My name is Monk Rowe and we are on the Hamilton College campus for the Jazz Archive, filming
today.
And I'm very pleased to have Mr. Leo Rayhill, Class of '49, as my guest.
LR: I'm delighted to be here.
You've done such a wonderful job with the Archives, it's unreal.
MR: Well you know Milt Fillius, who founded this whole thing, he used to get a little
aggravated at me because he said you know you've got the job I wanted.
He really did give me a great gig so to speak.
I've been curious about your lifelong love of jazz.
And the little bit I was able to read, it sounds like you were hearing it at a young
age in Utica?
LR: Yes.
My dad had a wonderful operation on Catherine Street and right in back of his building was
a bar owned and operated by a lovely man who loved jazz and he would play it, you'd hear
it all day long and all night.
And when I got a chance, I was very young, I'd go over there and sit on the steps and
he'd put his arm around me and we'd listen to the music on into the night.
It was a lovely black man who really loved the music.
He knew the music and he loved it.
MR: Would he play big band music or mostly combo?
LR: He played big band, played a lot of piano, he loved Meade Lux Lewis and he loved James
P. Johnson and Albert Ammons, that type of music.
Pete Johnson he loved.
And he was instrumental in bringing some of those men to Utica.
And Tommy Joy took over, really from him, and Tommy brought in Count Basie.
See Utica was ideal because it was a stop off place for these people on the way from
New York to Chicago.
And Art Hodes would play here, and I mentioned Albert Ammons, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller
was at Tommy Joy's here.
It was wonderful.
I always remember when Tommy died and he had left such a legacy of great music to all of
us, that I went with my dad and a couple of people and tried to get Tommy Joy's open,
and it wasn't the same.
You can't go home again.
And my dad said as we walked out of Tommy Joy's, he said, "To Tommy the music was everything."
And it just wasn't the same.
MR: Well did your father like the music also?
LR: Oh yes.
He was into - he was a piano player.
He sold pianos at Kemp Brothers in Utica on Genesee Street.
And when he met my mother my mother was then the record counter at Kemp Brothers, so that's
how they met and married and he was great.
He was always bringing records home and encouraging me to play the piano, and it was a lot of
fun.
MR: Why would they have had a piano in the record department?
Was it to demonstrate the songs?
LR: They sold pianos and records.
MR: Okay.
I see.
LR: And dad would sell the pianos and my mother would sell the records.
MR: Oh that's neat.
LR: Yeah it was her family that owned the store.
It was just a nice old-fashioned friendly store where you could listen and pick out
the records and listen to them.
It was wonderful.
MR: Do you recall if jazz and popular music were different back then or were they one
and same.
LR: Well to me it was one and the same there for a good period.
It was a wonderful period, it really was, because there were people like Harry James
who would go and play the very popular stuff and play some roaring jazz, oh, outstanding
jazz, and he brought great men with him.
And then all those wonderful musicians of that time, their music really was popular.
They sold a lot of records and it was a great time for people because that was what was
being played on the radio.
MR: Yeah.
And so much of it was instrumental, which we don't have too much of that anymore.
LR: No you don't at all.
And Les Hite, there was - the quality of the music came first which is great.
MR: Yeah.
There's a lot to be said for that.
What was the - you went to UFA.
LR: Yes.
MR: And graduated in - LR: '45.
MR: '45.
Did your friends that you hung out with, did they like the same kind of music you did?
LR: Yes they did.
I was very lucky.
We went to everything.
The Stanley Theater was the golden spot here for having big bands.
I always felt people who saved the Stanley Theater here are golden people who are wonderful.
They brought Buddy Rich back years after the big band era was gone, and he played and I
don't think there was another spot in the country that would have had a sellout, but
the Stanley Theater, they were standing up and it was just so great, and Buddy was so
good.
He was - I did an interview with him at the Stanley Theater and he came out in a pair
of - in his dressing room - of black shorts and said, "Sit down, make yourself comfortable"
and he talked about just everything that had to do with his band.
He loved his band.
And when he was so sick at the end his only thoughts were not of himself but to keep the
band going.
And Mel Torme tried to keep the band going there for a while and he had some good - but
his, really right from the beginning, when he had the band in the middle forties, were
good arrangers.
He had wonderful arrangers.
He'd pay a lot of money.
He learned that from Harry James.
Buddy played with Harry for a long time and Harry paid Buddy more money as a sideman than
Harry made himself.
And it was so interesting because he thought that was the big thing, to get the quality
out front and Buddy was great.
MR: Sometimes the arrangers were sort of the unsung heroes of that era.
LR: Yeah.
There were some wonderful ones.
MR: Yeah.
Fletcher Henderson and all those folks.
LR: Oh yeah.
There was one, there's a legend of a big band arranger who had made a wonderful new arrangement
for Harry James.
