Little Brother "Eureal" Montgomery

INTERVIEW 2

S = Standifer
M = Lil Brother "Eureal" Montgomery
J = Jan (Montgomery?)
G = Gerry ?

S ....Oh, I do too. All right, Jan, you don't have no business grunting and groaning like that.
M She's talking on the phone.
J I got no business what?
M Grunting and groaning like that.
J I'm not grunting and groaning. How are you? Nice to see you.

S You don't change, you know. You just get more prettier every time I see you.
J Oh, yeah.

S Don't laugh. It's true. I've been showing your brother the pictures that I took of Edith.
J Ooooh, yeah. Let's see honey. Turn it on the first part. Alex Moore.

S Yeah. Do you know him? He knows you very well.
M Yeah.
J Yeah. That's from _____ ____. That I recognize. Turn it this way.
M
J Well turn it so you can see.

S Doesn't she look good.

<BEGINNING OF SIDE#2, TAPE #2>

J Oh, did she give it to the _______?

S Some of it. She said her husband sold some of it, I'm not sure to whom. She said the sister, Denise, Mrs. Grace Harrison in Niles.
J She sold it?

S No. Her husband, Danny, the one that she's married to, her current husband.
J Jille.

S Jenny?
J Danny was the first one.
M Danny was a piano player.
J That is a nice picture.

S She's going to give me this, and she had some things in her scrapbook, for her section of the collection. And these are the two we preserved. You see, I don't have these pictures on you. That's why I brought back my camera is to take these kinds of things of you, because I have a whole big book on each person I've interviewed. I have the video tape, you remember the one that went to.
J Oh, yeah.

S I have that and what I don't have - oh, I should have brought those tapes to you, because I just taped Johnny Griffin.
J Who's Johnny Griffin? Do you know him?

S He's a sax-okay, maybe I have a picture of him. Oh, he's a big one. Oh, here he is. Some other people you may know. Oh, here's Judy. Jerry, this is Jan.
Jerry I made it here finally. Nice to meet you.
J Hi. Nice to meet you, too.

S One of my students and also someone who is one of my assistants in this project.
J Ooooh.

S So he can come and help drive and he's been my chauffer for the whole time we've been in Chicago.
J Well, that's nice to have a chauffer, huh?

S It was about time I put some White folks behind the wheel.
Jerry Well, just call me "boy".
M Now who is this here?
J I'm sorry, but I don't know who this is.

S Oh, you don't know her. That's ______ she's a teacher.
J That's not Rossetta?

S No. Her name is Betty Cox and she works in Los Angeles. She does things for education television.
J Oh.

S And when I went out and made a picture for KCET Los Angeles on our program with Hubie, so she happened to be one of the hosting producers.
M Oh, Alberta.

S That's Alberta. This is Johnny Griffin.
J Oh.

S Yes. That's the guy to listen to. He's quite a sax player.
J I don't really think that I've ever seen him.

S He's about 40.
J Oh, he's pretty young.

S No. 52.
J Oh, yeah.

S And he played with _________, Dallas and _____.
J And where is he, on 26th?

S He lives on East 46th. Do you know where Martin Luther King is?
J Yeah.

S If you just come down on...
J 46th. I'm thinking of 47th.

S Do you know where Etta Moudon lives?
J Who?

S Etta Moudon. You know, Etta Barnett? Her husband was the owner of the Chicago Defendant for many years.
J Oooh. Oooh. Well that's over there by...that's right over there by what's her name. Bud Bean's widow.
M Seem like I ...
J Sure. We all know her.

S Do you know who that is? You might have seen her in Europe. This is Anne Brown who was the first Bess in Porgy & Bess...
J Oooh.

S And she's 72 years old. Look at how young she looks.
J I can't see it. Oh, my word, does she...
M Old Alberta is breaking off now. She used to look alright.

S Alberta's pictures are in here, too.
M I saw...
J Oh, you've got some marvelous pictures.

