George Lewis talks about New Orleans-Style Music,
the different instruments, clarinets and clarinet technique, reeds, and other matters...
- I know
how I like my music. I guess a lot of people could say I'm wrong, but I like my music
peppy, and I like four beats to a bar. If you've got six men playing together then
you've got a full band, enough to fill in everything. Somebody should be going all
the time. It's a conversation, just like I would tell you 'no', and you would respond
'yes', do you know that? Somebody should be underneath, somebody on top. That's the
sort of music I came up with, and play. It should not be just one ensemble chorus,
and then everybody takes down except the rhythm. You don't have a band then. You
have a quartet.
That's what Dixieland music is. Dixieland music
is what white people play here, for most part. Ain't none of us playing it. Few of
us could play it, because we don't rehearse, in the first place. Dixieland
music is rehearsed, where everybody gets up, plays one chorus, and then they take
down and all play solos. But when I came up, music was more like a conversation.
Kid Thomas has the idea of it, even though he plays very little lead on the trumpet.
Thomas just plays the chords, but he's up there all the time, or he's doing something
underneath, even just one or two notes, you know what he's doing. He has the right
idea of this type of music.
Who would I have in my "All Star" band?
Buddy Petit would be the first one, of all the men I've played with, and on trombone
I'd have Yank Johnson. Bass would be Chester Zardis, because he knows that music,
he came up with it. On banjo I'd take Lawrence Marrero. His brother John was supposed
to be the better, but I'd prefer Lawrence. On piano, they didn't have too many piano
players, but they had one guy called Tink Baptiste - I would like him. On drums,
well, I don't know, there was Irving Joseph, Papa John's nephew; and then there was
Roy Evans, he was good. From out of town, Kaiser Marshall played good drums.
Now, about the different instruments: the rhythm
is the most important thing in the music; it ain't the horns, it's the rhythm. When
Lawrence Marrero was living, and Slow Drag could hear better, and Joe Watkins was
playing, we had good rhythm. I don't believe there's a band in New Orleans that had
the rhythm they had. They say I worked Joe Watkins hard; I didn't work Joe hard,
he worked his own self hard. And then, if you're the leader of a band, you've got
to work your men hard. Like Elmer Talbert, he was working all the time. You
can hear that on some of the records, he's underneath, or doing something. It hasn't
got to be fancy because you listen at the rhythm of it, that's what counts.
George Lewis in Bunk's band 1944.
I like the snare drum - if you've got a
drummer who can play press rolls. But you don't hear a lot of press rolls today.
I like a bass, and I like a banjo, of course. You've got to have a banjo. But I like
a banjo player who brings out the tone. I like chords, not the fancy stuff. The banjo
player should not just smother the strings, smother the note, he should bring the
tone out right. And something else I don't like is a plastic head on the banjo -
sounds like someone is striking on a dish pan or something. Most of the banjo players
around here only play on the after beat (second and fourth beats in the bar). The
banjo player should be steady. That's what Lawrence Marrero was. Lawrence had the
wrist, Lawrence had the fingers, and there's only one person I really can play with
now, and I like to hear him playing, and that is this boy way out in Minnesota there,
Mike Polad. He fingers the banjo right rather than just smothering it. Most banjo
players can't get the tone now. They used to make any banjo ring and get the tone.
It's supposed to cut through just like an E-flat clarinet.
So many things are changing in the music. You take
piano players, for instance. They're playing melody all the time, but they're supposed
to be playing chords. For a piano player I would take someone like Alton Purnell,
even though he was contrary. I think he got the music better because you could hear
the rhythm.
The bass is an important instrument in the band.
There were many good bass players here - Simon Marrero, Duck Ernest, and Chester
Zardis, who's the best one living. I play a little bass, you know, in one or two
keys. Not very much, one or two notes, that's all. But I like a bass. I always had
loved the bass, and I always said if I had to give up clarinet, you know, earlier,
bass would have been the instrument I would like to play. But now I wouldn't want
that toting. If I was to learn bass, I'd want to learn it the right way, I can tell
you that. There were a couple of kids on TV the other night playing bass; I wish
you could have heard them. They were playing on this great composer - high-class
music. It sounded good. I like classical music. When I started out that's all my
mother would hum, that's all she knew; she had heard French opera since she was 16,
and she liked the French opera, high-class music. She would hum a lot of the tunes
to me when I first started out on my fife.
George playing the real thing.
The bass is what I call a "feel" instrument.
You don't have no frets between the notes, so you feel for that note and you become
accustomed to it so that you know just where to put your fingers. It's the same with
the trombone; the trombone is a vamp instrument. Some of the trombone players here
don't get to the proper note, though. They're always a little bit out. And the majority
of them never play a note further than that much away from their lips, with the slide
in all the time. They're playing mostly with their lips, in other words. Well, the
trombone's got seven positions on it. You're supposed to go down and make that pedal
note. But very few go way down there now. Willie Cornish did, Yank Johnson did, old
man Joe Petit went far down. And many others. That's why they call it tailgate. They
never carried the melody, those old-timers. But now you hear a trombone carry the
melody and sing just the way Tommy Dorsey and them other trombone players did.
