An Interview With Rusty Bryant, saxophonist, recording artist

My father, Herman Bryant, had a funeral band and the rehearsals would take place in the casket room which was the largest room in the funeral home. I would sit there in the space, watch them practice and I became so familiar with the each instrument that I knew what each instrument was doing.

One night the tuba player didn’t show for rehearsal and my father called The Waltz She Save For Me. I walked out in my little pajamas with the flap in the back, walked under the tuba and started to play The Waltz She Saved For Me. The mouthpiece almost covered my nose, but I played that song; I was four years old at the time.

I remember what inspired me to play was Lionel Hampton , who came through the Palace Theater with Arnett Cobb and the other saxophonist was Johnny Griffin. Johnny was close to our age and they didn’t have a coat to fit him. His coat was so long you couldn’t even see his fingers, but he could play.

Me and a boy named Leroy Cobb lived in a double and we both were learning how to play saxophone. I went and got my alto and went into the bathroom on one side of the double and Leroy went to the other side of the double and all night long it sounded like we were calling cats, just skreeching, trying to copy Johnny Griffin all night long.

I think I had my horn about a week before I was playing professionally and I joined Stomp Gordon’s band. I hadn’t even seen a saxophone before I started on the road with a band... I took to it like a duck to water.

And the saxophone belonged to my father, Herman. He had a saxophone behind the couch and I took it out and that’s how Paul Cousar took to playing. I showed him a scale and, boom, he took off. The first time he ever touched a saxophone was in my living room at Long and Ohio Avenues.

That was on a Monday and that weekend I went to Nelsonville, Ohio with Stomp Gordon for our first job. I was thirteen years old and I’ve been on the road playing ever since.

Norris Turney, Harry Ross, Wendell Hawkins and I were all up there playing. This cat came in and Norris didn’t even know he was in town. We had finished the set; it must have been ten or eleven o’clock. Tommy Lucas took out his horn; he was the alto saxophone player from the Glen Gray Band.

So the rhythm section got up and Tommy Lucas started making his horn talk. Norris went and got his horn and wasn’t nothing but two horns up there. They both had chairs sitting side by side. And after they finished this number, one of the jam tunes of the day. They finished that tune, everyone applauded and they started into Cherokee. And man, those two got to battling; that was a classic battle, more saxophone than I ever heard at that time.

Pretty soon, I looked around and it was time for the club to close. And these two weren’t finished with each other yet. They didn’t even put their horns in the cases, got into cars and went over to the Poor Lover’s Ballroom at Mt. Vernon and Champion Avenues, where Sammy Hopkins Band used to play. The joint was closed and the man was just counting the cash.

The crowd and all were following those cats who went through the door, went to the stage, got back on the piano and took up the song where they finished at the bridge. When they finished that song, it must have been five or six o’clock in the morning. They battled four and two measures on that song; they did everything you could do. Norris Turney and Tommy Lucas engaged in one of the most classic saxophone battles that there ever has been around here. Saxophonist Jimmy Allen can tell you about that one.

I was just a youngster at the time. I’ve had plenty of those battles at the time I was twenty, twenty-five years old. I was out signing autographs at the Seneca Hotel on Broad Street, radioman Spook Beckman was with me. There was a prom at the hotel that night and Nancy Wilson was part of the trio that was playing at the prom. It was very clear amongst the three voices tht I heard that night which one was ringing through and I could hear a lot of potential. I talked to her after they finished singing and together we went to her father, Olden Wilson, and asked for permission for her to come out onto the road and start her career.

After we had her on the road for three or four years of training, I called Cannonball Adderley to get a second opinion. Her concurred and we talked to manager John Levy and that’s how she got started.

I was playing with organist Hank Marr, we went through Cincinnati and we were looking for a guitarist, finding Wilbert Longmire. Hank agreed that Wilbert would be dynamite. The rest is history.

Things were a lot different fory years ago, it doesn’t seem that long. There’s more of a chance for the young musicians to have a shot at the big time than there was in the days when Hank and I were coming along. Music is like being a farmer, owning so many acres of corn or what have you. You have to been able to take your commodity to the marketplace; you can’t sit back and expect the marketplace to come to you. The competition is really extensive and a musician has to start very early at being a businessman was well as a performer.

Music is an offspring of the time and a lot of what you hear is a very confused, angry sound, due to the times we’re living in. If I am without music, I am without a great portion of my life. I love music very much. This was planned before I was born; God knew how I would feel about music. That’s why he gave it to me.

I knew that the sound and feeling of music was a lifelong heritage for me.

Note: Rusty Bryant passed on March 25, 1991, due to complications of diabetes.

My Pal, Dimitrius Roberts

Dimitrius Roberts and I met and bonded in 1999, when he was four or five. I came by the Childhood League center to play one afternoon and I saw this little guy, who looked like a miniature Arnett Howard. He pointed up at the band, as to say, "Look, mom, trumpets and saxophones.

Later we led a mardi gras parade around the yard and naturally, I went out, took his little hand and we marched around the grounds. Afterward, as we sat, I took his hand and used it to play some songs, Yankee Doodle Dandy, etc. We finished our concert, but he definitely made an impression on me.

Early in the next year, I took a spring ski vacation to France. When we returned home to Columbus, I had a phone message for me from Lisa Courtice, Childhood League executive director. "Dimitrius has died and we're going to have a memorial service for him tomorrow." So in the shock of having someone so young pass away, I dedicated the rest of my day to immortalizing him in a New Orleans-style, second line song.

My Pal Dimitrius

Chrs. My pal Dimitrius, he sure is curious.
I think it’s marvelous, I’m really envious.
He simply is a plus, my pal Dimitrius.

A1. Marching’ to the river early in the day
I’ll take my horn and my protege’.
Dimitrius, we’ll get harmonious,
Play loud and boisterous. Me and Dimitrius

A2. He’s got a nickel and I’ve got a dime.
We’ll make people dance in the summertime.
The two of us, we will be devious
Bordering on riotous. Quite loud and furious!

A3. With trumpets on the left and drums on the right
Parading into heavenly sunlight.
Just glorious. I’m talking’ thunderous.
Heaven is prosperous, with my pal Dimitrius.

My pal Dimetrius, he sure is curious.
I think it’s marvelous. I’m really envious.
He simply is a plus, my pal Dimitrius.

I came to the memorial, they saved the song for last and we had a mardi gras parade in his honor. It is ten years later, I see his grandmother periodically and we reminisce about Dimitrius.

Ellen Barksdale, pianist, gospel musician

Arnett and Ellen Barksdale

Ellen “Mom” Barksdale celebrated her ninety-second birthday in late March, 2009 and she fooled everyone who can’t believe her age. She was a faithful member of congregation that has supported Shiloh Baptist Church since 1869. She was also one of my links to the music teachers of the last century.

She began taking piano lessons in 1924 at age nine and her longtime teacher was Helen Carter Moses, who had a studio in her home on Columbus’ Hilltop. Ellen remembers that Black families lived on Highland or Wheatland in those days and Mrs. Moses owned and drove a Ford Model T.

Mom Barksdale says that she not only studied with Mrs. Moses until she was twenty, but she became her chief instructor when the Carter School of Music relocated to Spring Street and Hamilton Ave. Each Sunday morning Mrs. Moses aimed the Ford towards Shiloh, where she was not only organist but director of the gospel choir. She also founded, with E. L. Rockhold, The Music Lovers Guild, a fifty-two member chorus founded in 1934.

