[Dixielandjazz] Condon & Watters?

[Bill Haesler]

Dear Mike,
Here is an article of interest from the Frisco Cricket.
  www.sftradjazz.org/lu-watters.html
But not the one I mentioned earlier.
Condon is mentioned in the final paragraphs.
Regards,
Bill.

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Lu Watters¹ Yerba Buena Jazz Band
by Jerry Stanton 

Before I start I should say that on this subject The Source, capital S, is
Bob Helm. Of those of us from the dinosaur days still around, he¹s the one
who lived and knew it all. He has to: he¹s ten or more years ahead of me, as
Wally was, and knew Lu in the band¹s formative stage in the late 1930s.

When did I come into the movie? It seems like a movie now looking back‹a
long one and a very memorable one. I came in the summer of Œ39, together
with my brother Tom Stanton (he was christened Peter Thomas Stanton and in
his Œ30s wanted to be only Peter, then P. T. But when you¹ve grown up with a
brother Tom, at work and play, you¹re never going to call him anything but
Tom). 

But Tom wasn¹t with me on the late summer afternoon at the Golden Gate
International Exposition on Treasure Island when I left the close of the
daily Benny Goodman big band open air concert in the Temple Compound on the
south side of the island and strolled along a road full of fairground
attractions. Across from one of them, Sally Rand¹s Nude Ranch, was another:
The Corral. Drinking, eating, and jazz from a trio consisting of Bob Helm,
pianist Forrest Brown and Freddy Higuera drums. I stayed, of course, then
introduced myself, and that was the start of friendships which in Bob¹s case
have lasted sixty years to the present writing.

I didn¹t talk long enough to Bob that day to hear what was coming in the Bay
Area jazz scene‹maybe Lu¹s plans weren¹t quite finalized. But a couple of
months later, September or October, l939, the equivalent of a musical atomic
bomb detonated Bay Area, California‹make it all of U. S. A.: righteous jazz.
The Yerba Buena Jazz Band opened at the Dawn Club, 20 Annie Street in San
Francisco. 

Nothing like it had ever hit town before. It¹s true that the King Oliver
Band played The City in the mid-1920s, maybe more than once, on their West
Coast tours. But they weren¹t there long enough to make the impact they
deserved, and anyway by 1939, with the advent of the big band era and
hundreds of smaller bands the classic Oliver sounds were forgotten, if
they¹d ever been remembered long in rousting, live-it-up San Francisco
balling the livelong nights.

The Dawn Club changed all that, because Lu had really done his homework. The
band was brilliant, without making a fuss about being that way. It was
highly professional, disciplined, with a fabulous repertoire including Lu¹s
originals and arrangements, yet still gave you the feeling they were fresh
on the scene and playing for your New Year¹s Eve party. Spontaneity was in
the air, not least because Lu had selected the Dawn Club for its spacious
dance floor‹the Œ30s on the way out had been a great dancing era all over
America, in thousands of clubs, halls, ballrooms, hotels, fairgrounds‹you
name it. They even got up and did it in theater aisles when the band on
stage got hot enough. Me included.

Okay, I¹ve opened with atmosphere, and now for some facts. You turned off
Market Street, walked maybe fifty feet along Annie Street, more like an
alley, next to the Palace Hotel. You went in the club and down a long
steepish flight of stairs. At the bottom you bought your admission from a
guy who in return handed you a long single-sheet program. Genial idea of
Lu¹s: every number to be played that night was listed by sets (five,
sometimes six). 

You were early, in your early-teenage anticipation, the way we of the kid
Golden Gate Jazz Band (Tom dubbed it that) were, and some trepidation
because there was no guarantee we were going to get a real drink at our
tender ages. Who were we? Tom Stanton, trumpet and cornet; Pete Allen,
clarinet; Bill Bardin, trombone; Jerry Stanton, piano and George Clark,
drums. Larry Grey, bass, too but not always, and Tom Dowd, our booker,
poster designer and general tub-thumper. We were sponsored by Augie Giretto,
Lu¹s manager and master of the lease on the Dawn Club‹and had the approval
of the real master himself, Lu, who smiled benignly on our efforts and gave
us genuine encouragement. He also, in his quiet savvy way showed us where in
the dim recesses of the spacious back room of the club we could cluster in a
corner and get served firewater‹for hard cash, of course, nobody could
afford to be in the business of charity in those days. So for four bits‹you
heard it‹we got our gin and juices. For a couple of bucks each we could join
the rollicking spirits of the long night, trip the light fantastic with a
gal, and still go home sober with the sounds of an amazing band ringing in
our ears. 

