Listen, regarding you music and your playing, can you give me a little

background on when you started and how you started and how this

happened and so forth? [spoken words – Moses Asch]



Well, in the first place, the whole entire family was musicians.  And I

started playing when I was fourteen years old.  My father played music.

My mother played music. My five brothers played music, and I had two 

sisters played music.  And I just bought an instrument and, and in ah six 

months I was holding a good job.  I ‘s playin' with my father's band – he 

had a string band.  And we played for weddings, and different things like 

that.  It was nothing like now, you know?  Those days wasn't like now, not 

then.  And we just played for weddings, and dances, and, and ah, private 

parties, things like that, dinners, and … well …



When did you start recording? [spoken words – Moses Asch]



I started recording 1920 ...  for Okeh Record Company.  I started 

recording for them in 1920 and I stayed with … I won a contest with 

them … I had been … I had been on this contest for eighteen weeks … I 

won first every Thursday night.  ‘Cause it's something, it's hard to play 

violin and sing at the same time.  And I was doing that.  And I was doing 

a very good job.  And I got … a five-year contract from them.  And I 

played violin and sing, and my brother played piano for me.  And I made 

a so many beautiful records for them.  And so after the contract give out, 

and I went back to the steel mill, and started to working again … ‘cause I 

didn't know the nightclub work and I didn't take any chance. So [I] went 

back to the steel mill in East St. Louis, and worked there five years.  I 

started as a sand cutter and end up as a molder.  I was molding these big 

boxcar wheels you see on the track, that's what I was molding.  And I 

worked there for a long time, and I left there and I went to … they had a 

job open at the tie plant.  You know, a creosote plant where they make 

ah railroad ties.  So I went … I, I went up there and went to work, and ah, 

I didn't work there very long – I worked there six months because ah, the 

work was too heavy.  I was tired of weighing from 150 pounds to 200 

pounds only, only two men had to carry them.  And they come out of that 

creosote boiling hot.  And you had those leather coats on.  You put ‘em on 

your shoulder.  And you load sixteen, seventeen hundred ties into a boxcar.  

An' I got tired of that.  So I left from there and went to Peoria, Illinois.  

Got a job in a nightclub, playing music again, and I played there three 

years in a nightclub, and the club … closed down, ah, and I … went to the 

foundry, only four blocks from the club and got a job doing the same kind 

of work I was in East St. Louis.  So I worked there seven years.



When was this?  [spoken words – Moses Asch]



Hmmmm? Oh, that was way back in the 20s … 28, way back in there.  

And then I, then I worked there for a long time and then I got another 

easy job workin' at the golf club … takin' care of the lawns, you know?   

I had a good job, worked out there a long time.  Then when I left from 

there, come back to St. Louis and I started playing for Charlie Chreathe's 

band … and playin' all the, all the ah, all the… all the ah… I played every 

excursion boat out there for five years. I ‘s workin' with Charlie Chreathe's

 band, that's what they called him, Charlie Chreathe's, his, his name was 

Chreathe.  So I, I ah played violin for his band … for five years.  And then 

his band broke up. And then I left from there and went … where'd I, then 

I come here to Chicago.  And ah, I worked in Chicago … with Louis' band, 

I worked with Louis Armstrong's band way back in the 20s.  I worked there 

with him plum until he went out on the road by hi'self … and it cut me out 

again.  And then I started working in vaudeville, see?  I worked everything 

in, ah on the key circuit ‘s to be worked.  They kept me on ‘leven years.  

I worked everything on this side and everything overseas.



Playing violin overseas? [spoken words – Moses Asch]



No, I ‘s playin' guitar then and singin'… [spoken words – Lonnie Johnson]