Oral History Program Glen “Dutch” VanLeeuwen Interviewed by Charles Trentelman 19 November 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Glen “Dutch” VanLeeuwen Interviewed by Charles Trentelman 19 November 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial house flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and business related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other small operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: VanLeeuwen, Glen “Dutch,” an oral history by Charles Trentelman, 19 November 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Glen “Dutch” VanLeeuwen November 19, 2013 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Glen “Dutch” VanLeeuwen, conducted November 19, 2013 by Charles Trentelman. VanLeeuwen discusses his experiences as a musician and his memories of 25th Street in Ogden, Utah. CT: Ok, just to start it off, this is Charlie Trentelman talking with Dutch VanLeeuwen, and that is all I know at this stage in the game. It’s kind of a partner interview that I did with Ron Ross, because you guys used to play together down at Porters and Waiters, and still play together. DV: Yes, exactly so. Of course, I’m still playing with the seventeen piece Junction City Band. CT: That’s what I hear. DV: The Junction City Big Band has been playing a long time. Dr. Ericson, a music Professor at Weber College, started that band in 1987. He retired from Weber and started a band and the College was sponsoring it. CT: Now are you related to Scotty VanLeeuwen? DV: Yes, I am, he’s a cousin. His grandfather and my dad were brothers. Scotty is a character. CT: He is, I’ve known him for many, many, many years. DV: His dad, George VanLeeuwen was big time, he was a GS 16 at Hill Field, and he was the one that set up Washington Terrace. He went back to Washington DC and got all that property turned over from the government, and came up with a plan to remodel all those military homes and make family housing on individual 2 lots. When he died, Washington Terrace had the flag at half-mast. Yes, he was quite the guy. CT: Go for it. DV: He was responsible for getting the industrial center started. CT: Oh really? The industrial park north of DDO? DV: Yeah. He was instrumental in that. CT: I had not heard anything of that before. DV: I ended up working on his staff at Hill Field and because I was a relative, he passed me over on promotions, so I finally had to transfer out from under him to get promotions. He didn’t want people to think he was giving favors to his relative. CT: When was that, that was during the war? DV: No, in the 1960s and 1970s CT: Or after the war? DV: Yea, it was after the war that he did all that. CT: How old are you, when were you born? DV: I was born on July 16, 1927. I’m 86. CT: Oh, ok, you’re just a kid. DV: I guess that you’d like to start with maybe just 25th Street. CT: Sure, sure. I’ll work up to it. DV: There are a lot of things that happened when I was growing up. I found out that a White City dance hall existed; I found that out when I was about, I would say five years old. 3 CT: Where did your family live at that time? DV: At that time we were living in Harrisville in the old brick house where you enter Walmart from the west side. During the depression, my dad worked at Boyles Furniture as a truck driver. He only had a third grade education, so in the depression we were poor, but somehow made payments on the house. I had a sister ten years older than me. Before Harrisville, dad had been paying on a house on Wall Avenue and 30th and that’s when I appeared. I was born in the old Dee Hospital, three months premature and born with pneumonia. CT: Why are you alive? DV: They kept me there in an incubator trying to get me well, and finally they called my mother, they just got in touch with her and said, “He’s not going to make it, so you’d better bring him home and enjoy him for a few days.” Well mom and dad were really upset, but they brought me home and mom told her friend the story and her friend came over and started putting mustard plasters on me, a little tiny baby, and all the skin came off my chest, but she cured my pneumonia. CT: Really, wow. DV: Yeah, so I survived there. CT: That sounds similar to what happened to Ron Ross. His parents just put him outside, the cold revived him or something, he was very sick when he was little. Something similar to that. I guess that was the do or die cure they had back then huh? DV: Yes, you know Ron and I are the same age, he’s six months younger than me, but we were in the same grade. Anyway, when we moved from Wall Avenue to 4 Harrisville, that’s where I started hearing a little bit about the White City ballroom. Our neighbors, the Vondetts went to a White City raffle, I guess whatever you want to call it, giving away a brand new Chevrolet Automobile, which was a little old fashioned, with spoke wheels. Well, here they come driving by our house one day and we were sitting at the breakfast table and we saw that new Chevy with the Vondetts in it, so then I became curious about the White City. I started the clarinet in the second grade, third grade I guess, I had a teacher that asked my folks to start me on clarinet, they really couldn’t afford to buy me one so they bought me an old cadet clarinet. Mom found out when I came from Harrisville to Ogden at Pingree School, I didn’t know a thing. I sat in the class at Harrisville and there was first through sixth grade all in the same room, all of us on a different row and about three teachers teaching. When I got to Pingree they were so much advanced to what Harrisville was, so I just decided I’d better get to work and try to learn, because I was writing everything backwards and having a terrible time. The music teacher was trying to teach the students in the third grade to sing duets, harmony, and alto harmony. We all had high voices then, including the boys. I had never seen music before but I could follow the alto part and sing it, but no one else could. The Teacher was very impressed, she pulled me out of half my classes that I didn’t need to miss to come and sing in her class, so that’s how I got started in music. She told my parents I should start on an instrument, so that’s how I got on the clarinet. Then when I got to junior high. Delmore Dixon was the music teacher, and he was one 5 of