The Beat of My Own Drum

by Sheila E.

  Without love

  It ain’t much

  “THE GLAMOROUS LIFE”

  SHEILA E

  As my daddy jokingly likes to remind me, I wasn’t always Sheila E, nor did I always lead a glamorous life. After pushing my way eagerly into this world on December 12, 1957, I was born Sheila Cecilia Escovedo to a jobbing musician of a father and a mother who found work wherever she could.

  My parents brought me home from Providence Hospital to their downstairs flat on Sixty-first Street and Adeline in North Oakland, bordering on Berkeley. They liked to joke that their front yard was in Oakland and their backyard in Berkeley.

  Juanita Gardere and Pedro Escovedo (known as Pete) first met when they were both in junior high school; she was fifteen and he was eighteen months older. He’d had a tough childhood, some spent in Mexico and some in an orphanage in San Rafael, California. Music and art had kept him sane. Poor and hungry as a child, he used to sit outside nightclubs and let the music transport him to another place.

  His first proper musical instrument was an old saxophone, but that wasn’t to be his calling. Drawn to percussion, he made a set of bongos out of coffee cans and tape. He painted them himself and taught himself how to play. And play he did.

  Although he and my mother were at different schools, Pops traveled miles out of his way to visit her. “She was so cute in her skirt, little sweater, and rolled-over bobby socks tucked into buck shoes,” he recalled. “Her hair was combed straight down. She was joyful and friendly and seemed to have a skip in her step. I liked that about her.”

  Initially, though, her family affected him most powerfully. The Garderes couldn’t have been more different from his own dysfunctional family, which was scattered across several states and in Mexico. Juanita’s siblings were welcoming and warm in comparison to his. But her father, known as Papa Rock, was mean and didn’t much like the young musician his daughter brought home to meet him.

  Moms’s five brothers and two sisters loved, played, fought, and competed against each other all the time. My mother was the second youngest and one of the most competitive. She even had a special “Gardere face”—squinted eyes, scrunched-up eyebrows, and pouting lips. It could appear for any number of reasons, from someone showing disrespect to debating the finer rules of poker. That’s when we’d cry: “Hey, Gardere lips! Chill out!”

  She’d be the first to laugh. We could tease her about anything and it would bounce right off. I think she had such a strong core and such a deep sense of confidence that she was impossible to embarrass, but, on the flip side, she loved to embarrass us back. For Pops, being among Moms’s family was like nothing he’d ever known. He’d never encountered such an open, friendly, and noisy group.

  Hailing from New Orleans, the Garderes were also compellingly exotic to him, with their beautiful brown (sometimes light) skin, blond or brown hair, and pale eyes. Being Creole, they acted differently and spoke with gentle southern accents with a touch of French. They said things like, “Y’all come back, bay” (which was short for babe). “What kinda people are these?” the shy teenager thought. Intrigued to learn more, he began walking Juanita home from school every day, even though they lived almost an hour apart.

  Moms thought Pops was cute too. She especially loved the way he dressed, even though she noticed that he always wore the same suit and tie. His family may have been poor, but a musician from New York had hipped him to the importance of looking the part.

  “If you want to be a musician, you better dress like one,” he was told. Heeding this advice, Pops spent all the money he had on a suit, shirt, and tie that he bought from a gentlemen’s outfitters on Telegraph in downtown Oakland. There was no money left over for an alternative outfit.

  Pops kept that suit of his as clean as a board of health. On a hot day, the jacket would be neatly folded over his left arm, which he’d keep lifted away from his body at a perfect 90-degree angle so as not to create a wrinkle. His fastidiousness about clothes and shoes still makes Moms laugh.

  The more time they spent together, the more Pete and Juanita grew to love each other. He affectionately called her Nina or Nit—and still does. On those long walks home they discovered that they had much more in common than they realized. My father had Latin music in his blood, while Moms had acquired her love of music from watching variety shows and vaudeville. She’d studied piano, tap dancing, and singing. She could read sheet music and went for a professional singing audition in San Francisco once but didn’t get the part because she tapped her foot too much.

  It’s always been hard to keep Moms still.

  A born ham, she’ll tap-dance and sing all day long, or serenade someone at the drop of a hat. She has a beautiful a cappella voice, is a fantastic salsa dancer, and can play a guiro like a pro. She’s talented at virtually everything she does, but—much to her chagrin—whenever she gets up on a stage to perform, she freezes.

  When my father first sang to her, he melted her heart. From that day on, she knew she wasn’t going to let that “cute young boy” out of her sight. Despite my grandparents’ fears that the music business wasn’t the best profession for a son-in-law, they gave their permission for Moms to marry him, and they did so on October 21, 1956. She was eighteen and he was twenty. She wore a big white dress with a fifteen-foot train, and he rented a tux. Their reception was at a union hall in Piedmont. Their after-party was at the California Hotel in San Francisco, where they danced to mambo music. They couldn’t afford a honeymoon.

  Sometime after I was born the following year, we moved into a small in-law unit in the back of the Gardere family home, where Moms (who was pregnant again) could rely on her mother for babysitting.

  My grandfather, Papa, had a big heart, but he didn’t mess around and could silence you with one look. He was a hardworking man who was a janitor for some rental properties. He’d suffered burns and lost the sight in one eye in an accident in his previous job. He smoked cigarettes, and his right thumbnail was stained yellow. His beige coveralls smelled of paint and his breath of sardines from the sandwiches he loved to make, which included the whole fish—bones, tiny faces, and all.

  Mama, my grandmother, always seemed to be in the kitchen cooking for her family and any friends who happened to call. The smells I associate with her are all mouthwatering, and I think of her hands as permanently busy—baking, rolling, frying, stirring—sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

  The memory of living in that first home behind my grandparents is imprinted like a black-and-white photograph in my mind. It was calm, simple, and quiet. That was where I first came to know the beauty of silence and of being still.

  The quiet part stands out the most, because after that I can hardly remember any moments of peace in my childhood.

  I was a year old when my brother Juan was born in 1959; then Peter Michael came along two years later in 1961. My sister, Zina, followed in 1967, ten years after me. From the day I stopped being an only child, the soundtrack of my childhood was a cacophony of crying babies and screaming toddlers underscored by the rhythms, beats, and melodies of my father’s world.

  My memories are, for the most part, pretty loud.

  Life could not have been easy for my parents and their growing family, especially when a regular income was so hard to come by. Pops tried to get recording work in studios when he wasn’t at a gig, but he occasionally had to break the musicians’ rule and take a regular job. He worked in a gas station, a clothing store, at Kinney shoes, and the Del Monte cannery—all of which nearly broke his spirit.

  My mother found shift work in supermarkets and factories. For a long time she worked in the Carnation ice cream factory, from which she brought us home Popsicles as a treat. If Mama couldn’t watch me, then she and Pops would split the child care between them. They couldn’t afford babysitters, so they’d also enlist one of our cousins. If there was no other option, then Pops would take me along to rehearsals, jam sessions, and even his gigs. Sometimes he’d play two in one night and have to dash a
cross town on a bus carrying his timbales, cowbells, and me.

  I can only imagine how hard it was to waltz into a nightclub holding a baby and hoping to get away with it. Back then, Pops was still building a name for himself and didn’t have the kind of reputation he has now. Sometimes club owners gave him a hard time, since babies didn’t exactly fit their scene. He made it clear, though: “If you want me to play tonight, then my daughter stays.”

  So while Pops played, I’d be up onstage in a stroller, asleep behind the bar, or tucked into a leatherette booth. Dark, smoky music venues became my second home. Long before I could walk or talk (let alone slap a conga), I knew melodies, rhythms, and arrangements, because my father’s music was the very oxygen I breathed.

  At home, percussion was everywhere too. It was part of the furniture. Sometimes it was the furniture. With little of our own, we’d use a drum as a TV tray or footrest. And sometimes furniture became percussion—tables, chairs, pots, and pans have surprisingly good tone.