In time Mom Barksdale took over leadership of the choir and continued for thirty years. She remembered some of the other piano teachers who taught the children of Columbus. In 1920 J. Cleveland Lemons taught and founded the Columbus Chapter of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM), who presented opera singer Marian Anderson in 1924.

Another noted teacher was Mamie Artist, who was a member of Parker’s Popular Players and founder of the Columbus Choral Club in 1922. Other outstanding instructors were Margarite Coleman and Ara Warren Arnold.

Mom Barksdale and I started playing piano and trumpet duets together during the 1980s, at the invitation of Rev. Harold Pinkston, pastor of Good Shepard Baptist Church, Columbus. We have performed together at church services, community concerts, birthday celebrations, anniversary parties. For several years we made regular visit to her good friend Helen Ramsuer at Lutheran Village, entertaining the luncheon audience with religious favorites. We have also recorded a number of songs together that have appeared on two of my compact discs, as well as two compact disc featuring her.

Mom Barksdale was inducted into the Columbus Senior Musicians Hall of Fame in 1999. She completed the cycle of life in June, 2009.

Robert F. Williams, our grandfather

Arnett, Robert Williams and Kevin Howard

Robert Fulton Williams, the father of Delores G. Williams Howard and maternal grandfather of the Howard Brothers, was born, March 1, 1913 in Martinsville, Virginia. He said that his memories of life began when he heard the noise of a coal tipper when he was two years old. “My family was traveling from Martinsville to Gary, West Virginia to find work in the coal mines and I was awakened by the loud, rough sounds of that machine grinding up coal. That’s the first event I can remember, however I have remembered everything since.”

His mother, Fannie Kate Hairston Williams, had a brother who worked in the mines in Gary. The family, George Wesley Williams, father, Willie Mae, daughter and Robert, lived with their relatives until George found a house. The Williams were among many Negro families that were trading the hard life, working on farms, for the harder but steadier paychecks that were offered by the booming coal industry/steel/railroad industries. They joined immigrant families from Europe, who were being met at Ellis Island in New York to supply labor for industry, raise gardens, hogs, chickens and children. He said that his family was never hungry.

During the days surrounding WWI, Gary mines were owned by U.S. Steel. In addition to coal mining, there were coke ovens that turned the coal into coke, sent to the steel mills of Pennsylvania and Ohio. U.S. Steel was a major American company and it was a boom time with lots of jobs. Before the rise of the United Mine Workers Union (UMW), miners were industrial slaves, trapped into hard jobs. "A typical day started at six am., workers ate their meals underground and since it was more important for the companies to get the coal out of the ground than the men, sometimes it would be nine-thirty pm. before we climbed out of the shaft. John L. Lewis and the UMW came along, negotiated and organized conditions for miners that we’d never dreamed of."

Because of the UMW contract bidding, mine workers were able to get eight hour work days, vacations, better wages, health care benefits and, for the first time, miners retired with pensions and could afford a reasonable life. "These were benefits that we had never even dreamed of,” he said. "Mining towns of the early twentieth century surrounded company owned houses and stores. Company doctors delivered babies in houses that had no water or electricity, until the 1920’s."

His first recollections of school surrounded following his sister, Willie Mae, to school, refusing to leave and since he knew how to read at age four, the teacher let him stay. Although Willie Mae was four years older, she was not a motivated student and Robert reached the ninth grade before her, thus winning a bicycle from his father, who challenged the siblings.

Robert was bright, studious and a fast learner. However his mother, Fannie died in 1928, when her was fifteen and he was left without a parent to push educational invitations after his graduation in 1930. Instead of going to college, he jot a job in the mines, spending twenty-three hard working years, before retiring in 1952.

In 1932, at the height of the U.S. Depression, he left Gary to find a job at an active mine in Amonate, Virginia. There he met, married and had a daughter with Myrtle Hairston, three years younger. The couple stayed together for three years before separating and Robert took his daughter, Delores, as his responsibility. He got help from his in-laws, John and Nannie Hairston, in raising Delores. He says that they had lots of fun together and loved the same Gary Colored Schools that her father had graduated from twenty years earlier.

Delores did go to Bluefield State Teacher’s College, where, in her first year, she met, George Howard, a senior in chemistry and WWII veteran. They married, February 25, 1950. Robert’s first grandson, Arnett (me), was born in September, 1950 and the newlyweds moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1951.

Robert retired from the mines in 1952 and moved to the West Virginia state capital, Charleston. He collected his miner’s benefits and worked part time custodial and home maintenance jobs. His joy was traveling to Columbus to visit his daughter and four grandson’s.

I first remember my grandfather’s friendship when he would take me back to Charleston when I was six. His eyesight had dimmed, due to his decades in dark, coal mines and his first lessons to me were about reading road maps, highway signs, traffic lights. I think that his lessons were the best instructions in life; have the vision to see things down the road.

Throughout the 1950’s and ‘60’s, our travels together included trips to Cleveland to visit Aunt Millie Booker, whose husband Reverend Tom Booker, had established the Cleveland Church of Christ in the 1920’s. They lived at Central Avenue and Twenty-Fifth Street in Cleveland’s Roaring Thirds community of Black citizens. At Aunt Millie’s, I remember sleeping on a straw mattress and the timeless collection of ceramics and glass objects that all African-American women collect and store on shelves and behind glass.

One trip that we made together to the city during the summer of 1966, occurred on the day that the Hough riots started. That summer, Bobby Hebb had a hit with the song, Sunny and the city howled with the wails of police and fire emergency vehicles, along with Ohio National Guard troops. Windows were smashed, shots fired, buildings burned and races engaged in death clashes for nearly a week in east side neighborhoods, as I wandered the curious streets of Kinsman Avenue and Shaker Heights, alone.

Before he permanently moved to Cleveland in 1965, Grandad had lived with us in Plain City, Ohio; a surrogate to replace my mother who died in 1963. We had a household like the television show My Three Sons; six men of three generations breaking the roles of a traditional family. Grandad got us up and off to school, he reinforced with a firm, but gently hand, the lessons that we had started to learn about cooking, house cleaning, laundry and manners.

On our many trips home from the laundromat in Plain City, he would be agreeable to letting me take my first turns behind the wheel of his 1957 Plymouth Savoy Coupe. I was twelve and beginning a lifetime of love with autos and travel. I once loosely calculated that I have traveled to visit Grandad in Cleveland between three and five hundred times in thirty-five years of driving.

He remarried in 1969 to Gracie (Annette) Brack, bought a Jaguar sedan in 1981 and I have driven them to Virginia and Tennessee for family reunions and events. One of his regular travel rituals was attending the annual reunions for his alma mater, Gary District High School, whose classes meet around the U.S. each July. Another can’t miss trip for The Williams’ is the annual Frazier/Creole Funk Pig Roast and Family Day, held each Labor Day since 1984 at the Howard Family homestead in Plain City. We have traveled to visit my brother Kevin in Seattle, Washington, my brother Keith’s family (Carol, Kalahni, Maya and Aliyah) in Long Beach, California and brother Gerald and family (Norma Rodriguez , Tina, Edean Cassa) in Atlanta. Grandad and Annette have also visited Puerto Rico to visited Norma’s family.

“Your world is only as big as the places that you have been and the things that you have seen,” a cliche that I have heard echo from my grandad’s lips my entire life. He always liked to read about politics and he can remember an age when most African-Americans were aligned with the Republican Party, in respect to Abraham Lincoln, remembered as the Great Emancipator. His life was never greatly impacted by racial strife, but recalls that coal mine bath houses were segregated and Black miners and soldiers didn’t get job advancements they deserved due to the social limitations of the times.

