Central Avenue Sounds: William DouglassDepartment of Special Collections
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Restrictions on this Interview
None.
Literary Rights and Quotation
This manuscript is hereby made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publication, are reserved to the University Library of the University of California, Los Angeles. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the University Librarian of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Biographical Summary
Personal History:
Born: February 28, 1923, Sherman, Texas.
Education: Jefferson High School, Los Angeles.
Military Service: Sergeant, Tenth Cavalry Band, United States Army, 1942-45.
Spouse: Dorothy Burney; Deloris Seals Douglass, one child.
Career History:
Played drums with:
-
Played drums with:
- Judy Carmichael
- Wild Bill Davis
- Benny Goodman
- Earl Hines
- Red Norvo
- Art Tatum
- Cal Tjader
- T-Bone Walker
- Gerald Wiggins
- Vice President, American Federation of Musicians Local 767, ca. 1950-53.
- Treasurer, American Federation of Musicians Local 47, 1985-91.
Selected Recordings:
-
Selected Recordings:
- The Tatum Group Masterpieces (with Red Callender, Buddy DeFranco, and Art Tatum), Pablo Records, 1956.
- The Tatum Group Masterpieces (with Red Callender, Art Tatum, and Ben Webster), Pablo Records, 1956.
- Vibrations in Hi-Fi (with Bill Dillard, Bob Drasnin, Bill Kosinski, Jack Montrose, Red Norvo, and Gene Wright), Liberty Records, 1956.
- High Five: Red Norvo Quintet (with Bob Carter, Bob Drasnin, Red Norvo, and Jimmy Wyble), Liberty Records, ca. 1956.
- Norvo Naturally: Red Norvo Quintet (with Buddy Clark, Bob Drasnin, Red Norvo, and Jimmy Wyble), Rave Records, 1956, reissued 1986.
- Cal Tjader Quartet (with Cal Tjader, Gerald Wiggins, and Gene Wright), Fantasy Records, 1956.
- The King and I: Gerald Wiggins Trio (with Gerald Wiggins and Gene Wright), Challenge Records, 1957.
- The Jazz Pickers (with Harry Babasin, Buddy Collette, Bob Harrington, Dan Overberg, and Ben Tucker), EmArcy Records.
- The Jazz Pickers, Featuring Red Norvo (with Harry Babasin, Red Wootten, Dempsey Wright), EmArcy Records.
- Real Time (with Red Callender and Earl "Fatha" Hines), M&K Records, 1978.
Interview History
Interviewer:
Steven L. Isoardi, Interviewer, UCLA Oral History Program; B.A., Government, University of San Francisco; M.A., Government, University of San Francisco; M.A., Political Science, UCLA; Ph.D., Political Science, UCLA.
Time and Setting of Interview:
Place: Tape I at Douglass's office at the American Federation of Music Local 47, Los Angeles; Tapes II-V at Douglass's home, Los Angeles.
Dates, length of sessions: February 2, 1990 (77 minutes); February 10, 1990 (129); February 17, 1990 (76); March 3, 1990 (69).
Total number of recorded hours: 5.85
Persons present during interview: Douglass and Isoardi
Conduct of Interview:
This interview is one in a series designed to preserve the spoken memories of individuals, primarily musicians, who were raised near and/or performed on Los Angeles's Central Avenue, especially from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s. Musician and teacher William Green, his student Steven Isoardi, and early project interviewee Buddy Collette provided major inspiration for the UCLA Oral History Program's inaugurating the Central Avenue Sounds Oral History Project.
In preparing for the interview, Isoardi consulted jazz histories, autobiographies, oral histories, relevant jazz periodicals, documentary films, and back issues of the California Eagle and the Los Angeles Sentinel.
The interview is organized chronologically, beginning with Douglass's childhood and education in Texas and Los Angeles and continuing on through his career as a jazz musician. Major topics covered include fellow jazz musicians, musical styles, desegregation of jazz groups, the American Federation of Musicians, and the rise and decline of Central Avenue.
Editing:
Alex Cline, editor, edited the interview. He checked the verbatim transcript of the interview against the original tape recordings, edited for punctuation, paragraphing, and spelling, and verified proper names. Whenever possible, Cline checked the proper names of nightclubs against articles and advertisements in back issues of the California Eagle. Words and phrases inserted by the editor have been bracketed.
Douglass reviewed the transcript. He verified proper names and made minor corrections and additions.
Cline also prepared the biographical summary. Steven J. Novak, editor, prepared the table of contents, interview history, and index.
Supporting Documents:
The original tape recordings of the interview are in the university archives and are available under the regulations governing the use of permanent noncurrent records of the university. Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Oral History Program.
Table of Contents
- TAPE NUMBER: I, Side One (February 2, 1990)
-
Childhood in Los Angeles -- Meets Dexter Gordon in junior high school -- Music teachers -- Local musicians--Influence of Sam Browne--Choice of the drums as an instrument--Learning from Lloyd Reese--Jamming at the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) Local 767--Joins the union --Hanging around famous musicians at the Dunbar Hotel--Jo Jones--Integrating bands--Benny Goodman.
- TAPE NUMBER: I, Side Two (February 2, 1990)
-
Finding work--Central Avenue--Enlists in the United States Army Tenth Cavalry Band--Stationed in North Africa and Italy--Central Avenue during World War II--Art Tatum--Performs as a singer -- Discharge and marriage--Drawbacks of unionizing music--Impact of bebop--L.A. nightclubs--Buddy Rich.
- TAPE NUMBER: II, Side One (February 10, 1990)
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Participates in the liberation of Rome during World War II--Billy Berg, nightclub owner--Hollywood clubs--AFM Local 767--Dixieland jazz--Lester Young--Racial segregation in Las Vegas.
- TAPE NUMBER: II, Side Two (February 10, 1990)
-
More on racial relations in Las Vegas--More on Benny Goodman--Bebop--The Club Alabam--The Plantation Club--Other jazz clubs--Race relations in the South.
- TAPE NUMBER: III, Side One (February 10, 1990)
-
Dynamite Jackson--Winning double time for New Year's gigs--Gerald Wiggins--Amalgamation of AFM locals 47 and 767--Elmer Fain--Going on strike at the Club Alabam--Women musicians--More on Art Tatum.
- TAPE NUMBER: III, Side Two (February 10, 1990)
-
Tatum's virtuosity.
- TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side One (February 17, 1990)
-
More on AFM Local 767--Union dues structure--Elks Club auditorium--Union officials--Opposition to union segregation--Jazz musicians and marijuana--Racial discrimination in Los Angeles.
- TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side Two (February 17, 1990)
-
Elected vice president of Local 767--Pushing for amalgamation of the locals--Union red-baiting--Mechanics of the locals' merger--Continued vigilance against discrimination--AfricanAmericans elected to office in Local 47--Difficulty of maintaining musical skill while serving as a union official.
- TAPE NUMBER: V, Side One (March 3, 1990)
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Spread of union integration--Clef Club musical scholarships--More on the struggle to change the union bylaws--Nat King Cole.
- TAPE NUMBER: V, Side Two (March 3, 1990)
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The recording industry and Central Avenue--Start of the Musicians Guild--Reservations about union amalgamation--Impact of R and B on jazz musicians--Decline of Central Avenue.
Tape Number: I, Side One
February 2, 1990
Isoardi
Bill, it's a pleasure to begin an interview with you. Can we start by talking about where you were born, what the neighborhood was like, the environment, etc.?
Douglass
Well, that's kind of interesting. I consider myself a native of Los Angeles. I wasn't actually born here. I was born in a place called Sherman, Texas, which I know nothing about. My mom [Christopher Sanders Douglass] and dad [James H. Douglass] brought me out here when I was six months old, so there you go. Don't ask me about Sherman. I know nothing about it at all. But I was born in the year 1923, February 28, to be exact. I was reared here, went to school here, and just practically spent all my life here. I mean, I've been in and out of town a little bit, but this has been it. This has always been home.
Isoardi
Why did your folks come out here?
Douglass
I have no idea. I like to feel that they brought me out here so that they'd put me in a fresh setting, like away from the Jim Crow and all that other type of thing. Not that none of it existed here, but basically and by law and whatnot it was not supposed to exist. I don't know. I have no idea. We have a very large family and relatives and whatnot, and it seems that most of them migrated out here around about that time.
Where did they settle? Where did you grow up?
Douglass
Let me see. I grew up right here— Well, the Eastside of Los Angeles. I think I spent most of my time, as I remember it, as a very young kid, on a street called Compton Boulevard. I don't remember very much about that, but then, a little later on, just a few blocks from there, on what was considered East Thirty-ninth Street, 1500 block, actually, my grandmother and grandfather had a lot there, and they had two houses on the lot, and we, my dad's family—that's my mom and dad and myself and my two younger sisters [Josephine and Frances Douglass] at that time—were living in the rear house. Thirty-ninth Street, and then later— That's called Forty-first Place right now. I do remember sometime, during the thing, for some reason or another they did a little shifting around, and the numbers on the street were changed. Then, from there, we went directly across the street, my mom and dad and our family did, still to the 1500 block and right across the street. And then, shortly after that, we moved out on East Fifty-sixth Street. That's where I did the majority of my growing up, I guess.
Isoardi
Did your family own the houses they lived in?
Douglass
No, they didn't. No, my grandparents owned that piece of property that we stayed in originally, but, no, we never did own any property. It was a funny thing. When I
Isoardi
What were those neighborhoods like when you were growing up? How would you characterize them? What was it like to be a kid then?
Douglass
That's a hard one to answer. I didn't think about it so much then. The schools we attended were all— I'd say they were quite integrated. They were, I guess, predominantly black, but I guess we had Caucasian, and some of them were referred to as Jews and whatnot. I don't know. I cannot tell a Jew by recognition, you know. People all look the same to me. We had Japanese, Chinese, Hispanic, as you call them. I mean, they all attended the same schools. So there I was in grade school. The first school that I remember was not too far from my first home that I remember, and that was called Ascot Avenue [Elementary School]. And that was located— I guess it extended from the streets Compton [Boulevard] over to Ascot [Avenue], and it was fronted by Vernon Avenue.
Isoardi
Was that the name of the school? Ascot Avenue School?
Yeah, it was called Ascot Avenue at that time. I think the names of those schools have all been changed. Then, later on, when we moved out on Fifty-sixth Street, well, then I was forced to transfer to another school, Hooper Avenue, and that must have been up around—I'm just guessing—up around Fifty-sixth Street. That was my grammar school thing. And then our grammar school years, that was from kindergarten up to the sixth grade, and then you're promoted, and you graduate to junior high school, and then you go to another school. From there, I went over to McKinley [Junior High School], and that was— Let's see. McKinley was fronted by Vernon Avenue, and it ran from— Let's see. God, it's awfully hard to remember the streets now. But anyway, that was my junior high school, and that's where I first ran into Dexter Gordon.
Isoardi
You went to junior high together?
Douglass
Yeah, we were in junior high school together. I mean, we looked at one another. Here we're both the same height, you know, and this and that. People have said that we looked an awful lot like brothers. Of course, I have to say that he was very influential in the fact that I decided to become a musician.
Isoardi
Do you remember the first time you saw him? The first time you met him?
Douglass
All I know— I remember our gym class.
That was it?
Douglass
We just looked at each other kind of funny, you know, and just kind of grinned and laughed. We just became very good friends, very close friends. There were just a lot of guys in the community, some of them related, and— We just went to school. This is going back an awful long way. But we were in junior high school together. We finished junior high school. I think that took us from the sixth grade up until the ninth grade, and then, from the tenth to the twelve, then you go to high school. From there, we went to Jefferson High School. Of course, Jefferson High School is where we finally began to get our formal training. I think that was the first time I actually got a chance to get into a real instrument class.
Isoardi
Let me ask you about when you first started playing. When did you first pick up and play an instrument? Was it before then?
Douglass
Yeah. I would say that it was tenth grade, my first year in high school. I'd been interested. I had a guitar at one time and a ukelele, because I had an uncle [Peter T. Douglass] who was a guitar player with one of the so-called real popular bands around town, the Les Hite Orchestra. People like Marshall Royal, Floyd Turnham, and a number of others, were in that same orchestra.
Isoardi
I think Lloyd Reese played with Les Hite, didn't
Douglass
Yeah, Lloyd Reese, who was one of my teachers.
Isoardi
Oh, you studied with him also?
Douglass
Oh, yeah, yeah. All of us studied with the same teacher. That's Buddy [Collette], Dexter, Charles Mingus, myself, and—let's see—Hampton Hawes, Eric Dolphy. He taught everybody. You know, you figure with all these different instruments— Of course, I was a drummer, basically, but I was into studying music. So I studied keyboard with Reese, and he just kind of told me what to do on the drums. He told me who to watch, and this is right, and that's it. I never had a formal drum teacher. I had people that I got together with from time to time, and I just sought out the knowledge that I wanted and just worked at it.
Isoardi
When you were in tenth grade and you first studying an instrument then, was it drums?
Douglass
Yeah, it was drums.
Isoardi
What attracted you to the drums?
Douglass
Oh, well, I had a cousin [Alvy Kidd], a cousin by marriage, and he was quite a little bit of a showboat type of guy. He played on— Well, you've probably read some of the articles by Dexter, the kid who played the washtub and had the tin pans and things all set up like a drumset, simulated a drum sound? I think that was when Dexter first
Isoardi
He was the first teacher in the system?
Douglass
He was the first black teacher in the Los Angeles school system.
Isoardi
No kidding? I didn't know that.
Douglass
Yeah. There's been an awful lot written about him. I should have some articles around here somewhere, because he's been acknowledged quite a bit in very recent years.
Isoardi
Certainly everyone talks about him who's encountered him. Do you know when he started teaching at Jeff?
Douglass
Well, I don't know all these things, but it's all in these little documentaries about him. I just remember Sam Browne, because there's an awful lot been written about him. He's still around somewhere.
Isoardi
What was he like as a teacher?
I don't have to look back. You know, from this day, I mean, I still respect him. I mean, I thought he was just absolutely the greatest. He is the one who taught all of us how to play and what to do. That was the thing that made school so interesting. He not only conducted the regular high school orchestra and the marching band and all that type of thing, but he organized the little swing bands and taught us how to jam together and all that type of stuff. We used to have those little jam sessions at school. Of course, we were listening to the big orchestras. Like our idols were the Count Basies, Jimmie Luncefords, Duke Ellingtons, and what have you, and he sort of helped us as we were all trying to emulate these people. So he sort of helped us along.
Isoardi
Was music very prominent in your family when you were a kid? Was there music? Was your family listening to records or going to dances to hear the bands, things like that? Or was this something you sort of gravitated to on your own?
Douglass
It's something I did on my own. I always had an interest in it. My dad was with a vocal group, a quartet called the Bilbrew Quartet, and he sort of did that. I guess that was basically a sideline, because I know he was a custodian in the school system. But I actually saw him on stage many times. And my dad's father [Calvin Douglass]
Isoardi
You were saying you saw your father performing on stage quite a bit.
Douglass
Yeah, yeah. I saw him perform. So I was always aware of these things. My uncle was playing in the bands, so I'd see him on the stage from time to time. And then, as a young kid, he came over. I remember Floyd Turnham, who's a saxophone player. He's still around, also. He and my uncle played together quite a bit. I never will forget them coming over to the house and having a session or something at one time. I know that I was very mad; my mom and dad made me go to bed because it was getting after hours. But I don't know. These kind of things just kept me— I know I used to listen to— At one time I wanted to play a clarinet because I heard Ted Lewis at some time or another. And the guitar, I used to try to get my uncle to teach me. He was very impatient, but he'd show me a few little chords, and I'd learn to strum a few things from time to time. I used to listen to my grandfather. My grandfather was a violinist, and he and Marshall Royal's dad played together in the same orchestra. So I used to see and hear all this kind of stuff at the family picnics and things. I don't know. The music was always around.
Isoardi
What kind of an orchestra was that? Did they
Douglass
I guess at that time they were probably playing what you called— I don't know whether you called it ragtime or— I never knew how to put labels on things. I didn't know what you'd call what Ted Lewis played. But I thought that Ted Lewis was a terrific entertainer. I guess you've heard of him. He had the clarinet and the top hat and all that kind of thing. He did a little bit of singing, and I thought that he was great. And I thought Louis [Armstrong] was great. My grandmother used to have the windup Victrola, and they'd put these records on. I'd hear a little bit of Louis Armstrong, and then, once in a while, a little Lionel Hampton along with him. Then, I don't know, the bands just came into prominence. You know, you used to be able to turn on your radio and catch live broadcasts. This is what was happening. And then, I don't know when Benny Goodman came along. Well, then, I never heard a clarinet like that! I was very much wrapped up in that until I heard Gene Krupa get loose and they left him out there playing all by himself. That was "Sing, Sing, Sing." The first time I heard that, it was on the radio, and something just happened to me then.
Isoardi
Now, were you playing drums at that time?
Douglass
Well, I was interested in it. I had a pair of drumsticks and an old footstool I used to bang on. "Camel
Isoardi
So it was hearing those Krupa drums solos that really got you going.
Douglass
Yeah. And, of course, when I got into high school, in your curriculum, you had to select what you call a major. I decided to be a music major. I was going to be a musician. And then, when I got into Sam Browne, well, the first thing I did in the instrument class is he put a book in front of me with notes in it. I said, "Gee, I didn't know drummers were supposed to read notes." However, I was very fortunate, because right then I associated the two things, and I've been a note fanatic ever since then, just anything I could find to read or whatever. He was the one who encouraged me in the study of rudiments. I said, "Rudiments? What's that?" So then I'd go down and buy books. I'd hear those words, and I'd go down and buy the books. Then, he would kind of— Well, see, a teacher like that, he had to kind of coach everybody, no matter what. He was a pianist himself. But they had to know enough about all the other instruments to be able to kind of get guys going. And then, of course, he always encouraged everybody
Isoardi
So he's a teacher who really motivated people.
Douglass
Oh, yeah, yeah. No doubt about it.
Isoardi
So at this time, then, you began with Sam Browne, but you didn't have a private teacher then, did you?
Douglass
No, I didn't have a private teacher then. Then, of course, naturally, I ran around with Dexter and Lamar Wright. Ernie [Ernest] Royal went to school with us there— he was a little older than we were—and I know he was a great trumpet player then.
Isoardi
Oh, really? He was that fine then?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. In school, he was just— Our guys, even before they got out of high school, they could play. We all held down jobs at night while we were trying to go to school.
Isoardi
While you were in high school?
Douglass
Yes. I mean, nightclubs, you know.
Isoardi
When did you sleep?
Douglass
Well, we just didn't. We used to try to sleep in class, and then we used to catch hell from the teachers. They knew what we were doing, and we had to get our studies together or else— We were afraid that somebody was going to come on our jobs and pull us off the jobs.
You never had any trouble for being so young and playing on stage? You must have been sixteen or so?
Douglass
Well, I had to be fifteen going on sixteen. You know, I was very tall. I guess Dexter and I were both about this height, you know, a good six foot four or so. Even though we were young kids, nobody paid that much attention. They didn't have the real— You know, the liquor laws. They didn't really watch you or pay that much attention to you. Our teachers were always threatening to expose us and get us pulled off the jobs, but they sort of left us alone if we got through school and got our studies. So that was what was happening.
I don't know. It seems like, when you get going on these things [interviews], you know, kind of a million thoughts run through your mind at once. One thing just leads to another. You feel like you're leaving something out, and I probably will, because it's like trying to cover a whole lifetime in a few minutes.
Isoardi
Oh, don't worry about that. Just follow whatever, whatever you—
Douglass
Well, anyway, you were mentioning the private teacher. I know that Dexter wound up with a private teacher, and that was Lloyd Reese. When we'd leave school, I would walk over to his music lesson with him. Here Lloyd Reese is teaching Dexter what to play on the clarinet.
I remember he mentioned to me what a great musician Cozy Cole was, a man with a great amount of knowhow. I managed to meet Cozy after a while, and he was very influential. He was traveling with Cab Calloway's big band, and they'd come into town. Fortunately, he would let me come by his house, after school or so, usually after school. He's getting up around that time. He was one of those guys who practices very diligently at all times. I was able to just sit around there and watch what he did and all the things that he practiced. I saw his books. I went out and purchased every book I could find, and all I could do is just absorb, just watch him play. I said, "Gee, I never knew anybody could read notes that fast." I never heard the rudiments move that fast. I was learning the rudiments, but the way he played them, they sounded so great and so musical. I mean, he didn't take time out to just show me exactly how to play things, but I absorbed. I looked at the notes and then heard them. I sort of watched and saw it all go by, and I just maintained that in my head
Isoardi
You were talking about your picking everything up from Cozy Cole just sitting there listening.
Douglass
Yeah. Of course, once in a while, after I got my books together, I'd run across something here, and I'd go to Reese and say, "I don't understand this. How does that go?" Then he would just give me an explanation. I finally decided that I wanted to just take lessons from him, so I studied the keyboard with him.
Isoardi
Why keyboard?
Douglass
I just wanted to know something about the music and what was going on. To this day, I think the keyboard is the most important thing. It's been very influential to me. The reason why I— I don't know. While I was playing drums, I still listened to everybody, each and every instrument and what they played and this and that. To this day, I firmly believe that just playing drums means nothing unless it's related to the other instruments in the orchestra. I felt like by having some knowledge and some feeling as to what the other guys were doing and whatnot, it made me more sensitive as a drummer. That's proved true throughout my career, because I've always managed to accompany all of the great pianists of all time, such as Art Tatum, Erroll Garner, Gerald Wiggins, Earl Hines— I mean, I
Isoardi
I've always gotten the sense that, if you know keyboards, you have more of a sense of the possibilities. You can really see the chords and what's happening, as opposed to just knowing the other instrument.
Douglass
Yeah. So that's why I got into it. I wanted to know— I don't know. It was a funny thing.
Like in the instrument classes under Sam Browne in school, besides rehearsing with the band, you had the instrument class. After a while a semester goes by and you move up. You're promoted to the band, and that's what happened eventually. Now, I got in the band, and there's a guy in there playing drums, a hot drummer named Chico Hamilton. Same school, same band— I mean, you know, Jefferson High School was the— Well, what do you call it? I mean, that's where everybody came from. Jefferson High School. That was it. Everybody played. Everybody was working jobs at night.
Isoardi
With a band like that, boy!
Douglass
Yeah. So then, what happened with so many of the guys, Charlie Mingus, all these different guys, they all studied with Reese. Now, Reese didn't play bass, but Charlie was into it, so Charlie studied keyboard. We studied what you call keyboard harmony. I didn't sit there
Isoardi
Sort of a rehearsal band.
Douglass
Yeah. We used to go down to [American Federation of Musicians Local] 767, you know, the hall down there. We weren't members at that time, but they got it open on Sunday mornings for us. So we would go there and we would rehearse. We'd get our little stock arrangements. I think we all chipped in something like a quarter apiece per week, into the little treasury so that we could buy music. I was reminding Gerald Wilson of this the other night. Finally, at some time or another— I remember Gerald was with Jimmie Lunceford at that time, and he was writing, naturally, so we got him to bring a couple of his arrangements. We called them special arrangements at that time. [tape recorder off]
Isoardi
So Gerald Wilson would bring arrangements by.
Douglass
Yeah, he'd bring arrangements by at that time, and so then—
Isoardi
The band was playing.
Douglass
Yeah. We'd set up and we'd rehearse his numbers
Isoardi
What a thrill.
Douglass
So then we would offer to buy them. Sometimes he gave us an arrangement. But then we offered to buy his arrangement from him. It cost us a little more than the stocks did, but we could just automatically tell the difference in the specially written material.
So this band, we'd rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Boy, if you could have seen us. I remember there was fellow named Charles Martin, who was a pianist. He lived way out in the Watts area, and he would pick up Mingus. He drove a little Willys car, a very small car. Then he would swing by and pick me up. We had the bass, the drums, and I don't know how many musicians in that car, hanging in and outside of us, and then we'd make that trip all the way down Central Avenue until we got to Seventeenth Street where the union was located. Then we'd get out there and take our stuff out. That was the ritual. We looked forward to that each and every week. We played and we played. Finally, we had a lot of real adult musicians who would come around and listen to us play. We had a pretty good thing going. Later on, we were going around and soliciting jobs and playing the dances and things like that. In fact, there was a point where we giving a lot of the union musicians a pretty bad time for some of the jobs. [laughter] So it was through that that
Isoardi
Just before that, when you were playing these clubs at night as teenagers, you didn't have to be a member of the union, then, to play at those clubs?
Douglass
No. Well, I mean, there was as much nonunion stuff going on as there was union.
Isoardi
Oh, there was?
Douglass
Yeah. That's what it was all about. I mean, people have got to start somewhere. You can't just start off in the union. The only reason why you would join the union is if there was a necessity for it. I would tell somebody that same thing today.
Isoardi
So Central Avenue wasn't really a closed shop. It was a pretty mixed bag. Some were open; some were—
Douglass
Oh, yeah. All the first jobs I played were just— I remember a lot of the older musicians— You know, we weren't always just playing together as kids, either. I'd sit at home and I'd practice. And then, it happened all the
I remember there was a guy named Waller. What was his name? It was a pianist whose name was Waller. Gus Waller, I believe was his name. Then there was another fellow who's a member of this union now, Eugene Jackson. You know, he's a child movie star from the Our Gang comedy days. Well, he's a saxophone player and a comedian on the side. He came by. Then there was another guy named Ted Cruise, who was a saxophone player. I mean, the guys, they got to know you. So they said, "We'll get this young kid. He keeps time." Oh, just about every Friday or Saturday one of them would come by. I had no car or anything like that. They'd come by and pick me up.
Isoardi
And take you to a gig.
Douglass
The funniest thing about it, they always had to ask my mother's permission. [laughter] They kid me about that now, you know, what they went through. They really had to go through hell. My mother grilled them: "Well, where are you going to be? What time are you going to get back?" They had to go through hell just to get her to let me go out with them on the job.
Isoardi
What clubs were you playing at? Do you remember any of them in particular?
