In 1922 five kids from Austin High School out at Chicago's west end, started a little band. The buff brick high school they attended was so much like others it was hard to describe, and the boys themselves were the sort who might have gone on to college but for their interest in music. All played violin except Bud Freeman, the greenhorn of the bunch. Their interest in music was so keen that they played and practiced in school, in their homes, and even in the vacant apartment of a house owned by the father of one of them. "The poor people downstairs", Jim Lannigan commented, "they finally had to move out".
Jim Lannigan played piano, Jimmy McPartland played comet, Dick McPartland played banjo and guitar, Bud Freeman played C-melody sax, and Frank Teschmaker was learning alto sax, but still played violin. The ages of the group ranged from fourteen to seventeen.
Drawn together by a common ambition, they went as a group to theaters, parties, and restaurants. Coming from comfortable middle-class homes they could, in the beginning, pursue their musical ambitions as a hobby, this gave them much more freedom of choice than would have been the case with a different background. At that time the Al Johnson Orchestra, heard in a local theater, was their inspiration. This gave them the incentive they needed and they improved rapidly. Soon they were good enough to play at the afternoon high school dances that were popular in Chicago. These dances had the endorsement of the Parent-Teacher Association, no doubt on the theory that they were a healthy social outlet for youthful energies. Over at Hull House was a band made up of neighborhood kids, most of them from the tenements. There, membership in the band was a double inducement. Some, like Benny Goodman, joined it to get a chance to play on a real instrument, others were chiefly interested in the fact that the band got a free trip to summer camp.
The little band played at high school fraternity dances, at the homes of fellow students, for supper or for nothing at all. Practicing day and night and never quite satisfied, their studies had been forgotten.
Across the street from Austin High was an ice cream parlor known as 'The Spoon and the Straw'. The boys dropped in there often, as did other students from their high school, and usually someone had a nickel to feed the automatic phonograph. One day they made a tremendous discovery. It was a record by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, made under the name of the Friars' Inn Society Orchestra. They played the record over and over, none of them knowing who the clarinet was on Tin Roof, but all of them getting a kick out of hearing that kind of music for the first time. They turned to each other and said, "That's the stuff....That's it!" So audible in their amazement that even the soda-jerk looked over at them in surprise.
The Rhythm Kings, to whom the young Chicagoans were listening for the first time, had grown up where jazz was born, where in a few compact blocks in New Orleans you could hear jazz that was authentic. And so, patterning their style after the veterans of New Orleans, The Rhythm Kings, had the satisfaction that they were getting their music from its source.
The Austin High School Gang had no such opportune environment. What you heard when you listened to jazz might be a four-piece honky-tonk combination playing as if there were nothing to go by, or it might be a fourteen-piece band emasculating the already dreary strains of Tin Pan Alley's most commercial output. In this atmosphere of confusion the significance of the records on the nickelodeon at 'The Spoon and the Straw' may be appreciated. Listening to the Rhythm Kings, the Austin High Gang heard real jazz for the first time. The Austin Gang came definitely and immediately under the influence of the Rhythm Kings. They tried to get the same steady, compelling rhythm, contrapuntal improvisations, and comparable quality in tone color. When a bit later on they heard Gennett records made by Bix Beiderbecke and the Wolverines, their pre-professional training was almost complete. In this way the impact of New Orleans music, strained first through the Rhythm Kings and next through the Wolverines, stamped itself on the musical style of the Chicagoans from the very beginning. It was only natural that they name themselves after the Friars' Inn Society Orchestra [Husk O'Hare's nom de plume for the Rhythm Kings] and call themselves the Blue Friars. Having heard records, they went out to hear the bands themselves. it was about this time they discovered King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. From then on, their identity with New Orleans jazz was complete.
One of the first dances given by the Blue Friars was at the Columbus Park Refectory. They paid eight dollars' rent to get the hall from three until six in the afternoon, and they charged fifty cents admission. Jimmy "borrowed" type from the school print shop to make up tickets and handbills on a home press. On that day, each of the boys felt a responsibility that was less to Austin High than to Leon Rappolo and Bix Beiderbecke. "The kids came from Austin and other high schools", Jimmy said. "They went crazy ".