And Harry and Count Basie were big time friends.
And Harry says, "I want you to come and hear my band," when the Count had a night off.
So he comes and he listens to this arrangement, and it's by Jimmy Mundy, the arranger, and
it was the same one that he sold Count Basie.
It was very funny.
MR: That's a good story.
LR: Harry was a great talent.
My favorite story is the great James raid when Duke Ellington stole Harry's three best
men.
And they were interviewing them for Down Beat, they were interviewing Harry and said, "You
must hate Duke Ellington after what he did to your band."
"No," he says, "he had good talent for finding good people - he took my three best."
MR: You have to give him credit for that.
You know locally Jack Palmer played with Harry for quite a long time.
LR: Yes.
There are some old Columbia records which have been re-released that have Palmer on
them and it was very nice.
He was a good part of the James band at one time.
MR: Did you ever have aspirations yourself to be a professional musician?
LR: Well I played a little trumpet and I played a little piano but I wasn't really that good.
I love the music - but what it did for me, and I think it's so important, if you understand
the music.
If you learn to play an instrument you learn about the music.
And I just love some of the tricky arrangements.
I don't on my jazz show anymore, but I was the first one to play Ornette Coleman.
I loved the things that Ornette was doing and I love Roland Kirk and I just love Sun
Ra, but I try and keep it more right down the middle now.
Because the audience which I have, and I'm on a classical station, and I bring the audience
along so that they enjoy the music but it's not too far out.
And this is good.
I don't ever want to be at a point where I'm so far out and you get an audience of half
a dozen people and that - MR: And the rest of them are-
LR: If the station is nice enough to have you on and put the promotion behind you, you
owe something to them too.
And I try to keep it, my program, quite varied and I try to play a little bit of everything,
but I don't go too far out anymore.
I did at one time.
I've been on four stations and I never missed a program, I went from one to the next to
the next, but I never lost sight of the audience, I never lost sight of the broadcasting, the
station that kept me on the air.
I did, for years, but it got to be too much, we used to do it for a West Virginian station
as well.
And I try to keep it low tone and not too far out.
MR: Right.
And don't get hysterical on the air or anything.
LR: No.
I've been tempted to on occasion but I don't.
I love Basie, he was my favorite.
There's a new CD, brand new, Concord has it out this week.
It was recorded in Japan.
And it's the Basie band under Hughes, it's very good.
And they have some wonderful musicians and it's a good band.
Now I do not think that a couple of the other ghost bands really are up to par.
They pick up local musicians and try and mend them in, you can't do it in a couple hours'
rehearsal in a studio, you just can't do it.
But Basie tries to, Hughes has tried to keep the same personnel together and they're good.
Butch Miles is - MR: He's fantastic
LR: He's the drummer and he's just great.
He's part of the original Basie band and he's very good.
MR: I'm so pleased that Bill Hughes has risen to that thing, because he's been in that band
since the fifties.
LR: Forever.
MR: You know?
So it's nice to see him.
LR: He's a nice man.
MR: He is a really nice guy.
LR: A really nice man.
Yeah.
MR: Let me take you back.
We're going to talk about your show a little more, but I'm curious about Utica in the 1940s
and sort of this jazz club scene in your high school.
What was the racial relations like back then?
LR: It was pretty good.
Because they had, I remember being in Tommy Joy's a number of times, I practically lived
there with Joe Sullivan.
Remember Joe Sullivan?
MR: Oh, umm.
LR: Great piano?
He came there and he stayed forever.
He just loved it.
You'd give Joe a drink and he was all set, and Tommy kept rushing over.
But he was great.
It never ever interfered with his piano playing, he was always good.
And he was always on.
And they had - Art Hodes was wonderful.
The all-time greatest guy were the club scene here in the Utica, was a fellow named Bobby
Henderson and he was known as Jody Bolden.
And he played all over, he loved a little bar up in New Hartford which he played at,
and he loved to play in Tommy Joy's, loved also Jerry Marsh's.
He played there and did very well.
But he was the original piano player for Billie Holiday and he played for Billie for quite
some time, then came back up, he loved the skirts, I'll tell you, he chased girls.
But anyway he had a lovely, beautiful girl that lived up in Herkimer and he used to come
up here and play just to be with her, she was great.
And then he'd go back to New York.
Chiaroscuro recorded him and Vanguard recorded him, and he did excellent.
And then there is a Verve recording that he did at the Newport Jazz Festival which is
very nice.
But he was really, he loved Utica, he loved Herkimer, he loved Frankfort, he loved that
area.
And he played all those bars and then went down to the Albany area and he wound up in
the Albany area but then came back up here again.
He was a great friend of Hamilton College.
He played all the fraternity houses here.
And he really - Bobby Henderson was great.
