- Ths Gumbands Podcast is made possible by the Buhl Foundation serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927.

And by listeners like you Thank you!

- In 2017, Tom Roberts wrote some great music for our WQED series called NEBBY.

- So the Barbecue Prelude makes use of the same little... And the same as the... But now you make it a little more funky.

And so on and so forth - Shall we?

- Shall we?

Yes.

- Tom Roberts still plays piano and composes music and has become an important historian of the musical history, and oft forgotten musicians of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This is part two of a conversation we had in the spring of 2023, and it may help to have listened to Gumbands episode 006 before you listen to this one.

There we talk about Toms work with Leon Redbone and his moving to New Orleans and Anapolis, Maryland, but theres more to learn.

- How do you get back to Pittsburgh because you live in Pittsburgh now?

- Things are horrendous in Annapolis and... - This is with ex-wife number two.

- Ex-wife number two.

And I am gonna move back to New Orleans.

I figured that's it.

So I'm gonna move back to New Orleans.

And so I went back and I got tons of more offers than I had the first time that I was there because I knew what I was doing and I told them, I told Leon and his wife Baryl, who was his manager, I see Baryl Handler's name as the producer on some of those recent albums.

That's his wife.

Very nice lady.

And I told them, "I'm gonna move back to New Orleans."

And they said, "We can't use you if you live in New Orleans."

"Why not?"

"Well, the flights are erratic, the weather is crazy and the flights are very expensive."

- But the food is good.

- The food is insane.

- Did you ever go to Domilise's?

- No.

- Oh, that's where we got a po' boy when I did my show on sandwiches.

- Nice.

Where was that?

- Uptown.

- I lived uptown.

- Okay, so yeah.

And it wasn't far from some clubs that I had heard about.

- Like Tipitina's and- - Yes, Tipitina's was not far from Domalise's if I remember correctly.

That's, you know, the only time I think I've spent any time.

- What year was that?

- Oh, it would've been early 2000s.

- Okay.

I was gone from then.

- Okay.

- I left.

- But Domalise's is quite old and makes an incredible po' boy, yes.

And I remember that my favorite soundbite from that was a guy who said, "We come here, the food is lagniappe.

- Yeah.

Which means something extra.

I'm sure it was filled with great theater.

- Yeah.

- As most of the places in New Orleans are.

- The characters, you know.

You know, Mrs.

Domalise was like his mother and you know, the food is lagniappe and I didn't know the word lagniappe, but I love it.

It means something extra.

- I think at this point, I need to share my favorite New Or... I've got so many great New Orleans stories too.

- Alright.

You're gonna say something about eating?

- Something about eating.

So we used to have a gig.

We had the two steady gigs on Bourbon Street.

So we would start at like three o'clock at the Maison Bourbon and then there was like a little break and then we'd go down the street to the CanCan Club and play.

So it was like 3:00 till 1:00 in the morning, seven days a week.

There was a night off from one club and a day off for another but it was seven days a week of playing.

And so we would always go to this Mexican place in the quarter.

And I'm sitting there ordering whatever I was eating that day and a man walks up to me and he points at me and he says, "Havana, 1959.

It was a stormy night.

It was the something-something bar.

A man was killed.

And you were there!"

I said, "I'm sorry sir, I wasn't born yet."

"Oh, excuse me.

Allow me to buy your dinner."

And that was the end of it.

(laughing) So Leon and his manager, his wife, said, "If you move back to New Orleans, we can't use you.

Why not Pittsburgh?"

And I know you love it, but I had to say, "Pittsburgh?

Really?

Ugh!"

I didn't wanna come back.

And so my buddy and I, Pasha, put a list of all the pros and cons and it turned out that Pittsburgh was a better choice.

So I went back to the north side and looked at some apartments and found an apartment and moved to the Mexican War Streets.

- [Rick] This is approximately... - 1997, 98 maybe.

Yeah.

And so I was using Pittsburgh for the airport.

So I was still able to tour with Leon.

I was still able to tour with all the bands I was playing with the New Orleans, but I had made connections with the New York guys.

So while I'm living here... This is a little bit of a confession.

Lucky Robertson's great-granddaughter contacts me.

- (chuckles) Okay.

- And said, "I heard you made a CD of my great-grandfather's music."

I said, "Wow, how did you find out about me?"

"Oh, my boyfriend at the time is a musician.

He lives in Baltimore, I live in DC."

"Oh my God.

I was just there!"

And so she wanted to collaborate on a book on him.

And we became involved.

She was very, very attractive.

There's a group of people in New York that refer to themselves as New People that have been mixed for hundreds of years.

Every imaginable type of, you know, Black, Spanish, German, all of these things.

Just people inter marrying within that community.

And they're stunningly beautiful.

And so we got together and we were working on this book on Lucky.

And so I moved her there.

And then Vince Giordano found out that I was in New York.

And he calls... Vince Giordano as the Grammy Award winning leader of the Nighthawks.

He also played Tuba with Leon Redbone.

We did lots of great things eventually, he said... And he calls everybody, Mike.

"Mike, I hear you're in New York now.

Do you want a gig?"

And I went, "Yeah, sure!"

"We're playing at the Cajun Mondays and Thursdays.

You can come in, you can play with us at the Cajun.

It's 50 bucks and a meal."

And went, "I guess that's okay.

I could play at the Cajun."

That's where everybody heard me.

And so we're playing at the Cajun and living in Harlem.

We're doing research on Lucky Roberts.

And while I'm playing at the Cajun, another one of my heroes hears me.

And it's Dick Hyman.

Dick Hyman is an NEA Jazz Master grad.

He's like almost 100 years old now but he was the musical director for Woody Allen for all of his films.

He knows everything.

He was the curator for the Smithsonian Jazz Orchestra.

