by Bill Minutaglio
Livey Arts editor

The hat's looking good. In fact, the whole uniform is looking smart. Millard F. McNeal is heading out the door of his home on Dawson Street. His father has already left to spend the day riding his horse and wagon, delivering grain for the Fred Staffel Co. over on Burnet Street. It's a hazy summer day in San Antonio. It's 1923. He hooks a turn onto Commerce Street and heads downtown. It's a little bit before 8 am. The Joske's building sits 100 yards away from the Alamo. The young and the old side, by side, McNeal thinks as he pushes the door of the gleaming department store and heads inside. His fellow elevator operators - Alva Brooks and Percy Bush - had beat him to the store. They wear the same crisp-looking uniforms. The three exchange knowing smiles. The sort of smiles that indicate a conspiracy is underfoot, that a unique experience is being shared. In their case it's a bond that goes beyond the fact that they are all operating elevators for Joske's customers. Beyond the fact they're being paid $12.50 a week. And beyond the fact they're all young, black and from the East Side of San Antonio. It has to do with the instruments they'd bought at the Thomas' Goggan Music Store downtown - and it has to do with a little old band by the name of "McNeal's Southern Boys". The "Boys" were an all-black jazz band, the only one in Texas and one of the few in the country. In fact, they were one of the first organized jazz, bands - of any color - in the United States.

It was a nine piece outfit: McNeal on sax and clarinet; Bush on trumpet; Brooks on alto sax; Clarence "Bubba" Howard, who never learned to read a note of music, on piano; Lee Hilliard on trumpet and sax; Fred Abernethy, who preaches now on Cactus Street, playing tenor banjo; Clifford "Boots" Douglas on drums; Lee Andrew. Gaines on sax; and Jimmy Owens on trombone. They played all over the South and the Midwest. They traveled in a beat-up truck to Milwaukee and then into the heart of Louisiana. They played Joplin and St. Louis, Mo.; Oklahoma City, Okla. and Springfield, Ill. They played for the white boys in the fraternities at the University of Texas at Austin.

In the capItal City, they gave command performances for Miriam "Ma" Ferguson - the only woman ever to be elected governor of Texas. And in their home town they played the old Empire Theater, the Plaza Hotel, the Roof Garden restaurant on Commerce Street and dozens of "Negro Dances" at the Community House on Hackberry Street. If things weren't shaking, the band members, all in their late teens and early '20s, would print up a few posters and hold their own dance - usually in someone's East Side backyard. Then they wouldn't wear the tuxedoes that they wore when they played the "nice" white clubs nor would they play any of that watered-down, semi-classical jazz that people like Paul Whiteman were spreading around the country. They'd reach back and play the songs that were making the 1920s the 20th century's most rebellious decade: "Yes, We Have No Bananas," "Charlie My Boy," and suggestive tune like "Oh, How I Miss You Tonight"

McNeal was the leader of the band. He called it to order in 1923. And he called it to a halt a short and fast four years later - just in time to beat the Great Depression, a period when being a jazz musician was about as appropriate as wearing a clown suit to a funeral. He walked away from it all. His saxophone. The lessons that he had taken from the old ltalian man. His musical friendship with Bush, whom he had met when they were students at the St. Peter Claver school where the Healy-Murphy Center now stands.

He never looked back. McNeal went to work for the forefather of City Public Service: San Antonio Public Service. Then he switched to IBM. Now, at the age of 76, he sits behind, a desk as the president of the Alamo City Chamber of Commerce. The chamber, housed in a small building on East Houston Street, near a spiritual healer's headquarters, serves the East Side. It's having troubles right now - the phone company has them listed in the phone book above the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, the bigger city-wide organization. McNeal spend more time than he wants telling people: Nooooo... You probably want the other Chamber: of commerce. . .Do you have that number?" After another one of these phone calls McNeal, a wiry man with a huge forehead and large hands that look like they could smother a clarinet, pauses and says, "It was easy, Really. I was getting married and I didn't like the idea of dragging my wife all around the country. And when I gave it up, I really gave it up. I mean I never played again and never had any desire to." The pay was a little less - he made $2.75 a day with Public Service instead of the $10 a night he'd charge at the black dances and the $15 a night he'd get at the white fraternity parties.

But it was steady. . . and he didn't have to worry about Isabel, his wife. It didn't even hurt when drummer Douglas hit the limelight and went on to cut a few records with his own band called "Boots and His Buddies." "We had some people that were simply way ahead of their time. Of course, they didn't like it when I left, but they were good enough to drift into some other things," McNeal says.

Like most successful bands, McNeal's Southern Melody Boys had its own unique retinue. In their case, the leader of their pack was a man by the name of Lawrence Barr. Barr stands out in McNeal's mind for two reasons. First, "he was our advance man and would go and set things up. One time he tore up our car in Madison, Wisc. We were in Milwaukee and he went ahead to set up an engagement and next thing I knew we had to take a train." Second outstanding thing Barr was noted for: "He could dance. He would stand to the side and dance while we played soon everybody would start dancing." Crazy decade, those 1920s. People playing crazy music. People dancing crazy. People dressing crazy. And... white people dressing crazy and dancing crazy to crazy black jazz. But not everybody was cutting loose. There were more than a few folks who just couldn't get caught up in the societal somersaults of the '20s. Like the folks in Atlanta, Ga., where the Ku Klux Klan was revived just as the '20s began. Their nice little club grew rapidly throughout the country.

McNeal recalls what it was like being an innovative black in a white man's world, and what it was like traveling into the heart of middle-America. Into places like the Midwest, where in Indiana the head of the KKK, D.C. Stephenson, was regarded as the virtual dictator of the state. "Well, we played all over. some really tough spots for Negroes. We played down in the Valley, in Kingsville and in Waco. Waco was a real mean place for Negroes back then. "But I don't know if it was because we were musicians and everyone liked our music, but we never got hassled. We never had trouble when we were on the road, either. "I think people just enjoyed the music. You have to realize that music was really the rage in those days. And we were playing all the hot new numbers. In fact, once people heard us, they'd invite us back to play again the next night.

McNeal even remembers that a white person would occasionally sneak one tentative foot, then another, into a "Negro dance," and soon he'd be dancing along with everyone else. And there were also those white musicians who knew that the black jazz players were more likely to be tapping new musical veins. "We'd play with all kinds of people. Everytime we'd come into a town there'd be people who wanted to play with us. "Once in Milwaukee, we played a battle of the bands contest with a white group. That attracted a really big crowd." McNeal stabs at his gold-framed glasses and pushes them back up his nose. A slight smile crosses his face. He's enjoying the memories. But, aside from Isabel, the woman he left it all behind for 53 years ago, the memories are all that's left. McNeal has never felt the urge to play again. Never wanted to stand up in front of a mirror again, checking the tuxedo, taking one more deep breath before heading on stage. Like the old East Side that he remembers - the "strip" that existed from Live Oak Street up to the railroad depot, where he first played in the black nightclubs - there's nothing left but memories. Good memories!

San Antonio Express News
September 21, 1980