PAUL VERNON CHESTER

Manouche Maestro

Jazz in the Orient

Cedric West - Burmese Guitarist
(contemporary of Ike Isaacs) His talents got him quickly hired by bandleader Teddy Weatherford and was soon recognized as the leading jazz guitarist in Calcutta.  He appears on many Teddy Weatherford sides.  Cedric West went to England in 1947 and went on to become a respected session man, recording with Nelson Riddle, Quincy Jones and Elmer Bernstein. He was a close friend of Joe Pass. He went on to hold down the guitar chair in the BBC jazz band and is described by Mike Edmonds  - “he was a master bebop player and played with his thumb like Wes”. His daughter Jenny Legget is the archive of information about him which may appear in a future page dedicated to Cedric West.  Aptly, many years later, Cedric West released an album titled “West meets East”

Regarding Cedric West and Teddy Weatherford - I was a jazz piano player in London in 1959, when Cedric was at a Night Club in New Bond Street (Fischers or the Embassy?) with Rudy Bernardo (drums) Ricky Fernandez (bass) and myself (stuart DeSilva, piano). Cedric also played a very fluent trombone, styled on JJ Johnson.  As for Teddy Weatherford, he played at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo. My father used to take me for the Sunday afternoon concerts to hear him. I was only four yrs old, studying classical piano and still listening to Fats and Tatum. Dad was a good friend of Teddy's. Further news - Ruben Solomons (Alto Sax) was living in Sydney where i live and passed away on 12th October  2009 - Born 29th May 1921 - Regards Stuart de Silva

Cedric West Entertains Joe Pass in Goodmayes Essex - Indian summer indeed. Spot Louis Stewart.

Jazz in India

Jazz in India

Hi -  - Re. Paul Gonzalvez, I befriended him in Paris, where I was resident solo pianist. with pianist ART SIMMONS, (see him on Wikipadia) at the Mars Club for 4 years, 24/7. He told me he was in Ceylon as a truck driver in the US Army forces stationed in Colombo (Colombo was SEAC - South East Asia Command- Headquarters during WW2) and that he did play in Weatherford's Band during that period. Must have been 1940 thru late 1942. The Japanese attacked Ceylon on Easter Sunday 1942, following which the Brits moved SEAC to a Singapore base, leaving only a token force in Ceylon.  Re the Manouche: there was a cafe in Paris at the Flea Market in Boulogne Billancourt, where every Saturday & Sunday, where there was a resident Gypsy Quartet all Django's relatives and I am sure many Manouche played in that group.  I took Johnny Griffin and Art Taylor there and Johnny sat in with them on tenor. That was a blast! Stuart de Silva. Sydney, Australia. 

Finding Carlton Kitto
who learned jazz guitar by listening to his mother’s 78rpm records of greats like Charlie Christian and who’s jammed with legendary musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, says: “It was amazing in those days because musically Park Street was like Hollywood with shows and bands in every restaurant all playing jazz.”  “Carlton is the only practising pure jazz artist in Calcutta today,” says Ajoy Ray, who runs the Jazz Listeners Forum at the Calcutta School of Music.

JAZZ IN SHANGHAI - 1934

Despite warnings by Occidentals not to go outside the International Settlements alone at night nor wander too far even by day into the Chinese districts of Shanghai, I did so many times just to see what would happen. Nothing happened. I had been told, too, not to trust the rickshaw boys outside the Settlement boundaries-they might lead the unwary stranger into traps. None did. The rickshaw men waited patiently for me if I chose to descend from their cabs and walk around the teeming odd-smelling exotic streets or go into the shops. So i came to the conclusion that these well meaning warnings given me might have some validity for white foreigners-not much liked by the Shanghai masses in spite of years of missionary charities. To the Willow Pattern Teahouse of the Dragon Flower Pagoda or the Butterfly Bazaar, or anywhere else I wanted to go outside the barbed-wire fences and patrolled gates of the International sectors, I went; into Nantao, Chapei, or Hongkew and time, day or evening with or without a rickshaw, and nothing unpleasant happened to me nor had I any ill effects from eating Shanghai watermelon. On the whole, I found the Chinese in Shanghai to be a very jolly people, much like coloured folks at home. To tell the truth, I was more afraid of going in to the world famous Cathay Hotel than I was of going into any public place in the Chinese quarters. Coloured people are not welcomed at the Cathay. But beyond the gates of the International Settlement, colour was no barrier. I could go anywhere.

Shanghai was an enormous city of almost four million people, so I never saw the whole of it. But i did see a great deal of it, from the Bund to Bubbling Well road and the racetracks and outlying districts, the theatres, amusement parks, and the Canidrome Gardens, where the best American jazz band in the Orient was playing. Headed by the pianist Teddy Weatherford, this group of Negro musicians at the Canidrome were known from Calcutta and Bombay through the Malay Straits to Manila, Hong Kong and Port Arthur. They were very popular in Shanghai, which seemed to have weakness for American Negro performers.

