(Paying Subscribers, at the bottom you will find two recordings by Peck Kelley, and two articles about him.)
In the first essay on Jack Teagarden (see the Index), we learned that in 1947, jazz historian Charles Edward Smith (1904-1970) conducted an oral history with the legendary trombonist for about six hours. This very significant resource was never published in any form, and I’ve had it on reel-to-reel tape for many years. (I thank my former grad student, jazz scholar and trombonist Dr. Alex Rodriguez, for transferring it to digital files for both of our use.) In the first two essays, we heard Jack play “St. James Infirmary,” and listened to him talk about his family history, his beginnings in music, and some early gigs in his native Texas. At the end of Part Two he told how he began working with his idol and mentor, pianist John Dickson "Peck" Kelley (1898-1980). Here are two photos from April 1960, when Jack was performing in Houston, and Kelley and clarinetist Dick Shannon, standing between them, came to listen:
Today we’ll hear two more parts of Jack’s oral history, where he talks largely about Kelley. Jack wasn’t the only one who was amazed by Kelley’s playing. His name regularly appeared in print, beginning with a brief mention by songwriter Hoagy Carmichael in Metronome, August 1933. He was the subject of an enthusiastic feature article by producer John Hammond in Downbeat, July 1939, entitled “Peck Kelley is No Myth!” In 1940, Collier’s, one of the most popular general magazines of the day, published a feature article about all the generous offers from leading musicians that Kelley had turned down. (Those two articles, plus two recordings, are below for Paying Subscribers.) The most extensive research on Kelley is in a long booklet by Dick Raichelson, included with the double LP of Peck’s home recordings from 1951 and 1953, which was released in 1999.
Kelley has often been compared to Art Tatum—but that comparison should be used cautiously. Teagarden himself made that analogy, but he never said that one could ever mistake Kelley for Tatum. At least in this oral history, he only pointed to one very specific similarity between Kelley and Tatum: On a blues, Kelley could play each chorus with a different approach, as Tatum did later. Jack does not say that, in general, Kelley sounded like Tatum. That would be impossible, because Kelley—a white man from Texas who was born in 1898—was from a completely different generation, social and musical environment than Tatum—a Black man from Ohio who was born in 1909. And, since Kelley famously refused to tour or to record, and, to my knowledge, Tatum never traveled to Texas, Tatum could not have heard him. (Kelley did perform briefly in St. Louis, Missouri, but that was in 1925, after Teagarden left the band and before Tatum was old enough to tour.)
After he died in 1980, tapes of Kelley were released that had been recorded informally at home, in 1951 and ‘53, and in a jam session in 1957. The late date complicates matters, because before these tapes were made, he had taken private lessons in music theory and classical music, which surely changed his playing. Many of the songs that he plays on these tapes were not even written when Teagarden played with him. And Peck was by then well aware of Tatum—in fact, friends remember him having Tatum and Vladimir Horowitz records in his collection. On the other hand, we do have Jack’s memory that Peck was playing in a similar manner back in the 1920s. And Kelley’s style is very different from Tatum’s, so clearly he didn’t copy Tatum, even if he might possibly have gotten some ideas from him. In any case, the recordings reveal Kelley to have been a truly individual and creative player whose music resembled Tatum’s mainly in the independence of his hands, and in his fondness for fast runs up and down the piano. As I have shown in a series of essays, the runs are a superficial aspect of Tatum’s style, not the basis of his immense contribution to jazz. But don’t get me wrong—Kelley was terrific in his own way.
Well, I think we’d better listen to Peck Kelley after all this discussion! Let’s hear a blues, since Teagarden specifically mentioned his blues playing. Kelley plays the traditional 12-bar form, but at 1:50, he uses an 8-bar form, adds two extra beats, then repeats it. He then concludes with a final 12-bar chorus. After that, at 3:00, he goes into a wildly inventive version of “Honeysuckle Rose,” published by Fats Waller and lyricist Andy Razaf in 1929. You can hear Peck’s audience of friends on this home recording from June 12, 1951. At the beginning, someone is keeping time on a book or a table, just for a bit. Let’s listen:
(Paying Subscribers, at the bottom you will find two more recordings by Peck Kelley, and two articles about him.)