the best I think in junior high. He ended up teaching at Weber College later on, he was my teacher at Weber College after the World War II. CT: Where did you go to junior high? DV: I went to Lewis Jr. where I ended up heading for the White City. Art Webb, a friend of mine, started a dance band and I think we were in the eighth or ninth grade. The school had one string bass. I was playing clarinet my first year at Lewis. Delmore couldn’t find anybody to play bass the next year, so he asked me. I didn’t want to play that big bulky thing and said no. He finally got me to play it by telling my parents, he gave them a lecture and they gave me a lecture and I got on the old bus and took the bass fiddle home. At that time we lived on 27th Street between Lincoln and Wall and that’s when I started learning the bass. Anyway, we started this little band, well we had the old Jack Mason arrangements that you could buy for $3, and they were written for twelve piece bands and had all the old standards so we started rehearsing lunch hours in the music room. Finally we got to where we thought we were doing pretty well, and we started playing at the USO’s and playing for nothing. Sometimes we’d finish a job and we’d make a dollar a piece or three dollars apiece. We got better and started going to the White City to hear that band because they had good musicians in that band. George Turnquist was the band leader, and it was the band that I ended up playing in. We all went up there after rehearsal, about twelve of us and we’d listen to that band. One of the guys, Glenn Eklund, my wife’s late husband, played trumpet in our band and he said to George, “We’d like to sit in.” So, George Turnquist said, “Can you guys play?” “Well, we got a 6 little band and were playing some of the same arrangements you guys are, and we’d like to try.” So George says, “Well do you want Sammy Morrison to take the solos on trumpet or whatever?” Don Green said, “No, I can play the solos.” He could improvise like he was born with it, so we all sit in and eventually we all ended up in that band, they were so impressed. We did a good job. So that was how I got started in the White City. I used to have a picture of that ballroom but I think that I gave it to my son. It was a huge ballroom, beautiful. CT: I’ve seen pictures of it before, inside, it’s amazing. DV: Well they had an outside ballroom which was very nice too. There were gardens outside and walkways and a big outside dance floor. CT: What kind of dances were they, were they big formal dances? DV: Well they had everything, they had regular dances Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The place was packed and that was during the war, a lot military came in and a lot of young girls danced with the military. CT: What kind of music? DV: We played the old standard old arrangements, Glenn Miller stuff and Duke Ellington and Tommy Dorsey, the big bands of the 1940s. CT: All that stuff that is on those war years CDs. DV: Yes. CT: All that good swing stuff. DV: So we went from there into the service, one at a time. When we came back George still had an opening for us if we wanted it, but it only lasted about a year 7 after the war and then that music wasn’t doing it. You know who owned White City, don’t ya? CT: No. DV: Lou Peery, Harm Peery’s brother and he also owned the Egyptian Theater. However, I was reading something the other day that said Bob King’s son said that his Dad Harm Peery, I mean his Grandpa Harm Peery owned it, but they’re brothers so I don’t know how that came to be. CT: Maybe it was in the family or something, I just assumed the whole family owned it somehow. DV: Harm Peery, boy, what a Mayor. They had the park there where the city and county building is, that little old city and county building we had was just run down and the little police station that had a corner there and then we had a library next to that which was a downstairs library like a basement home. CT: That was the old Carnegie Library right? DV: Harm Peery had the celebrations down town and boy they were in that same park, down on 25th and Washington. CT: What kind of celebrations? DV: Well, 24th of July, he was a big star then. He wore his big cowboy outfits and was on his horse and he had a big parade and he ended up pretty famous, ended up having a celebration that out did Salt Lake City. CT: Did you ever meet Harm? DV: Yes, I played in his club. CT: Oh, the Mill? 8 DV: Yes, that was a wild place too. CT: I imagine it was, wild in what way? What was going on? DV: Well, there was a lot of fights and too much drinking and so forth. Lot of military there and things got out of hand when there was a lot of drinking. That club ended up empty after the war, well he had it open for a while then he got rid of it when, I guess a bunch of people from Hill, a men’s club from Hill Air Force Base leased that building. But to go back to the White City, that’s what I can tell you about that. Then right below the White City was the Ogden Theater right next door. I’ll tell you a little bit about the Ogden Theater. A friend of mine, Doug Hooper, was our school photographer at Ogden High and then when he was a senior in high school, he was a year ahead of me, and he ended up being a photographer for Standard Examiner, part time basis. CT: What was his name? DV: Doug Hooper and he played in our band, in fact he ended up owning our band. He was the first one to go into the White City, as a trombone player. He called me one day and said, “You can’t believe what I saw. I was assigned to go to the Ogden Theater to take pictures of the ceiling,” they had all kinds of things in that theater. They had catwalks, they had dressing rooms they had all that stuff up there. There was no balcony in that theater, so he took pictures of all that and I couldn’t believe it. I was very interested in that and the old Ogden Theater, and I guess back in those days they had shows there. CT: Vaudeville. 