INTRODUCTION

The Selective Service Act 40 Stat. 76 was passed by the Congress of the United States of America on 18th May 1917 on the nation’s entry into World War I.  The Act gave the President the power to draft men for military service.  By the end of World War I about 24 million men had registered for the draft, and some 2.8 million were inducted into military service.

There were three stages in the draft registration process:

1.  —  5th June 1917 for all men between the ages of 21 and 31.

2.  — 5th June 1918 for those men who turned 21 after 5th June 1917, with a supplemental registration on 24th August 1918 for those who turned 21 after 5th June 1918, and:

3.  — 12th September 1918 for those men aged from 18 to 45 inclusive who had not previously been required to register.

World War I Draft Registration Cards are a valuable source for jazz researchers and historians, because of the information given about the birth date, occupation, residence and physical characteristics of each registrant.

Our search for World War I Draft Cards of jazz musicians, and their associates, effectively spanned three continents — North America, Europe and Australia — and involved persistent and concentrated efforts by Millie Gaddini, Mike Meddings and Peter Hanley. We have obtained high-quality images of the cards of some important and well-known musicians who were later in the forefront of the jazz world.

In addition to my essays accompanying the Draft Cards of Jelly Roll’s relatives, associates and fellow musicians, Mike will be inviting leading researchers to provide their essays about other musicians and composers in the World War I Draft Card project.

Special thanks to Prof. Lawrence Gushee, Brian Goggin, Guy Hall, Henry Smith, Aaron Mountain, Alex Adan, Shane Bell and James J. McSweeney.

© October 2006 Peter Hanley

Ferd Joseph Morton

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

Jelly Roll’s WWI Draft Card eluded researchers for many years. When it was discovered in November 2005, it was easy to understand why. Jelly Roll registered at Draft Board #17 in Los Angeles on 12th September 1918 and the card was sent to Draft Board #50 in Chicago to be filed with the other cards registered at Draft Board #50. The reason for this is that Jelly Roll gave his permanent address as 545 Aldine Square, Chicago, Illinois, which gave Draft Board #50 in Chicago administrative control over his registration.

The birth date on the card of 13th September 1884 adds yet another variation to the number of different birth dates for Jelly Roll on the public record.

The location of the address of Jelly Roll’s residence at 545 Aldine Square (which leads off Vincennes Avenue, just south of 37th Street), Chicago has been identified by Millie Gaddini and independently verified by Prof. Gushee. Millie has provided the superb period photograph of apartments and street scenes in Aldine Square.

Jelly Roll listed his occupation as “Actor” and his employer as the “Levi Circuit, San Francisco, Calif.” It was not unusual for featured musicians on the vaudeville circuit to list their occupation as an actor (for example, Bill Johnson and Eubie Blake). The “Levi Circuit” was actually Bert Levey Circuit of Independent Vaudeville Theatres, which operated, as an agent for vaudeville artists and independent theatres, from the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco with branch offices in London, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Denver and Los Angeles. Bert Levey was born in California on 1st August 1885 and ran his theatrical agency business from about 1910 to at least 1930. He died in Los Angeles on 30th September 1972. [PH 1]

© November 2005 Peter Hanley

Nelusco J. Adams

WWI Draft Registration Card
5th June 1917

Nelusco John Adams was the son of Joseph Adams and Laura Péché, and was Jelly Roll Morton’s uncle, even though they were born only a few months apart. Nelusco was born in New Orleans on 12th June 1890, and baptised at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church at Annette and Claiborne Avenue in 1894 as Pierre Adams.

The unusual name of “Nelusco” (incorrectly written as “Nulesco” on the draft card) is taken from the name of the slave, Nelusko, in the opera L’Africaine (The African Girl) by the German Jewish composer, Giacomo (originally Jakob) Meyerbeer, which was posthumously produced in Paris in 1865. [RR 1]

Adams was a carpenter by trade, working for various building contractors in New Orleans. Although brought up in the same household, Jelly Roll and Nelusco were far from friends. Conflict arose between them over Nelusco’s harsh treatment of Jelly Roll’s sisters, Amède and Frances, and his habit of wearing Jelly Roll’s clothes. After the death of his mother, Jelly Roll was very protective of his sisters, and had zero tolerance of Nelusco’s attitude. When Jelly heard that Nelusco had mistreated Frances on a particular occasion in 1906, he flew into a rage and gave his uncle a severe beating. This was the beginning of the end for Jelly Roll in the Adams’ household.

