So, that’s when I joined Barnet – in ’42. I was with him for about six months, an‘ he fired everybody. He said, „Everybody fired!“ I called up Andy [Kirk]. I thought Charlie was serious about the situation, but he was drunk. Lena Horne had been up to the theater, the Apollo, and they’d been ballin‘ and drinkin‘ all day and most of that night. He was drunker than a hoot-owl, so he turned around and said, „The whole band is fired. You don’t sound like Duke no way.“ Okay, so it don’t sound like Duke; so I called up Andy. Barnet didn’t have the music that Duke had – shit. YOu got to have the music that sound like what Duke plays to make it sound like that. We never had nothin‘ that – all the shit that he was doin‘ was either done by Andy [Gibson] or some other cats, Billy May, some of the other arrangers that were writing for him. How’re you goin‘ to sound like Duke?
But anyway, next morning Kurt Bloom called and says, „You know Charlie didn’t mean that.“ I said, „Oh, yes he did, I heard him! He said everybody’s fired, so I got me a job!“ So he said, „Well, no, man, you konw, Charlie gets drunk like that, he do that all the time.“ So I said, „Yeah, well he don’t get drunk and fire me.“ So I told him if he wanted me to come back it was going to cost him fifty bucks a week. He gave it to me. But the next time he got drunk, he said. „Everybody fired except McGhee!“ He wasn’t that drunk, so I say, „Uh-huh.“ But that was funny.
aus Ira Gitlers „Swing to Bop“
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba