Sybil, Ailsa and Merlyn Hutson

The Hutson Sisters, Bombay’s answer to the Andrews Sisters, first appear in my archival material in November 1937, when they were featured on a late-night All India Radio programme. The hypercritical reviewer for The Times of India wasn’t exactly bowled over by their harmonies. Though they performed “some quite good jazz”, the reviewer had some reservations. He concluded, “I hope that the Hutson Sisters Variety Troupe…will in time reach the goal they are aiming at.”

It didn’t take long for Merlyn, Ailsa and Sybil Hutson, the daughters of a postal official, to work their way into the spotlight. Six months later, they had become part of the band assembled by the great African-American pianist Teddy Weatherford at the Taj and the Times was very impressed. “This band is composed of the best musical talent available in the country and has been rehearsing for a considerable time and will offer a musical extravaganza on their debut,” the paper predicted.

(Click on images to enlarge.)

In 1940, the Hutson sisters made their first record, When, with a group called the Georgians of Bombay. Over the next few years they would cut at least half a dozen sides, with Teddy Weatherford’s band and with a group featuring the clarinet player Hal Green, pianist Sollo Jacobs and bassist Eddie Travasso.

I first came to know about the sisters when I read their names in the credits of the seminal compilation Jazz and Hot Dance in India: 1926-1944.  It contains a recording by the trio called So Long Sarah Jane, backed by the Teddy Weatherford band. The song had been featured in a Hollywood film called I Dood It. Like so many swing tunes recorded in India at the time, the song was about a soldier who was on his way to the war front. (In the movie, the So Long Sarah Jane sequence featured the actress Eleanor Powell doing the Western rope dance, an elaborate bit of choreography involving lassoes and sundry bits of rope. During rehearsals, Powell had tripped herself on a lariat and knocked herself out.)

One recent morning, I went off to Mahim to meet with Veronica Balsara, daughter of Sybil Hutson, to listen to her stories. Balsara told me that her mother and sister had come into their own during World War II, when they performed frequently at shows organised by ENSA – the Entertainments National Service Association established to keep British troops in good cheer. This took the Hutson sisters all across India. (Note the red V for Victory signs on their costumes in the first photo, on top of the page. It was shot in Lahore.) During the course of these travels, Sybil Hutson met an American solider, married him and moved to the US. Her daughter, Carol Heyer, a respected writer and illustrator of 28 children’s books, sent me many of these photos.

Carol Heyer says that her mother set off her creative spark. “When we were in the garden, my mother always treated me as if I was a grown-up,” Heyer has written. “We’d pick an area in the back yard and she would smooth down the dirt for the faeries to dance on.  Together, we’d look for leaves that were just skeletons, as these were the leaves the faeries made themselves, and thus were magical.  Faerie clothes were made from rose petals, and their furniture from small twigs that we held together with shafts of grass or vine.  Finally, when we’d finished preparation for their party, bread and cookie crumbs were left out for snacks.  We’d include any little bead or bauble to attract them, as, of course, they only came at night to dance.”

Back in India, Sybil and Ailsa continued to perform together, sometimes calling in a Burmese friend name Tiny Ong to sing the parts Merlyn had once performed. “Mother was an artist and interior decorator,” Veronica Balsara recalled. “She could tell people how to rearrange a room to make it look fabulous without needing to buy anything new. She would buy battered furniture and restore it completely.”

The Hutsons were cousins to Maxine Steller (nee Taylor), who once sang with the Bombay outfit The Broadway Boys.  “I was very young when we used to go to their wonderful parties and they took a fancy to me and asked Mum if they could take me to their concerts to sing,” Maxine Steller recalled.  “I remember singing Over The Rainbow at the Bombay Townhall when I was about eight.  Amongst my scraps I found a letter from their mother to mine, asking why I had missed a radio broadcast I was supposed to sing at.  I was seven.”

The last mention I was able to find of the Hutson sisters in the archives was in 1952. At 10pm at Jan 5, they’re listed in the radio schedule for a performance with a rhythm section. Sadly, that programme seem to have gone unreviewed.

So Long Sarah Jane by the Hutson Sisters by Taj Mahal Foxtrot

Frederick Joseph Steller was born on the 2nd December 1925. His parents were Charles Joseph Steller, who was German, and Maria Annika (Annie) Falcao de Carvalho, of Portuguese descent. Charles’ parents had come from Berlin to India with a theatrical company. Otto Herman Steller (born 1863) was a Professor of Music and his wife Ernestine, nee Hauke, (born1867) was a talented violinist from Halla. When the concert party disbanded in Bombay, they decided to stay on. Otto became the bandmaster of The Bombay Volunteer Rifles and died of meningitis in 1895 at the age of 32 years.

Charles Steller

Ernestine went to the German Consul in Bombay and, with his aid, put her daughter, Theresa, in the Bandra Convent and her two sons, Charles and Otto, in St Joseph’s Home. The boys were eventually sent to St Mary High School, Mazagon, run by German priests. Ernestine died of cholera in 1912, aged 45 years.

The Falcao de Carvalhos, the family of Fred’s mother, originally came from Portugal and settled in Panjim and Damao. There is a plaque in the Big Market in Damao bearing the name of Jose Maximiano Falcao de Carvalho in appreciation of the good services he rendered to the people of Damao and as a mark of their love and affection to his memory. Annie’s mother Luisa Falcao eventually ran a boarding house in Wodehouse Road, Colaba. Charles Steller became a boarder and fell in love with Annie, whom he married in 1918.

When Charles left school, he joined the Governor’s Band, playing the violin and clarinet. He eventually became bandmaster. He then went on to being bandmaster of the GIP railway band and when that disbanded became bandmaster off the BB&CI railway band. In the month of May every year, Mr Panday, a high official of Matheran would hire his band to play for concerts in the park. When the band was short staffed, Charlie would take his son Fred to play the clarinet with them. Charlie also played in the band of Ken Mac.

St Mary's Band

Fred Steller had two sisters, Doris and Sheila, and three brothers, Anthony, John and Wilfrid. They started out living in Colaba but when the boys grew older and needed to attend St Mary’s School, they moved to Byculla. Fred and his brothers attended St Mary’s School, Mazagaon, and, at the age of 11, he joined the school band and learned to play the clarinet. One of his teachers, Mrs Yates, taught Fred and his brother, John, to dance and they entered and won a few talent contests. They also started to sing in harmony and would perform for All India Radio’s Children’s Hour.

From an early age, Fred became an altar boy at St Anne’s, Mazagaon, and at Midnight Mass would hear the dance music coming through from the Christmas Eve ball at the Byculla Railway Institute. After Mass, he would sneak into the Institute to listen to the band playing. This is what gave him the urge to form a band and he vowed that one day he would be up on that stage playing.

