Turk & Lu: West Coast Classic Jazz in Concert

Turk & Lu: West Coast Classic Jazz in Concert
They called their music 'The Truth'—real, righteous Traditional Jazz. Its champions were the powerful brassmen, Turk Murphy and Lu Watters. In the 40s, West Coast 'true believers' in Traditional Jazz preached their gospel at the Dawn Club on San Francisco’s Annie Street, a little alleyway near the old Palace Hotel. They held forth at Hambone Kelly’s across the Bay and later at the Hangover Club and Earthquake McGoon’s. More Photos and Music at www.riverwalkjazz.org

They called their music 'The Truth'—real, righteous Traditional Jazz. By the early 1940s, its champions were the powerful West Coast brassmen Turk Murphy and Lu Watters.

Disciples of 'The Real Stuff' themselves, The Jim Cullum Jazz Band presents their concert tribute to The West Coast Classic Jazz Revival at the Stanford Jazz Festival in California, this week on Riverwalk Jazz.

West Coast 'true believers' in Traditional Jazz preached their gospel at the Dawn Club on San Francisco's Annie Street, a little alleyway near the old Palace Hotel. They held forth at Hambone Kelly's across the Bay and later at the Hangover Club and Earthquake McGoon's. Beginning in 1939, bandleader and cornetist Lu Watters—and trombonist Turk Murphy—gave the movement its impetus, and it kept right on rolling across the country well into the 1970s.

These revivalists didn't learn their stuff only by sitting around listening to scratchy records. They were veteran jazzmen, bored with working in bloated Swing bands playing tangos, fox-trots —and precious little jazz. They were enchanted with the excitement of music from a bygone era. They brought a muscular, inventive approach to the roots of jazz, and made it their own. A second generation continues to this day, including many jazz artists who have appeared on the Riverwalk Jazz radio series in the past 20 years.

The authenticity of Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Stompers set the group apart from other small, 'hot' Swing-oriented ensembles of the era. Both Watters and Murphy were serious students of early jazz. Watters wrote many new arrangements of the old tunes, breathing new life into them. Almost all the tunes in their playbook— "Shake that Thing," "Cakewalkin' Babies From Home," "Froggie Moore Rag," "That's a Plenty," and others—hearkened back to New Orleans and repertoire created by King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, W.C. Handy, and Clarence Williams. They created originals, too. "Emperor Norton's Hunch" and "Big Bear Stomp" were inspired by people and places in the Bay Area.

The instrumentation and performance practices of the Yerba Buena band might well be considered "antique"—the use of banjo (instead of guitar), tuba (instead of string bass), ragtime piano, snare-drum oriented drumming (instead of ride or sock cymbals), and two-to-the-bar bass. The horns produced a rough-edged, blues-drenched sound inspired by King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Kid Ory, and others.

At the heart of the 'West Coast' style was the jazz ensemble—all horns blowing improvised jazz at once, in a spirited conversation. Jim Cullum says, "Like the King Oliver band, the basis of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band was ensemble playing. Lu's vision drove the band sound." And Jim's extensive use of the jazz ensemble in his own band is a defining quality that sets it apart from others on today's jazz scene.

By the mid-1940s, several 'originals' of early New Orleans jazz—Bunk Johnson, George Lewis, Pops Foster and Kid Ory—settled in San Francisco. Their hot, boisterous and slightly chaotic "ensemble" style of jazz had been all but forgotten with the advent of Swing ten years earlier. The older New Orleans men quickly became the heroes and patron saints of the new Classic Jazz Revival.

Lu Watters said the foundation of the traditional jazz he played was dancing. Just like his model, King Oliver, who got the crowds up on their feet at Chicago's Lincoln Gardens, Lu liked to play to a packed dance floor.

But, late at night, after last call, with the tables strewn with empty glasses and the lights low, the band would wind down with a haunting, slow blues by W. C. Handy—"Friendless Blues," a tune often heard today at The Landing in San Antonio.

Text based on script by Margaret Pick
Copyright 2009 Riverwalk Jazz

lu watters

Lu Watters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band
by Jerry Stanton

Before I start I should say that on this subject The Source, capital S, is Bob Helm. Of those of us from the dinosaur days still around, he’s the one who lived and knew it all. He has to: he’s ten or more years ahead of me, as Wally was, and knew Lu in the band’s formative stage in the late 1930s.

