and a bass and myself and either trumpet or trombone, and we could have musical conversations. And it’s free, too because you’re not restricted in your harmony.

Crawford: You don’t have to look for another place to go.

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01-00:22:21 Hadlock: Yes. With only two horns, you’ve got lots of choices. As soon as you put three horns up front—and four makes it even tighter—everybody’s worried about getting on in the other person’s notes. [laughs]

Crawford: Did Turk have the instrumentation that he wanted?

01-00:22:48 Hadlock: I think Turk had a very strong feeling for what he wanted his band to sound like. This was one of the reasons that he and I parted ways, because he essentially wanted a certain sound from the trumpet, clarinet, trombone, and a certain kind of rhythm in the rhythm section, that struck me that any person he hired, he would want to fit into that sound.

My feeling about jazz was always a little different. I feel that if you change one person in the band, you change the sound of the band because that person doesn’t sound like the last person. And I always felt that maybe what Turk really wanted was a certain sound, sort of like Bob Helm, let’s say, but maybe not as free as Bob Helm. And that’s what he would look for. And a certain way of playing the lead in the trumpet.

That gave him much satisfaction, that this is the band that’s— It sounds like a Turk Murphy band. And that’s legitimate, that’s okay. And he kept it going for many, many years, so who am I to say he was not correct?

But for myself, personally, I always felt— Here’s a leader who never once asked me, who do you like? What would you like to play? Any tune you’d like to do? To me, those are just the standard questions that a leader might ask a friend who’s playing in the band. Turk never asked those questions.

Crawford: Of anyone.

01-00:24:58 Hadlock: Of anyone that I know of.

Crawford: I heard that he wouldn’t take audience queries.

01-00:25:08 Hadlock: He might take requests if the person was very important. He was very conscious of who could be helpful to him. He knew a lot of people who were very, very wealthy. That club that I mentioned, Easy Street, was financed by a very wealthy guy back east.

Crawford: Who was that?

01-00:25:38 Hadlock: Well, it’s from the Wooten family in the Carolinas. Doug Wooten was the key figure there. And Doug would call up from South Carolina, I think it was, say,

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“Hey, Turk, I want to hear you play ‘The Saints.’” Now, if somebody in the audience said that, Turk might say, “I’m sorry, we don’t do that.”

But Doug Wooten wants to hear it, okay, Doug. Puts the phone down and we play the “Saints.” Well, that’s just good business, because he had a lot of investment in that. It was a co-op band.

You might be interested to know that Turk liked to operate as a co-op, except for a couple of us that didn’t seem to fit the pattern so well. I wasn’t included; I was too new in the band. Dick Lammi wasn’t included because I think Turk thought Lammi’s not a very good business person at all.

But the rest of the band all had functions in the club. So the drummer was in charge of publicity, PR work, getting famous people to come by and then get written up in the local columns—all that kind of stuff.

So the drummer, that was his assignment. Turk, besides running the band, always took on the assignment of all the building work. He loved carpentry and building a new stage, putting in a sound system, hammers and nails and screwdrivers flying all over the place. He loved that. So he was busy.

The piano player, Pete Clute, was in charge of personnel. So he had to deal with waiters, waitresses, bartenders, and kind of keep an eye on the bartender—while he was playing, sometimes—to check up on him. Sometimes bartenders will fudge on drinks or do little things that aren’t quite straight, so he had to keep an eye out for that. The trumpet player became engaged to Doug Wooten’s sister. So that sort of solidified everything quite nicely.

Crawford: Who was that?

01-00:28:48 Hadlock: The trumpet player was Larry Conger. He wound up by actually marrying her. Funny, I can’t think of her name. She was married to a DuPont. We’re talking about quite a lot of money in this world. She was married to a DuPont in Delaware.

He died, and I think she and Larry got married. I think they settled back in South Carolina. So it was a lot of drama going on.

I was talking to one of the musicians—might’ve been Leon—about that, and he said, “Turk seemed happiest when there was all this hubbub going on,” which other people would say, wait a minute, there’s too much stress here; we can’t handle all this. He seemed to almost like it, to take it on.

Crawford: Did he create it?

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01-00:30:09 Hadlock: Yes. He would find time to compose new tunes, to write out the arrangements, call rehearsals; and in between all that, he’s in the back room building some shelves or something. All that. [laughs] Remarkable guy in a lot of ways.

Crawford: Everybody says what a good musician he was. I interviewed John Handy and Allen Smith, and they both came up with Turk’s name and praised him as a musician.

01-00:30:39 Hadlock: Turk had a background, as you must know, of playing in the big dance bands in the thirties. So he could read very well. And he knew how to arrange, he knew what good part playing was, and that’s what he wanted from his individuals.

