Low Down: Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales From Childhood

by A. J. Albany

  The mere mention of the ocean gave me a sinking sensation. In the summer months, Dad and I had often ridden the Santa Monica bus all the way down to the beach and spent hours goofing around the pier or sitting on the dirty sand looking out. The vastness of the sea always triggered a despair in me. If I made the mistake of breathing too deeply in the presence of any endless horizon, I would burst into tears. It was as though I’d ingested pure wide-openness, and once inside of me, it turned into some huge, mournful creature. At such times I had a great need to hold on to something, anything tangible—seaweed, a sneaker, my father’s warm hand. As if reading my mind, Johnny suddenly grabbed my hand. “Why the tears?” I looked at him with his black curls and beaten-up jean jacket and imagined for the first time since Alain that my heart was a blushing rose.

  We were walking down Bronson toward Sunset en route to the plasma center, and there was a spring in Johnny’s step, for in another hour or so he’d have the money needed to score, and he was happy. Sometimes early in the morning you’d see junkies and alcoholics in varying stages of need and decrepitude sitting by the side of the building, waiting for the center to open. From what I observed, they did little back then to monitor donors. Unless somebody was falling down sick and covered with tracks like 3-D road maps, they were allowed to give blood. Johnny joked that a great many people in at least twenty states probably owed him their life, for all the donating he’d done. “I like to give something back to society,” he stated insincerely.

  Johnny’s crime spree would soon come to an end, as all sprees eventually must. One of his alleged friends had gotten a job busing tables at a place called the Old Spaghetti Factory on Sunset, and devised a ridiculous scheme that he swore would make money. The Spaghetti Factory had a huge, garish assortment of lamps that looked like they’d been heisted from a New Orleans brothel. This busboy assured Johnny that the management would never miss a few lamps, and he could make a mint selling them as Tiffany lamps to unsuspecting chumps. I was mortified. Even at thirteen, I knew they didn’t look anything like Tiffany lamps, but this guy seemed to wield some power over Johnny, and I could say nothing to convince him otherwise. After sneaking out one floor and one table lamp, Johnny and I headed over to the senior center on the west side, where I watched in disbelief as he attempted to “work his magic.”

  “Hello, madam, I was just on my way to Butterfields Auction House with these genuine Tiffany lamps that belonged to my dear grandma—say, you surely remind me of her. Anyway, this is where she spent her final days, God rest, and I thought she’d like it if I first offered this investment opportunity to one of her, you know, own kind.” This poor woman with her lavender hair rinse and slight palsy had been slowly backing up toward the door during Johnny’s verbal assault. “I don’t need a lamp,” she stammered as she struggled to make her way inside.

  “I need a new strategy,” Johnny said to the lamp, as my female intuition suddenly set off blaring warning bells.

  “Forget it. These lamps are crap,” I urged, as he turned and snapped at me.

  “Shut up. You’re just some dumb kid.” With those words, he walked away, pathetically struggling with the two cheesy lamps, and headed straight into a trap. It had been a setup from the beginning. The busboy had an ax to grind with Johnny, who’d been in town barely a year and “thought he was top dog.” Together with a local dealer, they’d cooked up the scheme and informed the cops of the theft to have him busted. When this petty crime was added to the trail of troubles he’d accumulated in other states, he ended up facing a ten-year sentence. I ran home to Gram in tears when I learned the bad news. She had seen Johnny one time when I’d persuaded him to come up and meet her. Even though he’d bought her a six-pack of Lucky beer, one of her favorites, she had not been impressed. “Sure he’s locked up—I gave him the malocchío,” she said, making the sign of the horns with her fingers. “He’s a bum. You shouldn’t hang around with bums.” In the end, even if he had been more wary of jealous junkies bearing cheap lamps, it wouldn’t have mattered. Once Gram decided to truly give someone the evil eye, their ill fate was sealed. As Johnny had noted after meeting her, she was “one tough old lady.”

  flaming youth

  Gram, having become convinced that I was heading down a thorny path littered with unsavory characters, asked my dad to take me for a month or so and straighten me out. Dad, the pinnacle of prudence and clean living, was supposed to redirect my wild adolescent energy into more sedate channels. He would have had better odds catching the sun in a bottle.

