700 Sundays (3 page)

My dad was happiest there, I know it, because he got to produce these shows the way he wanted to. He didn’t just book existing bands, he would put them together. The guys would call in looking for a gig, and every weekend he experimented with the players, like a chemist, always looking for the perfect combination and the perfect sound. I used to love to answer the phone, not only because I thought someday somebody would call telling me they were going to take me to Hollywood, but I loved talking to the musicians. One of my favorites was Willie “The Lion” Smith. Willie was a very rare and charming man. He was a black Jewish man, who had also been a cantor in a synagogue at one time. He would call, and if I answered he would speak fluent Yiddish to me. I didn’t know any Yiddish, but I would nod, and say “Hmm” once in a while, just so Willie would think I was following the conversation. I’d say, “Do you want to talk to my dad?” Willie would say, “Vat Den Bubbeleh, I like talking vit you, but you don’t have any pockets.” (Meaning Dad was the one who could pay him.)

A couple of years ago,
The New York Times
was doing a story on my dad, and they asked me to talk to some of the surviving musicians. One of Dad’s regulars, Conrad Janis, who is still a great trombone player, told me that Dad was the “Branch Rickey” of jazz. And when I heard that, I felt so proud because it never occurred to me back then when I was growing up.

It meant my dad was one of the first producers to integrate bands, to play black players with white players. And oddly, that wasn’t happening a lot even in New York back in the late forties and fifties, when the Central Plaza was at its height. The players loved Dad because he would do this, and he loved them back. When he played them, he paid them the best he could, and when they died, he ran benefits for their families. They really were his other set of sons, and my brothers and I understood it, because we loved them too. If Dad made a buck, he gave them eighty-five cents. Which is probably why we had a gray-on-gray Plymouth Belvedere.

That night at the Plaza, I discovered my dad’s other secret life. We were waiting for the show to start and he says to me, “Billy, don’t you move. Don’t move. I’ve got to do something. I’ll be right back, and then we’ll go downstairs to Ratner’s and have cake. Don’t move.”

What he had to do was emcee the show. I didn’t know that he did this too. Suddenly, there he was, behind the microphone. He had the audience in the palm of his hand. He was really charming and witty, and you could see how much he loved presenting this music to the world, and how much the players loved that he was the guy doing it. It was a thrill for me to see my dad behind that microphone. When I used to host the Grammy Awards, I would think that somehow I was channeling him, because I was doing the same thing he did decades before but I was introducing the great musicians of my day.

It was on this night, my fifth birthday, that I performed for an audience for the very first time. I was in the band room before the show with all of these fantastic musicians, a few I knew from the house, guys my uncle described as having “such big souls” and great names too: Hot Lips Page, Pee Wee Russell, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Buster Bailey, Henry “Red” Allen and the great Roy Eldridge.

Roy was a fantastic trumpet player and he wasn’t very tall, so his nickname was “Little Jazz.” When he met me for the first time, he called me “Littlest Jazz.” Everybody else called me “Face.” That was my nickname given to me by Zutty Singleton and Willie “The Lion” Smith. They were, along with Tyree Glenn, my favorites. They called me Face because I could make their faces. I could imitate them and it was easy, because they were all such great characters. So, that night, somebody put me up on a sax case and that meant I had a stage.

“Hey, listen up, you got to hear what the Face can do. Face, do the joke about Zutty. Zutty, get over here. This is about you. Hit it, Face.”

I imitated his voice and his mannerisms, eyes wide open, filled with joy, the voice, Satchmo-like, raspy from the cigarettes and the booze, a real nightclub voice, coming out of my five-year-old mouth . . .

“Zutty goes in to get his hair cut. He says to the haircut cat, ‘How much is a haircut?’

“He says, ‘Well, you know, a haircut is two dollars.’

“He says, ‘Wow, two dollars. That’s a little heavy for a haircut. How much is a shave?’

“‘Well, you know, Zutty, a shave is just a dollar.’

“And Zutty said . . .” as I pointed to my hair, “‘Okay, baby. Shave it.’”

Everyone cracked up. All of them coming over to give me some skin.

“Face, My Man the Face . . . Can you dig that? I knew that you could.”

Then they ran up onstage and played. I was in heaven. The music went right into my soul. I was only five years old, but I understood my uncle and my dad just like that. I just fell in love with Dixieland jazz. For me it’s easy because I think it’s the happiest music in the world. And when it’s good and it’s really cooking, to me, Dixieland is like the end of the Kentucky Derby . . .

“And down the stretch they come. The trombone sets the pace, cornet takes the lead, clarinet comes up on the outside. Then the drummer goes to the whip, and it’s a photo finish as they all cross the line together.”

And I couldn’t help myself. I ran up onstage and I started tap-dancing with them. Mom had been teaching me to tap-dance, but I only could get the right leg to work. The left just stood there watching the right one, as I danced to “Muskrat Ramble” spinning around only using my right leg, looking like a dog chasing its tail. The guys on the bandstand looked over and smiled, like I did this all the time, and the audience went wild. I loved every second. I think of that feeling every time I’m onstage. It’s like my dad said, “Once you hear the music, you can’t stand still.”

Of all the great people who were recording for my uncle and being produced in concert by my dad, Billie Holiday was by far the greatest. I think there’s only two artists, Sinatra and Billie, that when you hear one note, you know you’re in the presence of a genius.

And I was so blessed to be in her presence when I was a little boy because of her relationship with my uncle and my dad. She used to call me Mister Billy and I would call her Miss Billie. She had done most of her great recordings on Commodore, and later followed Milt to Decca with songs like “Embraceable You,” “Fine and Mellow,” which he wrote with her, “Sunny Side of the Street,” “As Time Goes By,” “I Cover the Waterfront,” “Good Morning Heartache” and “Lover Man.”