S And Jester.
J Well can I look?

S Yeah. Do you know Andy Kirk?
J No.

S Okay, here he is. Look how young he looks. He's 84.
J Aw, how is Ubie doing?

S Ubie is 87 and doing strong. No, he's not doing so well actually because Marion died last, what, March, or in the Spring.
J Well, Marion was a lot younger than Ubie.

S Marion was-in fact, I thought Marion was in her 60s but Ubie told me that she was 74.
J Oh, I thought she was 50.

S Me, too. In fact, when they told him that she was 34, Ubie said, "Well, I didn't know Marion was that old." At the funeral, you know they announce they are survived by. Marion died at... But I thought, I knew she was, I thought she was in her 60s, but I thought that's what she led me to believe.
M Me and Ubie was playing at the racetrack fairgrounds in New Orleans and he was 93. We said now I worked the show and he followed me on. He told me, "Little Buddy", we were sitting down at the Chapman Room. I said, "huh?" He said "Little Buddy", you know, he won't call me Little Brother. He said, "Lil Buddy, you know I'm 93 years old?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Had I known I was going to live to be 93 years old, I would have taken care of myself a little better."
J Oh, these teeth of Sippie's are something else.

S Oh, you recognized Sippie, didn't you?
J Yeah.

S You'll see Sippie over there. Sippie Wallace. We'll get those in...
J Oh my. Why does she do that?
M I played with Sippie in 1980.

S I know it. Well, in fact, you played up at Newport Jazz Festival with her, didn't you?
M Yeah. I played in New York.

S Well she told me that you had played with her and...
M She was blues as a woman. Let me see her. I recorded with Sippie, too.

S Oh, you did?
J Oh, sure. They did American ______. Oh, yeah. Andy Kirk.

S You know, he's working at a local 802 in New York.
J Oh. I know that name.

S He did Twelve ____ Joy?
M Who

S Andy Kirk.
M Yes.

S What was his theme song? Do you remember?
M Uh,

S He made it famous.
M It seems like to me it was "Okay Baby" or something like that. Erla Lang used to sing with him to Ella Fitzgerald.

S Right. And also, what's his name played with him. Myrtle Williams.
M Yeah.

S He introduced her to the world.
M Yeah.

S In fact.
J Oh, _______, she's the one I'd like to meet.

S Oh, she is a beauty. She came to Michigan and sang into everybody's heart.
J She is something else.
M Well, he was 100.

S He's 98 or 99. He's up there I know that. But he's having a little problem I think, because he had a tooth out, but he didn't have but 3 or 4 teeth and he had an operation to remove one and he hasn't done too well. And I think he has prostate problems.
M Every time when I was a little boy, everything somebody played the piano good, he'd be playing it and people would say, "Play that Mr. Blake." And you don't care whoever you was, you were Mr. Blake playing this.

S Let me get my camera out.
M He was ____ Noah's sister.

S Is Noah still living?
M No. He passed.

S He was in ___ ____, wasn't he?
J I don't remember, but he died not terribly long ago.
M Well, who took these?

S Look at ole Jan laying back there looking gorgeous.
J Yeah. Look at this. That's the best picture anybody ever took of me, I'll tell you that. Now that's not a bad picture of both of us.

S Well, I've got to get some to put in my album.
J But, this, look at he's making a funny face.

S I ought to put him out of that one and leave you. That's what we should do with that one.
J Now that's a good picture. I wish I looked like that.

S This is too light.
J Yeah.

S This is much nicer.
J I don't know what we were doing. He looks like-come on.

S Who is this?
J And this is him and Kirby. Kirby is this kid from Arizona who has heard about Brother, and he wrote to him and called him up one time, and Brother said, "Well, if you're ever up here in Chicago be sure to call me up." A week later, he gets a call and says, "I'm at the ______ Hotel, Lil Brother" and Brother says "well, that's right across the street, come on over." And this kid turns up. He is the world's nicest fellow. Now, I took that of the two of them, but these _____ ____ _____ from the Mississippi ____ to-I don't remember why he took these, either. But, Kirby is a businessman. He has a business there in Tucson and he employs about 16-20 people.

