Drummer Charles Barsto “Duke” Turner was born on 14 March 1904 (by his own account in Stoppard, though when  he registered for the draft in October 1940 he gave his birth date as 30 March 1905) whither his family had recently moved from New Orleans.  He worked outside music (for an insurance company) for forty years until his retirement in 1969 but nonetheless he was active in music from an early age.  The first proper band he worked with was Clarence Banks’ Syncopators in 1922 or so and through the twenties he worked in the bands of Clem Raymond, Wade Whaley and Sax Seixas as well as taking whatever occasional gigs came along with other bands.  He organized his own band, the Musical Cavaliers,  in 1931 - the latest reference I have found to it is from 1936 but he says that it disbanded in 1941.  In his own words ‘We did pretty good in those early days, stayed busy most every week.  We’d go to Watsonville, Guerneville, Maryville, down to Monterey, as well as throughout the Bay Area.  We’d play for the Elks, VFWs, Fire departments.  Did a couple of Grocery Dances for the union . . . the admission was a sack of groceries to be used to feed the unemployed here in Berkeley. . . Used to play the Walkathons at the the Monk’s Gyn on 16th and Mission.  We played some tough, small places and we played some of the best and most elegant, too.  I remember a place on Bush and Grant, in San Francisco, I think it was called the Alabam, where we’d play for the lunchtime crowd. . . . McFadden’s Ballroom in Oakland was a good place for us.  They had big crowds and they would put on a duel of the bands with us and Ran Wilde’s Collegians.’  In Stoppard he adds further information - ‘Another place we played was San Francisco, at  a couple of West Indian cricket clubs. .  I booked my own dates, and we played places like the Ross Country Club and the Laquintas Country Club in Marin County; the Riverside Inn, which was a dance pavilion in Stockton; and, for quite a while, we played the Guerneville Grove on the Russian River on Saturday nights. . . in Oakland at the Persian Gardens.  We had that job a long time.’
He recalls the members of the band as Elmer/Elma Graves, saxes and clarinet; James Raglin/Ragland, trumpet; Alex Forbes, guitar and banjo; Thornwall Kaiser, trumpet; Buck Campbell, saxes and clarinet; James Vaughn/Vaughan, piano; Ralph Thomas, ?; Sterling Wagner, bass; Johnny Dean, piano.