Roy Eldridge

S = Jim Standifer
E = Roy Eldridge

S May 18, we are in New York City in the hotel room on 51st and 8th. Frankly, not too far from where Roy Eldridge performs at a place called Jimmie Ryans. You are looking at Mr. Roy Eldridge and we will start by asking him just a few questions about his family. Roy, can you tell us where you live and how many in your family and where you are performing now. Just sort of get us off.
E Well, I live in Hollis, New York, which is one of the suburbs of New York, it is in Queens really. There is my wife, Iola, my daughter Carol. We have a cat., Grey Paw, and a little Ch... named Morris. At one time we had a big bad dog named Fang but he died on us.

S And the dog and the cat lived amicably together?
E They were both males but they were like, well, they just love each other.

S I have a Siamese and a poodle, at least my daughter has. Occasionally they sleep together but they fight like, literally, cats and dogs.
E The cat is bigger than the dog. But they never fight.

S Listen, I am going to name some names and before we really get into them
with you, Roy, let me ask a question. How did you get the name of Lil Jazz? I think
it is Lil Jazz?
E Yes. That came back in 1931. 1 was working at Small's Paradise with Elmer Snowden's band. Old Joe Hardwick that used to play with Duke Ellington, first alto, he was in the band at the time before he went to Duke. I was kind of a small kid, I guess I didn't weigh but about 122 lbs. You can't tell that now. I used to play all the time. When the band was through playing I would still be playing, with a mute, outside corner of the men's room and play. Finally one night he said, man, you play so much I'm going to name you lil jazz because you are always playing, and the name stuck. He also named Tricky Sam... thetrombone player, and that stuff.

S How did that name come about, do you remember?
E That was before my name.

S You mentioned Small's Paradise. Now, when did that close, about?
E Oh, I haven't the slightest idea because in recent years Wilt Chamberlain had it, you know, and a disc jockey had it before Wilt.

S When you were there, though, who owned it. Small, himself?
E Small, yes.

S Then Wilt bought it from him?
E No, that was a long time before that. I was there when Elmer Snowden and they moved Elmer Snowden out and they kept me and I played in there with Charlie Johnson's band.

S Was that anything like Minton's where everybody helped
E No. Minton's, no, please. It was where they had a good show that could have appeared on Broadway, good performers. Minton's was a place where they would cats just go on and jam. It was no jam joint... Had good shows.

S So you actually had shows
E Yes. I'll tell you what. You catch us... show on, there is a film out called Smash Your Baggage, and that is one of the shows. . . where the waiters dance with the trays "Rubber Legs" Williams and the cats dancing and jumping ropes. It was a good show.

S Now this is a black place, black establishment, and their shows were black? Was that part of or did it reinforce the old days of Eubie Blake, for example... his shows. That was prior to that, I guess.
E What do you mean?

S Eubie Blake, his Shuffle Along that he composed some of those pieces
E That had nothing to do with that.

S I was thinking that it was the same kind of shows, were they at all the kinds of shows that you would see at Small's. For example, with a chorus line of black girls in the background and maybe with a performer in the front?
E Well, let me see, now. You are a little confused about what was happening. This was the type of show that you would find like the Cotton Club, you understand what I mean now. They had a show like that. All the shows were orientated like that, like the 101 was like that, the Lindy's Club was like that. It was composed of like... You had the band, you had chorus girls, you had comediens, you have all kinds of dancers, you have singers, finales, and that's it...they did this on the carnivals too. So Broadway's no different, I mean really than the carnivals, what they call plantation shows or plant shows on the carnivals.

S Speaking of carnivals., and this is not at all following us area but it is just as well, you had a job with a carnival for a while.
E Yes. Way back there.

S Tell me a little bit about it. How did you happen to become associated with the carnival.
E Well, I happened to be one of the trumpet players that didn't play like the trumpet players played. There was a party, I was on the TOBA show, you know... used to say, tough on black actors.

S I have heard other names too.
E They had a circuit, just like the Keith circuit, you know. We are talking about black shows which was the same kind of format that they had in Small's, you know. They had a party. Back then I wasn't on that circuit., I had just left home. When I first left home I was 14. They had a party and they had these people from the carnival which had about a 33 piece band. They heard me play and they hired me.

S At 14?
E Yes.

S Did you have to get permission from your parents or something?
E I had already left home then. No, I didn't get no permission.

S Where was home?
E Pittsburgh, Pa.

S So you are a Pittsburgh boy?
E Yes

S How many in your family?
E I am the only one left. There were l2 kids and I'm the last one. My mother and father both have gone.

S So you are the youngest of the 12 children? Of those you are the only one, and your parents are both gone?
E Yes.

S Do you own property at all in Pittsburgh now. Is that all gone?
E It is all gone, sold.

S The old household, the home, the homestead?
E Everything is gone. I don't own no memories of Pittsburgh.

S Were you in the city or outside the city of Pittsburgh?
E We were on the north side, which is really like a suburb of Pittsburgh, too

S I see. I am going to mention a few names, we'll get back to my questions, and just give me any comments that you can or you prefer to do in reference to these name if you might have performed with them, if you knew what they did, just to keep things going. Charlie Christen?
E Yes. Guitar player, right?
Porf. S. : Yes. Did you ever perform with him? If so, can you remember anything at all about Charlie?
E He used to come by, him and Jimmy Blanton used to come by when I was working on 52nd street with Billy Holliday and they were with Benny Goodman.

S I understand he was an incredible guitarist, though.
E Yes he was. He started the electric guitar thing, you know.

S Right, he was the first one to do that, in fact. George Benson gives him quite
-I="*- -
a bit of credit for -,, for laying the groundwork for many of the guitar players of today,
E He has no choice. He did lay the groundwork.

S Kenny Clark?
E Oh. Kenny Clark started out with me really in the... When I left home he conned my father into giving him my set of drums. Also worked with him in Paris and did a couple tours with him. He worked with me on 52nd Street too w hen Charlie Christen used to come in.

S Did you ever do any recordings with Kenny Clark? He was a rhythm section.
E I think I did in Paris.

S How long were you in Paris? Just off and on or for an extended period of time ?
E I stayed there for the first time when I went there with Benny Goodman. When they left I stayed. So I stayed about a year.

S Oscar Peterson?
E What about him?

S Well, have you done anything with him?
E Come on, you gotta be joking. We did a thousand records together.

S Anything unique about your relationship with Oscar that you might repeat for prosperity?
E Well, I think he is the nicest cat I ever met playing piano that can play as good as he does. He has a real feeling for people that are trying to play, he doesn't crowd them out of the thing and he really enhances them to go on and play. To me, he is in first place, you know.

S He's an excellent musician. He was just at Michigan a few weeks ago.
E ...what is it, I can't say it like this Vodka is getting to me. Humanitarian, right?

S Humanitarian, right. He's a real person.
E Yes, he's for real.

S Ray Brown?
E Yes. Well me and Ray played together with the jazz with a friend of mine, too.

S Joe Jones
E Jones just come out of the hospital.

