Carmon Meswarb interview, April 15, 1976: transcript

UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 1 An Interview with Carmon Meswarb An Oral History Conducted by Judy Hammer Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 2 © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2020 UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 3 The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 4 Abstract On April 15, 1976, Judy Hammer interviewed Carmon Meswarb (b. February 9, 1932 in Cedar Falls, Iowa) about his life as a musician in Las Vegas, Nevada. Meswarb discusses how he ended up in Las Vegas, the musicians union and his time playing in a relief band. Meswarb also delves into the different entertainment acts of the 1950s and 1960s, the big-name performers, the city’s showgirls and racial segregation in entertainment. Moreover, Matson talks about the changing landscape of the city, residential areas and the changed attitude of the Strip. The interview ends with Meswarb discussing the short stint of Broadway shows on the Las Vegas Strip. UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 5 Fifteenth, 1976 at 1:30 p.m. The place is 5854 Madera Circle, Las Vegas, Nevada. The collector is Judy Hammer, Box 29, Logandale, Nevada. The project is Local History Project Oral Interview: A Musician on the Las Vegas Strip. Carmon, as a musician, when did you come to Las Vegas and how did you end up being in Las Vegas rather than somewhere else? I came to Vegas in January 1955. That was about a month after I got out of the navy. And the options I was considering at that time was either going to New York or to Los Angeles or to Miami or to Las Vegas. They were the only places that I’d heard that musicians could earn a decent living and stay in one place, the other alternative being going on the road with a dance band. I see. And what problems did you encounter when you got here? As far as immediately going into employment. Well, first of all, after boiling it down between Las Vegas and Miami and then finally deciding to try Las Vegas first. And if not making it here in Las Vegas, then trying Miami. After choosing Las Vegas, I came here and applied first to the union where I found out that I would have to wait three months before I could even try to get a job and the only other thing that I was trained to do was teach school. So I went to talk to the school superintendent and because it was January and they were in the middle of the school year, they didn’t have anything for me. So I wound up getting a job at the Horseshoe Club as a dishwasher through the person that owned the motel I was staying at. She knew somebody who knew that was hiring at the Horseshoe so I got on as a dishwasher there and, after a day or so, became a busboy and later a food checker. And that’s how I went through my three months waiting to be in—being, to become eligible as a musician. Where and when was your first job as a musician in Vegas? UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 6 The day that my three months was up, I got a call from the union and they told me that a relief band was in mid rehearsal at the Sahara playing a Ray Bolger show and that the relief band didn’t have a trombone. And they found out during rehearsal that they had to have one. So they called and sent me out there to play this job and as a result of that I was paid not by the band itself but by the hotel who had made some deal with the act—with Ray Bolger to pay me separately. I take it this is contrary to what the normal practice is working a relief band? Yes, it’s apparently not to the musician’s best interest to be hired directly by the hotel. In fact, that was one of the big issues in the last, very recent negotiation between Musician Union and the hotels. Hotels have wanted to become the direct employer of the musicians and the musicians want to have their own leader and or contractor who hires musicians. And so, in this case, while it’s never been—I guess it’s never really been known, this was kind of an exception because it is contrary not only to practice but our union rules that for this short time, and on a few other occasions when this happened, I was hired directly by the hotel and paid through their payroll and not by the band. I see. Well, after the first job with the relief band, did you get to continue working as a musician or was it back to the Horseshoe? Well, it was both. I stayed on at the Horseshoe because I had a feeling that even though I did get this first job it wouldn’t necessarily last and I might be out again so I kept the job at the Horseshoe so that I’d have something when this gave out. As it turned out, I kept that job for about three more months until school opened and then a job opened there. And I still had my job playing because a number of other hotels were built during that time. Right during the—let’s see, I started workin’ in April, it was April 2nd of 1955 that I got that first job at the Sahara that we UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 7 just talked about, which was just one night a week. It was just Thursday nights, being the relief