Oral History Program Joe L. McQueen Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 25 July 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Joe L. McQueen Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 25 July 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: McQueen, Joe L., an oral history by Sarah Langsdon, 25 July 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Joe McQueen Joe McQueen July 25, 2013 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Joe L. McQueen, conducted by Sarah Langsdon on July 25, 2013 at the Stewart Library. Joe discusses his experiences with 25th street. SL: This is Sarah Langsdon and I’m doing an interview with Joe McQueen. Joe, let’s go ahead and get started and have you tell us a little bit about when and where you were born. JM: I was born in 1919 and in some places they say I was born in Dallas, Texas, but I was actually born in Ponder, Texas. I managed to get my birth certificate last year. Before that time, I was always using the 1930 census because I didn’t have a real birth certificate, but I finally got it and it gave me all of the information about my mother and dad and all those things. SL: How many siblings did you have? JM: None. SL: You were an only child. JM: Yes. SL: What did your parents do for a living? JM: As far as I know, my dad left when I was five years old and I don’t know what he did. My mother more or less was a housewife and I don’t remember my mother ever working. I’m quite sure that’s the only thing I knew she did. She died very young. She was only 30 when she passed. 2 SL: Who ended up raising you then? JM: I raised myself and my grandparents were there to help me, but I had to help them because they were old. Sometimes I was working two or three jobs and that was during the big depression. My mother died July 5, 1933. I was doing a lot of work helping my grandparents as well as helping myself. SL: How did you start to play the saxophone? JM: I had a cousin, Hershel Evans, who played saxophone and bass with some other people. Hershel didn’t do anything but show me how to run a C major scale on the saxophone and then I never got a chance to even touch a saxophone for a year or so after that. I told a music teacher in Oklahoma about wanting to play music and he said, “We can get you up here and let you play bass tuba because we need a big guy to play bass tuba.” I said, “I don’t want to play a bass tuba, I want to play a saxophone.” He said, “I’m sorry, Joe, we don’t have a saxophone, but we have a bass tuba and you can get started in music with that.” I played that thing for a while and hated it. After I got rid of that big tuba, the first thing I got was a clarinet because I wanted something small after playing with that big thing. From clarinet I got an E flat alto saxophone that was painted black at a hockshop that my uncle bought for me for 10 dollars. Vanoy Green helped me get the paint and stuff off of that horn and fix the pads and things. During WWII I was playing in Lawton, Oklahoma and somebody stole my alto. The lady I played for said, “Can’t you find another horn?” I said, “Well, I can find a tenor but I haven’t played tenor.” There was another tenor player that told me, “Go ahead and get the tenor. I’ll help you. It’s not that much different.” So, I 3 bought a tenor saxophone at a hockshop in Lawton, Oklahoma and paid 40 dollars for it. That’s when I started playing tenor and I’ve been playing tenor ever since and that was back in 1942 or 1943. Incidentally, I got a deferment from the service to play music. I went to Oklahoma City to be examined and when you were examined in Oklahoma City they sent everybody to Lawton at Fort Sill and from there they’d disperse them to wherever they were going. I was on the train and thought I was headed to Lawton when a guy came around with this clipboard and called my name and told me to get off. I said, “What’s the matter? Is there something wrong with me?” He said, “No, but I see that you have on your paper that you’re a musician. We’re going to need some entertainment for these people. We’re going to give you a deferment, but you need to go and find somebody and start playing and entertaining servicemen.” That’s what I did during WWII. As a matter of fact, when I first came to Ogden, they had a Bushnell Hospital in Brigham City for all the amputees and that was the only place I would play free. I’d play for those guys free, but nobody else because if you start playing free everybody and their cousin want you to start playing free. I told them, “I don’t play free. I didn’t learn how to play a horn to be playing free.” SL: How did you meet your wife, Thelma? JM: In Ardmore, Oklahoma. Thelma’s brother and I were good friends. He was her younger brother and if you had seen him you’d have thought they were twins they look so much alike. Thelma and another lady used to see me coming down the street and they’d cross to the other side of the street because I guess I was 4 kind of a mean guy. They didn’t want to meet me, but we played a dance at a place and it rained and I was one of the few guys that had a car. She was there with her sister-in-law and I got off the bandstand because it was my band and I could do what I wanted to and I danced with her that night. After the thing was over, I could have taken any girl home that night because everybody wanted to get a ride, but I took her and her sister-in-law home that night. After that I started dating Thelma and we dated for quite a while. We just celebrated our 69th anniversary. I’m glad we’ve been together for 70 years at least. It’s cheaper to keep her. You don’t want to be getting rid of them because it costs you too much to get rid of them. SL: How did you end up in Ogden? JM: We came here intending to stay two weeks. We were supposed to play a dance on 25th Street and then go back to California and play in the Cow Palace. When they had the big bands come in we were supposed to play intermission spots. Something happened and Jimmy and I got into it there and we got put in jail. It was all because of some money. A lady gave me some money and told me it was for me and not for the band and Jimmy thought if any money got onto the bandstand it was for everyone. We watched that whole city and county building up there because they gave us 30 days each and we got out in 18 days. The guy that we came up here with got paid for playing and he didn’t pay anybody. I told Jimmy, “You can do what you want to, but I’m