[Dixielandjazz] Jack Sheldon interviewed

[Steve Voce]

I met Jack in Holywood many years ago when I interviewed him. Subsequently he appeared several times
for one or two hours  on 'Jazz Panorama', the radio programme I presented for the BBC.

He told me that he liked playing with Stan Kenton. "All the time Stan wanted louder, louder. So you

didn't really have to play the music because nobody noticed if you weren't playing. I just used to look

round at the girls all the time."

And "Stan got a girl away from me one time. She was real nice. But she wanted a taller man...."

  Jack, trumpeter supreme and a great singer,   remains convinced that he

is a lesbian trapped inside the body of a man, but   his main concern these days is

for his weight.

    'These days I only eat once a day a day,' he told me. 'A cow and a salad.
'Years ago I tried that musicians' diet where you have to have every

meal with Leonard Feather while he told you what was wrong with your

playing. I joined Over-Eaters Anonymous, I joined Narcotics Anonymous. I tried

the 21-Day Drinking Man's diet and I lost three weeks. They told me all

these things were diseases. I was glad to hear it because I thought I was

just having fun. They told me that you lie to yourself and tell yourself

that everything's OK, and that's a big part of it. So I wanted to join

Liars Anonymous but they kept lying to me about where the meetings were

held.

    'I used to drink very strong rum, and there was no telling what I

would do. One time I woke up in a hotel room with a fully-clothed sheep,

and it was wearing an engagement ring. No telling what I would do.

    'I had really high quality cocaine. Not the kind that has Dr

Scholl's Foot Powder put in it - with that your nose not only runs, it jogs. The

kind I used made you see a flock of geese fly through the room. You could

never quite catch them, they'd go right by.

    'One time I called the room clerk in my hotel and said "There's a

flock of geese in my room".

  He said "You got any left?"

    'When I was born in Jacksonville, Florida, my father came into

the room, took one look at me and said "I'm going out for some Pepsi."

    'He never came back. I spent all my life looking for him, hired

detectives and everything, and I finally found him working as a contortionist in a carnival

in Fresno under the name of D'Artagnan Le Farge. He saw me sitting in the audience and

he was so shocked that he had a heart attack and died in his own arms.

    'It was when I joined Woody Herman's band that I first met Go Go Gloria.She travelled

with the band. She didn't sing or anything, just travelledwith the band. She was a very good sport.

She had a huge lower lip, but itwas OK though because her upper lip covered it. I told her that her

stockings were wrinkled and she said that she never wore stockings.

She had a lot of little round bruises on her body where guys had been touching herwith a ten-foot pole.

    'I'll never forget the first time I saw her, sitting on the Golden GateBridge, dangling her feet in the water.

It was love at first sight. I said "Are you free tonight?" She said "No, but I'm reasonable.

    Jack was never actually in the Herman band, but always told everyone that he had been, so that in

the end Woody was convinced that Jack had been inhis trumpet section.

    'Whenever I was out on the road and we got a really bad room I used to say "Oh, the Woody Herman Suite",

and he got to hear about that and that made him remember me.

    'In actual fact when he was in town I used to hire him to work with myband. He was like me, he'd rather work

than be just sitting around. So I'm one of the few guys that hired Woody Herman.

'America didn't treat Woody properly. This was a guy who helped win the Second World War and the IRS took

his house away from him. He had a manage rwho never paid the taxes on the money that the band earned.

Woody didn't care about money. He ended up really penniless. Somebody bought his house and they let him live in it.

    'In San Francisco, one in five guys are gay and the other four are jovial.

I'm heterosexual; I went to Sweden to have a sex change operation. I'm going back as a man.'

Steve Voce