I Remember Jazz: Six Decades Among the Great Jazzmen

Pee Wee Spitlera

120 • I Remember Jazz Wonderful Wizard of Oz A La Creole." (Second Line is the quarterly magazine published by the New Orleans Jazz Club.) Because of its fascinating subject, the article brought in more mail than the publication had ever received in response to a single article. Sou died in August, 1968, just a few months after our New Orleans Jazz: A Family Album was published. He had been ailing— though hiding the fact—through all the time the volume was in progress . When we planned it, both of us conceived of it as a tax shelter. We reasoned that the processing costs for our photographic collections would be high enough to insure a substantial loss. It seemed obvious to us that the work could never return in royalties anything like what it cost us to deliver it. To everybody's surprise, our first period royalties ran into the thousands, and Sou said, "Now it's really gonna cost us!" Both the second, enlarged, revised edition of 1978 and the even more revised and enlarged edition of 1984 continued to carry Edmond Souchon's name alongside mine. I wouldn't have had it any other way. Pee Wee Spitlera Only recently someone told me that Pee Wee Spitlera had retired. Retired? That little child, retired? Why it wasonly yesterday. . . . He had a distinguished career as a clarinetist to Jumbo (Al Hirt) and developed a following of his own not only in Jumbos Bourbon Street nightclub, but among the TV audiences that noticed there was something special in the tone of this roly-poly little fellow whose every note was pure New Orleans. Okay. So he's retired. After all, I just looked up his age and he is forty-six. I suppose he saved his money while the pay was good. 1 suppose he made a few decent investments. Why not? Why shouldn't he retire? I think back to 1954. In those days at 112 Royal Street in New Orleans, on the second floor, there was a place called the "Parisian Room" where the proprietor, trumpet player Tony Almerico, hosted a regular Saturday afternoon jam session to which jazz fans across the nation had become addicted, since they could tune it in on 50,000 watt, clear-channel WWL, which conducted a weekly live broadcast of the proceedings. Pee Wee then had a nice tone for a sixteen-yearold , and Tony would let him sit in with the band until the broadcast started. There were top musicianson those shows—Jack Delaney, / Remember Jazz • 121 Deacon Loyacano, even, before he died, Fazola. People like Stanley Mendelson or Bob Doyle might be on piano. Usually Tony stomped things off at tempos that were too fast to make for the best jazz, but it was a good-time place and a good-time party. It was alwaysfun. We used to tease Pee Wee because, even though he had reached the advanced age of sixteen, he looked closer to eleven. He never had any smart comebacks. He'd just look at you with those big, wide eyes and apply himself to blowing the best horn he could. The first week that Tony Parenti came back to town after an absence of two decades, Almerico called me and asked if I'd bring the master clarinetist up to his radio talk show. I said I thought Parenti would do that, and later Parenti agreed. We went up there and spent an hour on the air, talkingabout old times and listening to records. Then on Saturday, I was in the French Quarter with Parenti, eating oysters at the Acme, and I suggested we go around the corner to the Parisian Room for the jam session. I thought Tony might enjoy meeting some of his old friends. So we went up and walked in. Pee Wee, his eyes shut, was wailingaway on some war horse. Just as the number was over, I brought Parenti up to the low bandstand. He shook hands with bass player Joe Loyacano, an old friend, and greeted others he knew. We came to where Pee Wee was standing. He had never seen Parenti, of course. The maestro had been gone too long. But like every young New Orleans clarinet hopeful, he knew the name and was familiar with all the Parenti records. I was saying, "Tony, this little kid is Pee Wee Spitlera—and Pee Wee, I know you'll be happy to shake hands with Tony Parenti." Pee Wee's...