PROFILE: Preston H. Love
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Internationally Renowned Band Leader, Musical Manager and Author
Copyright © 2005 by Jean SandersPreston Love played lead alto saxophone with the best in the business, including Count Basie, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. An African American, Preston led his own integrated orchestra when that was a rarity. He managed the west coast operation of Motown Records for several years. He taught classes in black music history and was an artist-in-residence who conducted numerous jazz clinics. He wrote a well received book and was a columnist for the Omaha World Herald. This gifted man embodied "the whole musical package."
Preston was born April 21, 1921, the youngest of Mexie and Thomas Love's nine children. His mother was by then a widow who raised the children on her own. Their home in Omaha, Nebraska, often referred to as the "Love Mansion," was described by Preston as "dilapidated," but its nickname aptly described the closely knit family within.
Preston was ten years old when his brother Tommy (a.k.a. "Dude") bought a used alto saxophone and made it his mission to convert his family and friends into musicians. When a neighbor donated an old trumpet to the family, Dude decided brothers Norman and Preston should learn to play it. Preston was not enthusiastic. As he explained, "My interest in the trumpet waned soon after I learned the C-scale and a portion of a few easy melodies."
Eventually, their brother Phillip (a.k.a. "Dodda") acquired a tenor saxophone, but he cared more about experimenting with mechanical devices than practicing music, so the instrument often rested unused under the bed.
Preston and Norman listened to musical radio programs, and one night in 1935, for the first time, they heard Count Basie and His Orchestra. From then on, their fascination with Basie grew.
The next year Dude got a job playing with a regional band, Webb and His Spiders. While they were on tour, Preston began to practice on Dodda's tenor saxophone secretly so as not to be embarrassed. When Dodda discovered this, he began coaching his brother.
One day the Spiders needed a substitute for a drummer who was ill. Preston suggested himself as an able timekeeper. When no alternative appeared, the Spiders acquiesced. The gig was at the Aeroplane Inn, a combination filling station, cafe, and dance hall in the tiny town of Honey Creek, Iowa. Preston was fifteen and this was his first paying job as a musician. He received two dollars!
After leaving Webb and the Spiders, Dude continued to work with other bands around Omaha. At that time, Omaha was a thriving center for black bands. There were two local music unions, one white and one black. Black bands could play on the concert stage, but black patrons were relegated to the balconies. However, black nightclubs were popular, proliferated, and provided performers and dancers with music indigenous to African American culture. This meant blues and jazz, the most authentically American musical expression.
Preston and his friends took advantage of every opportunity to listen to these bands. Too young to enter bars legally, they often huddled by open windows to absorb the sounds they loved and wanted to emulate.
In 1937, Norman bought a new recording of Count Basie. Preston listened intently and wanted to produce a sound just like the unidentified lead alto saxophone player.
Preston graduated from Omaha North High School in June 1938. He worked as a bellhop in a local men's club and saved money to buy an alto saxophone. He had lost interest in tenor saxophone, although he continued to practice it. Then he learned two wonderful things: Count Basie and His Orchestra would appear at Omaha's Dreamland Ballroom in August and the alto saxophone player he idolized was Earle Warren.
Meanwhile, Preston was nineteen and beginning to develop a positive reputation among musicians in Omaha when Claude "Buster" Coates asked him to join a new orchestra that would play in St. Paul, Minnesota. Organizer and financier for the venture was Ed Lippert, who rented a large home in St. Paul, where the musicians lived. Lippert paid household expenses and union dues. When the musicians started working steadily, Lippert withheld money from their paychecks to reimburse himself. The musicians had little leftover. After a few months, Preston decided to return to Omaha, where he felt he could do better financially. He was also in love and wanted to marry Betty Riggs, who lived there. Just before Christmas 1940, he came home.
Norman and Billy were drafted into the Army in March 1941. Preston replaced Norman on his job as porter at the local office of the MGM film distributors. In June, Preston joined the Lloyd Hunter band which left for four weeks to play at the College Inn in Boulder, Colorado.
Benny Hooper's Bar in Boulder was a popular hangout for musicians and there were nightly jam sessions. Preston met Johnny Otis, who usually either sat in on drums or vibraphones. A lasting friendship developed. Johnny was another Basie and Earle Warren devotee.
