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From Piano to Saxophone (1927–1931) It’s uncertain when the chance arose for Ben to stand on his own two feet, but it was probably in late 1927 or early 1928. A few isolated sources mention him leaving Kansas City with violinist Clarence Love,1 an improbable claim, since Ben never mentioned any connection with Love. But he did often speak of the leader of a territory band named Brethro Nelson from Enid, Oklahoma, about whom nothing is known, and whose greatest contribution to music, it seems, was to have offered Ben his ‹rst professional job. In Ben’s own words, “He heard me play piano and asked me to join his band. I didn’t think that my people would let me leave home, so I invited him over to my house. He came and met my mother and my grandmother [aunt], and he promised that he would look out for me. My mother told him that ‘Ben knows the telephone number if he gets in trouble.’”2 Ben left with him and went to Oklahoma, and then on to Amarillo , Texas. Ben himself said that Nelson’s band was small,3 probably no more than four or ‹ve musicians, so they were able to travel in one car. In Amarillo, Ben quit Nelson’s band and joined another band led by Dutch Campbell. We know little about Campbell and the lineup of his band, but an article a few years later reported that he played drums and was also the band’s manager.4 When oil and natural gas was discovered around Amarillo in the early 1920s, the town grew to become the industrial center of the region. There Ben found much of the same lively nightlife he knew from Kansas City, although on a smaller scale. We don’t know how long Ben stayed on with Campbell, but after a while he began looking for other work, either because Campbell found a more competent pianist or because Ben quit. 2. 11 Whichever the case, the spring of 1928 found him playing piano for silent movies in the neighborhood cinema. When saxophonist Budd Johnson, one year Ben’s junior, arrived in Amarillo with Eugene Coy and His Original Black Aces, it proved a turning point for Ben. It was Budd’s ‹rst professional job. Fresh out of high school, Coy had hired him and his older brother, trombonist Keg Johnson, for his twelve-piece orchestra. Budd Johnson booked into a little hotel where Ben happened to be staying. They met, and Ben got so interested in Johnson’s saxophone that he asked him how to play a scale. “So I proceeded to show Ben how to play the saxophone that way,” Johnson recalled, “and he always gives me credit, but I mean, this is all I really did. Well, one thing I did sort of teach him how to play was Frankie Trumbauer’s [recorded solo on] Singin’ the Blues, and you know, all those saxophone players were playing Singin’ the Blues sort of note for note. We thought this was so beautiful. And I showed Ben a little about this, so we became great friends.”5 Ben also had fond memories of those days with Budd and Keg Johnson, when none of them had much money. “We used to play pool together every day, and I had to win that pool game, because the three of us used to go to a restaurant called ‘Scott,’ and for twenty-‹ve cents you could eat.”6 Budd and Keg soon left Amarillo, while Ben stayed on, playing in the movie house. However, the saxophone had captured his interest. “I then borrowed a horn from an old man. It was his daughter’s alto, and I used to practice every day, all day.”7 “Oh, I worried people to death in that neighborhood,” Ben went on. “Up in the morning at six o’clock blowing, and you can imagine what a saxophone player sounds like just starting out! And then I just got stuck with it, and I came back to this old man ‘Pops’ Smith and started trying to do gigs with him. I can imagine what I sounded like then!”8 Ben’s life continued much in this fashion until well into the summer of 1929, when Lester Young’s father, Willis Handy Young, arrived in Amarillo from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to hire pianist Harry Nelson for his band. Ben happened to be with Nelson at the...

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