Little Brother "Eureal" Montgomery

INTERVIEW 1, Chicago, IL. February 25.

S = Standifer
M = Eureal Montgomery
Ms. M = Ms. Jan Montgomery

S Tell me, how did you get the name lil brother?
M Ever since I was a baby.

S Who gave that to you, your parents?
M Yeh

S I thought you might have picked up the name Lil brother while you were performing, or something of that sort. so lil brother Montgomery is the name that you came by legitimately through your parents. Tell me.
M They called me Lil brother Montgomery when I was little. They call me lil brother Harper now. My father was named Harper.

S Is that down near Shreveport?
M 83 miles north of New Orleans on the Illinois.... 51 highway.

S Do you have relatives down there now?
M Well, I have a sister living in Franklin and I got a son that lives in. and grand kids and I got a lot of nephews and nieces that live... ...New Orleans and Franklin,9j.... Louisiana., All down around in there.

S How many children do you have?
M I have one.

S And that's a son?
M He's a son and he got 3, 2 boys and a girl, so I'm a grandfather. 2 pianists

S I understand that you are a self-taught pianist, blues, pianist. Is that true, Or did you take lessons?
M I taught myself Just a gift to me, I could play when 1, well it took me about 6 weeks or 2 months... my, father bought a piano

S Did anyone in your family play piano also?
M In later years, most of them. The whole group played something. My father was a coronet player and my mother, she played one of them squeeze

S Oh, yeh, right
M My older brother, he could play the guitar and the coronet. My older sister, she could play guitar and piano. All of them could play something.

S Did any of them play professionally as you did?
M There were ten of us. 5 girls and 5 boys

S I have 10 in my family also. 7 boys and 3 girls. So I love a big family.
M 10 of us, 5 even, 5 girls and 5 boys

S When did you come to Chicago.
M About 1928, something like that.

S Did you come from Chicago from Kentwood?
M No. I came northwest came to Chicago.

S Are these some additional albums your wife is bringing into you now. If so, what album?
Ms. M This is...

S Can you turn the cover around?
M Sonny,Grib, Duke Ellington's first drummer, Johnson,

S Victoria Spivey, Lonnie Johnson, Lil brother Montgomery, Peter Sonny Gribs. Is this the same one?
M No. this is a blues origin... That means....

S Featuring you as a soloist though. We don't have that many blues soloists like yourself that are still with us that really have the, do you have what they call the Chicago style and what is the Chicago style?
M No, I ain't never had no style like that. I always Just had my own style. I was in Chicago when all the great guys, but I don't think Chicago had no style. ....I was here the first lie-awake.... Fats Waller wrote them and sent them out to... he was living n Chicago at the time, sent them out to me and Irene. Wisconsin. The first recording that I did he wrote the number. He lived at 67th and Michigan.

S Is he alive now?
M Fats Waller. He's the one that wrote Misbehaving. No, he's dead.

S Have you seen the Ain't Misbehaving play?
M Yeh

S Do you think it is a good representation of?
M Yeh, it is close.

S That is about as much as you can expect...

S What can you tell me about Jimmy...?
M Well, me and him was good old time friends. He was a caretaker over at Whites Park. Groundkeeper. Kept the ground over there. He used to play at the Beartrap on 31st and

S Now he had a band, right?
M No, he's just a piano player

S But did he have a nucleus of a group that played with him, was he the leader of a group or
M No, he just mostly played by hisself.

S Is he considered a blues pianist? Southside blues
Ms. M Living legend Prof. S. Janet is a living legend. She comes in and gets into the picture Beautiful, I love it.
M This isn't the one, honey, I want the one with all of us on it.
Ms. M Isn't that the one
M This is me and mommy.... me and Alberta ... and all of us on it.
Ms. M Yeh, and it's a different picture.

S How old were you when you started playing professionally?
M 11 years old.

S That's kind of young. How did that happen? Did you just happen to run away from home, or...
M I run away from home. I left home when I was 11

S What did they pay you for your first job, or do you remember.
M Well, I was getting $80 a week, my room and my board.

S Where was this?
M Holton, Louisiana.

S That meant that you must have been a pretty tough kid or a very self confident kid to run away and start working professionally at 11 years old. Montgomery; I could play good enough so everybody wanted me to play because I was a kid.