S I don't know too much about him. Is he currently just out of the hospital, did you say?
E Yes. He just came out of the hospital last Tuesday.

S Has he been performing recently, in the past few years.
E Sure. He goes to Europe all the time.

S Dinah. Washington? That is the one way out in left field. Have you dorieanythin at all, had you done anything with Dinah?
E No, we are just friends.

S It is a person I didn't know or don't know at all and I just thought on the plane this morning that I am going to ask him if he had done anything with Dinah because I think she's a great, really. It is too bad that she didn't live long for us to see some of the re things that she did. Ella Fitzgerald. I know you have done a remarkably fine collection of things. I know, too, that both of you have the same producer, if I might call him that Norman Grants. What are some of the things, let me ask you some specific questions about Ella. As a musician playing for or with Ella, do you find it difficult when she breaks off into scatting to keep up with her. I say that, difficult, because some times she seems to be so free yet she is deliberate in what she does.
E She can never be free like I can never be free, really. Because they come up in an era when free wasn't a thing. You do a lot of things and do a lot of things but they are not free things, only then what's going on.

S You have a structure within you which you work.
E Yes. I would say on average that I'm seeing structure but it is there, you know. So, no, I mean I done what she is doing, I've been listening to that when she first started doing it.

S Well, now, I remember reading a lot about your pointing out your inability as a younger person to read music. When you are working with a person such as Ella is it crucial to read or more crucial to hear? That is a dumb question, probably, but in order to answer
E No, you got to be able to read. She comes up with music, you got to be
able to read.

S How old were you when you finally were able to grab hold of the notes and begin to read?
E Oh, my brother, poor Michael, my brother taught me how to read and the rest was just from habit. I, you know I have such a good ear I can play classical music without reading it. But you finally get tricked with that, they put something in that, if I heard it first... this carnival, all the old trumpet players hated me and they were out to get me and they did it. One day the first trumpet player... would play for us, was sick, so they said and they didn't show up for rehearsal. And the cats said ok Eldridge you take this part. I didn't know what... the animals....so I jived around and then we started off playing the thing. I figures I could say well I don't think somebody, somebody's not playing their part, can I hear that? That was where I give myself away. They said no you ain't you play it, play your part. So then I just said I can't read ...

S So then you began to see the importance of
E No, I didn't think nothing about it. Even then, I just figured I just blew it, you know. Man, what are you going to think when you are 14 or 15 years old. I was having a ball but the music wasn't important to me. What was important to me and that was on account I wasn't making but 12 dollar s a week. But I could go into all the shows I know all the animals, you know., I used to make a little extra money helping the cat tear down his stand, lemonade stand, you know.

S Right. And you had yourself a ball plus getting paid for it.
E Yes. Rides when I want it. I would get my $12, I'd go to the 5 and 10 cent store and

S I had to laugh I read something in this jazz book, Jazz Makers, you were performing somewhere with the group and the singer said hit it and none of you could read...
E That was the first gig I went on.

S When, about 1920 or
E Who wrote that book?

S That's... and Shapiro
E ...

S What did they say.
E What happened was this. I ran off home, I told you that. That is when I tell you about people misquoting you. Hearing something today and not getting it really correct.

S You had better be careful. This is being done by Roy Eldridge now.
E No, I am telling you. You can react words there and I can tell you what happened, I was there, I am the one that did it, was one of the ones. So we went to Sharon, Pa., which is about 75 miles from Pittsburgh and what happened was that there wasn't time* for no rehearsal, so they just handed us the music. The first tune was a thing where the chorus girls come in and dance. The tune was When the Melon's ripe in Dixie"...Right away if you could read you would have trouble because from the use and they didn't have ink like they do nowadays from water coming out of the hole... had dripped on it and it was all smeared up too. So the curtain went up and the cat said hit it. That was when we all started... we... read. So they pulled the curtain down and we played that and Sweet Georgia Brown for them or something, no singer, no.

S Tell me something. What kind of hobbies do you have?
E Well you we looking at that book I'm reading now. Carpentry. I am tryin to get into that.

S So you actually have time to do some carpentry around the house.
E I don't work Sunday. I have to, I have a house and there is always something breaking down.

S I read somewhere you are also into photography and some other things.
E Yeh, I was into that. I was into electronics too. But I have to make a living so I can't stick with it then, you know.

S Are you making any money from the records that you have recorded over the years. I mean that not in a, well answer the question, I guess, and then I will tell you what I mean.
E Well, no, not no heavy money, no. I get little checks, you know, nothing heavy.
Prof. S. Well we know that your records sale and those things that you are associated with were you a pretty good businessman when you made those records?
E Well, it wasn't the case of being a petty good businessman when you made the records. You are thinking in terms of what happened today. You know like Fats Waller sold his tune, "Honeysuckle Rose" for a little bit of money. He had no choice. You understand what I mean. When you worked with a band in the old days you worked with a band and you got a certain salary, part of that salary was supposed to be for you to make records... I wouldn't be sitting here now, you know, Maybe I wouldn't be alive, I'd have too much money. But it wasn't my tune and I was part of the band.
Prof.. S. : Now, explain those in more specific. You are saying that if you were under contract with X agent and you were given a salary to play in the band, to make records, to...
E This covers all of that.
Prof, S. : None of that was not broken up. It was as if you were a company man then.
E That's what you were.
Prof. S,, : There were no royalties or
E No, there were royalties it it was your tune, For instance, one of my tunes now that I get money from now but that it is a thousand years too late, was "Drum Boogie", that I wrote for Gene Krupa. I get a little taste off of that now, but I should have got a taste way back when and I would have been straight on that, just that one alone.
Prof. S...at that time the contract wasn't drawn up in such a way
E No.

S Was that, and I am trying to find out why was that, because you are not unique. In talking with Dizzy and talking with, Dizzy with a little more force I guess, but in talking with Andy Kirk, Merle Williams., Alberta Hunter, person after person after person they've given me stories of this kind of thing. Why didn't you get
E Now don't forget now that Dizzy came up a little later than that when all this was happening. Dizzy come up everybody was hip to what was going on.

S So he had learned or had been taught by
E Well, he had heard, you understand what I mean. So and I think he has been... did out of a few things too, he must have been... just one of those things.

S Who got the money, then. We know they sold, we, the public
E Who got the money? The publisher got the money, the band leader got the money, his manager got his share and that was it.

S Do you think that, what would you tell the Roy Eldridge's of the day in terms of their business and in terms of their creative output.
E Well, to write any tunes, the first thing get it copyrighted. Next thing is if the publisher wants to take it, make sure that you have the right kind of thing that you, get the right kind of royalties, you understand what I mean. That's about all you can tell them about. This you have to do. First of all, what messes up a young person when the are writing a tune is the fact that they are going to hear it, . . . watch it on television, but you hear it on the radio. Boy, that is an incentive for you to forget about money. Hey, I'm gonna play your tune on radio, baby. They are going to hear it all over the United States.

