The record changer (Jan-Dec 1953)

7 technique. In addition to the cities of repute, the band also played at such places as Camps 5, 6, and 7 — mining towns in Kentucky. "I remember those towns well — it was just like leaving the States. We would go in on a Saturday night and play in a hall upstairs over the commissary. All the houses looked alike. The people would come in and the men had their guns hanging on them. They had to check them of course. The band got its instructions: 'If anything starts run behind a piano because hardly a Saturday goes by without someone gets shot.' We soothed them with the music, though. "The style of the band? Well. I guess you would call it 'progressive' — but not what they mean by it today. What it was was that we tried to develop an original style, sort of a vamp band, based on the jazz we knew. We started there and tried to rrogrcss, to add our own ideas to it. I remember we used to play Oh You Beautiful Doll, Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gave to Me, Aunt Hagars Children's Blues, 12th. Street Rag, Japanese Sandman, and Royal Garden Blues." Pleased with their progress, the band, true to the pattern of the entertainment world, began to think about New York. But, as Cecil put it: "We had our heart and soul in music and were like brothers, so commercialism— and that's what we were afraid it would be — didn't intrigue us too much. I didn't get excited about New York too much till some travelling shows came through and I heard them play tunes like Runnin' Wild. There was always a dance after the shows and we played for some of them. The show people would ask us why we didn't go to New York, and some of them had even heard of us. "About this time (1925) we were playing in Pittsburgh at the Paramount Cabaret for Gus Greenly— he owned his own nightclub on Wiley Avenue. I remember I used to have a specialty worked up — you know the band had to entertain more in those days than they do now— where I used to play Another photo of the Symphonic Syncopators, undoubtedly taken at the same time as the one on the left-hand page, this time showing the group in the second of the two poses that seem to have been compulsory for jazz bands of the period. three clarinets at one time on such tunes as Twelfth Street Rag. I held the clarinets in grooves in a special board I rigged up. They used to bill me as 'Great Scott, the Clarinet Wizard.' Evidently word got to New York about the band, because the manager of the Capitol Palace, Johnny Powell, came to Pittsburgh to hear us and booked us into the Capitol for a summer tryout. When we came to New York they advertised us as being from Columbus, because they said nobody ever heard of Springfield, and they even wanted to say from Chicago. We had a good season there and got a return date for the next February. On our trip back we swung through Tennessee and Kentucky, with a long stopover in Lexington." After the trip to New York the second time the personnel of the band began to change somewhat as the men were heard by the bigger and established bands and started to be "picked off," as Cecil put it. This was to plague this and successive groups during all their stays in New York, and although two of these groups made some good recordings on Victor, it was unfortunate for the jazz world that the Scott groups could never get their feet on the ground. In any event, it was a compliment to the men and the music they played. Between these trips to New York the band picked up such players as Dicky Wells in Lexington, Frankie Newton in Huntington, Bill Hicks at Youngstown, as well as Fletcher Allen, tenor; Mac Walker, bass, and Johnny Williams, alto, in other towns. Later Harold McFarran, alto, and Hubert Mann, banjo and guitar, were added. Scott calls Mann "one of the best I have ever heard" and remembers in particular the work he did on Symphonic Scronch (Vi 20495). There has been some debate about the personnel on the above and the other two sides by the Lloyd Scott Orchestra {Happy Hour, the backing to Scronch, and Harlem Shuffle, Vi 21491'). Index to Jazz and Hot Discography differ, and there is mention of this dispute in the Record Changer of November, 1946, as follows: "Some time ago the musician Juice Wilson commented to Norman Jenkinson that the trumpet section as listed in Hot Discography for the first Cecil Scott session was incorrect. He said that instead of reading Gus McClung, Emerson Dickerson and Kenneth Rhone (sic) it should be Gu McCullen, Bill Coleman, Jabbo Smith. I should be glad to hear from any collector having the records as to whether Smith or Coleman can be recognized from any of the trumpet solos." 1 l McCarthy, Albert .1.. "Collector-. Notes." Record Changer, Nov. 194^, l>. 16. Cecil Scott's 1942 band, at the Ubangi Club: the band included Henry Goodwin on trumpet and Ruth Brown (not shown) as vocalist. The two businessman types up front with Scott are unidentified.