S Is,the record you were talking about?
M

S Harden Armstrong, Earl Himes, Preston Jackson, Mommy.... Alberta Hunter, Jasper Taylor, BuzZ-No letv, Lil Brother Montgomery, Mississippi Monkey Joe, now that's a name.
M Yeh, he was a blues plaver.

S ...., Booker Washington, Blind John Davis, Banjo Ike and others. This is an interesting picture of Alberta. I just talked with her this past weekend and it looks very much like her. Of course, she is very much younger there.
M Yeh, she was younger then. Chicago living legend. This is me and Mommy..

S Did you say she was alive now?
M Yeh, she's living.

S Where does she live, here in Chicago?
M Yeh, I got her phone number...

S Boy, she looks like she's ready to sing some blues there. Who are these two here?
M This here is Walter Jacob, Walter Benson. He goes in two names, Walter Benson and Walter Jacob. This guy here I have known him, I am not sure what his name is.

S Is it Benson?
M Yeh

S Something like Benson.
M He wasn't much of a singer he just.

S I'm going to hold these over here with me and sort of look at these as I talk to you more. Did you ever play the kid...
M Yeh

S When was that.
M I played Carnegie with Kid in 1949. Me and Bud Scott,.... Collins, Ed Garland, he died here not long ago.

S Did he live here in Chicago?
M No, he lived in California.

S Has your music changed from ,* those days when you played with Kid til now. For example, we all have a style and sometime as we grow older the style changes. Has yours changed any from when you were a young boy?
M No, I play just like I always did.

S Do you have the walking bass so famous with the boogy-woogy style and all that?
M I have been playing that ever since I was 8-9 years old.

S And it still hasn't changed. Did you ever hear Alberta Hunter sing Handy Man.
M Yeh... sings that too.

S Really. Well if she sings that and I know, Huey and I talked with him about it last summer and he was telling me that he had given that to Alberta to sing and just made a record for Columbia and she has Handy Man on there which I think is incredible.' k Ain't nobody wants you when you are down and out. Did you ever see her sing that one?
M Yeh

S Nobody wants you when you are down and out, that's it.
M I made that number with Elaine...

S Who wrote that?
M I think a guy way back -- Well, you see from way back when the colored people first started Mammie Smith was the first black woman ever to make a record. The second one was iv Lucille Hegman. Mammie Smith, now they had Smith and Johnny Dawn, Tommy.. and all them people playing with her.

S Smith related to this Mammie Smith at all
M No,she was just a great old time piano player. Smith and there was Johnny... band and Mammie Smith made.. (if you don't want it and all that. The second one was Lucile Hegman. Her husband was named, Willie Hegman, we called him Bill Hegman. He was the one And the third one was Edith Wilson. Her husband was ...named Danny Wilson. He was a piano player too. Then the fourth one was Alberta Hunter. Come on Down the Line.

S Was Alberta married at that time?
M I don't know. Alberta Hunter, and then there was Sarah..., Eva Taylor, Clara Smith, Fletcher.... Bessie Smith, they had all them people back there.

S And you played with them all?
M I didn't play with all of them. But I was playing back then when they all were

S Could you compare the style of Alberta Hunter with one of those, Clara Smith, any other singer that you might have played with.
M Alberta Hunter has been a great singer ever since I knew her. She still is. They had some great ones. Bessie Smith was the greatest female woman singer that had ever made a record.

S Did you ever play with her.
M Well I played on a show together. She had guy to play with her, Clarence.. James P. Johnson, Fred W. Longshore,.... Fletcher Henderson, all them guys recorded

S Did you ever play Sheldon Brooks' Darktown Strutters Ball.
M Yes

S Who did you have singing that with you?
M Anybody sang that you know, that's a that's a public song. The audience sang that mostly.

S I see. What about Alberta Hunter's tune, I'm Having a Good time, have you heard that?
M Oh, yes, I heard that

S I still think My Handy Man is, do you know anything at all about the background of that song?
M Handy man ain't handy any more, is that it?

S That's it. mows his lawn and so forth. Sort of a double type.
M Edith sang that song real good too. Me and Edith do the Yankee Doodle blues and all such things as that.

S Are performing with Edith Wilson now.
M A lot of times we work together.

S How old is Edith Wilson?
M About 84. She is supposed to be older than me right now.

S Why. You said supposed to be.
M She's going to put her age back to mine. She says she was born in the same year I was, 1906.

