A Chapter  On Pee Wee Russell by Charles Edward Smith

Charles Edward Smith wrote a chapter on Pee Wee in “The Jazz Makers” edited by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, in 1958.

Here are some excerpts from the chapter:

The period around 1920 and a bit later would take months to sort out from the time he first heard records by the Dixieland Band to the time he heard them, and later, Bix, in person. Pee Wee had considerable respect for that band, as did Bix, and for both of them, this meant respect for Shields. Between them, they knew every note and nuance of those Dixieland Victors.

When he first recorded a solo on Tiger Rag, Bix based it upon Shield’s clarinet part!

Pee Wee describes the Arcadia as it was in 1926. “I remember they used to have a Sunday afternoon thing at the Arcadia Ballroom. Ordinarily, the band would complain about the extra work, but Bix would really look forward to it. He said he liked to see the kids dance. He liked to watch them do things like the Charleston. He said he liked it because the kids had a fine sense of rhythm. And in their way, the kids knew what Bix was doing. They knew he was doing something different because he made them want to dance.

Very interesting. It confirms what I have been emphasizing for a while, namely, that Bix spent most of his professional life as a member of dance bands, hot perhaps, but dance bands nonetheless.

Bix and Pee Wee used to visit a speakeasy in South Bend. It was a pleasant place and had a piano that Bix liked to play. But it was too expensive or the amount of liquor they were putting away, especially when it came time to wrap up bottles for the cottage they lived in out on the lake.
The bartender, being sympathetic to musicians, as bartenders often are, told them of a place where they could get good homemade stuff, jugs of corn buried in the cornfield to elude the revenuers.
That sounded fine.
The bartender drew a map, without which they’d certainly have gotten lost. Then they were off, in Dan Gabe’s [sic; it should be Gaebe] Studebaker …
At last they came to a dirt road and, driving down it, saw a faded brown house, barns equally nondescript, and were met by two yapping dogs whose eager menace reminded them of the bartender’s warning:

When you get the bartender had leaned confidentially across the mahogany-  don’t go inside. Don’t go up to the house. Don’t even get out of the car. Just blow the horn and yell.

They blew the horn and yelled. What they saw at first gave little cause for alarm-three blowsy and barefooted old maids. Then a fourth party soon learned it was a brother who emerged from the barn, holding a double-barrelled shotgun. Pee Wee shook his head, thinking about it: It was a cannon!
When he came up close we told him the bartender’s name.

Who else you know there? – they told him, Whatd’yuh want?

We understand you’ve got some good whisky here. Adding, as though an explanation: We’re musicians.

Where are your horns?

They explained hat the instruments were out at the lake. Then Bix added helpfully:

I can play piano.

‘That so?’

Bix got a calculating look; then they were asked inside… They were shown into a papered parlour with a pull-down kerosene lamp, a potbelly stove and, conspicuous to Bix and Pee Wee, the old-fashioned parlour organ that was to test their veracity. Bix took it in stride, playing something sweet and simple. This wasn’t a time for cats and alligators.

The barefoot bootleggers simpered and began to look like three dear old ladies from Dubuque. The defender of home, hearth and hooch lowered his gun and gave them a taste of good corn whisky.