The Last Decade (Bio part 12: 1985-1994)

 The last ten years of Willie Humphrey's life saw a continuation of the routines he had established. He played two nights a week at Preservation Hall, along with periodic tours, occasional engagements at the Palm Court Cafe and other venues, and private functions. As one of the oldest performing musicians in New Orleans, he was held in high esteem, and was considered by most observers to be the dean of traditional New Orleans clarinetists.

During this final decade, however, his playing finally started to show the effects of age. His finger technique had always been impressive, but with occasional hints of wildness or uneveness. This tendency became mor pronounced as he approached his 90th birthday; his fingers would not always do exactly what he asked of them.

Few jazz musicians ehibit the same tone quality late in life as they had in their youth. Subtle changes could be heard in Willie's tone through the years. But at this late stage in life, Willie's sound became more gnarled and unsubtle, sometimes leaning toward harshness.

Humphrey's mind stayed as sharp as ever, though, and this included his musicial imagination. His improvisational imagination continued to develop, even if it became more difficult to express his musical ideas through the clarinet. We can find many recorded examples in Willie's last decade of wonderfully conceived musical ideas that are marred by performance problems. But we can be thankful that such flaws showed up so late in Humphrey's career - and that his musical conceptions were so strong that we can overlook some performance weaknesses and enjoy his amazing improvisations. 

Here's a perfect example of that dichotomy: brilliantly conceived clarinet playing paired with some performance problems like a gnarled sound, some uneven fingering, and some squeaks. But so what? This is one of my favorite recorded performances by Willie Humphrey. It's "Hindustan," from the Sony album Preservation Hall Jazz Band Live! I don't know the exact recording date, but Willie was likely 90 or 91 years old when it was recorded. From his first ensemble notes, it's clear that he came to play, and his two-chorus solo is simply brilliant. And yes, in some ways he sounds like a 90- or 91-year-old clarinet player - but a supremely talented one.

During this period Willie aquired a protege in the person of clarinetist Brian O'Connell. O'Connell had been part of the Minnesota traditional jazz scene before moving to New Orleans in 1981. Around 1983 he began working the door at Preservation Hall, giving him frequent opportunities to hear Humphrey perform. O'Connell was impressed by Humphrey's playing as well as being struck by his impression that Willie was "someone from another time," as he put it. O'Connell asked, through Allen Jaffe, if Willie would give him clarinet lessons. Humphrey was not interested in teaching at that point in his life, so O'Connell began learning from him through the simple device of hiring Willie as a sideman for gigs, notably for the parties that French Quarter resident and jazz lover Andrea duPlessis held on her porch. Sitting beside the veteran clarinetist for the duration of a performance while listening and asking questions turned out to be a satisfactory substitute for formal lessons.

One of the first lessons concerned Willie's huge sound, which could fill any hall. O'Connell assumed, as most clarinetists probably would, that such volume was produced by using an open mouthpiece and a hard reed.* He was surprised to discover that Humphrey used a soft reed and a relatively closed mouthpiece. According to Willie, his sound came from the double-lip embouchure, which he called the "double tuck," that he learned from his grandfather. Most clarinetists today play with a single-lip embouchure; that is, with their top teeth resting on the mouthpiece. The double-lip embouchure was derived from the French clarinet tradition, and is still used by a minority of classical players, such as Richard Stolzman. In a discussion of the matter with O'Connell, jazz historian Bill Russell told him that all students of the famous Tio family of New Orleans clarinetists used the "double tuck."

O'Connell also discovered that, unlike many woodwind- players, Willie was not picky about reeds, and in fact would use every reed in a box. (Many saxophone and clarinet players discard one half to two thirds of the reeds in a typical box.) At the 1991 recording session that produced the Two Clarinets on the Porch album, Humphrey admonished the younger clarinetist to stop changing reeds in search of the perfect one and to play the one he had on his clarinet.

Two Clarinets on the Porch gives us a snapshot of the Humphrey / O'Connell collaboration. The two clarinetists are easily distinguishable; O'Connell has a conventionally attractive sound on his instrument, while the older man has a rich, woody, hoary tone. In spite of their very different approaches, the two work very well together.

In addition to the esteen he had for Humphrey's musical talent, O'Connell was impressed by Willie's personality and physical condition. For most of the time they knew each other, O'Connell never remembered Willie being sick. O'Connell only saw him angry once, but it was a pretty memorable occasion: Humphrey got into a fight with veteran banjoist Emanuel Sayles behind the back gate of Preservation Hall. Like most squabbles between New Orleans musicians, this one blew over quickly.

