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Frankie Roberts Narrator

Carl Warmington

Interviewer

September 28, 1987 Leonard's Piano Store, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Frankie Roberts -FR Carl Warmington -CW CW: Frankie, tell me about your early music days back in Nebraska. FR: My first introduction to jazz music was, I believe, back in 1917, listening to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band on phonograph records. It wasn't a very good recording, but the clarinet stood out. The tune was "The Original Dixieland One-Step" with "The Livery Stable Blues" on the other side. I bought that record and listened to it and listened to it. I remember the musicians: Larry Shields on clarinet; LaRocco on cornet; Edwards on trombone; Ragas on piano; and Sbardaro on drums. Then they started putting out other records such as "Clarinet Marmalade," "Temptation," and "Lazy Daddy." About that time we organized a little band--a sort of Dixieland group--in Albion, Nebraska, my home town. We had bookings five or six nights a week in all the little towns around Albion. I played clarinet. Sometime after World War I, a minstrel show came through town--Uncle Sammy's Minstrels. In the band was a very fine saxophonist. So with the money I had saved, I bought myself a saxophone. Then I began to practice on my new horn. I used to practice out on the porch in the summertime, and drive all the neighbors crazy. I eventually got good enough to start playing professionally with other bands. I quit school in 1922--after starting the twelfth grade--to go with a road band. It was a good one, too! We played all over the Midwest--Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska--for about seven months. I also broadcast with that road band, in 1922, from a little ten-watt radio station in Hastings, Nebraska. I remember they started the program by hitting a gong. It was a popular station for the farmers. The piano player, from our band, and I would play a few tunes. This was the first time I had played on a radio station. In 1923, I joined Bill Ackerman's Band. This group played in a ballroom in Omaha, Nebraska, called the Rustic Gardens, and we did a weekly broadcast from radio station WOW in Omaha. That summer we played at the Roof Garden Ballroom in Sioux City, Iowa. Then we returned to Omaha. In the fall of 1924, I came to Minneapolis to play with a band at the Marigold Ballroom.

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CW: What was the name of that band? FR: Bill Ackerman's Band. CW: Were there two bands playing at that time? FR: Just one. We were there for about six months and then the New Orleans Rhythm Kings followed us. CW: What year was that? FR: That was 1925. CW: I remember that band. The local musicians really turned out to hear that group. FR: Oh, sure. Rappola played clarinet. I can't think of the trumpet player's name. CW: Was it Leon Prima? FR: Either Leon or Louis Prima. I can't think of the other names, but they were pretty good musicians--all from New Orleans, playing in the New Orleans style, of course. CW: How would you describe that style? FR: It was a little different sound and had a good beat. CW: When you were playing with the territory bands, would you describe it as ballad-style music? FR: Oh, no. We had some fast tunes. I tried to copy the New Orleans style and get a good sound on the horn. Much earlier in my career--1921--I revered a famous saxophone player named Rudy Wiedoeft. He had a beautiful tone and could single-tongue rapidly. I had learned many of the novelty songs he composed for the saxophone. After the Marigold in 1925, we played in a place out in Wayzata, Minnesota. It was on the "main drag." I don't know what became of that ballroom. Most of the guys stayed in cabins, but I stayed in town. This was when Bix and Trumbauer started coming out with their records--"Singing the Blues." Remember that chorus of Trumbauer's on "Singing the Blues" that he played with Bix? That's the tune that Doc Evans used to play. You know, Doc used to idolize Bix. I often listened to Bix's records and to Benny Goodman when he was recording with Ben Pollack. Later I heard Benny in person.

