Joe McQueen Day, Celebrating associate Ogden Jazz Legend

“Later on, I referred to as him up and asked him if it'd be cool if we have a tendency to enjoyed time, and he same, ‘What square measure you doing right now?’ ” KRCL’s drive-time host says. “So I got over there, and Joe same that he was making an attempt to get some concrete.”

“I place his ass to figure,” McQueen says with a gravelly laugh.

“This floor,” Wheeler says, inform to the bottom within a 10-foot-by-10-foot shack/practice house that sits behind McQueen’s place Ogden, “is the story of Joe and that i turning into friends.”

McQueen is additional sort of a foundation than a floor, though. He’s sort of a wizen grandparent to Wheeler, and a job model to incalculable others community-wide, whether or not at his job as a driver and caregiver to the senior (usually a decade or additional younger than McQueen) or through enjoying jazz standards, Wheeler says. throughout McQueen’s seventy one years in Ogden, his career has run the gamut from gigging with jazz’s biggest names to being the primary blackamoor to perform in Utah’s white clubs.

“What I can’t imagine is why of these peoples is creating all this promotion regarding Joe McQueen,” says McQueen, World Health Organization still contains a spunk and bite to him. “I’m simply another guy. I don’t do nothing no completely different than no one else. The issue regarding it's folks get the thought that I’m associate previous man and still doing things. I can’t consider nothing else.

“I’ve been referred to as a legend,” he continues, “but i assumed legends was dead.”

This year, McQueen are going to be honored at A ne'er Ending Salute to Joe McQueen at Peery’s Egyptian Theater, an evening of music and storytelling. however the accolades started gushing forth in 2002, once former Gov. Michael Leavitt declared April eighteen to be Joe McQueen Day. It’s since become associate annual event.

“I’ve got the proclamation right there,” says the dismissive McQueen, inform to associate previous gymnasium locker. “I got all reasonably awards, man. I got that issue packed with those damn things.”

There square measure incalculable relics scattered around his weather-beaten blue armchair—a fan-made painting (with McQueen’s left having six fingers), news clippings, notes, etc.—all testifying to a solid career at the middle of Ogden’s jazz scene since the Nineteen Forties.

McQueen was born in urban center and raised in Ardmore, Okla., wherever he began enjoying music in school—first on brass, then on to saxophone—and received coaching from his cousin-german, Herschel Evans, tenor sax player in Count Basie’s band. McQueen began enjoying professionally at sixteen. Soon after, he took to the jazz circuit, itinerant the country. In his career, he’s compete with and met the World Health Organization’s who of the jazz elite, from cornetist to T-Bone Walker, Yardbird Parker to Ray Charles and Lester Young to torpedo Carmichael—and he’s outlived all of them.

On tour along with his band in winter 1942, McQueen stopped in Ogden, that happened to be a fateful performance, a cheerful accident for jazz in Ogden.

“Sumbitch [the bandleader] got paid and didn’t pay nobody; then he gambled away all our cash,” McQueen says, adding that he stayed in Ogden however wasn’t “stranded” there, as others have reportable. “As long as you’ve got some make the most your pocket and your girl by your aspect, you ain’t stranded obscurity,” he antecedently told IndieOgdenUtah.com. Luckily, McQueen had with him some healthy savings and his spouse, Thelma. McQueen became the new director and, with him at the helm, the band gigged close to perpetually, together with their residency at Porters and Waiters Club.

“Jazz hasn’t modified that damn abundant since then,” McQueen says of the hard-bop and swing sort of jazz he plays. He remembers and plays songs from highschool (78 years ago)—“It’s not on no damn paper”—and wants solely play a song once or doubly to commit it to memory. “It comes from here,” he says, inform to his head, then his heart. “I don’t savvy I mate. I simply give thanks the great Lord.”

To this day, McQueen plays along with his heart quite his head. “The issue regarding it's, man, is once I got up there and play, I play what I feel. I don’t simply attempt to build some notes,” says McQueen, World Health Organization is more well-off talking regarding wiggling with feeling than what it sounds like to own every day named once him.

“The truth is: Joe hates awards,” Wheeler says. “Joe hates attention. He extremely will. however Joe will prefer to inspire and educate folks.

“Joe McQueen Day extremely isn’t such a lot for Joe,” he continues. “It’s additional for everybody else. He extremely touches plenty of individuals. however are you able to not be galvanized by a person that’s ninety four years old?”

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