John Wendeborn | Talegate | Oregon Historical Quarterly, 108.1

Talegate

A Trombone Tableau

by John Wendeborn

TAILGATE: Back end of wagon in New Orleans with band playing and trombonist pointing horn over tailgate; New Orleans style of jazz trombone

TALEGATE: Trombonist who becomes writer

IT'S FALL 1944. I'm fourteen years old and looking for the music room at Washington High School, carrying the tarnished trumpet I'd been trying to play for a year while taking about a dozen lessons. Within a week, the trumpet's gone and I'm sitting at the back of the room with a tuba on my lap. Band director Arlon O. Bogard didn't need a dysfunctional trumpet player but figured with some work his open tuba chair would be the right thing for me. It didn't take long to figure out the tuba was not right, either. The next fall, with the arrival of a sophomore who could play tuba and sousaphone coupled with a need for a trombone player put Mr. Bogard on my case again. He wasn't willing to dismiss me completely; my freshman year had been okay, and he needed to fill out the band.

The Wayout, under the eastside ramp leading to the Hawthorne Bridge, was a leading jazz club from 1959 to 1962.

Courtesy of the author and George Reinmiller

Arlon Opal Bogard will always be Mr. Bogard to most of us who spent the requisite four years under his strict command. A short but stout man, Mr. Bogard had a distinct military presence as he walked — well, marched — at the end of the front line in parades or the practice field. I was in his band, not the orchestra, and as a marching unit, the WaHi band was always one of the best two or three bands in the city. Those were the days when all high schools in Portland put their bands on the street for the annual Rose Festival parade, and Mr. Bogard strutted his demeanor as the band worked effortlessly through John Philip Sousa marches clad in maroon and gold uniforms.

Going from trumpet to tuba meant a big change in my embouchure — how the lips connect to the mouthpiece — and I took to the larger mouthpiece fairly well. Moving from tuba to trombone as a sophomore was a lot easier. After a month of practicing scales every day, learning the slide positions, and improving on reading the bass clef, Mr. Bogard put me in the band playing in a section of six trombonists. I was at the end of the line, playing third trombone with a freshman. By then, I owned a horn, courtesy of the lost-and-found room at Broadway Deluxe Cab Company, where my dad was one of the fifty owners. The horn had languished there for several months, so management said "OK, it's yours."

By my junior year, I was a competent trombonist who had a growing love affair with jazz by way of the waning big-band era that flourished in the 1930s and early 1940s — Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. They swung alright but not like the swing bands of the 1930s. Swing bands were pretty much gone by the late 1940s as singers took over the audience.

I was wearing out records — 78s then, but LPs were on the way by the late 1940s. At first, it was the traditional, New Orleans jazz of trombonists such as Kid Ory and J.C. Higginbotham with some Jack Teagarden adding distinct flavor to the stew that attracted me. But the more modern sounds of J.J. Johnson, Kenton's Kai Winding, and Herman's Bill Harris also filled my jazz ears. If there's a trombone anthem out there, it would have to be the Bill Harris treatment of the Woody Herman tune "Everywhere," a record I played a couple of times a day.

Mr. Bogard was not a jazz person, but he helped turn us into musicians. On weekends, we would head for the YMCA at Broadway and Taylor to take in the dances — jitterbugging, lindyhopping, and dancing to records by Woody Herman, Les Brown, and Charlie Barnet. This was long before portable tape recorders, and a DJ would come in every weekend night to play the records.

I also listened to jazz at home and compared notes with friends while hanging out on the southwest corner of Southwest Broadway and Yamhill, in those days simply "the corner" to the many duck-tailed youngsters who hung out there. It was the gathering spot for the various elements of the then-notorious Broadway Gang, probably because of its close proximity to restaurants and two major movie theatres, the Orpheum and Mayfair. Every Friday night during spring, summer, and fall, dozens of teenaged guys and some young women hung out after school, each group keeping to itself but all pretty much slightly acquainted. By evening, they would be looking for a party.

A sextet from the 293^rd Army Band plays a holiday party during the Occupation of Japan in 1950. John Wendeborn is on the far right, with singer Don Johnson and tenor saxophonist John (Sparks) Miele.

Unless otherwise noted, images courtesy of the auther

I was a few months shy of sixteen years old when I made my first sojourn to "the corner," which was in front of a Rexall drugstore. Across the street was a Hostess café, on the same block as the old Orpheum Theatre. The Portland Hotel and the old Journal Building took up the other corners of the intersection. In front of the Journal building, a guy was usually tossing a football to a friend in front of the drugstore. They weren't actually disrupting the two-way traffic on Broadway, a busy downtown street, but their daring game of catch was a sign to any observer that these teenagers were a bit unruly.

By seven or eight o'clock, the various high school fraternities — mine was Kappa Psi Delta — and sororities would move to the YMCA to take in the dance and, strangely enough, the rowdy decorum settled into an evening of dancing and listening to the big bands. The music was not swing to members of this group, who were only marginally conscious of the Swing/Big Band era of the 1930s. They were into jazz — usually what would become known as modern or straight-ahead jazz — which was on the radio all the time. Because of the platters played by disc jockeys such as Bob McAnulty, Sammy Taylor, and later Ray Horn I bought records and got a solid education in jazz.

This 1951 jam session at Hunter Club in Tokyo often featured 293^rd musicians, including John Wendeborn on trombone, Dick Campbell on clarinet, Don Syracuse on saxophone, Bill Place on piano, and Bill Ramsay on trumpet.

HIGH SCHOOL ENDED for me in 1948 with no job in my immediate future, although I worked part-time at the original Rialto pool room that summer. Upstairs on Southwest Park Avenue near Alder Street next to what became the Brasserie Montmartre, I helped keep track of the time played on the tables, collected fees, and kept the tables clean. By then, I was eligible for the military draft. The Cold War made the threat of war ever-present, especially to those of us just out of high school. I had joined the Marine Reserve at Swan Island in January 1948, but when I turned eighteen in July I decided it might be better to join the army than get caught in the draft. It would prove to be a wise decision. The army recruiter interviewing me realized I was a musician and told me there was an opening for trombone players in the Sixth Army Band in San Francisco.