Willie began another fruitful association in the 1980s, the Maryland Jazz Band of Cologne, Germany. This group, led by Gerhard "Doggy" Hund, was one of the best of the many European groups performing traditional New Orleans-style jazz. The Marylanders invited many New Orleans musicians to tour and record with them over the years, including Willie Humprey. He toured Europe with them seeral times and made three full albums with them, in addition to scattered tracks which appeared on various collections. In fact, Willie's final issued recording was with this band; my post about that track is here.

The last album under Willie's name as sole leader was recorded in April, 1988, a few years before Two Clarinets on the Porch. Issued as New Orleans Jazz From Willie Humphrey on LP, it was retitled Willie Humphrey In New Orleans when reissued on CD (with additional tracks) in 1996. The album features a nice international quartet: Willie is joined by German trumpeter Norbert Susemihl, Japanese pianist Mari Watanabe, and British drummer Emile Martyn.

There would be a few more recordings, like an album by Brit Chris Barber and "His New Orleans Friends," as the CD bills them. Humphrey is in excellent form on this 1991 recording - more about this album later, perhaps.

Willie continued to tour with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band into his 90s, and played at the Hall almost until the very end of his life. I saw him perform there on April 2, 1994. (I write about that occasion and the other times I saw him here.) His last performance was at Preservation Hall eight weeks later, on May 27. After that concert, he suffered a seemingly mild heart attack. He was expected to recover, but he died in his sleep a week and a half later, on June 7, 1994.

Willie's funeral was held four days later, on Friday, June 11. The family opted for a private burial, but a brass band played as the coffin was carried out and as the hearse drove away. At the time of his death at 93, Willie Humphrey was the oldest active jazz musician in New Orleans, and a link to the earliest days of jazz.

*An "open" clarinet mouthpiece is one with a wider opening between the tip of the mouthpiece and the reed. Generally, a more open mouthpiece will produce more volume, although control and tone quality may be sacrificed. Similarly, a harder reed can generally produce more volume than a softer one, but can make it harder to control the instrument when playing softly.

Sources:

Interview with Brian O'Connell; April 4, 2001, New Orleans.

Raymond Lee: New Orleans Clarinet: A Discography of Willie Humphrey, Gerard Bielderman, 1996.

James Gill: "Distinguished Musician's Funeral," New Orleans Times-Picayune; June 15, 1994 .

The 1970s Into the 80s (Bio part 11: 1970-1984)

For Willie Humphrey, the 1970s brought more appearances at Preservation Hall, more touring and more recording. Early in that decade (July, 1970), a Preservation Hall-sponsored band featuring Billie and DeDe Pierce (and including Willie) played at the Newport Jazz Festival. The Pierce band also began making regular visits to the West Coast - visits which often included stops at Stanford University for their annual Summer Festival. One of those visits, in July, 1972, resulted in an LP on the Preservation Hall label: Billie & DeDe and Their Preservation Hall Jazz Band Live at Stanford. For whatever reason, this seems to be the only album released by Preservation Hall that has never been reissued; it's been out of print for many years. (For that reason, look for it in this blog in the future.)

The banjo player on the Stanford album was Frank Demond. Demond was a Los Angeles native who was very successful in the construction business. He loved New Orleans jazz, and would sit in with visiting New Orleans musicians on both banjo and trombone. Sometime around the end of the 1960s Demond moved to New Orleans and became a full time musician, eventually becoming part of the main Preservation Hall touring band after Jim Robinson died. Demond thus became part of a trend - as more and more of the older New Orleans musicians passed, their places were taken by younger disciples, not only from New Orleans but from other parts of the country - and the world.

Demond's presence in New Orleans benefited the city's music scene beyond his playing when he used some of his savings to start the Smoky Mary record label. Smoky Mary, named after the train that for many years took New Orleanians to the resorts, restaurants, and beaches of Milneberg on Lake Pontchartrain, specialized in the traditional New Orleans jazz that Demond loved. Demond documented many older New Orleans musicians, and among the fine Smoky Mary releases is Willie Humphrey's first album under his own name, featured in the previous post of this blog.