S It's ok, play it
E And you say, yeh. Go ahead. You don't think about the money part. You are thinking about your music being everybody hearing it. Now, I could care less about the music now but if there is some money involved, let me get what I am supposed to hear.

S Gotta pay your bills
E Yeh.

S Do you find that you are a little resentful that the places to jam are so rare today. Are there places that you can still drop in and jam as you did in Menton's in the old days ?
E Well, I don't think that I am resentful. I think I did my share of that.

S Do you have enough of that
E Well, You see what I think now, if I want to jam when you have so much electronic equipment now, what I did, see I made a couple good records myself, like on tape, where I got the piano and a set of drums and I put those on the tape and I put one trumpet on, two trumpets, three trumpets, four trumpets, for background and I would jam with that. I do the same thing when I go out on the road. I'll make me a couple tapes, go out and play the piano, I'll do the things I want to warm up with and jam with that.

S Is that the same, though, in jamming with me or a live body?
E Sure it is the same. All I am trying to do is warm up my chops.

S I thought that part of the whole essence of jamming was the fire that you get from being next to that next person, a live body.
Mr.. Eldridge: No.

S And the unexpectation that you have. If you were jamming with Dizzy and Charlie Parker and maybe Carmen McRae, all... together, that's no substitute for stereo where you can almost play it over and over to the end. You can predict what is going to happen, is it?
E Well, it depends on what you want to do. I am a competitive type person. That is what it comes into. But I have played with all of them. Me and Dizzy have made many, many records, you know what I mean. I have been on things with Clark, so this is not my stand now. All I want to do is be peaceful and keep my chops together. Put my little saying on the little tape and play with it, and when I get on my gig, be able to perform.

S Now you seem and sound like a person who is in his middle years, or his later years. For example, let me take that further. I read somewhere also that you had a heckler in the audience when you were younger you would go in and bust him over the head with your instrument if it were necessary, but now you say, if he heckles that's his problem. You are interested in making music.
E Well, now, you want to figure this out. You ask me a funny question I am going to give you a funny answer. You work in a club where they drink and they smoke. A guy walks in with a girl, right? He is going to make a lot of noise because he is spending a lot of bread for these drinks, right? So you are not in a concert hall, so if he doesn't want to listen to what you are playing, that is his bad luck, you know. So you just go on and play. That physical thing, when I would have, unless somebody puts his hands on you then you do that, you know. I don't know who quoted me as saying I would hit somebody on the head with my horn cuz I wouldn't even bruise my horn like that,. I never had those kind of nights. Only when you try to put your hands on me. So that is another something that somebody wrote that was wrong.

S I'm not going to quote that person, but I think that I got that from that book. Let me ask you another question. As you have dangerously close to it, you are obviously not the young man that you were and from everything that I have real and heard of yours you were quite a vigorous player. Like you said a few moments ago, Lil Jazz, you just played in the men's room, in the hallways, in the streets, anywhere you could get an excuse to blow that horn. We all slow down, let's face it. We have to if we want to stay longer and be around here to see our friends, and so forth. Are you slowing down because of age, are you slowing down because you are wiser and preserve, just why are you slowing down.
E Well, first of all, it is not the case of slowing down. Just like you said, there is no places to go out and jam. Who you going to find to jam with, to start out with, really. And there are so many people that are into free music, there is really no fun. I went around, I tried to go around and see what was happening. I don't get no feeling out of what is going on. Their... their in tune is great. I am not knocking it. But it doesn.1t enhance me or make me feel like I want to play. If anybody makes me feel like I want to play, I'll play. If they don't let me play on the stand, I get on the side and play, you know. I've always been this type of... But as far as slowing down, I figure it like this. I work four nights a week and I think that is enough. I play hard, you come and catch me play hard and I played strongly 20 years ago, you know. So I haven't lost anything, except for a few teeth. Age hasn't got nothing to do with it man.

S Well, does it have, is age, let's get moving deeper into that.
E Alright, you can get as deep as you want to.

S ok and I want you to be as candid as you can. I'm getting old, I'm 43 years old and a lot of things that I do I know I don't do as well, so I am selective now. Now, when you are playing that trumpet are you finding that certain notes you don't make as easily and as such you try to make them... is there anything changing at all?
E No. The only thing that changes is my mind is changing about how I want to play. Anything that I could ever make I can make as good or even better because I got more feeling now. You see it is a... I don't know why they say that about jazz musicians Here's classical musicians that play til they are 100 years old, so why can't a jazz musician play. I don't buy that, man, you know.

S Well, I talked to Horowitz a few years ago and he pointed out that he was slowing down. He was playing as well or better, but he was more selective. Maybe that's what you are saying.
E I am selective. I want to tell you what I don't do. I don't run all over my horn like I used to, you understand what I mean. When I came to New York I was the fastest cat, fast as grease lightening. That I don't do because, I'll tell you why Chick Webb was the first on... about that. My brother was trying to get me a job when I first-come here in 1929 and I was down jamming at the Rhythm Club and he asked VJ eb 10 Chick what do you think about my brother. Webb said well he's fast, but he ain' t saying nothing. And that is just where it is at. During those days I couldn't play a ballad. You know the hardest thing to play is a ballad and to play it, and to mean it, that a ballad is with some kind of a decent sound and with right changes. So that is the difference. No, I don't be running and jumping like I did years ago because it was useless. I used to get smothered by some cat sitting in the corner playing the blues. I learned my lesson. Didn't mean nothing.

S I understand from you and from Andy and from Mary Lou and others that I have interviewed that it is too bad youth is wasted on the young because, you are right, you are fastest, now you are conserving you are selective, and you are saying something by doing less. That makes a hell of a lot of sense, I might add. Let me ask you another thing which may or may not be related to age. I see over and over again people say that you are a saxophone type trumpet player, what does that mean?
E Well, my brother plays saxophone to start out with. Really, by my brother he came in here and was a success, you know, he was a hell of a musician believe me.

S What was his name?
E Joe Eldridge. It is just by him stayed in the house, you know, my first gig I got with the carnival was because I played the saxophone chorus... the saxophone chorus on stampeding, which is the only trumpet that played it. So I was more or less tending to go toward the saxophone than I was the trumpet. First of all you must remember during those days when I come up I didn't Louis Armstrong too much, you know.

S Maybe that was good.
E Yeh, it was because it made me go in a different direction. I heard like...., wasn't too fond of, you know.. I just didn't like the way he played. I liked Red Nichols better.

S I noticed that. You quote Red Nickols and Rex Stewart...
E Rex Stewart played fast

S Is that where you got your fast, virtuosity
E I... played the saxophone. Saxophone and Rex. I would Rex some... you know. Yeh.

S So then you are saying you would give some of your greatest influence is directed to Red Nichols and Rex Stewart
E No, it is not directed to Red Nichols, it is directed to Rex Stewart, Bennie Carter... and my brother
Prof S. : Bennie Carter? Why Bennie Carter? How much older is Bennie Carter than you? I thought he was more like a peer or younger than you.
E Younger than me? You ain't reading your history, baby. You better check your history

S But I thought you were only 42, I'm just kidding, you know
E I'm 42 around the waist.