night. Maybe I should explain that what I mean by relief night. All of the hotels in town have shows in their showrooms that work seven nights a week but, again, because of union regulations, musicians can only work six nights a week. They have to have one night off per week. That means that while the—again, while the shows go seven days, the bands in those various hotels can only work six days a week. So they have what they call relief bands that play on the house bands’ nights off. The nights off are staggered up and down the Strip in such a way that two relief bands accommodate all the hotels in town. So, back to where I started, I got my call to play in just one of those hotels with one of those two relief bands. So, as I just said, during that same month, other hotels which were being built, opened, among them were the Riviera, the Royal Nevada—which has now become the Stardust Convention Center—the Stardust Hotel itself, the New Frontier. Those hotels all opened up within a month and then a short time after that the Moulin Rouge also opened up. While it wasn’t on the Strip, it was also in Las Vegas. And so as it turned out I got the relief night at all of those new hotels plus the one that I already had. In addition to that, two existing hotels, the Thunderbird and the El Rancho, I got those relief nights occasionally when the bands were augmented to use trombones. Now in all of these new hotels, they all employed trombone players on relief night and several of the older hotels at that time didn’t employ trombone players except when the act insisted upon it. So, I had all these nights work then on the relief nights, I still had my job as a busboy at the Horseshoe Club and then that following September when school opened, I was offered a job in the music department of the elementary schools in Henderson so that gave me three jobs and just—I was already working almost around the clock UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 8 so I took my new teaching job, quit the Horseshoe Club and for that year I taught in Henderson and played the relief nights on the Strip. Who were some of the big names that played the Strip in those days? I’ll have to struggle for this one. At the El Rancho we had Milton Burrow, Joe E. Lewis, Sophie Tucker and Eartha Kitt. They were the main standbys there and from time to time they had other people, I can’t remember. I remember, let’s see, Gloria DeHaven was one that I remember. I just can’t remember others at that hotel. At the Sahara, Marlene Dietrich was a biggie in those days. She made the cover of Time Magazine and a new revealing down and played up that she was the sexy grandmother. George Burns worked there, Mae West worked there. A lot of acts that I can’t just remember on the spur of the moment. The Riviera opened with Liberace with his brother George conducting the orchestra and I came in there with a relief band on their off night. George conducted us too, but it was contracted by somebody else whom I can’t remember now. Let’s see, Jack Benny was working in town in those days, can’t remember the hotel. Red Skelton, Robert Murrell was one of the big acts at the Sands, as was Louis Armstrong. And soon after the—soon after the New Frontier was built, they added in addition to their old stars, they had Sammy Davis who was featured with the Will Mastin Trio and in about, it was either 1955 or ’56, Elvis Presley came in as an opening act with Freddie Martin and his orchestra. They were the—Freddie Martin’s band was the featured act, had Merv Griffin on piano and Shecky Greene was on the show as one of the opening acts, but as I said along with that was Elvis Presley who was rather unheard of then. Some of the kids in my band in Henderson, in my junior high band, when they heard that I was playing the relief night on Elvis Presley’s show, that was about all UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 9 they could talk about. It really helped my popularity out there because I was playing for Elvis Presley whom I’d never heard of at the time. But most of the acts in those days were—seems to me, they were mostly movie stars. Anybody who was known in movies, for example Jeff Chandler, who didn’t really have much of a nightclub act but was so well known for playing in movies, came into the Riviera and didn’t do very well because he didn’t have a nightclub act. His big thing was making movies but people knew of him so he came in. Now today everybody knows anybody who’s on television, it seems like their instantly known to everyone so that today that seems to be who draws the people in town today. That’s about all the performers I can remember at this time. It just seems like—my feeling is that it was nearly all of the really popular movie stars with the exception of Bob Hope. Seemed like everybody else played here in those days. What was the Strip like in those days? What was the atmosphere like? It was a lot more relaxed than it is now. The people that were known as the big money players often times could be identified because of their sloppy dress. The more money they had, the sloppier they could afford to dress not having