Cradle is Rocking Transcript
- [George] I wasn't from a musical family. My daddy was a shoe maker. He used to try to break me in fixing shoes. I'd be sitting down nailing shoes, cutting leather. Never did like it. Coming from school, I used to follow the bands. Got many whoopings that way, getting home late. My name is George Cola. But when I was about 11 years old, people started calling me Shiek. Now that's all they know me by, Kid Shiek. Here in New Orleans any day is a right day for a parade. Monday we played a funeral across the river, today we gonna dedicate a new church. Let's see what alright if I'll take it the piano music. Today young folks come to me like I used to go to Chris to learn the horn. Of course I know Chris Kelly. He was a great man, you gotta remember though you can only share so much.
- Oh yeah, I see what you mean, I get
- You can teach someone to finger the horn to blow the notes but the feeling for the music has to be in you. Jazz is a feeling, a good feeling. Never a sad feeling in music, even when you play the blues.
- They're almost the same.
- Play that from the beginning.
- [George] If you work hard and you're lucky you develop that tone. Little by little it comes to you like a voice in singing. I remember my days with Chris Kelly, he was a great musician because he had a special sound. Plenty fellows had it, but they didn't blow notes like Chris. We used to go around listening to all them bands around that time, Jack Carey, Sam Hall, Buddie Petit, those were good times, In 29 I went on tour out at Bogalusa with a fellow named Dan Woody. House parties, yard parties things like that. Played with some great ones when I was coming up but one day I just said well I can make up my own group. And so I've been going ever since. When you play with a band and the life is there you play easy. It seems like you're not blowing at all everybody's together like one man. I played with bands where the fellas didn't speak to one another just played to make the money. That way you don't get nothing out of it. No kind of feeling, just a hard night for you. But the band I have now we're happy together and so the music's good Playing in Marguerite's yard or in the Grand Ballroom of the Royal Orleans makes no difference. We can be getting a dollar or a thousand dollars it's gonna be the same. The feeling is in us, there is no other way we can be.
Jazz started on the river, that's what people say. They tell me Buddy Bolden was the first one to play it. He'd be on the other side of the river and you could hear him here. Men working on the river would move in time to the beat of the music. Beat was everywhere, on the street, in the church and the tonks and barrel houses where people went to be together. Like the beating of a big heart gave everyone a good feeling.
Nowadays people seem to move to a different beat you've got your rock-and-roll, swing and all that when I was coming up that was nothing but jazz. That's all you heard, that's all you had to go by and that's all I know. New Orleans Jazz. Still I figured things seem to change a lot more than they really do. The river is the same river I knew as a boy and the feelings I had then are the same I still feel and the music I played as a boy touches the heart same today as it did then. Always be that way I figure, nothing ever gonna change that. To end is to begin again, it's all part of life. We lose a dear friend and the heart fills with sorrow but in the end you got to sing again cause life goes on. That's what jazz is all about. Like I say even when you play the blues there's nothing sad about it. New Orleans was the cradle where it all began. When I found it, it was already full grown in it's prime. Today it's getting known some but there's plenty life there yet.