And then he got involved... He was the man that curated Jazz in July at the 92nd Street Y. And he said, "Great, we're gonna use you for this thing."

So this is, you know, people talk about, like, "I played at Carnegie Hall."

You can rent Carnegie Hall and play there.

And I did play at Carnegie Hall with Vince and the New York Pops but anybody can get into Carnegie Hall.

This is a big deal.

And this was in 2003.

And this is the kind of programming that they have in New York.

Venuti, Bix and Lang at 100, Joe Venuti, the violinist, Bix Beiderbecke who I named my Dalmatian after, and Eddie Lang.

They all turned 100.

This was part... I did the arranging for this and I played on this show.

The early Benny, I didn't do arranging for, but I played on this.

But the big thing, and it was the end of the thing, the Lion, the Lamb and Lucky.

And there I am.

- Very cool.

Roberts plays Roberts.

- Roberts plays Roberts.

But I also told Dick and I said, "You know what?

I don't want to just play the Lucky Roberts stuff.

Let me do all these things 'cause I don't want people to think that this is the only thing I do."

So while preparing for this, I made a recording.

I transcribed all of the Willie the Lion Smith stuff and did a recording of it mostly to sell at the show.

So I'd have Lucky Roberts, Willie the Lion Smith.

And that was the close of that thing.

- And who's the lamb?

- Donald Lambert, who was an amazing stride pianist who was living in Harlem and was like eating everybody up.

And then his wife died.

He felt that she died as a result of New York and he went back to New Jersey somewhere, I think Orange, West Orange, New Jersey.

And he would just play there and people would come out to hear him play.

Phenomenally fast, phenomenal pianist.

And just was living out in Orange, New Jersey.

- So, I dunno if this is the moment to ask this question, but I think when there's this famous quote that I saw several places online about Jazz Beat saying you were one of the greatest pianists in the Harlem Stride style.

- Oh, shucks.

Yes.

(both laughing) - Harlem Stride style does not sound like New Orleans.

How's it different?

Or how's it the same?

Or like, you know, have you been all along since you were playing Scott Joplin doing Harlem Stride piano or- - Oh, no.

So what it is... Let's think about this and this is a great connection.

When you went to get your po' boy, what was the word that you heard that you didn't know?

- Lagniappe.

- Lagniappe.

And the people down there, because it is so hot, they speak very slowly.

Things move at a slower pace.

Some of my Schenley kids when I had moved down there said, "Oh my God, you're speaking so slowly now."

I didn't realize.

But there's more space, it's hotter, it's steamier, it's the same material in terms of your left hand is doing the job of a bass player, a guitar player, and a drummer, alternating between octaves or tenths and chords in the middle.

And then the right hand becomes the rest of the orchestra doing clarinet, violins, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Doing all that.

So you're basically doing orchestral piano.

The Scott Joplin stuff is the material from the Midwest around the turn of the century.

It's very peaceful.

It's very gentle.

The New Orleans stuff, which follows out of it, which grew out of the Scott Joplin stuff, has got that same kind of like sweaty, hot, but with great food on it.

Just great food and spices and it has that same thing.

And New York is very, very urban and very, very sophisticated and very, very fast moving.

Notice how my language changed.

- Yes, you started speaking faster.

- That's good stuff.

That's good stuff.

Things are faster there.

And so their music was using the same ingredients, but they had more classical influences in it.

It was more exciting and more flashy and more splashy and virtuosic for the sake of virtuosity but it's all wonderful music.

So that is the difference between those three things.

They all grow out of the same material.

Joplin and classic ragtime becomes New Orleans, Jelly Roll Morton and that stuff, the New Orleans piano stuff.

Joplin was idolized by all of these guys.

The guys in Harlem also idolized Scott Joplin.

He lived there for a while.

- But they do it faster.

- They do it with more technique, not necessarily faster, and I think, but it's also got more... A little more muscular and more virtuosic because the guys in Harlem have the ability to hear all the great pianists.

They heard Rachmaninoff, they heard Joseph Hoffman- - [Rick] Because they all came through town.

- They all came through town and they were able to hear them at Carnegie Hall.

- Right.

- So that's that.

So I got to play at Jazz in July.

When I was with Vince Giordano, I did... I did the score to the movie, "The Aviator."

- But you're not in the Aviator or can we see you at some point?

You can't see me, but you hear me all over the place.

- Playing the piano?

- Playing the Piano.

And I did most of the arranging for it.

The Aviator was done... You know, Scorsese was like, everything was last minute.

I remember one- - I admire that.

- Yeah, I know you admire that.

That's a sign of genius!

I remember I came home from New York, I was craving a Sweaty Vinny's pizza.

- (chuckles) From Forest Hills?

- From Forest Hills.

- The Vinny Pie.

- The Vinny Pie.

We call it the Sweaty Vinny's Pizza.

- And I was craving it.

And so I drove six hours from Harlem back to the north side to go pick up a Sweaty Vinny's pizza and eat it.

As I was sitting at the stoplight at the corner of East Street and East Ohio Street, right there at 279, the phone rings and it's Scorsese's producers saying, "We have a recording session on Sunday.

Can you write this arrangement?

We're gonna record it Sunday."

- I turned around, went back to the house, didn't get my sweaty Vinny's pizza, wrote the arrangement, sent it off to Vince, and then drove back.

(laughing) - Back to New York?

- Back to New York.

- One of the funny stories about "The Aviator" was, and I remember exactly where I was.

You know, we have our cell phones.

I'm getting off of 279, gonna go back to the War Streets where I was living at that point, and the phone rings and it's the producer for all the music.

You'll see his name everywhere.

And he calls Tom.

"Hi, I am here with Martin.

We'd like you to be in charge of the final recording session for the film."

And I'm like, "Oh, boy!"

And I'm keeping my cool and I said, "Oh great.

Well Martin, it's really nice to meet you virtually."