When the Boulder job ended, the Hunter band toured several Midwestern states, playing one night stands.
On August 11, 1941, Preston and Betty Riggs were married. In April 1942, Preston left Lloyd Hunter and joined the Nat Towles band. In July, Preston and Betty became parents for the first time when Preston Jr. (a.k.a. "Sandy") was born.
In June 1943, Preston began playing at the Barrel House in Omaha, the first place in Omaha that integrated races and musical styles. In August that year, Count Basie and his band performed for a week at the Orpheum Theater. Shortly thereafter, Preston began working at Sloppy Joe's Tavern. On September 6th, Basie appeared at the Dreamland Ballroom and Preston went to listen. Earle Warren was soon to undergo surgery and he asked Preston to replace him temporarily. Preston toured with Basie to St. Louis, Chicago and the Apollo Theater in New York City. When Earle Warren returned, Preston went back to Omaha.
On January 4, 1944, Preston went to New York to join the Lucky Millinder band. However, dissatisfied with working conditions, he soon after rejoined the Nat Towles band. That, too, was short lived. Preston returned to Millinder and toured throughout New York and California. In April 1945, he went home to Omaha.
In late May 1945, Count Basie contacted Preston. Earle Warren intended to form his own band, and Basie offered Preston the first alto saxophone position permanently.
Preston later wrote, "Nineteen forty-six . . . was really the last glory year for the Basie band." Musical tastes were changing and crowds dwindled. In 1947, they spent the summer at the Club Paradise in Atlantic City, New Jersey. After that, Preston decided to form his own group, so in January 1948, he went back to Omaha where, for a couple of years, he played with local orchestras.
In the spring of 1950, Preston finally started his orchestra, contacted the Howard White Booking Agency of Omaha, had brochures and posters printed, and scheduled a gig for the night before Easter at the Glovera Ballroom in Grand Island, Nebraska.
Life as a traveling musician is expensive and the financial burden was daunting. Making payroll, which included the booking agent and union dues, was difficult. Added to that, motoring long distances in an old unreliable band bus and playing in "actual barns and dilapidated, makeshift ballrooms" was exhausting.
Over the next few months, the band toured most of the central states from North Dakota to Texas, but multiple mechanical problems with the bus diminished profits further and crowds were often fewer than anticipated.
It became necessary to stick close to Omaha. In October, Preston signed with a new booking agency and was handled by Royce Stoenner. Bookings and venues improved immediately. Now they played fine black ballrooms, black country clubs, schools, and military bases.
However, reliable transportation remained a problem. Again, the necessity to pay continual repair bills lessened the ability to pay other bills. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service added to the woes. Preston was unable to meet arrangements he had made to pay his taxes, and agents began seizing his pay on the job.
Stoenner advised Preston to take a year off from the band business so he could work somewhere for steady wages and pay down his debt. Reluctantly, Preston agreed.
Johnny Otis called from Los Angeles to remind Preston that King Records owed him some work. While there, Preston was able to play a few extra jobs before returning to Omaha. When his fortunes did not get better, Preston moved the family to Los Angeles in June 1952.
Since his union dues were still unpaid, Preston took a job at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica as an assembler, and Betty worked at a clerical job. Finances improved significantly. Although Preston was able to play two Christmas parties, he seldom practiced for a year.
On June 3, 1953, the Loves returned to Omaha with money and hope. Preston decided to limit his new orchestra to seven or eight pieces. Eventually, he reconnected with Royce Stoenner and bookings rose.
In the spring of 1954, Stoenner announced his agency's merger with National Orchestra Service (NOS). This was good news. Preston got bigger and better bookings that expanded as far as Minnesota, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and New Mexico. His was one of only a few black orchestras performing regularly on military bases. From 1958-1959, tours included stops in Canada, Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Panama.
In September 1959, Preston learned that Royce Stoenner had left the NOS agency with no notice or explanation given by agency executives. In February 1960, the NOS folded. This was devastating financially. The Loves now had two small children, Portia and Norman, and were expecting another, Richie.
At the same time, Preston Jr. (Sandy) was attending Northwestern University on a football and track scholarship, though he eventually transferred to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he lettered in football in 1963 and 1964.