Brass players stayed constant in the band, both before and after World War
Two: Lu, Bob Scobey and Turk, but clarinet duties were divided between Ellis
Horne and Helm, more Ellis in Œ39 and Œ40, and more Helm in Œ41, Œ46 and
Œ47. Wally, too, was a constant, though Forrest Brown was in before the war
on piano awhile at the Dawn. Bill Dart was a constant on drums, Dick Lammi
on tuba and string bass as well, but there were several banjo men on duty:
the inimitable and unforgettable Clancy Hayes, doing his great jazz singing,
and Harry Mordecai and Russ Bennett.

The Dawn Club, as you no doubt know, was not invented suddenly in 1939. It
had a pretty riotous life as a Prohibition speakeasy, or ³Speak,² all
through the Œ20s and early Œ30s behind it. The long brass rail bar was one
of the longest, if not the longest in San Francisco. Another contender for
that distinction was Breen¹s, the classic early-S. F. style Irish-flavored
bar off Third and Market, in an alley behind the Examiner Building, and an
off-duty favorite of Lu¹s. I lifted more than one beer mug with him there.

The atmosphere with the band was infectious at the Dawn, and it was always
full of dancers and listeners. There was a lot of dark wood there and a
mellow dim decor‹ plenty of tables and oodles of atmosphere in the style of
the times. The whole cast of Dashiell Hammett¹s ³The Maltese Falcon,² that
director John Huston was filming on location in The City was often there:
Huston, Humph Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet etc.
Probably not only for the music but because they felt they hadn¹t left the
movie sets: the Dawn was just like one of them.

After the war in 1947 Orson Welles was often there, with his current flame
Rita Hayworth. Welles loved the music. I can remember seeing and hearing him
cry out ³That¹s the Black and White Rag!² when Wally was playing it, then
grab Rita and swing her high, wide and handsome around the floor. And he
shouted: That¹s-a-Plenty! Great!³

A whole lot of other notable people, not only Hollywood but from the
professions, big business and politics etc. came regularly to the Dawn. And
of course Herb Caen, a legend in his own lifetime. He often put some
anecdote about the club in his columns, in the Examiner and the Chronicle
(he shifted gears several times in his life). Everybody danced. Lu said the
foundation of everything was to have people dancing, and when he moved the
band in 1948 to El Cerrito he stayed firm to that principle.

A word must be said at this point about Lu Watters the man, because he was
as well put-together as a human being as he was as a jazz musician. You
could call him the Rock of Gibraltar: while all the waves and storms and
winds lapped and whirled around him, he was always unflappable and
unruffled. He¹d gone through the rough-and-tough mill of the orchestra
business as it was in the Œ20s when he started at 16 withhis first job as
second or third trumpet in a section, Anno Domini 1926. He toured the
country with various bands of all sizes and styles of the time. He built up
a lot of general musical savvy until he gradually separated the wheat from
the chaff and knew what he wanted to do on his own.

That time didn¹t come till much later, in the late 1930s, but by then Lu¹d
found the players he wanted and knew exactly the results he wanted:
continuation, with his own refreshments, of the great New Orleans Oliver and
Armstrong two-trumpet tradition in an eight-man band with banjo, tuba,
support but not solo drums, and ragtime-tinged piano. And of course a
clarinetist in the Dodds, Simeon, Nicholas traditions deeply embedded in the
best New Orleans bands. In Turk he¹d found the ideal driving bottom line for
the front line. 

