Straight Life (2 page)
When Art returned to New York in May 1980, he asked me to come by with my copy of Straight Life so that he could inscribe it. One of the things he wrote was, "[Thanks] for being so honest in the last article." That was the Voice review, in which I had enumerated many of the least appealing aspects of his character, as detailed in his book. He liked people to be polite, but honest. Our first encounter had followed his 1977 debut at the Village Vanguard. I had sat there opening night mesmerized, and then went home to write a reverie in which there were even more egregious puns than the title, "The Whiteness of the Wail." I really didn't know anything about him, except the Contemporary records and some of his own liner comments, and the way he looked and sounded on stage-gaunt and tenuous, compulsively talkative, searing and punchy in his playing-so I was flying by the seat of my pants in speculating about drugs and race and everything else. My essay was more presumptuous than knowledgeable. You can imagine how surprised (and relieved) I was when Laurie called the day it came out in The Village Voice and said, "Art wants to meet you. He wants to know how come you know so much about him." It never occurred to me to say: It's all there in his music.
-Gary Giddins
(This introduction incorporates portions of "Art Pepper Talks Straight," from The Village Voice, February 18, 1980, and "Endgame," the notes to Art Pepper's The Complete Galaxy Recordings, 1989, by permission of the author.)
Gary Giddins, jazz critic for The Village Voice, is the author of Riding on a Blue Note, Rhythm-a-Ning, Celebrating Bird, Satchmo, Faces in the Crowd, and a forthcoming biography of Bing Crosby.
What is the use of talking and there is no end of talking, There is no end of things in the heart.
Ezra Pound
For their contributions to this book we wish to thank:
Special thanks to Todd Selbert for everything.
Contents
Cast of Characters
xviii
6. On the Road with Stan Kenton's Band 1946-1952
93
8. The Los Angeles County jail 1953
138
9. The U.S. Public Health Service Hospital at Fort Worth 1953-1954
144
10. The Los Angeles County Jail: Integration 1954-1956
165
14. The Los Angeles County Jail: The Hole 1960-1961
244
16. San Quentin: Learning the Ropes 1961-1964
289
17. The Check Protector 1964-1965
309
18. San Quentin: Tattoos 1965-1966
325
20. On the Road with Buddy Rich's Band 1968-1969
369
23. Synanon: Games, Raids, the Trip 1969-1971
431
24. The Return of Art Pepper 1971-1978
454
Conclusion
475
Afterword
477
Discography by Todd Selbert
507
Index
551
This is a true story, a tape recorded narrative by Art Pepper (and those who've known him) which I have transcribed and edited. In order to avoid embarrassing a number of people, some details have been changed and pseudonyms are occasionally used. Attitudes, intentions, and feelings attributed by Art Pepper to anyone besides himself should be understood by the reader to be Art's impressions, not fact.
-Laurie Pepper
Cast of Characters
(in order of appearance)
Cora Hahn Pepper Noble (Grandma): Art's paternal grandmother. She was responsible for Art's upbringing. Her children were Arthur Edward Pepper Senior and Richard Pepper (Dicky Boy), and a stepson, Shorty Noble.
Arthur Edward Pepper (Art Senior, Moses, Daddy, Pop): Art's father. A merchant marine, machinist, fisherman, longshoreman, union organizer.
Mildred Bartold (Ida Bartold, Mildred Bayard, Millie, Moham): Art's mother. Art senior's first wife, she married him when she was fifteen.
Sarah Schecter Bartold: Married Vincent Joseph Bartold and raised his niece, Ida (Millie), Art's mother.
Thelma Winters Noble Pepper: Married at first to Art Senior's stepbrother, Shorty, she had three children-John, Bud, and Edna. Deserted by Shorty, she married Art's father.
John Noble and Mildred (Millie) Moore Noble: Thelma's son and his wife. Art considered John Noble his cousin.
Johnny Martizia: Introduced Art to improvised music (jazz). He is still a professional singer and guitarist.
Patti (Madeleine) Moore Pepper: Art's first wife. They were married in 1943.
Lee Young: Brother of the legendary Lester Young, he has been active in all aspects of music since childhood and led the band at the Club Alabam which gave Art his start in jazz. He is now an executive at Motown Records.
Benny Carter: One of the most respected and prolific figures in jazz. He is a composer, saxophonist, trumpet player, and educator and has written numerous film and television scores. He led a band in 1943 in which Art Pepper played briefly.