not going to play with T [Terence Holden] anymore.” So, we started playing without him. I took over the band and 5 ever since that time I’ve had some kind of band. I came here exactly four years after Pearl Harbor and we never did leave, thank God. I’m glad I stayed here. SL: When you lived in Ogden, where did you live? JM: All over. When we first came here it was hard to find a place to live and there was a lady, Mrs. Graham, who had a little place where the hotel is on 24th Street. It didn’t have heat in the rooms or anything like that, so we’d have to go across the street on the corner where they had a big coal lot and buy coal for the coal stove out in the hallway so you could get heat in your room. Then we moved onto 25th Street and lived three different places on 25th Street. The last place I lived in was right on the south side of 25th Street between Lincoln and Wall Avenue. There was one building on the side that’s taller than all the other buildings and I lived in an apartment in the front of that building. Marshall White is the one that lived in the apartment on the corner and after he got married he moved out and referred me to the people that owned it. Then I lived two places on Lincoln and the place I’m living now I’ve been there for 40 years on Grant Avenue. SL: Your previous one was probably on the 100 block. JM: Yes, 107. SL: So it was owned by the Murphy’s at that point. JM: I can’t remember. I have a hard time remembering people’s names. SL: When you were here in Utah, what clubs did you play at? JM: I’ve got something to tell you about the Porters and Waiters Club. A lot of people think that we came here to play in the Porters and Waiters Club and that’s the 6 biggest lie that could have ever been told. The Porters and Waiters Club was not there when we came here. The Porters and Waiters Club was there, but it was strictly for men that were working on the railroad. They’d come in and have a place to stay overnight and they had showers for them where they could shave and all that kind of stuff. All of that was there before the place down in the basement where the club was two years after we got here. AnnaBelle [Weakley] was running a restaurant and she asked me and another guy to go downstairs and get her some chairs because she had some people that she was serving that day. When I went down there and I saw this room I said, “My God almighty, look here.” I called AnnaBelle and I said, “Come down here.” She said, “I’m busy, Joe.” I said, “Come on down here I want to show you something.” When she came down there I said, “What in the world is wrong with you, lady, you could turn this place into a club.” She said, “Well you talk to Billy about that.” I used to drive Billy around all the time and I told him about it and said, “I want to show you this.” I showed him and told him that it could be made into a heck of a nice club down here. Three weeks later all that stuff was gone and they started painting and we had a club. That was where the Porters and Waiters Club came from. A lot of people have no idea how it happened, but that’s the way it happened. I started it just like this amphitheater they have on 25th Street. I was on the arts council when they built that thing. I helped vote that thing in and I was the first one to play down there just like I was the first one to play in the Porters and Waiters Club. I played in Salt Lake City at the Velvet Club and the Dixieland Club. They had another one called Four Seasons there. Right now I’m playing 7 out there on Beck Street at a place called The Garage. I played at the State Capitol and in St. George, Moab and all over Utah. I remember a little town clear up north on the other side of Logan, but I can’t remember the name of it. We played a Halloween job up there one time on the back of a big flatbed truck as a bandstand. I’ve played so many places in Ogden I couldn’t even think of remembering all of them. SL: Rainbow Gardens? JM: Yes, Rainbow Gardens, Old Mill, White City, Berthana, and all those places. SL: All over then. JM: Yes. There was the Old Man’s Club that used to be out on Washington Blvd. It’s called something else now. We played in the basement down in the Ben Lomond Hotel too. I’ve played all over this place since I’ve been here for 67 years. SL: Will you talk a little bit about the segregation that was going on in Ogden? JM: When we first came here there was a guy named Shorty Ross that didn’t want us to play here. He told us that we couldn’t play here and when he came down he got a rude awakening when he told the guy down there that we couldn’t play there. That guy gave Shorty a little bit of a talking to. I don’t think Shorty wanted to hear that, but he got it anyway. He said, “This is my club, you can’t tell me who can play in my club.” In California, we were union musicians. We all had cards and transfers and everything you needed to go to different locations. We had all of that stuff, but he wouldn’t even look at it. I called [James] Petrillo, who was the head secretary back in New York, and told him what was happening. He said, 8 “You go and get the sheriff and show him all your credentials and everything and tell that sheriff what you came to do.” After we did that, Shorty found out he couldn’t stop us from playing here. After that I started taking some of the jobs that he’d been playing. They didn’t have another band that was playing jazz like we were. That ended that. When we played in Roy one time I had some friends that came out there and this guy told me that they couldn’t stay and they had to get out. I said, “I’m not going to tell them anything, if you want them out you tell them.” I told the people that I had an announcement to make when we got through playing. I said, “We won’t be back here again ever, so don’t look for us. We will be playing some other place.” By this time, the Porters and Waiters Club was there and had been there for a good while. I told Annabelle what happened and she gave me a key to the Porters and Waiters and said, “Here. You go down there and play anytime you want to, but if you get ready to open that place up down there let me know.” I started playing one or two nights and ended up playing six or seven nights a week down there. There were a couple of young white kids down there that night and the cops came down and were going to try to break it up, there were all these white folks, Mexicans, and Indians all mixed up down there and these two guys got up and said, “I’m