When did I come into the movie? It seems like a movie now looking back—a long one and a very memorable one. I came in the summer of ‘39, together with my brother Tom Stanton (he was christened Peter Thomas Stanton and in his ‘30s wanted to be only Peter, then P. T. But when you’ve grown up with a brother Tom, at work and play, you’re never going to call him anything but Tom).

But Tom wasn’t with me on the late summer afternoon at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island when I left the close of the daily Benny Goodman big band open air concert in the Temple Compound on the south side of the island and strolled along a road full of fairground attractions. Across from one of them, Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch, was another: The Corral. Drinking, eating, and jazz from a trio consisting of Bob Helm, pianist Forrest Brown and Freddy Higuera drums. I stayed, of course, then introduced myself, and that was the start of friendships which in Bob’s case have lasted sixty years to the present writing.

I didn’t talk long enough to Bob that day to hear what was coming in the Bay Area jazz scene—maybe Lu’s plans weren’t quite finalized. But a couple of months later, September or October, l939, the equivalent of a musical atomic bomb detonated Bay Area, California—make it all of U. S. A.: righteous jazz. The Yerba Buena Jazz Band opened at the Dawn Club, 20 Annie Street in San Francisco.

Nothing like it had ever hit town before. It’s true that the King Oliver Band played The City in the mid-1920s, maybe more than once, on their West Coast tours. But they weren’t there long enough to make the impact they deserved, and anyway by 1939, with the advent of the big band era and hundreds of smaller bands the classic Oliver sounds were forgotten, if they’d ever been remembered long in rousting, live-it-up San Francisco balling the livelong nights.

The Dawn Club changed all that, because Lu had really done his homework. The band was brilliant, without making a fuss about being that way. It was highly professional, disciplined, with a fabulous repertoire including Lu’s originals and arrangements, yet still gave you the feeling they were fresh on the scene and playing for your New Year’s Eve party. Spontaneity was in the air, not least because Lu had selected the Dawn Club for its spacious dance floor—the ‘30s on the way out had been a great dancing era all over America, in thousands of clubs, halls, ballrooms, hotels, fairgrounds—you name it. They even got up and did it in theater aisles when the band on stage got hot enough. Me included.

Okay, I’ve opened with atmosphere, and now for some facts. You turned off Market Street, walked maybe fifty feet along Annie Street, more like an alley, next to the Palace Hotel. You went in the club and down a long steepish flight of stairs. At the bottom you bought your admission from a guy who in return handed you a long single-sheet program. Genial idea of Lu’s: every number to be played that night was listed by sets (five, sometimes six).

You were early, in your early-teenage anticipation, the way we of the kid Golden Gate Jazz Band (Tom dubbed it that) were, and some trepidation because there was no guarantee we were going to get a real drink at our tender ages. Who were we? Tom Stanton, trumpet and cornet; Pete Allen, clarinet; Bill Bardin, trombone; Jerry Stanton, piano and George Clark, drums. Larry Grey, bass, too but not always, and Tom Dowd, our booker, poster designer and general tub-thumper. We were sponsored by Augie Giretto, Lu’s manager and master of the lease on the Dawn Club—and had the approval of the real master himself, Lu, who smiled benignly on our efforts and gave us genuine encouragement. He also, in his quiet savvy way showed us where in the dim recesses of the spacious back room of the club we could cluster in a corner and get served firewater—for hard cash, of course, nobody could afford to be in the business of charity in those days. So for four bits—you heard it—we got our gin and juices. For a couple of bucks each we could join the rollicking spirits of the long night, trip the light fantastic with a gal, and still go home sober with the sounds of an amazing band ringing in our ears.

Brass players stayed constant in the band, both before and after World War Two: Lu, Bob Scobey and Turk, but clarinet duties were divided between Ellis Horne and Helm, more Ellis in ‘39 and ‘40, and more Helm in ‘41, ‘46 and ‘47. Wally, too, was a constant, though Forrest Brown was in before the war on piano awhile at the Dawn. Bill Dart was a constant on drums, Dick Lammi on tuba and string bass as well, but there were several banjo men on duty: the inimitable and unforgettable Clancy Hayes, doing his great jazz singing, and Harry Mordecai and Russ Bennett.