S In Arizona?
J Yeah. I don't know why he has all this time to travel. He's going to come up and stay with us in November. He was here in April.

S Is he a collector of jazz?
J Yeah. And he's a pianist himself.

S Does he have his own collection or anything like that?
J Oh, yeah.

S You know, my brother lives in Tucson.
J Oh, no.

S My _____ is up there. In fact, he should be retiring ____ ____. So I use my brother at the West Coast. I stop in Tucson and stay with my brother.
J Oh. He'll go on for ages about what he's crazy about Brother. The two of them sit here and go yapyapyapyp.

S Let me get my camera out.
J He is a nice guy. Kirby Martin is his name.

S Kirby Martin. You've got his address?
J Yep.

S I'll write him.
J In fact, I'll give it to you right now. Brother told me that you wanted to get a bunch of stuff together.

S Yeah, I don't have
J And I do.

S You see this stuff, I brought that for you to see what I've collected, but the only thing I have from Brother is that video tape and he sent me that picture that I'm going to Xerox with him, you know, one picture. He's in a big picture. I think that's in there. I'm almost sure it's in there.
J Well, now we had some things from the Bessie Smith story write-up.

S Jerry, will you look in one of these and see if you see a Xerox picture of Lil Brother and I'll see if I can see one in here.
J And really, you know, this is like "Old Farong" because this is what he's done later. Do you have the thing from the Smithsonian Institute in the Downbeat that he got the ____ on?

S I'll take that back. ____ _____ ____ means to the
J Oh, yeah.

S The award luncheon, performance with Brother.
J Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

S You sent me the program.
J Did I send you the program?

S Yeah, you sent me the program with that. And then you sent us a Xerox letter-or he did-that he received from Dan??, and the picture that I have of him that was Xeroxed. He sent it to me to use in a display and afterwards, I sent the picture back.
J Well, here we have a lot of junk. Here's the write-up about the Blues is a Woman that he played, and here's the review of his church record, here he's advertised on the Jazz at Noon, although I don't think you'd necessarily use it.

S Anything. You know, this is a famous man you're living with, Lady.
J I don't even recognize all these people myself. Oh, this looks like _______.

S Well, I do have the picture that you saw a while ago. Louise was sitting with Edith.
G Here we go.

S Oh, yeah. You have this picture. Do you remember it? So he sent me the photograph and we made a Xerox of it, but it really doesn't look very nice alongside everybody else's real picture.
J Yeah.

S Photographs. So, I thought while I was here I would simply come by and take some more photographs of him.
J Who's that in the background?

S I don't know. It looks like the bottom side of a door or something.
J Well, yeah, what the heck's that?

S Well, this was in 1980s.
J Oh, well, he was born in 1906.

S So, what does it make him now, 74?
J 76.

S 76, that was 2 years. That came ____. That was right, then.
J That was right. Yeah, I can't get over this one.

S Can you imagine that?
J I cannot get over it.

S ?????
J God, yes.

S Of course, on her 3rd or 4th floor she'd go out to her balcony and she had this swimming pool. Just a small one that she keeps in shape for whenever she does her dances, and then after her first third of an interview, she said, "I have to stop now, my suitor is coming over."
J Oh, wow! No wonder.

S And this young handsome ____ ____ _____ for about ______?????
M I was trying the record that me and Sippie...
J That's the one.
M Sippie one?
J Yep.
M They had her picture on there, huh?
J No, but that's the record. Look in the back there. I'm sure you'll see it.

