Clancy Hayes, John Phillips, Steve Jordan, Squirrel Ashcraft and Tommy Gwaltney at Blues Alley, Washington, DC., April 1968
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The first jazz club I ever visited with any regularity was Blues Alley in Georgetown, a little corner of Washington, D.C. that was a unique destination in 1965 and maybe still is today. That was the year the club was founded by Tommy Gwaltney, the clarinet-playing member of the ham producing family. The club has a Wisconsin Avenue address, but the old carriage house really is tucked in a little alley that runs off Wisconsin about twenty yards south of K Street. When it first opened, Tommy and various groups he led provided most of the music. Then they began to bring in soloists who would appear with the house band. Traditional artists like Jimmy Rushing, Red Allen, Jimmy McPartland, Wild Bill Davison, Vic Dickenson and Clancy Hayes were regulars. Tommy Chase, Cliff Jackson, John Phillips and others I’ve forgotten handled intermission piano. I didn’t get to go as often as I’d have liked because in those days my salary was modest and Blues Alley wasn’t. My friend, Johnson McRee was a part owner and if I was at his table there was no charge at all. If I went with Squirrel Ashcraft, there was a charge, but I never saw it. It was even better when I was working a tape recorder. Then I could stay all night and some pretty good things were recorded there. A few were awful, notably a solo record with Tommy Chase, because the piano hadn’t been tuned in forty years, or so it seemed. It was better with Cliff Jackson and the sound on nights with Jimmy McPartland, Buck Clayton and Wild Bill Davison was terrific. These recordings were Johnson McRee projects, none of which were ever issued, but it was a good learning experience. In the 1970s I acquired the Buck Clayton tapes from Johnson, but never issued them. In 1969, however, I undertook my first project on my own at Blues Alley, a solo recording with Willie The Lion Smith. It worked out pretty well and I did a second a few months later. The best parts of the Willie the Lion dates were issued on two Chiaroscuro LPs. I often took my fixed focus Kodak camera to the club. It was loaded with Kodachrome and I usually had a few flash bulbs in my pocket. I wish I had it with me on the nights I saw Jimmy Rushing and Red Allen, but I did have it with me in April 1968 when I recorded Clancy Hayes at the club. I don’t remember all the details, only that Squirrel asked me to come to Washington and do a favor for Clancy. He was still sufficiently connected that he could call me to DC and I didn’t have to give up leave or make any excuses. I don’t remember everyone in the band and there’s no way to look it up since the recording was never released, but in addition to Clancy, the photographs show Tommy Gwaltney (clarinet), Steve Jordan (guitar), John Phillips (piano), Billy Taylor, Jr. (bass) and Bertell Knox (drums). I recall the music was charming, there were a bunch of Clancy vocals and I managed to get one good picture, one of those lucky accidents where the exposure is better than perfect and everything works. Many of my early Kodachromes were lost. This one wasn’t. The five guys in the photograph, left to right, are Clancy Hayes, John Phillips, Steve Jordan, Squirrel Ashcraft and Tommy Gwaltney. They’re in the bar and it looks like a rehearsal, or at least they are talking about what they’re going to play. I can see photographs of Bud Freeman, Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, and Cliff Jackson on the wall. The guys rehearsing are long gone and my guess is so are the pictures on the wall, it certainly didn’t look like this the last time I was there, but this is what the best jazz room in Washington looked like forty years ago. |
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