He wanted them to be part players. And he would write an arrangement with, let’s say, black notes for the trumpet. And then up above them would be red notes for the clarinet that were the right harmony notes. He would show it to you; maybe he’d let you have it for a few nights.

Suddenly you’d come in and it wasn’t there; he thought by now you should’ve internalized that. And you could improvise, but still hit those good harmony notes. I believe that’s what he was looking for.

That takes, first of all, pretty good musicianship on the part of the sidemen; but secondly, a very fast-thinking, good improviser, which Helm was. I think Helm went beyond Turk’s harmony sometimes, and that may have bothered him a little. So if he would write a very neat C-E-G-B-flat, Helm might play a ninth or an eleventh up above that. And for Turk, that might’ve sounded dissonant.

Crawford: Did he say something? Or did he let it go? You were kind of free to do what you wanted to?

01-00:32:19 Hadlock: Well, you were free within those limits. If you got too free, he’d come right down on you. One night he called a tune. [laughs] I shouldn’t tell these stories. He called— Oh, gosh, what’s— One of the corniest tunes ever written. “Twelfth Street Rag,” I think it was. Which he refused to call corny because it was just a tune that he wanted to play. But to me, it sounded like a cornball band, like a Spike Jones band.

So I started doing silly things like chicken noises on the clarinet. You know, [makes noises]. And he was livid. And he came over and said, “If you ever do that again, I’m going to ship you to Pee Wee Hunt’s band.” [they laugh]

Crawford: Good story. Would you say something about reading charts?

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Hadlock: Jack Minger, who died recently, was in our band at Washington Elementary, and he gave me some tips: the arrangement has a pattern, and you look for that pattern. Something like a triplet followed by a dotted eighth note. Your eye takes it in and you are on to the next part. I couldn’t do that but good jazz players can—they can translate that to their ear.

Crawford: Well, Turk approached you in New York. After how much time did you join the band?

01-00:33:22 Hadlock: I joined in the fall of ’57, after Bill Napier left. Bill Napier was with Turk a lot over the years, and came to New York with him.

I guess they had a falling out or something, and Bill left. And Turk knew the band that Carl Lunsford and I played in, the Red Onion Jazz Band. Bob Thompson was the leader. He just died, by the way, a couple of weeks ago.

So Turk knew about Bob Thompson because Thompson had sat in with him, playing washboard. I think he recorded with him. And Bob sort of hero- worshipped Turk, so they knew each other quite well. And I guess Turk probably said, “I need a clarinet tomorrow night; where can I find one?” And Thompson must’ve—and Carl Lunsford, too—said, “why don’t you call Hadlock?” That’s how that happened.

Crawford: How was that for you, to sit in the next day?

01-00:34:39 Hadlock: Well, I was a little scared, but I thought, well, I know enough of these tunes now; playing with the Red Onion Jazz Band isn’t that different. I know enough tunes to get through an evening, maybe two evenings.

Crawford: Where did the Red Onion Jazz Band play?

01-00:34:54 Hadlock: We played at New York clubs, like Jimmy Ryan’s, Child’s Paramount, which is also where Turk played at one time, and any place we could find a gig.

Crawford: Was that a good scene for your jazz?

01-00:35:13 Hadlock: I’m trying to remember. None of those clubs paid much money, but as long as it was close to home and you could go to work on the subway, if we made twenty-five, thirty dollars, that’s pretty good.

Turk was fabulous because he paid me $200 a week. It was more money than I’d ever made. Even in business, I couldn’t make that much. However, it came down after we moved back to California. But on the road, he was paying

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$200, because the guys had to get hotel rooms. I didn’t; I was living there. So it all went into The Record Changer and down that tube. [they laugh]

Crawford: Did you hesitate to come to California?

01-00:36:11 Hadlock: Only a little, because I had just gotten married that June. And this was September, I guess, or October.

My wife Ruth was a librarian, with a nice job. So I said, “Well, I’m going out to see what it’s like. I’ll be back as soon as I can, or bring you out as soon as we can do that.” And my two friends, LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen, were running The Record Changer while I was away. Roi is now known as Amiri Baraka.

He met his wife Hettie at The Record Changer. I always felt like Cupid for that. So he was trying to run it, Roi was, and it wasn’t working out too well. But I spent Christmas alone in San Francisco, and then we opened New Years night at the club.

Crawford: At Easy Street?

01-00:37:36 Hadlock: Easy Street. And that would be 1958, January 1. And so by this time, I thought Ruth should come out and look around. And when she did, she said, “Oh, this is great. Yes, we ought to move.”

