INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH: John Sheridan
INTERVIEWER: Sterlin Holmesly
DATE: June 9, 1980
SH: John plays piano for the Happy Jazz Band. John, you're
classically trained, right?
JS: That's right.
SH : Bachelor's degree in music, Ohio State?
JS: No, my Master's degree is actually from North Texas State
University.
14.
SH: No, your Bachelor 's, your Bachelor's.
JS: Oh, my Bachelois, no. That's from Capitol University
in Columbus.
SH: Okay, and your Master's--North Texas State.
JS: North Texas. In Columbus, I went to a little school
across town that nobody knew about.
SH: Oh, the other school.
JS : The other one, that's it.
SH: Uh, okay. Are you classicall y trained, what are you
doing playing jazz for a living?
JS: What I like best is what I do best.
SH : That's a stic6inot·· answer.
JS: Well, as far as playing classical music, I've always loved
the composers such as Chopin, Beethoven, Bach ... I loved them
SHERIDAN 2
JS: all. But that's the printed page. I like to have the
freedom doing that.
SH: Yeah. Well as you--as it were, you compose as you go
along in jazz.
JS: So to speak, yeah.
SH: Yeah. How did you get into jazz? What was it that in-fluenced
you?
JS: Well, my first influence came at about age 8 when my
father brought home a copy of the Carnegie Hall concert in
1938 with the Benny Goodman Band. And I was hooked on it.
At that time, I had been studying piano for about a year; I
started studying piano at age 7. And this was something totally
different to me.
SH: Was Jeff Stacy ...
JS: Especially Teddy Wilson •..
SH: Right.
JS: It was--I wasn't really influenced by jazz piano until
later, I would say maybe about age 14.
SH: But you would--Teddy on the small groups really, really
got your ...
JS: Teddy got my attention on the small groups. Other piano
players that did were Gene Shroeder, the piano player with
do
the Eddie Con~n's band. Uh, Ralph Sutton at the chords, and
Fats Waller. I hope a lot of what I play comes directly from
Fats although I don 't try to copy anybody.
SH : Fats is your idol, as it were ... Maybe that ' s not the
correct term.
SHERIDAN 3
JS: Well, if I had to say idol--I don 't know if I could say
that or not--I really like them all. I get a lot from different
ones and try to make it myself. But I'd say Fats Waller for what
I'm doing right now, is probably as close as you could come .
SH: When did you first play jazz professionally and where?
JS: I first played jazz professionally about age 14 I would
think, in Columbus. I was in a band that was composed of junior
high and high school kids. Jimmy Llewel yn and his Nove l aires
was the name of the group. And we were put together by Jim 's
parents. His mom used to go out and get us all kinds of dif­ferent
jobs, here and there for experience for Jimmy.
SH: But you got paid for it?
JS: Oh , we got paid for i t. Not very much . I think my first
job paid a dollar and a quarter.
SH: When was that about ...
JS: That was about 1959 to '60. Someplace in there .
SH: Yeah .
JS: That was my first wage--was a dollar and a quarter .
There were four of us and they paid us five dollars and we
split it four ways. (Laughter)
SH: How long, how long a gig was that for a buck and a quarter?
JS: Oh , it was about a half hour.
SH : Well, that's not bad .
JS: No, when you consider, you consi der the age and all that.
It wasn't too bad, but we ...
SH: You know, an exploitation of child labor, though.
SHERIDAN 4
JS: Oh, a little bit. I worked with them for about five
years. I quit when I was 18. All that time I was studying,
of course, and going to school. But we had one little story
about that. It's one of those people who we alternated with
at one point in time. There was a hotel downtown, The Deshler,
and that had been the Deshler Hilton and later it became a ...
this was after the experience I'm talking about, became the
Deshler Walligan and the Deshler Beesley and it ' s now a parking
lot. They tore it down. But they opened a room called the
"Roaring '20 s" and they were gonna have a Dixieland Jazz
policy. Well, that's what we played. And their opening
attraction was Bobby Hackett . Bobby Hackett Jazz Band.
SH: Pretty good opener.