Sometimes the band played at Lewis Institute, which Dave Tough attended, and he added his drums to the little band. It was Dave who found trombonist Floyd O'Brien at a University of Chicago jam session. The dances at Lewis were "tea dances", on the model of those endorsed by the P.T.A. Each of them got fifty cents for the afternoon's work. Benny Goodman occasionally played with them, though Tesch felt that he was not close to their musical ideas. Joe Sullivan also played piano at Lewis. They played Jazz Me Blues the Dixieland pieces, and numbers from the repertoire of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings.
Jim Lannigan got hold of a bass, watched how Chink Martin slapped it, and was soon able to play it in the band. Then, with Dave North on piano, they could call themselves an orchestra. They didn't have a business manager and hardly needed the inducement of cold cash to make them work. "Let's get together and play", was the first law of their band.
In the fall of 1924 the Wolverines lost Bix. They were in New York at the time, playing the huge Cinderella Ballroom on Broadway. They tried out Sharkey Bonnano of New Orleans but he hadn't ripened, so they wired to Chicago for Jimmy McPartland. While in New York the Wolverines recorded for Brunswick, and many listeners hearing McPartland's cornet, mistook it for Bix. Actually his tone was bland compared to that of Bix and his style hadn't the rolling quality of the original Wolverines' cornet.
The Wolverines spent the winter in Florida, coming back to Indiana, their old stamping ground, for the spring college dances. Jimmy Hartwell and Vic Moore had left the band. Vic Berton, who had made the trip East with the Wolverines, was on drums, Jimmy Lord on clarinet. Dick Voynow, the pianist, was finally the only member of the original outfit. Though there were temporary changes in personnel, every member of the Wolverines was eventually replaced by a member of the Austin Gang.
During the lean months the boys who had been left behind had temporary jobs of varying duration. One was as the pit band in a movie house prior to the days of sound. Their job, of course, was to play music appropriate to the film. On one occasion the band, interested in the piece it was playing, was unaware that the newsreel was on. Field Marshal Foch solemnly laid a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier while the Austin Gang had an informal jam session, beating it out. Suddenly one of them noticed the discrepancy. "Holy smoke!" he exclaimed, "we're playing the wrong tune!" The manager of the theater had made the same discovery and was on his way down the aisle, to give them their notice. They needed work and were relieved when Jimmy came back and with Husk O'Hare, the most unmusical Chicagoan of them all, they formed "Husk O'Hare's Wolverines". Over WHT the band was labeled "O'Hare's Red Dragons".
With Floyd O'Brien, Dave North, and Dave Tough added to the Austin Gang, Husk O'Hare's Wolverines got a job at White City, a large dance hall of Chicago's south side amusement park. On Saturdays Mezz Mezzrow or Fud Livingston played third sax. A Goldkette unit consisting of Bix Beiderbecke, Pee Wee Russell, and Frank Trumbauer, was playing at Hudson Lake, Indiana, and sometimes came in to hear the band. Ben Pollack, who was at the Southmore, and Louis Armstrong, who was at the Sunset, both came out. Louis, once stood near the bandstand and commented, "Hit it. Yeah, boy!"
While the band was still playing tea dances at Lewis, Tesch was practicing clarinet, blowing on Bud's before he got one of his own. Often he'd practice in the locker room of the Y.M.C.A., his style showing traces of the glissandi from violin playing.
At the Sunset and at Kelly's Stable Tesch heard Johnny Dodds, learning from him, as well as from Bix, a method of playing that was somewhat like trumpet phrasing. He also went to The Nest (later the Apex) where he sat in with Jimmy Noone, a clarinet player whose style was typical New Orleans, fast runs of notes that seemed evenly spaced in tempo made up flowing passages, interspersed with long, sustained notes and sudden excursions into the upper register. Tesch learned the one without losing the other. Bud, meanwhile, had become interested in the tenor sax. When he heard Coleman Hawkins later on, in a Detroit ballroom, it was exactly the lesson he needed in order to develop a style of his own. Hawkins, who has since become known as a virtuoso of the tenor sax, then had a simple direct style, characterized by clear and precise attack.
