Only recently someone told me that Pee Wee Spitlera had retired. Retired? That little child, retired? Why it was only yesterday….
He had a distinguished career as a clarinetist to Jumbo (Al Hirt) and developed a following of his own not only in Jumbo’s Bourbon Street nightclub, but among the TV audiences that noticed there was something special in the tone of this roly-poly little fellow whose every note was pure New Orleans.
Okay. So he’s retired. After all, I just looked up his age and he is forty-six. I suppose he saved his money while the pay was good. I suppose he made a few decent investments. Why not? Why shouldn’t he retire?
I think back to 1954. In those days at 112 Royal Street in New Orleans, on the second floor, there was a place called the “Parisian Room” where the proprietor, trumpet player Tony Almerico, hosted a regular Saturday afternoon jam session to which jazz fans across the nation had become addicted, since they could tune it in on 50,000 watt, clear-channel WWL, which conducted a weekly live broadcast of the proceedings. Pee Wee then had a nice tone for a sixteen-year-old, and Tony would let him sit in with the band until the broadcast started. There were top musicians on those shows—Jack Delaney, Deacon Loyacano, even, before he died, Fazola. People like Stanley Mendelson or Bob Doyle might be on piano. Usually Tony stomped things off at tempos that were too fast to make for the best jazz, but it was a good-time place and a good-time party. It was always fun.
We used to tease Pee Wee because, even though he had reached the advanced age of sixteen, he looked closer to eleven. He never had any smart comebacks. He’d just look at you with those big, wide eyes and apply himself to blowing the best horn he could.
The first week that Tony Parenti came back to town after an absence of two decades, Almerico called me and asked if I’d bring the master clarinetist up to his radio talk show. I said I thought Parenti would do that, and later Parenti agreed. We went up there and spent an hour on the air, talking about old times and listening to records. Then on Saturday, I was in the French Quarter with Parenti, eating oysters at the Acme, and I suggested we go around the corner to the Parisian Room for the jam session. I thought Tony might enjoy meeting some of his old friends. So we went up and walked in. Pee Wee, his eyes shut, was wailing away on some war horse. Just as the number was over, I brought Parenti up to the low bandstand. He shook hands with bass player Joe Loyacano, an old friend, and greeted others he knew. We came to where Pee Wee was standing. He had never seen Parenti, of course. The maestro had been gone too long. But like every young New Orleans clarinet hopeful, he knew the name and was familiar with all the Parenti records.
I was saying, “Tony, this little kid is Pee Wee Spitlera—and Pee Wee, I know you’ll be happy to shake hands with Tony Parenti.” Pee Wee’s reaction was instantaneous. With a motion quick enough to rival the great Houdini, he whisked his clarinet behind his back so Parenti wouldn’t think he’d have the presumption to attempt to play it in the great man’s presence.
Parenti was at his benign best. He chuckled at Pee Wee’s ingenuousness and said, “Don’t worry, kid. You sound good. I heard the last chorus you played and you’re okay—and you’re gonna be even better. Now on the next number, you and I are gonna play a little duet. You know ‘Cecilia’?”
Pee Wee knew it and Tony made arrangements with the band. “Now you just play the melody, kid. Don’t let anything get you off the melody. And then don’t worry. You’ll see. It’ll sound great.”
So the grand master of New Orleans clarinet and the new kid got into it. Pee Wee didn’t feel like he was doing anything but it sounded like the angels, and I always had the feeling the kid learned a lot from the five minutes they were on the stand together. The audience, naturally, was ecstatic. Later Pee Wee told me, “I always thought a great man like that would be, well—hard to get to know. But he’s just like anybody else. Whew! I was scared to be standin’ there alongside him and tryin’ to play!”
And that’s the little kid who has just retired?