History of Leroy Satchell pt. 2

I’m sure I don’t have to tell readers what this revelation meant to me in this day and age. As our nation struggles with its identity and tries to figure out just who we really are we find ourselves in a struggle between those who are fighting racism, those who believed with all their hearts that racism was over after the election of our first Black president, and those who are angry that a Black president was ever elected and have been taking the last 4 years to attempt to get our country back to a darker time for minorities and people of color. For me it’s a time to look inward at my own preconceived notions, my own attitudes and beliefs around race, and what I thought I knew as true in my home here in northern New England.

First, I asked the folks at the St. Albans Historical Museum if what I was seeing was true as it’s often hard to tell with old black and white photos. In this case though, I was sure that I was right. It seemed as much a surprise to them as it was to me. Being a music teacher in Franklin County I know a few folks who’ve played with Sterling Weed and his orchestra back in the day and so I decided to reach out to a couple of them. A quick text message to my good friend Eric Bushey got an even quicker response; that drummer’s name was Roy Satchell.

Over the phone during a lunchtime lull in remote teaching, Eric and I both jumped on Google and read to each other what we were finding through our crackly connection. As we searched, Eric told me stories that were told to him by Sterling himself of the days when he employed a “colored fella” in the band. Sterling told Eric that Roy wasn’t just any old drummer, he was an artist on the drums whose playing was distinctive and very musical. When you look at the photo of Roy in Weed’s Imperial Orchestra you can see him with his dapper, pencil-thin mustache situated behind his percussion setup as it would have been in the day with a large bass drum most likely operated by a foot pedal that may have also struck a cymbal attached by a clip to the drum’s rim. Atop the bass drum is a rack of temple blocks, gleaming as if brand new, which added just the sort of pizazz and punctuation that a dance band of the era needed.

When I first asked Eric what he knew about Roy Satchell the first story that came to his mind was about a time when Sterling took his group down to play at the Hotel Vermont. According to the 1953 autobiography of Will Thomas, a Black man from Vermont, the Hotel Vermont accepted Black guests without trouble. Go back a little earlier however and Thomas writes that in the late 40’s Burlington was visited by composer and singer Roland Hayes and at Hotel Vermont he was discouraged from eating in the dining room with the other guests. This was in issue that Roy was faced with as a member of the Imperial Orchestra.

The folks at the Hotel Vermont (which is now home to the Gryphon on the corner of Main Street and St. Paul St in Burlington) told Sterling that, while the band was welcomed to eat before their show, Roy would have to wait outside. According to Bushey that was just not something that Weed was going to tolerate. Weed told management that if his whole band couldn’t eat together then the hotel would need to find a different band to entertain their crowd. Weed’s Imperial Orchestra stuck together. I’m not sure how taken aback the management was to hear this, perhaps they weren’t at all. I mean it’s not like Vermont was the deep South (though the frequency of confederate flags popping up at random around the state sometimes makes you wonder who actually won the war and if some of those folks actually know where they are) but racism was and is persistent throughout every state in the nation, despite that State’s history of abolition, support for the underground railroad, and geography. Well that night the folks at the Hotel Vermont must have been in strong need of a band as they relented. Roy was allowed to eat in the same room with the rest of the group.