A Monkey at the Homestead Hotel and Kingsport's First Dance Band

In 1953 a fresh-faced young reporter at the Kingsport Times named Mary Clement interviewed the innkeeper at the Kingsport Inn, Jim Welch (not the Jim Welch of Eastman), who told her about the perils of his profession, including the story of the monkey at the Homestead Hotel. (The Homestead and the Kingsport Inn were both owned at the time by the heirs of John B. Dennis, who had founded both. The Inn was Kingsport's luxury hotel; the Bumstead, er, the Homestead the economy inn.)

A few years later Mary would marry Alvin Kiss and as Mary Kiss her byline appeared in the Times News until the early nineties.

Here is that monkey tale:

The Monkey At The Homestead Hotel And Other Tales From the Hotel Trade

By MARY CLEMENT

Unhappy pet monkeys, missing bedspreads and stray safety razors are typical of the problems! which confront a hotel manager in his everyday work, says C. J. (Jim) Welch, young manager of the Kingsport Inn.

In his job, he performs services; never noted on a visitor's hotel bill, and may play the role of detective and diplomat as well.

Welch recalls an autumn a few years ago when an entire visiting team of burly football players from a famous southern university registered at his hotel in West Point, Miss., not far from Mississippi State College.

On the morning of the boys' scheduled departure, the worried hotel housekeeper appeared in Welch's office to report that the hotel's linen supply was alarmingly low.

Within the past few days the extra towels, sheets and washcloths had dwindled away gradually, leaving the linen closets practically bare,

Embarrassed, the housekeeper suggested the only possible solution, and the manager politely requested that the head coach ask the team members to open their suitcases.

Every bag, Welch relates, was stuffed with linens, including the missing towels and sheets, and even a few bedspreads, all of which had been destined for a new career in college dormitories.

After apologies from the coach, one of the players slyly suggested that the coach follow suit and display the contents of his luggage.

When the traveling bag was opened, the embarrassed trainer discovered neatly folded atop his shirts and socks an even wider array of hotel property, a contribution of the boys on the team.

Although most hotel guests aren't as enthusiastic in their souvenir collecting as were this group of ball players, Welch says a surprising number of linens vanish into the suitcases of departing hotel guests.

The Kingsport Inn, for instance, loses approximately $1,000 a year in missing towels alone.

"But there's not much we can do about it," he declares. "A towel costs 40 or 50 cents, but we can't go around opening our guests' luggage on their way out. If we did find hotel property in the bags, it would create ill feeling among the customers. And if we made a mistake, there'd be grounds for a lawsuit. So we usually just try to forget about it."

Hotel guests apparently leave almost as many articles as they take, however. Mrs. Loraine Leachman, housekeeper at the Inn, says almost anything may turn up in a hotel room after the visitor has checked out.

"Women hardly ever leave anything. But the men! We find razors most of all more than anything else. Sometimes we find  clocks and radios. Lots of people forget their plane tickets and then telephone back from the airport. And the other day we found an unopened can of beer.

"Once I found a man's gold wedding band, lying on the floor of the room. It was never called for."

Sometimes guests leave money. They place a billfold or purse under their pillow, or hide it inside the pillowcase, and then forget to retrieve it before leaving, Mrs. Leachman says.

Once a maid found a wallet bulging with bills—$500 worth - under a pillow, she recalls.

"She was so afraid to be alone with all that money that she made me stay in the room until she made the bed. It wasn't long until the owner came back and got the wallet."

One year General Bob Neyland's crack Tennessee football squad descended on Welch's hotel for a two-day stay before a game! with Mississippi State. Tennessee was heavily favored to win, and nobody was more surprised than the Vol team when Mississippi staged an upset and won with a score of 7-0,

Only then did Neyland discover that his boys had been in the care of an enthusiastic State fan. Welch had been graduated from the Mississippi college only a short time before. He laughingly admits that he did his best to squelch lightly veiled hints that the Vol team had been "sabotaged.”

Hotel guests' pets sometimes cause the manager a headache. Welch recalls a story from years ago at the Homestead Inn.

Hotel residents complained to the management that they were being disturbed by the sound of a baby crying somewhere in the building.

After a brief investigation, a troop of employees tracked the sobbing sounds to a room belonging to an out-of-town couple. The man and woman had turned in their key at the desk early in the morning and departed for the day, apparently leaving a small child alone in their room.

Armed with a passkey, the manager entered the room and was assailed by a small brown monkey which greeted him with a torrent of enthusiastic gibberish. He retreated hastily, leaving behind a disappointed little anthropoid, who resumed his crying and kept it up until the owners returned several hours later..

Once the famous fan dancer, Sally Rand, arrived at Welch's hotel and somehow managed to smuggle a tremendous dog into her suite, the hotel's best.

When Welch discovered the animal, he pointed out to Miss Rand that it was against state laws to quarter animals in hotel rooms.

The actress, however, refused to part with the dog, and the animal growled viciously whenever any of the hotel people approached. Maids were even afraid to go into the room to change the bed linens.

The "pet" remained as a nonpaying guest in the Rand suite until their departure a week later.

Welch came to Kingsport a year and a half ago as manager of the Kingsport Inn and the Homestead Hotel. A graduate of Mississippi State College, he managed hotels in West Point, Miss., and Lake Charles, La., before coming to Kingsport.  His attractive wife, Emily, serves as manager of the Inn dining room and as assistant hotel manager here. The couple have two children, a boy and a girl.

 Kingsport's First Dance Band, Maybe

Let’s keep dancing our way through the pandemic; let’s just switch to a different Kingsport band, the Chester Landes Orchestra, and a different kind of music, the dance music of the twenties.

Landes’ local group probably wasn’t Kingsport’s first dance band. But in the late twenties and early thirties it was certainly its most popular, playing, as the Kingsport Times of the time noted, “every cotillion club and social club dance.” The group even played at the introduction of the 1928 Ford at Tennessee Motors on Sullivan Street.

Landes’ day job was at Mead but on weekends he and his eight-piece orchestra helped early residents of the city cut a rug.

From 1927, when the combo got its first mention in the newspaper, until 1930, when Landes was transferred to Mead’s Chillicothe, Ohio plant, The Chester Landes Orchestra was Kingsport’s band of renown.

The Times identified the band members under a photo: “The personnel of the orchestra include Chester Landcs, piano; John Williams, saxophone; Roy Denning, tenor saxophone; Curtis Warner, trumpet; Albert Sharp, banjo; Dave Evans, sousaphone, Allen Gaines, traps, and Pinky Blevins, banjo.”

Landes was an interesting fellow. He was an early hire at Mead Paper, following graduation from Ohio State. He was promoted to an Ohio plant in 1930, then hired away by American Cyanamid in 1936, where he worked for the next two decades. He held patents in synthetic resins, paper and coatings. In 1958, when he was 54, he took a professorship at North Carolina State, teaching in the department of paper and pulp technology until he retired in 1972. He died in Asheville in 1998 at age 94. His obituary made no mention of his years as a band leader.

The Chester Landes Orchestra apparently made no recordings. I can’t find a mention of any.

They undoubtedly played the popular tunes of the time, songs like:

(Click on song title to play)

 Ain’t She Sweet, a song made popular by Gene Austin

My Blue Heaven, a hit for Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra

Flapperette by Nat Shilkret & The Victor Orchestra

Baby Face by Jan Garber and his Orchestra