And though my grandmother took leave to her bedroom, her strength and spiritual belief found a voice on the piano. At this early age, I perceived the conduit between the vast internal reality and the external expression on musical instruments.
MEMPHIS—Fall 1954—3
There I was, first day of fourth grade, in the band room. The cutoff for band was seventh grade, yet I was allowed in. I sat quietly amid a cacophony of chaotic sounds, horns, bells, children laughing, when in walked Mr. Walter Martin, an energetic, goateed young man—the first band director at Porter Junior High. He was the one that let me break the school rules and join the band three years early. There was immediate order when he stood in front of the class. He looked at each student a brief moment, then turned away and made a resolved face. Silence still.
“Good afternoon. My name is Walter Martin. I’m your new band director.”
Yeaaaaaaah! I yelled to myself.
Mr. Martin smiled and looked off to the side as I would see him do a thousand more times. Instantly, the students loved him. He had already seemed to win over the whole school, and we hadn’t yet played a note. We had no idea of his qualifications, but we had a teacher, and we would have a band.
“I graduated from Booker Washington, studied band under Professor W. T. McDaniels.” No more needed to be said at this point because Professor McDaniels’s reputation as a great teacher preceded him throughout the South. “I received my BA in music from Philander Smith College.”
Heads turned. There were a few sighs. The class was impressed.
Then, Mr. Martin outlined the rules and procedures for checking out instruments, music, seating, being late—all the things to make his band room orderly and let us know he was in charge. Best of all, he had us put some music on our stands, and together we began to play some elementary scales.
It was my first experience performing in an ensemble, and I loved it! And on the very first day. I’m sure it sounded awful, but you wouldn’t have known by Mr. Martin’s face. He was genuinely happy to be there. Everything was going to be OK. And! He had not regarded me as much younger and smaller than all the other students! I was being treated as though I was three years older!
Mr. Martin was the first in a succession of gifted band directors/mentors, and he was the last for me—as he was transferred to my high school as well.
Ultimately, I remained part of that ensemble because I volunteered to play the oboe, a difficult instrument important to the concert band that none of the older kids would tackle. The oboe possesses a sharp, nasal quality of sound, solitary and lonely in its beauty. This peculiarity makes it a favorite for orchestral solos.
One sat untouched, brand new, in the instrument storage room at school. Mr. Martin trusted me; I was the only student with a key to the storage room, and he let me bring it home. Still enamored with my new clarinet, I took the oboe down to Amro Music, the store where I bought my clarinet, and was informed this instrument was like no other—it was a “double reed” (two quarter-inch slivers of cane must be cut square on top and wrapped with thread or wire in such a way as to curve slightly toward each other; then the two sides must be forced into the center of a small cork in order to be squeezed into the tube on top of the oboe so the lips can be pursed to blow air through the contraption). It required great care and a course in reed making, as the expensive oboe reeds were not as easily obtainable as the clarinet ones.
Before the age of nine, I told myself, “Life was meant to be lived in the key of C.” It was the simplest, least complex key. It had no sharps or flats and was beautiful and pleasing to the ear. The flute, the oboe, the piano, the guitar, and the trombone were all created in C, and I believed that C was the natural key for the earth, humans, and the universe at large.
When I was nine years old, I started living life in the key of B flat. A clarinet is one of few instruments that transposes to B flat. That means clarinets are constructed so the note C (in the normal world) is actually D. In other words, to play a C, as you would hear it on a piano or guitar, you must play a D on a clarinet. It is as if the instrument had been musically “jacked down” like a lowrider.
This unnerving discovery wreaked havoc in my young, developing mind—to find out the C was not really a C but a B flat in clarinet world. There were sounds in my musical palette that I had not yet given names. The notes in my mind had positions on the piano or the ukulele, and I wasn’t sure what to call them. I was relieved when I took my first clarinet lesson to discover and associate these note names with the sounds (pitches), only to find out I had to learn yet another syntax. I renamed the clarinet sounds in my head to correspond to the ones on the piano.
I learned that other instruments transposed to different keys as well, like saxophone to E flat or B flat and French horn to the key of F. That meant I must develop a supple mind if I was to understand and write music. An American in Paris is an example of a piece that whetted my curiosity. Textures, to sound cohesive, must be written in different keys for different instruments, and the concert key was the common language. With original musical passages flowing through my head, I knew I had to master that language.
I played an oboe solo in fourth grade with the school band at a PTA meeting. My mother came, and I will never forget the broad smile on her face.
I was not, however, always happy being the youngest and shortest member of the marching band. I had their smallest uniform—the cap fell down over my eyes. My mom had to take up the pants. The coat dwarfed me, and I couldn’t see over the person marching in front of me.
I rolled up the sleeves and tilted the cap back, excited to participate—even though there were no musical parts written for the oboe in marching band. If I was to continue when concert season was over, I needed to make the grade on clarinet. So in concert band, I doubled as an oboist and as a clarinetist, playing the clarinet my dad purchased at Amro Music.