Chicago style was closer to the beat than most styles having a comparable "swing". Describing it, Bud Freeman said, "This was right on the note. In order to keep time you have to think of pushing on the beat, all the time. There are fellows who play ahead of the beat or behind the beat. But on the beat gives you that fine rhythm. We worked it out from playing together. We studied and listened a lot". He said that you could compare it with the way Black bands played, though it was not the same thing, it was similarly motivated. "It came from playing together. We used to listen to and love the same things".
At White City, O'Hare's Wolverines stayed in the shell a great part of the night and when feeling good, begrudged themselves time off. They had some stocks, but usually played without arrangements. Sometimes Jimmy stood up to lead. In the band were Teschmaker, Jim Lannigan, Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland, Dave Tough, Floyd O'Brien, Dave North, and Dick McPartland. Later George Wettling played traps. Late at night when they played New Orleans tunes you could hear the high strong tone of Tesch's clarinet cutting through the dance hall din. A big hall and a big tone. Tesch showed the way in collective improvisation, slashing the tones of the upper register, the band getting hotter and the dancers so excited that the floor shook and the manager begged the musicians to take it easy.
On week ends at White City, Sig Myers' Orchestra with Muggsy Spanier played opposite them. This band had tremendous sock, and was even closer to the spirit of the Black bands than Husk O'Hare's Wolverines. The two bands undoubtedly affected each other. Muggsy was an old-timer. Back in the early twenties he'd had a cornet team with Bix. Keeping to the middle range of the cornet, Muggsy played in the rhythmic style of Oliver and Armstrong, and from the former may have gained his dexterity with mutes. He kept to this style, even when playing in name bands. Years later, when a baton wielder wanted him to play high notes, Muggsy Spanier retorted, "Aw, get a piccolo!"
At the Columbia Hall "dancing school" where Myers' band played opposite a band with Louis Armstrong, there were real battles of music. It was tough, rough, and so noisy that the bands had to play loud to be heard. One band was on the floor and the other on a balcony. For a time the Rhythm Kings played there, and apparently felt a trifle condescending toward the younger musicians. One reaction was "We killed those guys!" But the Myers' band were not lacking in confidence, either, and boasted of how they "blasted" the Rhythm Kings.
For the White City job Sig Myers had Volly de Faut on clarinet, Myers on violin, Floyd Town played sax, Shorty Williamson on piano, George Petrone played drums, Marvin Saxbe on banjo and guitar, Arnold Loyocano on upright bass, Muggsy Spanier and one other cornet, and trombonist Bob Picilli. At the end of the White City engagement the band was re-formed to go into the Midway Garden at 60th and Cottage Grove. Tesch joined Muggsy for this job and the Wolverines broke up at last, Freeman, Lannigan, and Jimmy McPartland going with Art Kassel, and the Midway Garden band shaped up around Tesch and Muggsy.
For more than a month after he began playing at Midway Garden Tesch came in each night, said hello, then sat down and got to work. Not a word out of him. Later, when he and Muggsy became friendly, they went to jam sessions together and often at night they'd have a few drinks, then go down to a French restaurant in the Loop.
Muggsy was from the South Side, where he'd gone to parochial school. So was George Wettling, who became the drummer in the Midway Garden band. Another recruit to this band from Husk O'Hare's Wolverines was Floyd O'Brien. Jess Stacy came into the Midway Garden one night, shivering, wearing a tuxedo but no overcoat. One of the men in the band knew Jess very well, though some remembered him from the "tea dance" days. Stacy came directly to the point and said that he was looking for a job. He had been playing piano at a little place in the Loop that had closed down. Muggsy said, "Go on upstairs, we got all the gin upstairs". Stacy headed for the stairs, Muggsy watching him as he blew softly into his cornet. While Jess was getting warm the band played Poor Little Rich Girl, a number they really swung out on. Jess came down, feeling warmer inside. Muggsy asked him if he was ready to play and Jess nodded. "What would you like to play" Muggsy asked. Jess said, "That Poor Little Rich Girl suits me fine". He sat down at the piano, chording skillfully with an easy rhythm. When the musicians came in with him they played softly so that they could listen to the piano.