S You look great. You look in a hell of a good shape. You got all your hair.
Mr.. Eldridge:... Atlas

S ...New York. No, you see, you got all your hair, look at my hair receding
E Well, you got to lose something, man. You can't go out of this world without losing something.

S I guess you are right. Benny Carter stayed at your house, explain that.
E Well, the band... my brother was the director of the band at the time and they came to New York and he stayed at the house once. I always thought he was playing. I think he was the greatest alto player there ever was.

S When you are trying to reproduce. Let me ask you this way. A saxophone-type trumpet player, does that mean that you were trying to recapture or reproduce a saxophone like sound on the trumpet?
E No. It means that because you have 3 valves you shouldn't be limited to playing like the trumpet players were playing back in those days. Now I can't growl, you know, or... what they used to do or some of the other things they used to do. So I figures you should be able to move like the saxophones move, you know, like make changes, you know...way back...changes and I don't know what happened to him. It was Benny Carter's cousin,...Bennett, he was a nice one, he was one of the first cats I heard... In fact, he made more changes than... or anybody, you know.

S He was sort of an experimenter, was he not?
E No, no, he had his thing together. He had his thing together. Cat played good.

S Well, in terms of that ability to be much more flexible on a trumpet, wouldn't you say that Louie Armstrong certainly achieved that in the purest water.
E Before you get to Louie lets not forget Jabbo Smith

S Jabbo, right. In fact, I read something where you said Jabbo you really had a great debt to pay to him. He grabed you one night and turned you every which way but loose, in Milwaukee, maybe.
E Yeh.

S Tell us about that
E There is nothing to tell you except that we had a battle in Milwaukee.

S What, I mean, what, I don't recall now what the story was but he told you weren't playing correctly or something, or showed you a better way to play?
E No...I just going to tell you, fast as I was playing then. The thing about itt is that he played and I am telling you this cat played...see my only thing to get by was putting everything up in like double tempo, you know. Like most of the young cats will do now. If you slow them down they are lost. They have to triple up, you know what I mean. I was in that same kind of groove back in them, 20, 28-and Jabbo came in the place and he gave me, and he asked for my horn and he played. And he played...somethin like Louis Armstrong, you know. So I said...I told him...listen, why don't you go home and get your horn, you know, cuz I was like that then in those days, you know. So he said, I'll do that and I'll meet you in...And we met in...the word got all around and we got down to...
Prof. S . Is a night club in Milwaukee, right?
E No, this in Duluth...

S In Milwaukee
E Yeh. The joint was loaded. So, of course, we played one and then my cousin Bruno Jones used to play first trumpet with Basie with one hand, you know that cat. He was there, he was fast too, cuz he was trying to play like me at the time. There was another... Stump Ellis, I think that was it. Well, anyhow we started to play and finally somebody got up and made an announcement. Said, we are going to ask the judges and judge who is the best in this contest. Jabbo...made...don't nobody know this little boy. They know me all over the world, which was true, you know. And he didn't play no more. Then we met later and we got to be friends, you know. He was a hell of a player, believe me man.

S Jabbo didn't play then?
E No. But he was a hell of a player, believe me.

S How old were you then?
E I don't know.

S Were you a teenager still at that time.
E At one time in life I was a teenager. I have been 100 years old all my life.

S Are those contests, I know they have been quite popular I've heard Lester Young was involved in a kind of a contest of that sort, I forgot with whom.
E Well, they used to have them quite frequently. I mean, when you go into town like a band is coming to town to sharpen the town, they have a certain joint where they used to play, you know, and they would be there to meet you. And you jam. They don't do this no more, you know. First of all there are no clubs.

S Well what about places like the Cookery and
E Oh, the Cookery don't have no jams. They are not allowed to have no drums in there.

S They aren't? I didn't know
E Did you ever see any drums in there?
Prof. S. You are' right. I never have. Why is that?

S We are with Mr. Roy Eldridge again. Tape No. 2, we are in New York City. Roy, can you tell me something about say the chronology of some of the trumpet players, say starting back with Louie Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and on. Is that a logical chronology that I have just given or would you in terms of
E How did you get Charlie Parker in there? You said trumpet players.

S I meant Charlie Parker because I was thinking about Charlie Parker in reference to Dizzy Gillespie's friend, I guess. I shouldn't have mentioned him but, yeh, trumpet players only.
E Well, there was a lot of good trumpet players that is not even mentioned, you know.

S First of all, is that chronology that I just listed sound, I mean without Charlie Parker, would that be of order of
E The ones that they write about, or wrote about?

S Right
E Yeh, they would say that Louis Armstrong and me, and from me Dizzy and from Dizzy to Miles and from Miles out in space.

S Did you ever intentionally or deliberately give Dizzy any pointers in trumpet playing. That's a hard question, maybe.
E No it ain't no hard question neither. The only thing I ever told Dizzy was like years ago in Minton's that everything I played low I tried to play high. The fast things I played low , I try to play them high. That's all I ever told him. The rest he did hisself. He could play better than me like I played. I lost $10 dollars on a record he made with Lionel Hampton on hot mouse that I thought was me and it was Dizzy.

S That close?
E Yeh, it was close. I tell you it was that close, I heard it from outside in Detroit. I heard it from outside, you know, they had the speaker outside and I said dam when did I make that record. I went and I said who was that on there, on that record. He said Lionel Hampton. I said I never played no record with Lionel Hampton. He said well, no it is Dizzy Gillespie. I said, no, no, that's me. He said do you want to bet. I threw $10 down on the table and he said ok, play it again and I will take my hands up and tell you whether it is a bet or not. He played it again and I swore that was me. I said you got it. He showed me and that's the $10...

S What are some of the stylistic features that Dizzy and you seem to have in common?
E Nothing. He played just like me at that time.

S You just cool it at that
E Yeh. Don't forget that I was the one that instead of playing like Louis Armstrong he played like me. From then on he went on to his own things, you know.

S When you are improvising, or when you are performing when some improvisition comes are there key guidelines that you have for yourself. This is a musical question I know in terms of chord movement, or, can you tell us anything at all about your
E No. You just play. When you start planning things these are people that play the same thing night after night. I'll tell you something...

S We are back after the fire, folks. I was asking Roy to tell us something about what, can you really talk about the process of improvisation when and if he improvises.
E Well, like I told you, it is one of those things where when you ... I'll give an example. I might say I am going to do something on the piece, you know. Then I'll get right in the middle of just before I do it and change my mind. That means that I'll end up making nothing right. You know. Or you scoot your lip like you are going to hit a high note with it, you don't need to do it, you know. Cuz you anticipate what you are going to make, you know, and I think with me it has always been best for me to just go out and play.

S A spontaneous type of thing
E Yeh. If it comes out good, if it doesn't too bad, you know. You have to prepared and say what you are going to do and that never worked out with me.