9 DV: Vaudeville and they had pit bands and the Orpheum Theater was doing that at the same time. But I was surprised there was all that up in the ceiling. This photographer, the guy who during the war was working for the Standard, and he got a call one night and there was a train wreck, a train wreck out there on the Lucian Cutoff. You remember that one? CT: Absolutely. DV: Well he was right there with the first crew trying to save those people, see if there was any one still alive. He went out there and took pictures of it, boy the pictures would make you sick. You know what happened, why the wreck was there, the old stream engine loaded with cargo broke down. CT: The second train ran right into the back end of it. DV: Yes, you see he, the engineer, built big bon fires way back down the tracks because, I don’t know why he couldn’t communicate, but there was some reason why they couldn’t communicate, and so the word never got sent. I guess that train was going 60 miles an hour, a passenger train, and drove right into it. The train was mainly filled with military and men and women and the concussion pushed the brains right out the top of some of their heads. It was something else. I got to see all those pictures, he showed me, and they were never seen by the public. CT: I would hope not. I wonder what Doug ever did with all those pictures he shot. DV: Well, I don’t know, the Standard Examiner kept them I guess, they must have them on record somewhere. 10 CT: Yeah, their files are pretty hit and miss. I never looked in that particular year down in the basement. We’re trying to get those donated to Weber State so they can be conserved and preserved. It will be very interesting to see what’s in that mess when they finally get them down there and sorted out. DV: Well, I’ve got things out of sequence a little bit but, because Doug Hooper was the photographer and he was also a musician. CT: Now the Ogden Theater, White City was between 24th and 25th right? DV: No, White City was right up 25th Street, right on 25th. Now the outside ballroom and all the gardens and that went clear through to 24th. CT: So where was the Ogden Theater relative to that? DV: See, the front of the White City faced south on 25th Street and the next building down the hill facing south was the Ogden Theater. Then there was Shirley’s Ice Cream Shop below there, but all those things changed a lot overtime. Below that was Bockas Sweets Shop, I played in the band with his son, Bill Bockas, you’ve heard of him I guess? CT: I’ve heard the name. DV: He was a piano player and I worked with his older brother, Jack Bockas. The father had a candy shop there at 25th and Washington. He eventually moved it up 27th Street I guess, close to Quincy or one of those streets up there on the south side of the street, and then he just finally closed it all up as the years went on. Then, well I wrote some things down. You walk down across the street going west across Washington was the Broom Hotel, then it was Ross and Jacks, then the Senate Café, I ate there a lot. Then there’s one you might not come to like, a 11 Chinese restaurant, it was called the Senate Café. The only Chinese Restaurant in Ogden at that time, boy they put out good food, but everybody went there and they seldom bought Chinese food, they put out American food also, but their Chinese food was still good. It looked like a den of iniquity inside though, it was kind of old and smelly, but oh my folks used to take me there on a Sunday, it was the only time we could afford to eat out, and we could buy a four course meal there for 65 cents apiece. CT: You said it looked like a den of iniquity, what do you mean? DV: Well, no modern furniture or anything else and the walls were just plain. Now the Chinese people they decorate them up and have some Chinese music going and whatever, but it was clean, I can say that. CT: The food was obviously good? DV: The food was good. But this one old Chinese guy that waited the tables there, he had pock marks all over his face, it looked just terrible. I don’t know whether he had small pox at one time or what. CT: You almost wonder, what did he really have? DV: Yes, but he was always dressed clean, but a lot of people didn’t go there because of things like that. But I never did want to try their Chinese food, because I was just a kid, and my folks would order American food. Boy they had salads and big desserts and I’d go out of there just about half sick from eating so much you know. But I looked forward to going there, about maybe once a month my folks could afford to go there on a Sunday and eat, and that’s the only day my dad had off. 12 CT: That was back when people went out to eat because it was a special thing to do, you didn’t do it all the time like people do now. DV: Well, and my dad left Wall Avenue and bought this little farm in Harrisville, it was the depression and he thought maybe he could grow some of our own food. When dad grew up, he had to go out and hunt for food, his dad got injured, got a pitch fork stuck in his head. It was on a Sunday after he got out of church, he’d go out and work on the farms in Hooper. They were unloading from the barn loft onto the wagon, unloading hay, and one guy’s pitch fork got away from him, my grandpa was down on the wagon straightening the hay and that pitch fork came down and went right in his head. They didn’t know what to do so they did pull the pitchfork out and got him in a horse and buggy wagon and took him to the old hospital. Well, he kind of survived, but he started having seizures and was sent to Provo for the rest of his life. Including my dad there’s fifteen of them in that family. He had eleven sisters and three brothers, and a lot of them didn’t make it through very many years. He had about six or seven sisters here in Ogden, that I knew, but it was a depression, so he gets over there to Harrisville and starts putting his corn in and Alf alpha so he could feed his cow. We had a little Jersey milk cow, she had calves, and then he had pigs and he had Capon rooster, chickens that he raised and sold, and then he had rabbits so there was plenty of meat for us. Then he made a little money on the Capon roosters and sold eggs, but then that got to be too much for him eventually, so he sold that place and we moved on 154 27th 13 Street down by the railroad station. I’m going to get to that one too before we forget. CT: We’ve got all day Dutch. DV: Ok, so anyway, back to the 25th Street. I got out of the service, started playing the White City again and started Weber College. There was a lot of us vets. Some things happened there on 25th Street with the Weber College students, we had some big snake dances and we went in all the old bars and downstairs clubs. The police got there and watched it pretty close, but they let us go. I think that’s when I was a freshman. CT: You were too young to be going in bars theoretically. DV: Yes, but we got to see in side of them. I was a freshman, so I was old enough to, no I wasn’t old enough I was only nineteen. But that was kind of fun, and then all of a sudden we heard about this Joe McQueen playing down at the Beehive, so we started going down there and listening and we’re all interested because they could all improvise. Joe and those guys got down there in 1945 and we started getting down there in 1946, and we wanted to learn how to improvise like those black boys could do. Joe was pretty strict, he would let you play once and either he approved of you or he didn’t. But a lot of us learned a lot from his group. CT: You learned it fast huh? DV: Yes. CT: So the Beehive was on the corner of… DV: It was on Lincoln. CT: It was on Lincoln and 25th right? 