Dameronia: The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron

Notes

207 Notes Chapter 1 1. This is not the Willie Smith who played with Lunceford and Ellington. Willie Smith of Cleveland was also an alto saxophonist and arranged for Lionel Hampton and Motown Records, among others. 2. For more on Cleveland jazz history read Joe Mosbrook, Cleveland Jazz History (Cleveland, Northeast Ohio Jazz Society, 2003) and Mosbrook’s articles posted under the heading“Jazzed in Cleveland” at http://www.cleveland.oh.us. As of this writing, the complete list of Mosbrook’s articles can be accessed from the home page. The method of navigating the site changes from time to time. 3. From the certificate for Ruth’s marriage to Adolphus Dameron, which says“Koscinska .”There is no such place, and only two letters differ between this likely misspelling and the spelling of the known town. Ruth’s mother’s maiden name is also misspelled on this document as“Padley.” 4. According to his marriage certificate, Silas would also have been born in 1893. This a deduction made from his and Ruth’s given ages on the dates of their respective marriage certificates. If correct, it would seem they were born in quick succession. 5. It was not until 1951 that civil marriage licenses were required for all cases in Cuyahoga County, OH. 6. Tadley Dameron did not start spelling his nickname with two d’s until the late 1940s. In this book, however, his name will be spelled with two d’s unless a source is being quoted where it is spelled otherwise. 7. The directory ending in Aug. 1916 shows Caesar Harris to be the householder of 2201 East Thirtieth Street and Isaiah Peake to be a resident. 8. W. J. Zoul was a “longtime justice of the peace in Cleveland,” according to Joe Mosbrook. In 1918 he presided over the civil marriage of Sidney Bechet to Norma Hale. It could have been the case that second marriages were not performed at St. Paul’s or that doing so would have been embarrassing to the founder of the church. 9. Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), 27. Between 1910 and 1920 the black population of Cleveland rose from 8,448 to 34,451, and by 208 NoteS to PaGeS 4–8 1930 it would grow to 71,899. According to Carol Poh Miller and Robert A. Wheeler, “Central Avenue [basically one block south of Cedar] became a hotbed of gambling, prostitution, and crime; law enforcement was lax in the‘Roaring Third,’ as whites called the area.” See Cleveland, A Concise History, 1796–1996 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), 121–23. 10. Information on local adoption procedures in the 1920s is courtesy of staff at the Cuyahoga County, OH, Probate Court Adoption Department. 11. Tadd Dameron and Benny Golson, interview with Harry Frost, Mid Town Hotel, St Louis, MO, spring 1952; The Dave Cliff/Geoff Simkins 5 “Play the Music of Tadd Dameron ” (Spotlite Records, SPJ-(CD) 560, 1997), track 12. 12. Denise Dameron (Tadd’s niece), interview with the author, Aug. 10, 2004. 13. Bill Coss,“Tadd’s Back,” Down Beat, Feb. 15, 1962, 18. 14. Myron Styles, interview with the author, Inner-City Yacht Club, Cleveland, OH, July 22, 2000. All further quotations of and references to Styles and his friend Buddy Crewe come from this interview. 15. Ira Gitler, Jazz Masters of the 40s (New York: Da Capo Press, 1983), 264. The quotations at the end of this paragraph and the one in the next paragraph come from the same source. 16. Dameron and Golson, interview with Frost, spring 1952. 17. Dameron and Golson, interview with Frost, spring 1952. 18. Joe Mosbrook, interview with the author, Aug. 10, 2004. 19. Gitler, Jazz Masters of the 40s, 263. 20. Jimmy Williams, interview with the author, Aug. 10, 2004. 21. Ian MacDonald, Tadd, the Life and Legacy of Tadley Ewing Dameron (Sheffield, England: Jahbero Press, 1998), 74. 22. Barry Ulanov,“Tad Dameron, Second in a Series on the Leading Beboppers,”Metronome , Aug. 1947, 24, +35. The medical school reference is also found in Ulanov’s History of Jazz in America (New York: Viking Press, 1952), 278. Later, Max Jones reported that he“was originally intended for the medical profession. But after six years’ study he gave up medicine for music”(“And Next We Come to Soulphony,”Melody Maker, June 4, 1949, 4). Tadd also related another version of this story to Bill Coss, which appeared in Coss’s 1962 Down Beat...