In 1938, at the age of 13, Fred started a four-piece group comprising Bill Cooper (piano), John Steller (drums), Hubert Stapleton (second clarinet) and Fred on 1st clarinet. Within months, Cyril Sparks joined them on the guitar and later, Bill McMahon on the bass.

When Fred was 14, he persuaded the manager of the Railway Institute to allow his band to play free, asking only for money to pay for carting their equipment to the tennis courts. Their music took off and soon there were eight members: Bill Cooper on piano, Percy Isaacs on guitar, Cyril Sparks on bass, Fred and Brendan Thompson on clarinets, Bubbles Raccani on trumpet, John Steller on drums and Tony Steller as vocalist. In 1945, at the age of 15, Maxine Taylor (whom Fred would eventually marry) started singing with them but stopped to do her Senior Cambridge in 1946. This outfit performed at the usual places: Byculla and Parel Railway Institutes, the Police Club, the Customs Club, HM Mint, schools’ ex-student’s functions, etc.

Fred worked hard arranging the music, getting the group to practice and organizing the bookings. The band became very successful and popular over the years, especially for Christmas and New Year’s Eve dances. They were all young and appealed to their youthful audiences. They were even hired to play upcountry in Kalyan, Gungapore and Dohad, where the railway communities were starved for good musical entertainment.

Fred purchased a second hand saxophone in June 1946 at a cost of Rs 850 and took a few lessons from a brilliant tutor and musician, Hal Green (from Ken Mac’s band), and whilst doing so, met a Norwegian alto sax player, Ollie Risoe, who later joined the group. Ollie also wrote and transcribed band music.

Fred Steller

When Billy Cooper left, Fred replaced him on the piano with Francis Saldanha, recommended by Hal Green. Fred started using orchestrations and the band members increased to a nine piece orchestra, including Ollie. At Christmas and New Year’s Eve they would start at the Byculla Railway Institute (9pm-1am) and go straight on to the Police Club (1.30-4am), a very long night for them. They also entertained at the Allied Airforces Club (during the War), the Ritz and the Ambassador.

In October 1947, the original Broadway Boys finally disbanded with the departure of Tony and John for Australia but Fred continued with a quartet comprising Arthur Jacobs (piano), Johnny Fernandes (drums), Percy Isaacs (bass) and himself (tenor sax and clarinet). He kept going until just before his departure for Australia.

Musicians are always advised to have a “proper job” and in 1947, Fred joined Westrex in the Metro Cinema building at Dhobi Talao as a sound engineer and, in conjunction with his apprenticeship, did a radio course at the Radio & Electric Institute, Lamington Road, and then a projection course at St Xavier’s College. He assisted Cyril George, a
Westrex sound engineer, on the Metro Theatre conversion from RCA to Westrex equipment, starting at midnight every night, after the last show was over and working until 8 or 9am every morning. Later Fred had the pleasure of installing brand new equipment at the New Empire Theatre with a fellow engineer, Mr Bapat. He also did a fair bit of travelling in upcountry areas, such as Bundi State, Surat, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Mhow, Igatpuri and Indore, usually by train.

He would work under very primitive conditions with a lack of fresh water and food, and poor sewerage conditions but the gratitude of the humble villagers once the movies started, outweighed the hardship. They treated him like a god and would put garlands of flowers on the equipment and do puja to it.

Doris Steller

The 1940s was the era of big bands and great music. When a musical movie came to the cinemas, local bands were provided with professional copies of the music it featured. Fred would go to the publicity department of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 20th Century Fox, Columbia, etc and they would issue orchestrated music with the proviso that he announced the movie before playing the song. Fast numbers, foxtrots, waltzes were all included in the BB repertoire. The young people loved to  jive and then have a cuddle during the slow numbers. Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Glen Miller, Harry James, Xavier Cougat, the Dorsey Brothers, Louis Armstrong, Ted Heath, Woody Herman were all revered for their talented performances.

The Broadway Boys were unique as they were young, talented and charismatic and attracted the younger generation to them. Fred, Tony and Cyril Sparks would sing in harmony during the second chorus of some numbers to the delight of the dancers. John would hold the mike and sing while he was drumming, which went over well.

Fred Steller’s sister Doris sang with her father’s outfit, which was called the Karl Starr band. In addition, she also performed with Mink Devine’s Band and Mehli Mehta’s Trio, both at the Taj. She also made records with Joe Rich’s band, which performed Hawaiian tunes. (There’s one at the end of this piece.)

Fred emigrated to Australia in 1950, arriving in Sydney in May. He joined National Theatre Supply Co, a subsidiary of Greater Unions. He did shift work and there was no opportunity to do band work. Later he joined a trio, playing mostly at local parish functions, weddings and bowling club dances.

His brother John, who had been the drummer of the Broadway Boys, later took the stage name Larry Stellar. He performed big concerts in Australia and then around the world – in London, Spain, Tokyo, Hong Kong and the US. In 2006, having already received several prestigious awards, he was given the Order of Australia Medal for his services to the entertainment industry and for his community-oriented fundraising concerts. More about him on his website here.

The Broadway Boys never made any recordings but here’s one of Doris Steller from 1944, with the Joe Rich band. She’s now 92.

The Singing Sands of Alamosa by naresh fernandes

Before she emigrated to Australia in 1950, she’d sung at several events around Bombay and has shared with me a wealth of photographs, commendation letters and programme notes (one from the war years lists her as “Maxine, The Boys’ Favourite”). There’s also a contract for a show on All India Radio in 1947, which includes a clause stating that the station director retains the authority to reject the performance if “the artist is not sober enough”. I wonder what 17-year-old Maxine’s mother made of that.

Two years before that, aged 15, she had been invited to sing with a band called the Broadway Boys, which had at its core members of the Steller family. Several years later, in 1951, Maxine married the band leader, Fred. Here’s her story, as she wrote it for her grandchildren.

        WISDOM COMES WITH TIME

Both my grandfathers joined the Army in England and were sent out to India. Robert Taylor was based at a cantonment in Bangalore.  Ernest Morris was in the Wellington Barracks, Poona, then joined the Poona police force, eventually transferring to Bombay.

My father, Bill Taylor, was born in Bangalore in 1902 and ran away to join the army when WWI broke out.  He was shipped to Mesopotamia and he would tell us stories of life in the cavalry taking care of the horses and eating the dead ones, as these young soldiers were starving.  After the war, when the ship docked in Bombay he joined the Bombay police force and married my mother Vera. Her father had been a Superintendent in the Bombay Police, dying at an early age. Bill and Vera had two sons and decided to try again for a daughter.