to create any image. So people were encouraged to come as they are as opposed to, say, New York where you’ve got to wear a shirt and tie and coat to get in deep. People here would show up and they would go to shows in their short sleeves, whatever they happened to have on. Dungarees if they felt like it and be playing at the tables. Be spending thousands of thousands of dollars wearing just old clothes, just sloppy dungarees. So, in that sense, it was more relaxed. Also it hadn’t become as expensive. People like myself, for example, who have unions that keep pushing our wages higher and then pushing all salaries higher for everyone and also the stars being so expensive, as a result of all that as well as just the general cost of living, costs UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 10 spiral in the country as a whole, keep pushing everything to be so expensive today so that we all earn several times as much now as we did in those days. As a result, shows are so much more expensive. There are other reasons for that, too. I think now, ever since Howard Hughes came to town and his efficiency experts concentrated on making each entity of each hotel show a profit, that meant that costs in all fields of the hotel, room rates went up, food went up in price compared to when I came to town. As an example, when I first came to town, there was no cover charge or any minimum on any show. That meant that for a few dollars a person could go to a dinner show and to the late show where there was no minimum, people could come in there and just watch the show or order one drink and nurse that through the whole second show. That went on for a couple of years after I got here and then they put on a two dollar minimum for the second shows. There still wasn’t any minimum on the first show although there was a certain amount guaranteed because of the cost of the meal. But because food prices were so low, in those days people came to town to gamble and it was in that area alone that the hotels seemed to be concerned about making a profit. As a result they often gave shows away free as they sometimes do today to special people but not on—not in the way they did those days. Back in the mid to late ’50s, they used to have free chuckwagons after midnight at a couple of the hotels, and the few hotels that charge for their chuckwagons, it was such an elaborate spread of food and still the charge would only be about a dollar and a half in those days. Apart from that—let’s see, your question is how is it different? Apart from that, again to the relaxed atmosphere, because it wasn’t so congested here the parking spaces were so much more available for each hotel. Now people have to drive forever to find a place to park and they have separate parking lots for employees. In those days, there was so much parking available, UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 11 that it didn’t make any difference where a person parked, whether he was a customer or an employee. He found a place to park very close to the entrance to a hotel. So all of those things say to me that it was just much more relaxed in those days. Much more open. I think that’s it. (Unintelligible) this more relaxed atmosphere of then. What about things like, oh, all the glitter that we think of with Las Vegas? The showgirls, the prostitution, the high rollers? Now that it’s more corporation controlled, was it considerably different then? Let’s see, I’m not sure I understand the question. When you mention the glitter, there was more glitter here then than I had seen anywhere in the world that I’d been. Which had been nearly everywhere in the navy. There’s probably even more glitter today just because it’s larger but in those days, we still had the glitter. In 1955, when I drove Downtown, for example when I worked at the Horseshoe Club, I drove down Fremont Street, it was as bright as daylight in the hometown I came from in Iowa. It was as bright at midnight Downtown Las Vegas as I’m used to seeing in a town at noon. So from that standpoint, there was still the glitter. The Strip had its big signs, it also had the glitter then. So I don’t see much difference in that respect other than now besides all the bright lights, it’s so very, very congested. Let’s see, you said prostitution. I’m—it’s my understanding that while we sometimes see prostitutes on the Strip today, it’s my impression that prostitution is supposedly illegal in Las Vegas now. And if it is, then that would be a difference from when I came to town when we had legalized houses of prostitution here. Although it seems to me that they were closed within about six months after I got here. I don’t think I had anything to do with it— (Laughs) But they had a couple of houses of prostitution near town, one out on Boulder Highway. And around election time, that was a hot issue and they closed them up and the nearest houses of UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 12 prostitution after that at out in Searchlight. So then that became as the closest place to go from Las Vegas. And I don’t even remember now when that—when prostitution was made illegal