Last year, I happened across an old copy of Talking Jazz in a second-hand bookshop. The 1987 memoir is a compilation of essays and other musings by Max Jones, a legendary British jazz journalist who helped drive the popularity of the music over here. (For a fuller bio, see my Max Jones piece in the March 2023 issue.)
Jones was not only a knowledgeable and passionate proponent of jazz, but a compassionate confidante to some of its stars. Broadcaster and trumpeter Digby Fairweather described his late friend, in an email to me last year, as an “extremely kind critic.” As such, Jones gained access to jazz royalty that would make other journalists green with envy.
Below, in a second foray into Talking Jazz, I unearth some of the fascinating tidbits Jones uncovered during his encounters with three legends: Johnny Hodges, Eddie Condon, and Billie Holiday—the last of whom Jones once saved from a rabid press pack more interested in her drug abuse than her musical achievements.
Johnny Hodges
Jones recalled Duke Ellington sideman Hodges as “the first alto player [he] listened to on purpose” and “the first great saxophonist [he] had seen in person” (at a 1933 London Palladium concert). Jones finally met Hodges on a 1950 French tour by the Ellington band. They struck up a twenty-year friendship which lasted until Hodges’ death in 1970. (Jones recalled getting the news in a phone call from saxophonist Ben Webster.)
Chatting in 1964, Hodges filled Jones in on a recent recording session (Everybody Knows Johnny Hodges, 1964) which “turned out pretty nice.” Jones asked about how he had named his new tracks. “I like to use titles that mean something to me,” Hodges replied. “What was that pub you took me to, The Old Spotted Dog? I might do that on a date… ‘The Spotted Dog,’ yes.” (Hodges recorded “Spotted Dog” with organist Wild Bill Davis the following year.)
Despite their closeness, Jones described Hodges as “reticent” in interviews. “I never felt I understood the character beneath the sceptical eye and imperturbable expression,” he recalled, “nor why he was nicknamed ‘Rabbit,’ though he hinted it was to do with his facial appearance.” Asked how happy he was with his own tunes, for instance, Hodges replied: “I like some better than others.” When pressed for a favorite, he responded, “Oh, I don’t know.”
Hodges had more opinions about his government-sponsored East Asia tour with Ellington, in 1963—the first of the so-called Cold War “jazz ambassadors” tours, aimed at projecting US soft power overseas. “We were guinea pigs on that tour,” Hodges said, adding: “Almost everywhere we went revolution broke out, or we just missed an incident. Guys were walking the streets with machine guns. And we were on a goodwill mission.”
All the same, Hodges considered the mission successful. “I’ll tell you this: music has a whole lot to it,” said the saxophonist. “You can go to the most prejudiced state and they will accept the music you play… Yes, music’s a hell of a weapon.”
Eddie Condon
Jones described Condon as another one of his “personal jazz heroes.” The writer admired this “dandyish character with patent-leather hair” whose playing always lent a “strong, firm rhythm” to a song. He praised Condon as a pioneer of the “Nicksieland” style—combining the old New Orleans and more modern Chicago sounds, swapping tuba for double bass and emphasizing solo over ensemble playing—refined at Nick’s in Greenwich Village, New York City, where Condon spent much of his playing career.
Jones remembered the hard-headed, hard-drinking Condon as “a pithy, instinctively funny conversationalist who seldom told any story the same way twice.” The guitarist spurned both the old-time New Orleans players and peddlers of the nascent bebop music; Jones recalled that at Condon’s eponymous club on West 3rd Street, opened in 1945, the musician often responded to the sound of dropped glasses with, “None of that progressive jazz in here.”
Jones first met Condon on the latter’s first trip to Britain, when Humphrey Lyttelton and his band met him at London airport with fellow music journos, “sundry fans,” and a song. A morning press conference followed in Condon’s hotel room, to which the musician ordered several whiskies before reclining in bed, hat over his face. Reporters tried in vain to get usable quotes from the bandleader: Asked why he never took solos, he replied, “I don’t know enough about guitar.” Pressed, he added, “I’m a saloon keeper, not a guitar player.”