He would bring up, I remember him at the Psi U house, he'd bring in a cooler, a wine cooler,
and he'd put it up on the piano and he'd play.
And time meant nothing to him.
He just loved to play.
And he was really influenced by Fats Waller but I remember - Frank Pry was my roommate
and my best friend my whole life.
And Frank could tell you that he was the best he ever heard.
He said he'd put him right up there with Fats Waller.
He was really great.
MR: Do you remember what he would have been paid back then?
LR: Yeah, I could tell you right now, he got fifteen dollars.
MR: Really?
LR: Fifteen dollars.
And that was a lot of money then.
It was a lot of money.
MR: Yeah?
1946, '47.
LR: Yeah, '46, '47, '48, '49.
MR: Yeah.
LR: And he was - Bobby Henderson was a great talent.
And Utica really had their fill of great piano players, really wonderful piano players.
I mentioned Albert Ammons before, he played in town and he was great, and Fats played
here.
Fats was good, he was good.
James P. was great.
James P. was at the Hamilton College concert during the forties.
And he was great.
MR: Right.
Wasn't there, someone said that that might have been recorded or something?
LR: Yeah.
I recorded those.
MR: You recorded it?
LR: And I gave the tape to the so-called library at that time.
And it's around here somewhere.
MR: All right.
I'm going to have to track that down.
LR: Yeah.
In fact two of the records showed up on an LP, oh probably in the middle seventies.
It showed one was bootlegged so it's floating around.
MR: When you were a junior and senior in high school, were you worried or concerned about
World War II and what that was going to mean for you?
LR: Yea.
I was too young for service.
And there were fifty some students here when I came, when I entered in the summer program.
And I didn't know when they'd draft me but I went anyway and - the guidance counselor
here was very good.
He was excellent.
He said, "Don't worry about it."
He said, "You just go away until they send you that jolly little message in the mail
and you'll be fine."
But the school itself was wonderful.
They practically had a teacher for every three or four students.
It was just great.
It was a great time.
And they really - what's made it wonderful about Hamilton is that the teachers cared.
They even, back then when they only had three or four students in a class, they cared and
it was like they were teaching to a hundred.
It meant everything to them and of course it meant everything to us.
Bobo Rudd I particularly remember, he was a great English teacher.
I took every course that he taught.
And he was - when I came back 15 years after I graduated and he was teaching, he was still
teaching then, and I went in the class.
He was teaching on a Saturday morning and he says, "Leo Rayhill" he comes down the aisle
and he throws his arms around me.
He was just a great guy.
You know it takes something like that to remember a student that long.
He was a really wonderful man.
MR: While you were here there probably was a significant number of veterans coming back
from the war.
Did they talk much about their experiences?
LR: They did and they were very helpful.
I found them just great.
They'd take the younger students under their wing.
I remember particularly the jazz concert here.
The older men who had returned wanted that music and they got the concert together.
But I was part of it.
And they didn't have to.
I was just a young kid and they didn't have to.
But it helped and then I found that after many of those that graduated I was booking
their big bands for, like we got some good bands in here then, some really very good
bands.
I remember a lot of cooperation from the older - I have nothing but good memories of the
older men.
MR: What buildings would have been the site for a big band, and would it have been a dance?
LR: The gymnasium.
MR: Pardon?
The gymnasium?
And would it have been a dance or dancing was, you could.
LR: Yeah.
We had a good booking agent at the time who helped us - Willard Alexander?
MR: Oh Willard Alexander.
LR: And he helped bring in some of the good big bands.
He was delightful.
And we had people coming from all over to join in, so that was the heyday of the big
bands, they really were fun.
MR: Where would they have stayed in this area?
LR: Down in Clinton.
The old Alexander Hamilton.
MR: Oh okay.
I'll be darned.
What about the alcohol policy at that time?
LR: It was open.
You'd get away with anything we did.
It was great.
I remember after Gene Romano was one of my dearest friends in the whole world, he had
a milk can full of whiskey sours and he'd carry it around party to party, great times,
great times.
MR: That's great.
But the fraternities, people who were at Hamilton at that time, they usually speak pretty highly
of the fraternity system.
LR: They did.
What I found, I pledged Psi U hall, and I found a great mix, great guys, and it made
me grow up.
It was really a wonderful influence on me.
I loved the fraternity, but I found when the school here, I read a lot of what was going
on here because I got The Spectator and I can see, when you try and look at something
from another person's standpoint, a lot of people got hurt by not being pledged to a
fraternity.
And I always felt sorry for that, and particularly in the years when they - just before they
did away with the fraternities here, The Spectator did a good job in painting both sides of the
picture.
MR: Was there ever any sort of unwritten selection filters about - people of the Jewish faith
were not going to be pledged here, would not be accepted, or things like that?