Unlike saxophones, which have a neck strap to support their weight, clarinets only have a thumb grip, a little bar midway down where you put your thumb to hold the instrument. I developed a worrisome callous/sore on the topside of my thumb from carrying the heavy instrument while stepping high and playing in the marching band.
In the concert band, I shared the first clarinet chair with Leo Thomas, a ninth grader. At one rehearsal, Leo pushed me off my seat to get a better view of the music, and we were sent to the principal’s office for fighting.
This is part of a pattern that began early in my life where I was always the youngest—granted an exception by older colleagues or bosses. So often, I felt the need to keep to a higher standard because of my age, but the consequence of being good made some people resent me. I responded by trying to be too good to be rejected—which sometimes backfired. Thrown into a group that was three or four years beyond me, I didn’t realize how out of place I was socially. A fourth grader is not a ninth grader.
One afternoon, Jeramy Beard, who was in the habit of picking on me and others in a walkway next to the classrooms—threw sand in my eyes, and I fell to the ground. I was the unlucky kid that Jeramy chose to harass that day. The clarinet case slipped from my hand, but I managed to find and grab it. Even when I was down on the ground, with all the other kids standing over me saying, “Oooh! Oooh!” and laughing, I held on to that clarinet! Another day, Enoch Wallace kicked me in the chest and knocked the wind out of me. I dropped my clarinet but picked it up before he got to it.
Those jerks were cowards. They were jealous. They knew I’d never let go of my clarinet and saw me as soft. Why me? How do you fight with a clarinet under your arm? That’s why.
With two hands, I’d have beat the shit out of them. I was strong. Inside and out. Stronger than those bullies. My crusade was chartered, and I became a convert to the life of a musician.
Chapter 3
Precious Lord
MEMPHIS—Summer 1951—4
In 1951 Memphis, on hot summer days on Beale Street, big-bellied, white-shirted black police officers walked in twos
. They were like Abbott and Costello—with big guns high on their hips—sweat dripping. Customers came out of the shops with brown paper bags containing their food or ate at the tables inside. But the officers came out with fat sandwiches, having walked in, stepped behind the counter, and made their own food, leaving without paying. Not so much as a look at the black proprietor.
My dad taught some of these officers in his ninth-grade algebra class at B. T. Washington High School. They were respectful of Mr. Jones, who turned out impeccably dressed in white shirt and tie and addressed the young men and women as Mr. or Miss.
SAN FRANCISCO—1972—5
He was so respected that the memory of him lasted in his students’ minds for years. In 1972, some twenty years later, I was on my way from Seattle to San Francisco, and the flight had stopped in Portland, Oregon. A young black man about my age took the empty seat next to me. Without introduction, he started to talk to me, opened his briefcase to show, to my dismay, that it was filled with tightly wrapped bills.
He smiled at my reaction and continued to talk as if he knew me. I responded nervously, knowing his type was not one to be standoffish with.
Landing in San Francisco, I put on the speed and, with a brief goodbye, walked swiftly ahead of him toward baggage claim. As I walked, a dark-suited man appeared on my left and seemed to be pacing me. Another suited man appeared on my right. Within seconds a man moved in front, slowing down a bit. I didn’t bother looking behind.
I was funneled through a doorway, down a stairway, through a corridor, and into an interrogation room underneath the airport. A detective was waiting near a large conference table. The men stood around as he asked about my “friend” on the plane. How well did I know him?
“Who’s your pal with the briefcase?”
“I don’t know him.”
“What’s your name?
“Booker T. Jones.”
He frowned. “No, what’s your name?”
Another detective stood close. “The man asked you a question—best you tell the truth.”
“Like I said, Booker T. Jones!” I said, breathing faster.
Taking my ID, the detective at the desk said, “You Booker T. Jones? You Mr. Jones’s son?”
“Yes, yes!” I answered.
“Get outta here, boy! Your father was my homeroom teacher at Booker Washington! No way you’re involved in this thing!”
The officers stepped aside, and I bounded up the steps and out of the airport very relieved! I don’t know if the money was real or who the guy was, but I’m sure he’s still in jail now.
MEMPHIS—1951—2
When I was a young boy, my dad and I were always physically close to one another—going places, playing ball, or listening to the radio. Both my parents were loving people, and our home was filled with warmth and happiness. I was protected, looked after, and cared for. When we weren’t working, we were having fun with cards or checkers. We relaxed together with long drives in the car. Dad was a huge baseball fan, and we listened to the Dodgers games on the front porch.
I also loved baseball. I played every day. My first glove, which I oiled and cleaned regularly, was my prized possession, save my B-flat clarinet. I slapped my fist into it to shape it up. I kept it wrapped in a curled position with a large rubber band to make it supple and easy to use. When it was ready, Dad threw a ball out to me in the yard. I caught it with my fielder’s glove. My pitcher’s mitt was my other most prized possession. As far as I knew, I was the only kid on our block to have one.