Although Chicago's local of the American Federation of Musicians was Jim Crow (almost all locals except New York City are, even today) the musicians themselves got around this policy. They played together in the Black district, at speakeasies patronized by musicians, and in the homes of such musicians as Johnny Dodds. "It was jam session all the time", Wettling remarked. Joe Marsala at that time did more listening than playing. But he liked Noone, Tesch, and Dodds, and was learning clarinet himself. He drove a truck for a living, and bought records on pay day.
They jammed at The Cellar with Wingy Mannone, and at the 3 Deuces Bix often led the sessions. Eddie Condon played there a lot and after a night of it would buy a bottle of milk from the wagons to drink on the way home. The idea that the Chicagoans were at this time (1926-1928) amateurs was of course without foundation. Condon, for instance, had his first union job at the age of seventeen.
There was among them one bona fide amateur. This was Charles Pierce, a south side butcher who played jazz for the love of it. He used what profits he derived from the meat market to pay high salaries and thus attract the best men to his band. It was not a regular band but a pick-up outfit playing week-end engagements and making phonograph records. Pierce always supplied a bottle for these jobs. The first recorded example of Chicago music was made in 1926 when Charlie Pierce, with Muggsy and Tesch in the band, made some records for Paramount, a company that specialized in "race" records. Because no one knew the tune, Muggsy had to sing the verse of Darktown Strutters, then they waxed it. Tesch was nervous and kept pushing up too close to the mike.
Pierce played alto sax, and though his style lacked brilliance it was clean-cut and in the mood. Once Pierce heard a clarinet player he didn't like, hired him and put him in the band so that he could hear Teschmaker. He'd have the newcomer play a chorus and then have Tesch play six to show him.
Although the Chicagoans had jobs, the big hotels still went for the name bands. Often the Chicagoans, who were far better musicians, generally speaking, eked out a living in the joints that flourished during the Prohibition era. Most of these places were really low down, like a cafe on North Clark Street, described by Wettling, where the cab drivers came in with guns sticking in their leggings. They'd get drunk and have battles. Then they'd begin to shoot. We'd duck into the back room, behind the safe.
The little clubs were settings for many fights. Young gangsters, coming in from outside, tried to break up the dance. If the law got around it was usually when the fighting was over. When it was too close, the drummer had to hold the bass drum in the air so it wouldn't get smashed. "But we got good money then", a musician confided. "One job on South State Street paid 118 dollars a week".
The Midway Garden Orchestra got a job at the Triangle Club at the end of its Midway Garden engagement. Although he paid the regular men well, the boss of the Triangle Club hired substitutes and extra men without paying them. They'd take out what they could in meals and drinks. When the union threatened to get tough the boss said he'd bomb the union. He meant it, too. But the regular men liked the job. As one of them put it, "We had the best band and conditions were good. It was cabaret class. Strictly west side crowd. Plenty of takers. The boss was shot in the stomach one night but we kept working. After that he walked sort of bent over".
North and south side gangs had their own leaders but Al Capone was boss. He would come into a place with seven or eight men. As soon as he got in, the door was closed. Nobody got in or out. He had a couple of hundred dollar bills changed into fives and tens and his bodyguards passed these around to the waiters and entertainers. The musicians always got five or ten dollars each for playing his favorite numbers, all of them sentimental things.
During these years George Wettling often worked on jobs with Joe Sullivan. Joe studied piano at the Conservatory of Music. When he first came around to play jobs at Lewis Institute, he didn't know standards like Tiger Rag. He was influenced somewhat in this formative period by the trumpet-piano style of Earl Hines, but Sullivan's own style was characteristically ginmill. Sometimes on the slow blues he would use a heavy left hand roll that he had learned from the obscure Black "party-piano" players.