He says that American Blacks joined the Democratic ranks in support of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, whose four term administration paid off by opening WPA works, and later, defense jobs to Negro workers. Grandad did work as a precinct committeeman in Cleveland’s twenty-first voting district in 1971, when the city elected Carl Stokes, America’s first Black mayor of a major city. The following years resulted in city council seats and elective offices being equalized racially.


Grandad recognizes that even though he’s never owned a home, he has lived a reasonable life. “I raised a daughter who succeeded; her children have been offspring that have had a disciplined, well-bred upbringing. I have been proud of them as community minded leaders and successes in business and the arts.” And he says, “I’m glad that my grandsons and great-grand children are my friends too. When I finally pass on, I want them to shed very few tears and just say that ‘We’re gonna miss him.’”

Robert Williams completed his life cycle August 26, 2005 at ninety-two years of age. However he lives in his grandsons.

Henry “Hank” Marr: Jazz Musician, Educator, Recording Artist

Ramsey Lewis, Nancy Wilson and Hank Marr in Chicago, IL.


By Pete Fallico, 1995, www.doodlinlounge.com

Henry “Hank” Marr was born on January 30, 1927, in a section of Columbus known then as Flytown. He remembers sneaking off to the neighbors', where he could practice on their piano, playing the chords he would pick up from listening to music on the radio. "My stepmother could never find me," recalls Hank. "She eventually asked my dad to buy a piano, and at great sacrifice, he did."

Hank often jammed with his friend Ronnie Kirk (later known as Rahsaan Roland Kirk) in a nearby garage. "I developed a very good ear, but it wasn't until after I got out of the service and worked in Tampa, Florida and played professionally in a band then called Charlie Brantley and the Honey Dippers and later came back to Ohio State, that I formally had any training with music." Hank described himself as a diamond in the rough in those days. "I didn't know anything about classical music or any of the technical aspects of the music," admits Hank. "But a couple of teachers got their heads together and said there's something there. They saw some talent."

Hank began performing with the Sammy Hopkins Trio and soon joined Rusty Bryant's band. His keyboard playing would soon expand to the Hammond organ as he was caught up in the tremendous interest stirred up first by "Wild" Bill Davis and ultimately by Jimmy Smith. "I had heard 'Wild' Bill Davis, fortunately, just before I was getting ready to go overseas. I think it was Birdland," recalls Hank. "About that time, he had put together his arrangement of 'April in Paris."'

In the mid-fifties, Hank and Rusty traveled to Atlantic City, only to run into the eye of the organ hurricane created by Jimmy Smith's exciting new sound. The Hank Marr Trio was soon formed with Wilbert Longmire on guitar and Hank on the increasingly popular Hammond B-3 organ. After he signed on with Shaw Artists, he continued to look to Jimmy Smith for inspiration. "I caught up with him where we could because we sort of followed one another or preceded one another on certain engagements. Then we were playing all the organ rooms, and I would casually just go up and ask him things."

At Grace Daniel's Little Belmont Club in Atlantic City, Hank would run into "Wild" Bill Davis. "They had the revolving bands," remembers Hank. "The music would never stop. Bill would be playin' his theme song. Then I'd come on, pick it up, and it just went on and on." Bill Davis' influence remained with Hank. "I learned an awful lot from 'Wild' Bill Davis about how to play the organ to get a 'locked-hand' sound."

Hank joined King Records in about 1961 and recorded seven albums for them. "I think at that time Bill Doggett was perhaps leaving King Records," says Hank. "They wanted a new organ artist to follow along in that tradition, and I think this is what they expected of me. I wasn't allowed to do things like Jimmy Smith." Later a manager named Bubbles Holloway suggested that Hank seek a new identity on the organ. Hank found himself departing from the Jimmy Smith sound and taking on a more orchestral sound. "I tried to find a combination of stops that would simulate a big band or maybe a saxophone section--a softer sound--or I'd pull them all out when I wanted to get a bright, brilliant sound."

Hank's career expanded through the sixties and seventies. He worked as TV star George Kirby's musical director and played coast to coast, making numerous television appearances. Of more importance, however, has been his devotion and dedication to music education. For the past twelve years, Hank has taught at Ohio State University and is now an associate professor in the Jazz studies program. "I'm back teaching here in the classrooms where I matriculated," reminisces Hank "and it is indeed fascinating."

Hank maintains a positive attitude towards the future of Jazz and the young players who hold it in their hands. "I'm very optimistic about it, and I think with some work and cooperation with our government, we'll be able to turn this thing around."

Hank has also contributed to the Jamey Aebersold play-along catalog with an unprecedented Hammond organ accompaniment record or CD for students everywhere. "It's a great feeling of accomplishment when you have students who are becoming an extension of you," says Hank. "I don't think you can have a better tribute made to you and to your profession than to have students carrying your legacy."

On August 12, 1990, the City of Columbus honored Hank with Marvelous Hank Marr Day. Awards came from dignitaries ranging from the governor to the mayor. More recently, Hank was given the Continuing Legacy Award at the first Columbus Music Awards Ceremony. As he puts it, "It's great that they let you smell the flowers while you're still here." Hank Marr's spirit inspires music lovers of all ages. "I stay young and like to think young by playing happy music and being expressive and showing that optimism in how I perform the music."

Note: Hank Marr passed in Columbus’ Grant Hospital, March 16, 2005, after a brief bout with cardiac illness. His life celebration was held at Shiloh Baptist Church, where friends, family and fellow musicians shout to the joy of his life’s victory.

A Conversation With Earl Hood

March, 1980

“I was born on the Westside of Columbus, September 20, 1896, and my dad, Charles I. Hood, was in the grocery business with one of the three largest stores in Columbus. His place was at 171 S. High St., where the City Center Mall is, across from National City Bank and Lazarus Department Store.

Both sides of my family have been in Central Ohio for over one hundred seventy years, my grandfather originally coming from Georgia when he was small. I get a kick out of letting people who think every Black comes from Mississippi, Virginia or Georgia know that my family was here when they came. And I don’t hesitate to tell them.

I never went to college and I only went to high school for three months. There was a panic in 1908 that wiped out lots of businesses and Dad took sick right after that with malaria and typhoid fever. He never recovered, died in 1912 and at fifteen years old I had to come out of school and take care of my mother, which I did for the next forty-two years. I learned the hard way, went to night school and listened, instead of talked. Anything that I have learned has come from listening and trying to develop an attentive mind.

When I was young you could go anyplace you wanted. The social club I belonged to, La Legro, entertained at the Busy Bee at Gay and High Streets. It was one of the finest restaurants in Downtown Columbus and we never had any problems. During the years of the first world war, we had an influx of colored and whites as the city became a center for war work. That’s when Columbus became segregated; prior to that colored lived anywhere.

I remember when I went to work for the Franklin County Courthouse, the first day of May 1918. There wasn’t a man in the office, other than the chief deputy and the auditor, who spoke to me for three months. It made me no difference; I got a raise the second week I was there and if they wanted to give me the silent treatment, OK with me. I did my work.

Finally one fellow, Prosper Bonarx, came in and said, ‘Jack Kaiser is a neighbor of mine and he wanted us to be friends.’ Kaiser was the auditor of the Ohio National Bank and I knew him well. Bonarx became the first man at work who spoke to me.