Three days later I walked into a barracks at the Presidio army base, picked up my new fatigues, and met the band, whose members ranged from eighteen to fifty years old. I began my basic training, which did not include weeks of intense duty with rifles, tough sergeants, and day-long hikes. My two weeks of basic were close-order drill — right-face, left-face, about-face, dismissed. We marched endlessly on the Presidio parade ground, either practicing or playing for the frequent parades staged there. We played seven to eight hours a day in section rehearsals, brass rehearsals, and full band rehearsals. My adequate trombone playing quickly improved. It was demanding but ultimately satisfying and eventually led to a better assignment. A year after arriving at the Presidio, I was headed for Japan.

On August 15, 1949, I boarded the W.O. Darby at San Francisco and sailed for two weeks across the Pacific, eventually landing several miles east of Tokyo in Yokohama. Upon docking, a group of officers from General Headquarters in Tokyo (GHQ was Gen. Douglas MacArthur's command, the top echelon of the post-war occupation of Japan) came aboard and began looking at the records of the thousand or so soldiers waiting in the lower decks to find out where they were going. My original orders had me headed for the Twenty-fourth Infantry Division Band, stationed a couple of hundred miles from Tokyo, but GHQ changed my assignment to the 293^rd Army Band, General MacArthur's Honor Guard band, stationed in downtown Tokyo. My year with the Sixth Army Band was deemed good enough training for me to join the prestigious unit.

By the end of that hot August day, I was in a six-by (six tons, six wheels) army truck with a dozen others headed for the Finance Building in downtown Tokyo. That five-story office building would be my barracks for the next three years. We were on the fourth floor, and General MacArthur's Honor Guard — the tall guys with the chrome helmets — lived on the fifth floor. The band played for every conceivable outing, often at Haneda Airport during the arrival of dignitaries, from bigtime generals to senators to ambassadors, all slated to end up at General MacArthur's office.¹

It didn't take long to find out that I was in major league territory. Musicians in the 293^rd came from a variety of bands and orchestras, both army and civilian. By June 24, 1950, when the Korean War began, the band had grown to seventy-five members.² After that, more new talent arrived, including a symphony pianist from Hawaii who didn't have to march until someone figured out he could play a glockenspiel attached to his waist.

The dance band — called the Kampai Kings — roared to life with the arrival of Sgt. John Kluczko, whose professional name was Johnny Watson. Watson, who had been a highly successful arranger/composer during the Swing Era of the 1930s, led the dance band and was its heart and soul.³ I played second or third trombone in the Kampai Kings, which presented new arrangements by Watson and was always part of the monthly shows at the Ernie Pyle Theater.⁴

As the Korean War continued, entertainers from the United States, including comic actors Danny Kaye and Betty Hutton, arrived frequently and often used our dance band in their acts. The most exciting show of my near three years was the 1952 appearance of the Gene Krupa Trio, with saxophonist Charlie Ventura and pianist Teddy Napoleon. The trio played in one of our Ernie Pyle shows, and we were able to hang out with the legendary jazz artists afterward. In 1951, the Kampai Kings also took part in the "Grand Jazz Concert," an all-day jazz festival in Tokyo. Six Japanese jazz groups were part of the day, including the Gay Septet and Teruo Yoda and the Six Lemons.⁵

I BEGAN TO GET comfortable with improvisation, and I joined up with clarinetist Dick Campbell and tenor saxophonist Don Syracuse to learn tunes during our off-duty time. Melodies came easy and the accompanying chord structures became easier to learn, both by sight-reading and ear. Before long, we began to include other guys in our off-duty jam sessions, where several musicians would get together to play and improvise. The necessary ingredients would usually begin with piano, bass, and drums. Dick, Don, and I would coerce a pianist to join us, which, depending on duty status, could also bring on the bass and drums.

We soon took our jams out of the building and into the city. A bunch of us hung out at a nightclub called the Hunter Club, which had a Japanese quintet playing most nights. Calling it jazz would be a stretch, but they did play standards. The woman was a good pianist, backed nicely by two guys playing bass and drums. One night, Syracuse, Campbell, and I asked if we could sit in with them. The next night, we brought our horns along, beginning a two-year jazz escapade that became a highlight of my stay. At times, there were maybe five or six of us, and we would take over the stage, getting strong reaction from both the local audience and the GIs. The army published what were called Hit Kits, monthly magazines of songs making news in the United States — basically sheet music. We began taking them into the Hunter Club for the band, which gave the Japanese musicians a new and regular source of songs.

Before leaving Japan, I played in a half dozen nightclubs — always just sitting in, of course, but honing my jazz skills and learning new music. On one occasion, several musicians from the dance band, an officer who sang, and I were asked to play a concert in Shizuoka, in southern Honshu, for a Japanese audience. There were about two thousand people there, and when it was over about a hundred of them greeted us at the stage door asking for autographs.

Early in 1951, pianist Morty Freedman and drummer Harry Fisher — outstanding talents from Brooklyn — were caught in the draft and joined the band. Freedman played professionally as Morty Reed, and he wasted no time making his talent public in Japan. He put together Morty Reed and the 7 Crowns, a seven-piece band that brought to the stage drums, bass, alto and tenor saxes, trumpet, and me on trombone.

The 7 Crowns played at the Ernie Pyle, backing USO (United Service Organizations) entertainers and becoming the third act from the 293rd to play the theater. We were definitely a show band, and we were paid when we played anywhere other than the theater. Working as a band, the 7 Crowns wore civilian suits — a real rarity during the Occupation — or Xavier Cugat-style multi-colored outfits when we took on Latin jazz gigs. Our evening shows always climaxed with some showbiz schtick. On the last tune of the night, usually the Dixieland classic "5 Foot 2, Eyes of Blue," Morty would play with his head under the piano keyboard and four of us would go to the floor, lie down on our backs in pairs, and play our instruments while pedaling against each other's feet. I was paired with the bassist, pedaling and playing.

