One
of the city's greatest jazz treasures
won a little recognition late in life: On
a Sunday in September, 1987, Marshal
Royal, the alto saxophonist, was given an
award from the L.A. Jazz Society for a
lifetime of musical achievement.
He
received the honor at a ceremonial
concert at the Hyatt Regency downtown,
when the society bestowed its principal
annual tribute on bassist Red Callender,
whose autobiography, "Unfinished
Dream," has recently been published
by Quartet Books.
But
they hadn't written the book yet on
Royal, who was turning 75 that year, and
when they did, it was no easy job because
was a behind-the-scenes stalwart, a
yeoman in the trenches who never had his
own band.
"I
never wanted a band," said Royal,
who was remembered by local big-band
followers as the lead alto player in Bill
Berry's L.A. Band and by jazz lovers
everywhere as Count Basie's lead alto
player for 18 years.
"I'd
teach guys, and I'd work as a helper or
instructor or whatever it was and be
assigned by the leader to show somebody
what was happening. I don't like to be
bothered with people's problems. You
always have that in bands. As a leader,
you have to look after people that don't
know how to act, a lot of times."
It
doesn't sound like he does much,
the way Royal puts it. But when he's in
the sax section with his trusty old Conn,
he can make the whole band sound and
swing like Duke Ellington. And he has a
few other talents besides blowing his
horn.
For
instance, let's say you're Mel Brooks and
you think it would be a funny scene in a
movie if the hero is riding along through
the desert and suddenly comes across the
entire Count Basie band blowing
"April in Paris," as in
"Blazing Saddles." The man you
would get as music contractor is Marshal
Royal.
It
was Marshal Royal who helped Lionel
Hampton form his first big band in 1941,
recommending Dexter Gordon for the tenor
chair. And it was Marshal Royal who
helped put
together the resurgent Basie band of the
early 1950s, with Lucky Thompson and
Wardell Gray on tenors, and became its
musical director or burgomaster as he was
called.
Royal
was born on the road,
in Sapulpa, Okla., when his family was
passing through on the way to Los
Angeles. His mother, his father and his
uncle had a pre-World War I group called
the Royal Family Orchestra. In 1925,
young Marshal joined up on violin.
"I
know every place that ever opened here in
Los Angeles, from 1926 or so," he
said. "This place they're trying to
reconstruct on Central Avenue called the
Dunbar Hotel, I used to cross that vacant
lot going to junior high school.
"During
those days, blacks weren't allowed or
welcomed into other places in the city.
This was the first hotel that was ever
built in Los Angeles as a first class
hotel for blacks. Duke Ellington stayed
there when he came here in 1930 for the
first time to do a picture called
"Check and Double Check," with
Amos and Andy.
"I
played violin and saxophone in that
picture, and that's when I first met
Ellington, since I was working next door
to the Dunbar, in a nightclub that later
became the Club Alabam. It was then the
Apex club, owned by Curtis Mosby."
Royal
worked in Curtis Mosby's band, and
then landed a gig at age 18 with Les
Hite's band at Frank Sebastian's Cotton
Club, a huge place on Washington
Boulevard in Culver City that seated
1,200. There he got to know Fats Waller.
Waller
would front that band when he got to
town, and Lionel Hampton was in it,
playing drums. So after Hite broke up in
the late 1930s, Royal and his brother
Ernie, a trumpet phenomenon, joined Hamp
in New York.
"I
was the guy that formed that band for
Lionel Hampton, and my first wife, Evelyn
Myers, was the first vocalist in the
band.
"He
really intended to have seventeen pieces
playing whole note harmonies while he
played his vibraphones," Royal
recounts in his autobiography. "I
don't think anybody would have stood for
that, but he might have had some success.
I rehearsed that band for him down at my
old stomping ground, the Club Alabam,
while he stood over to the side and
watched.
Royal
on duty with a big band
during a tribute to his
departed friend Nat Pierce at the
Musician's Union hall on
Vine Street.
"When
we first started out, Lionel hardly had
any book at all. He came into the band
business with just some take-offs on
things he had done with Benny Goodman.
He
was sextet minded. Sometimes the sextet
within the new group would play for 15 or
20 minutes before the band ever came in.
"The
first week that we started rehearsing,
his repertoire was sterile, just nothing.