The Dawn Club, as you no doubt know, was not invented suddenly in 1939. It had a pretty riotous life as a Prohibition speakeasy, or “Speak,” all through the ‘20s and early ‘30s behind it. The long brass rail bar was one of the longest, if not the longest in San Francisco. Another contender for that distinction was Breen’s, the classic early-S. F. style Irish-flavored bar off Third and Market, in an alley behind the Examiner Building, and an off-duty favorite of Lu’s. I lifted more than one beer mug with him there.

The atmosphere with the band was infectious at the Dawn, and it was always full of dancers and listeners. There was a lot of dark wood there and a mellow dim decor— plenty of tables and oodles of atmosphere in the style of the times. The whole cast of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon,” that director John Huston was filming on location in The City was often there: Huston, Humph Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet etc. Probably not only for the music but because they felt they hadn’t left the movie sets: the Dawn was just like one of them.

After the war in 1947 Orson Welles was often there, with his current flame Rita Hayworth. Welles loved the music. I can remember seeing and hearing him cry out “That’s the Black and White Rag!” when Wally was playing it, then grab Rita and swing her high, wide and handsome around the floor. And he shouted: That’s-a-Plenty! Great!“

A whole lot of other notable people, not only Hollywood but from the professions, big business and politics etc. came regularly to the Dawn. And of course Herb Caen, a legend in his own lifetime. He often put some anecdote about the club in his columns, in the Examiner and the Chronicle (he shifted gears several times in his life). Everybody danced. Lu said the foundation of everything was to have people dancing, and when he moved the band in 1948 to El Cerrito he stayed firm to that principle.

A word must be said at this point about Lu Watters the man, because he was as well put-together as a human being as he was as a jazz musician. You could call him the Rock of Gibraltar: while all the waves and storms and winds lapped and whirled around him, he was always unflappable and unruffled. He’d gone through the rough-and-tough mill of the orchestra business as it was in the ‘20s when he started at 16 with his first job as second or third trumpet in a section, Anno Domini 1926. He toured the country with various bands of all sizes and styles of the time. He built up a lot of general musical savvy until he gradually separated the wheat from the chaff and knew what he wanted to do on his own.

That time didn’t come till much later, in the late 1930s, but by then Lu’d found the players he wanted and knew exactly the results he wanted: continuation, with his own refreshments, of the great New Orleans Oliver and Armstrong two-trumpet tradition in an eight-man band with banjo, tuba, support but not solo drums, and ragtime-tinged piano. And of course a clarinetist in the Dodds, Simeon, Nicholas traditions deeply embedded in the best New Orleans bands. In Turk he’d found the ideal driving bottom line for the front line.

It was a carefully thought-out band, but as already mentioned it had that great feeling of right now, freshness and spontaneity that got people up from their tables right now and out on the dance floor. In the first great flourish of the YBJB at the Dawn—’39, ‘40 and ‘41—a lot of young and very impressionable starting-out musicians, our gang included, formed an enthusiastic and faithful fan support element, which translated out in many ways, the most important being there every night the band played and if possible memorizing every tune they played. That was no easy job since most of the tunes were three and four part numbers, with introductions, interludes, repeats, breaks and codas galore.

All the guys in the YBJB had a lot of previous experience in improvising, but Lu wrote out all his numbers and rehearsed them that way before he let the improvising take wing, as it should in the middle of the tunes. In this way the band stood out from all the Dixieland-style bands that were often good, but long on jamming and short on substance and ensemble quality. It can’t be emphasized enough in a resume of Lu’s impact on the Bay Area, California and national jazz scenes. The band was unique, the band was organized, the band swung, the band was great. Period.