Morty Reed and the Seagram 7 take a break during a gig at an officers club in Tokyo. From left are Morty Reed, John Wall, Harry Fisher, Ron Long, Bill Murphy, John Wendeborn, and Bill Ramsay. Reed reached an agreement with the company to furnish outfits and horns, and the bandstands were later covered with the Seagram 7 whiskey logo.

Despite our fun, the Korean War slogged on. Playing for jet pilots and battle-scarred GIs on leave for R&R and for wounded soldiers at Tokyo General Hospital kept us aware. Occasionally, we were treated as soldiers, not musicians. On one outing, we were split into rifle squads and transported to a training area outside Tokyo. We all were issued carbine rifles, not the era's standard M-1 rifles and live ammunition. One of the men, who wore thick-lensed glasses, took aim at what he thought was a tree hiding the so-called enemy. The tree was actually a clarinetist, who barely missed being shot. That episode in war maneuvers was wisely our last one. The command decided we should just continue to entertain soldiers and leave the fighting to others.

I LEFT THE 293^rd on the day the Occupation of Japan ended in May 1952. Tokyo's streets were overflowing with people celebrating in a variety of ways, but I was headed home. I was fortunate enough to squeeze a favor out of the sergeant in charge of the Officers Club and flew home on a DC 6.

In San Francisco, I had a few days before I had to report to Fort Lewis, Washington, for discharge, so I connected with a San Francisco trumpeter I had known in the Sixth Army Band, Jim (Ziggy) Price. He had resumed his music career after returning home a couple of months earlier, and he asked me to join him and a pianist at a gig playing a strip club. We played behind a curtain and talked to the strippers between acts. We also went to the Hangover Club, a popular New Orleans-style jazz club, to hear the popular Marty Marsala Band. Late in the gig, his trombonist became ill, and Ziggy went up to Marty on a break and told him I was a trombonist. As a result, I played one forty-minute set of traditional jazz with a well-known band and got raves from the audience. Perhaps the uniform I was wearing had some influence.

Two days after leaving San Francisco, a train delivered me to Fort Lewis. I was discharged on June 6. Once I got home, I began my day job driving a cab for my father. My brother Bill clued me in to the jazz scene. I wasn't playing any pay gigs, but I did seek out jam sessions and our house on Southeast Ash Street hosted occasional jams. All it took was a couple of phone calls on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and within a couple of hours four or five guys would show up. There was activity on the west side, too, including jams at a house that bassist Bill Nuckols rented in the Goose Hollow neighborhood and at a place over on Northwest 16th Avenue — always pretty much spur-of the-moment occasions.

One of my earliest connections was with keyboardist Dick Knutson, who lived a few blocks away from me. He and I spent time just playing tunes. Guitarist Warren Black soon joined us, creating afternoons of wonderful music. When Knutson took up the bass, he became known as Uncle Pudgy — one of Portland's most talented jazz bassists and a regular at the popular Way Out jazz club on Southeast Second and Hawthorne Avenue, which was open from 1959 to 1962. I already knew about Warren Black, who was perhaps Portland's leading jazz guitarist, since one of the musicians in the 293^rd had a jazz-oriented fake book he had written.⁶

In 1954, I enrolled at Portland State College under the GI Bill. I joined the band there, using the practice to get back the strong lip and embouchure I had when I left Japan. No degree in music was available then, but I took two years of music theory, which climaxed with a trombone quartet I wrote that actually was played in an assembly as part of the course.

In the fall of 1955, I joined the George Sienko Quintet, which had been hired to play weekends at Timberline Lodge. That band included tenor Sienko, pianist Bill Patterson, drummer Bill Winkle, and bassist George Ommert. Saturday and Sunday afternoons at the Blue Ox bar at the lodge were mega-lively, with the room overcrowded with skiers coming from or going to the slopes and working off their energy with a lot of beer. In the evening, we would don suits and ties and move up to the dining room for a sedate two hours of soft dinner jazz. Leaving on Sunday, we would drive to a ballroom bar in Rhododendron to jam for a couple of hours for a hundred rowdy, homeward-bound skiers before heading back to town. The Lodge gig lasted two winters.

It was also 1955 when I met Frank Craddock, an émigré from Cleveland, Ohio. Both of us were members of a beer-drinking group called the Lush Club, and we realized we shared an interest in jazz. Frank was a professional photographer who enjoyed shooting photos of jam sessions, and he usually carried one of my horns to evade any cover charge at clubs. The Lush Club was also a source of revenue. We hosted monthly keg parties during the summer at the Clackamas County Pat's Acres or the suburban Willsada Park. During the fall and winter months, we put on parties with live music, most often at a neighborhood center in Huber, near Aloha, where I would bring in a quartet to play for dancing and listening. Most of the thirty or so guys in the Lush Club were jazz fans who supported the local clubs. The club disbanded in the early 1960s when all but a few members were married, making our once well-attended "nickel beer nights" at taverns a bit lonely.

In the late 1950s, someone from the Lush Club organized a Veterans Day march from the Alpenhansl Tavern at Twenty-sixth and East Burnside. There were about two dozen of us, including several musicians, and we would march and play — even getting the police to block a lane of traffic as we marched to Twenty-eighth and then on to the Blue Goose Tavern on Ankeny. A couple of years later, the march began at Claudia's on Southeast Thirtieth and Hawthorne. By then, the growing platoon approached forty guys, most of them veterans and many wearing ill-fitting uniforms. The music was handled by nearly a dozen players as we marched up Hawthorne to Thirty-seventh Avenue, again with police support, to Nick's Coney Island. That lasted two years and was definitely a fun-loving experience.