In later years Nelusco called himself John and registered for Social Security under the name of John Adams. He left New Orleans permanently in the 1950s to live in Chicago where he died in March 1963. [PH 20]

© June 2007 Peter Hanley

Ignace Colas

WWI Draft Registration Card
5th June 1917

Ignace Colas was Jelly Roll Morton’s brother-in-law. He married Eugénie Amède Mouton, the elder of Jelly Roll’s two sisters, in New Orleans on 15th October 1913. Registered for the World War I Draft in New Orleans on 5th June 1917, Colas was born in Edgard, St. John the Baptist Parish, on 31st July 1891 (the date on the draft card) or on 19th June 1892 (the date on his death certificate).  At various times, he was a carpenter and labourer, and suffered from indifferent health in later years.

Alan Lomax interviewed the Colas family in 1949 while he was finalising his material for Mister Jelly Roll. Ignace and Amède moved to California in the early 1950s so that they could be near their elder daughter, Louise, and her husband Frank Bozant and their grandchildren. [PH 12]

© February 2007 Peter Hanley

Emile Domer

WWI Draft Registration Card
5th June 1917

Emile Domer (originally D’Omer) was the son of Emilien Joseph D’Omer and Hortense Péché, the second youngest child of Pierre Péché and Félice Baudoin. He was, therefore, a first cousin of Louise Monette, Jelly Roll Morton’s mother. Born in New Orleans on 22nd November 1890, Emile was at various times a warehouseman for the California Wine Association, a labourer and a truck driver doing general haulage work. He married Bertha Thompson in New Orleans on 8th January 1910, and moved to Chicago with his family in the 1920s. [PH 23]

© October 2007 Peter Hanley

Arthur Frank Guichard

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

Arthur Frank Guichard Jr. married Jelly Roll Morton’s younger sister, Frances Mouton, in New Orleans on 25th April 1917. They had only one child, Julian Guichard (1918-1994), and separated and divorced in the mid 1920s. A freight handler for the Southern Pacific Railroad at the time of registration for the draft, Guichard later became a small transport operator. Born in New Orleans on 9th March 1898, he died there about 1939. [PH 24]

© October 2007 Peter Hanley

Edward Joseph Lamothe Jr.

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

Jelly Roll’s father, Edward Joseph Lamothe (1865-1938) married Olivia Mary Warnick in New Orleans in 1897, and two sons were born of this marriage. The elder son, Edward Joseph Jr., was born on 7th February 1898 and followed his father into the building trade, but as a carpenter. The draft card records that, like Jelly Roll, he was tall and slender. He left New Orleans in the 1920s and ended up in New York where he died in October 1981. [PH 25]

© October 2007 Peter Hanley

Isidore Joseph Lamothe

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

Isidore Lamothe was the younger son of Edward Joseph Lamothe, Jelly Roll Morton’s father. He was also a carpenter by trade, but, unlike his brother, lived in New Orleans for all of his life and died there in January 1973. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Isidore live in New Orleans to this day. [PH 26]

© November 2007 Peter Hanley

Arthur Joseph Monette

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

Arthur Joseph Monette was born in New Orleans as Arthur Delfort Monette on 26th January 1882. He was the elder surviving son of Julien Monette and Philomène Poydras, and was a half-brother of Louise Monette, Jelly Roll’s mother. He followed the occupations of Pullman porter and waiter at a clubhouse during most of his working life. Married in 1909, Monette and his wife Deborah had six children between 1910 and 1927. Arthur Monette died in New Orleans on 20th June 1934, a few days before his half-brother, Neville Monette. [PH 27]

© November 2007 Peter Hanley

Auguste Reynolds Monette

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

The details of Gus Monette, Jelly Roll Morton’s favourite uncle, were incorrectly recorded on his draft card as Auguste Ranold Monnette with a birth date of 28th August 1877. His birth certificate records his name as Auguste Reynolds Monette, and he was born at 151 Urquhart Street (old numbering), New Orleans on 28th August 1876.

