Straight Life (18 page)

(Sammy Curtis) As to drugs, it's like the thing going on now. It's a peer thing. A lot of guys are doing it, gettin' stoned. It did feel good. People enjoy feeling good. You don't know what it's going to lead to. You don't think of that. I'm a follower of Jesus now, and I look at everything spiritually, so I think that anyone drinking, getting stoned, you name it, is looking for the Lord. They're looking for something greater but they don't know how to go about it, to find it, and unfortunately, in the search they fool around getting stoned, and it feels better. But it's a temporary and destructive thing. I've been there, and getting closer to the Lord feels much better. It's cheaper and it's constructive not destructive.

DOPE MENACE KEEPS GROWING

Dope is menacing the dance band industry. It has become a major threat and unless herculean effort is made by everyone concerned to halt its spread, it may well wreck the business. We are not talking about marijuana, benzedrine, or nembutal, although these are the first steps leading to the evil.

We are referring to real narcotics, heroin principally, and too many well-known musicians and vocalists are "hooked," as they say in the vernacular. This is serious business and it constitutes a triple threat to the future of dance music.

It is demolishing the professional as well as the personal careers of the addicts themselves, many of whom cannot be spared from the ranks of working musicians because of their talent.

It is giving a bad name to ALL musicians and jeopardizing their living. We know instances in which bookings have been refused to clean units and bands because of undeserved reputation.

Most important of all, the example set by musicians who are addicts and who also are well known, is a wrong influence on younger musicians and on youngsters who may become musicians.

down beat usually has not given prominent display to news stories about musicians who run afoul of the law because of their habit. We did not wish to be accused of sensationalism. We knew, of course, that Miles Davis, the trumpet star, and drummer Art Blakey were picked up recently in Los Angeles on a heroin charge. We did not print it.

Now we are becoming convinced that we are doing a disservice to the industry by not giving wider publicity to such facts. We are begin ping to believe that we should name names and state facts, even in the instances of musicians who die from the habit, without attempting to thinly disguise the cause of death as has been done in two or three cases recently.

The grapevine is flooded with rumors and rumors of rumors. A name girl vocalist and her musician husband both are said to be hooked. One of the five top tenor sax stars has flipped, it is reported. Another femme singer, who has been in trouble before, walked out after playing three nights of a two week club engagement because her chauffeur was picked up with heroin capsules in his possession and the law began to stalk her again.

We can't print names on the basis of rumors alone, even those which seem to be substantiated. There must be an arrest or other official record. When there is, and it is only a matter of time in nearly all cases, down beat intends to print it as a small effort to help stamp out this traffic.

One name band leader has seen the light. He is eliminating, one by one, his sidemen who are known to be using the stuff. There have been half a dozen replacements in his band recently. Other leaders should follow his example. It's a tough decision to make, turning out an otherwise capable instrumentalist who may well have stellar talent. But it's better than having the entire structure collapse.

It's a pity, too, that such musicians should practically be deprived of making a living by the only means they know. Too many of them, however, are not making a living even when they are working. The dope pusher takes most of it. It's better that they should be forced to work out their own destiny alone, rather than be permitted to remain and infect others, like a rotten apple in a barrel. down beat, November 17, 1950. Copyright 1950 by down beat. Reprinted by special permission.

Perspectives

CRITIC DEMANDS JUNKING OF WEAKLING JAZZMEN by Ralph J. Gleason

The most important question in the music business today is not who's going to make the next hit record, but rather is something nobody talks about, particularly for publication.

Apparently operating on the ancient myth that you can conceal illness by not recognizing its existence, nobody, from bandboy and sideman up to bandleader and booker, will speak openly and frankly on the cancer that is infecting the business. I don't have to state it any plainer than that for you to know exactly what I'm talking about.

Jazz Is Big Business jazz is big business today. It's an important and money-making part of every major record company's activities and a major part of most minor firms' work. The jazz clubs flourish all over the country. In the opinion of a veteran publicist in San Francisco, a man connected with show business, the entertainment world and publicity for years, the jazz clubs are a strong part of the backbone of the entertainment field today and in the near future will be the biggest thing in the business.

Today's youngsters are the potential night club patrons of ten years from now, and what today's kids want is jazz. They are giving up the Joe E. Lewises for the John Lewises and the Sophie Tuckers for the Sarah Vaughans. Every year the older entertainment world loses another generation of customers. And the new order gains one.

Time To Clean House With this in mind, please consider the possibility that it is time for the musicians, the jazz fans, and the musicians' union if necessary, to clean house. But good. It's up to bandleaders and bookers, sidemen and managers to see to it that the cancer is contained, that the infection is stopped and a thriving business, that is also an art and a way of life, is not penalized by the twisted attitudes and hysterical flight from reality of a very few. And they are, relatively, a few. Even though they may be a talented, articulate, and amazingly active few.