ALREADY IMMERSED in the jazz community, I left cab driving in 1956. I had not played anywhere near full time for the prior two years, but I soon found Portland's jazz clubs and was a frequent visitor to places such as the Chicken Coop and the Shadows. Both were restaurants, and the Coop, off Northeast Sandy Boulevard at Twenty-fourth, was where Portland's popular pianist Sid Porter played. The Shadows, at Northeast Twenty-first, off Sandy, was pretty much a burger-and-fries outlet with a trio playing weekends. I did have a quartet for a few weekends at the Hollywood area club Carmen's but lost that gig when the well-known Hamiltones took over.

Jam sessions put me in contact with other jazz musicians, including Lynn Teadtke, who would soon be the leading Dixieland/traditional jazz trumpet in town. Lynn and I found ways to occasionally play in the afternoon, which gained me some status. He joined Monty Ballou's traditional jazz band and became a star. Ballou ran the popular Diamond Horseshoe Club on the second floor of a building at Southwest Broadway and Washington, adjacent to what was then the Liberty Theater. Through Lynn, I got to sit in a couple of times.

It was about 1955 when I began staging what we called Young Jazz Audiences, a take-off on the symphonic-type events called Young Audiences, which catered to high school audiences and musicians. With Wes Spellman, pianist Al Hood, and others, we staged several concerts, including shows at Grant, Madison, and Franklin high schools. The assemblies we played always ended with a few high schoolers joining us to play; years later many of them had become established jazz players in town.

In the late 1950s, a popular two-trombone sound by recording artists Kai Winding and J.J. Johnson led to the S&W Quintet (Spellman & Wendeborn). Trumpeter Wes Spellman doubled on the used Reynolds valve trombone I had bought to enable us to get the J.J. and Kai sound. I had also discovered a wizard of the valve trombone, Bob Brookmeyer, and when Wes said he could play the valve, too, the S&W sound was born.

Tenor sax man Carl Smith and his soon-to-be-wife Patti Hart, a jazz singer whose popularity was rising rapidly, regularly gathered with us at a small house on Southeast Stark across from the Lone Fir Cemetery. Those afternoons were more jam sessions than rehearsal, but we had to have a set list of songs to play. Carl later formed his Natural Gas Company big band, which has held the jazz community's attention for many years. The S&W Quintet worked often enough, but I still needed a day gig.

GETTING BY IN THE jazz world is certainly not easy, then or now, and musicians frequently lead double lives. Playing and acting at night may feed your heart's desire, but it doesn't always feed your waistline. Aspiring musicians work as waiters and bartenders, give private lessons if they are good enough, sell cars, and even become stockbrokers. In 1956, a friend got me a job at Shakey's, a new pizzeria on Southeast Foster Road. It was an early excursion into bartending, which had me working week nights and days between 1956 and 1967 at nearly a dozen different taverns, including Claudia's, the Frolic Inn at Southeast Forty-sixth and Hawthorne, the back room at the Stark Club on Southeast Twenty-ninth and Stark, Nick's Coney Island, the Gay '90s on Southwest Park Avenue and Yamhill (which later became the Vat & Tonsure), Spatenhaus at Southwest Third and Clay, and Ann's Tavern on Southwest Jefferson near Nineteenth, which became the Goose Hollow Inn.

By 1960, I had become a bartender at the Little Jewel Tavern, on Southeast Twelfth and Clay. Live music in taverns didn't arrive until 1973, so jazz on the jukebox was the mode of listening. The Jewel's jukebox was loaded with jazz, including 1950s-era modern jazz and vocals, and the patrons were into it. I augmented that on Sunday afternoons by bringing in a portable record player to play jazz LPs. That cut into the jukebox revenue; but, since it was only one day a week, it continued.

The Little Jewel, owned by Mel Chrisman and Chuck Raymond in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was one of three popular taverns on lower Southeast Hawthorne. Jan's Streets of Paris and Jim's Jungle, next door to one another on Southeast Hawthorne near Eleventh, were hot, but music there wasn't as big a deal as it was at the Jewel. Sam Pishue bought the Jewel, expanded it, and named it the Golden Key. In the 1970s, Rob Andersen, who had worked at the Jazz de Opus on Northwest Second and Couch, bought the Golden Key and turned it into Parchman Farm, a live jazz venue.

Chrisman and Raymond helped turn the tavern business around in Portland. When they bought a small restaurant in 1959, liquor rules included a license that allowed restaurants to serve wine and beer. Taverns could only sell beer. Chrisman and Raymond continued to serve food, but they installed a bar with beer taps and served wine and beer under the license that came with the restaurant purchase. They named the establishment The Gay '90s. It would be a decade before liquor rules changed and created more business for taverns. More places offered substantial food service so they could sell wine, and it became legal to sell pitchers of beer to serve to as few as two persons. When live music in taverns was made legal in 1973, the live music scene in Portland grew fast.

Most weekends, either the S&W Quintet or another quartet I was part of played around town. Pay was not bad for the mid-1950s, ranging sometimes up to forty or fifty dollars. One Saturday night, I worked with the Les Williams Quartet at a dance and Les kindly gave me a lift. Bringing me back home after the gig and a jam, he said he couldn't pay me that night and instead offered me his car. The next day, in exchange for the fifty dollars I was owed for the gig, I became the owner of a 1940 LaSalle limousine. It was a large four-door sedan with jumpseats in the back that could seat six or seven, which it did occasionally, including on breaks on Sunday at the Shadows when we would pile in to share drinks out of a flask.

Paul's Paradise, one place where the author sat in on many jam sessions, is on the far left of this photograph.

OHS neg., ba002066

THOSE YEARS, from 1955 to 1960, were dynamic. Jazz was popular, big-name jazz groups performed occasionally, and jam sessions seemed to be all over town. Pianist Al DeVito played at Elmo's on Sandy Boulevard close to Parkrose — a long way from downtown — and he catered to guys who might want to sit in. His piano was on a large swinging platform, like a huge metronome, and it was fun when just he and I played a few tunes.