S You know, I've just gotten a grant. I'm inviting-you'll get a letter pretty soon-because I just got the grant information last Friday and I have to resubmit a budget, but I'm trying to get enough money to invite you and Eurial, Sippie, Alberta Hunter wanted too but she wants to charge like $5,000 and my grant is only $10,000 for about 8 people.
M Well, she thinks she's the greatest thing. Alberta thinks it.

S I know it. That's what I mean.
M Me and Sippie, I me and Edith were playing in New York and she came where we was, you know, and so I introduced her to Edith and telling her about her you know, and Louise said, "give a round of applause for Alberta and she might sing for you." She said, "No. I don't sing out, you know." But if we went over there where she was, over to the ______, she'd want us to do something, you know? Me and Sippie went over there one night and I did just like she did.
J Good. No,
M No, I don't play nothing.
J Anyway, you wanted to have what now?

S So what I'm going to do is I'm trying to put together some type of historically important-I don't know if I should call it extravaganza, but, let's say an event-of having historically important people who figure prominently in a very viaterus(?) of Black music. For example, like blues piano and blues accompanists and blues, you remember I said I had Eureal and Sippie, and Alberta was supposed to be in that group. And then to have people like Oxmore who also plays blues and jazz piano and, you know Robert Shaw don't you? From Texas.
M Yeah.

S And there's somebody representing ____ _____. So one or two of them.
J Oh.

S And then, my mind is gone! Oh, Mr. Dorsey here. Getting old. Mr. Dorsey who represents jazz. He's been down
M Who? Tommy Dorsey?

S Yeah. He's been sick I'm told, though. Have you heard?
M No, I haven't heard.

S Well, he came down. I did have him visit last Fall.
J I was just looking at a letter here from him. Just this minute.

S To Lil Brother?
J To Brother, yeah. I was ____ ____ was living here.
M He wrote that in 1928. This my boy. He passed.

S You may write that to you. Open that up, Lil Brother, and see what it says.
J What does it say. I've forgotten what it said.
M Old Fats Waller. Yeah.

S Do you play the bass with him. Do you perform with him ever?
M Yeah. The first number I made on record, he wrote.

S So those are some things that you collected, Jan?
J Yeah.

S That you think might be useful?
J Yeah.
M And this is me rewriting for the same company.

S You and who? You and Fats?
M Yeah.
J They started out this Blues series and they put out Brother's double album and they put out things that they were doing putting____, but I don't think they had done anything. I think they've stopped the series.

S ?????
J No.

S I thought this; this is not a reissue?
J These are reissues, but that's what it was, the whole series. There was going to be a whole lot of Blues artists.
M You see, me and him on the record bar says Victor #2. Look on the back of that one.

S This one?
M Yeah. That's it. See? It's just like this one here.

S Oh, yeah.
G Oh, yeah.
M That's me. That's me when I was 27 years old.

S Is that right?
M Right here. That's Fats Waller.

S These are for the albums. These are your songs?
M Yeah.
J Oh, yeah.

S Several of those. So that I can make an album of Eurial.
J So how is Sandy?

S Sandy is doing fine, thanks. She's doing better now because she's working part-time.
J Oh, is she?

S In fact, she's got that accounting degree she didn't get a job at all, so she was depressed forever. So she got this part-time job at the School of Music in fact sort of a reception type of person. So she's doing fine. She's still hanging in there waiting for a better job.
M That's me from 1930 to 1969.

S Oh, the whole time.
M Yeah.

S Okay. The things you were performing during that time. Gerry is a masters student at Michigan and he's been one of my students for the past several years.
J Oh.

S He's sandwiched 2 or 3 years of teaching in Boston and then he went to Saudi Arabia for a couple of years.
J Saudi Arabia, oh, you made a lot of money.
M That's the church I belonged to.
G I made a little. I was
J ????
G Well, it has its

S Did Moses ask to talk to you about this?
G ...tradeoffs, you know, you tradeoff for something else for a while. I wanted to save some money and trying to make a little music myself. Now, I'm back in school, though.
M Who?