free, white, and 21, you can’t tell me what the hell to do.” He was right in that cop’s face. Another one joined in and then some more joined in and the police found out that they didn’t have a prayer in hell to break that up. They left from there and it didn’t happen anymore. When guys would call me to play in their clubs I’d say, “You know my policy. If you don’t want to let 9 everyone in I’m not playing in your club.” That’s when that started to happen. I said, “Another thing I want you to understand is I’m not playing for ten dollars anymore either. Annabelle gives me the door down here and I make a lot more money and I can pay my guys more.” Maybe one or two guys might still be alive around here that remember when we started getting more money and we started playing in other places and the guys found out that I was making more money in the other places they did the same thing and so we all started making more money. SL: What about down on 25th Street, was there a lot of segregation? JM: Oh God, yes. All the black businesses and things were on the south side of the street and the white businesses were on the north side of the street. They had restaurants and things that we couldn’t go in and eat. AnnaBelle just had it up front and said, “I’m not going to segregate my place.” She used to have more white people down there eating in that darn club of hers than she had blacks. That’s another thing that started making things better. In the sixties, when they had all that crap going on all over the country, Ogden and Salt Lake started making a lot of changes. SL: What are some of your other memories about the Porters and Waiters Club? JM: I have a lot of memories of the Porters and Waiters Club. I had a lot of big time musicians that came down and played with me there and some rough stuff happened there too. I saw two or three different times people get killed in there. 25th Street was rough period during that time. I didn’t really like it, but there wasn’t too much I could do about it. Those kind of things finally got to a place 10 where that didn’t happen too much. After Marshall White got to be a policeman, then Walter Epps was a policeman and Eason was a policeman and all three of these guys were black men. They started stopping things from happening down there. It wasn’t all that bad like it was. Before then, they had some military police, as a matter of fact, they had one that I knew from Texas that they called, “Blackout.” He wasn’t too big, but he was pretty damn mean and he’d stop stuff in a minute with a club. I saw him knock guys completely out with a club. That stopped a lot of that and I was glad to see that. SL: Can you tell us a little bit about Annabelle and Billy? JM: Well, Billy Weakley was quite a bit older than Annabelle, but he had a lot of money. When he had that club down there, guys would come off the railroad on paydays, Billy Weakley had money enough that he’d cash all those guys’ checks and things. After Billy and AnnaBelle got married, AnnaBelle had the restaurant and it was a pretty nice and different thing. At first, Billy was living up there in one of the rooms where the guys from the Porters and Waiters lived, but AnnaBelle said, “I’m not going to live up here in this place.” They built a really nice apartment next door to the Porters and Waiters Club. I used to take Annabelle places in Salt Lake and she had some mighty nice furniture and things like that because she had real good taste for things. Billy was just one of those guys that wanted to sit around and drink and enjoy himself. He had all that money and I’d drive him around practically every day to Brigham City or Salt Lake and all over. AnnaBelle more or less ran everything after they got married. Billy finally drank himself to death. He drank so much until they had to put him in a rest home out in 11 Roy and he passed out there after they’d been married about five or six years. He just drank so much and drank every day. Annabelle ran the place for a good while and things started to go downhill and she left and went to Denver. She got rid of the club and all that. SL: Do you remember when it was that she shut the club down? JM: I think it was the early seventies. SL: Then AnnaBelle came back here, didn’t she? JM: Yes, but when she came back she moved to Salt Lake, she didn’t come back to Ogden. She retired from the state prison. It’s a weird thing about AnnaBelle’s retirement because she and my wife retired the same day 10 years after the same day that I retired. I retired March 31, 1979 and AnnaBelle and my wife retired March 31, 1989. I didn’t really retire, I just quit working for one place and started working for another and I still am. I tell people that I don’t know anyone that’s worked as long as I have. I started working when I was eight and I’m 94 and still working. I have absolutely no intention of retiring. For what? What am I going to do? I don’t like to be sitting around watching that damn television. That’s why I say all these old people don’t last long after they retire because they get up and they just sit down. You can watch those old houses, they just deteriorate and old cars and things. A guy brought me a car that looked like it was brand new and everything, but it had been sitting up for 25 years. I said, “Well, man, you think you got something, but you got yourself nothing but a headache.” He said, “What are you 12 talking about?” I said, “When all those cars sit up that long, all the interior of that engine and transmission has been sitting there and there’s going to be a certain amount of condensation inside when you start it up, you’re going to have more than transmission trouble not too long after.” He said, “I started that car and it started right up.” I said, “Yeah, how much smoke came out of it.” He said, “Well, it smoked for a little while, but then it quit.” I said, “Okay, but I’m telling you, you didn’t buy yourself nothing but some trouble.” About two months later, he came down and said, “Man, I can’t stop this car from smoking and what not.” I said, “I told you what you were doing.” We had to put a new engine and a new transmission in that car. It was a beautiful Cadillac, but when you let them sit up like that, just like anything it’s like they say, “Use it or lose it.” That’s a good saying and the same thing goes for your body. If you keep on sitting around not doing work, you’re going to lose it. I can attest to that because whenever I sit around too much right now, I