I was on an all-consuming guitar-slinger mission, and I hadn’t been giving as much thought to writing songs. I couldn’t help being a song person, but at that moment Garth had me checking out the horn tonalities of Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster. I especially enjoyed the sound of saxophonist Johnny Hodges, who played with Duke Ellington: his tone was somewhere between a violin and a toy sax, so beautiful. And of course there was always Monk, Mingus, and Miles; Coltrane, Cannonball, and (Ornette) Coleman. I was captivated by Bill Evans’s touch on the piano: remarkable. For good measure Garth would throw in a dash of Bach, preferably played by the charismatic young Toronto composer and pianist Glenn Gould. Garth was a reservoir of brilliant music, and I wanted to dive in deeply to learn and understand enough of it to appreciate its rewards.
—
Natie called from Toronto. “I’m in a phone booth.” His voice was low with intrigue. “Even the pay phone outside the Capri Restaurant is bugged now. Kid, I need you to do something while you’re in New York. There’s a very important older gentleman you should go visit. You would never know it by looking at him, but he’s one of the biggest diamond merchants around. He turns over hundreds of thousands of dollars in stones every week. Anyway, you’ll go to his office. He already knows you’re my nephew, and he’ll give you a package. Then you’ll go to the Taft Hotel and meet somebody in the bar. There’ll probably be a couple of guys. Neither one of these parties can be seen together or know each other, you understand?”
“Sure,” I answered, understanding little except that it sounded like risky business.
“First of all,” Natie continued, as if he sensed my doubts, “there’s nothing illegal going on here. Nobody’s going to bother you, and I’ll make sure you get well taken care of for your trouble.” The word “trouble” stuck in my head. But I had to trust my uncle, right? And I could use the extra money.
“How much longer will you be in New York?” Natie asked.
“A couple more weeks,” I told him.
“That’s good,” he said. “I’ll give you a ring in a day or two with more information.”
When I related the story to Levon, he said, “Man, this is some big-city shit going on. We don’t have nothing like this in Arkansas, I guarantee you.”
“It sounds like this is a legitimate diamond dealer who doesn’t want to get his hands dirty doing business with mobsters,” I said.
“Maybe you should just take the stones and disappear,” he joked. “Retire to an island somewhere. Or maybe you don’t want either one of these parties chasing your ass.”
Levon and Connie had started calling me “the Duke” for a sharp new suit I’d just had made at Lou Myles’s tailor shop, and I was sporting it one night when Levon and I got back to the Forrest Hotel, a legendary spot for musicians to stay in New York. The songwriter Doc Pomus had staked out his usual position across from the lobby check-in desk. Doc was a heavyset Jewish guy who’d survived polio as a kid and now got around on crutches. It was always great to run into him. Doc called: “Robbie, that’s some fine-looking threads, baby.”
“That’s why we call him the Duke,” said Levon as we walked over to greet him. “By the way, Doc, do you know where we might be able to score a little reefer?”
Doc motioned us closer. “There’s a girl named Dolores who stays here. She sells pot, pills, junk, whatever you need. I’ll call her room and tell her you guys are okay. If she’s here, you can go right up and see her.” He picked up the house phone and dialed. As he spoke into the receiver, he started nodding “yes” to us. He gestured toward the elevator with one of his crutches. “Go on up. Room 709. She’s waiting for you.” As we headed across the lobby, Doc called out under his breath, “By the way, she’s a girlfriend of Ray Charles.”
At room 709 the door opened to reveal a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, attractive, with dark hair and vanilla skin. “Well, look at you,” said Dolores, eyeing us. “Come on in, but I have to leave in a few minutes.” She had a “been around the block” attitude, and her hotel room had the scent of something hard-knocked, a mix of rubbing alcohol and tar. I wondered if she was a heroin addict. “Tell me a little about yourselves,” she said.
“Well,” said Levon, “we’re here in New York doing some recording and playing at the Roundtable, a brand-new supper club, kind of upscale. And we’re in a pretty damn good rock ’n’ roll band.”
“Oh, I like your accent,” she said. “You from down south?”
“Yes, ma’am, from southeast Arkansas, born and bred. The Duke here is from north of the border, up in Canada.”
“Really, and you play in a band together? The man I’m with right now plays music, Ray Charles. Going to see him shortly. He’s recording some new stuff.”
That was exciting news. “I can’t wait to hear new music from Ray. Do you mean you just go to the studio and listen to what brilliant thing he’s gonna do next?”
She smiled, almost sadly. “Something like that. You’re so sweet—what’s your name—Duke? You want some grass?”
Levon gave her a double sawbuck and she handed him two ten-dollar bags wrapped in little manila payday envelopes, same as they did in Toronto. “Maybe I’ll see you around,” she said. “Gotta run now.” She rode down with us in the elevator, and when Levon and I reached our floor, I said to Dolores, “This is us. I’m in 505, and Levon’s in 507.”
“Levon,” she said, letting the sound of his name hang in the air. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard that name before. All right, catch y’all later.”
—
John Coltrane was playing for the next week at Birdland, and Levon and I couldn’t wait to check him out. We showed up on his opening night, and though we’d been to Birdland before, this time there was such a different vibe in the air. The club felt darker and heavier. Even the black greeter at the door, a little person, was more subdued.
When Coltrane and his band took the stand, they kicked into some of the most angry, powerful, strident jazz I’d ever heard. The stage lighting made Elvin Jones, the drummer, look like a demonic octopus, and he wailed with Trane like they were speaking a secret language. Coltrane didn’t address the audience. Half the time he played facing his band. You could feel his rage all over the wall. I had never witnessed a more antishowbiz stage performance. It felt like they had an ultracool, long-distance connection, and I swam in it.
The next afternoon, as I was laying low in my room reading Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, the phone rang. It was Dolores. “Duke,” she said, “I saw how thrilled you looked when I told you about Ray and me. I’m heading over to the studio now. You want to come check it out?” I closed the book and grabbed my coat. “I’m ready.”
Dolores hailed a cab outside the hotel. In the daylight I noticed the glassiness in her eyes. I didn’t know what she was into, but a drug dealer most likely enjoyed the fruits of the trade. “You can just sit quietly in the control room,” she explained, “and I’ll introduce you if I feel it’s cool, you dig?”
We entered the studio control room, and there behind the glass sat Ray Charles at the piano. He wore a light brown shirt and black pants, and his feet shuffled a bit nervously. He pushed his dark glasses up on his nose and scratched at his face. Dolores showed me where to sit on a couch over to the side.
The man behind the soundboard said on the talk-back, “Ray, let me know when you want to run this one down. Everybody’s in place.” No response. The producer repeated, “Ray, whenever you’re ready.”
I could see Ray rolling his head around, almost squirming now on the piano bench. “Let me talk to him,” said Dolores to the producer. “He’s just not feeling well.”
An African American fellow pacing in the control room piped up. “Yeah, go see if Ray’s feeling right. I’m here if you need me.” I guessed he was Ray’s manager.
The producer looked frustrated. “We’ve got a studio full of musicians waiting,” he said impatiently. “Boys, take a ten-minute break.”
I watched
Dolores walk into the big studio and over to Ray. The mics were live and we could hear her softly spoken words through the speakers in the control room. “Hey, baby, it’s me, I’m here. You need to talk to me.” Ray rose up from the piano and took Dolores’s arm. She led him out to the hallway.
“Yeah, he just needs to use the john, we’re cool,” Ray’s manager murmured.
About fifteen minutes later, Dolores emerged from the restroom alone and came back into the control room. “Joe, Ray’s looking for you,” she said to the manager. He sprang up and went to help Ray back into the studio. The orchestra musicians and singers all took their places while Joe led Ray back to his position at the piano.
“Okay, let’s go,” the producer announced. Ray sat on the piano bench and lowered his head, almost as if he were in prayer. I thought, Look at this, Brother Ray, the genius, doing his thing.
“Ray, we’re rolling,” said the producer. But again there was no response. “Ray! Okay, we got to do it. This is costing money and time.” Ray sat there barely moving.
