University Daily Kansan / Friday, April 28, 1989
25
Bysom remembers tiring tours
- Continued from p. 17
type of music we liked, instead of the requests we had to do at our paid gifts."
Bysum said bands would play their dance in the evening, then spend the rest of the night going around town looking for iam sessions.
"Some of the big name bands like Tommy Dorsey would come to KU to play a dance," Bysom said. "Sometimes I got to meet some of the musicians. We'd all go into Kansas City looking for places to jam. At that time 1830's) Kansas City was and the clubs pretty much run all night."
"One of the most famous afterhours clubs was down in the black section on Vine Street called the Subway Club." he said. "They had a drummer, Jesse Price, that Tommy Dorsey or Benny Goodman, anyone big that came to town, would go down to the Subway and sit-in with."
After four years of leading a band at KU, bison left KU in 1940 and went to work for Boeing Aircraft in Wichita as a tool and die machinist.
He kept playing on the weekends as a fill-in musician for bands that came to town short on players because of
World War II.
Bysom married Pauline Moore in 1943. His sister had introduced them while they were at KU. They celebrated their 46th anniversary April 10, but Bysom said it was difficult to find time to date Pauline.
"That was one thing about being a musician and being out playing every weekend," he said. "It wasn't too conducive to a social life."
After a two year enlistment in the Air Force, Bysom returned to Lawrence. He worked a series of manufacturing jobs ending up in 1955 at the Reuter Pipe Organ Company, 612 New Hampshire St.
"I pretty much worked at manufacturing the rest of my life to support my musical habit." Bysom worked in a job and worked music as a sideline.
For the next 20 years, Bysom played in small combs on weekends with groups like the Lawrence City Band.
He retired from Reuter's in 1979 to go full-time on the road with Paul Gray and the Gaslight Gang, the band that played at Place, now the Jazbaus, 926/1/2
Massachusetts St.
"Clyde started playing with me part-time in 1975." Gray said. "He's kind of the epitome of the big band tenor sax player in the Lester Young vein. He was really good in his day, and he's still good now."
Bysom said touring was fun but could get tedious.
Gray said from 1980 to 1984 the Gaslight Gang played more than 2,000 jobs.
"It was a nice way to see the country, though you saw it kind of quickly sometimes," he said. "Some of the hours were a little fantastic.
"I remember one Saturday nig...
"we played a舞动 in Wichita.
We were through and packed up by about
2 a.m. Sunday and on the road to
Utica, N.Y., where we had to play a
concert Monday morning."
He said the Gaslight Gang would do as many as five concerts in one day.
Gray said Bysom never complained about the long hours even though he was 63 years-old, twice as old as the other band members.
"Clyde was Mr. Steady. He was always ready to go." Gray said. "The nicest guy you'd ever want to play with." Clyde had a bad word to say about anybody."
Bysom quit the Gaslight Gang in 1985 to form his own group, the Bysom/Harbour River City Six.
Clayton Harbur is a saxophonist whose band competed with Bysom's when both were students at KU.
Bysom said they played wedding receptions and concerts and for the past three years had been a traveling group for the Kansas Arts Commission.
He said the commission sent them to play at many junior high and high schools.
"We start out playing 1900s ragtime music like Scott Joplin," Bysom said. "Then through the Roaring Twenties jazz, Dixieland jazz, early Kansas City style jazz and end up with big band jazz."
Besides his own group, Bysom plays in the Jazzahaus Swing Band, a big band style jazz band that rehearses twice a month and does an occasional show; the Olathe City Band; the Lawrence Town Band; and the Jungyard Jazz Band, a Dixieland group.
He said he still gets nervous before a show but it helped to get the adrenaline flowing.
Clyde Bysom
"It's still a thrill to play, and I'll play as long as I can hack it," Bysaid said. "As long as my health keeps up, I'll still play a few things."
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