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DETROIT - Tom Saunders was 9 when his destiny came roaring through the record player. Little Tommy had gotten off to a fast start, teaching himself to play the cornet at 7. Now his older brother was peppering him with side after side of classic jazz - Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bunk Johnson, etc.
Suddenly, a ferocious cornet caught Saunders’ ear. It was Wild Bill Davison, a leading figure in the hot Chicago-style jazz popularly known as Dixieland. “Play that again!” Saunders excitedly told his brother.
Saunders, who grew up in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., didn’t know that he would one day become Davison’s protege, recording and performing with his hero. Nor could Saunders have predicted that he would become a well-known standard bearer for traditional hot jazz. All he knew on that day in 1947 was that Davison made him want to jump out of his skin.
“I couldn’t get enough of his sound,” says Saunders. “He played with so much fire. I said, ‘Man, that’s what I want to do.’”
Saunders remains a stalwart on the Detroit jazz scene. Fans of traditional jazz, most from Saunders’ generation, have flocked to his gigs for decades. At 70, he’s also a regular at jazz festivals across the country devoted to traditional jazz.
You can still hear Saunders on the second and fourth Thursday of every month at Marge’s Bar and Grill, a hockey joint in Grosse Pointe Park where he’s played for 20 years, except during playoff runs by the Detroit Red Wings.
Saunders is in fine form on this June Thursday at the helm of a sextet. Marge’s, cozy and casual, is saturated with Red Wings memorabilia. A few pictures of musicians adorn a tiny piece of wall space near the front by the band. The bar is packed with hard-core fans.
“He makes me feel like I’m in New Orleans,” says Ginny MacDonald of Birmingham, Mich., who has been following Saunders from gig to gig for 40 years.
Saunders launches into “My Honey’s Lovin’ Arms,” a Tin Pan Alley ditty at a bounce tempo. He plays with a vigorous tone and animated rhythm, his compact solo full of easy-to-follow ideas braised with the expressive Wild Bill growls that Saunders internalized long ago.
“He’s a smart player,” says bassist Paul Keller, a frequent associate. “But he doesn’t improvise over chords the way modern players do. Tom respects the melody and improvises off the melody - it’s an older school way of playing.”
Saunders is also a class clown between tunes, cracking wise and needling friends in the crowd. “John, are you still here?” he asks. “At his age he could go at any moment. I know how old he is. His Social Security number is 3.”
Saunders lives just a few minutes from Marge’s in the colonial house in which he grew up. He has lived alone since his wife died in 2002. On a stormy afternoon, he sits in the TV room and fills in details of his life, his music and his relationship with Davison. He is a short, stout man with a full head of gray hair, a craggy face and a blunt voice that he uses to sing a couple of tunes each set in a melodious rasp.
He started playing second cornet with his brother’s band at 10, making a radio appearance on “The Original Amateur Hour” when host Ted Mack brought the show to Olympia Stadium in Detroit. Saunders led his own group in high school. Though modern jazz - bebop - was sweeping through the scene in those days, Saunders never caught the bug.
“Some of the modern stuff sounded pretty weird to me,” he says. “They stretched out so much that I used to say, ‘Boy, if that guy played the melody, it would shock me.’”
Dixieland has become a catch-all describing the diaspora of New Orleans jazz as it traveled north to Chicago in the ‘20s and east to New York in the ‘30s. Saunders favors the Chicago style with its driving, often frenetic four-beat rhythm and solos taking primacy over collective ensemble playing.
In New York an influential circle formed around guitarist and impresario Eddie Condon, including Davison, trumpeter Bobby Hackett and clarinetists Pee Wee Russell and Edmond Hall. Their legacy lives in musicians like Saunders.
“Tom does what we all try and do, which is take a tradition and make it ours,” says trumpeter Warren Vache, 57, who bypassed the contemporary styles of his peers in favor of mainstream swing.
“Tom has been very successful. He’s taken the tradition of Wild Bill Davison and Louis Armstrong and evolved his own style in that genre. He’s really well respected.”
When Saunders left the Navy in 1959, he toured with trombonist Pee Wee Hunt before returning to the east side in the early ‘60s. For more than 20 years, his Surfside Six played at local night spots. When work was slow and his children young, he took desk jobs at moving companies to pay the bills.
He met his idol Davison in 1964 in Toronto. The pair hit it off and began working and recording together on occasion. Davison introduced Saunders to the festival circuit and took him to Europe in the ‘80s. It was not always easy keeping up with Davison - his well-earned nickname came from his fondness for liquor and the ladies - but Saunders says they shared a similar nutty sense of humor.
They were like brothers born 32 years apart. When Davison was dying in 1989, Saunders flew to California and played his muted cornet in the hospital. Davison raised his head, his last sign of consciousness.
“That’s how close we were,” says Saunders.
Back at Marge’s, Saunders closes the night with a surprising Dixie-swing version of “The Preacher,” a hard-bop number from the ‘50s with a bluesy, old-timey feel. Saunders plays a strutting solo with cocky half-valve inflections. Everyone in the bar seems to be smiling.
When the tune ends, Saunders introduces the band one last time and sends everyone home with a couple jokes:
“We’d love to see more of you, so take off your clothes,” he deadpans. “And drive carefully, ‘cause we’re walking.”
