With Billie

by Julia Blackburn

  MAELY: Well, for heaven’s sake don’t do her up, because if you’re doing her up she can’t earn a dime!

  MCKAY: She ain’t earning anyway. She ain’t even making a living. She owe the government four and a half thousand dollars and I ain’t going to pay a quarter … I’m going to let her go ahead and rock it out … I hate her. How can you just sit up and tell me a lie, and you know I know the difference the next day when the people get to me?

  MAELY: Well, she’s so mad with me because she says that you said we were sleeping together.§

  MCKAY: How could I?… You ain’t no chippie‖ and you got a family … That woman owe you a thousand dollars right now.

  MAELY: That’s right! She says she’s mad with me. She won’t talk to me because we sleep together.

  MCKAY: I say, when she talk of me fucking her, I say, ‘Why don’t you stop using this white woman’s money,’ that’s what I told her! I say, ‘You ain’t earnt fifteen cents. In the last six months you’re about four or five thousand dollars behind with me now … You ain’t ever paid my salary and you never did give Maely nothing for working for you …’ She never gave me a quarter. I took care of her. I kept that woman alive. Kept her away from junkies in the street and on the corners. Fronting it myself for years. And here this bitch turns skunky overnight!a

  MAELY: Well, if I knew where she is, I’d tell her not to go home, because I don’t think you two should meet tonight!

  MCKAY: Shit! I’m going to tear this joint up with that whore’s ass. Do you know Alice’s mother’s phone number?b

  MAELY: Louis, get some sleep, huh?

  MCKAY: I ain’t even sleepy, so help me God. I need a dexie to keep me awake a little longer. This house is so damn cold, Maely honey. I’m freezing to death, so help me God … She don’t mean a damn thing to me. I said, ‘Well, baby, you and I let’s go ahead and get a divorce and stop fighting.’

  MAELY: Well, you know also that I love her and that’s it … She don’t know how much I love her. Louis, take care. Take it easy, darling. Let me hear from you, huh?

  MCKAY: When I start work on her she’ll know. I work on her when she get to the door …

  MAELY: Take care, darling. Take it easy. MCKAY: Like something from Mars or something …

  MAELY: Well, take it easy, darling.

  MCKAY: Make both them motherfuckers commit suicide this morning …

  MAELY: Don’t do that! Not my friend!

  MCKAY: And I’m doing all right now and if I’m going to stop doing all right, I’m going to end it all. Crack this bitch’s head or something. OK, honey?

  MAELY: OK.

  MCKAY: How’s Billc doing?

  MAELY: What? Bill’s OK. He’s getting better. Everybody’s getting better. It’s too cold for him to go outside, so he’s raising hell inside. Take care, darling, and we’ll talk. OK?

  Now, if that is the voice of Louis McKay talking about his wife in February 1958, it is also interesting to listen to him giving his account of his relationship with Billie during that same time, in an affidavit that was presented on his behalf to the Surrogates Court, towards the end of 1959.

  This was the first of a number of legal battles in which Louis McKay was involved after he had inherited his wife’s estate. It seems that as soon as the lawyer Earle Zaidins had learnt of Billie’s death, he rushed to the hospital to tell McKay that Billie owed him some $12,000 in legal fees. Zaidins said he was prepared to waive this debt in exchange for a 10 per cent share of her estate and he immediately wrote out a contract that McKay signed.d

  McKay quickly realised his mistake and, with Billie’s lawyer Florynce Kennedy acting on his behalf, took Zaidins to court. McKay did not appear in court in person but, with Florynce Kennedy’s help, he produced an affidavit in which he explained everything he felt was relevant about his relationship with Billie Holiday and her relationship with Zaidins.e

  The language used in the affidavit is very formal and controlled. McKay is made to sound like an elder statesman as he tells the story of his love for Billie and how he tried, but ultimately failed, to protect her from her own vices and weaknesses. He explains that the task has been hard, and ‘those who would judge me must have lived through what I have gone through with Billie Holiday’.