"Oh, he can't hear you."

I said, "Why not?"

He said, "I'll tell him what you say and I'll tell you what he says."

And I said, "Guys, you're in New York.

There's a thing called a three-way call.

You can use technology for me to talk."

And he refused to do so.

- Martin Scorsese refused to do so?

- No.

The producer refused to let me talk to Martin.

And so he says, "Tom, Martin says that he would like you to arrange 'Fireworks.'"

"Which one does he want me to transcribe and arrange?

The Lewis Armstrong one or the original Memphis Five?"

"Martin, he wants to know if it's the Lewis Armstrong... Martin says it's the original Memphis Five."

"Okay, great.

What else does he want?"

"He'd like to have, 'That's a Plenty.'"

"Okay.

Ask him which one.

Which 'That's a Plenty.'"

"Martin, he wants to know which 'That's a Plenty.'

Is it the New Orleans Rhythm Kings?

No, no?

No.

Tom, Martin says he wants you to transcribe the the early Benny Goodman version of 'That's a Plenty' with the Charleston Chasers."

And this went on for everything that I arranged for that session.

I couldn't talk to Martin.

The producer would talk to Martin, he would speak to me.

It's very weird.

- It is weird.

- It's very weird.

But it's a fun story.

- Okay.

- But I remember where I was- - But eventually you met Martin Scorsese.

- Never met him.

- Wow.

- Never met him.

- But you did all that music.

- Did all that music.

- Huh.

- Never met him.

Hollywood is a weird place.

- Now, you mentioned- - It's not like with WQED with Rick Sebak.

That's the big... That's the real deal.

- No, but I think you also mentioned Dick Hyman and Woody Allen.

Did you work on a Woody Allen movie too?

- I did not.

I was offered the job with Woody Allen.

Woody Allen's musical director, when I was first there, Eddie Davis was his name and he called me and he says, "We're looking for a piano player with Woody.

Do you wanna try out?"

And I had to think about it.

And this was when things were getting a little weird with him.

And I decided, "I really don't think I wanna do that."

And it seems like it wouldn't be as exciting as playing with Vince.

It wouldn't have as many opportunities.

It wouldn't be as much of a challenge.

That was the main thing.

I wanted something to really challenge me, that would push me outside of my comfort zone.

- At this point, when you're working with Scorsese, what's happened to Leon Redbone?

- He, now, at this point, got another piano player.

- Ah.

- And that's fine.

And that's when I... He would contact me occasionally.

He's like, "Can you come and do this show?"

And I was like... (groaning) I mean, we were trying to do it, but then there were things that were overlapping and it just didn't work out.

- All right.

Then he passes away pretty young.

- Yeah.

He was a lot younger than anybody realized.

And I was... I do have... As you notice, I have a very good memory, which is kind of amazing considering the stroke.

I had a stroke a couple years ago.

So the musicians in New York that I had played with, with Leon, they were being interviewed by a woman who was writing an article.

I should have brought this.

I forgot about it.

For the Oxford American.

And she had called me and it was right before Leon died.

And Leon had some very sad medical problems.

- [Rick] Okay.

- That had rendered him incapable of performing.

Very sad.

And so she was talking to people and she called me and just said, "What do you remember?"

And I shared these stories and the story that I shared with her, it became the name of the article.

Leon became very fascinated with spirituality, particularly Middle Eastern spirituality.

Leon's real name is Dickran Gobalian.

He is Armenian.

He had grandparents murdered during the Armenian genocide.

There was a lot of pain with that.

But he was very much drawn to this idea of time travel.

And he would frequently ask me, "Alright, Roberts, we were at this hotel three years ago, what room were you in, what room was I in, and what room was Kelso and Levinson in?"

And I would go back into my memory and remember where we were.

I didn't memorize numbers, I just remembered locations within that hotel, and I went and I looked and I said, "Okay, it's this number and you were over here."

And he'd say, "How did you do that?"

I said, "I just went back.

I went back there.

I remembered.

I just rewound the tape and went back there and remembered where we were."

And he said, "Exactly.

Every memory that we have..." It's more fun to say it in the voice.

"Every memory that we have is somewhere in our brain.

Even the most minute thing is there in our brain."

Well, I guess you're right.

We are made up of the cells of our parents.

And as a result of that cells, our brain is made up of the cells of our parents.

They are made up of the cells of their parents.

And... - Ad infinitum.

- Into antiquity.

He said, "If we have the ability of accessing the cellular memory, which is in there very, very deeply, but it's there, we can truly time travel.

We are vessels of antiquity."

Isn't that great?

- Yeah.

- It's an amazing thing.

- Huh.

This makes me want to ask one of the questions that I ask everybody on this podcast, and it comes from the fact that as a kid, I loved the story of my great-grandmother who came from County Donegal in Ireland, but she came because she stole her sister's money.

Her sister had saved the money to come to America and she stole it.

- Oh wow.

- And got on a boat and came to Pittsburgh.

- [Tom] What year was that?

- It would've been in the 1890s.

I never knew her.

She died 10 years before I was born.

But we used the name that my mom called her, which was my mom-mom.

It was my mother's grandmother.

But I always loved that story.

So obviously, maybe I have some of those connections, this vessel of antiquity.

- You definitely do.

It's in there somewhere.

- What about you?

Is there a family story like that that you know from your own family?

No.

There's nothing.

- Huh.

All right.

I just, you know- - I know.

You'd think, but no.

- And Roberts, is it British?

- Welsh.

- Welsh?

- It's Welsh and I'm learning to speak Welsh.

- On Duolingo?

- On Duolingo!

- Okay, cool.

(Tom speaking foreign language) - The reason why I'm learning Welsh is there is no connection to any human language.

There is nothing that connects to anything.

It just works great to keep my brain firing so I don't start to have the ailments that occurred with Mr.