The producer kicked back his chair with exasperation and charged into the studio, raising his voice at Ray as he approached. Dolores tensed up. “He’s okay, man,” she murmured, “just give him a minute.”
But the producer was already on him, scolding about wasting everyone’s time. Then, suddenly coming to life, Ray stood up and smacked him across the side of his head. “I’m ready, motherfucker. Get off my ass!” he declared. “Who the fuck are you, talking at me!” Ray sat down and called out, “All right, one, two…” The engineer hit “record,” and they slid right into the tune. Ray’s vocal sounded like he’d just woken up, and that wasn’t even the best thing about it. His phrasing of the words, his take on the melody—it was like the best caramel sundae you ever had.
When Levon and I met up back at the hotel, I enthusiastically told him the story of my afternoon. “Holy shit,” he said, “I guess that Dolores really knows her way around.”
The next thing we knew, Dolores had checked out of the hotel and was gone. Doc Pomus guessed she might be going on the road with Ray. “That will be interesting,” he said, “because Ray’s wife is traveling with him these days, and I heard he’s having a thing with one of the Raelettes too.”
I put my arm around Doc’s shoulder and said with all the worldly wisdom of an eighteen-year-old, “Ah, show business.”
—
I’d only just settled back in my room for a nap when the phone jarred me awake. I fumbled for the receiver. It was Natie, speaking quietly. “Jaime, write down this address and name I’m going to give you.” He gave me the address of an office on 47th Street, and a very biblical-sounding man’s name. His instructions were short and clear, and his tone left no room for interpretation: this was serious.
The next afternoon I walked over to the address, entered a nondescript doorway, climbed the stairs to the third floor, and knocked on an office door. A man in his thirties wearing a yarmulke answered the door and waved me into a sparsely furnished room, just a card table and some chairs. In one of them sat an older bearded man in a black suit and hat. He was having a phone conversation in Hebrew or Yiddish, I wasn’t sure which.
The older man was the one I was here to see. Even though I had no idea what he was saying on the phone, I couldn’t miss his tone of authority and impatience. The younger man shook his head with disappointment at the phone conversation, looking at me as if to say, Can you believe this? Oy. I managed a weak smile. The old man hung up the phone and introduced himself to me in a heavy Jewish accent; the young man, he said, was his son. He told me how much he liked my uncle Natie. “Very, very much I appreciate your uncle. A terrific man to do business with, right?” he asked, looking approvingly to his son. Then the older man reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a square envelope. “This,” he said, looking at the envelope and then at me, “is what I’m no longer giving you to take to our business associates. Natie just informed me he doesn’t trust these people to have this package, which I understand. So I’m not going to ask you to take this, because I have just found out it’s not in our best interest.”
“Of course,” I said. He grunted a small laugh. “Well, young man, I hope your uncle comes here himself sometime.” He passed me the envelope. “Feel that? Heavy, huh? Maybe at a later date. We’ll see.”
I stood and shook hands, and as I closed the door behind me, I wondered if it had been divine intervention. Who knows what or who was on the other side of that envelope at the Taft Hotel: mobsters? smugglers? creditors? I was relieved to be out of it—this wasn’t my bag—but I couldn’t help but be curious.
When I got back to Toronto, Natie and I met to talk about the Taft Hotel. “In terms of the handoff to the people at the Taft, I’ve found another way to keep them satisfied without having to give them the stones,” he said, “although, to tell you the truth, they’re getting a little anxious again anyway.”
I mentioned to Natie that it was way past the date when he’d said I would be making money from what my mother and I had invested. Everybody was getting anxious, including me, and I wanted to feel like I was an exception and not getting screwed. He ducked the question for a while but finally said, “Okay, I’ll make a call and get it straightened out.”
We went to a place where they had a bank of public phones, and Natie pulled a dime out of his pocket and put it in the pay phone. He spoke into the receiver, saying that he needed to get some interest money back from my investment. He listened carefully, then said, “All right, I want to get this taken care of immediately. Yes, I’ll call you back on Wednesday. Okay, bye.” He hung up and looked at me. “It’s being taken care of. I’ll call on Wednesday and get it straightened out.”
