[Dixielandjazz] Lu Watters

[Steve Voce]

I wrote this obituary almost 32 years ago. Might be of interest around here.
Steve Voce*

LU WATTERS*

Oddly, because he was only a moderatelytalentedtrumpet player, Lu Watters became one ofthe most influential
musicians inthe whole of jazz. It was he who  started the traditional jazz revival which eventually produced musi­cians like Chris Barber, Hum­phrey Lyttelton,
Acker Bilk and the entire revivalist movement ofthe Forties and Fifties.

At the height of the Swing erain 1938 some writers were insist­ing that jazz as represented by theDixieland music of Eddie Condon and the big band sounds of BennyGoodman and
  Tommy Dorseyhad moved too far away from thetrue New Orleans music. Thesewriters and many fans were de­manding a return to what
they saw to be something purer and LuWatters set out to provide it. Infact Watters had been playing jazzas a teenager during the so-calledGolden
Era of the Twenties.

Lu began his career as "themost promising bugler" at the StJoseph's Military AcademyinSacramento and as trumpeter in the school's brass band. While at high
school in 1926 when he was15 he formed his own jazz band.He worked as a musician on aship during school vacations andwhile
at the University of SanFrancisco he played in a band atthe Palace Hotel. Turning profes­sional, hetoured with Carol Lofner's band where he stayed forfive years and then sailedto
China as a ship's musician.

Back in SanFrancisco, heworked with several groups andthen formed his own 11-pieceband to play at Sweet's Ballroomin Oakland from 1938 to 1943.When trombonist Turk
Murphyfirst heard this band in 1937 itconsisted of a rhythm section,four brasses and three reed in­struments that, as Murphy said,"never played together". LaterTurk
joined the band himself.

At this time it was fashionableto have a band within a band, inother words, a small group drawnfrom the full band-Benny  Goodman's Sextet, Bob Crosby'sBob Cats and Artie Shaw's
Gram­ercy Five, for example. From hisband Watters drew what he calledhis Ycrba Buena Jazz Band. It made its debut at the 1939 SanFranciscoWorld'sFair.Thegroup
was devoted to the authen­tic recreation of the music of JellyRoll Morton and particularly JoeKing Oliver.

Watters and Bob Scobey pro­vided a two-cornet lead for theband in the way that Louis Arm­strong and Joe had done in theKing Oliver band a couple of de­cades
before.

Banjoist Clancy Hayes becamefamous as the band's vocalist."Nobody was working at King Ol­iver or Jelly Roll Morton's musicthen," Murphy recalled. "We fig­ured it would be a do-or-die prop­osition.
The band was very care­fully planned and we rehearsedalmost every night during the lasthalf of 1939 at a place called TheBig Bear, in the Berkeley Hills.We rehearsed from 1 am till 7."

The Yerba Buena jazz band(Yerba Buena-"Good Earth"- was the original name of SanFrancisco) used a tuba and abanjo in the rhythm section, asopposed to
string bass and guitar in the conventional bands of the time.

This meant that the band had mo­mentum rather than lift, and it didnot swing so much as lurch. The music was two-beat and very loud."It certainly is funny to hear those youngsters trying to play like
oldmen,"wastrumpeterBobbyHackett's comment on the band.

At first the band played a fewscattered engagements for a localhot music society. Then in De­cember 1939 it moved into SanFrancisco's Dawn Club.
Wattersinsisted that all sound-absorbingmaterial such as curtains and car­pets be removed from the club,  and this resulted in a raucous andechoing quality in the music.

There existed no audience ofany size for Watters's revivalist  music, and the musicians hadtherefore to create one. Their lo­cal reputation spread, and Watt­ers revealed himself
as a capablecomposer in the tradition of hisidols, writing such memorablenumbers as "Sage Hen Strut","Big Bear Stomp","EmperorNorton'sHunch"and"San
Andreas Fault". Within the Dawn Club the band played in a huge room. Young people and particu­larly the city's student populationfound the music ideal to drinkbeer to and, as Eddie
Condon putit, it became so crowded that "It was difficult to get on intimateterms with. a glass of beer inthere."

Later the Watters revival stylebecame known as "good
time mu­sic", eventually spreading acrossthe world during the Forties andFifties and occupying a large part of the jazz field to this day. Theband made copious recordings,now regarded
as classic, from 1941 to 1950. These were to have a tre­mendous influence on the world­wide jazz revival to come.

During the war Lu led a 20­piece navy band in Hawaii. On hisrelease in March 1946 the YuerbaBuena band reformed and moved  back into the Dawn Club, whichhad now moved to Annie Street,
aSan Francisco alley immortalisedin Watters's fine "Annie StreetRock". In June 1947 Wattersmoved the band to Hambone Kel­ly's in El Cerrito, where it stayeduntil Lu disbanded in 1950.

Partly from health consider­ations, Watters retired from mu­sic in 1950, when his potential wasgreatest. He did reform the bandbriefly but in 1957 left music forgood to study geology and
later towork as a chef in various Califor­nian restaurants. Something of arecluse, he hid himself away in hishome in the hills, and had little further connection with the mu­sic.
He attended Turk Murphy'ssixty-fifth-birthday celebrations inDecember 1980, and that seems tohave been his last appearance inpublic. However his music sur­vives,mostnotably
intherecreation of his recreation by theMerseysippi Jazz Band, formedto play Watters music in 1948 and still, with most of the originalband members still there, playing it today.

Steve Voce

/Lucius//`Lu"Watters, trumpeter,  band leader, composer, born SantaCruz California 19 December 1911,died
Santa Rosa California 5 No­vember 1989./