On Condon’s third day in Britain he flew from London to Glasgow for the first concert on his UK tour—his band followed behind on an overnight train. Presented with a bottle of rare scotch by ex-bandleader Billy Mason, Jones recalled Condon saying, reverently, “That, my dear fellow, is medicine… I love medicine on the rocks.” After the Glasgow debut, supported by Lyttelton, Jones joined the musicians for drinks in the hotel bar.
Despite Condon’s fearsome reputation for boozing, the Brits were allegedly the last two standing. “[We] lived to see [Condon] carried out,” Jones recalled. “‘I think that’s one up for England,’ said Humph, raising his glass to me. And it was. Two actually, but only just. Of the two bands, British and American, he and I were the only ones able to stand.”
Billie Holiday
“To write about Billie Holiday, even to think of her, is to fill my mind with recollections of a love affair with a voice,” Jones recalled. “I was hooked on all Billie’s qualities of sound and style, on her almost indolent improvising, on the freshness and rightness and special rhythmic thrust of each interpretation, on the fact that she never came across as slick, artificial or winning in a little-girl way.”
Jones met his “jazz heroine” in late 1953. He drove to meet her at London Airport, armed with a photographer and a bottle of whisky. “Both could be useful, I knew, as a means of breaking the ice, and both were to come in handy,” Jones recalled. He admitted that he had mixed feelings about meeting Holiday, given her “uncertain temper” and reports of “unreasonable behaviour” towards other journalists.
“Parking near the arrivals lounge, I felt the frisson of an imminent adventure—eager anticipation tinged with apprehension,” Jones wrote. When she emerged, “the singer looked tired, cold and resentful, as though she had suffered many fools in the recent past.” The jazz writer introduced himself with “measured warmth, politeness and a degree of reserve [he] was far from feeling.” In short, he survived the encounter unscathed, got a photograph and proffered the whisky—which was received with a smile and “vanished into the mink [coat], just as her retinue disappeared into the limo.”
Jones and Holiday caught up again later at the Piccadilly Hotel, where a press call had been arranged. Lady Day had already begun answering questions and was “looking harassed” on Jones’ arrival. Most queries had pertained not to the singer’s music, but to her widely publicized drug addiction and a recent stint in prison. “‘Are you still on dope, Miss Holiday?’ asked one pressman pointedly. Billie ignored the question, but explained that she had served her time for the offence and expected to be able to start off again with a clean slate.”
Ever the gentleman, Jones lept to the singer’s defense. “I told the company at large that I didn’t suppose Miss Holiday had travelled all this way to give a lecture on narcotics,” the writer remembered. “I asked how she had come by her nickname, Lady Day (though I knew the answer), and she shone upon me a real smile and expression of gratitude… Then, whenever a drugs question began to rear its head, I interposed a query about her programme or records or accompanists.”
Jones was rewarded for his humanity with a long-lasting, warm relationship with Holiday, giving him unparalleled access to the star throughout her UK tour. “For me it was the start of a friendship I found as touching as it was surprising,” he remembered. “I chauffeured her when needed, ran errands, took her out for food and drinks and visited her and [husband Louis] McKay at the hotel. I saw as much of her as I could—and hold on to my job.”
On nights off, Jones and his wife Betsy would go out with Holiday and McKay. “Mostly we talked about music, booze, sex, drugs, politics, gangsters, film actors, club owners, writers, and café society; also about dogs, or clothes and shopping.” Jones later wrote a piece for Melody Maker titled “Max Jones Spends a Holiday With Billie,” hinting at the closeness of their relationship.
You can read much more about the heartwarming, but ultimately tragic friendship he enjoyed with the jazz icon in Talking Jazz, which you can still find on eBay for under $10. It’s a fascinating read. Or you could just keep buying the ST—I’m sure I’ll revisit Jones again in future.