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When I left Wayzata, I began playing at the Radisson with a fellow by the name of Harry Johnson. We played concert music on Sundays up on the balcony and for dinner and dancing at night. CW: Did they call it the "Flame Room" then? FR: I'm not sure. I know they called it the Radisson Hotel. From there I went back to the Marigold with a new band. It was composed of some of the guys from the original Ackerman Band. We played at the Marigold for about six months. CW: Was Hal Runyon in the Marigold Band then? FR: No. I think Lindell Rhome was the trombone player at that time--he later became a music teacher in the public schools. We went to the Lowry Hotel in Saint Paul and made some recordings for Gennett. There were some other local bands making recordings at that time. CW: Do you have any of the records? FR: No, I guess they got lost in the shuffle. In the summer of 1928, I went to Estes Park, Colorado, and played with a college band. That fall I joined a band at a Lincoln, Nebraska, radio station--KFPB--which was a studio orchestra. I played there for a whole season. The people who owned the radio station also had an agency for Stinson airplanes. I think we did one of the very first airplane commercials. By that time I was playing pretty good jazz. We used to have jam sessions with the local boys around Lincoln. CW: Were you playing tenor or alto? FR: I played tenor, but some alto. Later on, we went east to Chicago and made some recordings for the Brunswick Company. I played alto and clarinet on some of those records. I came to Minneapolis in 1929 to join a local band. It was either come to Minneapolis or go with Blue Steels' band down in Saint Louis. At that time, I had two boys who were ready to start school, and I thought Minneapolis was the best place for them to go to school, so I took another job at the Marigold. I was happy about that. Then Red Norvo joined the band. CW: Didn't he front the band? FR: Yes, he stood up in front with his xylophone and used some unusual mallets to sock the xylophone. He still used this style with Goodman. CW: And he's still going strong.

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FR: Norvo is a great guy. He lived in an apartment next to me and we were together a lot. CW: Frankie, would you comment on the statement that Minneapolis and Saint Paul had a reputation as top music communities? FR: You mean for jazz? Yes. But I'm talking about a little later now. There was a band out at a nightclub called The Patio--we called it "El Patio." It was a good band with Lester Young playing tenor and Rook Gans, a fine trumpet player--really great. This was a top black band. I used to go out and listen to them when I could. After work I would drop into a place called Musician's Rest and also the Apex Club, where we could jam until the wee hours of the morning. CW: Tell us a little bit more about the Musician's Rest. FR: I used to go there and play. There was a pianist by the name of "Pop Eyes," and another was Frankie Hines. Rook Gans used to go there--he was a fine trumpeter who never got any recognition. Adolfus, a bass player, would also go there. He had kind of a sleeping sickness; he'd be playing on the bass and go to sleep and then wake up and start playing again. It was weird--he was also a good arranger. CW: The club was in an old Victorian house on Sixth Avenue North. FR: Yes. I always got a kick out of it. When I'd go in the door, someone would call out, "Frankie, did you bring your iron?" There were always lots of libations available, but it was quite a spot. CW: And the music would continue until daylight. FR: Yes. I don't know how my wife put up with it. I got my kicks going there, and I guess she realized that. CW: Let's talk a bit about improvisation, because the magic of the fine musicians of this period was their inventiveness. Can you describe your approach to improvisation? FR: Well, I think it is something that is inside you, in a way. I don't think it is something that you can really learn. I had a few pupils who came to me with the express purpose of learning to play jazz. I'd tell them to play just the melody of the tune. "Just play the melody. Now, do you hear any chords that go along with that melody?" This is what baffled them. They couldn't hear the chords. But that was the first thing that happened to me. I didn't listen to the lead as much as I listened to the chords. Great chords in the tune--that was the thing. CW: Some musicians described jazz as playing the chords.