In today’s first interview segment, Jack recalls that he stayed with Peck’s Bad Boys for a few years. This was actually from about September 1921 through the spring of 1923, and then again in the summer of 1924. I’ll continue to provide approximate dates like these in boldface, relying primarily on Jack Teagarden's Music by Howard Waters (1960). During his time off, he traveled with his uncle and played trombone for tips on the train. At 3:00, he talks about meeting a drummer who had a “trunkful of traps,” from whom he bought orchestra bells, also known as glockenspiel. “Traps,” short for “contraptions,” is what musicians called all of the items that drummers added to their sets—woodblocks, chimes, cowbells, and so on. Sometimes drummers were said to be playing “traps” or “trap set.” Duke Ellington’s drummer Sonny Greer had a famously lavish collection of such instruments— big tubular bells aka chimes are hanging vertically behind him in this 1943 photo. On the left are orchestra bells aka glockenspiel:
(Thank you to my friend Lou Grassi, drummer and subscriber, for clarifying the names of these instruments.)
Continuing on at 4:00, Jack says that he worked for his uncle who was in the oil business, when a boiler exploded. (There is a short blank space at 5:40 to 5:45).
At 6:30, and later at 9:30, he names some of tunes they played in those days: “Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble,” “St. Louis Blues,” “Maple Leaf Rag,” “Wolverine Blues,” “That’s A Plenty,” “Tiger Rag,” “Royal Garden Blues,” and “At the Jazz Band Ball.” “Wolverine..” is from 1923, and the others are earlier, so his memory is accurate. At 11:00, he adds that, very rarely, they would get requests for older songs like “My Wild Irish Rose” (published in 1899), and “Sweet Adeline” (1903). Jack didn’t sing at gigs yet, he says.
At 7:30 is the quote I discussed above, that Peck played great blues, with each chorus in a different style. He played good drums too. And at 8:40 Jack talks about drummers. At 10:15 he says it was traditional in the South that Black shoeshiners would sing jazz and ragtime riffs while working. This is one of the few moments in the oral history when he refers to the Black origins of the music. In other interviews he talked about the influence of hearing Black churchgoers sing spirituals when he was a youth.
At 11:50, Jack says he never heard anything like Kelley—he was “a genius.” He was based in Houston, and was taken for granted by the local audience, but he almost never left home, despite offers. At 13:20, Jack notes that Peck took up the pipe organ with pedals and played independently with his feet and hands, creating a one-man band. And at 14:30 Jack recalls that Peck took up golf.
At 14:55, Jack mentions that they were aware of saxophonist Frank Trumbauer’s work. (He adds, “with Bix” Beiderbecke, but that was later—they first recorded together in October 1924. He also mentions “In a Mist,” but that was a piano solo by Bix alone, made in 1927.) So when the Bad Boys lost their sax player—this must have been in the summer of 1924—they wired (that is, sent a telegram) with an offer to Trumbauer, who was with Ray Miller’s popular band. (Jack mentions “I Never Miss the Sunshine,” a June 1923 recording of Trumbauer with the Benson Orchestra of Chicago.) Trumbauer recommended Pee Wee Russell, who then doubled on sax as well as clarinet. He was formerly with Herbert Berger in St Louis. (There is another blank space here, from 16:52 to 17:02). Russell joined the band, but he seemed sickly so they took him to a doctor, who warned him about his lifestyle, and his “habit”—meaning, I believe, alcohol. Not long afterward, Russell went back to the Berger band, and made his first recording with them in November 1924 (not counting the last two notes on Benson’s “Fuzzy Wuzzy” from 1922). Here is this interview segment:
There’s still a lot more to this oral history, so let’s hear one more segment today: For the summer of 1924, the Bad Boys played primarily in Sylvan Beach Park, outside of Houston. (A photo of the band at that location is on this page.) At the beginning of the audio clip below, Jack recounts that on a night off they played in Galveston, and since they were still missing a reed player, Peck gave him some money to go to New Orleans for 24 hours to find a clarinetist. He didn’t find one, but he heard Louis Armstrong on a riverboat and briefly introduced himself. In general, Jack’s stories make sense chronologically, but this one does not. Louis’ last job on a riverboat was in the fall of 1921, probably September, but possibly as late as November. Teagarden had only joined Kelley around the end of September 1921 (some sources say the 21st), and at that time they would not have heard of Trumbauer or Russell. Jack also says this was “just before” Bessie Smith’s recordings with Armstrong, “Cold in Hand Blues” and “St. Louis Blues,” came out, but that was in 1925, which is way too late for this story. Jack said that Louis did not remember that first meeting, but Louis must have found Jack’s story plausible, because he later confirmed, in an interview in 1970, that he was playing on a steamboat in New Orleans when he first met, or possibly just saw, Jack. (Thank you to my friend and former graduate student, Ricky Riccardi, author of the three-volume Armstrong biography, for this information.) However, there is a way to resolve this: My conclusion is that Jack must have made two short trips to New Orleans, but in his mind he later combined them into one: The first was before he was with Peck Kelley—that is, before September 1921—and that was when he met Louis. For example, in the Summer of 1921, when Teagarden traveled from San Antonio to Shreveport and back, he possibly made a long detour to visit the famed city of New Orleans, and met Armstrong. (Louis says that Jack was looking for musicians for Kelley when they met, but that doesn’t affect my story, because he also said that he did not speak to Jack on that first occasion. So he could not have known why Jack was there—Teagarden must have told him that years later. )
Teagarden’s other early trip to New Orleans was in the summer of 1924, after Trumbauer had become better known and they had tried to recruit him. Louis had been living in Chicago since July 1922, so this later trip could not be when he met Jack.
