Here's a name I can mention: I interviewed Herb Gordy, a jazz bassist who'd played with some of the greats. Look him up on YouTube under "Herbert Gordy." He's Berry Gordy's cousin.
Here he is with Earl Bostic:
Earl Bostic - Telstar Drive - YouTube
He arranged for Cab Calloway and Lavern Baker as well.
When I interviewed Herb, he was playing bass in the Royal Street Bachelors at Disneyland. He founded the trio and played with it for 30 years. Since he was such a distinguished jazz bassist as well, I thought
Bass Player would let me do a longer feature, but he was "yesterday's news," of course. The short article didn't have some of the more entertaining details of Herb's career. We weren't in the business of entertaining people, since music isn't entertainment. Or something.
In the mid 1940's, Herb--a rare left-handed standup bassist--put phosphorescent paint on the edges of the body and sides of the fretboard of his bass so that when the lights went down, the audience would see a green, glow-in-the-dark outline of the instrument.
Later in the 1940's, Herb played with Tiny (Mac) Grimes and His Rocking Highlanders. Grimes was an electric guitarist who had his all-black band play in kilts and Tam o' Shanters. At different times the band included saxophonist Red Prysock and vocalist/pianist Screamin' Jay Hawkins. They sang open harmonies in the style of the Four Freshmen.
One night at a club in New York, Herb was violently accosted by a drunken Scottish tourist, angry that Herb wore a kilt.
"What clan are ye?" the Scotsman yelled.
Herb had no idea that the tartan pattern or sett of a kilt signifies individual Scottish clans. Being a black American man born in the 1920s, he snapped, "I ain't no Klan!"
"What clan are ye, I said?" the Scotsman shouted again, before the bouncers piled on him and threw him out.
The big break for Tiny (Mac) Grimes and His Rocking Highlanders came one night in Chicago. They were scheduled to play at the Edgewater Beach Hotel and would be followed by Sophie Tucker. The Highlanders would play several 30-minute sets after an opening act. If all went well, the booking agent had other great jobs lined up. Grimes was so excited that he took the edge off by having a few drinks to calm his nerves. He didn't eat anything because he was too nervous.
The opening act consisted of a violinist, an accordionist, and a bassist walking around the diners, playing quietly. While they were performing, the maître d'--a smooth, well-spoken gentleman--approached Grimes and said, "Mr. Grimes, would you please play nothing but soft music during this first set, because this is our dinner hour?" Brush-type music, Herb called it. Always quick tempered, the stressed and now drunk Grimes blew his stack and said, "You don't tell me how to run my G-D group!"
What Grimes didn't know was that in Chicago, the maître d' actually
did run his group. He ran everything in the hotel, including the band. Instead of arguing, the maître d' got on the phone to the musicians' union headquarters. As he did so, the Highlanders took to the stage. Grimes plugged in his electric guitar, turned it all the way up, and played "Flying Home" as loudly as he could.
The rep from the musicians' union came and watched. After the first set, he pulled the Highlanders' union cards, paid them for two weeks, fired them on the spot, and sent them packing.
Herb came to California in the mid 1950s. He arrived with Earl Bostic, who bought a home in Los Angeles and opened a restaurant. Bostic’s six-piece band traveled the state nine months out of the year in two Chrysler station wagons. When the nine months were up, Bostic drove the band to Union Station, paid them, and told them to return in three months for the next tour. "Just like we were a baseball team," Herb said. For the ten years that he lived in California, until his death in 1965, Bostic--born in Tulsa, Oklahoma--was pathologically afraid of earthquakes.
Herb told me several stories about Disneyland. He and his two fellow musicians were the only employees allowed to have mustaches. They got their name from Walt Disney himself, who was horrified at the thought of naming them after the awful, debauched, sexy, dangerous Bourbon Street in New Orleans. They were the Royal Street Bachelors instead.
When Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, visited the park, she scared the hell out of everybody because she had a giant security detail of agents from Scotland Yard, the Anaheim Police, and the FBI. The theme park wanted her to go right to Club 33, the private establishment beside the Blue Bayou restaurant and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. When the Duchess saw the ride, she announced that she wanted to go on it instead and then eat in the Blue Bayou, which set off a panic among her security because they hadn’t cleared any of the area. They ended up hustling her inside and letting her ride one of the boats by herself, the craft in front and the one behind filled with armed security. She then ate alone in the restaurant, surrounded by her guards.
Herb's fondest memory of working in Disneyland was when a British symphony orchestra toured the park. The symphony bassist was a young woman at least six feet, three inches tall. She'd never seen a left-handed acoustic bassist before and asked Herb if she could play his instrument. He handed it over, along with his bow, and she proceeded to play a flawless, right-handed rendition of "Flight of the Bumblebee" even though the bass was strung left handed.
"Never seen anything like it," Herb said.
The Disneyland gig resulted in Herb's trio being hired to play at celebrities' private parties all over southern California for almost three decades. Rosalind Russell saw him playing at the park, arranged for him to play at her party the next month, and then died before the party was thrown.
Here's a photo of Tiny (Mac) Grimes and his Rocking Highlanders in their kilts, taken sometime in the late 1940s. Herb Gordy is on the left.
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