Читать книгу Straight Life: The Story Of Art Pepper - Art Pepper - Страница 12

3	The Avenue1940–1944

WHEN I WAS at San Pedro High, because I was a musician and played for the dances, I began to get popular. All the chicks dug me and would vie for me, smile at me, and flirt with me. The guys came around, too, and listened to me play, and they wanted me to hang out with them. And one day this guy Chris came to me, him and a couple of other guys, and they wanted me to join the club they belonged to. It was an honor.

In San Pedro at this time there were a lot of different gangs. Chris had a gang called the Cobras. I thought I might be happier if I was with other people more and I also wanted to join because I figured it would impress my dad: the Cobras had a reputation. I joined and got a jacket with a cobra on the back.

We used to go to the Torrance Civic Auditorium to the dances, and Chris, who was the biggest guy in our group, would find the biggest guy on the floor, who was a member of some other gang, wait until the guy was dancing, and then go up to him and tap him on the shoulder to cut in on his date. The guy would say, “Hey, there’s no cutting in here! Get lost!” Chris would just hit him on the shoulder again, grab him, turn him around, and Sunday him, you know, punch him. And when he’d hit a guy, he was so good that no matter how big they were they’d go down. The guy would go down, and everybody would get all excited, and Chris would tell him, “We’re the Cobras. We’ll meet you at so-and-so.”

There was a street where some city or county lines met—Wilmington, San Pedro, Torrance, I’m not sure. The street was right in the middle of these lines, and there was some idea that this was the safest place to fight, which was ridiculous because the police would bust you anywhere—they didn’t care about lines. But this was where we’d go. It was a country type place and at night it was deserted. There was an old lot with a stand where they sold vegetables in the daytime.

I was never afraid of a one-on-one situation boxing or fist-fighting, but when you get into gangs then you have to worry if someone’s got a knife or a gun or a piece of steel. We’d drive to this lot, the cars would stop, and out would jump Chris and all the guys and the guys from the other gang, and they’d meet and start fighting. I would have to get out and fight. We’d fight until one side or the other won, or, if we were losing, we’d jump in our cars and split. And afterwards, we’d go to this drive-in and eat and talk about the fight. They’d laugh and everything. That was, like, great fun. We’d strut around the school the next day. And we drank. We drank Burgermeister ale and Gilbey’s gin to get the nerve to go into these things. That was the trip and it wasn’t me.

Finally, during one of these fights, some guys brought out a chain, and a couple of knives came out, and a couple of guys got cut real bad, and I started thinking, “Wow, I don’t want this!” I thought, “If this is being part of society . . .” That was society for me. Now, if that was what I had to do to belong, I didn’t want any part of it. So that was when I started getting with Johnny Martizia and Jimmy Henson, musicians I’d met playing at dances. They were in their early twenties, and they had other friends whose thing was playing music, and it was a good thing. I got along better with them. I withdrew from the guys in school, and the gang ranked me: they thought I thought I was better than them, that I was stuck-up, that I had a big head, and every now and then I’d get challenged by one of these guys and have to have a fistfight, but it was better than being part of that gang. I quit the Cobras and that’s when I really got into the music thing.

(Johnny Martizia) I was about eighteen. I was playing with a little dance band, high school dances, and I kept hearing all these, you know, stinking saxophone players, out of tune, honking sounds, and I went to this rehearsal, and I heard somebody warming up, playing scales and so on, and my God! I said, “What is that?” It was such a gorgeous sound. It was like a real artist, and I looked, and it was this little kid! He looked about fourteen years old. It was Art. I couldn’t believe it. I said,” Who the hell are you?”

Art and I got real friendly. He’d come over to my house. I played him some records and I played some jazz myself. Not well. He said, “How do you do that? How do you jam?” That was the word—jam. I explained about chord progressions and I said, “You make up your own melody.” And boy, he got it right away. He’s got great ears. He’d hear something once and he’d have it. He must have had a good teacher, too. Art knew all his scales, and that’s very important.

