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

8. Call Me "Italy"

0 chapter eight Call Me “Italy” Back in New York working the freelance scene again, I was running into fellow musicians at the usual spots. While Charlie Parker was becoming an American musical icon by the late 1940s, his fellow bebopper , Dizzy Gillespie, was also gaining a reputation. Dizzy and I had met at the Rhythm Club in the early 1940s. I had also heard him at some of those sessions at Minton’s Playhouse and Monroe’s Uptown House, where I had seen Joe Guy, Little Benny Harris, Clyde Hart, and Thelonious Monk. I think Monk was the house pianist because he was always around. Dizzy had also sat in with us when I was with Andy Kirk at the Golden Gate Ballroom, which was one or two blocks from the Savoy. Andy let several musicians sit in with us. Dizzy and Fats Navarro were once competing against each other in a cutting contest based on the songs “I Can’t Get Started” and “Stardust.” Their playing was incredible, with each trying to outdo the other. Dizzy would sit in with anybody who’d let him. In that respect he was like Charlie Parker. They were both always ready to play. I met the Afro-Cuban drummer Chano Pozo because Dizzy had been promoting him as a fantastic conga player. He had been written about in Down Beat magazine. He was a dark-complexioned guy with a full face and an easy smile that he never hesitated to show when he greeted you. He also had very large, strong hands like he had worked in the fields. He lived on 110th Street close to where Bobby Johnson was living at the time. I saw him play with Dizzy at the Savoy and the Apollo. We used to run into each other at a restaurant on 111th Street and struck up a casual friendship. There were many Cubans and Puerto Ricans living in that area. Chano spoke with a thick Cuban accent. We always talked about musicians whom we saw. For example, I knew the tenor saxophonist George Nicholas, or “Big Nick,” who was in the band with Dizzy. George played a tenor solo in one of Dizzy’s big hits with Chano, “Manteca.” We talked about other musicians we played with—and about whom we liked or disliked. Chano always said, “Deezy a greatest musician.” In December 1948, I read that Chano Pozo was murdered outside of the same cafe where we usually met. A while afterwards I was talking to some other Cuban musicians who knew Chano and I were friends. They were telling me they were sorry about my “boy” being killed. I told them I knew about the murder and asked if they knew what had happened. Everyone went silent. The silence was so deadening it was like a scream. They all looked at each other a little nervously before one of them suggested it was a politically motivated killing. One guy said Chano had been killed by political operatives of a Cuban-based group that he opposed. I recalled Chano saying he left all that political “sheet” behind in Cuba and he wasn’t going to get involved in it here in New York. As nice as he was, I always had the impression that he had a short fuse and could be quite rough, but he never displayed any of that temper in my presence. • • • • • I also joined the Jimmie Lunceford band in 1948. Lunceford had tragically died of a heart attack the year before, but the band was being led by Eddie Wilcox with the assistance of Joe Thomas. Eddie Wilcox had been arranging for the Lunceford band for some time. He contacted me and asked me to audition for the band. Given my reputation on the road and in the studio, I found that request insulting. He told me he had come across a few saxophonists who couldn’t read the band’s book, which was difficult . I told him, “Sorry, no audition.” I figured whoever referred him to me should have also told him I was a first-rate sight reader. After I refused to audition, I thought that was the end of it, but Eddie Wilcox called me back a week later. He said they really needed a lead alto player. We reached an call me “italy” . 1 2 . follow your heart agreement that I would play with...