Clip 01:
00:00:00
EZ: So, what would you like to know?
LA: Well, I guess I'd just like to start out by asking you to start from the beginning. You know, talk about your birth. . .
EZ: Oh, when I was born I cried like a baby... I was born at a very early age [laughs] ... I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and I started playing when I was about fourteen years old. My cousin had a saxophone, and he wouldn't let me play it, but he would let me put my arms around his body and finger it - he showed me the fingering on the sax, and then he'd blow it, and then we played tunes, you know. So my father thought it was kind of cute, so he went out and bought me a thirty-five dollar saxophone, and I took two lessons from a guy that used to play in a strip joint in New York. Eddie Small -- I still remember his name.
00:01:01
And then I thought I was a big shot (I knew about three tunes), and somebody told me that you could get a job if you go down to the Brill Building in New York, in Manhattan, so I went and took a subway, brought my horn, and I was standing outside the front of the building, and I put the horn down beside me, and after a while a guy comes over and he says, "You play sax?" I said, "Yeah," he says, "My sax man didn't show up. You wanna audition for a summer job in the Catskill Mountains?" I said, "Yeah, sure!" [laughs ]…that's how little I knew, you know?
00:01:35
So we go up there into the room in the Brill Building, and he brings out a stand and puts music over there, and I said, "I don't read - I don't read, like, enough to be able to read the music." And he says, "Oh my God. Jesus, do you know any tunes by heart?" And I said, "Yeah. I know three tunes." I knew Heart and Soul, Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, and Tuxedo Junction. [Laughter]. So, we used that for the audition. We had a trumpet player, a singer, and this guy was a piano player. We had this drummer who stuttered. He was a real nice guy, but really funny. And we got the job. We were making seven dollars a week, room and board. Then things were going pretty bad, so after a few weeks, he cut us down to five dollars a week, room and board, and so that's how we got started professionally - that whole summer up there.
Synopsis of Clip 02: Zaretsky discusses his high school years, his time in the Army Air Force Band, and his musical learning experiences at the Port Arthur Restaurant. Places: Port Arthur Restaurant, Fay's Theater.
Clip 02:
00:03:14
So I did it for about two or three summers and got a lot of experience playing shows, and realizing how little I knew, so then I finally graduated, I had to graduate high school, but my father moved up here in 1941, so I did my last semester up here [in Providence]. And I played with the school band, in Brooklyn. When I was playing, we played the World's Fair. when they had that hemisphere, that big, big globe - I don't remember what they called it, they had a special name, And then I got right into the service when I graduated high school and I spent four years there, and got into an Army-Air Force band. Matter of fact, I just called up a buddy of mine that enlisted with me, and I asked him to come over but he was fertilizing his lawn.
00:04:18
And as a matter of fact, as you'll see in pictures here, if you would see him now, he's all white [his hair], you know... but it's amazing, the difference in people. I was a good athlete. I was a golf professional and a musician. I had a back operation, which has kind of crippled me up. So that was unfortunate. But yeah, we were all young bucks in those days, and we got to play with all different kinds of bands. I got old pictures from the Army with big band, small bands..
00:4:51
And then, of course, I learned how to read when the war broke out. I got a job - you had to join a union - a lot of guys were being drafted so they were losing musicians, so I joined a union, and worked at a place called the Port Arthur Restaurant, in downtown Providence. It was like a block long; it was this Chinese restaurant - it was unbelievable. We used to do three shows a day. We used to go from twelve to two, six to eight, and then we'd have an hour off and then come back and play from nine to one. Seven days a
week, seven months I played there. That's where I learned how to read. We did all kinds of acts and everything, so you'd have to read - I was forced to read, playing with better musicians. And I even played at a place called Fay's Theatre, which... [chuckling] it's like ancient times. They had an old-time band leader, and on.the music, it says "bows." We didn't know what the heck that meant, because we hadn't played these kind of shows. .. we played for a group called "High, Low, and Standy." They had a giant, and a regular-sized guy, and a midget. And they started dancing, the, midget would run between their legs, and they'd do all kinds of crazy things - it was funny. So, when they'd go on, first they'd come on and we'd play, like. [singing the tune of "California, Here I Come"] "California, dah dah dah. . . " you know. And they'd come on, they'd dance on, and then where it says "Bows," we were supposed to play [sings] "Dah duh dah duh dah!" and they'd go off. The band leader's yelling, "Bows, bows!" so one of the guys gets up and starts bowing! Instead of playing. [Laughs.] You know, he thought that's what he meant! But that's how green we were. There was all this kind of experience we had.
