[Dixielandjazz] Colorless days in smalljazz bands

[Don Ingle]

I toss in my own experiences on this point of "color"in trad bands.
 From 1962 to 1965, except for a short break to work with Rosey McHargue 
in CA, I was the trumpet chair at Chicago's Jazz Ltd.
It was my great, good fortune to work with several players of color 
there, and also previously in CA.

At one time we had Freddie Kohlman on drums and Manny Sayles on 
banjo/guitar - good friends and fine players. We also had Quinn Wilson 
on Sousaphone and string bass. Quinn, as a youngster of 16, recording a 
number of sides with Jelly Roll Morton in Chicago, and was also with the 
1930's band led by Fatha Hines at the Club Delise. He was one of the 
nicest, beautiful souls God ever made. When Quinn and his second wife 
had a late-in-life baby boy, Jean and I were honored to be asked to be 
God parents. Freddie Kohlman and I used to drive around the corner of 
Lake Michigan to Michigan on our day off to go fishing in some small 
lakes, and were often guests at with him and his wife when he got a 
batch of fresh gulf fish and shrimp air expressed from his dad. Talk 
about Louisiana cooking - Freddy was  a master.

For awhile we had a young pianist named Earl Washington on piano. 
Marvelous player. Unfortunately he had a serious substance abuse problem 
that eventually led to his death, but he was a player. We later had 
another black pianist for severaal year, Roselle Claxton, a fine 
exponent of both stride and the KC styles.

Earlier in L.A. I worked in a band with  Doc Cenardo, a fine creole 
drummer who could play a press roll most drummers would kill to learn. 
Such is a lost art for most.
I sat in on sessions with other good players of color and color was 
never an issue. If they played well then it was romance with the sound 
and feel that the music gave you.

Fresh out of High School in 1949, I spent part of the summer in NYC 
where dad's band was on a long stay. Since the legal age to be in joints 
serving booze was then 18,
I went every where - sometimes with dad on off nights, or by myself. I 
heard many of those mixed small jazz bands and marveled at how well 
melded the playing was witihout any regard to color. That's the way it 
was then, and the way it should be today. Dad, a wise teacher in his own 
way showed by example. He'd worked with Bix in the '20's  in Detroit 
with Goldkette and revered him; but it was Armstrong's uncanny sense of 
timing in vocaliazation that inspired him.  The only question about 
color in a player he ever asked was -- "can he play and does it make you 
glad you listened."

After all these years, why do we still ask about color? Get over it!

Don Ingle