Redbone.

- Okay.

You come back to Pittsburgh, you're flying out of here, you're doing all this, a lot of stuff in New York.

You're working with movies and all of that.

- So when I came back here, I started... One of the things that we discovered at Rutgers through Dan Morgenstern was there was this archive.

I mean these books, these published books that were like this much.

Like, this wide, this thick, but this far.

It was like, oh my God.

And it was called "Jazz Advertised" and it was made in Germany by a guy named Franz Hoffman.

And he had access... who knows how many decades he worked on this.

Every page had like 100 listings, with like pictures all done from microfilm.

There were millions of advertisements with photographs and things from all of the newspapers from 1910 up to maybe 1940 with lots of stuff from Pittsburgh.

And I went, "Oh, wow!

Oh, wow!

Who knew?

- This is at Rutgers?

- And now it's at my house 'cause I bought a copy of it.

- Okay.

- It was expensive.

I paid my own money to get it.

I didn't get no grant.

I used my money.

- It's called... - "Jazz Advertised and Jazz Reviewed."

It's amazing.

So I then went down this rabbit hole of trying to discover everything that had been discarded.

I personally... This has become, one of my big, big things that I wanna do is restore all of these forgotten musicians from Pittsburgh.

And it's like, Stephen Foster dies in the 1860s, and then if you were to read and believe the books, nothing happens in Pittsburgh till the 1950s.

There's some new books that have come out, but they fabricate a lot of junk.

I have found, and I have here in these valises, the missing history of Pittsburgh, including Ragtime composers... It's unreal.

Dave Klug from the "Red Beans and Rice" is the one that lent me these valises.

I started the Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra to perform these orchestrations by these composers that everyone has forgotten.

And I brought a bunch of these with us today.

Oh, this is not the good one.

This is the good one.

Before we go any further, just 'cause you've mentioned Red Beans and Rice Combo.

- Yes.

- When does that start?

That's while you're here in Pittsburgh?

This is a jazz trio that you play with?

- It's a rocking, rhythm-and-blues trio with Wayno who draws for "Bizarro."

We've seen "Bizarro" in the newspapers.

It's a nationally syndicated cartoon.

And Dave Klug who is was the preeminent punk-rock drummer in Pittsburgh in the 1990s and now is also an artist.

And our whole point is to bring happiness to people.

And I've never had more fun playing music with three people in my entire life because- - But how did that start?

How did you meet Wayno?

Or was it... How did you get together?

- So I was doing silent movies at the Hollywood Theater and I had befriended Chad Hunter, who we'll talk about here in a moment.

And so I found out that there was a documentary that came out in New Orleans called "Bayou Maharaja: The Tragic Genius of James Booker."

And it was winning awards all over the world.

It was playing everywhere.

I love James Booker.

James Booker is a virtuoso pianist from New Orleans who started off playing gospel music, was classically trained and had the ability of playing two things in this hand while doing at least two things in this hand.

- Wow.

- And they call him the greatest, gay, black, one-eyed, junkie, piano genius to come outta New Orleans.

And being a gay, black, one-eyed junkie in the deep South in the 1960s is fraught with problems.

You're gonna get into trouble just walking down the street.

And luckily for him, the district attorney of New Orleans was Harry Connick Sr.

who said, "Booker, I'm not sending you back to prison.

You're gonna give piano lessons to my 12-year-old son.

- Harry Connick Jr.

- And now we have Harry Connick Jr.

and all those things.

So this movie, I wanted to see it, and it's like, it's so far off the radar of the people who control things, so it's never gonna show here.

So I mentioned it to Chad.

He said, "Oh my God, I know the filmmaker, Lily Cleaver.

We'll get it here."

So I created this huge event at the Hollywood Theater where we screened "Bayou Maharaja."

I had my friend and occasional piano student, MacArthur Genius Award winner, Terrence Hayes, come and read his poems that he wrote about James Booker.

And I played James Booker on the piano before.

And we showed this, it was a great event.

While it was there, Wayno walks up to me and introduces himself and he gives me his card.

He says, "Let's get together.

I wanna be friends with you."

It's like, "Oh, what a nice guy.

This is great.

I wanna be friends with him too."

And we're getting coffee, he says, "I wanna have a band with you."

I said, "Oh, okay."

And he said, "But I wanna bring Dave Klug in.

I think we need to have the drums."

I went, "Yeah, okay."

(Rick laughing) - So he knew Dave Klug.

- He knew Dave Klug.

They had been in bands together, like punk bands, the Chalk Outlines and things like this.

And they knew each other from just the art world and the punk world.

And so we started this New Orleans R&B group called The Red Beans and Rice Combo.

And it's great.

It's so much fun.

- How many years is that now?

- I think it's been five years.

We had this guy... I don't know if you've ever heard of him.

His name is Rick Sebak.

He comes in and he reads "The Night Before Christmas" at somebody's Christmas- - That's just on your Christmas concerts, but you do lots of concerts during the year.

- We do many things.

And we're working on new album right now.

So it's all good.

- Excellent.

No, I mean, I think the three of you came when I was in the hospital.

- We did visit you at the hospital!

- And you brought me a CD.

- We brought you a CD, we brought you red beans and rice.

There's a very cute picture of the three of us- - Exactly.

Holding a bag.

- Holding Zapp's potato chips and Dave is making a weird face.

- And I don't know, I mean... I think maybe I found this out while doing some Tom Roberts research, but that's how Louis Armstrong signed everything?

- Red beans and ricely yours.

- Ricely.

- Yeah, that's one of the things, but you know, red beans and rice is a very wonderful dish.

And we are The Red Beans and Rice Combo because we come with fries or a biscuit but you'll always choose the biscuit 'cause that's the way we roll.

