Second Generation

Almost the only men playing old-style jazz outside New Orleans today are the aging old masters who came from there. In Los Angeles, jazz purists flock to hear the great tailgate trombonist, 56-year-old Edward ("Kid") Ory. New Yorkers until recently could seek out 66-year-old Trumpeter Willie ("Bunk") Johnson, playing in a Lower East Side ballroom.

In San Francisco, the fans gather in the dark Dawn Club, in an Annie Street cellar, to hear the unmuted two-beat Dixieland rhythms of a band that is neither Negro nor old. The eight musicians of Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band average 30 years in age, but they serve such standbys as Ostrich Walk and High Society, along with new ones of their own New Orleans style. The college students, sailors, socialites and nostalgic oldtimers who pack the joint don't come to sit and listen. Their dancing rocks the floor like an old-fashioned firemen's ball.

Lu Watters learned about jazz secondhand. When he was born in Santa Cruz, Calif, in 1911, Pianist Jelly Roll Morton was ragtiming the opera Martha up & down the Mississippi; Bunk Johnson was playing his cornet in Storyville's famous Eagle Band and teaching his eleven-year-old "boy Louis" (Armstrong) to blow his first blues. Bull-necked Lu Watters was less than 11 when he blew his first trumpet.

While "jobbing around" with Bob Crosby's band and others, he collected musty sheet music and old records by King Oliver's Band, Jelly Roll's "Red Hot Peppers" and Armstrong's "Hot Five." After hours Lu took some of the boys to a roadhouse in the hills back of Oakland, where they tried out the hoedowns, marches and blues of old New Orleans until dawn. By 1939 Waiters had his own twelve-piece band, playing the accepted mixture of sweet and swing. Soon they gave up playing regular ballroom dates. Says Walters: "It was ruining my lip, having to play soft. I wanted a jazz band or nothing at all."

Trombonist Turk Murphy, who uses an empty gallon paint can for a mute, used to sit in with Bunk Johnson. Banjoist Henry Mordecai once played guitar, caught the jazz fever and bought three riverboat banjos so he could switch from one to another when his ferocious strumming broke the strings. Drummer Bill Dart has fingers like crowbars, drums almost exclusively on wood blocks and a washboard. Pianist Wally Rose, a man with a solid beat, also plays Bach and Chopin.

This week a minor recording outfit, West Coast Recordings, released four Lu Watters records, planned to turn out 32 more. They included classics like Canal Street Blues, Creole Belles and Chattanooga Stomp, and originals like Turk Murphy's Trombone Rag and Lu's Antigua Blues, named after the ship on which Lu did Navy duty. Watters' boys have an impressive library of 200 oldtime tunes--all "in their heads."

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