<Canidrome 1930

The sparkling Nora Holt had just completed a long engagement at the Little Club shortly before I arrived, singing and playing at the piano her intriguing versions of French and American songs. The young radio singer Midge Williams, and her dancing brothers had been in China that spring. too. Other performers that Shanghai that I loved were Valaida Snow, a kind of Josephine Bakeresque artist of stunning gowns and varied songs. Bob Hill's band, Jack Carter's band and Buck Clayton's trumpet thrilled the International Settlements.

But these people came, performed and departed. Teddy Weatherford, however, had become a sort of permanent institution in the Orient, covering the circuit from the Winter Garden at the Grand Hotel in Calcutta and back again to Shanghai almost every year, stopping at Singapore for side trips to the Malaya jungles to play at parties and dances at remote British clubs on rubber plantations in the up-country.

Buck Clayton's Band performing in the Ballroom of the Canidrome - since demolished
In 1934, the Clayton band opened at the palatial Canidrome Ballroom in Shanghai, China, becoming one of the first bands to play the Orient. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and other celebrities flocked to the Canidrome nightly to sway to a potent mixture of hot jazz and classical music performed by the band, decked out in tails. The Clayton band spent the next two years at the Canidrome, with a short jaunt to Japan. A melee with a former Marine that turned the dance floor into a roiling free-for-all and cost Clayton the job at the Canidrome. Unable to find steady work in Shanghai, Clayton and what remained of the band returned to the United States.  Some claimed that Clayton was picked by Teddy Weatherford for a job at the Canidrome ballroom in the French Concession in Shanghai. Others claimed he escaped the US temporarily to avoid extreme racism, Clayton was still discriminated against by fellow American Marines who were stationed in Shanghai. On numerous accounts, he was attacked by US servicemen, including an instance where bricks were thrown at him.

I discovered more info on Buck Clayton. he left Shanghai and was back in the US in 1937.the same year he joined Willie Bryant's in New York, but, while in Kansas  City, was persuaded to join Count  Basie, taking the trumpet chair vacated by Hot lips Page. So the assumption that he was in Weatherford's band in Ceylon is wrong.  Incidentally Weatherford's Band was resident at the Galle Face hotel in Colombo, where I heard them and met him with my father. (circa 1939 thru 1941) Stuart de Silva. Sydney, Australia. 

Teddy could play some wonderful blues when he wanted to, but he had to be in the mood. He played at the old Sunset in Chicago in the days when Louis Armstrong first came north from New Orleans, and he played with Sidney Bechet, Noble Sissie and Eddie South and had been all over Europe as well as Australia. But now the Far East was his personal stomping ground. Stiff-necked British and Old China Hands from Bombay to the Yellow River swore by his music. it was the best! A big, genial, dark man, something of a clown, Teddy could walk into almost any public place in the Orient and folks would break into applause.

The night that he came and got me in his car to go out to the Canidrome gardens to hear his band, i soon found myself sitting under paper lanterns in a softly lighted outdoor pavillion at a table with a white American woman named Irene West. She was an old trouper of the vaudeville stage, now turned manager, and in Shanghai she had under her wing a team of Negro dancing boys (Jim and Sam then aged 17) billed as the Mackey Brothers - Dancing Twins, featured in the Canidrome show. But they were headache for miss West.  It seems the Mackey Twins were running wild in Shanghai. In their late adolescence, they were both feeling their oats-and sowing them. Between the White Russian women and the Japanese girls, the boys almost never got back to their hotel at night. They slept all day and evening. When it was time to come to the Canidrome for the show it was hard to awaken them.

Back on the Bund in Teddy's car in the early dawn, the steaming city of Shanghai lay behind us, and the warships of the world were in the waters offshore. The tall rectangular sails of big brown junks and the smaller sails of little Chinese houseboats and fishing boats rocked gently on the Whangpoo. Sitting beside the big, dark, hulking musician in the car, I though how fascinating it must be to be a band leader like Teddy Wetherford, making music all around the world from Paris to the Orient, or dancers pantomiming grace and strength and beauty like the adagio dancers on the wide stage of the Canidrome Gardens. I had always been in love with show business. If I were a performer, I thought, and could play or sing or dance my way to Hong Kong and Singapore and Calcutta and Bombay, I would never go home at all. But I was not a performer, only a writer, so I had to think about heading for the USA. it was too expensive for me to stay in that incredible city. As it was, I'd had to cable for an advance on my royalties.

