[Dixielandjazz] Lu Watters

[Eric Holroyd]

I dispute Steve Voce’s claim that Lu Watters was only a moderately talented  trumpet player.

He certainly didn’t want to have a band that played an ensemble ‘head’ followed by a string of improvised solos, then one or two choruses of the head to finish the tune.

Instead, his band played mostly in ensemble, with only the occasional short solo from one of the band members.

When Lu himself took a hot solo, it wasn’t done in the style of Dizzy Gillespie or Howard McGhee, but in the style of the Twenties that he was recreating in the Forties.

And he was a good soloist too!

Voce does credit Lu with some good compositions, and I agree whole heartedly with that statement, having played many of the Watters tunes many many times during my own music career.

Incidentally, Voce at one stage calls Watters a cornet player and Bobby Hackett a trumpet player. Not so, it was mostly the other way around.

I have studied the ‘sketch map’ charts that Lu Watters wrote for his band to learn from, and it’s my understanding that he never intended for them to be played ‘note for note’ either by his own band or later bands that acquired those charts for their own use.

Instead, he allowed the band to rehearse from those charts for a limited time, then took them away to allow the band to play freely – but within the framework that he had laid down.

I consider that an excellent idea, as he trained the brass players, in particular, to play in a certain register and thus complement the other musicians.

I understand that Turk Murphy later adopted the same idea with his excellent band.

Voce also mentions that ‘Watters and Bob Scobey provided a two-cornet lead for the band in the way that Louis Armstrong and Joe had done in the King Oliver band a couple of decades before.’

In all of the dozens of photographs published of the Yerba Buena Band I have yet to see one where Watters and Scobey were playing cornets.

Instead they were playing trumpets, and a large bore Martin at that – with which they were able to produce a huge sound.

In fact Bob Helm told me that he’d developed a different clarinet embouchure in order to be heard at all, the brass being so loud. And photographs of Bob playing into a microphone are the exception rather than the rule in my experience.

And by the way, he was a wonderfully inventive clarinet player, totally dedicated to the music.

I have it on very very good authority that quite late in his life, Lu Watters said that if he was to run a jazz band today it would probably include an electric piano and an  electric Fender bass. An interesting thought...

Just a couple of personal highlights in my own music career: One night playing with an Australian band at the Dawn Club in San Francisco – a big buzz in itself – and another session at the Sacramento Jubilee when I sat in with the excellent Merseysippi Jazz Band on third trumpet. They said they would only allow me to sit in if I could play ‘Potato Head Blues’ a la Louis, to which I asked ‘What key?’. It worked very well and we’ve been great friends ever since, despite the tyranny of distance, them living in Liverpool (UK) and me living in Liverpool (NSW, Australia).

I rarely put pen to paper – or finger tips to keyboard – to respond to journalistic spoutings, as in my experience many jazz writers fall into the same category as theatre critics ie ‘if you can’t do it yourself, criticise those who can and do’. but thought I would make the effort this time.