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