Auguste Monette was a barber by trade, and married Octavie Lavigne in New Orleans on 5th November 1900. He employed Jelly Roll and endeavoured to help him after his mother died in 1906. Jelly mentioned him, not that favourably, in his interviews with Alan Lomax in Washington D.C. in 1938. [MJR 22-23]

Auguste Monette owned a house at 1320 St. Bernard Avenue in the Seventh Ward, and he and his family lived there for over thirty years until they moved to California. He died in Alameda, California on 27th August 1958. [PH 21]

© June 2007 Peter Hanley

Henry Oswald Monette

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

Henry Oswald Monette was the eldest of the three brothers of Louise Monette, Jelly Roll Morton’s mother. His birth certificate, issued in Orleans Parish, records that he was born in New Orleans on 24th March 1874, the same date he gave when registering for the draft on 12th September 1918.

In his early years, Henry worked as a cigar maker, following in the tradition of his Péché ancestors and relatives, and as a teamster, before joining the Citizens Industrial Life Insurance Company as an agent about 1914. Citizens Industrial was owned by the now defunct Acme Life Insurance Company, and Monette represented the group for more than thirty years.

Rudi Blesh visited New Orleans in 1944 to further his research on Jelly Roll and contacted Henry Monette, at Big Eye Louis Nelson Delisle’s suggestion, to arrange an interview with Jelly Roll’s sister, Amède Colas. Blesh described Henry as a truly Dickensian character, very light coloured and easily able to pass as white, who seemed to know everyone in the Creole section of the city.

During his research for Mister Jelly Roll in 1949, Alan Lomax spent an afternoon with Ignace and Amède Colas and Henry Monette, whom Amède referred to as Uncle Henry. He was able to unravel Jelly Roll’s (and his) ancestry for Lomax, correcting his nephew’s mistaken memory of the names of Pierre Péché (his maternal great-grandfather) and Julian Monette (his maternal grandfather). [MJR 29-38]

After retiring as an insurance agent, Henry Monette ran a wine cellar in New Orleans for some years. He died in February 1963, shortly before his eighty-ninth birthday. [PH 19]

© June 2007 Peter Hanley

Neville Joseph Monette

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

Neville Joseph Monette, as he preferred to call himself, was the youngest of the Monette brothers mentioned by Jelly Roll Morton when discussing his ancestors and relatives on the recordings he made for the Library of Congress in 1938. [AFS 1640-A]

Neville was born at 153 Urquhart Street (old numbering), in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans on 20th February 1879, and his birth certificate certified that his name was “Joseph Roscoe Neville Monette, the natural son of J.J. Monette and Eleanora Peché.” He was a barber by trade, operating his own business.

On 4th December 1899, Neville married the eighteen-year-old Adelaide Marquez, who was also a native of New Orleans. By the time he registered for the draft on 12th September 1918, he had purchased a house at 1476 North Claiborne Avenue, from which he operated his barbershop until his death.

Shortly before his death, Neville suffered from chronic myocarditis and endocarditis, and collapsed and died at Milneburg, near the Light House, on 26th June 1934. [PH 22]

© July 2007 Peter Hanley

Seymour J. Monette

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

Seymour Monette was the younger surviving son of Julien Monette, Jelly Roll’s maternal grandfather, and Philomène Poydras. He was born in New Orleans on 5th February 1885 as Seymour Benjamin Monette. An assistant chemist in a food laboratory, he married Aurelia Oubes in New Orleans in 1904. Seymour died in New Orleans on 6th April 1948, and, interestingly, his death certificate records his race as white or Mexican. [PH 28]

© November 2007 Peter Hanley

John Henry Pratts

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

John Pratts, born in New Orleans on 18th April 1877, was a blacksmith by trade although his occupation at the date of his registration for the draft was given as labourer. He was the son of the Spanish born J. W. Pratts and Maria Louisa Gravel, and his birth, registered in Orleans Parish, confirms the birth date on his draft card. He married Louise Monette’s first cousin, Charlesia Péché, the daughter of Emile Péché and Elizabeth Mindibourg, in New Orleans on 25th July 1898. Pratts died in New Orleans in 1940. [PH 29]

