Jazz in Wartime

Abstract

I started getting odd gigs again. Some of them were with the great Fats Waller, who was doing theater dates of one to three days in small towns of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Dave McRae, an alto player, was the one who engaged the musicians for the big band Fats was using. We were Jacques Butler, Johnny “Bugs” Hamilton (Fats’s regular trumpet man), and myself (trumpets), Herb Flemming (trombone), Cedric Wallace (bass), Al Casey (guitar), Arthur Trappier (drums), Bob Carroll (tenor sax), and there was another alto sax whose name I’ve forgotten.