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JACK MCDUFF: I was adopted to the McDuffs. That's how I got their name. But my real father was in Champaign also, so I had the best of both worlds. And he was in the restaurant business. So every day I could bring somebody from school to eat lunch and all of that kind of thing.

SPEAKER: Now your father put you up for adoption?

JACK MCDUFF: No. Well, I guess he did. He was-- I don't know if he and my mother were actually ever married because I know she lived in Gary, and I didn't get to meet her until I was out of the Navy. And the people, the McDuffs, were men that were just like church people. We even had an organ at home. Can you imagine? The kind that you pump. But I couldn't play boogie woogie on it. And oh, hell, when I went into school. I never was into music. But I was hung around the band room.

And when I went to the Navy, I couldn't read music. But see, I was a steward's mate. In the Navy, that's a-- steward mate is waiter, that kind of stuff. And we had a lot of time off in between meals. We'd go to the band room and listen to the band, man, good band. And I couldn't play, man. I couldn't. I could play a couple of tunes on the piano, but I couldn't read. And I was just hanging around in there. Just every time I'd get through, I'd slip the guys sandwiches and things to let me watch. It was great. Yeah.

SPEAKER: So it was really after the Navy in Gary where you really learned how to play?

JACK MCDUFF: Yeah, and I played with a guy named Lester Shackelford. As far as I know, he's still living. But you know what? Now that I think about it, he was a good musician, man. Because he would call changes out for me. Cause I didn't-- He'd say C9, C7. I said, what do you mean C7? So when intermission come, everyone would say, here's a-- look, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. That's the major seven. That's the dominant seven. That's the blues seven. I said, uh-huh. So he goes back to play the next set. He'd say C7. Yeah.

SPEAKER: So at that point, you still couldn't read music?

JACK MCDUFF: No, no, no, couldn't read. Couldn't read. Let me say I couldn't read until I was-- and I was in a good band. Jimmy Cole, this was about 1949 and '50. And I was playing in Cincinnati at the Cotton Club, and Jimmy Cole was the house band at the Cotton Club. But I was in this band. It was a good band. Four Horns, everybody read, man. But I always did have a good ear and everybody would tell me, show me once or something you know, one of them, and I could play it.

I'm playing with all-- I'm playing it by ear. And it's an old saxophone player named Ray Smith that he always sat on the bandstand when everybody else took breaks to watch the instruments and things like that, would have smoked a pipe. And I'll tell him, he said, I can't read that. He said, you can read that. I said, what do you mean? I'll show you how to read that. And you know what? I still use that system that he taught me back, this was in 1949, maybe, of reading, of using your hand.

1 and 2 and 1. He said, quarter note is 1, 2, 3, 4. Eighth note is 1 and 2 and 3 and-- triple note-- triplets is 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. Right then, man, I taught myself to read. [LAUGHS] I'm telling you. Oh, yeah, by the way, I became a bass player now before I was a piano player.

SPEAKER: Yeah, talk about that a little bit. How did it happen?

JACK MCDUFF: I had been-- I'd been messing around with bass in the barracks when I was in the Navy in the rec room. Oh, man, I got pretty good at it. And guess who I was playing with? Johnny Griffin. But you know what discouraged me, man? The way Johnny Griffin and those guys played. They played like this. Look--

[HAND SPUTTERING]

All night. And I had a bad bass, had a blonde cave bass. It was hard to play the string, man. My hand was like a piece of beef. And he played 20 minutes. Then they'd leave me up on the stand by myself. They both walk off-- [LAUGHS] man, I tell you. I say, you all got it. [LAUGHS]

SPEAKER: Oh, man.

JACK MCDUFF: So I started back with my little piano playing. I always could play after hours and little things like that. You know what I mean? And then the organ came along or I'd gotten real good at the piano. Then the organ came in, and the reason everybody started doing the organ was, see, without an organ, you need bass, fiddle, piano, drums and horn. That's four pieces. But if you get an organ, you only need three pieces because the organ player plays the bass also. So that's what everybody was getting the organs in the clubs for.

SPEAKER: So when did it-- when did you first start to think that music, instead of just being a hobby, might actually be a way to make a living?

JACK MCDUFF: Well, that's good. I'm glad you asked me that. During this time when I was in Gary, I was playing with school boy porter making $5 a night. That was $30 a week, man. That was good money. So we went to another club. All the school boy porter told me was, come on down to Buddy Bears, that was the name of it. The Buddy Bears are night and play song. He said, be that around 8:00. I said, OK, man, I'll be home pressing my shirt all day and getting my stuff ready.

And look, and I worked one or two nights and didn't even know I was working. You hear me?

SPEAKER: Mm-hmm.

JACK MCDUFF: He said, come on now, be back tomorrow night, man. We had a good time tonight, didn't we? Yeah. And then I asked him for the next night. I asked him for some money. I said, hey, man, could you loan me $5? He said, didn't you get paid? I said, paid for what? He said, you're working. I said, what? And Eddie Gray was the bandleader. Yeah, I just thought you'd want to wait until the end of the week. Yeah, I know, I know. And from then, I was working again, man. That's the way that started.

SPEAKER: So that was your first professional gig?

JACK MCDUFF: Yeah.

SPEAKER: All right. So what kind of places were you playing with these--

JACK MCDUFF: Oh, Peps and Philly, The Showboat.

SPEAKER: And these are-- these are bars, nightclubs?

JACK MCDUFF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you call the Oregon Circuit? Buffalo, New York, Rochester, New York, Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER: All the musicians in these bands at that stage in your career were all African-American. Is that right?

JACK MCDUFF: Yeah. Yeah. Well, not necessarily, because Pat Martino was playing with us and Willis Jackson's band, and there was a couple of other guitar players, white boys that was in the band. It wasn't totally by design, just by chance. Because you could be polka dot if you could play, man.

SPEAKER: What about the audiences? Who was listening to your music?

JACK MCDUFF: Well, now, these-- now, our audience was mostly Black, because these clubs I'm telling you about, they were the Pine Grill in Buffalo. They were dominantly Black clubs, man. And we played six nights a week. You didn't play like I go on a gig now. I played two nights. That's the week. But then you close your club on Sunday. You travel to the next town on Monday and you open Tuesday. Tuesday through Sunday. That's the way it went.

SPEAKER: So you had one travel day in between and then six dates?

JACK MCDUFF: Right. And a lot of times you were so far away, you got there in time to change clothes and set up and go in where they stocked the beer and go in that room to change your clothes and come back and play. And when you come out, the club owner is looking at his watch. I say, it's no use looking at that goddamn watch.

SPEAKER: But life on the road agreed with you?

JACK MCDUFF: Oh, yeah. Hey, look, man, now that was when I was with Willis Jackson's band. Now, when I got my band, they got worse.

SPEAKER: What made it so much fun when you were traveling around like that?

JACK MCDUFF: Well, first of all, playing the music when you get there and get set up. And I always believed in having my little stuff together, always knowing what we were going to play, how we're going to end it, what we're going to do next, and who's going to play here. I always believed in that from I had a way of whatever town I was playing in, like Asbury Park, New Jersey. The Main Street there was Springwood Avenue. So I'd have a tune called Swinging on Springwood. Now, when we got to Newark-- Williams Street is called Swinging on Williams Street, it was the same tune.

SPEAKER: Mm-hmm. Just modified.

JACK MCDUFF: I didn't change the title. Yeah?

SPEAKER: Mm-hmm.

[CHUCKLES]