LR: When I got pledged, a very dear friend of mine who was Jewish did not get in then.
And I made up my mind then that I'd try and do something about it, and in my senior year
I was in charge of pledges and I got three Jewish members in Psi U which was great.
I had some help of course.
Many of the guys in the fraternity felt the same way that I did.
It was time - times were changing - and it was time in other words that the Jewish had
the same shot as we did.
MR: You know the look of a dorm room has changed an awful lot.
I think about my daughter went here, and I think about what we moved up to campus for
her, included a refrigerator and I mean a computer, the whole thing.
I'm just curious, what was the most high tech thing you would have had in your dorm room
at that time?
LR: It was a Victrola.
MR: A Victrola.
LR: It had a lampshade I think, which covered the lamp that we read by and also -
MR: Oh you would wear it on occasion, when Gene Romano came by.
Did you have telephones in the room?
LR: No.
We had the telephones down the hall, and always there was a line waiting.
MR: It's so interesting to think back then.
Like you know a couple of weeks ago Hamilton had a very rare day when they closed the campus
down.
And they canceled classes 'cause of the weather.
And of course that kind of news these days just spreads so quickly, you know, everybody's
got email and all that, and I just wondered like how did news spread around the campus?
Just word of mouth?
LR: Yeah, yeah.
That's about it, it's word of mouth.
MR: Yeah.
Like if a class was canceled you'd probably just find out when you went there.
LR: Right, right.
MR: Okay.
Did you own a car at the time?
LR: No I did not.
No.
I never owned a car until later, much later, after I got out of school.
But Hal Wagner, and Frank Pry, and my wonderful roommate, had a convertible and we were the
toast of the campus for that I'll tell you.
How he ever sprung for it, but he was a great guy.
He was a veteran.
He'd come back.
He'd served in the Battle of the Bulge and he had - both his legs had been severely damaged
from the war, but he was a great guy and he was fun.
He loved, like Fred Astaire, and my fondest memory of him was dancing on the Psi U hall's
roof at a house party.
He was just - he was a very good dancer, a very handsome guy, and everybody loved him.
You meet very few of them in your lifetime.
He was just a delightful guy.
MR: How do you spell his last name?
LR: W-A-G-N-E-R.
Hal Wagner.
MR: Oh right.
So you got your first taste of being a jazz DJ here at Hamilton?
Was it WHC?
LR: WHC.
The wonderful thing, I remember I loved boogie woogie at the time, I used to play a lot of
boogie when - I loved those Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson.
Those guys were just great.
And then you could buy the record for 35 cents.
MR: And what was your tuition here?
Do you recall?
What did it cost to go to Hamilton?
LR: Oh 450 dollars.
450 dollars.
Yeah.
MR: Were you - you went into your family business.
LR: Yeah.
MR: Was that sort of something you were expecting to do?
LR: No not really, I had been at Birdland for a week, two weeks.
Two weeks I went down there and then I stayed there from early when they opened until they
closed at four o'clock in the morning, listening to Charlie Parker.
And to me that was the greatest experience because Parker was on.
Whether he was going quiet on drugs or not I don't know but he played, he was inspired,
just inspired.
And I came home after the two weeks and I laid on the couch, my father came in and he
said, "Aren't you tired."
So he had an operation in Syracuse and he sent me up there.
He says, "Just go up there for a couple of weeks" and he says, "just see what you could
do up there to help out."
MR: At the business you mean?
LR: And I stayed there.
I'm still waiting for him to call.
He says "I'll call you-" MR: When I can relieve you.
I'll be darned.
Well that's so interesting.
You heard Charlie Parker and would that have been, forty what?
Or the early fifties?
LR: The early fifties.
MR: Okay that was after you graduated.
LR: Yeah.
It would be about '51.
MR: Boy you must have really had the - well you still do obviously - but the jazz bug.
LR: Oh I do.
MR: To just go to that club every night.
LR: Oh I loved it.
And what's interesting, he didn't repeat himself.
I swore he didn't.
People think I'm crazy, you know, the same old licks, well it wasn't the same old licks.
That guy was a genius.
Absolute genius.
I loved Birdland.
You'd go in there for 99 cents and sit in the - Bud Powell was where you are now, and
I remember sitting there the whole night and listening to him.
He was - and he was on that night.
He had mental troubles later on but he didn't when I heard him, he was great.
MR: Did you have a feeling at the time, I know hindsight you think well gee I was hearing
something pretty historically important in jazz.
Did you have a feeling at the time that this was like really new and innovative?
LR: No, not really.
I just loved it.
I can't tell you - I was in another world, it was just great.
And every extra cent I got I went over to Sam Goody.
And I got to know Sam pretty well and he gave me a good deal, he gave me a further discount
and it was great.