After funding and lease problems, the Dawn Club closed after two successful post WW II years, and in 1948 Lu found a new home for the band at a great big, roomy club, Sally Rand’s, on San Pablo in El Cerrito just over the Albany line. A long rectangular building with a spacious parking lot of its own, band and staff rooms on the other side of it—and a two story house in back with a lot of little rooms for what had obviously been Sally’s hanky-panky trade, never admitted and never officially allowed, though gambling in an upstairs room at the Kona Club nearby went on while the city uncles looked the other way, when they weren’t upstairs themselves taking a flutter.

And then Lu christened it Hambone Kelly’s with a bow to his wife Pat, and the enterprise took off, and how. The big dance floor Lu insisted on was there, a prime factor in the choice. Then he ordered the same dimly-lighted cozy atmosphere of the Dawn, and initiated a unique feature: dozens of names of his tunes were written in script style large on the wall behind the long bar at the front of the club, facing toward San Pablo Avenue. In Manuel, the head bartender, he found an expert, trustworthy man, and Augie Giretto was on hand again to manage the band, the finances and the club. Most important of all, Augie was a dedicated fan of the band and knew his jazz music, with a big record collection at home. 78s in those days, with LPs just emerging on the scene.

For more intimate Hambone reminiscing, check with Bob Helm. Bob had a room there and stayed till the closing New Year’s Eve, 1950. I was there the last year of Hambone’s. I’d replaced Johnny Wittwer who in his turn had replaced Burt Bales—‘48 and ‘49 respectively. Lu had come out to El Sobrante over the hills and out toward Martinez and the Carquinez Bridge, several times where I was working in my brother’s weekend band. Then he asked me to come aboard at Hambone’s and I think I waited about ten seconds to sign on. The band was abbreviated by then, down to Lu and Bob and Lammi and Dart and myself. But Turk hadn’t started his own band yet and often came around to sit in, as did Scobey. Charlie Sonnanstine often came around with his trombone, as did other good players, all of them needing Lu’s careful approval, of course. It was never a jam session. Clancy Hayes came in to play banjo and sing. I must say here that Clancy, along with Lu and Wally, gave me the early strong encouragement, early 1940s, that I badly needed, and that got me over the hump, y’know—that feeling that you’re not going to make it.

Another institution Lu invented was the Sunday afternoon special: inviting names in the jazz world to be guest artists at Hambone’s, with their own support players or with us, depending. He only did it in the summer months when the vacation-time atmosphere and the weather combined to make it worthwhile. I got to meet a lot of memorable people and players: one Sunday or sometimes a pair of consecutive Sundays Lu’d book in the Red Nichols band from L. A. Then another time the Wingy Manone band. Out of that contact I got a job with Wingy two years later. Then Lu brought out members of the Eddie Condon band from New York. And one very memorable week he finagled the presence of master James P. Johnson, Fats Waller’s teacher. Though no longer a young man, James P. played strong stride solos on the big Hambone redwood upright with a resonant sounding board, and I was right there two feet away at his right hand. The slightly elevated bandstand at Hambone’s was a replica of the Dawn Club stand: like a square box, open at two ends but with a big drape at the back for you to come in and out.


FROM ISSUE NO. 10, FALL 1999

lu watters

Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band
Cornetist Lu Watters began his career as a cruise ship musician. During the 1930s he worked with the Carol Lofner Orchestra and led his own big band at Sweet's Ballroom in Oakland. In 1940 he formed a new outfit, the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. Watters' new group rejected all modern forms of jazz and embraced the older New Orleans sound. In their effort to return to the pure roots of jazz, they ignored even the white bands of the 1920s and instead focused on such artists as King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. However, Yerba Buena wasn't just an attempt to recreate the past; the group also added a great deal of local San Francisco flavor to its music, producing its own unique style.

