[Dixielandjazz] More about Goldie Lucas

[Stephen G Barbone]

The man played banjo and guitar. After his work with Oliver and others  
in Chicago, he came to New York City and worked in a number of clubs  
there. Below is from an interview with Bobby Booker, a jazz trumpeter  
in NYC who worked with Goldie, From the Book "Hot Jazz from Harlem to  
Storyville" by David Griffiths. The author recounts interviews during  
the 1990s with oldsters who were on the jazz scene in the 1930s. In  
this interview  Bobby Booker says:  (BTW, Booker fronted a band in  
1935 or so that had Tad Dameron on piano before Dameron went on to  
bigger and better things)

*** start Booker's quote

"I was on trumpet, Al Robinson on alto, Charlie Skeets on piano, and  
Puss Johnson and Freddie Moore played drums with us at various times.  
The job lasted four or five months, but after a while you would get  
tired of these kinds of jobs and get another one.

"Jack Bradley (the brother of Herman bradley) and I led a band at a  
taxi dance hall, the Broadway Danceland, around 63rd or 64th Street.  
Jack Bradley played tenor, Ben Smith was on first alto, Craig Watson  
on third alto, Dolly Armenra and myself on trumpet and cripple Joe  
Smith was on drums."
Around this time, I joined the band led by GOLDIE LUCAS, who played at  
the Cosmopolitan Ballroom at 48th Street and Broadway. We also worked  
at a nightclub across the street, the Monte Carlo; it was owned by the  
same people. We had GOLDIE on banjo (HE recently passed away, HE was  
an old cat, though, and he was a good pool player); Ted Colon, who  
came from Chicago (after the engagement he returned to Chicago) and  
myself were on trumpets. Ted Colon had worked at the Renaissance  
Casino with Vernon Andrade before he joined GOLDIE LUCAS. Leonard  
Fields was on alto; I never heard anybody play like him, he was really  
fast and used to do double and triple tongue work on the  
saxophone . . . . . ."

]***end quote

If you are into reading about some virtually unknown jazz musicians  
from those days, this book is a fun. It gives you a good idea of how  
vast the jazz business was in the 1930s and talks about musicians most  
of us never heard of, like:.

Bobby Booker, Puss Johnson, Vernon Andrade, Leonard Fields, Dolly  
Armenra, Cripple Joe Smith, Israel Thompson, Humpy Flintall, 'Egypt' a  
tenor man who had a beard and everything, but nobody knew his real  
name, and on and on and on.

It is also full of stories like below, again from Bobby Booker:

"In the summer of 1934, I played in Atlantic City (NJ) with the Israel  
Thompson Band at the Belmont Night Club, a famous place for Breakfast  
dances . . . . . Now at that time  Billie Holiday was working at a  
real jumpy place called The Old Barn, around the railroad tracks in  
Atlantic City. I used to go by there and bring her to our breakfast  
dance. She'd break it up every time because she was better than the  
girls who worked at the Belmont; she used to come along and sing and  
leave the place in an uproar."

If you like those kinds of stories, get the book.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband