Red Norvo on being a leader.

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Red Norvo on playing the vibes.

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Red Norvo takes an overview on his career.

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Q: “How did you fall into it [being a leader]?”

A: “Being a leader, well, after Prohibition, 52nd Street started to open up. We’d been up to Bar Harbor, Maine with a wonderful band and I was directing that. It was called Rudy Vallee’s New Yorkers’. It had some great musicians in it. Tosco Muratti [ph], Chris Griffith [ph], and Eddie Sauter were the trumpet players and Bob Lane and oh so many, I just can’t remember them all. So we came back to New York and so we formed the group to go in 52nd Street. So they voted me the leader, so that’s the way I started. I said, "I don’t want to be the leader, really." But it was a nice group. It was the first group, I think, in jazz that never used a piano or drums. We had Dave Barber on guitar and Pete Peterson and three horns. And it's the first small group, they say, that didn’t play Dixieland. That was more of a riff group.”