© November 2007 Peter Hanley

William Benbow

WWI Draft Registration Card
11th September 1918

William Benbow (generally known as Will or Bill Benbow) was a pioneer of black vaudeville entertainment in the southern states in the early part of the twentieth century. He began his career in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 1899, moving on to Pensacola, Florida in 1900 [AM 41], and joined the well known Allen’s Minstrels in Birmingham, Alabama in the early part of 1902. About 1906, according to Jelly Roll Morton, Benbow was an actor at Mobile’s Dixie Park when he planned a small road show, which consisted of himself, Mrs. Benbow of that period, and Jelly Roll. Benbow was versatile and “would do straight, blackface, dance, sing duets” and mind reading with the young Mister Jelly. The troupe nearly came to grief in Pine Hill, Alabama when they narrowly escaped a gang of well-armed rednecks who were on their way to kill every one of those “black bastards.” Jelly said that, “Will Benbow was the kind of fool that never thought anything was the matter that he couldn’t talk his way out of . . .” and had to be persuaded to leave in a hurry. [OMJ 49-51]

In September 1907, Will Benbow opened the Belmont Street Theater in Pensacola, Florida with a larger show, Will Benbow’s Chocolate Drops Company, which included Mrs. Alberta Benbow, the comedian Lee Cobb, a young buck and wing dancer by the name of Johnny Stevens, and a pianist admired by Morton, Frank Rachel from Georgia, who led the augmented orchestra. [IF 261007] The company included Jelly Roll on piano in 1908, and, in April 1909, Benbow introduced a young Butler May (String Beans) and Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886-1939), one of the truly great blues singers, at the Belmont Street Theater. Also in the cast was Stella Taylor, Jelly Roll Morton’s girlfriend at the time, and it is quite probable that Morton himself was playing there in the orchestra. (The Indianapolis Freeman, 17th April 1909)  Jelly Roll told Alan Lomax in 1938 that String Beans “was the greatest comedian I ever knew, and a very, very swell fellow. He was over six feet tall, very slender with big liver lips, and light complexioned.” [OMJ 50]

Morton said that he toured with Benbow intermittently for several years, probably from 1908 to the latter part of 1911. They played Louisville, Winston Salem, Richmond, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Kansas City, St. Louis, and New York, where a young James P. Johnson heard Morton play in 1911. [MJR 143-144]

Jelly Roll recalled that Edna Benbow sang the blues in one of the Benbow shows he toured with in this early period of his career. This must have been in 1911 when The Indianapolis Freeman reported that Edna Landry Benbow, the then current Mrs. Benbow, made a big hit [IF 220711], as Edna was only fifteen-years old at the time. Edna Landry was born Edna Landreaux in New Orleans on 14th October 1895, the daughter of Victor Landreaux. Several years after she left Benbow, who was a notorious womaniser, Edna Landry moved to Chicago in the early 1920s where, in 1923 and 1924 as Edna Hicks, she made over two dozen recordings issued on a variety of labels (Victor, Columbia, Brunswick, Vocalion, Gennett and Paramount). She died on 16th August 1925 as a result of a tragic accident in her Chicago apartment. Lizzie Miles (1895-1963), the well-known blues singer, was her half-sister. Edna’s brother was the fine trumpet-player, Herb Morand (1905-1952), who made a memorable record, Forty and Tight coupled with Piggly Wiggly (Vocalion 1403), with Johnny Dodds, Frank Melrose and Baby Dodds in a small group called the “Beale Street Washboard Band” in Chicago in 1929. He later played with the “Harlem Hamfats” and recorded extensively with them in Chicago and New York from 1936 to 1938.

Will Benbow was an important mentor to String Beans (Butler May) who, in his short career, became the shining star of the black entertainment world. Wherever he appeared, from the South to Chicago and all the way to New York, String Beans created a sensation. In February 1916 Benbow teamed up again with String Beans to form Beans and Benbow’s Big Vaudeville Review, which debuted in St. Louis and toured until February 1917. They both signed on as a feature in C.W. Park’s Colored Aristocrats from July to early October 1917, the last major tour of String Beans before his tragic death in November 1917 cut short a brilliant career. A number of stories were circulated about the circumstances of his death, but it appears that he was being initiated into a Masonic lodge in Jacksonville, Florida on the night of 10th November 1917 when the initiation ritual got physically out of hand, and May’s neck was broken, leaving him completely paralysed. He was taken to a hospital in Jacksonville where he died on 17th November 1917.

