“During busy seasons, there are often three or four Rivers Chambers groups playing their soft, swinging Negro jazz simulateneously for seperate congregations.”
A Baltimore Sun society note, 1957.
For nearly 40 years, no society gathering, wedding reception or debutante party was complete without the music of Rivers Chambers who could always be counted on to enliven a social gathering.
They even serenaded those who gathered at Bethlehem Steel in Sparrows Point to watch a newly christened vessel slide down the ways and into the chilly waters of the Patapsco.
Dressed in white dinner jackets in the summer and black in the winter, they played a combination of mostly pre-World War II songs which they mixed with college fight songs and novelty numbers.
They were a fixture at Worthington and Green Spring valley estates and at homes in Guilford, Roland Park and Homeland, and played society gigs up and down the East Coast.
They performed at the Maryland, L’Hirondelle and Elkridge clubs and even boarded chartered parlor cars on Pennsylvania Railroad trains transporting area Princetonians to their alma mater for football games.
And wherever they played, the party really didn’t get going until they sang their signature number, “Cut Down the Old Pine tree.”
They were an essential part of Baltimore’s social fabric as was Lester Lanin and his society orchestra was to New York, the Hamptons, Boston and Philadelphia.
Their music was hard to characterize because they played everything from Dixieland to popular music or what was once called “society music.”
Rivers Chambers, founder of the band that bore his name, was born in Baltimore, and raised in Sugar Hill, an affluent Black neighborhood in the 2300 and 2400 blocks of McCulloh Street and Druid Hill Avenue, the son of musical parents.
He was a toddler when he began receiving his first music lessons and had mastered the accordion, piano, organ and violin, and by the time he was a student at Frederick Douglass High School, was playing with various professional bands around town.
As a young man, he was a member of the Bob Young Society Orchestra, and later moved to New York City, where he was the organist in the Lafayette Theater.
In 1930, he returned to Baltimore where he became acquainted with Charles “Buster” Brown and Leroy “Tee” Loggins,ย two African American musicians.
Brown had been a member of a jazz band in Albany, New York, and Loggins was with a traveling show in Louisiana, and when times got tough, because of the Depression, they moved to Baltimore where they met Chambers.
The three men formed an orchestra and played as the pit band at the old Royal Theater on Pennsylvania Avenue, with Chambers as director.
In 1937, they established a musical trio and began playing at parties and quickly became a success.
Brown played guitar and Loggins the sax.
“Buster and Tee were the personality of the outfit and often played duo at cocktail and other parties,” wrote Stan Heuisler, a quintessential Baltimorean and former editor of Baltimore magazine, in an email.
“Buster was smiling and stately and Tee was an entertainer. I can remember them at family parties. Kids would sit around them and sing along,” he wrote.
According to Francis F. Beirne in his book “The Amiable Baltimoreans,” the three were playing at Wilkens Avenue beer garden when in the middle of “They Cut Down the Old Pine Tree,” an old hillbilly song, Brown, who was playingย his accordion suddenly forget the lyrics and had to improvise.
He found himself singing and then repeating ‘Oh cut it down, oh cut it down, and they hauled it away to the mill.’ The tune was catchy and in a few minutes everybody in the place had joined in,” Beirne wrote.
“No telling how many times the old pine tree has been cut down. The song requires no voice. It isn’t sung. It is shouted. It never ends. And it makes a party go.”
The original lyric of the old African American spiritual was, “They cut down the old pine tree to make a coffin so fine for that sweetheart of mine.”
It was later changed to “make a cabin so fine for that sweetheart of mine,” and it wasn’t uncommon for them to sing it multiple times during an evening and it became their theme song.
“They changed it ‘to build a cabin so fine for that sweetheart of mine,’ and made the music uptempo,” Heusiler wrote.
Another song that was part of the group’s repertoire that was often requested was the somewhat bawdy 12-verse , “Roll me over Yankeee soldier, roll me over, lay me down, and do it again,” with this refrain repeated throughout.
“Well this is number one and the fun has just begun, roll me over Yankee soldier, roll me over, lay me down and do it again.”
It concludes with: “Now, number 12 makes an even dozen and I just found out he’s my cousin. … roll me over” etc.
For the sake of propriety and if there were any young women in the audience, they would stop singing after verse seven, unless urged to go on, and permission was granted by the hostess.
Rivers Chambers became so popular that he hired and trained 25 to 30 other musicians who separated into other units to play for social events and dances.
So sought after were the bands, that it was common practice that society matrons had to book them at least two years in advance to play at a daughter’s debutante party or other private event.
One of Chambers’ favorite stories was when theย Duke of Windsor and his wife, the former Wallis Warfield Simpson, during one of their visits from Paris to Baltimore, were being entertained by a friend who requested they play nothing but quiet spirituals.
“I told her all right,” Chambers said in a 1947 interview with The Sun, “but I couldn’t help thinking those people might want to do a little dancing later on. I’ve found out that big people like to enjoy themselves about the same as anyone else. Well, just to play it safe, I put a set of drums in the back of the car and left them outside the house — just in case.”
The Duke of Windsor strolled over to congratulate the group and said to Chambers, “I can play the drums a little but I see you haven’t any with you.”
With that, Chambers raced for his car to gather up the drumset.
“The guests dropped their dignity and danced to the music of an unusual quartet — Rivers Chambers, accordion, Buster Brown, guitar, Tee Loggins, sax; and Edward Windsor, drums,” The Sun observed.
In 1957, while giving an organ recital at the Odd Fellows Hall at Cathedral and Saratoga streets, at a Kunkel Organ Co. function for prospective organ buyers, Chambers suddenly suffered a stroke and died at what is now Mercy Medical Center. He was 54.
He had just finished playing “Old Moses is Dead,” when he was stricken. Brown and Loggins were at his side.
“Rivers Chambers has been an intrinsic part of Baltimore social life for so long that it is hard to imagine many functions without him,” said a Sun editorial at his death.
“It is safe to say that few individuals have contributed more to Baltimore’s reputation for hospitality, few will be more missed. For his widow and family there is the consolation of knowing thaย Mr. Chambers’ untimely death is mourned by thousands of Baltimoreans, all of whom felt Mr. Chambers was a personal friend.”
His widow, Olga Mills Chambers, continued to operate the business with Brown and Loggins, until closing it in 1973.
“I think they made a good living out of it with discipline and teamwork,” Heuisler wrote. “And they kept their standards by being preservationists. They were hired to do it the old fashioned way and they kept up standards.”
