Mutt Carey talks

From The Frog Blues and Jazz Annual No.2 copyright 2011 published 2012

PAPA MUTT CAREY

I was he youngest of seventeen children in my family. You know my brother Jack had the Crescent Band in those days and was a pretty good trombone man, as was my brother John, and my brother Milton, Pete and myself played the trumpet.
  I was 22 when I started playing the trumpet. Lots of boys had a headstart on me because they began playing earlier but I caught up with them. You see, I first learned the drums but got tired of packing those drums around, so I switched over to the trumpet. My brother Pete gave me my first lessons on the horn. Later John taught me also.
  I got my first job with Jack’s Crescent Band in 1912. They had a lot of good bands in those days and a lot of fine musicians playing with them. I played with almost all of them during my years in New Orleans.
  There was Frankie Dusen’s Eagle Band which had Pops Foster on bass, Louis Keppard on guitar, Sidney Vigne on clarinet, Ed Robinson on drums and Dusen on the trombone when I played with them.
  Baby Wrigley had the Tuxedo Band which I also played with. Let me see, Ezebe Lenaris played clarinet, Tom Benton was on guitar, Ernest Tripani was the drummer and Baby played the trombone.

  I played with Kid Ory’s Band too. You know ’Montudie’ Garland played with him then too.

   Jimmy Brown had the Superior Band and I played with them. I played with Joe Oliver, in a brass band too. Old Joe could really play his horn.
  In my brother Jack’s band Sidney Bechet was playing the clarinet and Jim Johnson was the bass. Charles Monroe was the guitarist and Ernest Rodgers played drums. Then there were my brother Jack and I.
  I played in Storyville joints. My first job was in Billy Phillips’ place. We played anything we pleased in that joint; you see, there was no class in those places. All they wanted was continous music. Man, they had some rough places in Storyville in those days. A guy would see everything in those joints and it was all dirty. It was really a hell of a place to work.
  Fred Washington, Jimmy Noone, Frankie Dusen, Joe Lindsey, Paul Dominuess and I played in a joint called Jim Tom’s Place. I also played at Pete Lala’s and the 101 Ranch. Kid Ory was in the band with us at the 101 ranch.
  In 1917, I went on the road with a show called Mack’s Merrymakers of Mirth. These comedians Mack and Mack were the stars of that revue and the band had Johnny Dodds, Steve Lewis on piano, Max Hill on drums and myself. We travelled all over the South in Florida, Mississippi, and up in Georgia and paid our own expenses. We had a lot of fun though.
  As soon as the road tour ended, I was called up to Chicago to open at the Dreamland Cafe. Joe Oliver was doubling over at the Royal Garden and the Dreamland and asked me to take over at the Dreamland because he wanted to give up one job. We had a fine band there with Lawrence Dubs on clarinet, Lil Hardin, Wellman Braud, Minor Hall, Roy Palmer the trombonist and Jimmy Pollard on sax. We remained there sbout a year.
  I left Chicago i 1918 and came back to New Orleans and played with Wade Whaley at Dubois place in West End. You know that was jus t like the Storyville places only with a little more class. In 1919 I left New Orleans. You see, lots of the old boys had left and had begun to make names for themselves up north. But instead of going back to Chicago I went to Los Angeles with Wade Whaley to join Kid Ory.
  From 1919 until 1942 I played in and around Los Angeles with my own band and with Kid Ory’s band. You might say that I played in all the swellest places out there at one time or another like the Biltmore Hotel, Jack Denpsey’s place, the Ambassador Hotel and all the big night spots. I also had just about every Los Angeles boy who later made good working for me at some time. Les Hite and Lionel Hampton both played with me.