We got in Natie’s car and drove off. Several moments later, with real hurt in my voice, I said, “I heard the dime come down into the coin return. There was no one on the other end. How can you try to fool me like this?”
Natie pulled the car over to the side of the street. My eyes had welled up a bit. I had come into this family just a few years earlier, and in a whirlwind they’d taken me in and made me part of their lives. Natie especially had seemed keen on bringing me into the fold—all those calls on the road, the meet-ups, taking me around like the heir apparent. He’d made a tremendous impression on me in a short time. This was a punch in the gut.
He apologized profusely and said he should have known better than to try to fool Tutor’s kid. “I have to play the part of a ruthless con artist. You see what I mean? I can’t show vulnerability. If I show any weakness toward anyone in my family, I’ll be putting us all in danger.” Natie put the car in gear and we drove on. I didn’t say anything. I understood the impression he believed he needed to give his creditors, but I also realized he was so deep in his own con game that he didn’t know how to be real with me. This street lesson had an effect on me; I knew at that moment that Natie’s world wasn’t what I was looking for. I’d take music.
There was a different tone in the air. The war in Vietnam was looming larger in our lives as American involvement deepened. As we had planned, our friend Connie B. married Levon to keep him from being drafted.
At the same time, I met a girl named Virginia, a classic beauty, maybe five or six years older than me, who had previously been the girlfriend of a major operator in Toronto. She was well known and respected in the rounder world and often had pot. She had an edge to her, and I learned quickly that she had no tolerance for bullshit. With her cat eyes and pouting lips, Virginia had a look that shot straight through you. I was just eighteen, and flattered that she found me interesting enough to spend time with. I felt a little more mature in her presence. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on my relationship with her. Connie wasn’t thrilled about it, and Ron thought I might be getting in too deep. But Levon, my partner in crime and closest friend, said it was good experience for me to date a woman on her level—a gangster moll chick who was a knockout, and powerful in her way.
Our gigs at th
e Concord Tavern ended at 1:00 a.m., but Ron would keep us rehearsing deep into the night, always driving us to get better. Sometimes he would join us, rehearsing songs he wanted to try, but more often than not he left us to toil alone. In many ways this was a good thing, as his choices weren’t always our cup of tea. Left to our own devices, we took to venturing into new territories. Mainly Levon and I selected rare gems, though sometimes Garth and Jerry would suggest some instrumental bluesy jazz numbers. Rick and Richard kept an ear out for cool Motown delights. The next evening at the show, we would audition our new stuff in front of the audience, songs like “Turn on Your Love Light” and “Stormy Monday” by Bobby “Blue” Bland and “Please Please Please” by James Brown. Often we’d be auditioning for Ron too, who had never heard us play this material. Some of it was a little beyond his comfort zone, but for the most part the Hawk embraced the songs and challenges we were embarking on. He stood proud of how his band was advancing.
At our Saturday matinee shows at the Concord, local talent would regularly sit in with us, like Jon and Lee, two white teenagers who sang like Sam and Dave on steroids, and David Clayton-Thomas, whose powerful R&B voice raised the roof—he would go on to become the lead singer of Blood, Sweat & Tears. One Saturday we were joined by John Hammond, a good-looking folk-blues artist from Greenwich Village with a likable stammer. Hammond was an authentic student of early bluesmen like Robert Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt, as well as other brilliant acoustic-blues artists who followed in the tradition of Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter. John’s father was John Hammond Sr., the Columbia Records A&R master who had signed Billie Holiday, Pete Seeger, Aretha Franklin, and Bob Dylan. We didn’t know many white cats on a dedicated blues journey like John Hammond Jr., and we certainly appreciated his respect for the music. He had a unique, before-its-time, raw musical persona. Normally he played acoustic guitar, sang, and blew harmonica, but on this afternoon he played with the Hawks and something magical happened. Afterward John was ecstatic, and said he wanted this electric experience to be his next record. He invited us to record with him in New York. This was the beginning of something: we all felt it.
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