Good afternoon. We are here filming today for the Hamilton
Jazz Archive and it is our greatest pleasure today to have with us a trumpeter, vocalist,
and a man who has seen the history of jazz just about from its inception. Welcome to Doc Cheatham. It's a great pleasure to have you here. DC: Thank you very much. MR: Doc, why don't you tell us what you're
up to these days, because I know when we called you and tried to get together with you, you
have a pretty busy schedule. DC: Yes, I do. I've never had a schedule like this ever before. MR: That's great. DC: And it's still going on, people calling
me every day, and I don't understand it because it's just new. It's a new thing to me. MR: Do you remember what you told me on the
phone when I said, "Wow you're pretty busy." Do you remember what you said to me? DC: I don't think I do. MR: You said, "All the other trumpet players
must be sick." I'm sure that's not the case. DC: It's not the case. It's just a difference in the new generation
of trumpet players against the old trumpet players. It's not the same. It's altogether different - the new generation
and the generation to come is going to be different. It's going to be that way all the way. Each generation has its influence about jazz,
all of us, I'd like to be here 50 more years to hear it. MR: See what comes next. DC: Yes, I'm very interested in that. I hear a lot of these kids today and I'm surprised
to hear what they're playing. They're playing so, so pretty and so beautiful,
and I wonder where it's coming from. And now I see where it's coming from. I follow Roy Hargrove, because he's such a
nice guy - a lot of guys don't like you to bother them you know - but Roy is very nice
and a wonder player. I follow him. I'm watching him very carefully. Every time I see him there's something different
about his conception of jazz. Very nice, too. MR: Where do you think his influences were?
DC: Well I'll tell you, his influences were from all the rest of the young trumpet players
of his era. Because they all have the same influence,
but with differences among all of them. There is a slight difference with all of us,
even old timers, there's a difference. MR: You consider yourself an old timer? DC: Almost. MR: Almost, all right. DC: Yes, that's the way it is, and I'm very
excited about it because what I went through I don't think they ever had to go through
what I had to go through to become a player, a jazz player. They never had to go through that. Because they can hear more than I heard when
I was young. I didn't hear hardly anything I mean but Louis
Armstrong through guys like that, but most of them all sound the same and have the same
conception of jazz. They all, back in my day, they were all alike,
except Louis Armstrong. MW: Tell us about Louis. Tell us about his style. What made him the musician of his day? DC: Well, Louis Armstrong - only God can answer
that question. I found out a lot of things about him but
I met him accidentally, and he was very nice to me and his wife, and he helped me a lot
and for what reason? All I did here I did because years ago he
was not too friendly, I mean the musicians from New Orleans were not too friendly with
him. Because they were jealous because he was one
man that came and outplayed everybody who had a horn. And they were jealous of that, of the way
he played, and what his conception of jazz was. They never heard anything like it in their
life. And a lot of them didn't like it because he
received so much attention. And there was nobody in the world that could
play like him, nobody had the knowledge of not only jazz, but everything else in music,
than Louis Armstrong. He had a, I found out that in New Orleans,
I met an old fellow down there, and there's not too many old people that knew him. I found an old fellow down there sitting down
eating some corn flakes or potato chips on the sidewalk, and he looked up and he says,
I had my horn and he says, "You a musician?" I say, "Yeah." He says, "What do you play?" I tell him, "I play cornet, I play trumpet." He says, "You know Louis Armstrong?" I say, "Yeah, do you?" He says, "I know him like a brother." And I sat down on the sidewalk beside him
and I said, "What about him, why is he so great?" The old man said, "Well I'll tell you," he
said, "you don't know this but he could outlast anyone in the world because he was born with
a double jawbone. That's why he had so much power and so much
range, and could outlast anybody with a horn." You can't last forever playing a horn. You get tired. He has never gotten tired of playing. MR: Oh my goodness. DC: So that's what the old man said. And I inquired about that, and that's true. He had the strongest jawbone of anybody, he
was born like that. That's how he could outplay anybody. Nobody could compare with him. Those are the things I learned a lot about. MR: That's very interesting. DC: But he was very good to me. He helped me and helped me so much that I
followed him around and he gave me jobs sometimes with him, and sometimes I worked for him. He kind of grilled me, like, took me under
his wing when I was young. I was in Chicago, in 1926. So I stayed with him as long as I could and
followed him, because he got so great that he had to travel all the time and I never
saw him anymore, maybe once in a Pullman car or something on the train. But he was going too much for me. I couldn't afford that. MR: Wow. Would you step into his band sometimes as
a substitute? DC: Oh, yes. I did that several times, oh yes. And I wasn't a good player but he thought
I was, I mean he said I was. That's the kind of man he was. I had no right to sub for him. MR: Well he must have thought you did. DC: Well I don't know. As I said before, he didn't have too many
musician friends. See he had some good players in Chicago and
I wasn't anything. I was learning. He had a lot of good players from New Orleans,
trumpet players from Chicago, that they made it kind of tried to make it hard for him when
he first arrived from Fletcher's band. They resented him. But when he started playing they all began
to respect him. MR: They didn't have a choice, right? DC: That's right. He was the hottest thing Chicago's ever seen,
ever heard. MR: When you were a boy - in Nashville, right
- what kind of music was going on? DC: Nashville was a sort of a very quiet city. There was nothing going on there. We had too many colleges and too many schools. We had a medical college and we had all kinds
