[Dixielandjazz] Guitarist/entertainer Slim Gaillard-- Horace Harris writes

[david richoux]

I had a "2nd Degree" connection to Slim - the mother of a friend played
Conga Drum with Slim when he was performing in California.  her stage name
was Marion Vee. She told me he would always stay at her house when he was
on tour, and would take over the kitchen (he was apparently a very creative
cook.)

More Slim stories (including Marion's ) here:
http://www.pocreations.com/slimbio1.html


David Richoux


On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 10:31 AM, david richoux <domitype at gmail.com> wrote:

> I had a "2nd Degree" connection to Slim - the mother of a friend of mine
> played Conga Drum with Slim when he was performing in California.  her
> stage name was Marion Vee. She told me he would always stay at her house
> when he was on tour, and would take over the kitchen (he was apparently a
> very creative cook.)
>
> More Slim stories (including Marion's ) here:
> http://www.pocreations.com/slimbio1.html
>
> David Richoux
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 10:00 AM, Steve Voce <stevevoce at virginmedia.com>wrote:
>
>> Here's my interview with Slim.
>>
>> Steve Voce
>>
>> Bulee Slim Gaillard's greatest talent is his turbulent surrealist
>> imagination, which is on a par with Spike Milligan's in the greatest days
>> of the Goon Shows. He is also gifted with a relaxed and most attractive
>> voice which is musical even in speech, as shown by his intoxicating
>> recordings of Travellin' Blues and Slim's Jam. He is a good guitarist and a
>> gifted pianist who can play better with the backs of his fingers, as he
>> regularly does, than most can do with the fronts. He is a good
>> vibraphonist, too and is perhaps best known as a composer and lyricist - in
>> the latter capacity he can truly be said to have changed the language.
>>
>> Despite the fact of a sometimes selfimposed obscurity, he has had almost
>> obsessional followers in this country over the years, including myself. We
>> had heard of a fiery, recluse-like figure who regarded his days in music as
>> finished many years ago, and consequently it was a surprise when he
>> suddenly popped up in Europe.
>>
>> I was lucky enough to be at Nice when he made his debut. It was half way
>> through a set by Joe Newman, James Moody and Kai Winding, when a tall,
>> patriarchal figure with a long grey beard appeared at the back of the stage
>> and began unpacking a guitar. There was a tentative ripple of applause from
>> an audience that wasn't quite sure who he was. Slim looked up in pleased
>> surprise, for he had obviously not expected recognition. He took over the
>> session - there isn't any way in which he can stay in the background - and
>> the resultant eruption of hysteria in the audience was the forerunner of
>> the reception almost every time he played.
>>
>> At the end of that first set I met him as he came off the stage and was
>> able to see the surprised delight in his face, not just at the reception,
>> but at the implication that it meant a new start to his career in Europe.
>>
>> You might expect a clown off-stage, too, but you would be disappointed.
>> Slim is a fairly serious man, very friendly but uncommunicative. Comments
>> have to be drawn from him with patience, and he answers most questions with
>> 'That was good fun,' or a variant on it. He's unused to providing the
>> information a writer might want from him and things which might be of
>> importance to us appear trivial to him and he has a poor memory of them.
>>
>> His act is extrovert and as such he has to dominate anyone else who
>> shares a stage with him. In some cases this produced glum faces amongst
>> some of the great musicians who backed him - this was entirely
>> understandable, but unavoidable. It was not the case with Kai Winding
>> though, he of the polished and immaculate image, who could have been
>> expected to be least suited to the Voutmaster's insanity. Soon embroiled in
>> the labyrinth of Chicken Rhythm he was drawn along by Slim's magnetism and
>> responded superbly. He didn't have much choice so these were his first
>> public vocals.
>>
>> Slim's repertoire is geared so that any professional musician can pick up
>> the threads as he goes along. 'Now we are going to play some special
>> arrangements which we'll put together as we come to them,' w as Slim's
>> description.
>>
>> He agreed to be interviewed the next morning, but wanted to sunbathe, so
>> we
>>
>> arranged to talk on the beach at Nice and it was there, seated on the
>> pebbles amongst the topless beauties, that he told me:
>>
>> 'I was born in Detroit. I'm not sure of the date, but I think it was
>> January 4, 1916. Everybody in my family used to make music of some kind,
>> and there was always a guitar lying around the house, but my first
>> instrument was the vibraphone, I really enjoyed that. I earned the money to
>> buy my vibes by driving a delivery van and by making shoes - I was a
>> professional shoemaker. Eventually I was good enough to earn money playing