And it was wonderful.
Years later I went back to Sam Goody and they had the big store you know, I was over there
when he was on Ninth Avenue.
They had the biggest store you'd ever want.
And I came up to him and I said, "Hey Sam, how are you?"
He didn't know me at all.
Didn't know me.
You know I was - MR: Not like a Hamilton professor.
Gee.
And were you buying 78s?
LR: 78s yeah.
Then I went to the LPs which I loved, and I loved the 45s.
I still have a lot of 45s and I still have a lot of LPs which I play on the show because
they haven't come out on CD.
There are some wonderful things.
Some of the Ralph Sutton things are priceless.
You had Ralph here at the college and he was an outstanding piano player, really great.
MR: He sure was.
Yeah, I know you mentioned that the other day on your show that you played something
by him that wasn't out, hadn't been reissued yet.
Do you - let's talk about "The Sound of Jazz" for a bit.
Do you listen first to everything you play?
LR: Yeah I take about four hours to do a show.
But it's a joy, I love it.
MR: Yeah, it's not like a chore.
LR: And it works out better, when you're well prepared I always find you do a better job,
you're more relaxed.
I have a tendency to get carried away.
I find somebody I really love that I'd like to play them all the time, but I don't do
that.
Now people in the business who were really wonderful, Woody Herman, he was great to me.
I had him on the show three times.
He really was a great guy.
And when we were down to West Winfield, he was playing a high school down there and don't
I go down.
And I'm sitting in the audience and a guy comes up with a note and he says, "This is
from Woody, he'd like to ride back to Syracuse with you and talk about old times."
And just a wonderful guy.
Kenton was the same way.
Stan Kenton, probably the nicest man, just a delightful man, and it's too bad that people
don't appreciate his music the way they should because he had such great arrangers and he
had the cream of the crop as far as talent is concerned.
He was the first one who knew what to do with Maynard Ferguson.
When Ferguson went into the Charlie Barnet band - and Charlie didn't know what to do
with him.
You know he'd get those high notes and Stan could write - actually he wrote arrangements
which toned him down.
It was great.
Because Maynard was a talent, a major talent.
He really was.
It wasn't all screaming trumpet, he did some beautiful things.
MR: Kenton was just maybe too progressive for some people I guess, you know.
LR: He got people like Bob Graettinger, who is a genius, absolute genius, but I couldn't
play it on the show, people would throw a stone at me.
MR: Yeah.
It was really mixing almost like classical music with the swing type thing.
LR: But another nice man was Count Basie.
He was just so relaxed.
I had a dear friend in Syracuse named Chris Powell.
And Chris was a drummer.
And his main claim to fame was he was the original band that Clifford Brown came out
of.
And Clifford was so great, oh.
MR: Oh yeah.
What a tragedy that - LR: A tragic loss to all of us.
MR: Because he was going to be the next guy I think, you know, really.
I'm just curious how you managed to do the show just about every single day.
You just fit it into your daily life schedule I guess, huh?
LR: Well it's such a labor of love, it's just like having a good time.
I love - and the discovery of finding a record that's really extra tremendous is great.
I went one night to Birdland and they had a band there named Dan Terry, whom nobody
has ever heard of before or since, but he managed to rob the Count Basie band of most
of the people for a while.
And he brought it into Birdland and I thought the place was going to absolutely fall down.
He blew - there was, you know how you could do soft and then maybe not.
His was all just at the top, he screamed.
MR: Loud, louder and loudest.
LR: He roared.
He only knew one range.
He didn't have a lot of range but he didn't want it.
MR: Gee.
Let me take you back again to your Hamilton years.
Jazz was a popular music to have on campus, or swing.
Who else did you have up here?
Did Eddie Condon come up here?
LR: Yes Eddie came here and there were some wonderful people.
I remember the Teddy Wilson band came up here and he was really just unbelievable.
And then they brought in bands that weren't, you know, at the top of the thing because
we didn't have any money.
And we brought George Paxton in.
Now George Paxton had a great band.
Pete Stryker who ran King Cole Ice Cream, I don't know if you remember King Cole Ice
Cream in Utica, but he was a drummer.
He was good.
He could play in anybody's band.
He was very good.
Yeah, they had some wonderful, wonderful talent here.
MR: What about the college, the college Dixieland band.
Did you have any association with them?
LR: No not really, not really.
To be perfectly frank with you they weren't very good.
MR: Yeah.
I think they were called the Fallacious Five or something?
Or maybe that was - LR: Well you see at the time there were good
Dixieland bands around.
Like Williams College, the State Street Stompers, they were really good.
But it wasn't good here.
MR: They're still here, you know, the Alumni All-stars.
They call themselves the longest running alumni college band in the country I think.
Yeah.