Although living in Washington D.C., Will Benbow registered for the World War I draft in Newport News, Virginia on 11th September 1918. He gave his date of birth as 15th October 1881, and his occupation as a self-employed actor. His nearest relative was recorded as his brother, Lawrence Benbow, who lived at West Belmont Street, Pensacola, Florida. The birth date above is in contrast with Benbow’s World War II Draft Card, which records that he was born in Montgomery, Alabama on 15th October 1882, and was five feet four inches tall, weighing 175 pounds. By the time of the 1920 U.S. Census, Benbow was lodging at 257 South Fourth Street, Memphis with a new Mrs. Benbow, a twenty-year old actress from Tennessee by the name of Beulah. (1920 US Census, Tennessee, Shelby County, Memphis, 5th Ward)

Benbow continued in vaudeville for the next two decades. In both 1925 and 1926, he produced a show called “Get Happy” with a troupe of eighteen men and women, which had a good run including a week at the Douglass Theatre in Macon, Georgia. The 1926 cast included the New Orleans trombonist, Alvin (Zue) Robertson. Benbow registered for the World War II Draft on 8th April 1942, and was living in Indianapolis where he ran a show at a nightclub, called the Cotton Club. When he died in Indianapolis in 1951, notice of his death appeared as an item in The Chicago Defender. (courtesy of Lawrence Gushee)  [PH 33]

© April 2008 Peter Hanley

Martin Blumenthal

WWI Draft Registration Card
5th June 1917

Martin Blumenthal was the real name of Marty Bloom, who was a partner in the music business of Melrose Bros. for a period of time in the 1920s. Born in Chicago on 9th November 1893 into a Jewish family, his parents were Max and Rose Blumenthal who had migrated from the Russian controlled Poland in 1891. Marty Bloom began his career in the music world as a pianist in Chicago saloons, and later became an actor on the vaudeville stage.

Bloom’s work with Melrose Bros. included a brief stint at managing the career of Jelly Roll Morton, no easy task for either the experienced, or the inexperienced. It is said that he introduced Morton to the fledgling Music Corporation of America in 1927, probably motivated by a desire to pass the responsibilities of looking after the brilliant but difficult Creole to a more experienced manager. Nevertheless, Marty’s association with Jelly Roll yielded an impressive collaboration (also with Charlie Rider) in the 1926 publication of Cannon Ball Blues. Bloom also handled the sound effects on Jelly-Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers 21st September 1926 recording session for Victor.  He is heard on Sidewalk Blues and Dead Man Blues. [RHP]

Marty Bloom was also a songwriter in his own right, and published a number of songs, including the popular standard Melancholy in 1927, still played by jazz bands today. His most successful song was the novelty collaboration with Billy Rose and Ernest Brever, published as Does the Spearmint Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight in 1924. The English skiffle maestro, Lonnie Donegan, revived the song with great success in the 1960s as Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight.

Fats Waller was managed by Bloom in 1932 when Waller was making the stage shows swing at Connie’s Inn in New York. It was the end of the prohibition era, and the New York gangsters were pushing to control the sale of alcohol to the Harlem clubs, resulting in a war between the gangs of Vincent (Mad Dog) Coll and Arthur (Dutch) Schultz. Mad Dog Coll unilaterally decided that Connie’s Inn was his territory, and kidnapped George Immerman, one of the members of the family, which owned the club, holding him for ransom. When Coll took Immerman to the Inn to collect the money, the police were waiting. In the resulting shoot-out, Coll got away, but without collecting. All this was too much for the Immerman’s who sold Connie’s Inn despite it being a profitable landmark in New York entertainment. It was safer that way.

