The Stanley Dance 1963 interview with Jimmy doesn't really reveal very much about the man himself. So I went looking for stories and tid-bits about Jimmy in order to see if I could find out more about who he was and what he was like.
"I remember the lovable Jimmy Rushing..." recalls Mary Lou Williams ('Hear Me Talkin' To Ya..' Shapiro and Hentoff Dover Publications New York 1966)...
"Jimmy was a big brother to me and some of the other band wives. I remember him playing piano and singing wonderful ballads to us; other times he would keep us laughing with his risque stories, getting a kick out of seeing us blush."
Count Basie testifies in 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya..' (Shapiro and Hentoff Dover Publications New York 1966)...
"...and in 1929, we picked up a blues singer in Oklahoma City. That was Jimmy Rushing, who for my money has never had an equal when it comes to the blues.
"In all the time he was with the band, Jimmy Rushing has been what I might call my right arm. There were times in the early days of the band that I'd have given it all up but for Jimmy's urging to stick with it."
His popularity was undisputed. After Joe Williams replaced Jimmy in the Mid-50's, Basie fans divided into two factions...
"I went ape," said Nat Pierce, recalling the first time he heard Williams at Birdland. "As I was leaving, I met John Hammond coming down the stairs.
"Basie got himself a singer," I said.
"Ah, I like Jimmy Rushing," John answered.
"Wait till you hear this cat!"
"Nobody like Jimmy....' "
"Hammond's preference was not merely a matter of loyalty to Rushing. There was a generation gap, a difference of approach, a different conception of what was or was not authentic, and Joe Williams was well aware of it.
"There were a lot of people like that," he said, "and a lot of critics in England and Europe who were hostile. After the posters went up and signs were stuck on them saying, 'All Seats Sold', the reviewers would write, 'Most of the applause was reserved for a singer, and he is no Jimmy Rushing,' and so on, blah, blah, blah. It took 'em a long time. It took them years before they finally decided; 'So it isn't Jimmy Rushing.' "
In the same vein, British author and music critic, Eric Hobsbawm ('The Jazz Scene' Pantheon Books New York 1993) wrote in 1959...
"Williams is a jazz-singer of considerable talent, who has increased the band's popularity in America, but for one critic at least he cannot make Basie play the blues as James Rushing did in the distant days when he and the band first moved us with 'Sent for You Yesterday'."
"Jimmy was a sweet, sweet man. Everybody loved him." Stanley Dance said in a recent phone conversation with me. (Radun 1998)
According to Dicky Wells in 1970...
"He (Harry Edison) and Prez named just about everybody (in Basie's band), and when Prez named anybody the name stuck." ... "Rush was 'Honey Bunny Boo' or 'Little Jim'.
"Helen Humes did well as Billie's (Billie Holiday) successor, and her blues style fitted the band. Even her pop songs had a blues flavor. She and Jimmy Rushing used to get along well, telling tall tales and keeping the bus in an uproar all the time.
"Jimmy used to come aboard the bus with a bag of food, chicken or something. We'd be leaving around two o'clock and he would wait until everybody was asleep, snoring, and then open his chicken bag. I was sitting behind him one time, hungry, and saw his jaws working, so I touched him on the shoulder.
"Ah, man, I thought you were asleep! Here, fool, eat this and go to sleep."
"He passed me a very small bit of chicken. I'd wait a couple of nights and then touch him up again.
"Rush is a big man, but he's real light on his feet and can move fast. The only time that I saw Rush depressed was when his wife or mother was sick. He's something like Earl Hines. Earl may have troubles, but he doesn't let you know it.
"And Rush never forgets anything. He can tell you exactly what happened twenty, thirty years ago."
Says Gus Johnson, Jr. ...
"I went with Basie at the very end of '47 for an engagement at the Strand Theater, but while we were there Shadow Wilson returned and the office wanted him back in the band. Basie insisted I stay till the Strand job was finished, but Shadow took his former place again when the band went into the Royal Roost across the street for about a month. Then they went out on the road, and Shadow put his notice in and joined Woody Herman. So now Basie was without a drummer and he told Jimmy Rushing to call me.