I was trained as a violinist and my first musical job was with Thomas Howard on Fourth Street at the Masonic Temple. Howard was a pioneer music booker, who played bass fiddle and booked a few groups that were very good units. Charlie Parker was another pioneer booker who enjoyed a very good reputation. He had a first class barbershop at Gay and High, where he also had his booking office.

Parker had four or five units out playing all the time and he had a pretty regular thing at the Kaiserhoff Hotel on the corner of Gay and Wall Alley, northwest of High Street. He played violin and sang with his group that included Sanford Smith on piano, Brownie Clark on drums and Ollie Scott on saxophone.

His groups were three or four piece combinations and one great group was led for three or four years at the Hotel Hollenden in Cleveland by pianist Sammy Stewart played piano in another group and as many as thirty five of his groups played in hotels and amusement parks around the Midwest. Parker’s Popular Players were known everywhere.

Stapleton Wright brought the first saxophone into the United States from the Spanish American War and Wright’s Saxophone Orchestra was a pretty successful unit. They stayed on the road in Michigan, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, where they were popular at Penn State University.

The college would have bands from all over the country twice a year and Fred Waring was the campus bandleader. He worshiped Stape Wright and Wright taught him the theme song that became Waring’s signature with the internationally famed Pennsylvanians, Sleep.

Another musician that worked with Parker was Carl Kinney, whose stage name was “Battleaxe” and he played at the Wintergarden in the Southern Hotel. He was the first drummer to start throwing sticks and when Vernon and Irene Castle came here to perform they saw Battleaxe and took him right to New York City.

Battleaxe won a competition at Madison Square Garden in the early 1920’s that made him “World Champion Drummer.” He played with the top musicians in New York and came back to Columbus where he died in 1969.

Another violinist that I came up with is worth remembering, Floyd Hickman. He had a violin orchestra and played at the Pier Ballroom in Detroit. Another Parker musician was Jimmie Perkins, who became personal drummer for Ethel Waters.

Sam Stewart was the pianist led the best Parker band . The five pieces included the Robbins Brothers, Rennan and Millard, on various instruments, Paul Jordan on violin, Lawrence Dixon on cello and banjo.They were classically trained and during the years that they spent at the Hotel Hollenden they trained with top teachers in Cleveland.

They came back to Columbus when the Deshler-Wallick Hotel opened in 1918 and performed evening concerts. The lobby was crowded every evening and they performed nothing but classics during the dinner hours. But after 9 p.m. they added more musicians and played for dancing; they were such fine musicians.

Sam wanted to break away from Parker; so in 1918 he and I collaborated to form Sammy Stewart’s Singing Syncopators. We played at the Southern Hotel and the Secore in Toledo. When bands contracted for jobs in those days it wasn’t for a week or two, it was for a year.

But that was when I was working for Franklin County, so when the band left town, I could only join them on vacations. The band spent the year 1922 in Detroit at the Ritz Supper Club and left Detroit for Chicago. I joined them at the Sunset Cafe on the Southside playing bass in that terrific band.

They were a symphonic jazz band, mixing concert and show material. There was a superb hot trumpeter named Eugene Hutt who soloed with that group. Louis Armstrong came to sit in, but he couldn’t cut the music. He was a speller and you couldn’t spell there because they’d put on a classic number like Rhapsody In Blue or The William Tell Overture.

The band eventually came back to Columbus and opened the Ogden (Lincoln) Theater, Thanksgiving, 1928. They went on to New York City in 1930 and made stars out of Chu Berry and Big Sid Catlett.

I used to lead a band at Indianola Park, on the Northside, right at the end of the interurban line. Percy and Eugene Lowery were in that band and Percy later led his own bands, before become a lawyer and the first Black member of Ohio’s Parole Board. There was also a great trombonist in that group, Archie Hall, who had played during WWI with the great James Reese Europe’s Harlem Hellfighters.

I worked at Valley Dale Ballroom before the Peppe Family owned it and brought a Springfield group called McKinney’s Cottonpickers to Columbus for the first time. Jimmy Peppe bought Valley Dale and he had an orchestra who would alternate with mine at a dance hall in Marion called the Millerdome.

Jimmy Peppe gave me a chance there and I made good on it. He became a successful booker, moved his office to New York and took the Sammy Kaye Band out of Ohio University. He made a top band out of them and turned the Dale over to his brother Lou Peppe. (Note: one of the three Peppe Brothers was legendary OSU swim coach Mike Peppe)

I don’t want to boast, but because of some of the top notch players that I had in my band, the Pittsburgh Courier ranked us among the top ten Negro orchestras for years. Saxophonist Joe Thomas left my group to become a star with the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra and a Zanesville man named Sy Oliver used to write arrangements for me. He sat in my trumpet section on occasion before he went on to Tommy Dorsey, before leading his orchestra in New York’s Rainbow Room. My front man and director, Chet Nelson, placed second in a national competition for bandleaders in New York.

Have you every heard of Harry “Sweets” Edison? Well, Harry will tell you that I insisted that he learn to read music. I took Harry and his trumpet out of Columbus East High School and he left me to go with Count Basie. He also became Frank Sinatra’s right hand man.

I got to share the stage with some of the best during my years at Valley Dale. Kaye Kyser played there a summer before he went on to New York. Benny Goodman performed there with his great quartet, Artie Shaw brought Billie Holiday to Columbus.

The night Sinatra played there was something else; the girls just screamed and fainted something awful. But the biggest crowd, surprisingly, belonged to Guy Lombardo, the place was packed inside and out.

World War Two was hard on the music business, the draft plucked many of my best men and I ended up consolidating my band with Clarence Olden’s Dixie Rhythm Boys . Gas was being rationed and a trip to Valleydale became almost an unaffordable luxury.

But we held it together and made it a point to entertain the people to make sure that they’d return again. All my men worked day jobs and played at the Dale on Friday and Saturday nights.

We kept this up for years, I still had my job doing real estate identification for the county and I had a large insurance business going. It made for a rather full week with me laying out work on Friday and Saturday to keep three women at my insurance office going.

When New Year’s Eve, 1951, came I had had it with the music business. Asthma was putting me on the ropes and I still had six months on my Valley Dale contract so I turned the band over to Clarence Olden.

I’ve worked so many jobs for all these years that I could never fully retire. I gave my insurance business to my son, Charles and now the county and my household are my only responsibilities.”

(Note: Mr. Hood retired from 54 years service to Franklin County in 1986, died January 25, 1991, at aged 94, but he’s very much alive in me).

Dr. Theodore "Ted" Turner

Dr. Theodore H. "Ted" Turner is a giant and leaves quite a legacy in the story of Ohio music. A first class gentleman of jazz, trumpeter Ted likely enjoyed his heaven on Earth.

Ted was from Steubenville, likely a crosstown contemporary of Dean Martin and he was seasoned on the big band swing of the 1930s. He came to The Ohio State University in 1945 and was not only the first Black student to perform with the Concert Band and Symphonic Orchestra, he was loved by his fellow students. Earl Hood had a place for the OSU student in his Valley Dale Orchestra, because in addition to playing trumpet, like his predecessor Sy Oliver, he contributed arrangements for the band.

Ted’s star rose over the Columbus East High School music program from 1959 to 1965. I boast that Ted Turner was the greatest high school jazz band director in the history of Central Ohio. And during those years his high school talent pool included pianists Bobby Pierce and Geoff Tyus, saxophonists Odell Thompson, Mike Roberts and Nate Fitzgerald, trumpeters Bobby Alston and Lee Savory, guitarist Craig McMullin, drummers Fred Thomas and Richard Thompson and a legion of other great young musicians.

