THE SLAPPING CAREER OF BASSIST AL MORGAN 2

PART 2: After Cab Calloway, in California

The Eddie Barefield Orchestra, in California
Source: Black Beauty, White Heat, Frank Driggs & Harris Lewine

A new life in Hollywood, a new band with Eddie Barefield

Al Morgan stayed with Cab Calloway and his orchestra until the end of January 1936, right after they finished filming The Singing Kid with Al Jolson in Hollywood. While Morgan had always been a favorite of cameramen, he’s barely noticeable in this movie. But Hollywood’s attraction was stronger. Reed player Eddie Barefield just left the band after the movie: he admitted that he was tired and sick (stomach ulcer) of the harsh rhythm in the band. Barefield first got an offer from pianist Lorenzo Flennoy, who played at the Club Alabam, to join his group. The union wouldn’t let him play so Barefield offered his writing services to several orchestra around such as Red Norvo and Jimmy Dorsey. Then after earning good money, Barefield organized his band.

Therefore, Al Morgan gave his notice to Cab who was en route back to the East Coast. This is the beginning of Milt Hinton’s story with Calloway, and this has been told everywhere else.

By the way, Milt Hinton explains another version in his 1977 interview by Tom Piazza for the Jazz Oral History Project:

“In California when they’re making The Singing Kid, this guy’s so photogenic that every time Cab looked around, the camera was on him instead of on him. (Laughter.) Because the director would say, hey, catch that guy. He looks beautiful, catch him. And then on a couple of other pictures they had been done in, so there was a little animosity between Cab, and a couple of chicks had run in between there, too. He tried to borrow a couple of Cab’s chicks. And Cab didn’t like it too well. And then—but it worked out all right until, when they were in California making this picture with Al Jolson, the director carne to him after the picture and said, “Look, man, you’re wonderful.” Said, “You’re just a great thing, a black guy with a face like that, doing that kind of thing, now that they’re putting them in pictures, was marvelous.”

Eddie Barefield describes his band in Storyville #76 (April-May 1978):

“I had: ‘Snake’ White (he came out from Cleveland), ‘Pee Wee’ Brice, Red Mack Morris, trumpets; Tyree Glenn, Country Allen, trombones; myself and Hugo Dandridge, Don Byas, Jack McVea, tenors; Paul Howard, baritone; Dudley Harper, guitar; Al Morgan, bass; Lee Young, drums. Don Byas was playing alto sax but I got him to change to tenor.”

In June 1936, Eddie’s 14-piece band plays on Wednesdays and Saturdays at the Arrowhead Gardens in San Bernardino, a classy spot. “Eddie has some very fine talent in his band and with his arranging ability his band should go places in the near future.” (Freddy Doyle, California Eagle, May 15, 1936).

July 30, 1936, Evening Vanguard

The main event for them is to be hired at Frank Sebastian’s Cotton Club in Culver City. Eddie played there in January when he was still part of Cab Calloway’s outfit. Accused of being a gambling place, the club lost its liquor license a couple of weeks after and only reopened on March 28. Eddie Barefield’s contract starts on July 9 there and is supposed to be “an indefinite stay”. Billed as “The greatest floor show in the West”, it features Mae Diggs (read our full-length biography in 3 parts) who used to sing in front of Les Hite’s orchestra, the house band. With 3 reviews per evening (plus broadcast over KFAC every night from 10:30 to 11:00), Barefield and Morgan are getting back into the swing of things from the Harlem Cotton Club. What would have been a long stay would only last until September 1 (Barefield often declared that his engagement lasted 9 months there but the newspapers contradict his erroneous memories). Frank Sebastian changed the club’s policy and decided to use white bands: Jimmy Dorsey will follow. However, soon, Earl Hines band would play there. When Barefield leaves, Down Beat dated September 1936 rites a terrific review titled “Cotton Club is Disappointing”:

“The most pathetic place we were able to find on the Coast was Frank Sebastian’s once-famed Cotton Club. It is large, gaudy, and expensive. The colored chorus has been reduced from thirty-four to eight to six. (…) Eddie Barefield’s band was among the saddest in captivity, the men being unable to play his extremely complicated arrangement, and the people pretty similar to those who frequent the New York Cotton Club and your own Grand Terrace, if you know what I mean.”