Oh, I don't remember the names of all of them. Some of the jobs were down on Main Street. I remember Dexter and I and probably Charles Martin, a piano player, we had the job down on Main Street at one time or another. These are just clubs, just beer joints. I guess they had beer and whiskey. Just little places where people just drank, you know. We'd play the music. With our little three pieces, we'd try to imitate the sounds that we heard in the big bands, and we just did the best we could. I remember the salary was $1.50 a night. Of course, people always threw tips at you. You got well off the tips.
The Eugene Jackson thing— We finally started working with a certain amount of regularity at a little club out here called— I think it was called the Zomba, which was on— I think I was a member of the union at that time. Yeah, in fact, I know I was. So I don't know. Trying to think back over the years, what happened before union and what happened when you were in [is difficult], because I know I had the union card when I was sixteen. That's just one of the things that I remember.
You'd go to the places on Central Avenue. I mean, there was the Dunbar Hotel and the Club Alabam. That was a famous place. All of us as young kids, when we got out of school and were on our way home, we would walk right down Central Avenue just for a chance to pass by the Dunbar
Isoardi
Yeah. Buddy introduced me to him.
Douglass
Well, let me show you something. I've got a picture that Sweets gave me during that time.
Isoardi
Of what? You and Jo Jones or something?
Douglass
No, no. During the time when we were with Basie and we were the young kids hanging around and— [rifles through photographs] Golly, what's here? Yeah, see, I've
Isoardi
Oh, geez. A very young Bill Douglass with a drumset.
Douglass
Yeah, yeah. Here's another one, see. There he is. Well, who do you think?
Isoardi
Geez.
Douglass
Yeah. That's what Sweets gave me. I must have been around fifteen, sixteen years old when he gave that to me. A real, live autographed photograph of Sweets.
Isoardi
Wow. Marvelous photograph. How old was he then?
Douglass
Oh, he couldn't have been much more than twenty-one, twenty-two, I would say.
Isoardi
Yeah. At the most.
Douglass
Because that's in the thirties, you know. That's in the thirties. That was the Paramount Theatre downtown. Basie was the first band to come out here and play a theater.
Isoardi
And this photograph is Sweets with the Basie band?
Douglass
With the Basie band, yeah. He's right on the bandstand. That's where that picture was taken. In uniform, as you can see.
Isoardi
Marvelous photograph. Marvelous. So did you have much of a relationship with Jo Jones? Did you become friends with him?
Oh, yeah, to his dying day. I mean, we just lost him about a year or two ago, I guess it was. I never knew when he was going to pop up out this way. It's just that that phone would ring, and then he'd say so-and-so and say— See, I was a teacher around here for quite a while, too. He'd say, "I need to get some lessons." I'd listen, and the voice would get familiar. You never knew when he was coming to town. And then he'd be here. I had to drive him around over here and then over there and so forth and so on. And to this day, to this day, you know, he still treats me like I'm the same young kid. "Say, Bill, let me tell you something." He says, "Next time you pick me up," he says, "I want you to bring your tape recorder, because whatever I tell you, you want to put this down and remember it." [laughter] I loved him. I loved him every day of my— He felt like he was my father. I guess that's how we tagged that name "Papa Jo" on him. I mean, not just myself, but I guess everybody all over the world and all over the country, for that matter. But it was just a relationship. You know, at one time I was a young kid: "Jo, how do you do this? Jo, how do you do that?" So he feels like it's that way— If he were still here right now, he would feel like it's that way. I should still be asking his advice. And I had that much respect for him that I would never say, "Well, no, Jo, that's wrong." Whatever he
Isoardi
Was he a big influence on your playing?
Douglass
Of course. Well, he was a big influence on everybody's playing. Big influence. See, like I told you that Gene Krupa was the first influence. And that's what it was. I heard a lot of great drummers. And then, when I heard Jo, well, that turned me around, all the way around. It was just another thing altogether, a completely different thing, you know, a very loose, free style of playing.
There were just— Every time I heard somebody— And then Cozy was a great influence. I mean, from the legitimate standpoint, he could read anything, he knew all the rudiments. I just couldn't imagine anybody knowing as much as he did. I know that Jo and some of the other guys couldn't read like Cozy could. It wasn't really necessary. But Cozy was just thoroughly schooled. I just decided I wanted to be like that, also.
And then, when I went around other drummers— I mean, like the way I held my sticks. I must have changed it a dozen— Every time I saw a new drummer, I'd try to hold my sticks the way he does. Or where he sets his snare drum or his cymbal. I don't know. I just went through all kinds
Then I admired guys like Sid Catlett. Sid was a big guy, but he had that finesse. I mean, there were so many good ones until you didn't know which way to go. [laughter] So what the hell, be like everybody. I never could be just one way, you know. And I guess, in the long run, I finally wound up being myself. But during the years, it was always gratifying when somebody says, "Gee, you remind me of so and so." I've even had little writeups and things where somebody said that my brush work was reminiscent of Jo Jones. To this day, that makes me feel great. It really does.
Isoardi
What would you say the role of Local 767 was at that time? How important were they for young musicians, for musicians down on Central?
Douglass
Well, I don't know how to answer that question, necessarily. We all came up through 767. I mean, that was the union. It was the only place to go. All the musicians we knew belonged to that. So there was a certain amount
Isoardi
Sort of accepted as part of the brotherhood.
Douglass
Yeah. We were really proud of it. Of course, that was the only union we knew. We never thought about the fact that it— Well, we knew about this thing that was over on this side. This thing was over on some street called Georgia Street at one time, you know. All the white guys belonged to one local [Local 47], and all the black guys belonged to another. We didn't get really conscious of it until later years. Buddy Collette branched out. He was the only black guy who was on a regular television show, the Groucho Marx show ["You Bet Your Life"].
I was playing with Benny Goodman at that time. I was the only black guy in his band, and I was doing a lot of recording with him. I mean, I did a lot of traveling, the concert tours. My first trip to Las Vegas was with Benny. And then, he even made a statement like— You know how he was. I guess one of the things that impressed me about Benny was not only the Gene Krupa thing, but, I mean, when Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson and those guys— Now, all of a sudden, here's black guys playing with Benny Goodman. So therefore— I don't know. For some reason,
Isoardi
So that was important, that model.
Douglass
Yeah. Many years later, when I least thought about it, I finally received a phone call. Somebody said they wanted me to do a date with Benny. I thought somebody was being funny. I almost didn't go.
Isoardi
When was this? The early fifties or so?
Douglass
'Forty-nine, I think it was. Yeah, about '49 I think I did my first date with him. This was during the time that [James C.] Petrillo [president of the American Federation of Musicians] had announced that there was going to be a ban on recording, so everybody was recording like mad. We just had to stay up all night, one date after another. They were trying to cut all the records they could before the strike went into effect. But anyway,
Isoardi
A childhood dream come true.
Douglass
Yeah.
Tape Number: I, Side Two
February 2, 1990
Isoardi
You said that in high school you guys were jamming a lot together. Did you guys form performing groups among yourselves? I mean, did you and Dexter or Hampton [Hawes] or somebody form groups and go out and look for jobs? Or were you just getting jobs as they came? Picking up with other people?
Douglass
I think they just kind of— It was as they came. Once in a while, we'd wind up on the same— Well, yeah, I guess we always did. We always did get a little thing. There were always the little parties. And then your own little group of people, they'd want you to play for their thing. And we were always playing for the other kids. We were always anxious to show off before the rest of them. We did an awful lot of stuff. We used to rehearse and do what you call assemblies at school, which were just like little jazz concerts.
There were times when we got people like Lionel Hampton and the Nat [King] Cole Trio to come over to our school and perform. I got to know some of those guys real well. I remember the instance when we were trying to get uniforms for the school band. We had sort of a small band, but we had a good band. We were scheduled to play at— There was a thing at the [Los Angeles Memorial] Coliseum
You were mentioning about the advantages of belonging [to the union]. Yeah, I think it was an advantage, as it turns out, for all of us. The fact that we were just there, we were on the spot, and— I mean, next door to the local itself was Lester Young's family.
Isoardi
They lived next door to it?
Douglass
Yeah. They lived right next door to Local 767. It was just a great big, two-story frame house;
Isoardi
Did Lee Young live there? The whole family?
Douglass
Yeah, Lee Young lived there, his family, you know, sisters, and whatnot. Lester was there whenever he was in town, because Lester was always out and gone most of the time. Lee Young was another one of the many drummers. If I wanted to learn something, I'd go watch— "Lee, how do you do that?" "Like this and that." And then he was another one; he would give me the opportunity. I mean, when the Lee and Lester Young band was formed and was performing around here, I was just one of the young guys that Lee would trust. You know, he could get up from the drums and say, "Come on and play a few tunes." Boy, that was just the the thrill of a lifetime. I got a chance to play with some awfully great people, strictly because I just took care of business and kept it together. So the opportunities were there.
I guess this [Local 767] was on a much smaller scale than this thing [Local 47]. This thing varies between 13,000 and maybe 16,000 members, and over there we had something like 600, which we thought that was a lot of people. However, when all those bands came to town, they all came right through there. You always knew ahead of time that they were coming, and you were right waiting for them. It was similar to the people meeting the [Los
Isoardi
When is this? What period are you talking about?
Douglass
Well, I mean, just during the forties, fifties, or what have you. Most of the clubs and things who were doing anything— I mean, the bands were mixed, but predominantly— Like when we wanted to work, we worked on Central Avenue, but the better jobs generally were out here in the Hollywood area. I'm talking about the Sunset Strip. You know where that is?
Isoardi
Sure.
Douglass
That used to be the elite, like Ciro's and the Macambo and the Trocadero and all those places like that. Well, I was fortunate enough to work all those places. All the jobs weren't necessarily jazz, as such, but I'd say they were jazz, because we all— You know, whatever we did— If I was playing society, there was always that little jazz
Isoardi
Do you remember when, I guess when you were a kid, the first time you went to Central? Or when you first started understanding what Central was about, hanging out there? Can you sort of describe what the avenue was like back then?
Douglass
Well, yeah, I guess I could. I mean, we didn't think of Central Avenue as being anything special. People are just now starting to think of the significance of it. It was just home. It was just a way of life. That's all there was to it. I mean, I lived just two or three blocks— I had to go down Central to get wherever I was going. If I wanted to go downtown, I had to get the "U" car on Central and take it all the way downtown.
Isoardi
But the clubs were going, the sounds were coming out, block after block.
Douglass
Oh, yeah. We had all kinds of clubs all up and down the street, and they stretched all the way out towards Watts way. Watts was all the way out around 103d Street or so. And, of course, the Plantation [Club], that was still on Central Avenue.
Isoardi
That was out in Watts.
Douglass
Yeah. That had to be in the Watts area.
By this time, then—I guess it must be about the late thirties or so—you're finishing high school. Were your plans then to become a professional musician?
Douglass
Oh, yeah, nothing else, nothing else at all. Our minds were made up in school, just made up. That's what we were going to do.
Isoardi
So you graduate from Jeff. Then what?
Douglass
Well, I just continued to play until the next thing. Shortly after that, I guess, maybe— I finished Jeff in '41. Well, you know, the war broke out December 7 of '41. Of course, I didn't have to go right away. I mean, I wasn't quite of age. But I did go one year later, December 7 of 1942.
Isoardi
Did you?
Douglass
In the service.
Isoardi
You were drafted?
Douglass
No, we weren't drafted. We enlisted. Then, you enlisted for the sake of escaping the draft, because there was another thing, you know— I think Buddy is probably a year older, and— All of us, I remember Jackie Kelso, Buddy Collette, Charlie Mingus, myself, and all of us, they were draft age. So when the draft board was after them— Well, then this opportunity came up in San Francisco. I guess that's where Buddy— They were recruiting guys, organizing a band at Saint Mary's College [Preflight School]. That
All of us went up there together at the same time. Charlie Mingus didn't pass the physical, and I think by the time they told me to raise my hand to get sworn in, I got scared and chickened out. [laughter] I just didn't make it. Well, I think what happened is they told us— Well, we were supposed to go there and be stationed there for the duration. That's what we were thinking about at that the particular time. Then the guy said, "Well, there's nothing that says that you can't be shipped out." And I said, "Oh no, not get on the boat!" Mingus wasn't going, so I came back. We came back together. Buddy and those guys stayed there, and I don't think they've been on the water yet. [laughter]
So anyway, I went back home and just continued to play in jobs and all that type of thing. And then, just about the time the draft board started after me, about a year later, then another opportunity came up. There was a warrant officer and a lieutenant from the regular army who came down to our local. They were going to enlist the band for the Tenth Cavalry. That's the regular army. You've probably heard of the Tenth Cavalry. I mean, that's a very
Isoardi
Where were they stationed?
Douglass
They were at Camp Lockett, which is in a place called Campo, California, which is about sixty-two miles southeast of San Diego, sitting, really, right on the Mexican border. Well, there was an opportunity, and it came up. So I said, "Well, we're going to be sitting right on the Mexican border for the duration." [laughter] So we jumped at that.
Isoardi
And far from home.
Douglass
So twenty-eight of us went into that band. My teacher, Lloyd Reese, went into that band.
Isoardi
Really? Twenty-eight from 767 went?
Douglass
From Local 767, yeah. [Elmer] Fain, who was the business rep at that time, the big, bad business rep from the union and, boy, just all kinds of guys. We had a fantastic band. So we took all of our basic training there, and we organized. We had a fantastic band. We played all of the USO [United Services Organization] shows, came out here, did the Hollywood Canteen. We traveled here and there. It was great. I mean, it had its ups and downs. We fought with each other, and certain things we didn't like, and whatnot, but, anyway, basically, we were there. And then, what happened was, after about fifteen months, we did go overseas. [laughter]
Oh, no. Really?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. Across five oceans. [laughter] You know, I didn't want the navy because I didn't want that!
Isoardi
And Buddy spent three years in—
Douglass
And those guys don't even know what water looks like! [laughter] So there it was. That's what we were doing. We were all comparing, making notes, but then we went. I don't regret it. It was a great experience, even though it was rugged at times. We saw a little action and all that type—
Isoardi
Did you?
Douglass
Oh, yes. However, we were never called upon to fight. We saw action because we stayed— Even though they broke the cavalry up— The cavalry was a horse cavalry, an actual horse cavalry. I've got a picture of myself. [rifles through photographs]
Isoardi
I didn't think they had any left by World War II.
Douglass
Oh, yes. It was just a very historical regiment, a horse cavalry. I learned to ride. Here I am on the horse there. And I've got a picture of myself in my uniform, which I was very proud of. Well, I don't know. I'll just try to keep talking more.
Isoardi
So where did they send you? Where did you guys go?
Douglass
Oh, the first place we went was North Africa.
Then, of course, when we left there, then we had to cross the Mediterranean. We went to Italy, landed in Naples, and then, later on, we made the invasion of Rome. And then, after that was over, then we wound up in our own hotel. Our band was doubled; they joined another band with us, so then my band was doubled. I commanded that band. Then it was fifty pieces. We broke it up into two— Boy, we already had our own eighteen-piece band. We didn't let the other guys from the other band play in our band at all. We thought we were better than they were. [laughter] [showing photograph] Yeah, there's what a good soldier looks like.
Isoardi
Yeah. Three stripes.
Oh, yeah. As soon as I finished my six weeks of basic training, three stripes. Never one or two. Well, see, the thing about it, the band was a newly authorized outfit, so all the ratings were open. So all we had— We had a warrant officer, and we had a first sergeant and a staff sergeant at that time, and the rest of us were all recruits and rookies. And then, they had to pass out the ratings. You had to be a combination of good musicianship as well as being a good soldier, and I was excellent in both areas. [I was a] pretty young guy to be a sergeant because I had to order a lot of old men around, you know.
Isoardi
I can really see, in a lot of ways, the similarity with Dexter Gordon. I mean, why people would say you guys could be brothers.
Douglass
Yeah. It was really a funny thing. Just recently, not too long ago, Dexter came out here. That's when Concerts by the Sea was going. He came out. I went out to visit him. He was playing at Concerts by the Sea. You know how the lights and things are at a club. So, naturally, I got down there and listened to him play. And then, when he finished his set, I stood up and walked over to him, and we hugged and this and that, and then we went and sat down together. Later on, he got up and went to the dressing room, and then somebody came over and hounded me for an autograph. I said, "Wait a minute." They thought I
Isoardi
Were you able to make it back while you were stationed below San Diego? Back to L.A. to the avenue?
Douglass
Oh, yeah, in and out all the time. Well, we were always in San Diego, just about every night or so, but any time we had any amount of time at all, well, then, bam, straight back to Los Angeles. We'd come in and hang out in the clubs and jam and this and that. And, naturally, when I was home, I'd stay there. That was the thing that was so beautiful about it. We were just home. You know, people just didn't believe it. It seemed like we were just home all the time. [laughter]
Isoardi
What was the avenue like during the war? How had it changed from before? Or had it changed much?
Douglass
Oh, I couldn't see any particular change. I mean, it seemed like things were really swinging. The clubs seemed to swing. I guess there must have been another crop of guys. There were a lot of guys who didn't get affected, who didn't get called into the draft, and they weren't affected by it. There were an awful lot of guys who were guys who were gone, necessarily. We were
There were clubs— Well, you know what happened down in the area up around First Street and San Pedro and whatnot, places that are predominantly Japanese or used to be predominantly Japanese. You know, that was when they put all of the Japanese and their families into the camps and whatnot. So then the things, the hotels and clubs and things down there, seemed like— I don't know. It was not all black. But basically, it seemed like that's where the avenue kind of moved and stretched on out that way. There were all kinds of clubs and things down that way, too. I do remember them.
Isoardi
So that area used to be a Little Tokyo kind of area.
Douglass
Yeah. I think it is again now. It is now.
Isoardi
But it was pretty cleaned out, then, by that campaign of internment.
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
Do you remember going to a lot of those late-night jams there? Did many white musicians come down there to play at all?
Douglass
Oh, yeah, did they. We always had this way of getting together. We used to have the little after-hours
Isoardi
I know the name.
Douglass
He was a real hang-outer, a drinker, and this and that. He played saxophone. He was in the Lee and Lester Young orchestra. He was the other tenor in that orchestra. And then, he worked with Benny Carter and just about everybody. Very predominant. He liked Ben Webster. He liked to drink and just hang out and that kind of thing. And then, I remember when Corky Corcoran came along. He was a little, hot, tenor player, and he used to come down on the avenue. See, then they'd have the battles, and he'd give a lot of people a bad time. But he was always nervous when Bumps was around. [laughter] Yeah, we had all kinds of after-hours— I mean, there was Lovejoy's, and there was [Ivie's] Chicken Shack. I mean, there was Jack's Basket Room. I'll always remember Lovejoy's. It was an upstairs place. I was a very, kind of, young guy at the time, but I was working at a club. It was on— Well, I worked at a club on West Eighth Street. It was called the 331 Club. I mean, I had met Art Tatum before that, but that was when I had really gotten acquainted with Tatum.
Isoardi
Do you remember when this was?
Douglass
Well, it's got to be— Let's see if I can think. I don't know. I'd have to say this has got to be about '41 or so. Yeah.
Isoardi
Was this before you went into the service?
Douglass
This was before I went into the service. Yeah. And I remember I was with a group called Dootsie William's Four Chocolates. The reason why I got that job was because George Reed, who was a drummer/singer with the group, he got drafted. Nellie Lutcher was in that group. I remember I auditioned for the job, and I won it on the basis of my singing.
Isoardi
Really?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. We used to play instruments and sing in four-part harmony. I mean, really together. We played opposite Art Tatum. Tatum was a drinking guy at that particular time, and he used to go out and jam from time to time. This guy who owned the club was named Herb Rose. Art used to give him a pretty bad time. I was just a little kid who was worshiping guys like Art and whatnot. So Art would tell me, "Tell Herb to give you a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon." Whenever I got that case, I'm supposed to take it over on Central Avenue to Lovejoy's and put it in the refrigerator. When everybody saw me coming there
Isoardi
Did you ever see him drink anything other than Pabst?
Douglass
Well, he drank Scotch, V.O., and then he chased it with the Pabst Blue Ribbon. Of course, I was working with him at the time that he finally gave up the drinking. That's when his health got bad.
Isoardi
That was that trio with Red Callender?
Douglass
Yeah. He lost all that weight, and he was off— He was away from the drinking at that time.
Isoardi
Do you remember the first time you heard Art Tatum? What kind of an impact did he have on you?
Douglass
Oh, I don't know. I can't remember the— I don't know. He was just fabulous. I mean, I just couldn't think of anything to equal that. Of course, I was a frustrated piano player, anyway. I was taking piano lessons all the time, just trying to use it for my own knowledge and whatnot. But I heard him, and I heard all the piano players. As great as Art was, I knew which ones Art liked, also.
Isoardi
Which ones were they?
Douglass
Nat Cole was one of his favorites. He used to
Isoardi
The Turban Room was in the Dunbar, also?
Douglass
The Turban Room was in the Dunbar Hotel. We had a trio—
Isoardi
Was that like a smaller lounge or something?
Douglass
Just a little small lounge, yeah. It was right here. If you went all the way back, well, then, the big Club Alabam was in the back. So we were working in that. It was Gerald Wiggins and myself—we worked as a duo—and then, on the weekends, we'd add Red Callender on bass. And then, later on, it was a trio.
Art was another one. You never knew when he was in town or not, but you'd look up and there's Art standing at the bar. After he'd get loaded, to see him decide that he wants to sit in and jam some— I had worked with him on that thing I was just telling you about. I remember what a bad time he used to give Herb Rose at the 331. He'd say, "You didn't get this piano tuned today." You know, a big Steinway. Just anything. Like, if the piano wasn't tuned, he would threaten not to even work. This kind of thing. And then, this thing we had in that club was just— We were
Isoardi
What kind of a singer were you?
Douglass
Oh, I'm all right. I can hold my own.
Isoardi
Did anything ever go down on record?
Douglass
Oh, a long time ago I did a few things, a couple of commercial things. I did a Louis Armstrong impersonation.
Isoardi
Did you really? You recorded?
Douglass
Yeah. But then, other than that, as far as singing, I never was— I mean, naturally, you're serious about it to a certain extent, but it's just one of the
Right before I came to work down here, it was a funny thing. One of the last jobs in one of the Young groups I was working with, the only reason we held onto the job was because of my singing. We had a little, girl piano player; she was a novice. I was teaching her how to play piano, really, and then showing her— You know, I've been doing a lot of teaching a long time. So there's a little group— In fact, I started working with them just by chance, started jamming with them at a little session out at the beach. Then they asked me to work a job with them. So I said, "Well, okay." The job was paying money. Then, after
Isoardi
Is she still playing?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. She never learned to sing a note, though. I just told her, "All you've got to do is learn how to sing." If I had worked on my piano and then sung with it, I think I could have stayed busy all the time. [laughter]
Isoardi
It sounds like it.
Douglass
Yeah, I think I could. I really believe I
Isoardi
So you're in the service, you're traveling around a lot, and you're playing a lot of music in the service.
Douglass
Oh, yeah, we were playing all the time.
Isoardi
And your band is pretty much, throughout your years in the service, guys from Local 767.
Douglass
Yeah, we had some good ones. Well, even Bumps was in the band for a while. He didn't go overseas with us. Ulysses Livingston was in the band, guitarist. He didn't go overseas with us. And Reese didn't go overseas. There were quite a few of the older guys who didn't go.
Isoardi
Why not?
Douglass
Well, I don't know. Everybody was just trying to get out of it. People were doing whatever they could to just kind of beat the rap physically or whatever it is. Then, some people, I don't know. They just— You've heard of Billy Hadnott.
Isoardi
Sure.
Douglass
Well, he was our first sergeant for a while. He was in the army before we joined. So a lot of people did all kinds— I don't know. There were all kinds of funny things that happened when it was time to go. Like, I was just as bad as any of them. I mean, I started complaining about this and complaining about that, going on sick call
Isoardi
So are you in the service, then, for the duration? Until the end of the war?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. I was in the service exactly three years and seventeen days.
Isoardi
And then you got your discharge.
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
And then it's back to L.A. and Central Avenue?
Douglass
Yeah. Well, there was always Central, but I went to San Francisco.
Isoardi
When you got out?
Douglass
Yeah, when I got out.
Isoardi
Why San Francisco?
Well, all the same guys— Jake Porter was one of the guys. He was in our Tenth Cavalry Band also. He's one of the guys who didn't go overseas. Great trumpet player. He's still around. When I got out of the service, he knew when I was coming out, and when I got back home—I think I was only home just for Christmas—he had a job in San Francisco, and he wanted me to join his band up there. So I went up there and stayed. I think we worked there for about a year. I met my first wife [Dorothy Burney] up there. We got married and then came back here. I should have stayed in San Francisco, but because I'd been away so long, I wanted to get back here. Then when I came back here, well, then the bottom dropped out of everything. Nothing happened around here. And then I—
Isoardi
Really? This is about '46, '47?
Douglass
Yeah, it was about '47 when I got back here.
Isoardi
What do you mean "bottom dropping"? Do you mean jobs?
Douglass
Well, all of a sudden— I mean, that was the way of life. One minute you're busy working, and the next minute there are no jobs. And then, sometime or another, things will pick up, and there's more jobs. So that's just the way it was. It's always been that way.
Isoardi
Was that happening to other people?
Douglass
Oh, yes.
Throughout the avenue? Other musicians?
Douglass
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Isoardi
Things were just drying up, then?
Douglass
Yeah. Some guys were working and some were not. Sometimes there were periods when there wasn't that much work.
Isoardi
Why do you think this thing hit in '47?
Douglass
Oh, I have no idea. I don't stop to analyze or think about why it happens and this and that. Just like things are very much that way now. Of course, I can see the reasons. I mean, I happen to feel that things in the clubs and things are really happening right now, starting to really pick up, and they are happening more and more and more so. But from a union standpoint, we're not getting that business, and I think it's the fault of the union, basically. You see, the thing about it is, we have a health and welfare program, we have the pension program and all that kind of stuff that we try to sell people on and all this kind of thing. However, it's supposed to be employer paid. Well, then, people or clubowners or whatnot, they don't want to accept the responsibility of being your employer. They'll pay you, but, I mean, they just want to pay you the money and that's it. They don't want that responsibility.
So, consequently, a guy works on a job, he may get on
Isoardi
Yeah. That would mean going out and trying to organize most of those clubs.
Douglass
Well, that's what needs to be done, and that's what we're in the process of trying to do right now, except that it's a little bit on the late side. I mean, there may be a way, but we have to keep searching until we find a way.