I introduced him to a fellow
we called the Fox, whose real name was
George Williams. The Fox worked day and
night for five days making arrangements,
and just like that, we had a book."
The
band lost a tenorman to bad whisky and
mean women on the way home from a date in
Vancouver.
"We
decided to try Dexter Gordon as his
replacement on tenor. Dexter's father was
my doctor and a personal friend of the
family. Besides that, my brother and
Dexter had gone to Jefferson High School
at the same time and they knew each
other.
"The
other tenor player was Illinois Jacquet.
This little fellow from Louisiana proved
to be an influential member of the band.
He had a vivacious personality and his
tenor saxophone voice was an important
part of the hot playing.
"
'Flying Home' was one of the numbers on
which we didn't have a written
arrangement. We usually started out with
the six-piece jam band ...(and) we might
play five, ten, even fifteen minutes
before the band ever came back in.
"But
when we recorded the number, it had to be
condensed down to fit the three minute
time limit on ten- inch records. It was
Jacquet's exciting solo on the tune which
made this a hit record for us. I think it
actually was our first big hit record.
"We
were recording in a studio which was high
up on the 34th floor of a building in
downtown Manhattan. Through the windows,
we could see New York's harbor, where all
the big ships were docked. While we
watched, the Normandie, a famed passenger
ship of that time, burst into flames and
we saw it burning.
"In
between doing takes on 'Flying Home' and
looking out the window, this important
passenger ship turned over on the side in
the harbor. The firemen had poured so
much water on it that the ship lost
balance!
Royal
left Hamp after a managerial contretemps
and joined the Navy, where he played in a
couple of bands, and settled in Los
Angeles to play the clubs with the
Central Avenue cats or the fast guys from
the studios. But after a while, he got
restless.
"Count
Basie called me to join him toward the
end of 1950. I only intended to stay out
for three or four months, but ended up
staying with him for 20 years. At the
time, Count had an exciting seven-piece
group including Clark Terry on trumpet.
Wardell Gray was the third horn.
There
was also the perennial Freddie
Green on guitar. Freddie had
been with Basie since the Lord formed the
world... from 1937 until he died just a
couple of years ago. He never played
electric guitar, always just straight
acoustic guitar and he was the best that
ever did it...."
You'll
have to go to Royal's book for his pithy
thumbnails of the rest of the Basie guys,
Jimmy Lewis, the bass player, Lucky
Thompson and Wardell Gray
("Twisted") on tenor saxes;
Charlie Fowlkes, baritone; Ernie Wilkins,
alto, Al Porcino, trumpet; Matthew Gee,
trombone; Sonny Payne, drums; Paul
Quinichette, tenor; Al Grey, trombone;
Joe Williams, vocals; Frank Foster and
Frank Wess, saxophones, Thad Jones,
trumpet; Quincy Jones, Billy Byers, Nat
Pierce and Neal Heft, arrangers.. most of
the great mid-century jazz talents came
aboard at one time or another.
Joe
Williams and Count Basie
turned out to be a terrific combination,
with a string of big sellers. Next time
we came into Birdland in New York, we
were all the rage. The Birdland ads would
simply read "Basie's Back,"
with no name, just the address of
Birdland under it. That was enough.
The
whole town came to hear us. Fancy
automobiles would be parked three deep,
Cadillacs, Mercedes, Rolls Royces and
what have you parked for the whole
block between 52nd and 53rd Streets.
I
rehearsed that band, took some things out
and put them together, made them more
playable and successful. That was my job.
Being with a big band was my meat, what I
enjoyed playing the most then and still
do.
It
happened very gradually that Count had
come to lean on me. It was just that I'd
be there. We'd run into something and
he'd say, "Hey, Marshal, what can we
do over here? What's wrong over
there?"
"The
fellows in the band called Basie
"the Chief" and
I was called 'the Burgermeister' because I
was the music director, in charge of a
whole lot of the rehearsing of that 1950s
band.
I
left Basie in January of 1970 within a
few days of being with the band for
twenty years. I stuck with this band over
the years that we were really scuffling,
trying to make it, over the rough
periods. And I watched it become a
success. Count and I worked together and
I can't say that we every really had an
argument over the entire twenty years."
Marshal
Royal never wanted his own band.
Royal
off duty during an
intermission at the John
Anson Ford amphitheatre,
where he was playing with a
big band, the Capp-Pierce
Juggernaut.