S I noticed you said in this particular book by Shapiro that you remember practicing for a week one time and then went into a gig and didn't play a single song that you have practiced.
E That is true. I would go early, you know, doing concerts and I play tunes I know ware going to play and I practice on them and play things on them, but when I am on the stage it is really the matter to acquaint yourself with the piece. But that ain't what you want me to play when you go out there, you know. When you go out there it is a different feeling. You got a rhythm section with you, you know what I mean, and a crowd there gets its adrenalin going and it is a different ball game.

S You also said one time that at the most four and sometimes at the very most five times a year, you didn't say a year, but five times is when you play at your very best. Was that five times per performance, or five times per year, or
E Well, it used to be five. It is down to three now. Now we get to the age thing.

S Maybe it is that you become more of a critic of yourself.
E No, I know when I play good... Listen, I have been playing long enough to not play bad period.

S ... best playing, what you consider
E When I say three or four times, it is when I thrill myself, you understand what I mean. When I know when I get through playing, I say to myself well how did I do that And I'll try it the next night and it won't happen.

S It was almost... where did I get that extra energy?
E Sometimes I thought I played good and I heard it on tape and I figure after I heard it, I'd say yeh, boy, what was that.

S Are you like most musicians that you don't really like yourself on tape after especially the first or second time?
E Yeh, I don't like. I very seldom play any tapes of mine. I got boxes and boxes of tapes in the house where a friend of mine every time I go to Chicago he says, he gets them from all over, wherever they go, he puts them on tape. For instance, I played a couple, like I played some tapes with Gene Krupa back in the 40s, you know. They are fantastic. After I heard them the second time I won't play them anymore. Cuz I really couldn't get to them when I taped, it was just one of them nights where I was on, you know. I didn't want to excite myself out and say well, you are getting old and you can't do that no more, cuz, I don't listen.

S Let me ask you something else. You mentioned something earlier about jazz musicians and I... the other jazz musicians. Is there any difference between the young musicians today in popular music who are supposed to be strung out on this or that or whatever. I know teenagers are more into alcohol than, say, in the old days when I was coming in which was maybe just a little pot. But do you see any difference, are kids really pretty bad today. They are into so much, you know, a little angel dust, a little this and they think they can play better. Was this true with your peers when you were growing up
E See, when I was growing up I was the baby. So I couldn't tell, Most all the guys I played with were older guys.
Prof.S. you know
E Yeh. So I never did have the experience of being around home playing with local cats. Even the cats I left home with were older cats, you know what I mean. As far as I can see it, there are quite a few guys, young kids that I have met, come down to my place, black and white, that are taking care of business. Trying to play, they get... there always was somebody who was strung out on alcohol or something, you know. But there was never,... during my younger days there was never anybody that was strung out on heorin, angel dust and things like that...

S Was it because angel dust wasn't available then, as it is now.
E I don't know. Like pot was real popular at one time you know. You know what is so funny. They make all this mess about pot. When I first found out about it, you could buy it in any drug store for 10 or 15 cents a Prince Albert can.

S You're kidding.
E Am I?

S Was legal, you mean. Are you saying that?
E I said you could buy it in any drugstore, anywhere in the world.

S When was this?
E That was in 1926-27.

S That was all over the country?
E . Yeh. See people used to use... for different remedies and things like that. They didn't buy it to smoke. You could also find that can of fluid that you can soak the cigarettes in, you know.

S Would you believe coming out on the plane I heard on the news that the University of Michigan Medical School is receiving, I have forgotten how many sticks of marijuana because they are going to treat glaucoma and side effects for cancer.
E Yes.

S Having the people smoke pot. So they were doing that in 27, 26 and if you live long I guess
E It generally comes right around. Yeh, I did read something about them using it for glaucoma, I didn't know it would work.for anything else.

S Yes, glaucoma that is one of the more successful things that the medical school there in Ann Arbor that they found it for. It was very curious. I asked that question because I do know with some of the players I know they think they can by taking pot or some of the other things they can perform better. When I say better, I'm not sure it is better, but they can perform, get the heights that they have never achieved before.
E This has happened to me with alcohol, you know. The time that I got real juiced and man I thought I was mean, you know.

S You thought it?
E Yeh, I thought I was mean, you know. Man, I heard that, you know, would always get caught. As long as I was playing fast I could get by the high. Where I would get caught is when I would played a ballad. That is when that whiskey would show up. I would be slurping. I got a video tape that I did, you see this belt I got here. I got that from the jazz society in Chicago. I want to give it back to them. I played so bad on their show and it was video taped too from the University of Chicago. So they sent me a tape, man it is... for days and there were like seven trumpet players on there,you know. And I was running this show wondering. They were all after me that is why I played so bad it was pitiful.

S That might be what you could tell the young people today, then. In their own eyes they should see themselves after the fact. While they are performing they think they are a gas probably. And if they are high and performing and all going wild.
E No, the best thing I can tell them is this. If you are going to perform somewhere, don't wait until you get on the stand. Don't warm up on the stand. Come to the gig early and get your chops together, then you're ready to play, you know. What happens, most people will warm up on the stand. Like where I work there is no place to warm up at, you know. Unless you want to ge down in that basement, boy it is so hot down there with those big waterbugs that get me.

S You fight with them to get upstairs. If you don't warm up, what do you do? Warm up in the car before you come in the club.
E I keep my mouthpiece when I want to warm up and there is something going on. I don't play the radio or nothing. I got a tape player in the car. I don't play it, I just and I'll do this... that will get my lips to vibrate, you know. I'll do this all the way from then til... I get to the tunnel and then I will blow my mouthpiece, you know. Then when I pick up my horn I can get a sound out of it, you know.

S Is Jimmy Ryan's, I don't mean Jimmy Ryan's, but that type of place after all the years, is that where you, you're there so you prefer to be there, but is that the ideal place for Roy Eldridge.
E Let me put it to you like this. Where else do you know a musician that can stay for 10 years in New York City. Name it.

S I can't.
E Right, you can't. I have been here since 1929. There's no place. And I ha the freedom to go out when I want. Plus, people come from all over the world there. We don't get as many people from the states. But we get them like the people that seen me on the Continent, in London, in China, Japan, South America, you know-. Canada. These are people who have seen me in concert but they have- never been close to me, you know.

S So then you are saying there persists an adequate platform
E Sure, right in New York.. Right in the heart. The Hilton right down the block. You go around make an L and there is the Americana, the Sheraton is right up the street a half a block. The Wellington. This is only two, three blocks from there, right?

S What can I get into Jimmy Ryan's for price wise, I should put it this way.
After I get in, what can I get out of there for-, bottom, pricewise?
E Now you are getting into something deep. Their prices are a little funny. I think after the music starts you sit down to the table, I think it is about $4 something a drink.

S With cover?
E No cover

S Oh, that great
E it is 4 something plus tax. So you have 2 drinks, you figure you got $10 coming, approximately. Its not 5 but close to $10, you know. Your change ain't going to do you no good.

S I asked that because I keep wondering, the people that I see in Detroit, for example, or Chicago just last week, talk glowing about Roy Eldridge, but most of them in American say that if I get to New York, hell it is too damned expensive for me to go in there to see him. Would you agree with that?
E Yeh.