Crawford: Good wife! [they laugh]

01-00:37:57 Hadlock: So I had to give my notice to Turk, so I could get back to New York and finish up all the business there—liquidating the magazine; I had to get rid of a 1927 Rolls-Royce that I had.

And so it took a while to get back to San Francisco. But I spoke to Turk one time— I think it’s the last time we talked, up in Golden, Colorado. When would that be, in the eighties, maybe? And he said, “I’ve always felt bad about the way I treated you when you were in the band.” I said, “Turk, I’ve always felt grateful to you for bringing me to California. You changed our lives, much for the better.” And that made him feel good.

Crawford: How did he feel that he treated you?

01-00:38:56 Hadlock: He knew that I was unhappy. I went to his home to try to talk about the band, and [to ask if he] would he tell me exactly what he would like me most to do, in terms of style of soloing and so forth. Because he had definite ideas about those things.

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Well, this was that face-to-face thing that I told you was difficult for him. And he said, “I can’t talk now. I’m going downtown.” I said, “I’ll ride with you.” And he really was stressed by that.

So he never did talk to me about all those things. I knew one thing that he liked in his players. He used to say, “Everybody in the band is a rhythm player.” And for me, that was kind of deadly. In the best sense, he was right. But what happens when you think that way, you start playing a kind of steady pulse, so that everybody in the band starts playing that same pulse.

What you need is the variety of a Louis Armstrong, who plays over that pulse. If you listen to Louis, you’ll hear him come in after the beat, play a triplet that goes over two measures, or two beats, at least. All that kind of stuff. He’s playing with time, without losing the swing or the command. And everybody in Turk’s band was trying to go da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da- da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da.

If everybody does that, it starts to wear on you. Now, Turk himself was better than that. When he soloed, he was all around the beat and good syncopation. I liked his solos better than I liked the rest of the band’s solos. But he still maintained that’s what he thought everybody should do, to play rhythm.

Crawford: He wasn’t strong on solos, either, was he?

01-00:41:38 Hadlock: Turk? He was for me, because he knew how to play with that beat, with the time. He’d come in just ahead of the beat and then wait, lag, and get just behind it or whatever.

But when I did that, he said— He came to me one time, he said, “You played that whole solo behind the beat.” I said, “Yeah. That’s sort of something I learned from Lester Young.” “Well, don’t do that anymore.” [laughs]

Crawford: So he held a pretty tight rein.

01-00:42:19 Hadlock: Yes. And he knew that I wasn’t totally married to that kind of trad jazz.

Crawford: How long did you stay?

01-00:42:33 Hadlock: About six months.

Crawford: And you didn’t want to stay longer?

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01-00:42:40 Hadlock: I’d reached the point where I was glad to go, because it hard work every night. I really never liked being a full-time professional musician. Playing five or six nights a week almost destroys your love of music. [laughs]

Crawford: Someone said your style of playing was more like Eddie Condon’s.

Hadlock: Turk always put down Eddie Condon, and that baffled me because coming from New York I found both exciting and both were headed for the same ensemble playing. Condon had no use for tubas and banjos as Turk did, and Turk had a religious zeal about not playing songs like “Lady be Good” or “Honeysuckle Rose’’ unless he had arranged them. It was rather stiff but he thought of those like jam session tunes.

Everything Turk did was like a credo—a religious session—traditional jazz we play from the golden years. That was on the stiff side for me. It wasn’t my idea of swinging.

Crawford: Well, you taught, and of course, you had a great career at KJAZ and other stations.

01-00:43:07 Hadlock: Yeah, I love doing radio shows. But my teaching wasn’t music, it was just elementary school.

Crawford: How did that happen at Washington School?

01-00:43:19 Hadlock: Well, my first job teaching was on a reservation, a Pomo reservation. That lasted four years, and changed our lives again. A wonderful experience. But I was pretty well used up and played out, after four years.

Crawford: Was that part of your credential?

01-00:43:42 Hadlock: I got the credential first, before I got that job. It was a one-room school. I was teaching all eight grades. And I’d be up until two in the morning, doing lesson plans. It was exhausting. So we came back to—

Crawford: Where was that, by the way? Where was the reservation?

01-00:44:04 Hadlock: Do you know the west coast of Sonoma County and beyond? Okay. If you go up from Jenner to Fort Ross, you come to a place called Stewarts Point. That’s before Gualala. And if you’re going north and make a right turn and go four miles up the mountain, that’s where the reservation—[laughs] It’s very isolated.

Crawford: Gualala, isn’t that where Harry Partch lived?

