Telling It Like It Is
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TELLING IT LIKE IT IS by JOE DARENSBOURG Edited by Peter Vaclier Supplementary material compiled by Peter Vacher M MACMILLAN PRESS Music Division For Patricia, Louise, Sarah and Amanda Text © Helen Darensbourg and Peter Vacher 1987 Supplementary material © Peter Vacher 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 978-0-333-41735-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1987 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset in 10/ll V2pt Caledonia British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Darensbourg, Joe Telling it like it is.-(Macmillan popular music studies). I. Darensbourg, Joe 2. Jazz musicians United States-Biography I. Title II. Vacher, Peter 788'.62'0924 MU19.D3 ISBN 978-1-349-08732-7 ISBN 978-1-349-08730-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-08730-3 Contents Forewdrd iv Acknowledgements vii Prologue 1 1. Every little town in Louisiana had some kind of band 5 2. Doc Moon could sell an icebox to an Eskimo 28 3. Los Angeles was really jumping 50 4. There's never been a town like Seattle 72 5. I never did lose my touch for dixieland 96 6. Ory was a very suspi<;ious character 121 7. Yes, the Lord picked out Louis 147 8. I know I'll be playing until I cut out 169 Supplementary material compiled by Peter Vacher Discography 197 List of compositions by Joe Darensbourg 208 The film appearances of Joe Darensbourg 209 Career chronology 210 A bibliography of articles about Joe Darensbourg 217 Index 218 Foreword The greater part of Joe Darensbourg's reminiscences were recorded on cassette tapes during my stay at his home in Woodland Hills, California, in October 1979. Although I set out to build up a chronological account of his life, along the way there were many digressions and diversions, some omissions and a fair amount of repetition. A number of Joe's stories, when repeated, differed in details that were quite important and there were occasions when I had to guess which was the right version. Naturally there were topics that he preferred to hint at rather than explore, although Joe wanted, where possible, to be frank and direct. That is why we decided to give the book its title, Telling it Like it is. We also spent time examining his personal papers, files and scrapbooks, to ensure that the career chronology was as complete as possible. In fact this flltering of data proved a far more involved task than I had anticipated, since Joe, unusually for a musician, had kept a lot of material. He had many of his recordings, too, and I listened to them all with him, cross-checking dates and personnel so that the discography would be reasonably comprehensive. This book is the result of those days that we spent talking over his career, but its seed had been planted many years before. As far back as 1959, I had written to Joe at his house in North Hollywood, taking his address from Leonar<J Feather's Encyclopaedia ofJazz. To my surprise Joe replied promptly, asking whether I could help him organize a visit by his band to England and telling me that he intended sending me his latest records. These arrived and proved to be by the Dixie Flyers, the band that brought Joe some fame and a brush with fortune. Joe's touring possibilities came to nothing in my inexpert hands, but our friendship flourished despite this and we continued to exchange letters. We met for the first time in 1962 when Joe was touring Europe with the Louis Armstrong All Stars and, aside from the exceptional pleasure of meeting Satchmo and mingling with the Bob Scobey band, who were also backstage at the Odeon, Hammersmith, I was able to tape a lengthy interview with Joe, which later appeared in Jazz Monthly as "My Louisiana Story." This account of Joe's life was certainly the m'ost complete to have been published up to that time, and made clear the varied circumstances of his musical wanderings. After this Joe and I lost touch for a number of years, but our correspondence resumed in the early seventies and was followed by a cordial reunion in London, this time in March 1974, when Joe was a member of Barry Martyn's Legends of Jazz. I interviewed him for Melody Maker but it was obvious that Joe was quite ill. Fortunately trumpeter Andy Blakeney was on hand to take care of his old Ory FOREWORD I v colleague, but, more to the point, local enthusiast Dave Bennett was quick to take action and arranged Joe's admission to hospital. After two weeks' recuperation at Bennett's home Joe felt well enough to return to Los Angeles and continued his recovery, watched over by his wife, Helen. In August of the same year Joe brought Helen over to stay with the Bennetts for a holiday, before showing her a number of European countries where he had taken playing engagements. It was during our conversations at the Bennetts' house that the idea of a book collaboration took root. Dave recorded those discussions and turned the tapes over to me; their contents were used to supplement the main flow of Joe's recollections. In 1975 Joe was in London once more, still with the Legends, restored to health but already tired of touring. I wrote about him again for Melody Maker and we continued to assemble inteiView material, starting to plan the book in earnest. Our exchanges of letters continued after Joe had left the Legends, but then Joe's poor health intervened and the anticipated series of trans-Atlantic tapes never quite materialized. Curiously, it was the recuperation period that followed his heart attacks that provided the impetus for the preparation of these tapes, and they started to arrive. Inevitably, recovery led to increased calls for Joe to work and the tapes slowed down, although some were sent in February 1978 and two more in early 1979. Their quality heartened me and also made clear Helen's clever questioning. Transcription confirmed that we had an excellent story to tell, but it was also obvious that detailed one-to-one inteiViews were needed to eliminate ambiguities and it was arranged that I would travel over in October 1979, just 20 years on from my first contact with Joe. During our fortnight together I enjoyed the Darensbourgs' hospitality to the full. Joe was an outstanding cook and introduced me to all his favorite New Orleans dishes. I was able to hear him play-usually at private functions- and to meet a number of his musician friends, who were also remarkably hospitable. Joe took life fairly quietly following his heart attacks, but his lively anticipation of the gig and animation when at work belied his condition. His warm-toned clarinet style, for which he was well known, together with his easy-going personality, meant that he enjoyed the respect and admiration of his fellow musicians. The trombonist Herbie Harper put it well: "Joe's just wonderful. I have never heard anyone in this business say a word against him. He has friends everywhere." I believe his story is uniquely American in its sense of movement and opportunism, a kind of picaresque journey that would be impossible to equal in today's world of music colleges and high-profile media hype. Joe worked with some of the greatest creative musicians in jazz, both black and white, straddling the line between art and entertainment, with the various phases of his career a partial mirror to the evolution of the music itself. During his Louisiana childhood, Joe was fortunate to know some of the first great generation of Creole and black jazzmen before ~oving on to California, where many of the New Orleans pioneers had also journeyed. From Los Angeles he went on to the lively backwater of Seattle, which offered a low-life parallel to Pendergast's Kansas City with its "wide-open" status. Many readers, I think, will vi I FOREWORD be interested in Joe's account of his participation in the Seattle scene, since this is a subject which has been overlooked by historians. He then took an active part in the New Orleans revival of the forties, the last major flowering of traditional jazz, and arguably Joe's finest hour. No master plan attended his travels, just chance, and it is our good fortune that his remarkably accurate reminiscences bring back these lost eras with such vivacity. Joe was proud that he had always earned a living from music and seldom complained about past hardships. While often critical ofothers, he made no false claims for himself and he was refreshingly honest about the temptations that faced traveling musicians. If some of his stories sound apocryphal, then so be it. Joe's most appropriate legacy must, of course, be his music, and I urge the reader to seek out his recordings, especially those of the early Ory period (from the mid-forties) and others by his Dixie Flyers and the Legends of Jazz.