Young Bandleader in New Orleans (Bio part 4: 1920-1923)

 When Willie Humphrey returned to New Orleans from Chicago in 1920, he was surprised to discover that musicians in his hometown were earning more money than their Chicago counterparts. So he decided to try his luck back home for awhile. He moved back to his grandparents' house at 4225 South Liberty Street; this address would be his base of operations for the next five years. 

His first job after arriving back in the Crescent City was with Amos Riley's Tulane Orchestra. Riley was a cornetist, and led one of the best-known dance bands in the city at the time. (Riley's son Teddy, born in 1924, became a popular trumpet player in his own right.) Also in Riley's band was trombonist Frankie Dusen, who was famously a member of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden's band. Dusen, some 20 years older than Humphrey, was described by Willie as "rough" and "fly" (hip). 

Riley's band had a regular gig at the Pythian Roof Garden at South Saratoga and Gravier Streets. Willie found playing with Riley educational:

Amos Riley was not a great trumpet player I would say, but he was a nice musician. He had his own way of playing, a soft way. I wouldn't call him a jazz player but he played a nice horn. He could read real well and that meant a lot to me. If you work with good musicians and you're just mediocre, you can learn from them. It helps you.

Tension soon developed, however, due to Riley's difficulty making the eight o'clock starting time; his daytime work as a barber sometimes made him late. The management of the Pythian Roof Garden effectively fired Riley from his own band; he was replaced by George Moret. "Old Man Moret," born in 1861, had been the leader of the Excelsior Brass Band since 1905. Although Moret was not a jazz musician, he was highly respected as one of the finest cornetists in the city. Willie said of him, "He was one of the best, to me. At that time, he was the best street cornet player they had." Like many New Orleans musicians, Moret had a day job; he was a cigar maker.

This is a good place for a digression about the Pythian Roof Garden, and the Pythian Temple in which it was housed. The Temple was built by the Colored Order of the Knights of Pythias of Louisiana, a branch of a fraternal order similar to the Masons. Completed in 1909, this impressive building housed offices for black-owned businesses, a theater, and on the top floor, an open air dancing/entertainment venue, the Roof Garden. The Roof Garden became one of the most popular nightspots for Black New Orleans society; it was enclosed in 1923 - more on that later. The Pythian Order went bankrupt in 1941 and lost the building. After years of ups and downs, the building is now a multi-use apartment/business complex.

Thom's Roadhouse

When Moret took over the cornet spot in the Roof Garden band, Frankie Dusen took over its leadership. According to Willie, Dusen was "a terrible manager," and Humphrey eventually had a falling out with the trombonist. Willie quit the band to work with drummer Zutty Singleton at Thom's Roadhouse, a large restaurant and bar in West End, near Lake Pontchatrain. Singleton was eventually recognized as one of the great New Orleans drummers, but during the Thom's job, Zutty was having trouble mastering his new spring-loaded bass drum pedal. Willie described the problem: "You hit it, it would bounce back a couple of times." 

After playing with Singleton for awhile, Humphrey went back to the Pythian Roof Garden, this time as co-leader of the band. With Maurice Durand on cornet and Buddy Johnson in the trombone spot, the band was known, rather straightforwardly, as the Durand-Humphrey band. Durand, born in 1893, was closer to Willie's age than most of the celebrated cornet men Humphrey had been playing with. A former student of Willie's grandfather, Durand "wasn't such a fast reader but he did all right.... He had pretty good chops," according to his co-leader. Durand was an admirer of Manuel Perez's cornet style, so he was particularly pleased when Willie complimented him after they played a parade together; Humphrey said that he couldn't distinguish Durand's playing from that of Perez.

Pythian Roof Garden - first night with the new roof.

Apparently the young clarinetist impressed the management of the Roof Garden with his musicianship and professionalism, because he soon was given sole control of the band - he was the nightspot's "preference man," as he put it. "Boy, we used to pack that place up there," he remembered. The open-air club was only open in the summer until the space was enclosed. A picture of the first night the Roof Garden was open after the new roof was installed allegedly shows the Humphrey band on the balcony, but the faces are difficult to distinguish at that distance from the camera.

As Willie became established as a bandleader, quite a few excellent musicians passed through the ranks of his band. At one point the Humphrey band was a four-piece outfit with Charlie Love on trumpet and Fats Pichon on piano; According to Willie, his band usually did not use a piano, but "when I had occasion, I'd hire a piano player." One of the piano players he sometimes used was Buddy Christian. Christian (who dressed "fancy-like," according to Willie) also played banjo and guitar, and is possibly the banjoist who recorded many sides with Clarence Williams in the 1920s. When asked about that possibility later, Willie was uncertain if it was the same Buddy Christian. 

The bass chair in the Humphrey band was filled for a time by Jimmy Johnson, another veteran of the Bolden band. Willie was apparently not happy with Johnson, however, and fired him in favor of Henry Kimball, father of banjoist Narvin Kimball, who would be one of Willie's colleagues in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band many years later. Bebe Mathews, brother of trombonist Bill Mathews, was Willie's drummer. Finally, Willie Green was in the banjo chair. "He was a pretty good banjo player, and he was a very nice man to get along with," recalled Humphrey.

What did the Willie Humphrey band sound like? We can't really know at this point, but the band was probably an all-around dance band rather than a hard-core jazz unit. The fact that the band played at such upscale venues as the Pythian Roof Garden and the New Orleans Country Club (where Willie had a regular Saturday night gig) suggests that the band played in the relatively smooth style exhibited by A. J. Piron's New Orleans Orchestra in their recordings from the period. On the Piron sides, the band swings in the New Orleans style but does not get too heated. The musicians improvise, but the melody is always in view. It is easy to imagine that the Humphrey band played in a similar style. In any case, Willie later recalled some of the tunes in the band's repertoire: "Nice and Nifty," "Nickel in the Slot," and selections from the famous "Red Back Book" ragtime folio, including "Maple Leaf Rag."

The next biographical post will cover the rest of Willie Humphrey's activities in New Orleans during the 1920s

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.

Richard Knowles: Fallen Heroes: A History of New Orleans Brass Bands; Jazzology Press, 1996