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Sunday, July 21, 2002

By Nate Guidry, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

This is the first of an occasional series profiling long-time performers and aficionados to mine their memories and knowledge of a lifetime in music.

A few days past his 90th birthday, William Charles Dobie reacquaints himself with a Pete Fountain vinyl purchased during the Eisenhower administration.

	William Dobie is in the process of cataloging the thousands of jazz records he has collected, starting in the mid-1920s. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette photos)

He wipes the record slowly, meticulously, then spins it on a moody old Panasonic turntable that has aged gracefully but has become increasingly cantankerous.

Dobie insists it's a minor cueing problem, something easily correctable, if only he could remember when and where he bought it.

Settling his frail body in a red cloth-covered antique chair in his eighth-floor penthouse apartment in Wilkins, he adjusts his glasses, then closes his eyes as he listens to those musical overtones and quietly starts to shuffle his feet to the rhythms.

Dobie is moved by Fountain's drive and melodic pacing, or the clarinetist's ability to improvise. And he likes the way it transports him back to a time when ragtime, Dixieland and big band music had a grasp on American culture.

"That's the beauty of jazz," he says, adjusting the string tie he wears around his neck daily. "You can stray away from an artist for years, and when you come back to them, it's like discovering someone new. Can that be said of any other music?"

Dobie isn't a musician. Never played a note on any instrument. His love of jazz comes from a vast collection -- and a near-religious examination -- of the music's often overlooked periods. He also has lived through every innovation in the music and has met some of jazz's greatest practitioners.

A few days before the death of Mary Lou Williams in May 1981, Dobie spoke with the pianist/composer on the phone. They talked about religion and held a protracted discussion about how jazz had evolved into a rebellious art form.

He became close friends with trumpeter Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, who played trumpet for everyone from Chick Webb to Benny Goodman.

He was present at pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines' 75th birthday party held at the Overseas Press Club in Manhattan. An old photograph of Eubie Blake and Hines taken during the party hangs from a wall as a vivid reminder.

	Audio Samples The following audio samples are representative of the type of music collected by William Dobie: Louis Armstrong and King Oliver perform "Dipper Mouth Blues" on the album "Louis Armstrong and King Oliver." (464K MP3) Kid Ory sings "Li'l Liza Jane" from the compilation disc "Kid Ory: Complete Verve Sessions." (470K MP3) Woody Herman and his Orchestra perform "Apple Honey" on the compilation disc "Blowin' Up A Storm." (468K MP3) From the same disc, Woody Herman and his Orchestra perform "Caldonia." (468K MP3) King Oliver performs the "Chimes Blues" on the compilation disc "The Jazz Trumpet, Vol. 1." by Prestige Records. (464K MP3) Bix Beiderbecke performs the "Riverboat Shuffle" on "The Jazz Trumpet, Vol. 1." by Prestige Records. (468K MP3) Wingy Manone performs the "Tar Paper Stomp" on "The Jazz Trumpet, Vol. 1." by Prestige Records. (There is some sound distortion from the original recording) (464K MP3) Download MP3 players at: Real Player Windows Media Player WinAMP

Since the 1930s, he's been collecting jazz records. Save for a 1960s recording by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, about the only thing current in his collection are his CDs, and even they are reflective of the earlier styles of jazz.

Dobie's records are cataloged by artists and styles. Some artists, like clarinetist Sidney Bechet, trumpeter Louis Armstrong and pianist Jelly Roll Morton, transcend time and style, so they have their own sections amid the recordings.

Dobie purchased his first jazz recording two years after the Great Depression. It was a 10-inch copy of the "Charleston" by Harlem stride pianist James P. Johnson.

"I used to like to do the Charleston when I had two good knees," he says. "If you could do the Charleston, you could get the girls. Jazz was so much of the fabric of our everyday lives. It has brought so much happiness into my life."

It was jazz that taught him to dance. He summoned the courage to kiss his first girl after listening to jazz.

Now, jazz is his only company, mostly. And when he's lonely and feeling blue, it is jazz that lifts him out of the doldrums.

Dobie doesn't know exactly how many recordings he owns, nor does he place a monetary value on them. The shelves along one wall buckle from the weight of recordings. Two cases along a center wall are filled with records and tapes. Scores more are tucked away in the basement. Some are so old and rare the covers have began to wear.

