When he asked me to join his orchestra I jumped at the opportunity. It meant a great advancement in my musical career because his musicians had to read music perfectly. Ory's men did not. Later on I found out that Fate Marable had just as many jazz greats as Kid Ory, and they were better men besides because they could read music and they could improvise. Fate's had a wide range and they played all the latest music because they could read at sight. Kid Ory's band could, catch on to a tune quickly, and once they had it no one could outplay them. But I wanted to do more than fake the music all the time because there is more to music than just playing one style. I lost no time in joining the orchestra on the Sydney.
In that orchestra David Jones played the melophone. He had joined us from a road show that came to New Orleans, a fine musician with a soft mellow tone and a great ability to improvise. I mention him particularly because he took the trouble between trips to teach me to read music. I learned very quickly. Br'er Jones, as I later called him, taught me how to divide the notes so that whenever Fate threw a new arrangement I was able to cope with it, and did not have to sit and wait with my cornet in my hand for Joe Howard to play the tune once and then turn it over to me. Of course I could pick up a tune fast, for my ears were trained, and I could spell a little too, but not enough for Fate Marable's band.
Fate knew all this when he hired me, but he liked my tone and the way I could catch on. That was enough for him. Being a grand and experienced musician he knew that just by being around musicians who read music I would automatically learn myself. Within no time at all I was reading everything he put before me. Fate was the kind of leader who liked to throw a hard piece of music at his boys and catch them off their guard. He would scan his part while the boys were out taking a smoke. After running his part down to perfection he would stamp his foot and say: "O.K. men. Here's your parts."
After the parts had been passed around he would stamp his foot again.
"Let's go," he would say.
Then we all scrambled to read the tune at first sight. By the time we were able to play our pans Fate had learned to play his without the notes. I thought that was marvelous. Fate was a very serious musician. He defied anybody to play more difficult music than he did. Every musician in New Orleans respected him. He had seen the good old days in Storyville, and had played cotch with the pimps and hustlers at the Twenty-Five gambling house. He had had fine jam sessions with the piano greats of those days such as Jelly Roll Morton, Tony Jackson, Calvin Jackson, Udell Wilson, Arthur Camel, Frankie Heinze, Boogus, Laurence Williams, Buddy Christian, Wilhelmina Bart Wynn, Edna Frances and many of the other all-time greats. He always won the greatest honors with them.
He had his own way of dealing with his musicians. If one of us made an error or played part of a piece wrong he would not say a thing about it until everyone thought it had been forgotten. When you came to work the next day with a bad hangover from the night before, he picked up the music you had failed with and asked you to play it before the other members of the band. And believe me, brother, it was no fun to be shown up before all the other fellows if you did not play that passage right; we used to call this experience our Waterloo. This was Fate's way of making his men rest properly so that they could work perfectly on the job the next night. I learned something from that, and to this day I still think it is good psychology.
When it was time for the steamer Sydney to leave New Orleans Fate Marable treated me very diplomatically. He knew I had never been out of the city in my whole life except to such small Louisiana small towns as Houma, West Wego, La Blaste (Ory's home town) and several other similar places. He wanted me to come with his band in the worst way. The older musicians, who idolized "Little Louis," told Fate he would be wasting his time even to try to get me to leave town. But Fate had a way of his own. He could see that I was very happy in his wonderful orchestra, playing the kind of music I had never played before in my life and piling up all the experiences I had dreamed of as an ambitious kid. He made me a feature man in his orchestra. I can still hear that fine applause I got from the cus tomers.
What with David Jones giving me a helping hand in reading and Fate's strictness as a leader I had no desire by this time to leave the orchestra. Mind you, I was only with them for a try-out, or what they call an audition nowadays. Things were jumping so good for me that the minute Fate popped the question to me I said "yes" so fast that Fate could scarcely believe his ears.
When the boat docked that night after the moonlight ride I made a beeline to tell Daisy all about it, thinking she would be glad about my advancement. Instead of that she gave me a disgusted look as though she thought I was only leaving New Orleans to get rid of her. My feathers fell something awful. While I continued to talk about my good fortune she gave me a sickly grin and one of those forced kisses on the cheek.
"Are you going away and leave me all alone?" she asked.
"Well, Daisy darling," I said, "this is my one big chance to do the things I have been wanting to do all my life. If I turn this offer down the way I have been doing with others 111 be stuck here forever with nothing happening."
Then I used that old line about "opportunity only knocks once." With these words that chick's face brightened right up.
"Honey, I understand."
Then she gave me a real big kiss. And everything came out all right.
At the time I was too young to know all the ropes. I found out when we reached Saint Louis that I could have brought Daisy along.
Just before I left, Daisy and I went down on Canal Street to shop with the money I had been given as an advance on my salary. That was something that had never happened to me before. The only advance money we musicians ever got in those days was the deposits on the gigs we used to play. The only person who got that money was the contractor for the job or the leader of our little tail gate band. I never signed contracts for any of those jobs. That was done by Joe Lindsey, our drummer, who would keep all the deposits. The rest of us did not know enough to pay attention to what was going on. We were so glad to get a chance to blow our horns that nothing else mattered.
The only times we knew that money had been deposited in advance was when we had too many engagements in a night for us to be able to fill them all. Then people would come and demand that Joe return their money. Like fools we would back Joe up and play the job another day. New Orleans was famous for this sort of thing. From the big-shot band leaders such as Buddy Bolden, Joe Oliver, Bunk Johnson, Freddie Keppard and Emmanuel Perez, down to the kids of my age money was handled in this way.
That is one of the reasons I never cared to become a band leader; there was too much quarreling over petty money matters. I just wanted to blow my horn peacefully as I am doing now. I have always noticed that the band leader not only had to satisfy the crowd but that he also had to worry about the box office.
In addition to Fate, Joe Howard and myself, the other members of Marable's band when I joined were Baby Dodds, drums; George (Pops) Foster, bass; David Jones, melophone; Johnny St. Cyr, banjo guitar; Boyd Atkins, swing violin, and another man whose name 1 have forgotten. Any kid interested in music would have appreciated playing with them, considering how we had to struggle to pay for lessons. Most of the time our parents could not pay fifty cents for a lesson. Things were hard in New Orleans in those days and we were lucky if we ate, let alone pay for lessons. In order to carry on at all we had to have the love of music in our bones.