(Rick laughing) So here is... In these folders that I brought here are years of discarded Pittsburgh history and composers who for some reason are no longer acknowledged or even... And I've been finding these... Some of these things I find on eBay, some of these, most of them I find in junk shops, sadly.

And I have uncovered an unbelievable amount of musicians from Pittsburgh who were successful.

And as a result of this, I also discover all of this history that we have abandoned, sadly.

So these, I got at the library, they have a Pittsburgh section here, and this is the Pittsburgh Gazette March and Cakewalk.

And it was published by The Walrus Company.

And I would imagine that The Walrus Company is associated with the Pittsburgh Gazette.

There was a lot of music that was published via newspapers in those days.

The next thing we're gonna show you is pretty amazing.

So this was by Carl Bruno and the famous Rover, which I eventually found.

This is fascinating.

The Trinacria Rag, which is the Sicilian symbol with the three legs.

- I know nothing about it.

- Oh!

Chris Fenimore knows about this.

- [Rick] All right.

- Did you know that there was a Italian-language newspaper published in Pittsburgh at the turn of the century called the Trinacria?

- No, I did not know that but it doesn't surprise me because I know that on the poster from my strip show, a man is reading a paper and it's in Hebrew.

- Yes.

- So there were, I think, many foreign-language newspapers.

- And this one was nationally... The Trinacria was on Woods Run.

The building is still there and this piece by M.S.

Rocereto, a nice Jewish boy, The Trinacria Rag.

And then it just keeps going and going and going.

Karl Guenther.

And then, so I go around- - He's from Bel Vernon?

(Rick laughing) - Well wait, we'll look at these.

So a lot of these are a lot of these rags that I found.

Here is the Rover from the Walrus Company, Smithfield Street.

This is the Atlantic Rag by KFW, Karl Freidrich Wilhelm Guenther and he had his own music publishing company, the Atlantic Rag.

I orchestrated this.

- A Pittsburgher.

- A Pittsburgher.

Here is the composer, George A. Reeg.

All of these people are forgotten.

They do not appear in any books.

It's not because they weren't important, it's because we abandoned them.

- All right.

- Because somehow we deemed anything before 1950 was unimportant.

This is George A. Reeg.

George A. Reeg is the predominant Ragtime composer from Pittsburgh, he's from the north side.

- And we're talking 1900?

- 1900.

And these are other things.

Moses Bertrand Howard, also West Ohio Street, Northside.

Pittsburg without the H.

- [Rick] So it's after Allegheny City.

- Yes.

- The Old Grey Mare.

- Frank Panella, Lewis Panella.

Reese David, who is, Sarah David and Reese David are members of Allegheny City, who are also involved with The Concordia Club, the Jewish organization that was originally in Allegheny City and eventually moved to Oakland.

- [Rick] The Bigelow monument's still there.

- And here's the march.

- It's right in front of the Phipps Conservatory.

- 1895.

- Wow.

- And then in here, this is another publication.

So this is all of these musicians from Pittsburgh.

Panella.

Look at this.

- This is "Songs for the Twilight, a collection of beautiful gems."

- The Pittsburg Press.

No H. This was published by the newspaper.

This is from, I believe, 1895.

- [Rick] I was gonna say, with no H's, I think 1895 to 1911.

So usually you can often date things from their lack of the letter H.

- [Tom] Yeah, and these might be people from Pittsburgh who wrote these pieces.

- Excellent.

- Yeah, and- - From the Pittsburg Press, or I wonder if that's just them putting their name on that corner.

- No, I think it came from them.

- Okay.

- And then throughout this is all of these interesting Panella Music Company, Marches, another George Reeg, Louis Panella.

- [Rick] Who had his own company, Panella Music.

- Yes.

- [Rick] And when you get these, do you always take them home and play them?

- I play 'em!

Some of them are pretty good.

Some of them are not so good.

But the ones that are really good, I orchestrate them and my Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra plays them.

- So that's different than the Red Beans and Rice Combo.

- That's a different org... I do many things to maintain my lifestyle of extreme poverty.

(Rick laughing) - And so I created this Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra to play this music.

- And a lot of these things were orchestrated.

Mellor, Moses, look at all this music published in Pittsburgh.

- And it all says Pittsburgh, which is- - It's all Pittsburgh and there are some that say Allegheny City.

- [Rick] Ah, yeah.

There's published by the... It's New York and Pittsburgh for Memories of Yesterday by Emma Kenney.

Kenoy.

And On the Square by Panella again.

Panella Music company.

- Panella is one of the big March guys.

There's also gonna be Danny Nirella in here.

And I didn't bring any 78s in.

- [Rick] Oh, here's Danny Nirella, right there on cue.

- There's Danny Nirella.

Danny Nirella was the Pittsburgh March king but he also led an orchestra, a dance orchestra and they made records for Gennett.

Gennett Records are the company that today is the day of the first Louis Armstrong and King Oliver Records, they were recorded by Gennett Records.

Danny Nirella and his dance orchestra played at the Duquesne Gardens here in Oakland.

I'm glad I didn't buy that on eBay.

And they hired Lois Depp, who was an African-American to perform with them and he would wear a lei around his neck in case anyone would question it and they would identify him as being Hawaiian.

But nobody gave them a hard time because he was such a great singer.

Rick Benjamin, who's the leader of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, who I got to record with.

They're are a bunch of guys, it's a bunch of Julliard graduates.

He acquired this sheet-music collection from a theater here in Pittsburgh.

And here is Irvin's Pep Orchestra.

- Nice!

- I know!

- Peppy.

- They're peppy.

And recently, I went into a garage.

There's the North Side Auto Place on Spring Garden.

Nice guys.

And one of my neighbors said, "Oh, Tom, you collect the old records.

Go down there.

They've got a whole bunch of 'em."

I contacted them and he says, "Oh yeah, this house used to belong to a guy named Don Parker and he had his own orchestra that existed here and they toured all over the country.