   I was born in the Motlibhai Hospital in Bombay, India on the 23^rd October 1930 and baptised Maxine Iona Taylor at St.Anne’s Catholic Church, Mazagaon.  The heroine of the book my mother Vera (nee Morris) was reading at the time was named Maxine and although a friend suggested she call me Gloria instead, as Maxine conjured up French prostitutes, she stuck to her guns then threw in Iona as my saint’s name to tone it down.  Mum was of Scottish stock from her mother’s side, attended the Scots Kirk, Colaba, Bombay when a child, and the Isle of Iona is where the Scots believe Christ will appear when he comes back to this earth.  My Father Bill was a Catholic.

About a fortnight before I was born, my father and mother returned in a gharry (horse driven carriage) from a night out at the cinema and as they were crossing the road to the quarters behind the police station, they were both shot at as reprisal for someone being arrested.  The perpetrators were told to find and shoot a European officer and my parents happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Mum was shot in the thigh and Dad in his hand.  The men were arrested and there was a court case.   They apologised to my mother as they said they had no idea they were shooting at a memsahib.  Fortunately, there were no serious repercussions where I was concerned.  This story was never told to me until about 1946 when it was mentioned in a newspaper article when my father was made a deputy commissioner of police.

When Dad was a young police officer we lived at the back of the various police stations he was assigned to, so our lives were very different to the ones normal families led.

I was very fond of my ayah Ramu, who had been hired to care for my two brothers before I was born, and who only left the family after I finished school.  I used to love going into her room to squat on the floor and have a taste of the wonderful vegetable curries she would cook on her sigri (a little coal cooker).  She used to have pictures of all the gods pinned on her walls and it was comforting to find Jesus side-by-side with her own Hindu gods Rama, Sita, Ganesh, Lakshmi and Lord Krishna.  I can remember when I was young, Ramu was dismissed one day, and I was so upset that I packed a little suitcase and announced that I was leaving home. I sat on the top step of the stairs waiting to say goodbye to my Father and when he returned I told him I was not staying unless my ayah came back.  He discussed the matter with my Mother and it turned out that she had discovered a man in the ayah’s room and dismissed her on the spot, but Ramu was reinstated when they realised that fretting for her would probably make me sick.

Ramu was very loyal to the family and when Dad fell ill with typhoid and nearly died, she made puja and promised her gods that if he lived she would stop combing her long, thick hair.  Dad recovered, she kept her vow and the family did not have the heart to make her break it, so from that day on she had this mass of untidy tresses.  When it was time for her to leave, Dad arranged for the Sisters of Mercy in Bangalore to take her in, presumably because his dream was to retire in Bangalore where he had been born in the army cantonment.   I would send her a ‘pension’ from my own meagre pay-packet and prior to leaving India, I wrote and advised Ramu that I was going.  Shortly afterwards, one of the nuns wrote me that when Ramu realised she would never see her ‘Maxine missibaba’ again, she just gave up hope and willed herself to die.

Because of the rough and dangerous areas the police stations were situated in, our parents decided to send Cedric and Desmond to boarding school in Panchgani which is a beautiful holiday resort in the Western Ghats outside Poona.   Then in 1937 they were enrolled in Christ Church High School, Byculla, Bombay, which was a co-educational school, so that in times of trouble a police sepoy could accompany them (and eventually me) to the one school.

Living in predominantly Indian areas meant we would be in the thick of things when festivals were being celebrated.  Marbouri was a Hindu sector and we’d watch the fun when the festivals of Holi and Diwali were on. Pydhoni was a Muslim sector and the police station was directly opposite a masjid.  There was a high wall around the mosque and near the gate was an alcove where an old Muslim sat and cooked korma, which he sold with naan.  He’d do a roaring business on feast days and we’d sometimes send our servant across to buy his tasty food.

Bill Taylor, extreme right

At Ramadan (or Ramzaan as we called it in Bombay), devout Muslims pray and fast for a month, from one new moon to the next.  They are forbidden to eat or let water pass their lips before sundown.  They wake before sunrise to eat, and can only eat again when the sun sets.   The Mullah from the nearest mosque would climb up the minaret before dawn and call out to the faithful to fulfil their vows.  This would awaken us as well, as we lived across the road from the mosque.

People of several religions lived in harmony in India, except of course the Hindus and Muslims who were forever fighting with each other.  The Parsis originally came from Persia, were followers of Zoroaster and worshipped fire and the sun.  They were a wealthy community and engaged mostly in commerce.  They exposed their dead in the open air in the towers of silence.  There were always vultures sitting in the surrounding trees on Malabar Hill and when a body was placed there, they would swoop down and eat all the flesh.  Eventually the bones would fall through the grids into lime pits.  I think the richest man in Bombay was J.R.D. Tata, a Parsi gentleman, who lived in a huge green building called Tata Palace and who started Tata Airways which eventually grew into Air India International.  My cousin Ray Salway became Air India’s first Chief Air Hostess.  Her second marriage was to a Tata pilot – Aspy Noble and they eventually settled in Perth, Australia.

We used to look forward to invitations to Parsi weddings and their religious thread ceremonies as the food was so tasty.  The guests would sit at long trestle tables with banana leaves used instead of plates.  The waiters would walk around with huge trays and slap a spoonful of everything on the leaf – wonderful dishes made with fish, chicken, lamb and vegetables also scrumptious rice dishes, and you’d always get a fried egg dumped on top of everything.  Then came the mouth-watering sweetmeats and ice creams.  Parsi cooking has a special flavour – once tasted, never forgotten.

We mustn’t forget the colony of Jews living in harmony in all the cities.  They were Bene-Israelites (of the tribe of Benjamin) and after the War when Jews started returning to Palestine from all over the world all the young people began leaving India to live on kibutzes in the new formed state of Israel.  One of my best schoolfriends was Estelle Gemmel and she made my daughter’s christening robe for her when she heard I was pregnant.  She contacted me from Haifa a few years ago and sends hilarious emails regularly.

In 1938 I joined my brothers at Christ Church High School and was placed in Standard 2 with Miss Penner as my class teacher.  I liked my new school but got into serious trouble one day when one of the Muslim boys tormented me to the point where I called him a ‘damned swine’ and his father came to the school next day to report me.  Muslims consider pigs unclean so that was the worst name I could have chosen.  I was made to apologise but we soon became friends again.  Years later he used to pester me to go out with him but I already had a steady boyfriend and politely declined.