On September 1936, Eddie Barefield’s band is spotted at the Breakfast Club in LA for a jam session in honor of Lester Young. Eddie Barefield, Tyree Glenn, Art Twyne are named but we can be almost sure that Al Morgan was there and, of course, Lester’s brother, Lee on drums.

In Storyville #76 (April-May 1978), Barefield explains another lack of luck:

“We played up and down the coast and then Al Jarvis, the disc jockey [and owner of House of Music record shop], recorded my whole repertoire but nobody has ever found it or knows what happened to it [and to this day, it has never unearthed]. (…) My aspiration was to get back east, but things got very slack. Finally, my band broke up, and Tyree Glenn and Don Byas joined Ethel Waters, who had come out to California. I gigged around, and, with Georgie Stoll, Marshall Royal, and Al Morgan, did some work at the Paramount studios for movie soundtrack music.”

In the Mae West film Everyday’s a Holiday released in November 1937, in the parade scene, when Armstrong sings Jubilee, you can spot Eddie Barefield… on trombone, but I haven’t been able to recognize Al Morgan on sousaphone. All the musicians who appear on the sequence belong of course to the local 747 union—where Paul Howard was secretary.

In March 1937, Reg Marshall becomes the band’s manager. The month after Barefield and his band appear at Papke’s Harlem Nite Club in Los Angeles. But Al Morgan doesn’t belong to the group apparently. He’s in the new Paul Howard’s swing band who play at the Cotton Club in Culver City.

The extravagant number in colour with Maurice Rocco in "Vogues of 1938"

Faithful to his envy of spotlight, in March 1937, Al Morgan is on the movie lot in Hollywood to shoot a ballet filmed in color for Vogues of 1938. This is a glamorous and incredibly musical sequence where he holds the bass next to the piano phenomenon Maurice Rocco, while the dazzling and zesty singer dancer Dotty Saulters (she’ll join Cab Calloway’s troupe in 1943) sings “Turn on That Red Hot Heat (Burn Your Blues Away).” Not to be missed and forgotten!

During the summer of 1937, Mosby’s Café was a crowded cocktail-lounge in Los Angeles. Especially when guitarist-vocalist Ceelle ‘C.L.’ Burke and his swing band play over there. Those cats made sensation around their leader: Caughey Roberts (cl, as), Putts Johnson (ts), Hershel Coleman (tb, as), Leon Perdue (p), Al Morgan (b) and Lee Gibson (dm). Swinging Hawaiian and Spanish tunes are on the menu. Who could resist such tentation?

At the Famous Door with Fats Waller

At the Famous Door Café in Hollywood, Al Jarvis organized swing sessions: the group in charge was under the leadership of pianist Eddie Beale. Lee Young (Lester’s brother) was on drums, Eddie Barefield, and Al Morgan.

This was a little bit different from the Al Morgan’s band, which was just a freelance band, setup for special gigs, with two leaders: Al Morgan or trombonist Baron Morehead. So whoever among those two got the job, that’s whose band it was. Al Morgan’s aggregation lasted until Fats Waller’s engagement at Hollywood’s Famous Door, during fall 1937.

“In his swing band, Fats is using some local cats who are really ‘sending’ him and keeping him in the ‘groove’ on the ivories. (…) Fats Waller has a very fine combination which can equal any of the other swing bands that he has for the past number of years.” (California Eagle, Dec 2, 1937).

During one month at the Famous Door (November 11-Dec 31ca), they backed Waller who took them to the studio for a recording session on December 16, 1937. In the group with Al were Paul Campbell (tp), Caughey Roberts (cl, as), Ceelle Burke (g), and Lee Young (d). Al Morgan talks about the man he recorded with Fats in 1929. “I don’t think anyone could get mad at Fats; as soon as he walked in, he transferred to you some of his warmth and humor, and you enjoyed every minute on the set.” And we can all appreciate the joyful tracks recorded, such as Everyday’s a Holiday, Neglected or the funny Why Do Hawaiians Sing Aloha?