It was about 1956 or 1957 when S&W was hired to play what turned out to be a day gig at a Northeast Portland church. I don't recall whether it was a dance or a concert, but a member of the church was a young Jim Pepper. He was playing alto sax and still learning about jazz. He sat in with us and played fairly well, and it wasn't long before he switched to tenor and became a leading light as an innovator of Native American-styled jazz. At age fifteen, he was a friendly, mostly easy-going young man who even joined us on breaks when we'd satisfy thirst with a six-pack of cheap beer.⁷

During the 1950s, I joined the Walter Bridges Band, which was mostly a rehearsal band but loaded with jazz talent. It was what we called a "salt and pepper" band, with both African American and white players. Bridges ran the band with a velvet glove but also with a lot of authority. He knew what he wanted and took the time to get it. Over the band's span of years, just about every jazz cat in town became a member. From early 1957 onward, I was in Walter's band in the trombone section with Cleve Williams. We had a marvelous rapport and enjoyed our time in the band as we got together every Saturday afternoon to check out ongoing and new charts. One necessity at rehearsals was refreshments. Everyone brought something, and one of the highlights of the afternoon was the sharing of cheap wines and beer.

Through the musical and friendly relations that developed when I joined the Bridges band, I became known all over town. Jam sessions were vibrant, but sitting in on club gigs with a hired band was also recognized. Cleve Williams and Bobby Bradford had a quintet at Paul's Paradise, a popular jazz club on North Russell between Williams and Vancouver avenues. I became somewhat of a regular at Paul's after they invited me up to sit in one night.

THE SPIRIT OF competition in Portland's jazz community is positive rather than detrimental, and nowhere was it more practiced than on Williams Avenue — known historically as "the Avenue" because of the many jazz venues that made it so different from other parts of the Rose City. Like all the clubs on the Avenue, Paul's was predominantly African American.

One night I spent at Paul's has been burned in my memory bank for fifty years. Several African American men were out front; and as I approached the door, trombone case in hand, I was greeted with smiles. One of the men asked if I was going to play, and I responded with a brief "I hope so." Another commented that my horn case was a badge of entry. My Bach Stradivarius trombone and its huge oblong, velvet-lined case had become a badge. That night, I was one of maybe five or six white people in the place and the only one who was a musician.

My trombone case had been attached to me at several clubs on Williams Avenue, and this wasn't the first time my hands had carried it into Paul's or the first time someone had said something to me on the way in or out. Soon after arriving, I climbed the ladder to the loft that held the musicians. Cleve Williams offered a hand, as trumpeter Bobby Bradford and pianist Evans Porter said hello and immediately went into an uptempo, bebop-infused blues in B-flat.

Cleve said I had the first chorus, and the rite of passage that went with sitting in at Paul's went into effect. As the melody veered into my chorus, I performed that rite by singing: "I'm gonna blow now, I'm gonna blow now, shoo shoo doo savvy do scoovy hee ree bop." That rite was a musician's first chorus of the night, and it told the audience that we were off. It was a regular happening at Paul's, and the audience came to listen. Every time I sat in there, the crowded club would clap and cheer at the end of solos; it was obvious there was no tension over race. Coming down from the loft after playing, I was always greeted with nothing but positive remarks. That happened at every club I played in.

One of several jazz clubs located along the Avenue from the Steel Bridge out to Fremont, Paul's was a treasure, and jazz was an African American art form. There were also Li'l Sandy's, located on the south end off Cherry Court and Williams; the Porters Club, two blocks from Paul's on Williams; Johnny's Olympic, on the north end at Vancouver and Fremont; and the Upstairs Club at Northeast Union and Russell. By the late 1950s, these were the classics. The Cotton Club arrived on North Vancouver at Tillamook in 1963.

Bobby Bradford and Cleve Williams, members of the Albina Art Center Orchestra, play on April 23, 1965. Williams is playing the author's Bach Stradivarius trombone.

OHS neg., OrHi 25042

I played all of them but jammed at Paul's frequently, always when Cleve and Bobby held down the loft. I no longer remember the drum and bass players, but I definitely recall pianist Evans Porter, a nephew of popular jazz pianist Sid Porter, who reigned over the Chicken Coop.

The Porters Club (no relation) hosted jams into the early morning hours after Paul's closed, bringing in players from around the city after they finished playing paying gigs. It was a small club about a half block north of Russell Avenue, with a somewhat congested main room with tables almost bumping into each other. There was no stage to speak of, and when I walked in off the street it only took a few seconds to be recognized and invited up to play. I remember playing at jam sessions there as late as four or five o'clock in the morning on a Saturday night. All of the musicians who sat in on the Avenue's jam sessions were talented players.

The only Avenue club I actually worked at in the late 1950s was Johnny's Olympic Room on Vancouver and Fremont, where I brought in a quartet. There was a comfortable lack of discrimination in the area during those days, and a white jazz quartet playing in an African American club seemed just fine. On weekends for a month, I led the quartet there, with George Ommert on bass, Al Hood on piano, and Nick Gefroh on drums. We played standards, bop-oriented blues, and other jazz-themed tunes.

I also became a regular at the Shadows, which offered music most nights. The piano sat in front of an empty fireplace near a door, which opened onto Northeast Twenty-first Avenue about fifty feet north of Sandy Boulevard. I came in occasionally on weeknights to sit in with whoever was playing piano. On weekends, the piano, a small spinet, was moved to a stage area near a back door that opened to the parking lot. I had played there often on weekends before singer Patti Hart took over, but the arrival of players coming to hear Patti and sitting in occasionally gave me an idea that the Shadows's owners quickly approved. Sunday jam sessions were inaugurated; and, by the second Sunday, the Shadows was packed with patrons paying the one-dollar cover charge. The sessions began about five in the afternoon and frequently lasted up to and past midnight, with as many as a dozen jammers showing up. On a couple of occasions, a jam kept the audience past the 2:30 am closing time. The Shadows had no windows, so the owners just locked the doors and continued to serve drinks.