JS: That ' s a pretty good opener. So our agent Johnny Moore
in Columbus who's still there; the biggest agent in Columbus,
fixed it up as we would alternate sets with Bobby Hackett . Of
course, we were just totally thrilled. So we walked in and they
played the first set and there stood Vic Dickinson on trombone,
Dave McKenna on the piano, I think he brought Cliff Waylan
out f rom New York; Joe Moreni was playing clarinet. It was
a marve lous band , you know . And so we played the first night
and Hackett was just great . You know, he looked like such an
aristocrat and you get that beautiful prize fighter voice :
"Well, you boys certainly played great , you know. Just keep
doin' what you're doin'." Just a beautiful guy . And the
second night, we go up to play our second set and we always
SHERIDAN 5
took .... At this point in time we ' re still all--I think t he
oldest guy in the group was lB. So , instead of playing the
whole set, we ' d take a parent with us on the job and Louie
Way, Phil Way's dad, he was our drummer ; came up and said,
"Why don 't you guys take a break?" We had just p layed two
numbers, and one of the guys said, "Louie , we just took a
break." He said, "Take a b r eak." He was so nervous you
could feel it, so we took a break and went off the stand.
He took us out in the hall. There was about three great big
burlfy guys standing out there and they took us upstairs
one floor to a part y room. And they flashed their badges
out , they were the vice squad. Somebody had called the vice
squad because we were under age to work there . And I don ' t
know who did it or anything else but we had to leave right
then and there.
SH: By the vice squad.
JS : By the vice squad. Imagine that, I was a delinquent
and didn ' t even know it.
SH: (Laughter) Was this because you're playin' a joint that
served booze , or .•.
JS: Yeah . And legal age to even be in a place like that
in Columbus at the time was 21 . I believe it ' s 18 now.
But, it was 21. I'm ta lking about 1963. And it was kind of a
wild experi ence .
SH: Did that stop your career for awhile ...
JS: No, i t' s just that we couldn 't play in a place with a
liquor l icense . We could play at all the conventions we
SHERIDAN
JS: wanted. And, nobody bothered us like that. It was
okay.
6
SH:
JS:
That was kind of a nasty thing for whoever did it 1to do.
Still don't know who did it. Don't have no idea who did it.
SH: And what brought you to Texas, get your bachelor's there
at Columbus ...
JS: Well, after I finished my work--that was the time of the
Viet Nam War; I was about to be drafted, so instead I went into
the United States Navy and ended up in the United States Navy Band
in Washington for four years. And at that time I became friendly
with a fella named Bobby Houston who now lives, I think, he '
teaches at the East Texas State University. And he lives in
Converse, Texas. But he lived in Dallas at that time. He was
going back to Dallas. We were in the Navy Band together, and I
was kind of looking for some place to go. I always loved Ohio,
and it will always be part of me, but it's not really the best
place for a working musician. So he said, "Well, Dallas is
up and coming and there's a lot of things, why don't you come
to Dallas; send your wife and everything and you can go to school
in North Texas State. So that's what I did, and in May of 1972 ...
SH: You would go to school on the G.I. Bill.
JS: Discharged and went to North Texas State on the G.I.
Bill, and piece meal on the degree I did this--the first couple
of years I went pretty hot and heavy on it. And then after
that I did my Master's thesis; and the whole time I had to
work and support my family and so forth, so I would work
SHERIDAN 7
JS: at night and work on the thesis and go to school during
the day. And it was at this time I met some great musicians
up here. There's been some wonderful musicians in the Dallas-
Fort Worth area . And about a year after I arrived in Texas, I
went to a party one night at Mal Fitz's house who did an
awful lot for me there. And Bobby used to work for him and
I worked in Mal Fitz's outfit for quite some time. And he
made sure I got a lot of good work. And always gave me first
call. And I wrote a lot for his band. Well, we were at a
party at his house that he had each year for hi s band. And
Bobby, my friend, introduced me to Tommy Gwinn who, I don't
know if you're familiar with his name. He was the drummer that
was with Tommy Dorsey for a long time. After Louie Belson left
Tommy Dorsey he was with Dorsey and, on the stage show in 1950
that the Dorsey Brothers had. If it wasn't Buddy Rich it would
be Tommy Gwinn.
SH : Big leaguer, then.
JS: Yeah, he was playing with a band at--well, he was playing
Loy_
with Tommy ~· That's who he was playing with a t the Levee
in Dallas which is now gone. It was on Mockingbird Lane.