I had started out playing cowboy songs, “Home on the Range,” things like that. Then, somehow, I happened to hear some Django Reinhardt. That was really incredible. I still have some of the records—78s. I listened to them over and over and tried to copy all his licks. I started taking down beat magazine, listening to all the big bands, and going with the other guys to hear people like Coleman Hawkins and T-Bone Walker when they were in town. We’d get friendly with them and they’d tell us, “Hey, man, we’re going to go down to this after-hours place and jam, do you want to come?” Of course we’d go. We’d stay all night.

Well, Art started going out with us, going to bars to play. We didn’t even have a car; we’d walk sometimes for miles. Zoot Sims was one of the guys then. We used to call him Jackie, Jackie Sims.

Art was a very clean-looking, Italian-looking kid, normal height, good weight, very, very healthy, good-looking. He was a very exciting kid, kinda naughty, you know, a raise-hell kinda kid. One night we went to a club to jam and all of a sudden I turn around and here’s Art having an argument with an old guy. Maybe he wasn’t so old; he seemed old to us. The next thing I know, Art’s rolling on the floor, fighting with this guy. Art was a very energetic kid. Always jumpin’ around.

WHEN I was nine or ten I liked the big bands that I heard on the radio—Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnet. After I got my clarinet, I started buying their records. It became my goal to play Artie Shaw’s part on “Concerto for Clarinet.” Finally, after I’d been playing for a few years, Mr. Parry bought me the sheet music. I practiced all alone and with the record, and I was finally able to play it. It was a difficult piece.

Johnny Martizia was a guitar player; Jimmy Henson played trombone. I got together with them at their houses to play. Johnny would strum the guitar. He told me, “These are the chords to the blues, which all jazz emanates from. This is black music, from Africa, from the slave ships that came to America.”

I liked what I heard, but I didn’t know what chords were. Chords are the foundation for all music, the foundation jazz players improvise on. I said, “What shall I do?” He said, “Listen to the sounds I’m making on my guitar and play what you feel.” He strummed the blues and I played things that felt nice and seemed to fit. We played and played, and slowly I began to play sounds that made sense and didn’t clash with what he was doing. I asked him if he thought that I might have the right to play jazz. He said, “You’re very fortunate. You have a gift.” I wanted to become the greatest player in the world. I wanted to become a jazz musician.

I ran around with Johnny and his friends. We’d go into bars and ask if we could play. Sometimes they said yes. I was four-teen or fifteen. These guys took me down to Central Avenue, the black nightclub district, and asked if we could sit in. The people there were very encouraging.

I played clarinet in the school band in San Pedro but when I got to Fremont High I stopped playing in school and started working more jobs. I had been playing alto saxophone since I was twelve, and now I got a job playing alto with a trio at Victor McLaglen’s. I began going by myself to Central Avenue. I met a lot of musicians there. I ran into a bass player, Joe Mon-dragon, who said he was going with Gus Arnheim in San Diego. He asked me if I wanted to go with the band. I was still going to school but I wasn’t going regular. I went to San Diego and stayed for about three months.

Gus Arnheim was in a big ballroom down there. It was a very commercial band and I didn’t fit in because there were no jazz solos to play—you just read music. It was good practice, but it got tiresome, so I left, came back, went to Central Avenue again, and ran into Dexter Gordon. He said that Lee Young was forming a band to go into the Club Alabam; they needed an alto player. I auditioned and I got the job. I think I auditioned at the colored union. They had a white union and a colored union. I had already joined the union when I lived in San Pedro.

This was in the early ’40s and things were so different from the way they are now. Central Avenue was like Harlem was a long time ago. As soon as evening came people would be out on the streets, and most of the people were black, but nobody was going around in black leather jackets with naturals hating people. It was a beautiful time. It was a festive time. The women dressed up in frills and feathers and long earrings and hats with things hanging off them, fancy dresses with slits in the skirts, and they wore black silk stockings that were rolled, and wedgie shoes. Most of the men wore big, wide-brimmed hats and zoot suits with wide collars, small cuffs, and large knees, and their coats were real long with padded shoulders. They wore flashy ties with diamond stickpins; they wore lots of jewelry; and you could smell powder and perfume everywhere. And as you walked down the street you heard music coming out of every-place. And everybody was happy. Everybody just loved everybody else, or if they didn’t, I didn’t know about it. Gerald Wiggins, the piano player, Slick Jones, the drummer, Dexter Gordon, and Charlie Mingus—we would just walk out in the street and pee off the curb. It was just cool. We’d light up a joint; we had Mota, which is moist and black, and we’d smoke pot right out in front of the club.