"For me, record collecting was never about how much market value they have," he says. "Jazz is part of my life. It's like going out and buying a table or a chair. You don't buy a table and say this is what I can resell it for. For me, it has always been about pursuing an art form that I enjoy."

Over the years, he has amassed several thousand recordings, from Morton's 1926-27 recording of "Birth of the Hot" to original recordings of the McKinney Cotton Pickers. The Cotton Pickers were formed in Springfield, Ohio, in 1922 by drummer William McKinney and over time featured such artists as Coleman Hawkins, Don Redman and Fats Waller.

"Let's face it," Dobie says unapologetically. "I'm a preservationist -- ragtime, Dixieland and swing -- and when you get down to brass tacks, you can't go wrong with the old-timers. I don't go for bebop or much of that modern stuff because it has too much rock 'n' roll in it, and of course rock 'n' roll isn't music. It's an insult to one's intelligence."

Rock 'n' rollers might beg to differ, but they won't get very far. If it isn't clear by now, Dobie doesn't mince words. There's jazz, and then there's razzmatazz.

Hobnobbing with legends

Dobie was born April 26, 1912, in Swissvale. In 1921, his father, Charles, who was an accountant, introduced the young William Dobie to music. They listened to music piped into their Wilkinsburg home from a homemade crystal radio set concocted out of copper wire, pine board, a crystal diode and an oatmeal box.

One weekend his mother, who was a Sunday school teacher at Wilkinsburg Presbyterian Church, took his younger sister, Wilma, and a group of students on a field trip aboard the Strekfus Riverboat St. Paul, which made daily trips up and down the Ohio River.

Initially, Wilma objected. She was older than the other students and didn't want to be forced to hang out with a group of kids. But her mother insisted.

Aboard the boat, Wilma wandered into a room where Fate Marable's band was rehearsing. She sat down, entranced by the music. Eventually, Marable walked up and asked her name.

Marable was a respected band leader whose group became known as the "floating conservatoire" because of the incredible talent he assembled, which included everyone from Louis Armstrong to Jimmy Blanton.

After exchanging greetings, Marable invited her to the bandstand to listen to the band.

Wilma eventually told her dad about the experience, and he brought her back several times. After their father died, Dobie drove his sister to the concerts.

"Fate's music was a revelation for Bill," says his sister, Wilma Dougherty, a former general assignment reporter for Newsweek magazine, from her home in Florida. "Bill never had any particular interest in music until he heard Fate's band."

Dobie went to the boat reluctantly, but over time, he and Marable became friends.

"Bill used to ask Fate about the band and how he could get all those instruments to work in unison," says Wilma. "Fate was so patient. He would sit down and explain it to us."

Fate was also delighted to know that Dobie had a car. Dobie drove him all around town, including to visit his wife and three children in the Hill District.

Pittsburgh was the last stop on the riverboat's trip, which began in New Orleans.

Marable recounted a story to Wilma about the day he went to the Home for Colored Waifs, and the nuns there asked him to take Lil Louie with him -- Louie, as in Louie Armstrong.

Armstrong had been sent to the home for firing a pistol. Marable found him standing on the levee of the Mississippi River with a few fishermen. He had his trumpet tucked under one arm and a piece of hot sweet potato pie in the other.

Marable asked Armstrong, "Are you Lil Louie?"

"Yes," Armstrong retorted.

"I'd like you to play your horn!" replied Marable.

"Where?" asked Armstrong.

"You can play here," said Marable

Marable was so impressed with what he heard that he hired Armstrong on the spot.

Music and marriage

A few years later, Dobie also got to know Homestead native Maxine Sullivan and Earl "Fatha" Hines, who grew up in Duquesne and is considered by many to be the father of the modern jazz piano.

Sullivan was singing at the Benjamin Harrison Literary Club, an after-hours spot on Liberty Avenue reputed to be owned by gangsters. The club eventually became the Southern Outing and Fishing Club.

"I can assure you there wasn't much reading or fishing licenses being handed out there," Dobie says with a chuckle. "It was strictly wine, women and entertainment. This was during the time of Prohibition and speakeasies, and people used to come in with their own bottle, and there had to be entertainment. Maxine was singing there. If I recall correctly, she started out as a waitress; then someone realized she could sing."

Sullivan's national exposure began in 1937, when she recorded "Loch Lomond" as a member of the Claude Thornhill band. She followed that with a series of folk and light-hearted novelty songs like "Cockles and Mussels" and "If I Had a Rainbow Bow."

