[Dixielandjazz] Huey Long, Guitarist for Ink Spots, Dies at 105

[Robert Ringwald]

Huey Long, Guitarist for Ink Spots, Dies at 105

Link to this N.Y. Times obit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/arts/music/13long.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

By
WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: June 13, 2009

Frank Davis and his Louisiana Jazz Band were booked to play at the Rice 
Hotel in
Houston in 1925. The banjo player never showed. For Huey Long, who shined 
shoes outside
the hotel and occasionally got onstage to announce the bands, this was the 
unmistakable
sound of opportunity knocking. Putting down his ukulele, he ran out to a 
music store,
got a banjo on credit and stepped into the breach.

And so began an 80-year career in jazz and popular music. For the rest of 
the century
Mr. Long, who took up the guitar in 1933, performed with an extensive list 
of greats
in a journey that began with Dixieland, moved into swing and jumped forward 
to bebop.

Along the way, he spent nine months in 1945 as a guitarist and singer with 
the Ink
Spots, the enormously popular and influential vocal quartet that paved the 
way for
rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll.

He died on Wednesday in Houston, the last surviving
Ink Spot
 from the days when the group still had some of its original members. He was 
105.
The death was confirmed by his daughter, Anita Long.

On the extended timeline of Mr. Long's career, his tenure with the Ink Spots 
takes
up no more than a couple of inches, but he joined the group in its heyday. 
In early
1945, while playing with his own trio at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street in 
Manhattan,
he was approached by Bill Kenny, one of the earliest Ink Spots and the group's 
signature
voice. Kenny wanted him to replace their guitarist, Bernie Mackey, who was 
filling
in for Charlie Fuqua, an original member who was doing military service.

In late March Mr. Long, providing guitar accompaniment and vocal support, 
appeared
as an Ink Spot at Detroit's Paradise Theater. He also recorded several songs 
with
the group, including "I'm Gonna Turn Off the Teardrops," "I'll Lose a Friend 
Tomorrow,"
"The Sweetest Dream" and "Just for Me."

When Mr. Fuqua reappeared unexpectedly in October, Mr. Long was suddenly an 
ex-Ink
Spot. But his career rolled on.

Mr. Long was born in Sealy, Tex., a farm town about 20 miles west of 
Houston. His
brother Sam played ragtime piano, and Huey picked up the chords on his 
ukulele. After
he finished his adventure with the Louisiana Jazz Band, a visiting aunt took 
him
back to Chicago, intent on getting him some music lessons and starting him 
out in
nightclubs.

In 1933 he switched to guitar to perform with Texas Guinan's Cuban Orchestra 
at the
World's Fair in Chicago. The city was a hotbed of jazz, and Mr. Long, who 
developed
a deft hand at constructing chordal solos, found himself in demand as a 
studio musician.

In 1935 and 1936 he recorded sessions for Decca Records with the pianist 
Richard
M. Jones's Jazz Wizards and the pianist Lil Armstrong and Her Swing 
Orchestra, including
her signature tune, "Just for a Thrill." He went on to perform and do 
arrangements
for the trumpeter Zilner Randolph's W.P.A. Concert and Swing Band.
It was a colorful period. "If you were an entertainer in Chicago, you worked 
for
the gangsters," he told The Journal of Longevity in 2006. "After midnight 
they would
close a club to the public for a party. Generous and friendly, they threw 
large bills
on the stage as some sort of status symbol. When they left, you counted it, 
and it
was always more than enough."

Fletcher Henderson hired Mr. Long to play with his orchestra at the Grand 
Terrace
Cafe and later took him to New York, where the simmering bebop movement 
propelled
Mr. Long into a new phase. He joined the pianist Earl Hines's orchestra and 
performed
with emerging stars like Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan,
Charlie Parker
 and
Dizzy Gillespie
 before forming his own trio and then taking a detour with the Ink Spots.

After playing with the saxophonist Eddie (Lockjaw) Davis's Be-Boppers, he 
formed
a new trio of his own and entertained American troops in Korea and Japan as 
part
of a U.S.O. tour.

Mr. Long briefly attended Los Angeles City College in pursuit of a teaching 
certificate
but grew homesick and returned to New York. The Ink Spots, in the meantime, 
had broken
up, spawning a host of groups using the name, some with no connection to the 
original
group. In the early 1960s Mr. Long formed his own version of the Ink Spots 
and performed
with them in California for two years before returning to New York, where he 
set
up a teaching studio in an apartment in the CBS Building. The studio 
developed into
a small school, which he moved to Broadway and 52nd Street.

In 1996 Mr. Long returned to Houston, where in 2007 his daughter started the
Ink Spots Museum
 across the street from his apartment. In addition to his daughter, Anita 
Long of
Houston, he is survived by two sons, Rene and Shiloh, both of San Jose, 
Calif.; and
seven grandchildren.

At his death Mr. Long was compiling what his daughter described as a musical 
dictionary,
a compilation of the chord melodies he developed over the years. It helped 
tune out
unwelcome developments in popular music.
"Music is defined as sound vibrations that are picked up by the ear," he 
told The
Journal of Longevity, diplomatically. "The music of today has sound and 
vibrations
- heavy on the rhythm."

A version of this article appeared in print on June 13, 2009, on page A20 of 
the
New York edition.


--Bob Ringwald K6YBV
rsr at ringwald.com
530/642-9551
916/806-9551 Cell
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band

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