14 DV: Right. CT: That was before it became Poncho’s and is now a pizza joint right? DV: Probably, yes, it was on the Northeast corner right across from the Rose Rooms. I knew Rosie real well. After school I was working at Dunkley’s Music in the record department, and the prostitutes from Rosie’s came down there and spent a lot of money on records. CT: Oh Yes? Now where was Dunkley located? DV: It was right there next to the Orpheum Theater on Washington Boulevard. CT: Ok, now you say you knew Rose, tell me about her. DV: Well, she drove a big pink Cadillac and she knew I was working part time at Boyles and going to school and working at Dunkley’s. She said to me, “I’m going to buy a refrigerator, to put up stairs where I work. I’m requesting that you deliver it.” You know, I was nineteen by now, I was in pretty good shape in those days. She ordered this big refrigerator, and my helper and I delivered it. “Now I need you to do me another favor,” she said, “I don’t know how much you want, but you tell me. I want you to take the old one down, take it up 25th Street on the south side, and upstairs in that building there’s a black ladies house of prostitution.” They were buying Rosie’s old fridge. We charged her ten dollars apiece to deliver. That was a lot of money for us. I’ll tell you about Rosie’s facility. The building she was in [north east corner of 25th and Lincoln] belonged to Mr. Prantil, he was my sister’s father-in-law. She married Andy Prantil, a son. Mr. Prantil had a little cigar store there. He also owned a service station and the hot springs in Willard. 15 CT: Ok, now this would have been the El Boracho next to the hotel? DV: I think so. CT: So what was it like when you went up in to the Rose Rooms, what did it look like? DV: There were rooms on each side of the main room, it had kind of a little kitchen up by the front if I remember. Pretty drapes on the windows, and nice carpet. I got to know some of those girls just selling them records, and Rosie used to come over to the Beehive sessions. She had a pink Cadillac, convertible, and then she got wound up with another guy, he may have been Spanish, Mexican, I don’t know, his name was Candy and he was from out of state. I don’t know how he got in there, but they ended up going together for quite a while. Well he had a Cadillac convertible too. That was kind of the story, but he was a drummer and he used to come over and play drums with us at the Beehive. I remember this, and I don’t know how, but Joe McQueen, when he came here in 1945, he came with this trumpet player, Reggie, was his name. I can’t remember his last name, but he was a trumpet player, and he had the band. Joe came up from Oklahoma and started the music job. They were booked at the Beehive. Joe had Ernie Moore on piano, and Ernie was gay. He had Jimmy Rainey on drums. Then they had a bass player, Mon Francie, that didn’t come with them, but he played with them later on. A lot of us guys would set in on the bass, and I was one of them. I’ve played jobs with Joe ever since. CT: Yes, as I understood it, didn’t Joe’s group just run out of money or something or just got stranded here? DV: They got stranded here, so Joe got a job at the railroad as a porter. 16 CT: Joe did? DV: Yes for a short time. CT: And that’s when you lived on 27th Street? DV: No, I lived with my parents then. The Porters and Waiters started, I can’t remember what year it was, but it wasn’t there when I first got out of the service. It was a few years later. It was an all-black place and Annabelle Weekly managed it. CT: Yes, I know, she just died a couple of years ago. DV: She got in a car wreck with Joe. She had this big Japanese guy that worked in the Porters and Waiters with her, and I swear he weighed 300 pounds. Big for a Japanese, and he was about six foot tall, and I don’t know what his purpose was there, but if anything got out of control he was the bouncer. CT: He was the bouncer basically? DV: Basically. CT: Now how did you end up playing there, it was an all-black place? DV: Joe would bring the musicians in to play, they were the only whites that could get in. Annabelle Weekly and Joe controlled that. CT: That’s what Ron said too. He said because he was a musician, that kind of put you down the social latter in the white community. He was perfectly acceptable in the black community because he was a musician. So he mentioned that happened down in Salt Lake as well. DV: Yes, and there was a lot of guys, whites that played the Porters and Waiters. It was Johnny Neil and Ben Garr and I got a whole bunch of their names. Glenn 17 Eckland played down there and that was my wife’s late husband, a trumpet player. Fred Mills, Dean McKey, Ray Cox, Art Webb, Don Green, Val Green. Then there was Frank Lawrence and there was Bill Shepard who played bass sometimes with Joe. He played electric bass. These were some of the whites that got in there to play. CT: And this would have been after the war? DV: Yeah, it was after the war. CT: So what was the typical evening like? You go down there and just play and people would dance, or what would they do? DV: Yes, they’d dance and I think they had a little restaurant there, a food concession thing. There would be a lot of black musicians come in. I remember one time there was Count Baise. Some of the black name bands would be playing in Salt Lake, they would hear about the Porters and Waiters in Ogden, and they would come there and play. CT: So did you get to sit in with Count Baise? DV: No. The one they called little Jazz, a trumpet player, very famous, I can’t think of his name now, he came down there and played and that’s what they ended up calling my wife’s late husband [Little Jazz]. I think Joe hung that name on him. CT: I got all the time in the world. DV: Then come see this right here. [Walked away from the recorder and looked at pictures of the White City and Beehive]. I am currently playing with Clayton Furen, do you know Clayton? CT: The name sounds familiar. 