of colleges in there. And everybody was going to school, you know
what I mean. And there would be some students who'd come
from the south like Savannah, Georgia, Atlanta, come to Meharry Medical College. And every now and then maybe a guy, a violin
player, he may come there to study medicine or something, but he played violin. We had a drummer, we had a violin, we had
a piano player, we had a tenor saxophone player there, he was a dentist, and Herbert Blue
was one of the great pianists, I've never heard anything like it in my life. And they all came to Meharry for different
studies. And while they were there they got acquainted
with one another and they formed a little group while they were there. And they played for like fraternity things
and proms and "dancents" they used to call them on Saturday, and they did all that stuff. But they didn't raise a lot of excitement. But they were available whenever there was
something that needed a group. No one else other than Jimmie Lunceford, and
he didn't care for playing for anyone but forming his band was the biggest thing he
ever thought up. And his band, most of his group were in Fisk
University in Nashville. And see he had a band, and I was alone, and
I wasn't playing with anybody but I was studying like, I taught myself to play the instruments. And I taught myself how to play well, you
know? So I was alone. I didn't play with Jimmie, I didn't play up
to Meharry unless they called for me. Once in a while they'd call for me to play
like a first Sunday they'll have some band to play there. And things like that. And I just worked on my own, because there
wasn't anything around there anyway, wasn't no money around there to earn. I was playing in church. My mother would drive me to the church on
a Sunday and I'd play a solo on the cornet. Little things. Just old, not jazz, but old melodies, I forget
what the melody was, but I played it, and I did things like that. I'm a self taught musician, up to a point. Things I needed to know I couldn't teach myself
I would ask, from the best, you know, from the best I could. MR: Were you still playing the sax at that
time? DC: I played the sax in Chicago until I met
Louis Armstrong. And I listened to what was going on in Chicago,
because there was the world's greatest musicians were in Chicago. They were all from New Orleans. They all came to Chicago from New Orleans
because Al Capone brought them in there. Before that, Chicago was dead, other than
the stockyards, and you could smell that all over Chicago, the stockyards. But other than that there was nothing there. But Al Capone formed his gang and sent to
New Orleans and got all those great musicians and brought them to Chicago and put them in
all kinds of joints. Even a shoeshine parlor, he'd put a trio in
there, and they'd be in all the cabarets and night clubs. That that's what he did. So he made Chicago one of the richest cities
in the world because there was money flying all over Chicago. Cabarets, night clubs, everybody playing jazz,
and all those big players from New Orleans were there. That's why Chicago was one of the greatest
places of the world. And Nashville was nothing other than being
able to play a little sacred solo and they had a lot of people there try to imitate McCormick
you know, and things like that, and women trying to sing you know, opera, that's all
you would hear. Once in a while there would be a band come
through Nashville once a year, Paul Whiteman, and gave a concert at the Ryman Auditorium
and the people would go pack it to hear it. Ted Lewis. Those are the only two that I know of that
came to Nashville - Ted Lewis once a year, you know "Me and My Shadow" and all that crap. And that's all, otherwise, everybody was going
to school. Everybody was going to school. All my family was, I was the only black sheep
in the family. It isn't because I didn't want to go to school,
I didn't want to go to medical school. My brother did that and my uncles and everybody
in my family except my father, were in medicine. And I didn't want to do that. I was stuck with my horns, practicing my horns
all the time until I got to the place where people started listening. It wasn't great but they were listening to
the toning down of whatever I was doing, because I was running everybody crazy. MW: Tell us about playing with Benny Goodman. DC: Oh. I was with, I had a trio down on Broadway
called Jack Silverman's International, you never heard of it. He had great reviews, like he brought the
reviews from Europe, those big casinos. Jack Silverman. He had, a lot of people don't know about that. He had a place right down on Fifty-something
street, right across from the old Palladium, right. He had one of the greatest nightclubs and
he, I played down there with a big band and a show band they called it. And I played with the relief band - I only
had trumpet, piano and drums - between shows I played that. And I played that for about six years. It was nice. I learned a lot of tunes. Everybody had to run across the street and
buy tunes. I think I knew more tunes then they ever played. And so it wasn't too much money down there
but it was a nice job. And Benny Goodman had a brother named Harry. And Harry came down there, it was mostly a
Jewish club anyway. And Harry came down and he heard me play during
the intermission, anyway he called Benny Goodman right away and said I've got a trumpet player
for you. Because Benny was having trouble with trumpet
players. He couldn't get along with them. And good players, like Charlie Shavers and
the guy that played with the, you know what I mean, what's his name, you know my memory
is not like it should be, uh maybe it is like it should be, uh, Gleason. MR: Oh, Jackie Gleason. DC: Jackie Gleason, well this guy was a trumpet
player with him, he's the one that made that played for Jackie's record. -Yeah, he's the trumpet player. And he couldn't get along with Benny Goodman. And Charlie Shavers couldn't get along with
him. Benny Goodman was a very peculiar man. But he, you know, he was a genius, and you'll
find all geniuses sort of nutty, and there's something wrong with all of them. I was with a Latin band. I was with a Latin band called Ricardo Ray
and Bobby Cruz and we played up to an auditorium - Hunt's Point Auditorium - one night and
Benny Goodman was playing there with a band, and I was with Ricardo Ray. They had two bands there. And I played with Benny and Benny took ill