Ted eventually received his doctorate in education and moved upwards in Columbus Public School administration, retiring as assistant superintendent. But away from the school board, Ted remained a fiercely imaginative brassman. He still had national music education professional contacts, including Carl "Doc" Severinsen, that he shared compositions with. He created the African Brass Ensemble to present the classical side of his expression.

His high standards in musicianship and goodwill raised the quality of life for all of us. Central Ohio is blessed that Dr. Theodore H. Turner made it and took us along with him. He passed in March, 2006.

Bobby Shaw, pianist, drummer, vocalist

Bobby Shaw was my mentor and I was proud to presented Bobby to the Columbus Senior Musicians Hall of Fame in 1997. It was a proud moment for both of us; I told his story to the audience, gave him the award and added a financial gift with the presentation. Bobby is probably the only musician who received an honorarium with his hall of fame award.

The info attached to Bobby’s only page on the world wide web says, “A mutli-talented individual, Bobby Shaw has been an inspiration to many local musicians.  As a child in Chicago, he began singing gospel music as a member of The Shaw Brothers, accompanied by his mother, Letha, on piano (gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called the Shaw Brothers ‘her babies’).  Their popularity was such that they toured throughout the United States."

Shaw was then hired as the pianist on the S.S. Fair Seas, a cruise ship which sailed regularly between California and Alaska.  In 1949, he moved to Columbus, working at various times with Rusty Bryant, Nancy Wilson, Boyd Moore, Roland Kirk, Chic A Dee & Chick A Doo and Arnett Howard, as well as in his own trio. 

Most recently, Shaw has been heard as a member of  The Listen for the Jazz All Star Band and the Jazz & Eggs Jam Sessions. Saxophonist Gene Walker has said of Shaw, "When he discovered that I wanted to play jazz, he took me to the piano in the Downbeat Club and taught me songs.  His influence as a vocalist, pianist and organist has been strong since the 1950s."

Bobby was a contemporary of Nancy Wilson and says that he used to give her lessons in jazz vocal styling. When I began my search for the history of Columbus’ Black entertainers, he was not only an interview subject, but in a short time we were playing together. Our 1980-81 trio was called The A Train and included drummer Eddie Nix. We traveled to Portmouth for a series of concerts, played at the first Columbus Marathon and the two seasoned veterans were my friends. I hate to see them both pass within one year, 2006. BUT THEY WERE HERE!

I thank Bobby Shaw for being a patient teacher and a friend.

Harry "Sweets" Edison

I met Harry Edison’s mother, Mrs. Kitty Redmond, in 1981. She was living in Poindexter Village, in East Columbus and she was very pleasant and personable. She would tell me about her famous son, where he was traveling in the world and when he would be home.

About the fifth time I visited Miss Kitty, I was finally introduced to Harry and we discussed his career. He told me about his training on bugle as a child with his uncle and his first days on trumpet. He told me he was fourteen in 1930, when he began playing with Earl Hood, the local bandleader who had the local job at Valley Dale Ballroom. He was the “get off” player with Hood, but was having a difficult time getting Earl to give him any money for his work.

Miss Kitty said she marched down to Valley Dale, had a talk with Mr. Hood about her son’s contributions and afterwards Harry began getting regular pay. Mr. Hood insisted that Harry learn to read music, in addition to “getting off.” Harry says that was his key to musical longevity.

Harry’s next job was with the Jeter-Pillars Band, where in his words, he acquired the nickname “Sweets.” According to what I remember Harry saying, “The Jeter-Pillars Band was based in Cleveland and I would ride the train to hook up with the group. My mother would fix a big basket of food for me to travel with and the fellows would call me ‘Sweets’ when I’d get to Cleveland and they would tear into that basket.”

Others stories emerged about Harry’s nickname; his trumpet sound was so sweet, he was sweet with the women, saxophonist Lester Young allegedly gave him the nickname when he joined Count Basie’s Orchestra in 1937. However, despite how he got his nickname, Harry proved to be sweet indeed, with a muted trumpet solo sound that is indescribable delicious.

If you google his name he has over a million pages online. His legend was made in his eleven year with Count Basie that lasted until 1950. In 1944, he played a prominent role in perhaps the finest jazz film ever made, Jammin' the Blues. Basie's orchestra disbanded temporarily in 1950, and thereafter Edison pursued a varied career, leading his own groups, traveling with Jazz at the Philharmonic, and working as a freelance with other orchestras. In the early 1950s he settled on the West Coast, where he became highly sought-after as a studio musician, recording extensively with Frank Sinatra. He regularly led his own group in Los Angeles in the 1960s and he rejoined Count Basie on several occasions.

Harry came home to visit his mother in September, 1983 and offered to play a birthday party for Earl Hood. We had Miss Kitty in the audience at Valley Dale, Harry played two sets with an allstar band of Columbus musicians, including his signature song, Centerpiece and had a wonderful time saluting Mr. Hood at eighty-seven.

Harry continued travel and appearing worldwide, jazz festivals in Europe, concerts in Japan, clubs in the United States. But in 1999, he retired to Columbus, where his daughter, Helena, had settled. He was honored by the Columbus Senior Musicians Hall of Fame in June of that year, wearing a beautiful chocolate brown suit and matching hat as he sat for a photograph that afternoon.

Harry “Sweets” Edison died of cancer the following month, July 27, 1999 at age eighty-two. I served as a pallbearer and played horn for his celebration at the cemetery.

The Columbus Harmonaires: A Conversation with Dave Newlin

On Sunday, Feb. 8, 1998, Dave Newlin, passed into the spirit world after a great life that resulted from his determination to make the best of his existence. I was blessed to meet him in 1980 and spend hours with him on several occasions. His influence on me was as a musician, from his singing with a famed men’s choir, The Harmonaires and as an entrepreneur.

In 1985, he retired to Springfield from employment with Franklin County and was able to enjoy years of good health before his sudden death. but he was a member of a singing group whose success is the stuff that dreams are made.

Would anyone believe a story that begins with two janitors being overheard singing in a closet that blossomed into a national touring show that went to New York, Hollywood and continued for thirty years? It’s true and the center of the saga is the Columbus Harmonaires.

The foundation of this story is the Curtiss-Wright Plant, also known as the North American-Rockwell Plant, on Columbus’ far east side. Many of the nation’s military aircraft were produced there beginning in the 1940’s and the facility continued in aerospace production until the 1980’s.

Before President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” edict which outlawed discrimination in defense plants, Blacks were employed in strictly custodial or kitchen jobs. A couple of fellows were easing their way through the day’s cleanup by vocalizing in the privacy of their station, when the plant’s manager, C.W. Williams, interrupted their solitude.

The automatic response from the singers was, “Oh no, we’ve been caught. There go our jobs.” But amazingly, Williams’ reaction was joy that such harmony was coming from the workers. He immediately inquired as to their availability to entertain at a party that he was having that night. They accepted and sang the few songs that they knew several times.

The founding members were George Boswell, Fugate Page and Walter Willis, known as the Curtiss-Wright Singers. Williams suggested a new name for the singing group, The Harmonaires, referring to the gospel songs that they first sang as “aires.”

An early member of the group, Dave Newlin, said, “Recreation for Black folk during all ages has been music. If you get three guys under a street lamp, they’d be harmonizing. We had a choir at Curtiss-Wright that had a hundred and fifty voices and we loved to sing.”