The dope thing hadn’t evolved into what it is now, with all the police activity. I’d never heard of a narco, didn’t know what the word meant. Nobody wanted to rat on anybody or plant their car with a joint or with some stuff. You didn’t have to worry that the guy that asked you to go out and smoke a joint was a policeman or that the chick that wanted to take you over to her pad and ball you was trying to set you up for the cops. People just got high, and they had fun, and there were all kinds of places to go, and if you walked in with a horn everyone would shout, “Yeah! Great! Get it out of the case and blow some!” They didn’t care if you played better than somebody else. Nobody was trying to cut anybody or take their job, so we’d get together and blow.

There was no black power. I was sixteen, seventeen years old, white, innocent, and I’d wander around all over the place, at all hours of the night, all night long, and never once was ac-costed. I was never threatened. I was never challenged to a fight. I was never called a honkie. And I never saw any violence at all except for an occasional fight over a woman or something like that. It was a whole different trip than it got be later on.

The club Alabam was the epitome of Central Avenue. It was right off Forty-second Street across from Ivy Anderson’s Chicken Shack. There were a lot of other clubs, but the Club Alabam was really one of the old-time show-time places, a huge room with beautiful drapes and silks and sparklers and colored lights turning and flashing. The bandstand was plush and gorgeous with curtains that glistened. The waitresses were dressed in scanty costumes, and they were all smiling and wiggling and walking around, and everywhere you looked you saw teeth, people laughing, and everybody was decked out. It was a sea of opulence, big hats and white fluffy fur. And the cars out front were real long Cadillacs with little mudguards, little flappy little things, shiny things.

The band had two altos, two trumpets, a tenor, and a rhythm section. On the show was Avery Parrish. He was the one who wrote “After Hours” and made that famous, and when he played the whole place rocked with the music. There was Wynonie Harris, a real handsome guy, light skinned with glistening eyes and the processed hair, all shiny with every hair just perfectly in place. He had a good blues voice and just carried the audience away. The walls would start shaking; the people screaming and clapping. Every now and then they’d get up and start wiggling in the aisles next to their tables. Moke and Poke were on the bill, far-out comedians. When they came on they’d do this walking step, laughing, one right behind the other, moving in perfect synchronization. After their act they’d run into their dressing room, rip off their clothes, and throw on silk robes and come back and do this walk around the audience; every now and then, when they were walking, if the audience was really good, they’d have it so their joints would flop out of their robes, flopping in time, in perfect unison, and the chicks would go, “Ahhhhh!” And we’d just be shouting in the background, playing these real down-home blues. I’d go in there and play and get so caught up in the feeling that I never had a chance to think about anything bad that might be happening to me or to worry at all. It was such an open, such a free, such a beautifully right time.

There was a place on Vernon, right around the corner from the Club Alabam, called the Ritz Club. You went through a door into an empty storefront and walked through a curtain. You took bottles in, and they served mixes and food. The music started at two in the morning and went on all night. People would come and sit in: Jimmy Blanton, probably the greatest bass player that ever lived—he was so far ahead of any jazz musician on any instrument it was just ridiculous; Art Tatum came in; Louis Armstrong, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Hodges, Lester Young. You can imagine what a thrill it was to be in the same room with these people. I used to go sit in after my job at the Club Alabam and play with them. Then the management decided to hire a regular band at the Ritz Club so they’d always have somebody there to play when people came to sit in, and I was hired. That’s when I started smoking pot; I was already drinking every night and taking pills.

