The record changer (Jan-Dec 1950)

8 The Phenomenal Resurgence HENRY B. MACKEY It was only after a long and difficult search through the red light districts of forty-eight states and fifty-three countries, that I finally rediscovered that undiscovered jazz tin whistlist, Jug-Head Brown, playing kazoo in a little cafe in the Union of South Africa. 193 years old, he still looks as young as ever, and can hit high notes on the kazoo that experts have hitherto considered impossible for that instrument. But Jug-Head was always doing the impossible, like the time he introduced the trumpet as a jazz instrument. When I first entered the Queen's Arms, where Jug-Head was playing, it was the middle of a set, and the place was .really rocking. Several dozen people, all in their fresh Sunday loin clothes, were enjoying themselves tremendously. Some were eating hot dogs and some were drinking beer, but most of them were dancing. Men, with their feathered head dresses and spears, were stomping and shouting, and pretty little South African girls with dainty white bones in their noses were moaning in perfect antiphonal response. Here was jazz returned to its source, dominant sevenths and ostinatos and everything ; a polyphonal overlapping that quickly developed into the most satisfying heterophony. With one more number, Puberty Rites of the Wawira, they finished the set and the band came to my table. Besides Jug-Head on kazoo, there was Pepper Steak Smith on tom-tom, Deaf Orange on elastic band, and the vocals were done by a local witch doctor named Mbongo. We ordered a bottle of Miss Circe's gin and nibbled on some yen pox, and I began to ask Jug-Head about the good old days. "How did jazz start, Jug-Head?" I asked. "I started it," he modestly replied. "Having listened to all of them there work songs as a child, I got me a tin whistle at the five and the ten and started to play them things the way they should be played. I really felt them songs, man. In two weeks I'd invented the blues and with another week's practice, ragtime, and I was playin' jazz when everyone else was still doin' ring shouts." "Well, that's very interesting, Jug-Head. About what year would you say this was?" "About 1867. Organized my first band the same year. Had a trio with Onion Skin Jackson on cigar box guitar, Broken Nose de la Cavalier on wash tub, and myself on tin whistle. Later on we added Alligator Tom Long on spoons. We really played it, man !" "Ah, yes ! That ostinato with those invigorating inner rhythms, over rhythms, counter rhythms, and those semi-tonally flattened thirds and fifths ! It must have been truly wonderful !" "We were pretty good." "When were legitimate instruments first used in jazz, Jug-Head?" "That was a sad day, man. The real jazz, the true jazz, man, you can't play that on no legit' horn. From the first day that jazz began to use them European instruments, it began to decline somethin' fast !" "Well, 'Cest la gare, Jug-Head, 'C'est la gare." "I first tried a trumpet in 1873 with my Original Superior Crescent City Spasm Band De Luxe, and right from the start it proved itself a no-good thing. When I started to blow that horn, why, man, you couldn't hear that 'lastic band!" "Well, that's the heart-rending epitome of so many unfortunate occurrences that the world blindly embraces under the delusive appellation of progress. Did you ever record, Jug-Head?" "Only with legit' horns and stuff. 'Bout 1926 I made four sides with a pick-up band for Victor under the name of Jelly-Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers. I played piano for the date." "Made one more recording in 1928 for Javanese Aeolian. It was an old original that George Gershwin stole and called Rhapsody in Blue. But I calls it Dirty Old Street Walker Rag. 'Bout half-way through that record though, I got disgusted with the way that piccolo player kept hitting them high (Continued on Page 17 )