Despite the Odds* - Jazz Transcends the Red Line

From Walker Street to Center Street everybody was groovin' to the Beat

Welcome back readers and listeners. Today we focus on Des Moines jazz circa 1949-1955. Music was a big part of the culture in Post War II America. Des Moines, situated as it was between major midwestern cities including Kansas City, Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha and even New Orleans was particularly blessed to benefit from the talent crisscrossing the region on tours. Missouri-born piano phenom Ernest “Speck” Red, when not ‘tickling the ivories,’ was tickling the typewriter as journalist covering the Des Moines jazz scene for Iowa Sepia News.

I’m gratified to be able to present a newspaper interview Speck conducted with my father Ellsworth about a year after he arrived in Iowa from Los Angeles with his new Fort Dodge-born wife Mary Alice Thompson. The two musicians became very good friends and musical collaborators between 1949 and 1960 but here Speck and Ellsworth (aka Brown-E) are just getting acquainted in this article for ISN.