It was a carefully thought-out band, but as already mentioned it had that
great feeling of right now, freshness and spontaneity that got people up
from their tables right now and out on the dance floor. In the first great
flourish of the YBJB at the Dawn‹¹39, Œ40 and Œ41‹a lot of young and very
impressionable starting-out musicians, our gang included, formed an
enthusiastic and faithful fan support element, which translated out in many
ways, the most important being there every night the band played and if
possible memorizing every tune they played. That was no easy job since most
of the tunes were three and four part numbers, with introductions,
interludes, repeats, breaks and codas galore.

All the guys in the YBJB had a lot of previous experience in improvising,
but Lu wrote out all his numbers and rehearsed them that way before he let
the improvising take wing, as it should in the middle of the tunes. In this
way the band stood out from all the Dixieland-style bands that were often
good, but long on jamming and short on substance and ensemble quality. It
can¹t be emphasized enough in a resume of Lu¹s impact on the Bay Area,
California and national jazz scenes. The band was unique, the band was
organized, the band swung, the band was great. Period.

After funding and lease problems, the Dawn Club closed after two successful
post WW II years, and in 1948 Lu found a new home for the band at a great
big, roomy club, Sally Rand¹s, on San Pablo in El Cerrito just over the
Albany line. A long rectangular building with a spacious parking lot of its
own, band and staff rooms on the other side of it‹and a two story house in
back with a lot of little rooms for what had obviously been Sally¹s
hanky-panky trade, never admitted and never officially allowed, though
gambling in an upstairs room at the Kona Club nearby went on while the city
uncles looked the other way, when they weren¹t upstairs themselves taking a
flutter. 

And then Lu christened it Hambone Kelly¹s with a bow to his wife Pat, and
the enterprise took off, and how. The big dance floor Lu insisted on was
there, a prime factor in the choice. Then he ordered the same dimly-lighted
cozy atmosphere of the Dawn, and initiated a unique feature: dozens of names
of his tunes were written in script style large on the wall behind the long
bar at the front of the club, facing toward San Pablo Avenue. In Manuel, the
head bartender, he found an expert, trustworthy man, and Augie Giretto was
on hand again to manage the band, the finances and the club. Most important
of all, Augie was a dedicated fan of the band and knew his jazz music, with
a big record collection at home. 78s in those days, with LPs just emerging
on the scene. 

For more intimate Hambone reminiscing, check with Bob Helm. Bob had a room
there and stayed till the closing New Year¹s Eve, 1950. I was there the last
year of Hambone¹s. I¹d replaced Johnny Wittwer who in his turn had replaced
Burt Bales‹Œ48 and Œ49 respectively. Lu had come out to El Sobrante over the
hills and out toward Martinez and the Carquinez Bridge, several times where
I was working in my brother¹s weekend band. Then he asked me to come aboard
at Hambone¹s and I think I waited about ten seconds to sign on. The band was
abbreviated by then, down to Lu and Bob and Lammi and Dart and myself. But
Turk hadn¹t started his own band yet and often came around to sit in, as did
Scobey. Charlie Sonnanstine often came around with his trombone, as did
other good players, all of them needing Lu¹s careful approval, of course. It
was never a jam session. Clancy Hayes came in to play banjo and sing. I must
say here that Clancy, along with Lu and Wally, gave me the early strong
encouragement, early 1940s, that I badly needed, and that got me over the
hump, y¹know‹that feeling that you¹re not going to make it.

Another institution Lu invented was the Sunday afternoon special: inviting
names in the jazz world to be guest artists at Hambone¹s, with their own
support players or with us, depending. He only did it in the summer months
when the vacation-time atmosphere and the weather combined to make it
worthwhile. I got to meet a lot of memorable people and players: one Sunday
or sometimes a pair of consecutive Sundays Lu¹d book in the Red Nichols band
from L. A. Then another time the Wingy Manone band. Out of that contact I
got a job with Wingy two years later. Then Lu brought out members of the
Eddie Condon band from New York. And one very memorable week he finagled the
presence of master James P. Johnson, Fats Waller¹s teacher. Though no longer
a young man, James P. played strong stride solos on the big Hambone redwood
upright with a resonant sounding board, and I was right there two feet away
at his right hand. The slightly elevated bandstand at Hambone¹s was a
replica of the Dawn Club stand: like a square box, open at two ends but with
a big drape at the back for you to come in and out.


FROM ISSUE NO. 10, FALL 1999