International Jazz Banjo Newsletter

I'll be glad to tell you what I know about my uncle Eddie Collins. He
was my father's younger brother, and when my father died, I lived,
off and on, with my Uncle Eddie and his family. For that reason, I
know quite a bit about his career.

He was in Hollywood working as a studio musician in 1940 when my
father died, and his work commitments prevented his coming back to
Detroit for the funeral. As a six-year-old at the time, I recall his
absence having been discussed by my mother and grandmother with
special sadness, since the two brothers were very close. I don't know
what movie he was making then, but he did play for at least some
Busby Berkeley musicals. In fact, he stayed at Ruby Keeler's house in
Palm Springs for much of the time he spent in California. She was the
star of many of those musicals and was married to Al Jolson then. He
often told me stories of his time in California and of his close
friendship with many of the Hollywood actors of the day. Robert
Mitchum's sister was a friend of Ed's, too. He first met Robert
Mitchum when Robert was just 18 years old.

Ed was a master not only of the banjo and other stringed instruments,
but also a very proficient brass and reed player, He was a very fine
French horn player, but did not pursue a career with a symphony
orchestra. He did play with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra whenever
they needed a banjo player, however, and was officially listed as the
"Prinicpal Banjoist" with the DSO. He always apologized for the
"Principal" designation, pointing out that the title was automatic
since the DSO only had one banjo player.

I know that he did indeed perform with Eddie Peabody, but I don't
know exactly how many times or when those performances would have
been. I telephoned my Aunt Margaret, who was my dad's younger sister
(the two boys, my dad and uncle Ed, were born in 1909 and 1912, and
Margaret was born in 1924). Margaret is in a nursing home, now, and
her memory is failing. She said that she remembers her brother Ed's
leaving from the Shelby Hotel in Detroit on a band bus that would
take them for 72 one-night stands across the U.S. and that Eddie
Peabody went alongon that trip. I'm nearly a hundred percent certain
that she is mistaken about Eddie Peabody's going on that tour. I,
too, remember that road trip, and it was definitely at a time when my
uncle was with the Art Mooney Orchestra. They played gigs ranging
from the Shamrock Hotel in Texas to the Paramount Theater in New York
City and, presumably, 70 other locations in between.

Ed played the banjo on all of Art Mooney's records with the exception
of the first recording of Four Leaf Clover, a single for which Art
hired local NY musician Mike Pingatore for the banjo part. That was
the record that disc jockey Al Collins (no relation) played over and
over for 24 hours on a San Francisco radio station. It was a
(probably payola) stunt that made the record famous. My uncle then
played on the subsequent albums recorded in 1948 and the re-recording
of all of them around 1971. Ed mentioned these recordings on one of
the Arthur Godfrey radio programs he did 1971. Godfrey often had
guest stars on for a whole week at a time. I think it was a week in
March of 1971 that my uncle Ed and Theresa Brewer were the guests.

Ed played with all the big band pick-up orchestras at one time or
another, the earliest being that of Paul Whiteman. He also played
with a USO troupe, and I wrote a story about that in the May/June
2006 All Frets Magazine put out by FIGA (the Fretted Instrument Guild
of America). If you happen to run across that issue of the magazine,
the people in the final photo are misidentified. I'm the tall one.
McDonald is the short one.

I'll include a couple of old photos. The first of them shows my Uncle
Ed on the right, a banjo player I don't recognize on the left, and (I
think) Eddie Peabody in the middle playing a "banjoline" guitar. In the second
one, Ed is flanked by Leo Carillo (an actor friend from his Hollywood
days) and Michigan Governor G. Mennen Williams (Williams, by the way,
was 6 feet six inches tall. The next one shows Ed in front of a
billboard at Chicago's Chez Paris. Next are Louis and Ed backstage at
the Fox Theater in Detroit in a dressing room rehearsal. The final
one is the Art Mooney Orchestra at the Paramount theater in New York
City, with Ed featured at the left of Art Mooney in the photo.