I played the other night with Earl Humphrey and
I was surprised. I mean, I'm not going above Jim Robinson's head when I say that
Earl plays a lot of trombone. He has ideas, you see. Now he is playing a real tailgate.
And he still could be very good, even today, because I noticed how he played the
other night. I would take him above Jim. Of course Jim can really play, fine tone,
but Jim plays the melody on his trombone. And Louis Nelson plays a good trombone,
but he plays nervous trombone, you know, on his out notes. That's because he never
come up playing this music. He came up playing big band music, you understand.
The trumpet should stay in the staff, not range
up high. Chris Kelly didn't make no high notes. He played in the range, stayed right
in there. Buddy Petit never ranged with the high notes, and he was the best trumpet
player I ever heard in New Orleans. I'd rather want a fellow stay in the staff than
go up high, because if I'm trying to play there and then he comes up, then you get
in one another's way. If the trumpet player stays in the range, and plays the melody,
and if he has got ideas too, then you have got a good trumpet player. Buddy Petit
had, and Bunk.
I played saxophone for about three or four years,
but I didn't say I liked it. The first saxophone I ever used was a C Melody. My father
bought it from some people he knew. It was brand new. I just got rid of another sax
a couple of years back. It was an alto. I didn't play tenor because I couldn't get
the right tone. Most saxophone players around here used to play clarinet, but when
they tried to get back to clarinet they couldn't get the embouchure right. Something
about the saxophone slow you down. I just stuck to my clarinet.
When I play music, I like to have people around,
especially people dancing, because then you don't think so much. It gives you a spirit
because someone is patting his feet, you see, and it gets your mind off what you
are doing. You want to do it right, but most of the time if you worry you do it wrong,
you see. You get too tense to play right.
I'll tell you something, I'm not reading music
when I play, and I imagine my fingers know what they're going to do before it gets
up here (pointing to his head). And the older I get, the more I pay attention to
what I'm doing. Sometimes, now, when I'm going to make a high note, I can tell beforehand
that I can't make it. I know when I feel that way, that I can't make it, and so I
don't try for it.
When I play clarinet, I like to go in and out from
high to low register, and from low to high. I could do that well. I know I ain't
the best, but that is what I could do. Because that's the beauty part of the clarinet,
you know, going from high to low, high to low. I like the low register. Of course,
the high register is fine too. It's the trill notes which appeal to some people's
hearing and it appeals to mine, too.
You should weave in and out, in variation, when
you play. And sometimes I stick to the lead, too, so the band will not get lost.
Carry some of the melody, variate some, play some of the melody and variate some
more, you see. That's the way I learned myself, and that's the way I play the music.
If you play for recording, my idea is, if you play
the tune three times - sometimes even five and six - you lose it. The musician will
lose an interest in that tune, you see. He ain't getting it, for some reason. So
forget about it. Go on to something else. Because the first time you play, in my
estimation, that numer is the best one. Now the big companies have - what do you
call that man? He's in there supervising, and you start playing, and he stop
you. And you start again, he stop you again. And then you sort of lose it.
That tune'll sound worse. Every time you play it, it'll sound worse and worse.
Now about my playing sharp sometimes, which some
critics say. Of course, some critics don't know sharp from flat, you know, don't
even know what they're hearing, but it's true I might overpower the horn sometime,
when I feel good. But you've got to tune to that piano, you see, and the piano is
according to the weather, especially in New Orleans. Or some of the strings of the
piano may be missing, and that puts the others out. So the more you pull out the
joints on the clarinet, or the more I use the tuning roller, the more air begins
to escape. The horn is getting flatter and flatter. The top notes or the bottom notes,
you can't get them all. So sometimes you have to be a little sharp, you see.
I always breath from the abdomen. You see the vein
come out on my forehead, but mostly I breathe from the abdomen. I have noticed that
if the drummer is pulling you, and you're playing so many notes, you start to feel
it right in the stomach, you feel a pain. Now they've got some fellows that blow
from the jaw (puffing out his cheeks) but I never could blow that way.
When I first started out I used to hold my lips
over my teath when I played, but now I don't do that because my lips would get sore,
very sore. I used to play the jitney dance at The Music Box at St. Charles and Canal,
where Rubenstein's Store is, and my lip would be bleeding all the time, so I learned
to catch the top of the mouthpiece with my teeth, and I would pucker the bottom lip
like that (lower lip projecting forward slightly). Eventually my bottom lip got a
groove on it where it became hard, you see.
Now, for tonguing, you should tongue the horn,
I tongue my horn, but don't ever make it pop. Sometimes I make it fuzz (indicating
a growling tone), I may do that, but I never pop a reed. I never liked that (slap
tonguing) I like a pure tone. What put me on playing a tone was, when I first started
playing clarinet, quite naturally you screech and squeak, you know. And the gentleman
who lived downstairs would call, "Hey, up them stairs there, who's got them
birds?". So I learned to blow softer on it, and I got a very good tone on it.