and he had a back problem. That was his last engagement. So the Latin band heard me play solos, and
after the dance they came to me and said, "How would you like to play a set with us?" I said, "Fine." So I went over and played a set with Ricardo
Ray's band. They were kids from Monte Carlo. They were outasite. And they had music. And I read everything. I could read like flies on the paper. And I read everything and solos, they gave
me all the solos, just with the timbales and the drums. And they all fell out and says, "gee." And the harmony, for that band. And the next day they had a recording date
downtown. And I just played solos, that's what I saw
in the paper. And that became one of the biggest hits they
ever made. All over South America you had this coming
out of there. I was 79. I was 79, an old man playing trumpet. But the solos I played were not Latin, they
were American with a Latin beat, and those guys made a lot of money, all through the
south, all over South America. And they paid me very well. MR: That's great. DC: And that's how I got Benny Goodman - before
that I was with Benny Goodman. I played two years with him. We went to Las Vegas and other places. He played with symphonies sometimes and played
jazz after that with his sextet. And he was very good to me. He fired everybody in the band at one time
but myself. Because you know people don't understand the
man's a genius, and he expected his men to play as well as he played. He expected that. And if you can't satisfy him, you have to
leave that's all there is to it. And he had a hard time finding anybody like
him. And he chose me and that's because his brother
recommended me and I made an audition with him, he and Hank Jones had a place and I just
played and he played. And he liked what I played. I didn't know everything he knew. I couldn't know all about it. But he was very easy on me, because I was
an easy-going guy, you know. So he was nice to me and one day we were in
Las Vegas and I was standing out in front of the band and he had a habit of starting
out on one tune. And he would switch to another tune without
telling anyone. He did that all the time. He'd pick up and start playing "Body and Soul"
and after a chorus, "I Surrender Dear" and not tell anyone. And that's hard and it's not right. But that's the way he is - he was. So one day we were standing out front and
I says, "Benny I don't know." He said, "listen. Just watch my eye. Just look at my eye. My eye will tell you when I'm going to change
to another tune." I said, "okay, but" I said, "I can't see out
of this eye." So he fell down laughing. We had a lot of fun together. I'm the only one that stayed in that band
with his group. Because I know him. Right away I knew how to treat him. Don't try to be a big shot around him, you
know. That's all you had to do, just let him have
his, it's his job. And let him have it. And what he asks you to do you do, that's
all. Everybody in the band in rehearsal, we had
a rehearsal up in Skitch Henderson's studio. And we were playing the most beautiful solo,
he was, and we were with him, "Stardust." And he played so beautiful. He just took out his clarinet and started,
he don't-let's rehearse this, or what do you want to do fellas, you don't do that. He just took his clarinet and played the - played
the melody and everything, and then he stopped all of a sudden, and started taking the clarinet
apart and walking out. We said what's wrong with this man? He walked out. And he stayed out into an adjoining room. And so his valet came out and I said, "is
this all?" He says, "Yes, this is all." He said, "don't call me, we'll call you" one
of those things. So then I started going out, packing up and
leaving. I was the last one to leave. I don't know why, but I was. He opened the door and said, "Where you going?" I said, "Well everybody's fired. The valet said everybody's fired." He said, "Not you." So he kept me. And I guess I worried him because I didn't,
I kept my mouth shut. Because in Las Vegas he got me, there was
a lot of segregation, I couldn't go in the hotels, but he went across from this big casino,
and there was a woman there that had a nice house. And he took me over there and stood for me,
and she said why sure, and she gave me a room. And I sat on the porch, because I love porches,
I say out on the porch. And Benny came out from, he was staying at
this hotel, this big casino rather. He came out with his golf things and he crossed
the street and he saw me sitting and he came all the way back on the porch and says, "Doc?" I said, "what." "Does anything ever worry you?" I said, "no, Benny, I don't think so," I said
"but there's only one thing that will worry me is if you don't give me my check at the
end of the week." He fell down laughing. MR: What year was this? DC: Lord have mercy. It must have been - that was - I was 79. I was close to 79. MR: Yeah, so not that long ago. DC: No. But he was very nice. He fired everybody. If he didn't like you he'd make it hard on
you, you know. Like the poor drummer Morty Feld. He would always introduce Morty as a imitator. I don't know, they must have had some kind
of words. And he fired Morty Feld the drummer and I
thought he was a great drummer. But Benny was a very strange man. You just had to leave him alone, and that's
what I did I didn't bother him, you know. So he kept me, he kept me. And he liked the way I played too because
I didn't try to be a big shot, you know, like I didn't try to overplay him. I let him do the, let him star. Because that's what he is, what he was. My father was very good in teaching me a lot
of things about diplomacy and of course he was the king of diplomacy, my father. So I figure it pays off. MR: Can I take you back to your early days
in Chicago, and it seems that in music every once in a while there seems to be a time when
something new happens fairly quickly, like with rock & roll in the late 50s, or some
classical composer writing something brand new. When you were young, was jazz first called
"jazz?" Do you remember what the music was, like you
felt like you were into something really new here? Is that a fair statement? DC: Well, that is a fair statement. Because as I said before, back then in the
20s, my goodness, rock & roll was never heard of. But there were people that sound like rock