"Maxine was a great singer and a beautiful person. She and Earl and my sister were very close. They used to come over to Wilma's house in New York for Thanksgiving dinner.

"Earl was beautiful, too, and extremely gentle with a great deal of class and high bearing. He never gave you the impression he was this great piano player. Sometimes when I was in his presence, I would forget how great he was."

In 1942, Dobie was drafted into the Army, and served in New Guinea, the Philippines and Japan. After his discharge in 1946, he eventually returned to Pittsburgh to work as a contractor installing sinks and bathroom partitions, which he did until his retirement.

In 1947, Dobie married Ludmilla Lepeta of Johns-town, who died in 1992. The couple, who never had children, met briefly before Dobie went into the Army, when Lepeta was working in a dress shop.

Back in the States after the war, Dobie was eating in an East Liberty restaurant when a woman tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he was William Dobie.

"I couldn't believe she remembered me," he recalls. "Soon afterward, we were married. She loved jazz."

Racking up records

Dobie befriended many jazz greats through his sister, who worked for the French Radio News Service. She got to cover many jazz concerts there, including the first post-war jazz festival in Nice France.

In 1948, she returned to New York as an editor for CBS News and continued to write about jazz. For more than 18 years, she presented "Twilight," a jazz program at the OverSeas Press Club.

Once, on a trip to New York to visit his mother and sister, Dobie stopped in Philadelphia to hear Fats Waller perform. Waller's son, Maurice, and Dobie were good friends.

"Fats and I got so drunk that he had to take me to the train station," says Dobie. "Fats was a great player with a cheerful disposition. He never got his due. Trumpeter Doc Cheatham, who I got to know very well, was another musician who didn't get his due. Louis Armstrong was the cream on the cake, but there were so many wonderful players."

In New York, they went to Ryan's and other jazz clubs along 52nd Street. They also went to Cafe Society, a club made famous in 1939 when Billie Holiday premiered "Strange Fruit."

"My wife called Billie 'a singer of realism,' " says Dobie. "She favored trumpet players, but she adored Billie. That was one of the great things about her. She had a genuine love for the music. In the early days of our courtship, she knew I loved the music, and so did she, and that made things so much easier."

	Now 90, William Dobie of Wilkins bought his first jazz record in 1934, a 78 of the "Charleston" by James P. Johnson. He now has a massive collection of early jazz recordings, including standards by Eubie Blake.

In 1974, Dobie met Fran Veri, a frustrated musician who was working as the manager of National Record Mart in Monroeville. The two men nurtured a friendship and began to attend jazz festivals at Conneaut Lake. There they heard artists such as Dick Hyman, Joe Wilder and Milt Hinton.

"Those were some the best concerts I've seen," recalls Dobie. "The festival featured swing jazz and some traditional. Dick Hyman is a piano player who can play it all. It was some great stuff happening at Conneaut."

When they weren't listening to music they traveled to New York; Princeton, N.J.; and Cleveland scouring for records.

In Cleveland, they befriended Dan Link, a lawyer who also sold records out of his garage. He had more than 200,000 records purchased from estates.

"Dan used to say, 'If I don't have it, you don't need it,' " said Veri. "He knew his customers, and when we would go in, he would pull out of a stack records."

Dobie and Veri spent hours rummaging through Link's garage, looking for that special reissue of a rare recording. Another place they frequented was Frank Pope's used record store in Carnegie. Pope dealt primarily in 78s and 16-inch transcription discs. Now, Dobie buys most of his records at Jerry's Records in Squirrel Hill.

"We were at Pope's place when a kid came in and paid $250 for a copy of Hoagy Carmichael performing 'Stardust,' " said Veri. "It was birthday gift for his dad. I don't think we ever paid that much for a record, but every time we went there we bought 10 or 15."

Dobie isn't buying as many records as he once did, but that's mostly because he's filled in the holes in his collection.

But in the past few weeks, he's been thinking about purchasing a copy of "Rampart and Vine," a 1954 recording by the Rampart Street Paraders. The group, organized in 1953 by clarinetist/arranger Matty Matlock, was a Dixieland band whose music was an outgrowth of the Chicago tradition.

"That's what record collectors do," says Dobie as he prepares to spin "Can't Get You Off My Mind," a 1937 recording by Ben Pollock and his Pick-A-Rib Boys. "I'm always trying to fill in the gaps. As a collector you zero in on a particular artist, style or period in the music, and then you go about trying to find it."