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01-00:44:36 Hadlock: It could be. Could be. That’s grown enormously since we were up there. But we returned to our little— We had a flat in San Francisco. We were sharing it with Kenneth Rexroth. He wanted to store books in it while we were gone.

Crawford: Was the flat in North Beach, hangout of the Beat poets?

01-00:44:59 Hadlock: No, this was in the Fillmore area, Scott Street, near Divisadero. Kenneth had been there for years, upstairs. But when we went up to the reservation, with seven rooms it seemed that we had room to spare in that flat, so he rented three of them and we kept the other four for our escape from the redwoods to the city. And that worked out pretty well.

Anyway, I later got a job in the inner-city schools as a sub in San Francisco, and got a real taste of how awful it was. The schools were crumbling.

Crawford: What level were you teaching?

01-00:45:48 Hadlock: Any elementary grade they wanted to assign me to. So if you go to fifth or sixth grade in Hunters Point, in the teachers’ room, the teachers would say, “Here’s a way for you to leave this afternoon, when you’re driving off the hill, so you won’t get rocks thrown at your car.” I thought, gee, what a wonderful job this is. [laughs]

So anyway, Herb Wong approached me one day when I was subbing in Berkeley, and he said, “How would you like to teach kindergarten?” And I said, “That’s the one grade I’ve never taught.” I had done one through eight. “I’d love that.” So he hired me on at Washington School.

Crawford: He had a big music program there, didn’t he?

01-00:46:48 Hadlock: Well, in a way. Herb was very, very interested in jazz. Still is. He’s still doing it. But there was no real program at Washington; there was a program in the high school. From fourth grade up, there was a program of music in school. And that fed into the high school, which was spectacular. Because Phil Hardymon ran the high school band.

Crawford: In Berkeley?

01-00:47:24 Hadlock: In Berkeley. It was right across the street from Washington Elementary. So we would go to their recitals and hear the students play. And they were spectacular. There were wonderful players in high school, still are.

Crawford: And Phil Hardymon was the head of that program?

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01-00:47:46 Hadlock: He was the band director full-time, and he inspired a lot of young people who are still in the business, still active as outstanding players. I didn’t know him well, but he was teaching across the street from Washington Elementary. Phil wasn’t content to have the stage bands just read charts, he tried to develop them as individual improvisers. He wanted me to play “Lady Be Good” or “Indiana” to show the kids they don’t have to prove how fast they could play and be all over the horns. So they could listen to each other better.

The only negative thing was that there was a tendency to go after awards. I knew a couple of good players who were not allowed to play, not good enough to play. Paul Hanson couldn’t make the band, but now he is a star bassoon player.

Crawford: How about Peter Apfelbaum?

01-00:47:59 Hadlock: Peter was always a maverick. In sixth grade he played all the saxes, flute, piano. You knew he was star material. He was kind of difficult when he played with the band—he wanted to do his own music. I like some of his music—some is a little pretentious. I admire him for all he has done.

I heard him when he was a sixth grader, and he was playing two saxophones at once. That’s impossible. No kid can do that. Joshua Redman is one of the more recent graduates. These are great players. Really.

So Herb was happy if we did jazz in the classroom, with records or— I had one of the great piano players, Joe Sullivan—the last time he ever played was with my kindergarten kids.

Crawford: He lived here, didn’t he?

01-00:48:38 Hadlock: Joe lived in San Francisco. But Ray Skjelbred went and picked him up at his apartment and brought him to Washington Elementary. And the kids loved it.

And then we formed a Washington School rehearsal band out of the faculty. Bob Houlehan played sax and Manny Funk played sax and I played sax. We had a three-man sax section.

The vice principal, George Yoshida, played drums. [laughs] and we just had a great time using the auditorium and having rehearsals, having great fun. So it was a jazz-friendly school.

Crawford: Was that your main job at the time?

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01-00:49:28 Hadlock: My main job was being a kindergarten teacher. That’s all. Full-time. I did that for five years, and then the enrollment went down, and I was the last hired. You could see how long people stayed on in that school. Last hired means first person transferred, and I wound up going downward in age groups and teaching preschool. After that, nursery school, which I liked very much. Although with three-year-olds, that got a little iffy, because in September, some of them are still only two, and you’ve got to have lots of Pampers and all that. [they laugh]

Crawford: Well, let’s have you talk about KJAZ, because that was an important radio station.

01-00:50:27 Hadlock: Yes. I was writing. I was the jazz writer for the Examiner in ’58, ’59, ’60, ’61, all through there. I knew the DJ Pat Henry. I think I’d written something about him in the paper.