  There was plenty of real music, too, as Pops played congas, bongos, and timbales as part of his daily routine. He’d wake up, light his pipe, head to the front room, and put on one of his favorite records. Then he’d practice for hours on end, alone or with band members, anything to keep his chops—technical efficiency—up. Being a drummer requires whole body strength, and most drum and percussion players practice every day to maintain their fitness levels and keep on top of their chops. Our home was constantly filled with musicians: old friends, new friends, strangers, and relatives. That was the norm. The Escovedo pad was the place to be. Sometimes they were rehearsing for a show, and sometimes they just came to hang and jam. They were usually led by Pops, who played the music he was most influenced by—a heady mix of salsa, mambo, Latin jazz, Afro-Cuban, and jazz.

  For relaxation, he’d put on an old favorite like Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole and sing along. (Later in life, he was proud to be known as the “Mexican Frank Sinatra.”)

  I didn’t care what the music was; I loved hearing anything with notes, although I especially tuned in whenever Pops was playing. When I was a baby, his music must have been like an invisible mobile above my crib—rhythmic, mesmerizing, and soothing.

  Before I had language, I had rhythm. I learned it before I learned my mother tongue.

  I wasn’t just born into an environment with music; I was of music.

  Music shaped my bones.

  Moms danced to it when she was pregnant with me, and then she swayed me in her arms or bounced me on her lap as a baby. As soon as I could coordinate my hand movements I began to copy my father, sitting across from him to imitate his beats on my lap.

  Whatever his right hand would do, my left hand would mimic. Whatever his left hand would do, my right hand would follow. Because of this, I continue to play in a way that leads people to assume I’m left-handed, even though I’m not.

  What began as a child’s imitative play planted the seed for my life’s passion.

  3. Polyrhythm

  Playing two time-signature patterns over the top of each other

  Of all earthly music, that which reaches farthest into heaven is the beating of a truly loving heart.

  HENRY WARD BEECHER

  The best thing about music when I was growing up is that it was free—which was just as well, because sometimes Moms and Pops really struggled financially.

  At best, one of Pops’s gigs might earn his band fifty dollars, which they’d split between them. I’d hear my parents whispering late at night and, sure enough, a few days later our latest car would be repossessed—a Mustang or an old white Jag—towed away on a truck while all the neighbors looked on.

  If times were really hard, we’d have to move because my parents couldn’t make the rent. A notice pinned to the front door would mean it was time to pack our bags again.

  Occasionally the lights would go off for a day or two because we couldn’t afford the electricity or because in our neighborhood the service was patchy. Whatever the reason, Moms and Pops never gave up on their belief that God would provide, and they turned every setback into an adventure.

  “Let’s try something new!” they’d cry as we stumbled around in the dark. Out came the flashlights and the candles so they could tell us ghost stories or make shadow puppets on the wall.

  We rarely went hungry, although every now and again we’d have to pour water into the milk to make it last. Some nights we only had cereal or sugar on bread for dinner, and Moms would skip a meal. “I’m not hungry,” she’d lie, puffing on one of her Salem cigarettes.

  Occasionally, my brothers and I would go to a house on the corner where, in return for listening to Bible stories, we were fed peanut-butter sandwiches. Sometimes we stole candy from a store. Moms would have spanked us if she ever found out, but all our friends did it, and sometimes our cravings for something sweet got the better of us.

  My favorite candy was an orange flute that you could play and then eat. We also liked Pop Rocks, which fizzed in the mouth, as well as pear-flavored sugar sweets, Twinkies, and 7 Up. There was an orange or red soda we liked called Nehi. We’d drink a little, then pour in half a bag of peanuts to get a combo of sweet and salt. Mostly, though, we just grabbed what we could and ran.

  When times were really hard, we went on welfare. I was sent to the corner store, embarrassed, with food stamps. I felt as if the words I AM POOR were stamped across my forehead.