there. But anyway, there was legal prostitution in Las Vegas when I came here. Do you remember any more of that question? We were talking about the aura around the showgirls that now, I think, is a little bit different. As far as showgirls, when I came to town we didn’t have—oh, let’s see, we talk in terms of topless. That expression wasn’t used in those days to refer to gals wearing now bras or, like, wearing no clothes from the waste up as is now and has been in the last, close to the last decade I guess, done in our French Production shows. In those days we didn’t have that, but we did have showgirls in every hotel. It was like there was a, what we call the dance line of showgirls. Every hotel, without exception, had showgirls or dancers. And their function was to open each show, if it was a star policy show, the show still would open with a dance number of showgirls and dancers. And then there would be an opening act, often a comedian, then there would be another dance routine, showgirls and dancers, another production number. And in some cases, after the headliner, there was sometimes a dance number closing the show. That often—that didn’t happen a lot though because headliners liked to close the show. It seemed like they would then end the show with a climax instead of an anticlimactic dance routine. But the showgirls and dancers generally worked two numbers in each show, somewhere like the opening and then somewhere along the middle of the show so that—. And also, they also had a social function in those days to perform for the hotel and that was called mixing. The intermission, the hour and a half to two hours intermission between the first and second show, the girls would sit in the lounges where there were also acts performing UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 13 and they would be offered free drinks by the management just to decorate the hotel during those hours. And then often about a half hour to an hour after the second show, they would also—they were required to stay on the premises. But again, their union put a lot of pressure on that. Girls were sometimes made to feel or they thought that it was implied that because they were decorating the lounges of the hotels that they were often approached as if they were prostitutes and their union (unintelligible) raised so much of a ruckus about that that the practice of mixing was discontinued. But, ironically, their practice of dancing was also eventually discontinued at most of the hotels. So now we have dancers and showgirls only in the big production hotels with the exception of once in a while a headliner or an act will bring in dancing girls and or boys as an integral part of the act. But they are no longer hired by the hotel as a routine part of each show with the exception of our shows that have the production shows like the Stardust, the Dunes, the Tropicana and now the MGM. Would you say the faces in the shows have changed or is the caliber shows higher? Is the production better? Are the people performing better now than they were in those days? I can’t say for sure on that one. In one aspect the shows, I don’t know if we would say they’re getting better, but they’re certainly getting more elaborate with the production shows which have been quite elaborate since they started. By that I mean the French shows, the Folies Bergere and the casino show, those various shows that have supposedly begun in Paris and then come over here, they’ve always had a format that’s been about the same. But I think, over the years I think they’ve gotten more elaborate both in their sets and costuming. And, certainly, from my standpoint in the music, it seems as if at least for a number of years each show seemed to get harder to get play. It seemed like they tried to make a musical climax that would last through the whole show and as a result both the musicians and the UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 14 audience, I thought, came out of the shows exhausted just from the exuberance of the music. It seemed like it was always to become higher each show, each year we could expect the arrangements to require us to play higher and louder. And possibly even with more notes, faster, faster, faster, louder. I don’t know if that just reflects our—the neurosis of our times or, I just don’t know the reason for it. But again, going back to my answer about whether the town is more relaxed when I said it was certainly more relaxed twenty years ago than it is now, that was true with the type of shows. Now it’s if you go to, for example, the new production show at the MGM. There are people coming out of the ceiling and they’re on all the walls, they’re up in front of you, the music is going constantly, it just seems like it’s become more of a fifteen-ring circus now. There is more happening, whether that’s better or not, is a judgment that I can’t really make. The headliner performers that work here are the biggest, the biggest, strongest stars that are available anywhere in the country but they also were when I came to town so I wouldn’t really say that there’s any real difference there. Where were