He said, “I’m starting a jazz station. Would you like to have a show?” I said, “Wow. I’ve never done radio.” “It’s okay. You apply for a fourth class license; we’ll show you how to work the board and you’re all set.” [laughs]

So in 1959, I started doing The Annals of Jazz. I had to run my own board, and there were times when there was nobody else in the building except myself.

Crawford: Was that a coffee-pot station, so-called?

01-00:51:27 Hadlock: Yes. Oh, it was just two rooms. Little rooms. I thought, suppose something blows up or the transmitter goes— I wouldn’t know how to fix that. I don’t even know how to put out an alarm or anything. But I got away with it. And it was fun.

Crawford: Let me back up just a moment. How long did you teach?

01-00:51:57 Hadlock: Well, I started teaching in 1965, on the reservation, and I retired in 1987, I think.

Crawford: Always at that level?

01-00:52:18 Hadlock: The first four years were all the levels, because not only was it a one-through- eight-one-room school, I took on GED and taught adults at night.

My wife started a preschool, which became the Head Start center. So we were involved with all the kids, all the way down to age two. It’s an all-involving job. At two in the morning, you might get a teenager who’s run his car into a

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muddy ditch, and he needs you to help pull him out. That kind of thing. But it was a great experience, it really was.

Crawford: What happened after you left Washington Elementary?

01-00:53:15 Hadlock: I was shucked around a lot because of all the changing dynamics. They’d assigned me to one school that I never got started in because the teachers went on strike for six weeks.

By the end of the six weeks, the enrollment had gone down so much that my job no longer existed in the school that I was picketing. [laughs] It was really bizarre.

I would go to the personnel officer, and he would say, “Well, I’ve got an opening here. You’re a musician. I’ve got an opening, a junior high band director.” I said, “Band director? I’ve never had any training for that.” [laughs] That was the level it was on. I thought that was really strange.

Crawford: Very flexible. So you took that job?

01-00:54:16 Hadlock: I didn’t take it, no. I got back into nursery school level. Parent nurseries, they’re very interesting to me because you not only work with the children, you work with their parents. And they were mainstreaming kids. We had a Down syndrome kid, we had a spina bifida kid. And that’s very challenging, without special aides or anything, to fit it all in. I found it very exciting to work there

Crawford: I would think so.

01-00:54:51 Hadlock: Yes. Three- and four-year-olds. And they’re so charming because they’re like sponges; they want to learn. They can learn a lot, and they know it. And they haven’t become cynical yet.

Crawford: I know. [Hadlock laughs] That age of innocence. I’m glad it’s still at that level.

01-00:55:13 Hadlock: Well, I think cynicism, not innocence, may be all the way down to first grade by now. [they laugh]

Crawford: Let’s talk about your programming at KJAZ. Thematic programming interests me.

01-00:55:24 Hadlock: Well, from the beginning, I felt that I didn’t want to be restricted to— I am not a DJ that wants to do just trad or just swing or just bebop. I don’t like that. I

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like listening to everybody. It used to drive Pat Henry kind of nuts, because he didn’t like avant-garde jazz.

I had Ornette Coleman records. I played one one night with a 1903 banjo record, pre-jazz record, at the same time, just to see what would happen. It was kind of awful, but it was interesting. Pat didn’t care for that kind of— [laughs]

But from the beginning, I operated out of my own personal collection, because the station had walls of LPs—no CDs in those days—but when I would go to look for Billie Holiday, for example, they might have two LPs. And then if you were to look for June Christy, they might have twelve LPs.

Pat loved Stan Kenton’s band and all that, and so it was heavy on that period of Kenton, Woody Herman, sort of modern swing and bebop, but only up to the point where it started to go around the corner to avant garde, and then he didn’t like it.

Of course, I like all kinds of artists before bebop, from the twenties and thirties. And he didn’t have any of that. He had hardly any Louis Armstrong in the collection.

Crawford: So basically, he liked swing, then.

01-00:57:32 Hadlock: He liked modern swing. Woody Herman, Kenton, Basie, Ellington. Good. But if you played a Joe Venuti or a Bix Beiderbecke or something, he said, “Oh, that’s too old. I don’t like that sort of stuff.” [laughs]

Crawford: How much were you there? How much programming?

01-00:57:55 Hadlock: He started me with a commuter show. I think it was from five to six every afternoon, five days a week.

Then I started doing Sunday nights, and I had a show called The Musician Speaks, where I’d get local players or visiting name players to come over to the station and either bring records or tell me what they like and I’d bring them, and we’d chat about them. That was a lot of fun. I enjoyed that.