SH: Right.
JS: And, I had been recommended by Billy Ainsworth and Freddy
Crane. Them, and also by Al and Bobby, and he wanted to know
if I wanted to come work with Tommy's band. And I said , "Yes
I would, very much." He said, "Okay, be there Friday night and
you can work all . I was with Tommy for a long,
long time. I was with Tommy up 'til just before I arrived
in San Antonio.
SHERIDAN 8
SH: Let me interject here.
Loy
Tommy ~lc:a is best known as the
fella who plays the National Anthem for the Dallas Cowboy
games and he's also by trade a sound engineer and a very fine
jazz cornetist.
JS: Yes he is. He ' s a marvelous jazz cornetist . Has a
very good band up there, too. And, what I'm leading up to
is Tommy is the one that introduced me to Jimmy .
SH: Jim Cullum.
JS: Jim Cullum. Right. I met Jim first--well, I played
K at(the)L uc~enbach in 1975. In September of 1975. And,
talked with Jimmy briefly, but didn't really get to know
him 'til about six months later when he brought the band up
for a Sunday night job, and came into the Railhead where we·:were
working in Dallas at the time--and became very friendly with
Jimmy. He liked the way I played , and I liked the way he
played. And he said if there were ever an opening in his
band, I was welcomed to it, and there was and sure enough I
was we lcomed to it, and here I am.
SH : The opening came in what--April, March or April of ' 79,
l ast year.
JS: I arrived my first night--let me see--my first night I
worked was April 6 or 7, I believe. April 7th was my first
night. So I've been with the band 14 months and 2 days.
SH: Right.
J S: Exactly. This being June 9, 19 80.
[...
SH: Let's talk about the 1ife of a jazz musician. I know
it puts strains on family life. What I've seen and what I ' ve
SHERIDAN 9
SH: been told . It can and i t' s, the hours, the travel ...
JS: It can. The hours and the travel, well, of course the
situation I'm in now, you know , the travel doesn't really have
much to do with it. I mean , it' s about--where most bands
travel 50 weeks out of the year and we ' re on location two hours
is exactly the reverse .
SH: Right. You have a home base.
JS: Well, a home base. But still you're right about the
fami l y . The family has a very high fatality rate in this
business. Because of hours . The first p l ace you're a night
time person living in a daytime society . And it's very, very
hard to maintain a family life t hat way, especially if you
have children, which I do not. I am divorced. But it was
very hard for me to maintain a family life of any kind
because my wife always worked. Not so much as she needed to but
she wanted to. She would leave the house at 9:00 i n the
morning , arrive at 6 :00 as I was on my way out to work .
SH : You ' d say , "hi" and "bye. "
JS: "Hi" and "bye" and that was it. And we'd see each other
the next day probably. Unless it was weekends, we'd spend
weekends together . But, yes, it ' s very hard. It ' s very hard
to maintain a life like that . Few have.
SH: And i t' s not that easy t o make~living wage , either .
Except for a few , maybe.
JS: For a few , yes. but , as far as the wage is concerned,
you have to keep in mind that it goes a little deeper than
that . I?articularly in the.l•band 1that I 'm with now, with Jim
SHERIDAN 10
JS: Cullum's band. Everybody in there, you know, there's
more things in life than money, sometimes you have to realize.
What we're doing--although we're--nobody's starving to death--
what we're doing is making a musical statement within a parti-cular
style. Jazz has changed an awful lot as you know.
SH: Right.
JS: From the time of, let me say, well, okay, let's say the
swing era and before. When the bee-bop rage came in, starting--
well, it started in 1941 in New York with a bunch of guys
getting together like Charlie Christian, from Benny Goodman's
band, Charlie Parker, Dizzy, 1'helonius Monk , they'd get
together at Mittens in Harlem. Everybody would go out there
and jam. That's how it came about. And, it's changed quite
a bit from that. What we're trying to do is make a musical
statement in the style that was prevalent in the '20s and
'30s ·
SH: Without copying.
JS: Without copying. We're trying to say something new.
SH: Right.
JS: It's not that easy. There has been so much done. It's
comparatively easy to make a statement in the new style, 'cause
there's no precedents; however, as precedents--you go back
and you look at those records by giants.
~1 ·!!t.
