With "Becoming Turk Murphy," we present the second in a series of five articles by trombonist, author and teacher James Leigh, who reminisces on more than 55 years in the Traditional Jazz Scene in the SF Bay Area and beyond...

The first week of 1952 I caught a Pacific Southwest shuttle from Los Angeles to San Francisco with Turk Murphy. He was 36 and in his musical prime, I was 21. On Sunday, January 6, Turk and a band reassembled with difficulty for the occasion would play a concert christening the basement of the Italian Village nightclub on Columbus Avenue, and I couldn't miss it. It was my first plane ride, the roughest I've ever had, but that was a small price to pay for the glimpse I would get of Turk's life, which was the life I craved: grey skies, damp weather, and, inside a snug flat, an affectionate wife (named Grace) All that, and to be Turk Murphy, too!

For the truth is that since listening to Turk's band nightly for six weeks the previous year in LA, I had wanted to become Turk Murphy. This amiable dementia would last me pretty well through the 1950s, which were my 20s. Though he never stammered when singing or announcing, Turk fought all his life against that speech impediment, and before the mid-50s I would develop a stammer myself, causing a close friend to say, "You're just lucky Turk isn't blind or one-legged."

Within a few weeks of that concert Turk would be leading a quintet in the Village basement five nights a week, with Bob Helm, Wally Rose, Dick Lammi on banjo and Bob Short doubling tuba and cornet. This project was initiated by jazz enthusiasts Bill Mulhern and Charles Campbell (presently the owner of a San Francisco art gallery and an SFTJF board member). I had returned to my job in Southern California after the January 6 concert, and for me that cellar on the North Beach had taken on the magnetism of Mecca for a Muslim. Nine months later I finally made the move north.

When I arrived, Turk as good as adopted me. He found me a place to stay — the kitchen of Charles Campbell's flat on Chestnut Avenue (Lammi already had the spare bedroom). He found me a job, warehousing for a record distributor on Sixth Street. He even wrote me a trombone exercise, a sort of arabesque through the twelve keys which I still play today.

Doing Duty as Turk Murphy's Social Secretary

After a couple of weeks on the Campbell kitchen floor, I began sharing Turk's flat, one building north of Charles'. Turk and Grace had come to a parting of the ways. For half the $50 rent I got the back bedroom and the privileges of the house. Responsibilities, too: not merely my share of cleaning and tidying — Turk ran a tight ship — but what would soon become a demanding sideline as Turk's social secretary.

In the old phrase, Turk was candy to women, and the feeling was mutual. Ex-girlfriends frequently called — his name was in the book — as well as women not yet on his string. Perhaps most problematically, there were the current girlfriends. Except for grumbling at odd moments about one or another, and not always by name, Turk did not keep me posted. When the phone rang I was on my own:

May I speak with Turk? This is Jeanie (or Mary Ann, or Catherine, or Polly, Yolanda, Betty, Pam or Kate or Renee or Sue).

That version is very much abbreviated, and the names have been changed to protect the innocent: not many days passed on which I didn't have to field two or three such calls. So I was that much gladder to have a home away from home, around the comer in the village basement. It seemed to provide me with everything I needed, even a wife-to-be, Carol, later to cut a considerable swath as a singer. When I first laid eyes on her, that autumn of '52, she was dancing a solo Charleston in front of the bandstand. Afterward, Charles sat her down at the table I was sharing with the artist Lom Le Goullon, and told us, "Don't let her drink anything alcoholic." She was 18, it turned out. Until then I hadn't even known I was looking for a jazz girl. Carol certainly filled the bill; forty-five years later she is still a jazz girl. Still, it would be months before we finally shared a roof.

I was still getting used to sharing a roof with my idol. Turk acknowledged having been impressed with Jack Teagarden before converting to the earlier music, after which he credited Kid Ory as an influence (Turk labeled his album of the Crescent 78s "FATHER ORY"). He actually preferred Roy Palmer. Except for traces, he sounded like neither: for a traditional musician he was, like Bob Helm, very much a stylistic original.