don’t feel good and I have to get up and get started doing something. I tell people, “Don’t start talking about retiring and sitting around.” A friend of mine retired and he had a sign on his car that said, “I’m retired, don’t ask me to do anything.” Nobody asked him to do anything, so he’s started going downhill. It just doesn’t work. I tell anybody to keep busy and find something to do rather than sit around when you retire. SL: Who were some of the musicians you played with over the years? JM: Some of the greatest ones I’ve played with are Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, and trumpet players I had two or three of them that I played with. I can remember a lot of these guys, but trying to 13 think of their names is a problem for me. That’s one of the biggest problems I have right now. Thank God I don’t have dementia yet. I can remember tunes I played in high school, but I have a hell of a time remembering these names. Before I came to Utah, I was in California and I played with some awfully good musicians down there. Frank Butler was one heck of a drummer that I played with down there. He was playing with a group and the head of the band was a very good bass player. I played with some really good bass players and things and I’ve played with a lot of good musicians here in Utah too since I’ve been here, but I can’t remember all those guys. SL: How did you meet Charlie Parker? JM: He came down on Wall Avenue when I was playing in a place down there. As a matter of fact, they had the American Legion down in the basement there and he would come through on the train and he would ask somebody if they knew about somebody playing and they told him I was playing down there. When I saw Parker I almost fell over. I knew who he was, but I had never met him before. I saw him standing at the door and I said, “How could that be?” I just stopped playing and went down there and told him to come on in. He had just written that tune, “Now’s the Time,” and I played that all the time. I had a book of music for anywhere from a three piece to an eight piece band and it was in Salt Lake City at one of these places I was talking about over there called the Dixieland and somebody stole my whole book. That music that he wrote for me for “Now’s the Time,” would be worth a fortune right now and somebody stole the whole book. That’s how I met Charlie Parker. He came down there that night and played with 14 me down there. That was a rude awakening for me, I’ll tell you. That guy was playing so much at that time you just couldn’t believe it. SL: What about Duke Ellington? Do you remember when you met him? JM: He was playing at White City Ballroom and he came after he got through playing that night and we had a session going on down there and Duke had this tenor player that played so many choruses until you couldn’t believe it. I had a drummer named Jimmy, well his name really was Joe DeHorney, and we went to grade school together in Oklahoma and he left and I never saw him again until he was a grown man. He had been off and did carnivals and all that stuff. Ma Rainey named him Jimmy Rainey, so when he came up talking about Jimmy Rainey I thought, “That must be somebody else.” The guy that played piano with me, Ernie, he was there too and he said, “You know Jimmy.” I said, “No, I don’t know a Jimmy Rainey.” He said, “Oh yeah, I forgot, this guy’s name is Joe DeHorney.” I said, “I know Joe DeHorney.” He said, “Well, he changed his name to Jimmy Rainey.” Duke Ellington was amazed at this guy and how he could play all those fast tempos. He’d start a tempo and you’d think you were going to play a half hour or an hour and he’s going to drop it, he’s sitting up there chewing that gum and when that tune ended he had that thing going. Duke Ellington said, “I can’t believe this guy. Where did you get him from?” I said, “Well, we were raised together and we’ve been playing together forever. He just loves playing those fast tunes.” We used to play tunes like “Cherokee” and up tempo things like that. Dr. Larry Smith that was head of the music department up at Utah State University, he’s retired now, but I played with him one time and he was telling me 15 that he used to come down here and listen to us play and I said, “Well, why didn’t you come play with us?” He said, “Man, there’s nobody who could come and play with you guys around here, didn’t you notice that?” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because you guys play too damn fast, that’s why. Nobody could keep up with you.” It was all because of Jimmy. He could get up and kick off those tunes way up tempo. I had to learn how to play with all that fast stuff. I told him sometimes, “People can’t dance to that, man, we’re going to have to cut this stuff down.” Duke Ellington was really amazed at that guy and how fast he could play those tunes. The thing that amazed him so much was that he kept the tempo up. He had a metronome in his head or something. We’d change bass players, piano players and everything like that on a tune and we must have played 30 or 40 choruses on that tune, but we never changed drummers. Jimmy Rainey would still be sitting back there chewing that gum and grinning and that tempo never dropped. Duke would just sit up there and shake his head. I hated when Jimmy left. He went to California and he died down there. Everybody that came here with me except my wife is gone. When you live to get as old as I am, there are not too many people around that you know or were raised up with or people that you knew when you were younger because people just don’t live that long. I don’t know what it is or why I’m still here. When I first came to Ogden, there must have been about five or six thousand people that I knew and they’re dead now. A lot of them were born after I came here and they’re gone. I guess I’m about 20 or 25 years older than just about anybody in my church. It’s amazing and I can’t believe it myself really. I can’t believe that I’m still here and still able to get 16 around and do things at my age. I just thank the good Lord daily for the blessings that he’s given me. SL: How did you meet Quincy Jones? JM: He was up here with a band and I can’t remember the name, but that band was really stranded because they were down in that basement where I met Charlie Parker. Fletcher Catrell brought that great big band here from California and tried to put all of them up there. I can remember three or four guys in that band, there