Giants like Louie,
There were bands like Red Nichols and His Five
Pennies. Just scads and scads of bands, good musicians. All
working. I mean, it's very hard to do. You know, to make
that kind of a statement.
HERIDAN 11
SH: But each of you, in one way or another, makes an indivi-dual
statement with each number you do, with your solos and
your interplay ...
JS: That's right. It's a little different each time we do it.
SH: Yeah. If you wanted it the same way everytime, you'd make
a record and play the record, or the video tape, or something.
JS: That's right.
SH: How does the creative process work with you on a solo?
JS: Well, I kind of take it from notes and no, if you know
what I mean. It's not really that much.
SH: Well, do you have a line in mind ...
JS: Sometimes, but it's also fun to build. You get a germ.
You get maybe a grip. And then you build a series and go
s
with that. You hit a bas~ pattern. Like, you know, those
boogie patterns. You've heard them play those, the ones that
Ralph Sutton used to teach. Taught me how to do those. And,
I used those to keep it going as long as they can and then I
find a place to break it, and then break into stride, it's
funny. I try to make it a little different each time. And
of course, then when the rhythm lays out, I never know when
that's coming, and then I'm totally on my own. I get to
carry it over all by myself, you know. And that's fun, too.
So, it's a challenge. You take it from note to note. And
it's the kind of a thing where we all love each number that
we're doing, and then Jimmy comes in and calls it the "Jazzband
Ball." We don't say, oh, we gotta play this turkey again,
you know, because there's no such thing as a turkey in music.
SHERIDAN 12
JS: So the idea is to make it live again, and again, and again
and again. With any kind of music, whether you 're p layin' a
c w Beethoven sonata or whether you play ~~strich ~alk . It
doesn't make any difference.
SH: You once told me that the system with the band, when
everything really cooks, really goes , is almost like good
sex.
JS: That's right.
SH : It's just a great excitement and satisfaction that only
the player knows. Or the band knows.
JS: And I'm very sorry to say this as a musician, but playin'
with a band like that runs a very, very close second. (laughter)
No, I'm just kidding when I say that. There's not really quite
a feeling like that in the world, when it just gets to gain'
I
and everybody knows that they're doin' it. I mean, it's
just reaching a peak and I mean there 's not quite a feeling
l i ke it. And especially all of a sudden--we've been really
getting into dynamics now in the band. All of a sudden we'll
come up to a climax and everything goes back down to a whisper.
And slowly and slowly it starts to simmer and sizzle and cook.
And there's nothin' like that--a marvelous feelin' when
everybody does it together. It's a marvelous fe e ling.
SH: You don't really know when that's gonna happen , when
everybody is there.
JS: We ll, we don 't rehearse those things, it ' s just that
you watch very carefully. The best thing to do is watch Jim,
SHERIDAN 13
JS: because he has body English. You can always tell when
he wants to get soft. He'll kind of bow down, crouch over
a little bit.
SH: No, I wasn't referring--but you don't know when this
super time is gonna come. It can occur ....•
JS: Hopefully, it ' s gonna happen from downbeat to last
chord and it has. But there are special nights when the
band plays better other times than not.
~V~N
SH: Well, like when Kenny D¢~ was in, I've never heard
such intensely prolonged , through the whole night ....
JS: It built. It built and it· prolonged ang it built and
it never let up. And it was especially good the second
~Ave~n night. Kenny ~Vern is probably one of the greatest geniuses
in the music business I ' ve ever had the chance to work with .
He 's in total control of his art and he knows what he can
do and knows what he can ' t do, and the marvelous sound that
he gets out of the instrument .
SH: Clarinet.
JS: Oh, yes. Wonderful clarinetist. Big, fat sounds. And
that was a real ball to work with him.
SH: Let me ask you what may be an unfairly tough question .
Tell me as succinctly as you can what jazz meansto you .
JS: What jazz means to me? That is kind of tough. My
first reaction is to say what Fats Waller, a mutual friend
of ours _________ phonograph, said to a little old lady one
time when she asked him to define swing, and he said, "Lady ,
SHERIDAN 14
JS: if you have to ask, don't mess with it." But it means
to me--a very happy thing to me--a very happy thing to me.
No matter where it is . It's my life--at this point in time.
It's my life.