I was hanging around with Dexter Gordon. We smoked pot and took Dexedrine tablets, and they had inhalers in those days that had little yellow strips of paper in them that said “poison,” so we’d put these strips in our mouths, behind our teeth. They really got you roaring as an upper: your scalp would tingle, and you’d get chills all over, and then it would center in your head and start ringing around. You’d feel as if your whole head was lifting off. I was getting pretty crazy, and right about that time, I think, Dexter started using smack, heroin.

Dexter Gordon was an idol around Central Avenue. He was tall. He wore a wide-brimmed hat that made him seem like he was about seven feet tall. He had a stoop to his walk and wore long zoot suits, and he carried his tenor in a sack under his arm. He had these heavy-lidded eyes; he always looked loaded, always had a little half smile on his face. And everybody loved him. All the black cats and chicks would say, “Heeeeey, Dex!” you know, and pat him on the back, and bullshit with him. I used to stand around and marvel at the way they talked. Having really nothing to say, they were able to play these little verbal games back and forth. I envied it, but I was too self-conscious to do it. What I wouldn’t give to just jump in and say those things. I could when I was joking to myself, raving to myself, in front of the mirror at home, but when it came time to do it with people I couldn’t.

Lee Young was worried about me. I was so young. I think he felt he had an obligation to take care of me. Lee looked like the typical black musician of the ’40s, the hep black man with the processed hair. He was light complected, very sharp, with diamond rings; he wore his clothes well; and he was a cat you’d figure could conduct himself in any situation. His brother was Lester Young, one of the greatest saxophone players that ever lived in this world. The most fantastic—equaled only fairly recently by John Coltrane. Better than Charlie Parker. In my humble opinion, better than Charlie Parkerr, just marvelous, such beauty. And Lee, Lee played nice drums. He was capable but was in the shadow of his brother, and I think he felt that. He loved his brother and was very proud of him, but I don’t see how he could help but feel sad that he couldn’t have played with his brother and really set the world on fire.

Lee was very nice to me and thoughtful. To show you what kind of a person he was—I was playing my parts and nobody else would have worried about me. Why go out of their way to worry about a little white boy, you know? But Lee dug that I was hanging out with Dexter, and we were on that road, and he sat down with me. He said, “I’ve talked to Dexter, man, and he’s got a way to go. There’s cold awful dues he’s got to pay and he’s just going to have to pay ‘em, I’m afraid. But you, man, why don’t you—boy, I’d love to see you not have to pay those dues.” I said, “No, I’m alright. I’m okay.” He said, “Art, I really like you. I’d sure love to see you do right.”

At that time Jimmy Lunceford’s band lost Willie Smith, who had played lead alto with them for a long time. He went with Harry James. So Kurt Bradford, who had been with Benny Carter, went to Jimmy Lunceford, and Lee got me an audition with Benny. He tried to get me a job where he thought I’d be protected. I auditioned and I made the band.

(Lee Young) I started the band that Art was in after I left Lionel Hampton. Well, when I first quit Lionel’s band, Lester left Basie, and we formed a band out here. Jimmy Rowles happened to be in Seattle, Washington, and he came down here to be in the band. Now, I don’t want to make this a black and white thing, but at the time we’re talking about it was an exception to have a white guy in a black band. Only we didn’t say “black”; we said “colored band,” “colored players.” Music has always been the same to me. It never had any color to me.

Lester and I took our band to Cafe Society in ’42—that’s in New York City. Then our dad died. That broke up the band because I was very close to the family. I came back home to L.A, in the latter part of ’42 or early ’43.

I told you about the Jimmy Rowles thing because for some reason it seems like every band I had, I always had a white player. I don’t remember where I heard Art, but I just believe it might have been at a jam session because that’s all I did all the time. I kept my drums in the back of the car. They had all kinds of jam sessions on Central Avenue; it was against the union rules to play them, but I did it all the time. They must have fined me a hundred times. I’m certain that’s how I met Art, and when I got the gig for the Club Alabam he was one of the first people I thought of because when you build a band you think of the first-chair man. And Art did play lead alto.