So last - I've seen a couple of things, you now own like twelve thousand LPs?
That may be an outdated number.
Are you still adding on LPs?
LR: Yeah.
I do.
I try to fill in as best I can.
And I get a lot of requests on the show and it's good for me because I look for something
that I wasn't aware of before being available.
Very good.
And I've had good luck in finding sources to buy stuff.
There are some good LP places -- Amoeba out in San Francisco, I go out there and I
love them.
It's like being in a candy store, it's just unreal.
I grab this and grab that, and the suitcase is full coming back.
MR: Isn't it interesting, the technology has changed so much.
You probably remember Ray Shiner?
LR: Oh yes, he was a wonderful man.
MR: He gave us some 78s and I remember going over pick up - it was like in a little metal
suitcase.
And I go to pick it up and I go my goodness, just carrying those things around was a chore.
LR: I don't know if he told you or not but he was a member of the Sauter-Finegan band.
MR: Yes, he was very proud of that.
LR: Very, very good.
He used to call me all the time with requests and stuff, he was a wonderful man.
His daughter I've talked to a couple of times, she's very nice.
MR: She's a good drummer.
LR: Yeah.
MR: Does your wife Joan like jazz?
LR: Yes fortunately.
She's lived at Birdland with me too.
MR: Oh great.
LR: She's a good gal.
She loves music.
She sang in the Syracuse chorale and she has a nice musical background.
MR: Did you meet at UFA?
LR: Met at UFA.
MR: Wow.
LR: We lived two blocks apart.
MR: That's really great.
So how long have you been married?
LR: We were married 55 years.
MR: That's - congratulations.
LR: She's a great gal.
She has a great sense of humor.
She's very funny, very funny.
I'm very lucky.
Now I had a couple of notes that I wanted to mention while I was down here.
I thought it was the greatest thing that Hamilton College brought Dizzy Gillespie here before
he died.
That was an outstanding concert.
I interviewed him there and he was just great.
He had a good band and he played well.
He always had young people around him.
It was wonderful.
Another thing that I wanted to mention was that you have a nice CD out that people should
really be aware of.
They're top flight guys.
I mean you couldn't ask, if you walked in a store in New York and asked for the best
group around, they should give you that.
It's great.
MR: Thank you.
LR: It's really great.
And Harry James was here and it was shortly before he died - and he went up to the Onondaga
Golf and Country Club and played and he was unreal.
His face was haggard and you could see that he was in the last throes of cancer, and he
played his heart out.
He was great.
Those guys, like Bob Scobie who I've played many times on the show, there was a pillar
that - he played at this club and he needed the pillar to support himself up while he
played.
But he played great.
And down at Saratoga they had a big band carnival and Harry James was on it and Stan Kenton
was on it and anyway Stan Kenton had had his stroke.
He'd had that fall.
And he got up before the audience and he was playing well.
That was the surprising thing.
He could play the piano all right but he couldn't remember the members when he went to introduce
the members of his band.
And just from out in the wing Harry James came out, put his arm around him and talked
on and got right out of the tough hole he was in.
I always thought that was class.
MR: That's nice.
LR: You can't teach that.
MR: No.
LR: It's something that's within a human being and he just carried it off like it was part
of the program.
There are a couple of notes I wanted to mention.
Earl "Fatha" Hines was a great piano player.
He played wonderful things with Louis.
And I did an interview with Earl "Fatha" Hines and he came on and he says, "Look at me" he
says, "I've been up 'till four o'clock in the morning" and he says, "I can only give
you five minutes."
Two hours later he's still talking.
It was great.
And he came on the next week and the week after that.
MR: Oh.
That's so nice.
LR: He was playing at The Dinkler in Syracuse at the time.
And then a couple of years after he last appeared at The Dinkler I get a call and it was from
Earl "Fatha" Hines, and he says, "I'm in town with Marva Josie," and he says "we'd love
to have you out for drinks."
And he was a wonderful man."
MR: That's great.
Well you had the same experience with George Shearing too, right?
LR: Yes.
George is wonderful.
MR: See musicians can tell when you know the music.
And I think that makes a big difference.
LR: He was wonderful.
I made four programs - well you have them, you have them in the Archive.
MR: That's right.
LR: They came out, really came out great.
MR: Yeah.
And you could tell he was enjoying the experience.
LR: Oh he was having a ball.
He was wonderful.
He wouldn't let me go.
He'd hold on to my - you know even though he was blind he'd hold me, "We're not over
yet, not done yet, we've got to talk some more."
MR: That happened to me with a guy named Sol Yaged.
LR: Oh yeah.
MR: But you know actually I wanted to be done.
Because it wasn't quite as enjoyable, but that was funny, he wouldn't let me stop either.
LR: Oh yeah, the clarinetist?