S But you know better. Tell me another thing. Have you read music from the very beginning or did you begin to pick up charts or did you play by ear
M I .... take music lessons from nobody. I've taken more music lessons just say the last, in Texas I've taken about 5 or 6. I was going to take but the old professor wouldn't teach me no more.

S Why?
M Cauze I could beat him playing. He didn't know I could play so I'd take the ...music lessons that I was about 27, 28 years old then. I'd go over there to take my lessons so he was up there taking a bath one morning when I went over there, I had my lesson in the morning, about 11 o'clock. So he was upstairs taking a bath, so I sat down and fooled with the piano while he was up there. I didn't never fool with the piano, he didn't never know, so when he come I played a couple of numbers so when he come down he said well who was here just a little while ago. I said nobody but me. He said well somebody was playing the piano. I said that was me fooling around. He said you mean to say that was you playing play me a number. So I played him a number. He said you play like that and you're taking music from me, taking lessons from me. I said look I don't know how to read that, the notes, I already know how to play.

S Did you ever learn?
M He wouldn't teach me no more. He thought I was pulling his leg. Cause I could play like that, I could beat him playing.

S Are you the piano player that could hear something on the radio and could go and play it?
M I still can do that.

S Now that's a great gift.
M Well I have been doing that ever since I was 4 years old. Hear anything I heard I... in big bands for 20 years.

S How does your style differ, I know it does.
M They would put the music up in front of me, everybody in there had their part and they would put mine up there and I'd play, they could go down, I was sitting between the banjo and the trumpet player, so when they played down one time, the next time around I could play everybody's part on that. So the leader of the band always thought I was site reading. I couldn't read nothing, you know. But I did have the music.

S And you'd sit there and hear and listen very well what's going on and after that.
M Play everybody's part. I still can do that. See, the piano is the foundation of all the music, that's the foundation. You got everybody's part on that, guitar, bass, trumpet, whatever, you got everybody's part....

S Can you compare for me .. Harden's playing say, Mary Lou Williams?
M No, Little couldn't... Mary Lou Williams playing no piano, no.

S Not at all? What's the difference between their two styles.
M Lil was a good reader, she could read like mad, but she was no piano player. She played pretty good. Mary Lou Williams is a piano player. She was a professional like Earl Himes, Duke Ellington, everybody else.

S Well you know she's down at, oh, I just called her, she's sick right now. She's at Duke University, North Carolina.
M Mary Lou Williams... all of them are professional piano players. Me and nobody else play, they played light, man.

S Mary Lou did a lot of composing too didn't she?
M Oh, yes.

S Did she ever compose anything that you played for any singer. I got a record in there.
M Not that I know of. But I know she. t with all the greats on it. She is one of them on that.... Fats Waller, Oscar Peterson,...

S Oscar was just in Ann Arbor about a few weeks ago...
M Boy, he's something else.

S Isn't he though?
M Tatum was the world's greatest technician piano player.

S ...Tatum. What about Teddy Wilson?
M Teddy Wilson was a great piano Player. But Tatum and Oscar Peterson is about the greatest of them out there now. Technicians. Fats Waller was the greatest solo, him and and J.P. Johnson. Full stride piano player.

S If you had to define the term stride piano, how would you describe it? Or would you just go to the piano and play it.
M It is one of the greatest styles ever been in piano history.

S What is it though?
M Everybody can't play it.

S What is stride piano?
M I don't know. It's too hard to play for me. But Fats and J.P. can do that

S You don't play stride piano. That's not your style
M No. I just play piano, I wouldn't know about what style I am.

S Now that you are getting a bit older, do you see what you want to do your art different from when you were younger, playing say every night or whatever. Can you play now when you want to?
M Well, I ain't never been out of work playing since I was 11 years old. I played when I want and if I don't want to play I won't. That's the way its always been...

S This is a personal question. Do you find, I'm getting older, you're getting older that being any older makes you more mellow in the way you play, or is it more lyrical or just the same thing.
M If I'm not getting older, I am shorter winded than I was when I was young. I had more youth and you know.

S Does that mean that you play slower?
M I had more power and could play faster and everything else. You see when you get older, the only thing about it when you go to getting up in age is you slow up.

S Right, that's what I was getting at, partially. So here's another album of yours with Oscar Peterson, Earl Himes,... Lewis, General Morten, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, Jess Stacey, Earl Garner, Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, Mary Louise, called Great Jazz Pianists.
M They are the greatest.

