Read Online With Billie by Julia Blackburn - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Julia Blackburn
Ads: Link
each for his own. They can have it.’
Clara used to have two apartments at 135 West 142nd Street. She kept one for business purposes while the other was for living. She was nostalgic about the old days when ‘people used to come into my house, from the best to the worst; even Tallulah [Bankhead] used to come to my house. They were beautiful times. You could walk up and down Lenox Avenue and go in and go out and there was no sticking up. Everything was peaceful, and people could have beautiful evenings and mornings and look beautiful and not be afraid, and they were all nationalities … And there was a shop on 8th Avenue had the most beautiful flowers you ever heard of, honey, and even the President didn’t have no more beautiful flowers.’
It was Clarence who arranged for Billie and Sadie to rent a room from Clara for a while. Clara said she wanted to make it clear that she wasn’t ‘cloaking’ Clarence at the time, and she only met him once or twice when he came to the apartment to visit his daughter. She said you could tell straight away that the two of them were related because Billie ‘looked just like her daddy, only she was taller and he was a little shorter. But they had the same freaky-looking eyes, sort of slanty eyes … In fact, Clarence looked something like a foreigner.’ She remembered how Billie ‘always did what she wanted’ and how Sadie would run after her, calling, ‘Billee, Billee, Billee.’ ‘She just loved her, just like a little baby, and used to worry herself to death about her.’
After a few months Sadie got a place on 142nd Street, near 7th Avenue. Clara said Sadie had a little business there,where she used to serve food. ‘There were no real tables, but people could sit around and drink and go with girls and everything. White fellas and girls would go on up.’ The trumpet player Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison confirmed that Sadie was a ‘groovy person … who ran a little whorehouse, and a lot of musicians used to go up there and buy some pussy’. Clara said she didn’t know about Billie ‘doing any prostitution’ at the time, but in her view it was always ‘better to sell it than give it away!’
Clara said that Billie was ‘beautiful people’, having a good time and living her life. She had lots of friends and ‘she did everything everybody else did … There’s nothing bad I can say about her … She was a spodie-odie good time. She’d come into some place and she’d say “OK, come on! Rack ’em up and run ’em around!” ’ At one point during the interview Clara announced that Billie ‘could have been real famous, with that voice’.
Clara remembered Clarence’s funeral. She said the Reverend Monroe was the preacher and he had ‘some Baptist church’ down on 115th and St Nicholas Avenue and ‘he’d preach for anybody’. Clara used to call him Motha because he was ‘a gay baby and he loved those nice-looking boys’.
Fanny also spoke about the Reverend Monroe. She said he was often called in for the funerals of musicians who didn’t have church connections. She described him as a light-brown-skinned man with a deep ‘religious voice’. He could really preach a funeral; he could preach anyone into heaven with fire and brimstone and his hands waving. Clarence’s body was brought to Duncan’s Funeral Parlour and the Reverend Monroe did his preaching there because ‘he had no church’. Then Clarence was taken to Forest Hills cemetery in Queens, and Billie accompanied Fanny and Atlanta Shepherd in the limousine. There was no question of Sadie coming with them, so she went on her own in a separate car and somehow got lost on the way and arrived too late to see the coffin lowered into the ground.
* Clarence had already married an eighteen-year-old Baltimore woman called Helen Boudin, on 16 October 1922 when he was twenty-three, but they only stayed together for a few months. He never obtained a divorce.
† This is according to his friend,
Clara used to have two apartments at 135 West 142nd Street. She kept one for business purposes while the other was for living. She was nostalgic about the old days when ‘people used to come into my house, from the best to the worst; even Tallulah [Bankhead] used to come to my house. They were beautiful times. You could walk up and down Lenox Avenue and go in and go out and there was no sticking up. Everything was peaceful, and people could have beautiful evenings and mornings and look beautiful and not be afraid, and they were all nationalities … And there was a shop on 8th Avenue had the most beautiful flowers you ever heard of, honey, and even the President didn’t have no more beautiful flowers.’
It was Clarence who arranged for Billie and Sadie to rent a room from Clara for a while. Clara said she wanted to make it clear that she wasn’t ‘cloaking’ Clarence at the time, and she only met him once or twice when he came to the apartment to visit his daughter. She said you could tell straight away that the two of them were related because Billie ‘looked just like her daddy, only she was taller and he was a little shorter. But they had the same freaky-looking eyes, sort of slanty eyes … In fact, Clarence looked something like a foreigner.’ She remembered how Billie ‘always did what she wanted’ and how Sadie would run after her, calling, ‘Billee, Billee, Billee.’ ‘She just loved her, just like a little baby, and used to worry herself to death about her.’
After a few months Sadie got a place on 142nd Street, near 7th Avenue. Clara said Sadie had a little business there,where she used to serve food. ‘There were no real tables, but people could sit around and drink and go with girls and everything. White fellas and girls would go on up.’ The trumpet player Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison confirmed that Sadie was a ‘groovy person … who ran a little whorehouse, and a lot of musicians used to go up there and buy some pussy’. Clara said she didn’t know about Billie ‘doing any prostitution’ at the time, but in her view it was always ‘better to sell it than give it away!’
Clara said that Billie was ‘beautiful people’, having a good time and living her life. She had lots of friends and ‘she did everything everybody else did … There’s nothing bad I can say about her … She was a spodie-odie good time. She’d come into some place and she’d say “OK, come on! Rack ’em up and run ’em around!” ’ At one point during the interview Clara announced that Billie ‘could have been real famous, with that voice’.
Clara remembered Clarence’s funeral. She said the Reverend Monroe was the preacher and he had ‘some Baptist church’ down on 115th and St Nicholas Avenue and ‘he’d preach for anybody’. Clara used to call him Motha because he was ‘a gay baby and he loved those nice-looking boys’.
Fanny also spoke about the Reverend Monroe. She said he was often called in for the funerals of musicians who didn’t have church connections. She described him as a light-brown-skinned man with a deep ‘religious voice’. He could really preach a funeral; he could preach anyone into heaven with fire and brimstone and his hands waving. Clarence’s body was brought to Duncan’s Funeral Parlour and the Reverend Monroe did his preaching there because ‘he had no church’. Then Clarence was taken to Forest Hills cemetery in Queens, and Billie accompanied Fanny and Atlanta Shepherd in the limousine. There was no question of Sadie coming with them, so she went on her own in a separate car and somehow got lost on the way and arrived too late to see the coffin lowered into the ground.
* Clarence had already married an eighteen-year-old Baltimore woman called Helen Boudin, on 16 October 1922 when he was twenty-three, but they only stayed together for a few months. He never obtained a divorce.
† This is according to his friend,
Similar Books