>> in Detroit and then, I don't know how old I was, and I can't remember
>> years, I went to New York. I'd been there a year or so when I made my first
>> recording. This was as a singer with Frankie Newton's band. I sang on two
>> of the four titles, There's No Two Ways About It and 'Cause My Baby Says
>> It's So. Frankie was a beautiful player, and there's some wailing by Pete
>> Brown and Ed Hall on those sides, too. Soon after that I met Slam Stewart
>> at a club called Jock's Place, and we began working together, stayed
>> together until 1942 when I went into the army. We had our first and biggest
>> hit with Flat Fleet Floogie in 1938 (the public though it was Flat Foot
>> Floogie so we changed it to that and eventually we became so identified
>> with the hit that we changed the name of the band from Slim And Slam to
>> Slim Gaillard And His Flat Foot Floogie Boys). Not so long ago at the
>> World's Fair in New York they buried a time capsule and they included a
>> copy of Flat Foot Floogie. I'm pleased about that. It's nice to think that
>> when the Martians find it in a thousand years they'll start vouting. Slam
>> and I made a lot of records after Floogie started the rush. We had a good
>> band, Slam was a virtuoso bassist, a fact sometimes obscured by his humour.
>> That band had a great tenor player, Kenneth Hollan, who was a mail carrier
>> by day and played with us at night. I can't think why he wasn't better
>> known. He had a big sound and he used to swing like Chu Berry.
>>
>> 'I've always been lucky with tenor players. I've used guys like Lucky
>> Thompson, Teddy Edwards, Ben Webster, Jack McVea, Buddy Tate, Lockjaw -
>> they're the best. Yes, I always chose all the musicians on our recording
>> dates, chose them because I liked them - Howard McGhee and such like.
>>
>> 'Our next bit was Tutti Frutti. It wasn't as big as Floogie but it helped
>> to get us regular broadcast, on \V NEW in New' fork.
>>
>> 'In 1942 Slam and I came out to Hollywood to make the movie
>> 'Hellzapoppin'' with Olsen and Johnson. We had a band with Rex Stewart,
>> Sonny Greer, Buster Bailey and Vic Dickenson. We made a few movies out
>> there and we were both due to
>>
>> go into `Stormy Weather' with Fats Waller and Benny Carter. Slam appeared
>> in it, but I got called into the army as filming began and that was the
>> last I saw of Hollywood for a year or so. But we liked the West Coast, Slam
>> bought property out there and was very comfortable. But eventually he got
>> restless for New York and when I came out of the army he had gone back, so
>> we split finally, because I was determined to stay out west.
>>
>> 'Tiny Brown, who was a very big man, came in on bass to replace Slam. In
>> some ways his sense of humour accorded more with mine. Slam had a very
>> mellow sense of humour, but Tiny's bad more bite and he could improvise
>> with it. The vout thing bad started early on in New York when we recorded
>> Floogie and I just kept right on with it. As long as you had a vivid
>> imagination it grew by itself. I used to think of the most impossible
>> things and let my imagination run riot and one thing led to another. The
>> basis of it was making the impossible possible. For instance, in B19, where
>> the bomber is into a dive and we put it in reverse, or in How High The Moon
>> where they grew potatoes the size of the Hollywood Bowl on the moon. It
>> didn't need too much imagination to follow that it needed a bulldozer to
>> peel them.
>>
>> 'Anyway, when I came out of the army I went to work in Billy Berg's club
>> in Hollywood with Tiny. The management decided that he should be called
>> 'Bam' because he was the successor to Slam and he 'bammed' the bass, or
>> something. We worked a lot at Berg's, I was there for years, and that's
>> when I made those recordings for Beltone with Bird and Dizzy. I had a
>> record date for my quintet with Dodo Marmarosa, Jack McVea, Barn and Zutty
>> Singleton. At the time we were working opposite Bird and Dizzy who were
>> making their famous first trip out west, so they came on the date, which
>> was very good fun.
>>
>> 'Those titles we recorded came out on so many labels afterwards that I
>> could never keep track of them. I made so many recordings and broadcasts
>> during the forties, and a lot of them have been coming out on albums
>> lately. I get zero. You can write letters, call on the companies, but
>> nothing. They just take everything away from you and you get no composer
>> royalties or anything. (An honourable exception is the Hep label which has
>> reached a financial agreement with Slim - SV). French Verve have just
>> brought out an album with 'Opera In Vout' and a lot of the studio things I
>> did for Norman Granz, and I get nothing for it. I'll have to get in touch
>> with Norman!
>>
>> 'The 'Opera In Vout' concert was a great one for me. We were just part of
>> it, because it was a typical Jazz At The Philharmonic concert with I think
>> Buck Clayton, Prez, Hawk and Charlie Parker. That opening on C Jam Blues