& roll back in the 20s, as far as 1924 in Nashville. We had people called "Holy Rollers." They had tents. And every night that's all you could hear,
was people rolling on the ground and singing and, that's all there was. Singing old blues and groaning, and they called
them "Holy Rollers." That's the beginning of all this stuff. That's the beginning. MW: That's right. You know I wanted to ask you something about
this. You know there's a lot of black church influence
in the music. DC: Absolutely. MW: And I'd like you to talk about that, some
of your experiences. Because you know when I pick up a lot of books
on jazz history now, it's like they don't say anything about the black church. But there's, you know, a lot of, that was
the pillar of the community and a lot of the energy and spiritual feeling inside the music
came from there. DC: Yes. But they were almost all alone. There was a lot of time before the whites
decided to go hear these people. The Fisk Jubilee Singers. And I know every one of them. My mother took me out, and they were alone
for a long time before they were even discovered. Julius Blitz, a guy like that, you never heard
of him I'll bet. But he was before Paul Whiteman, I mean Paul
Robeson. Julius Blitz. He had the biggest names, vocalists in the
world. But he was never, they never paid any attention
to him because that's the way it was in the South. But afterwards, I mean years and years after,
they looked these people up, trying to find them. Fisk Jubilee Singers were reorganized and
then going to be recognized in a hurry by everyone. But that's the trouble, that was the trouble. MR: Well it's a whole statement in itself
that Paul Whiteman was called the "King of Jazz" at the time and he didn't, his band
didn't, you know, that was like a sweet band, right? DC: Yes it was. It was a very good band of its time. And he had the best musicians that he could
get in that band, some great, great players. And it was a good band. He had a wonderful band. Wonderful band. But you know, right after he died, a little
bit before he died, he had a black musician in there in his band. I forget his name now. But he could pass for white and you would
never know that he wasn't white. A trumpet player. And he was hired. And Paul Whiteman knew that he was black. And he was just about at the end of his career,
he used this guy and this guy was a great, great trumpet player. But things started to seep in there once in
a while. Now Ted Lewis had one too. MR: Yeah? I didn't know that. I thought Benny Goodman was one of the first
guys with - so that's an interesting fact. DC: Yeah, a lot of people didn't pay much
attention to that in those days. Because it wasn't obvious. But those were good old days and as you say,
Johnny Dunn, if you ever have heard of him, was the first black trumpet player that played
jazz in the style. Now he moved up from, I'll start in New Orleans. New Orleans is where it started. You know I mean jazz, I'm not talking about
the Africans that came over with the drums, I'm talking about the horn players. It started in Louisiana. I was there. I went all through everything they had there. MW: I want to ask you something and you can
probably tell us about this. Tell us about Congo Square. DC: Who? MW: Congo Square. DC: Where is that? New Orleans? MW: Yeah. DC: Well I was there five times and I never
heard of Congo Square. MR: No kidding? I thought it was a -
DC: No, you see I never knew there was a New Orleans when I was in Chicago in 1926. I was stranded there. That's how I got there. I never knew anything about New Orleans or
Louisiana or nothing until I got to Chicago in the 1920s. So there is a lot in New Orleans that I haven't
been able to see. I go every year. I'm going there next month, in October, and
I go almost every month-every year to the festivals and they use me, they play me to
death. They like me, and so I go all the time. Now I have gone all over I think, almost all
over New Orleans. I haven't finished yet. There are so many places - you've been there
- there are so many places. You can stay there forever and never finish,
never completely visit everything about New Orleans. Jelly Roll's home and King Oliver's home and
all those guys - even the cemeteries are something to see down there. It's falling down, it's old, rotten, everything
is above the ground you know, but if you go in there you go see some great guys in there. It's great to go. I ever cared for the cemetery but that's one
cemetery that everybody says, that knew anything about jazz. You've got guys in there from the 1700s, the
players, it's all written on their tombstone. Humphrey, the two Humphrey brothers already
died - Percy and Willie. Percy died about two days ago. One of the great trumpet players. Died in Barclay. And guys that, even before I was born, musicians. And it's so sad that we didn't have a recorder
back in those days. That's so sad. MR: Yeah, because we can only imagine what
they were doing. DC: That's all we can do. MR: Can you tell us about your first recording
date? DC: With Ma Rainey? MR: Yeah. DC: Oh, yes. I was with Al Wynn's Creole Jazz Band when
we made that recording. I knew Ma Rainey because I sat in the Bijou
Theater playing shows with the pit band. I wasn't getting paid, I did it because they
let me do it. And I just did it to try to learn as much
as I could. And Ma Rainey, she came, she was the ugliest
blues singer on earth when she got old, but when she was young she was pretty. You see her picture, she was the prettiest,
nice looking girl. But she is so ugly, that that's what they
call the ugliest blues singer, and they billed her as that. MR: Oh my God. DC: And she taught Bessie Smith. She was Bessie Smith's teacher. And in Chicago she used Albert Wynn's Creole
Jazz Band and I was in the band. So that's how I recorded with her. She was very nice, a very, very, very nice
woman. And we played all of her songs, and that was
it. That was about '26. And in the 30s, someone gave me an album of
it. MR: What was it like, you know, for our students
who are used to hearing what they do to make a record these days you know, in the million
dollar studios. What was it like at that time to make a record? DC: Well after, this place where we played
and recorded with Ma Rainey was just a room. They didn't have any speakers. We had a big megaphone we put out in front
of the band, but no speakers. And everything was done by wax. You know we didn't have all that stuff. MR: No fixing mistakes, right? DC: No, no, no. And my next recording I did in Spain, in Barcelona,
