[Dixielandjazz] Chu Berry -- the ghoulish curiosity etc

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

In the way things happened during the long haul toward a comprehensive 
discography of jazz and blues, Chu Berry was named as the tenor player on a 
session by the St. Louis-based bluesman Peetie Wheatstraw, a session with a 
ghoulish appearance. Peetie took his name from folklore, and liked to refer to 
himself as the Devil's Son-in-Law and the High Sheriff from Hell (his real name 
was William Bunch). 

The session was his last one, he was killed in a car accident shortly after 
recording such items as HEARSE MAN BLUES and BRING ME FLOWERS WHILE I'M LIVING. 
Spooky enough!  
The tenor player sounds rather like Chu, but Chu had been dead for three and a 
half weeks by the date of the recording. Just the sort of situation to prompt 
the writing of a ghost story. 

Benny Waters told me he would have taken over Chu's chair with Cab Calloway but 
for his drinking. In retrospect and in his happily dry eighties he didn't think 
he had been unfairly done by. After our conversation he went on stage and 
delivered himself on tenor in very much a Chu Berry style, which can also be 
heard in a solo he played with the Lips Page band. There were other occasions 
when Benny played more like Coleman Hawkins.
I do remember references to Chu, like Lester Young and Illinois Jacquet (and the 
slightly younger player too many juniors have tended to imitate rather than 
actually engage in making music non-mechanically with the resources of the 
horn) having served his apprenticeship on alto before moving to the larger horn. 

A very decent tenorist Chu, and one not at all irrelevant as an example for 
potential tenor soloists in the style central to this site's concern.