I didn't want anyone to hear me, so I blowed sort of soft, you see, with a stiff
reed, and that's where I got my tone. I play a different tone, although I say it
myself, from any clarinet player.
I use a Lavoe reed. It's supposed to be French.
Sometimes I get a Vibrator. But I always liked a stiff reed. Bill Russell bought
me a plastic reed once, and they were expensive then, but I never could use it. I
tried it but I just couldn't get the right tone. It was, well - did you ever hear
Paul Barnes? - not powerful enough. I don't like a plastic reed. Before I had my
teeth out in New York in '45 I used a No. 5 reed - as hard as plank. It was the hardest
you could get. In New York I had to get false teeth, and every year I was getting
older and I was losing strength. So then I went down to a No. 4, and 4's kind of
hard, it's all according to the grain of the wood. And now (1968) I'm using a 3,5
or a 3. I found out that just testing the reed doesn't mean that the reed is good;
you can pass it along your fingernail at the end to see if the reed is split, of
course.
When my daddy was living he tried to make a reed
for me out of a goat's horn. Couldn't play with it though. Couldn't get anything
out of it. He just took hold of the reed and saw how it was made, tried to make one
like it. He didn't play himself. None of my folks ever played music. I had one reed,
I'll tell you, on my first trip to Japan in 1963, which lasted for three months.
Never changed it. That was exceptional though. Normally they didn't last that long.
Then again, if you don't play regularly, you can't get the tone from a reed. They
get wet from saliva, and then it will get dry rot if you don't use it. I don't like
to scrape a reed because it gets too soft. I'd rather use a new reed. You've got
to get used to a new reed first, because the cane is sweet, and it makes you salivate.
Sometimes I trimmed a reed with a reed-cutter, or put a half dollar on the edge and
burn it up to rim. I've got a reed-cutter in the back somewhere, but they split the
reed too often. One out of two reeds they cut, and it ain't any good any more. For
me, I'd rather burn them. Before I start playing a job, I'll make a high G or whatever
note, and if I can't get it, then I'll pull my reed down to make the reed a little
stiffer. If I still can't get it then I'll change my reed.
The mouthpiece of the clarinet I'm going to use
tonight is a Selmer, and I have one in my case which is the mouthpiece belonging
to my old metal clarinet. I used to like to use a wide lay mouthpiece. With a wide
lay it makes a soft reed seem harder, and of course reeds get softer with use. If
you've got a close lay you can use a hard reed.
George Lewis' Selmer Albert system
clarinet.
I like a wood clarinet best, but once I used a
rubber one - hard rubber. And I got the same thing out of the rubber clarinet as
I did the wood. Now, about metal clarinets, a lot of fellows say the tone is different
from wooden ones, but I didn't find any difference in tone. I did Burgundy Street
Blues, the original Burgundy Street Blues we made for Bill Russell, with a metal
clarinet. It is at the Jazz Museum on Bourbon Street now, it was a "Harry Pedler"
make. The only way the tone is different is if the clarinet is a cheap one - wood
or metal. Of course, a metal clarinet won't crack like wood ones. The one I used
the other night cracked. They tell you if a clarinet don't crack it's no good. The
weather will crack it. I've had clarinets that split and I've gone on playing them
with sealing wax in them.
George Lewis' Pedler Albert system
metal clarinet.
When I was starting in New Orleans, all clarinetists
played Albert systems. All of them. I never saw a Boehm. Sometimes I played a Boehm
when I was younger, but I never did like it. I play an Albert system clarinet, a
French Selmer. I didn't like the tone of the Boehm system - it was too keen. If you
listen to the radio and you hear a clarinet you can tell it's a Boehm system because
the tone is so light, you know. It doesn't have the body. It's not as deep as the
Albert, but the Boehm system is faster. They're much heavier in weight, of course.
Boehms, they have more keys, more mechanical, and it helps you to make so many things
where with the Albert system you've got to do it with your tongue or with your fork
fingering, you see. (Demonstrates middle finger of left hand held down while all
others raised.)
The Boehm system is much easier to play. You see
kids playing them all the time in Mardi Gras parades, but the tone is not so good.
The speaker key on the Boehm is underneath, and you can find some Alberts like that,
too, but I don't like them because the moisture seeps in easily and it leaks. When
they make a clarinet, or any instrument, all those keys are supposed to be used.
But I've seen fellows here pull keys off, so they can close up that hole, but I never
do that, because I know it's for some use, and I do use it sometime.
For a final word of advice? If you like the clarinet,
or whatever instrument you play, keep on playing it, keep it up. Don't expect to
play it in one day, and don't expect to become popular in one year. In time you can
become popular. I consider myself as a beginner from the time I started till now.
The only thing is, I don't know how long this music is going to last.