The Yerba Buena Jazz Band spent its lifetime in San Francisco, settling in the Dawn Club until WWII broke out. During the war Watters led a twenty-piece Navy band in Hawaii. After the war he reformed Yerba Buena, again taking up residence at the Dawn Club. In 1947 Watters opened his own jazz club, Hambone Kelly's in San Francisco, where the group remained until its breakup in 1950. After that Watters retired from the music business to study geology but formed a new band later that decade. He retired again in the late 1950s.

poetry

1

count not the ways
not the words
not the days
my love
begins
ends

2
see the darkness
hear the silence
shadows
light
high pitch
low bass
mute

3
stars lost sights
sun its head
moon her skin
winds die
rain wet
deny

4
words loud
mind shouts
eyes open
mouth shuts
smiles drop

haiku7---by Louise Zhang

Technorati Tags: haiku 7 by louise zhang


1
chatty raindrops
keep up the wet monologue
all night long


2
in the process of dying
no one knows what's in the mind of the dying
he is on his own


3
with wintry fury
ocean waves assault the morning coast
an indifferent shore


4
what do you see
looking into the kaleidoscope of death
a shattered heaven


5
a drugged mind
a stormy landscape of psychic chaos
artificially tranquillized


6
dances
endeavour to visualize the nonverbal
for the eyes


7
shelter residents
under the roof of organized benevolence
sleep with hope


8
ripe apples fall
knocking the intelligence of Isaac Newton
out of grandpa's head


9
waking from a dream
I remember I am speaking English
oh, an American dream


10
mossy hangings
from the winter's old oak trees
green dreadlocks


11
Roman fountain
up shoots its ancient memories
from marble basin


12
locking himself indoors
the bemused poet wrestles
to gain sublimity


13
the restroom
a place to hurry into and
out, at ease


14
have lived
in a dream and died
out of it


15
knitting by the window
Mrs. Wallstreet appears unmistakably Chinese
as on Ibsen's stage


Notes: A Doll House: Helmer commenting on Mrs. Linde: You know what? You should embroider instead. .... Yes, because it's a lot prettier. See here, one holds the embroidery so, in the left hand, and then one guides the needle with the right--so--in an easy, sweeping curve---right? ......But, on the other hand, knitting--it can never be anything but ugly. Look, see, here, the arms tucked in, the knitting needles going up and down--
there's something Chinese about it.


16
little birds in the rain
chirp away on the tree's wet branches
rinsing their notes


17
thick snow lies
on the huge frosty pane of skylight
a blocked view


18
Vincent Van Gogh
fires his deliriums of yellow and blue
onto a starry night


19
a lonely boat
tossed violently in the swift white water
holding its unstable mind


20
on a backlit stage
muted figures appear tiptoeing back and forth
then retreat


21
the condemned bandit
executed in water colour
date unknown


22
cat sculptures
free flowing contours hardened into stone
solid fur


23
with relentless enthusiasm
peach and pear trees in spring
pop up their buds


24
a pleasant anarchy
oil tubes vomit their tainted emotion onto canvas
modern abstract painting


25
a studio artist
hijacks a piece of nature to his canvas
and sells the fugitive


26
a foreclosed house
filled with emptied space and evicted presence
on the market again


27
many an American dream
ripped open at their seams and stitches
demands needle work


28
the undefeated poet
forces his muse to advance with her invasion
claims three lines of new territory


29
she follows her heart
like the blind following inner dark luminosity
with steady gaze


30
the best seller
regurgitates violence and perverted sexuality
feeding a starved readership


31
rain lets up for a while
giving the wet world a moment of change
yes, it can


32
Vincent Van Gogh
enriched by the poor and the deprived
shoots his own heart


33
the figure drawing artist
enlarges the breasts of the model on stage
a personal intervention


34
a group of beer bottles
emptied of contents by last night's gathering
wordless in solidarity


35
a Buddhist monk
picks a single blade of grass from the field
does he hear Emerson?


36
dark furrows of land
stretch as far as the eye can see
vines of growth


37
a seal of his personality
the artist spreads a layer of oil paint
then a first class stamp


38
she smiles broadly
stretching the lines over her cheekbones
a smoother expression


39
a singer laments
her smoky voice smells cigarettes and beer
a cowboy's story


40
grandpa is dozing
no one knows what dreams he now dreams
just that he is dreaming

haiku 6 -- by Louise Zhang

1.
palmetto fan
stirs tropical breeze over faces
leafy cool delights

2.
a defiant cat
within striking distance of my thoughts
refuses to turn her cheek

3.
blue range of mountains
silently pledges to stand on their feet
forever and forever