Isoardi
We're already more or less up to 1947, when you're back in L.A. By this time bebop is in, and it's in big. As the music changed in the early forties through the mid-forties, how did you react to that? Or how did you become aware of it? How did it affect you? Do you remember the first time you heard this new music?
Oh, yeah. I remember. Well, the first time I heard it was on records. You know, some of the Charlie Parker and Dizzy [Gillespie] things. I was in the service at that time when I first heard it. Sure, I heard Charlie Parker and the guys. There was a certain difference about it, and a whole lot of it I liked. Of course, a lot of the fellows that I admired as drummers— I mean, the first drummers I heard on the first Charlie Parker dates were actually Cozy Cole and Sid Catlett. So that didn't— I mean, they were the greatest, anyway. Then I began hearing about Max Roach, and I began to hear him. And, of course, records— I mean, I didn't always get carried away by records so much, or if I liked something on a record, I didn't really accept anything until I heard the guy do it in person.
I'm still like that. To me, a recording is like these photographs. That's just a record of something that was done at a particular time. That's not the ultimate. But to see a guy perform over and over again— "What does he do tonight? What will he do tomorrow night?" You know, a record is just going to play the same way every time you hear it. I don't care how good it is or whatever it is. I can always enjoy it. But I like to think— Even when I'm playing myself, I don't know. If I play a tune right now, I mean— I don't know. Tomorrow night I won't even
Isoardi
Yeah, the chemistry between—
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
Were you in L.A. that week or couple of weeks when Dizzy Gillespie and Bird [Charlie Parker] came into town and played Billy Berg's on Forty-sixth [Street]? Did you go to see them?
Douglass
Yeah, I was there. Yeah, Milt Jackson. Shelley Manne was playing drums. I can't remember who the bass player was. Yeah. But I was there. Heck, I worked all the Billy Berg spots before that. There were a lot of Billy Berg spots. The first one was the Club Capri, and that's where Lee and Lester Young started their band. The Club Capri was located on Pico [Boulevard] and La Cienega [Boulevard]. It was right next door to a bank, and it was on the corner. They used to call them the jitterbugs. I think most of the young kids came in there and bought nothing but Coca-Colas and things like that. But, boy, did
I was just out there in the audience, and every so often they said, "Well, Bill, why don't you come up and play the next set?" That had to be a thrill. So I got a chance to play with all these guys. I would do that because the next time I look up Ben Webster's in town, and he's going to work somewhere, well, he calls me. So that's how you— As you were saying, just being on the spot and just kind of growing up with things, developing a little bit of a reputation, then the guys think enough of you to call you.
But anyway, that was a thing that happened. Then he had that thing going on. Then Billy Berg bought another club called the Trouville. That was over on Beverly [Boulevard] and Fairfax [Avenue]. The Trouville was a club
Isoardi
You're kidding!
Douglass
That's what happened, you know. There's no let-up all night long. How did he find time for all these people to play? I can't remember. That's what was going on at the Trouville. So you know that it was like this, you know. It was ridiculous. And then, while that's going
Isoardi
So he's got three of these places going at once.
Douglass
He's got three clubs going at the same time. He didn't even open Billy Berg's, which was down here on Vine Street, until all those others places had closed.
Isoardi
So these three were going in—what?—the early forties, mid-forties? Or even earlier than that?
Douglass
Let me see. I'm trying to think. It seems to me like when I did my little thing in the Capri, I think that was before I went in the service. Yeah, that was before I went in the service. Because I know, when then things started to change around—
Even Buddy Rich worked over there for Billy Berg at one time. I was kind of the house drummer. In some way or another, when Lee and Lester left there and went wherever they were going on tour or whatever, they had Jake Porter and the Loumel Morgan Trio with Buddy Rich on drums. Buddy Rich was getting ready to go into the service at that time. He had a bad time with the union, you know. He was down there just doing whatever he could, and then, some way or another, he had a bad time with the union, so the union refused to let him work, supposedly. And then Billy Berg called me from over at the what's-its-name and says, "Well,
Tape Number: II, Side One
February 10, 1990
Isoardi
Let's begin today by going back a little bit. I think last time we finished around 1947 or so, when you're back in L.A. after your tour of duty and your year in San Francisco. But let me ask you one or two things about your war years. Last time, I think you said that you led the troops into Rome during the Italian campaign when the allies liberated Rome.
Douglass
Yeah. Did I get that far? [laughter]
Isoardi
I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about that. You were at the head of the allied troops?
Douglass
Well, no. You know, we formed this band. I told you about the band, the Tenth Cavalry Band that we joined, that we enlisted in. And then, finally, when the cavalry itself was dissolved, they kept the band intact, one of the units intact, and they took us overseas. That's when we made our little overseas jaunt. So they gave us another name. It was more like special service. I think it was the 118th Army Services Band or something like that. Then we were attached to Allied Force Headquarters, so we were a unit within our own. Then they took another band and joined it together with us, another twenty-eight-piece band. So then, actually, as far as parades and things like that, we had a band that was larger than fifty
Isoardi
So you were the drum major?
Douglass
Yes. I had to help train the other drummers. [tape recorder off]
Isoardi
You were saying about being appointed the drum major for—
Douglass
Yeah. I took over the duties of actually leading the band. My rank at that time was staff sergeant, and we had another fellow in the band who was of a higher rank than myself, an older fellow, but they kept him basically in the office for more clerical-type duties. It was my job to lead the band in parade formations and things of that sort. I guess the function I was telling you about is when we went up—
Well, what we did, we took part in the invasion of Rome, such as it was supposed to be. At that particular point, the Nazi army was pretty much on the run, and we were making this gigantic push up north from Naples up towards Rome by trucks. When we got outside the gates of Rome itself, there was a truce that was called. The truce was for the sake of saving the city of Rome itself, you know, the Vatican City, which is where the pope and the— It's very famous for the Catholic religion. The truce was called in order to give the enemy a chance to move farther
Isoardi
You had [Bernard L.] Montgomery at the head of the British Eighth Army?
Douglass
Yeah. Secretary of State [Henry L.] Stimson came there to interview the troops, and they had a bit of a flag-raising there. The place was liberated, and then [came] the march into the streets of Rome. That's what we call making an invasion. We were blowing our music, and the tanks and things lined up behind us, and the troops— I've told many of my friends about this. It was quite a thing, just going down the streets of Rome with the people pouring champagne from the rooftops and so forth and so on. But that's what it was all about.
Isoardi
And you were in the lead?
Douglass
Yeah, I was leading. I was the first man down the street.
All right! That must have been a thrill.
Douglass
Yeah. It was, yeah.
Isoardi
You must have been on all the newsreels.
Douglass
Well, yeah. They had newsreels at the time, and that's what happened. They had the newsreel cameras. It was a very historical event.
Isoardi
And you had the band right behind you, I guess, right?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. We had a better than fifty-piece military band.
Isoardi
And a good chunk of those guys, I guess, were from Central Avenue, right?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. Well, twenty-eight of them, twenty-eight of us exactly who were recruited right here at the [American Federation of Musicians] Local 767 on Central Avenue. Of course, there were a few guys who did not make the trip overseas. There were some of the older fellows who managed to angle their way out of it. There were always replacements here and there—a few younger guys, you know—but basically that's what it was. Basically, they were all Los Angeles. We had a few guys from other places, but basically they were from Los Angeles.
Isoardi
So you could say that a handful of jazz musicians from Local 767 liberated Rome.
Douglass
They were all jazz musicians, yeah. [laughter]
Isoardi
Just for the band?
Douglass
Just for our band. We had room service, sheets, and then we had our own banquet hall. Even though we had these K rations, C rations, and things of that sort, you know, stuff that was delivered over there to us to eat and so forth and so on, they had the Italian chefs and things who could take this stuff and just really just do it up grand style. So it was like a banquet every day. [laughter] We were in a very favorable position, because we could always get ahold of food and take it out to the people, the women or whatever it is. Like, we all had our little girlfriends and things like that. We could always
Isoardi
Who else from the Central Avenue scene was in that band with you? Do you remember anybody in particular?
Douglass
Oh, I'm trying to think. Well, let's see. I'll always remember James Nelson. He was a neighbor of Dexter [Gordon]'s. He was another young fellow who went to school with us also. He was a tenor saxophone player. We called him "Hawk."
Isoardi
Hawk?
Douglass
Yeah. He was a very, very tremendous talent.
Isoardi
Did you call him that after Coleman Hawkins?
Douglass
Yes, I think so. I don't know. Well, I don't want to talk about just one man individually. But he was one. And there was David Bryant, who's a bass player. He's still around. Gosh, if I have to stop and think about— We had Perry Johnson. He was the other sergeant in charge, like myself. Johnny Randolph. God, for me to call these names, it's pretty— I'll have to think about that one a little bit. I mean, I think I can dig up the names for you.
Isoardi
Did most of these guys, after the war, come back home and continue playing?
Yeah, we were very fortunate. We did not lose a man the whole time. All of us returned here. We lost some guys here and there after we got back, but none of it was a result of the so-called action that we saw. When I say action, we didn't have to pull out our guns and actually fire at anybody. We were fired upon sometimes. I mean, there were air raids and things of that sort.
Isoardi
When you were around entertaining troops and things like that?
Douglass
Yeah, that type of thing. And then, a lot of times, in the places where we stayed, there would be an air raid and things like that. I had to learn how to get the guys into the trenches and teach them how to cover up and protect themselves in the event of the air raid and so forth. So those were just a few anxious moments. But basically, when we were there, the Rome thing, most of the time we had pretty much of a ball. [laughter]
Isoardi
It sounds it. A little while ago, I read Red Callender's autobiography. I think at one point he makes a reference to your time in Rome, and he says that you tell a great story about running American jeeps on Italian cognac.
Douglass
Oh, my. Yeah. [laughter]
Isoardi
What story is that?
Douglass
Well, when we used to leave our little campsite or whatever it was— I don't know if all of this was in
There was one time we had a little run to make. What we'd do, we'd go down to visit the houses, or get into town and get in the— We always had that thing of transportation. I could always requisition a jeep, but I could never get the fuel for it. So we finally got this bright idea: "Nobody's going to drink this stuff." We poured it in the gas tank and off we went. [laughter]
Isoardi
No problem.
Douglass
Yeah, no problem. The jeep would cough a little bit, but that was about the extent of it. [laughter]
Isoardi
That's good. Those are the war years, spent pretty comfortably, boy, compared to most.
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
Last time you were talking a bit about playing in various clubs in Hollywood, and you talked specifically a bit about Billy Berg, whose name just comes up over and over again. He started a number of clubs, [Club] Capri, the Trouville, Billy Berg's Swing Club later—
Douglass
And then later on it was just Billy Berg's, when he finally got turned loose from the others at some time or another.
Isoardi
I've seen his name mentioned over and over in many books, but not much about the guy. Who was Billy
Douglass
Well, he was a clubowner. At that time I never knew anything too much myself, personally. I never paid too much attention to anybody's business. All we knew was that he was the guy we worked for. The times that I worked for him, he's the guy that gave me my paycheck and all the rest of us. He just had a thing with musicians. He was just one of these guys who just seemed to be very highly successful in promoting the clubs and then the people who worked in his clubs.
Isoardi
He was a fan himself very much, then?
Douglass
Oh, yes, very much so.
Isoardi
As far as you know, had he always sort of been into clubs, into managing and promoting clubs?
Douglass
Well, from the standpoint of my knowledge, yes, that's all I ever knew him to do. That's all I ever knew about him.
Isoardi
What kind of a guy was he? What was it like to work for him?
Douglass
Never any problem. He seemed to love musicians, and most of them loved him. We never had any problems. I mean, God, those clubs— I mean, I've described them to you. I mean, it was a place to work.
Isoardi
Yeah. It sounds like he just pulled in the best
Douglass
Yeah. That's true, yeah.
Isoardi
Were those clubs fairly successful?
Douglass
Oh, yes. I'd say they were very successful. So many people that they— Well, I mentioned Slim and Slam. You know, that was Slam Stewart and Slim Gaillard. One time when they were working at that thing where they had all that big fanfare going on I told you about. I think it was the Trouville club. They were there. And then, a little later on, Slim Gaillard came back and I think worked the regular Billy Berg's nightspot with another fellow named Tiny— I think it was Tiny Brown. I'm trying to think what they called it at— What did they call it? But, anyway, that was— If you remember the famous "Cement Mixer"? "Cement mixer, putty putty—" Great big hit. They made a big record, and it was during the time that they were working there, so, consequently, there again, he had a couple of ready-made stars working right in his club. I remember that quite well.
Isoardi
The guy had some luck, as well, eh?
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
How did you go about getting jobs in Hollywood? I mean, obviously Central is your area. You're around there a lot, it's where you live, you know the clubs, you know the people. But what about crossing over, going above
Douglass
Well, it just seemed to happen by itself. I wasn't that involved as far as being a leader, but when somebody booked a good job somewhere, they always managed to call me. I know during the time that I was working there with the—
Oh, just an example, when I was working with Dootsie William's Four Chocolates, we were booked by MCA [Music Corporation of America], which is a big booking agency, you know. They took us over at one time. We were always busy working clubs and things like that, but they pulled us out of one club and then put us in the Trocadero with Lena Horne, who was an up-and-coming star at that time. This was just about the time when the war was going on, when we had the blackouts. You know what the blackouts were? When everything was blacked out around here? Well, the Trocadero was a very going club at that time. And there again we— I don't know. That was one of the reasons why we were booked in there. I don't know. I can't answer that question very well.
Isoardi
So you never had to deal with those people as a leader or anything like that?
Douglass
Not really. But it wasn't that you were leaving Central Avenue. I mean, you just went where the jobs
Isoardi
They paid very, very well, though.
Douglass
Oh, yes. At least we considered it so at that time.
Isoardi
Another thing I wanted to ask you about Central, a lot of people that we've talked to talk about the clubs. I mean, the main thing is where the music was, but was Central Avenue more than just a chain of clubs? I mean, what else was going on on Central Avenue, like during the day? What was Central Avenue like? People must have gone to Central Avenue for reasons other than to hear music, I guess. Did they?
Douglass
Well, yeah. You had your markets. You had your bars. There were hotels besides the clubs. I told you about the Dunbar Hotel. Oh, let's see. There was another hotel on Washington [Boulevard] and Central just about off the corner from the [American Federation of Musicians] Local 767, where the black union was set up.
It might be interesting to tell you about some of the
Isoardi
Jelly Roll Morton was a member of 767?
Douglass
To my knowledge, he was.
Isoardi
He came out here and lived for a while, didn't he?
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
Between the twenties and thirties?
Douglass
I remember meeting him when I was a very young kid.
Isoardi
Under what circumstances?
Douglass
Oh, I don't know. I just met him. He was there at the union. I didn't have any dealings with him or anything like that, but—
Isoardi
Did you know who he was?
Douglass
I knew who he was. I saw him rehearse down there where most of the rehearsals and things went on.
Isoardi
What was he like rehearsing? I guess, from what I've heard of him, he was a man in charge.
Well, yeah, he was. That wasn't my type of thing, you know. I was into the more modern things like [Count] Basie and [Jimmie] Lunceford.
Isoardi
So he was kind of old hat.
Douglass
Well, yeah. We used to look at the the ragtime and the— I don't know. I didn't like to call them corny or anything like that, but there was a thing about some of the older musicians. You know, it wasn't what we were into necessarily. However, we knew what they were, and we respected them for what they were.
Isoardi
When you were that young, was ragtime or New Orleans jazz big out here? I mean, Jelly Roll Morton was here, and he was certainly one of the giants.
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
But if you have a sense of what music, say, was like, before swing, if you will— Do you not remember much of any of that?
Douglass
Well, I didn't really get involved in it until it was swing. However, I do remember an awful lot of the bands and things. I remember some of the bands that I heard, where they had the tuba rather than the string bass. I remember people keeping time on the banjo. You know, they had the banjos in the band as opposed to the guitar as we know it now. Acoustic guitar and, later on, electric guitar. I know as a kid, another one of my first
Isoardi
Jack McVea? I was just going to ask you.
Douglass
Yeah. And he played banjo with one string. [laughter] One-string banjo.
Isoardi
How?
Douglass
I don't know. I mean, a lot of people played banjos just like guitars. They played single-string and so forth. So I guess on a banjo you did the same thing. He was the guy who used to just book jobs all over the place and send different ones— Because I didn't always work with him. I'd work with one of his subleaders or whoever he was, but just one of the many sources through which we got jobs. All the jobs we played weren't strictly jazz or swing as we liked it or wanted it to be, but you played whatever the job called for. Or if you're a young kid, you get a call, you played whatever that band was playing. So I worked with a lot of older guys at that time. I just had to go along with what they were doing. Just whatever, you know.
Isoardi
So I guess, although it wasn't your thing, among the older generation New Orleans jazz was big, I guess. Dixieland jazz was big around there?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. There was always quite a bit of it. Even if it wasn't happening directly on that street, you
Isoardi
Why was he called "Little Louis Armstrong"? Because he played like Armstrong?
Douglass
Well, he did that same type of thing, the same type of style as Louis. You know, the high notes and— And he resembled Louis. Physically, he resembled him to a certain extent. But there again, like a lot of those fellows, like I said, members of the Clef Club, I mean, they would know more about this type of thing, because I think
Isoardi
I guess when you were a kid, were you at all near or have any contact with the Royal family.
Douglass
Yeah, the Royal family. It seems like I've always known Marshall [Royal] and his brother Ernie [Royal]. Ernie went to the same high school I did, Jefferson High School, even though he was, I guess, maybe a couple grades or so prior to me. Marshall went to Jefferson High School, also, but I think he was probably away from there before I came in there. But Ernie was there at the time that I got there. And then, as I said, my grandfather, who was violinist, played in the same group as Marshall's father.
Isoardi
Marshall's father, was he a professional musician?
Douglass
Yeah. They were professional musicians. Not that they did it exclusively. I imagine they probably held down other types of jobs. I know my grandfather [Calvin Douglass], as well as my dad [James H. Douglass] and my uncle [Peter T. Douglass], they held down jobs as custodians in the Los Angeles [Unified School District]. I guess it was a certain amount of playing that they did, also. I guess it's always been like that. People hold down something that's more or less stable, and then they're still
Isoardi
It seems like you can point to a couple of families here and there that really made important musical contributions. It seems like, I guess, in the Los Angeles area, Central Avenue area, the Royal family were prominent very early on. And Buddy Collette and other people have talked a lot about the Woodman family down where he was at in Watts as being crucial.
Douglass
The Woodman Brothers [Britt, Coney, and William Woodman].
Isoardi
The father [William B. Woodman, Sr.] was a musician and encouraged them very much. Was there anyone else in the Royal family who played other than the two brothers?
Douglass
No. That's about the extent of my knowledge. Have you talked with Marshall?
Isoardi
No, we haven't yet, actually. He's reluctant to because I think he's writing his memoirs. [laughter] We'd like to, believe me. Maybe you can put in a word for us.
Douglass
Yeah, well, I'd be glad to do that. He and I are very close friends. We always have been. Our families have always been. I guess sometimes he knows more about my own family than I do. [laughter]
Isoardi
Okay, let's see. What else did I want to ask you about? Oh, yeah. Last time, I think we talked a little bit
Douglass
Well, naturally, Lester was just like a legend. Like we saw him when he was with the Basie band. Lester could just do no wrong. I can't say that I just knew him from the standpoint of hanging out, but I got a chance to be around him quite a bit when he came out here and settled out here, he and his brother Lee. You know, that's another fellow you should talk to, Lee Young.
Isoardi
Yeah, we've gotten in touch with him.
Douglass
Lee was one of the fellows, the local drummers, whom I admired quite a bit. I always tried to pattern myself after him. He was a great influence on me, I'd have to say. And then, of course, I always loved him, because I was always there at like the Billy Berg clubs and other clubs wherever Lee and Lester appeared. I was always out there in the audience. One of the main things was that I'd sit there very anxiously, you know, and Lee would sometime or another ask me to come up and do a set. So, therefore, I had chances to jam with Lester Young.
Isoardi
Wow.
So that was it. I remember a lot of the funny sayings and things like that that Lester used to say.
Isoardi
Yeah, he had a strange way of talking.
Douglass
Oh, he had a way. I remember— It was outside of the Capri one night. I guess it was intermission. They were out in the little alleyway in back, just yacking and talking and whatever it was. This was during the holiday season. Somebody walks up, and Lester's out there and— excuse my language—somebody asked Lester, "Is Santa Claus going to bring you anything for Christmas?" or "How's Santa Claus going to treat you this year?" And he says, "Motherfuck Santa Claus." [laughter] He said, "It don't mean a thing. It just means play a little louder. That's all." [laughter] Yeah, he was quite a character. That was just typical, just having some really funny things to say.
Isoardi
I read somewhere that he had almost created his own language. He had his own vocabulary for everything. And unless you knew him, you had a hard time understanding what he was talking about.
Douglass
Yeah, [Harry] "Sweets" Edison is like that, too, to me. Sometimes he can just say the funniest things that— He can say some funny things, that's all there is to it. It never leaves you, you know.
Isoardi
Isn't it also true that Lester called everyone
Douglass
I don't know.
Isoardi
Did he ever call you "Lady Bill"?
Douglass
No. I just remember that he's the one that tagged Billie Holiday with that "Lady" thing ["Lady Day"]. Yeah, that's what I attribute.
Isoardi
I guess you heard Lester Young play with the Basie band in the thirties.
Douglass
Oh, yeah.
Isoardi
You knew the records.
Douglass
Oh, yeah. I knew the records and saw them in person. That was the first big band I ever saw in person.
Isoardi
His playing after the war— There's a lot of talk about how he was playing after the war compared to before the war. He had this bad experience down in Georgia when he was in the military, etc. Did you notice a change in the way he played when you were playing with him in L.A.? Did you notice if he was playing differently from the way he played in the thirties?
Douglass
I don't know. I always enjoyed him. I didn't notice any particular difference. I mean, I guess if there was any difference— I mean, I used to hear him a lot on the Norman Granz concerts when they'd have him and Coleman Hawkins and possibly Benny Carter and Ben Webster and all of them, you know, those jam sessions. I guess we thought
Isoardi
Especially if you're behind it playing the drums for forty choruses. [laughter]
Douglass
Oh, man. Yeah. You know, my expressions— Yeah, I used to get pretty mad at a lot of guys for just being too longwinded.
Isoardi
Do you remember any particular instances?
Douglass
Oh, well, it goes on, and it still happens. You should hear Red Callender and me talk about it. If we had our way, we would probably leave all horn players at home. [laughter]
Isoardi
Gerry [Gerald] Wiggins just said the same thing.
Douglass
Yeah, well, that's where we were. There were times when we just didn't want to be bothered with them. In other words, you're just utility, as far as they're concerned. I mean, you could be working on a job, like
Isoardi
I also wanted to ask you a bit about your experience playing with Benny Goodman. You talked a little bit about it toward the end of our session last time.
Douglass
All right.
Isoardi
And especially, you made a reference, I think, to traveling to [Las] Vegas, etc., and dealing with problems
Douglass
Yes, it was exactly. It was the year '51 that I went to Vegas doing a job. I guess it must have been about a two- or three-week stay or something like that, and it was the Benny Goodman Sextet. I happened to be the only black member of the sextet at that time. I'd heard a lot about Vegas. This was my first trip there, my first experience. I had heard these stories that happened at that time, that even the star entertainers, I think, like Lena Horne and people of that calibre, they usually had like a trailer-type thing, a dressing room set up out in the parking lot and whatnot.
Isoardi
And that's where they would stay? Even— Now, Lena Horne, people like that, were the headliners—
Douglass
I don't think they necessarily stayed there, but they'd go on and do their show on stage, and they were there, and they didn't stay in the hotels, as such. At least, to my knowledge, that's the way it was.
Isoardi
Even for the big-name stars, the headliners.
Douglass
Even the big-name stars. If they didn't know somebody's private residence where they stayed, well, then they had to go over on what I think was called the west side
Isoardi
Hotel management? Everyone?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. Well, he just sort of [said], "This is my drummer, and this is that, and then blah blah blah blah blah—" I couldn't even go off in a corner and sit down by myself without somebody like throwing a napkin on my lap [and asking], "Can I get you a cup of coffee or this and that?" I mean, I don't know. It was a real funny thing. They just spread so much attention. When I'd go off, they'd say, "Well, what are you doing over here by yourself? Why don't you come on in here and blah blah—" You know, that type of thing.
Why do you think this happened?
Douglass
Well, Benny said, "This is my drummer, blah blah blah, and you're going to treat him like everybody else." He just laid down the law. I'm going to stay there at the place. And to my knowledge— I mean, I might be wrong, but to my knowledge I've never heard of any black staying out on the Strip in one of the hotel accommodations. But he sure had it there for us. I know the one we opened, the El Rancho Vegas, you know, Duke Ellington's band came into town the very next day and opened right across the street from us at the Thunderbird [Hotel], and at that time I was staying over there, but I know that all of those guys stayed over on the west side at Miss Shaw's Motel.
Isoardi
Did you ever talk to them? Or did they ever say, "What the hell are you doing?"
Douglass
Oh, did I! Well, this is the funny part of the story. It was a funny thing. Like, we'd play our sets, and I'm like the rest of the boys, you know. When I had nothing to do, I'd step outside into the fresh air, walk out in the back, if it's at night, by the pool—there's nobody out there—and then I'd like to light up. And somebody would come out after me: "What are you doing out here by yourself?" [laughter] I had no privacy whatsover. Everybody's afraid that I was going to become a loner at the place.
I even went in the casinos with some of the guys in the group. We'd go in there, get on a dice table, put a couple of bucks up there and roll the dice, and it was real funny. I remember I got to rolling the dice one day, and there was a guy standing—naturally, a white guy—and he's standing there, and he must have felt like I was lucky to him or something, because every time I'd roll the dice, he'd lay a big pile of money on it. And then, when I get ready to drag, he'd say, "Don't drag it down. You're hot. I'm not going to drag mine down." And we'd sit there, and I'd let that thing stack up until I finally crapped out, and so that's it. He said, "Well, you were hot for a while," you know. That's all there was to it. It was really funny.