S Put out by RCA, Camden. They have all signed this for you, huh There names are on the back, did they sign? Could you hold that up, I want to see if I am getting a good picture of that. That is incredible. Are you on that playing. Are you on this particular record here?
M No, I'm on another one. I'm on one from 1930 to 1969.

S What year was that when that came out?
M This one came out I think a little later than that. Oscar Peterson's on there.

S Oscar Brown, Jr. Do you know that I am working with him now. Doing a television series called Jump Street.
M I was the first one recorded with him...

S With Oscar Brown? Have you ever heard him do....
M Yeh

S He is incredible. I'm working with Oscar Brown now.
Ms. M You are? What are you doing?

S He's doing a TV program, a series of television programs called Jump Street and he's the host on these. So every month I go into Washington, I'm the Sr. adviser, and I go into Washington and Oscar Brown is doing, he's hosting each one of these shows. They'll come out this summer, I mean this fall. He's incredible. I just talked to him. I saw Todd Duncan the first man who did Porgy, the first Porgy and Bess
M You heard of Brother John Southers, haven't you?

S No I haven't.
M He's one of them .... That's him there.

S Is that Oscar up in the corner?
M .......

S I'll bet he doesn't even know that exists.
Ms. M I'll bet he doesn't.
M Yeh, he do. Williams was the first guy he ever...
Ms. M Yeh, but does he know about that.
M Yeh, me and him we recorded the guy that owned the company's Ebony label.

S Who did this for you, though?
Ms. M He did. The guy J. Mayo Williams. He was a regular nut.
M Have a habit of putting his fingers in his ear when he'd be singing, so he couldn't hear too.
Ms. M Now J. Mayo Williams, there was just something about J. Mayo Williams.
M Now he was in the hall of iiLme, football player. Him and Duke Slater, Paul Robeson, Fritz .....
Ms. M But he had a regular thing. You should see what he used to have in his office. He used to have oh a dozen of those in his, and if you really looked at them closely, they a real inky-dinky stars.
M Oscar knew Williams well. Next time you see him.
Ms. M Oh, yeh, maybe he doesn't know Williams then.
M Williams died.

S Did he live here in Chicago?
Ms. M Yes.

S He died recently?
Ms. M Yes very recently, three or four weeks ago.

S How old was he when he died, about ?
M He was about 80 something, about 88.
Ms. M Oh, really, closer to 90.
M ...is holding on. He's 97...

S I have three hours of.... Huby and Marian Blake invited me to their home this past fall and I sat with them in their home and they invited back. We have done two TV shows together.
M ...wheelchair. But after you get to the piano boy, he can play.

S You've seen him on television on the Johnny Carson Show.
M You see him everywhere. Me and him was on the same show in New Orleans..

S Oh, really.
M ...and he followed me on, at the race track fair grounds.

S That reminds me. I am told by some of the, like Alberta Hunter, that very often... in the old days the white singers would send out for black singers to warm up the audience for them. Was that a trend?
M They still do that. I opened up the show for a lot of them, like..Ogo...,or... and all of them. I opened a show Friday night.

S She said she would open the show for Sophie Tucker sometime and she would go out and she was a better singer as far as I'm concerned.
M Oh, yeh, she's better. Colored ones are better than the white one, but they had Ruth Sophie Tucker and all them people back there.
Ms. M Ruth Edding and Edith Wilson were on the billboard together, did you tell him about that.
M Yeh, well Edith was up in that... time. They had two or three different times. Toba. Then then had... time, Edith was lucky enough to get up in there higher than Ethel... and the white....

S Time was white.
M Yeh...

S How is that word.... spelled?
M Keith. Toba were colored.

S Right, I know a lot about that. Did you ever hear, I am sure you did Ethel Waters. I have never heard her sing any blues. In my day she sang mostly religious songs and things.
Ms. M Oh, yeh, well she.
M She was the one that made Am I Blue popular. And Stormy Weather too. She's the first one that made that.

S Now Alberta Hunter said Stormy Weather was written by a black person.
M Yeh, it was.
Ms. M Who wrote it?
M I don't know.

S A white person got the credit for it. She said the other night at the Cookery that many times the whites would steal the music of blacks.
Ms. M Oh, how true.
M They been doing that all their lives.
Ms. M Just put their name on it.
M Sorta like boogy-woogy. They call it... boogy. We was playing that when... they called it and Smith named it. He used to call it.... boogy and then Tommy Dorsey come on and took it and called it the Dorsey Boogy.