And it started in like the teens and he ended in like the 1940s.

I've got all his music."

That's the Facebook post that I had of like 800 pounds of orchestrations that I'm sending back to New York to Vince Giordano.

But this is in it.

And here is another one of these Panella, "That Spooky Rag."

- [Rick] "The instantaneous and sensational success.

That Spooky Rag."

- Published by Panella and Company, Pittsburgh, PA.

Pittsburg without the H, pre 1911.

These have been sitting in all that pollution for all those years.

And so they're covered with all types of grime.

So we use a lot of cortisone cream on your hands when we're done here.

But here is "That Spooky Rag."

And so what I do is I copy these, or I'll put them into valises and I will have my Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra perform these and the Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra, there's videos on YouTube, it's not a slop-together piece-of-crap Dixieland band, it's members of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the ballet and the opera orchestra and we play authentic orchestrations from the period.

- Wow.

Pretty amazing.

A lost world of music and... - And here it is.

- [Rick] And it's because, before we have records, we had sheet music.

- [Tom] And that was the source of people playing that there would be a woman in the household who would play the piano for something.

Oh, look, there's The Old Gray Mare, Wiffle Tree One Step, Two Step March on the back of this, "On the Square," Frank Panella sheet music.

But these things are all orchestrated.

- [Rick] Uh-huh.

- [Tom] All orchestrated.

- Whoa.

- I know!

- So you're writing a book.

- People are trying to convince me to write a book.

We'll see.

- Alright.

Well, I mean, you know, I think it makes sense.

So this is all pre what I would call like Hill-District jazz.

- And that's kind of a myth too.

- Yeah?

- Hill District Jazz, what people expel right now is post post-World War II.

- Right.

Lena Horne... - Yeah.

That's all post-World War II.

It's as if someone made a decision to erase everything before this.

- I see.

So that- - And that's one of the things that I do with the Hot Club of Pittsburgh.

- Okay, The Hot Club of Pittsburgh, your invention.

- It's my invention.

- And I did a little research.

I mean, the first hot club was in France.

= Yes.

- Hot Club of de France, I think is- - That's it!

- And it was Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt connected.

- That is actually the thing that occurred as a result of that.

The whole idea of the Hot Club in Paris was guys would get together and listen to records and these became like very famous jazz critics, French jazz critics later on.

Charles Delaunay and I can't remember the other guys, Hugh Panacier, I can't pronounce those French names.

And they would get together and they would listen to American jazz records.

And eventually people started bringing instruments along to play there.

And that was the creation of the quintet of the Hot Club of France, which is Django Reinhardt Stephane Grappelli.

But it started off as a just an entity to listen to records.

and they would've been 78s at that time.

- And that's what you do with the Hot Club of Pittsburgh.

You listen to records, to 78s.

- We listen to 78s.

And so- - Online.

- We used to do it in public.

(Rick laughing) - And there's that little thing called the pandemic occurred.

And then that all ended pretty quickly.

So we started doing things online.

Clean up the table.

We started doing things online and it actually opens up the world to lots of people.

I was doing it originally for the City of Asylum.

And we had people from all over the world tuning in.

Including descendants of like, Kid Ory, his daughter, and Ricky Riccardi from the Louis Armstrong house.

He participated in this.

The reason why I started the Hot Club of Pittsburgh is... Again, this goes back to that early childhood frustration and early-20s frustration.

I would talk to musicians and I'd say to them, "So do you know Louis Armstrong?"

And it's always the same response, but there's two variations upon it.

"What a Wonderful World."

And they'll either say, "What a Wonderful World," because it's a wonderful piece and great love within it where they go, "'What a Wonderful World.'"

And I said, "What else?"

"There's something else?"

- That's really late in his career.

- That's like his last decade of his life.

So I'm talking to Phil Schaap.

Phil Schaap, he's passed away, sadly.

He was a friend of mine and he was the curator of jazz at Lincoln Center.

And he had contacted me a couple years ago trying to identify a pianist on a recording session by this crazy trumpet player named Jack Purvis.

Now, the name Purvis might ring a bell because Purvis, well, he was just insane.

He was an amazing trumpet player but completely insane and for a little while lived in Pittsburgh and had a wife here and had a daughter who was Betty Jean Purvis, who was a DJ on the radio here.

There's a recording that he made in 1929, Integrated Records session.

And they couldn't identify who the pianist was.

The discography said it was Frank Froeba and they couldn't believe it was Frank Froeba so it became this fun thing to do for a couple of months of just like going back and forth and listening to this.

And so I'm sharing information and I'm back with my New York gang.

I'm talking to Dan Morgenstern at Rutgers, I'm talking to like Ricky Riccardi.

We're all these big wigs in New York and we're all deciding who this could be.

And they said, "Tom..." And this made me feel really great.

"You're gonna be the one that makes the decision.

We respect what you have to say about this."

And I realized it was Frank Froeba in the long run.

So as we're talking about this, and I'm talking to Phil Schaap, I just expressed my frustration about like, "Yeah, musicians don't know who..." They don't know any of this stuff.

They're not aware.

It's not that they're dismissing it.

There's nowhere for them to hear it.

There really is nowhere to hear it.

You can hear this in Baltimore, you can hear this in Cleveland.

All of our rival cities.

You hear it in Philadelphia.

It's everywhere except here.

- You mean that period of history that seems to be forgotten here in Pittsburgh?

- Yeah.

Forgotten or discarded and I'm not sure why.

But he said to me, "You need to start a Neo Hot Club."

"What is that?"

And then he explains to me what it is.

And then at the instigation of Phil Schaap, the Hot Club of Pittsburgh was created.

- So how often do you do that?

- Well, we were doing it every month and now it's like every other month.

It takes a lot of work.

And we listen to a variety of things.