But anyway, what happened is that I finally decided—I don't know whether it was the second day or whatever—but I know I finally decided that I was going to go over on the west side of town and see what was happening. I didn't have a car of my own, but Johnny White, the vibe player, he had a little old, raggedy car. I don't know what kind it was, but we drove up there together. You know, Benny gave us money, gave us plane fare and the whole bit. Well, in the interest of saving money, we drove in order to put that plane fare in our pocket. It was perfectly all right as long we were there on time. So that was just one of the many things. And then, of course, by the same token, I thought that we
Isoardi
Oh, keno.
Douglass
Keno. That's it. They had a keno parlor over there, and the people would play it, and you could get into the card games and all that other kind of stuff. Things were going on, but it was basically like the black section of town.
Isoardi
With a black casino and a black strip?
Douglass
Yeah, a real poor Central Avenue-type thing. There was an Elks Club there and places where they hung out, and they had their little fun. And later on, as I found out, there was a band that worked in the club where we used to go over there—a couple of the places—we used to go over there and do some jamming from time to time. But anyway, I just went in there kind of unshaven and just— It was right after rehearsal or something. I just went over there and went in their bar and hung out a little bit. I noticed that people could go in there at that particular
Isoardi
Boy, how times have changed!
Douglass
Yeah. But I just sat around and this and that. I said, "Where can a guy get a place to stay around here?" I figured I'd kind of check out the room rents. So I was told about Miss Shaw's place. I went around the corner and spoke with Miss Shaw and found out about getting a place to stay. I think it was something like— I'm trying to think of the amount. It was some ridiculously low price.
Isoardi
Compared to what you're paying on the Strip.
Douglass
Yeah. I've forgotten what it was. But at any rate, I just said, "Well, what the hell." It was one of those things where you had one of those community bathrooms and all that kind of bit. But I felt like I could hang in there and make it, and I could save myself a little more money. So I moved out of the El Rancho Vegas and stayed over there. And then, lo and behold, the Duke Ellington bus pulls in, and all of them stayed there, except Duke himself. I mean, guys who were on the show with him like Timmie Rogers. And I remember the guys in the band like Al Hibbler, Paul Gonzalvez, Ray Nance— Those are the ones who I kind of got tight with. I mean, I knew a lot of the guys in the band. But all I know is that, when they came in there and— I don't know.
Tape Number: II, Side Two
February 10, 1990
Isoardi
You were saying they were paying about $40 a week?
Douglass
Yeah. Well, anyway, whatever it is, that rate was just— I'm just making a guess. But it was nothing like what I was paying. I was paying practically nothing. I might have been paying $5 or $6 or $8 a week. I don't know what it was. This is 1951. But when I found what they were paying, I couldn't understand. Like, when you went anywhere on the road, people knew how to lay for you, and the prices would go up whenever they found out you were a musician or an entertainer or whoever you're playing with.
So this was going along all right. I don't remember what month it was, but all I know is that it got cold there at night. They had the butane gas tanks and all that kind of stuff. Of course, when I'd leave my room at night, I'd light the fire and whatnot so it would be warm when I came in. And, naturally, I'm acquainted with all the guys. Like, we all have to go out on the Strip now to do our shows. There was a place where we'd go around the corner and catch the bus. There was a bus there that would pick you up on the corner, and they would take you all the way out on the Strip. The guys would go on over to the Thunderbird and work, and I'd go on this side of the street and report to my job with Benny. Naturally, I'm dressed.
But naturally, I got to be very tight with the guys in the band, and I got to be what the guys called their connection. Because when I went into the Elks Club with the little group that worked there— There was a guy named Dave Hendricks, who was from Los Angeles, also. He was a saxophone player. He was leading the group. And then, there was a drummer who was playing with him whom I got acquainted with, and this drummer would play drums in the
Benny himself was— I don't know. My relationship with him was great. I mean, I always respected him. I always admired him. He treated me just royally, I would have to say. The only time I actually got mad at him was when I was over on the west side, I got into a game and lost all of my money. [laughter] I mean, to the standpoint that I didn't
Isoardi
Oh, he's a big gambler? He liked to gamble?
Douglass
Well, he did at that particular time. I knew he was playing. He was there. That was part of the thing. He spent all of his time at that roulette table. Bundles and bundles of chips, you know.
Isoardi
Gee. That's a sucker's game. It's got almost the worst odds in the house.
Douglass
His brother, Irv Goodman, acted as the band manager. He was also a trumpet player, but he acted as the band manager.
I'd tell Irv, "Well, look, Irv, what about getting a little draw, a little advance or something like that?"
"Oh, man, Benny so and so and so."
He was scared of his own brother.
So I finally just went on in there to speak to Benny. I said, "Well, Benny, I'd like to make a little draw, get a little advance."
"What the hell do you do with your money?"
I said, "Same thing you're doing with yours." [laughter] "Except that mine's a little bit short."
He finally just tossed me a bunch of chips or something like that and said, "Get the fuck out of here." So other
But we never had any problems. I always respected him. I used to feel sorry for a lot of the guys who worked for him, though. I know that the majority of the musicians that I've run across called him a son of a bitch. Well, I guess you've probably heard the stories.
Isoardi
Well, there's one that comes to mind that I think Bill [William] Green told me. I don't know where Bill got it. I don't think he was there. But apparently there was a group of people over at Goodman's house one day, and they were rehearsing or something. It was just ice cold, and he didn't have any heat on. So the guys are trying to play, and they're freezing to death. Finally, one of them says, "Benny, don't you know how cold it is in here?" Benny stops, and he says, "Gee, no, I didn't notice. Thanks for telling me." He goes and puts a sweater on and says, "Okay, let's play." [laughter]
Douglass
Oh, boy. Yeah, that's just like him. You know, my first experience playing with him was quite a while before we went to Vegas, of course. It was rehearsals, and then we had a record date. It was mostly recording and things like that. I used to see how he treated these different guys, and you never knew where you were. You'd have a group of guys here— Sometimes it was the big band. You've got this guy playing bass, this guy's playing piano,
Isoardi
How do you relax?
Yeah, well, you just couldn't. You tried to. You did the best you could. You didn't know what was right and what was wrong.
Anyway, finally one day I heard about a record date. "Benny recorded last night."
"Yeah?"
"He had Lee Young on drums." You know, this and that.
So I said, "Okay, well, that's it. It was good while it lasted, but I guess he's finally decided to get another drummer for the time being."
Well, in the meantime, I'm working with Jake Porter on Central Avenue at the Downbeat Club. You know, that was our regular job. We had kind of a semi-bluesy, jazz-type thing, and it was right on Central Avenue. This is home to us, so we're all relaxed. We're drinking and just swinging and having a ball. I have to say that Jake was kind of responsible for me getting the Benny Goodman call in the first place. He was a very close friend of Fletcher Henderson, and Fletcher Henderson was the guy who did all of the writing for Benny and whatnot, so I know that Fletcher had a lot to do with getting me that spot with Benny. Well, anyway, when this news came out, I just let it go at that. "Maybe they'll call me again; maybe they won't." I just went on back to my regular job, which was playing every
It was a Saturday night, and we were swinging. I mean, we'd had a few belts and things like that, and we were up there, you know, and this and that and so forth and so on. I didn't know it, but Benny came in that night with Fletcher. Fletcher brought him in there. They're sitting there. And then, when we came off the stand, I mean, it was natural. We're all real show-offs when we're all on the stand, you know. Everything was really hot. I came off of the stand, man, and I look, and there's Benny looking straight at me, and he's sitting there with Fletcher. So I didn't know what— You know, "Hi, Benny. Well, how are you doing?" He says, "Why don't you play like that when you're in my band?" [laughter] So I made up my mind then. I said, "Never again will I ever let anybody tell me how to play for somebody else. I'm just going to be myself, no matter what it is." And that's the way it was.
Other than him giving you those little funny looks. I mean, we'd be on the stage playing, and after that, he'd stop and look around like this and that. I'd just look the other way. [laughter] Then he'd laugh, you know. He knew what I was going through. But he just liked to bug people.
Isoardi
Jeez. Tough one to work for.
Douglass
Yeah. I used to feel sorry for some of the—
Isoardi
Let me ask you a little bit about some of your favorite hangouts. You mentioned that you had a pretty steady gig at the Downbeat. What was the Downbeat like as a club? Do you remember what it was like inside or—?
Douglass
Well, all I knew was, there again, it was almost right next door to the [Club] Alabam. It was just on the corner there. I don't know. It was just full of people, and there was a bar, then the tables and the waitresses and so forth, and there was the bandstand. That's the same Downbeat Club that brought Howard McGhee. To my knowledge, that's the first place that Howard McGhee worked. That was when I got my first little taste of bebop, you know, because that was the spot where Howard McGhee brought Teddy Edwards and Roy Porter. I can't for the the sake of me remember just who else was in the group. But that was, as far as real, live, and in-person, one of the first actual bebop bands that I ever heard.
Isoardi
Now, McGhee had come from the East Coast, hand't he? He wasn't an Angeleno?
Douglass
Yes, he did. No, he wasn't an Angeleno.
And that was your first experience with live bebop, then?
Douglass
Yeah. Live bebop. It was very impressive to me.
Isoardi
He was a great trumpeter.
Douglass
Oh, yeah, yeah. Really, yeah.
Isoardi
And he had Teddy Edwards playing with him?
Douglass
Yeah, Teddy Edwards. That was the first time I saw Teddy, the first time I was acquainted with Roy Porter. I don't know how long he'd been out here, but it seems to me like there were a number of guys around town who knew Roy at the time. So I think Roy must have been around here a little bit longer than the rest of them. But just when he came out here, I'm not sure.
Isoardi
Was the Downbeat, I guess, the place you played most down there?
Douglass
Oh, no.
Isoardi
Were there other clubs you hit pretty regularly?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. Well, there were all kinds of— When I was actually on Central Avenue, I think I spent more time in the Club Alabam itself, which was the big place inside the Dunbar Hotel. And then, after that, when I left the Club Alabam, they had just recently opened that Turban Room, which was the little cocktail lounge where Wiggins and I worked together.
Isoardi
You worked as a duo there?
Yeah, we worked as a duo for a long time. Then they finally let us add the bass on weekends, and then it finally got to the place where we were a trio.
Isoardi
And the bass was Red Callender?
Douglass
Was Red Callender, yeah.
Isoardi
Great trio.
Douglass
Most of the time it was Red. There were times when we had Charlie Drayton playing bass, and then maybe Joe Comfort or somebody else. But basically, it was Red most of the time.
Isoardi
The Club Alabam sounds like it was quite a show. It had chorus girls and all sorts of different acts?
Douglass
Yeah. That's where everybody went when they left all their Hollywood jobs, Beverly Hills jobs, and whatnot. Then, around about two A.M., everybody came from all over everywhere, and they always gathered right in the Club Alabam.
Isoardi
Really? For jams?
Douglass
Well, yeah. It wasn't always a jam. The show would always run late, and then it just seemed like they did that just because everybody was coming over there, not only the musicians and whatnot, but the crowds. I guess I'd say that the predominantly white crowds would just sort of follow the guys over, and then, when then that closed up, then they would just migrate to the little after-hours
Isoardi
Yeah. But the Alabam was never an after-hours place, then? It was a—
Douglass
Not technically or legally. It was just a place that just ran late. [laughter] I mean, I worked in there. It used to make me pretty mad. You never knew what time you were going to get off.
Isoardi
Were you in the house band then?
Douglass
Yeah. House band. And the show always ran overtime. Oh, it was a really quite a thing. Curtis Mosby was the owner for quite some time, and he was famous for being bad pay.
Isoardi
Was he really?
Douglass
Oh, yes. So you always went through that thing, you know, like the chorus girls and everybody on the show, everybody in the band sitting around waiting to get paid. I mean, sometimes you'd get some money and then he would owe you some. It seemed like you were always just doing something— It seemed like I managed to always get my money at some time or another. However, it was a job, and it was a steady job. You didn't always like it, but there you were. You made the best of it. And then, of course, that was one of those jobs where— I guess I worked there many times during the course of my lifetime. Then, later on, it was a guy named Joe Morris who became the owner after
Isoardi
He took over the Alabam from Mosby?
Douglass
I don't know if he took it over directly from Mosby, but at some time or another he did become the owner.
Isoardi
Was he connected with the Morris Hotel?
Douglass
I don't remember. He's the same Joe Morris who opened the other place that was farther out on Central later on, a big place called the Plantation [Club]. Did you ever hear about that?
Isoardi
Oh, down in Watts?
Douglass
Yeah. I used to work with him out there, too. Let's see: Buddy Collette and Charlie [Charles] Mingus and I and a number of others. Oh, we were in a guy named Snake White's band. Snake White was an arranger, trumpet player, good musician, and a hell of a drunkard. [laughter] Yeah. That place was hilarious.
Isoardi
The Plantation?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. The stuff that went on and—
Isoardi
Like what?
Douglass
Oh, man, like— Well, Wynonie Harris was there, and people came out there to see who was going to fight who, you know. [laughter] Yeah, it was really something.
Isoardi
It almost sounds like a roadhouse.
Douglass
Yeah. I mean, we had Dorcester Irving, a bass player, a real cockeyed guy. I guess he'd get kind of
Isoardi
No kidding?
Douglass
Yeah. He pulled the peg out of his bass and went after him like this, you know. He had Wynonie begging for his life. It was really funny. Snake White would be leading the band. He wrote arrangements and all that, and we'd be playing. We used to have those rehearsals with the different people on the show and—
Oh, I remember one instance, just an instance. There was a guy who was a tap dancer. We had his music and all that. We played his introduction. The show was going on. You know, [sings], he runs out there, "Pick it up, drummer! Pick it up!" He wants it faster. And Snake says, "No you don't. I want this to swing." [laughter] He just wants the band to be right here, you know. That was the kind of stuff that went on. Now, that poor dancer couldn't get anything going like he wanted to, and Snake's not going to let it happen. He was the boss. Yeah. Oh, that was just typical of a lot of things that went on, but it was
Isoardi
Who else was in the band?
Douglass
Charlie Mingus, Buddy Collette— Seems to me like— I'm trying to think of this boy, Nellie [Lutcher]'s brother. Joe Lutcher. It seems like he was in the band. I can't remember all the names of the guys who were in that band.
Isoardi
When was this, then? About mid-forties?
Douglass
Shoot, don't ask me. Sometimes I try to think about a lot of these things as to whether I was in the service, or was it after my time in the service, or— No, I know it was before I went in the service. Because I know the thing that was significant about that was that he was trying to get us to take a cut in pay because "business is bad" and this and that.
Isoardi
Oh, Joe Morris, you mean.
Douglass
Joe Morris, yeah. But, you know, "This club is going to make it, and I'm sure I'll be able to pay you more." And then, all of us were studying with Lloyd Reese at that time. We were just a bunch of young punks, but Reese was a bit of a genius. Naturally, I would tell him what's going on in the club. He says, "Well, next times he mentions that, just ask him, as soon as things get better, how much is your end of the profits going to be?"
Isoardi
Ooooh.
Yeah. And then, I, for one, would go there and present it to him like that. And he says, "This little young punk—" You know. [laughter] Yeah. Reese is the one putting the ideas in our heads. He's always trying to tell us how to take care of business and not let people take advantage of us.
Reese gave me a very good example, and I'm telling you that it always hung true throughout my career, everywhere I've ever been. He says, "You know how it is when you go in the market? Okay, just for example, you're going to get a loaf of bread. This is Weber's bread or whatever it is, and it costs so much a loaf. Okay, great. Then you look over here and you see some new product, bread, whatnot, and it's maybe about half the price of the other. You feel it, and it seems to be soft, and it seems to be fresh, so you try it. And it's good. So whenever you go to the market, you get that loaf of bread. And you keep going and this and that, and, all of a sudden, one day you walk in there and it's the same price as the other. Then you get the one—" [laughter] Yeah. He said, "The same thing happens in music." Because this guy is telling about what he is going to do and this and that.
Of course, he had a chance to get mad at us because of the fact that, around about the time that Billy Berg got the Trouville and moved Lee and Lester [Young] out of the Capri
Isoardi
Because you were leaving?
Douglass
Because we left there to go work for a white guy rather than to stay there to help him to— We said, "Well, that's just the way it is. We just have to go, and that's all there is to it." So that's what happened. But then, the ironic thing is, when the club started to kind of make it and pick up, he did let that band go, and he hired Count Basie. [laughter] It's like I was telling you about the market thing. So there you go. Yeah, as soon as things picked, you see—
Isoardi
They must have really picked up!
Douglass
You see who got the job. Yeah. It was a gigantic place, too. When they got those crowds in there, well, there's nothing but money. The Alabam was a very large place, too.
Isoardi
So this was happening about 1940 or so, then, I guess. Is that right? You guys were playing at the
Douglass
Yeah, this had to be 1940s, yeah. 'Forty-one. Because Buddy and all the guys, they went in the navy, I guess, sometime— It must have been maybe the early part of '42. And I know that in December of '42 was when this Tenth Cavalry Band was organized down at the union, and so that's when we took off.
Isoardi
So ultimately, then, Joe Morris buys the Alabam, or takes over the Alabam.
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
Later on. And Mosby, I guess, ran the Alabam for quite a long time, though. Did he go back quite a few years?
Douglass
Yeah, he did. I don't know. There are a lot of guys who have been around a lot longer than me; they could tell you. In fact, they could even tell you the name— I think that place had another name at one time or another. I wouldn't know anything about that. But it had another name before it became the Alabam. I guess it had to be after— Yeah, it had to be after my army days that I finally went back in there again as the house band. The other time, I was working with Curtis Mosby. And at the time I worked for Joe Morris at the Alabam, it was after my army days. I'm quite sure that was. Because when I left there, I remember I left there to open the other little club that was right
Isoardi
Do you know much about some of the background of Mosby or the Mosby family? I know he had a brother named Esvan Mosby, I think.
Douglass
Yeah. And then he had a son, who I used to know. I don't know. I don't know that much about them. I couldn't tell you that much.
Isoardi
He was a musician at one time, wasn't he?
Douglass
Yeah. I think he led Curtis Mosby's Blue Blowers. I used to remember hearing that name all the time. I never heard the band, but I guess this was kind of before my time.
Isoardi
Wasn't there also some kind of festival or parade on Central once a year? Do you remember that at all? There would be a parade down Central Avenue, and they would end up in the ballpark or something. Was it Wrigley Field or whatever? And groups would be playing.
Douglass
The only thing that I remember, there used to be a Labor Day parade, and I didn't really take part in that. I know that my uncle before me, who was the guitarist, he used to tell me about those things. I think that the musicians in some sort of a way, the union made them obligated to play in this parade or whatever it was. That could be the one that you're talking about. I understood that, in the cases of a lot of them, I think that they were
Isoardi
Let me ask you. You referred at one point to the fact that you guys would play everywhere. There were a lot of other places to play. Certainly other than Central Avenue, and, say, the fancier clubs in Hollywood, outside of those two areas, where else would you go to play?
Douglass
Well, we did a lot of work in Watts. There were a few places that happened around Watts.
Isoardi
Do you remember any of them? I mean, the Plantation club was down there, right?
Douglass
Yeah, that was there. That was on Central Avenue in Watts. And then there was another one on 103d [Street]. I've forgotten the name of that one—Savoy or something like that—you know, on 103d and Graham [Avenue] or something like that. I don't know. There were always little places popping open here and there. I used to play over in Pasadena quite a bit.
Isoardi
Really? Where at in Pasadena? Do you remember?
Douglass
Oh, don't ask me. [laughter] Don't ask me. A joint's a joint. They come and go, you know. Sometimes it might be somebody's high school, or it might be some sort of a civic auditorium or whatever. Just wherever something was
Isoardi
I just moved up there. I wish there were still some joints up there. There doesn't seem to be much.
Douglass
In fact, there were a number of guys, musicians, who were tired— There were a few guys. Like one of them, William Ellis, Bill Ellis, he was a tenor player, and there was Bob Farlice, who was a trumpet player, and we were all in the bands, and we rehearsed together. We had some guys who lived out in Watts, some were in Los Angeles proper like me, some guys were in Pasadena, and, boy, that was the only freeway we had at that time, but we used to eat that thing up. We'd go over there for rehearsals. There were always things just happening. There was always Glendale, always a couple of clubs that were really happening over there in Glendale. [Melody Club]
Isoardi
Really?
Douglass
I mean, what was his name—? Spider, the piano player. Spider— What's his name? Dang. These names really get away from you. I know that's where Bumps Myers and Brother [William] Woodman, who is one of the Woodman Brothers, they were in that little Glendale spot for a— No, not Spider. Poison. Poison Gardner was the name of the piano player who led the—
Isoardi
Poison Gardner?
Douglass
Poison Gardner, yeah. And Bumps Myers. It was a
Isoardi
You'd finish your gig, get in your car, and split!
Douglass
Yeah. Nobody you knew lived around there, that was for sure. You'd go in there and do your gig and have a ball with all the people and so forth and so on and then back to town.
Isoardi
"Little Texas," "Little Mississippi," that's good. Did you ever go toward the coast much? Were there any clubs along the coast or down in Long Beach or San Pedro or anything like that?
Douglass
Yeah, yeah, always. We worked Long Beach, everywhere else, and then we'd leave here and go to San Diego. I don't know. Just jobs. Like this week you might be working in San Francisco. It just seems like you're always up and down the coast, in and out and all over and everywhere. That was when things were really happening.
A lot of clubs.
Douglass
Oh, yeah. You just didn't stay in once place. Of course, every once in a while the tours would come up. I mean, I used to leave here and then go away on one of those blues tours or something like that where you go all through the South, cover every town in Texas and Louisiana. Then we worked our way down into— Oh, one of the towns that I enjoyed was Oklahoma City in Oklahoma.
Isoardi
Why?
Douglass
Man, we used to go by car. The band I was in with Jake, we'd go by car. We would jump five hundred miles a day and work in a different town every night.
Isoardi
Wow, that's grueling.
Douglass
Yes, it was. You always got sick whenever you went out.
Isoardi
Why did you like Oklahoma City so much?
Douglass
Well, I don't know. I think it was one of the places were we— I think we stayed there about three days. And then, you know, some of the best girls I ran into—
Isoardi
Were in Oklahoma City.
Douglass
Yeah. [laughter] All I know is we had a ball. It was fun, you know. And, of course, we were playing the blues. You've heard of Big Joe Turner?
Isoardi
Oh, sure.
Douglass
Yeah, he was with us, and then Wynonie Harris,
Isoardi
Wow. So this tour originated in L.A., and then you guys—
Douglass
Yeah. You worked your way through. The way you would do it, you'd leave here, probably the first place you worked would be somewhere in Arizona, either Tucson, Arizona, or Phoenix. It would be one or the other. You'd play one town, either Phoenix or Tucson going up, and when you came back, you'd play the other town. Then you'd go from there into El Paso, and then, from there, from town to town in Texas, and then we'd get into Louisiana. I mean, we hit New Orleans on occasion.
Isoardi
This blues tour was pretty much L.A.-area musicians?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. It was the same thing. It was just formed right here. We'd just leave here and take off and go. You'd go wherever it was.
Isoardi
Hell of a lineup. Who else did you have? You had Joe Turner, you had Wynonie Harris—
Douglass
And T-Bone Walker.
Isoardi
T-Bone Walker.
Douglass
Yeah. And then, at times, somewhere along the tour, we'd pick up Marian Abernathy. I mean, you talk about learning how to play the blues, that's where I learned to play the blues.
Boy, that was some college of the blues! [laughter] What was it like going through the South? Was that your first trip through the South?
Douglass
Yeah, that was my first. Well, let me see. Wait a minute. No, my first time through the South was in the service. Yeah, because I remember, that tour that I'm talking about, that must have happened about 1947 or so. Because I remember, I was married. I had a wife at that time. But my first experience going through the South was when they took us from Camp Lockett, I mean, Campo, California, and then put us on the troop train going to Newport News, Virginia. That was when we went through and we saw all the signs, you know, "White Only" and so forth and so on. That was kind of a new experience for myself and a lot of guys. So that was the experience we had.
I did have a little experience with some of the towns when I came back from overseas and when I was stationed in different places like Virginia and then San Antonio, Texas, and a few others. They moved me around quite a bit during the time that I came back, so I got a chance to get acquainted with a whole lot of the stuff that went on down there—finding out where I could go and where I couldn't go. That was a real weird thing.
I remember when I was in Camp Lee, Virginia. It was kind of big facility where they had bands and bands that
Tape Number: III, Side One
February 10, 1990
Isoardi
I wanted to ask you a little bit more about Central Avenue itself. You mentioned Curtis Mosby and— Is it Joe Morris of the Plantation [Club]?
Douglass
Joe Morris, yeah.
Isoardi
Are there any other other owners that stick out in your mind who were sort of prominent on the Avenue? Any other people who ran businesses or clubs down there who are somehow economically important down on the Avenue?
Douglass
Yeah, well, I think of Dynamite Jackson.
Isoardi
Who was Dynamite Jackson?
Douglass
A fighter. For a long time he carried the title of heavyweight champion of California. [laughter]
Isoardi
Was he the legitimate heavyweight champion?
Douglass
Yeah, he fought. He was a great big guy. I used to hear about him as a kid, and then I got to know him because, naturally, I worked for him in clubs. He had a club on Central Avenue at one time or another. Even though I went in and out of there, I didn't work for him there. I worked for him quite a while in another club that he opened over on Adams Boulevard just west of Crenshaw [Boulevard].
Isoardi
Do you remember the name of that club?
Douglass
Dynamite Jackson's.
Isoardi
What about that earlier club you mentioned?
Dynamite Jackson's.
Isoardi
That was called the same thing? [laughter]
Douglass
Yeah. [laughter] I worked in the other club with Gerald Wiggins and Irving Ashby. Gerald Wiggins was playing the Hammond organ at that time, and Irving Ashby was on guitar. Dynamite, he was a funny type of guy. Well, an ex-prize fighter, he's just about as tall as I am and bigger, you know, an enormous, scary-looking type of guy. I don't know. The conversation came around once. He was saying, "I so-and-so and so-and-so. I never mess with nobody. I don't bother nobody. Gerald, do I ever bother you?" Gerald says, "You'd better not bother me, you big motherfucker!" [laughter]
Isoardi
Gerald said that?