"No, I ain't going to call him,' Rushing said. 'You didn't treat him right when he was here."
Buddy Tate in 1969, recalls the Bennie Moten days, and how many of Moten's band joined Basie until...
"When Moten picked up some bookings, the fellows began slipping off one by one. Lips Page went first. Then I met Jimmy Rushing one morning about three o'clock. He said he was going downtown to the drugstore, but I knew there was none open at that hour in Little Rock. He was sneaking off to the bus station, you know, to catch a bus! That's the way guys would leave a band in those days."
Alto sax player Preston Love joined the wartime Basie band, "Jimmy Rushing acted as my 'guardian' at this point..." recalling the veteran band-member's big-brother attitude.
"My mother had purchased a fine home in 1944 with money sent by my brothers, Norm and Dodda, from their army pay, and during the week my sisters gave several huge parties there for the entire band and show cast. At each of these affairs, Jimmy Rushing and Sweets Edison were the life of the party. What with playing piano and telling jokes, they kept everybody lively. I think of them as two of the cleverest individuals ever in show business."
Vocalist Melvin Moore in 1977...
"...I actually got known around Oklahoma City first as a blues singer, because Jimmy Rushing was a dear friend of mine."
George Melly remembers him insightfully from a 1957 British visit, where Jimmy sang with Humphrey Lyttelton's band...
"Jimmy's bulk - and its attendant problems, getting in and out of cars for example - soon appeared irrelevant except to give his movements a deliberation, an almost balletic adjustment of weight in relation to gravity which suggested his inner calm." ('Jazz, the essential companion' Prentiss Hall Press 1988)
Jimmy at Newport 1956
From 'Jazz Anecdotes' by Bill Crow (Oxford University Press 1990)...
Patti Brown once played a record date with blues singer Jimmy Rushing ("Mr.Five by Five") and walked him out to a cab afterwards.
"He took up the whole back seat," said Patti.
Otto Preminger (notoriously bald film director and actor -Radun), who had just come out of the same building, stopped to watch Jimmy squeeze himself into the cab, couldn't resist commenting.
"You're the shortest, fattest man I've ever seen!" he said through the cab window.
Rushing smiled up at him and replied, 'And you're the tallest, baldest man I've ever seen!"
Jimmy didn't take part in the ongoing crap games that occurred while the band was on the road, often chiding other musicians for wasting their money. Also from Bill Crow's book, Billie Holiday remembers trying to add to her income of fourteen dollars a day...
"The first time out we had been riding for three months, and neither Lester (Young) nor I had a dime. Both of us were actually hungry. Jimmy Rushing, the blues singing "Mr. Five by Five", was always the only one who had any loot. We went to him once and asked him real nice for a buck to buy a couple of hamburgers. He wouldn't give us nothing but a lecture on how he saved his money and how we petered ours away.
When we were on the bus coming back to New York from West Virginia, I couldn't stand the thought of coming home to Mom broke. I had four bucks when that crap game started on the bus floor...
...When we pulled up in front of the Woodside Hotel everybody was broke and crying. I was filthy dirty and had holes in the knees of my stockings, but I had sixteen hundred bucks and some change.
I gave some of the cats in the band enough loot to eat with and for car fare. But not Rushing. I didn't give him back a dime. ..."
While with the Basie band in France, Buddy Tate got the wrong interpreter...
"We went to Lyon, and Jimmy Rushing says, "Now, don't worry about the language problem. I'll order for you, I'm over here all the time." So we go into this restaurant and I decide I wanted some veal chops, so Jimmy talked to the waitress. She went away and we waited and waited. Then she comes back with six hard boiled eggs. I can't tell you what name I called him.