Those jams could get a little on the raucous side, especially when several horns added their sound to the rhythm section of piano, bass, and drums. Quen Anderson, a regular, always leaned against the corner wall at the edge of the stage to play torrents of notes on his trombone. I met Quen when he moved to Portland after playing in Los Angeles jazz clubs. He was a close friend of pianist Bill Evans and had worked extensively in a group led by Georgie Auld, another well-known tenor saxophonist. Quen could talk about jazz in Los Angeles as a veteran, and he told me how the jazz cats in one club would take their breaks and go across the street or up a block to hear other jazz groups. The action in those clubs was memorable, he'd say.

Sidney Porter

Courtesy of Dick Bogle

LAST CALL — PORTLAND'S JAZZ CLUBS

Most jazz clubs in Portland tended to settle into a particular musical niche. The Jazz Quarry had a house band, but would also bring in an eclectic mix of national acts. The music at the Upstairs Lounge often featured Hammond B-3 organ trios. The Prima Donna's forte was piano, bass, and drum trios. Other clubs were home to long runs of specific players. Legendary jazz guitarist Buddy Fite worked the Beachcomber in Lake Oswego, and Jeanne Ronne has only recently retired from over thirty years as house pianist at the Benson Lobby Lounge. The Roaring Twenties at the Hoyt Hotel was an example of a traditional jazz/Dixieland venue, and the Hoyt also brought in jazz stars such as Duke Ellington and Buddy Rich for memorable concerts. Other clubs, while not strictly "jazz" joints, had a large component of jazz in the music they presented. Portland guitarist Larry Adair remembers working Marino's in the 1960s, where the band would play jazz sets and then would back up the strippers. And I recall a gig I worked with pianist Dick Blake at the Brasserie Montmartre in the early 1970s, where we were hired to back up "Kimo, the Hawaiian Fire Dancer" with an opening set that was all jazz. Piano bars might have a repertoire of pop and standards, but much improvisation went on between the singing and the "cocktail music." These are some of the clubs in Portland that have either disappeared or no longer offer gigs to jazz musicians.

Asparro's, S.E. Grand off 8th
The American Museum, 3rd & W. Burnside
The Beachcomber, downtown Lake Oswego
Bill's Gold Coin, 21^st & W. Burnside
Blue Room, N.E. Fremont & 13^th
Brasserie Montmartre, S.W. Broadway & Morrison
The Broadway Inn, S.W. Broadway & Jefferson
Café Espresso, S.W. 2^nd off 14^th
The Caravan, S.W. 4th Ave.
Carmen's, N.E. Sandy & 40^th
The Chicken Coop, N.E. 24^th & Sandy
Cotton Club, N. Vancouver Ave.
Delevan's, N.W. 14^th & Glisan
The Earth, N.W. 21^st & Irving
Elmo's, N.E. Sandy near 85^th
Euphoria, S.E. 2^nd near Oak
The Embers, S.W. Park & Yamhill
Frontier Room, Vancouver, Washington
Geneva's, N. Williams near Prescott
Green Meadows, east Multnomah County
Henry Ford's, S.W. Barbur near Plum
The High Hat, S.W. Pacific Hwy., Tigard

The Hobbit, S.E. Woodstock, then S.E. 39^th & Holgate
Hoyt Hotel (Roaring Twenties), N.W. 6^th & Glisan
Imperial Hotel, S.W. Broadway & Stark
Jazz DeOpus, S.W. 2^nd & Couch
Jazz Quarry (Mural Room), S.W. 11^th & Jefferson
Jerry's Gable, S.W. 6^th near Broadway Drive
Kingston, S.W. Morrison & 20^th
Marino's, S.W. Salmon& 9^th
Monkey's Bottom, basement lounge at N.W. 17^th & Savier
The Monte Carlo, S.E. 10^th & Belmont
Mural Room, S.W. 11^th & Jefferson
The Olympic Room, N. Vancouver & Fremont
PC&S Tavern, S.W. 11^th & Morrison
Parchman Farm, S.E. 12^th & Clay Park Havilland Hotel (Top of the Park), S.W. Park & Salmon
Paul's Paradise, N. Russell off Williams
The Pinafore, downtown Lake Oswego
The Prima Donna, S.W. 4^th & Lincoln
Ray's Helm, N.E. 15^th & Broadway
Rip Tide, S.W. Stark St. off 9^th
Russian Village Sam's Hideaway, S.E. 8^th & Morrison
Sidney's, S.W. 5^th & Lincoln
Turquoise Room, off S.W. Barbur Blvd.
Top of the Tuck, N.W. 4th & Davis
Upstairs Lounge, N.E. Union Ave. near Russell
The Village Jazz, downtown Lake Oswego
The Way Out, S.E .2nd & Madison, under the ramp to the Hawthorne Bridge

Al Hood's piano work could go from subtle straight-ahead to monster chords in a near free-style, and pianist Pat George lit up the room with his work on standards. A tune might be a Charlie Parker take on a standard that would test the horns, maybe Dan Mason on tenor, an alto player, Spellman on trumpet, and the occasional fluegelhorn. Lee Rockey, Nick Gefroh, or Neil Masson played drums; and bass was played by Doug Royce or Bill Nuckols, maybe even Jerry Magill. Tunes played were either blues in B-flat or F or standards. It was difficult to find a standard — tunes by Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie — that no one knew. In those days, jazz musicians seemed to know hundreds of songs and could play them in whatever key the pianist would call.

