Blues, and other things, after hours.

(left) Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, featuring Avery Parrish (circled) and (right) Boogie Woogie Red

Oh, the stuff you can turn up when Google is really humming and clicking. For instance, seventy years ago today, on March 28, 1943, the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra was playing at the Paradise Theater in Detroit. Since Dead Like Jazz is a Motor City-based blog, we tend to gravitate to information like that. Hawkins’ band is famous for—among other things—introducing “Tuxedo Junction”, a tune appropriated for much greater profit by one of its white competitors, the infinitely more famous Glenn Miller.

Like many of his white contemporaries such as Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, Miller borrowed extensively from black bands’ repertoire. Unlike those bandleaders, Miller rarely gave anything like credit where credit was due, although one could say he mostly withheld any comment at all while he cashed his ample checks. Anyway, in addition to being one of the many uncredited stepping stones to Miler’s stardom, Hawkins’ also recorded a simple blues tune, “After Hours”, that became a juke box staple in African-American establishments for years after its release in 1940.

“After Hours” was essentially a vehicle for pianist Avery Parrish to improvise a simple twelve-bar blues riff and variations, and would have been considered a little “down homey” but for the sudden popularity of boogie woogie and other blues piano styles in 1940. Our additional familiarity with Parrish is twofold. For over 30 years, our local public radio outlet—WDET-FM—featured a late night Saturday blues program featuring “After Hours” as its theme song. The program was called—drum roll, please—Blues After Hours. It was hosted by a local record store owner, blues gadfly and general character named Famous Coachman. He was erroneously referred to by listeners and the press as “THE famous Coachman”, but apparently his given name was, in fact, Famous Coachman. He was as authentic as collard greens and chitlins when it came to his relationships with all the local, famous blues artists—from Eddie Burns to Bobo Jenkins to John Lee Hooker—and our young, white ears soaked up his style and wisdom with humor and respect.

Eventually, we met—and occasionally played gigs with—another old time Detroit blues survivor, Boogie Woogie Red. He had had been something of an all-purpose piano player in Detroit’s Black Bottom music scene on Hastings Street back in the 1940’s. By the late 1960’s, Ann Arbor hippies had rediscovered him, and he enjoyed something of a second career there until the late ’70’s, when changing tastes closed many of his old venues, and he was back to scuffling for occasional jobs when we knew him best. One evening after a gig with Red, while chatting with him over cocktails—um, a pint of Four Roses, actually—the subject drifted to piano players. Red often played “After Hours”, and after hearing him rave about guys like Teddy Wilson and Earl Hines, he mentioned that he did, indeed, admire Avery Parrish’s playing as well. He said that he’d actually met Parrish at the Paradise Theater when Erskine Hawkins’ band was in town, and we suppose that today could mark the 70th anniversary of that event, given our factoid noted above. We asked him about his impressions of Parrish, and Red responded angrily with “I liked his playing alright, and I told him so, but that mother(expletive)ing (homophobic expletive) liked me for all kinds of other reasons. I don’t play that game, mother(expletive)!” Ah, the sweet fancies of youth.

Years later, after losing touch with Red for a while, we finally read that he had died. Red always struck us as REALLY OLD, and we assumed he must have known King Oliver and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and dodged the draft in 1917. As it turned out, he was only 75 when he died, and was thus even younger than our parents. The infamous Avery Parrish incident would have been when Red was only eighteen. Go figure. The moral of the story is that life is short, so don’t freak out when your idol makes a pass at you.

Check out a Red tune here, Red’s Boogie or check out an Erskine Hawkins collection, Jukebox Hits 1940-1950.