Buddy Collette

William Marcel "Buddy" Collette (August 6, 1921 – September 19, 2010) was an American jazz flutist, saxophonist, and clarinetist. He was a founding member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet.

Early life

William Marcel Collette was born in Los Angeles on August 6, 1921. He was raised in Watts, surrounded by people of all different ethnicities. He lived in a house built by his father in an area with cheap, plentiful land. The neighborhood in which he grew up was called Central Gardens area. For elementary school, he attended Ninety-sixth Street School because it allowed black students. Other schools in the area, such as South Gate Junior High School, did not and Collette often felt odd entering areas primarily inhabited by whites. Collette's family did not have a lot of money, but his childhood gave him the chance to mix with all sorts of different people. The “melting pot” of Watts framed the way he saw his position as a black man in the future.

Buddy Collette began playing piano at age ten, at his grandmother's request. His love for music came not only from his community, but from his parents—his father played piano and his mother sang. In middle school, he began playing the saxophone. That same year, he formed his first band with Charlie Martin, Vernon Slater, Crosby Lewis, and Minor Robinson. They played the music of Dootsie Williams, which Collette's parents had received while at a party. The following year, Collette started a band with Ralph Bledsoe and Raleigh Bledsoe. Together they played for less than a dollar each at parties put on by people in the area on Saturday nights. Following this, Collette started a third group which eventually included Charles Mingus on bass. Collette and Mingus became very good friends and Collette helped Mingus find his less wild, more reserved side.

During his childhood, Collette had plenty of musicians to look up to. William Jr., Coney, Britt, and George Woodman were the sons of trombonist, William Woodman. Their ability to play gigs and make money while still in high school was inspiring to musicians like Collette, who were a few years younger. When he was fifteen, Collette became a part of the Woodman brothers’ band, along with Joe Comfort, George Reed, and Jessie Sailes. Collette credits the Woodman brothers with finding the jazz sound of Watts.

Music career

During his first couple years of high school, Collette began traveling to Los Angeles in order to form connections with other musicians. At the Million Dollar Theatre, he and his band competed in a battle of the bands, but lost to a band that included Jackie Kelson, Chico Hamilton, and Al Adams. Afterwards, Collette was asked to join the winning band, making twenty-one dollars per week. Later, Charles Mingus joined this band.

At the age of 19, Collette started taking musical lessons from Lloyd Reese, who also taught Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, and many others. Collette credits Reese with teaching him and the other musicians how to manage themselves in the music world.

During World War II, Collette served with the U.S. Navy band attached to the pre-flight school at St. Mary's College. Led by Marshal Royal, it was one of two regimental bands of African-American musicians. From that band of 45 musicians, two dance bands were formed, the first being the Bombardiers, led by Royal. The second dance band, the Topflighters, was led by Collette, who had been playing with Les Hite’s band in 1941 before enlisting. His memoir records a trip that he, Bill Douglass, and Charles Mingus made from Los Angeles to San Francisco in October 1942, after hearing that a Navy officer was recruiting musicians from the union there to serve in an all-black band that would be stationed at St. Mary’s. Both Mingus and Douglass changed their minds, however. Douglass was later drafted by the Army; Mingus got re-classified 4-F. Collette, like most black Navy bandsmen, was trained at Camp Robert Smalls, at the Great Lakes, Chicago, complex of Navy bases.

According to Collette, he formed the second dance band at St. Mary's after he refused to join the Bombardiers on baritone sax, and along with most of the remaining fellows in the marching band realized that the dance band service was much easier than general musicians duty. Also in his band were Orlando Stallings on saxophone; James Ellison, Myers Franchot Alexander and Henry Godfrey on trumpet; George Lewis on first trombone; Ralph Thomas on bass tuba; and a few fellows he recalls only by nickname: “the Indian” on bass; “the Spider” and “the Crow” on tenor saxophones.

Both dance bands played gigs at the Stage Door Canteen, the USO in San Francisco that featured 24-hour service and entertainment, as featured acts and as back-ups to the stars that were performing there, usually unannounced, when they were in the San Francisco area.

Willie Humphrey, a New Orleans Dixieland jazz legend, joined the marching band late. Collette recalls that Marshal Royal didn’t realize who he was and wasn’t that interested in Dixieland, so Collette was able to get him into the Topflighters and subsequently arranged songs to highlight Humphrey’s talent.

Collette and others from St. Mary’s also played at clubs around San Francisco, especially in Oakland and at Redwood City, south of San Francisco, while in the Navy. “When you’re in uniform, you’re not supposed to be working outside,” he writes, “so we would get in civilian clothes–it was such a good job.”

After serving as a U.S. Navy band leader, he played with the Stars of Swing (Woodman, Mingus, and Lucky Thompson), Louis Jordan, and Benny Carter.

In 1949, he was the only black member of the band for You Bet Your Life, a TV and radio show hosted by Groucho Marx. In the 1950s, he worked as a studio musician with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, and Nelson Riddle.

In 1955 he was a founding member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet, playing chamber jazz flute with guitarist Jim Hall, cellist Fred Katz, and bassist Carson Smith. He also taught, and his students included Mingus, James Newton, Eric Dolphy, Charles Lloyd, and Frank Morgan. He helped merge an all-black musicians' union with an all-white musicians' union.

Although information on the relationship between Groucho Marx and Buddy Collette is scarce, there is no doubt that their relationship was significant. Marx, an American Jewish entertainer was, by the 1940s, one of the film industry's biggest superstars thanks to films such as “Duck Soup” and “A Night at the Opera.” Marx's career successes, up to You Bet Your Life, had been shared with his brothers, who, as the Marx Brothers, had been entertaining the public since their childhood days in Vaudeville.

In 1949, Collette was the first black musician to be hired by a nationally broadcast TV studio orchestra, on You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho. It has been noted that the conductor of the orchestra, Jerry Fielding, received hate-mail for standing by Collette. Collette's job and job security on the popular television show signaled that opportunities were becoming more readily available for black musicians by the 1950s.