By Bob Weinberg
What Pauly Cohen lacked in physical stature, he more than made up for in personality. At about 5 foot 3, with a mane of white hair, a bulldog’s jowly countenance and a basketball coach’s whistle around his neck, the trumpet-playing conductor put his multi-generational big band through the paces during afternoon rehearsals at a South Florida senior center.
Cohen, who died in 2021 at the age of 98, wasn’t your average Sunshine State senior; his résumé included some of the most fabled names in swing, from Artie Shaw to Benny Goodman to Tommy Dorsey and, in the 1970s, Count Basie. His senior center bandmates, several of whom he grew up with in Brooklyn, were no slouches either, boasting CVs that read like a who’s who of swing and jazz: Jimmy Dorsey, Lucky Millinder, Lionel Hampton, Miles Davis and Gil Evans. These cats could blow, and continued to do so into their 80s and 90s.
Graduating high school in 1941, Cohen found work with the big bands right off the bat. Frequent visits to uptown spots like Minton’s brought him into the orbit of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, both of whom were playing in Earl “Fatha” Hines’ band. “They got me in that band, because they liked the way I played,” Cohen told me during a rehearsal break in 2002 at the Northwest Focal Point Senior Center in Margate; his bandmates would stop by to chat, as well. “When they wanted to go on the road, I couldn’t go, because Black Americans with whites — they didn’t allow the mixture. They went on a Southern tour, I stayed in New York. I wanted to be with the band, but I looked very white.”
While most musicians cared less about color than chops, race presented challenges for touring big bands. Saxophonist Al Epstein fondly recalled playing in Benny Goodman’s integrated bands with Slam Stewart, Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson in 1944-45. However, he also remembered the difficulties trumpeter Howard McGhee encountered when they played together in Georgie Auld’s band. “He always had to go eat at another place [from the rest of the band], and that was a drag,” Epstein said. “Howard was a wonderful cat, and he came to visit me in Flushing. He was married to a white woman. They came to visit, and he comes in the house and Dorothy sits in the car. She didn’t want to be [seen] out together.”
Saxophonist and flutist Eddie Caine crossed the color line while playing with Lucky Millinder. “There were four white guys in the band,” Caine explained. “Lucky was a political guy, and he wanted to have a mixed band. So we were the house band at the Savoy Ballroom, around 1949, and we also did the Apollo Theater around four times that year. … In those days, [race relations in Harlem were] better than [in the 1960s-70s]. I mean, especially amongst musicians. I used to walk up Lenox Avenue with my horn, and I had a bebop cap, and nobody bothered me. Everybody in Harlem knew me that came to the Savoy.”
Pianist Bill McCumber was just 16 when he started working a couple of nights, on trumpet, with an integrated band at the Savoy. “The Savoy Ballroom had a double stage, and on Monday we would replace one band and we would alternate with the other,” he said. “And on Tuesday, we would replace that band. And all the great Black bands of that era — Jimmie Lunceford, Teddy Wilson, Erskine Hawkins, Lucky Millinder — I would alternate with all of these bands. It was such a ball. And there was camaraderie. Everybody loved one another.”
Civil rights legislation made life easier in some respects. Cohen went on to play with Count Basie in the 1970s, Caine with Miles Davis in the ’60s (he’s on
Miles Ahead and
Sketches of Spain), and McCumber, who joined Louis Prima’s combo in the 1950s (“Wail, Willy, wail!” Prima shouts to him on “Jump, Jive ’n Wail”), shared Vegas stages with stars such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Pearl Bailey, even though he noted, “Things were still funny in those days, there were still restrictions.”
It goes without saying — although each said so quite clearly — that Cohen, Epstein, Caine and McCumber idolized the Black musicians who compelled them to dedicate their lives to this music. “I used to sit and listen to all the records of Count Basie and never thought I’d ever be with Count Basie in the latter part of my life,” Cohen said. “But it was my ambition. A lot of times, you have ambitions, but they don’t realize. Well, I was lucky to realize it.”