A music relatively free from the inhibitions and constraints of arranged popular music was bound to attract younger men. Some of these entered the picture early and stayed on. Some, like Joe Marsala and his brother Marty, were not to become known until the thirties. Others were lost sight of in later years. Nor were all of the Chicagoans from Chicago. Wettling was from Topeka, Bob Zurke, a younger pianist than Sullivan who came under the influence of the latter, was from Detroit, and Jess Stacy was from Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Bud Jacobsen, the clarinet player, and John Mendel, trumpet, are usually called Chicagoans because they played on the OKeh record of Crazeology. In other words, it was the style that made the man. Rod Kless, the clarinetist, decided to come to Chicago after hearing the Austin Gang when the latter, ala' Husk O'Hare's Wolverines, were playing one of their first jobs, a summer place at Riverview Park near Des Moines in May, 1926. (He's also a Chicagoan by marriage. His wife is Bud Freeman's sister.)
Jack Teagarden wasn't very much in the Chicago picture though he recorded with Chicago musicians. Many of the Chicagoans met him for the first time in New York, when Pee Wee Russell said, "Come on, I've got a trombone I want you to hear".
Like Teagarden, Russell played with the Chicagoans more often on records and at jam sessions than in bands. He was born Charles Ellsworth Russell, Jr., March 27, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri. Tall, thin, and apparently vague, Pee Wee's whole personality seems to change when he blows on a clarinet.
Although in and out of Chicago, Pee Wee had an influence on its music. Goodman, on his early records, seemed to vacillate between Tesch's phrasing and Pee Wee's growl. Tesch, by his own admission, was an admirer of Pee Wee's style. Besides the growl, that sounded as though he were trying to play two tones at once, Pee Wee played with a sustained rhythmic flow in a tone that was very blue. Pee Wee was surprised that Tesch's opinion of him had survived. He said, "I learned plenty from Tesch. If he was alive today he would play more clarinet than anyone in the world".
In the early twenties Red McKenzie was back in his hometown, St. Louis, the Mound City from which the 'Blue Blowers' got their name. According to Red;
"I was a bellhop in the Claridge, and across the street was a place called Butler Brothers. Slevin worked there and there was a little colored shoe-shine boy who used to beat it out on the shoes. Had a phonograph going. I passed with my comb, and played along. Slevin would have liked to play a comb but he had a ticklish mouth, so he used a kazoo. He got fired across the street and got a job in a big soda store. He ran into Jack Bland, who owned a banjo, and one night after work they went to his room. He and Slevin started playing. They got me. Gene Rodemich's was a famous band at that time. His musicians used to drop in at the restaurant where we hung out. They were impressed and told their boss. He took us to Chicago to record with his band, as a novelty. When we got to Chicago we went down to the Friars' Inn. About 1924 it was. Volly de Faut and Schoebel were there. Isham Jones was at the place and he asked us what instruments we were playing. He had us come to his office next day, and set the date for Brunswick. That was the time we made Arkansas Blues and Blue Blues. They say it sold over a million copies. Brunswick put us in a cafe in Atlantic City called the Beaux Arts. I met Eddie Lang in Atlantic City. In New York the 'Blue Blowers' played the Palace in August, 1924".
After a trip abroad, where the band played at the Stork Club in London, McKenzie returned to America, and has been busy in the music business ever since. It was Red who fixed the first OKeh date for Bix, Eddie Lang, and Trumbauer, on which the band made Singin' the Blues. In 1927 he arranged a Paramount recording session at which a small band of Chicagoans made Friar's Point Shuffle. The following year four sides were made for OKeh under the band name 'McKenzie and Condon's Chicagoans'. At this time Condon was with Morris Sherman at College Inn. Bud was with Herb Carlin at the Hollywood Bard. In between jobs with Art Kassel, Jimmy McPartland and Jim Lannigan had had a run at the Friars' Inn. But it was already a cheap, dingy cabaret. The crowd had moved on.
On the McKenzie and Condon recording date were Jimmy Freeman, McPartland, Bud, Teschmaker, Joe Sullivan, Jim Lannigan, Eddie Condon, and Gene Krupa. They made the discs in the old OKeh studio on Washington Street, standing on soap boxes. Jimmy said, "It was so wonderful to be together again that we really played". Bix (who wasn't allowed to record with musicians other than those in the Whiteman band) heard the records soon after they were made. "They were fine", he said, "the greatest I ever heard". "It was all right", Tesch admitted after playing Nobody's Sweetheart over and over," but Bud played too much Armstrong".
