Walking with Legends

Barry Martyn's New Orleans Jazz Odyssey

Mick Burns, Mick Burns

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780807147917
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Drummer, record producer, bandleader, jazz researcher, and cigar-chomping raconteur Barry Martyn is a New Orleans original who happens to have been born in England. Implausible though this may seem, it makes perfect sense to members of the New Orleans traditional jazz community, who view themselves as an extended family based on merit as much as nativity. For more than forty years, Martyn has been a fixture in the Crescent City's jazz scene, laying down the beat for generations of celebrated musicians and avidly promoting the city's unique musical heritage around the world. In Walking with Legends -- based on over forty hours of interviews with Martyn by fellow British jazz enthusiast and author Mick Burns -- Martyn reflects upon his life in jazz and offers a window into a musical world that few have understood, let alone witnessed from the inside.
At the age of nineteen, jazz fanatic Martyn found his way to the Crescent City and began working as a professional drummer in clubs and studios. The first white man in the United States to join a black musician's union, he eventually started his own record label and recorded hundreds of jam sessions that today are regarded as classics in Europe. In 1972, he formed the Legends of Jazz, an old-style New Orleans jazz band that toured the world and took New Orleans jazz into the American showbiz mainstream.
Martyn's life story provides unique intimate glimpses of a vanished generation of New Orleans musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Kid Sheik Cola, Harold Dejan, Joe Watkins, Albert Nicholas, Kid Thomas, Andrew Blakeney, and many others. Throughout his chronicle, Martyn highlights the continual clash of cultures that arose from an avid British pupil learning lessons of life and music from elderly African American strangers who take him under their wing both out of curiosity and self-interest. Together, they find a way to connect through music, even if the road gets a little bumpy at times.
A standard-bearer for New Orleans's jazz drumming tradition, Martyn remains one of the city's busiest musicians and most avid promoters of New Orleans music. In Walking with Legends, he honors the legacies of the African American musicians who taught and inspired him and affirms the importance of the human relationships that make the music possible.

Appendix 1

Barry Martyn Collection of Interviews, Historic New Orleans Collection

Watkins, Joe, drums, Jan. 20, 1961

Cola, George “Kid Sheik,” trumpet, Jan. 28, 1961

Sayles, Emanuel, banjo, Jan. 29, 1961

Williams, Alfred, drums, Feb. 3, 1961

Frazier, Cié, drums, Feb. 16, 1961

Bigard, Alex, drums, Feb. 7, 1962

Dawson, Eddie, bass, Jan. 31, 1962

Bocage, Peter, trumpet, 1962

Barnes, Emile, clarinet, Feb. 7, 1962

Handy, John, saxophone, Nov. 21, 1963

Summers, Eddie, trombone, Nov. 11, 1963

Kelly, Jack (son of Chris), Nov. 17, 1963

Crescent City Crystals, various, Nov. 13, 1963

Ferbos, Lionel, trumpet, Aug. 3, 1964

Cola, “Kid Shiek,” on Chris Kelly, 1963

Dejan, Harold, saxophone, March 28, 1963

Morgan, Andrew, saxophone, March 20, 1969

Barnes, Paul, saxophone, June 16, 1969

Kimball, Jeanette, piano, June 19, 1969

Valentine, “Kid” Thomas, trumpet, June 17, 1969

Tio, Rose (Lorenzo Tio’s daughter), July 7, 1969

Hamilton, Charles, piano, 1969

Maurice, Emile, drums, 1969

Williams, Peter, drums, 1969

Franklin, Henry “Dog,” clarinet, 1969

Blunt, Cal, trombone, Nov. 23, 1963

Murray, Frank, guitar, 1969

McNeil, John Henry, trumpet, 1969

Moore, Buster, trombone, 1969

Spears, E., saxophone, 1969

Purnell, Alton, piano, 1970

Humphrey, Percy, trumpet, 1970

Thompson, Leroy, trumpet, 1971

Gallaud, Louis, piano, 1971

Murphy, Turk, trombone, Dec. 1, 1972

Hines, Earl, piano, 1973

Bechet, Leonard, saxophone, Dec. 4, 1972

Delay, Mike, trumpet, Jan. 19, 1973

Alcorn, Alvin, trumpet, 1993

Koeller, Reginald, trumpet, 1995

Potier, Harold, trumpet, Sept. 20, 1995

Veasey, Paul, Sept. 20, 1995

Viltz, Leander (Bunk coworker, rice mill), Sept. 21, 1995

Polk, Matthew (sponsored WPA program for Bunk), Sept. 21, 1995

Blumberg, Jerry, trumpet (Bunk’s student), Oct. 25, 1993

Dejan, Leo, Nov. 25, 1991

Otto, Herbert, Aug. 6, 1992

Broun, Heywood Hale, n.d.

Pierce, De De (interviewed by Dick Allen), n.d.