with Sam Wooding's band. Sam Wooding. You never heard of him? MR: Sam Wooding? DC: Sam Wooding. MR: I've seen the name. DC: Sam Wooding was a band in New York and
he turned down the Cotton Club, to rather go to Europe with his band than to play in
the Cotton Club. That's how Duke got in there. It wasn't but Sam Wooding. So Sam took the band to Europe in 1927, the
latter part of '27. And I joined Sam Wooding and went to Europe
with that band. And we, that's the second recording I ever
made was with Sam Wooding in Barcelona. And you can get that now, it's now on CDs. It was a great, great band. The band was so great that no other band in
Europe could compare with it. Now they were there in 1923. They were all through Russia and all down
in Argentina with that band. I joined the band the first part of '28. And we just went over there and we played
all the big casinos and hotels, because they had a very big name, and we recorded up in
Barcelona. It was hot as it is now. And the wax kept melting. And they put ice cubes on the wax to keep
it from melting. But they came out wonderful. You should hear that CD. Because Sam Wooding's band in 1923 was not
the same as '28. One side is the first band, on the other side
is the newer band. You just can't believe the difference. Because he had some great arrangers when we
went modern. And on one side was like Mickey Mouse music,
cartoon music. On the other side was very modern, like today's
modern. You should hear that thing. And I stayed in Europe three years and I recorded
with Sam Wooding in Paris. And I wrote one of the arrangements. I studied that too but it was too much for
me, too much headaches on the eyes to write it. I think I only made one arrangement in my
life, and that was in Paris for Sam Wooding. And that's on there. MR: No kidding, that's good, it got recorded. DC: Yes it did. And I came back in 1930. I left Sam over there because I got tired
of being over there. I came back and I recorded with Marlow Hardy
- Alabamians, a band out of Chicago. That's the band that Cab Calloway took over. And I played with Hardy, and then I went to
McKinney's Cotton Pickers in Detroit. And I recorded oh a lot of things with that
band. Then from there I went to the Cotton Club
with Cab Calloway and I stayed there nine years. And we made so many recordings, 78s with Cab,
we made so many I can't even count them. And I think there are a lot of CDs of those. And I've been doing that. I've been doing little side recordings of
different groups, you know, some that you never hear of them. Some groups come over here from Europe from
different countries, and they give me an opportunity to record with them. Sammy Rimmington out of Sweden - I'm going
to Sweden next month for 10 days with Sammy Rimmington's band, in the South of Sweden,
and I don't know where. But I didn't, I sort of refused that on account
of my knees and my hip. I have this arthritis making it hard for me
to get around. And I turn down a lot of things. Oh, I can walk pretty good, but the shows. So I was in Elkhart and the other two last
week, and they had a wheelchair like that from the airport, and I didn't have to touch
a thing. They had my bag, my horn, and they put the
wheelchair in my room in the hotel, came and got them when it was time to play. It was fun. But I could get up and walk a little bit. But that's the reason I'm trying to turn down
all those things. I want to stay in New York. But I musn't say that, I don't want to stay
- I don't want to leave Europe if I have to go. But I'd like to stay in America and play here. MR: Well we want you to stay too. DC: But it's getting too difficult with the
wheelchair and all the traveling with the baggages. People are nice, they do everything for me. But, you know, you get tired of that. But it's nice. I'm enjoying it. I'm going to Sweden for ten days. I'm saying that but you know a lot of people
keep calling me from Europe to come over there. But it looks bad for some musicians to be
in a wheelchair over there. It looks bad. You look like you're too old to get around. So I think I'm going to give it up after this
trip. MW: I wanted to ask you, you know do you have
any specific concepts about jazz education? About the way that this music is taught in
the schools? And have you been asked to be a guest speaker
or lecturer in any classroom? DC: No. Never. I've been to several schools. Out in San Diego they had me down there for
about a week. And they had me, every day I had to go to
the music class where the guys had, the kids had musicians and there were about 25 trumpets
and all these saxophones, there must have been about a hundred musicians down there
in the class. And they were beginners. I mean they could read, but they did not learn
how to play in tune. And I didn't want to say anything, but I would
go to listen to these guys, these kids. They're teenagers I mean. And I went to this class at San Diego University
and they were going to play something for me. Play something. And what they hit on was Stan Kenton's arrangement. And I never heard anything so bad in all my
life. Every one of them were out of tune. And their horns would sound bad, and you know,
I had to sit there and listen to that, then they had some of Count Basie's arrangements. And I couldn't believe how bad. And here the teacher is standing up there
saying nothing. Nothing. The first thing those kids have to learn is
to play in tune with one another. Your A has got to be with my A. But when you're
playing and everybody's out of tune, this was the worst thing I ever saw in my life. And the teacher is a friend of mine by the
name of Cheatham, Jimmy Cheatham, you ever heard of him? And I was waiting for him to tune up. But these teachers, they don't care about
those things. And in the back of the school, I sat up there,
and I said, how can that be? These boys are 17, 18 and 16 years old, 15
years old on up. And they don't realize that they are playing
out of tune. So most of them will never become musicians. Because you know that's important, you hear
something like that. And I was sitting out in the back of the school
and two kids came up to me and I was sitting on the bench and they asked me how did I like
the rehearsal. I says, "The only thing wrong," I says, "everybody's
out of tune." And I asked one of the kids, I says, "Look,