S That New York, that's generally for New York, though?
E No

S To go to a show you pay a fortune
E But the shows are, look what they pick, because of the small they figure they should get in there for, now nobody sells no tickets for what they they even downstairs the drinks is $1.90 some. $1.91 I think, isn't it?

S Right, at least.
E Yeh. It got to be, you know. I had two drinks and I got a $5 bill and I got some pennies and two quarters or something like you know. So this is what the cat charges, you know. I mean, what does it cost to go to a show, you know what these shows are yet, they are murder. And go out to eat.

S You might as well forget it almost.
E Yeh, man I take my wife on mother's day down to Chinatown. Let's see she had Cantonese Lobster and I had shrimp fried rice and egg foo young and then I carried some sweet and sour spare ribs back to my daughter, $33.

S I believe it.
E So, you know, when I go out I say, well I am not going to put up no squabble but I want to look at the menu. When I looked at the menu and ran it down through my head and seen what things cost and that's where it was at.

S Well, to get back to the point, though, many of the blacks and the people who really need to hear Roy Eldridge very often say they can't afford it.
E They can afford it. Let me tell you something. They can af ford it, but there's not enough of them. I am going to tell you what happens. Now we was talking about the shows in Harlem, do you think they would come there, could they afford that, that was back in the early 30s.

S Yeh
E They didn't

S They didn't? I thought they did, who did then?
E The white people came there.

S But you had blacks too, didn't you?
E Very few, very few.
Prof. S. Are you saying the blacks- never have supported this kind of endeavor, then?
E I don't think so, no not really,.

S Is your clientele at Jimmy Ryan's primarily black? I mean white?
E Yes. A few of my friends come by. Outside of that you very seldom see one of them in there, you know. That really drags- me, you know.

S I noticed that at the Cookery.
E It was the same thing, wasn't it?

S Yeh. You could count the number of blacks in there. I think I was there by myself the last time, in terms of blacks
E But they support rock and roll group.

S They will. You mean like down at the Garden somewhere?
E Like James Brown or somebody like that, you know.

S Maybe some blacks, or the average black, considers jazz too elitist, or too intellectual.
E No

S I'm not saying that it is, but maybe that is the problem.
E Well, I think that they are just not into it, man you know. Like I went out people and you know what's a real drag when you go out, you just want to go out, you know what I mean. Like it was somebody, no tag around, you know. Some of the people would be there and they would say, oh, I want you to meet Mr. Roy Eldridge. They say, who? You don't know who he is? They can't relate to me no kind of way, you know.

S How do you want to be remembered? We talked a hell of a lot about Louie Armstrong and you hear a lot of things about him. How would you like, what do you want people to remember about Roy Eldridge.
E Take your pick. I won't be here to hear about it.

S True, but you will have
E I'll tell you one thing that I would dig. I'd hate to see these people making all the bread when people die with these benefits. I have many a benefits for Louis Armstrong, not a benefit, a tribute, you know, and somebody's getting the bread, just capitalize on the man's name, you know.

S Well, what would you like to be done. When I attend your first benefit, and I'l check on the money, where would you like the money to go?
E First of all, I wouldn't like it to happen period. I'd like to be like... You know the elephant what he dies and nobody sees him again.
Prof - S. : Yeh, but you are a famous man. You are a man that has done something that no on else has done. You are a trumpet player, you are a jazz man, let's face it, you are one of our national treasurers so that's not going to happen whether you want it to or not. So,
E Like I said, I won't be here to know.

S Is there any foundation or a college or a music department or something that perhaps you would like to, or not that there is any particular one, or is there a group
E No, I hadn't even thought about that. And I'd rather not even go into that, you know, because that is a different kind of thing.

S How do you want to be remembered, then, can you go into that?
E Just remember Lil Jazz, that's all. That's all I can say.

S Do you want to be remembered as a trumpet player, or as Roy Eldridge, the father, or all of those?
E Just a nice person, which I am, you know.

S I think you are a nice person, and this is my first time having to meet you.
E That's good enough for me, you know. I get to love life and lived it.

S Are you a Christian?
E I don't know what you mean by that.

S Let's me it this way. Are you a practicing religious person, whether you are christian or Jewish-or
E No I don't practice any more. I was raised in a religious family, you know. Every morning before we would get up we would have to get on our knees and say prayers, you know. Father was very religious, you know'. But I think I live by the ten commandments up to a point and I think that covers it, you know, I don't misuse nobody and I think that is where its at. I am not an atheist but I don't look. I'll tell you why I stopped going to church.. I used to argue with 'my father,. Everytime I-come home I would always have to go to church., you know', and I'd go to church and I would listen to what people are saying, you know. And the preacher would preach and I would say 25-30. minutes and then for the next hour and 15 minutes he was saying what he needed, you know, like the rug in his parish is, getting a little raggedy, and soon would have to get him a new car, and something like that the car is running bad, Just a host of things,. He spent more time on that than he did the sermon. You understand what I mean, Then to top it off, this one preacher when he was going to college, you remember when I had the big band, I played for their homecoming dance, somewhere in West Virginia, one of those black colleges down there, then he made a big deal out of that. He said, yeh, he was the leader of the band but I'm the leader now. He roasted me for a while you know'. So we got ready to go and shook hands with him and he said, now', listen you go on back to New-York and I need me a tape recorder so you send me a tape recorder back-from New York, you know. I mean this turned me off. I come to hear a sermon, right and 1-got all this, other things, and I know when I was on the road I used to try to go to church all the time, in my younger days, and... when we were in the band and they would start with the devils-in the house tonight.

S You're kidding.
E Yeh... you know I'd come up on those jazz museums was the lowest thing in the totem pole, you know. Now they got a little respectability-, but when I came

S Why do you suppose they, did they get the reputation deservedly? or why do you suppose they got it to begin with-?
E Well, first of all, you know, what happens with our people, right. If you are not a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist, you ain't nothing, you know. Then, Now, oh you get recognition now. Then the thing some these cats, like this cat wrote that thing, they
wrote about the plan and things like that, so that put a stigma on the jazz, you know what I mean. Which all cats didn't play in whore houses, some of them are playing in them now, you know, piano players, but not the horn players. No horns is playing in a place So I mean if you met a girl in those days and her parents found out you were a jazz musician you couldn't come in their house. The funniest thing is that didn't have anything to do wit dope or nothing like that. It was just that you were a jazz musician.

S So you had the potential of evil. No evil there just the potential.
E Yeh, the devil is in the house. I heard that so many times I stopped going to church.

S Since you mentioned that, if you were going with a girl, where did
you meet Vi
E We went to Savoy together

S Does she perform on
E She was dancer. She was a hostess, I guess she was. I was working in the band

S I see. Her family had that respect for the jazz musician, then.
E Then it was a different ball game, Talking about back in the 20s. We met I knew her a year before she would even speak to me

S How long have you been married?
E 1. guess it would be, lets see, this- is 80, 44 years.

S 44*years. You have a daughter?
E Yeh.