Pierce, Billie (interviewed by Dick Allen), n.d.

Butler, Joseph “Kid Twat” (interviewed by Dick Allen), n.d.

Gorman, Israel (interviewed by Dick Allen), n.d.

Leo Dejan, n.d.

Harold Dejan, 1998

Harold Potier and John Fontennette, 1996

Walter Lewis, 1997

Milford Doliole video, original 8-mm film of Cié Frazier and Alfred Williams, 1986

William Wagner, n.d.

Harry Newmark, n.d.

Bill Bowler, n.d.

Earl Hines, piano, n.d.

Appendix 2

American Music Reissue Program

AMCD–01	Bunk: King of the Blues
AMCD–02	George Lewis, Kid Shots Madison
AMCD–03	Bunk Johnson, 1944
AMCD–04	George Lewis Trios
AMCD–05	Wooden Joe Nicholas
AMCD–06	Bunk's Brass Band
AMCD–07	Big–Eye Louis Nelson
AMCD–08	Bunk, 1944: Second Masters
AMCD–09	Herb Morand
AMCD–10	Kid Thomas: The First Recordings
AMCD–11	Dink Johnson, Charlie Thompson
AMCD–12	Bunk, 1944—45
AMCD–13	Emile Barnes
AMCD–14	Mobile Strugglers
AMCD–15	Bunk Plays Popular Songs
AMCD–16	Bunk in San Francisco
AMCD–17	Baby Dodds: Drum Record
AMCD–18	Natty Dominique Creole Dance Band
AMCD–19	Kid Ory,1944—46
AMCD–20	Kid Ory, 1948—49
AMCD–21	Oxford Vol. 1: Lewis, 1952 Party
AMCD–22	Oxford Vol. 2: Lewis, 1952 Concert
AMCD–23	Oxford Vol. 3: Lewis, 1952 Concert
AMCD–24	Oxford Vol. 4: Lewis, 1953 Rec.
AMCD–25	Oxford Vol. 5: Lewis, 1953 1st Concert
AMCD–26	Oxford Vol. 6: Lewis, 1953 1st Concert
AMCD–27	Oxford Vol. 7: Lewis, 1953 2nd Concert
AMCD–28	Oxford Vol. 8: Lewis, 1953 2nd Concert
AMCD–29	Oxford Vol. 9: Lewis, 1953 Ves/Reh/Party
AMCD–30	Oxford Vol. 10: Lewis, 1955 Party
AMCD–31	Oxford Vol. 11: Lewis, 1955 Concert
AMCD–32	Oxford Vol. 12: Lewis, 1955 Concert
AMCD–33	Oxford Vol. 13: Lewis and Lucas, 1955
AMCD–34	Oxford Vol. 14: Lewis and Lucas, 1955
AMCD–35	Oxford Vol. 15: Barbarin, 1956 Concert
AMCD–36	Oxford Vol. 16: Barbarin, 1956 Concert
AMCD–37	Oxford Vol. 17: Spirituals in Ragtime
AMCD–38	George Lewis Band with Elmer Talbert, 1949—50
AMCD–39	Fabulous G. Lewis Band, Kentucky 1956
AMCD–40	Kid Howard: Prelude to the Revival
AMCD–41	Kid Rena: Prelude to the Revival, Vol. 2
AMCD–42	Kid Ory: Green Room, Vol. 1
AMCD–43	Kid Ory: Green Room, Vol. 2
AMCD–44	John Reid Collection
AMCD–45	Bunk and Mutt Carey, New York
AMCD–46	Bunk and Leadbelly, New York
AMCD–47	Ray Burke 's Speakeasy Boys
AMCD–48	Kid Thomas: The Dance Hall Years
AMCD–49	Kid Thomas: Slatter Recordings
AMCD–50	Big Boy Goudie
AMCD–51	John Handy: The First Recordings
AMCD–52	Punch Miller, 1960
AMCD–53	Kid Thomas: Sonnets from Algiers
AMCD–54	Kid Howard's La Vida Band
AMCD–55	Paul Barnes's Polo Players
AMCD–56	Steve Angrum, George Lewis
AMCD–57	Punch Miller, Delegates of Pleasure
AMCD–58	Kid Howard Olympia and Morgan Bands
AMCD–59	Creole George Guesnon, George Lewis
AMCD–60	Charlie Love
AMCD–...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1941–1960 ENGLAND AND CANADA
• 1961–1972 NEW ORLEANS AND ENGLAND
• Photograph
• 1973–1984 ACROSS THE STATES AND AROUND THE WORLD
• 1985–2004 NEW ORLEANS
• Appendix 1: Barry Martyn Collection of Interviews, Historic New Orleans Collection
• Appendix 2: American Music Reissue Program
• Appendix 3: Interviewees of the National Park Service Interview Program
• Notes