I Remember Jazz: Six Decades Among the Great Jazzmen

Preface

Preface Sure I remember jazz. I remember more than sixty years of it—from the time I was a kid standing on a French Quarter banquette in New Orleans listening to the breathtaking band that played for dancing on the second floor of the Fern Cafe No. 2 to the ones I tried futilely to put together in the 1980s, combing the lists to find seven good men and true who could, one more time, quicken this fading pulse. Of course, I'm talking about genuine, unhyphenated jazz—not modern, not progressive, not fusion, New Wave, blues, or swing. Just jazz. Only jazz is jazz. I have worked with jazzmen through concerts, recording sessions, radio, television, movies, and promotions. I have roistered with them on planes, trains, buses, boats, and taxis here and abroad. I have gotten bombed with them in low-class dives and classy saloons in New York, Rangoon, the Louisiana bayous, Dallas, and Singapore. I've filled out their social security applications, bailed them out of jail, stood up for them at weddings, carried their caskets, and run interference for them through mobs of rabid fans. I have introduced them on the nation's most prestigious stages, from Carnegie Hall to the Hollywood Bowl. I have written about them, composed songs they playedand sang, gotten visas extended for the foreign ones, patched up domestic difficulties, broken up fights, tried to protect them from the worst of the exploiters. But, best of all, I've listened to them. I've listened not only to their hopes and aspirations, their tales of woe, their philosophical observations , their complaints and exultations. I've listened to the sound of their music, which is really all that ever matters—either to me or to them. Time has demonstrated that the public, the people who have delighted in these sounds, collected the records, gone to the festivals, want more than the music. They long to know more about the men and the lives that created their music. To meet that demand, the recent past has presented an impressive library of historical and biographical works relating to the people who made the music. There x • Preface have been some autobiographies, too, which generallyprove to be the least reliable information sources. I put this book together because every time I attend a jazz function —whether as a host, a speaker, a panelist, a master of ceremonies, or merely a ticket holder—people constantly ask me to share my recollections about my six decades of involvement with the musicians. Of course, the transient nature of the lives of jazz people rarely permits long-lasting, close personal relationships, though I've had my share of those, too. So what I have to tell isn't always incisive or analytical . I have undertaken to tell just one or two things about each of the many musicians I've had dealings with. These vignettes haven't been published before, though some folks might have heard me relate some of them at private or public functions, or even, from time to time, on the radio. This book is only as autobiographical as it needs to be. After all, I'm telling about the musicians, not about Al Rose, but I do have to tell a couple of relevant things about him in order to make sense of the stories. I was born in New Orleans in 1916. The first band I remember was the pit orchestra in my grandfathers Dauphine Theater. I remember several musicians who played in it—jazzmen like Martin Abraham , Tony Parenti, Wilbur Dinkel. I was four years old. During the same early years, I remember bands parading in the streets. I didn't then know the name of my favorite one, but I later discovered it had been led by Buddy Petit. I never made—or tried to make—a nickel out of jazz. Directly or indirectly, the musicians got every cent their performances brought in when they worked under my auspices. Concerts, record sessions, all belonged to them. I have been fortunate enough to have unrelated skills that kept me and my family reasonably prosperous so that my jazz activity stayed free of commercial restraints. My greatest satisfaction has been in the production of what I like to think were among the best jazz records ever made and in seeing the books I wrote in print, knowing how they're appreciated by the world's jazz fans. I've made sure, here, to include no...