Your Blogger, Listening to Willie Humphrey in Person

 Below you'll find a low-quality photograph of Your Blogger, Jeff, looking raptly at Percy and Willie Humphrey before a performance at Preservation Hall in New Orleans in 1992. It's not a good picture, but I'm glad I have it. This will be a more personal post than is usual with this blog; I'll give my impressions (as best as I remember) of the three times I heard Willie Humphrey in person. There are many people who heard him far more often, but those three times were very meaningful to me.

I first visited New Orleans in 1990, when I was 31 years old. Of course, I went to Preservation Hall; I had been looking forward to that experience for years. The evening just mysterious enough to be exciting: When do you show up? Is that the line? Who is playing tonight? The band that night was led by trumpeter Kid Sheik. Besides George "Kid Sheik" Colar, the band included veteran pianist Jeanette Kimball and a real pioneer of the jazz bass, Chester Zardis. Zardis was 90, and played powerful, imaginative jazz that night. There's a picture of him with the legendary, unrecorded cornetist Buddy Petit's band, supposedly taken when Chester was 15. He died four months after I heard him; I feel very fortunate to have seen him in person. Manny Crusto was on clarinet that night, not Willie Humphrey.

I returned to Preservation Hall on my second visit to the Crescent City in the fall of 1991. Although my visit corresponded with the regular night for the Humphrey Brothers Band, they were on tour. Willie, though, had come home to take care of a sick wife, and so played that night. The pickup band was led by English expat trumpeter Clive Wilson, and Phamous Lambert, part of a famous New Orleans musical family, was on piano. I sat at Willie's feet with his clarinet pointed right at my head. He played with more volume than anyone else in the band, and his sound filled the room. He was featured on a nice version of "Just a Closer Walk with Thee." Humphrey was pushing 90, but the only obvious age-related weakness I noticed in his playing was some sloppiness in the 16th-note clarinet breaks in "Fidgety Feet." Otherwise, I was very impressed with his powers, and came away with a sense of fulfilment on hearing a musician I had come to revere.

One potentially unpleasant moment during the evening turned into a nice one. Clive Wilson asked Phamous Lambert to sing on “Pennies from Heaven” and got annoyed when Lambert didn’t. It was obvious to me that Lambert hadn't heard or didn’t understand what Wilson had said. When Lambert didn't start singing at the obvious place, Wilson scowled, than launched into the vocal himself. The audience spontaneously joined in, sang well, and created a warm feeling, wiping out what might have turned into a "humbug," as New Orleans musicians call a disagreement.

Percy and Willie Humphrey
Preservation Hall; November, 1992

I heard Willie Humphrey for the second time a year and a half later, back at Preservation Hall in November, 1992. It was the regular night for the Humphrey Brothers Band, and they were there with the usual lineup of the time: Frank Demond on trombone, pianist Lars Edegran, Narvin Kimball on banjo, bassist James Prevost, and Joe Lastie on drums. As an added bonus, Leroy Jones walked in, wearing his Harry Connick tour jacket, and sat in for a set. I don't remember much about the music that night except that Jones added some very tasteful second trumpet parts. My only surviving note about the evening's music says that "Willie played particularly well." I do remember my feeling of quiet awe before the first set - just being in the presence of those two jazz pioneers, Willie and Percy Humphrey, was something special. They didn't say much to each other, but shared a few softly-spoken sentences as they took their instruments out of their battered cases. My then-wife took a discreet photograph with a cheap camera. That's me to the left.

The last time I saw Willie Humphrey was also at Preservation Hall, on April 2, 1994, just nine and a half weeks before he died. The personnel was the same as in 1992, except that Benjamin Jaffe had replaced James Prevost on bass. I spent part of the evening in the Hall's small performance space, and part of the evening listening from the carriageway, with one of the ubiquitous Preservation Hall cats sitting in my lap.  It was the night before Easter, and the band opened with Irving Berlin's “The Easter Parade.”  Willie sang “Bourbon Street Parade,” gesturing toward Bourbon Street every time he sang the words “on Bourbon Street,” and he marched around in a circle when he sang, “I’ll parade you” - some nice show business from a 93-year-old musician/entertainer. Willie only had a few more gigs after this, and I feel lucky to have caught one of his last performances. But each of those three times I heard him in person was special.