Musicians in town for gigs would show up at the Sunday jam sessions, and several times former Portland pianist Jean Hoffman and her husband, drummer Bill Young, came in when they were in town from their Bay Area home. Jean — a 1948 graduate of Washington High School and a cellist in the Junior Symphony — still returns to Portland to play during the holiday season with her longtime music partner, bassist David Friesen. She wasn't the first woman to leave Portland for jazz. Lorraine Walsh, also a Washington High graduate, made a major name for herself playing around the country with big name jazz artists, marrying a leading alto saxist, Herb Geller, before a pulmonary ailment killed her at the age of thirty. In her tragically brief career, she played with many of the finest cats in jazz.

ABOUT THE TIME the Shadows jams began, other after-hours action would draw players and an audience to different locations around the city. In about mid-1959, I found what we called a 'leg joint (bootleg, after-hours, speakeasy) a few blocks from my home. Up Ankeny Street, the after-hours site had it all — six prostitutes and dollar drinks. Between one and three o'clock in the morning, the house would be jammed.

One night, someone brought in a deck of cards to play some low-budget poker, and the woman who ran the house permitted it. It started out as low-limit draw and stud poker but slowly expanded into no-limit. The house madam decided it was time to rake off the game and hired me to be the cut man. My duties were to extract a 5 percent cut from each pot, which over two or three hours could add up to a hundred dollars. I was given 20 percent of that; and on a Saturday night after music, I could make fifteen to twenty-five bucks. I didn't play poker, just watched and raked.

This all came to an end in June 1960, when a blue-collar-looking guy in overalls sitting on the couch with a VO-rocks in his hand stood up and yelled, "You're all under arrest!" Fifteen minutes later, the black maria pulled up, and the six girls, the manager, and I were taken downtown to the station at Second and Oak. We were booked and fingerprinted and had started to sit down when we were bailed out. To this day, I don't know who bailed us out, but the charges were never brought up.

After years at the Chicken Coop, Sid Porter, at the piano, moved across the river and opened up a club at Southwest Fifth and Lincoln.

Courtesy of Dick and Nola Bogle

In a warehouse in Northwest Portland, the Jim Smith Quintet — trumpeter Smith, trombonist Anderson, pianist Lee Reinoehl, drummer Lee Rockey, and bassist Jerry Magill — joined Portland artists Louis Bunce, Lee Kelly, and Milton Wilson to present a fascinating evening of jazz and improvised art. The artists painted while the musicians played. The collaboration was repeated occasionally, including one time in 1961 when Bunce and the ten-piece Ernie Hood/Jim Smith band painted and played on television.

BY 1961, THE WAY OUT jazz club beneath the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge was a major player in the scene. George Reinmiller and Jim Smith, players in the Portland Symphony, started the club, which featured a good deal of music written by Ernie Hood and played by the Hood/Smith tentet. A large club, it had purportedly been a tavern or 'leg joint run by Portland crooks before it closed. I sat in there occasionally and just about always played the baritone fluegelhorn that Reinmiller loaned me. The Way Out lasted from 1959 to 1962.

This band was one of two groups the author called "Seagram Seven" that got together at Civic Stadium to entertain during minor league football games. This unit included, from left, Bill Nuckols (trumpet), Ron Miller, Laverne Krause (French horn), Rex Amos, Candy Miller, and Graham Conroy (trumpet).

Jazz in the 1950s was also available at the Mural Room, which was first called Johnny's and then Van's Mural Room when Johnny sold it to his bartender Van and moved north to take over the Olympic Room (then known as Johnny's Olympic Room). In the 1960s, the Mural Room, on Southwest Jefferson near Eleventh, became a go-go club with dancers on stage urging the crowd to the dance floor. Then, in the 1970s, Brad and Kenny Butchek bought it, renamed it the Jazz Quarry, and brought jazz back until they closed in 1987.

In Portland, jazz evolved initially as dance music. In the 1950s, for instance, clubs were populated by trios, maybe quartets, playing standards. Piano bars, where a solo pianist played for a dozen people seated in an arc bar built around the piano, were popular in nightclubs. The pianist was inches away from his audience, talking and playing requests. Jazz artist Jack Howell, for example, played solo piano in the Benson Hotel's London Grill. The near-circular piano bar at the long-gone Bill's Gold Coin on West Burnside near Twenty-first was the epitome of that piano art. But piano bars did not become jazz hangouts where musicians could sit in. Sure, occasionally it happened. I remember visiting Ray's Helm near Northeast Thirteenth and Broadway to sit in with Russ Hackett at the piano and Jeannie Hackett on vocals. Russ always invited me up for a couple of tunes. And I used to hit the Monte Carlo on Southeast Tenth and Belmont to sit in with Speed Anderson, a very inventive pianist.

Of course, playing at jam sessions or sitting in at clubs didn't pay the bills. If I needed a few bucks to get by, like many cats in those days, I hit the pawnshop. It was always the same shop downtown. Because I had two horns, it was easy to pawn one during the week and play the other. But when I needed both, like in the S&W Quintet gigs, things got a little goofy. The pawn shop guy recognized me over time, so it got to the point where I could pawn a horn without opening the case. On two occasions, I took advantage of that and put some heavy material in the case. I always picked it up on Monday after a gig, and I've always had the notion the owner knew what I was doing.

TURNING THIRTY years old in 1960, I decided it was time to think about life after music. Rock and roll was gaining popularity; and by the time I quit playing a few years later, jazz was in a temporary stall. One of my friends from the 'leg joint was active in business, and he suggested I join the Jaycees to get an idea of what life in the daylight was about. I took him up on that and soon became an active member, even though I was still a night person and was still playing and listening to jazz. I took over the Jaycees monthly newsletter and discovered for the first time that I had an interest in writing.

My playing slowly diminished during the 1960s. Gigs were fewer, jams were fewer, and it was becoming apparent that things were happening in African American neighborhoods around the country. Riots had already occurred elsewhere, and being "ofay," or white, put a little rust on the badge. We could sense that something was in the air, and by around 1962 or 1963 I had stopped visiting the Avenue except to rehearse with the Bridges band. I stopped in to listen to the music at Li'l Sandy's once in a while, which was still a comfortable and pleasant venue.