Papa Mutt Carey on other early New Orleans trumpet players

  Who was the greatest trumpet player in Jazz? Louis Armstrong… there’s no question there! Louis played from his heart and soul, and he did that for everything. I remember once when Louis came out to Lincoln Park in New Orleans to listen to the Kid Ory band. I was playing trumpet with the Kid then and I let Louis sit in on my chair; Now at that time I was the ”Blues King” of New Orleans, and when Louis played that day he played more blues that I ever heard in my life. It never did strike my mind that blues could be interpreted so many different ways. Every time he played a chorus it was different.
  In New Orleans all the bioys came up the hard way. The musicianship was a little poor; You see, the average boy tried to learn by himself because there were either no teachers or they couldn’t afford music lessons. John Robichaux’s Band, the Tuxedo Band and the Superior Band lived strictly up to music but they were about the only ones in New Orleans to do so. Joe Oliver had a few numbers that were on sheets of music, but the got away from it as quickly as he could. You see, Joe was no great reader. Joe Oliver was very strong. He was the greatest freak trumpet player I ever knew. He did most of his playing with cups, glasses, buckets and mutes. He was the best gutbucket man I ever heard. I called him freak because the sounds he made were not made by the valves but through these artificial devices. In contrast, Louis played everything through the horn.
  Joe and I were the first ones to introduce these mutes and things. We were both freak trumpet men. Some writers claimed I was the first one to use mutes and buckets, but it wasn’t so. I got to give Joe Oliver credit for introducing them. Joe could make his horn sound like a holy roller meeting; God, what that man could do with his horn! Joe’s band followed me into San Francisco and it didn’t go over because I had come there first with cups and buckets  and the people thought Joe was imitating me. Joe and I used to get a kick out of that whenever we talked about it. He sure got his laughs about it.
  I’ll tell you something about Joe’s records. I haven’t heard a single one that comes close to sounding like Joe’s playing in person. I don’t know what it was but I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t believe that it is Joe playing on the records sometimes. It never has sounded to me much like Joe.
  Now at one time, Freddie Keppard had New Orleans all sewed up. He was the king…yes, he wore the crown. Then Louis got in and killed the whole bunch of them. Freddie really used to play good. He could have been as big as Louis, since he had the first chance to make records, but he didn’t want to do it because he was afraid that other musicians would steal his stuff.*
  When Freddie got on the street, it was the king on the street, Louis will tell you that. Keppard was the first man I ran into in a band battle, and it was just my hard luck to run into the king. We had a big audience on the street. It was on Howard and Villare Streets in New Orleans. The crowd knew I was a younger musician and they gave me a big hand mostly to encourage me. It certainly was an experience for me I’ll never forget. Freddie had a lot of ideas and a big tone too. When he hit a note you knew it was hit. I mean, he had a beautiful tone and he played with so much feeling too. Yes, he had everything; he was ready in every respect. Keppard could play any kind of song good. Technique, attack, tone, and ideas were all there. He didn’t have very much formal musical education but he sure was a natural musician. All you had  to do was play a number for him once and he had it…he was a natural! When Freddie got to playing he’d get devilish sometimes and he’d ”neigh” on the trumpet like a horse, but he was no freak man like Joe Oliver. Freddie was a trumpet player anyway you’d grab him. He could play sweet and then he could play hot. He’d play sweet sometimes and the turn around and knock the socks off you with something hot.
  Then there was another good trumpet man in New Orleans. His name was Manuel Perez. Manuel Perez was a good musician as well as a fine trumpet man. He was a better musician than Joe or Freddie. Perez couldn’t fit into any kind of a musical outfit. Perez was powerful, and he stuck mostly to the legitimate side of the horn. He never was a hot man and he never professed to be one. His attack was great and he hit the notes just as they should be played.
  Now Buddy Petit was a boy who had the ideas like Louis but he let the liquor get the best of him. He never was as powerful as Louis but he sure had ideas and feeling. He was no high note man either. He used to say ”Why make the note way up there when you could make it down in the middle register?”  Buddy always had a way of getting out of a hole when he was improvising.
  Of course, Bunk Johnson deserves credit for what he used to do. He had marvellous ideas and I used to like to hear him play. He wasn’t quite the drive man that Joe and Freddie were, however. He always stayed behind the beat instead of getting out there in the lead like those other men. Bunk was good and he was solid when he was playing. Bunk had plenty of competition on his way up and he never was the king down there.
When you come right down to it, the man who started the big noise in jazz was Buddy Bolden. Yes, he was a powerful trumpet player and a good one too. I didn’t have a chance to hear him too much but I sure heard a lot about him. I guess he deserves credit for starting it all.

Edited from Papa Mutt Carey by Cy Shain, Jazz Music, Vol 3, No 1, 1945 and New Orleans Trumpet Players by Mutt Carey, Jazz Music, Vol 3, No 4