Moving on, at 3:20 Jack recalls that clarinetist Leon Roppolo went from Chicago back to New Orleans for mental health reasons, and they got him to come to Houston to join the Bad Boys for a brief period—three months at most. This was in the summer of 1924. (Raichelson’s research indicates that Roppolo actually came to Houston to play with another band, but that he soon left them to join Kelley.) Roppolo played entirely by ear, and doubled on guitar. He left, again due to his psychological issues, and in fact he was later committed to a state mental hospital where he spent most of his life from 1925 onward. At 6:00, Jack says that he saw him a week before he died, in 1943 (not 1945 as Jack says). Researcher and subscriber Tom Buhmann reports that Jack’s pianist at the time, Johnny Wittver (spelled Wittwer in Lord’s discography) wrote a letter confirming that he went with Jack to visit Roppolo in early October 1943. The clarinetist died on October 14.
Smith asks at 7:10 for Jack to tell more of his years in Houston (1921-24). Jack recalls that Paul Whiteman’s group, then much smaller than his later orchestra, came through and the manager made Jack an offer. At the time he didn’t want to leave Peck, but of course he did join Whiteman in 1933. At 8:40, Jack recalls meeting Louis Prima and his brother Leon, both trumpeters. He says that he gave Louis his first cornet lesson. Louis of course went on to become quite a popular entertainer. (There is another short silent gap from 9:38 to 9:50.)
Now, presumably at Smith’s request, Jack says that he needs go back and explain his first marriage. In Part One he mentioned living in San Angelo, Texas in 1919. when he was about 15 years old, where he ran the movie projector. There he met a woman who lived near him. Apparently they kept in touch, because she phoned him years later, while he was on tour in Dallas, and they reconnected. He says he was touring with drummer Doc Ross, but he may have confused the names, because according to Waters he was actually with a trumpeter named, believe it or not, Ross Majestic, in Dallas in early 1924. I located his first wife’s name—Ora “Dee” Binyon, and the marriage date, April 7, 1924, in San Angelo. She came with him to Houston, but apparently San Angelo remained their home base, because that’s where Jack Jr. was born on December 5, 1925.
At 13:00, Jack talks about working with Doc Ross. The first tour with Ross lasted from about December 1924 through March 1925. It was in March that Jack stopped in San Antonio on the way to a gig with Ross in Wichita Falls, Texas. He parked the car in the Gunter Hotel garage, and saw a Stanley Steamer—a steam-operated automobile. The owner said it didn’t work, and that Jack could have it for $125 if he could get it running, which, with his facility for engines as discussed in Part One, he easily did. At 16:00, Jack’s second tour with Ross began around October 1925 in Albuquerque. There he met trumpeter “Wingy” Manone, and Jack got him a job with Ross. In February 1926, when Jack Jr. was about 8 weeks old, his wife Ora came along with the baby to the Los Angeles area, where Ross had engagements all the way through August. At 18:25 he recalls that a producer had them dressed like cowboys on horses and asked them to perform in the center of town, but as soon as they started playing, the horses bucked and threw them off. The disappointed crowd let out a “Bronx cheer.” At 19:38, he recalls that at the gig there were two other bands including a Black group called King Porter’s band. I suppose this band’s name was taken from Jelly Roll Morton’s “King Porter Stomp,” which by then had been recorded by Morton and others. Finally Jack recalls driving to N.Y.C. in September 1927, but Waters says this was in November 1927.
There is a lot more to come!
All the best,
Lewis
P.S. Paying Subscribers: More music by Peck Kelley, and two articles, are below for you.