The Turquoise Room on Southwest Barbur Boulevard near Thirtieth opened its doors on Sundays around 1961 or 1962, luring the usual jammers but also other jazz guys not as active in the after-hours scene. At sessions at the Turquoise, I joined trombonists Hal Swafford, Pat O'Neal, and Quen Anderson. It only happened once or twice but, wow, the sound we could get.

In about 1958, Sid Porter left Dick and Jane Kirk's Chicken Coop to open his own club. Sidney's, at Southwest Fifth and Lincoln, became the hot jazz spot in its near-downtown location. On the opposite end of Lincoln, near Fourth Avenue, the Prima Donna Italian café offered jazz on weekends. (Sidney's is now the popular Candlelight blues club and the Prima Donna is a rental car lot.) Without Sid, the Coop soon closed its doors. It eventually opened again, but it never regained its earlier popularity or its aura as a jazz club. Like the Shadows, the Coop had been a restaurant before jazz danced in and in 1938 had been the Rendezvous Inn. The Shadows, which at one time had been a church, has been the Club 21 for many years and offers no live music. The Cotton Club opened in 1963 and did well, but eventually died, too, as white crowds no longer visited the Avenue. Before the 1960s died, the block between Williams and Vancouver avenues on Russell had been razed, and a park took over the space.

Meanwhile, I helped put together the Portland version of the Seagram 7, a ragtag gathering of musicians and non-musicians who got together to perform at Portland's semi-pro football games in Civic Stadium. The group had seven "players," including artists Laverne Krause and Rex Amos, philosophy professor Graham Conroy, Carl Smith, Quen Anderson, a sousaphone player, and me. We sat in the stadium stands but moved onto the field at halftime, going into avant-garde marching formations that were improvised on the spot. They became so funny that the teams didn't head for the dressing rooms at halftime until after watching us for a good laugh.

In January 1963, after realizing a writing career might be possible, I used the GI Bill again to enroll at Portland State with journalism on the agenda. I joined the Vanguard staff, took classes from retired Oregonian reporter Wilma Morrison, and began writing a column that I soon realized was being read not only on campus but outside the school as well. A year later, I stopped playing when I had to have some teeth removed.

In 1965, I won the support of Portland State College to stage a jazz festival. That same year, the Dave Brubeck Quartet and the Gus Mancuso Quartet played at the Oriental Theater on Southeast Grand Avenue near Morrison. In 1966, we followed that concert with the Miles Davis Quintet and Vince Guaraldi Trio. Miles Davis was difficult. At the end of Guaraldi's set, I approached him backstage as he was running scales and facing the wall in the wings. "Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Davis," I shyly asked. "What could you possibly do for me," was the raspy-voiced, snippy reply. I immediately left the area until I took center stage to introduce popular jazz DJ and emcee Ray Horn.

AFTER GRADUATING from Portland State in 1966, I continued working in bars, got married, and applied for a reporting job at Oregon City's Enterprise-Courier. The publisher hired me as a sportswriter covering about a dozen high schools in the five-days-a-week paper. After two years of free-lancing nighttime show reviews in Portland while working days in Oregon City, I joined the Oregonian staff in 1971.

Although I was no longer playing, I kept one of my horns, the Stradivarius tenor-bass trombone. One more opportunity to perform reared its lovely head when several jazz musicians decided to honor the memory of tenor saxophonist Braley Brown, a regular at the Chicken Coop and a beloved member of the Portland jazz scene, who died in 1973. Cleve Williams helped put together a tribute jam session at the White Eagle Saloon on North Russell Street near Mississippi Avenue. The Eagle was not a jazz club, but owner Tony Ferrone turned it over to jazz on that Sunday afternoon and evening, as many of the city's jazz artists appeared for what became a monster jam session. Cleve had insisted I bring my horn, and while I only played one tune — I think it was "Perdido" in B-flat — Braley's wake was my absolute playing finis. My lips were sore for two days.

Years after the excitement of the Avenue dwindled into memories, I decided to take a look at the area and stopped at the park where Paul's Paradise had been. I closed my eyes, and memory brought me back to the Porters Club, the Olympic Room, Li'l Sandy's, and finally Paul's Paradise. Lew's Mens Shoppe, located across the street and the ultimate store for threads in the area, was long gone, and there was hardly any traffic in the area at all. But I had no problem remembering "I'm gonna blow now, I'm gonna blow now — shoo shoo do beedle bop la bop."

Notes

^1. In 1951, the band played as General MacArthur boarded a plane headed back to the United States after President Truman had relieved him of duty.

^2. The Korean War began on June 24, 1950, where we were located but, because of the international date line, began on June 25 in the United States.

^3. Watson's credentials included the much-respected Jan Savitt band, for which he wrote the swing standard "720 In the Books," and Vaughn Monroe, a popular swing/big band singer and bandleader. As Watson, he wrote Monroe's theme, "Racing With the Moon," and arranged his other big hit of that time, "Ghost Riders In the Sky," as well as many other songs, including an arrangement of the hit song "Shanty In Old Shantytown" for the Johnny Long band.

^4. Kampai is Japanese for gulping down a beer or sake.

^5. Playing piano in the Yoda sextet was twenty-one-year-old Toshiko Akiyoshi, already an aggressive pianist rapidly gaining fame. She arrived in the U.S. a few years later to begin a career that is still very much alive. The Kampai Kings were the headlining final act on the bill.

^6. Fake books compile songs, mostly standards, with melody and chord structure. Many have lyrics, too.

^7. Jim Pepper died in February 1992. See Jack Berry, "Comin' and Goin': Memories of Jazzman Jim Pepper," Oregon Historical Quarterly 107:1 (Spring 2006): 122–129. For more information about the history of Portland's jazz scene, see: Robert Dietsche, Jumptown: The Golden Years of Portland Jazz, 1942–1957 (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2005).

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.