“Folks would be afraid to do that, the places I come from. I liked that. It seemed safe here and I wanted to stay.”

On a spring morning in 2002, Governor Mike Leavitt declared April 18 will forever be known as ‘Joe McQueen Day’ in Utah. For the uninitiated, Joe McQueen has been an integral part of the Ogden community for over 60 years. One could say the history of Ogden is interwoven with the history of Joe McQueen. As an African American jazz saxophonist who played in clubs and hotels during a time of segregation, McQueen has become a cultural and musical legend, helping shift the tide of history to a more inclusive environment.

“Hell yes, I had a gun. I might be packin’ right now. You don’t know. A man’s got a right to protect himself.”

He came to Ogden on December 7, 1945, exactly 4 years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. McQueen was touring with a quartet in California when they were hired for a two-week gig in Ogden at one of the 25th Street jazz clubs. That two weeks turned into 68 years ”and I’m damned glad it did,” says McQueen. 

McQueen decided to make Ogden his home after he and the band’s drummer got into a fight because the drummer wanted to leave without paying the other members of the band. “He had a knife and I had a gun,” McQueen said. “And the police broke up the fight and threw us both in jail.” 

“Folks would be afraid to do that, the places I come from,” he said. “I liked that. It seemed safe here and I wanted to stay.”

When he got out of jail, McQueen took over the band and they found work in the clubs on 25th Street. He had never seen so much snow in his life as he saw his first winter here. He didn’t care much for the snow, but as spring and summer rolled around, he saw people sleeping out on their porches and front lawns to beat the heat. 

Joe McQueen played an integral part of Ogden’s transformation. He remembers a time when railroad passengers poured from Ogden’s Union Station and old ‘Two Bit Street’, the name locals call historic 25th Street, was alive with the sounds of jazz. Mcqueen opened a club in the basement of the old Porters and Waiters Hotel and Restaurant. At the time, Porters and Waiters was the only place open to black people in Ogden before desegregation. He helped changed that with his jazz club.

McQueen had one incident when the police showed up, and two white men stepped up to defend the place. “Them boys got up in the cops face and said ‘We’re free, white, and 21, and you can’t tell us what to do.’ and them cops just got out of there. That’s what started breakin’ down the racial prejudice in Utah. Lotta people don’t know that.” After that incident, McQueen refused to play in clubs that wouldn’t admit black people. His bands were always a mix of white and black and he felt it was right.

He was never short on band mates as Ogden’s Union Station was a thoroughfare for a number of famous people who came through Ogden on the railroad. McQueen met and played with many of them. That’s how he got the opportunity to play with the jazz legend Charlie Parker.

The way McQueen told it, Parker was looking for someone to play music with while waiting for a connecting train. Someone sent him to the Royal Hotel because McQueen had a gig there, but it almost didn’t happen. The guy at the door didn’t recognize Charlie Parker and wanted to charge him a cover to come in. “So they come and got me,” said McQueen. “They said there’s a guy at the door who wants to see you and when I saw who it was my eyes got real big and Parker said, ‘I heard you playin’ and it sounded good. Can I sit in with you?’ and I just said ‘Oh man.’ And we played together.” 

McQueen played the sax with lots of others greats: Louis Armstrong , Ray Charles, Hoagy Carmichael and Lester Young to name a few. At the age of 100, McQueen still finds time to get up in front of an audience and play his sax. You can see him perform on the first Sunday of every month at The Garage on Beck.

At the age of 100, he even worked as a red cap for the railroad, an automotive instructor at Weber State University, and as a volunteer caregiver and driver for the elderly. He would take care of people often twenty or thirty years younger than he. All the while, he always made time to play his horn.