[Dixielandjazz] Charlie Shavers 3

[Steve Voce]

I mentioned Ruby Braff in my Jazz Journal piece about Charlie.
I am currently trying to transcribe more than 50 hours of conversations I had on radio with
Ruby. He and Charlie Shavers were good friends.
When Ruby made the fabled Vic Dickenson Septet recordings back in the '50s, he was in
fact living on tinned tomatoes from an automat because it was all he could afford.
One day he returned to his cheap boarding house and the man on the door handed him an envelope.
It had $50 in it.
Ruby had no idea where it came from.
The envelope was repeated occasionally in subsequent months.
Eventually Ruby said to the man on the door "Did the guy who left this look like a seal?"
"Yeah, now you mention it, he did," said the man.
Ruby realised it was Charlie who had been leaving the money for him.
At that time Charlie had a good residency with his quartet at, I think, the Metropole. Whenever
he had jobs that took him out of town, he tried to put Ruby in as his dep.

(There are good stories about Ruby and Nat Pierce almost starving in New York at that time).

Steve Voce

>