The dining room attached to our school was huge and the tables very large.  There would be a table reserved for each family and the family ‘bearer’ would serve a hot meal every lunchtime, set out on a clean tablecloth with cutlery from home.  Chemun would carry the meal in a ‘tiffin carrier’ and lunchtimes would always be noisy and fun.  When one thinks back, we really used to eat far too much considering the heat and our sedentary lives.  Most people would have porridge, eggs and toast for breakfast, then morning tea (elevenses), then a hot lunch of curry, dhal and rice, then afternoon tea, then dinner at about 8.30pm which was an English meal of soup, main course and pudding.

When our Muslim cook Abdul finally left, Chemun, who was a Hindu, told Mum that he had been watching Abdul and would like the chance to take over.  Mum let him, and from that day on, he did a good job with the cooking.  As we grew older, Chemun tried to make a deal with each of us children so that he would always have a job in one of our homes, whether it be Cedric, Desmond or myself.  Our servants were well treated and at Christmas or their Indian festivals were given gifts of clothes and sweets.  Chemun had a wife and child in his village and would visit them on his annual holidays.  He eventually brought them to live with him in his room and we made a big fuss of his beautiful little son.

Every night Mum would sit at the dining table with a notebook and the cook would tell her what he had bought at the markets that morning and how much it had cost.  Mum knew that he would be adding an ‘anna’ here and there to drop into his own pocket, but all memsahibs knew this was going on and did not mind.  Then she would tell him what to cook the next day, give him some money to spend at the markets and off he’d go to bed or out rambling as his chores had been done for the day.

Wages were paid once a month in India, and Mum would go monthly to Crawford Markets to buy sugar, flour, rice and all the other ingredients that didn’t need to be fresh.   She’d hire a coolie with a huge basket on his head to carry her purchases back to the gharry (horse and carriage).   We had large tins the size of garbage bins in the pantry which could hold a month’s supply of everything, which was essential as Gandhi would call a strike and the whole of India would come to a standstill –  no trains, trams or buses and the shops would be closed until further notice.  This was satyagraha – non-violent disobedience and opposition.

It was most important to bargain for everything as the shopkeepers added extra on to the price and expected it.  If you didn’t, you were considered ‘weak’ and lost face.  Crawford Market is  in the centre of the city and similar in size to Flemington markets over here.  There are beautiful carvings over the doors of the massive stone building which were done by Rudyard Kipling’s father, who was a famous architect.

Mum enrolled me in Phyllis Laidlaw’s Dancing School where the other three pupils were Rajkumar Rudy and Rajkumaris Betty and Rita (prince and princesses of Baria State).  They were extremely well-mannered and friendly children.  I also began to learn the piano with Phyllis’ sister, Dorothy Beck and studied with her for several years.  I wish I had practiced harder but would only pull out my music and pretend to be very conscientious when I knew she was due to walk in.  Phyllis and Dorothy were the daughters of  Superintendent Roy Smith of the Bombay Police Force.  Later, when I was about 14, I learnt with Arthur Jacob (a bandleader) who endeavoured to teach me jazz and ‘extemporise’.  He’d write the melody notes of the treble cleff with the bass chords beneath on a piece of paper and off we’d go, extemporising – tunes like Lady Be Good, Tea For Two, Dinah and all the great songs that came out during the War years.  I still have some of these pieces of paper, now wilting and going brown.

My brothers, being boys, were allowed more freedom than I.  They would line up for pocket money every week and they’d go off to the cinema or visit schoolfriends.   They played all the usual games boys did, like rounders and gilly-dandoo (with stick and ball, a bit like baseball), backyard cricket, hockey and football.

Cedric was mad about cricket and even devised a game whereby he could play by himself for hours on end.  He used an exercise book, dice, lead soldiers and a hand-drawn ‘cricket field’.  He’d throw the dice, the soldiers would run around the field and their runs, lbw’s, maiden overs, etc would be recorded in the book.  I’d hear him cheering whenever someone made a good score!

Cedric was a playful student and used to get into trouble with his teachers for inattention, especially the Head Mistress – Mrs. Tate.   Being very English, she made the boys learn English country dancing (Morris dancing to be exact), much to their embarrassment.  One day when she was in a temper she called him a ‘jarron’ (tea towel) and years later when his Moghul Line ship was passing the English vessel taking Mrs. Tate back to England, he sent her a farewell message from one of her ‘jarrons’.

My memories of India are good ones even though, as children of a junior police officer, we never settled down in one area or stayed put like other families.  Every two years Dad would be transferred and, yet again, Mum would have to pack everything and get used to new living quarters behind the police station.  We moved to some very dangerous areas, the worst being Nagpada, Gamdevi, Marbouri, Kalbadevi Road and Pydhoni and during the riots we would be escorted to and from school by a sepoy.  Riots brought curfews and everyone would have to be off the streets before 7pm which could be very inconvenient at times.

When we had Muslim visitors over at our house Dad would ask me to recite in Urdu.  It was our second language in school and we used to learn beautiful poems, and even read the ‘Indian Mutiny’ in our latter years in Urdu.   I sat for the subject both in Junior and Senior Cambridge and had to do oral and written exams.  It was quite daunting sitting and chatting with a strange examiner but I managed to get through.

I remember when we were on the netball field at school one afternoon, there was a huge boom, and window panes were shattered.  It was April 14^th 1944 and the SS Fort Stikine carrying tons of explosives, gold bars, bales of cotton, drums of oil, scrap iron, rice and resin blew up in Bombay Docks.  Her berth in Victoria Dock was ringed by 24 other vessels and when she blew up she devastated 300 acres of Bombay Docks and reduced twelve ships to scrap iron.  White-hot metal from the ship’s plates fell on Bombay a mile from the ship and a million pounds of gold disintegrated.  Fire engines had turned up after the first blast and when there was a second one, the firemen were also caught in this disaster.  Smoke and the smell of death hovered over Bombay for weeks afterwards.

At an early age we became used to the sight of the injured being brought in with bandages around bloody heads, stomachs or intestines, and during the final years before Independence, we even had British soldiers stationed in our backyard, waiting for a call to quell an unruly mob.  They could not go without being accompanied by an Indian Justice of the Peace and when he gave permission to fire, they would fire warning shots above the heads of the rioters who quickly dispersed.  Dad would tell his family and friends hair-raising yarns of the riots and the dangerous positions the police officers found themselves in.

During the war an English entertainment group called ENSA started visiting hospitals and giving concerts for the troops and they asked me to join them.  They’d seat me on a piano and tell me to sing I Can’t Give You Anything But Love to the shyest soldier or sailor in the front row.  My favourite ballads at these concerts were Vienna, City of My Dreams and the Kerry Dance.   From 1938, I sang regularly for Aunty Hilda’s Children’s Hour on All India Radio, and I can remember singing Over The Rainbow at the Bombay Town Hall when the movie Wizard of Oz first came out.  I must have been about ten years old.  Another song I often sang at concerts when I was young was Alice Blue Gown and I also danced the ‘hula’.