It was also too much for Marty who decided that the overwhelming Waller character, not to mention the gangsters who frequented his appearances, were best left to someone else. He persuaded Phil Ponce to take over and went back to the relative peace of Chicago to produce shows at the Sherman Hotel. After a long and successful career, Marty Bloom died in Highland Park, Lake County, Illinois in December 1974. [PH 8]

© February 2007 Peter Hanley

Harry Edward Dunn

WWI Draft Registration Card
5th June 1917

During his years on the Gulf Coast between 1906 and 1910, when he travelled extensively in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, Jelly Roll Morton nurtured the ambition to become a sharp shooting gambler. At that time the main card game played was Georgia Skin, which Jelly Roll described as a game that had “so many different kinds of cheats right in front of your eyes. It’ll take a magician to catch ‘em, and maybe not even him.” [AFS 1679-B] Jelly Roll’s tutor in Georgia Skin was a tall, thin, light complexioned mulatto by the name of Harry Dunn. After a short period of tuition, the Morton confidence turned into over-confidence, and the pair set out from Biloxi with another friend to win some money in a railroad camp in a two-horse town called Orange, Mississippi. Their amusing, but near fatal, adventure in Orange was recounted in detail on the Library of Congress recordings. [AFS 1679-B] - [AFS 1680-A] and [AFS 1680-B]

Harry Dunn was born in Moss Point, Mississippi, the birthplace of that fine pianist and composer of modern ragtime, David Thomas Roberts. Harry Dunn and his elder brother, Spencer, and young sister, Sarah, were brought up by their grandmother, Sarah Brown. The family were recorded in Moss Point in the 1900 U.S. Census as white, but were described as black in the 1910 U.S. Census when Harry was working as a waiter in a restaurant in that same town.

On 5th June 1917, at the Draft Board for West Biloxi, Dunn registered for the World War I draft. The draft card records his full name as Harry Edward Dunn, his place of birth as Moss Point, and his date of birth as 9th June 1917. His description as tall and slender accords with Jelly Roll’s description of him above. At the time, he was working as a cook for the White Hotel Co., which was more correctly described as the White House Hotel Company. The White House Hotel was built as a large residence by Walter A. White, a Mississippi lawyer and later Circuit Court Judge, and his wife Cora on an ocean front property in Beach Boulevard, Biloxi in the late 1890s. The Whites took in boarders to increase their income and later extended their house to a row of seven Victorian residences, which became the White House Hotel, the finest and most popular hotel in Biloxi, often called the Riviera of the Gulf Coast. The hotel was run by the White family until 1940 and Harry Dunn was employed there as a cook until at least the 1930s. It is now on the Register of Historic Places.

Harry Dunn was called up for the draft on 15th July 1918, and served in 15th Company, Fourth Regiment, U.S. Marine Corps in the Dominican Republic, rising to the rank of Private First Class. At the time of his discharge on 21st April 1919, he was hospitalised in the field hospital at Sand Pedro de Macoris, about fifty miles east of Santo Domingo. After his return to the United States and discharge from Army service, Harry resumed his employment as a cook at the White House Hotel.

He continued to live in Biloxi until his death there on 28th November 1964. As a veteran, Harry was buried in Biloxi National Cemetery on 7th December 1964. [PH 31]

© March 2008 Peter Hanley

John Francis Ford

WWI Draft Registration Card
5th June 1917

John Francis (Jack) Ford was the common-law husband of Anita Gonzales (born Bessie Johnson in Montgomery, Alabama in 1883) from 1924 till her death in 1952. Anita was the love of Jelly Roll Morton’s life, and he described her as the only woman her ever loved. On Jelly Roll’s death in 1941, she became the principal beneficiary of his estate.

Jack Ford was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming on 22nd September 1892, the son of Michael Ford and Susan Elizabeth Maley. According to the 1900 U.S. Census, Michael Ford had migrated from Ireland in 1859 when he was only a few months old. However, one of the two entries for him in Utah in the 1910 U.S. Census lists him as born in Pennsylvania. Whatever the case, both parents were of strong Irish descent, and Jack was proud of his Irish heritage.