was Paul Kimmershade, a tenor saxophone player that copied Lester Young so much that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Quincy and a guy named J.J. Johnson all came up here. Do you remember a guy that used to be on the radio named Len Allen? He died not too long ago. I got a hold of him and told him to announce the gig and I asked Bob King, who ran the club out there at the Rainbow Gardens if he could play. I played downstairs at a place called the Indian Village, but upstairs he had a great big dance hall and I asked him about those guys that play up there and I said, “We can probably give them enough money,” and I explained to him what happened and he said, “Yeah, okay. You’ll be responsible for everything and the only thing we’ll do is serve the drinks and things like that, but you can take all the money off the door.” I got on the door and Len Allen started announcing it on the radio to stop over to Rainbow Gardens because they have a big band up there and they’re playing this, that and the other. You’d be surprised how quick that place filled up. Boy, could those guys play. They had a big band and they had some arrangements that were just completely out of sight. I wish they’d had recorders like they have now so we 17 could have recorded some of that stuff. As a matter of fact, I’ve been on some sessions I wish I could have recorded. Anyway, they got through playing and I took a little over 800 dollars at the door and that was something back then. Some of those guys, I used to see them and they’d say, “Here’s the old life saver.” That’s what they called me because they knew I got that thing. I gave them all the money and I didn’t want to take a penny. Of course, I played that Saturday night down in the Indian Village and a couple of guys from that band played with me. That Sunday is when I got that thing going up there for them so they could get out of town. Being able to help those guys was one of the things I enjoyed in my life. SL: Did you used to have jam sessions all the time at Porters and Waiters? JM: Two on Sundays. Sometimes I’d have them at the Rainbow Gardens and I’d have them at Salt Lake City too. At that time, I could play all day and all night and it didn’t bother me because I was young and in good shape, but if I had to play that kind of job now, I wouldn’t try. No way. We played six nights a week and two jam sessions on Sunday so it was plenty busy. SL: I heard stories that musicians would come into town and call you even if it was two in the morning. JM: They would. They’d call me and wake me up and I’d get up and just go start a jam session. I don’t care when you started one, you’d look up in an hour or so and that place would be full of people because people didn’t know how to go to bed. They’d be up there all night and up and down 25th Street. I remember when traffic was just like this all night long on 25th Street. 18 The trains were coming in back then. In 1950, I started working on the railroad. They had 82 passenger trains a day in and out of Ogden. That train station was just like that all day and all night. People would be coming off the trains and coming up there and we’d have the sessions going and people would be coming down there from everywhere. I’ve got a cord I got from one of those famous actors and I can’t think of his name, but I’ve got the cord somewhere and he wrote and told me sometime if I was ever in New York to look him up. I used to get people off the train all the time from Sun Valley and I got to see and meet a lot of the movie stars. I was working as a red cap and you could get a chance to meet all of those people. Sun Valley had a lot of them. I can’t remember this guy’s name, but maybe you guys can. He used to be a big fat guy and he played in Roy Rogers and he was always saying, “Wait for me, Roy.” What was his name? Andy Devine would come up here every year with his family and go to Sun Valley. One of the red caps used to drive him up there all the time. It just so happened that this time Johnny Hayes wasn’t there and I had just bought a big 1962 Fleetwood Cadillac. I drove him up there that time and Johnny Hayes was mad at me because that guy paid real good for you to drive him up to Sun Valley. He had three kids and his wife and him, but I had this big Fleetwood Cadillac and it had plenty of room in it and I drove him up there. He told me when he was getting ready to come back so I could bring him back. SL: How long were you a red cap? JM: Ten years. 1950 to 1960. I know exactly what the date was when I started: August 5, 1950. At that time, if you worked for the railroad you could get a phone, 19 but if you didn’t work for the railroad you couldn’t get one. When I started to work for the railroad I got my phone and I still have the same number that I got back in 1950. A red cap is a guy that meets and greets the people, takes their bags, puts them on the train and gets them off the train. They called them red caps rather than a porter, but they were the same thing. I stopped working at Hill Air Force Base to start working there. That job paid a lot more money than Hill because I made a lot of tips. People make so darn much money now they can’t understand anybody working for two and three dollars an hour. I think I was making $2.42 at Hill Air Force Base and at the railroad I was making $2.65 plus 20 to 30 dollars a day in tips. That beat the other job fifty times to one. I think I might still have some money coming from out there because I didn’t even try to get my money or check or anything else. The guy that told me about the job and wanted me to come over and sign up to be a red cap, Ed Hughes said, “Come over here right now if you can get over here.” I was supposed to go to work at Hill Field that afternoon, but I lived right across from the train station. I went right on over there and signed up and went to work that next day. That beat the heck out of that Hill Air Force Base. I was working on carburetors in the shop out there for planes and things. I’m just thinking that people don’t realize what happened with planes back then. They had carburetors like they had on cars and now they don’t have carburetors on cars, they have fuel injection. Someone paid me 500 dollars to work on a carburetor for him about a year or so ago. He tried to take it to the shops around town and they told him, “We don’t do carburetors.” Most of those young mechanics now don’t even know 20 how to work on carburetors because when they