Just as the four OKeh sides represent adequately the type of Chicago music played by 'O'Hare's Wolverines', two sides recorded by Brunswick show to some extent what the Midway Garden band sounded like. Though the personnel differs from that band, Muggsy and Tesch dominate the records in the same way they dominated the playing of the band at Midway Garden. The titles are; There'll Be Some Changes Made and Dark Town Strutters Ball. On the date were Muggsy, Tesch, Condon, and Mezzrow (tenor sax), Sullivan, Krupa, with McKenzie doing the vocal on There'll Be Some Changes Made. After playing until six in the morning, the musicians reported for the Brunswick date at nine, played around to start the tune, then put it on wax.
Benny Goodman is sometimes identified with Chicago style music, a point that proves confusing to those who listen to his recordings. Few of them would be considered appropriate to the direct melodic approach of Chicago music. Yet they saw quite a lot of Benny and there were certainly times when he played in a style that fitted well with theirs. An excellent example is from a Red Nichols' recording made in New York after Nichols had begun to use the Chicago men on his records. This was the Brunswick record of Lazy Daddy, on which Krupa and Sullivan also play. Benny's chorus is creative and along definitely melodic lines. The decorative phrases that often mark his playing are absent. Hot musicians in New York jumped when they heard the record, for the rhythm was exciting and the solo work of Sullivan and Goodman excellent. Benny's clarinet on this record has a thin reedy tone, not at all unpleasant but utterly unlike the round limpid tone with which he was to play a few years later.
Among the Blacks who have made records with one or more of the Chicagoans are "Happy" Cauldwell on tenor sax, Jimmy Noone with clarinet, tenor sax man Coleman Hawkins, Henry Allen Jr. on trumpet, and drumer Zutty Singleton. Not all of these men played Chicago style, or anything like it, nor can there be any attempt here to list the innumerable Chicago style records and their personnel. Though the total number of Chicago-style records is somewhat limited, the fact that they were recorded under various pseudonyms made their discovery a sort of collector's nightmare. The two most recent masters to turn up were Windy City Stomp and another Jazz Me Blues. The former record is actually a metamorphosis of a popular song.
The Chicagoans were not always sure they were on the right track. Sometimes they wondered if they ought to go commercial. But most of the time, they didn't think about it. If you were a musician depending on the gangster joints and the taxi-dancehalls for a livelihood, you didn't think too much of today, much less tomorrow.
Because Tesch had natural talent some of his friends were inclined to overestimate it and assume that he came by the style as you and I breathe or walk or talk. Seeing him with the clarinet held carelessly to his lips, notes tumbling out, spreading in broad crescendos that cut through the noise of a crowded hall, it did look spontaneous. But he practiced continually and listened critically to his own playing.
That was Tesch and that was the spirit of Chicago style. That it was a melodic and rhythmic style having its own measurable qualities may be determined by listening to records. That it had a perceptible influence on subsequent hot music will hardly be questioned. Yet Chicago style as such began to decline in the late twenties, when its best exponents were absorbed in name bands. The musical spirit of the Chicagoans was swallowed up in the maw of something bigger and considerably less great than itself, the popular music business. This business, to exist, must predicate its methods on what it thinks the public will take, not on what it thinks the musicians themselves have to give. Thus, the music they had to play depended no longer on their creative ability but on how they could adapt themselves and their talents to the name band business.
With some fortunate exceptions, this transition was noticeable even on records. Many of them had less and less the "feel" of Chicago music. The Mezzrow sessions of the early thirties were largely jive music. Mutiny in the Parlor was worth listening to because, like Armstrong's Tight Like This, it was jive to the bone. One listened to the spurious Sendin' the Vipers because on it Floyd O'Brien none the less played beautiful trombone. The record that was good all the way through, with everyone playing "like crazy" was a very dim memory, until the coming of a jitterbug era that was to give hot music a re-birth.
Other pages of this site
All That Jazz main page
The Origins of Jazz
New Orleans Jazz
New Orleans Artist Index
Jazz in Chicago
Chicago Style
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