4.
you can live with us
but if you get bored that is
your own burden

5.
thoughts flourish
turning a mind into a jungle
the thinker gets lost

6.
near and dear
the children are close to Heaven,
until they find hell

7.
a vow of secrecy
the most powerful bondage
enslaves and redeems

8.
a cat in my face
no matter how hard I gaze
it remains a cat

9.
boyfriend asks girl
did you kiss him last night
o... yes, but I don't like it

10.
a certifiable mind
tries to wiretap its own impulses
self shrinking

11.
on a very crowded bus
a carefully dressed lady looks around
niches into a window seat

12.
parties come and go
the interests of Nation alone stand
dictates to a president

13.
"Lady Chatterly's Lover"
lies steamy in the hot sun
wears jacket

14.
a tight smile
stretches with effort to express
a deep reluctance

15.
unsettled self conscience
munches away at her aging girlishness
delights an onlooker

16.
old wooden planks
broken and rotten with age
a cat walks them

17.
wifedom and motherhood
one more function to the female trinity
breadwinner

18.
modern drama
is delivered in A Doll House
audiences watching

19.
the poet cries
when he comes up with the following
a line drops dead

20.
sipping black coffee
his thoughts get darker and stronger
he adds milk and sugar

21.
a happy housewife
cooks meals and English haiku
without seaweed

22.
his writings
smelling of strong tobacco
cough out of pages

23.
window
closes out wind and rain
closes in sunshine

haiku 5--by Louise Zhang

Technorati Tags: haiku by Louise Zhang (5)

1.
a little baby
cries when nipples are withdrawn
big sorrows

2.
thunder rolls
rain dumps down on dry lands
a wet apologia

3.
classical books on mantle
silently display to the old clock
their staying power

4.
oil pipes are on
petroleum rushes through to Ukraine
from Russia with love

5.
his fingers drill
notes pop up from the piano keys
an A major

6.
clouds move in
overcast her mood with Oxford gray
English tea time

7.
the green leaves of summer
forever fresh and green in the air
Roger Williams

8.
wind dies down
like a spoiled runaway lover
after a tantrum

9.
piano notes
run wild on airwaves
chased by drumstick

10.
sleepy shoes
tired from long hiking yesterday
still unrested

11.
waves, rocking
the sleepy shores in small hours
deep in blues

12.
a fallen leaf
adrift on a small slow stream
a lingering moment

13.
a tall gray wall
looms through the thick brushes
solidly imposing

14.
the Copeland Creek
going quietly her small way
to join the Russian River

15.
dough rises in the oven
its exaggerated size and texture
settles into a bread

16.
she writes poems in
one line and calls them
lonely ones

17.
the centre of flowers
Nature has placed sexuality
in this proper place

18.
a reservoir
volumes of water pile up
behind the dam

19.
obituaries
register peaceful passages
away in its pages

20.
death is peaceful
after a noisy commotion
to leave the body

21.
a butterfly
does not eat butter, but only
flutters by

22.
camera shutter
aiming at a composition
includes and excludes

23.
tumbling over the curb
she falls over her own shadow
double painful

24.
water dries up
wet mud, twigs and rocks
show themselves

25.
cold dislikes
are not warmed up by hot tea
and exchange of greetings

26.
a tune smith
a nightingale releases a flourish
of tunes into air

27.
a bar stool
still warm before a candle light
alone with the jukebox

28.
a steel guitar
spills notes above the thumping band
a metallic echoing

29.
a cowboy's fingers
pick raw the aching intensity of
a lost soul

30.
mist spreading
its haunting white ambiguity
slowly fills the valley

31.
a dog barks
kick-starts a morning of potentials
with a bad poem

32.
a single bird chirps
like a song that hits home
turns grove blue

33.
a single old oak
shares an ancient moment of solitude
with a blind cow

34.
Christian crusaders
found One Thousand and One Nights
in Arabian land

35.
courtly love
a knight woos a married woman
worn-out romance

36.
first winter rain
turns the aging hillsides
maiden green

37.
a lady to a gladiator
flesh is mightier than the sword
try me if you doubt


38.
a dark crow
follows a nameless homeless man
to his unmarked grave

39.
winter blizzard
the earth groans under thick snows
white terror reigns

40.
darken with time
the evening sky hastens to
tuck in the sun