When Boswell, Page, Willis and Lawrence McGhee came together, a quartet was ready. They rapidly expanded with the additions of J. Leroy Bowen, Dave Newlin, Edward Ritchie and J. Calvin Ward. Rehearsing in a church, they were overheard by Raglin Reid, an attorney and former member of the Wilberforce University Quartet.

Reid took charge and a group of twelve strong was soon performing statewide in defense related benefits with the backing and sponsorship of Curtiss-Wright. For three years they made weekly appearances on WLW Radio in Cincinnati on the Circle Arrow, Midwestern Hayride and the Sunnywide Shows.

Newlin remarked, “We did some tunes that I’d give anything to have on record; ‘Mighty Like a Rose’ and ‘He.’ Every week we had to have new tunes so we’d rehearse Monday through Friday, four hours a day so we could go to Cincinnati to do the broadcasts.”

“We did some pretty heavy stuff and very seldom did we have orchestration behind us. If there was an orchestra behind us we’d use only the rhythm section because our arrangements were so complete.”

In station wagons purchased by their radio sponsor, the Moores Stores of Newark, Ohio, the Harmonaires touring circle, as singing ambassadors of Curtiss-Wright, extended from Columbus to St. Louis and New York. They performed over five hundred songs at hospitals, civic and benevolent functions.

At war’s end the Harmonaires and Ragland Reid were commended by the War Department for their services. In 1947, still under Reid’s meticulous direction, they headed for New York for even more success.

Two years of storming New York found them on radio with the Carnation Hour, the Jack Smith Show, the Henry Morgan Show, the Arthur Godfrey Show, the Paul Whiteman Show and the Fred Allen Show. Newlin added, “When we did the Carnation Hour, we were forced to write a script for the orchestra behind us. The famous arranger Don Redman wrote the tunes that we were going to do for the eighteen piece orchestra that was on the show. The producer wasn’t going to pay the orchestra and not have them play.”

Newlin also remembers other performers that the Harmonaires worked with including Milton Berle, George Kirby, Spike Jones and their television premier with The Ed Sullivan Show in 1947. “The television lights for the Sullivan show were so hot that we were all wringing wet in no time. It almost burned your skin.”

After three years of non-stop touring, the group returned to Columbus to greet family and friends. J. Leroy Bowen says, “After being away for such a long time the wives really put the pressure on. Ragland Reid resigned and the Harmonaires folded.”

But in late 1949, at the insistence of the Music Corporation of America (MCA), who wanted to make new plans for the singers, The Harmonaires were reorganized as a quintet. The new group featured Bowen, Newlin, Page, Ed Ritchie, Calvin Ward and pianist Harold Clark.

This group continued in the gospel-spiritual tradition of its previous years but added more popular material. In 1951, the high point came when the New Harmonaires journeyed to Hollywood to be featured in “One Too Many.” The work involved recording seven songs for the soundtrack album.

Show business life and regular appearances continued for the group until 1974. At that time death claimed two members, Clark and Ritchie. The group performed an enormous amount of material, but the history of the Harmonaires survived on three seventy-eight rmp records on Majestic Records. In listening to the recordings of the group, they seem a large group extension of the tradition that started with the Mills Brothers in the 1920’s.

Newlin reminisced, “When I was coming up in the ‘30’s the only thing that a young man had to look forward to was driving a city truck or working at the Post Office. Music gave me the opportunity to travel the country in grand style and be on equal terms with all people, rich and poor.”

Myron “Tiny” Bradshaw, 1905-58

Myron “Tiny” Bradshaw lived a lifetime in fifty-three years as a singer, drummer and bandleader. Born in northeast Ohio’s Youngstown, he was schooled there and at Wilberforce University, where the school had a tradition called the Wilberforce Collegians. Led by Horace Henderson, the greater talented brother of noted bandleader Fletcher Henderson, the Collegians were a fundraising organization that in 1925, had saxophonist Benny Carter and trumpeter Rex Stewart as student musicians. Later alumni of the Collegians were Ben Webster, Ernie Wilkins, Coleman Hawkins, Snooky Young, George Russell and Frank Foster.

After playing with the Collegians through the end of the 1928, Bradshaw went to New York and performed with Duncan Myer’s Savoy Bearcats, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, and Luis Russell’s Orchestra. Marion Hardy's Alabamians had given its young front man, Cab Calloway a springboard to his fame and Bradshaw took on the legend with them as “Super Cab Calloway.”

In 1933, during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Bradshaw formed his own band and they headlined the Harlem Opera House. In January, 1935 Ella Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Bradshaw band at the Opera House.

The band recorded two sessions for Decca Records in 1935, but sales must have been disappointing. However, the band continued to be popular in performance until the War. Bradshaw was commissioned a major in the U.S. Army and led a twenty-five piece USO orchestra.

Tiny’s big break came in 1949 when he signed with King Records and his recording career took off. Headed by owner Syd Nathan, King Records started out as a county and western label, but successfully moved into jump blues with artists like Benjamin “Bullmoose” Jackson and Wynonie Harris. Nathan employed Henry Glover as talent scout and songwriter and Glover wrote many of Bradshaw’s hits.

Bradshaw pared his unit from a large orchestra to a flexible septet and King released his first recording, “Gravy Train", in January, 1950 and in May, 1950, “Well Oh Well” rose to a respectable No. 2 on rhythm and blues charts. In that year, Bradshaw appeared at Cincinnati’s Cotton Club and Tiny continued to be a major attraction in the early 1950s because “the kids want that music with a beat to dance to and at the present time ...Tiny Bradshaw’s unit is giving it to them.”

Tiny was felled by a stroke in November, 1954, paralyzing his legs. After recuperating in Florida, he returned to performing and recording in January, 1955, but it was three short years later, November 26, 1958 that Tiny Bradshaw died of a heart attack at aged fifty-three.

Though forgotten through the ensuing years, Westside Records released a compact disc entitled “Walk That Mess: The Best of the King Years,” and Tiny Bradshaw can be remembered by fans. The above photo was given to me by Lucien Wright in 1980. It is inscribed to his sister, Iona, “To Iona, I wonder what you think of every time you look this way. Tiny B.”

Clarence Olden, trumpeter, saxophonist, bandleader

I interviewed Clarence Olden in 1980 and he was most noted for playing the Cotton Club in the Pythian Theater (The King Arts Complex) in the late 1930s. Here is a partial transcription of his interview.

Clarence Olden, trumpeter, saxophonist, bandleader

Interview in 1980 by Arnett Howard

I was from Paducah, Kentucky and was inspired to be a musician when Fate Marable, who led the bands on the Streckfus Steamboat Lines up the Mississippi River would come to his hometown, Paducah, and play a concert.

I went to Buffalo, New York and worked in the Hotel Vendome from May until November, 1934. Then I went to the Hotel Ford and played miscellaneous jobs until Christmas week.

Christmas week, 1934, I opened the Apollo Theater in New York City and after the Apollo, I went into a night club job in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to avoid travel during the winter. And on the very first night we worked, which was a Saturday night, the Highway Patrol came in and took the man who owned the club’s license for selling liquor on Sunday morning. Blue Laws were in effect

Well, a night club is no good without a license, so we didn’t have a job. That was New Year’s Eve and we were stranded for three weeks. My wife had left from Buffalo to Columbus and she encountered a Jewish man and told him that I was stranded in Harrisburg.