  Dad was living in Amsterdam, which wasn’t the ideal place to shelter your young from drug culture or sexual promiscuity. He seemed happy to see me, although it was an extremely busy time for him. He had two tours planned, three weeks in France followed by three weeks in Germany. I did my best to stay out of the way, help him pack, and offer him my enthusiastic support.

  I enjoyed traveling around; it was a lifestyle I’d become accustomed to with Dad, even back in the States. We rarely stayed in one apartment for too long. It was a good way to stay ahead of trouble.

  On one of my first nights in Amsterdam, Dad played at the Bim Huis, a great jazz club where everyone who was anyone played. It was here that we ran into Chet Baker, who was in a happy hashish haze, along with Dad and most everyone else in the place. I noticed a ginger-haired man with huge sideburns grinning at me intently from another table. Being a polite girl, I smiled back and thought no more of it until a note arrived from the guy, which was written in Dutch. I handed it to a Dutch friend of Dad’s named Nils who was sitting next to me. After reading it, he crumpled it up, went over to its author, and tried to make him eat it. A short but lively riot ensued, and my admirer, who was no longer smiling, was escorted out. Dad, thoroughly engrossed in “A Night in Tunisia” on the bandstand, was oblivious to the incident. I pressed Nils to tell me what the note had said. “Oh, it was nothing, you know. He just said he wants to fuck your tits. Typical, right?” What a thing to write to a thirteen-year-old girl wearing yellow knee-high socks.

  From the start of the French tour, I lusted after every young Frenchman I met, in every hotel and on every street corner. One day, while on the train from Lyon to Paris, I sat next to a beautiful French soldier who ran his hand along my thigh every time we entered a dark tunnel. The move was particularly bold since Dad was seated on the other side of me reading through some musical arrangements. Just when I was turning into a pool of fire, the soldier got off the train, winking at me and tipping his hat to Dad as he left. “People are really friendly here, hey Jo Jo?” Dear, sweet Dad. Europeans were now added to his list of people who would never harm me, along with clowns, dwarfs, and the rest.

  Just as the French tour ended, Dad prepared me for the fact that I had to return home. “I can’t put you in school here when I’m running around on tour, unless it’s a boarding school, which I don’t think you’d dig much.” He was right. I’d have been miserable if I were institutionalized with a bunch of snotty girls. It was strange to see my father being so logical, so grown up. When I was little, he’d readily keep me out of school for an impulsive trip to the beach or the cinema.

  Dad sent me back home, assuring Gram that he’d put me wise to the lowlifes who prey on young girls. Armed with this bit of ancient information, I returned to a place where I could make endless studies of a wide range of lowlifes—Hollywood.

  cracker

  There exists, or at least existed, a certain reverse discrimination in the jazz world that’s not often discussed, and I’ll probably catch hell for bringing it up. It presented itself to my dad several times throughout his career.

  In all fairness, African Americans gave birth to jazz and their desire to covet the music for themselves is understandable, especially when it’s compounded by decades of oppression and deprivation. However, there was a small group of white musicians, most of them sons of immigrants, like Dodo Marmarosa, Red Rodney, and my dad, to name a few, who shared a deep reverence for jazz and had no interest
in diluting or gentrifying the music to suit the white masses. When Miles Davis made the stupid remark that “White musicians play behind the beat,” few dared to protest it, many dismissing it as one of Davis’s “eccentric notions.” Had the shoe been on the other foot, however, such a remark would’ve caused riots.