Working in mines in Utah from an early age, Jack went to Arizona about 1915 to work in the rich copper mines in the central part of the state. He registered for the World War I Draft on 5th June 1917, at Miami, Gila County. In the wild and wicked town of Jerome in Arizona, while a foreman at one of the mines there, he met Anita Gonzales. Anita, always with an eye for a quick dollar, was involved in a number of business enterprises in Jerome. Known as the Cuban Queen, she ran a popular bordello and Jack became her star boarder. They befriended a young Mexican family by the name of Villalpando, and it appears that Anita employed the father to manage a billiard saloon. The father was killed in a gun battle with another Mexican, leaving his youngest son in the care of Jack and Anita who left Jerome and went to Canyonville, Oregon where they purchased a property on the South Umpqua River and established a restaurant, motel, and petrol station.

Jack and Anita brought up the young Mexican child, Enrique Villalpando, as their own, and he became known as Henry Ford. The Fords prospered and the restaurant, located on the old Pacific Highway 99, became a landmark in the area. In the 1940s, Anita and Jack purchased a motel, the Topanga Beach Auto Court, at Topanga Canyon, near Malibu, and went to live there in 1947. After Anita’s death in 1952, Jack continued to run the motel. He went on a trip to England and Ireland in 1956, and died at Topanga Canyon of a heart attack on 31st July 1956, soon after his return.  [PH 11]

© February 2007 Peter Hanley

Louis August La Mar

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

Louis August La Mar (Lew La Mar) was a French Canadian, born in Quebec on 11th December 1873. He migrated to the U.S. with his parents prior to 1894. He was white — not African-American. He registered for the WWI draft on 12th September 1918. The draft card records his occupation as a Theatrical Actor for the Western Vaudeville Association, Majestic Theatre Building, Chicago, the same vaudeville group that employed Bill Johnson. [PH 2]

On 4th June 1927 Lew La Mar joined Jelly-Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers in Chicago to participate in a Victor recording session.  He is featured on Hyena Stomp and Billy Goat Stomp. [RHP]

Dave Peyton reported in The Chicago Defender, dated 18th June 1927, that “Lew La Mar was the polite and jovial master of ceremonies and kept things on the hum at all times.” [CD]

© October 2006 Peter Hanley

Lester Melrose

WWI Draft Registration Card
5th June 1917

Lester Franklin Melrose, the second eldest of seven children of Frank and Mollie Melrose who owned a farm near Sumner, Lawrence County, Illinois, was born on 14th December 1891. He began his working life as a deliveryman for a dry goods store, and had ambitions of becoming a star baseball player. When he went to Chicago to live in 1912, he tried out as a catcher for the White Sox baseball team, but without success. In 1914, he opened a grocery store on the South Side at 37th Street and Vincennes. He was still running this store when he registered for the draft on 5th June 1917, but had to give it up when he was drafted into the army in 1918.

After his army service, the 1920 U.S. Census recorded his occupation as a grocery salesman (probably for Marshall Field’s department store at State Street and Randolph). About 1922, he joined his brother, Walter, as a partner in his music store at 6311 South Cottage Grove Avenue, on the South Side of Chicago. Marty Bloom, a pianist and vaudeville actor and the composer of the popular standard Melancholy, joined the partnership later. In 1924, Lester married a sixteen-year old girl of French Canadian descent by the name of Blanche.

Melrose Brothers Music branched out into music publishing after they became associated with Jelly Roll Morton in 1923. Wolverine Blues, Milenburg Joys, King Porter Stomp and a host of other Morton numbers put them on the road to financial success. In 1925, Walter Melrose took over the music publishing business and moved to the more affluent North Side. Lester acquired the music store, financed by Walter. When Lester got into financial difficulties, Walter called in his note and sold up the business. Neither family nor friendships stood in the way of Walter Melrose when money was concerned.

After struggling for several years, Lester climbed the ladder of success again when he promoted many African-American blues artists who became popular, recording them mainly in Chicago and, at the same time, demanding that they transfer the copyright in their songs absolutely to him. He ultimately became the owner of the copyright to some 3,000 tunes. Such was the way of both the Melrose boys.