Reeds player Caughey Roberts reminisces his time with Al Morgan and Fats in Peter Vacher’s book, Swingin’ on Central Avenue:

“Fats Waller sent me a telegram, 'Coming to the Coast, such and such a time, play such and such a place.' So everything’s going on good, got a chance to make some money. This was with Al Morgan’s band. That was just a freelance band. A small gig band. Well, it had two leaders; whoever got the job, that’s whose band it was. Baron Morehead was on trombone, and he’d lead the band sometimes. This was an interesting band, I guess, because of Fats himself, just the way he works and his sense of timing. I just couldn’t believe it; it was incredible. So we got this one job, nightspot, and he’d start that tempo, however many choruses you play, at the end of it, it’s that same speed. Humans always pick up on time. We were supposed to go to that St. Francis Hotel. The most popular place to get suits made, the whole band went out there, got two suits each, went back for fittings, and the next thing you know Fats went and caught a train and went home. So that broke up the band and the new uniforms. He came out again, but he brought his own band. We never did get the uniforms out because he never did pay for ‘em. Just ordered them and they sat up there.”

The same Robert talks about his “boss”:

“Al Morgan had cut out from Cab Calloway, and he would be around musicians and he’d say, “Now in New York, fellers, we don’t do things like that,” and somebody would say, “Why don’t you get a bus or a train and go back to New York?” [laughs].”

A lobby card for the retitled "The Duke is Tops"
You can spot Al Morgan on the bandstand

But Al remained on the West Coast until 1940 searching for more lucrative movie contracts. Those spotlights on him will convince him to stay there, even if you barely notice him, like in The Duke is Tops (retitled The Bronze Venus in 1943), released in September 1938 with Lena Horne. Al Morgan appears in Ralph Cooper’s Swing Band Harlemania in the final sequence of the movie. It is said that the cast members weren’t paid for their work because producer Ralph Cooper ran out of money…

Al Morgan starting his scene in Going Places (1938)

Another of his film appearances, Going Places (released in December 1938) again with Armstrong, shows Al Morgan in the final scene, backing Louis Armstrong on a fast-speed wagon—visible only in a few frames… Perhaps it was time to move on. Watch the sequence on Louis Armstrong House archives (starts at 01:15:15)

T-Bone Walker, as a singer, in front of the Les Hite Orchestra
(source: Georges Mathys collection)

Touring with Les HITE

Summer 1939: at the Onyx Club in Hollywood, the small place to be, Al jams with icons like Art Tatum, Charlie Christian and Nat King Cole.

The big move happens in fall 1939, when Al Morgan is hired by Les Hite. The latter has just revamped his band (after Lionel Hampton’s departure) with the help of disc jockey and radio promoter Al Jarvis. Bandleader Les Hite’s orchestra was famous for accompanying Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller when they performed at the famous Sebastian’s New Cotton Club. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Hite was then the most important Black bandleader in California.

Along Al Morgan on bass, the personnel at this time were: Paul Campbell, Walter Williams, Forrest Powell, trumpets; Britt Woodman Allen Durham, trombones; Floyd Teernham, Judillis Martyn, Rogers Hurd, Sol Moore, saxophones; Nat Walker, piano; Frank Paisley, guitar and Oscar Bradley, drums.

Les Hite's rhythm section: Oscar Bradley on drums, Al Morgan on bass,
his cousin Frank Paisley on guitar and Nat Towles on piano (Frank Driggs's collection)

Guitarist Frank Paisley was in fact a cousin to Al Morgan, as confirmed by Joe Darensburg in his interview for Rutgers’ Jazz Oral History Project in 1972. Also validated on Al Morgan’s draft card, fulfilled while he was working with Les Hite and gives as a contact address his cousin Irma Paisley, living on 730 ½, E.25th Street in Los Angeles. Note that he gives as his personal address 1710 South Central Avenue, which is the headquarter of the all-Black musician’s union Local 767 AFM address: always touring, Al Morgan didn’t really have a place on his own.

“767 also served as a social and cultural center and offered a range of activities from casual affairs to barbeques and parades.” Not only did the union help jazz musicians get jobs and negotiate pay and contracts, it was also “a favorite hangout for young aspiring artists who wanted to be part of the scene and meet their heroes.” In upstairs rehearsal spaces, young musicians would often simply walk in and listen to superstars like Duke Ellington rehearse. They were encouraged to ask questions, and occasionally sit in and jam.” (Hadley Meares, Mapping the jazz clubs that made Central Avenue swing, LA.Curbed.com)

Billed as “the man who taught Hollywood how to swing”, Les Hite and his orchestra tour out of the Los Angeles area: Tucson, AZ, Amarillo, Dallas, TX (just before leaving, their bus was robbed and all the clothing stolen!), then fly to New York and the Harlem’s Golden Gate, the Apollo, then Washington, Evansville, Pittsburgh in March. The road trip goes on: Kentucky, Chicago, Minneapolis (April), Iowa, St. Louis and other cities in Missouri, Pittsburgh again in July, Detroit, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Illinois, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Chicago again…

Oroville Mercury Register (November 21, 1939)

During the tour, T-Bone Walker is featured as a vocalist while Frank Paisley holds the guitar chair. Al Morgan is featured in the press as a boy from St. Louis with “energetic style” and the band’s popularity widening to national recognition allows them to be in top position above Count Basie for a couple of weeks during the yearly poll contest organized by the Pittsburgh Courier.