Douglass
Yeah, that's what Gerald said to him.
Isoardi
Little Gerald?
Douglass
Yeah. "You better not bother me, you big, ugly motherfucker." [laughter] That's the way he talked to him.
Isoardi
Well, he had guts. [laughter] So you guys were working for him in what, the late forties, maybe?
Douglass
No, this had to be '58 going on '59. I know I was working there during the time that I was sort of courting my present wife [Deloris Seals Douglass]. We got married in '59. But, yeah, that was one of those funny things, funny experiences.
I remember what happened that we finally left the club. We were working there, oh, I guess about six nights a week, and we always had a thing— The thing that always existed when the holidays rolled around, if you got a job New Year's Eve somewhere, the New Year's Eve jobs always paid enormously much more than your regular jobs did. So there was always a problem. Guys, usually, when they were working on a steady job, if somebody booked them ahead for a New Year's job, well, then they're looking all over trying to find some sub to take their place over here while they go out to the other place and make the money. So it always created a bit of a hassle.
Well, in Dynamite's, I don't know just what it was, I don't know what was happening. I think that maybe Tuesday night might have been our regular night off, and I think that maybe New Year's Eve fell on Tuesday night that year. Well, that's our night off. [laughter] So we think nothing of it, you know. When we didn't show up Christmas Eve, he wants to know what's going on.
"Well, that's our night off."
"Well, then, what about next week?"
"That's our night off."
"Well, hell, you know goddamn well I'm the one who's taking care of you. I'm the one who's feeding you. You should know that you—"
I said, "Well, you know, unless somebody tells us what's happening—"
So anyway, he got mad at us for that reason. Of course, we didn't care.
However, from time to time, I've been a little bit involved in the union [American Federation of Musicians]. I think, at that particular point, I had not a regular job in union, but I was on the wage scale or the price committee, you know, one of the committees, that reviewed the scales and then came up with suggestions. It was as a result of that I knew what the problem was, and I knew how hard it was to get people to work in your place. I really felt like if you were on a steady job and holding it down, that just because a particular night in the year rolled along that you should stay on your regular job. But I do know that he, like all of the rest of the other places, when New Year's Eve came around, they always put a cover charge on, which they didn't have before. They doubled the price on everything, but yet they wanted us to sit there and work for that same little bit of money that we were getting. That's the reason why it's written into the union contract right now. I'm the one who instigated that, that everything, no matter where you are, it pays double.
Isoardi
For New Year's.
Douglass
Yes. It's got to pay double. No matter what
Isoardi
Was Dynamite Jackson a product of Los Angeles? Did he come out of the Central Avenue area as a boxer, do you remember?
Douglass
Yeah. I don't know where— You know, none of these people, I never knew where they were born or where they were from originally. But it seems like he was just one of those characters who was always here, to my recollection.
Isoardi
Can you think of any others?
Douglass
Who were around here?
Isoardi
Yeah.
Douglass
Henry Armstrong. He used to live right down the street from me. And there was a Jack Thompson. I think he was a lightweight champion at one time or another. But Henry Armstrong— My dad [James H. Douglass] used to take me over there to the Olympic Auditorium. I used to see him fight almost every Tuesday night.
Isoardi
You went to the Olympic that often?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. Because we had some good fighters, you know. It was just the thing. There were a lot of hot fighters, and we used to go to the fights until this thing
Isoardi
So the late thirties, early forties was that?
Douglass
I guess. You'd have to kind of go to your record books and history books—
Isoardi
Isn't that when Armstrong— Yeah, I think that's when he had those three titles.
Douglass
Yeah. I know he passed away just recently.
Isoardi
Yeah, last year.
Douglass
In fact, the Clef Club had what we call our Christmas party. We do that in late January. That's a kind of Christmas dinner for the club members and their guests. And Mrs. Henry Armstrong was at this affair.
Isoardi
Do you remember any characters on the avenue who were hanging out in the clubs or anywhere who weren't anyone in particular, may not have been famous, but were just characters?
Douglass
Oh, there's hundreds of those. I mean, nothing comes to my mind right now. But there were always hundreds of characters. They're just guys who hung out with you, part of your entourage, so to speak.
You had an entourage?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. Well, especially Wiggins. He had a whole slew of guys who went with him. Because Wiggins was a drinker at that time. He always bought all the drinks.
Isoardi
Yeah, every time I ask him something, he says, "I can't remember much about that. I was drunk all the time." [laughter]
Douglass
Yeah. Yeah, Wig would— And then, when payday comes, he owed the boss money, you know. [laughter] Those kind of things, yeah. And sometimes, if you weren't careful, you're working with him, and he'd tab up yours, too, you know. [laughter] I worked many of the clubs where I used to draw, draw, draw, until I got ahead of the man. Especially the places where— You know, there were some guys who had a reputation for being slow pay and all that kind of thing, so you always did things to try and get ahead of them.
Isoardi
How did you meet Gerry Wiggins? Do you remember?
Douglass
Oh, I remember Gerry was in one of Les Hite's last orchestras. I remember him playing piano and— Gee, I don't know how I— Well, all of us were just musicians. I mean, I didn't play in the Les Hite Orchestra, but I was always around there when they played and heard them when they were rehearsing. Damn, that's a good question. I'm trying to remember exactly when. But I remember I had the
Isoardi
So you guys just sort of hooked up, then?
Douglass
Yeah, so we just kind of hooked onto one another, and then, after that, it seems like we were just— We worked so many places, you know. Even though there were things where we just drank, drank, drank, we played a lot of good jazz. The Turban Room was one of the places. And when we left there, we used to go in other places. When we'd get into a club, we'd stay there for quite some time.
Isoardi
By popular demand?
Douglass
Well, yeah. We had a way of kind of packing the clubs. I know the boss at the Turban Room— We used to take those long intermissions. Gerry used buy drinks for people, and then people are always buying drinks for you and whatnot. The boss admitted that he made more money when we were off the stand. [laughter] We were sitting around the tables, and then the places where we worked, it was Saturday night every night. Everybody came in there to just hang around and drink and see what was going to happen. That was
I remember Mike's Waikiki, but there again that was on Western Avenue. Things just began to move over that way, too. Well, things just didn't just move; things just spread out that way. First, it was Western Avenue and then it was Crenshaw and then things just continued. They were just all up and down, just spread out all over.
Isoardi
You mentioned the Les Hite Band. I suppose that band must have been the most prominent big band to come out of L.A., wasn't it?
Douglass
Well, it seemed to be. I used to hear a lot about it. I'm pretty sure that Lionel Hampton was associated with Les Hite's band. And I have to say— I don't know. I can't say offhand, but I imagine that Marshall [Royal] and an awful lot of the guys were in there. I remember a lot like the prominent guys like Oscar Bradley, drummer, Floyd Turnham again. It was really a good band, really name-band quality, that type of thing.
Isoardi
Who was Les Hite? I don't know anything about the guy. I don't even know what he looks like or—
Douglass
Well, some of the older guys, when you talk to them, they can tell you more about him. I knew him to talk to him. He knew my uncle [Peter T. Douglass]. I guess that's how I knew of him, because my uncle was a guitarist when I was a very young kid.
So he was pretty much your uncle's generation, then?
Douglass
Yes, he was.
Isoardi
Was he from this area, do you know?
Douglass
I don't whether he's from here originally, but yeah, that's what he was. Boy, he was an Angeleno, as far as I was concerned.
Isoardi
Did he play an instrument?
Douglass
I always remember him just sort of conducting. I don't know whether he played any instrument or not. He was a very likeable guy. I always liked him. He always called me "Veep," you know, because at that time I was the vice president of [Local] 767. See, this is when we were getting ready to go into the amalgamation years. I was a young guy, but the reason why we got into these offices and whatnot is because we had started this amalgamation thing, talking up on getting the unions together.
Isoardi
I want to get into that.
Douglass
Yeah. So the only way that we could do it was to just go and run for office and get elected.
Isoardi
So it seems like, probably, if you were to look at the list of people who played for Les Hite over— How long was that band together? Maybe twenty years he had that band?
Douglass
Oh, God, yeah. I guess so. Maybe longer. I
Isoardi
Probably every prominent musician who came out of L.A. went through that band at one time.
Douglass
Yeah. I think he was probably leading the band when I was a baby, more than likely.
Isoardi
Do you know how long that band lasted?
Douglass
Oh, I have no idea. In his later years I don't think he was leading a band. I know that at one time or another— Well, you know, Elmer Fain. I went to his funeral yesterday.
Isoardi
Elmer Fain?
Douglass
Elmer Fain. He was the business rep.
Isoardi
Yeah, of Local 767.
Douglass
Of 767, and for a long time was the business rep over here [Local 47]. In fact, he retired out of 47.
Isoardi
Oh. He just died.
Douglass
I went to his funeral yesterday, yeah. He goes back a long time. He was also in that group that joined the Tenth Cavalry Band. He was in that group, also. As long as we knew him, we never knew him to be a saxophone player. We were really surprised that he had a horn and knew how to play it. But he had to march along with us and play in the marching band. Fain is an institution because of the fact that, when all of us were just barely starting to learn how to play instruments and we were running around playing the
Isoardi
Why would you hide from him?
Douglass
He just seemed to be so big, bad, and ugly. He just gave every— Sometimes you'd work with other musicians who belonged to the union, and they were always staying out of his way, because he was the type of guy who really went out and hunted you down. Unions had a lot of clout then, you know. Like, if you were on a job, he could pull you off the job and all that kind of stuff.
Isoardi
And he did it?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. He would do it in a minute. He'd pull his mother off a job. If anybody was breaking the rules, according to him— So that's how I got to know him. He didn't sit too well with too many of the musicians, you know. I don't know. I had my own thoughts and feelings about him. I mean, I got to know him pretty well. He was in the service with us, and he was one of the older guys who didn't make the— You know, I guess they discharged a lot of the older guys, and they didn't have to make that trip overseas when the rest of us got ready to go. But I mention him because of the fact that I know that during the time when the amalgamation first came into effect, well, he was
Isoardi
Oh, really?
Douglass
Yeah, called the Hite Fain Talent Agency. Because of his experience in knowing the clubs and whatnot— Well, he even booked us on a couple of jobs. He would begin to work like a booking agent, you know, trying to book talent in the clubs. That's what he was doing for a while. But then, as fast as the need came, they needed a regular business rep in 47. Well, then he finally got that job again.
Isoardi
Oh, he did.
Douglass
So that's what happened to that. But I don't think that I remember Les Hite organizing a band anymore, after that time.
Isoardi
Did he stay in kind of brokering talent?
Douglass
I really don't know exactly what he did or what happened to him. I just know that he passed away, and I know that had to be— Well, our amalgamation took place in 1953, so I don't know. I guess sometime shortly after that—
Isoardi
He died shortly after that?
Douglass
I imagine he did, yeah. I know he did, but I don't know if that was exactly the time. But I don't remember him becoming active again as far as leading a band.
Could you talk a bit about what the conditions were like playing in those clubs on Central? I mean, what the hours were like, if you can generalize at all about the situation. What the hours were like, what the pay was like? Was it pretty hang-loose or—?
Douglass
I don't know. Most of the clubs were unionized, like the [Club] Alabam and all of them. We had scales, you know, wage scales. God, it's hard to remember what those figures were like.
Isoardi
At the time, the money that, say, an average musician working on Central would make, would it be more than, say, most people who were out with regular day jobs or—?
Douglass
No, I couldn't say that that was true. It seems to me like there was a scale of some sort. In the Alabam days, I think we had gotten the scale up to the point where a sideman made something like $72 a week. I guess we're talking about working six nights a week.
Isoardi
At the Alabam, which was one of the better clubs.
Douglass
Yeah. Well, not one of the better clubs. I mean, the Alabam was all right, but that was just average.
Isoardi
Oh, really?
Douglass
Yeah. There were clubs like out in Hollywood and— But if you got a good hotel job or something like that, they had a scale that was called a deluxe-type
Isoardi
When you did work those jobs up in Hollywood, was there any contact with Local 47?
Douglass
Well, there was contact. I guess our local made a certain amount of contact with them.
Isoardi
To work those jobs?
Douglass
Yeah. Well, I think that that's one reason why the amalgamation came about. Because there was a— I don't know. I don't know if it really happened, but there was supposed to have been something like scale undercutting or one local vying against the other. I didn't know, really, but, I mean, I used to hear little things like the officials at 767 would call over there. We got a band going in one of the clubs out there somewhere, and they used to call and find out what the scale was. It seems to me like whatever local got into the spot first, they were the ones who would establish the scale.
Isoardi
I see.
Douglass
Yeah, I do remember that figure, about $72 a week. I know that, while I was in the Alabam that last time, I was actually vice president of 767 at that time. Joe Morris had gone down to the union and negotiated with
Isoardi
You did? It came off?
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
Tell me about that.
Douglass
There were two owners: it was Joe Morris, and he had a partner named Clarence somebody or other. The guys came to work, we got there, the place is full of people, it's almost time for the show to go on. So the guys in the band are sitting there, and I tell them, "Well, we're just not going to work. I'll get a contract for the $72 amount drawn up, and then we'll make sure that he signs it, or we don't go to work." See, because what he's got, he's got a contract from the union on the $60 scale.
Isoardi
So you guys are not only bucking the Club Alabam, you're bucking the union leadership.
Yeah, that's right. So that's what we did. We just said that we were not going to play, and we also told him that if they tried to bring another band in there that we were not going to let it happen. I was not going to let another band come in there. As usual, the guy still owed us money. [laughter] It was really funny. They didn't know what happened. Now it's time for the show to start and people are in there and we're not going to budge. So this guy Clarence, he doesn't know what to do. He finally just has to go ahead and sign the contract that we had for the $72 a week. Of course, when Joe came in and found out, he says, "Well, I never would have done that." I don't know what he would have done any different, but that was the way it was.
Isoardi
So you got what you wanted.
Douglass
Yeah, we got what we wanted, and so we continued to work there.
Isoardi
You didn't have to carry a sign out front.
Douglass
And then, I remember, shortly after that, he brought Dinah Washington in there. She packed so many people in that place, with the cover charge and all that kind of bit, that, instead of just having two and three shows, we used to do about nine shows a night.
Isoardi
Nine shows!
Douglass
Yeah. We used to just do a quick show and just
Isoardi
Jeez. When was that? Dinah Washington. What was that? The late forties, when she was just becoming well-known?
Douglass
Well, this is— Let me see. I guess it's got to be— Let me see. I'm trying to think if it was late forties or— I don't know. I can't remember exactly what year that was. But Dinah Washington was well known.
Isoardi
Well, actually, if you were the vice president of the local then, it must have been around '51, '52?
Douglass
Well, we have to be talking about like '50, '51, or something like that. But it's during— See, when I was there, we were in the process of trying to bring about the amalgamation, which did happen in '53. This has got to be the really early fifties, I guess.
Isoardi
Yeah, he was making out. And he was appealing for hardship? [laughter]
Douglass
Oh, yeah.
Isoardi
Did you encounter many women musicians down on the avenue? Were there many? Who were they? Do you remember?
Douglass
Oh, Clora Bryant was around there at that time. You know, she was kind of a young thing at that time. And I remember—
But she was playing.
Douglass
She was playing in the Alabam. She was playing in the Alabam after I left. Like during the time when—
Isoardi
In the house band?
Douglass
Yeah, when I was— Yeah, I guess we called it a house band at that time. I think probably Lorenzo Flennoy might have been leading the group at that time. But at that time I had moved into the Turban Room with Gerald Wiggins. I think that she was there then. I don't know. It seems to me like there were different bands and different things moving in and out. It wasn't a stationary house band like it was when I was there. I mean, there was a violinist named Ginger Smock.
Isoardi
A violinist? Really?
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
Playing jazz violin?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. She played jazz violin, played a little bit of everything, yeah. She's still around somewhere. I think she's up around the Las Vegas area. I heard someone talking about her just recently, but I haven't seen or heard from her in I don't know how long.
And we had many people who were pianists. Nellie Lutcher was around at that particular time. And— God, if I can just think of— There were a lot of— Betty Hall Jones.
Who is she? I haven't heard that name.
Douglass
Well, I still hear from her all the time. She's living up around Perris, California. She's in and out and travels. I guess she goes abroad and back again. She's an elderly lady. She's kind of in the same class with Nellie Lutcher.
Isoardi
A piano player.
Douglass
Yeah, a piano player. A piano player and entertainer.
Isoardi
Did you ever play with Vi Redd? I think she was a—
Douglass
I knew of Vi Redd. I knew her. I mean, I knew of her brother, who was a drummer, and I knew her dad, who was a drummer, Alton Redd. Alton Redd was one the guys that my uncle used to play with, and I knew him quite well.
Isoardi
So her family goes back quite aways, then, too.
Douglass
Yeah, it goes back. Her family, also. She's another one you can talk to, because her family was really entrenched. I think Vi Redd even had a little secretarial job at Local 767, for a while. I knew her at that time, but she never impressed me, or I never did know that much about her. It just seems to me like she just kind of sprang up all of a sudden, because I wasn't even aware that she was a player of any kind. I don't know. I guess there are a lot of people in the—
Dorothy Donegan. I didn't know her on Central Avenue, but I remember when her husband [John T. McLaine] at that time had a club over on about Forty-Sixth [Street] and Western Avenue, a supper club or what have you, and it did quite well. I worked with her over there for quite some time. That's not Central Avenue itself, but that's another one that happened a few years ago.
Isoardi
She was a fine player, wasn't she?
Douglass
Yeah. She's still around. I just heard her name. She's going to— Oh, I think they mentioned that she's going to be in the Playboy Jazz Festival at the [Hollywood] Bowl. I just heard today that she's going to be on one of those programs.
Yeah, there a lot of women musicians. God, they just don't pop into my mind right now. I guess when I leave you, at some time or another, and before we get together again, if I can think of them, I'll start jotting them down.
Isoardi
Okay, great. Or when you get the transcript of this, you can always add some if you want.
Douglass
Oh, yeah.
Isoardi
I wanted to backtrack just a bit to Art Tatum. His name has come up a lot. It's fortuitous, in a way, that I'm talking to both you and Gerry Wiggins at the same time, since you two interweave so much, and you both have
Douglass
Yes.
Isoardi
Those marvelous Pablo [Records] sessions. What was it like in the studio with Tatum? How was he?
Douglass
Oh, Tatum was just great, just one of the greatest things that ever happened in my life. I not only recorded with him, I was his regular drummer. We worked together every night. He stole me away from Gerry Wiggins.
Isoardi
He stole you from Gerry Wiggins?
Douglass
And Red, also.
Isoardi
Red Callender.
Douglass
Yeah. See, Tatum used to come in and out of town. He was a drinker at first. When we were working that same Turban Room, you just never knew. I mean, you're up there jamming, you're playing, and then you look around, there's Art standing at the bar, just hanging over the bar with his Scotch in one hand and Pabst Blue Ribbon in the other. He'd sit there and listen, and he'd pop his fingers and so forth and so on. He knew everybody. Then Gerry said, "Oh, my God, God's in the house." And then, later on, for no reason at all, Art decides he wants to sit in and play some.
Oh, Ben Webster used to hang out in there, too.
Isoardi
At the Turban Room?
Oh, yeah. Always— Well, everybody: Lloyd Reese, Ben Webster, everybody came in the Turban Room. That was just one of the places that, when anybody came into town, they all came to the Turban Room just to see what was going on.
So Art would want to play. That piano had half the notes missing, a little spinet piano. We were up on a high platform over the bar. I'd worked opposite Tatum like in the Herb Rose incident, you know, where he used to threaten to quit because Herb didn't get the piano tuner in there. They always had a nice, brand-new Steinway for him to play. Well, he was that type, real particular about pianos. If you didn't tune it, he might not play, that kind of thing. How a guy could sit in there and listen to this old raggedy piano— We couldn't get the guy to fix it. We couldn't get him to do anything with it. You know, there's been cigarette butts and drinks poured all down the piano and everything else—
Isoardi
And that's what Gerry's been playing on?
Douglass
That's what he's been playing on. Of course, we were loaded half the time. We were just doing the best we could. All you'd do is, "Goddamn it!" you know, "This note's missing, and that's missing, or this one is sticking." Art would get up there and fool around with this thing a little bit, and then we started jamming. To
Isoardi
Was he living by himself then?
Douglass
Yeah, he was by himself. He had just gone through some kind of a divorce. I don't know who his first wife was, but he hated her because, in the settlement, she got his piano. Can you imagine that?
Isoardi
That's cruel.
Douglass
Made no sense. Made no sense at all, you know. He got married again while we were working together. Someone called me from New York. They're trying to locate his widow now. And for all of me, I can't remember her name.
Isoardi
Oh, Gerry Wiggins just— Was it Gerri Tatum?
Douglass
I don't know. If Gerry Wiggins has any ideas on that, I'd sure like to know about it, because this fellow— In other words, what it is, it's got something to do with some Tatum music, and she's got some money coming or something coming.
Isoardi
Gerry Wiggins just told me that she's around
Douglass
Yeah. I think the last time that I saw her was at that Gerry Wiggins thing that was promoted downtown, it seems to me. And I had no way of knowing.
Isoardi
Call him up. He might—
Douglass
Yeah, well, I will. I'll remember to call him and ask him.
Isoardi
So Tatum's living in an apartment on Adams?
Douglass
At that time. He bought a home shortly after that. I guess shortly before he got married this last time, he bought a little home that was up in, I guess, Baldwin Hills or something like that, a nice little place. That's where he was until he passed away.
I don't know. I guess he got such a good feeling out of sitting there jamming with us that he decided, for the next club job, that that's what he wanted to do. And as he told me, he said— You know, he used to always have the trios with the bass and the guitar. He said they had to rehearse. They'd do this and that and work out the thirds and things like that, the little things that they could play together, but he just felt like playing with us—that it was just so much more relaxing. He could just do whatever he wanted to do, and Red was a tough enough bass player that Red could stay right on top of what he was doing. I always felt good about the fact that he felt like
Isoardi
Great compliment.
Douglass
Yeah. I carry that with me everywhere. If I'm good enough for Art— Art never said "Bill, do this" or "Bill, do that." It seems like I was just sensitive enough to the things that he did. So that's the way it was. I feel very proud of that. Yeah, nobody can say anything to me about how to play drums. If it was good enough for Art, it should be good enough for anybody. [laughter] Art could have had anybody he wanted, you know. He could have had anybody he wanted. He paid well. By the standards of those days, he paid very well.
Isoardi
So, all of a sudden, poor Gerry Wiggins is a solo?
Douglass
Yeah. [laughter]
Isoardi
He's not a trio. Both of you guys left then?
Douglass
Yeah, we took that job. But what happened is that— I don't know what happened with the Turban Room. It just kind of leaves my mind as to when that thing closed or what happened with it. But Gerry always had a way of going from one place to another. I started working with Gerry again, naturally, but I worked other places. I don't remember leaving Tatum and going back to the Turban Room. Tatum did several engagements. Like he'd come here, and this thing might last a couple of weeks or so, and then
Isoardi
And Tatum played them all. [laughter]
Douglass
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Tatum, yeah, he liked to play in B-natural, E-natural, and this and that, and so he had— I mean, I was there. He had a guy named Dudley Brooks come to rehearsal and write out the bass lines. He'd tell him exactly what to write and where to put it in the staff, and then Dudley would write out— Most of it was just whole notes and half notes, you know, not a whole lot of difficult stuff, but just general— In other words, he didn't have the bass player just playing the changes. He had certain lines that he wanted, and Red knew those pretty well. From then on, I had to carry that bass book with me at all times. And then, when we were in San Francisco, I'd sit there with Leroy and help him with the notes. Of
Of course, Leroy could play; he sounded good. And then, when we got back here, that's when Shelly Manne and André Previn grabbed ahold of him and they did that My Fair Lady album that was kind of hot and so forth. It seemed like Leroy just kind of caught on. Everybody wanted him from that point. I mean, Tatum was a good enough reference. They see you in the club, you're playing with Art Tatum, and then all of a sudden you're available over here. Who do you think you're going to call?
Isoardi
Yeah. After Tatum ripped you two guys off from Gerry, what club did he go into? What was the club date that he had?
Douglass
Oh, the club. We went into a place called the Royal Room. That was located on Las Palmas [Avenue] and Hollywood Boulevard, a little place right on the corner there. That was one of the most delightful engagements I'll ever remember.
Tape Number: III, Side Two
February 10, 1990
Isoardi
Why was it one of the most delightful engagements you've ever had?
Douglass
Well, it just was. I don't know. There was a certain feeling— There's a certain feeling just going to work and feeling like you are somebody and that what you're doing is very, very important. And the atmosphere, I remember, was very— Tatum would play just quiet, so the atmosphere was very, very quiet. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Isoardi
Because he would lower the volume so people would quiet down?
Douglass
Yeah. If people yacked, he would just play so soft that after a while the next guy would say, "Hey, shhh. Quiet." So after a while, it got like that. Pretty soon the waitresses and things didn't move around and rattle their glasses and things like that, either. It was just like a concert, you know, just very quiet. We'd sit there. And we'd get up there, and we'd play as a trio. He had certain tunes, and we'd do the things together. He'd feature me on the drums. That was another thing about playing drums with him: he was a drummer himself at one time or another. It was almost as if he was reading my mind because, while I'm playing my little
Isoardi
Yeah. There are no recordings of that trio? You three guys?
Douglass
Well, it was the three of us on the things that we did, but, I mean, that was the Norman Granz thing. Norman Granz, at that particular time, he would get Tatum during the day, and he'd have him record with different groups. I've got all those albums here.
Isoardi
Yeah, all the Pablo albums.
Douglass
So then, the only ones who actually read [music] did a lot of other things with him, along with other people. But the ones where we were together as a group was when he added Ben Webster and Buddy DeFranco on two albums. So those are the only ones that I'm on with him.
Isoardi
How long were you at the Royal?
Douglass
Well, I don't know. It had to be about a two- or three-week stay or something like that. Most jobs at that time didn't last must longer than that, especially an appearance like that, because Art was the type of guy who moved in an out, and he was here and there. And then, later on, he came back, and then we went into Jazz City.
Isoardi
What were the audiences like at places like the Royal coming to see you guys?