He sent a Greyhound bus to Harrisburg to pick us up and by that time, my musicians had gotten scared and went back home; some to Buffalo and I had only about eight pieces left out of fifteen. So that’s what I came to Columbus with.

The Jewish man put five hundred dollars into the Lincoln Branch of the Ohio National Bank in my name. So with that money I started sending all over the United States for musicians; an alto player from Los Angeles, a trombonist from Albany, New York, a tenor sax from Detroit, a bassist from Toledo. When I got through I had thirteen or fourteen musicians.

I wanted a certain type of musician, free to travel. When I got to know Columbus musicians I found that they were tied down with home, family and nice cars. But traveling musicians are used to living in a suitcase and ready to go, you can do things with them and they’re willing to cooperate with you.

Local musicians, all they want is money. They’ll work, but I’d rather have transient musicians, because after I finished my local jobs, I’d have to hit the road myself. I had engagements as far south as Nashville, Tennessee, as far west as Iowa, into Michigan and into New York state.

When the War came and they had the draft, I was cleaned out of players. When I had engagement in Columbus, I would have to send to Wilberforce to recruit Collegiants to fill my spots. When the draft got heavy I would have men out of Cincinnati who would come up to Columbus to work.

There was a local organization called Earl Hood and His Orchestra and when the draft cleaned me out and I had to work at Curtiss-Wright, we combined orchestras and held his job and the Valley Dale Ballroom. Within a year, 1943, he took sick and I had to take over the management of the orchestra.

I eventually took over the Hood band and had it until 1957. Up until that time, I had been working at Curtiss-Wright, which became North American Aviation and playing music. But when 1957 came, I quit playing music, quit North American and bought a grocery store.

There was once a time when I was changing piano players and I had an option on Count Basie or Al Freeman, Sr. and I took Freeman. He was out of San Antonio, but Columbus was his home and he was a wonderful piano player. At the time Count Basie couldn’t read very good and I didn’t hire him. He could play anything by ear, but I had to make my decision.

Madame Rose Brown

 Madame Rose Brown was an unknown legend in Columbus music until historian Doug Tracy sent me this column that appeared in 2008. She died one night in 1960, after appearing with Chickadee and Chickadoo at the New Frontiers Club.     

The Bright Rose of Bronzeville

By Eddie J. Colston,
The Ohio Sentinel, March 29, 1958 edition

Name any great Columbus entertainer in the past decade and the name Madam Rose Brown will ring a bell. Years ago, Madam was the town’s top performer. Today she still has firm hold on her star studded crown by singing and swinging in the area’s night clubs and plush cocktail lounges.
The young clique will remember Madam more vividly from her weekly TV show a few years ago over WTVN-TV for a segment of “The Rose Brown Show” was devoted to introducing fresh talent.

Born in Savanah, Georgia, Rose Brown came to Columbus to visit relatives. Out on the town one night she did several guest numbers at a couple of popular night haunts. With soulful blues, sexy torch songs and energetic swing style, she had the town’s nightlifers in the palm of her hand. Since then, this has been Rose Brown’s town.

Wasn’t so long ago that Rose rose (and I’m not tongue tied) to the pinnacle of Broadway success, when she costarred with the late Bill Robinson as Katisha in Mike Todd’s “The Hot Mikado.”Her Broadway appearance was in a featured role in “My Dear Public,” starring Willie Howard and a long list of today’s top stars.

Rose has added other musical triumphs and flattering press notices to her scrapbook with top billings with The Page Cavanaugh Trio. Louis Jordan’s Band, the Page One Ball, sponsored annually by the Columbus Chapter of the American Newspaper Guild and many others.

Norman Nadel, Columbus Citizen’s celebrated theatrical editor and big voice in show business recently penned a lengthy feature on Rose Brown. Nadel said, “I thought of shows I’d seen, singers I heard in Manhattan nightspots where the cover charge would buy food for a family of six. Once in a blue moon you might hear a singer like Rose. People from Columbus go to those New York clubs when they travel east. They could do as well or better, listening to this handsome dark-skinned woman singing in a little club on High Street.”

Another thrill for Rose was her invitation to audition for the role of Bloody Mary in the original “South Pacific” cast. “Rogers and Hammerstein brought me to New York,” she recalled happily, “and I sang the part for them. But when I saw Juanita Hall do it, I told them to go ahead and pick her, because she was perfect for the part. But I would have loved it.”

Currently, Rose is slated to make a series of films or live appearances on WTVN-TV doing Negro spirituals.

Sammy Stewart's Orchestra, 1913-33

Jazz musicians, writers and critics are almost universal in turning a sour face when the mention of a society bend or sweet music is made. Sweet music never fails to awaken visions of the syrupy, vibrato sounds of Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians or of the Paul Whiteman Band. Whereas the lean, muscular, aggressive syncopation of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Count Basie or Bennie Goodman was hotter, thus preferable to jazz snobs.

But in the 1920s, there was a Columbus Ohio's society orchestra, led by pianist Sammy Stewart, that became the leading band in the music centers Chicago and New York throughout the decade. Stewart's bands catered to more generalized audiences such as hotels, ballrooms, stage shows, supper clubs, movie houses and more often, they performed in a non-jazz set thing.

Sammy Stewart was born in Circleville, Ohio, in 1891 and spent most of his early life living on Columbus's Mount Vernon Avenue. He was raised by his mother to be a respectful boy, went to Garfield school, graduated from Columbus East High School and was regarded as an outstanding pianist. Local booking agent and violinist Charlie Parker apprenticed young Stewart and allowed him to become a member of Parker's Popular Players. The orchestra performed in many of the area's prestigious hotels, the Deshler Wallick, the Kaiserhoff and in the the Secore in Toledo, Ohio.

Soon Sammy was to carry away many of his sidekicks from the Parker band to start another unit in 1918. Three years after he started the Sammy Stewart orchestra, Sammy contracted for a year at the Secore. The band's most important break came in 1922 when Sammy closed a lucrative deal with the exclusive Ritz, a supper Club in Detroit Michigan.

“When you contracted a job in those days it wasn't for a week, it was for year,” remembers Bill Stewart, not related to Sammy, but a saxophonist mainstay of the band. The rich contract was big enough financially to attract other colleagues from the Parker orchestra. At this time the Stewart orchestra include Paul Jordan, violin, Renna “Fats”, Robbins, trumpet, bassoon, his brother Millard Robbins, bass, flute, vocals, Frank Fowler, sax, Lawrence “Dick” Dixon, guitar, cello, Mance Worley, trombone, Harley Washington, sax, clarinet Claudius Forney, trumpet and cello

The Ritz engagements solidified the band and their fame was spreading. “Sammy only chose the best musician available,” says Roy Butler, who later joined the band at their opening in Chicago. “He had the respect of his men, who were chosen for their character in the first place and therefore, no disciplinary action was ever necessary.” According to Bill Stewart, who also joined the band in Chicago, “Sammy's contracts were so good that he could hire who he wanted and he preferred musicians from Ohio.”

The 1923 opening of Sammy Stewart and his Ten Knights of Syncopation at Chicago's Entertainer's Cafe was a sensation. For several months, long lines appeared at the doors of 35th Street to hear this great band from Columbus, Ohio. “We the first Negro organized orchestra playing special arrangements to hit Chicago,” says Roy Butler. “We were not known for playing hot or jazz music, but more on the sweet or semi-classical style, with which Paul Whiteman later made headlines. Bill Stewart relates, “We did all kinds of overtures, the William Tell included. We're the first negro orchestra to play Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in its entirety. On one occasion, we auditioned and got a contract because of that and built a stage show around it.”