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FR: Sure. I'd hear the chords in my ear. I actually had relative pitch; I didn't have perfect pitch, but I had relative pitch. CW: Tell about some of the big bands you heard in the 1930s at the Lowry and Nicollet hotels. FR: Well, I heard so many name bands. The bands I worked with were the summer replacement groups for the name bands. One I played with in 1931 was Bud Struck. He was nineteen years old, a handsome singer. At that time we just played luncheons and dinners. There was no dancing or night shift, so we could go out and job in the evening. CW: Did you play with Bud over on the University campus? FR: Yes. We used to go over there during Rush Week. Earlier, I had played with Fatso Palmer--that must have been in 1927. CW: Someone said that Fatso Palmer played the loudest horn in town. FR: I remember playing with Fatso and a piano player at a sorority house, and Gordy Bowen was playing next door. In fact, there were bands in several nearby houses blowing up a storm. It was unbelievable in those days. Now they don't have the bands at "rushing" any more. CW: You're describing Sorority Row on Tenth Avenue. You probably played at those houses after football games, too. FR: Yes. Those were the campus bands that thrived on improvisation. No music was used. You just followed the chords. You followed the melody in the back of your mind, but the chords were the most important. CW: Give me the names of some of the name bands that you heard and played with. FR: I played with George Osborne in 1930 at the Saint Paul Hotel. He was an innovative musician and a beautiful cello player. He had a great stone face, because he never smiled. He had the opening band at the Nicollet Hotel. CW: I recently purchased an LP [long play] record, "Twin City Shuffle," that is a reissue of several 1920s and 1930s Twin City bands. You are playing with Eddie Carlew on two tracks and pictured on the cover photograph with George Osborne. FR: I recall the tunes "Darktown Shuffle" and "Indiana Mud." I remember reading a review in the paper in which the producer was raving about a chorus I played on "Darktown Shuffle." It was a jazz style at that time to accent a lot of notes. Red Nichols used to do that--ta-da, ta-da, ta-dah-did-dah, da, da, da. That kind of stuff.

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CW: You recorded with several bands--Carlew and Osborne. Any others? FR: We also made some records at the Marigold. I'm not sure if Red Norvo was with us then. CW: In talking with Les Beigel in Seattle last week, I asked him about his favorite "front line" during his playing days. And he said Frankie Roberts, Hal Runyon and myself at Lindy's back in Minneapolis. FR: That was nice of him. We had a first-class band down there. It was actually a musicians' hangout. We would start at nine o'clock in the evening and go until four or five in the morning. You can't believe it, but the town was wide open then. There was a gambling place on the second floor called the Camel's Club and there were several nightclubs within the area. One of the basement spots was called the Paradise Club and it had a sewer-hole cover in the middle of the dance floor--real high class. Glenn Miller, Ben Pollack, and the Casa Loma musicians used to come in and listen to us. They liked our playing. It became a big-band musicians' hangout. Glenn Miller wanted me to join him in Boston. I couldn't see it. At that time, I was working at Lindy's from nine to four or five in the morning--played two shows a night besides--and doing six broadcasts a week at WCCO radio [Minneapolis]--three promoting Dinty Moore and three promoting Spam. And on top of that, I was playing the Palace Theater on weekends. The Palace Theater was only two doors from Lindy's so at a break I'd take my horns, run down the theater aisle, climb over the railing to the pit, and play the acts. CW: Frankie, tell me about the most memorable jam session you played. FR: This was when I was playing at Lindy's. Glenn Miller was playing with his band at the Nicollet. He and the other musicians would stop in after closing the Nicollet Terrace Room. One night he suggested that he would like to set up a jam session. Benny Pollack had just brought his band to town, so Glenn asked Benny to play drums and got Big Swede, the Pollack pianist, Les Beigel, our trumpeter, and myself. We went down to a place on the South Side and had a great session. Oh, how I wish we had taped it. Such a remarkable combination of musicians--the tops at that period of jazz. CW: Do you remember what union scale was in those days? FR: I don't remember because the Lindy's Band was a cooperative band. The union frowned on that, you know. Each guy in the band had his duties to perform. One guy was to get the fellows up on the stand, and one guy was to collect the money and split it up. CW: Did you have tips to share?