And gradually, it evolved into a one-hour—occasionally it was a two-hour, but usually one-hour program—a week. And then when I moved over to KQED, that was pretty much a straight one hour every Sunday night or something like that. Here’s what happened. I left KJAZ so I could go up and live on the reservation to teach.

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When I got back, Phil Elwood, at that moment, had left KPFA and gone over to KQED to do a show; changed his mind, for reasons I don’t remember, and went back to KPFA.

I had just returned from the reservation job and Phil said, “Would you like to ask for the job at KQED?” And I said, “Sure.” It turned out it was one block from our flat in the Western Addition. So I could walk to it with my little suitcase full of records. And that was in 1969. And I stayed with that station for eighteen years.

Crawford: Did they have jazz programming?

01-01:00:11 Hadlock: Not really. The reason I left was— I think the head man was Tony Tiano. Does that sound right? He decided that it would sort of follow the CBS example and be an all-news, all-talk station. So the big investment they had made in music would no longer have any meaning. They had a music director who was very steeped in classical, and was building a beautiful collection of 78 rpm records.

Crawford: I’m thinking of Gene Parrish.

01-01:00:52 Hadlock: This came after Gene was there. Victor Ledin, I think his name was.

Crawford: Yes. Let me break here to change the tape.

[End Audiofile 1]

[Begin Audio File 2]

Crawford: In your book, Jazz Masters in the 20’s [Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1956] you said—I’m paraphrasing—that musicians had been subjected to inequities brought about by race prejudice. Certainly, we know that; we’ve seen that. What is that like now?

02-00:00:24 Hadlock: Oh, boy.

Crawford: Maybe you would talk about the Fillmore and what happened there.

02-00:00:28 Hadlock: Yes, that’s a heavy question. I’m really not qualified to say anything that’s positive or negative here. But I will tell you that I lived for a good many years in the Fillmore District, and always felt quite comfortable there. I would walk over to a little club called the Blue Mirror. It was run by Leola King, and she would be just completely welcoming.

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I’d go in, I’d be the only white person in the club, listening to T-Bone Walker play his guitar. And I thought, wow, this is a great city. It’s wonderful to just feel at home here.

That started to change in the sixties, with the flower children, the Civil Rights thing, and it got a lot of things stirred up; it stirred up a lot of feelings. The Black Power movement was starting. And we were suddenly finding hostility on the street. Never had had that before. Somebody would just come along and [grumbles] curse you for just being the wrong color, perhaps.

I got into a discussion group one time, out at San Francisco State— Phil Elwood, John Handy, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka and myself were discussing jazz and where it’s going, where it’s been and all, da-da-da.

Roi had just had a book out, Blues People, is it? And it was quite well read, so we had people down in the front who were eager to hear him, not me. And I started to say something about race, and I realized that that was such a big, emotional issue—and legitimately so; I mean, it’s the most powerful issue of the day, almost—that we were supposed to be talking about jazz, which is a much smaller little subject. When you put it in this big box called “race,” it gets overwhelmed. There’s no way you can be objective. There’s no way you can say, oh, well, I think we should all be even handed about this and not talk about race with hostility. You’re not being realistic.

So at that point, we saw more and more black musicians who felt that in order to express their feelings, they were going to let out their anger. In the most extreme cases, there were black musicians who were saying white guys can’t really play jazz. And they didn’t want any white people in their bands. It was that kind of thing.

Crawford: And that happened in the sixties.

02-00:04:27 Hadlock: It started to happen. And we’re not out of that yet. I’ve always felt so sad about that. Not from my personal view; I don’t work that often that it makes a big difference. But when I was first in San Francisco, I remember playing a job. It was my band, and I looked around and I realized I was the only white guy in the band. I had hired an all-black band, without thinking that’s what it was. It was just individuals that I wanted to play with, that kind of thing. And if you want an example of “Crow Jim’’— I may be talking out of turn.

Crawford: You’ll see this text, of course, and you can edit it.

02-00:05:19 Hadlock: All right. But if you want an example of that, all you have to do is watch the Ken Burns series on jazz that PBS had, and will probably do it again. I was upset with all the people that he left out.

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I called back to New York to a couple of my friends who were very influential jazz writers. One of them was in on the planning of that whole series. And he said, “We almost came to blows over some stuff.”

He said, “Burns sent out people, couriers, to find interesting old photos of early musicians. Old jazz pictures.” Well, we all love those; those are wonderful things to come onto, and they went prowling through all the different sources of that.

My friend said, “I know, because I was there, that they told the proprietor of this store that specialized in old photos, said, ‘Never mind the white guys; we’re only interested in the black musicians.’ ” And to me, that summed up the whole— what was wrong. Without any questioning of the idea that there wouldn’t be any jazz, much, without black people. These are the people that really brought it to us.