Patricia Ellen Pepper: Art's daughter with Patti. She was born in 1945.
Alan Dean: Alan Dean was a pop singer in England during the war years when he met Art. He now lives in Australia, and is still a singer, touring occasionally, as well as a composer, arranger, and producer of television and radio commercials.
Hersh Hamel: Has known Art since the late '40s. He is a bassist living in Los Angeles.
Freddy Rivera: Was one of a group of musicians, which included Art Pepper, who played jam sessions in and around Los Angeles during the late '40s and early '50s. He now teaches at a California college.
June Christy and Bob Cooper: Were "girl singer" and tenor player, respectively, with the Stan Kenton orchestra from the mid to late '40s. Christy is semi-retired although she still sometimes tours and records. Coop is very active in the studios and plays jazz whenever he can.
Sammy Curtis: Was a member of the Stan Kenton orchestra. He prefers that his name and the specifics of his career be withheld.
Shelly Manne: Has been for many years one of the world's finest and most popular jazz drummers. He was a member of the Kenton orchestra during the '50s, ran a nightclub, "Shelly's Manne Hole," in Los Angeles during the '60s and early '70s, has toured extensively with his own groups, has composed scores for television and films, and has been abundantly recorded.
Diane Suriaga Pepper: Art's second wife. They were married in 1957.
John Koenig: Present owner of Contemporary Records and the son of the late Lester Koenig who was Art's mentor and friend, producer of many of Art's finest albums.
Marty Paich: Arranger, composer, pianist. Has recorded in all these capacities under his own name and for numerous popular and jazz artists and has composed scores for television and films.
Steve Kravitz: Reed player, was Art's student in 1960. He is an active studio musician.
Ann Christos: Has been Art's fan and his friend for almost twenty years.
Jerry Maher: Jerry and Art became friends in San Quentin where both were serving sentences.
Marie Randall: The sister of Diane Pepper, Art's second wife.
Christine: Art's lover, 1966-1969.
Don Menza: Was a member of the Buddy Rich band of 1968. He is a composer, plays all saxophones, clarinets and flutes, has toured widely playing jazz, and is a successful studio musician.
Karolyn April: A Synanon alumna and friend.
Laurie LaPan Miller Pepper: Art's third wife. They met in Synanon in 1969, and were married in 1974.
1
1925-1954
1
Childhood
1925-1939
MY GRANDMOTHER was a strong person. She was a solid German lady. And she never would intentionally have hurt anyone, but she was cold, very cold and unfeeling. She was married at first to my father's father and had two sons, and when he died she remarried. And the man that she married liked her son Richard and didn't like my father whose name was Arthur, the same as mine.
My father's stepfather beat him and just made life hell for him. Richard was the good guy; he was always the bad guy. When he was about ten years old he couldn't stand it anymore, so he left home and went down to San Pedro, down to the docks and wandered around until somebody happened to see him and asked him if he would like to go out on a ship as a cabin boy, and so he did. That was how he started.
He went out on oil tankers and freighters doing odd jobs, working in the scullery, cleaning up, running errands. Because he left home, naturally his schooling was stopped, but he always had a strong desire to learn, so he began studying by himself. He was interested in machinery and mathematics. He studied and kept going to sea and eventually, all on his own, he became a machinist on board ship. He went all over the world. He became a heavy drinker, did everything, tried everything. He lived this life until he was twenty-nine years old, never married, and then one day he came into San Pedro on a ship belonging to the Norton Lilly Line; they'd been out for a long time; he had a lot of money, so he went up to the waterfront to his usual bars. And going into one of them he saw a young girl. She was fifteen years old. Her name was Mildred Bartold.
My mother never knew who her parents were. She remembers an uncle and an aunt who lived in San Gabriel. They were Italian. They seemed to love her but kept sending her away to convents. Finally she couldn't stand the convents anymore, so she ran away, and she ended up in San Pedro, and she met my father.
She was very pretty at the time with that real Italian beauty, black hair, olive skin. My father had gotten to the point where he was thinking about settling down, getting a job on land, and not going to sea anymore. They met, and he balled her, and he felt this obligation, and I guess he cared for her, too, so he married her.