SH: And you have recently gone through a rather traumatic
period deciding if that really was your life. And you
deci ded that it was indeed.
JS: Yeah, and it was soul searching. It was soul searching .
SH: I bring this up because in the course of these conver-sations
I've been having, I've talked to people who were
excellent musicians who quit. Who had to make a living, had
a family to support .
JS: Happened with Red Nichols. He quit. Happened with a
lot of 'em. Tommy Flannigan, the pianist who was with Ella
Fitzgerald for a long time.
SH: Yeah. Tom Flannigan Trio.
JS: Tom Flannigan Trio. He quit. Matter of fact , Ella's
~
manager, his name is Norman Gran~ , by good authority I have
it, found Tommy Flannigan washing dishes in some New York
restaurant when they were lookin' for him.
SH: Just recently?
JS: No, this was--has been several years ago.
SH: Oh, he quit and then came back?
JS: Well, they drug him out of retirement. Same thing
happened with Bunk Johnson, they found him workin ' as a steve-dor
down in New Orleans . Of course he was old and he didn't
SHERIDAN 15
JS: have any teeth . John Hammond paid for his teeth and
put him back in business.
SH: Yeah. Robert Hall, ~ Herb~y{rother1, after 18 years
quit and went to work for the post office in the 1940's and
never p l ayed another note.
JS: Well that happens. Happens with the best of us . That
happened to me .
SH: Right. It almost did.
JS : It almost did.
SH: You were thinkin' about goin ' back to Ohio and selling
somethin'.
JS: Yeah, I don't really care to go into it much more than
that. But that was because there were a couple of other people
involved.
SH : Right .
JS: But ...
SH: But anyway, there was---you had a confrontation with
John Sheridan and ...
JS: Yeah. I had a big fight with myself . And I won.
SH : And now it shows up in your music . You say, "This is
John comin' out on the piano. "
JS: I hope it does. I hope it does.
SH: I definitely think so.
JS: I don 't want to say much of anything else about why it
happened, except that I 'l l quote Duke Ellington . He said at
one point, "There isn ' t a girl singer worth a damn who hasn 't
SHERIDAN 16
JS : had her heart broken. II
SH: Urn hum.
JS: And how can--you can ' t play the blues unless you've
had 'em. So that's all I 'll say about that.
SH : Yeah . Okay . You got to have been there in order to
tell about it .
JS : That ' s right.
SH : What ever way • ... What about your--well , maybe we've
already covered that here. Philosophy of music . We ' ve got
that in a different way . I think we came around on that.
Ar e you encouraged abbut the future of jazz .
JS: Yes . Very much so.
SH: Do you think there's a rebound coming on.
JS: I think there's a rebound coming on. You can go to any
record store , such as Peaches up in Dallas, or any of the
Sound Warehouse. Look at the jazz section. I 'm just
not talkin ' about the outside fusion jazz, either. I 'm
talkin ' about main stream jazz . I 'm talkin' about tradi-tional
jazz, the kind we play. Tal k about all of it . There's
a lot of records, and they ' re selling .
SH: Yeah .· Peaches in Dallas has four long counters of
nothin ' but jazz.
JS: Four l ong counters, and you ' ll see t~ings like, well
the RCA prints, Fats Waller , the 20 volume Fats Waller . It ' s
all there . B ~X 8e..;J.e becXe-
SH: Yeah . .,Sicl<s Biderbask,
SHERIDAN 17
JS: 1~~-s £1R-~·J&fa~~'the old Goodman band. They have all
kinds of things . Bluebird. The Bluebird series on RCA records.
They discontinued it but they were putting out the complete
Benny Goodman , the complete Arti~Shaw , the complete Tommy
Dorsey. They were goin' back and getting bands like Willie
Bryant.
SH : Fletcher Henderson.
JS: Fl etcher Henderson, sure . And J immy Lunlsford. Decca
has a wonderful, called the Heritage series , had a wonderful
been going for a while . Louie, Duke, Chick Webb .
And that kind of music; you've got a lot of bands playin' now.