went to school to learn to work on cars, the carburetors were obsolete. This guy had fixed a 1965 Chevrolet and had it all painted up pretty and everything and it wouldn’t run because the carburetor wasn’t working right. People told him, “If you can get Joe McQueen to do it, he knows how to do it, but he says he doesn’t work on cars anymore.” I quit when I was 80, but he finally talked me into working on that carburetors for him and he told me he was going to give me 500 dollars. I wasn’t going to pass up overhauling that carburetor for 500 dollars because I could do it in a couple of hours. I tore it apart and soaked it and washed it off and overhauled it for him. Right now in my shop I still have one of those big sun machines and on those older cars I can hook that sun machine up and tune it up. After I fixed that carburetor for that guy, I said, “You bring that car down here when you put the carburetor in and I’m going to really fix it up for you.” It wasn’t just the carburetor that was causing him problems, he had other problems with that engine that needed to be looked into. I found the problems and fixed it up so it’d run like a charm. For 500 bucks, that was nothing and it took me about two hours. I’ll do 250 dollars an hour any time. SL: What else do you remember about 25th Street? JM: I remember so much about 25th Street. I remember when they used to park cars at an angle and then I remember when they parked them sideways. They changed it three or four times. Where I live on Grant Avenue, it was a one way street and now it’s a two way street. I lived right off of 25th Street on Lincoln and that was back in 1973. 25th Street was a rough street. Even after all the people 21 that went in there and tried to straighten things out, there were still people doing some crazy and weird things down there. Anything you wanted to see that was wrong was happening on 25th Street. It was as bad as any street in the United States. Marshall White was down there and a guy started to back a car up and Marshall told him to stop, but he wouldn’t stop so he shot the tire out. I was standing right there looking at it when Marshall White shot the tire out of that guy’s car. He said, “The next one is going to be right between your eyes. I told you to stop that car.” That guy got out of that car. Something else I can tell you about Marshall White, if I wanted to I’ve got a .38 snub nose that I had way back when Marshall White was a policeman. He didn’t drive and I used to take him to the pistol range all the time. I got to the place where I could shoot that pistol as good as he could shoot. I still have that same pistol and if somebody was to mess with me right now and I wanted to waste you, you’d be in big time trouble. Every time I go down south, which I’ll be doing in September if the good Lord will be my helper and the creek don’t rise, I’m going to take that same .38 with me and I always find me a place to practice so I can shoot right now. That bottle sitting over there on that table, I could shoot the neck off of it with that little .38. Anywhere from 25 to 30 feet it’d be big time trouble, but thank God I don’t have that in my mind. I don’t want to hurt nobody. SL: Other than when you first got here, did you have any other run-ins with the police? JM: No. I never was a guy that would run in with the cops. I stayed away from that. That was problems I didn’t need and I tried to keep away from the police. When 22 Jimmy and I went up and got in that trouble it was because we were there fighting about some money. When I left California I hadn’t had any trouble and when I was in Oklahoma, I didn’t have any trouble with the police. I stayed out of that stuff. To tell you the truth about it, I was always one of these guys that was kind of scared to go to jail, I didn’t want to go. I kept my nose clean. My grandmother would tell me that too and said, “Trouble is easy to get into, but it’s pretty hard to get out.” SL: Living on 25th and Lincoln, did you ever know Rose Davie who ran the Rose Rooms? JM: Yes I did. SL: What did you know about Rose? JM: Well, I knew she had one of those big cats. She kept that cat up there in that apartment and I knew her old man. I knew a lot of those girls that worked up there. It was right on the corner from where I lived right across the street. On the bottom of that place we used to play down there and right across the street on the corner we used to play over there too. One of the first jobs I had after we first came here and we weren’t playing across the street was another club where the Kokomo is now. SL: Was it the Pioneer? JM: The Pioneer Tavern, that’s what it was called. I got a scar on my hand right now from when some sailors got to fighting and Jimmy had his drums up on the table and a sailor threw a beer bottle at someone and missed and it hit one of Jimmy’s 23 tom-toms and that beer bottle exploded and it cut my arm. At that time, they had Dee Hospital up on Harrison. They took me up there and cleaned and sewed it up. There were two places and I was bleeding like a stuck hog. That was the second club I played in. I’ve played in there since it’s been the Kokomo Club too. I just played in so many places that I can’t even stop to think about where all I’ve played. I used to play at a place up in the canyon called the Management Training Center and used to tend bar up there. Bob Marquardt just died not long ago, but he was up there and I used to work and go do things for him. How I got to know Bob Marquardt, one night it was snowing like mad up in that canyon and he came out and got ready to go home and he had a flat tire. He came in cussing and raising hell and I asked, “What’s the matter?” He said, “I’ve got a flat tire out there.” I said, “Do you have a spare? I can change that for you in a few minutes.” Even at that time, I had a jack and I kept it in my car. I went and spent some money a while back on something that most people don’t have. They have impact rinks right now that use a battery and it’ll take a tire off. It’s got a nineteen volt battery. Back then I had a four way lug wrench and I took that tire off and changed it in about ten minutes for him. He said, “I can’t believe it.” I said, “You can’t believe what?” He said, “I can’t believe you changed that tire that quick.” I said, “Mr. Marquardt, I can do a lot of things a lot of people might not believe. I’ve been doing things like that all my life. I had to learn how to do things.” When you’re raised