Although the band worked occasional jobs, they were not enough to support the Loves. Personal debts escalated, union dues were unpaid, and once again the IRS attached their meager earnings.
In the spring of 1962, Johnny Otis convinced Preston that he should move to Los Angeles, where work was plentiful. The big band era was over, replaced by small combos, lead singers and instrumentalists who needed backup musicians, and a burgeoning TV industry that required much background music. Work was steady and, during his years there, Preston was finally able to become debt free.
When Preston played backup to Marvin Gaye one night in 1962, he was unaware of Gaye's connection to Motown and its musical significance. Nevertheless, Preston had been noticed. Four years later he was called to provide backup for The Temptations, another group whose work he didn't know, but as he said, by the end of the evening he was a "Temptations addict."
A few days later he played flute during a paid rehearsal for Frank Zappa. Then he toured as first alto saxophone player for Ray Charles. Preston left Charles and returned to Los Angeles in July.
Preston became the west coast bandleader/contractor who handled all of the backup music for Motown artists when they played in that area. He asserted that "The recordings of Motown artists during those years are probably the last important pure and unspoiled or undiluted black music that will occur in the history of this country."
In August 1971, the Loves moved back to Omaha, which they had always considered home. In the ensuing years, Preston maintained a rigorous schedule of performing, teaching and writing. In 1975, he became the first jazz artist-in-residence for the Iowa Arts Council.
In October 1983, Preston joined some original and early members of the Basie orchestra for a three-week European tour, where they enjoyed great success. On December 7, 1983, Preston's mother died at the age of 103.
For seventeen years Preston taught courses at the University of Nebraska-Omaha that included "Black Music in Social Perspective" and "The History of Jazz." He also continued doing jazz clinics and residencies in Nebraska and Iowa.
He expounded definite ideas about the current state of jazz instruction. He felt that jazz couldn't be taught properly in an academic setting because it requires an innate ability to improvise. He said that jazz is best learned during jam sessions where players are not constrained by written scores. They must be innovative and creative.
As well as performing regularly with his small combo, lecturing and doing musical residency programs, Preston was featured on a weekly radio program, he worked as advertising manager for the African American-owned Omaha Star, and he wrote a semi-regular column for the Omaha World-Herald called "Love Notes." His writing also appeared in European publications.
In 1992, he received an honorary doctorate from Creighton University. In 2003, at age 82, he was recognized by the Omaha Press Club as part of their "Face on the Barroom Floor" series that honors notable newsmakers, although he was unable to attend the ceremony due to his fight with lung cancer. He succumbed to that on February 12, 2004.
Preston felt that we must never forget the black roots of jazz and blues and should honor its best performers. As he explained, "I once lectured to a class of approximately thirty young black children in a Waterloo, Iowa, high school, and not one of them had ever heard of Count Basie, Earl Hines, Charlie Parker, Jimmy Smith, Sarah Vaughan, or Billy Eckstine. This was a black history class!"
Therefore, it is fitting that the non-profit Loves Jazz and Arts Center (LJAC) in Omaha now exists. Located less than a block from the old Dreamland Ballroom, it is "dedicated to showcasing, collection, documentation, preservation, study and the dissemination of the history and culture of African Americans in the arts." Its mission is "To preserve and promote the unique history and cultural talents of local and national African American artists."
Preston Love left a legacy of important recordings and writings. His book A Thousand Honey Creeks Later: My Life in Music From Basie to Motown, simultaneously an autobiography and historical perspective of African American music, received national critical acclaim. The quotes herein, except the LJAC descriptions, are from that book.
A music scholarship has been established in Preston's name at Creighton University. At Omaha North High School, he is honored in the school's Hall of Fame. And he is among the charter inductees into the Omaha Black Music Hall of Fame, which opened in 2005.
For reliable sources, read Preston Love, A Thousand Honey Creeks Later: My Life in Music from Basie to Motown, (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1997) and the Omaha Sunday World Herald, July 15, 1990, pp. F-1, F-3 and December 14, 1997, pp. E-1, E-8 and New York Times, April 5, 1998, Sec. 2, p. 28 and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd ed, Vol 2 (2002) 628.
For more information, consult "900 Famous Nebraskans" on the Internet at www.nsea.org or www.beatricene.com/gagecountymuseum or www.nebpress.com.