When Teddy Weatherford and the fellows in his band heard that I was leaving, they insisted on giving a farewell breakfast on the date of sailing. When I think about that breakfast, my heart almost stops beating. On account of it I came near to being stranded, probably forever in the Orient, for after I had gotten my ticket I had almost no money left. My boat sailed at three in the afternoon. The fellow had been playing music all night long the night before. Two of the musicians and Teddy Weatherford came directly from the Canidrome Gardens to fetch me at my hotel about eight in the morning. I was still asleep, and had not as yet packed anything for my departure. But I dressed hastily and went with them, thinking I would pack on my return about noon. But I did not get back at noon.
I turned out that Teddy, when he stopped for me, had not even bought the chickens for breakfast yet. And at the nearest bar before heading for the market, the band boys stopped to buy us all a drink. It was two hours before we got to the market. The house of one of the musicians, where he lived with his Japanese girlfriend and where the breakfast was to be held, was far out on the edge of Shanghai. It was eleven o'clock when we got there. Other musicians with their White Russian girls or Japanese wives were gathered by that time, having highballs and awaiting us. The one Negro woman in the group, wife of one of the band boys from Harlem, said that fried chicken wouldn't amount to anything without hot biscuits, so she went into the kitchen to make some. Meanwhile, the chickens that had been purchased alive, had to be killed, cleaned, plucked and their pin feathers pilled out. I was already approaching noon!  "Teddy," I said, "I'll have to be going soon."
"Don't worry 'bout it," he waved, "We'll get you to the boat."-"But man, I still have to pack my bags."-"Don't worry," said Teddy, "them girls will have breakfast fried up before you can shake a stick. You got to eat yet. You can't go without eating. this there bon voyage chicken in your special honour."

By that time I could smell the chicken cooking in the kitchen where the coloured wife was busy with the biscuits, and assorted Japanese and White Russian females were all cooking too, drinking and chattering away like mad. Everyone was in high spirits, so it took quite a little time to get anything done. Anyhow, the chicken certainly did smell good! But I looked at the clock and both hands were past high noon! On my ticket envelope it said in large letters to be on board at least an hour before sailing. That meant two o'clock. Here I was ten or twelve miles from the Bund, breakfastless, and with nothing packed at my hotel for my departure.  "Teddy, man, I'm gonna have to go." -"Asaki, how about that bird? Teddy bawled. "Shenshi, Kiki, Tamara, what you-all doing out there?" This man is hungry!"

The girls started setting tables-a big table and two or three smaller ones in the front rooms, as there were more than a dozen people. Said Teddy, "If i had me a piano, I would beat out some blues." But there was no piano, so Teddy and the rest of the folks just kept on mixing highballs and um-ummmm-mm-m-ing at the wonderful smells of chicken frying in the kitchen-that seemed as if it would never get to the table.  "We're making gravy," shouted the coloured girl. "What's hot biscuits without gravy?"  "Southern fried!" said Teddy. "Hot biscuits with gravy! Man, this is a bon voyage for fair!"  "If I wait for breakfast now I'm afraid I won't get off," I said. - "Don't worry 'bout it," cried Teddy. "Just don't worry! Take it easy in this life and you'll get there."

By this time I was worried. It was almost one o'clock-and my hotel was at least an hour away through the crowded Shanghai streets, driving normally. "Man I got to go." But that chicken smelled so good! And I could see that things in the kitchen indicated that breakfast would be served soon. I was almost tempted to let the SS Taiyo Maru sail without me, and just stay in China.

Instead I went out in the kitchen myself and said to the coloured wife, "Couldn't I just have a biscuit before I go?"
"Go?" she said. "All this chicken is for you-and you got to go! You reckon that boat leaves on time?"  "I'm afraid it does," I said. "Once Teddy starts eating, he'll never get up from the table to drive me to the dock. I think I'd better start now. I'll just take my chicken with me. But give me a biscuit to eat on the way."

That is what happened. As the big golden brown platters of Southern fried, and the bowls of gravy, and the fluffy bowls of white rice, and the enormous pans of biscuits were coming to the table, borne by fluttering Japanese and Russian and Negro hands, at half past one there on the far edge of Shanghai, Teddy and I were climbing into his car, each of us with a sizzling drumstick and a buttered biscuit, on the way to my hotel, miles off near the Bund. I never got to sit down at the bon voyage table, but the chicken and biscuit which the coloured wife gave me, I ate on the way to town. Wonderful, that one piece of chicken!

With greasy hands I rushed up the stairs of the hotel and started throwing things into my bags. Teddy gathered up my typewriter, books and such items and took them down to the car, then came rocking jovially back to see if he could be of further help. It was then about two-thirty P.M. I still had to pay my bill! When I stumbled panting into the car with a string of ties and two pairs of shoes in my hands, and we headed a top speed for the pier, I just barely caught the last lighter going out to the ship anchored offshore in the Huangpoo, flags flying and steam up for sailing. I left Teddy waving on the docks with the whole backdrop of Shanghai behind him. - Langston Hughes

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Last modified: 13/09/2011