why don't you guys get together," and I asked one of the guys, "do you practice your scales?" Well he says, "What do you mean?" "Do you practice your scales on your own?" "No we don't do that." Imagine that? That's San Diego University. And I think the teacher got mad at me because
I got angry myself. What in the world are they teaching these
kids? I went to Harvard or something like that,
one of those - Berklee - way up in Massachusetts I went. And the same thing is there. People just blowing noise, making noise on
their horn and trying to play like Dizzy. MR: And loud too, right? DC: Huh? MR: They were playing loud too? DC: Wooo, you never heard that. They're all trying to out play one another,
playing all those riffs of Dizzy Gillespie's. I taught once, the beginners, and I got to
the place where I said the heck, let them handle it, let them do it. I can't do it. A woman brought her son down to 48th Street
where I had a studio with another fellow. And she brought her son and came and introduced
him and she brought her son and on her way, she bought a trumpet on 48th Street for him,
because he wanted to play trumpet. They came up there and the first thing she
says to me, "This is my son, I have a horn, now how long will it take him to play his
horn?" I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "How long will it take you to teach
him to play?" I said, "Lady, he may never learn to play
that horn. How on earth can you ask me a question like
that?" She said, "Well I bought a book for him to
look at that maybe you can teach him with." And she opened the book and you know what
she had? Dizzy Gillespie book. She hadn't opened the case yet. I said, "Lady, I'm sorry, you go down the
street and you may see somebody there that can help you out. I can't do it." But those are the kinds of kids I had. The successful kids I had, out of 60, there
would be about 4, and they were white and Puerto Rican and Cuban, that's all. And they would listen. Because those guys had music in their soul
in the first place. And that helps. That helps. And sometimes-I had one of them in the Navy,
he came by to thank me for teaching him because he was playing, he came to me and he was playing
over here. He said, "I want to change to here, like it
should be." I said, "That's the way it's supposed to be." So I put him in front of a mirror and made
him take his mouthpiece and I said, "It should be in the center, so both muscles can be used." I said, "You're playing over here you're not
using this muscle." And he couldn't make it. He couldn't see it to save his life. He'd come every day and say, "I can't do it." I says, "You can't do it because you say you
can't do it." And I said, "You buy you a little mirror and
everywhere you go, you put that mouthpiece up there and start buzzing, make a buzz with
the mouthpiece, and just watch it." He almost got run over down there. Off the street, he had that thing up there. I said, "Don't take chances like that." But he came back a couple of years ago and
thanked me. He got it. And he's not playing trumpet, he's playing
the French horn in the military band. But I just had to give up on teaching because
most of the kids come in late, some don't come at all and you wait for them and they
don't come at all, and I just stopped. Because I like to play, I like to play. If I can help someone I will but I like to
play not teach. Teaching is awful, especially on this instrument. But I like to play. Well hurting can help you. You can be hurt on your instrument if you
start teaching too much, because you're going right back where you started. MW: In other words too much of it is remedial? DC: Absolutely. MR: That's a good point. Well I think that might have been the case
with your friend in California where after you hear young students for so long, your
ears get desensitized to, like playing in tune. DC: Yes. Absolutely. I realized that right quick and I gave up. Oh boy. I'm going out playing with different groups
and things like that, sitting in. As far as being a trumpet player, I was always
playing as a lead trumpet player. I wasn't a soloist in big bands, I was a lead
player. And every big band I played from Chic Webb,
Sam Wooding, everybody, lead. Because no one wanted to play lead. The trumpet players didn't want to play lead
when I first came around. They didn't want to lead, even from the Preservation
Hall band they didn't want to play the lead. They wanted to solo. Everybody wanted to solo. So I made up my mind that I was going to be
a good lead trumpet player. And I think I did, all this time. And after that, after Cab broke up and I went
to the Louis Alladin band, that was one of the best things I did for my health, because
I was beginning to get powerful. I got real powerful just playing solos. I had my, you know I could stop, but in a
Latin band you don't have to stop you just keep going and going and going, and that gave
me a lot of power. That and playing lead trumpet gave me a lot
of power. And so, and right now I think I play too loud. But I can calm down. I learned how to do that too. But I mean sometimes I can't help myself. I'll play a solo and make it sound nice and
hit all over the top. But that's surprising to me because of my
age. I had no idea that I would ever be a jazz
player, but I wanted to do it and I just did it. And after playing all the lead I started looking
back to the things I learned with Sam Wooding and Louis, in the New Orleans music, that's
what I did. And I went back to that, and I started doing
it, very slowly, people gave me hell just trying to play jazz when I was playing jazz
- from the musicians. People that I know said "what are you trying
to do? You can't play." And I couldn't. It took a long time, long, long time, because
I went back to when I was learning things. And one day I got up and I went to Nice, France
for the festival. And I took our quartet. And I think that helped, better than sitting
in with some other group. And the people came in there and every section
of the press, and everybody was listening to our quartet. And it made me feel good. And I started to play and I just let everything
out, and I forgot about my, what do you call it -
MW: Inhibitions? DC: Yeah, I forgot about this and I started
playing and people that I knew from France asked me they say, "What's wrong? We never heard you play like that." And I used to hold back. But I stopped doing that. I used to hold back and let somebody else