How can you respect a man who does not respect himself? There is no reality on Cloud 9, and there is no clearer perception of life. If the music business, itself, doesn't do something about it, we will all be losers in the long run. Frankly, I can think of no re-orientation too severe for certain of our so-called stars for their behavior in recent years. An addict is a shame and a disgrace to the very word "musician."

"Special Privilege" Gone Time was when camaraderie between the races and the colors and the factions in music was the rule. The residue of history when musicians were strolling players, a group apart, and as artists and special human beings enjoyed special privileges. It's getting so the word is one of opprobrium rather than praise.

Sure the papers exaggerate; sure the hysterical columnists shoot off a lot of nonsense. But you know what's happening, don't you? Is it good? No one can cure it but you. It's time the hipsters got their hip cards punched, but in the right place. down beat, December 2, 1953. Copyright 1953 by down beat. Reprinted by special permission.

(Shelly Manne) Drug use was prevalent among musicians then. That was why I originally left New York. People hitting on me for money to score. Leave something on the bandstand, turn around, and it's gone. Friendship goes right out the window. People turn into animals. But there are different extenuating circumstances in everybody's life: the need to be accepted by a group of peers who maybe are using drugs or alcohol at the time, the need to be accepted as one of the guys, the need to be considered hipper by doing that, by being a farout cat, or the discontent with one's own playing. Maybe he feels that a stimulant or a depressant might somehow enable him to get his head together so he can cut the crowd out and get totally into his playing. Who knows. There's a hundred reasons why. It might be something in your personal life which a friend wouldn't necessarily know about, in your background, in your bringing up, in your environment. It's too hard for me to speculate on why a guy would use heavy drugs or heavy alcohol. I know that to do it just for fun - smoke some pot, take a few drinks with the guys, just partying it up - or because there's a lot of tension on the road, just as a release, was cool. We used to have a lot of fun. We'd get stoned or something and just enjoy ourselves. But when you start getting into heavy drugs, you're getting into another area, and it's a terrible vicious circle because it's a losing battle all around. You're not only leading a life on the road that is debilitating to your body, to use heavy drugs as a relief from the stress of being on the road creates another disability to your body. And finally your body breaks down, and finally you break down, and finally you have no control or will power, and the whole thing just goes down the toilet.

I was fortunate because drugs scared the hell out of me. When I was young, in New York, playing on Fifty-second Street, when I was eighteen I looked fifteen, and all the musicians I was playing with-Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Trummy Young, Dizzy-all those musicians, kinda were very protective. Even when I hung out in a saloon, the White Rose, on Fifty-second Street, with all those guys and somebody'd offer me a drink (I didn't like alcohol), they would put them down, "No, give him a Coke." I'm very grateful to them for that, being protected like that. And, of course, what helped me, too, was being accepted by those guys. It gave me strength and confidence. I felt selfassured about what I wanted to do, where I was going.

7

Busted

1952-1953

THE POINT was whether I really wanted to do it or not. A month at the sanitarium cost two thousand dollars, and there was no sense in spending all that money if I was just going to come out and start using again. But I felt I wanted to stop. I was hoping I felt that-way.-

My dad phoned the sanitarium and they told him I should go and stay with him so they would know exactly how much I was shooting a day. He put his house in mortgage and took his money out of the bank. He bought dope for me. I'd make a phone call to East L.A. and line it up, and he and my stepmother would drive me to score. We. did this for three days. Then they made the appointment for me to go into the sanitarium.

Before I left, my dad got a hammer and we all went into the kitchen. Patti was there. He handed me the hammer and told me to do it right. It was like a ceremony. I broke the outfit into a million pieces and took the pieces into the backyard and threw them as far as I could. I felt that I'd be able to make it with my dad behind me.

When I got to the sanitarium I was already sick. They got me into bed and took the standard tests, and then the doctor came in with the nurse and talked to me for a while. Heroin isn't like drugstore dope: you never know what you're getting. He tried to estimate how much I'd been taking a day but he couldn't do that, so he said, "I'll send the nurse back with a shot of morphine and after you get the effects of it, call for her and let her know how you feel, if it takes away the sickness, because I don't want you to be uncomfortable." The nurse came back with a syringe and injected the morphine under my skin instead of into the vein. (Later on I tried to get her to let me fix myself in the vein, but she wouldn't do it.)

The morphine helped me quite a bit but I still felt bad. So I called the nurse and told her to get the doctor; I was still sick. She came back with another shot of morphine. They set the dosage at a certain point and keep it there for four days, and then they gradually decrease it. You get a shot every four hours. After the second shot I felt just fine but I told the doctor that I was still sick and got another shot, and after that I said, "I still don't feel comfortable." He said, "Well, I don't understand it, but alright, we'll give you one more shot." By this time I was just wasted. I was sailing. So I finally told them that I felt okay. I could make it. Hahahaha! I could stand the pain.

