"That Good-Time Sound"

There were seven men in the band, but they just happened to like the name Firehouse Five Plus Two. On the stand they wore red shirts, white suspenders and ancient leather firemen's helmets. They played standing up and they irreverently displayed a reproduction of Whistler's Mother when they honked out You've Got to See Mamma Ev'ry Night or You Can't See Mamma at All in a solid two-beat, flatfoot jazz style.

The act was pretty corny. But it was hot and loud and Hollywood cafe society couldn't get enough of it. Last week, the Firehouse Five Plus Two was packing Hollywood's slick Mocambo one night a week with four-alarm crowds. To the Firehousers' chief, Ward Kimball, the explanation was simple: "After bebop, jazz sounds solid and melodic. Maybe that's why people are ready to go for if now."

The Huggajeedy Eight. The Firehouse Five was started as a hobby and it was not the first one that Ward Kimball ever lit a match under. A onetime symphony trombonist who now makes his living putting out cartoons for Walt Disney, Kimball has a full-scale railroad in the yard of his San Gabriel home. After he restored a 1914 Ford to shining grandeur, he became an earnest member of the local Horseless Carriage Club. The band got started when he found some other jazz-record fans around the Disney lot; before long they had dusted off their long-neglected instruments to try a few licks themselves. Their first name: the "Hugga-jeedy Eight," because someone thought their rhythm sounded like the sputtering chug of Kimball's 1914 Ford.

Two years ago they changed their name, made some replacements and got the band into high gear. They made a hit playing a "casual"--a high-school country club dance. Then they landed a date playing once a week in Beverly Boulevard's Beverly Cavern when oldtime Jazzman Kid Ory was taking his night off. Comic

Keenan Wynn hired them to play at a Christmas party. Bing Crosby heard them, stepped up and ripped off a little scat singing with them. He thought they were so good that last week he put them in the guest spot on his CBS radio program.

Back to Jelly Roll Morton. Playing to their first nationwide audience, the Fire-housers sounded like just what they were: topflight amateurs who can push some professionals when it comes to two-beat jazz. Says Kimball: "We try to play as authentically as we can--along the lines of Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. We don't try to copy them; we use them as our inspiration. We like to give the tunes our own treatment."

Sometimes their clatterbang treatment sounds a little like Spike Jones. But it doesn't worry the Firehousers. The band is still a hobby. Says Kimball: "If we turned pro it might cease to be fun and the band might not have that good-time sound anymore."

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