We had three saxes, one trumpet, one trombone, and piano, bass, and drums. We had to play two shows and we played for dancing. The arrangements we had were made by Gerald Wilson; Dudley Brooks and Nat Cole also used to write arrangements for us. I don’t know if that was when Art was with the band or not. Nat always wrote in pencil. That’ll let him know. Gerald Wiggins wrote for the band and played piano. We used to call him Wig. I’ve been all over the world since this—and talk about how times change—Art was just one of the band. We didn’t know any different down on Central Avenue at that time. It wasn’t about “whitey” this and “whitey” that. It was about good musicianship and people respecting one another for the talents that they had. I don’t know of a single incident that occurred. We never thought in the terms that they seem to now; maybe white people can’t go now on Central Avenue for some reason or other, and that reason I don’t know.

I remember when Buddy Rich first came here with Artie Shaw and Vido Musso; they used to always be down on Central. Harry James, he used to be on Central Avenue jammin’. That’s where everybody hung out. Everybody. They had so many little clubs. Next door to the Alabam was a Mexican restaurant, and she had a piano in the back, and piano players used to go in there, and I’m speaking about Art Tatum. Adjacent to that was the Downbeat. Within two blocks they had about six clubs where musicians were working, and so, like, we used to take long intermissions and go across the street and listen. We’d go next door and they’d come over to hear us play. It was like a west coast Fifty-second Street, but you never really heard of Los Angeles that much, then, where music was concerned. Everybody thought all the jazz and all the better jazz musicians came from the east. The writers for Metronome and down beat used to segregate it. They had what they called “West Coast Jazz”; they thought it would be different. I think that’s because the east wanted to really be up here and have the west down there, whatever that was. Music is music. Either you can play or you cannot play. And I’ve found that music is an international language. One of the best bands I ever heard was a band in Buenos Aires, in Argentina.

But let me tell you this about Art. At that time, I think everybody in the band was young, but, at seventeen, Art was the youngest. And about musicians, you can always tell when a guy is going to be great because the potential is there, and the only thing that needs to happen is for him to get out and play. It’s like my brother, Prez. I know how much he could play at seventeen, and I think that what happens is that they could play snakes at that age, but they just have not mellowed into the type of style they’re going to play. I think that’s all that happens after that. When a musician is young, every idea they have, they try to play at once. They’re not necessarily any better—Art probably wasn’t any better at twenty-seven than he was at seventeen; he probably didn’t know the instrument any better; but he knew what to do with it. He knew how not to overplay. You learn to pace yourself. But if he was not able to play all those notes and hear all those things, then he would never have been able to create a style. He was destined: nobody at that time was taking a seventeen year old and putting him into a band. The nearest I remember is when Harry James had Corky Corcoran. He played tenor. At that time he was the child wonder; I think he was sixteen or seventeen. But he was never destined to reach the heights as a jazz player that Art reached because you knew then, in hearing Corky play, that he wasn’t the instrumentalist, the technician, that Art was. Stan Getz was very young, too, but Stan, he copied a lot. Stan copied Prez. Now, I never did hear that in Art.

I lost track of Art for a long time, and then he did a lot of things on his own. When he went with Benny Carter, that’s understandable. He went from nine pieces to fourteen, fifteen pieces; he went from three saxophones to five. That was an education in itself. And then to go on and join Stan Kenton, that’s beautiful.

Art was talented, but let me tell you, I never would have hired him if I’d thought he didn’t have the right personality. If it’s going to be one of you and a lot of another race of people, you could have a problem. I didn’t just take Art blindly because I thought he played so well. I knew he’d be able to get along with the guys. And I knew the type of guys I had in the band. They would only judge him by his playing. He was quiet, the way I remember him. As a matter of fact the whole damn band was quiet! Hahahaha! That was a quiet band, but it was a good band. It could play.