S Did Moses ask to talk to you about this?
M Yeah. That's where I made _______. That was made in Europe.

S The old story ______.
M Yeah. Now here's me and Alberta and all those songs Chicago really ______.

S Well, that's pretty old stuff.
M Yeah, this was in the 1950s. Alberta. There she is up there.

S She's the Alberta ______
J LB?
M Huh?
J I hope you're calling him now. He's a doctor you know.
M Oh, yeah?
J We do mean you.

S Aw, I don't even think like that.
M That's ____ _____.

S Yeah, Alberta. This is you.
M ____ _______

S Mamma Yancey.
M Yeah.

S Merciful Jesus. He's still living isn't he?
J Father Hines? Oh, yes.

S Where is he working now?
M I think he lives in California. He moved.
J He has some problem with some nervous nerve disorder and it comes out that he can't walk too well. He loses his balance. I don't know what it is.

S I'm going to show this to Gerry, okay?
J But he can still play and all. He doesn't get around too well.
M Me and her had a good record out there.

S Jazz?
M Jazz.

S Because of this last year _____ _____? Is that over there?
J No. No. It was before that.
M You said we get ____ the ____. I don't know what other ...

S You haven't given me one thing. That's what I've telling you.
M I ain't talking about you.
Laughter
M What you talking about.

S I suggested I called from the airport 2 or 3 times over the years.
J Yes, yes. I told him. I told him.

S No. Yours is the poorest, deadest thing in the collection.
J Then, we've got several things to give him.

S Now that we've invited you down, we've got to do something about it for you.
J Right.

S What we're doing is to use this and put you on exhibit before, oh, about a month before.
J Did you find our record? Do you want our record?

S Yeah.
J Well, hasn't he seen our record?
M I don't think so.
J Had you?

S Don't you remember when I was in, had you just made it or you were going to make it?
M No.
J No, no. We made this before then.

S Oh.
J Now this is a write-up that was in the Chicago Magazine which you don't want to cover the Chicago Magazine. But it's really terrible. This, Jim, I sent you this, too.

S I have that.
J This?

S Right.
J Do you have this?

S Yeah. I have that.
J Okay you have that. All right, this is from the Smithsonian Institute. This is the 5 Stars Brother got on his record by himself. That's the one he did by himself. This is the write-up that he had got in that "He May Be Your Man." That's ______. This is a letter that he got from ...

S Oh, "Twiddling your Thumbs", too, is on here.
J ... yeah. That's one of our _______. This came from Amos Kent who was one of the founders or owners or whatever of Kent _____ _____.
M He's ______. The family of Danwood, the founder of Kentwood.
J Yeah, and that's an article they had in the Kentwood paper ______ which is famous. And then this is the write-up of the "Blues is the Woman" thing where Brother is mentioned that shows how _______.

S Oh, Hammond, Louisiana.
J Yeah.
M Yeah. They own Kentwood, you know. They own all down through that.
J That was ______
M Kent, Richard Kent and all of them. That's his father-in-law was the founder of Kentwood, Mr. Walden.
J And then here's a review of LB's church record.

S Oh, that's the Folkways, right?
M yeah.
J Yeah. And then, oh, here's the thing about the _______ _____.

S You played in an Irish bar?
M Yeah.
J Oh, yeah. He played with Cartland's. He played with them for, what, 5 or 6 years. Now, that was quite a place. I mean he met everybody's friends. Yeah, that's that review-did you give him a tape on that? ______ thing? Mel Carter and all of them? Yeah.

S I do have that ...
M What?

S Yeah, I do have it.
J And here's a write-up when he was in

S ____ Taylor. She's still in there isn't she?
J Oh, yeah.
M Yeah.

S And she's what? About her 50s?
M No. She's around about 50.
J Well, that's what he said, the 50s.
M No. I thought he said 60s. Yeah. She's about 50 something.

