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1901–1971

the American trumpet-player and singer

I was not born into a wonderful world. I grew up in a poor area of New Orleans, where life was tough for young African-American boys. But music saved me, and showed me that the world really was wonderful.

I was born in 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the Deep South of the United States. Two years later, soon after my little sister was born, my father left the family. My mother didn’t want to look after us on her own, so my sister and I went to live with Grandma Josephine. Although we had no toys, no shoes and very little food, my grandmother always sent us to school and to church.

When I was five, my mother returned and we lived with her. It wasn’t a real home though, and I was often on the streets. I needed to earn money to buy food for my mother and sister, so I found a job delivering newspapers. But I started getting into trouble too. New Orleans was a tough city, and you had to join a street gang to survive. One of my jobs as a young member of the gang was to take messages, while another person was watching for enemy gangs outside clubs. I liked standing outside the clubs, because I could hear the music inside. Ragtime music was very popular then.

I found a job with a Jewish family from Russia. Their name was Karnofsky, and they used to buy and sell old furniture and other household things on the streets. Mr Karnofsky was very kind to me, and often invited me to stay in their house. Later, he also lent me enough money to buy a cornet, which is a kind of trumpet. He taught me how to live – to expect the best from people and myself, and to work hard.

I left school when I was 11 and joined a singing group of four boys. We earned a few dollars, singing the latest songs on street corners, and people seemed to like my voice. The other boys called me ‘Satchel Mouth’ because I had such a wide open mouth (a ‘satchel’ is a kind of school bag with a wide opening). Also, I learned to play some simple songs because some of the musicians in the clubs were kind to me and gave me music lessons.

Because of the area where I lived, I was often in trouble with the police. One New Year’s Eve, when I was 11, I fired a gun into the air in the street. The police caught me, and sent me to the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, a home for young African-American boys who had been in trouble with the police. It was really a prison for children. I lived there for 18 months.

There was a music teacher at the Colored Waifs’ Home called Professor Davis. Most of the other boys weren’t interested in music and behaved badly in his lessons, but I wanted to learn. The Home had a band, and the band had a cornet, which I loved. I practised the cornet every day, improving all the time until, when I was only 13, Professor Davis asked me to be the leader of the band. It was the proudest day of my life.

When I left the Colored Waifs’ Home I had nowhere to go and I was soon back on the streets again. I was 18, and I could have got into a lot of trouble. Life was kind to me, however. New Orleans was famous for its brass band parades. Brass bands walked through the streets of the town, playing popular songs. I soon found a job playing in these bands.