Lessons Learned from a Jazz Master

It is next to impossible to say precisely what I learned from Turk musically as a result of my close friendship with him, except that I was in what might be called a Total Imitation mode. He was a success as a band leader, but none of that rubbed off on me when I tried to lead a band. The truth was rather that he was a son of three-ring circus as a man, and I was a spellbound spectator.

He loved all forms of parade and circus music. Once I heard him debate a friend about the most desirable bedroom music. The friend said, "Segovia." Brandishing a large fist, Turk said, "Wrong. J-J-John Philip Sousa!" His Spike Jones collection was complete, and he revered the great film comedians past and present. (He was the first person who pointed out to me Buster Keaton's superiority to Chaplin, and my first week in town he took me to see Jacques Tati's Fête du Jour, which he had already seen twice. When Turk laughed, it was hard not to laugh with him; he laughed a lot, so it seemed fair enough to be expected in share his daily grief.

That was his word, as in, "So-and-so's giving me a lot of grief." Grounds for complaint were as necessary in Turk's life as fiber in a healthy diet. Complaint needs two things: a cause, real or imagined, and a sympathetic ear. Women and his band — not necessarily in that order — were his causes. His perfectionism guaranteed that some member of the band had to be a source of grief at any given moment. The only person who came away blameless, as long as I knew Turk, was Wally Rose. (Later, when I played gigs for Wally — a perfectionist himself — I understood why; Wally was professionally punctilious; he was also good-natured and very kind.)

The Most Successful Composers in San Francisco

Then as now it seemed to me that Turk and Lu Watters were the most successful composers in San Francisco jazz, and I find Turk's tunes more varied and adventuresome than Lu's. Turk wanted at least three strains, and a degree of harmonic intricacy. I still think that his best-known composition, the challenging Trombone Rag, in five flats, is also his best. He told me once that he had written it during the war, when Bill Bardin, then 17, was doing a creditable imitation of Turk in the band replacing the Watters crew at the Dawn Club. Turk was not so busy serving his hitch in the Navy that he didn't find time to put Bardin in his place: "I said, 'Let him try to play that!'"

Among earlier jazz composers, Turk most admired Jelly Roll Morton; he wanted his own tunes, like Morton's, to have a recognizable stamp. Once, when I was foolish enough to mention a harmonic similarity between Turk's Five Aces and Benny Goodman's theme song, Let's Dance, Turk shot me a dirty look and said nothing.

That first time in San Francisco I would stay less than a year, but my life seemed very full and exciting, though not without its frustrations. As a fledgling musician I needed people to play with, but I wasn't good enough, and all the chairs were taken. When Freddie Crewes, a raggy pianist from Seattle, moved into the Entella Hotel, next door to the Italian Village, I had some company in my misery. Freddie was blind, but asked no favors, and swore he hated seeing-eye dogs because they smelled bad.

On occasion, clarinetist Bob Helm would take us with him after the gig to the virtually soundproof flat of a friend out on Clay Street. There until morning we would drink and play records, and sometimes even try a few tunes — Bob and Freddie and my timid self. I recall one particular morning shortly after Thanksgiving. Helm was in the kitchen, judiciously adding white wine to his turkey soup. Mellowed out from a few drinks, I was stretched on the living room carpet, eyes closed, listening to Louis accompany Bessie's St. Louis Blues. This was at least part of the life I'd come north to find. In the process I had learned a lot about how to listen to jazz, and about how ensemble play worked; without that understanding, my hopes of ever playing it would have been nil.

But then I lucked into meeting some young co-religionists in the San Jose area, and clarinetist Rowland Working, with whom I'd played in Southern California, came home from Korea and settled in Berkeley. I thought I could discern the makings of a band. Carol lived down that way, too, in Menlo Park — a powerful added incentive. Turk sold me one of his discarded Conn 32H trombones for $50 (it would last me many years). For another $50 Helm sold me a topless but runnable 1941 Plymouth convertible. I attached a do-it-yourself black ragtop from Sears, and felt myself fairly well kitted-out for whatever life might offer now. I was even secretly considering college. So, in the spring of 1953 I loaded up the Plymouth — it didn't take long — and headed for the Bayshore Highway. I had no troubles that I didn't trust Doctor Jazz to fix.

Part Three: Mister Leader Man...

Reprinted from the Frisco Cricket, courtesy of the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation.