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Interview with Herman Autrey
Interviewer: John S. Wilson
New York City
December 1978

(Start of Tape Three)

MR. WILSON: Well Herman, at the end of the last reel we were just about --you were just about to go from Philadelphia to New York. But before we do that I'd like to stop and go back a little bit and clear up a few things in the earlier part of your career. Now for example, how did your trumpet style develop? Who were the people that you listened to, or had any --had some influence on the way you play?

MR. AUTREY: Very well. I would like to say Pitts- burgh. From Pittsburgh, I joined the show, and we went from Pittsburgh to Chicago, playing the --was it the Corcoran Theater, or Monogram? Well, I kind of get them confused, because you know, both were small theaters at that time, in each town. Well anyway, after Chicago we went to Detroit, I'm almost positive. Well there I met and saw a very fine trumpetist, trumpet lady, maybe I should say. She was playing trumpet for Ethel Waters. She was a backup for Ethel, because Ethel was singing all those beautiful things, and blues, and whatnot, and that time making movies, and I had never seen or heard her, and being with the show, being a youngster, and just starting out, I heard and saw her take a Harmon mute -- that's what they called the wow-wow mute that was used, I would say by Henry Busse, but she was the first I ever heard go Wow-wow-wow-wow-wow. But she used it, and she took my hand, put the mute in my hand, and showed me how to go wow, how to make those sounds. With her mute. So—

MR. WILSON: What was her name?

MR. AUTREY: Dyer Jones.

MR. WILSON: How do you spell that, D-y-e-r?

MR. AUTREY: I think --yeah. And she --oh a very pretty girl. She was a cute little thing, and she had hair hanging down to her waist, and she --when she sat down in the theater her feet hardly touched the floor. And I --tell you the truth, I fell in love with her just looking at her. I'd never seen anything as pretty as that before.

So while I was setting there in the pit playing this show --show --she came in and sat down, and the other trumpet player in the house band, they knew each other. Looked at him and said oh hi, Frank, Joe, whatever his name was, and said hi, how are you? I don't know. I didn't know who the heck --who she was. I hadn't noticed her trumpet then. But she took the trumpet, put it down there and stuck it under the seat, which I still didn't matter. I said boy, she's a good looking gal.

And show went, and I was playing, playing, play- ing, so while he was sitting there he said Dyer, I'm going to run across the street and get a drink, or a sandwich, or a soda, or something. Sit in for me, will you? She said Okay, go ahead. She reached under the seat, pulled out this trumpet case, and took the trumpet out, and sat beside me, with one hand, her little legs just swinging, you know, the seat, started hitting F's and G's and everything, and I had never seen a woman play trumpet in my life before. Never mind the high notes. I'd never seen them. I didn't know a woman could playa trumpet.

Anyway, and so the --everything was so perfect. Everything was so nice. And I'm sitting there trying to learn --this is my well, second or third day in show business maybe the second week, and I'm trying to learn, hoping to be good someday, and this woman sat there, and she was out of this world. So finally she turned to me, and she said, "What's your name?" And I told her. And I said, "What's yours?" An she told me. "How long have you been playing?" I said, “Oh, I started --" (Laughs.) "I've been playing since I was about eight, nine years old." "You have? Nice." You know, which I knew. She knew that, but I didn't.

(Laughter.)

MR. AUTREY: And I say, "How do you do that?" And she picked up the mute, and she says, "Well I'll show you." So while the show was going on she took my hand and placed it around the mute to make this --how to make this sound, and you to do this, and how to do, the other. I said, "Well what is this? What's the name of this?" And she told me that's a Harmon Mute.

This is called a So-and-so mute. This is a -- then picked up a rubber thing. I said, "What's that?" She said, "That's a plunger." Plunger? She explained all that to me there. So --but I tried to buy everything I saw her with. And I went in the hotel, and drove everybody nuts because I was sitting up in my room making all these noises. But to me she was the greatest trumpet player I had ever heard, because I never heard nobody play like that. And well she had made a lot of recordings with Ethel Waters at that time, and made movies, and such a very nice person, which later --much later --I met her daughter. Her daughter also played trumpet. Louie Armstrong helped her, she told me. Louie helped her quite a bit.

MR. WILSON: The daughter, or Dyer?

MR. AUTREY: The daughter.

MR. WILSON: The daughter.

MR. AUTREY: And Dyer and Louie were friends. They: knew each other. They --I guess he must have helped her some time too, in the --you know, happenings there. But the daughter was very nice, real sweet, and --but she had --at ! that time she told me she was inspired by a lot of trumpet players, and one in particular who had inspired me. He was with --had been with Don Redman, different bands'. Hmmm -- he's working now for the airplane company. He's working out in Jamaica --Long Island there. Oh, what the heck is his name? You know. Oh boy, what a trumpet player.

Anyway, he had taught her, showed her a lot of things, and helped her, and she was more a modern, I would say, modern gig, because she was playing more changes, run- ning the changes, what we --you know what we mean by changes the kind --the --uh:

MR.: The chord?

MR. AUTREY: Harmony --yeah, the chords. Harmon running the changes. And she could do very, very well and sounded doggone good.

MR. WILSON: What was the daughter' s name? Do you remember?

MR. AUTREY: Dolly.

MR. WILSON: Doll—

MR. AUTREY: Dyer and Dolly.

MR. WILSON: Dolly Jones?

MR. AUTREY: Yes. Dolly Jones.

MR. WILSON: I've heard of Dolly Jones.

MR. AUTREY: You have?

MR. WILSON: Sure.

MR. AUTREY: Well, she's the lady. But I haven't seen Dolly in so many years. I hope she's well and doing fin, but –

MR. WILSON: What became of Dyer? Do you know?

MR. AUTREY: I think Dyer passed some time --I'm almost positive that she passed some time ago, but what a trumpeter, you know, what a trumpet player she was. And she and I ~ere pals there for quite some time. So I used to kid her, after I met her that time I came back years later. I said "Remember? Remember me?" She said, "Yes, I remember." I said, "I dare you to take your horn out of your case. I'll blow you out of here." She laughed, you know. “Where have you been?" I told her, and said Well, I went all down in Texas, Alabama, Florida, and everything, and Louisiana and everything. I said, "I'm ready for you now." So she said okay.

MR. WILSON: How long did it take you, when you first got the mutes and everything, and she was showing you how to do it, how long did it take you to learn how to do it? Hard?

MR. AUTREY: Well, it was --I would say a week or less, because I was --man, I was driving everybody --I know I was driving everybody nuts. They wanted --who --who is that guy, or whatever it is, next door, if they heard me. Bu I didn't care, because I kept trying, I kept-- because I wanted to make the sounds, the things that I'd heard her do. You know. Because I liked it.

And when I started recording with Fats Waller I was the guy, I think. I got a lot of the credit, because I was one of the first to put it on tape --on --not tape, record with Fats for Victor, and we were the first small band on Victor, so I think I got a lot of the credit, because I was doing it. They'd never heard nobody play behind a singer like me, and behind Fats, and I heard it from her. So I want to be honest. I –

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