In 1945 the campaign for Independence had been stepped up and Anglo-Indians (born of British or European parents in India) started thinking of where to go when they were asked to quit India.  A Catholic priest (Father Dalton of St Mary’s School, Mazagaon) lobbied for the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.  He started the Britasian Club and put on shows encouraging young people to attend.  He hired a band called the Broadway Boys, seven talented young musicians led by Fred Steller, who were very popular.  One day Father Dalton got in touch with my father and asked him if I would sing at the next show.  I said I would but needed a rehearsal with the pianist.  Shortly afterwards, Fred Steller and his pianist, Billy Cooper, turned up at our house and my association with the Broadway Boys and the Steller family began.
Dad became interested in the Britasian movement and we attended all the shows, where I would sing regularly.  Fred asked if I would like to become the Broadway Boys female singer and I can truly say that my fifteenth year was by far my happiest.  My mother had previously been very strict with me but once I joined the band I was allowed to go to all the shows they played at (chaperoned by my parents, of course) and I met so many very nice young men who were all eager to dance with the new young singer.

Bill Taylor escorts Morarji Desai on a guard of honour

Dad was made Deputy Commissioner of Police and put in charge of traffic and the Naigaum Police Training centre where the young officers trained.  Whenever an important person came to Bombay – Nehru, Jinnah, Gandhi, General Carriappa and other dignitaries, it was his duty to ensure that they were safe.  Gandhi would want to walk into the crowds lining the roads, and it would be a hair-raising experience for the young officer who would be put in charge of his safety.  My father had a great admiration for Nehru, Jinnah and Carriappa.  They came from wealthy families, were well-educated and well-mannered.   Whenever Gandhi fasted, all police-force leave would be cancelled in case something serious happened to him.  Remember by the 1940s he was in his seventies, mellowing a bit.

As Dad was a gazetted officer, his movements were mentioned in the Bombay Police Gazette and very often the news article would say that Deputy Commissioner Taylor was accompanied by Mrs Taylor and their daughter Miss Taylor.  I was officially invited twice to Government House, the first time to meet the last English Governor Sir John Colville and Lady Colville, then the first Indian Governor Sir Maharaj Singh and Lady Singh.  Lady Singh was very interested in conditions at Burmah-Shell, where I worked, and asked a lot of pertinent questions.

My father was a very gentle man and never raised his voice or hand to anyone, especially his children.  Bill Taylor was popular and loved by his junior officers and friends.  I am proud to say I resemble him in features and I hope some of his other attributes have rubbed off on me.  My mother was a very shy lady and would always be taking a dose of chlorodine when she was invited to parties with strangers or maybe to act as a judge at some show.  I’ve definitely inherited her queasy stomach.

My favourite pastime was collecting the autographs of the rich and famous and during the War years many celebrities came to Bombay to entertain the troops.  I wrote to Lord Louis Mountbatten and he was kind enough to reply and send me his autograph.  Lady Mountbatten visited the Pitman’s College where I was training, and the girls all lined up for her signature.  I met Gracie Fields, Vera Lyn, George Formby, Melvyn Douglas – so many that I can’t remember but it was exciting trailing them.  Even the police sepoys who were stationed at the concerts would help me to get in to see them.  Mr Gandhi used to come regularly to his ashram in Bombay and advertised that he would sell his autograph for five rupees if we sent him the money and a stamped, self-addressed envelope.  I’m sorry I’m didn’t send for his autograph.  We were at Government House one afternoon and Dad called me over to meet Moraji Desai, the Home Minister, saying “Why don’t you ask Mr. Desai for his autograph?”  I still have it.

Lord Mountbatten was the last Viceroy of India and both he and Edwina did a wonderful job, diplomatically, over a very difficult period.   Over this period of changeover, Jawaherlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten became great friends and he would wear a rose on his jacket as a tribute to her.

On 14^th August 1947, the girls gathered on the roof of the YWCA building to watch the Union Jack being lowered for the last time and the Indian flag raised.  From then on whenever we went to the cinema or any other function, instead of standing for God Save the King, we would stand for Bande Mataram.

My first place of employment was Kemp & Company, a pharmaceutical concern.  I became a Junior Secretary.   I worked for the Sales Manager, Derek Hampton, who instructed the senior clerk not to let any letters regarding birth control or condoms come my way.   My boss took a fancy to me and wanted to take me out.  He was all of thirty and I considered him too old (I was 17).

A year later, I joined the Imperial Bank of India where I worked for the Secretary and Treasurer. Not bad for an 18 year old!  While I was there, Nehru sent in his troops to fight the Nizam of Hyderabad’s army as he would not cede to the Indian Union.  Urgent instructions were going backwards and forwards to the Imperial Bank in Hyderabad to ensure important documents were burned.   The war lasted about nine days, then the Hyderabad army capitulated.

There is a book out called The Last Plane Out Of Berlin by Jeffrey Watson, which mentions gun-running by Sidney Cotton and the supplying of arms and ammunition to the Nizam of Hyderabad.  Apparently 200,000 pounds dterling were paid by the Nizam to Cotton, and 50 men of the Nizam’s army loaded up the planes in Karachi.  From the start of the operation, an average of two planes a day ran guns into Hyderabad at 4,000 pounds a trip for each aeroplane.  Cotton had enraged Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, by his insolent cable in which he had dared the Indian air force to shoot his planes down.  We knew Henry Luschwitz, the Hyderabad army officer who negotiated with Cotton on behalf of the Nizam.  Henry and his wife, Doreen, have passed on in Australia.

When Cotton returned to London in 1949 he was charged with carrying arms and ammunition.  He was advised to plead guilty but his counsel, Russell Vick, KC produced certificates from the Office of the Pakistan High Commissioner which proved that the aircraft was under charter to them at the time it had been carrying weapons, therefore no offence had been committed.  Russell Vick was a famous advocate with an impressive track record.

The most sought after band in Bombay was Ken Mac’s All European Band.  When the band would need a temporary singer, they would ask Doris Steller to fill in and when they needed a clarinet player or drummer, Fred or John would oblige.  Fred learned a great deal from one of the musicians Hal Green and when he asked Ken if he could borrow some music, Ken refused as he said the competition was too great.  What a compliment for a young and upcoming band!  Ken’s brother Horace also played in the band and when his young daughter Pamela contracted polio in a boarding school up in the hills, it was a great tragedy.  Her parents took her overseas to see eminent surgeons to no avail.  On her return she asked if I’d visit her and Fred accompanied me.  A well-dressed male servant would carry her around and he always wore white gloves to do this.  She used to sing in her uncle’s band and had a great voice.  We are still good friends and keep in touch when we visit Melbourne.