He helped teach Steve Allen for "The Benny Goodman Story."
MR: Yeah.
LR: And I wanted to mention also Louis Armstrong.
Louis I did a wonderful interview with him, he was just great.
And he was funny, and I said I did the interview, I didn't do anything.
All I did was introduce him and he took over.
He did all the talking.
It was the easiest gig I ever had.
I don't think I said two words.
Really.
He was wonderful, he was funny, he told a lot about old players that he had.
It was wonderful.
MR: What a thrill.
LR: The final thing I wanted to have for your remarks, the college has done wonderful things
under your tutelage to bring good people here.
You've had some outstanding concerts.
They're as good as anywhere in the world.
MR: Right.
LR: They're just great.
And how blessed we were with your wonderful clarinet player who just died.
MR: Oh, Kenny.
Yeah.
LR: Kenny Davern was a wonderful man.
He stayed at our house when we had the Eddie Condon concert and he held old Eddie up.
Eddie had the vodka.
And he added in, he'd keep asking my wife, "Go Rafael," and it looked water, and he drank
it like it was water.
But Kenny was a great guy.
He was a good human being.
He really was, one of the finest clarinetists there ever was, he really was.
MR: Well it's curious that you - not curious but it's timely because I wanted to just play
a little bit from this famous concert.
[audio interlude] You know I think of this music like a lot
of, almost like a lot of traffic.
But the musicians know how to not slam into each other.
Tell me how this came about again?
This is from, in Syracuse- LR: We were going to try and do a reunion
of the Hamilton College concert which happened in the forties, but unfortunately just about
everybody had died.
We got a hold of Eddie Condon.
MR: First can I ask who was at the concert in the forties at Hamilton here.
That was Eddie Condon with- LR: James P. Johnson was there, he was a wonderful
piano player.
Tony Parenti was there.
Miff Mole, the old time trombone player from the twenties?
MR: Miff Mole.
LR: He was not good.
MR: Really.
LR: I'm sorry, he was a great guy, turned out to be a great guy and I loved him dearly
but he played awful.
It was embarrassing.
But anyway but James P. stole the show.
He was Fats Waller's teacher.
And he played some great Fats Waller stuff.
It was just unbelievable.
He was great.
He had had a stroke before he came to Hamilton, but he had recovered.
It's like right now what we're going through with Oscar Peterson.
Peterson's still playing.
And it's amazing what some people can do with a stroke, and others it's all over.
MR: The music is almost like a therapy for them.
And what year would this have been?
LR: '47 I think.
What we tried to get was to get as close to the 25th anniversary.
But anyway we wound up with Eddie Condon and he says, "Don't worry boys, we'll get a good
group."
Eddie got a great group, unbelievable.
And it'd be interesting to you that we sold ten tickets.
MR: You sold ten tickets?
LR: And I'm apologizing to Eddie, I said I feel sorry, I said, "You're going to play
before ten people."
He says, "Don't worry about it," he says, "we'll have a ball."
Well I went to get Eddie at the airport, I brought him, there was a mob scene.
They were lined up around the block for tickets, they turned hundreds of people away, they
had only so many seats in the auditorium.
And he was great.
He just, oh, I love the guy.
I mean he said, "Is there a place that we can go have some fun?"
I says, "Our house."
And we came back there and we had a wonderful time.
MR: Wow.
And how did you manage to record it?
Were you planning to?
LR: I asked at the studio, I had an Ampex tape recorder, which was very good.
It really came out - that sound that you hear there is very good.
Yeah.
MR: How many mics did you have?
LR: We had one mic.
MR: One mic.
Well you know that also, with a band like that they know how to control their-
LR: Oh they're old pros.
They did great.
Yeah Lou McGarrity always knew how to get up close to the mic and Bernie Previn was
unbelievable.
It was just glorious, a glorious time.
MR: Right.
So then this tape sat around for quite a while, and then did Kenny take it to Arbors?
LR: Kenny took it to Arbors, yeah.
It got lost at one time.
You know how those things happen.
But Kenny saved it.
He was really the one who saved it.
It was kind of surprising the tape held up pretty well.
MR: Yeah, 'cause sometimes that tape can fall right apart when it gets that old.
LR: Oh yeah but it had a good sound, it had a good sound.
MR: That's great.
Gee I'm glad you were able to do that.
LR: Kenny was such a lovely man.
You were so nice here at Hamilton because I drove down to New Jersey, he was appearing
at the New Jersey Jazz Fest down there.
And I drove down and he told me, he said, "If there were people up at Hamilton College
only knew how much it meant to me for all they've done for me."
He really was very grateful.
He was a nice man.
He was really nice.
MR: You know, he was.
He could be very sarcastic.
LR: Oh yes.
MR: And he could like nail you, or other people.
You know he knew what he liked and he knew what he didn't like.
