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

5. New York, New York

43 chapter five New York, New York In September 1938, I was on my way to New York City for the first time. I had already traveled up and down the East Coast with Shep as far north as Richmond, Virginia. New York City was just about four hundred miles beyond. When I arrived at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Manhattan, Bobby was right there to meet me. We took the subway to Harlem. He and Hilda lived at 143 St. Nicholas Avenue in a relatively large place by New York standards. It was a five-room apartment with three bedrooms. Across the street was the Dewey Square Hotel, and to the left was Minton’s Playhouse at 118th Street near Seventh Avenue, where a lot of musicians met regularly. At first, I stuck so close to Bobby that I could have been his shadow. The only time I let him out of my sight was when one of us had to go to the bathroom. I was just plain nervous about being on my own like this. During the day, he showed me around. NothinginmylifeexperiencehadpreparedmeforblacklifeinNewYork City. New Yorkers thought their city was so great, they named it twice. Ev- 44 . follow your heart eryone seemed to be dressed so nicely, even the children. When you came from the South you weren’t accustomed to seeing people dressed like that every day. People were not only well dressed, but walking around without any apparent destination, strolling in the park and up and down Seventh and Lenox Avenues. After seeing several black people driving Cadillacs and a few driving Rolls-Royces, I told Bobby, “New York sure has a lot of lawyers, all dressed up with their briefcases.” He said, “Oh, no. Most of these people who are dressed up are janitors or waiters or elevator operators. They may work downtown and that’s why they dress up.” He pointed to one well-dressed man in a shop and said, “See that one guy there? That’s Sweet Jelly Roll. He’s a pimp and has sixteen girls working for him. See that one over there? That’s Pittsburgh. He has ten girls working for him.” Some of these pimps even had white girls working for them, which, of course, floored me. Bobby was a good teacher. It was clear that Harlemites had a true affection for the place. The running joke was, “I wouldn’t leave Harlem to go to heaven.” The only effect of the nation’s economic depression that I noticed was when I heard musicians talking about playing for house rent parties to cover a whole building. Perhaps it was because I had come from the South where the economic conditions were much worse. The streets in the city weren’t that dirty and, overall, people were polite. In time, I walked the streets at four and five in the morning, coming from a playing job. I could walk from 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue down to 117th Street, and nobody bothered me, including the ladies of the evening. Once, however, as I was going into my building, I saw a white man run behind the staircase inside the foyer. I was a little suspicious. Some of the boys who had brought me home were still waiting outside in the car, so I went back and told them what I’d seen. Two of the boys got out and came in with me. Just to play it safe, they kept their hands in their pockets as if they were concealing weapons. They looked under the staircase, and there was a white man in his underwear stooping down trying to hide. He told us not to hurt him. He was from out of town. He said he’d been robbed, but we knew he had been chased out of a girl’s apartment in a setup by her pimp. We hailed a cab to take him downtown. • • • • • As an American Federation of Musicians member in good standing from Pensacola, I was eligible for certain playing engagements, if I followed the rules. So I deposited my existing union card with the area local, New York Local 802, and they issued me a temporary transfer card. The first three months of residency I could only play single engagements with an all802 band. The next three months, I could play multiple engagements but couldn’t travel out...