S I understand that up until about 1927 whites really didn't play the boogy at all. After that they began, after Bob Crosby...
M ... wrote it off of one of cmw- records. Wrote it for Tommy Dorsey to play with his band. Wrote it and then Tommy took it. He sold a lot of records of it and called it the Dorsey Boogy
Ms. M When would you say that you heard any white people play the boogy-woogy.
M ....
Ms. M ... Tommy Dorsey
M Tommy Dorsey was about the first
Ms. M .... about the first one. You never used to hear boogy-woogy

S What about Bob Crosby, his groups
M Bob Crosby, that Bob... he could play anything
Ms. M He didn't play boogy-woogy.
M He played anything.
Ms. M I remember... playing boogy-woogy
M Bob... could play anything. I knew him.

S I don't... Zurki at all.
Ms. M Bob Zurki. He was a great piano player.
M They had great white guys back then...
Ms. M Oh, yeh.
M Sparky Carlisle and all them guys, they were piano players.

S And all the time I was thinking that we blacks had it all.
Ms. M Oh, no.
M The most white copied off them blacks. All the blacks, see the blacks started jazz and all that kind of thing, boogy-woogy, and blues. The whites copied them. Most of it them great ballads.... blacks did it. You take Shelton Brooks he wrote ome of These Days for Sophie Tucker.

S Shelton Brooks, he did, right. Yeh, he was black. He did that song Darktown Strutters Ball, right.
M Yeh.
Ms. M Oh, did he write that, I didn't know that.

S Alberta Hunter just recorded that it is going to come out in April with Columbia.
M Fats Waller wrote Ain't Misbehavin, Honeysuckle Rose, Squeeze Me.

S What about Nobody Knows you when you're down and out.
M I don't know who.

S Jimmie Cox, I think wrote it, didn't he?
M I don't know who wrote it, but I know I made it with Spanky, the little white girl.

S What about that song,...A Good Man's Hard to Find, who wrote that.
M Some colored guy wrote that too. Now you take everybody loves a baby, that's why... I'm in love with you, a colored guy wrote that, his name is Jackson.

S How many pieces have you written?
M I have written so many I can't...

S What are some of your favorites?
M .... I ain't never had too many favorites. After I play a piece once or twice I get tired of it.

S That brings up another question. What is it that there seems to have been such a wealth of great blues singers and performers as you were growing up. Right now we have them but we don't have the great ones,like the Bessie Smiths and the Mary Lou Williams. Why do you suppose they had so many in those days as opposed to now?
M Well, you know, there's a lot of people don't have that talent. Fool with no blues. white, black, and nobody else. You got a lot of colored boys don't have that blues, they ain't got the blues feeling they got everything else but that. The blues comes from... within the person anyway and usually comes from within you. It don't come off....

S True but I'm trying to figure out why there were more, seemingly, in your day as a youngster than there are now. There seem to be so few.
M There was more f eling for it. They had Bell Hawley,....
Ms. M That's true. Their forms of entertainment were very different than they are now.

S They have all the television and stuff.
M They had speakeesies, nightclubs, and everything else back then. But people had their fun and do everything else...
Ms. M They weren't out there to kill each other. They had fun together.

S Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to stop this tape and put another one on, and let me reintroduce your beautiful wife. This is Jan Montgomery, a beautiful person and perfectly marvelous too. Tell me something about the lady you call Jan, and other things when I'm not around.
Ms. M Typical performance.

S Your beautiful wife. How long has she been singing with you?
M Well, me and her have known each other about 15-20 years, something like that. But what happened, we've been married going on 13 years now.

S Has she been singing with you that long?
M Yeh . .....

S How would you classify her as a singer. Would she be one of the moaners of the blues singers, as...
M She sang in churches and everywhere else. She... sang all those church songs. But, what happened, she knows how to sing ballads too. What happened.... she could sing much better. Sometimes she knows she kinda doubts herself, but she can sing, she can sing anything.

S Do you give her a little support by when you sung the blues do you give her a little support on the piano so that she has accompaniment?
M Oh, yeh. She can sing. I don't have to be worried when I....