back in the twenties and thirties when things were bad and didn’t clear up until the forties. When World War II broke out, that’s when things finally began to ease up and people began to make a little bit of money. I started 24 working when I was eight and that was in 1927. My mother died when I was 14 and that was in 1933. I was working all kinds of jobs and learning to do anything I thought I needed to learn to try to make money. I worked on a lot of jobs a lot of people wouldn’t even think about working on, but if you didn’t you didn’t eat. Food was a real thing to get a hold of in those days. I used to kill squirrels and give squirrels to a lot of people in the neighborhood and we had a lot of ladies in the neighborhood with kids and they didn’t have husbands and things like that and they had rough times. I used to kill squirrels by the dozen and rabbits and things like that and give them to people. I’d help a guy kill hogs during the fall and he’d give me a lot of parts of the hogs. I had a wagon that I made that was about eight feet long. I’d pull that thing down there and people would be running over trying to get that stuff to eat. It was rough times. None of you here have any idea what it was like. You couldn’t possibly know unless you lived it. I lived through times that I never want to see again and I hope nobody will ever have to live through those kinds of times again. They talk about things being rough now, but no way possible. I remember things were so bad if you would start a line from this building to Harrison, I’ve seen lines that long with people with a tin cup trying to get a cup of soup. Sometimes that almost brings tears to my eyes because it was bad. It was real rough. Getting food was a thing that was a real problem for a lot of people just to get something to eat. With people running around here talking about things being bad and people have three and four and five automobiles and great big houses and all these things that people have now. There would only be maybe two out of 25 a thousand people that could buy that. Nobody had money to do much with. It was just terrible. I hate to talk about it because it was such a bad thing. I’ll talk about something else. SL: Who came up with the nickname King of O-town? JM: Brad Wheeler. He’s the one that did that and I said, “What are you talking about, man?” He said, “Well, they’ve got this, that and the other and I’m going to give you the name King of O-town.” Do you know Brad Wheeler? SL: I don’t know Brad Wheeler. JM: Well, Brad is a harmonica player and right now he’s on KRCL radio and he plays around Salt Lake and Ogden. Sometimes he teaches harmonica in the schools. One time, he tried to break the record for harmonica players down in the ballpark. He’s the one that came up with that King of O-town business. He’s a good friend of mine. We have a tape where he and I were interviewed at KRCL. SL: How did it feel to have Joe McQueen Day declared? JM: When it first happened I could hardly believe it and one lady I knew that knew about it before I did was doing all this, “Man, you’re a big shot.” I said, “What are you talking about? What’s going on?” She said, “I don’t know anybody in this whole state that has a day named for him.” I said, “What are you talking about?” She said, “You don’t know that you’ve got a day named for you, Joe McQueen Day.” I said, “No, I didn’t know anything about it. What can I do about it? It happened and there’s nothing I can do about it.” We’ve celebrated it ever since it happened in 2002. Leavitt is the one that gave me the day and I said, “Well, what 26 can I do about it?” I just thank the good Lord that somebody thought enough of me to try to do something for me because the way I came up, I never thought I would have done anything. I had to drop out of school in the eleventh grade and there was just no way I could keep on going. People tell me about going to school and trying to get a degree in music and all this. I say, “I was lucky to even have a horn. What the hell are you talking about trying to get a degree in music? I had to learn how to play on my own.” I didn’t have anybody teaching me anything. That’s the reason I say the things that I’ve gone through. [Former Ogden Mayor Matt] Godfrey was telling me about coming down here the other day about all those guys from the school with the students from Juilliard. I said, “I don’t want to be bothered with all those people because the first thing they’re going to ask me about is all these different things about music and the only thing I could tell them is I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I don’t. When I play, I play what I hear. I’ve got a guy that plays guitar with me and he writes chords and things like that and I told him, “Well, that’s something I never tried to learn.” In the first place, if I hear a tune and I want to play it, I can play it from my ear and I’ve been playing like that all my life and I’ve played with some of the world’s greatest musicians. One guy did something for me more than anybody else and that was Ray Brown. He said, “Stop trying to just think about playing a tune in one key. Learn that tune in more than one key.” Right now, sometimes we play with those guys and they say, “You’ve got to watch out when you’re playing with Joe because he’ll play the tune in this key, but next time he’ll start playing in another key. Sometimes they’ll be playing in the key of F and I 27 start the tune off and play in G or some other key. It’s just because I learned to play in more than one key to play a tune. Ray Brown told me to do that and that’s been maybe 30 years ago. The music that I learned I had to learn on my own because I didn’t have any money to go to music school or any other school. People just have to think about what things were like back in the twenties and thirties. During the time, I should have been going to college and trying to do things like that, but I was working trying to make a living. Then when World War II broke out and jobs started to open up, you could get better jobs and things like that. I was still playing music because that guy had given me that deferment so I could play music. That’s when I started entertaining servicemen all over the place. I played every kind of club they had in the service. A lot of times, those people would have birthday parties, funerals and anniversaries and all that kind of stuff and I played all of that. That’s the thing that’s been a part of me and