S Carol. How old is Carol?
E She's in her thirties somewhere.

S How old are you Roy?
E 69

S When were you born?
E January 30, 1911

S So then you logue a few years on this circuit if you started when you were, well you started when you were 12, right.
E I would staying at home when I was 12 years

S But as a professional you were 14 or 15
E 14

S And the carnival job was your first professional or paid for
E No, I wasn't professional, I left home at 14 and I got stranded

S That's right, and then you joined. Where were you stranded?
E Sharon, Pa.

S ok. And then you went to the carnival
E No we worked around there, around Sharon, and then we finally got to Youngstown. We were doing little theatres around there, and that's where this carnival was in town and they picked me up.

S So the group as such broke up and then you went with the carnival alone and joined the other group. You mentioned twice your band. When did you organize this band.
E Well, when I left the carnival I came home and I got a band together and went on the road together... this time.

S How many pieces were there?
E Let me see. About 6 pieces.

S Would you book a gig and then after the gig is over you split the money between the 6 or 7 of you, or
E No, there was no money involved.

S How was this done?
E We got a meal ticket

S So literally you played for the joy of playing, then, in essence. You and your band.
E Yeh, well, we got meal tickets and maybe a few dollars every-
once in a while

S What kind of organization did you play for. Dances, or country
clubs-,
E No, we played shows, in fact the shows that we were talking about before.

S I see.
E Chorus girls, comediennes, dancers, singers, blues singers

S You mentioned Billy Holiday. When did she, when did you first work with her?
E ... early 40s. I made the first record in 35.

S 35. Then that is right after, that's why you had the band, then, right? You
E I have had a million bands. I had that band, I've had big bands, I've had small bands. I wouldn't even try to start to think of how many bands I have had at different times, you know.

S Of the bands that you had, which one of those are you most noted for, did you make the most records with?
E None of them.

S You made no records with your bands
E The most notable was the one in Chicago, the Dueces. Cuz I was on the air for 3 years, CBS, WBBM, you know. When we started making records I got a contract they had a big strike between ASCAP and BMI and the union so I only made one date.

S I see. Did you arrange for the band?
E No, my brother did.

S When did you, what pieces that you have composed would most of us be most familiar with.
E ... a lot of help too you know. She works one of these big buildings over here. She's in charge of

S Between 1936 and 1942 many people say this is the time when Roy Eldridge was real admired and listened to. Can you tell us something about that time period? 36-42. I know the hecklers hawk was one of the pieces that was mentioned in some of the research
E The only thing. Forget about what they mentioned. Just remember this, like I told you, is during that time I was on the air every night, 7 nights a week for 2-3 years. It was the time when the band used to travel with radios in the buses.. Whenever they came to Chicago that is the first place they would come to, 3 Dueces. I had a band that was really... they could play. We were so unique because we could be playing something way in tempo and I had the time down so perfect that I could slide right out of that and right into the theme song. This intriqued people like mad. So that was a good period. I made those records with Billie before I left. While I was there I didn't make so much. I went there with Fletcher first.

S This is Dueces, you mean?
E No. This is the Grand...Fletcher Henderson's band. I left Fletcher's band and went to. See when I got married our honeymoon was in Chicago.

S Give us a date for this period
E That's 36

S In 36, got married, you were with Fletcher Henderson but you left.
E I went to Chicago with him, from New York. We worked here at the Roseland.

S How long were you in Chicago?
E 3 years.

S Where were you there?
E Well, I was there with Fletcher for, let see, got married the 24th of January somewhere, we went out on the road for a while, came back. I remember I bought a car. Then something happened. The band made a big hit with Christopher Columbus, you know. Then the band got real sluggish like. They start playing all these pop tunes and things that little jive arrangements and featured me and True Berry. They got pretty uninteresting, you know. e, So I quit. They tried to get me to come down to this joint, the 3 Dueces, and they got the band together for me and that was it.

S Who was doing the Fletcher Henderson arrangements?
E Fletcher and his brother

S Was Mary Lou doing any of those?
E No. She used to arrange for Benny Goodman. I think she would arrange for anybody she'd get some bread.

S Did you do any arranging at that time or were you doing any not just for him but for yourself?
E No...composer, not an arranger..

S After you left Chicago, then where? Where was your next, then you came back her to 3 Dueces?
E ...

S ok. 3 Dueces from Chicago, then when you left Chicago?
E I went on the road with the group

S ok. When was that, about the early 40s
E No, that was 38. We went to Detroit, played, I can't think of the name of that theatre.

S Fischer theatre, maybe
E No it wasn't that big. It is across from the Detroit Hotel. That was a gig because there was a Greek restaurant right across the street that sold hot dogs and they wouldn't serve me and my name was in the marque

S Really, because you were black?
E Of course, not because I was a Chinaman.

S Whatever happened to the 3 Dueces? And when did it happen?
E I don't know. It ran enough times there...was there Duff Smith was Jonah Jones worked there...worked there. It finally caught on fire so now it is, well it was the Shrangra La, a Chinese restaurant, and now it is a Porn theatre.

S So it went the route. Did you ever work at the jazz workshop in San Francisco?
E No.

S Down in North Beach?
E No way

S So your daughter played trumpet
Mr. Eldridge; Yes, she played and played awful good too. But I went to her last concert when she graduated from high school and she played so beautiful. On the way home I was telling her I got a golden horn and you get the horn and get a new mouthpiece for you and I'll get you a teacher. She says Daddy, I'm not going to mess my lips up... no trumpet. That was the end of that. It really broke my heart too, you know.

S I can imagine, especially after seeing, how many years had she been playing that.
E Well, she did, funny thing about it, when she was 3 years old I had a little small pocket coronet, you know. For some reason or other she thought that was hers,,you know. And we were living at 270 Comfort Avenue in the city at the time, you know. I used to beep along practicing so she picked up the horn and blew and at three years old she, got such a sound that I screamed and my wife thought she had jumped out the window, fell out the window, dropped in the ditch. She said what's the matter. I said Carol made such a beautiful note on this little bit of horn, you know. So she didn't start until she went into high school and she asked me about the horn. I let her have a horn and give her one of my mouthpieces and I...she said no, no, I'll take care of it. The only time she ever came around to me about anything was when she had something tough that she couldn't get to, you know, and I'd have to play it for her, you know. Otherwise, I never heard, she never played around the house.

S At school and in band
Mr. Eldridge; Yeh, never played the house and it used to drive me.

S Well, she is probably a good audience for you now. Does she get down to Jimmy Ryan's at all.
E Oh no.

S When does she hear Dad play? Apart from a recording?
E She doesn't. I carried her and my wife to Europe one year. I was having such a ball in Europe and I told her I said hey people think this music business is like ice cream and cake. When you get up every morning at 6 going to a different country flying, fog, rain, and...go through the customs and before you know it it is time to make the gig, you know, searching for somewhere to eat when you get off, took about 6-8 weeks of that and your fantasy about the good times will disappear. I know you're over there partying, you know, so I carried them. They were so glad when we got to London I had a suite, you know, and...myself. Four more days till Christmas... they were so glad to get on that plane to come back here.
Prof. S. Excellent idea. Take them along and they can see really the kind of work that dad
E How hard it is really, you know.