But I just always found it so interesting that someone who had that ability to be that
sarcastic could play so beautifully and just always inventing these great melodies.
LR: There's a tune on this tape that Kenny plays magnificently.
It's the best thing on the whole gig, but he didn't put it out on the record.
He said that there were a couple of players who just did not do well on that and he said,
"It isn't up to my standards," so he cut it out.
MR: Boy, I've been so lucky to hang out with those people.
LR: You are lucky.
MR: And you said something just a little while ago about you can't teach that kind of class.
And I've met an awful lot of musicians and 99 percent of them have just been, they've
had that class.
And I think it partly comes from dealing with what they have to deal with in a life of a
musician, which isn't always easy.
LR: You had a nice one here in Milt Hinton.
He was a lovely man, a lovely man.
I had dinner with him and I loved him.
I loved every minute I spent with him.
A great guy.
He loved to talk about his life.
MR: Uh huh.
Well they were probably the most loved couple in jazz history you know.
I mean they just were, you felt better when you were around them.
I always used to get a kick out of watching them at the jazz parties and the festivals
because they'd have this crowd, you know, everybody wanted to talk to them.
LR: Oh they were wonderful.
MR: Do you ever go to those jazz parties?
LR: No I never did.
The one out west I understand was the best.
MR: Yeah, the Gibson?
LR: Yeah the Gibson.
I got some tapes of the party and I got some records.
MR: They do one in Chautauqua now.
LR: Yeah.
MR: So "The Sounds of Jazz with Leo Rayhill" is - no end in sight, right?
LR: No end in sight.
MR: That's terrific.
LR: They'll have to carry me out, that's all right too.
MR: And you go to the station every day, and you do it.
LR: Yeah.
My problem is if I do it at home, that isn't quite right, to stop the machine, I go in
the studio and I just do it.
And it's a good way to do it.
MR: I know exactly what you're saying.
Do you play mostly CDs now?
LR: Mostly CDs.
But every show has at least between two and four LPs that I work at.
Because I feel that there's so many jazz musicians that are not available on CD that we need
to listen to.
I hate to think that the music is gone and forgotten.
And I try to work those in.
And I think they're very good.
The Johnny Guaneri is a great example, who played with Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.
There's nothing on CD.
It's all on LPs and I try to work them in from time to time.
He was a good piano player.
MR: Well let me sort of wrap up, just go back to Hamilton for a minute, and I'll try a question
on you that usually doesn't work.
It's a hard question.
But do you recall one of the goofiest things that ever happened to you here at Hamilton,
or one of the silliest thing that you ever did or that your roommates ever did?
I should have given you a day to think about this.
LR: Probably going out for football.
MR: Okay.
LR: I got killed.
Absolutely killed.
And I went back the second year.
MR: Really?
That's a good answer.
LR: They had to carry me out then - we wouldn't have to worry about how long the show would
go on, I truly got killed then.
Oh I loved it and had a great time.
The guys - Frank Pry was my roommate and he was a great football player.
He was really too good for this school, he really was.
I mean he was a major talent, a big, big guy.
And he was good.
And we had wonderful times together.
And he'd always say, "Now if somebody gets too rough on you, let me know."
MR: He's going to protect you, huh?
LR: I weighed 139 pounds.
MR: What position did you try to play?
LR: I tried to play end what they now call flanker.
MR: Is that on the offense?
LR: On the offense.
MR: Okay, like a receiver?
LR: Yeah a receiver.
MR: That's a good answer.
Is there one thing that Hamilton gave you or instilled in you that stuck with you?
LR: How to think.
I've been very successful in business.
I've made a lot of money.
And I owe - because I could think things through.
Hamilton gave me, that's the biggest thing I got out of Hamilton was how to think.
And I could go over a problem and I could dissect the problem like I was back in school
And it made a great deal of difference for me.
I just found it wonderful.
It was a great education.
The teachers were wonderful.
I loved Bobo Rudd and he was just a great guy.
MR: Well said.
I think they're still doing it too because I see it in my own daughter.
LR: That's great.
You can't replace that.
That's with you forever.
School has been very good to me.
I enjoyed every minute I was here and had some wonderful times, wonderful times.
I was probably a little bit more of a cut-up then I should have been but that goes with
it.
MR: And you'll be having, in a couple of years, your sixtieth?
LR: Yeah.
MR: Maybe we should try to get a good jazz band together for that event, don't you think?
Well it's been a great pleasure talking to you.
I hope we covered everything.
LR: I enjoyed myself, just like having a nice leisurely talk with a good old friend, and
you are.
MR: Well thanks for all the great stuff you put on the airwaves for so many years.
It's like a Central NY institution.
LR: Well I love it.
Thank you.
MR: Okay.
Thank you very much.
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