Douglass
It seemed like we attracted a terrific movie crowd and all kinds of celebrities and, of course, naturally, musicians who came out there. Musicians were just clamoring to get into the place. That's the reason why sometimes your best night would be a Monday or Tuesday, the nights when most musicians were off, and then they would be there. We had people like Leopold Stokowski.
Isoardi
Stokowski came to hear you?
Douglass
Yeah, he would come in there and sit there with his mouth, his chin hanging wide open, you know. Yeah. And we had the movie stars. I remember Sonny Tufts got thrown out—he drank a lot—just for being noisy.
Isoardi
They threw him out?
Douglass
Art was playing "On the Sunny Side of the Street," and he says, "Sonny. You get it?" He said,
Isoardi
There are a lot of stories about classical pianists, [Vladimir] Horowitz and [Artur] Rubinstein and people like this, sneaking in the clubs to hear Art play.
Douglass
Oh, yeah. Well, that happened. I don't remember Horowitz, but I know that he did. And Art was a fan of his, also. They both admired one another, especially from a technical standpoint.
Isoardi
Is there anything Tatum couldn't play?
Douglass
No way. He could play— I've seen him do runs with these two fingers up here and then the other two fingers playing something else down there—a couple of different things going on at the same time. Stretched tenths from here to here. He used to give me piano lessons. I was always a frustrated piano player. Not piano lessons, as such, but he knew that I was interested. He was always showing me things.
Isoardi
He would do runs with one hand, with two fingers playing one thing and the other two fingers on the same hand playing something else?
Douglass
Yeah. Two fingers on the black keys, and then the other two fingers would be playing something else on the white keys. He could do that in either hand; it didn't matter. He was just phenomenal.
Tape Number: IV, Side One
February 17, 1990
Isoardi
I think today we're up to the union [American Federation of Musicians], one of your areas of real expertise.
Douglass
Oh, well—
Isoardi
I think if we can roughly follow an agenda that goes from [Local] 767, as much as you can talk about it, through the amalgamation, and then into the Local 47— If you can do it that way chronologically— Let's begin with Local 767, your earliest memories of it, what you can tell us about its very early history as much as possible, and then just bring it up to the point of the amalgamation and your involvement with it, etc.
Douglass
Yeah, well, okay. I guess we became aware of the union and what have you as a result of when we were young kids. Did I mention that? That Buddy [Collette], Charles Mingus, myself, and most everybody else, the Woodman Brothers [Britt, Coney, and William Woodman], and who have you, we were young kids, we were all in the business of practicing music and playing professionally as much as we could—you could call it semi-professionally. You know, this fellow [Elmer] Fain was always on the scene. It would get a little rough when every once in a while there were people who were actual
Isoardi
What was the normal initiation fee?
Douglass
The regular initiation fee at that time, I'm quite sure, was $50. I think that that was the amount that we paid for it. And when I say initiation fee, that covered the initiation fee to the union, to the federation—you know, all locals are members of the federation—and then it also included the club. Even in that little local we had a thing that's very similar to Local 47 where we all belonged to a corporation that's called the club, as well as
Isoardi
Pretty cheap.
Douglass
Yeah. Really, it's just that the thing has been behind for a long time. However, when you pay your initiation fee, well, then we have $100, which we call an initiation fee into the union, and there's $100 of that that's— Well, the way it was before, if I can remember correctly, we used to have what you called a $150 initiation fee. Fifty dollars of that was to join Local 47, $50 was to be a member of the club, and the other $50 was to be a member of the federation. So if I can just get my figures correct, it's still $50 to the federation, $50 to the club, and then $100 to join the local. Something like that. I mean, it's all divided up, and there are reasons for this. And then, of course, when the guy pays his— How much is that? That's $200. And then, with the new dues structure, which is $92 a year, many fellows, unless they work out something other than that, they'll join, they'll pay these initiation fees, plus you still have to pay your first-quarter's dues. However, we don't do it by quarters anymore. We do it semi-annually, which means that we have to pay for half the year. Or you might want to pay for the whole year and get it out of the way.
Isoardi
That's a good deal.
Douglass
So you're in there, and you're legal, so we've been there ever since. That's all it costs us to get started in that thing.
Isoardi
A separate amount of this money goes to the club, right? Now, what happens to the club treasury?
Douglass
Well, the club treasury is what maintains the building.
Isoardi
For the maintenance of the property. I see.
Douglass
You know, you've got utility bills, you've got this, and you've got that. Of course, in many instances the local itself will take care of all of these things, but they take care of them for the club, in the name of the club.
Isoardi
And this is pretty much the way 767 was set up?
Yeah, it operated the same way.
Isoardi
Same way?
Douglass
Yeah. Well, I mean, there's transfers. If you save up some money in the club, you could always transfer it into the general fund as you see fit. Or the club, if it needs money, can borrow money from the general fund into the club, and, sometime or another, the club pays it back. So it's like you're borrowing from yourself and putting it back, but there's always something to work from. And you keep a certain amount where nobody else can touch it, so nobody else can get their hooks into it.
Isoardi
Do you remember when 767 was founded? Do you know much about its history?
Douglass
I don't know. There are a whole lot of people, and I've been giving you names of people who were around there. See, at the point that I'm talking about, I'm just a little child, just a little high school kid who is playing music and all the rest of us, so we're getting into the union. And then, we don't realize what we're getting into until we get in, and then we can go back and we can talk about the old hats and whatnot and how they were doing. There was a competitive thing that went on between the up-and-coming, real talented musicians like Buddy Collette, Charlie Mingus, Jackie Kelso, myself, Dexter Gordon, Chico Hamilton, all these guys, you know— We're all kids in
Isoardi
Yeah, I know about the Elks auditorium.
Douglass
Okay, you know about that. Well, that's where an awful lot of the action happened. The big bands came in and played the dances there. I mean, it had a downstairs floor and then a smaller club room upstairs.
Isoardi
I didn't know that.
Douglass
Oh, yeah. That's the place where everybody had their functions, all of the so-called little social functions and things like that, the various social clubs, the Elks auditorium was it. That's a very, very historical place. It's equally historical as the Club Alabam. Equally.
Isoardi
So this was musicians and entertainers and all sorts of socials, weddings, whatever was held there.
Douglass
Yeah. Now, you know what the Elks organization is. The Elks were the ones that owned the building. It was a very nice structure [with] a big parking lot in the back. It was a big auditorium, with a balcony and all that type of thing. And then, of course, above that, we had another little club room and facilities and things like that upstairs. And, boy, Saturday night, both ends of it were jumping.
Pretty regularly every Saturday?
Douglass
Yeah, it used to be a thing where it would seem like there would be a union band on the bottom floor and then a nonunion band on top and so forth. And then every so often the nonunion band would get the bottom floor because somebody comes out and they hire you, you know. They rent that hall, and then they hire you to play, and there you are. Of course, the union had that problem. Like whenever they caught a bunch of us playing in there, there were certain things they would consider a union house. Well, then they used to hassle you a little bit. That's the reason why it was advantageous to us to join the union, as well as it was advantageous to the union to have us in, because we gave them a pretty bad time. You're undercutting or cutting the throats of some of the professionals.
Isoardi
So the club upstairs was generally smaller? It had smaller groups, smaller sizes?
Douglass
Well, yeah, it was quite a bit smaller. That's right, smaller parties, although, as I recollect, they had some pretty nice functions that went on up there.
Isoardi
I guess a lot of big bands must have come through, if that was a big auditorium.
Douglass
Oh, yes. That's right. Yes, they did. [Count] Basie, [Jimmie] Lunceford, Earl Hines. I remember Earl Hines being there with— You know, his vocalists were Billy
Isoardi
The Elks Club was located where?
Douglass
It was on Central Avenue, and I would say— I'm just making a guess. You know where Jefferson Boulevard runs across and segues and then goes east? I think that's called Forty-first Street right there. I think the Elks must have been somewhere just north of Forty-first or possibly Jefferson and Central, it seems to me. Right there.
Isoardi
Was the Elks Club, as a social organization, very big in the community then? Is it a big organization?
Douglass
Yeah, well, to me it was big. I mean, you're talking to a kid, now, when it was there. It was just a place of recognition. I mean, we were always there. In school, we'd go to all the dances; all the big dances and things were held there. Sometimes even school events like proms and things like that were probably held there.
Isoardi
What type of people were in the Elks? Do you remember at all? Were they businessmen? Or was it a whole spectrum of the community?
Douglass
I really don't know. I have no idea. I have no idea who ran the place or rented it out to who or anything like that. My only recollection of the Elks myself is when I worked there or when I just went there to hear somebody or
Isoardi
So back to 767. [Local] 767 is located where on Central?
Douglass
Seventeenth and Central.
Isoardi
Seventeenth and Central.
Douglass
So, you see, that's still going farther northward. That's up above Washington Boulevard. But you can see it's just a very short space, a period of just a few blocks separation from one another. Well, we were members of this local, and, of course, just so much as locals go, the big bands, a lot of them, when they were in town, they used our local. Sometimes it was downstairs. It was really just a large, two-story frame house that housed the Local 767. I remember the Basie band rehearsing downstairs right beside our financial offices one day. Then, other times, we had— Well, it was just a big room, it was all open, so that it was big enough for rehearsals, and we had the big bands rehearse upstairs. That's where our group, what we called the Lloyd Reese Band, all of the Lloyd Reese Students, that's where we would rehearse every Sunday, right there.
We had the offices down there. I remember very well that the financial office was run by a very popular fellow named Paul Howard. He was a very famous saxophone player. And then, even though he was holding down that job there,
We had a lady named Florence Cadrez, who was the recording secretary. That's equivalent to what our position called secretary is like in 47. In other words, the secretary's office keeps track of all the records and so forth and so on and whatever pertains to you or whatever in the business.
And then, they had a vice president, who didn't have an office on the premise, necessarily. He was vice president. However, he still attended all— We had a little board of directors, trustees, board of directors and the whole thing, and we all attended the board of directors meetings. I'm not talking about just the regular membership meetings, but you always had board of directors meetings such as we have here. So like, as vice president, the vice president always acted as a member of the board, or, in the
Isoardi
So the highest policy-making body was the board.
Douglass
Yes. We had four officers in that union, and then we had a certain number of people who made up the board of directors.
Isoardi
Who was the vice president when you joined? Was it Lloyd Reese then?
Douglass
Well, when I joined, yeah, I believe Lloyd Reese was the vice president at that time. And then, I can't remember if it was Leo Davis who was the president at that time or if there was a fellow named Bailey who was president preceding him. These things weren't very important to us at this stage. I can only just kind of remember, you know. I know that, as far as my getting involved or becoming really interested in any union, being involved in any union politics or policies or what have you— It seems to me that Leo Davis was the president at that time. Very popular.
Isoardi
So among you guys coming in then, none of you were especially interested in political activity or the union as a political body or anything like that? You were pretty much joining as the next step on your musical career?
Douglass
Well, yeah, that's what it was. So we were around there. Of course, we never relished the actions and the things that went on, because, as you're out playing in
Isoardi
Well, I grew up in a teamster [International] Brotherhood of Teamsters] family in the fifties, and I, just in the last couple of decades, just from my family's vantage point, have seen a big change.
Douglass
Yeah. However, as things went on and on, and then you began to see this and that— I don't know. All of a sudden things began to hit all of us a little bit. There was always black and white. You know, the white union did this, and the black union does this. There were number of us like Buddy Collette, Charlie Mingus, myself, Chico
Isoardi
What brought you into contact with some of the musicians from 47? Was it working the Hollywood clubs?
Douglass
Well, I'd say that happened. Or all of them— You know, Central Avenue was the place. Everybody over there, everybody came to Central Avenue, you know. That was where— What was the song ["Basin Street Blues"] that said, "That's where the black and the white folks meet"? You know, they talk about "Basin Street." Well, hell, there you've got Central Avenue again. The people, when they'd leave those clubs, they'd come down here, and all the after-hours activity was all up and down the streets of Central. And, of course, musicians are going to get to know one another. That just happens.
Okay, well, anyway, as we began to get conscious of all this type of thing— I mean, I guess I became very conscious, but I guess when I became conscious of it, I was a member of— Well, I guess '49, '50, '51, when I was doing these things with Benny Goodman, there were a lot of times I was the only—sometimes there were others—but I was the
Isoardi
What was Lloyd saying?
Douglass
Well, he looked at the thing the same way. What we needed to do was progress. "Yeah, what you guys ought to do, you should buck against this thing. I mean, why should we have two unions here? It's discrimination." Okay, they're all putting this stuff in. And, of course, you have
Isoardi
How did you become aware of the NAACP?
Douglass
Oh, I don't know. Just because, all around you— Well, it was called the National Association for the Advancement of they called them "colored people" at that time. So, you know, naturally you're conscious of this. "Well, gee, an organization like this, to get into a thing like this seems to be the right thing. What they're preaching seems to be the thing that we all should be interested in and the things that we're striving for."
Isoardi
So when did you join?
Douglass
Oh, I don't know. But it was back there—
Isoardi
It was around that time?
Douglass
Yeah. I was very young at that time. I guess I had neighbors and friends and whatnot and a lot of people— It was just the thing, something to belong to, you know.
Isoardi
It seems like in this couple-of-year period, you
Douglass
You're running into this stuff. Like I told you about the neighborhoods: you go to Glendale to play and maybe over to Pasadena. Well, you wouldn't dare be caught walking around the streets there at night. I mean, that was just a general feeling. Like, in the clubs you were king. But as soon as the night was over, well, you get into your little buggy and get back across town or whatever it was. You didn't hear of people spread out and living in those areas, even a little place like South Gate, which is just south and east of here. I remember that's another one of those places where— I was always working over there, and I had my little problems, my little run-ins with various people for— I mean, a lot of racial things. We'd run into places where we even had to fight once in a while.
Isoardi
Really?
Douglass
Oh, yes.
Isoardi
In clubs or—?
Douglass
Oh, yes.
Isoardi
The audiences were predominantly white in those clubs?
Yeah, of course. There were a lot of places we worked as musicians. Even though we were black musicians, sometimes we would combine and work with white fellows. We worked in white clubs, in white areas. Black entertainment was very popular. That's the reason we really spread out. We were spread out all over the place. But still, you'd have those incidents.
Isoardi
Any one stand out in your mind?
Douglass
Oh, not necessarily. Not any particular person or anything like that. But we all ran into situations like that. And, of course, the thing to do was to try to keep cool, but sometimes the only way out of a situation would be to bust somebody. It didn't always erupt into a great big thing. I know I had experiences where, when I laid a guy out cold, well, it seemed like, after that, we had peace and quiet. [laughter] Yeah. So people may get a little excited quite once in a while. And then, of course, other times it was different. I don't know.
Isoardi
Did you ever get hassled by the police in these areas?
Douglass
Not really.
Isoardi
Just trouble with occasional patrons?
Douglass
Yeah. Not really any hassle with police. I'm just saying personally. I mean, other musicians probably did, for whatever reason. They were always hassling you.
Isoardi
Did you call them joints?
Douglass
Yeah, a joint, yeah, or a roach. Some tiny, little thing like that. A little thing that's been— Well, sometimes a joint was a whole cigarette or whatever it is. But, in many instances, we're talking about something that's half smoked, and most of it's gone, and you're saving a little bit of it for later. And then you let somebody stop you and open up your car and say, "Well, what's this?" And then, bam! Off to jail.
Isoardi
Were there many harder drugs around back then?
Douglass
I guess there was. I mean, we never thought that much about it. I guess all kinds of stuff was happening. Every once in a while you'd hear somebody say, "Oh, so and so is a junkie," this and that. Like, "The hell with him. How dumb can you be?" and so forth.
Isoardi
But for most guys, I guess it was booze and pot then.
Yeah, booze, and then the pot was a little extra luxury and whatnot, the thing that people sneaked around to do. I don't want to just put all of it— Because I could tell some real stories about a lot of prominent people.
Isoardi
Oh, go ahead! [laughter]
Douglass
But, I mean, as a youngster in these days that you're talking about, I didn't drink and I didn't smoke. I didn't smoke anything. But I was around older guys who did. And then, when I'd go to a lot of the little house and social functions and one of these little smoking things would break out, I found out, among some of the older musicians, this is what it was. God, I was so disappointed in so many of the people who I saw indulge. You know, I got just very— And then the guys used to laugh at me because I was— I thought it was just terrible that they even did that around me or exposed me to something like that. And they used to just kind of laugh at me. But I don't know. I just kind of— Whatever it was, I grew out it. I learned how much of it to take and how to accept it. I don't know. That's the thing. You become aware of this type of thing. Like you say, "This is wrong and that's wrong," and then you say, "Well, gee, everybody's doing it," you know, this and that. You discover those types of things.
Isoardi
So this period, between the union, the NAACP, traveling out to these other areas—
Oh, yeah. That's right.
Isoardi
Pot, everything. You're coming of age quickly.
Douglass
Well, yeah. You're in a society, and you're growing up in that society. But all of a sudden we were becoming very, very conscious of the racial thing throughout the world, I guess, for that matter—what's happening with people here and what's happening with people there. And here in Los Angeles, we don't have those kinds of laws. We didn't have to go to the back of the bus or so forth and so on, yet you still knew the areas where you weren't treated quite like other people were. So there were a lot of things you resented.
Isoardi
Weren't there housing covenants? Or had they just eliminated those about this time? I mean, weren't there restrictions on moving above Wilshire Boulevard, things like that?
Douglass
Well, there's always been things. If the restrictions weren't necessarily written into the law, it was kind of an agreement between certain people in certain neighborhoods. "No, you can't sell to so-and-so," you know. So there were always certain restrictions about blacks maybe buying in a particular area and this and that. Some of them got around it eventually by just fenagling around and getting somebody to make the purchase for them and this and that. But they did have their
Isoardi
No kidding?
Douglass
Yeah. It's still on the original deed except that it's just been overlooked now. It doesn't count anymore. You see what I mean?
Okay, now we're in the union, so we began to get together. We said, "Well, maybe we should go to one of these union meetings. We've been to meetings before, but maybe we should go to one of these union meetings. And then, all the old guys that I'm telling you about, they're still there. I guess 767 used to have elections once a year.
Isoardi
For the union offices?
Douglass
Yeah. But nobody was ever interested in the union offices, so the same bunch of guys would get down there and vote for each other, and the same people stayed in office year after year after year.
Isoardi
I just meant to ask you something real quick. You mentioned that Lloyd Reese was encouraging you guys.
Yeah.
Isoardi
Do you know if there were any earlier attempts to change this?
Douglass
I don't think so.
Isoardi
He never— You don't think so.
Douglass
No. He was always very progressive minded. As I look back upon him, it seemed like he encouraged us to do things because we were the guys who would get up and start fighting and get it done. I don't know. I remember him being a very great teacher, a very great adviser, but I can't say that I necessarily remember him being the guy who carried the sword and this and that. He would say, "You guys should so and so," and then he would back you up and he would advise you.
Isoardi
He was an idea man, really.
Douglass
He would encourage you and advise you as you went along. "Yes, you should do this or you should do that." So that's the way I remember him. So, naturally, I guess, to interject right here, well, then when the war came along, I told all about the enlistments. I heard Buddy Collette on the radio this morning talking about when he enlisted in Saint Mary's [College Preflight School] up in [Moraga]. How he stayed there three and a half years, right there. That was on the radio this morning. Yeah, Howard Lucraft's show. Is KLON the station out of Long Beach?
Yeah.
Douglass
From Long Beach. It's on the campus there.
Isoardi
Yeah, Cal[ifornia] State [University, Long Beach].
Douglass
Yeah, Cal State. Well, they have these little interviews, or recorded interviews, with different people like every Saturday morning, and I guess a lot of times all during the week, too. And every so often they'll get ahold of somebody, and then you'll get somebody like Buddy or somebody I know, and you hear them tell about these little instances and what went on.
Well, we had the little army stint. I told you that Lloyd Reese went in the service with me [in the Tenth Cavalry Band]. So was Fain. There were a lot of guys from Los Angeles who all went down there [Camp Lockett, Campo, California] together. Some of the older guys at that time, like Reese and Fain and a few others, managed to fenagle their way out of the army through whatever means and whatnot, when we finally got our overseas call. So the rest of us younger guys, while we tried our best, well, it didn't work, and so the next thing you know, we were going up that gangplank. I've told you about a lot of my experiences overseas. Of course, then we finally came back. And one thing that was nice was we were welcomed back into the waiting arms of the union, and we hadn't lost any of our seniority as far as membership. We didn't have to pay dues
But then, all of a sudden, that's when this talk about— I had an awful lot of experiences, you know, like racial-type things. In fact, that was the first time I was really exposed to a lot of things.
Isoardi
When you were in the army?
Douglass
Was when you were in the army. My trip across the continent to the East Coast, Newport News [Virginia], the debarkation center, and then coming back, it was really— I mean, I could tell you some more stories about what happened in these instances. As I told you, you can talk about one thing, and you can be in the middle of talking about one thing, and all of a sudden here's another detour, you know, whatever you—
Isoardi
Well, take the detours, Bill. [laughter] We've got plenty of tape.
Douglass
Well, we're trying to talk about the unions, so I'm trying to get back to that. Sometime or another we can talk about the other things.
Anyway, as a result of all this, we finally got back in. Here we are. And then, when we finally got to hassling around like, "What's going to happen?" We're going to go to a union meeting, and we're going to bring this up on the
Isoardi
Now, who are the group of you guys plotting to do this?
Douglass
Well, all the same guys I've been talking about.
Isoardi
Same guys you mentioned?
Douglass
I'm talking about Buddy and Charlie Mingus. I mean, there was Benny Carter—
Isoardi
He was with you guys?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. He was with us. Benny Carter— Marl Young wasn't with us at first. I know you've heard of him being very influential. He was somebody who joined us a little bit later. But basically, all of the younger guys, not just younger guys, but all of the progressive-style musicians who can't see this type of— You know, Benny could never see anything like this. However, Benny was just one. He had his own thing going, and he's working, he's doing this and that. I mean, golly, he was writing for the studios and the whole bit. He had his own little thing going. I guess I'd say that he was just so well respected, but I guess he probably had problems, too. But it just seemed like he was so great and so far above all these things. However, he wasn't so far above it that he didn't feel the same way that we did, and he could not stand to see
Well, anyway, we went to this union meeting and tried to bring up the subject on the floor, and then we were gaveled down. We were "out of order." They didn't want to hear it. We said, "Well, what is this bit?" Like, we come there—
Isoardi
You just wanted a discussion. You didn't put forward a proposal.
Douglass
Yeah. "Oh, no. This is out of order." Bam, bam, bang. And we began to realize, "Well, gee, you're not even going to get a voice in here. These old fogies, they're not going to let you say anything. You're just gaveled down." So then we said, "Well, the only thing to do—" Fortunately, they had elections every year. Nobody had ever opposed anybody down there, so we said, "Well, then, what we could do, let's run for office. And if we get into office, then, when we have a union meeting, then we'll get a chance to say what we want and let people say what they want." So that's the way it happened. I think we kind of caught those guys by surprise, because, when we got organized— And, of course, in the middle of this time, Marl
Well, what we did is we had our little organizations, and then we started giving our little fund-raising parties.
Tape Number: IV, Side Two
February 17, 1990
Isoardi
You were saying about the fund-raising.
Douglass
Well, this happened at the place over on Saint Andrews Place. I forget the exact address, but you probably have that from someone. I was telling you who stayed there and my association with them and so forth.
Isoardi
That was Buddy Collette—
Douglass
Buddy Collette, John Ewing, Jimmie Cheatham. I guess that was the three of them. It was like a large duplex. So we used to get together over there. It was large. We used to have a lot of rehearsals and things like that over there. So then we started having— I can't remember. I guess some of it was after hours. Little fund-raisers where we had kind of a little session, and we used to sell our booze and this and that, had little tickets, raised funds, and things like that, to get a little money together so that we could print pamphlets. So we had these pamphlets printed with our pictures and things and the fact that we were— Well, we were running for these various offices. If I'm not mistaken, I think Buddy Collette was at the head of the ticket. He was running for president. I was running for vice president. And then, we had several others. You know, we ran for all these offices. We had people who ran against Paul Howard, who was a very well
Isoardi
Did you?
Douglass
Yeah. Buddy Collette lost. And whoever ran against Florence Cadrez and Paul Howard, they lost. However, we did gain a vast majority on the board. Benny Carter was on the board, and so was Marl Young, John Anderson, and— I forget who. There might have been one or two others. But anyway, we had won because we had the majority. Well, then we started to take control of those meetings, and we got ourselves heard. And then, when we finally had a real good turnout for a membership meeting, I remember I was the one who was elected, for whatever or reason or another, to get up and make the antidiscrimination speech. So we got them all riled up, and they went after it.
Naturally, with all of us working around with different musicians, there was also another faction made up of musicians that was hard working over in 47 at the same time. They wanted it this way. So they're working on the membership over there.
Isoardi
Are they?
Douglass
Yeah. We've got to bring it to a vote in each local. We've got to bring it to a vote and then see what happens. And if the majority vote happens in each of the locals, well, then it has to happen.
Isoardi
Do you know who was doing this in the other local?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. I know an awful lot of them. I don't know. I can remember— Well, I don't know just right now. I remember a fellow— He's gone now. George Kast was one fellow I was very much acquainted with. I guess Buddy could fill you in on an awful lot of those things. But I knew an awful lot of guys. And then, as far as just the feeling and the popularity of it, I mean, most of the good musicians over there, none of them would have been against this thing. The same thing that was happening in our local— I mean, the people who were in the offices in 47, John Tegroen was the president, I'd say Maury Paul was probably the secretary. I think there was a guy named Henning who was the treasurer, and just who the vice
Isoardi
Did you guys coordinate at all? Were you meeting with any of the musicians—?
Douglass
Oh, yes. When we had the little jam sessions and all the little functions that went on, yes. They attended these things. Of course, as we began to grow a little bit, well, Buddy will probably tell you about the Humanist Hall Project, when we sort of moved our thing out of their residence, so to speak, and went down on Union Avenue to the Humanist Hall, and every Sunday we'd stage these little things. Sometimes they were very sparse, and other times we made it. But whenever we were able, each one of us would sacrifice our time to go down there and play and help it along. And it went on and on.