00:06:48
And then, later on, a few years later, when the Celebrity Club opened up, I was like the first house band that they had. And, do you remember Nat King Cole?
00:07:00
LA: Yeah.
00:07:01
EZ: Well, he had a trio at that time, Nat King Cole and his Trio, so he was in the front room, and we used to get on when he'd get off. And then they opened up the big room, and that's when Sammy Davis Junior came in with the Womaston Trio, his uncles. And he used to tap dance and play drums; he was so talented. And then I played with Lou Bellson-Louie Bellson was the world's greatest drummer- and his wife was Pearl Bailey, a singer. Pearly Mae... she was a black singer... and he was a white guy, very affluent... his parents were... I think it was his father was a doctor, he had a lot of money. But he pursued his love-that was drums-and then he married her... they didn't think it would last; it lasted all the time till she passed away.
Clip 03 Synopsis: Zaretsky talks about the early days of the Celebrity Club, including his work with Nat King Cole, Carl Henry, Jim Mendez, Slim Gaillard, and Slim Stewart.
00:27:59
LA: I wanted to ask, do you think you could sort of tell the story of the opening of the Celebrity Club, from your point of view. .. what you know about it... and your impressions from that time?
00:28:14
EZ: Yeah, well, when they first opened up; all it was was a dinky old front room. Like a store room. And so they built it back a little bit, and then they had a little stand, hardly enough to get four or five guys on it, a stand… and when Nat King Cole came in, he drew quite a good crowd. Standing room only…and so then, he enlarged it a little bit more, and then finally, he enlarged it so that it was a big club. I mean, it was like a half a block long. And then we got Carl Henry and Jim Mendez - they were two disk jockeys …and they used to record me all the time, and they'd be at the club, and we used to go on for an hour in the afternoon, from three to four o'clock. I played with Slim Gaillard, I got pictures playing with him - there used to be two guys: Slim and Slim. Slim Gaillard played guitar, and bongos, and all kinds of percussions, and he could play - he called it "Clear the Room, "-but it was "Clare de Lune." with his fingers upside-down on the piano. And he talked funny. He'd call me, like he'd say, "What's your name?" I says, "Eddie. Eddie Zaretsky." "Eddie Rooney? Eh, Reeny! How you doin', Roony?" And he would say that to everybody. He was just a hot sketch - a very, very colorful kind of guy. And Slim Stewart was a bass player that played with a bow, and used to hum an octave above, so that he'd be playing and singing the same thing, so that you'd get kind of a weird sound, between the bow on the bass, and his voice. But they became very, very famous, and so I worked - a week, a few times, I worked with him. And he used to drive in... Like, at three a clock, we're going to broadcast, at five minutes to three, we'd see his Cadillac drive right in, and then I'd say, "What are we going to do? We haven't rehearsed!" and he says, "You know the Blues in B flat?" I said "Yeah," He says, "You know the blues in C?" He says, "We rehearsed." [laughs]. Then he says, "All right. Blues in C. One! Two! Three! Four! ..." He's playing, and he's got the bongos... he'd get the room crazy. He was fantastic. I really enjoyed playing with him.
Clip 04 Synopsis: Zaretsky talks about race and the Celebrity Club, mentioning Carl. Henry and Count Basie. Places: Celebrity Club, Randall Street, North Main Street.
00:33:52
LA: Well, urn, the Celebrity Club - it's very known for being an integrated club... can you talk a little bit about race and the club, what you know? . . .
00:34:06
EZ: Yeah. Yeah. First of all, it was on Randall Street, and that was in part of the Black section. It was off North Main street. Matter of fact, right now, there's a big, big doctors' building in [inaudible]. Monohasset building. That's where all the doctors are. On the way down, going from North Main Street down on Randall street, on the right hand side, that's where the Celebrity Club was.
00:34:33
So this buddy of mine opened up a record store called "Carl's Diggins." This is Carl Henry. And he did terrific. He was the first guy to sell Rhythm and Blues, because all the Black people used to love Rhythm and blues at that time. And normally, I had a lot of friends that were black; and I played with a lot of black musicians, and there was no such thing as a color line in the Celebrity Club. I mean, I played with Count Basie's band for a week, and I was very happy to be there, and never felt that there was any kind of animosity or anything. And people would be sitting at tables with one another, and girls are going with guys, and ... you know, there was no such thing... once you get into the club, there was no color line. Nobody saw color. And that was fantastic. I thought that was tremendous, because, you know, when you get to know other people, you don't really know their lifestyle, but I got to know their lifestyle, because I'd go over to their houses and stuff like that. And they're the same as we are.