But that does not mean that there were no contributions by anybody else; that’s just ridiculous. And all the way through Burns, they sloughed off the white players.

Burns allowed Benny Goodman because he was the son of poverty-stricken Jewish immigrants and grew up in a ghetto. And that’s okay. And he became famous and that was okay.

But they never said the most important thing was that Benny Goodman was the greatest clarinet player that jazz knew; that black and white players alike tried to sound as good as Benny Goodman, including Duke Ellington’s clarinet player. These things were never said.

It’s just kind of pitiful. My very close friend, LeRoi Jones, fell into that. His book does not want to acknowledge Jack Teagarden. Well, who was he? He was just a white guy from Texas who played trombone. And not as good as da-da-da, Jimmy Harrison—and he’d start naming them.

Crawford: Did Marsalis have to do with this, do you think? Marsalis was important in the project.

02-00:08:44 Hadlock: I think Wynton has tried a little to get out of that, but not enough. I think he’s working on a premise that the history of jazz is a history of black musicians. And then once in a while, he’ll feature somebody as a guest; or he’ll maybe feature a theme on Artie Shaw, for example. That’s fine.

But basically, his outlook, his band, his supporters—like Stanley Crouch, for example or Ken Burns—are of the opinion that there were a few white guys that just sort of hung on around the edges, but they’re really not of much consequence. That’s too bad.

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Crawford: Yes. Well, I know you don’t have much time now, but let’s go to San Francisco a little bit. And maybe you’d talk about Say When and Bop City and the Blackhawk, some important clubs.

02-00:09:57 Hadlock: Oh, golly, you’re leading me into some difficult areas. I used to go to Bop City once in a while. It was fun because it was a late-night club. You could stay there all night, have breakfast in the morning.

Crawford: A lot of the great ones came there.

02-00:10:14 Hadlock: It’s almost like a pecking order. Jimbo, who ran it, he just adored certain players like Dexter Gordon, so those were his big heroes. If Dexter was in town, Jimbo would just turn cartwheels to get him into that club after hours and play.

It made for some peculiar situations, where local guys that thought they could really express themselves and get in there and jam and play would be either pushed aside or be at the end of a long line of guys waiting to play.

I always felt sorry for the bass player, because the bass player would be up there playing the whole time, and here comes tenor man number one. He’s going to play four choruses. Well, now, maybe he’ll play ten, because he’s excited. Then he steps down and here comes tenor man number two. And he’ll play twelve. And here comes number three. Let’s see if he can do twenty choruses. The bass player’s fingers are starting to bleed.

It was a humorous situation, but all very intense. Very, very intense. These players that came, including the guys from Count Basie’s band would sit in. They were very serious. This was a competitive arena. And there was a seriousness about it that you don’t always get in jam sessions.

If you go to Australia, or even England—more Australia—you’ll find a lot of people just having a lot of fun playing. And their idea of having a good time is to have a couple of pints and play their best and have fun.

But one of the guys down there told me, he said, “We went to New York one time. And we were in the same hotel as this band.” I can’t think of who they were now. But they were sort of like a Miles Davis band. It was the top-notch players of the day. And he said, “We Australians would just walk in and say, ‘Where’s the bar? I want to get a drink.’ They would walk in and want to get right to their rooms so they could practice.” He said they just never stopped practicing.

I’ve seen that. I’ve been up to visit people in Miles Davis’ band, and the bass player’s doing hand exercises with sponges all the waking moments of his

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life. The competition, the intensity has produced some great, great players; but I’m saying that I’m more of a recreational player, I guess.

Crawford: It’s a very interesting angle.

02-00:13:48 Hadlock: I just love to play for the sake of playing, and see what I can do with it. If I go down in flames, who cares? [laughs]

Crawford: Well, why do you think Turk Murphy was so successful here?

02-00:14:01 Hadlock: Turk? Well, he was a local guy. That made him more popular here than anywhere else. I’m not sure that he had that much luck in New York. He had a little following there, but not much. He was never a superstar.

Crawford: He was kind of a superstar here, though, wasn’t he?

02-00:14:24 Hadlock: But here, he was somebody. He was local. And we have a great fondness for people who are either local or become local, like Earl “Fatha” Hines. And he becomes part of the family, bassist Pops Foster. We think of him as being from San Francisco now, not New Orleans anymore.

Crawford: We didn’t even talk about Paul Desmond and Brubeck.

02-00:14:54 Hadlock: Yeah, and those were home guys.

Crawford: Brubeck writes big works, oratorios, and so forth.