This wonderful band in London, the Midnight Follies Orchestra,
I bANd
that when Jim5~ went to Holland for the old time
jazz festival, the international festival in May of 1979,
right after I joined the bano , we ran into the Midnight
Follies Orchestra. All Englishmen except for this singer
who is from California, and he ' s been there for ten years
and he sounds just like an Englishman too now. They're doing
all the material of like Duke El lington from the '20s. Fletcher
Henderson , Jimmy Lun(sford, Goldke){~hiteman . Just mar-velous
.
SH: Are they takin' it off the record or are they leavin'
room for themselves.
JS: In some cases they are. In other cases, they ' re not .
It's written in the style. They ' re doin' a lot of original
material, too.
SHERIDAN 18
SH: Urn hum. But in the style of .• .
JS: In the style. In that style . And the voicings are the
same. The bravadoes are all perfect on the saxophones. Mar-velous
piano p l ayer named Keith Nichols. Good, good, good
rhythm section. It's played well within that style. And, well,
B;~
there 's a band called the Sons of ~~s]:s that~ goin' right now
p
about the band. Tom /letcher.
SH: Tom was here in March. p
JS: Tom /letcher who played with us in March, and he is--
I don't want to put him down by saying that he sounds like
6\.x. f.?e...ide-rbc:....d~
cUi P'k~.; ;;~,.., lMr""lc: I because I think everybody sounds like
themselves, but to me if you would turn your back, you'd
swear that ~@ts didn't die, he recovered and he's back to
work now. Because he's trained himself, he wanted the sound--
that's what he wanbed to sound like. And he thinks like
that, and it's not copy. I don't think he ever copied a
B i )(. B<:..~<:.rk.K'e.__
Bi :J.s -Ri X"aaok solo in his life except for maybe something,
one of the classics or "Comin' Virginia" or something . But
it was very, very high-flaired--that's what he wanted to
play.
SH: And he does it well.
JS: He does it very well. He does it better than anybody
I've ever heard do that. And players like that--well, there's
a lot of young persons playin'. This guy, Ha~ilton, you know.
SH: Well, you ' re not that old yourself are you? 34?
JS: I'm 34.
SHERIDAN 19
v
SH: Well, okay. Scott Hamilton. Alan ~ache, 20 ... v
JS: Alan Jrache, he'll be 27 I think in December. He's
gettin' to be an old man anymore.
SH: Kevin Hess.
JS: Kevin Hess at 23, I believe.
SH: He's been playing jazz since he was 10 or 11 years old.
JS: That's right. He started, he's been involved with the
Landing one way or the other for over 10 years.
SH: Yeah. And Howard Elkins.
JS: Howard Elkins. No, Howard is 32.
SH: Oh really? Well, he just looks like he's about 18 years
old.
JS: He looks like about 16 actually. No, he's a very inno-cent
looking guy, you know. And a nice, marvelous musician.
And, well, Jim isn't all that old, you know.
SH : Jim's what? 37 or 8, somewhere in there.
JS: He'll be 39 I think in September.
SH: I've known him since God was a small boy.
JS: I'm sure.
SH: Since before he had his PFC. He has an enormous amount of
dedication. And just plain will power to have carried this
thing on.
JS: I know it. And he is very, very intensely dedicated to
the music that he plays. He told a story one ~ time ~~bout-~he
was at a party and there was a modern musician there. And
the modern musician knew how he made his living with this
jazz band, and said to h im1 "Listen, don't you feel a little
SHERIDAN 20
JS: self conscious that you're not playin' your own thing?"
And Jim looked at him and said, "Now wait a minute. I am
playin' my own thing. Don't you think--let's say you were
an archaeologist, 11 this is Jim Cullum talkin' now, 11 let's say
you were an archaeologist and you found a beautiful bell.
You found this beautiful bell that was 2000 years old and
you hit the bell and the sound just grew, and it was just
like gold, and it just rang across the whole valley. Would
you throw it away because it wasn't put out by Mattel Toy
Company? 11 Or something to that effect.
SH: Oh boy. That was an effective answer.
JS: And he said, "Yeah," he said, 11 I can kind of sympathize
with that." So that's the way he feels about it. You know
C,h',cJ< Core.o­some
guys get all enthused about music like by £hioor¥ which
is fine music, you know, like Spain, and the Light as a Feather
album and the Mad Hatter album and the different things he did.