  Yet there was at least one toy for each of us under a Christmas tree each year, and our stockings always contained a bag of socks, come what may. Moms was a stellar bargain hunter. We had a gift exchange so that each of us would buy one present only, for a few dollars. I went to the ninety-nine-cent store or made things. One year I took some photographs and framed them. Another Christmas when we had no money at all, my brothers and I made a little house out of the Popsicle sticks Moms brought home. She and Pops acted like it was the greatest gift in the world.

  To their eternal credit, our home was always clean, comfortable, and full of joy. None of us ever really knew we were poor because we were so rich in love. Everyone wanted to visit because my parents turned our latest pad into such a welcoming and beautiful space. We had the coolest decoration, too—orange plastic chairs that looked like leather, yellow shag rugs—many of them begged or borrowed from friends or family and then thrown together to look hip. My parents were never afraid of color.

  Pops had painted since he was a child, and the artist in him loved vibrancy and contrast. A teacher at his orphanage had been the first to spot his talent and encouraged him as a way of expressing himself. Our walls were adorned with his unique abstracts. He painted oils on canvas, did sketches, and created charcoal drawings. When he couldn’t afford materials, he sketched on drumheads, wood, cardboard, plates or boxes—anything he could get his hands on.

  When I look back at his art when we were growing up, I’m surprised by how dark a lot of it is. I think he must have felt weighed down by the worry of having to support us all. Not that he ever let on. Our homes may have been small, but they had soul, and, most important, they were full of warmth.

  Even during the worst times, Pops never sold or hocked his musical instruments. He refused to give up on his dream as so many musicians are forced to. He and his brothers always kept the faith that one day they’d make it. The tools of his trade may have been all beat-up, but they were cherished, and he took great care of them. He wiped them down after each performance or jam session, then put the drums back into their cases or the cowbells back into their little bag as if they were pure gold.

  I don’t know how they managed it, but Moms and Pops also somehow provided for anyone who knocked on our door. Musicians would drop in to eat, drink, and smoke until late. We kids learned to sleep through every kind of noise while they jammed. We’d wake for school the next morning and pick our way through a colorful patchwork of strangers sleeping on the floor.

  My parents also found ways to keep us entertained despite their persistent lack
of funds. We never had a so-called family vacation, but in the summer they’d drive somewhere like Fresno or King City in Monterey County, where it was especially hot. They’d book us into a cheap motel—all five of us in one room for the night—just so we could enjoy the luxury of swimming in the motel pool. That was us living the glamorous life. We were kings in King City!

  To save us having to eat out, Moms would always pack the car full of food, and—now that I think about it—not much has changed. Even when we travel together these days, I can count on her to either knock on my hotel door or call my room each morning to offer me fruit or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

  “It’s okay, I was just going to order room service,” I tell her.

  “Oh no, Heart!” she insists (using a nickname she sometimes gives me). “Why waste your money when I packed so much?”

  Free food has always excited her. I’ve lost count of the sophisticated venues and pimped-out green rooms I’ve had to usher her out of once her eyes fall on the buffet. If I can’t get her out, I have to convince her not to sneak food into her purse. “Moms,” I plead under my breath. “Put that down! You don’t need those sandwiches! We just ate and there’ll be more food after the show!”

  Taking her to an all-you-can-eat buffet is a nightmare. She’ll pack five containers in her purse, and I have to tell her, “Moms! They mean all you can eat here, not at home as well!” She just laughs and Pops, ever the dignified one, shakes his head (although he still enjoys eating everything she brings home).

  Back in the day, drive-in movies were a favorite family destination. There was one near the Oakland Coliseum that we went to, always late at night in an old Buick or Chevy or whatever Pops could afford. As we neared the entrance, he’d pull over and we kids would pile into the trunk, leaving it slightly ajar because it was dark and stank of tires. We’d lie there in our pajamas until we’d been successfully sneaked past the booth without paying more than the one-dollar fee for two adults.