So here she was. She had finally gotten out into the world and all of a sudden she's married to a guy that's been all over, has done all the things she wants to do and is tired of them, and then she finds herself pregnant. She wanted to drink, look pretty, have boyfriends. She was very boisterous, very vociferous. She would get angry and demand things, she wouldn't change, she wouldn't bend. Naturally she didn't want a baby. She did everything she could possibly do to get rid of it, and my father flipped out. That was why he married her. He wanted a child.
She ran into a girl named Betty Ward who was very wild. Betty had two kids, but she was balling everybody and drinking, and she told my mother what to do to get rid of the baby. My mother starved herself and took everything anybody had ever heard of that would make you miscarry, but to no avail. I was born. She lost.
I was born September 1, 1925. I had rickets and jaundice because of the things she'd done. For the first two years of my life the doctors didn't think I would live but when I reached the age of two, miraculously I got well. I got super healthy.
During this period we lived in Watts, and my father continued going to sea. He hated my mother for what she had tried to do. She was going out with this Betty; I don't know what they did. They'd drink. I'd be left alone. The only time I was shown any affection was when my mother was just sloppy drunk, and I could smell her breath. She would slobber all over me.
One time when my father had been at sea for quite a while he came home and found the house locked and me sitting on the front porch, freezing cold and hungry. She was out somewhere. She didn't know he was coming. He was drunk. He broke the door down and took me inside and cooked me some food. She finally came home, drunk, and he cussed her out. We went to bed. I had a little crib in the corner, and my dad wanted to get into bed with me. He didn't want to sleep with her. She kept pulling on him, but he pushed her away and called her names. He started beating her up. He broke her nose. He broke a couple of ribs. Blood poured all over the floor. I remember the next day I was scrubbing up blood, trying to get the blood up for ages.
They'd go to a party and take me and put me in a room where I could hear them. Everybody would be drinking, and it always ended up in a fight. I remember one party we went to. They had put me upstairs to sleep until they were ready to leave. It was cloudy out, and by the time we got there it was night. I looked out the window and became very frightened, and I remember sneaking downstairs because I was afraid to be alone. They were all drinking, and this one guy, Wes-evidently he'd had an argument with his wife. She went into a bathroom that was off the kitchen and she wouldn't come out; there was a glass door on this bathroom, so he broke it with his fist. He cut his arm, and the thing ended up in a big brawl.
My parents always fought. He broke her nose several times. They realized they couldn't have me there. My father's mother was living in Nuevo, near Perris, California, on a little ranch, one of those old farms. They took me out there. I was five. And that was the end of my living with my parents and the beginning of my career with my grandmother. I saw my grandmother, and I saw that there was no warmth, no affection. I was terrified and completely alone. And at that time I realized that no one wanted me. There was no love and I wished I could die.
Nuevo was a country hamlet. Children should enjoy places like that, but I was so preoccupied with the city and with people, with wanting to be loved and trying to find out why other people were loved and I wasn't, that I couldn't stand the country because there was nothing to see. I couldn't find out any thing there. Still, to this day, when I'm in the country I feel this loneliness. You come face to face with a reality that's so terrible. This was a little farm out in the wilderness. There was my grandmother and this old guy, her second husband, I think. I don't even remember him he was so inconsequential. And there was the wind blowing.
It was a duty for my grandmother. My father told her he would pay her so much for taking care of me; she would never have to worry-he always worked and she knew he would keep his word. I think she was afraid of him, too, for what she had done to him. For what she had allowed to be done to him when he was a child.
My grandmother was a dumpy woman, strong, unintelligent. She knew no answers to any problems I might have or anything to do with academic type things. She was one of those old-stock peasant women. I never saw her in anything but long cotton stockings and long dresses with layers of underclothing. I never saw her any way but totally clothed. When she went to the bathroom she locked the door with a key. Anything having to do with the body, bodily functions, was nasty and dirty and you had to hide away. I don't know what her feelings were. She never showed them. She had a cat that she gave affection to but none to me. I grew to hate the cat. My grandmother was-she was just nothing. There was no communication. Whenever I tried to share anything at all with her she would say, "Oh, Junior, don't be silly!" Or, "Don't be a baby!" I had a few clothes and a bed, a bed away from her, a bed alone in a room I was scared to death in. I was afraid of the dark.
I was afraid of everything. Clouds scared me: it was as if they were living things that were going to harm me. Lightning and thunder frightened me beyond words. But when it was beautiful and sunny out my feelings were even more horrible because there was nothing in it for me. At least when it was thundering or when there were black clouds I had something I could put my fears and loneliness to and think that I was afraid because of the clouds.