you living in Vegas twenty years ago? Where did most of the Strip people live? Well, first, where was I living? When I first came to town, I lived in an apartment for one month and decided I didn’t like apartment living and I bought a trailer, which we euphemistically learned to call mobile homes and I understand now that—I’ve been told that mobile home living in Las Vegas is still where an awful lot of people live here. Mobile home parks have increased all over. Anyway, that’s where I did—I lived in North Vegas, near where the Vegas Village store is. Now I lived there for several months. That’s where I was when I got my first phone call to go to work and after that I moved out on the Strip, across from where the Tropicana hotel now is, at the Lone Palm Hotel which had a trailer park behind it. So I lived there for several years. UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 15 I also lived, in those early years, I also lived temporarily at a trailer park out on the Boulder Highway while I was teaching in Henderson. I moved my trailer out there on Boulder Highway so that I was spaced between Henderson and Las Vegas. And then, where the college now is, across from where the college now is, there was a ten-acre piece of land at about the corner of Maryland Parkway and Tropicana, which it was owned in those days by—I believe his name was Bill Boyd. The man who played Hopalong Cassidy in the movies and they used those ten acres as movie sets for some of those old flicks. And it was on—after those movies were discontinued, whoever took over his properties, leased that land and one of the first Alpine Village. What were they called in those days? Yes, the Alpine Village restaurant, the German restaurant was put on that acreage. And that later became, it was called the Alps Lodge, then they had a big fire on there and that restaurant was burned down. And when it was rebuilt, it opened—same German restaurant reopened under the name the Bonfire. When that first occurred, as it happened—the reason I’m talking about this, my dad being German, liking German food, I took him out there one night to this German restaurant when he was in town visiting me and we struck up a conversation with the owner who, out of this conversation, invited me to bring my trailer down from the Strip and move it out on this ten acres. He said if I found the place under some trees that I liked, I could live there. I could plug into their water supply and into their sewer system and all I’d have to do would be to put up my own telephone pole. As a result, I lived there for three years rent free on this ten-acre lot and it was just beautiful there. And, as I said, that’s before the college was built. They did put one building in over there while I was living there. Tropicana Road in those days was called Bond Road, it was at first a gravel road and then they hard-topped it with tar or something but it wasn’t paved in those days UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 16 and Maryland Parkway going by there was a dirt road. But that’s where I lived for a few years and then after that I moved my trailer up to the Tropicana Mobile Park up on what then was named Tropicana after that hotel was built and lived there while I built—had designed and had built the house that we’re in now. I had this built nine years ago so all of those places I had lived in prior to nine years ago when I built this house. (Tape one ends) People working on the Strip living in those days? They weren’t consolidated in any one place. Seemed to me when I came to town that the family people, the musicians who had families, a number of them lived out in the West Charleston area. As I recall that was the only housing development that was separate from—or that I considered separate Las Vegas. What I considered to be the consolidated part of Las Vegas. I thought that was a long drive out there. But somebody had developed what was called the West Charleston Tract before I came to town, so that would be before 1955. And I visited a trumpet player whom I had known before I came to Las Vegas. I visited him and his family out there, and I remember him telling me what rent was, that he was paying fifty-five dollars a month for the rental—no, not for renting but that was buying the house. In other words, that was principal and interest in those days. Fifty-five dollars a month, it was a one-bath, three-bedroom home. All the rooms were very small. There was what they called swamp cooling as opposed to refrigerated air conditioning. But it was everything that they needed to live and it was I thought was an awfully long drive to get out to their development. Now, of course, we know that there are expensive developments going on way beyond that, but that was even in those days that was past, it was out in the area of Decatur so that it was farther UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 17 out than Arville and it went out to Evergreen, not as far as Jones. But it did seem like a separate entity from Las Vegas to me. Other than that, most of the people that I knew lived in apartments that were very close to the Strip. The