After a successful career in the promotion and publication of music, the musically illiterate Lester Melrose retired to Florida with his wife Blanche and died there in April 1968. Blanche died sixteen years later in 1984. [PH 7]

© January 2007 Peter Hanley

Harrison G. Smith

WWI Draft Registration Card
5th June 1917

Harrison Godwin Smith was a minor song plugger and promoter in New York for fifty years, beginning his career in the 1920s. About 1930, Jelly Roll Morton took him into partnership in an unsuccessful music publishing business, which ended in a bitter and acrimonious dispute, the effects of which still rankled Smith forty years later. Alan Lomax outlined the strange events concerning the dispute, [MJR 223-228] referring to Smith as the West Indian to prevent him taking any action for libel.

Smith had no known connection with the West Indies. He was born in Washington D.C., the son of Henry and Cathel (Catherine) Smith who were both from the state of Maryland.

According to Smith, he started in the music business in New York in 1913. When he registered for the draft on 5th June 1917, his occupation was listed as assistant janitor at the premises of The Peoples Trust Company (established 1886) at Nostrand Avenue and Herkimer Street. His date of birth on the card, 15th May 1893, was only one of a number of different birth dates for him on the public record: July 1891 in the 1900 U.S. Census, 1894 (age 35 on 1st April 1930) in the 1930 U.S. Census, and 15th May 1895 on his World War II Draft Card and in Social Security records (SSN 119-12-7429).

Smith claimed in two articles, published in the Record Research magazine in 1957, that he was co-composer (mainly with Ben Garrison) of nine songs recorded and copyrighted under Morton’s name, and further claimed that twelve songs and instrumentals, copyrighted under Morton’s name, were not composed by Morton, but by other song writers. [RR]  Be that as it may, Jelly Roll told Lomax that Smith’s musical ability was non-existent. Smith was apparently camera shy, and, to my knowledge, there is only one published photograph of him. William Russell, who took photographs of just about everyone, was not able to coax him before a camera lens when he interviewed him in 1970.

Harrison Smith died in Brooklyn, New York in September 1982, still bitter and vindictive about his association with Jelly Roll Morton. [PH 15]

© March 2007 Peter Hanley

Zack Williams

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

Zack Williams registered for the draft on 12th September 1918 at local board #17, in Los Angeles. Jelly Roll Morton submitted his details for the draft at the same board and on the same date, so given their association around this time; there is a possibility they traveled together to register.

The draft card shows his date of birth as 6th October 1883. In the 1900 U.S. Census he was recorded as Zacherus Williams, born in Louisiana in October 1886. His 1920 U.S. Census entry gives his age as 36, which is consistent with the 1883 birth date, while the 1930 U.S. Census records his age as 43, which is in agreement with the 1886 birth date. His California Death Record gives yet another birth date of 6th October 1884. [CDR]  Incidentally, in both the 1920 and 1930 U.S. Censuses, his occupation is given as a movie actor.

Zack’s occupation, at the time of his registration, was a Pullman Porter. Interestingly, regardless of their real name, “Pullman Porters” were called “George” by the passengers. This tradition finds its origins after the name of the company’s founder, George Pullman. At this time The Pullman Company was the largest employer of African-Americans in the United States.

On the Library of Congress recordings, Jelly Roll Morton describes Zack as follows: “I had a fellow runnin’ the place for me from New Orleans that I had a lot of confidence in. He was the first fella that played the part of Tarzan in the moving picture — a great big black fella, standing almost seven feet high.  And he must weigh at least three-hundred pounds, all solid meat. . . .” [AFS 2489-A]  Morton can be forgiven for the hyperbole, because with his draft card recording an imposing frame of 6' 3" and 260 lb., Williams was indeed an extremely large man.

Movie actor Zack Williams was one of the pioneers in the organization of the Screen Actors Guild. He appeared in twenty-six movies during the years 1920-1948. He is probably best remembered for his portrayal of Elijah, one of the Tara plantation field hands, in Gone With The Wind (1939). Among his many other screen appearances were roles in The Yankee Clipper (1927) with William Boyd; Kid Millions (1934) with Eddie Cantor, Ethel Merman and Lucille Ball, and Professor Creeps (1942) with Flournoy E. Miller and Mantan Moreland. [MG 1]

Zack Williams died in Los Angeles County, California on 25th May 1958. [CDR]

© November 2007 Millie Gaddini

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