Buster Bailey—Lorna Doone Short Bread” (1938)

William C. “Buster” Bailey (1902-1967) was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and throughout his life has brought his clarinet to many swing club gatherings. He played in such outstanding bands as those of W.C. Handy, King Oliver and Fletcher Henderson and he was part of the famous John Kirby sextet and the Louis Armstrong All Stars. Bailey also led several studio groups and worked in smaller groups with musicians from the Kirby outfit. Such as with the Spencer Trio in Bailey’s own composition “Lorna Doone Short Bread.”

Recorded at the Decca Studios at 50 West Street in New York City on May 15, 1938 with Buster Bailey-clarinet, Billy Kyle-piano and O’Neil Spencer-drums.

“For tone and technique, Buster Bailey’s clarinet performances are distinctive enough to be labeled academic,” the introduction to a collection of his sheet music says. “The many years he devoted to jazz won him a reputation that is unparalleled and to better understand his conceptions and style is to know his unique background.”

At the age of 11, Buster Bailey was compelled to take up clarinet by Prof. Green Polonius “GP” Hamilton, principal of Kortrecht High School. At the time Kortrecht was the city’s only Black public high school. Thus every Black graduate in Memphis was an alumnus of Kortrecht. Besides educator “GP” was also the author of the 1908 book “The Bright Side of Memphis,” an early book on the Black residents of Memphis. Two years later Bailey made his professional debut in Memphis. His father was part-owner of the Panama Café on Beale Street, a rendezvous much favored by musicians. He encouraged his son’s love of music and visiting clarinetists often found themselves providing tuition in exchange of whiskey.

Bailey’s original tutor was J.C Singleton, a specialist in clarinet, oboe and bassoon. Later Bailey recalled others who helped him in his early years “such as, Wilson Towns, Oscar Lowe, Fred Cullie, Bob Young, Ken Phillips, Dodo Green, Johnny Brown, and an Argentinean named Roman Perez. Most of these were concert-trained musicians who played in circuses and theaters. Another was Charlie Pastrido, an Italian and ‘legitimate’ clarinetist, who always wanted to play in the colored bands and worked for W.C. Handy.”

William Christopher Handy was a close friend of Bailey Sr., and his daughter and Buster were classmates at school. As Buster’s musical proficiency increased, he became in demand for the local bands. But so long as the boy was at school his father would not let him play out of town with anyone except Handy and another trusted band leader, Charlie Bynum. Even then, it was conditional on his being back in time for school.

In these circumstances, Bailey was one of the first to play “St. Louis Blues” with its composer Handy, and Bailey remembered that the first time Handy played his “Memphis Blues” around 1916 was in the yard of the “Clay Street School, back of my house. There was a little concert. I was going to school at the time.” However, even numbers like these were played from sheet music, so that the performances were, by jazz standards, “legitimate.”

In 1917, Buster Bailey went to New Orleans, where he heard Johnny Dodds and King Phillips, one of the first jazz clarinet players Bailey ever heard. Up until then, Bailey had only heard the New Orleans style on records.

In New Orleans. Bailey said, he “picked up a lot of jazz and began improvising.” At that time, improvising was the main difference between bands from Storyville in New Orleans and bands from Memphis. “Ours were more the note variety,” Bailey said, “we played from sheets.”

On his return to Memphis Bailey was in greater demand than ever, but after having toured with Handy, 16-year-old Buster Bailey now moved to Chicago because the girl next door, Lil Hardin, had moved with her parents from Memphis to Chicago to 1914-15 and Bailey wanted to follow his piano playing neighbor there.

In 1919, while in Chicago, he joined the Vendome Theatre Orchestra, a symphonic group under the direction of Erskine Tate, with whom he stayed until 1923. “I started at $24 a week. Ï was making more than that by that time around home.”

That same year, Bailey continued his clarinet studies with Franz Schoeppe, a classical instructor from the Chicago Musical College, who also had also given lessons to Jimmy Noone. Schoeppe, who was first clarinetist with the Chicago Symphony, was one of the finest clarinet teachers in the West, who ignored jazz and stressed in his students the discipline and respect for classical music.

Two paths of destiny crossed, for within two years another of Schoeppe’s students was a lanky youngster called Benny Goodman. Bailey, Schoeppe and Goodman would often play trio music, reveling in one another’s musicianship. Goodman remembered Bailey as “a very good technician.”

AllMusic columnist Scott Yanow described the brilliant Bailey as “one of the most technically skilled of the clarinetist to emerge during the 1920s.”

Over the next four decades, in swing concerts, on special broadcasts and especially on phonograph recordings, Buster Bailey would distinguish himself admirable, rising to a high roster in jazz annals not merely as a stylist, but as a clarinet virtuoso unmatched in tone and technique.