S Jan, what are some of the songs you are going to sing when you get to Europe with him?...
Ms. M Well, I'm to sing some of Brothers What Can I Say, What Can I Do, Now that you say we are through, I was so in love with you, and Blue Monday Blues. That's a fairly well known one. Then the Dangerous Blues . W.C. Handy wrote that.

S Do you think that Jan's style is more influenced by the younger group of singers now or, see I think that Sippy Wallace and Alberta Hunter who were singing many years ago probably hasn't changed their style a great deal, but Jan who may be a later comer to this than they...
M She hasn't changed... Kate Smith, she's an old timer I don't care nothing about none of them young singers.

S Well, that's maybe another good question. Do you see any young people singing as the older blues singers?
M No. I got one, her name is Jean Carroll, she sang good and old. We got a little white one I started right there with me. When you get right down to it, Elain McFarland, Spanky. She can sing too.

S And she is here in Chicago?
M I think she's in California.

S When you are singing do you do as Alberta is currently doing. For example, she... has contracted with the Cookery, A... Josephson owns the Cookery in Greenwich Village. She'll be there almost every night for maybe another year.
M Maybe two or three. She....better there than anybody that's been there since I know. I know a lot of people play there now.

S Does he usually have older singers in that?
M Well, we went there when was there. Ed Hayward, Jr. I knew his... father. His father was a great piano player. He was the first one that recorded with ke , Sippy Wallace. The father. I know Sippy I s brother. Both of it+s brothers. The older one was named George... Thomas. The baby one was named Hersel. He's a good piano player too.

S Why is it that there was a lag period where Sippy certainly was not known and she began to go to church a great deal in Detroit and sing with the choirs there. Alberta stopped in 57 and began to do nursing for more than 20 years. Why is it you think that they stopped. Was it because the public didn't want to hear them anymore.
M Well, they brought out so much of this crazy things, which has never been nothing and never will be.

S When you say the crazy, you are talking about the rock or the rhythm and blues.
M Rock and Roll, they come out with that. That pushed a lot of real professional people out of work because they didn't want to fool with that. So they just went and got a job. Now they got a thing they call the disco, that's more nothing than the rock and roll.

S What do you think about rhythm and blues with people like Aretha Franklin. That's a little bit closer to you than disco for certain.
M Well, Aretha Franklin, her father was a preacher and she started out singing spiritual things. She turned over, well Ray Charles used to be in the spirituals.... They all turn around.They can't make the money that they can make this other way, so they.
Ms. M Do you think that this could possibly have anything to do with the fact that they used to do this kind of shows like vaudeville, and all those people.
M A lot of them people ain't never saw shows like William, Bessie Brown and... we come along like that when they had shows, minister shows, minstrel shows....

S And the medicine shows too.
M Why sure.
Ms. M Is that what you are calling Dr. shows, medicine shows.
M Medicine shows, we called them Dr. shows.

S So you think that, well maybe that accounts for the fact that you did have more of those kinds of performers in those days because not only could you see them, not only could you do it, but you could also see other performers. Right now the young people hear and see mostly rhythm and blues, rock, the jazz pianists, or....
M Way back then you had all these great big things, like Ringling Brothers, and John Ross, and all them big tent shows. What you call like Barnum & Bailey and all that. They had all them, but they had musicians working on all of them. Now when you catch a guy they played on them kind of shows, the side shows and minister shows, he is one of the best musicians there ever was. They call them odd lip people, them guys that played like
Ms. M Oh, yeh.
M When you see them coming off of them kind of shows, they're great. Louis Jorden used to play them.
Ms. M Then like LeRoy.

S This Jorden, you mean the bee bop. I remember Louis Jorden.
M He played saxophone.
Ms. M Yeh, but what did he used to do?

S It will come to me on the way back to Ann Arbor probably...
M Norfolk, West Virginia, and move on the outskirts. of town and all that kind of thing.

S Which clubs have you played here in Chicago?
M Most all of them.

S Do you remember Dreamland?
M Yes.

S Cause Alberta spoke at lengthabout her time at Dreamland and the things she did.
M ...used to play at Dreamland. 35th and up in there somewhere Not State it was.
Ms. M Right in through Indiana and Chiles and stuff.