There's been a program about Earl Hines.

There's program on- - Also from Pittsburgh?

- Also from Pittsburgh.

Programs on Louis Armstrong, which was very, very important.

Programs on just music that you don't hear.

And one of the most important things was the lost Pittsburgh.

And there are tons of people from Pittsburgh who recorded between 1925 up until the period of time where the elite have said, "This is where music starts," that had been totally forgotten and neglected.

- I mean, and you've talked to me about... You actually found a record and you bought from some guy I think in Chicago that- - Oh my God!

- This would've been such a great thing.

So yeah, we were going to drive out, there was a guy in Chicago who had one of five copies left in the world of the first recording of a jazz band from Pittsburgh.

Lois Deppe, who used to sing with Danny Nirella over here at the Duquesne Gardens.

- Okay.

- Lois Deppe and his Symphonian and Serenaders.

And they had attempted to record for OK and it didn't work.

And it turns out that Danny Nirella told the people at Gennett Records about the Symphonian Serenaders.

So this record was recorded in Gennett Studios in Richmond, Indiana, and Lois Depp and his orchestra all traveled out to Richmond, Indiana and did this recording session.

And the goal was, these were private releases, so they pressed out these records for them and then they would sell them on the gig.

And there's only five left.

And I now have the best copy in existence because it was the file copy from Gennett Records.

And it was in the hands of this guy, Dave Bach, who lives in Chicago, and we were gonna meet somewhere in Ohio and we were all gonna drive out there and we're gonna do the exchange of money.

I had the whole idea built out.

Traveling across state lines with thousands of dollars to bring back history to Pittsburgh.

It didn't really work out, but it's back now and- - And you have it.

- And I have it here, and maybe you guys can come up to my house and we can play it.

And I also have the recording that Danny Nirella and his orchestra did.

And it's probably the only copy left in existence.

But there are other guys involved and we'll get to that next.

So in the orchestra of Lois Deppe's Symphonian Serenaders, a lot of those guys went on to do something really big and one of them is this guy named Thornton Brown.

And anytime you see any reissues of recordings by Perry Bradford, Perry Bradford is the guy who created the blues craze.

He was the one that went to record companies in 1921 and said, "Let's let these black women sing this music.

I think there'll be a big market for it."

And he had a hard time convincing them that there would be a market for it.

And so he finally convinced OK Records to record Mamie Smith doing the crazy blues and the floodgates open up.

This is why we have recordings by Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and all of these other.

This is the whole birth of that genre of records.

- And he connects back to this early record that was recorded by the Pittsburgh Band?

- In a very obtuse way.

So he was doing all of these recording sessions and he featured on the trumpet, this guy Thornton Brown.

- Okay.

- And in every reissue of this, on CD and on LP, it says, "Thornton Brown turns in remarkable performances.

It's a shame we don't know anything about him."

Do you know why we don't know anything about him?

Because he's from here.

- From Pittsburgh?

- Yeah.

And it's not just Thornton Brown, it's also... The two, and then we'll move on to the next subject, but the two big guys that are just ridiculous that we don't acknowledge as being us are the Russin Brothers.

Irving Babe Russin and his older brother Jack Russin.

Jack was a piano player.

Babe was a sax player.

They both started in New York in the early 20s.

Jack was there first, Babe came in and they started playing.

They got all the gigs.

They're on all these records from the 1920s into the 1930s.

Babe is at the Carnegie Hall concert of Benny Goodman.

He's on all of these recordings.

He eventually moves to Los Angeles and gets involved in the film industry.

He is on the Ella Fitzgerald songbooks and he has a name role in the Glenn Miller story.

There's a scene where, you know, Jimmy Stewart and whatever that actress's name was, they're sitting there in that speakeasy and Louis is playing, Louis Armstrong is playing.

He says, "Hey, Gene Cubo.

Gene Cubo, come on and play with us.

Oh, Babe Russin.

Babe Russin, come on up and play with us."

And Babe Russin, who is from here, is on the screen in this major Hollywood picture and he plays and he plays great.

- [Rick] Wow.

- His brother Jack is really fascinating 'cause when Jack starts playing, he's playing in the style that is popular for piano players in New York to play in the early 20s, which is very much based on like Frank Signorelli and you know, that kind of early rag-a-jazz type stuff.

And then towards the late 20s, he discovers the Chicagoans like Joe Sullivan.

And you hear he now starts incorporating this kind of more muscular Joe Sullivan approach to playing things.

So much so that in a lot of the books that are published, they identify the Russin Brothers as being Chicagoans.

- But they're Pittsburghers.

- They're Pittsburghers because we have abandoned them.

Not anymore!

So Jack Russin has this amazing career that he continues to record throughout the 1930s and the 1940s.

He follows his brother out to Los Angeles.

And when people heard him later on... I talked to a guy that heard him later on... Well, in the 1930s, he started playing like Teddy Wilson-like.

It's amazing to hear him on these Decker recordings from the 30s.

In the 40s, he starts growing, he just continues to grow.

And when people heard him play in the 80s, he sounded like Johnny Costa.

He sounded like Johnny Costa.

And do you know what his gig was?

He played all the private parties for Frank Sinatra.

- [Rick] Wow.

- That's forgotten Pittsburgh.

I don't know why we neglect these guys.

And there's so many, and all the documentations here at my house all on record.

And this is one of the things, this is the main reason for why the Hot Club of Pittsburgh exists, to kind of fill in all this missing information.

- But of the later guys, I know that you love Costa.

- I adore Johnny Costa!

He's my hero!

That's some of the first piano I ever heard as a little kid.

- But he's of that post-World War II generation.

- That's why he's remembered.

But he also was here, at WQ- - Right, he stayed in Pittsburgh.

- He went to New York for a little while and he said he missed it and his family didn't like traveling so he came back here and then he was at WQED and that's why we hear him.