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FR: Not there, but when I was playing with Osborne in Saint Paul, I used to go several times a week, after hours, to a place called the Green Lantern. It was a gangster hangout. Chicago gangsters would hang out in Saint Paul and this was their favorite nightclub. One night a guy came in with a sawed-off shotgun and sat there watching the door all night. Well, believe me; I was ready to jump over the piano if he raised that shotgun. That was a place where we played strictly for tips. We used to get some pretty big tips, too, but they were tough mugs. That's when [John] Dillinger was hiding out in Saint Paul. One night we were playing at Lindy's when--bang!--at twelve o'clock the club closed. That's when Hubert Humphrey became mayor of Minneapolis. CW: Did you ever play the Coliseum in Saint Paul? FR: No, but I played in the Boulevards of Paris next door with Nev Simons and I played there with Norvy Mulligan--do you remember him? The Saint Paul ball park was just behind the Boulevards. CW: Do you remember Johnny Lane, who was manager of the Coliseum? FR: Oh, yes. CW: I remember this short, roly-poly fellow who came up to the bandstand one night and said to the leader, "How about playing at 122?" The leader nodded and the drummer picked up the tempo a bit. I suppose Johnny was referring to the metronome count. FR: Johnny Lane's continual request was for "My Melancholy Baby." He would frequently get out on the floor and dance. The Coliseum was well managed. CW: Did you ever play with any of the campus bands when they were augmented to play for the Junior Prom or Military Ball? When they would have two bands and conduct a "battle of music" with continuous music? FR: Yes, I played several times at the Student Union. I don't remember any "battle of music," but I played several of the fancy student balls. I did play with two bands at the Marigold. Some of the nice work I did was on a Hormel show called "Swing with Strings." It was with a great big orchestra, and it went over the Columbia Network. We got two singers from Chicago to sing with the band. I also did some network shows with the Andrews Sisters, the Gary Moore Show, Jimmy Durante, Arthur Godfrey and LaRosa, Dinah Shore, and many others. CW: Where were you playing when the banks closed and the Depression started? FR: Well, I was playing with Norvy Mulligan at the Minneapolis Athletic Club. We also had an hour radio show, six days a week, called "Noon Highlights." On top of that, we had three or four jobbing dates a week. Everything was going fine. The day of the bank moratorium, my bank closed and all I could get were certificates--no cash. Just a week or

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two later, the radio program folded. Then the Athletic Club job ended, and jobbing started to fall off. The Depression had really hit me. CW: How about some of the other musicians? What happened to the Minnesota Theater Orchestra musicians? FR: They kept playing for a short time, but soon got their notice, because people couldn't afford to go to the Minnesota Theater. Entertainment was the first to be hit when the Depression came along, and the musicians suffered. It was several years before the unemployed musicians were saved by the WPA [Works Progress Administration] artists program. A lot of the fellows went WPA--musicians, artists, and writers--but I was stubborn and I said I was going to ride it out and be a big hero. And I paid for it. CW: How did you get by? FR: It was tough. Weeks without income. Finally, I got a nightclub job. It was a nice spot but the place folded after a couple of weeks. We only got paid fifteen cents on the dollar. I did play two summers at the Excelsior Amusement Park and alternated with the Wildwood Park at White Bear Lake in Saint Paul. I did that for two seasons, but during the winter there were many weeks with no jobs. I remember I was hired for a nightclub run by some of the Minneapolis Millers ball players, and very soon, it was closed. I recall getting some pay in liquor. [Laughs] CW: Did you do any teaching? FR: No, I didn't. But I did get a job with another nightclub that had a short life. It was called "The Galleries," and it was above the State Theater. Gordy Bowen had the band. The business was pitiful. Doug Nash, our guitar player, got the idea of inviting all his friends to come and drink and charge it to his tab. Then they paid him in cash. CW: How's your scrapbook? FR: Terrible. I had autographed pictures of many of the famous. I played at Club Carnival and many of the acts came right out of Las Vegas. All the greats appeared--Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, and Louis Armstrong. Although we didn't play for Armstrong's All Stars, we could sit and listen. Jack Teagarden was an old friend from the Ben Pollack days. CW: Tell me about some of the most unforgettable characters you met. FR: There were so many of them. CW: Describe one of the humorous incidents.