  According to the text of the affidavit, McKay moved to New York during the 1930s and there he met Billie and ‘dated her’ when she was just sixteen. He ‘befriended her and her mother’ and when Sadie was worried about her wayward daughter, she ‘would send me to bring Billie home, or to see about her’.f

  He said they met again early in 1951, while Billie was appearing at the Club Juana in Detroit, and within two weeks McKay had taken on the role of manager. In McKay’s written version of that meeting, he was working in a car plant and ‘Billie Holiday came to me for help, threatening suicide if I didn’t help her. I told her I wouldn’t leave my job in Detroit and abandon my obligations there, until she was ready to kick her drug habit. I refused to go on the road with her until this was done.’

  Whatever the truth might have been, it was clear that Billie was at first overjoyed to share her life with McKay and was quick to tell the world of her new-found love. As Nat Hentoff wrote in February 1952, ‘A large part of Billie’s new sense of security and consequent ease is due to her husband and advisor Louis McKay. In fact, Billie’s personal life has become so ordered that she is thinking now of retiring in two or three years because she just wants “to be a housewife and take care of Mr McKay”.’g The relationship was obviously good for her career as well, because people remarked that she was ‘singing better than anyone had heard her in the last few years, demonstrating a new sense of responsibility and co-operativeness’.h

  However, the happiness did not last for long and within a couple of years the relationship between Billie and McKay had become increasingly complicated, difficult and violent. Some people, such as Jimmy Rowles, who saw the couple together from a distance, felt that McKay really was looking after Billie, but those who were closer to the domestic realities were less hopeful. Carl Drinkard explained how McKay organised Billie’s heroin supply as a way of controlling her. And Memry Midgett realized that McKay was using Billie’s money to buy land and property, all of which he purchased in his own name. One of his first acquisitions was the house in Queens. In 1956 McKay bought a share of the 204 Club in Chicago, and the bistro attached to the club was called the Holiday Room. McKay told Billie he intended her to play there for several months every year, but the promise never took shape.i

  It was clear that by the time of their arrest on a narcotics charge in Philadelphia in March 1956, the relationship between Billie and McKay was in serious difficulties. The pianist Corky Hale, who played for Billie in Las Vegas in the summer of 1956, said, ‘I don’t know what the hell Louis was doing. He was out running with girls. He put her down all the time … She wasn’t on any kind of dope at all. She was drinking I don’t know how much gin … Louis was terrible, horrible. He made fun of her, but I don’t think she was even aware of it because she was so out of it.’

  However, according to the affidavit, in 1957 McKay and Billie were living harmoniously together in New York when they both met a young lawyer called Earle Zaidins. ‘We didn’t take him very seriously,’ said Louis in his written statement. ‘He said he was a jazz fan and was always following us around and offering to help us. At the beginning we thought he was just clumsy, like an overgrown friendly puppy … He hung around our place sometimes when he wasn’t wanted.’

  McKay went on to explain that after about nine months Zaidins began to get familiar with Billie when her husband was not around. ‘Billie would laughingly report that Zaidins was making passes at her. She would say, “Would you believe that fat faggot Earle Zaidins tried to talk sex with me? What’s his story?” ’

  At this point in his statement McKay felt it necessary to explain that ‘she always told me about people like Earle Zaidins, unpleasant though it was. I didn’t take it very seriously because man
y jazz fans confused their admiration of Billie Holiday with their own romantic desires or problems … I realised Zaidins was nervous. He bit his fingers deeply.’

  McKay said that to protect Billie from becoming too nervous or jittery, he seldom left her alone for any great length of time and always arranged for someone to be with her when he needed to be absent for a while. Zaidins was sometimes given the task of keeping an eye on her. McKay went on to say that on the weekend of 2 and 3 June he returned home to discover ‘A number of my papers were gone. Earle was gone, and Billie was obviously under the influence of drugs … I knew she didn’t have any cash because with her consent I handled all the money. To her, money meant drugs. The doctor had told me the last time she had been through withdrawal from drugs that her health would not permit her to “kick the habit” again. Earle Zaidins knew very well that he should not give Billie Holiday sizeable sums of money. When he went behind my back he co-signed her death warrant.’j