18 DV: He was a music teacher here in Ogden. CT: Yes, I knew him. DV: He also plays in the Junction City Big Band with me. Then he had the trio, Ron, took his place because he is in a nursing home now. CT: Oh is he, oh what a shame. DV: He’s on his last pegs I’m afraid. He’s three years younger than me, osteoporosis got to him. CT: People age differently I’ve noticed. An 80 year old lady the other day, I thought she could run around the block and probably beat me doing it. Some people age differently. DV: I think the only thing that has kept me going is I walk two miles every day. CT: Good for you. DV: We’ve have a couple of exercise machines and the music I think helps me survive. CT: So where did you live, on 37th and Belmar you said? DV: Yes, 3754 Fowler right, on the corner or Belmar and Fowler. The end of my lot hit Belmar. CT: On the Northeast corner? DV: Well, yes, I’d say northeast. CT: So you were on the east side of the street? DV: Yes, Fowler went along there and curved onto Belmar. Oh, let me tell you about the Lyceum Theater, it was a pretty big theater, but it was kind of in a bad district. It was a low price theater. I used to go there for a dime. 19 CT: Now, you can answer a question that I had, was the Lyceum only for blacks? DV: No. CT: White and blacks? DV: Yes, it was mostly whites that went there but it was in kind of a bad district. You know where it was, right below the bus station that was on 25th and Grant. CT: Right, just west of the bus station. DV: Then right next to that was the old Union Building, my dad used to go to meetings there because he was truck driver and he belonged to the union. A guy, whose father was in charge of all that, his daughter bought my house on Fowler. When we first got married we bought a condo in Chimney Hill in South Ogden, I don’t know if you know where that is. CT: I don’t know where that is, no. DV: Do you know where Manor Care Nursing Home is? Well its right there. CT: Yes. DV: Thought I should tell you, Annabelle Weekly started a booking agency and was booking jobs for us musicians and she’d take a commission. I don’t know how she did it, but she got us jobs all over the place, Mallad, Salt Lake, etc. Like I told you once before we had a little trouble collecting from her. CT: Collecting from her or from the jobs? DV: Well, she got the money from the jobs and then we had to get it from her, our share. CT: Was she trying to cheat ya, or she just didn’t have it, or what was going on? 20 DV: Well, I don’t know. You know she was always very good to us, she was a pretty lady. CT: Yes, I’ve seen pictures of her, she was a lovely lady. DV: Yes, and did you know that she ended up joining the LDS Church? CT: I think I knew that. DV: She worked in the church offices down in Salt Lake. CT: Right, yes, she got a degree and became some kind of social worker. DV: Yes, what was that degree, I forgot. Last time I was up at the Egyptian Theater celebrating Joe McQueen Day, I played a few tunes with Joe. Lars Jurgeson was also playing. I guess she was in the audience and so when I got through I was backstage putting the cover on my base and boy she come up and give me a big hug and kiss. She didn’t do that to Lars though. I went down to see Joe when he had his bladder removed and replaced because of cancer. He was in a Salt Lake hospital and who was there taking care of him? Annabell. They used to be together a lot. CT: Yes, I know. DV: I guess his wife is very understanding, she never got jealous of anything he did with her. CT: I guess they were just good friends. DV: I think so, that’s the way I like to look at it. CT: That broke my heart when she was killed in that wreck, seemed like it had to be hard on Joe too. DV: Well I called Joe when I read it in the paper, and Joe was just about in tears. 21 CT: Oh yes, I think I talked with him at that time too and it broke my heart. DV: I know he said, “I sure appreciate you calling Dutch, I needed it.” Yes, he’s a rough old guy, he used bad language sometimes. Clayton Furen, a good Mormon, played with Joe for quite a few years. Clay quite the Junction City big band to go with Joe on a steady job and they could play just two pieces. Clay had an electric piano that he could program to play bass notes, it would read the chords and play the bass notes, it made them sound like three pieces. They played at a restaurant on Harrison Boulevard and at the winery. CT: Oh, little wine cellar. Yeah, he’s there every month. DV: Yes, and they get good money, I think they made a hundred and twenty bucks a piece playing down there because they could divide the money. They didn’t have to have a bass player or a horn player. CT: Yes, I’ve seen them play down there several times. DV: Clayton was easy for me to play with because I improvise pretty well with Clay, he didn’t need music. He could play anything and of course he always had music there, because if they requested something that he hadn’t played for a while, why he could find it in the book. He had about every tune that was ever written in his books. I think Ronny’s got that same thing now, but I’ve got to show you the book that Ron and I put together. I’ll show it to you real quick. It’s right here. [Dutch leaves and comes back]. Oh yes, and here is a list of all the tunes. The ones I marked are the ones we’re going to play at a job this month. CT: Oh yes? 22 DV: I take the sheet music and write some bass parts. Our theme song is Snow Fall Claude Thornhills theme song, have you ever heard of him< CT: What’s his name? DV: Claude Thornhill. CT: No, never heard that name. DV: He was a New York Band, big band. I was going to show you some of this stuff if I can get them out here. