by Harold McMillan

I played Anderson High School band, the first Anderson here. There wasn't but one high school. And all my family played music. My father played trombone and that was my first instrument. When I was in L.L. Campbell Elementary School I used to leave and walk over the Anderson High School to band practice. I started playing in the band when I was in the...out of the 6th grade into the 7th. My father played with bands around here that I was too young to really know. I think I used to hear them practicing at grandmother's house. And I had an uncle Mitchell who was a Pullman porter, he's here in town now. He played trumpet. I liked the trumpet. From the way he played -- I just liked trumpet, I didn't like trombone.

My first year of junior high school I was able to switch to trumpet in the band. Mr. Joyce was the band teacher here, he taught my father too and Kenny Durham and all -- he was the band teacher and they all made fun of me because I was the smallest thing in the band and I couldn't reach the 7th position on the trombone so...so they made fun so I hid that trombone in a sewer pipe, there on Chicon there was a sewer pipe. From that I was able to get a trumpet from my uncle Mitchell. And my other uncle played trombone, Larou Mays. I lived with him in San Francisco when I finished high school.

I played first trumpet in Anderson High School band. Due to segregation it was the only high school and we had the largest band, we had a 150-piece band, and we won, yeah, we won the state champion contest every year from the time that my father was in the band.

I remember I was put out of the band, one time or a couple for trying to play jazz you know. You hear something and you go to play it, the band teacher, Mr. Joyce...well he didn't know anything about that and he couldn't show it to you. But he showed you the rudiments of reading. I was trying to play licks, and every time I'd hit a lick, pow! Mr. Joyce would put me out of the band. And that's the reason Mr. Joyce put me out of the band, because he believed jazz was bad, and I knew that see? 'Cause my father played in the band under him, and I'd hear things as a kid.

You know, they didn't hire no music teacher in no black school, so you volunteered your services. That's what Mr. Joyce was doing. He volunteered his services and whatever he said, didn't nobody say nothing. All at once the band was winning contests. We used to march for the University of Texas. Whenever they needed a band, like they having a major parade, we'd be like the front line, different little shows and things. But we had like the best band in the state of Texas 'cause we were regimented into reading certain things where we didn't know what we were reading. 'Cause we wasn't taught theory.

That's all Mr. Joyce...that's all he taught. I don't know if he knew theory or not, but...and they sure didn't have it in no schools...no black schools. They had it at Austin High School, but they didn't have it at Anderson. That's the reason there's not too many musicians out of Austin. Only ones that are had to leave here. You couldn't stay here and be one.

I was trying to learn how to play jazz because I'd heard something on the radio here like...the only radio station I grew up listening to was Lavada Durst. He had a show that came on I think at ten o'clock at night called Blues In the Night. Every now and then he would play some jazz, see, and I heard this trumpet playing on this...I said "That's the kind of trumpet." But I didn't hear it around here. "OK now," I said, "that's the kind of trumpet I want to play." So we used to go to the Harlem Theater, that was the only theater, that was before the Carver. In between the main attractions they had some inserts of, what do they call it,...it was like a news type thing. They used to have Duke Ellington's band playing. I said, "there it is again." So I'd go to the movies just to see the little coming attractions or what not.

We used to have a place called the Doll House where we used to get hamburgers, and the Harlem Theater, we couldn't go downtown to no theater. The Ritz, they did, the Ritz would let black people in. It was a Mexican theater. Down on 6th street, and black people could go in and sit upstairs. But I never went there because I was too young.

But the Harlem Theater, East End. That was the end of the line for the bus when I was a kid. And I vaguely remember a street car. Used to have a street car that ran up 12th Street to Chicon; used to turn around on a circle, 'cause when I got to San Francisco and looked at those trolley cars, I said, "Hot dog, that's the same way they turn around a street car in Austin."

And...I finished high school and went to San Francisco and I got to hear it for real then from a guy named Jesse Hawkins from St. Louis. He began to try to help me, so we had a little group that played around -- Fred Smith, saxophone, see he taught school here in Austin too. Frank Hanes, Johnny Mathis, Merle Sanders, Eddie Moore. Those are the guys--well they had a place there too called Bop City and Jackson's Nook where all the Jazz guys from New York would come to San Francisco and play and they would all go to this place after hours for a jam session. That's where I got to meet Max Roach and Clifford Brown.

In college I lived around the corner from the best jazz club in Los Angeles during this time. That's where all these guys -- Dexter and Harold and all of them played, and I was able to play with them every night around there. Well it was a heyday during that time as far as black jazz music. Wasn't no money hardly. But guys even from New York was coming out there staying. And down there I ran into all those other guys--Dexter Gordon, Harold Lan, Elmore, Billy Higgins, Don Cherry, Arnette Coleman, Hubert Laws, the Jazz Crusaders, Ellis Marsalis, it seemed like in '55 and '56 all those guys came to Los Angeles. They were in and out all the time because Los Angeles was rough on musicians you know. I got to play with all those guys out there. I still wanted to go to New York see, because that was where I really heard the trumpet sound that I liked, where Clifford Brown was...and all the music from New York, it sounded different from Los Angeles.

Luckily Ray Charles hired me and I got a chance to go and tour with his band. I never will forget with Ray Charles, we played shows at the Howard Theater and the Royal and the Apollo and I had a little opening solo in front of the band. And I'd already been in Redd Foxx's band in Los Angeles. They used to have a thing called the Redd Foxx Revue. Red was showing me some things about New York 'cause that was his, you know, he was raised there, and I started kind of moving my things to New York, 'cause the next job was with...I got a job with Earl Bostic. Boy, he is the most phenomenal saxophonist you ever heard. I had to go try to get the rest of my things in Los Angeles and relocate, went back to Los Angeles to get my stuff together and Lloyd Price came to town. Somehow I got to play with them in Los Angeles at the Balfour Ballroom, that was a big thing during that time. So I played with Lloyd Price, so he hired me. And from there, from Lloyd Price I joined the first Motown Revue. So before I could get a real good foothold in New York I went to Detroit to join Motown. But the circuit went to the same theaters. Chicago, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York.

The last one was always the Apollo theater, you see. So we got back to the Apollo theater there was another trumpet player there from Austin I didn't know named Gil Asky. He was playing in the house band then, at the Apollo. I got to meet him. He wanted to get out of New York. He left with Motown and left me in his place at the Apollo. In the house band. And I was there 9 years. And every major black musician came to the Apollo. So I was able to play behind all of them and made records with them. And everything was going good. I played with just about everybody.

more interview