I’ve been doing it for 80 years now. I still say the whole thing about it was that man up above. I’m going to make a statement and I hope you people don’t feel wrong about this. I think the reason why most black people don’t have skin cancer is because they were forced to work in that sun when they didn’t want to. You can find black people with just about all kinds of cancer, but damn few you’re going to find with skin cancer. Check that out. I think the good Lord just said, “Well, I can fix that. They can’t help it that they’re out there having to work when they don’t want to. They’ve got to get in that sun.” I think the good Lord with that horn and me said, “He didn’t get a chance to do all those other things, but I’m going to fix 28 him so he can do it on his own.” That’s why I think I can play like I do because I think the good Lord just opened it up for me. I can’t believe it happened any other way. Sometimes we have tunes now and I get the guys and as a matter of fact we were down there last night and I was teaching Brad another new tune. We try to get new tunes at least every week or every time we go play and we had another tune last night and I just got up there and said, “Don’t come asking me about no chord changes. I play the tune and this is the way the tune goes.” He’s got one of these things that he can thumb through that thing and find the tune and find the music in that outfit. I don’t know what you call that damn thing. They’ve got so much of this new-fandangled stuff. He’s got a little play thing about this big and he can go on that thing and find the tune and everything and what key it’s in and all that stuff. I said, “Oh man. Okay, now you found it and everything now you can read the music and play it, but I’ll tell you what, I’ll play it before you read the music and you see how close I am to it.” He can’t figure that out. He says, “Man, I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t fool with music either. If I could play like that and didn’t have to read the music I wouldn’t fool with it either.” I’ve got two or three lists that have tune after tune after tune after tune and I can play them and don’t have to read any music to play them. If I just have to, I can take a piece of music and figure it out, but I can’t sight read it. Sight reading, I don’t care about it because I don’t need it anymore. I’m not going to play in a big band. I’ve played in some of them, but what would happen is I would get one of the alto players and I’d get them together and we’d rehearse. Do you remember a band out of Tulsa called Ernie Fields? I played with Ernie Fields Band and we played 29 two jobs in Enid, Oklahoma. We played a job for whites from 8am-12pm and from 12-3pm we played for black people there. We started back from Enid to Tulsa and the doggone fuel pump went out on that bus and it must have been ten degrees above. Nobody on that bus knew a thing about cars. I had to get out and take that fuel pump out and fix that thing with a tongue out of a boot so we could get out of there. SL: How often do you still play? JM: I have two jobs that I play every month, but sometimes it can be anywhere from three to five jobs a month and that’s good enough for me. I’m not caring about playing every night now like I used to. SL: Do you play here in Ogden and Salt Lake mostly? JM: I play in Salt Lake on the first Thursday of every month at the Garage and the first Friday of every month at the Wine Cellar. I play a lot of other different jobs and things like that. I’ve got a lot of people here in Ogden, some of the older people that know me, like Wayne Pak. He had a bunch of friends and somehow or other they all have taken me in as one of their guys to hang out with, so they always have something and have me play for them. I go fishing with Wayne and he’s got a boat as long as this room. We play jazz on the boat. I’m glad I get a chance to do that, but we play quite a few other jobs than just those two regular jobs. SL: Do you have a favorite memory of Ogden? 30 JM: I have quite a few favorite memories of Ogden. One of my favorite memories of Ogden is the first time that I met Annabelle and Billy. Billy and Annabelle came out to the Old Mill and I was playing out there. I had been down to the club, but I had never met them. Billy Weakley came up and put a 20 dollar bill in the kitty and 20 dollars back then was a lot of money. I had seen Annabelle and Billy, so I went over and talked to them and I got to meet them that night. That’s when I really got to know them. After they got married I played for their wedding reception. I was really glad to meet them. I know another time when Marshall White was on 25th Street one night and some guy was back in the alley doing some kind of stuff back there and he had a gun. I told Marshall, “If I were you, I don’t think I’d go back there in that alley. I saw a guy sitting back there with a gun and I don’t know what he’s thinking about.” Come to find out, that guy was laying back there to try to shoot him. I found that out and they caught him and he admitted it and said that Doc White did something to him. I thought, “Well, man, thank God I got a chance to do that.” Whenever I could do something to help somebody or save someone’s life, to me, that’s a big thing. I think saving someone’s life or helping someone in any kind of way is a big thing. Those two things stand out in my memory just like it was yesterday. There were so many things that happened on 25th Street. Some guy stole one of Annabelle’s purses and I saw him going across the street with that purse and I went and stopped him. I said, ‘Hey, give me that purse.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “That’s Annabelle’s purse and you stole it. Now, you give me the purse and I’m just going to take it and give it to Annabelle and if you don’t I’ll 31 take your ass and put you in jail.” He gave me the purse right away. I don’t brag about it, but I’m a pretty big guy and at that time I was pretty mean too. If I wanted to take him to jail, I’d have taken him and if he didn’t want to go I’d have put him out. I took Annabelle’s purse and it was a flower purse and I think she paid a couple hundred dollars for that thing. I said, “I got your purse back.” SL: Thank you, Joe. We appreciate it. JM: I think I added a whole lot of stuff that maybe I shouldn’t have, but anyway. My wife is always telling me about how she doesn’t talk very much and she says, “Well, you do enough for both of us.”