Buck and Cow Cow

Perhaps only baseball players and mobsters have more colorful and varied nicknames than jazz musicians. I did an earlier post on jazz musicians with animal nicknames entitled “Little Bird and Papa Mutt,” which included the following list:

• Bird - Charlie Parker
• Cat - William Alonzo Anderson
• The Cat - Jimmy Smith
• Duck - Donald Bailey
• The Fox - Maynard Ferguson
• Frog - Ben Webster
• Gator - Willis Jackson
• The Great Dane - Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen
• The Hawk - Coleman Hawkins
• The Lion - Willie Smith
• Little Bird - Albert Ayler and Jimmy Heath
• Mouse - Irving Randolph
• Mousey - Elmer Alexander
• Mule - Major Holley
• Mutt or Papa Mutt -Tom Carey
• Pony - Norwood Poindexter
• Rabbit - Johnny Hodges
• The Stork - Paul Desmond
• Tiger - George Haynes

     A reader suggested the following addenda: Ben Webster was also apparently called "Beast"; saxophonist Sonny Stitt was yet another "Little Bird"; and Charles Edward Davenport, an early boogie woogie piano player, was known as "Cow Cow." I also found a few others to add, thanks to Bill Crow’s (who doesn't need an animal nickname) book Jazz Anecdotes:

• Bunny - Roland Berrigan
• Honeybear - Gene Sedric
• Hoss - Walter Page
• Octopus - Tal Farlow
• Porky - Al Porcino
• Sharkey - Joseph Bonano

     Trumpeter Wilbur Dorsey Clayton, who played with Count Basie, was nicknamed “Buck” by his mother, although this was apparently a not-so-subtle allusion to his American Indian ancestry. A couple of questionable additions: Trumpeter Charles Melvin Williams, who spent many years with the Duke Ellington orchestra, was known as  "Cootie." I call this “questionable” because the word cootie refers only to a body louse, and I would hesitate to include this under the category of animals. Ditto for guitarist Clifton “Skeeter” Best - a mosquito is an animal only by the broadest definition.
     Finally, there’s trumpeter and composer Joseph “Wingy” Manone, who lost an arm as a boy in New Orleans as a result of a streetcar accident. This nickname has to rank as a bit of gallows humor, although Manone’s 1948 autobiography was entitled Trumpet on the Wing. Jazz violinist Joe Venuti, who was a notorious practical joker and good friend of Manone, used to send “Wingy” a single cufflink every year on his birthday.