Roger Lewis Interview Out-takes

September 2, 2008 in Interviews

Roger Lewis, saxophonist and founder member of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, was interviewed by Jon Taylor for Blues in Britain (issue 41). Here, in an unprinted extract from the same interview, he talks about some of his musical experiences before the band formed in 1976.

RL: In the sixties I worked for a guy named Percy Stovall. A booking agent. He had a band called The Royals. It was a back-up band for all the r&b artists, like Joe Simon, William Bell, Robert Parker, Joe Tex, Irma Thomas, Wilson Pickett… His territory was like Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Texas, the so-called chitlin circuit.

Stovall was blind as a bat but that old man could count money. He would not give you all your money out on the road. He gave us about two dollars a day and the rest came when the tour finished. I really learned how to save money in that band!

He really knew how to hold on to a dollar! And when December came, Stovall showed his real strength. He’d book every day in the month of December. I played in Eddie Bo’s band back in the sixties as well. I played with Fats Domino in the seventies. He called me Chrome Dome. We tried to get Fats to record with the
Dirty Dozen later, but that’s another story. Fats took a year off. I moved to Las Vegas, played in a little band up there, then I moved to California. Irma Thomas was living in San Francisco at the time. She was
playing in a club there. I walked in to where she was playing and she was glad to see me. ‘Hey Roger! Where your horn?’ I said, ‘It’s in the trunk of my car.’ So I wound up doing the gig. She paid me, said ‘What you doing?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m just hanging out.’ I had a little one man band act at the time with electric drums. She
said, ‘You want to come back home with me and be my saxophonist?’ I said, ‘Why not? I ain’t doing nothing.’ So I came back to New Orleans with Irma and played in her band for a while.

I went back with Fats. Then he took another vacation and that was when the Dirty Dozen started.

The story continues in issue 41…