Hadlock: He is entitled to do that. I am not a fan of those big works. He tends to formalize things.

Crawford: His audiences seem to want the same things, the same few pieces. Is that a problem for a performer?

Hadlock: It can be, but he is so secure in his old age, I would think he could brush off all that and play what he wants. He enjoys playing with his kids, and I don’t make light of what he does. He always has something going on.

There was an interesting contrast between Brubeck and Desmond, Dave doing a clog dance on the piano and Paul playing lighter as if his alto sax was a soprano. Dave Brubeck was delighted by him. What I loved too was that Paul stood still onstage and played with no visual business.

Crawford: Why did Brubeck choose to stay here, do you think?

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02-00:15:37 Hadlock: Well, this is where he got his start. He also studied at Mills with Milhaud. Darius Milhaud was his inspiration, partly. And he met other musicians with similar goals, and they just had a wonderful time. And they also found a sympathetic record company, Fantasy, who recorded virtually everything that they did, first with the trio— Well, even before that, with his experimental—

Crawford: Octet.

02-00:16:21 Hadlock: —semi-classical octet. And the trio and the quartet. And Paul Desmond was very happy in San Francisco.

Crawford: Did you know him?

02-00:16:36 Hadlock: Yes. He was that kind of a guy that liked the city of San Francisco. Yes, he was a very nice man. Extremely bright man, by the way, and a good writer.

Crawford: He said that Brubeck always liked to take the pieces he did least well, and improve them in performance. [Hadlock laughs] I don’t know if that’s true.

02-00:16:58 Hadlock: He’s probably still doing that, at age ninety or whatever.

Crawford: He’s something else.

02-00:17:03 Hadlock: He’s an amazing man. Paul almost literally smoked himself to death, and took it all as if that’s just inevitable. After he knew he had cancer, he went right on smoking. That was Paul.

Crawford: What about Allen Smith? He stayed on the West Coast too, after a brief stint in New York.

Hadlock: I held Smith and others like him in awe. He could play any style and with any group. He played “Stardust” a cappella, beautifully, for Pee Wee Claybrook’s memorial. Claybrook played the tenor sax with a wonderful, warm tone. A wonderful player.

Crawford: Earl Watkins?

02-00:15:00 Hadlock: Yeah, Earl, wonderful. And first class. They could play with any band anywhere. But they wanted to live here. Bill Napier was another one. He didn’t bother with going to Europe, playing festivals—all the things he could have done. He just wanted to live in his house, sleep in his own bed every night, and play local jobs enough to make a decent living.

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Crawford: What would you say about the desegregation of unions in 1960?

Hadlock: There are mixed reports on that. Some black musicians felt they had strong positions in the old black local and not in the combined local. Some were honored and some were not. But nobody resisted it.

Crawford: Well, I think that kind of finishes for me, other than to ask you what you think the legacy of Turk Murphy has been, musically. Or will be.

02-00:17:42 Hadlock: Oh, well, I would’ve said some years ago that with Turk’s death, it’s over. I would’ve been mistaken, because there’s a whole flock of young people around—younger than I, by far, younger than trumpeter Leon Oakley; that makes them young, maybe in their thirties and forties—that care a lot about that music and are going to try to recreate it.

The Yerba Buena Stompers—I don’t know if you’re familiar with them— they’re doing the Lu Watters style, with a trombone player who’s playing in the Turk Murphy mode; and two trumpets, in the Lu Watters style; and banjo, tuba and sort of ragtime-style piano. And they want to do it. They love doing it.

Crawford: And there are audiences for it?

02-00:18:50 Hadlock: Apparently so. They’re making records. And some of the festivals are friendly to that style, the Ragtime Festival likes that style.

I was amazed when I went to Australia because I expected that there wouldn’t be much influence of Lu Watters down there, and the first thing I did was run into a band that’s playing all Lu Watters stuff, in that style.

And there was one in Thailand that I heard one time. [laughs] So it has a world impact, in its way. Not a great big impact, but it meant something.

Crawford: Trad jazz has a future?

02-00:19:47 Hadlock: I believe so. I think people have always wanted to declare jazz dead, since the twenties, maybe. In the thirties people said, swing is dead. And then bebop came in and they said, jazz is dead. And then the avant-garde people came and said, bebop is dead. [laughs]

None of it’s true. There’s going to be players for all that. Just as there are people that play the old classical music or people that want to do folk songs from long ago. I think there will always be this sort of repertory kind of place for it— I don’t expect it to be on the charts as best sellers. [laughs]

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Crawford: Well, thank you so much. That’s a very good interview.

02-00:20:51 Hadlock: Oh, thank you.

[End of Hadlock Interview]