Straight Life (13 page)

I felt this peace like a kind of warmth. I could feel it start in my stomach. From the whole inside of my body I felt the tranquility. It was so relaxing. It was so gorgeous. Sheila said, "Look at yourself in the mirror! Look in the mirror!" And that's what I'd always done: I'd stood and looked at myself in the mirror and I'd talk to myself and say how rotten I was-"Why do people hate you? Why are you alone? Why are you so miserable?" I thought, "Oh, no! I don't want to do that! I don't want to spoil this feeling that's coming up in me!" I was afraid that if I looked in the mirror I would see it, my whole past life, and this wonderful feeling would end, but she kept saying, "Look at yourself! Look how beautiful you are! Look at your eyes! Look at your pupils!" I looked in the mirror and I looked like an angel. I looked at my pupils and they were pinpoints; they were tiny, little dots. It was like looking into a whole universe of joy and happiness and contentment.

I thought of my grandmother always talking about God and inner happiness and peace of mind, being content within yourself not needing anybody else, not worrying about whether anybody loves you, if your father doesn't love you, if your mother took a coathanger and stuck it up her cunt to try to destroy you because she didn't want you, because you were an unclean, filthy, dirty, rotten, slimy being that no one wanted, that no one ever wanted, that no one has still ever wanted. I looked at myself and I said, "God, no, I am not that. I'm beautiful. I am the whole, complete thing. There's nothing more, nothing more that I care about. I don't care about anybody. I don't care about Patti. I don't need to worry about anything at all." I'd found God.

I loved myself, everything about myself. I loved my talent. I had lost the sour taste of the filthy alcohol that made me vomit and the feeling of the bennies and the strips that put chills up and down my spine. I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked at Sheila and I looked at the few remaining lines of heroin and I took the dollar bill and horned the rest of them down. I said, "This is it. This is the only answer for me. If this is what it takes, then this is what I'm going to do, whatever dues I have to pay ..." And I knew that I would get busted and I knew that I would go to prison and that I wouldn't be weak; I wouldn't be an informer like all the phonies, the no-account, the nonreal, the zero people that roam around, the scum that slither out from under rocks, the people that destroyed music, that destroyed this country, that destroyed the world, the rotten, fucking, lousy people that for their own little ends-the black power people, the sickening, stinking motherfuckers that play on the fact that they're black, and all this fucking shit that happened later on-the rotten, no-account, filthy women that have no feeling for anything; they have no love for anyone; they don't know what love is; they are shallow hulls of nothingness-the whole group of rotten people that have nothing to offer, that are nothing, never will be anything, were never intended to be anything.

All I can say is, at that moment I saw that I'd found peace of mind. Synthetically produced, but after what I'd been through and all the things I'd done, to trade that misery for total happiness-that was it, you know, that was it. I realized it. I realized that from that moment on I would be, if you want to use the word, a junkie. That's the word they used. That's the word they still use. That is what I became at that moment. That's what I practiced; and that's what I still am. And that's what I will die as-a junkie.

(Hersh Hamel) We were playing at a place called Esther's in Hermosa Beach, and I was with Jack Montrose. Jack and I were friends. They used to have a session at this place almost every night, so we had gone down there to play, and Art came down, and we all enjoyed ourselves together. This must have been in the late forties. Art was serious about playing, liked to laugh; he was drinking, smoking pot. Art immediately hit it off with Jack and I, and we all decided to meet there again, and we did, on succeeding days. Art was very handsome at that time, lean and dark, black hair combed back, and very fastidious. Art was a very interesting player, swinging and very intense, sort of trying to do his own thing under the cloak of the strong sentiment and strong popularity of Charlie Parker. Art was trying to create a style of his own.

Art was married to Patti and they were living somewhere between Washington Boulevard and Adams in a nice, little place. Patti was a sort of naive girl who wasn't terribly interested in music, jazz. She was very pretty. She was blonde and very pretty. Very much a take-care-of-business type of girl. She did her thing. Around the house. Wasn't lazy. Sort of serious and not terribly talkative or friendly with any of the musicians. She had her own set of friends, whoever they were.