One that'll get you excited about those, that's Jim. He gets
excited about ~~~Smith's record "Oh, Daddy Blues I Got
the Meanest Kind." And I think that's fine, because, you
know one time there was a review of a Bob Wilbur album in
Down Beat called the Music of Hoagie Carmichael, which I
have. And the reviewer gave it 5 stars, and it was somebody
like Morganstern. I forget who it was. It was somebody
like Morganstern. v SH: ~an Morganstern.
JS: 9an Morganstern. And at the end they said, "This album
deserves 5 stars right across the line." It said, "If jazz
SHERIDAN 21
JS: is to survive it needs Bob Wilbur as much as it needs
Ceci l Taylor." And that's true because, look at classical
music for example, European. Classical is a bad t erm be-cause
classical means Mozart and Hayden to me. But if you
look at European music for example--go to a concert--look at
the programming. They do Beethoven , they do Brahms .
SH: They didn't throw them away.
JS: No, that's a fifty-year gap right there, that's a fifty-year
gap right there, doin' those, but they'll do those and
they'll turn around and maybe do the "Rite of Spring ," or
"Daphne and Chloe" by Debuss\y, something like that--all
..____...
different styles--nobody criticizes them. What's the matter
with playin' "Oh Daddy Blues I Got the Meanest Kind." I
think that's marvelous. I really do. It ' s something that
should be done. It's a serious art form .
SH: I think it's very much an American cultural art form ,
and I would wonder about some of the avante garde jazz
musicians who are playing into their own navels and don 't
care if anybody listens or digs or stomps a foot . Personal
opinion .
JS: Well, okay . My personal opinion about that is jazz
belongs to the people. Okay?
SH : You don't play in a vacuum.
JS: When you get above the people's heads it loses its ~
point. It loses: its point e ntirely. Well, it's e ntertain-ment,
yes, but jazz originally made people happy. You forgot
SHERIDAN 22
JS: your problems. You go back and you look at Fletcher
Henderson's band, some of the things he did in the early
'20's and look at King Oliver, some of the stuff they did,
and Wilbur--just all very happy music. Even t he blues are
happy. You know? You go back and look at some of that stuff
and it just wants to jump right off the record at you, it's
so happy, you know. And it's, that's what it should do. It
should move. It should move you. I interviewed Benny
Goodman. You know the interview.
SH: Right.
JS: And you know what he said. He told me this himself.
I asked him what he thought about the tradition of swing
and everything else and that it'll always be here. And I
asked him to list some of his favorite players that he l iked
to listen to. And he didn't; instead what he said was ,
"Several things have changed an awful lot with the avante
garde." And he said, "An awful lot of i t leaves me awful
cold, very cold." And I asked him--he said , "Well, I love
modern music, but it has to move me; it has to touch me
and it doesn't sometimes. Some of it does, but a lot of it
doesn't." So that I think is something . Music gets to
people. And the minute it stops getting to people it should
not be played. It has to make an emotion.
SH: Personal question. What was the absolute of your
worst moment as a jazz musician. Does any one time stand
out? Keys fall off the piano? Anything like that?
SHERIDAN 23
JS: You make me think of the time ... I've had real good
moments, usually ...
SH: Well, we'll get the good one next, the best ...
JS: The best one?
SH: Let's have the worst one first. That made you think of
what?
JS: Well, the worst one was when I was playin' in Columbus
for the Novelaires, they booked us on a job one night. They
brought out a piano and one octave, there was only one octave
in tune. It was middle C to the C above it, the only octave in
tune. All the rest sounded like you were hittin' two notes at
the aame time--a minor second . It was horrible. I never tried
to play a job in one octave before that and neve r will again
believe me .
SH: Must have gotten that from San Antonio Parks and Recrea-tion
Department.
JS: Must have. It was a pretty horrendous experience. So
Now you want to hear about the best?
SH: The best.
JS : I think the best experience , the one that sticks out in
my mind the most outside of the high- powered stars I've
gotten to work with since I
Do..v eO-.Y)
Sutton, Kenny Bog •r rtile, Bob
dO)e
came to San Antonio, such as Ralph
H~5QRl
II c:k, PeeWee Erwin, some of the
greats . Pu1~rown . I got to work with them . I think the most
touching musical experience I had was last May when we were in
We were p l aying in this huge hall called the Turf Ship .