The entertainer's cafe job ended prematurely when the federal government, resulting from an investigation by Elliot Ness’ Untouchables, padlocked the club for prohibition violations; they serve drinks and teacups. However blessings were disguised as Sammy then negotiated with Joe Glaser, famed booking agent and later manager for Louis Armstrong, to open at the Sunset Cafe. The Sunset was another famous black and tan, located at 35th and Calumet in Chicago and the Sammy Stewart Orchestra, at its peak, enjoyed great popularity and success for several years surrounding 1924-25.

Bill Stewart remembers, “While we were at the Sunset all the musicians used to come over and see us. Jelly Roll Morton used to peek in from behind the backdrop and when we did a tune that didn't need an arrangement, we let Jelly sit in. King Oliver and his crew were down the street at the Lincoln Garden and we'd all run back and forth between shows to see each other.

The Sammy Stewart Sunset Orchestra included were Worley, the Robbins Brothers, Jordan, Dixon, Dave Smallwood, drums, Klein Tindall, piano Earl Moss, Bill Stewart and Roy Butler on Reed's. There came the need for a hot trumpet and a young, fat trumpeter who had just given notice to King Oliver’s band came to the Sunset and asked about the job, but Sammy barely turned his head and told him, “No, I don't need anybody.”

Bill Stewart says, “This is probably were Sammy missed the boat. He reasons that Louis Armstrong couldn't play the music which the orchestra was featuring and if he did use him, he would have to revise the band, building the it around Louis. It would have been a wise move had Sammy realize Louis’ potential., but Sammy was stubborn as hell, like to have things his way and didn't want to end up working for the great Satchmo, which would've been the case.”

Later in a biography by Max Jones and Paul Chilton, Armstrong's reflections on the audition were, “I wasn’t dicty enough regardless of how I played. I wasn't up to his society. . . ,” although Bill Stewart does not lend any credence to the social status implications.

“King Oliver’s gang used to go down to the record shops and play the records of the tunes that they wanted to use. They’d hum the songs over and over,until they get them into their heads. It was comical. But if you set music down in front of them, they be lost. They had a great pianist, Louis Russell, who’d write some tremendous arrangement and the have to bring it over to us to hear what it sounded like. But those cats were artists when they were blowing.” Eugene Hutt was a hot trumpeter, a good musician and he got the Sunset job with Stewart.

In March of 1926, the orchestra moved to the Metropolitan Theater and they played background for movies and intermission concerts. Klein Tindall left the band to return to Columbus to join Tom Howard's Whispering Orchestra of Gold, another of Columbus's great society bands, who became the center of a popular controversy in the 1920's. Dates in the publications at hand differ widely from 1921 through 1926, but the six man Whispering Orchestra was allegedly lured to a job by “crackers” from hotel that they were residing at in Miami, Florida, beaten, robbed and Tindall supposedly died a month later from his injuries. It is of little debate whether the bitter incident did occur, but the report of Tindall’s death seem to be inaccurate as he has been recalled playing with other orchestras as late as 1928.

The cliche, “when you're at the top there is only one way to go,” has to fit Sammy Stewart in the late 1920's. Sammy was getting older and the ever changing scene was looking for a fresh face.The Regal Theater was organizing an orchestra under Dave Peyton, and his contract offers to Lawrence Dixon and the Robbins brothers were accepted. Sammy worked a few small contracts, then he received an attractive offer to return to Columbus and open the new Ogden Theater on Thanksgiving Day, 1928. The homecoming continued to May of 1929, when they switched to the Black Cat Club on the far Eastside of Columbus. The Black Cat Orchestra, which had regular broadcasts on the Columbia System, included Bill Stewart, Kevin Stewart, Ed Carey, George Dixon, Frank Fowler, Leon Scott, Paul Tyler and Mance Worley.

The dedication of his band members became a nagging question to Sammy, being a careful leader, dedicated to his own formal of perfection. But he hung on with the anticipation of a journey to New York. Before leaving Columbus, the band filled a tenor sax position by calling on a young West Virginian named Leon Berry.

According to Bill Stewart, “We used to go to the movies to get ideas from the music and one of the characters that we had seen about that time was a Chinaman named to Chu Chin Chow. When we picked up Leon downtown at the bus station, he was wearing a purple beanie and long chin whiskers; he was a freshman pledge at West Virginia State College. I was so surprised at his appearance that I laughed, “Hey, look here! It's Chu Chin Chow! Somewhere down the line the Chen Chow dropped off, and everyone continue to call him Chu. “Chu” Berry eventually gained international recognition as a soloist with the Cab Calloway Orchestra.

A new look and the new sound was building with the additions of Berry and drummer Sidney Catlett and alternate stays at the Savoy and Arcadia Ballrooms in New York kept the Sammy Stewart Orchestra at the top of the heap. “At the Savoy, all the big named musicians with line the walls hoping to play with us,” says Bill Stewart. The tenor sax players would desperately try to shoot down Chu, but to no avail, because he'd blow them all away.”

But New York insisted on being a tougher nut to crack. American Federation of Musicians Local. 802 would issue a six month travel permit to visiting bands and when it expired Stewart was forced to replace fifty percent of his band with Local 802 members. This was further damaging to the nucleus of pride he insisted on from his personnel. And some of the veterans of the band remember that during this time, Sammy’s drinking problems began to arise. But the new band, which gained Eric Brown, alto sax, Kenneth Roane, trumpet Eugene Anderson, piano, Ikey Robinson, guitar and trombones star, Big Green, stayed in the bright lights of Broadway for nearly two years surrounding 1930.

After losing Berry and Catlitt, the band moved from New York's Lafayette Theater to the Pearl Theater in Philadelphia, to the Sunset Cafe in Chicago and back to the Lafayette in New York. But the Sammy Stewart Orchestra was about to come apart due to the pressures of the depression and changing musical tastes. The last stand was the Quoge Inn in Quoge, Long Island, New York in 1933.

Sammy became a piano soloist in high class clubs around New York. His violinist friend from the Charlie Parker days, Earl Hood, says, “He licked his drinking problem and he was once again at an unusually great pianist. He enjoyed being a single act because it gave him an outlet to play anything that he wanted to play. He was the first man I ever saw who could play two melodies simultaneously; one in one hand and another in the other.” Sammy Stewart eventually retired to teaching piano and organ in 1950 and his death came in New York, August 5th, 1960.

Aside from an orchestra photo in the the Pictorial History of Jazz, the band lapsed into the obscurity of the few participant memoirs. The surviving players met from time to time and in 1971 and Australian jazz writer, Ralph Gulliver started in long-distance inquiry. With a letter to this Columbus Citizen-Journal, he was able to find a few local people who remembered the Stewart saga. Further communications with Bill Stewart, Ray McFayden, Mrs. Charlotte Meadows, Lawrence Dixon Jr., George F. Mosel, John H. Baker, Ken Hutsizer and Roy Butler in Chicago, helped Gulliver put together a feature for Storyville, a British jazz collector’s publication. Sammy Stewart and his Orchestra: The Band from Columbus appeared in August, 1973 and Bill Stewart says he started receiving letters from all over the world.

Sammy Stewart will not compared with Satchmo, Duke, Count or the King of Swing, but his reputation and unique musical styles where individual approaches of the highest order.