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Couple of little things I want to tell you about the railroad. When I moved down there it was what, 1931, 1932, 1933, I was just a kid in grade school. I went to Pingree School, which was a tough school. I lived right on 27th in the middle of the block and I could see right through to the St. Joseph’s Catholic School. I was in a Catholic neighborhood so I really got it because I was a Mormon living among them. Well as soon as you got over by the Pingree School, the families were mainly Dutch people. It was all Dutch people. They all settled there in a place called Dutch Hollow in the old days. My grandparents came over, the church sponsored them. CT: Now where would that have been? 27th and where? DV: It was right on Lincoln and 30th. CT: So that whole area was settled by Dutch people originally? DV: Well, no the area south and west of there. I went to school with the Bells and Everatsons, Van Dykes, Van Burrens and a lot of Vans. Norman Morgan was the only black boy we had in there. Then we had Carrie Ann McKnight, she tried to be beat up all the Dutch boys, she was tougher than shoe leather. Black as the 23 ace of spades, mean, and not very bright. I remember her, she ended up going through Ogden High with me. CT: Any idea where she is now? DV: Norman Morgan, he died after being a mail carrier. He was in the Navy when I was in the Navy, and when we were looking for a place to decommission our ship after the war, we went through the Panama Canal, to decommission on the East Coast. We thought it would be Norfolk, Virginia so we were in port there and I guess there was business going on, trying to decide what to do with us. I got on a bus this night coming back from downtown Norfolk. Sitting in front of me was a black sailor. He was tall and skinny. I thought the guy looked familiar. So I kind of got up and looked around at him. I tapped him on the shoulder and I said, “Are you Norman Morgan?” Of course he didn’t know the name Dutch when we grew up in school, they called me Glen. “Oh Glen.” We were on the same base because we were all sleeping ashore instead of on the ship. CT: Where had he been? DV: Well, he was a baker there at the Naval Base. We ended up taking my ship up to Boston and decommissioning it in Boston. I spent two months there working on decommissioning the ship. They had civilians there doing the main work. The Navy ended up using that ship in the Korean War as a helicopter ship. CT: What ship was it? DV: The USS Barnes CVE, escort carrier that Kaiser converted from a World War One oiler. Our ship had a round hanger deck that helped us defeat other basketball teams. 24 CT: Because it had a round deck? DV: Yes, so the water could drain out. We’d get big weaves that would go right in the hangar deck. Yes, it was an old ship, the oldest in the Navy at that time. CT: Boy we got our money’s worth out of that one didn’t we, all the way back from World War One. DV: Yes, but I’ll tell you something interesting. My son went into the Navy during Vietnam. Back when I was in Norfolk, Virginia waiting to see what was going to happen to us, I saw this big beautiful aircraft carrier starting going out on its maiden voyage. It was the Franklin D. Roosevelt, a CV Carrier. It was huge and fast, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have been on a ship like that.” Well, my son went into the Navy during Vietnam and they put him on the Roosevelt. He told me that when he was in there that was on the carrier, that was the oldest ship in the Navy. When I was in the Navy it was the newest. CT: Franklin D. Roosevelt? DV: Yes. CT: Yes, It’s been decommissioned now. DV: Oh yes, they did, I remember they had a big article in the Sunday paper here that showed them scrapping it, taking it all apart. CT: So your son was in the Navy too? DV: Yes, were you? CT: No, no I was one of those people, I had a high draft number and never got called. DV: For heck sakes. 25 CT: Yes, I was in college during the Vietnam War. I would have been eligible under the draft that they started, and the year that they pulled my number I got 200 and they just never got that high. So I missed the military. DV: Oh boy. Okay, I’ll go back to the Railroad story. We lived on 27th. CT: Just above Wall. DV: Yes, just above Wall. CT: What was the address again? DV: 154 27th Street, right in the middle of the block. CT: Half a block above Wall. DV: And we moved there from Harrisville, we had a farm there and I was very healthy there. We moved into the city by the railroad and then I became very unhealthy. I had measles and chicken pox, mumps, I had everything, whooping cough. If you looked at the snow in the winter, it was black with soot. There were no diesel engines yet, they were all steam engines, coal. After it would snow, big beautiful white snow, two days later it would all be covered with soot, right in that neighborhood. It was pretty dirty, but a lot of fun things happened down there, they’d bring in all these circus animals and unload them at the Union Depot. They were for a circus in Ogden somewhere. We used to go there and get jobs, 50 cents a day for watering the animals. We’d go watch them parade out of there, and see them march to the tents where they were going to perform. CT: Where did they set up the tents? DV: Well, you know where the old ball field was west of Wall? That area there was one of the areas. I can’t remember where else. My mother, before she married 26 my dad, she worked at the old railroad laundry. You know the old laundry buildings that still stands empty next to the railroad station? CT: Yes, they’re still there. DV: Well, three of my dad’s sisters worked there in the laundry. Now that’s way before I was born. But my dad met my mother because she came home with his sisters, they lived on west 33rd, by the old sand hills. Did you ever hear about where the sand hills used to be way out west? CT: Way out west on 1900 west? DV: Well, just about that far. CT: Yes, ok, I know where that is. DV: But, is it 30th that goes out and becomes Hinckley Drive? CT: Midland Drive curves around out that way. DV: Yes, I think it’s about where Hinckley Drive goes west; but there was a big sand hill there. My grandpa learned a trade, to build homes in the old country, and he built a lot of homes around Ogden. Most of them were out south west of Ogden. CT: Ah, how about the old Weber Club. DV: Weber Club, yes, I