Excelsior Brass Band, Kid Rena, Ma Rainey (Bio part 5: 1923-1925)

Sometime during Willie Humphrey's 1920-1925 period in New Orleans, he joined the Excelsior Brass Band, considered to be one of the finest musical organizations in the city. George Moret, Willie's colleague in the Pythian Roof Garden band, was the music director of the Excelsior band, so Humphrey was probably invited to join the Excelsior while he was sharing the bandstand with Moret at the Roof Garden. 

The Excelsior Brass Band was a well-rehearsed group full of highly literate musicians; they played published arrangements, Moret's own handwritten arrangements, and less formal music. Humphrey said of the band, "To me, at the time, it was best 'cause we used music. We used to play head numbers, too." As was customary in New Orleans street bands, Willie played the smaller E flat clarinet with the Excelsior, rather than the standard B flat instrument. He played with the band at least until he began his second stint of playing on the riverboats in 1925, and he apparently played with them after that when it was possible; Leonard Bocage mentions Humphrey being part of the band around 1927. Willie was proud of his connection with the band, and kept his Excelsior Brass Band cap until the end of his life.

Of course, Humphrey played with other bands and musicians during this period. He mentions playing with Johnny St. Cyr for a long time, and he often subbed for Alphonse Picou in theater pit bands when that pioneer clarinetist was unable to play a job. Willie also played with the great blues singers Ida Cox and Ma Rainey during this period. The engagement with Rainey (a tent show) stood out in his memory; he called her “the greatest blues singer I ever heard,” but “ugly as old babe sin.” On this job he played violin; Buddy Christian played piano.

Percy, Willie James, and Willie Eli Humphrey

One memorable engagement was a gig with his father on Delacroix Island, southeast of New Orleans. Willie played clarinet while the elder Humphrey played saxophone. During one of the band’s breaks, the Humphreys were reminiscing about the days of Storyville with a guest from New Orleans when an armed drunk came into the dance hall and started shooting. The building emptied; Willie Eli remembered that he beat everyone out of the hall and was almost to the lake by the time most people got out. His son chided him, “I thought you such a brave man.”

Willie’s last regular gig during this period was with another legendary New Orleans cornet man, Kid Rena. Henry Rena is usually mentioned as one of the great early jazz players by musicians who were around in those days. Fellow trumpeter Lee Collins said of him, “Rena had a most beautiful tone and a range which was more perfect than any cornet players' I ever heard. He could play the high register so clear and beautiful. In the early days he used to really cut me when we would meet on the corners advertising some club.”

Although Rena was only 41 when he made his only recordings, he was apparently long past his prime. The records show a relaxed New Orleans lead trumpet style, but nothing of the brilliance Collins and other New Orleanians ascribed to him. Collins gives reason for Rena’s decline: “It’s too bad he drank so much and his lip gave out early.” However, Willie stated that during his stint with Rena, the cornetist was not drinking. Willie played with Kid Rena for about a year.

While playing with Rena in the fall of 1925, Willie went down to the river for one night’s work filling in with the band on the Streckfus boat S.S. Capitol. He didn’t return to Rena; he signed on with the riverboat band permanently. For the next seven years the Streckfus riverboats would provide Humphrey the bulk of his musical employment.

Sources:

Leonard Bocage interview, 1972; cited in Richard Knowles: Fallen Heroes, Jazzology Press, 1996

Allen, Richard, liner notes to Two Clarinets on the Porch,  GHB Records, 1992

William Russell and Ralph Collins: interview with Willie Eli Humphrey and Willie James Humphrey, New Orleans, March 15, 1959; Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University.

Charlie DeVore: "Talking With Willie," Mississippi Rag, June, 1982.

Lee Collins:  Oh, Didn’t He Ramble, University of Illinois Press, 1974.