She was always nice to me, said hello, but Freddy Rivera-we got to know Freddy; he would always be around Art, you know, coming over to the house, and I got the impression that Patti didn't like Freddy, didn't like Freddy over there. Art wanted Freddy there. Art got a big kick out of Freddy. Found Freddy amusing. So, there was a little tension between Patti and Art about Freddy. As for me, when I came over and picked Art up or whatever it was, she was more friendly with me, but I felt I was still one of the musician friends of Art's.

Patti and Art seemed to be on different mind levels. They didn't seem to have the same likes and dislikes. There wasn't a great rapport between them, although, you know, Art seemed to love Patti. And Patti's ideas about the way a marriage should be didn't coincide with Art's. I don't think Art really thought about it that much. He was very involved with his music and his emotional ups and downs with his music. They took a great toll out of him, so he wasn't able, really, to grasp the reality of the marriage situation. That was my feeling.

We used to go out playing all the time. Go over to the east side, play at different places. Sometimes, out of seven nights in the week, we'd be playing five nights, and we had a different place for each night. Even if we weren't working we'd be, like, together, as a group of guys: myself, Jack Montrose, Art, Sammy Curtis, sometimes Chet Baker, sometimes Jack Sheldon, Bill Perkins, Gene Roland, Bob Braucus, Bob Neal. Sometimes Shorty Rogers even came along.

Some nights we'd play at a place called the Samoan in East L.A., right in the Barrio, off Whittier and Atlantic. We knew the owner there; he was very mellow, and he liked us to come in. He knew Freddy. Al Leon had a place for us to play in El Cerrito. And the Mexicans loved Art. I think they thought that Art was part Mexican; he has that Latin look. I don't think they realized he's more Italian than anything else. He was just a hero to them. They'd come in and take us outside and get us high.

At that point Art was just drinking and smoking pot, maybe a diet pill from time to time. And he could always drink me under the table. I remember one night we were at the opening of a record store in East L.A. It was about ten at night, the grand opening, and we played, like, a jam session. The owner asked us to. They closed up the store at about one and we played until four in the morning, and Art, while I was standing up playing my big bass fiddle, Art was pouring this gin down my throat and it was running down my neck. Well, I got so drunk! Art drank more than I did, and I got terribly sick. Art didn't really even show the effect. He was drunk but he wasn't drunk drunk, like I was. He took me home, and my clothes were all screwed up, and Patti washed my clothes and cleaned me up. I was a mess. It was a lot of fun. It really was. The point was, Art was able to consume a lot of stuff, no matter what it was, and show very little effect from it.

About that period, Art went back on the road with Kenton, and the way I heard it from Art was that he was initiated to heroin while he was on that tour. I remember he came back and he was involved with heroin. It seemed like he got involved pretty fast and pretty deep. When Art wasn't on the road with Kenton, he would do some things by himself, and I remember he was down at a place on Sixth and Western called the Surf Club. Hampton Hawes was down there with him, and I remember how loaded Art was on the gig, really zonked. I remember going down to see him and being disturbed about him being so stoned while he was working. His playing was fine, but it seemed like Art began to feel like he couldn't play good enough unless he was on heroin.

Art's really a gifted and talented player. He's given his great talent to jazz, his style. And he did retain himself through all the Charlie Parker years, some pretty rough times. I remember there was a club near Hollywood Boulevard where we used to go play sessions after hours. This must have been 1960, something like that. I was standing outside the club and Art was going in and Joe Maini was going in and somehow there were words between Joe and Art. Joe said something: "Hey, faggot!" About the way Art played. He didn't mean Art's demeanor as a person. And they got into a fistfight and were rolling around on the concrete hitting each other over the style of Art's playing. Art was defending his playing by engaging in fisticuffs with Joe.

You know, there are Charlie Parker influences in Art's playing but Art was able to retain himself; whereas most of the alto players emulated Charlie Parker and therefore they didn't have as much of themselves to give as Art did. I think that's a great thing.

(Freddy Rivera) At that time, I was completely lost. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I wasn't even close to having an idea of what I was doing. In reality I was doing nothing. Getting drunk. Running around the streets. Screaming. At times it was enormous fun, but much of the other time it was frightening, really, not knowing what the hell's going on. Art was frightened, too. He was frightened of life. At one time, we went into a shopping center and people were going in and out of the doors and he said, "They're making it. Those people are making it." One time we were in a car and we were talking and somebody said, "You know, a lawyer makes eighty thousand a year. You, Art, you're not making anything at all. You should be making as much as a successful lawyer or doctor." It was the truth, too. Art was making, what, twenty dollars a week? Of course, when he was with the bands he was making more money. But he was capable of making eighty thousand. He rationalized it, "It's a rotten world. People are cold and conniving. They won't give a person a chance. There's no justice."

I met Art when I was nineteen, around 1946. I was a drummer. I met him through Al Leon, the piano player; he brought him over to my house. We went out to this place in Bell; they had sessions over there. Zoot was there most of the time and Jim Giuffre, Stan Getz. The sessions were usually on Sundays. And we used to hang out, ride around, smoke dope, drink, talk.

Art and I were able to talk to one another. When two people like one another, sometimes they don't even know why. I guess there was some kind of empathy there as far as emotions, attitudes, feelings, sensitivity. And, of course, another factor was youth. When you're young, you can be very open. You make friends more easily.

Art's attitude toward music is difficult to describe accurately. He's a marvelous musician, always has been. Very exact, with the right sound, whatever that means. The sound I like. Marvelous vibrato. But very exact. Does it right. And of course a lot of guys can do it right, but they can't swing. And there's depth in his music. Insight. When I think of Art, I think of Lester Young, and I think of Mozart, too. The quality-it appears to be easy, but it's never easy. If it were easy anyone could do it. I think there's a strong classical feeling there. I'm using the word to mean a feeling for form and for proportion and whatnot. He's just naturally a musician. He came out of the womb a musician, and I'm positive he always had a commitment to it. But you wouldn't find him, like some guys, practicing eight hours a day, constantly trying to get connections, get ahead, get the gig, achieve power, fame. He was afraid of any responsibility. He just wanted to fuck around.

Patti was a friendly person, an emotional, warm person, but she wanted Art to be more active and to seek success more vigorously, go after it, take care of business. And I imagine, as his wife, she wanted security, whether it was expressed immediately in more money or whether it was expressed in his attitude and in his ability to take care of himself, so she could at least feel that she was with a secure person who had a sense of direction, control of his life. Patti was very attractive. Physically, she was an exciting-looking woman, erotic in appearance, although she had something of the, you know, clean-cut, midwestern look about her and considerable charm. I think Art felt a need for her, an emotional need to draw upon her. I would think he had a strong feeling of physical attraction, emotions of abandon with her.

Art was very sensitive and I would say cunning in many ways. A real paradox. He had an inability at times to really take care of things and deal with his life in a forceful, direct way, to change things, but at the same time he showed a cunning in his relationship with people. The cunning was a result of great natural intelligence, but it was really a form of childishness. Instead of taking the form of advancing his career and getting work, which he had every right to have, it was diverted into the manipulation of flunkies: "Take me to the job." "Bring me home." "Yeah, come on over. Bring a jug." And people did this, of course-out of admiration for his talent. And I know what they got out of it. Feeling like nothing themselves, not having any identity, they were able to incorporate themselves into something else that was larger, that was great. So they more or less had themselves swallowed. And Art-I don't think that anyone could benefit from that. It's almost a hundred ten percent self-destructive because everything is false and there's no room left to grow and to do things for oneself, to actively walk into the world: "I am going to drive myself to the gig. I can do it." But Art was emotionally very young. The child must be take care of. He must be given things. Infantile gratification. For an infant it's perfectly appropriate; he's weaned in three years.