One way to look at the history of Preservation Hall is to observe the process by which it became a brand, with an image and a public identity. The branding really clicked into place in 1976, when the Preservation Hall Jazz Band signed with Columbia Records. From the beginning of the venue, the "Preservation Hall Jazz Band" was whatever band was playing at the Hall that night - this is still true today. But by 1976, there was definitely a "main" Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which was the public face of the Hall and the main touring band. (This is also still true today.) With the death of George Lewis, DeDe Pierce, Jim Robinson, and others, The Humphrey Brothers Band became "The" Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and retained that position into the 1990s. The band had a fairly stable personnel: Percy Humphrey on trumpet, brother Willie on clarinet, Frank Demond on trombone, James "Sing" Miller on piano and vocals, Narvin Kimball's banjo and vocals, Allan Jaffe (the owner of Preservation Hall) on tuba, and drummer Cie Frazier. (Of course, there were changes as musicians aged.) The Columbia contract led to four full albums by this band between 1976 and 1986, with more tracks showing up on various collections after that. To many listeners, the Humphrey Brothers' "Preservation Hall Jazz Band," was the face of New Orleans music during this period. And it was in this context that I first heard Willie Humphrey, on a TV special from the Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center.

In 1976 the band also played on a new live comedy TV show - Saturday Night Live. Their appearance was on the infamous Louis Lasser episode, when that actress was the host and special guest. Lasser's behavior on set was supposedly so bizarre and unpleasant that she was banned from future appearances on the show. (Lasser has denied this.) In any case, the band's performance of "Panama" can be seen and heard here.

The classic lineup of the Humphrey Brothers Band at Preservation Hall

Humphrey appeared on a pretty interesting record from this period - an LP led by Dave Bartholomew, a trumpeter and vocalist who is probably best known as the composer and producer of many fine New Orleans rhythm-and-blues recordings, particularly those of Fats Domino. Apparently, the idea of Bartholomew making a traditional jazz recording came from a conversation he had with Allen Jaffe. The album, Dave Bartholomew's New Orleans Jazz Band, features both New Orleans jazz standards and "trad" versions of Bartholomew's collaborations with Domino. The band is a solid New Orleans jazz band; besides Dave and Willie, Frog Joseph is on trombone, Justin Adams on banjo, Frank Fields on bass, and drummer Frank Parker. The album, on the Broadmoor label, is very accomplished and entertaining, with the Domino rock-and-roll hits coming off very well when translated to the traditional jazz idiom. Bartholomew's trumpet playing is lively and assured, although not very original, and his vocals are pleasant. Willie Humphrey's clarinet is heavily featured; he is even honored with a selection titled "Mr. Willie Plays the Blues," which has two fine solo blues choruses by the dedicatee.

During this period Willie made several appearances on Garrison Keillor's NPR radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. Willie's backing bands on the show usually included the fine traditional jazz pianist and clarinet Butch Thompson. In addition to playing music, he sometimes participated in the humorous skits featured on the show, including "commercials" for the fictitious Powermilk Biscuits, which supposedly gave "shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done." One of the scripts for a Powedermilk commercial survives in the Historic New Orleans Collection:

Powdermilk Biscuits. They are so good, I recommend them to all of my shy people from eight to eighty... all my young friends. At my age, however, which is eighty-three years and eleven months, I don't have to be shy anymore. I can stand up and tell you all the good things I've done in my life, knowing that the people who might disagree with me aren't around anymore.

My name is Willie Humphrey, and I invented jazz music in New Orleans in the year of 1918. I was seventeen years of age, and it was a warm day and I was playing my clarinet. People said, "What? What's that?" I said, "That's jazz music." They said, "Who are you?" I said, "Willie Humphrey!" They said, "All right. We'll remember that!"

That was the year after I invented the clarinet and three years before I invented radio. That was in 1921. I was twenty, and it was a warm day and I was feeling good and was fooling around with a fishing pole and a Mason jar and a fountain pen, you know the way a person does sometimes on a fishing pond. I put them together a certain way and that was the first radio. What do you think of that? I turned it on and there I was playing jazz music on the clarinet.

It was a very satisfying experience, it was, and so it is today, playing on the radio with all my friends and with my youngest son, Mr. Butch Humphrey. He was born in 1943. I was forty-two. It was a warm day, and I was feeling good, and I am proud of how well he turned out. A man who has done so much in his life has no reason to be shy. All he has to do is tand up and tell the truth. If anyone else claims to have invented jazz before I did, let them speak now or forever hold his peace. And I thank you. Do you believe me?