The next day they put me in a whirlpool bath and a guy gave me a massage, the most beautiful massage I've ever had-he was an artist. Here I was in this gorgeous room, comparable to any hotel I'd ever stayed in; I had my own private patio with flowers and lawn and birds chirping; and every four hours this pretty nurse would come in and give me an enormous shot of morphine. And I was just blind: I tripped out and sang to myself and made funny noises and looked at myself in the mirror. I stood in the bathroom for hours looking at myself and giggling, saying, "Boy, what a handsome devil you are!" I had a beautiful body. I'd get in the shower and bathe and get out and take the hand mirror and put it on the floor and look at my body from the floor. I'd look at my rear end and the bottom of my balls and the bottom of my joint, and I would play with myself until I got a hard-on and then gaze into this mirror and say, "What a gorgeous thing you are!"

I mentioned that as a child I used to play a lot alone. I loved sports and I made up a baseball game that I played with dice, and I never played it with anybody. I'd choose the names of the best players and roll the dice to make up fantasy teams, six or eight teams in the league. I would make up names like the New York Bombers, the Philadelphia Penguins. I had a typewriter that my mother's husband, Whit, had bought me, and I'd type up a sheet for each team listing all the players including pinch hitters and relief pitchers. I'd set up a page with the team standings and I kept batting averages, home runs, runs batted in, the whole thing. I had meetings for the managers, and I would talk. Sometimes I'd have trades. If a team was really losing I'd have them buy somebody that had a good batting average. And when I played the game, I was the radio broadcaster; I was the manager; I was the ball player; I was everything. I'd roll the dice. Each roll of the dice meant something. I'd say, "Ted Williams is up. Warren Spahn is pitching. It's the first pitch. Strike one!" I'd keep the standings and the percentages, and then I'd have my own all-star game with the leading batters. I even rolled the dice to get attendance.

I hardly ever cheated. Naturally I'd form favorites, and there would be certain players that I'd like better than others, or somebody would get close to a record legitimately and then it would be very hard not to cheat a little. A pitcher might have a shutout, two outs in the ninth inning, and somebody would hit a single, Then I might get angry and re-roll, but the few times I did that I felt bad about it. It spoiled the record, and I swore that I wouldn't do it anymore.

And so, when I was twenty-seven years old, I still had a baseball league going, if you can imagine that. It was something Patti could never understand. I'd be loaded and be up all night in the kitchen playing games. And when I went into the sanitarium, I took my notebook with my schedule, my dice, erasers, pencils, ruler and the whole thing, and I'm playing my league in my room. The nurse came in a couple of times and I explained it to her and she couldn't believe it.

There were some women and a couple of men who had rooms in this place. It was like a hotel. After a few days I started getting out and talking to the people. I met one lady who was about forty-five. She had diamond rings on and just reeked of money. Her pupils were pinpoints. She said, "Oh, hello! Are you the new boy in number seven?" She said, `I'm Mrs. So-andso." We started talking. She said, "What's your trouble?' I said, "I'm a dope fiend." She said, "Tsk, tsk, tsk! Oh, what a shame!" I said, "What's your trouble?" She said, "Well, I have this condition-my veins don't function correctly-and I have to have morphine. It opens up the veins into my brain. And I have trouble sleeping: they give me morphine to help me sleep. And I need the massage-I have muscle problems, you know-I have pains in my back, in my legs, in my lower legs." She showed me her legs.

I met the other patients and they all looked wealthy and they were all stoned. I found out that these people just checked into the sanitarium from time to time, stayed there, and stayed loaded. They get their morphine and their massages, and who can tell what else they get. You know, the guy massaging them-probably whatever they want they get. I thought, "Wow, these people really have it made. No police involved. No jail." I thought, "How beautiful!" I mentioned it to my doctor and he said, "Yeah, but unfortunately you're not in that position, are you, financially?"

I kicked after about two weeks, and I was in pretty good shape with the whirlpool and the rubdowns and the vitamins and the food, but I had a terrible mental craving and I'd have nightmares about dope, just continuously. I was worried. I thought, "Well, here I am checked into this place, and it's costing all this money, and right away I'm trying to get the dosage up." I knew that wasn't right.

It came time to leave, and I went home to Patti, and after we made love she said that she'd decided that maybe it would be better if we didn't stay together right away-just to see how I did-because she was afraid I'd start using again. My feelings were hurt but there was nothing I could do. I stayed with my dad and Thelma for a while and then I went up to my mother's house. And immediately, as soon as I got there, I got ahold of this guy Henry and scored.