>> was actually a take off on a phrase that the Hampton band was famous for at
>> the time. I think Barn played piano on that one as well as me. I don't
>> think I played two instruments simultaneously that night. Sometimes I used
>> to play guitar and piano at the same time. You can turn the volume up on
>> the guitar and it'll play itself - you just make the chords and hit the
>> strings, feedback!
>>
>> 'I like to pay different instruments, but of course these days the main
>> one is the guitar. I used to have some good sessions with Charlie
>> Christian, but I learned most from Bernard Addison in New York when he was
>> with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. Eddie Durham played nice guitar too,
>> in the style that I liked with the down stroke. Sometimes guitar players
>> have an up and down stroke with the plectrum, but I only do that when I'm
>> doing funny things. Charlie Christian always used the down stroke, never
>> did go up and down. I developed that style, too. Charlie would come up to
>> 117th Street to the Cecil Hotel and we would jam. There were regular
>> sessions there. Dickie Wells used to blow and Art Tatum came up a lot. When
>> daylight came you'd get him off the piano! I'd sit there and listen to him,
>> because you learned a lot from him. It really was a musical education.
>> Apart from the jam sessions I played guitar with him.' e worked together in
>> Pittsburgh, although it wasn't in that tight trio style he had with Tiny
>> Grimes. Good fun. He was the champion. I've never known anyone achieve such
>> mastery of an instrument.
>>
>> `But the later days out on the West Coast were good, too. As I say I
>> worked for Billy Berg from when he first began. In fact originally he began
>> with a place in Beverly Hills called The Country and I had the band there
>> with Lester and Lee Young. and Leo Watson.
>>
>> `From time to time I used to get lost. During the fifties I hung around
>> the West Coast and didn't work in music at all for about seven years. I
>> worked in lots of movies and TV shows and I never would play music. They
>> used to ask me but I told them I'd given up music altogether. In fact I
>> only really got back into music not too long ago at Parnell's jazz spot up
>> in Seattle, where I now live.
>>
>> ' I got into movies quite casually. I used to go to a Hollywood
>> restaurant called Theodore's where all the top comics would come in the
>> morning for breakfast. Guys like Joey Bishop, Milton Berle, Danny Thomas
>> and Johnny Carson would meet there and tell each other their jokes and I
>> used to go to listen to them talk. One day, out of the blue, a guy came up
>> to me in Theodore's and asked if I'd go out to the
>>
>> studio and read a script. I told him I wasn't an actor. "Would you do me
>> a favour and come to the studio?" "Well, OK, but I tell you now I'm not an
>> actor." So I read the script and the guy said "Right, you're leaving
>> tomorrow at five in the morning for Phoenix, Arizona." I went out there and
>> worked for about 12 days, and when I came back they had another thing for
>> me for Universal, Marcus Welby, MD'. So I jumped from M to Universal and
>> then back to MGM and I kept bouncing from one studio to another. More
>> recently I was in `Love's Savage Fury'. with Raymond Burr and `Roots - The
>> Second Generation'.
>>
>> `But I've been delighted with the reception I've had recently at some of
>> the American and now European festivals. So I might just stick with the
>> festival thing or do some more club work. After all, I've got albums out in
>> Sweden, England and France. Even if they don't bring me any bread I suppose
>> they let people get to know my work. and I might as well pick up what I can
>> on that.'
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Dear Norman,
>>> Slim was a delightful person.   He enjoyed living in London for a year
>>> or so.
>>> He was booked to appear one night at the Bath Jazz Club, of which I was
>>> a member.  Knowing it would be an entertaining evening my wife and I took
>>> ten friends with us.
>>> I spoke to him beforehand and told him that my wife had a problem with
>>> flat feet.   I gave him a slip of paper with her name on it and asked him
>>> if he would sing "The Flat Foot Floogie" for her.
>>> Halfway through the evening he announced, "Edwina, where are you?  Stand
>>> up please, because I am going to sing a little song, just for you!"
>>> Can you imagine how astonished and pleased our friends all were?
>>>
>>> Best wishes and a Happy Christmas.
>>> Horace.
>>>
>>>
>> ______________________________**_________________
>> To unsubscribe or change your e-mail preferences for the Dixieland Jazz
>> Mailing list, or to find the online archives, please visit:
>>
>> http://ml.islandnet.com/**mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz<http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz>
>>
>>
>>
>> Dixielandjazz mailing list
>> Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
>>
>
>