The Club Alabam had had many names. When I came out here as a kid, you know, I used to be a singer and dancer, and it was one of the first places I worked. It was called the Apex. That was in the thirties, when all the movie stars used to frequent the club, so it was really a big business. And the same man who owned the Apex wound up owning the Club Alabam. How can I describe it? You had to buy your tickets at a ticket window, and then you’d go in, and they had tables all around the dance floor, maybe three deep, and they had a balcony, and right on the railing they had tables all the way around. I think you could get nine hundred people in there. And there was a long bar, maybe eighty, ninety feet, and all the hustlers and pimps, they stayed at the bar to fire their shots, so it was like something you see in the movies now, with the gangsters. But these guys were harmless, guys that gambled, no guns or that type of thing, and always shirt and tie and hats and coats. The dance floor was about fifty feet; you could get a lot of couples on the floor. And the show—they had eight or ten chorus girls. Oh yeah! That’s why I always took the job! Hahahaha! We always had a shake dancer, chorus, comics, and a headliner, and you couldn’t get near the place on Saturdays and Sundays especially. Most of the black people would be there on weekends, and all during the week the clientele was white.

That club was a nice place to work. But it all came to an end with the change of times and with the people moving out. I think it was the influx of transients; there was a lot of that. During the war, I went on the staff at Columbia Studios, but Central was really jumping then. It was almost like Broadway. After the war, the clubs started closing. I don’t know if it was hard times or what it was. I never really thought about it, but I observed it happening. As a matter of fact, it’s been years since I’ve been there because it was such a drastic change. If you’ve grown up used to something and it deteriorates . . . The Downbeat turned into a dump, a lot of winos hanging around. And they started holding people up and mugging people. It was just the times, I guess.

WHEN I went with Benny Carter I played all my jazz by ear. I was good at reading, but I didn’t know about chord structure, harmony, composition. Also, I had never played much lead alto, so with Benny I played second alto, he played lead, but in my book I had two parts written in most of the arrangements and sometimes, if there wasn’t a large audience, Benny would just get off the stand and let me play his parts. I’d get all his solos. I learned that way how to play lead in a four-man saxo-phone section. And I learned a lot following Benny, listening to his solos, what he played against the background. The guys in the band were all great musicians—Gerald Wilson, Freddie Webster, a legendary trumpet player, and JJ. Johnson, a jazz superstar. We played all over L.A. We did well. I was making fifty dollars a week, which was big money in those days.

The band went to Salt Lake City. I took Patti with me, and we stayed with Freddie Webster and his wife, with a colored family, on the outskirts of town. Freddie was a nice-looking, kind of a strange-looking, little cat. I had a strong affection for him. He was a little man who could back up the little man complex; his playing was incredibly beautiful. And he always carried an automatic pistol. He felt that because he was black and because of his size, somebody was going to push him into a corner and he’d need an equalizer. When we finished the job at night, I’d go stand in the street and flag down a cab. Freddie would hide. Then I’d go to get in the cab and hold the door open, and he’d run and jump in. Because they wouldn’t pick up a black guy. And I was always afraid the cab driver would say something and Freddie would shoot him. I was happy and comfortable with the guys in the band, but my dad hated blacks. He hated blacks and policemen and rats, informers; those were the things he raved about all the time, and he was angry that I hung out with “a bunch of niggers, a bunch of goddamned jigaboos.” The band was going down south and Benny told me it would be too dangerous from the blacks and the whites both for me to go along. I couldn’t understand why I had to leave the band and I didn’t know what I was going to do, but Benny talked to his manager, Carlos Gastel, who also managed Stan Kenton’s band. Stan had an exciting new band, very glamorous; they were from Balboa and all that. Jack Ordean, who played alto, had just left Kenton, so an audition was arranged and I was hired by Stan Kenton when I was still seventeen.

(Benny Carter) I was greatly impressed by Art’s talent, his sound, his concept of playing lead, and his creative ideas. He was a handsome, clean-cut, and most mannerly boy with a very affable disposition. I wasn’t aware at all of Art drinking heavily or using drugs. I liked him and have only positive memories of him at that time.

