-
The Exterminators: Pete Fountain and Al Hirt
- Louisiana State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
204 • I Remember Jazz "I see you did it," Krupa commented. "You're lucky." I asked him if he found himself any closer to his goals, and he shook his head. I reminded him that he had told me drummers didn't get to be bandleaders. His band was now among the most popular in the nation. He acknowledged that he had achieved some financial stability, but denied that the quality of life had improved for him. He gathered my kids, Pancho and Frank, together with him and motioned to my photographer to take their picture. Then he scribbled an address on a note pad and handed it to me. "I hope you'll send me a print of this," he said. I did, of course. The Exterminators: Pete Fountain and Al Hirt Things were hard for jazzmen in the fifties—especially the early fifties—and most especially in New Orleans. Bourbon Street was still a year or so away from full bloom, and the Dixieland bands that were to proliferate hadn't yet secured their jobs. There were places like La Lune, a dance spot where Mike Lala and his band held forth, playing Mickey Mouse music—rhumbas, slow fox-trots, and businessmen's bounce a la Lester Lanin. But even Mike, though employed, couldn't make ends meet on the low pay of that time. He took a job during the daytime workingfor the Orkin Exterminating Company. During the day he'd go around makinghome termite inspections and bugproofing houses. But Mike wasn't the only musician that needed money, and Joe Mares and I used to talk frequently about the plight of the music and the difficulties performers were having to confront. There were two of the younger ones we were especially concerned about, and I suggested we might find out from Lala whether there were any openings where he worked. He said he'd see. I think one of his relatives was part of the firm. The building, by the way, is the original "Halfway House," a historic jazz spot of the twenties. It was fitting that though there was no music, the place was still employing jazzmen. It all ended with the young men getting the jobs. I will always remember how they looked in their yellow jump suits with the Orkin logo on them as they dropped in on Joe duringtheir lunch hour, / Remember Jazz • 205 looking for all the world like Laurel and Hardy in one of those tworeelers . Al Hirt, in those days, had no beard, but he was even heftier than he is now, and Pete Fountain was a skinnykid, ill-adapted to anything other than playing his clarinet. I'd have given anything for the chance to watch them on the job. It must have been one of the all-time great comedy acts. Fortunately for the music world, neither of them had to stay with that occupation long enough to become expert at it. I suppose you could say that they began to attract attention in about 1955 when they worked at Dans International, at Bourbon and Toulouse streets, with a scary trombone player named Bob Havens who is now the hot sliphorn man in the Lawrence Welk band. We were concerned about Pete, anyway, in the exterminating job. He had a long history of respiratory problems (which actually had led to his taking up the clarinet), and he was generally frail. Al, however , had to do all the work he could with his enormous family (a wife and eleven children). He had been so thoroughly trained in music, having occupied a trumpet chair for a long time in the New Orleans Symphony under the direction of Alexander Hillsberg, that he showed all the signs of disillusionment at having to go outside his music to earn the kind of living he needed. Joe and I sat at a table in the club listening to this hair-raising band, and Al and Pete came to sit with us during a break. I said to Al, "How long can you keep up that pace? Your lip probably feels like it's turning to stone." Pete said, "This sonofabitch never gets tired. My God! Playin' with him is like a track meet." "This guy," Joe predicted, "in a year or two is gonna be a superstar . He's goin' to Vegas and when they hear him out there, that'll be it." Afterward, I was standing outside the club with Al and...