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FR: Do you remember Jake Heidrich, a violinist who played with the symphony? We were playing a WCCO program for Hormel's Dinty Moore. We played the first tune and we always featured Jake on the fiddle. The first tune was a fast one, and Jake was supposed to play the bridge to "I Surrender Dear." There was a long pause and then Jake threw his violin at the announcer. It was a terribly embarrassing thing. Hormel was a great sponsor of musical shows, and Jake Heidrich was the leader of the Hormel Show. One time, he had us dressed in Mexican costumes to feature Hormel's Chili. In the middle of a tune, Jake forgot his part, but he was a fast thinker, and he remembered to drop his Mexican hat over his eyes. CW: I've asked the other musicians to comment on drugs and alcohol with musicians back in the 1920s and 1930s. FR: Back in the late 1920s and early 30s, there was a lot of marijuana. CW: How about the other musicians? FR: I don't know. I tried it in Denver a few times. It didn't help my playing; it just slowed my mind way down. It was weird. It scared me. I didn't like it. Some of the guys liked it. But I thought a couple of drinks relaxed you. CW: Can you remember going to the Musician's Club and asking the club bootlegger for an EB? (A half-pint bottle of moonshine) FR: Oh, sure. That was the thing. Those were spiked beer days, too. CW: Describe how you prepared spiked beer. FR: You'd take a drink out of a bottle of near-beer, replace it with grain alcohol, put your thumb on the mouth of the bottle, and shake it up and down. There was a club fighter in Saint Paul called Honey Boy Conroy, who would get his handler to give him a bottle between rounds--supposedly it was water, but he had his drink of alcohol-spiked near-beer. Even after Prohibition was repealed, there were drinkers who continued to drink spiked beer. They had acquired the taste. In Estes Park, we used to make home brew. Out in the Park, spiked beer would really get to you because of the altitude. In fact, after the job one night, we were shooting craps and I got a nose bleed. The air was pretty thin up there, right at the top of the mountains. CW: That must have been a wonderful summer. FR: Oh, it was beautiful. I spent two summers out there. It saved my little kid's life. He was real sickly, but in Colorado he would be out in the sun, and when the summer was over, he was another boy.

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CW: Tell me, when did you wind up your musical career? FR: Well, let's see. I played the Club Carnival and before that I played the Radisson for two seasons. Liberace was one of the attractions. He was a nice guy, and he treated the band well. At Christmas time, he invited us to his room and treated us to sandwiches and eggnog. At Easter, he fixed Easter baskets with his picture and piano logo. He was really a nice fellow. And he was sure smart where money was concerned. We just played background organ chords for him. The second time he came, his brother George, a violinist, came with him, and he shipped this big German piano with him. Liberace was a big attraction at the Radisson, especially the second time. You asked me what I did toward the end of my playing days. I played with small groups at Curley's nightclub, mostly three-piece groups. This gave me a chance to really play with guy, who had a stage bar band down at the Nicollet in the Jolly Miller, remember that? CW: Yes. Isn't it a shame that the Nicollet is now boarded up? FR: Remember Art Van Damm? I thought he was great. He had some fine ideas. I got to know Jimmy Dorsey very well, too. He came to my house several times to listen to records and have lunch. He was looking for a tenor man, so I told him about Herbie Haymer and he hired him. Herbie played a fabulous tenor. He played with Red Norvo's band. CW: Didn't Jimmy Dorsey play an Albert system clarinet? FR: Yes. And he said he liked to play in sharps, too. That was strange, because the Albert system had roller keys and you had to clamp down on both sides. CW: You played a Boehm system. FR: I started out with the Albert system and switched to Boehm, which was quite a hassle, but I knew it was the best system to play. I took some lessons from a teacher in Lincoln, Nebraska. He played with some of the big concert bands and he gave me some great tips. CW: Do you still have your instruments? FR: My son has my clarinet. He lives out in Edina, Minnesota. He's going to make a lamp stand out of it. They tell me it makes a great lamp stand. [Laughs] George Barton made a lamp out of his clarinet. CW: I played with George Barton back in 1924 with the Juvenile Follies.