  McKay said he realised that Billie was hooked again. He was so angry he resorted to violence. ‘The reason was that she confessed to me that this was not the first time she had been supplied with money for drugs by Zaidins … Moreover, she confessed that Zaidins had attempted to perform an act of sodomy upon her …

  ‘I blew my top, I don’t know which hurt most … I was almost crying. I grabbed the phone from her and threw it. I guess I didn’t care whether it hit her or not … All that I could think of was that for weeks she had been using again, and she was so hooked by now that I could never go through what was necessary to get her off alive …

  ‘I confronted Zaidins and demanded to know why he had helped her back on drugs and why he had stolen my papers and why he had made sexual advances to a woman who could not resist because of her condition. He did not deny one thing.

  ‘I started after him and he ran out of the house and I ran after him. It’s a good thing I couldn’t catch him. Later Billie told me Earle called the police and she told him she didn’t want any police, that I was her husband and it was her fault.’k A few days after this incident McKay got in his car and headed for the West Coast. On the way, and after driving for many hours, he fell ill. He was admitted to hospital in Chicago, where he nearly died from perforated ulcers. He remained in hospital for several weeks. When he was discharged he said that he remained determined not to go back to New York until Billie Holiday was off drugs and had finished with Earle Zaidins.

  ‘I was without the physical strength to do anything with her until she made her mind up to help. I could never keep the pushers away from her. This was the first time there was anything like this, and I knew I couldn’t win … Except for a bitter telegram which I sent, we were never estranged. Nearly every day or so we spoke. She phoned me nearly every week and I phoned her usually twice or more a week. I was trying to get well … I can’t be sure whether Billie was on or off drugs … She told me Zaidins was keeping her happy. I stayed in the West Coast. Zaidins was in charge.’l McKay won his case in the Surrogates Court and the lawyer Florynce Kennedy continued to work on his behalf for several years. When asked in 1994 for her assessment of the character of her client, she said, ‘I guess Lou was a kind of hustler, a gambler, and a lot of people said he had a string of whores. But this was not unusual; people in the black community did not have much money; this sort of thing happened. He lived off her earnings, but he was kind of compassionate and caring towards her, a “take charge” type. I think he made her feel he cared for her. He was knowledgeable in many ways, streetwise and a pimp. But it was a struggle with Billie Holiday and I don’t doubt he hit her, but she depended on him. When I dealt with her I found her a difficult person. I did not admire her.’m

  When the film version of Lady Sings the Blues was finally made in 1972, McKay was employed as the technical advisor, for which he received a percentage of the takings. He said later that he very much approved of the story that was told and the way his relationship with Billie was portrayed. ‘Billie and I were very much in love, although we had our problems … She was much, much more woman than most people realise who saw her only as a glamorous star, then as someone caught up in the narcotics thing.n She was a tender, loving woman, who liked nothing better than being at home with her man, cooking meals for me and doing little things around the house.’o

  There was one point on which McKay remained particularly firm. He said that in accordance with the law, as a narcotics user Billie was liable to a twenty- to thirty-year prison sentence and ‘If people get the idea that the Feds harassed her, then that’s wrong … They could have made things really tough for her, if they had wanted to.’

  * He is referring to his arrest with Billie in Philadelphia, on drugs and firearms charges, in February 1956, a month before Lady Sings the Blues was due to be published. The trial was finally held in March 1958. A lot of what Louis McKay is saying seems to relate to its outcome. McKay had been previously arrested in Philadelphia on a firearms charge.

  † There is no way of knowing what kind of photographs he was referring to, or in what way they were compromising for Billie.

  ‡ The $700 keeps changing its function. At first it seems to be money that Billie owes to Louis, and then it is money he is going to use to pay someone to hurt her.

  § When William Dufty and Maely were getting divorced, he also accused Maely of sleeping with McKay.