  I never gave any of this much thought until I saw Dad play a concert in New York with a well-known drummer who decided to use his immense talent to try and screw up my dad’s playing with overly loud, intentionally erratic, off-tempo drumming. It was bizarre to witness. Dad looked to him after every number, his frustration and anger mounting. At the end of the set, he confronted him, and the drummer said defiantly: “I don’t play behind any trio fronted by a cracker.” There was probably more to this story than I’m aware of—some old, unresolved baggage between them. Dad did have notoriously difficult relationships with drummers. Whatever the case, he was genuinely hurt by the encounter, though he didn’t speak about it, in great part because of the conscientious white man’s guilt syndrome. In the face of history, recent history at that, this drummer’s anger was certainly justified, but it was also, in this particular case, terribly misdirected.

  blue lights

  My grandmother collected eccentrics and madmen the way other grannies collect teacups. One such acquaintance was Benny. He looked a lot like Norman Bates and always wore powder blue cardigans, impeccably pressed plaid trousers, and white patent-leather loafers with tassels. The course of Benny’s life was charted with the help of two spirit guides: one the spirit of a Sioux Indian chief, and the other the spirit of James Dean. He would greet you by grabbing your forearm with both hands, as if preparing to give a Chinese burn. He’d then hold on tightly, claiming this was his way of transmitting “healing vibrations” to the unsuspecting receiver. In the course of a conversation, Benny would invariably notice a little blue light shining over your shoulder and immediately shift his attention to the light, or “visiting spirit.”

  “Oh, hello, Jimmy. Nice to see you,” he’d say. This one-sided discussion with invisible friends would often carry on for hours. At the age of thirteen, I was wound up tighter than a speed freak’s watch, and when the blue light presented itself, apparently over my shoulder, I started crying hysterically while Gram scolded Benny: “Now that’s enough! You frightened the poor girl to death.” Benny, who called Gram “mother,” would often ask, “Mother, do you think I’m gay?” to which she’d reply, “Goodness sakes—you’re the only one who knows the answer to that question.” Benny’s companion, who he referred to as his “special friend,” worked in the sheet music department at Wallach’s Music City, and at Christmas he was the Broadway Hollywood’s store Santa.

  When Benny’s special friend became terminally ill and suffered a long deterioration before dying, Gram watched Benny’s well-groomed appearance and oddball exuberance die with him. They were two souls inextricably tangled into one. It appeared that Benny’s spirit guides had deserted him in his darkest hour. Unwilling to accept the Christian party line that chalked up all human suffering as God’s will, and too perceptive and sensitive to join the ranks of the totally faithless, he found himself in an impossible netherworld. So, like many before and after him, Benny plunged into the “bottle of forgetfulness,” as my mom had once referred to a fifth of bourbon, until he finally drank himself into another dimension, where all his blue lights were turned off for keeps.

  princess bebop

  The Auditory Blasters Club was a group of four nerds in my school who collected records of a certain sort, made tapes for one another, and had listening sessions at each other’s homes on the weekends. Though “no girls allowed” was one of their strict credos, if loving music was the main prerequisite for joining, then I should have been a shoo-in. My one defining interest at age thirteen was collecting records. Everything from Work Songs Live from Angola Prison and the Stooges’ Fun House to the Pal Joey soundtrack. Besides, I was Princess Bebop, as Dad called me, born of royal musical heritage, daughter of the Legendary Joe Albany. My ear was finely trained and my veins flowed with the bluest, most melodious blood.

  However, their other rule, “You need to have a killer sound system to join,” posed a problem for me. The club was apparently as much about the equipment as the music. These were all rich boys, all living in the Los Feliz hills, all with giant Marantz speakers and stacks of imposing electronics crammed into pleasant rooms with the obligatory rock posters and black lights. They looked down their noses at the kids who did drugs, like good little boys.

  Rick, the most human of them, managed to convince the others to overlook my serious lack of noisy gadgets, and I was invited to sit in on one of their sacred sound sessions.

  While listening to their rather dull ideas about what constituted “great rock,” I began to notice that they all had abnormally large Adam’s apples, and wondered if it was indigenous to the area they lived in or if it was a symptom of too much exposure to overly produced music or excessive money. After suffering through Dark Side of the Moon and Layla, which appeared to be a religious experience for them, I remarked that Dark Side was as overrated an album as they come, and that Eric Clapton was a boring guitarist. “His Yardbirds stuff didn’t hold a candle to Beck’s or Page’s,” I contended in my overbearing manner.

  “I told you girls were hopeless,” said group leader Dave. Rick looked at me, crestfallen and betrayed. “Do all of you agree on everything?” I asked.

