Hello all,  Words cannot do justice to how I felt when I learned,
several days ago, of Mr. Montgomery's passing.  The shock and unreality
of it all will probably take a while to abate.  For me, personally,
I know mentally that the man has passed away, but emotionally, I am
still in the denial stage.  Give me a few days or weeks, and I'll start
bawling.

The first, and unfortunately only time I got to meet Mr. Montgomery
face-to-face, at the 2008 World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing
Contest, I was a little put off at first by what I considered a gruff
personality.  However, I told him I liked Jimmy Blythe and especially
Clarence Johnson (true!) and, after he heard me play some of this stuff
on the piano, he warmed up a bit.  I think he was used to whippersnappers
who drop a lot of names without knowing the music behind the names.

We had a nice lunch one of the days of the contest, and he told me
a fantastic story about personally tracking down a remaining relative
of the late Clarence "Jelly" Johnson (who reportedly passed away in
1933).  This was back in the 1960s, and after a long and nearly
fruitless search, finally found an aunt(!) of Johnson's living in
a small town (in Illinois, I think, but I could be wrong, it's been
three years since I heard what he told me and I stupidly did not record
that).

After demonstrating that he was simply interested in music and history
and not a threat (despite being an unfamiliar white visitor to a
mostly-black neighborhood), he was invited in to the lady's house,
where she told him her memories of Clarence Johnson from many years
before.  She even had a piano in her living room upon which he used to
play!  I can only imagine what Mr. Montgomery must have thought after
many years of searching in vain for details of this man's life.

If you read Mr. Montgomery's interview with J. Lawrence Cook in the
Billings Rollography (an interview which was done just a few years
before he managed to find the lady mentioned above), you will get an
idea of the state of his search; by 1963, he had found another pianist
named Clarence Johnson, who was much younger, and who had made a single
piano roll when he was young, subbing for another pianist, but this was
not the right man who had made some two dozen recordings, and over a
hundred (over two hundred?) piano rolls and was well-known to the roll
collectors.

Even J. Lawrence Cook, who was arranging for QRS at the time Johnson
came in to do his QRS rolls (1923) and who is pictured in this QRS ad
at http://www.mmdigest.com/Gallery/MMMedia/QRS/Artists/index.html 
could not recall Johnson, and said that only he had heard the man's
name before, and that it used to be well-known!  Anyway, were it not
for Mr. Montgomery's patient, diligent, and most importantly _tireless_
research, we very probably would know absolutely nothing about Clarence
Johnson today.

After all, even with today's state-of-the-art technology, you try
getting on Ancestry.com and plugging in that name and a guessed-at
birth date (1890? 1898? 1902?  Actually, it's reportedly 1900) and
getting some results!  You will get more hits for that name than you
can shake a stick at, and to find the correct person may seem nearly
impossible.  (But, not if you have the patience and perseverance that
Mr. Montgomery himself had, in spades, and he didn't even use
computers!)

A few months ago, after about two years' worth of procrastination
and preparation, I had sent Mr. Montgomery the first installment
(well, bulk) of some research I had been compiling on composer Nat
Johnson (no relation to Clarence).  He approved of what he saw so far,
and I at the time he passed, I had still promised to send him another
parcel of stuff including a CD with a few later (circa 1928-1930?)
Capitol A-roll tunes that I personally considered were hand-played by
W. E. "Buddy" Burton, a well-known figure on the Chicago South Side
jazz scene in the late 1920s.

The purpose of sending the CD was to get Mr. Montgomery's educated
second opinion that those three tunes[*] were, in fact, played by
Burton (or at least sounded like him).  After all, Mr. Montgomery
wrote nice liner notes for a CD on the Document label reissuing most
of Burton's recordings featuring him at the piano.

For various stupid and completely selfish reasons, I kept putting
off getting the second batch of stuff and CD together ready to send.
Now I have been kicking myself ever since.

I had hoped to conduct a full-length, in-depth interview with him
about all of the musicians (and musicians' relatives) that he had met
and researched (especially his favorites, some of whom were also my
favorites), but now this can never happen.  I only hope that somehow,
somewhere, he managed to get most of what he knew and learned written
down or recorded, even if only in a manuscript or tape format.

The few articles by him that I have found so far (including at least
two or three sets of liner notes written for CD's available from
Document Records overseas) show a man who really knew his stuff, did
tons of research, talked to lots of people, and knew probably far more
than he had the opportunity to put down.  I only regret that the
limited format (number of pages) offered by CD liner notes, etc., did
not always seem to allow his ideas and research to have been expressed
in full (although, to be fair, his well-researched liner notes for the
Jimmy Blythe CD on Document are fairly detailed and I highly recommend
them).

I understand that Mr. Montgomery also contributed articles to jazz
magazines including, but not limited to, Record Research (of which I
only have about two dozen issues, out of 254 issued).  Anybody having
further knowledge of same should post about this here.  A nice index of
Record Research issues is at http://www.proaxis.com/~settlet/record/RR/ 

I do have an MP3 audio recording (which, sorry, I will not be posting
online, but which I will be happy to make available to the family if
they would like to hear it) of my last telephone conversation with
Mr. Montgomery (February 20, 2011), and listening to it reminds me not
only of what a kind and self-effacing man he was, but also how much he
truly cared for the music and musicians that he liked, and how patient
and helpful he could be even with a nuisance such as myself.

Speaking of which, the only real downside to the phone call is that
the larger portion of the time is taken up by me prattling on about
stuff when I should have been _listening_ and asking more questions.
Blah Blah Blah, talk about 20/20 hindsight, I want the present-day
me to take a time machine back a few months to slap the old me around
a bit right before making that phone call and sternly remind myself
of what's _really_ important in life.  Oh, well...

On the plus side, as near as I could tell from meeting him at the
Old-Time Piano-Playing Contest in 2008, Mr. Montgomery's son Dan is
(in my opinion) a fine musician and talented composer and, in terms
of sheer musicality, the family legacy is certainly not lost.

My heart goes out to the entire Montgomery family, I only hope that
wherever Mr. Montgomery is now, he is at peace, not suffering, and
can finally meet those musical legends he never got to meet during
his time on earth!

Sincerely,

Andrew Barrett

* The three tunes I think are solo Buddy Burton performances, all
available on Capitol A-rolls, are "When Grandpa Steps Out", "I'm the
Happiest Guy in the World", and another tune, an original "stomp"
or "rag" with an unknown title (found on a Capitol roll missing the
roll number and tune titles), titled "Marble Orchard Crave" by the
late Ed Sprankle, for recutting purposes.  There are probably other
tunes that sound like him...  I have yet to hear every Capitol roll
ever made.

P.S.: I would like to posthumously thank Mr. Montgomery, not only for
his time, knowledge, and advice, but also for sending me a copy of the
very nice Clarence Johnson CD he helped produce, on the Delmark label,
which is still available and features, in addition to computer-realized
performances of Capitol A-roll tunes, all five of Johnson's fantastic,
realistic QRS rolls (they sound the closest to the way he actually sounds
on records), together with some lesser-known and recently-discovered
(and great!) material done for Staffnote (the Billings Roll Co., up in
Milwaukee).  The latter QRS and Staffnote material was interpreted by
Mr. Montgomery himself on his own home Steinway upright player, tuned
especially for this recording: http://www.delmark.com/delmark.newblues.htm