  ‖ A prostitute.

  a I think this means double-crossing; to ‘skunk’ someone means to cheat them out of something.

  b Alice Vrbsky, who worked as Billie’s assistant and secretary for the last two years of her life.

  c William Dufty.

  d ‘I acknowledge that Earle Warren Zaidins … has not been paid for any of his services. That in consideration thereof I agree as the surviving spouse of the decedent and as a logical administrator of the decedent’s estate, when appointed, to pay Mr Zaidins ten (10) per cent of all gross monies received.’ Contract signed 17 July 1959. Unattached file, Surrogates Court, County of New York. It is always possible that McKay suggested drawing up this contract.

  e I have only read the sections of the affidavit quoted by Stuart Nicholson in his biography, especially Chapters 12 and 13, pp. 211–15, 226–7. He uses the text as if it were an ordinary interview with Louis McKay. He also quotes the opinion of Florynce Kennedy that Earle Zaidins ‘was slimy. He was typical of the kind of sleazy people [Billie] seemed to surround herself with.’ In fact Zaidins later became one of America’s top show-business lawyers and then a judge. He did not try to contest the case, but in an interview with the documentary filmmaker John Jeremy in 1984, he dismissed McKay as a ‘pathological liar’. When I spoke to his widow, Alice Zaidins, she said that her husband was one of the most honest men in the United States. ‘He let it [the case with McKay] go, because those weren’t very nice people to be dealing with.’

  f No one else speaking about that time remembers McKay being around Billie. John Chilton, in his book Billie’s Blues, said that the two of them had a ‘casual acquaintanceship’ and probably met when Billie was singing at the Hot Cha.

  g Marie Bryant said of Billie’s relationships, ‘I have the feeling that Billie couldn’t tell the real from the put-on and there was always this want for her to have someone in her corner. If they could make it look like that, then she’d fall … Louis to me is a weak guy. I don’t think he dug her.’ John Levy the bass player said, ‘McKay was an idiot and a poor kind of pimp … compared to the rest of them he was a sweet cat up to a point … He was hanging on for dear life because that was all he had to hang on to: he was Billie Holiday’s husband.’

  h Downbeat magazine, October 1951.

  i In the affidavit McKay said that Billie had so few assets when she died because she had been forced to sell everything she owned and to spend all the money she earnt to pay for her heroin addiction (Nicholson, p. 226).

  j According to Nicholson, Zaidins was aware that McKay would leave Billie if she went back on drugs and ‘This was a source of grea
t torment for her. She loved McKay, but she loved to hate him for it. Her yearning for a fix was so strong it created an ambivalence that exasperated her and baffled those who knew her’ (p. 212). This, in spite of the fact that everyone (including Nicholson himself) agreed that Billie had replaced heroin with alcohol and was sometimes off drugs altogether or using them very sporadically.

  k Quoted in Nicholson, p. 213. This is obviously the same incident with the telephone that is described by Earle Zaidins (see p. 306), but in a very different way.

  l McKay did go and see Billie in hospital. She told William Dufty that when her husband walked into her room she half-closed her eyes so as not to be bothered by him. To her amazement Louis threw himself on his knees beside her bed and began to recite ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’. ‘I’ve always been a religious bitch,’ said Billie, ‘but if that bastard is a believer, I’m thinking it over!’

  m Quoted in Nicholson, p. 227.

  n On a TV show in August 1980, the singer Carmen McRae alleged that McKay ’caused Billie to become involved in drugs’. He filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against her, but the action lapsed with his death in March 1981.

  o Farah Jasmine Griffin describes the film as a ‘post-Black Power fantasy of a beautiful, talented, but weak and childish woman, who is rescued time and again by a strong, supportive, wealthy, handsome black man. When Diana Ross as Holiday is kicking her habit cold turkey in a padded cell, Billy Dee Williams’ McKay comes in with a doctor who injects her with something to make the going a little easier, and then her black knight slips an engagement ring on her finger. This is just the incentive she needs to pull her out of the nightmare. He pays for her time at a sanitarium, he arranges for her debut at a downtown club, he keeps her supplied with gardenias and he rescues her time and again. None of this ever happened’ (p. 60).

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Endgame