First Working Bands & Riverboat J.S. (Bio part 2: 1917-1919)

After gigging casually around New Orleans, mostly on violin, Willie Humphrey was hired (as a clarinetist) for his first regular position in a working band, that of cornetist George McCullum, in 1917 or 1918. McCullum (1865-1920) was a well-known New Orleanian who had played in both John Robichaux's and A.J. Piron's famous dance orchestras. McCullum knew and liked Willie's grandfather, so he was willing to give the young musician a chance. Other members of this band included saxophonist Louis Warnecke, Joe Robinson, Philip Nixon on guitar, Philip's brother Sam on bass, and drummer Chris Minor. ("Joe Robinson" might in fact be pianist Joe Robertson.)

After spending some time with McCullum, Willie went on to what he described as "my first big job," playing with violinist Albert Baptiste's Silver Leaf Orchestra, a well-known, well-respected dance band. Humphrey named cornetist Hyppolyte Charles, Paul Ben on trombone, pioneering bassist Jimmy Johnson, and "Little Cato" on drums as member of the band during his tenure. Among the places they played was the now legendary Tom Anderson's Cafe on North Rampart Street.

As member of the Silver Leaf Orchestra, Willie began to be recognized as a good musician in his own right, not just as Professor Humphrey's grandson or Willie Eli Humphrey's son. The Streckfus family, who operated a line of excursion steamboats on the Mississippi River, hired the Silver Leaf band to fill in for one of their regular bands for a week or two in the summer of 1918. John Streckfus had a keen ear for musicians and was impressed with the playing of two of the Silver Leafers, Willie and Jimmy Johnson. The two musicians were offered regular jobs on the boat; Willie declined, but Streckfus remembered his playing and renewed the offer the next year.

The Streckfus steamboat J.S.

The Streckfus riverboats were strictly pleasure boats, not intended primarily for transportation. Among the attractions was the prospect of dancing to the music of the excellent orchestras on the boats. Kentuckian Fate Marable directed the band on the Streckfus boat Sidney for many years; this band has become legendary in jazz history as the finishing school for young Louis Armstrong. Many other renowned New Orleans musicians played in Marable's Sidney band, including Pops Foster, Johnny St. Cyr, Zutty Singleton, and the Dodds brothers, Johnny and Baby.

In Pops Foster, New Orleans Jazzman, Ross Russell gives an overview of the music on the riverboats:

The riverboats were floating dance halls, the natural successors to the romantic sidewheelers eulogized by Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi, and of the showboats that bought opera and minstrelry to the river towns at the turn of the century. Few towns boasted ballrooms; what could have been more convenient than to bring both dance hall and authentic New Orleans orchestra to the town dock for an afternoon or evening of fun?... Aboard ship musicians ate, slept, lived, and played together for weeks or months at a stretch. Bandleaders, often older than the sidemen, acted as head of their musical families. Discipline was strict; drunkards and agitators were weeded out and discharged along the way. Most veterans of the riverboats have described the food and accommodations as good; in addition to one's keep, the salaries paid, although not princely, afforded the more provident an opportunity to accumulate a stake. The riverboats ran as far north as St. Paul; occasionally they found their way up the Missouri and Ohio Rivers. In this fashion New Orleans jazz spread through the cultural corpus of middle America. Without exception the towns where the boats stopped and their bands played made significant contributions to jazz style in the following generation. Bix Beiderbecke lost no opportunity to hear the floating orchestras when they played his home town of Davenport. St. Louis was much impressed by the New Orleans trumpet stars, Keppard, Armstrong, and Oliver, and ended up becoming a trumpet player's town and the center of brilliant brass style beginning with Dewey Jackson and ending up with the contemporary Miles Davis.

John Streckfus and his sons kept tight reins on their bands, hiring and firing musicians and specifying the types of music (and sometimes the actual selections) to be played. The music on their boats consisted of then-current popular tunes and some semi-classical numbers. Bassist Pops Foster, who later worked with Willie on the Streckfus boat Capitol, said:

The Streckfus people were funny to work for. You played music to suit them, not the public. As long as they were happy you had the job. You had fourteen numbers to play in an evening and you changed numbers every two weeks. The numbers were long. You'd play the whole number and maybe two or three encores, and sometimes two choruses. A lot of guys didn't like that and quit. The Streckfus people made musicians out of whole lot of guys that way. Louis Armstrong, Johnny St. Cyr, and I didn't know nothin' about readin' when we on the boats, but we did when came off.

Baby Dodds gave a similar description of the music on the boats:

The band played strictly for dancing. We played all the standards of the day and we used to make the classics into dance tunes. There was a sign up: "Requests filled," and the people could ask for special numbers. We played eleven or twelve numbers, and every one of them had an encore to it. Then we had only a fifteen minute intermission, and started all over again. We worked pretty hard with that band.

Humhrey and Jimmy Johnson were hired for the Streckfus boat the J.S. Already in the J.S. band were trombonist Honore Dutrey and Walter Brundy. Willie replaced the latter; although the Streckfus family had hired Brundy as a drummer, he switched to clarinet, and John Streckfus did not care for his playing on his new instrument. Jimmy Johnson was ill when the time came for the job to start, so Octave "Oak" Gaspard was selected to take his place. Humphrey and Gaspard were to meet the boat in St. Louis, but Gaspard missed the train, so Humphrey traveled with trumpeter Arnold Metoyer, some 25 years his senior. Willie's grandmother had prepared a shoebox full of food for the journey, much of which was consumed by Metoyer on the train.

The eighteen-year-old clarinet was a little frightened to be leaving New Orleans to play with a fairly big-time band of professionals. However, his grandfather's training served him well. In spite of his relative inexperience, Willie performed well enough to last the entire season. "It was a first-class boat I was on - the J.S." He also confirmed Baby Dodds' description of the musical workload; he later said that he "worked day and night" on the boat.

The end of the season found the J.S. in Davenport, Iowa. After his time with the J.S. band, Willie felt confident enough to try his hand in the city that was one of the country's major centers of black entertainment at the time. He took the train from Davenport to Chicago. We'll pick up the story there in a later post.

Sources:

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.

Vincent Fumar: "A Quiet Afternoon With Willie Humphrey," Dixie, February 3, 1985.

James Cahn: interview with Willie Humphrey, New Orleans, November 29, 1979; Hogan Jazz Archive.

Pops Foster & Tom Stoddard: The Autobiography of Pops Foster, New Orleans Jazzman; University of California Press, 1971.

Baby Dodds & Larry Gara: The Baby Dodds Story, revised edition; Louisiana State University Press, 1992

Online Steamboat Museum: https://steamboats.com/museum/jc.html