We moved from Nuevo to Los Angeles and then to San Pedro, and during the time of the move to L.A. the old guy disappeared. I guess he died. My parents separated and they came to see me on rare occasions. My mother came when she was drunk. My father always brought money, and every now and then he'd spend the night. When he came I'd want to reach him, try to say something to him to get some affection, but he was so closed off there was no way to get through. I admired him, and I thought of him as being a real man's man. And I really loved him.
My father was trim, real trim. He had a slender, swimmer's body. He had blue eyes, blonde hair. He had a cleft in his chin. He had a halting, faltering voice, but pleasant sounding, and a way about him that commanded respect. He'd been a union organizer and a strike leader on the waterfront, and he had a bearing. People listened to him. I nicknamed him "Moses" because I felt he had that stature, that strength, and soon everybody in the family was calling him that.
My father was tall, he was strong, and I felt he thought I was a sissy or something. I abhorred violence, but in order to try to win his love I'd go to school and purposely start fights. I fought like a madman so I could tell him about it and show him if I had a black eye or a cut lip, so he would like me. And when I got a cut or a scrape in these fights I would continue to press it and break it open so that on whatever day he came it would still be bad. But it seemed like the things he wanted me to do I just couldn't do. Sometimes he'd come when I was eating. My grandmother cooked a lot of vegetables, things I couldn't stand-spinach, cauliflower, beets, parsnips. And he'd come and sit across from me in this little wooden breakfast nook, and my grandmother would tell me to eat this stuff, and I wouldn't eat it, couldn't eat it. He'd say, "Eat it!" My grandmother would say, "Don't be a baby!" He'd say, "Eat it! You gotta eat it to grow up and be strong!" That made me feel like a real weakling, so I'd put it in my mouth and then gag at the table and vomit into my plate. And my dad was able, in one motion, to unbuckle his belt and pull it out of the rungs, and he'd hit me across the table with the belt. It got to the point where I couldn't eat anything at all like that without gagging, and he'd just keep hitting at me and hitting the wooden wall behind me.
My mother was going with some guy named Sandy; he played guitar, one of those cowboy drunkards that runs around and fights. I was going to grammar school and I remember once she came when I was eating lunch in the school yard. She went to the other side of the fence and called me. She was wearing a coat with a fur collar. I was scared because my father had told me, "Don't have anything to do with her! She didn't want you to be born! She tried to kill you! She doesn't love you! I love you! I take care of you!" But he didn't act like he loved me. I left the yard, and she took me in a car. I said, "I can't go with you." But she took me anyway. She smelled of alcohol and cigarettes and perfume and this fur collar, and she was hugging me and smothering me and crying. She took me to a house and everybody was drunk. I tried to get away, but they wouldn't let me leave. She kept me there all night.
When I was nine or ten my dad took me to a movie in San Pedro: The Mark of the Vampire. It was the most horrible thing I'd ever seen. It was fascinating. There was a woman vampire, all in white, flowing white robes, a beautiful gown, and she walked through the night. It was foggy, and it reminded me of the clouds. In the movie, whoever was the victim would be inside a house. The camera looked out a window and there was the vampire: there she would be walking toward the window.
I had a bedroom at the back of my grandmother's house, and my window looked out on the backyard. There was an alley and an empty lot. After this movie, whenever I got ready for bed, I could feel the presence of someone coming to my window. I would envision this woman walking toward me. I started having nightmares. She had a perfect face, but she was so beautiful she was terrifying-white, white skin, and her eyes were black, and she had long, flowing, black hair. She wore a white, nightgownish, wispy thing. Her lips were red and she had two long fangs. Her fingers were long and beautiful, and she held them out in front of her, and she had long nails. Blood dripped from her nails and from her mouth and from the two long fangs. It seemed she sought me out from everyone else. There was no way I could escape her gaze. I'd scream and wake up and run to my grandmother's room and ask her if I could get in bed with her, and she'd say, "Don't be silly! Don't be a baby! Go back to bed!"
This went on and on. I'd have nightmares and wake up screaming. Finally my grandmother told my dad and he took me to a doctor. The doctor gave me some pills to relax me, and it went away. But I kept having the fears. If I went to open a closet door I'd be scared to death. If I went walking at nighttime I'd see things in the bushes.