Fred’s father, Charles Steller was also a talented musician and in his young days conducted the Governor’s band, then in turn the GIP Railway and BB&CI Railway bands.  Eventually he started his own band called Carl Star and his Orchestra.  He had been one of the original members of Ken Mac’s Band and played the sax and clarinet.  His eldest daughter Doris had a beautiful voice and used to sing on All India Radio.  She also performed with Meli Metha and his classical trio at the Taj Hotel in Bombay.  Meli Metha is the father of Zubin Metha, the world famous conductor.  Zubin attended St Mary’s School, where the Steller brothers were educated.  Joe Rich asked her to make a few records.

A plum job in Bombay was at Burmah-Shell Oil Company, where the girls were paid good wages, free transport and lunches.   I was lucky enough to get in as secretary to the Manager, Kerosine and Petrol.  Our office was at Ballard Estate, next door to the UK High Commission, where my Uncle Ralph Thorley was employed.  Upon his demise my Aunt Bernie was given his job and when I needed a passport she rang me the day after I handed in my forms, to come across and pick it up.

The UK High Commission had instructed British citizens to come in and register, then choose the UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand to migrate to as soon as possible.  Apparently they did not want a recurrence of the Indian Mutiny, when so many women and children were slaughtered.  One day my brother Cedric was beaten up on his way home from the Port Trust where he was doing an apprenticeship.  He was cycling home with an Indian friend and a mob crowded around and ordered him to say “Jai Hind”.  He decided he wouldn’t, and paid for his stubbornness.  Then they told his friend to hit him and when he wouldn’t, he was beaten up as well.  They both arrived home in a bloody mess.  There were lots of instances where British or Europeans were accosted, had their topis pulled off their heads and their ties cut off.  One European police officer was even tied to a tree and a fire started under him.  Fortunately he was rescued in time.

On completion of his apprenticeship, Cedric joined the Moghul Line as a junior engineer.  Ships of the Moghul Line carried Muslims from around India to Mecca to complete their haj.  The main ports of call were Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Karachi, Aden, Bahrein, Jedda and Singapore.  He also did one trip to Turkey to pick up pilgrims.  In those days Raffles Hotel in Singapore was on the waterfront but of course nowadays it is in the heart of the city on reclaimed land.  He served on several ships of the Moghul Line and whenever he docked in Bombay he would bring all his friends over to our house or we would be invited to parties aboard.

Desmond was sharp-witted with a quick sense of humour and used to torment Cedric and myself incessantly.  He nicknamed me ‘Keyhole Kate’ and used to say I was too nosey for my own good.   After completing his schooling, Des began an apprenticeship in The Times of India and in 1947 (just two weeks after Independence Day in August) he persuaded his parents to send him to England where he hoped to keep up his studies in art.  He enrolled at the London Polytechnic, sharing a flat with Barrington Brendan Brady and his brother in London.

When Gandhi died, all hell broke loose and the police officers’ wives and families waited at home for their menfolk to return, not knowing what to expect.   Everyone naturally thought he had been killed by Muslims.   Gandhi was 79 years old and on his way to a prayer meeting in Delhi when he was assassinated by a member of an extremist organisation.  The plot was hatched in an Indian Army barracks in Poona and on 30^th January 1948 Nathuram Godse shot Gandhi three times at close range.  Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte (his accomplice) were hanged for his murder on the 15^th November 1949.

All the young men were leaving India to try their luck overseas as the Indian  government was giving preference to Indians, rather than to our lads, which was understandable seeing that they had fought so hard for their Independence.

On the 28^th February 1948, the last soldiers, men of the 1^st Battalion, the Somerset Light Infantry were due to leave Bombay.  They fell in for the last time on Indian soil not far from the Gateway of India, an enormous triumphal arch the British had erected by the water’s edge to mark the spot where their King Emperor had stepped on to Indian soil in 1911.  Indian troops were drawn up in formation as the Somersets marched on to the quay.  The Indians presented arms in a Royal Salute, while their band played God Save the King.  Then the Somersets returned the compliment to the sound of Bande Mataram.    The Indian commander handed over to the Englishmen a parting gift.  It was a silver model of the Gateway, and on it were the words, “To commemorate the comradeship of the soldiers of the British and Indian Armies 1754-1947.”  Slowly the King’s Colour and the Regimental Colour of the Somersets were trooped to the waiting transport ship through the Gateway itself, to the playing of Auld Land Syne.  It was finished.  A promise had been kept.  It was a sad, sad day for those Britishers left behind because we knew that things would never be the same for us.

Fred’s mother kept urging him to leave, as his three brothers were already in Sydney.  She booked his passage and registered him for a pier-jump which meant he had to make himself available for a cancellation at a moment’s notice.   Fred was in two minds as he still had his band, a good job as Sound Engineer with Western Electric and he did not want to leave me.  The day a pier-jump became available, he had taken me to Juhu Beach where we went swimming.  His mother was very annoyed with him.  Eventually the day arrived for him to leave and he sailed on the Himalaya in May 1950.  On the previous evening, we became engaged and it was a very sad time for both of us.  Cardinal Gilroy from St. Mary’s Church in Sydney was also aboard the vessel and as Dad had been looking after him (policewise) while he was in Bombay, he asked the Cardinal to keep an eye on Fred on the voyage.

Shortly after Fred left, Dad was offered a job up in the hills somewhere running a Police Training School, which he accepted and although I begged him to let me stay behind and board in a guesthouse, he insisted I hand in my notice at Burmah-Shell, which I did.  In those days you did as you were told with no arguing!  Dad decided that as we were going to stay on in India we might as well become  Indian nationals, which my mother agreed to.  Preparations were being made for us to transfer when riots broke out again, and Dad was caught in a mob and stoned.  The injury was not serious but he declared, “This is no longer my country, why should I die for it?”  He decided he would not take the new position and put in for long service leave.

India was in turmoil, Muslims in India were being told to go and live in Pakistan.  Indians living in the new Pakistan were told they were no longer welcome and to go back to India.  Trains would arrive in Karachi and Delhi full of dead bodies as the slaughter continued.  Thousand upon thousands of people lost their homes and lives.   The Anglo-Indian community started leaving for the UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand in droves as they were shown no consideration by the leaders who wanted India for the Indians, even though we were born there and considered ourselves ‘locals’.   Families and relatives were separated forever once the great trek began.  My mother never saw her brothers or sisters again although they had been a close family when living in India.