streets that took the names of cities. Streets in town like Cincinnati had the Cincinnati Apartments and there were Boston Apartments and all of those streets. New York Apartments. Most of those streets were lined with apartment buildings and a lot of the show kids lived there. Also, Paradise Road, which wasn’t a paved road when I came to town, it wasn’t—I think it was paved, I think but I’m not sure that it was paved in the area of Desert Inn Road. I know it wasn’t paved beyond Flamingo and I’m not sure if it was paved between Desert inn and Flamingo or not. But anyway, there were apartments there on that road where some of the show kids lived. So anyway, there were—generally, I think most of the musicians that were single, musicians and show kids lived in these apartments very close to the Strip and that the performers themselves lived in the hotels where they were working unless they were black in which case they lived in the, they tended to live out at the Moulin Rouge. I remember once going out to the Moulin Rouge to find the Mills Brothers. I needed to talk to Harry Mills to find out whether—whatever hotel, I can’t remember what hotel they were working, but I wanted to know. I knew they were opening at one of the hotels soon and I needed to know whether they were gonna request that the relief night have a trombone or not. And I couldn’t find them at their Strip hotel, I found that they were living out at the Moulin Rouge and that’s where I found them. That seemed to be where the black performers live and, as I said, the others lived close to the Strip, stayed close to the Strip. (Unintelligible) with the very definite change over the last twenty years in your work in the Strip, which do you prefer? Would you rather be working back then, would you rather UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 18 things were the same as they were then? Or is it really better for a musician now? I would like to working under condition as they were then and making the income that we make today. If I had my choice one or the other, I’d go back to what now seem like the good ol’ days. Okay. I don’t have any other questions for you. If there’s anything that you want to add that you’d like to bring out about then, you can go into that. A few minutes ago, before we turned the tape on, I had mentioned a period about, oh, around ten years ago where—a period during which several of the hotels went into a different phase of show business than anything that we’ve discussed now and that was having Broadway shows in town. And the Riviera was one of those and the Thunderbird was another. And for a year or so, we had a lot of Broadway shows. Would you like to know some of those that we played? Sure. That’s different from now for sure. Again, I only did them one night a week, being in the relief band business but I jotted down the names of a few when I mentioned that to you a little while ago and here are some of them that we played during that time. There was Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, Bye, Bye Birdie, Can Can, Sweet Charity, the Plum de Matat, Herma le Dues, Flower Drum Song, High Button Shoes, A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum, Funny Girl, Pal Joey, Silk Stockings, and Dusty Rides Again. These were the Broadway shows I was able to remember a few moments ago and I just made a note of it. Why do you think they discontinued this policy? Were they well received by the audiences? I thought they were. I don’t know why, it’d be hard for me to answer that one. In some cases, it meant hiring a pretty big cast and then having to attract people as opposed to, say, hiring a performer that’s on television like Archie Bunker who’s known by everybody and is able to draw people in. I don’t know. I remember that the show Flower Drum Song, for example, that played UNLV University Libraries Carmon Meswarb 19 the Thunderbird for a long, long time and then was brought back for another engagement later one, seemed to me that they had a full house every night. In fact, I remember—I remember seeing, I just worked out on the relief nights as I said and yet there was a person who sat ringside every week for at least one of the two shows that we played each week. I saw the same person sitting there week after week. And I don’t know, I thought those shows were very well attended but I think it’s possible they would be considered, say, more family entertainment than—performers like Dean Martin, for example, or Frank Sinatra, have a following of people that perhaps are more into gambling, which is where the hotels hope to get their biggest revenue. And if you’d put in a show like, well like these Broadway, put in a show like Pajama Game or Flower Drum Song or Funny Girl, this would be a show that people could bring their families to and be good entertainment. It might be something that you could show in a theatre where you would sell tickets but may not necessarily attract people who are big gamblers. That’d just be my guess, I don’t know. Well, I assume then as now that’s the reason for the Las Vegas Strip. Okay. That’s all I have. Thank you very much, Carmon.