So he gets to talking again and she goes back and she come with more eggs -- fried! I called him some more names I can't repeat, and Rush says, "Well, she can't speak English. She's just not getting it right." The waitress was listening to us arguing back and forth, and then she says, "Excuse me, what would you like to have?" Speaking better English than either of us!" (Bill Crow / 'Jazz Anecdotes')
Jimmy and vocalist Ethel Ennis in Germany
In Bill Crow's book, Basie tells about playing a prank while with the Blue Devils in Dallas:
"Jimmy Rushing got in touch with a girlfriend of his who worked in a restaurant, and during a certain time of day he could go around there and get himself a free meal. I had been there and had seen him do it a few times. So one day while he was fooling around in the pool room or somewhere I got hungry and slipped around there and told his girlfriend that Jimmy said he won't be around today and said for me to eat his meal. I ate my head off and cut out, and later on he went around there and sat at the table. She kept walking by without bringing him anything. At first he thought she was just busy and then he started wondering. She finally came and stood looking at him.
"Hey, what you doing here?"
"Aw now, baby. Don't I come here every day?"
"Yes," she said, "but you sent Basie around here."
"What?"
I don't even have to imagine the look on his face. I know that bulb began to light up right there.
"Basie was here and said you weren't coming so I gave him your meal."
Old Jimmy came back and just sat and cut his eyes at me for hours, as if to say, "You dirty dog. You lowdown dirty dog." Then all he did was shake his head and walk away. But finally he had to laugh about it, and he was still telling about that until he died some forty-odd years later."
Also from Bill Crow, in 'From Birdland To Broadway' (Oxford University Press, 1992)...
"The doorman at the Apollo had a small room with a TV set and a few chairs just inside the stage door. I was sitting there between shows one day chatting with Jimmy Rushing, who had dropped in to visit. Symphony Sid (an emcee at the Apollo - Radun) came downstairs escorting a stunning redhead in a fox coat, and as they passed us on their way out, we overheard part of their conversation. The lady was upset with Sid, and was letting him know about it with considerable heat. Sid was mostly saying, "Yes, dear."
Jimmy Rushing sat up as straight as his five-by-five frame would allow. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline as he listened to the lady's vituperative monologue.
"Did you hear the way she talked to him?" Jimmy howled as they disappeared into the street. "Why I could never let a woman talk to me like that! That's a disgrace!" He shook his head and settled pensively back in his chair.
"I remember one time," he said, "on the road with Basie. I had my woman traveling with me. I told her to stay up at the hotel room while we were playing at this dance, but about the second set I look over on the side and here she is with her girlfriend, big as life, setting at a table, drinking and carrying on. I couldn't believe my eyes!
"I told her to get her ass back to the room, and she gave me some mouth about it. Well! I straightened that out in about one minute! I went up-side her head ... whap!"
He swung his hand to illustrate the blow. Neither the doorman or I made any comment as Jimmy nodded indignantly to indicate that his point had been made. Then he sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin reflectively. After a moment of consideration, he mused:
"She left me not long after that."
Jimmy and the Basie Band
Recently Jazz DJ, writer, and producer Chris Albertson sent me this funny little story:
"After dinner, we usually talked about the music business and mutual
acquaintances.
One night, Jimmy received a call from Benny Goodman, who
wanted him to sing with his group at a Vassar concert. I heard Jimmy say,
"Seventy-five dollars? Ok, Benny, I'll sing for seventy-five dollars if
you play for me for seventy-five bucks!"
Benny offered a more reasonable amount, and Jimmy did the concert.
I went with him and we arrived before Benny did, so Jimmy took the best dressing room -- the only
one with its own bathroom. At one point, Benny knocked on the door to the dressing room and sheepishly
asked Jimmy if he could use the bathroom.
"I recall leaving his home many times; Jimmy, standing with his dog in the doorway, waving good-bye to me."
In his autobiography, 'John Hammond on Record' (Penguin Books 1981), John wrote about how Jimmy's dear friend, Helen Humes joined Basie in 1937 after Billie Holiday quit, tired of racial discrimination on the road...