Toward the end of the period covered in this post, Willie made his second album under his name, also for the Smoky Mary label. New Orleans Clarinet Vol. 2 pairs Humphrey's clarinet with the trombone of Frank Demond, along with Jeff Hamilton on piano and veteran bassist Chester Zardis, who like Willie was born in 1900. There is no drummer, but Betty Carter adds unobtrusive washboard percussion on some tracks. Willie's Preservation Hall band partner James "Sing" Miller adds vocals on a couple of tunes. It's a pleasant, enjoyable album, but Humphrey perhaps never reaches the improvisational heights he of which he was capable. I'll spare one track from that judgement: "Blues for Emma," dedicated to New Orleans pianist Sweet Emma Barrett, who had died earlier that year. Willie and the band play a heartful slow blues to honor their friend. Humphrey also included "Willie's Cabbage Song," which had originally been recorded in 1924 by blues singer Maggie Jones, who called it "Anybody Here Want to Try My Cabbage." This double-entendre song with Willie's vocal was an audience favorite in Humphrey's later years.

Recording for Columbia, regular appearances at Preservation Hall, tours of Europe and "every state in the country" (as he once said) - this was a rich period for Willie Humphrey, during which he acheived a more prominet public profile than ever before.

Sources:

Steve Baffrey, liner notes to Billie and DeDe and Their Preservation Hall Jazz Band Live at Stanford

William Carter, Preservation Hall, W. W. Norton, 1991

Raymond Lee, New Orleans Clarinet: A Discography of Willie Humphrey, Gerard Bielderman, 1996

Powdermilk Biscuits commercial transcript - William Russell Collection; Historic New Orleans Collection

Under His Own Name, For the First Time

 With the biographical entries, we've just about reached an important milestone in Willie Humphrey's career, so we'll take a short detour to talk about it. In May, 1974, at the age of 73, Willie finally recorded an album under his own name for the first time. 

The Smoky Mary record label was named after the train that ran from New Orleans to the resort of Milneburg, on the shore of Lake Pontchatrain north of the city. When the talented trombonist and banjoist Frank Demond moved to New Orleans for good in 1973, he used some of the money he had made in the construction business to record the city's veteran jazz musicians and issue the results as LPs on Smoky Mary. Willie Humphrey was one of the first of these veterans he recorded, and the New Orleans Clarinet album was soon issued as Humphrey's debut as leader of a recording session.

It was worth the wait. Humphrey is accompanied by a rhythm section only - Sing Miller on piano, Demond on banjo, and veterans James Prevost on bass and Cie Frazier on drums. The recording captures Willie's unique clarinet sound beautifully, and the absence of any other horns allows the clarinet plenty of room. Most of the tracks have vocals, though, and there is much tasty interaction as the clarinet provides obligatos to the vocals of Joseph "Kid Twat" Butler and Sing Miller. Willie also contributes three vocals himself, all on songs he had become associated with: "Little Liza Jane," "Bourbon Street Parade," and "Bill Bailey." Butler's three vocals deserve special mention; by this date his vocal delivery had evolved to include bizarre, stream-of-consciousness narrations with only questionable relevance to the original lyrics. Butler's "Pennies From Heaven" somehow turns into a dissertation on the agricultural and economic implications of the migration from country to city. (Incidentally, Butler's possibly obscene nickname stems from the appearance of the part in his hair when he was a young man.)

In some ways this is a particularly self-effacing album. Although Willie plays constantly, setting up the melodies and accompanying the vocals, many of the selections don't feature clarinet solos. Humphrey's ensemble playing, though, is excellent throughout; his obligato to Miller's vocal on "Amen" is particularly moving. Of his solos, that on "Bourbon Street Parade" is outstanding in its balance of daring and careful construction. On "Oh, How I Miss You Tonight," Willie's solo is practically a lesson on the creative exposition of a popular melody in jazz. It's almost if he is combining the traditional roles of the clarinet and trumpet in traditional jazz - he plays fairly straight melodic phrases which he answers himself with elegant filigrees. 

The session was later licensed to the Mardi Gras label, which released many of the tracks on CD. You can sample half of the original album below - although I would urge those lucky enough to have a turntable to seek out the original Smoky Mary LP. For one thing, the CD doesn't have the 1973 version of "China Boy." After the tune is finished, Willie is heard to say, "I about did my best on that one." He did, and those words also apply to the entire album.

Little Liza Jane

Bourbon Street Parade

Pennies From Heaven

Oh, How I Miss You Tonight

Amen

Sweet Georgia Brown

Bill Bailey