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FR: I played with George Barton at the State Fair. We had a saxophone quartet like the Brown Brothers of vaudeville fame. Do you remember them? We played between the Horticulture and Agriculture buildings, from nine to five, and only took an hour out for lunch. Imagine that! On Friday we took off to see the Thrill Day. That was when the stunt man, who jumped out of the airplane for a free fall, killed himself. The fellow who picked out the Thrill Day acts told me about it. The stunt man had already made out his will. It was a spectacular way to go out, for he dropped 10,000 feet and let out a sack of flour to make a streak. He landed in the infield so we didn't see the hit. Imagine people walking over to see the remains. This was my Thrill Day with George. I played with George Barton at the Lowry Hotel one summer. They hired Johnny [Scat] Davis to front the band. He was a great entertainer. He played great trumpet, too. We used to spend time together. CW: Did you play with bands at Mendota? FR: Yes. Doc Evans was playing trumpet; Don Thompson, trombone; Red Dougherty, leader, piano; Bob Bass, drums; and myself. I can't remember if we had a bass. CW: Did you ever play with Red Maddox? FR: Yes. Red was a real character, a great guy. CW: Can you remember an interesting episode involving Red Dougherty? FR: It was one Monday night at Mendota, and I wasn't there. But they had a room down in the basement at the Club. Anyway, some guy got out of line down there and was going to beat up everybody, but he picked the wrong guy. Red was a fighter, you know, who had boxing experience. Well, Red clipped him and knocked him out. And the same thing happened at the Musician's Club one night. There was a fellow by the name of Hesselgrave who played xylophone and maybe a little drums. He started pestering some of the wives of the guys up there and giving them a bad time. Red was there and couldn't take it any longer. So Red let Hesselgrave have one and he just flattened him. Then Hesselgrave sued Red. I went to the trial. It was an early morning court session down at the City Hall. Several of the musicians testified for Red. Hesslegrave had no one to testify for him, so the judge said, "Case dismissed. No case." In the meantime, there was a guy by the name of Don Poliod, a saxophone player. He came into court wearing a tuxedo. He had been in jail over the weekend. The judge said, "Ten days or ten dollars." The poor fellow was still in his tuxedo. CW: Recently, I heard Red Maddox playing with the Prairie Home Companion program band on PBS [Public Broadcasting System] and he's still getting laughs. FR: Oh, Butch Thompson plays piano on that program.

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CW: Frankie, tell me about some of the society bands that you played with. FR: Well, I played with Jimmy Robb. He had a good little band. Later on I played with Hal MacIntyre and when Hal quit, Orv Flemming took over the management of the band, and then Jerry Mulaney assumed the leadership and finished off Flemming's bookings. I thought that was great work, because the people treated us so nice. CW: Where did you play--private homes or clubs? FR: Both. We played in private homes like the Heffelfinger’s and Pillsbury’s--those big homes out at Lake Minnetonka. We also played the Woodhill Club. What they used to do--before we started to play--was have a waitress come and take the orders for drinks for the whole evening. If someone wanted bourbon, or scotch, after every set we played, she would come up with twelve drinks for the band. Sometimes I'd wind up the night with four or five drinks. When I played with Hal MacIntyre, he insisted that the band be served the same food as the guests. CW: You didn't eat in the kitchen? FR: No. We ate in a separate room. We took part of the band to eat while the rest of the band played, so they had continuous music, and we got all the fancy food that the guests ate. One night they served us sandwiches but Hal just about flipped. He spoke up and said, "The band is supposed to have the same food that the guests do!" Pretty soon they took the sandwiches out and then came the fine food. You know, Hal stuttered. He would call me up and say "Frank----come----prepared---for---a---lot--of---drinks." CW: This is a good note to end on. Thank you, Mr. Roberts, for your remarkable memory of your musical days with Twin City bands.

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