do it. I still do that. If I'm playing in a big band I don't try to
hog anything, but I don't, I have more confidence in myself than I've ever had in my life. And I forgot all about lead playing. I could probably do it but I forgot all about
it. And all these harmonies that I taught myself
are coming back to my brain. And all the cycles and shifts, from all those
years, are coming back to me. And I read, I read a lot about things you
know. And now I feel like I've never felt before
in my life. And I'm not - I don't fear getting up to play. I used to fear that. MR: It's almost like you came in a big circle
and you've done so many things with your horn. DC: Yes. I love standards. I love standards. They saved my life, that's what's happened. MR: Enjoy it. DC: Maybe I told this girl, she wrote about
me in a magazine, she called me the "late bloomer." So she came out with this and I said, "Listen. I'm not a late bloomer." I says, "I'm an electric light bulb." She said, "What are you talking about?" I said, "When it's getting ready to blow out,
it gets brighter." I could finish anytime. I could just give up anytime. Because being 90 years old is not easy. It's easy, if you think about it, I don't
worry about that. But a lot of people look at me like I'm nuts
or something. How'd you do that? MR: I think you're just creative. DC: It's something. It's something. It's something that has changed overnight,
helped me sorta. I know someone in New Orleans-you know people
in New Orleans are very superstitious people. She said, "Louis Armstrong is looking out
after you." I called her last night she says, "How you
doing?" She says, "Louis Armstrong is looking out
after you." And I said, "I'm glad somebody's looking after
me." And I keep a little silver engraving, a little
metal thing on my horn for Louis Armstrong. And everybody says, "Oh boy, that's Pop." MR: Can you tell us just a little about playing
with the Basie Alumni group? DC: That was, what do you call that? MR: The Countsmen? DC: Well you know I never tried to play that
style of music - Buck Clayton, Sweets Edison and the rest of them - because that's the
western band from Bennie Moten's band. That band started out playing blues, that's
the way it was. Then later on through the years it started
swinging, and still with the blues accent. And I was never a blues trumpet player. If I have to play it I'll play it. But everything they had was swing and jump. And I was offered a job with Basie. He asked me one time he came and heard me
play and he turned around and say, "Gee whiz - I didn't know you played like that." But I said to myself I hope they don't ask
me, because I can't play. It's hard to play the style of Count Basie. I never was successful with that. I like Duke, and I like other bands, the Cotton
Pickers. I like quality and I like, I never was good
at that jump stuff. You'll never hear me play it unless I have
to. If I'm forced to I'll do it. But it's not a style for me. And, because it's all blues, and there's nobody
in the world can play it like Sweets Edison and Buck Clayton. They were the greatest Basie trumpet players
and no one else could play like that. They say no one can play like Bird - they
are in a class with Louis Armstrong. And you can't kid yourself you know. I'm not going to jump in a band like that. So the Countsmen were never successful. They had Earle Warren leading and he was taking
the lead, and he was leading the band. And he wasn't in Count Basie's band as the
leader, see? But he couldn't make it. He's too loud and he was excited and he got
upset all the time at things, and you can't do that. So I'm just playing and I thank God for whatever
I'm able to play, whatever I play, and I've had more attention paid to me than ever in
my life. Everybody calls me a great player. Well if I am then I appreciate that. But I still don't think I am. But I'm doing what I know how to do. And you have to listen to what your opinion
is, that's okay, you see. I don't play to be a big player. But I'm having a lot of fun. MR: Alright. Just a couple of more things. Can you give us a sense of what was happening
to the bands during the depression years? DC: Yes. MR: Was that a tough time also? DC: During those days, the Latin musicians
from Latin countries like Puerto Rico came in. Bands. Musicians. And they started, they had a dancing school
and they had a band in there that played all Latin music. And it got to the place where that's all the
people wanted was Latin music. And the bands would come in and Machito came
in overnighted the band and Tito Puente came in overnight. Because I taught Marcelino trumpet, but he
could never learn. He had one of the greatest Latin bands that
there ever was in the world and I had his tape, a great band. And all of his rhythms, I mean his reed section
was all black musicians, all the saxophone players. Hot Lips was the only Cuban trumpet players
in that band - out of this world. Tito Puente came to this country and he sat
in with Marcelino, and then they started having dances, and everybody was going to the Latin
dances, all over in Brooklyn, all over here and everybody was dancing Latin. And it got to be a big thing. So I got into that. And it has just now started to fall, the end
of the line. They're still at the college, but there are
no more Latin bands in New York, you know, that, like it was years ago. Then when Dizzy joined Cab Calloway's band,
he started listening to a Latin band. And as the generation that came up at the
same time was kids, like Roy and Freddie Webster and all these beboppers, and Dizzy started,
left Cab, and started to do his own stuff. But he liked Latin music, see? And then here come the followers, the young
kids, like Roy Roman and you know I'll bet you've got one hundred or more young trumpet
players more educated than anyone else. And they all come out of Juilliard. And they all play alike. They sound good. So that's why I started saying about Parker. When Parker started, Parker came here with
Jay McShann's band, you know, playing in Philadelphia with that band. But he wasn't playing like - he was just sitting
there reading music and that's all in that band. But all of a sudden, he was a late bloomer,
he came out all of a sudden. Charles Parker came out and drive everybody
crazy, and the followers followed him. That's what you have now. You have more alto saxophone players now than
there ever was. And they all can play, and some good ones,
