Follow Your Heart: Moving with the Giants of Jazz, Swing, and Rhythm and Blues

2. Music Crazy

12 chapter two Music Crazy Once the music bug bit me, it became my obsession and my passion. It was as if the rest of my childhood quickly sped away. Music eventually became my great discovery, but the initial path was a bumpy one. Muh really wanted me to play an instrument. She also decided that the violin was what she wanted me to play. I can’t say that I felt one way or the other about it at first, but I took about four or five lessons. One afternoon, I was coming home from a lesson and some boys started to tease me about playing the violin. What made matters worse was that I was also wearing knickers, for which young boys were often ridiculed by their peers. “Man, you’re going to be a little sissy. Look at you,” one boy called out. “What’s that you called me?” “You heard me!” I started hitting the boy with my violin case. At some point, the case came open. The violin fell out, and I stepped on it. I picked it up and hit the boy across the head with it. When I looked down in my hand, all I had was the neck of the instrument, with the strings hanging down holding the body. “Look what you made me do,” I said. I was ready to go crazy on the boy by then, but he ran off. I started crying because I knew what Muh’s reaction was going to be when she saw that violin. As soon as I reached the front door and saw Muh, I cried, “Look what those boys made me do!?” “The boys made you do!? Boy, you broke that violin!” “They called me a sissy.” “That doesn’t matter, words don’t hurt you! You had no business breaking that violin!” Sensing that my blaming strategy wasn’t going to work, I thought quickly, “And furthermore, I don’t like nobody to talk about my mother.” “Talking about your mother? What’d they say?” “They were playing the dozens with me, and I couldn’t stand it no more and that’s why I broke the violin over the boy’s head.” I was lying, of course, but it seemed to have saved me because she was all set to give me a proper whipping. “Well, all right, you get in there and clean up, but that’s the end of your musician day,” she said. But Muh was still determined. One day when I got home there was a brand new piano in the front living room. I thought it was pretty, but aside from that it really didn’t impress me. She said that if I took piano lessons, I didn’t have to carry the instrument and that I would be able to play at other people’s houses and for my own enjoyment. That’s how I started taking lessons with Professor Bennett. A short, dark man with glasses, he looked as if he could have been an African. He carried a long pencil during the lessons, and if you made a mistake he would pop you on the fingers. Once, when I was en route to a lesson, some boys invited me to play baseball. I told them no, but they said I could play just a couple of innings. I took off my coat and before I realized it, I had missed the lesson, so I turned around and went back home. When I got there I did a few scales up and down the keyboard to make my mother believe that I had been to my lesson. I skipped a couple more lessons to play baseball, but Muh was still sending the money to Professor Bennett. Eventually, he came to our house and told her that I had stopped coming. Well, she whipped my ass and that was the end of my second attempt at musicianhood. The third time must have been the charm. I believe it was because, unlike the other times, the desire to play was coming from within me. As I was riding my bicycle one afternoon, I saw a band playing on a truck music cr a zy . 13 14 . follow your heart to advertise an upcoming performance. The band turned out to be the Midnight Owls, who were led by Raymond Sheppard, a well-known local musician...