And that's why I just fell in love with him.

- He was KDKA first.

I think Fred knew him, or Josie knew him at KDKA, Josie Carey, and she introduced him to Fred 'cause I think she always was very happy that she had made that connection.

- Yeah, that's the first sound of a piano I ever heard.

That's why, and this is why it was so meaningful for you to ask me to do the music for your Nebby shows and to record them on Johnny Costa's piano, the same piano that was used on "The Neighborhood."

And there's something really magical about that.

- Right.

Just that connection.

- Just touching that- - Your fingers are on the same keys.

- And I did, and things came out of me differently than they would've normally because it was just... There is that vessel of antiquity vibrating through that piano.

- Actually, I had thought about, we could have started there, but I wanted to hear more about your background.

But I called you when I was starting my series of Nebby shows because Chris Fenimore knew you.

Do you know why you knew Chris Fenimore?

- He used to come here, an early band that I had here before I left.

- Oh.

- Yes.

- Now, he plays banjo and he's in the Pittsburgh Banjo Club.

- Right.

I knew him beforehand and he also was friends with Vince Giordano.

- Okay.

- And so when I came back to Pittsburgh, I actually met with him here at WQED to pitch a Lucky Roberts documentary.

- Ah.

- And we were moving forward to create a Lucky Roberts documentary, but then I think Ken Burns got involved with something and then that just kind of fell apart.

- All right, but I mean, it was literally steps from here where I was saying, "I need somebody to make some music for this Nebby series," and Chris said, "You should call Tom Roberts."

- Yeah!

- I didn't know you at the time but you were totally willing and able- - Of course.

- And Frank is on the camera here and Frank is the one who said we could do this up in Studio B 'cause Costa's piano is still there.

- I know and that's why I'm so grateful to this.

This is a wonderful highlight.

- Well, no, and and it was really incredible.

And we actually... We only had enough money to get you to do two shows.

So then we used that music over and over again for all eight of the Nebby shows.

- That's right.

You'll be hearing from my attorneys soon and... - No, I think we got you to sign the papers that let us have the rights- - Ah!

That's right!

- To do this always.

And we've used it for 1,000 other things.

- I noticed!

- And you always say, "Hey, they're using my music!"

But it's been incredible.

- Oh, thank you.

- And again, this obviously could go on forever but I also like to ask people like... And I know that you always have interesting... Maybe I know the answer you're gonna say to this, but like, where do you like to go eat now here in Pittsburgh?

- We have to go.

You and I need to go.

We need to take Frank.

We'll take you guys too if you want to come along.

And Frank's kids need to come.

I discovered a restaurant in Bellevue called Indian Masala House.

- Okay.

- It is life changing.

It's in an old pizza shop so the decor is zero, the ambiance is zero.

But you go in there and it is the finest Indian food I've ever had anywhere and I've eaten Indian... I've never been to India, but I've eaten it in New Orleans restaurants and in the finest Indian restaurants in New York as well.

This is spectacular.

- And not fancy.

- Indian Masala House.

Not in the least.

- Okay, cool.

- It used to be a pizza shop.

So imagine going to like your pizza shop, but they serve Indian food.

I think they use the pizza ovens to make the naan.

- We've talked about this, but like, you know, something about Pittsburgh has kept you here.

Why do you live in Pittsburgh now?

- I'm glad you asked me this.

I spent my life running away from here.

I didn't have a great childhood, it was very frustrating and I did do everything... I mean, I had huge, huge, huge dreams and I made every one of them come true.

I worked very hard and made them all happen.

And now what I'm doing is... A lot of it is to fill in all that missing things.

You know, when I was a little kid, I had all this stuff that I loved and I couldn't connect to it.

I don't want anyone else to feel that way.

I don't want anyone else to feel abandoned.

I wanna give people this opportunity to connect with what they love.

And so I'm doing all of these things to kind of fill in all the missing history of Pittsburgh and mostly show other people how to do it.

I read a great book, that one line it says, "Recipe for a difficult but happy life."

And it says, "One, find what you love."

Find what you love.

"Two, do it no matter what stands in your way.

Three, share what you have learned from that love with people that are willing to listen to it."

So I'm not gonna go out there proselytizing, but if you want to learn something, I want to be able to provide it for you.

And so I'm teaching people to do what I do.

- Because our podcast here is called Gumbands.

- Yeah, that's why it's important we brought all this Pittsburgh stuff in.

- Do you use gumbands in anything you do?

I've used gumbands to wrap up old records when I'm... Using the word or actually using the physical device?

- But you think you'd still use the word?

- Of course I would.

It's fun.

- Right.

Yeah.

We take that weird sort of pride, I think, in the little things that make Pittsburgh different from anywhere else.

- Exactly.

- And why, on your Facebook page, do you have an abominable snowman?

- Oh, that's a Sasquatch.

So that was my birthday present this past year from Sherry.

I love... (laughing) And Sam Colieri spoke to me about my fascination with crypto-zoology.

I am fascinated with Sasquatch and Loch Ness monster and all of these unknown creatures.

I want to believe in them because they're magical and they're special.

And so I love Bigfoot.

And so my girlfriend, acclaimed romance writer, Sheridan Jean Edmondson, hired Dave Klug of Double Dog Studios and the Red Beans and Rice Combo to make this little painting of a Sasquatch walking my Westie, Linus, with a poop bag, wearing James Booker's eye patch, the greatest, one-eyed, black, gay, junkie, piano genius, wearing that with a flying saucer in the background and the Loch Ness Monster swimming in the back.

I think that's me.

- All the joys of life.

- All of the joys of life.

- Thank you, Tom.

- Thank you, Rick.

- I've learned so much.

- Thank you for being on this planet the same time that I am.

- Excellent.

- Mm-hmm.

And cut!

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And by listeners like you Thank you!