Read Online The Cool School by Glenn O'Brien - Free Book Online
Authors: Glenn O'Brien
Ads: Link
Dues, celebrating the improv nature of life as well as music in the early days of bop, and explaining how he became a singer to seduce girls. His idiosyncratic punctuation is preserved from the original edition.
from I Paid My Dues
J ANUARY OF 1945 I was out of bread and I hadn’t scored musically so I had to find me another day gig. I talked to two clothiers (F&F) and they gave me a salesman’s job. This was really sweet. I started at ten and worked until five with an hour for lunch.
As part of my job, I had to stay sharp, so I got seven vines (suits) right away. In three months I had twenty bands buying their uniforms there. Whenever I wanted to hang out on Fifty-Second Street, I would tell the bosses I was courting a new account and they’d give me expense money. I’d been working four months before I noticed there were no Negro tailors, cutters, etc. I asked the bosses and they said it was because none had ever asked for jobs. I spoke to a friend and he came down one day and applied. When the ten “Jewish” employees found out this “Negro” tailor was even “LOOKING” for a job, they threatened to walk out. Finally the bosses broke down and told me. “Look, Babsie, It’s not us, we’re not prejudice but if we hired one we wouldn’t be able to get any linings, buttons, or anything, plus the help would all leave.” They also said they had a lot of pressure on them for having “ME” as a salesman.
By this time, the happenings had all moved to Fifty-Second Street. “Coleman Hawkins” and “Lady Day” were the king and queen. Dizzy and Oscar Pettiford had a band in the “Deuces”, and “Clark Monroe” the only colored owner had his joint and was featuring “Bud Powell” and “Max Roach”. “Miles Davis” had just come to study at “Juilliard” and was the envy of everyone because his father sent him seventy-five ($75) dollars a week which was as much as the guys working were getting. The new sound got to me so I found myself there every night. I began to get gigs on weekends going up to “Bridgeport” and “New Haven”.
The street was really something in those days. The war was on and there were always loads of sailors and soldiers who wanted to and did fight every time they saw a Negro musician with a white girl. I’d seen a whore uptown beating her man with her shoe heel and him just holding his eyes screaming. When it was all over I asked her why the guy didn’t fight back? She answered, “Just get a box of “red pepper” for a dime and throw it in his eyes and you’ll win.”
I took her advice and until today, I’ve never been without it.
The guys all laughed at me at first but after I saved “Oscar” and “Bird’s” life with it, quite a few more colleagues copped some. There was one “Irish” bar on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifty-Second Street that wouldn’t serve colored even though the law said so. One night four of us went in with our white girls. After refusing us, the girls ordered. The owner called them all kinds of tramps, bitches, for being with niggers, etc. There were about thirty ofays there so we left. At 4:30 that morning, we took trash cans and broke out all his windows. We did this five times in a year before he finally got the message.
Another incident involved “Ben Webster”. At that time “Ben” weighed two hundred and forty pounds (240 lbs.) and was always ready to fight. “Baby Lawrence”, the greatest jazz tap dancer that ever lived ran into the “Downbeat ” and yelled “the sailors are beating up “Bud Powell”. We all rushed around the corner to the “White Rose” bar and there was “Bud” in the street unconscious and bleeding. Ben grabbed two sailors, one in each hand by the backs of their necks. Heran them both from the curb straight through the plate glass windows and the rest took off like track stars.
I stayed on the job at the clothing store until November. “Nat Cole” had made it and was playing the
from I Paid My Dues
J ANUARY OF 1945 I was out of bread and I hadn’t scored musically so I had to find me another day gig. I talked to two clothiers (F&F) and they gave me a salesman’s job. This was really sweet. I started at ten and worked until five with an hour for lunch.
As part of my job, I had to stay sharp, so I got seven vines (suits) right away. In three months I had twenty bands buying their uniforms there. Whenever I wanted to hang out on Fifty-Second Street, I would tell the bosses I was courting a new account and they’d give me expense money. I’d been working four months before I noticed there were no Negro tailors, cutters, etc. I asked the bosses and they said it was because none had ever asked for jobs. I spoke to a friend and he came down one day and applied. When the ten “Jewish” employees found out this “Negro” tailor was even “LOOKING” for a job, they threatened to walk out. Finally the bosses broke down and told me. “Look, Babsie, It’s not us, we’re not prejudice but if we hired one we wouldn’t be able to get any linings, buttons, or anything, plus the help would all leave.” They also said they had a lot of pressure on them for having “ME” as a salesman.
By this time, the happenings had all moved to Fifty-Second Street. “Coleman Hawkins” and “Lady Day” were the king and queen. Dizzy and Oscar Pettiford had a band in the “Deuces”, and “Clark Monroe” the only colored owner had his joint and was featuring “Bud Powell” and “Max Roach”. “Miles Davis” had just come to study at “Juilliard” and was the envy of everyone because his father sent him seventy-five ($75) dollars a week which was as much as the guys working were getting. The new sound got to me so I found myself there every night. I began to get gigs on weekends going up to “Bridgeport” and “New Haven”.
The street was really something in those days. The war was on and there were always loads of sailors and soldiers who wanted to and did fight every time they saw a Negro musician with a white girl. I’d seen a whore uptown beating her man with her shoe heel and him just holding his eyes screaming. When it was all over I asked her why the guy didn’t fight back? She answered, “Just get a box of “red pepper” for a dime and throw it in his eyes and you’ll win.”
I took her advice and until today, I’ve never been without it.
The guys all laughed at me at first but after I saved “Oscar” and “Bird’s” life with it, quite a few more colleagues copped some. There was one “Irish” bar on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifty-Second Street that wouldn’t serve colored even though the law said so. One night four of us went in with our white girls. After refusing us, the girls ordered. The owner called them all kinds of tramps, bitches, for being with niggers, etc. There were about thirty ofays there so we left. At 4:30 that morning, we took trash cans and broke out all his windows. We did this five times in a year before he finally got the message.
Another incident involved “Ben Webster”. At that time “Ben” weighed two hundred and forty pounds (240 lbs.) and was always ready to fight. “Baby Lawrence”, the greatest jazz tap dancer that ever lived ran into the “Downbeat ” and yelled “the sailors are beating up “Bud Powell”. We all rushed around the corner to the “White Rose” bar and there was “Bud” in the street unconscious and bleeding. Ben grabbed two sailors, one in each hand by the backs of their necks. Heran them both from the curb straight through the plate glass windows and the rest took off like track stars.
I stayed on the job at the clothing store until November. “Nat Cole” had made it and was playing the
Similar Books
