Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 - (Page 64)

Danny Barker A musician of all trades inspired a new generation to revitalize the brass band sound In New Orleans we pride ourselves on our jazz dynasties, not just for the sake of continuity, but because we embrace heroic traditions as essential to the way we live. Generation after generation, we produce musicians who can play, but that’s not always enough. Making a living can be tough with all that competition, so you’ve got to develop extra talents and be ready to offer “music for all occasions” without making ego the main attraction. This notion is something banjo and guitarist Danny Barker understood well, sometimes referring to himself in New York as “everyone’s second call” when they needed a guitar player. “I just play. Let them other people be geniuses if they wanna be geniuses. People don’t want no geniuses — they want me.” How else can you explain the variety of Danny’s jazz associations, from Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Henry “Red” Allen, and Bunk Johnson, to Lucky Millinder, Benny Carter, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker, and then on to Dr. John and Wynton Marsalis? He was beyond category, and that’s only the musical side of the story. Factor in his work as a raconteur, educator, actor, and American griot, and you’ll appreciate what it takes just to break even with a little on the side in the hardscrabble world of jazz. But just because you don’t have money, doesn’t mean you can’t live well — especially if it’s A Life in Jazz, which happens to be the title of Danny’s autobiography. Born in 1909, Daniel Moses Barker grew up in the French Quarter, which he described as “smelling like meat balls and spaghetti.” (Would that it were true today.) He was born into the Barbarin clan, one of the most illustrious Creole musical families in town. His maternal grandfather, Isidore Barbarin, was a member of the Onward Brass Band. His uncles Paul, Louis, and Lucien were all drummers, and it was Paul who bought him his first banjo. While still a kid he organized his own spasm band, the instigation, where Danny found work almost immediately with Dave Nelson and Harry White, then with Sidney Bechet, Albert Nicholas, Jelly Roll Morton, and Henry “Red” Allen. He picked up guitar to attract more big band work, which led to gigs with Lucky Millinder, Benny Carter, and then eight years with Cab Calloway. Danny also found the time to put together bands and write material to launch his wife’s singing career. Beginning in 1938, Blue Lu Barker spent a decade recording for Decca, Apollo, and Capitol, specializing in the blues and saucy songs such as her husband’s “Don’t You Make Me High” (originally written as “Don’t You Feel My Legs”). “Don’t You Make Me High” was a big hit in the black community, and in A Life in Jazz Danny tells the story of President Franklin Roosevelt’s visit to Harlem when the record was selling like hot cakes: “There was a reviewing stand. Society people, all the big politicians, office holders, were sitting up there, prim and proper. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, with FBI agents to protect her, was looking on. All of a sudden we heard a noise in the distance. The Savoy had a truck that used to come out and play current records with this big amplifier … ‘Don’t You Feel My Legs …’ ‘Listen at that! Listen at THAT!’ was all you could hear. ‘Whose record is that? It’s FILTHY! GET THAT RECORD!!!’ Some of the people were laughing, some were embarrassed: a song like this showed the vulgarity of the black mind. It was a DISGRACE, yet at their houses, probably half of them people had that record and played it at their parties.” Then Danny heard someone ask, “WHO wrote that record?” He didn’t wait around for the answer. Ducking down an alley, he was gone. The next day he got a call from Dave Kapp at Decca, who said, “Dan, I’m sorry. You had a smash hit here, but we gotta stop pressing them. United States says if ILLUSTRATION BY TOAN NGUYEN Boozan Kings, and by the time he was 16 he was doing the piney woods circuit in Mississippi with Little Brother Montgomery, hitting the turpentine camps on payday. (You know how that works — nothin’ left the day after.) He played with various New Orleans bands in the 1920s, most notably for trumpeters Willie Pajeaud and Lee Collins. Then he met and fell in love with Louise Dupont, four years his junior, and married her in 1930. The couple moved to New York soon after at uncle Paul’s 64 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Fall 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities New Orleans Immortelle The Historic New Orleans Collection Highland-Fairfield: The Historic Heart of Shreveport The Ogden Museum of Southern Art Perils of the Mississippi River Louisiana Foodways Harvest of Life King Oliver: The Forgotten King of Jazz Louisiana Architecture Jazz Notes Louisiana State Museum Eye of the Storm Louisiana Association of Museums Soul Resin Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008

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