you've got some, I think, what's the guy name that wears that leather cap all the time,
I forget. But I think he's better than Charlie Parker. But you've got a lot of them. And you've got a lot of Dizzy. That's the way it started. And you can forget about jazz in those days. It's out. It had nothing to do. Nothing to do. You'd have free jazz concerts down in Stuyvesant,
casinos, and places like that, but you wasn't getting paid. That's free. We were doing it just to have something to
do. What else was I supposed to do? So the beboppers, they were outlasting the
Latins. It was a mess. And Dixieland got moved up in there, and started
playing some Dixieland with a ballad band on 52nd Street with Jimmy Ryan. And that was in competition with - everybody
was in competition with one another. 52nd Street was the savior of jazz. That saved the whole thing. The beboppers man they were downtown and all
the LaBamba and all those clubs. And Errol Garner came in there one day. And I was playing. I played down there with Machito down to LaBamba. Yeah. And Errol Garner came in there. And the people who had the rumor said Garner
can not read music. MR: I've heard that from somebody. DC: He was in the audience when I played in
LaBamba, in Machito's band, a big band. We invited, Machito invited Errol Garner to
play. And I say Errol Garner misunderstood, he didn't
mean for him to play, but introduced him to the audience. And Errol Garner got up and came up to the
piano, you know. I dare say. And after he got up there they put all that
Latin music in front of him like "Renee Root." He set down and played everything, every one
of those parts. MR: No kidding. DC: Yes he did. And I tell everybody that Errol Garner just
had everybody fooled. He could play all that music. And those arrangements were hard. Latin. Woah. MR: They have some - did it take you a while
for you to get used to the rhythms? DC: Oh, I was fired. I was fired the first time I joined Machito. Because Mario was the leader of that band. And Mario and I played with Cab together. And Mario liked the way I played. He says, "Cheat, I'm going to organize a band,"
and he says, "and I want you as my trumpet player." I said, "Fine." So I joined Mario when he left Cab the first
time, and when I was in the band, he had me in the band, he had me play and he fired me
the same night because I couldn't get those rhythms to save my life. He fired me, very nicely of course. Then when I did I moved back to 110th Street
and Fifth Avenue, and I just went there and joined a little "cohoto" they called it - every
Saturday night there'd be fights there and people throwing chairs, every night it was
something. But I played with a little band there until
I learned, and stayed there until I learned the beat. And then after I learned the beat, Mario hired
me back, and I stayed in the big band a long time. But it's hard, it's difficult. Nothing easy about it. But I feel now I could play. But Dizzy, he came in there and he broke all
that up. Now he started his type of playing in the
Latin bands, and that's what they're doing today most of them. You hear those arrangements, they have the
Latin, I mean the bebop stuff in there. And that's what it is. So right now we got a lot of things and no
place to play, you know? Because the recording industry has breaked
up all this stuff. So all you can do - well I think it's coming
back. I'm quite sure it's coming back. Especially jazz. Jazz is coming back. MR: Well, on those positive words, I see a
great CD- DC: I don't know why, You know I was surprised
when they invited me to do this, because you know that's one of the biggest recording -
MR: Yeah, it's a good label. DC: But they invited me to do it. And I'd like to do another one. But you, they probably won't. I have two from New Orleans you ought to get. I have one from New Orleans called "Swinging
Down to New Orleans." You ought to hear that. MR: I'm sure we'll be getting it for our archive. DC: That's on what they call, that's the name
of the album "Swinging Down to New Orleans." It cuts that to death, man. Seventeen different New Orleans tunes, and
they're selling like hotcakes. And this is nice, I like this. They wanted me to do something on Miles Davis. I said I can't. I can't play like Miles. Well they were after me to play one Miles
Davis tune. So what I did, they says, "that is one of
my favorite clients," you know, "Miles Davis." You walk in the office and there was a picture
of Miles as big as that wall. They asked me to play something for Miles
Davis. So what I did, to show you how ignorant I
am, I played one of Monk's tunes, "'Round Midnight." I
had never played it before. MR: That's a hard tune. DC: I'd never played "'Round Midnight" before. Did you hear this one on here? Everybody called me and says "Cheat, that's
the greatest "'Round Midnight" I've ever heard in my life." I did it right away to get it over with, and
it did come out, it did come out to be nice. MR: Well that tune was associated with Miles,
too, so- DC: But I thought it was Miles' tune, I didn't
know. MR: Great. DC: But I liked that solo I did on "'Round
Midnight." I saw some young kids, young kids from college
came in two weeks ago to the club, three of them, trumpet players. And they stayed all day, all night, until
we finished, and then they came up and asked me about playing. And they said oh they loved that. They asked me to play it. And I haven't played it since I recorded it. But I says "You guys sit down" and I played
it. And it just came out, and it's difficult,
but it just came out automatically, all right. And it's hard, it's not an easy tune, I mean
to ad lib on, but just to play the melody. MR: Major changes, yeah. DC: And everything came out fine, I was surprised. MR: Well you're doing something right. DC: One thing is I'm having a good time. MW: I think that's half of it. DC: Yeah I'm having a good time. I'm playing. I don't care who I play with. I'll play with Wynton, Wynton likes me so
much. MR: Yeah, I saw you on T.V. with him. DC: He likes my playing so much. And Jon Faddis too. They all treat me so good, wonderful. MR: Well on that upbeat note, Hamilton College
would like to thank Doc Cheatham very much for joining us for our jazz archive it's been a
fascinating hour, and when they talk about "living legends" it's sometimes an overused
term, but I think we can use it here. Thank you very much. DC: My pleasure.