  “Some things are beyond criticism,” said wise Dave as the others nodded in agreement, their Adam’s apples sliding up and down their pimply pencil necks. Boys. So utterly righteous and ridiculous. I’d have no part of them for as long as I could help it.

  schoolboy hustler

  Donny was a hustler, and he was a regular kid. His older sister, Christine, tried to raise him as best she could after their mom decided she “didn’t like having children”—that was her parting comment—but at seventeen, after doing it for two years, Christine became tired and resentful, and though they still shared a room, Donny understood he’d be fending for himself now. He was fourteen, and we had two of the same classes at school, classes that the principal’s son and the weather report lady on TV’s daughter were both in too. Donny stayed in school with the hope of someday getting an athletic scholarship. “I’m going to be a great ball player,” he’d say with a confidence that his desperate eyes betrayed. We waited in line two hours once so he could meet Willie Mays, who was signing autographs at Zody’s on Santa Monica Boulevard.

  Donny had a deal with a gas station attendant who would let him use the rest room for his johns, as long as he was added to the list of blow jobs. Donny was very matter-of-fact when discussing his work. “Pretty much, they only blow me. But there’s three guys—well, I stick their dicks in my mouth, but they have to pay double,” he said triumphantly. I was silent, which seemed to make him uncomfortable. “Hey, I’m no fag, if that’s what you’re thinking. I like girls. It’s just—guys will pay. They always want it.” I asked politely how he managed to feel “okay” with himself, since I was still suffering the tortures of the damned over the scene with my uncle. “Ah, girls,” he laughed. “It’s like—like blowing my nose or something. Sometimes I have to do it,” he said, patting his stomach in a sign of hunger, “and it’s over you know?”

  Yeah, I knew. I knew he was trying to convince himself that he didn’t feel like a piece of shit each and every time it happened, and that he could think all he wanted about baseball statistics and a nice place he’d call home someday—but that at some point, the reality of it would eat a hole in him the size of a melon, and he might just blow his brains out if he ever let himself know what I knew. I hoped for his sake he never would.

  I found myself often visiting the gas station where the creep attendant allowed Donny to have his self-respect sucked out, as long as there was a piece in it for him. I started stealing every stick of gum, soda can, quart of oil, cough drop, and car freshener I could get my hands on, hoping to
somehow put him out of business. I wanted to kill all the bastards in the world who took advantage of hard-up, frightened kids, but I couldn’t, so instead I ripped them off, conned them, and gave them the evil eye for what it was worth at every given and taken opportunity.

  no academic

  Gram and I were now living on the corner of Vista Del Mar and Yucca in a brick apartment building that dead-ended by the side of the 101 freeway. It wasn’t too bad as far as dumps go. The worst part of it was the manager. A middle-aged, broken-down Frenchman, he would slither out of dark stairwells and come up behind me, whispering, “I can give you more than those young boys you waste your time with.” From that moment, I would never care much for older men, and would tend to gravitate toward guys a few years my junior, who seemed like a safer bet.

  Anyway, the only boy I was wasting time with back then was fifteen-year-old Stanley, who sang in a terrible cover band and had burned off half his face attempting to breathe fire like Gene Simmons. We spent most of our time together on my roof, engaging in the awkward but energetic sex of youth. We didn’t have much to say. I was covered in roof burns, scraped up on the small of my back and shoulder blades. At the fragile age of fourteen, I would’ve liked my scabby knees to have been the result of sliding into home base, not pointless sex with another lost peer, but there it was.

  One day when I came home from school, I found Gram sitting looking out the window with an opened letter in her lap. “Is that from Dad?” I asked. She held it out in my direction without looking at me. I felt like a Gorgon. I took the letter and went up to the roof to read it. We lived in a small one-room place, and the roof provided me with some privacy. “Dearest Mom, It is my understanding that Amy is no longer a virgin. While she is certainly no academic, she is my daughter, and I suppose I must continue to advise her the best I can. I don’t want her to turn into a rotten kid.” He went on to write about some recording session that didn’t register much in me after that first punch in the gut, and signed it, “Coraggio Mom, your son, Joe.”