belonged to that Weber Club once. CT: I used to go there occasionally back when it was a club downstairs. DV: But, I remember, down to the railroad again, I remember when the first diesel came in there. Boy that was something. Well, my neighbor boy and his friends were sitting up on the high fence there down by the railroad yards waiting to see that thing. More came and the guy riding in the front engine hit the horn and we had never heard a horn that loud. My neighbor, Fred Lausarika, fell off the fence 27 backwards and broke his arm. From then on his arm, it never did grow like it should. Now, what else do you want to ask me? CT: Well, did you go down to the Union Station much while you were growing up? DV: Yes, did you know Ace Lockwood? CT: Ah, the name rings a bell yes. DV: He put a lot of money in that down there. That was his baby. CT: What, Union Station? DV: Union Station, yes. CT: In what way, what do you mean? DV: Well he was a model train railroader. He had a basement full of trains. He inherited a lot of money from his mother. He wasn’t a musician but he hung around with us and had all the best records he could buy and he went to Ogden High with us. He’s a year older than me, and here just a few years ago, he moved near my house. He was cutting his lawn in the back yard and bam, they found him there, the lawn mower still running and he’d had a heart attack. He was quite a person, a very good-looking guy. He liked automobiles also, and always had nice cars. He restored old cars. CT: Yes, I know him by his name. DV: They should know him. For years he put a lot of money in Union Station and helped them do a lot of things. He hung around there and worked, helping to take people through the exhibits and the classic cars. He was in aircraft maintenance at Hill Field and I think he was a GS 12. CT: Well, when you were a kid, did you go to Union Station much? 28 DV: Well, in fact I shipped out from there and come back clear from Boston to that railroad station. CT: That must have been an experience riding across the country on a train back then cause you were probably just sitting in a coach car the whole time? DV: The whole time, we didn’t have any sleeping quarters and we had to go into another car to find the restroom. CT: So you got real good at sleeping in your seat, DV: Back in time when our ship came in to San Diego, they let a few of us have a cross country leave. The ship was going through the Panama and going up to Norfolk, Virginia, to pick up a bunch of new Navy recruits that had just got out of boot camp at Norfolk. We got on a bus and came to Ogden. I think we had about seven days here. My friend came with me, he lived in Idaho, so he got off in Ogden and took transportation to his home in Idaho. Then he come back to Ogden and we took buses all the way across the country to Washington D.C. Boy we went on some old fashioned buses after we left here. We were on a pretty good bus out of here clear into Lincoln, Nebraska, and then we got on some puddle hoppers. That was one long ride. CT: That would have been because they didn’t have interstates back then. DV: They’d make stops where you could go get you a soda or some ice-cream or a sandwich or something, some of those old buses with big old engine out front, you know. CT: They didn’t have a restroom on the bus either did they? DV: No, they didn’t have, and then it was quite a while until the stops. 29 CT: Now, you mentioned a couple of times, living over on 27th, there was like one or two black people in the neighborhood. Talk to me about black people in town. Cause the south side of 25th Street was supposed to be where the blacks went, am I correct? DV: Yes. Well, it was partially black in that neighborhood when we moved there, but I don’t think there was more than three or four families. They were all pretty high classed, they were all porters, the husbands were porters working on the railroad, and they didn’t have too much to do with us because I guess we didn’t have anything to do with them in those days. I remember coming back from the river with a big carp I’d caught, or sucker and this old boy come out and offered me fifty cents for that fish. He said, “Anytime you got any of those, you let me know.” But we had a man move in, on Lincoln and, 27th right there on, I guess you’d call it the northwest corner, the Slocomb home, Slocomb family. That home is still there, still full of Slocomb’s. Just a couple doors from them was where the Richey’s lived, Eddie Richy, they had Richey’s Drive-in out in Riverdale, years ago. Eddie Richy and I used to play together. Then Reagan’s Lumber Yard was next to that. They had a big fire, burnt the whole lumber yard up. We were out in our back yard with hoses trying to water it down, and the Ellis Planning Mill burnt up too. CT: Did it really? DV: Yes, they had a pile of sawdust there big as a hay stack and boy that really got going. 30 CT: I was not aware that place had ever burned up, I just thought the Ellis Planting Mill had always been there. DV: Well, it didn’t burn up his building, but it burned out the wood building out in back where all the saw dust and timber was. We did have a barber there on Binford, just around the corner, where you would enter from Wall Avenue. I used to get my hair cut once in a while. He was black, very light completion, grey haired guy, nice fella, and a clean shop. It took me a while to get used to it. I never saw my first black till my mother brought me into the Kiesel, by the Standard building. There was a barbershop and there was a black man shining shoes. I was really surprised, and then after that I ended up seeing them in the movies. There weren’t too many blacks around here then and very few Mexican’s. CT: That has sure changed, Ogden is like thirty percent Hispanic now. DV: Yes, I know and I guess nationwide they outnumber the blacks now. They are a third of the population now. CT: Well, twenty or something like that. DV: Yes, the blacks are about twenty I think. CT: No, I think blacks are ten. DV: Maybe it’s ten or twenty. So how old are you? CT: I’m 64. DV: Oh, ok, you’re young enough to be my son. My son, I’ve got a son, 61. I was married six years before I had any children. We moved to Phoenix, it was because of what was happening with the White City. I started playing there after I got out of the service and