S She was just on television a few nights ago, I believe.
J Yeah. I saw her on....
M Boy, that Sippie Wallace is still strong. She's like Alberta, you know.
J Here's my boy. Here's my boy. Do you know him?

S No. Willie _______
J whispering He's my boy.

S Where is he now?
J He's the world's worst piano player.

S Really?
J Oh. He is so terrible but he's such a nice looking fellow. I said to him once, did you ever think of going into the movies? Forget the piano and go into the movies.

S Don't play, just look, huh?
J Yeah. Oh, he's a dream.

S Is he in Chicago?
J No. He's in _______

S ...the world's worst piano player.
J Oh. Oh, you can't stand it. You scream.
M Well you ain't got the record I told you to get.
J No. I'll go get the record. I'm sorry I ran across the _______.

S It's not here together with these....
J No, no. I think I've got it all. Because this isn't something you've got.

S Now what I want you to do is to find something whether it's an autographed record-not necessarily today, but whenever you can find-or like I mentioned, for example, I don't know if you're going to give that letter you got from Louis Armstrong in case you have a lot of something. Something that no one else has.
M Yeah. Well, you got one of them letters from Louis.

S No. I mean, that's a Xerox. I mean something that is authentic or something that-I don't know what you have-but look, I was asking Jan, you hate say when you die and all this, ain't going to do it ______, but at some point you ought to plan that you're a famous person that your materials should be taken care for generations to come because you're part of history, and you should do that well before you think about going to the Great Beyond.
J Yeah.

S And you can do that either by having a person like you being the collector and say, "Look, what do I want to do with it, do I want to?" Where are you from?
M Kentwood.

S Louisiana? So you may want to say, "Well, okay, I may want to take all my stuff to a museum down there." Or maybe you want to give part of the stuff to ______ in Chicago. I'm hoping you'll think about giving it to our collection, because we have the finest in the World and know how to take care of it-keep it under glass.
J I know Red gave a lot of his stuff to the Chicago Historical Society downtown Clark Street.
M Yeah. I'm planning on the Friday on the 4th down to the Library.

S Are you collecting and keeping his stuff like something he gets that you think is of historical importance?
J Not really keeping all of it. Honestly, I'm serious, there's so blasted much of it.

S Well, that's important. You usually got it in boxes. You can send it to us and we can catalogue. And stuff like this, we put it _________ it and if there are 78RPM records we put in the music collection and have it ______fied, and if anyone in the world wants to know what has Lil Brother _______ _____ send it to Europe that he's done these recordings, etc. We usually have to set tapes up because 78s breaks real easily. So we have those _______ and we tape them before we put them on display.
J Well, I don't think Brother has even all his records he's made.
M No. That's the one I was showing him just now. I didn't know they had released it.
J You see, they put them out and sell them and he doesn't even know it.

S As there's a reissue.
J Yeah.
M Did you get that Deep South piano play book? Did you see that?

S No. That's what Jan was just talking about. Are you going to get that to ....
J This is the one he's talking about.

S Oh. She has this. Is this the right one?
J Is that the one you're talking about LB?
M No. Where's the book. Where's that think I had the book.

S Oh, this is the one that the records that you were telling me about.
M You know. That thing.
J The what thing?
M inaudible

S Oh, that's ____ _____.

<Inaudible for Jan & LB. They're searching for some items.>

S Of course, this is really, this is Ann Arbor time.
G Yeah. I'm still Ann Arbor time. I have almost 5 to 6. So we're ____ an hour. It'll take...

S It'll take us 4 hours to get back. We're gaining an hour. No. It was 5 o'clock here.
G When we get back, we'll have to set our watches back.

S Oh, that's right.
G Fall back?

S Fall back. That's it. I don't think they change here, do you?
G No, because they're already on Central time.

S So they don't change. So actually, we're the same.

S Yes. It works real good now.

END OF INTERVIEW