Right after that, I went to a jam session with some guys at a place called the Blue Room in Santa Monica. I was playing and drinking and I got sick to my stomach and had to vomit, so I went to the bathroom. Everybody at the place was guys that I knew, so I left my horn sitting on the stage. When I came out it was gone. I said, "Did anybody see my horn?" Nobody said anything. I said, "Man, somebody must have seen it!" They all just froze. I looked everywhere. The case was gone; the horn was gone. One of them just stole it off the stand. I thought, "These are the kinds of people I'm dealing with. These are my friends." Here I'd just gotten out of the sanitarium; I'd lost my saxophone; I had no money; my wife didn't want me in the house I'd bought; I was completely alone; and I was getting hooked again.

I started working with a borrowed horn at different little gigs with a trio or a quartet or as a soloist with somebody else's rhythm section. I had run into this girl Penny. She was short and had a gorgeous shape, black hair. She was Jewish. Extremely pretty. She kept calling me and wanting me to score for her. She had a little car and she'd drive out and meet me and give me the money, and I'd go to East L.A., and then we'd go someplace and fix.

I remember the first time. We went back to my mother's house to fix, and my mother was asleep. There was a garage in the back that wasn't being used so I had Penny park her car in there, and then we went into the house, snuck into the bathroom, and locked the door. I fixed about three or four caps and put half a cap or a cap in the spoon and fixed her. I started to go to the sink to clean the outfit, and all of a sudden she looked up at me, put her arms around me, pulled me down to her, and she kissed me. That was her thing, kissing and having that intimacy at the same time the stuff was hitting her. She was so sweet and so nice, I couldn't believe she was actually using heroin. All of a sudden I hear a noise, a voice: "Junior, is that you in there?" I whispered, "Cool it. It's my mother." I said, "Yeah, it's me. I'm just going to the bathroom." "I thought I heard voices." "No, I'm here all alone. I'm just going to the bathroom." "You don't have any of that stuff, do you?" "No, ma, go back to bed. Everything's alright." "I thought I heard a girl's voice." "Don't be silly, ma, go back to bed. There's nobody here but me." I waited, and meanwhile this girl is kissing me, trying to hold on to me. She put my hand on her breast and was rubbing up against me. She was grabbing my joint. I told her, "Cool it! Cool it! We've got to get out of here! Just be quiet!" I opened the door and looked out in the front room. There was no light. Straight ahead was the front door. I told her, "Come on!" We ran out and into the garage, and I pulled the door closed.

Usually heroin kills your sex drive, but for Penny it was like Spanish fly. We got into the back of her car and she was all over me; as I say, she had a beautiful body, and she was so ex cited she got me excited. I got most of her clothes off. In fact, I got all of her clothes off, and there she was naked in the car, and I started making love to her. She was clean; she smelled good; and she begged me to take my pants off, so I did; she started licking me and sucking me and she said, "Please put it in!" I didn't know how old she was. She looked, very young to me. She said, "Don't worry. I'll be alright. I've got a diaphragm." So we had intercourse, and it was really nice, and when we finished she started telling me "I love you." and everything. "I wish we could live together." She was really far-out. I told her, "Well, give me a call, like, whenever you want." She left and I went back to the house.

There were lights on in the front room and the bedroom and the bathroom. At first I thought it might be the police, but I looked in the window and saw that it was just my mother. She was in the bathroom with the door open. She was down on her hands and knees. She had forbidden me to fix in the house, and I hoped I'd cleaned up everything. I walked in and said, "What's wrong?" She says, "I was right! There was a girl!" Penny had left a little scarf and her purse in the bathroom. My mother holds out her hand. Here are these capsules, three empty capsules. She flipped out and told me, "If you ever do that again I don't want you coming back here!" We had a terrible argument. I said, "What do you want me to do? Get busted? I'm not hurting anyone coming here. I'm not putting any heat on you." She said, "I just don't like it! It's not right!" I told her alright, I won't do it again.

I got a job at a club in Inglewood with a Hawaiian name. It was a well-known place in those days for jazz sessions, and I told Penny about it, so she came to the club. Right before this I'd run into a guy that was a merchant marine. He'd been to Saudi Arabia or some place where he'd gotten some incredible heroin. Sometimes with stuff, when you put the water in it in the spoon and you put the match under it, it'll dissolve but dirty particles and residue will be left. His stuff would cook up perfectly. It was a light shade of green; I'd never seen anything like it; and it was just dynamite. I had some of this with me, and it came intermission time, and it was an afternoon session, and I wanted to fix. Penny said she was sick and would I please give her a taste.

I couldn't figure out any place to do it, so we went for a drive. I didn't have very long. Then I saw a gas station that looked fairly deserted. There was only one guy working there. It was early evening. I parked the car around by the restroom, and I figured that this guy would be pretty busy. He was waiting on somebody out at the island, and he couldn't see the bathroom. It was a pay toilet. I opened the door of the men's and I said, "Come on."