"Meanwhile, Basie was again without a female vocalist. Little Jimmy Rushing, a proud man whom Basie loved, saw no reason to share the bandstand with another singer and removed himself from the situation. Basie was most uncomfortable. To succeed as a commercial attraction he had to have a girl singing the ballads that just weren't Jimmy's forte.
I thought I could help. I had heard a girl singing with Vernon Andreade's band at the Renaissance Ballroom in Harlem who was one of the best I'd heard in years. I also had 'Do What You Did Last Night', an old Okeh she had recorded at age fifteen - hardly more than a child but already a fine jazz singer. She would perfect for Basie. But how to get her into the band without offending Jimmy Rushing was the problem. I thought I saw a way to work it.
The Apollo sponsored an amateur contest for young singers as a regular part of its stage show. The winner was awarded a week's engagement with whatever band was playing. Because of my own friendship with the Apollo's owner - Vivian was still my girl - I arranged for Helen Humes to enter the amateur contest held while Basie was appearing at the theater. I had no doubt that Helen would win, and winning would bring her to the band without Basie's having to hire her. It seemed a perfect solution to me and Basie agreed.
The record hit of the country that summer was 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket', sung by Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb's band. From coast to coast young girls were copying Ella, sometimes note for note. As luck would have it, one of these Fitzgerald copycats entered the contest with Helen and won. Helen came in second. By the end of the second week the time for artifice had passed. Helen joined the band with Jimmy Rushing's blessing and stayed for the next five years. She was the perfect complement to Rushing, and she and Jimmy became life-long friends."
"Little Jimmy Rushing thought he was all the singer Basie band needed, but changed his mind after hearing Helen Humes."
"...Helen Humes and Jimmy Rushing, were also great artists who "arrived" as singers but had to settle for something less than stardom. Whenever the history of blues is written, "Mr. Five by Five", Jimmy Rushing, will always be included. Perhaps more than any blues singer, Jimmy's artistry helped move the blues back into national prominence in the fifties and sixties." - Jack Schiffman ('Harlem Heyday' Prometheus Books Buffalo NY 1984)
With regard to Jimmy's enormous ability, Nat Hentoff ('Listen to the stories' HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. New York 1995) writes...
"Rushing - a large man of extraordinary poise and a wide range of moods, from rambunctious exuberance to poignancy that is almost unbearable, as here (referring to the song 'I Left My Baby...' -Radun) -was one of the most urbane of jazz singers. Were there a jazz Mozart, Rushing would have been his Don Giovanni.
"...had so mastered time that everything he sang had a deeply relaxed, swinging pulse. Indeed, the silences between the notes swung just as deeply."
"...founder of the vocal swing tradition - was Jimmy Rushing.
"He was the first not to sing "on the beat" - as the folf-blues people did - but in front or behind the beat, to "sing around" the rhythmic centers and counter them with his own accents, thus creating greater tension." (Joachim Berendt 'The Jazz Book' Lawrence Hill & Co. Inc. New York 1975)
Jimmy stayed with Basie until 1948, although by then he had also recorded with Benny Goodman, Bob Crosby, and others. He had appeared in films, mostly 'soundies', short music films similar to today's music videos, and the 1943 Universal release 'Funzapoppin'. He formed his own band, which included Buck Clayton and Dicky Wells, and went on tour. The band then spent two years at the Savoy where they often created a sensation by appearing opposite Count Basie.
Until his death in 1972, Jimmy remained a solo act, a regular at the Half Note in New York, returning on occaision to work with Basie, and producing some excellent solo recordings. He had a notable role in Gordon Parks' film ' The Learning Tree'. The year he died, his 1971 release ' The you and me that used to be' won the critics' choice in the Downbeat jazz poll.
"Throughout the years Jimmy waxed but did not wane. He never became less." - ('John Hammond on Record' Penguin Books 1981)