it wasn’t doing much business so they changed bands 31 and they tried this and that and finally old Lou Peery heard this one band come through, The Glen Henry Band. I don’t know how I remembered that, Ed Fir was in the military band sponsored by Hill Air Force Base during World War Two, it was a bunch of great musicians in that band, you can’t believe it. We would go hear a name band at the White City and then go over to the USO to hear the military band that was so good. Well Ed Fir ended up being the leader of that band before the war was over and so he went with this Glen Henry Band. Now he was a very talented musician, a trumpet player, and he wrote arrangements, big band arrangements that were just the best. But anyway, me and Dough Hooper took arranging lessons from him to learn a little bit about harmony and I did get to do a couple arrangements that we played at the White City. When the war was over, since I had been his student, I thought Ed and I were pretty close friends. But when he come through with the Glen Henry Band, Lou Peery wanted him to stay there and put a band in the White City. Well, he knew all the military musicians, he didn’t know any civilian musicians here. Well, anyway, he had to put a band together, so he told Lou Peery, “I’ll try, let me see what I can do.” He went to Shorty Ross, who was secretary of the union and Shorty says, “Well I’ll tell you who you’d better go see, Dutch Van Leeuwen, he knows all those musicians personally and he knows which ones are good enough to play your arrangements.” So he came to me, and I pulled out the whole list for him and I got him Grant Russel on lead alto, Val Green on tenor sax, Prentis Agee and Glen Eckland on trumpets and Gene Everet on Piano. Then I got Ed 32 Gordon on drums, I was going to play bass add I got AC Cook, Mac Cook and Harold Heasuer on Trombones. Well, he was real happy, he had a rehearsal and those guys really cut it. He was very pleased about it. I was at the rehearsal, and Ed said, “Ok, I’ll get my negotiations done and see if he wants my band and how much money I can get” So he went to see Lou Peery and got all the arrangements made and we decided to have another rehearsal before the first job. All the guys were having fun, it was a good band, good arrangements. I was at the rehearsal and we played and then we took a break and I was talking with the guys, and here comes Daryl Tillitson with his bass. I knew him because he was a bass player and we both had five string basses we bought when we got out of the service. I went up to Ed Fir and asked, “Is he just going to try out or what.” He said, “Well, I got to tell ya Dutch, I’m hiring him.” I ask, “Why?” Daryl got out of the service with Prentice Agee, who was another fine arranger and trumpet player, and Ed Cordon, the drummer. He said, “They told me that I need those guys in the band they’re so good and Prentice Agee can play all the lead trumpet and I have to have them and they said they won’t play unless I hire Daryl.” So I said, “Well thanks a lot.” It upset me so bad I just picked up and moved out of Ogden. Ended up moving to Phoenix, but I ended up playing with some fine musicians in Phoenix, so I learned a lot there. CT: When did you come back to Ogden? DV: Well, the thing that made me come back to Ogden was my wife, she was pregnant and I had just finished my junior year at Arizona State. 33 CT: This was after the war? DV: Yes, this was 1948 when I moved to Phoenix. So I was going to try to go to college the next year, but I would have to pay for it on my own. I wasn’t yet and Arizona resident, and I was going to have to go my senior year and pay out of state tuition. I’d run out of GI Bill, because it was so expensive there. They used up my GI Bill at Arizona State and I was still in the Navy Reserves and Korea broke out. So, that’s why I thought I’d better get her back where her parents were. See I married a Lorna Lindquist, her dad was Carl Lindquist, and he was the president of the company and the biggest stockholder. He was a young man in his 50s when we got married. We got married in December and he died in March, 53 years old. CT: Yes, maybe, if you had to choose between being a musician or a mortician, I think I’d rather be a musician, but that’s just me. DV: Well, I would too for sure. I think the music is what’s kept me going. My wife’s sister, Carlene, is still alive, she’s 94. She sits at the same table in the nursing home with Clayton Fureu. I went and visited them the other day and wheeled Clayton into the dining room and there’s my sister-in-law. CT: So where did you work at when you came back and got out of the military? DV: When I came back, my brother-in-law had a supervisory job in the auto repairs shop at the Navy base in Clearfield. They also had a big preservation program going on, pickling all the old Navy materials, mostly engines, diesel engines. They had big steam vats full of Cosmoline to prevent rust. My brother-in-law got me on there. Then they opened up a hydrographic chart correction. It was issued 34 to all the Navy ships, things that change in the ocean, hydrographic office it was called. I was called a hydrographic cartographic compilation aide, what a title. Apply for a loan and give them that name, they’d turn you down. CT: Oh they would. DV: But anyway, I finally found out that when I went to Arizona State, I majored in Aeronautics and so I had a FAA license to teach navigation, and they had an opening in the flight operations at Hill and it was a promotion over where I was. I went over there and got that job, but it was shift work. I had eight different shifts, never worked the same shift every day. I was getting run down, and trying to play dance jobs, I’d have to trade shifts with guys. I finally got into logistics there and I was an item manager. I went up from there and ended up doing real well there, I ended up as a GS 13, chief of logistics training. I got a good retirement out of it, I got a lot of benefits with the government. I hope they hold up with what’s happening now. CT: I hope so to, you just don’t know. DV: The governments going broke. Well, is there anything else you wanted to ask me? CT: I’m out of intelligent sounding questions. I’m sure we’ll both think of something we should have said later on, but I do thank you most sincerely. DV: Well I thank you too.