And then, Buddy will probably or probably already has told you about the time that Josephine Baker, the great star from here who made such a great reputation abroad, France, namely, came over here. She was also one of these who was definitely in favor of this movement. We were gathering a lot of momentum. The word was really getting
And then, I remember another election came around about a year later. Trying to get the presidency, we ran Benny Carter, you know, like, how can Benny miss? [laughter] So here we go again. And then Buddy ran for the board. Now he's on the board. Here we go. I ran for vice president again, and I won again. Benny lost. [laughter] You couldn't move these guys! You know, everybody wants an amalgamation, but they all love these— Yeah, they'd just say, "Well, what are those poor guys going to do if we vote them out of their job?" So it was really a funny thing. And then, it seemed like Benny Carter, when that happened, well, he got really riled up. I mean, that kind of pissed him off real bad.
Isoardi
Because he lost?
Douglass
"Dumb so-and-sos, how can they vote against me?" So then, that's the next time we gave an event, a real event for something or other. At that time, this thing was coming up for a vote in both locals. Shall we or shouldn't we? It's coming up for a vote in both locals.
Then people started playing dirty politics. They started to name various ones of us who were being "influenced," you know. We were being "communist
Isoardi
Is that what they started doing?
Douglass
Yeah. We were "communist inspired." That was popular at that time, to blacklist people. That was during the [Joseph R.] McCarthy days and all that. So all of a sudden, now you're getting this bad publicity. I'm a "communist" or Buddy's a "communist" or this and that. Or "They're being led, they're communist-inspired, those who want that." You know, the people who hire up in our local, they're preaching this type of thing.
Isoardi
They were doing it?
Douglass
Oh, yes! And then, the people in 47, "Yeah, that's what wrong. That's what's stirring these poor young guys up," this and that. So now we went out and got as much support as we could from everybody else. We went to all of the black stars, entertainers, the baseball players, football players. And then, we went to the NAACP, and they were scared to touch us. To this day, I am not a member of the NAACP. I mean, I resigned my membership. I said, "Well, this is what we're supposed to be all about." Now, they listened to all of that crap and got just a little bit nervous and a little bit scared.
Isoardi
You went to ask them to endorse the amalgamation?
Douglass
Yeah. We wanted them to tell them like, "These boys are members of the NAACP," and "this is the way to
There was a thing that we had to attack that was in the national bylaws. [James C.] Petrillo was the president at that time. It was a definite rule, a definite law, that in the places—and there were a lot of places throughout the country—where there were two locals, a black local and a white local, a white local would not be allowed to take in a black musician, and then, by the same token, a black local could not take in a nonblack. That was the federation law. We wanted to attack that thing. That's what we were really after. We were really after that because, when we finally— We finally won the vote. We won the vote in both locals, the popular vote that says we should amalgamate. Now we've got the federation trying to block our way.
Isoardi
Using that bylaw?
Douglass
Yeah, using that bylaw. We're attacking that kind of thing. So we're asking Petrillo and the IEB [International Executive Board], whatever it is, let's make a determination. This is the mandate of the membership out here. I remember Marl was a real fighter, and I remember Leo, our president at that particular time, he got out. He decided to go to the hospital and have his appendix removed
Isoardi
Had Leo Davis resigned? Or were you just taking over while he was in the hospital?
Douglass
No, he just took sort of a sick leave, and that's where he stayed until this whole thing was over.
Isoardi
So he really just wanted to bail out of it, then.
Douglass
Yeah. However, we did let Petrillo know that if— We called him. Marl came to the office, and we called him on the phone and told him that, "Whatever you say, so-and-so and so-and-so." We meant it. We said, "Now, if this thing doesn't come around, then, what we're going to do, we're going to become more competitive against 47 than we have been." I used to feel like we had most of the jobs sewn up, anyway, most of the real entertainment jobs. So we had said that, regardless of whatever, we were going to challenge that thing, and we were going to— You know, all the younger members coming in, we were going to accept them. I think our initiation fee was $50 at that time, and 47's was $100. So we said, "All the real good, young musicians, white musicians who are coming up, they want to get into the union, well, this is the place to be. We'll take you." And they didn't mind because, hell, we had all the damn stars belonging to our union.
So anyway, they tried to do this and that, and so they finally decided they were going to go along with it. I mean, it was beginning to be a real unpopular thing. And Petrillo was going to send Herman Kenin, who was his right-hand man, out here to oversee our meeting. He sent us a telegram to that effect. We called him on the phone again. We said, "Well, if he's coming out here, we'll let him attend the meeting, but we want him to keep his goddamn mouth shut." [laughter] "This is our fucking union, and we're going to do this thing." He said, "Well, this thing is a little bit too hot to handle right now." So he left us alone, and we brought the whole thing about.
Isoardi
It came about at a joint meeting?
Douglass
Well, all that happened. See, they already had their meeting, like, what you call ratification or whatever it is. The Local 47 membership voted overwhelmingly to accept our local into theirs. So what we had to do, we had to draw up terms. We had to dispose of our property, and all of it goes into the 47 treasury, all of our assets. And then, the things we had to iron out, like a man is already maybe a member of 767 for fifteen years— Their death benefit was a little higher than ours, also. I think that it's always been $1,000, and I think ours was something like $600. So it said, regardless of all that, any amount of membership in 767, you would maintain that.
So these were the things we had to work out. We did not want to go over there— Because we were officers, we didn't want to go across the street and then be some kind of subsidiary officers. Say I'll be the vice president—I was acting president at that time—or the president to the black membership and so forth and so on. We said, "No, we want none of that." We said, "We depend upon you and your officers to represent us the way that we feel we will be represented, and if any of us ever aspires to become an officer in this new organization, we will run in the election like anybody else." So that's what we said. We put all that down in our so-called agreement. We had a complete agreement as to the way thing were going to happen.
There were things that we wanted to be careful of that were happening in other locals. Not in New York, but in
Isoardi
So you guys, after the amalgamation, you weren't given a number of official positions within the—
Douglass
No, no, no. We refused that. We refused that. They wanted us to do something like that, but we refused it.
Isoardi
Why exactly did you refuse it?
Douglass
Because we did not want to be singled out. We wanted to all be the same, no means of identification for anybody else or anything else like that. There were a bunch of us, like Marl, Buddy, myself, Benny Carter, all of us ringleaders. We said that, after we got over there—and we did—we would investigate and see how things were being handled. We found out that when our membership cards or our file cards, their files, membership files— We'd look in there from time and time and look at the membership cards, see if anybody's making— In other words, we didn't want things that were happening in other locals. Like you might pull out a black musician, and then maybe there would be a red flag on his card. "Well, what's that red flag for?" "Oh, it tells you he's not white; he's black." We said, "Well, we don't want any of that kind of thing." So
Isoardi
Now, was that one of the things you worked out upon joining? Or is that something you discovered after you got there?
Douglass
Well, this is a thing we worked out, and these were the demands we were making. Now, we discovered, after we got there, when we looked at the file cards— We went back to examine them quite some time after that. And I forget. There was a guy—I hope the name is right—his name was Barker or something like that. I think he was the treasurer at that time, the same position that I'm holding right now. I run membership. You see what I mean? So the same thing happened there. So when we would start looking through the files, we'd see little things like— Okay, you pull out Marl Young's card: Marl Young, blah blah blah, such and such address, piano, and they would maybe underline piano and so forth and so on. Okay, well, great. Then you might find Buddy Collette's card: Blah
Now we went in and we filed charges against this guy. We went before their board and brought him up on charges before the board, so then he was finally forced to explain what it was all about. So now his whole thing, he says, "Well, I'm only trying to protect them," like he knows that there are all kinds of areas around here where people do not take kindly to integration and things of that sort. His whole thing is he was trying to protect us. You know, "Like, if a call came in for so-and-so and so-and-so, I wouldn't want to send the wrong guy out into the wrong area," and this and that and so forth and so on.
I myself got up and told a story. I said, "Let me tell you one thing. I have been black all my life. I think I know more about how to protect me that you do." And then I gave him an example. Just a short while before that, I was living on West Fourteenth Street, right across the street from Gerry Wiggins. I was single at that time, sort of between marriages, and I remembered, at that
Isoardi
Yeah.
Douglass
It was with Ella Mae Morris. So we got a little trio together, and we're going to go up there, and we're to be a trio behind Ella Mae Morris, and it's all the way up in Oxnard. I guess, maybe that must be— Is that more than— That's 100 miles or maybe more— It's about 100 miles round trip from here, isn't it?
Isoardi
Yeah. That sounds about right.
Douglass
We were supposed to open with Ella on a certain night. Now, we've got Ronnie Ball—you've probably heard of Ronnie Ball—piano player. He's from England, a little jazz piano player. Well, English, he's white, right? Okay. Then we had Ben Tucker on bass—he's a black musician—and there's me on drums, and that's it. And we're supposed to drive up there. Now, I'm tied up on a recording date that first night, that opening night. I cannot get away. So I had to get somebody to go in my place. I remember getting Sid Bulkin. He's a white guy. I mean, I wouldn't think anything of it. You know, "You
So anyway, this is what happened. I mean, they got their little money and all that kind of stuff, no problem, but the boss was a real screamer. So I said, "Well, nothing to do. Well, fellows—" I remember I was driving. We drove all the way out there, and we were walking in the club and bringing our stuff in, and the boss— "Oh, no! Oh, no! This can't happen! It's not me. I mean, it's the people I have coming in here, the customers. They cannot see this," and so forth and so on. "How are we going to handle this?" I said, "Yes, sir, I understand perfectly. I'll tell you what we can do. We can work it out like this, and we'll never go in the place." I said, "You know, I have a contract here. It
But, I mean, with the other guy, if it had been his way, we would never have gotten a chance to go out there in the first place because he was going to protect us and see that we were never sent on jobs like that, I told the guy, "Oh, man, we're going in through the kitchen. Oh, well, I won't go out there. God, just pay my contract off and we'll go on home. We'll get the hell out of here." [tape recorder off]
Isoardi
Okay, Bill. You were talking about some of the problems that continued to exist after the amalgamation.
Douglass
Yeah. That was just an example of one of the ways we were trying to oversee that things were being carried on in the right way. In other words, it didn't have any means as far as putting identification on people and this and that. I don't know. Even though we have birthdates, and I think right now we have birthdates and
Isoardi
Were there any other problems that stick out in your mind that you had to resolve after you joined?
Douglass
Oh, I don't know. We've still got all kinds of
Isoardi
How long was it before you guys started running for office at Local 47?
Douglass
At Local 47?
Isoardi
I mean, you said you were going to be just part of the membership and see what happens.
Douglass
Well, I can't name exactly. I know that Marl Young was the first one of any of us to hold what you call a major office. There had been instances where I know Buddy Collette and I think Marl and a lot of them started off by just running for a position on the board of directors. I cannot tell you exactly when that happened or how long we were over there before they got into it. I mean, the elections are held every two years. An odd year is an election year, even though we— Like this is '90. In other words, we will vote in December of an even year to
Isoardi
Was he sort of the first, then, from old 767 to hold office?
Douglass
Yeah, to really hold an office.
Isoardi
Now, when was the first time you held an office in Local 47?
Douglass
I took office in 1985.
Isoardi
So you had a thirty-year layoff from union office.
Douglass
Oh, yeah. They had talked to me many times, like, "Do this and that" or "Would you be a business rep?" I did not want to be bothered with anything that was going to prohibit me from playing my instrument, such as my job does now. I began to look at it more and more. I mean, it's been a nice thing. I've hung on to it all this time, and, I mean, I enjoy trying to do something. I want
Isoardi
So you can't play?
Douglass
I'm not allowed to play. No.
Really?
Douglass
Yeah. Now, a lot of people get into these offices, I mean, they're content. I like my position, for one thing, for the sake of my wife [Deloris Seals Douglass], my family, and this and that. I enjoy the idea that I get a paycheck every week. That didn't always happen when I was playing music. I mean, it would happen for a while in certain instances where, say, I'm going along, and I'm very fortunate, and I've got a little work going, but the work always did come and go. I mean, it was the type of life I've grown very accustomed to. But now just the idea of living in a house and trying to keep a house up and the way the bills and things mount, I mean, I feel very thankful that I'm able to pay my bills. I really don't know what I would do if I got into a position where I didn't have the paycheck coming in every week.
However, I have to tell you that I'm seriously thinking about quitting, getting out of it, because of my music. I mean, my music is my first love, and I feel like this job, the way it's set up, it's really musical suicide. I mean, I've got my instrument, as you know, in my office. I figured, well, I can practice and keep up. I try to do a little teaching on Saturday just for the sake of keeping my hand in it and so forth and so on, because if that didn't happen, I probably would never even pick up my
Isoardi
Could you play outside of the area of jurisdiction of Local 47?
Douglass
Not really. I'm not supposed to.
Isoardi
Really? You cannot play at all anywhere. I mean, you couldn't even go to Europe?
Douglass
No. Well, if I did that, I would have to take a leave of absence. If I could take a leave of absence, if I got an offer, I mean, I would just give that a try. I'd challenge it and see what happens.
Isoardi
You know, if somebody said, "Well, I've got a one-month tour of Western Europe lined up, big band, you
Douglass
I think I would have to challenge it. I'd have to find out what's happening and tell them, "Well, this is what I want to do." You know, I was hired to play at the last [American Federation of Musicians] convention, which was this past year, in Nashville. There is a fellow by the name of Ernie Lewis, who is the bandleader for the Tempo, which is the AFM band. That band plays at all the convention functions—dance music or jazz music or whatever you want to call it. It's a good-sized band, and it's made up of members or people who are delegates from all the locals around the country. I was asked to come up and play drums with them this past year, and it looks like I'm going to be asked again. That was great, because that meant I went up there to Nashville and had eight straight days of playing, rehearsing and then playing engagements. And then, while I was there, I began to get acquainted with, in the hotel— They had some good musicians in Nashville. Now, I'm not talking about [country and] western musicians. I'm talking about people who— So like every night, when I got through playing for the convention, which is early, after dinnertime, we would walk through the bar area and get in there and sit and play. And, boy, that was enjoyable. Yeah. It was an enjoyable trip. I took my
Isoardi
So that was a major factor, then, after the amalgamation, keeping you from running for office, then, this law.
Douglass
Yeah, that's one reason why I didn't want in office. I just stayed out of it. At the time that I took it, it was because it was an opportunity. I didn't know how I would lay with it or how long I'd want to stay with it or what the whole thing would be, but I got into it mainly because there was a faction that was running that was trying to get another faction out of office. And when they sort of got among themselves and searched themselves— I didn't know the people, you know, the— [Bernie] Fleischer [president of Local 47], I didn't even know him, never heard of him. Buddy Collette was on the board already, and he approached me, and so did several of them. And the retired president, Max Herman, approached me, and they told the people, "Well, if you want to win
Tape Number: V, Side One
March 3, 1990
Isoardi
Last time we pretty throughly covered the amalgamation of the two unions [American Federation of Musicians Local 767 and Local 47] and your discussion of it. I guess we're getting close to the end of the story and wrapping up with some general comments. Before we get into that, let me ask you what you thought the impact of the amalgamation was on 767 and its membership, looking back now, and how you think it affected Local 47 and its members. Do you have any general thoughts on that?
Douglass
Oh, I don't know. I don't know if I can just answer that question outright.
Isoardi
It's a big one.
Douglass
I do know that, at the time that we started the amalgamation, we, as black musicians in our organization, pushed this thing so thoroughly, and it gained nationwide publicity, because it was the start of a movement all over the country. In other words, we finally broke up that complete thing in the federation about separate locals for black and white throughout the federation.
Isoardi
So your amalgamation was a first.
Douglass
It was the first. And it's responsible for the fact that there is no more, or supposedly no more, discrimination of that sort within the AFM [American
Isoardi
So in a number of other cities in the country, then, other dual locals followed your path.
Douglass
They had to, yes. In fact, we made it law. When we fought this thing, we just put it up to the point that that's what they had to do. I mean, things were happening at that particular point. We were all over everywhere. I guess the Martin Luther King [Jr.] thing was going on and just about any and everything, all of the various black organizations and things of that sort. I'm not an authority on this, but this is what was going on. It became a very unpopular thing.
Isoardi
When you say you made it law, you mean it became part of the AFM's rules that there would be no separate unions?
Douglass
Besides our local bylaws, we have national bylaws, which is the American Federation of Musicians throughout the United States and Canada. They have all sorts of things, antidiscriminatory this and antidiscriminatory that, but it was also a bylaw, a law. A bylaw is a law of the American Federation of Musicians that, in the cities where they're designated, no white musician could belong to a black local and vice versa. No black musician could belong to the white local. They had them separate like that. That was true in several cities,
While I don't pretend to be an authority on just what the things are, I've learned a lot of things since I've been in this office right here. I didn't know what they meant by a black delegate when we went to the convention. I said, "Well, heck, we did away with all that. You know, in our thing, we said, `Well, we will have no black delegates.'" That if anybody from 767, after we made the move over there, which we were— We were something like six hundred people, and it was a very popular movement. Like we almost won this vote thing going away.
So we made it a fact that, when we went over there, I relinquished my office, which was vice president of 767. There was Marl Young. He was on the board of directors. Buddy Collette, board of directors, and all of us decided that, when we finally amalgamated, we would not take any— They wanted to designate certain offices for you. In other words, "Okay, you're over here, but now you'll be in control of the black population." And we said, "No, none
This didn't necessarily happen in the rest of the locals who went through the same thing, like in the case of San Francisco and a few others. Now, they attacked this thing with the federation to the point that, in order to wipe their faces clean and whatnot, they finally said, "We will not have this anymore within our organization. From now on, such and such a local will amalgamate or they will join or this one will dissolve and join the other." The black locals were forced to join the white locals in the same town. And it wasn't the most popular thing in all of them, at least from my understanding. What they did is, when they amalgamated or dissolved one local— I noticed there are some locals, like in San Francisco, I think— I forget the name of the local, but it's Local 10 plus something else, 300 and so-and-so, which means that there were two locals, and they're still identified by the fact that the two of them were put together.
While the convention does not have any provisions for
Isoardi
I see. So there were a certain number of offices or positions that were set aside?
Douglass
Yeah. In other words, all of the so-called amalgamations didn't happen exactly the same as ours did. But the main thing is we did get that wiped off of the national bylaws. So we did away with that, and that was appropriate.
Isoardi
About this time, were you being contacted by some of these other locals throughout the country as to what was going on or how they could do it? Did they come to you guys for advice or anything like that?
Douglass
Well, yes. I'd say that they did. I'm not saying that I was necessarily— I do remember some
Isoardi
But you didn't have calls, say, from the Chicago locals or Cleveland locals or San Francisco locals, saying, "What are you guys doing? We like it. How do you go about doing it?" Things like that?
Douglass
Yeah. I'm sure we did. However, they all had their own ideas about it. Not all of them were just throughly anxious to just follow the same path that we were. They didn't know what the situation was.
Like I say, there were locals who were against it, just like in our local. We had people who were deathly against it. Some of the people who were against it were some of our best-loved people. Like our president at that time [Leo Davis]—he was our opponent. Florence Cadrez, who was the one who did the— Well, she was the recording secretary, as they called her. She was against it. Paul Howard was one the most popular, one of the most well loved people in the world. I love him like a father today, but he was against it. So we were opponents. And then, on top of that, even though we ran people, when we ran for elections, even though we ran people for the top offices up there, we never could unseat those three people, no matter
Isoardi
What happened to these people?
Douglass
Well, Florence Cadrez, for one, and Paul Howard, especially, were offered positions within the Local 47 organization, which is loaded with all kinds of offices and, at that time, many, many positions—this person under that one and so forth and so on. So they were offered jobs which they were qualified to handle. So that went on. I didn't keep up with them very closely. I was busy out trying to play music. But I did see Paul Howard down there. He kept track of all of our records, and he was the one who notified me at the time that I had served my— You know, we didn't lose any of that tenure from our time over in 767 when we came. That was one of the things. When you become a member of 47, it's as though you were a member from the time that you first joined 767, if you follow what
Isoardi
So Paul Howard, then, got his job with 47 and stayed there for quite some time.
Douglass
Yeah, I don't know. One minute he was working in the mailroom and then other things. I mean, he was always there, and he assisted, I guess, to a certain extent, in the membership and the financial status, just kind of helping to keep the records and things straight. And then, at one time, then, he finally became the administrator of our credit union. And to this day—I mean, we have other people connected—he's the only black administrator that we've ever had in our credit union.
Isoardi
What about Leo Davis? Did he retire or—?
Douglass
Well, Leo Davis just remained very inactive.
We did that same thing just this last Tuesday, which was February 26. We did the same thing. What they were doing was posthumously honoring Don Linder, who was not the president but the administrator of the credit union, and had been for many, many years. He was kind of elderly in age, and then he passed away just recently. So we decided to do that with him. We had a big band. We had supposedly an all-female band, which is Ann Patterson's—
Isoardi
Oh, yeah.
Douglass
You've heard of her, the Maiden Voyage.
Isoardi
Maiden Voyage.
Douglass
Yeah. Well, we did that this past Tuesday night. We had a big buffet, all the food and everything, and I think we had about forty-six people who showed up. So, I mean, we have trouble getting quorums.
But I only said that to say that, when we did honor the past president of 767, and, therefore, we were honoring all of the former members of 767 who happened to still be in the neighborhood or in the vicinity or who happened to still be with us, well, that's the last time we had a crowd. It was a quorum. In other words, when you have a quorum, that's what you call an official crowd. The thing like we had the other night is not an official crowd. It's just a matter of record that they came out and they tried to have a good time and what have you.
Did Leo Davis come over to 47 and work in any capacity?
Douglass
No, no. He never did. That's what I said. He didn't. There were three officers. I mean, he was president, and then Paul Howard, who was considered a financial secretary over there, and then Florence Cadrez, who was the recording secretary. I guess that would be equivalent to what we call, in our local right now, the treasurer, which is my position, and then the secretary. We have a treasurer and a secretary of the union. A lot of locals have those two positions combined. They call you a secretary-treasurer. However, because of the fact that we have a lot more members than most locals, I just don't see any one of us like holding down the job of two offices like that. So anyway, Leo has just been around. I mean, I've associated with him because one of—
Well, I told you about the Clef Club, which is the organization made up of basically the older fellows who are left over from 767. We still get together. I have a club meeting tomorrow afternoon. And Leo, I saw him quite a bit. He attended a number of these meetings, and, of course, he was always in attendance at our annual jazz festival, which will be happening on May 20 this year.
Isoardi
I've already marked it in my book.
Douglass
Well, okay. And then, we have a little thing
Isoardi
So the Clef Club, then, is pretty much an organization of old 767 musicians.
Douglass
Yeah, that's right.
Isoardi
How far back does it go? When did it start?
Douglass
Well, I don't know. From what I understand— I never paid a lot of attention. I knew that I used to attend these things from time to time. It's been going on about twenty-four years. They've been doing things with that regularity. It's the thing that everybody just looks forward to seeing happen, and they all show up for it. It's a success in spite of itself.
Isoardi
It's a hell of a bash! [laughter]
Douglass
Yeah. So Leo has been around all this time, but
So I have been in touch with him. Well, I handle the relief committee at the union. What we do on the relief committee, we get together and that's what we try to do. We try to contact all the people who are disabled or incapacitated for some reason or another, and then we try to come up with ways to benefit them, help them to get their dues paid. In many instances, we do little monthly
Isoardi
Do you know much about his background as a musician on Central Avenue?
Douglass
There are a lot of guys who would know more, and I can't say that I know. All I know is that I was around there, I was a young fellow, a young kid coming up, and I knew that at one time or another he was a saxophone player and he led a band. I never worked with him myself, but there were a number of fellows—I imagine Buddy Collette and a few of the others—who would know a lot more about him. But I'm sure, as you talk with the other fellows, you'll learn a lot about him.
Isoardi
Let me ask you. You mentioned earlier that the bylaws of the AFM were changed pretty much, eliminating the dual locals. How did you go about accomplishing that? Was that something that was done at a convention, that you guys pushed through a change in the bylaws? Or was it just something that pretty much the leadership of the AFM recognized as happening and simply changed the bylaws? Did they propose it themselves? Or was there any kind of struggle to get that changed?
I don't think there was— The biggest struggle took place here. We were going about the process of creating an amalgamation. I told you that we finally brought it to a vote in our local, and it had to be brought to a vote in 47. There were a lot of people who were opposed to it. The people who were in opposition— I told you about how, because of what we were doing, we tried to seek the help of the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], and they turned away from us out of fear, just pure fear. So these kind of things. I thought we were up against tremendous odds.
Then we had the vote that this was supposed to happen, and at the same time, when the federation tried to intervene— You know, [James C.] Petrillo was the president of the federation at that time. He was going to send Herman Kenin, his right-hand man, the fellow who later became president after Petrillo— He was going to send him out here to oversee our election. Marl Young and myself were on the phone. We told him, "We want you to know that if your guy comes here, we'll welcome him, but we want him to come here and keep his mouth shut. This is our local, and this is what we're trying to do." And, of course, it was really a battle. It was a fight. During the course of the fight, we made it known that we would either accomplish this amalgamation, or then we were just going to keep our
Isoardi
So you're trying to recruit black members, then.
Douglass
No, no, no. By doing this, we were going to attack the part of the bylaws that said we couldn't take in white members, and we were going to take white members in. Our rate was much lower than 47, so we thought we would have been very attractive. Plus, there were an awful lot of guys, the jazz kids, white and whatnot, or Latino or whatever they happened to be, well, they were all very anxious to join our local. And so we would have become— To this day, I almost wish that we had gone the other way. [laughter] I think the whole scene would be interesting, to this day.
This is what we had, and this is what we were going to do, and then, when anybody tried to stop us, then we were going to have grounds to really attack that thing. I think they saw through that, so, someway or another, I don't think it was a real battle. I think they just squashed it. Petrillo, he's a hard man himself. When you see the handwriting on the wall, they finally decide which is the best way to go.
Isoardi
So as a result of your battle, then, they more or less went about changing the bylaws, because they could see what was going to be coming up, anyway.
Yeah. They could see it, because we were going to attack it all the way. So it was really a matter of not just fighting against us, but it was a matter of not letting an attack be directed at them.