Jam session at Jimy Ryan's, on November 23, 1941
From left to right: Eddie Condon (g), George Wettling (dm), Sandy Williams (tb),
Bobby Hackettt (ct), Max Kaminski (tp), Pee Wee Russell (cl), Joe Sullivan (p), Al Morgan (b).
Photo : Charles Peterson. Source : Swing Era New York, W. Royal STokes.

Rest and jam in New York

They eventually land in St. Louis in December 1940. That’s the moment when his old friend drummer Zutty Singleton hires a probably exhausted Al Morgan in his quartet along with Don Frey on piano, Joe Eldridge on alto sax (Roy’s brother). This was good planning for Al: “I got back to New York, everybody wanted me to stay there so I decided I would just stay in New York.” If you were customer at the Jimmy Ryan’s Café on famous 52nd Street in New York in 1941, you may have crossed our friends Al Morgan during the Sunday Sessions organized by Milt Gabler, along with Hot Lips Page. In the tradition of New Orleans, and Harlem, Al Morgan will remain one of the pillars of those integrated jam sessions. You can spot him on many pictures taken there, with the likes of Eddie Condon, Joe Sullivan, Pee Wee Russell, George Brunies, Brad Gowans, plus regular visitors and guest such as Muggsy Spanier, old friend Red Allen, JC Higginbotham, Sidney Bechet, Sidney Catlett, Coleman Hawkins, Al Nicholas, Benny Carter, Earl Hines… Airshots dated February 1940 with Zutty Singleton, Albert Nicholas, Clyde Hart and Al Morgan survived and were published on a bootleg label (I haven’t been able to find it yet).

Royal Stokes explains in Swing Era New York:

“The high regard in which these gatherings were held, by both participants and audience, is nicely summed up by trumpeter Max Kaminsky. “There was a moment there, in 1941-1942, at the Ryan sessions, when hot jazz seemed at its purest.... When a musician was building a solo you never heard a sound from the audience.... The feeling was that musicians and fans alike lived for Sundays. [from Jazz Band: My Life in Jazz]””

Less emphatic, Al states: “When I first went in Jimmy Ryan”s, it wasn’t anything. It just was a little place, wasn’t known at all. We made it popular then.”

This probably led Milt Gabler to convoke Al Morgan for a recording session on August 28, 1941 with Cab Calloway’s featured tenor sax Chu Berry. The lineup consists in Hot Lips Page (tp), Al Casey (g), Clyde Hart (p), Harry Jaeger. Blowing Up a Breeze is the perfect tune to catch Morgan’s impulse on a groovy tune.

Another great and inspired session will occur on March 28, 1941 with pianist Joe Bushkin and Hot Lips Page on trumpet and vocals. A very unlikely formation for that era. Could it be Milt Hinton’s Ebony Silhouette just recorded in January 1941 with Cab Calloway that influenced the decision to record Morgan’s Blues and spotlite the bass player? Even if Sweet Georgia Brown is way more exciting! And the last title Bozay offers a unique duet between Hot Lips Page and Al Morgan.

Al Morgan starts 1942 by recording with his jam session friends for Eddie Condon on January 21 for Commodore. Music and Rhythm in its June 1942 edition reviews:

“This is jamming in the rough. But compared to the trivia being played by most of the large dance bands, it shapes up as excellent fare. (…) Ensembles are loose and unrehearsed. Yet, the spark is bright and the solos brilliant. There’s an abundance of humor here, some very bad music, and not a little excellent jazz. Spin ‘em yourself and figure it out.”

The same issue gives its point of view about another session with Mel Powell, again for Commodore: “Not great jazz records. But very good ones.” He will record again with Mel Powell with Benny Goodman for two wonderful titles: “The World is Waiting for the Sunshine” and ‘Mood at Twilight”.