It was a huge building and they had 3 concerts going on at
SHERIDAN 24
JS: the same time, and I don't know 1 there was probably
15,000 people in there. And we played in the small--what
they called the foyer--to about 500 people earlier, on this
Saturday night, the last night we were there. Well midnight
rolled around--we're supposed to play in the large hall before
10,000 people--we followed a band which was not very good in
my opinion, and they shall remain nameless. And we walked
up on the stand--they give you about 2 minutes to change,
set up. That's mikeing, sit down. We did it. The whole time--
the band before us was wearing white sloppy T-shirts and jeans.
Of course you know how Jim dresses our band. We always wear
the finest looking things you can imagine. We have white vest
suits; we have blue vest suits; we have tuxedos. This particu-lar
night we were wearing blue blazers and white pants with
ties. We looked like $10,000,000 bucks going up on that stand.
I looked out at the first few rows of the audience and then I
went back. Everybody was sitting there with their chins in
their hands, looking at us with the most disgusted look on
their faces ever seen, like what are these bankers gonna do.
Jim walked up on the stand, says do the "Wang Wang Blues,,.
which is one of my favorite tunes and for this particular moment
it will always stand in my mind as purely one of my favorites.
It will always mean a lot to me because we played it with
this ... We got into the for the first chorus and the v
dog fight and the verse and all that stuff and Alan ~ache started
to play. And you know what a marvelously hot player he can be.
Well, he started to build, the rhythm section started to build
SHERIDAN @%
JS: with him. He got into his second chorus. Then I looked
at the audience again. Everybody was tappin' their feet,
snappin' their fingers, and the faces were just lit up like
Christmas trees. It was the biggest thrill I've ever had. It
was just great. It was just great. You know the music can get
to people like that.
SH: Right. The whole band had reached 'em.
JS: Everybody had reached them; they touched their heart and
they were with us. And a lot of them didn't even speak any
English. Afterwards, it was like the president had come to
town or something. They were crowding around us, shaking
our hands, buying us drinks. You know, the whole thing-­showering
gifts on us. The whole deal, I mean it was just
something like you've never heard, you know. They wouldn't
let us off. You know they had a hold and the concert was run
for almost two hours.
SH: And what did you originally have, 45 minutes or an hour
time slot?
JS: We had, oh I think it was 50 minutes. They wouldn't let us
off. Eddie Davis appeared with us that night. You know, the
banjo player? From New York? I don't know if you know him or
not.
SH: No. I was thinkin' of Eddie Lockjaw.
JS: Well, no. This is Eddie Davis. And he plays banjo,
plays fine drums, plays a lot of things. But his forte is
singing. He goes out and he sings and plays the banjo and
he knows the worst of all these old jazz band tunes. And I
SHERIDAN 26
JS: never met anybody that knew the words to the original
"Dixieland One Step" before, but he does.
SH: I didn't even know there were words to the ...
JS: "Irish Black Bottom." "Oh Daddy"; of course we do that.
I've talked about that enough, I think. All the different
old jazz band stuff.
SH: If you could go back in time, would you do it any
differently? Do you think you would inevitably become a
jazz musician again. Or ..•
JS:
SH:
JS:
I don't think I would have changed anything.
You're a player. It's ...
That's what I am. That's what I am. I probably could
change if I wanted to, but I don't want to. That I don't
wanna change. Any fortune that ever comes to me will come
to me from what I'm doin' right now.
SH: May I add a personal opinion? You do it extraordinarily
well.
JS: Thank you very much. It means a lot to me. Thank you.
SH: We're about out of time. They're gonna close this.
You've got 5 minutes if you want to say anything, any
opinions.
JS: No, I really don't have much to say. I was just very
happy that you asked me to do this, and if there's anything
else you want to ask me, though, if we've got some time ...
SH: I think we've covered some basics.
JS: We've covered a lot.
SHERIDAN 27
SH: I 'think the rest of it might just be personalities or
bits and pieces. I'm so satisfied 'with what we've talked
about I really don't want to go on with that right now. Maybe
we can pick up more of it later.
JS: We can pick up on that some other time.
SH: Yeah, we can use my little tape deck, or come back out
here, or somethin'.
JS: Okay. Bring it down to the club one night. We can talk
on a break.
SH: Yeah.
END OF TAPE