When we weren’t tossing the ball around, we would sit together on the porch and listen to every Dodgers game in the summertime. We didn’t speak, just paid close attention to every word from the announcer—it was a bonding experience. When Jackie Robinson hit a home run, we and the rest of the world erupted.
In the unbearable heat of midsummer, in his uniform of tennis shoes, shorts, T-shirt, and a baseball cap, my dad would take his position on the side porch, along with a large pitcher of iced lemonade, away from the sun. I was never far away, most usually sitting on his lap with his hands on both my knees, a position so comforting and serene to me I have never been able to replace it. I knew when to jump down by the pitch of the game…just in time to let him jump up for his holler, “Did you hear that, Leanie?” He had played baseball on a local black team in Holly Springs for years, and in the country baseball was more revered than church.
Of course, Leanie heard that. All of Memphis, the entire nation heard that. There was no professional football or soccer or hockey or basketball; there was only baseball, and besides the occasional boxing match, it was all that was necessary. Even when Arthur Ashe commanded professional tennis, baseball kept its place. Baseball. “Whoo, whoo!” you could hear Mama laughing in the kitchen, and next-door neighbor Mrs. Pritchard rolled her eyes from her chair, perched on the side of her porch where she could hear the goings-on in and around our house.
Daddy would holler, jump up and down, and run back and forth out into the street, and his glass of lemonade just sat, unattended, with frost from the ice dripping, on the edge of the porch. His noise drowned out the radio, and Mama and I assumed the celebration was because Jackie Robinson had hit one of his 137 home runs. We went to the screen door to watch. “Whoo! Whoo!” resonated up and down the street in a ritual that had repeated itself more times than I can name. When the Dodgers scored, everyone in my neighborhood for two streets on either side knew because my daddy hollered so loud. Other men in the neighborhood had their radios tuned in to the game and had the same reaction.
It’s baseball for breakfast, baseball for lunch, and baseball for dinner. I can’t count the times I broke Mrs. Humes’s back-bedroom window with a line drive meant to be a homer sailing across the roof of her house. But I had my loving dad, then my paper route, to pay for the broken glass. It happened so many times she stopped getting mad. In fact, Mrs. Humes began to enjoy letting us boys use her backyard for our games. It kept us off the street, and her nephew, Skipper, enjoyed being the center of attention. Even though he couldn’t hit a fence with a ball or bat, he was included in every game.
MEMPHIS—Fall 1953—4
There were less wonderful moments growing up too, and my father saved the day for me more times than I can remember, such as the time he ran off some thugs down on Lauderdale Street who had surrounded me to take my paper route money. Since it was early on my route, I was loaded down with two heavy cloth sacks of papers over both my shoulders. I couldn’t move my arms above my elbows—I couldn’t defend myself from boys from south of Lauderdale Street. I was bracing myself next to my bicycle when, out of nowhere, a white ’49 Ford screeched to a halt on the other side of the street. A small man jumped out angrily with his fist balled up…walking fast at the thugs. “How you makin’ it, boy?” Dad greeted me.
The thugs hesitated.
“Boy, I’ll beat the stew out of you!” my dad said to one of them.
They scurried like mice in all directions. He walked to his car, the engine still running, and pulled off. From then on, I was clear to throw papers on Lauderdale.
I was never so glad to see my dad, especially since I didn’t learn to fight back until high school, when one day I hit one of the worst thugs in Memphis. They called him Ba’ Brother, and he cornered me one night in the basement of our church. My dad was his math teacher and had given him an F. He was just kind of toying with me, and before he knew it, I landed a nice one right on his jaw. He looked at me in disbelief.
Ba’ Brother won the fight that followed, but after that, certain thugs became nice and even wanted to hang out with me. A big guy from South Memphis named Levi, who I had been afraid of, even started staying close and being friendly. Word got out that Booker T. hit Ba’ Brother.
MEMPHIS—Fall 1952—2
At a young age, I felt the need to be busy and self-sufficient, though I had no idea how to do that.
I spent more than a few evenings in the Urban League office where my mother worked, waitin
g for my dad to pick us up. In the hall was a rack where people passing through from other offices in the building would pick up a copy of the Memphis World, a local black weekly newspaper. The World was popular but not as much as the Tri-State Defender, a weekly paper for the black community.
When I was old enough, I stood in line outside of one of the press’s weekly meetings for its carriers and obtained an application for a route. I attended the meetings for months before a route opened up.
There was a two-week apprenticeship with the outgoing paperboy. It was a small route with only thirty-five customers. The only way to get there from my house was down tiny McEwen Street, then left on Mason Street—enemy territory—a gang-infested section one block away from South Fourth Street.
My mentor was a big, streetwise boy who was not intimidated by the gangs. But as soon as he stopped mentoring me, the harassment and attacks started, mainly on Fridays, which were collection days.
Time Is Tight Page 3