S They think you are partying all that time in the clubs.
E Yeh, its no picnic. But it is a job, what you do, you know.

S Have you done any television recently?
E Yeh. I just did... GI jive.

S Ok and the Jump Street down there
E The Ella show

S With Ella?
E Yeh

S When was that taped?
E Well, it just came on the same time the GI Jive did, about a month ago.

S Did you tape that here in New York
E Taped that in Chicago.

S Oh, in Chicago. Did Ella fly out from the West Coast to do that?
E Yeh. Basie's band was on there.

S Oh, Basie's band. Lionel Hampton is going to be up at Interlocken this summer. Have you ever done anything with him?
E With who?

S Lionel Hampton
E Yeh, I played the Metropoliton Opera House with him. I was one of the recipients of an award, silver award, you know, Louis Armstrong, myself, and Jack Teagarten was in the brass section. Art Tatum. Sid Caplen, Coleman Hawkans, the bass palyer that died that was so great from Minneapolis, Oscar

S There are not too many of the greats that you did not play with then.
E I played with everybody, white or black to give them a name.

S Well that is quite an honor, you know.
E You name one and see if I played with him.

S As you know, on the first tape we went through several names. I just chose them at random and each one I named you had talked about or talked with or played with. What do you think about players such as the young players such as George Benson who really I think is an excellent guitarist, singing more... when you think about them are they seemingly as dedicated as the players of the old days were.
E Well, of course... I am not kidding... and he's from my home town too, let me put that.
Prof. S.
E ...and he's making money now. So that's what it really boils down to. See when you are dedicated first, that's why so many people get messed up writing tunes, cause they just want to hear the music they are so dedicated, right, you know. But then you finally find out that the hearing it don't pay your rent. So you have to get some bread somewhere so then the cat made it and I am really proud of him.
Prof. S. Of the pieces that you played which are your favorites. I mean written?
E I don't have no favorite like that.
Prof. S. Of the pieces that you have recorded are there any ones that you are particularly proud of?
E No. I take that back, one is yes. The one I made with Oscar the f irst time he played the organ, The Man I love. I like that
Prof S; I have heard you say that a couple other times with him playing the organ, Oscar Peterson you are referring to.
E Yeh.

S We are going to bring this tape to a close. Meeting you for me has been obviously a pleasure. It has been three or four times we have talked and we have had an opportunity to try to rearrange and arrange an interview once when I was here with Andy Kirk, once with Mary Lou Williams, once with Alberta Hunter. All three of those persons spoke very highly of you and of course Dizzy Gillespie during that same period. I asked each one a question about one man, named Charlie Parker. There is a great deal being said about this man, some of which is myth, some of which is truthful, I guess. Could you say anything at all about Charlie Parker in terms of him as a performer and in terms of how you would evaluate him as a performer, as a musician, as a jazz musician? This is from one musician to another.
E I think he was great. He set a lot of people on fire. He had something going, you know.

S Do you think he was a loser?
E Well, when you say a loser I don't know what you mean by a loser.

S Well, what I mean is he was seeming always down, not always, but often down and out, he drank a lot of course, maybe we heard more about his downs and outs and not about hi up and upness.
E Well, let me see now. When I was living in Paris he said to me ... or had the people send for me rather than do a concert with him in Scandinavian countries which also caused me to lose my job in Paris. I was only supposed to be up there for two concerts and I ended up there for three weeks with Charlie. But, man, he was perfect, man, very intelligent cat, man. Speaks very well and played his buns off. All I can say is that he was a great cat, man, and all... lot of things make a cat turn... you see... couldn't be kind of strong to nudge him to realize that you can play so good and nothing happened really like it should happen, you know. When you see some other cats that are doing things and get more money than you get it kinda makes you feel kinda of funny, you know, you wonder what you are doing it for.

S Well, I looked at one of his, contemporaries, Dizzy Gillespie, and he seems to of course he had his wife who helps him, Dizzy said himself that that helps him a lot.
E Do you think he makes as much as Herb Alpert?

S No
E That's what I'm talking about, now you get the message.

S Yeh, but what I am also saying is that Dizzy could sit back and let that worry him and go drinking and go do some of the things that maybe Charlie might have done, but evidently he decided hey, look, that Herb Alpert, he's doing that so maybe what I should do is maybe just think about what I am doing.
E I understand what you are saying, but still and yet you plan everybody is trying to play like you and everybody is making the money and you ain't. That has to get to you.

S Are you making that analogy in referece to Charlie Parker, then.
E Yes. Who else am I talking about. You asked me about Charlie. I am just surmizing. I don't know whether that is true or not. But I'll say this could be a reason for a cat doing this, you know.

S Did you ever, before he was committed to the mental institution in Los Angeles, I believe, or California anyway
E Who's this

S Charlie Parker. While he was supposedly in a mental hospital
E I never knew that

S Well, did he ever have any erratic behavior when he was supposedly normal and doing
E ...he was always cool. He played, we had a ball together, you know. I never was around him when he was in that kind of a thing. I wouldn't know about that. In fact this is the first time heard it.

S Did you ever play with him in Minton's. Did you ever hear him play at Minton's?
E I heard him play all over.
Prof. S. Was he a good contestant or did you ever see him do any contests?
E Oh. veh.

S Was he tough to jam with?
E No nobody's tough to jam with. You do what you do.

S I read somewhere that you were burned out by somebody, maybe Jabbo Smith or
E I wasn't actually burned out. See, like this thing I played with Dizzie at Minton's you know like I was, I think he gotten it in his book too. Like I was mad at something. That's all a farce. Man, I wasn't made. He played his way and I played mine You see what happens, and it always did happen, certain set of people who play a certain ways, right. So if you don't play that way, according to them you ain't playing and I don't believe in that.

S Seems to be a waste of time if that is why you played it, right?
Eldridge: Well, no...they did or something. If you don't play that you ain't playing nothing. I wasn't able to come back here til... record to me that I made with Charlie Parker... those cats he was playing...at that time...But I played the way I played, I don't try to play like they play. When I make a record I sounded all right on it so I came on back. That's when I figures out I don't have to play like him.

S Have you been honored by New York at all as one of their illustrious sons?
Eldridge: Yeh...

S In closing, I would like for you to close the tape out by simply saying anything you wish to in reference to an interview knowing full well that this tape may be seen in 25 50-years from now and as a word from Roy Eldridge, the musician, the trumpet player, the family man, the gentleman. Anything that you might like to say to close out the tape.
Eldridge: I'd like to say something for the younger musicians. If they are... there is one thing really, study as much as you can. Don't... cheat, old or young, cuz everybody's got something to say and make time and on the stand and then you got it mad. And in saying that I am going to close.

S Thank you very much.

END OF INTERVIEW

Roy Eldridge, Tape No. 2, May 19, 1980.