I persuaded Dad to take me to Australia.  My father was still Deputy of Commissioner of Police and we were living in a large flat at La Citadelle on Queens Road.  We auctioned all our furniture and household goods, had our last breakfast with our Parsi neighbour, Mrs. Dondhi, and boarded the Strathnaver.  This was in November 1950.

As the ship moved away from the docks into the Arabian Sea we could see the majestic Gateway of India in the foreground of the city of Bombay.  As it started to fade into the distance I felt as if my heart was being wrenched out of my body and making its way back to my city and the country of my birth.  In normal circumstances we would have lived our lives out quite happily in India, but these were extraordinary circumstances.

Bollywood music directors have often been accused of plagiarising melodies from other traditions. Though some have had the temerity to pass off note-for-note copies as their own work, many others have used material gathered from a variety of sources as a springboard for their imaginations, transforming these base elements into something completely unique.

As a case in point, here’s Ay Dil Ab Kahin Le Jaa, from the 1963 film Bluff Master. The music was composed by Kalyanji Anandji and the tune is sung by Hemant Kumar.  Below, the Sidney Bechet classic that inspired it, performed by Angelique Kidjo.

In 1941, as World War Two raged, the Japanese advance on India’s borders had an unforeseen effect on the country’s jazz scene. Among the hundreds of thousands of people who trekked out of Burma for India ahead of the Japanese vanguard were several Burmese jazz musicians. The most prominent were members of one of Rangoon’s hottest bands, the Jive Boys, which featured Reuben Solomon on clarinet, Paul Feraz on bass, and three guitarists: Ike Issacs, Reuben’s brother Solly and Cedric West. They arrived in Calcutta in March 1942 and were immediately offered positions in the city’s most prominent bands. (See Amitav Ghosh’s note on the great trek here.)

After the death of the pianist Teddy Weatherford (whose ghost I wrote about last week), many members of his band joined the Jive Boys, which was  now being headed by Reuben Solomon.  The Jive Boys made a clutch of sides in Calcutta, including these tracks here, from the Marco Pacci archive.

Hello Frisco by RUEBEN SOLOMON JIVE BOYS by Taj Mahal Foxtrot

You’ll never know by RUEBEN SOLOMON JIVE BOYS by Taj Mahal Foxtrot

Reuben Solomon would later emigrate to Australia. Two of the Jive Boys went on to make very respectable careers for themselves in the UK. Ike Issacs, featured in the clip above (from a documentary by Spiros Mavrangelos)  moved to the UK in 1946 to study chemistry, but made his career in music. He would become the dominant guitarist on the English jazz scene for three decades until the 1970s, even performing a two-year world tour with the violin wizard Stephane Grapelli.

Cedric West emigrated to the UK in September, 1947, along with his wife Nesta, who had been a vocalist with the Jive Boys. In England, West played with a variety of outfits, including as a sessions man for Nelson Riddle and Quincy Jones. He even cut two albums: West Meets East (see review from Gramaphone magazine) and Bach Goes West. This video below features him with guitar legend Joe Pass.

Balsara had first-hand knowledge of this. Late one night, as she was returning her room after a performance, she said, she saw an apparition of Weatherford, wearing a brown suit, looking sadly out of the balcony. At first, she thought that one of the West Indian cricket players staying in the Grand at the time had strayed into the staff quarters. But Balsara soon heard other staff members telling of strange knocks on their doors in the middle of the night and of magical piano music the distance.

Weatherford, who had been born in West Virginia, left the US in 1926 to make his career in Asia. He’d been in India since 1936, when he started performing at the Taj in Bombay. He moved to Calcutta in 1941. Four years later, a cholera epidemic swept the city. Weatherford was among its first victims. Balsara said he’d contracted the disease after his wife fed him a custard pudding to get his strength back up. He died at the age of 43. Stories about him stalking the corridors started shortly after.

The band leader Sonny Lobo told Balsara that there were times he couldn’t bring himself to sit on his piano stool because he could feel the unseen presence  already occupying it. In addition, the hotel’s waiters would never sleep in Prince’s after they’d finished their duties. Every time they did so,  someone would come by and pull off their sheets or throw water on them or turn on the lights. To ward off any disruptions, Balsara said, the dancers would gather before each performance to say a prayer for unhappy souls.

When I visited the Oberoi Grand last year, the general manager failed to mention Weatherford’s ghost. But here, from the Marco Pacci collection, is more of his haunting music.

The Darktown Strutters Ball by TEDDY WEATHERFORD by Taj Mahal Foxtrot

Birth of the Blues by TEDDY WEATHERFORD by Taj Mahal Foxtrot

Earlier this year, a stage in suburban Mumbai played host to a jazz-fusion concert headlining Niladri Kumar, a fifth-generation sitar player. The depth of Kumar’s association with Hindustani classical music was satisfying, but it wasn’t as surprising as the long family connection one of his sidemen had with jazz. Gino Banks, the drummer at the performance, is a third-generation Indian jazz musician — a rather astonishing fact considering that the musical form was born in the faraway port city of New Orleans merely four generations ago.

Many fans know Gino as the son of the keyboard player Louiz Banks, the most prominent personality on the Indo-jazz fusion scene, but only a few realise that the Banks’ links with Western popular music stretch back to the 1940s, when Gino Banks’ grandfather, George, was recruited to perform alongside a visiting African-American pianist named Teddy Weatherford.

Though jazz has now become a niche interest in the subcontinent, Gino Banks and other third-generation Indian jazz musicians continue to perform fairly regularly, living proof that our country is heir to a tradition that it can claim as its own with much passion as the citizens of France or Japan, two other nations that took to jazz early.

Click here to read the complete piece.

I Take to You by TEDDY WEATHERFORD AND HIS BAND by Taj Mahal Foxtrot

I’ve Got a Bone to Pick with You by TEDDY WEATHERFORD AND HIS BAND by Taj Mahal Foxtrot
 

“Everywhere we went in India, the people were unfailingly kind and gravious to us, and the jazz fans were passionately devoted,” Kaminsky noted in My Life in Jazz. “But it was in Poona…that I met one of the most impressive and unusual fans I ever had the pleasure of knowing. He was the high priest of the Parsis, and after the concert he asked to be presented to me.”

The dasturji was “a slender olive-skinned man with bright black eyes…dressed in a long white robe and a white turban”, Kaminsky wrote. He “seemed to be one of the original Three Wise Men. You had the feeling he knew everything, and he probably did.”

He drove Kaminsky around Pune (“which has a lot of beautiful temples and palaces”) and then took the musician to his antique-filled home.