S Was Dreamland anything like Menton's in New York?
M Well they had a lot of places like that. Dreamland and Apex, Royal Garden, and then they had.... Grand Terrace,.... was the Grand... Father Himes, 3949 S. Park. South Park used to be before it was South Park was Grand Boulevard, then they changed it to South Park, now it is Caines Drive. It has been named 3 times since I've 3949 South Park. You could, boy you couldn't hear nothing. All the bands would stop to Earl, he'd come on 12:05 every night over that WENR and all the bands working would take their intermission at that time so they could hear him. His theme song was Deep Forrest

S I'm going to take these records again and, for example, here's one called How This Record Value is Impossible , great Jazz pianist. We saw that a few moments ago with .... Oscar Peterson, Earl Himes,.... Lewis,lc IGI(Morton, Duke Ellington.... recorded. Some of these others, Blue Piano ury-tcan you tell us anything about that....
M That's last night.

S Are those your fingers, hands on there.
M That is...
Ms. M That's Sonny Lambs. He's got long boney fingers.

S That's like Huby, who has such long fingers. Look at his fingers, though, they are not very long compared to ..
Ms. M No they are not.

S Oh, here's Victorie Spivey, did you know him/ When was this made, do you have any idea?
M That was made in New York.

S Vic, and who is Lonnie?
M That one was the first male singer that ever made a record, first male singer, Lonny Jones.

S Not necessarily the first black male.
M The first black male singer. That did the recording, sang the blues.

S So this is Victoria Spivey. She's an attractive woman.
M That's Sonny that was Duke Ellington's first drummer there.

S What label is that on?
M It's on a.... label, that's Victoria's label

S Her own label. That's what some of the young people are doing now. They are creating their own labels. That way all the money comes to them. And this is incredible. So this is your name in Japanese.
Ms. M ...says, it came out even yellow.

S Blues Lil, Lil Brother Montgomery, made in Japan. Blue Monday Blues,...With Time you also sleet in my house. I love you baby but you don't treat me no good...That's too much, beautiful. Dealing with the devil. That's like the part of that song you and I saw. This is on what label. I'm asking about these labels because some of these labels may not be existence any more.
M A lot of them bootleg labels.
Ms. M Yeh, they come and go very fast.

S Barrel House Blues. What is a barrel house, anyway.
M ...Honky tonks

S Several names. Now, I have noticed Alberta told me that when she was a girl she sang in these so-called honky tonks and very often they were the hang-outs of pimps and the ladies of the evening and so forth. Do you agree with that? As a young boy...
M Well, I wouln't say. You know a honky-tonk was a barrel house of a thing like the poeple all working, working around the clock and then Saturday maybe they get off Friday and don't have to go back to work Saturday, either work until 12 o'clock Saturday. Then they all go to this place for to have fun, you know, the barrel house, that's where they'd go. They couldn't go to church til Sunday noway so they would have fun. They'd have gambling in this apartment, be dancing in this place, maybe have...

S That's probably where the name Saturday night fish fry came from.
M They'd make to ...from... speakeesies to fish fries,...fish fries to and all the same thing.

S Did you ever have a ....?
M No

S I think a lot of students are doing this today. Church song. This is rather interesting. Have you done much church music?
M Well, when I was little I used to sing in the church choir ..... Temple Baptist Church.

S This is on Folkway records. That is quite a library, Folkway. Rock of Ages, Wilderness, You'll Understand, God be with you. This is available to us also. Chicago, 1972, Lil Brother Montgomery. Matchbox presents. This is on a bootleg label.

S You're singing on that?
Ms. M Yeh, I'm singing.

S I must come back so that I can hear some of these things. Now who are these people on here?
M That's Edith Wilson, that' s myself, that's Red Saunders,... one of the great bass Players around here. That's... This is Preston Jackson, trombonist,... and his space tree.... we got 5 stars on that.

S That's what you call living history. You can't do any better than that can you.
Ms. M That's a good record, it really is a good record.

S Blue bird. Now this is an old record isn't it? RCA.
M That's a reissue.

S Lil Brother Montgomery. Crescent City....
M I was 23 years old.

S Yes, and about 100 lbs lighter. I have a brother that looks just like him. That's a good looking picture. Don't you like that picture?
Ms. M Oh, yeh, he loves that picture, he thinks that great.

S This is blues piano, this is yours too, Lil Brother Montgomery, Johnny Jones, Floyd Dixon,... , Lewis, Chicago plus. That's on Atlantic. Is that out of print too.
M Might be, but I know that was a different.... they had some good guys on the...

S Well, I'll tell you what I am going to do now. My cab is supposed to be picking me up at 5: 15.

END OF INTERVIEW