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Transcription: [00:29:16]
{SPEAKER name="Willie Jones"}
I worked the theater here, I don't know whether y'all remembered, but I worked the national theater here with Walter Huston and "Knickerbocker Holiday."
[00:29:28]
I work here with the carnival on Bennet Road, that's where they used to put up with James E. Strates Shows.
[00:29:33]
I know a lot of ya' heard that show 'cause it still comes here, the James E. Strates Show, I work here with them.
[00:29:39]
And, and then we had a big theater down on--I think it was 7th and T--everybody, everybody heard of that. You hear the Harvard in Washington.
[00:29:50]
We would play the [[Rooling Balling?]], Harvard in Washington, the Earle in Philadelphia, the Apollo in New York. And, we did that year round.

[00:29:59]
{SPEAKER name="Interviewer"}
There's one more thing I'd like to mention. Those who have come to the festival and see you performing on the main stage have probably noticed that this gentleman is a comic.
[00:30:10]
Willie "Ashcan" Jones. Well, we've only talked so far about dancing here on this stage, and you starting off as a dancer and being a Lindy Hopper and going from here and there.
[00:30:21]
How was it that you became a comic, and how does that fit into this transformation in show business?

[00:30:27]
{SPEAKER name="Jones"}
Oh, I said that I got too old to dance, you know,
[00:30:32]
I was, we was throwing girls around, I was doing the Lindy Hop, and we was throwing girls around, and girls throwing us around.
[00:30:39]
If anybody--no it's not anybody old enough out there. If you saw "A Day at the Races" with the Marx Brothers, "Hellzapoppin" with Olsen and Johnson, "M-Mel-Melody Gold-round" with Martha Raye, I was in that picture.
[00:30:52]
I was with Chick Webb [?], "Beat the Drum" with Chick Webb, "Your Feet's Too Big" with Fats Waller, and with the "Brown Skin Models," "Wonder Where My Gal is Tonight."

[00:31:04]
{SPEAKER name="Interviewer"}
As a comic, from whom did you learn, and how did you go about becoming a comic?

[00:31:12]
{SPEAKER name="Jones"}
Oh, when I found out I was getting too old to dance, it was an old fella named William Earle was working with me, and I learned from him.
[00:31:20]
And when he died--no he got sick first before he died--and I had to take his place, and we had Rastus Murray--he's a late comic, was very good, everybody might of heard of him--
[00:31:34]
and he said to me, William Earle while he was sick, he told me to go out there and do comedy and do what he did, he had told me once not to never do it,
[00:31:42]
but he got sick and told me to do everything what he do and go out there and don't be scared of Rastus Murray and I would make it.
[00:31:49]
And I went out there and did it and-

Transcription Notes:
00:29:51- Jones names a theater that I couldn't make out