The American had never heard of the Parsis before, let alone met one, so the priest filled him in on the community’s history. He told Kaminsky about the migration from Persia and about Parsi burial practices. “As high priest, he was the only one allowed to take the cadavers up to the top of special high towers – Towers of Silence, they’re called – where within five minutes the bones are picked clean” by vultures, Kaminsky wrote. “It’s probably just as well that one doesn’t know what one’s fans are doing on their own time.”

The trumpet player was charmed by the priest’s hospitality. He concluded, “It was strange to picture this stately man seated in his carved teakwood chair during the languid Indian night, listening to a Summa Cum Laude recording of Nobody’s Sweetheart Now.”

I haven’t been able locate that particular track, but here’s a grainy film of Kaminsky performing Royal Garden Blues, only a few months before his Indian sojourn.

In 1940s, as the US marched to war, Hollywood pulled up its socks, put on its makeup and got behind the troops. It churned out scores of movies aimed at keeping morale high. Among the feel-good films of the time was Stage Door Canteen, which celebrated a recreational centre for recruits of that name in New York. The film was studded with cameos by such figures as Katherine Hepburn, Johnny “Tarzan” Weissmuller and even the Anglo-Indian actress Merle Oberon.

Stage Door Canteen also featured appearances by major orchestras led, among others, by Benny Goodman, Count Basie and this one, fronted by the Spanish-American bandleader Xavier Cugat (whose records can still be found in flea markets across India).

(Click on the image to expand it.)

The austerity of the war years resulted in a ban on record imports in the subcontinent. To meet the demand for music, HMV’s plant in Dum Dum, Calcutta, got Indian dance bands to record American hit tunes. As a consequence, only a few months after Stage Door Canteen was released in the US in 1943, the Bombay band leader Chic Chocolate and his Music Makers made their own version of the film’s big song, She’s a Bombshell from Brooklyn.

Latin music was immensely popular in India and, as this photo shows, Chic’s Music Makers didn’t dress very differently from Xavier Cugat’s men.   These tracks are from the Marco Pacci archive.

She’s a bombshell from Brooklyn by CHIC & HIS MUSIC MAKERS by Taj Mahal Foxtrot

We mustn’t say goodbye by CHIC & HIS MUSIC MAKERS by Taj Mahal Foxtrot

I haven’t been able to find out much about the pair, except for stray references to them in Billboard magazine in the 1950s. Even their first names are unknown. One advertisement in 1958 boasts that Zarate and Paquita were “widely known as concert artists and nightclub entertainers [and] are also known as composers and recording artists”. They had evidently released a religious album “containing the hymns and prayers embracing the faith of all people”. The ad said that the record was “receiving favourable comment from all who have heard it and those who already have it in their homes say it should be in all homes”. Other Billboard articles suggest that they spent the 1950s as performers at variety shows in the US that featured jugglers and magicians, in addition to musicians.

Advertisements and articles in The Times of India place them in Bombay in the winter of 1941, performing at the Taj and Green’s Hotel. They made these recordings in Calcutta later that year.

But there’s an intriguing twist to the tale. According to a discography published in the jazz magazine Storyville, Paquita was actually the stage name of an African-American jazz singer named Myrtle Watkins, who had performed at the Taj in 1935. If this is true, it makes one wonder why Watkins – who had established a rather solid reputation in Europe in the 1930s – decided to take on a Mexican alibi and when she did so.

Myrtle Watkins first appears in my research material in 1928 as a member of the cast of a revue called Blackbirds, which was well reviewed in the US. By 1930, she was a dancer in Paris, one of the scores of African-American performers who had moved to Europe to escape the racism of the US and to trade on the French fascination for “negro” culture.

Through the 1930s, African-American newspapers such as the Defender and the Afro-American reported Myrtle Watkins’ movements through Europe – she was in France, Belgium and Romania, among other places. In 1934, for instance, the Chicago Defender reported from Paris that the colourful African-American hostess Ada “Bricktop” Smith had postponed the opening of her new cabaret on rue Pigalle pending the arrival from Spain of Watkins, who “is appropriately publicised on this continent…as the world’s most fascinating entertainer”.

The next year found Watkins at the Taj in Bombay, where newspapers reported that she was laid low by a terrible bout of malaria. There’s little else in the local newspapers about her time here, though the Times of India complicated matters for future researchers by frequently misspelling her name.

One report in the Afro-American described her as the Josephine Baker of Spain. “Miss Watkins, who is a very good dancer, with plenty of pep, is pretty and has a shapely figure,” it said. “She has been making conquests in high society and on her string is the marquis of one of Spain’s bluest blue bloods. She lives at the Florida, one of the best hotels in the city, has a fine roadster, records for Spanish gramophone and radio, and entertains at one of the leading cabarets.” That experience, perhaps, provided her with material to help her metamorphose from Myrtle into Paquita.

The only image I’ve been able to find of Watkins is rather indistinct, so it’s difficult to compare her features with Paquita’s (though those noses do seem remarkably similar, don’t you think?).  Keeping that in mind, the most compelling evidence I’ve found to suggest that Myrtle was indeed Paquita comes from the Chicago Defender in January, 1938. It said that since the Paris Exposition had shut for three months, Myrtle Watkins and her “Cuban-American orchestra that enjoyed a lovely success…at the exclusive George V restaurant” on the exposition grounds had moved on to another engagement. As it turns out, a promotional card I found on the internet for Zarate and Paquita states that this duo were also at an Exposition restaurant – but the copy says it’s the George 6th. I’d love to believe that there’s a typo here somewhere. I still can’t understand whether it would make commercial sense for an African-American jazz singer to pass as a Mexican musician in the 1930s, though perhaps a decision like this would have afforded Watkins greater personal freedom in the racially segregated US. I wonder how audiences reacted to this transformation and why no newspaper articles mention it.

Even if she had played at being Paquita in 1937, she was back to being Myrtle Watkins the next year. The New York Amsterdam News reported that she was the second emcee at the Big Apple club in Montmarte run by Bricktop. The article describes Watkins as “one of the cleverest singers and dancers” they had ever seen. Then it adds an even more curious detail: “She is now married to an East Indian, Lall Singh. She has accepted the Hindu faith and in the streets, she affects Eastern garb.”

After that, her name disappears from the newspaper and magazine archives I have access to – and Paquita and Zarate make their appearance. I’ve tried all sort of search combinations but there’s nothing to nail down this indentity switch conclusively. However, even as I’ve reached a dead end in real life, I can still use my imagination. Tonight, Myrtle Watkins of Baltimore will flounce through my dreams in her avatar as Paquita Singh, clad in Eastern garb, singing St Louis Blues.
St. Louis Blues by Paquita and Zarate by Taj Mahal Foxtrot

Lady Be Good by Paquita and Zarate by Taj Mahal Foxtrot