Isoardi
You mentioned this alternate strategy you were thinking about pursuing. Is that something all you guys agreed on? That if this wasn't going to work, then you were going to start taking in white members?
Douglass
Oh, yeah.
Isoardi
That was something you guys were set to do.
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
And Local 47 must have known it, then. That was really clear.
Douglass
Oh, yeah. We made it clear to the federation. There's no way in the world 47 didn't know it. And there was a faction in 47 that wanted the amalgamation. Well, all those guys, you know, we all worked together, we mingled together, we had meetings together. Yeah, it was a combined effort of the black and the white musicians.
Isoardi
It doesn't sound like it would have taken you long to develop the biggest union.
Douglass
Oh, yeah. But it did take us a long time. In other words, there were obstacles. We just had to overcome these little obstacles. Then, finally, we just got it moving. We were just like a steamroller. And when we
Isoardi
Oh, good.
Douglass
Yeah, I've got thoughts about that. But anyway, we just finally gathered so much momentum. We had all the supporters. That was one of the biggest shows ever put on. It just made everybody conscious of what was happening. It was the way to go.
Isoardi
That had publicity. The media covered that?
Douglass
Oh, yes.
Isoardi
Well, I guess that's most of the questions I had on the amalgamation that I wanted to follow up with. Do you have any other thoughts on the amalgamation? Anything we didn't cover or mention that you think are important to remember about that? About the unions then?
Douglass
I don't know. It seems to me that I told you all about how we oversaw the thing. I think I mentioned the city of Oxnard and how significant that was. I don't know. I guess there will always be things. I can't think of anything offhand, but there will always be other phases or other stories about it, things that pop up.
Isoardi
But pretty much the main outline is pretty well sketched out.
Yeah.
Isoardi
So what was the Nat King Cole story, then?
Douglass
Well, did you see the special on TV last night? Did you know about that?
Isoardi
No.
Douglass
The Nat King Cole— It was advertised. It was kind of built up and this and that on [KCET] Channel 28. What is that? Is that the public channel?
Isoardi
Yeah.
Douglass
That must be it, because in between they were really— It was like a telethon. They were—
Isoardi
Oh, the pledge drive.
Douglass
Yeah, trying to hustle the pledges and all this kind of bit. It was a very beautiful story. You know, they told the story of Nat King Cole and he this and he that. Well, you know, he was one of ours: 767, Los Angeles, Central Avenue. I mean, he was one of those on the scene. That was the thing that I was very disappointed about in the program last night, because they just told about him as a singer. I mean, I noticed that they always had the big band behind him, Nelson Riddle or whoever in the world it was, and then sometimes the big band supplemented his trio or whatever he was carrying with him during the time that they photographed it. I looked on the screen, and I recognized the guitar player, Irving Ashby,
And then, on top of that, the thing that gets me is they didn't go back far enough, because right here in Los Angeles, among his peers of musicians, we looked upon Nat as just the greatest thing that ever happened around here. And the rest of his trio, his original trio, which is Oscar Moore—everybody knows who Oscar Moore is—one of the world's greatest guitarists ever. And then, their original bass player was Wesley Prince from right out of here. The thing that broke that part of it up was that Wesley had to go away in the service during World War II. He was replaced by Johnny Miller, the bass player who stayed with him the rest of the way, all through his thin years. When he succeeded at first, it was with his trio. It was the Nat King Cole Trio. I mean, terrific musicians. The rest of us guys around here worshipped them. They were the greatest things that we knew. So they were making it as a trio, and when they were the King Cole Trio they were— I don't know why the words escape me— They were equal, you know, not a leader and two men. Oh, God, it's a shame I don't think of the word I want to use [co-op], but it's a simple thing. But anyway, that's what
Isoardi
So he never sang with his trio, then? It was straight instrumental pretty much.
Douglass
This is when he started singing with the trio. No, they were instrumentalists, and famous among musicians and the rest of us. I know that because that bass, guitar, and piano sound became the familiar thing in almost all the little trios around town and everywhere else. All patterned themselves after the King Cole Trio. Even the great Art Tatum, who was the greatest pianist who ever lived, probably who ever will live, well, he got a trio together. He had the same thing; he added the bass and guitar. He added Slam Stewart and Tiny Grimes, bass and guitar. Everybody was on that kick. It seemed like all the trios were that way. I worked in a number of trios that carried that sound, except, in my case, I was fortunate that they added the drum to kind of tighten the rhythm thing up a little bit. Nat King Cole's trio did a lot of novelty things with the three of them. They did a
And then, all of a sudden— Well, first thing they made, they made a little trio instrumental. It was kind of an instrumental record, but with the three of them singing, you know, "Straighten Up and Fly Right," right? Then Nat took the little solo lines in there. That's the thing that started it off. Pretty soon, they decided, well, he'd sing a ballad and this and that, and pretty soon, as the thing got going and he started to really make it, then the producers or whoever they are, they all got onto him. They made him a star. They were going to, like, it was X and X amount of dollars, and "We'll give the guys so and so and so and so." That's the reason why that trio broke up. You know it was— They're working together as a unit. Everybody's splitting the money, and it's going down the same way. They made a success together, and now, all of a sudden, they just single this one out. The same thing happened with the— What was the name of the group that Diana Ross was in?
Isoardi
Oh, the Supremes.
Douglass
The Supremes. Yeah. You know, then it was
Isoardi
Making him more mainstream.
Douglass
They made more of a big thing of that TV show that he was on, the Nat King Cole Show. That was a thing that nobody really accepted. They had a lot of trouble with that. At that particular time, he was just a star, and he carried a little group around for his own accompaniment. The original guys were gone. They were replaced by Irving Ashby and Joe Comfort. We said, "Well, gee, that's nice," because I know they made good money. I mean, as far the groups that traveled around at that time, the figures that they were getting were superior in those days. It wouldn't look like an awful lot today, but that's the way things have changed. So there they were. They were in the group, and it went on and on and on. But then, finally, it just got to the place where it was just another good job as far as guys going around the country. In the case of Joe Comfort and Irving Ashby, I was right here when they finally left the group. Then, the other guys who
Isoardi
Yeah, sure.
Douglass
Well, he was the last guitarist with the group. And then, by that time, they had— Oh, as I saw on the TV last night, you know, he had a conga drummer at that time. Jack Costanzo worked with that thing. So they formed a little bit of a quartet. And then, after that period ended, when he got this last group together—and they showed a portion of that—well, then Lee Young was on drums for that. That's Lester Young's brother. He was on drums. I don't recall just who the bass player was, but I do know that John Collins was the guitarist at that particular time. But they missed the whole boat. I mean, when they started this Nat King Cole Story on TV last night, hell, they picked him up at the height of his career. And they went on through to when he got sick and when he passed away, but they didn't—
Isoardi
Terrible.
Douglass
I mean, he could not have made it without those other guys. That's how it happened.
Isoardi
So he was really a product of Central.
Douglass
Oh, yes.
Isoardi
And all of his musicians.
Douglass
Yeah.
And it's interesting. You guys, in the after hours or whatever, actually had to coax him to sing.
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
I mean, he was really reluctant to do it.
Douglass
Yeah. You know, we'd go on the job where the trio was working. At that particular time, I was on the good job. I was at Earl Carroll's Theatre Restaurant, and after we played a forty-five minute dance set, well, then this big show started. We were probably free for two hours or so. Nat was working right around the corner at the Radio Room on Vine Street there. Well, gee, we'd just run in there and say, "Let's go down and have a couple of drinks and listen to Nat." We always listened to him because he played so fantastically. And then, if you hung around him long enough and drinks and this and that, and you see him kind of enjoying himself, then he'd loosen up, and then he'd sing the blues for us. We'd say, "Gee, that cat sure has got a good style." [laughter] Yeah, you know. Somebody else finally recognized the fact that he had a good style, and bam!, they made a record, and then that record sold, and then, after that, you'd go in a store and say, "Well, just give me a pound of King Cole records." [laughter] You didn't care what they were. Yeah.
I can remember— I mean, like all the things that they
Isoardi
Too bad.
Douglass
I thought they missed the whole point. I mean, they missed this guy's entire life.
Isoardi
I bet most people who know of Nat King Cole don't know that the guy was a great jazz pianist.
Douglass
Well, that's what I'm saying, that they have to keep telling people about that. I mean, he was one of the world's greatest jazz pianists. He was one of Art Tatum's favorite piano players. And that was one of the reasons why Art patterned his little trio, with the guitar and bass and piano— That's what all the trios were at that particular time. Even Oscar Peterson. After that, he came up with a trio. For a long time, his trio was Ray Brown on bass, and then he had Barney Kessel on guitar, and then he had Herb Ellis on guitar. Then, when Art Tatum used to go around Central Avenue and came down to catch Red [Callender] and Gerry [Gerald Wiggins] and I working at the
Isoardi
Well, between Tatum and Nat King Cole, those were the styles.
Douglass
Yeah. Well, that's it. They set the pattern, and everybody else kind of went along that way.
Isoardi
You mentioned the problems with that Nat King
Douglass
No, I didn't see it.
Isoardi
You would never know that Central Avenue had all these clubs and great musicians.
Douglass
Oh, my goodness, yeah.
Isoardi
It was terrible. I couldn't believe it.
Douglass
Yeah, I've seen so many things they've done about Central. I've been all the way over to UCLA a number of years ago when they had some kind of Central Avenue thing. They had a bunch of guys up there. I don't think they even knew where Central Avenue was. [laughter] And the bands were integrated, but they were a little too well integrated. Because all those guys— They couldn't find Central Avenue if you gave them a map. [laughter] I mean, there's an awful lot of talk going on about it, like right now.
Isoardi
Yeah. It's getting hot.
Douglass
So now, all of a sudden, people are asking, "Well, what happened here? What happened there?" I'll tell one story, and another guy will tell you another story. But all these things happened.
Tape Number: V, Side Two
March 3, 1990
Isoardi
I guess, to wrap it up, Bill, I'd like to turn to some general things, see if you have any thoughts. First off, the recording industry. I guess at the time on Central Avenue, in terms of musicians getting recorded, you didn't have the major labels down there so much. You were dealing mostly with independent labels, smaller labels.
Douglass
Well, a little bit of both. We dealt with the major labels, yeah.
Isoardi
Could you talk a bit about what it was like down there as the musician getting recording gigs, what the conditions were like, what the pay was like, or who some of the labels were, some of the owners, etc.?
Douglass
Oh, well, let's see.
Isoardi
Or maybe you could talk about some of your own recording experiences and who you recorded for.
Douglass
Well, during the course of recording, depending on what was happening, there were a lot of the top rhythm and blues groups and things that were happening, and I guess some labels who did a lot of it— Well, there was John Dolphin. Dolphin [Records]. He was located right on Central Avenue. He was kind of a wheeler and dealer, you know, had his own record shop, and he would go out and then he'd pay you money to record music. I mean, you can ask
Isoardi
No kidding?
Douglass
Yeah. And then, on top of that, we were doing people like B. B. King, Jesse Belvin, the Platters, you know, all these people. They all came from somewhere.
And we didn't just do it for them; we recorded for Capitol; we recorded for [RCA] Victor. And like all of those big companies, you know, there was no surprise that we recorded for them just as well. We didn't have to record for black companies, because that was the music that was going. Just like they did with Nat Cole and everything else, I mean, hell, they'd come over and get whatever it is they want. They made their own records and we recorded for them. There was really no great amount of difference in that. I mean, I have to say the union is not very influential in getting you any jobs at all. They still aren't. I'm ashamed of the union for this, but they still aren't. It's who you are and who you know and what happens with you, you know.
Isoardi
One of the things that always sort of impressed me about the [International] Longshoremen's [and Warehousemen's] Union was their hiring hall and the way they had control over the jobs and made sure things were distributed equally and fairly, etc.
Douglass
Well, [Local] 47, I know, even before, or when we first came over, they tried all sorts of things like that.
Isoardi
The type of recording you were doing for these labels, was it mostly popular? For instance, was Dolphin recording jazz? Or was he recording R and B?
Douglass
I would say it was R and B. We didn't call it rock in those days, but it was mostly the R and B thing. I mean, some R and B has a somewhat bluesier, jazzy flavor. But, anyway, there were all different types of things.
Isoardi
What about the majors? You mentioned Capitol and Victor. Were they coming down looking for you guys as sort of studio musicians for backup on popular tracks?
Douglass
Well, we weren't just known as studio musicians. I don't know. I don't remember. I never liked that term applied to me. I mean, I'd work in the studios and so forth. We always figured that—
Oh, we had a thing that happened, for instance, in the motion picture studios quite a while back. A guy I forget became a contract musician for one of the major motion
I mean, that way another group—you can just read up on your history—called the Musicians Guild came up. And then, all of a sudden, they went to the Department of Labor, and then they won the right to represent the so-called musicians who were in the recording field. That's when the Musicians Guild got started. Then they won the right to represent them in the studio. Well, they got in there. When they got through with the studios, there were
And then we had this Cecil Reed, who was in direct opposition to the factions at 47 at that particular time. They said all the guys volunteered to donate their recording checks for this date to the Cecil Reed fund. I said, "No, no. Mine belongs to my family, and that's where it's going." So we had all those kind of things. I mean, it's always been a kind of a sickening situation, a sickening proposition.
Isoardi
When was the guild started? Do you remember when that sort of began?
Douglass
I don't know. There's an awful lot of data down there. If you research it, you can find it out. All I know is it was a number of years ago.
Isoardi
But it was after you guys amalgamated?
Oh, yeah. This was after the amalgamation. That was another thing. I always felt that, when we were fighting for the amalgamation, well, here we're a bunch of black musicians, and there were a lot of white also— Like when I mentioned the steamroller thing, I mean, like, we were powerful. We got to a place where we could go in and do anything we wanted to. I wish we could have kept some of that. We could be out here fighting our own battles and this and that. Now, we got over here and we integrated— And what is integration? I don't know. It's like you take a bottle of chocolate milk and you mix it in with enough white milk, after a while, integration is an act of disappearing. [laughter] Yeah, all of a sudden, you know, "Oh, gee, we didn't know anybody over here was having any problems. We thought everything was okay." I don't know. In the cases of some people, yeah, a lot of us were working with the white bands and this and that. But everybody wasn't. So some of us were for a while, and there's a few guys, a lot more than myself, they got in this, they got a show here and this and that. So there was a certain amount of representation. The thing about it, when the racial issue came up, you know, "Gee, why don't they use any black guys on that show there?" And you check and there was a guy in there. So you got your "adequate" amount of representation. That was always the answer back
Isoardi
Yeah. It sounds like, although you're certainly one of the leaders of the movement, there are some reservations about the benefits of the amalgamation.
Douglass
Yeah.
Isoardi
It wasn't a clear plus.
Douglass
Yeah. Well, like I'm trying to say, a few guys get going, and things are working all right for them, so, hell, they weren't concerned. I mean, a guy, it's happening with him, so he's working on this and that, so they're not concerned about the guy who's not doing anything. I mean, I know a couple of movements came up. There was an all-black movement that came up a few years ago. I attended some of those little meetings, but they weren't very well organized. You know, they tried to make a little noise, but they didn't have any— I guess they thought they had a purpose, but they had no real direction. So things just fizzle out, you know. We don't need that type of thing now. I don't think we need that type of thing from a black standpoint or a white standpoint.
But I do feel like in the case of the musicians who are not— Like I said, only a small minority of guys are actually doing the Recording Musicians Association, the RMA. That's another outfit that we have going right now,
Isoardi
Did you think 767 did a better job of looking after the majority of its members?
Douglass
No, I don't think so. [laughter] No. No union ever does. [laughter] It's sad. I had my hassles in 767, too, and that's one reason why we wanted to get rid of it. [laughter] All the guys did was sit down there and play cards. I mean, the booking agent, you know, he'd sit in his office and book horses. [laughter] And he's the
So things like that are the reason why— It's like I am in my capacity. I'm not legally allowed to go out and play, to compete with the members. That's because of this type of thing that went on. I mean, a call comes in, a chance to put a bunch of musicians to work, here's a guy sitting down in the office, he gets paid already, but "Okay, blah blah blah," then he's going to be on the set, also.
And that's happened in a lot of locals, not just here. It's happened in a lot of places. I mean, when 47 took over all of this jurisdiction that we have right now— Our jurisdiction encompasses, as I told you, Riverside County and San Bernardino County. That takes you all the
Isoardi
You mentioned you did a lot of R and B recording, and certainly, I guess, by the late forties, by the time R and B started coming in, L.A. was one of the centers of R and B.
Douglass
Oh, yeah.
Isoardi
And so many labels sprang up, etc. Do you remember what it was like when R and B started coming in on the avenue? Vis-à-vis, what's it like as a jazz musician to be confronted with something sort of different? Did it make jazz jobs harder to come by? Was there a kind of tension between being a jazz musician and an R and B musician?
Douglass
Well, I don't know. It just seemed to me like most of the R and B was happening on records. It seemed like you'd get more records like that, more than jazz record dates. There was a jazz record date here and there and now and then, but, of course, I was lucky enough to do those things because of the caliber of people that I worked
Isoardi
No, it does. I see what you're saying.
Douglass
You know, I've never tried to stop and analyze, well, "Why this? Why that? Well, when did this and when did that?" Heck, we were just living from day to day and from year to year and taking just whatever comes.
Isoardi
Did you ever have a regular gig in an R and B group or anything like that? Do you stay pretty much playing jazz?
Douglass
No, sure. I mean, I played R and B groups. I played every kind of group you can think of. I've even been in rock groups. I've been on some good rock jobs that I just couldn't take any longer; I just left. Yeah. You know, we're talking about jazz versus the other things, like, okay, you strive to make a living.
I mean, I remember there was a spell when I had one, very good paying, I should say. It was out on Lankershim Boulevard. I forget the name of the place now. It was a burlesque house. And, boy, there's nothing more degrading or sickening than playing burlesque, you know, and watching the people who come in there. You're sitting here by the stage, and here's a girl up here doing the bumps and grinds, like this and that and so forth. You're just making all kinds of sound effects. Catch the bumps. Bam! And the crash. The groups we put together, we
It was a very monotonous gig. You know, we'd start to play. We're going to pick this tune, we're going to play for this girl. She comes out there, and she walks around slowly. Gradually, she takes a little something off. And then, around about the second number, you're playing something a little brighter, and she's taking a little bit more of it off. And then, around about the final end of her twenty minutes, well, then she's dancing ninety miles an hour, and everything comes off, and blah blah blah, and then, bam, she's gone. And then, pretty soon a little of this and that, and then soon another girl comes out. So we start with the slow stuff. And then, we just work straight around. We're on the stand, and as soon as we were on the stand for forty-five minutes, well, then a comedian comes on and tells a few jokes while we get a chance to run outside and take a fifteen-minute break.
This would go on and on and on, but we got paid. As long as we took care of the business, we got paid. There was nothing to it. I mean, we had our little ups and downs with some of the people on the show and this and that. And this boss, he was very strict. I mean, the girls, they had their job. When they came off the stand, they went in the
Now, I'm just saying, that job would go on and on and on. And then, all of a sudden, somebody comes to town, a real good little jazz gig, and I got a chance to do it. I mean, it might not last for two or three weeks, but I would take that. I mean, this is jazz, you know, and I'd quit this job. I'd go out and do this thing and have my ball, and the next thing, then I find myself right back here, and my old job's right back there waiting on me. So, I mean, all of it was just a matter of survival. I mean, it was great to be working, and you did whatever was necessary to bring the bucks in. But then, when the good little job came up, well, you just took advantage of it whenever you could.
Isoardi
The studio gigs for people like Dolphin or the Bihari brothers, did they pay decently?
Douglass
Oh, yeah. Well, we had a recording scale. I think the recording scale was the same. It should have been in most of the cases. It was the same in both locals, even though we had two locals at one time. And even after we came over here, things didn't really change that much.
But, see, the scales for recording, that's the national, the federation. They maintained control over this. They maintained control over all radio, over all of TV, all movie work, and everything. Now, you wonder, why is that? I mean, like this is the movie capital of the world. There's probably more recording going on here than there is anywhere else. But why does the federation maintain control over that? Even though we're a local here, they take that out of our jurisdiction. We monitor the stuff and all that kind of stuff, but then we have to pay a gigantic tax to the federation. And all the scales and everything— See, in other words, they take control of all the big money-making things. So all we're left with, just to be truthful about it, as far as our local jurisdiction, all we've got is nightclubs and casuals. Who wants that? There's no money in that, especially the way it is right now with most of the nightclubs. I mean, they're hiring musicians, but, heck, they're not signing contracts with anybody. Therefore, we don't get the revenue coming in. The whole thing is in a sad state of affairs right now.
Isoardi
It sounds like this is the way it's been all along.
Douglass
Well, it's always been like that all along,
Isoardi
Well, I guess by way of conclusion, Bill, [there's] a couple of things I wanted to ask you. First off, in looking back, why do you think Central Avenue declined over the years? I guess pretty much, what, by the early fifties or so, the club scene was pretty much gone. It wasn't what it was ten years earlier.
Douglass
Well, it wasn't just the club scene. Clubs come and they go, and they're up and down wherever you are.
Isoardi
True. But the avenue is also a real center for the community.
Douglass
There was a certain time years ago when everything east of here— I mean, things have always been integrated all over the place, but I'd say that, basically, the black population was east of Main Street, you know, over there going towards— That's what we call Eastside. Most of the blacks lived over there, and just a few lived over in the Westside. It just seemed like, just little by little, as people began to move out of their homes and then get another apartment somewhere else, next thing someone
Isoardi
So people just gradually moved away from it.
Douglass
And now we're getting to the ocean. The people who are moving out of here, I don't know where they're going, but now they're spreading in the [San Fernando] Valley. So it's just an explosion that just keeps spreading out. And then, I guess the newer people, if you go back over there now, you find the Mexican population
Isoardi
Was there any problem— Especially in the late forties and early fifties, I know the climate in L.A. became much more conservative, kind of very moralistic. Was there any trouble with the police coming down and harrassing people in the clubs or anything? Was there any kind of friction with [Los Angeles] City Hall? Did they put any pressure down there to try and close clubs? Was anything like that happening?
Douglass
No, I don't recall anything like that. I mean, it might of happened maybe incidentally somewhere, but I don't think there was anything of that sort.
Isoardi
I see. So as you remember it, then, it was pretty much the population growing, people moving out—
Yeah, people just migrating from one end to the other.
Isoardi
Spreading into other areas?
Douglass
Yeah, yeah.
Isoardi
Let me ask you, finally, then, maybe, as a way of summing up—unless you want to raise some other issues—looking back now, how would you sort of assess the importance of Central Avenue? Central Avenue in general, and also in terms of jazz history? I mean, what was important about it? Why should it be remembered?
Douglass
I don't know. I mean, it wasn't my idea to interview me, you know. [laughter] You're asking me just because I happen to be here and because I can certainly remember. I haven't said that it should be remembered. But all the same, I do think that it should be. I've never been one to get out and say this is what it— I mean, myself and all the people I know, we've talked about it. You know, we talk about old times. That's all we do when we run into one another. We can talk about what went on.
The only thing I think about is when people talk about like the East Coast, "They did this and that." You had your Kansas City jazz. Here was your Chicago jazz. Now, what did they think we had here? We weren't running all over there bringing in this and that. And then, when I tell you about this farce that happened over on this side,
These guys, the so-called West Coast sound, these are a bunch of guys who migrated out here after the war. Musicians come through here, and all of the sudden they dig the California weather, and they settle down here, and they get a little thing going. Some of them are lucky enough to get into some of the studio work and all that other kind of stuff. Whatever it was, it just kept them here for some time. All these Kenton alumni, Stan Kenton alumni. Well, I guess Stan Kenton really got started right here, but he wasn't the original or the first anything. Where did they
Isoardi
Well, are you sort of saying, then, well, there wasn't a West Coast sound? You couldn't talk about, say, a Central Avenue sound, but there were a lot of different sounds, then.
Douglass
Yeah, yeah.
Isoardi
Very individual in that sense.
Douglass
Yeah. People didn't all play alike. I mean, to this day, there's many and many a great musician, and some of them I admire equally as well as the other, but they don't play alike. I mean, I recognize this guy's sound just like I'd recognize your voice on the telephone. Everybody has a certain identity. So I don't think you can take it and just put it into a category. That's what people try to do. They try to put you into a category. I don't ever want to be in a category, you know, or put a label on something that I'm doing.
Just as an example, if you go to the store and you
Isoardi
It's good. Go! One of the things that struck me, I know, in finding more out about Central Avenue, who came from Central Avenue, and what was happening down there, is that it deserves a place right up there with so
Douglass
Yeah. Well, people are becoming more and more aware of it, and that's what they're all doing. They're all getting into it, they're capitalizing on it. Just this past summer, KLON, the radio station, they did a series of concerts, and then one of them—
Isoardi
One of them was on Central Avenue.
Douglass
One of them was called "Central Avenue Revisited." I was there that day. I've got photographs and everything. You know about that. Well, we had some good people and some good players. They made a stab at it. It was pretty good. They had Ernie Andrews and Gerald Wiggins and a few others. I dare say that there were some people on that concert who don't know where Central is. [laughter]
Isoardi
Well, Bill, any final thoughts, then, before we turn the tape off? Anything else you'd like to say about those years and experiences?
Douglass
I don't know. Probably a lot of things will pop in my mind when we wind it up. Well, you'll probably be talking to me sometime or another.
Isoardi
Yeah. We may not have a tape recorder going then.
Douglass
Yeah, well, however, I'll be able to say things,
Isoardi
About the union, about amalgamation, musicians?
Douglass
No, I guess not. I don't know. I had a lot of things— I don't know. It seems like, as you're saying things, ideas are running through your head, and then they get lost while you're saying another thing. I don't know. All of a sudden, you're kind of running a blank, and I'm sure there are a lot more things. Well, well there has to be, because you're talking about a complete lifetime.
Index
Courtesy of Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library, A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library, 405 Hilgard Ave, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575; http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special/scweb/
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb2d5nb4g6&brand=oac4
Title: Central Avenue sounds oral history transcript : William Douglass
By: Douglass, Bill, 1923-, Interviewee, Isoardi, Steven Louis, 1949-, Interviewer
Date: 1990
Contributing Institution: Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library, A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library, 405 Hilgard Ave, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575; http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special/scweb/
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