Israel Fontaine

Jacob Fontaine published the Gold Dollar newspaper at 2402 San Gabriel in the 1800s. Hisgrandson Israel played with Louis Armstrong.Fontaine, the grandson of Travis County’s first African American publisher, Jacob Fontaine,met Armstrong in early 1931 when Armstrong played the Cotton Club. The dance hall(previously home to the Royal Auditorium) at 817 E. 11th St. is now a vacant lot. Afterhearing the opening act, the Dixie Musicmakers, Armstrong asked Fontaine, the band’s trumpet player, if he wanted to join his 14-piece touring band. “Of course I said yes,”Fontaine says. “I knew there was a lot I could learn from him. I’d never heard anyone playthe horn like that before.” Austin High senior Tommy Hill remembers standing behind arope at the Cotton Club with the handful of other white kids, amazed at the powerfulperformance. “He played 20 choruses of ‘Tiger Rag,’ ” recalls the 87-year-old. “He was sweatin’ like crazy, with a white towel across his back, but he just kept playing.” A localradio station broadcast Armstrong’s Cotton Club performances, and when the bandleadersent a message to his mother in New Orleans, Fontaine had to tell him that those airwavesdidn’t go any farther than the Austin area.Armstrong returned to Austin for an appearance at the Driskill Hotel on Oct. 12, 1931. Theshow was noted in Ken Burns’ “Jazz” documentary and accompanying book. In theaudience that night was Charles L. Black, who would later be plaintiffs’ attorney in thelandmark Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka, Kan.) decision that ruled segregated publicschools unconstitutional. Armstrong was just starting to gain national recognition in 1931.Five years earlier, he had a couple of minor hits with his Hot Five studio band, Louis Armstrong circa 1926 including “Heebie Jeebies,” which would usher in scat singing, a wordless singing thatsounds like a mix of blues and jazz. Legend has it that Armstrong invented scat because hehad dropped the lyric sheet and had to improvise.Then in late 1929 he had his first major hit, a version of Fats Waller’s “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ”from Broadway’s “Hot Chocolates” revue. He also wrote the pop smash “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate,” but he sold the rights for $50. The way Armstrong mademost of his money was playing live, but early on he couldn’t afford the talents of sessionplayers like Earl Hines and Kid Ory, so he put together pickup bands or fronted existingoutfits. It wasn’t until mid-1931 in Chicago that Armstrong assembled his first full-time bigband (which would, two years later, feature Austin-born piano man Teddy Wilson). Butbefore that, he’d given youngsters like Fontaine the times of their lives.“He just loved people,” says Fontaine, whose step-grandson, former NBA player OrlandoSmart, drives in from Pflugerville every morning to fix breakfast for him and also takes himto his dialysis appointments. “That’s what I remember most (about Armstrong) — himalways being in a good mood. He had a big ol’ smile for everyone.”The band traveled by train, segregated from white passengers, but if the racism of thetimes bothered Armstrong, he didn’t show it, Fontaine says. By the time a homesickFontaine returned to live in Austin after a few weeks on the road, Armstrong’s star was onthe rise, along with his asking price. “There was a small club in East Austin called the BlueKnights, and they took a collection to try to get Louis Armstrong to play,” Fontaine recalls.“They wrote him a letter that said they could pay him $100 to play, and he wrote back andsaid he’d play for $100, but they’d have to come up with a lot more money to also get theband.” After working for a printer for several years and playing music at Rosewood Park onSaturday nights, Fontaine followed a family tradition by starting a newspaper in 1938 calledthe Austin Express.His father George, who’d died a year earlier, founded the Silver Messenger, and in 1876 George’s father, Jacob Fontaine, published the first issue of the Gold Dollar at 2402 SanGabriel St., in the heart of the freedman’s settlement of Wheatsville. A slave for the first 57years of his life, Jacob named his paper after the gold coin his sister gave him when he wasfreed in 1865. Two years later, he organized Austin’s First Baptist Church for Colored and in the Mount Zion Baptist Church. “I gave up playing jazz in 1943 when I joined theministry,” Israel Fontaine says.That year he married his wife Dora Lee (who died in 1976) and took a job with a printingcompany in Fort Worth. When Fontaine returned to Austin in 1959, he led the parish atanother church his grandfather founded, St. Stephen’s Waters Park. “Preaching andpublishing — that’s in my blood,” he says. When he turned 90, this seventh of nine kidsreceived a congratulatory letter from State Rep. Dawnna Dukes of Austin. But giving trueperspective to his longevity were not Dukes’ words, but a remembrance. “Me and my wifeused to baby-sit Ben Dukes, Dawnna’s daddy,” he says with a big ol’ smile