THANKS to Benny, when I got with Stan I was able to play lead. But while it had been possible to play solos by ear with Benny, with Stan things were different. He had a syncopated style, very original; things were built on an eighth note, three quarter notes, and another eighth note. It wasn’t easy to hear when you played a solo, and it got increasingly difficult. Finally, when we played the first record date that we did, on Capitol Records, and I did a solo on “Harlem Folk Dance,” it was just impossible. That’s when I realized I had to learn something about chord structure and the theory of music, so I started asking the guys in the band, “What happens with this? What happens with that?” And I gradually learned to read the chords. Red Dorris helped me a lot. He played tenor and sang with the band. He sang on that first date “Do Nothin’ Til You Hear From Me.”

Patti came to the jobs. She never did anything to excess. Sometimes she’d have a drink, and later on she smoked a little pot, but all she cared about was making love to me and watching me play. There I was. I had been a child living in my fantasies. Now I was a married man making lots of money. One of the first things I did, when I was still with Benny Carter, I took Patti downtown and bought her a watch with diamonds and emeralds. I remember that watch cost me a hundred and seventy-five dollars, almost a month’s salary. I’d buy her sexy panties and when we were riding on the bus I’d put my hand up under her dress when nobody was looking. We’d play games. Sometimes I’d make her pay her own way on the bus and we’d sit in separate seats like strangers. Then I’d start talking to her. We’d end up getting off the bus together and all the people would see it; it was so obvious. Guys would watch: “I didn’t think she was that kind of a girl! He must have a great line.” I’d look back and they’d all be staring. We were living down toward Los Angeles, downtown. We’d wander around and see an old hotel or one of those apartment houses and walk in the front door and down the hallway. We’d sneak into the hall bathroom, lock the door, and lie down on the floor and make love.

We’d go to the market together, and coming home I would slow up and walk behind her. We did this so many times and neither of us ever did anything to ruin it. I’d say, ‘Oh, pardon me, young lady, do you live around here?” She’d say, “Yes, I live down the street with my husband.” And I’d say, “I thought so because I’ve seen you and you sure are beautiful.” She’d say, “You shouldn’t say that because I’m a married woman.” I’d say, “I just can’t help it. You’re so gorgeous. I’d give anything in the world if I could make love to you.” I’d walk home with her. She’d go up to the house and look in. She’d come back and say, “Well, my husband isn’t home. I don’t know where he’s at. I guess you could come in. You could maybe kiss me or something.” I’d get all excited. We’d go in. I’d put my arms around her. I’d kiss her. Then she would say, “Please stop. I told you I’d give you a kiss but that’s all. I’m sorry, because you are a nice boy; you are handsome; and if I wasn’t married ... “ I’d say, “Oh, please, please, please! Anything you want I’ll give you. I’ll do anything. Just let me look at you. Just let me look at your breasts.” “Don’t say that!” “Oh, please!” “Will you promise that’s all you’ll ask of me?” “I promise. I swear.” So she’d pull up her sweater and take her brassiere off and stand there posing with her titties hanging out. And I’d ask if I could just touch them ... .

I used to like to scare her, too. She’d go to the store and I’d hide in the closet. She’d come home and she’d shout, “Art? Where are you? Come on, Art, please. I know you’re here.” Then I’d start making noises. Growling. She’d say, “Come on out. Don’t act silly. Please!” And she was always scared. I’d sneak out of the closet, and she’d turn around, and there I’d be with this horrible Frankenstein look I had. She’d say, “Oh stop it, honey, please.” I’d yell, “Hhhrrruuuuuaaaahhh!” And she’d shriek, “Stop that!” I’d be coming toward her with my hands in front of me; I’d be jumping—little, fast, jump-steps. I’d be bouncing and I’d have this horrible look on my face. She’d scream, “Stop that!” And she’d start running. “Stop that, Art!” I’d be bouncing after her, “Pt-pt-pt-pt.” She’d be hysterical. I’d chase her all around the room, into the kitchen and into the bathroom, and she’d scream, “Please! Please!” Finally, I’d kiss her, and everything would be alright.

I was doing well. People were getting to know me in the music business. I was starting to get a little following. And I was in love—after seventeen years of loneliness. I knew it couldn’t last. Then, one day in the latter part of 1943, after six months of marriage, I got my greetings from Uncle Sam.