It was getting late and Mrs. Stella told Joe it was time to take me over to the room he had reserved for me in a boarding house at 3412 South Wabash Avenue, run by a friend of his named Filo. As we were going there in the taxi cab Joe told me that I would have a room and a private bath.
"Bath? Private bath? What's a private bath?" I asked.
"Listen you little slow foot sommitch," he said looking at me kind of funny, "don't be so damn dumb."
He had forgotten that he must have asked the same question when he first came up from New Orleans. In the neighborhood where we lived we never heard of such a thing as a bathtub, let alone a private bath. After Joe finished giving me hell about the question, I reminded him about the old days and how we used to take baths in the clothes washtub in the back yard, or else a foot tub. I can still remember when I used to take a bath in one of those tin tubs. In order to get real clean I would have to sit on the rim and wash myself from my neck to my middle. After that I would stand up and wash the rest of me. Papa Joe had to laugh when I told him about that.
Filo must have been waiting up for us because she came to the door the minute we rang the bell. She was a good-looking, middle-aged Creole gal. You could see the kindness in her face at once, and as soon as she spoke you felt relaxed.
"Is this my home boy?" she asked.
"Yep," Joe said, "this is old Dippermouth."
As soon as we came in Filo told me my room was upstairs and I could hardly wait to go up and witness that private bath of mine. However, I had to put that off because Filo and we sat around and talked ourselves silly about New Orleans as far back as any of us could remember. Filo had left New Orleans almost ten years before me, and she had come to Chicago even before Joe Oliver.
The next morning Filo fixed breakfast for me, and just like all Creole women she was a very good cook. After breakfast I went up and took a good hot bath in my private bathtub, and then I dressed to go out for a little stroll and see what the town looked like.
I did not know where I was going and I did not care much because everything looked so good. With all due respect to my home town every street was much nicer than the streets in New Orleans. In fact, there was no comparison.
When I reached home Filo had the big table all set up and waiting.
"Wash up," she said in her quiet voice, "and come and get these good victuals." Filo had about every good Creole dish one could mention.
After the meal I went upstairs to shave, take a bath and have a good nap. Since I was a kid the old masters had taught me that plenty of sleep is essential for good music. A musician cannot play his best when he is tired and irritable.
When I woke up and was just about dressed Filo came into my room.
"Although you have had a hearty dinner," she said, "you have got a lot of blowing to do and you need some more to hold you up."
I did not argue about that. Downstairs she gave me a sandwich covered with pineapple and brown sugar. Boy, was it good! When I finished that sandwich I started out for the opening night at the Gardens.
I was wearing my old Roast Beef, which was what I called my ragged tuxedo. Of course I had it pressed and fixed up as good as possible so that no one would notice how old it was unless they looked real close and saw the patches here and there. Anyway I thought I looked real sharp.
At eight-thirty on the dot a cab pulled up in front of Filo's house. Filo had ordered it for she was as excited as I was and she wanted everything to go right for the night of my debut with the King. It is a funny thing about the music fame and show business, no matter how long you have been in the profession opening night always makes you feel as though little butterflies were running around in your stomach.
Mrs. Major, the white lady who owned the Gardens, and Red Bud, the colored manager, were the first people I ran into when I walked through the long lobby. Then I ran into King Jones, a short fellow with a loud voice you could hear over a block away when he acted as master of ceremonies. (He acted as though he was not a colored fellow, but his real bad English gave him away.)
When I reached the bandstand there was King Oliver and all his boys having a smoke before the first set and waiting for me to show up. The place was filling up with all the finest musicians from downtown including Louis Panico, the ace white trumpeter, and Isham Jones, who was the talk of the town in the same band.
I was thrilled when I took my place with that grand group of musicians: Johnny and Baby Dodds, Honore Dutrey, Bill Johnson, Lil Hardin and the master himself. It was good to be playing with Baby Dodds again; I was glad to learn he had stopped drinking excessively and had settled down to his music. He was still a wizard on the drums, and he certainly made me blow my horn that night when I heard him beat those sticks behind one of my hot choruses.
Johnny Dodds was a fine healthy boy and his variations were mellow and perfect. His hobby was watching the baseball scores, especially for the White Sox team. Johnny and I would buy the Daily News; he would take out the baseball scores and give me the rest of the paper.
Bill Johnson, the bass player, was the cat that interested me that first evening at the Gardens. He was one of the original Creole Jazz Band boys and one of the first to come North and make a musical hit. He had the features and even the voice of a white boy – an ofay, or Southern, white boy at that. His sense of humor was unlimited.
Dutrey had a wonderful sense of humor and a fine disposition to boot. How well I remembered how I used to follow him and Joe Oliver all day long during the street parades when I was a boy in New Orleans. When he was discharged from the Navy he went to Chicago to live and he had joined Joe Oliver a few weeks before I came to the city. He still played a beautiful horn, but he suffered badly from shortness of breath. Whenever he had a hard solo to play he would go to the back of the bandstand and spray his nose and throat. After that the hep cats would have to look out, for he would blow one whale of a trombone. How he did it was beyond me.
For a woman Lil Hardin was really wonderful, and she certainly surprised me that night with her four beats to a bar. It was startling to find a woman who had been valedictorian in her class at Fisk University fall in line and play such good jazz. She had gotten her training from Joe Oliver, Freddy Keppard, Sugar Johnny, Lawrence Dewey, Tany Johnson and many other of the great pioneers from New Orleans. If she had not run into those top-notchers she would have probably married some big politician or maybe played the classics for a living. Later I found that Lil was doubling after hours at the Idleweise Gardens. I wondered how she was ever able to get any sleep. I knew those New Orleans cats could take it all right, but it was a tough pull for a woman.
When we cracked down on the first note that night at the Lincoln Gardens I knew that things would go well for me. When Papa Joe began to blow that horn of his it felt right like old times. The first number went over so well that we had to take an encore. It was then that Joe and I developed a little system for the duet breaks. We did not have to write them down. I was so wrapped up in him and lived so closely to his music that I could follow his lead in a split second. No one could understand how we did it, but it was easy for us and we kept it up the whole evening.
I did not take a solo until the evening was almost over. I did not try to go ahead of Papa Joe because I felt that any glory that came to me must go to him. He could blow enough horn for both of us. I was playing second to his lead, and I never dreamed of trying to steal the show or any of that silly rot.