But her most important song was one called “Strange Fruit,” which was very controversial because it was about lynching black people down South. Nobody wanted to hear this song. When Billie introduced the song at the Café Society, nobody wanted to be reminded about what was happening in our America of 1939, and nobody would record “Strange Fruit.” Even her great producer at Columbia Records, John Hammond, wouldn’t touch it. She was frustrated, so she turned to her friend, my Uncle Milt. And he told me years later she sang it for him the first time a cappella. Can you imagine that? That aching voice and that aching lyric. “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root, black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees . . .” He told me, “Billy, I cried like a baby. And I said to her, ‘Lady Day, listen, I don’t care if we sell one record. People must hear this song. They’ve got to hear this song. We’ve got to get this made somehow.’”

So they worked out a special arrangement with Vocalian Records, and Billie Holiday, a great black jazz artist, and my Jewish Uncle Milt together recorded “Strange Fruit” a song about lynching down South, the song that
Time
magazine in December of 1999 would call the song of the century. I’m so proud to say it’s on the family label, the Commodore.

One night, my dad was producing one of Billie Holiday’s concerts. It was at a place called the Stuyvesant Casino, Second Avenue around 9th Street. We all got there in the afternoon to watch her rehearse and to hang out with Dad of course, and Miss Billie said something to me that totally changed my life.

“Hey, Mister Billy, let’s go to the movies.”

So Billie Holiday and I walked down Second Avenue together, past Ratner’s, past the Central Plaza, to a little movie theater next door, called perfectly enough, the Loews Commodore. It later became known as the Fillmore East. And there sitting on Billie Holiday’s lap, I saw my first movie. And the movie was
Shane
: Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur and JACK PALANCE! and this kid who I looked like, Brandon De Wilde. He was an extraordinary eight-year-old actor. I couldn’t believe it. It proved to me that even if you’re four foot six, you could be forty feet tall.

At the end of the movie, Shane rides off into the sunset. The kid runs after him and he screams, “Shane . . . come back.”

And Miss Billie whispered in my ear, “He ain’t never coming back.”

I sat there, the projection light flickering behind me, the music swelling as well as the tears in my eyes, and I looked at that kid on the big screen, and I wanted it to be me. And you know something? It was a Sunday.

CHAPTER 4

M
y grandmother once asked Louis Armstrong at a Seder, “Louis, have you tried just coughing it up?”

Louis laughed so hard, throwing his head back, pounding the table . . .

Grandma Susie was hilarious. She was my mom’s mother, a big woman weighing around three hundred pounds. (At one time she was worth three electoral votes.) She was the One-Liner Queen. She had a great sense of humor. It made me think funny just being around her, and she could deal with any situation. One time, I walked in on her and she was naked. I mean, I loved her, but no one should ever have to see that. And she handled it better than I did.

“Oh, I bet you never thought you’d see this!” And she laughed and shut the door.

Me? Three years in therapy.

Her husband, my Grandpa Julius, was different. Julius was one of the hot people. He was one of the cranky people, and I think he was edgy because he was a little hard of hearing. He was always buying these new hearing aids from his connections with the store. Once a week he would try out a new hearing aid. The reason he tried out so many was every time he’d put a new one in, my brothers and I would do this to him:

“So, Gran—a how’s —e ne- hear— -d? - -ope it -orks. Be—-se it -ooks -eally -ood. -’s nice and —all.”

“What?”

“Is it —anese? -ow come —e Jap—ese -ake them so —all? Is— -ecause th- Japan— ar- so -s-m -all?”

“What?”

“Re—-ber—old on- —had -o —ear in —our —ocke-? Testing -, 2, -.”

He’d pull the hearing aid out of his ear, and throw it across the room.

“God damn it. Another piece of shit. This is costing me a fortune.”

I used to love when he would come over to stay with us. This was not a big house. The walls were paper-thin in this house. Oh, I never needed an alarm clock. I was never late for school. Six
A.M.
you’d hear him every morning, like a Jewish rooster, waking up the neighborhood. Coughing and hacking, wheezing, muttering to himself, “I can’t get up the mucus.” This was not just a cough, it was a plea for help.

Once he was done coughing, the farting would start. A true Whitman Sampler, every kind you can imagine, and some you can’t possibly think could come from a human being. The problem was, he couldn’t hear it. And when you’re a little kid, that noise is the funniest thing you ever heard in your life, and he would keep talking, as he tooted away.

“Billy, you know what I think (fart) I’m going to do (fart). I want to go (fart, cough, fart) . . . I want to go (fart) . . . I want to go up on the boardwalk. I want to go (fart) . . . I want to take a walk. Why are you walking so far behind me? Come, I want to be back around four because (fart) Grandma’s making cabbage soup. I don’t want to miss that. Phew!”

Then he would wave his hand around like it was low tide, and of course, he would blame me: “Billy, what crawled up your ass and died? Do you feel all right?”

I used to love to have breakfast with him because that was like going to a science fair. He’d have a lot of plates on the table, he liked a lot of different tastes. He’d have a plate of just pieces of herring, a lot of herring, so for years, I thought he had a pet seal. There was a soup bowl of just soft-boiled eggs and a plate of toast, and then there was the ritual of the making of the glass of tea. This was something to watch. First, he would take the sugar cube, and put it between his teeth. Then he’d put his teeth in his mouth. He would then take the glass of tea, and he’d sip it through the sugar cube. When he was done, he’d walk over to the window, toot, toot, toot, take out the sugar cube and leave it on the windowsill to dry. He was eighty-nine when he died and he’d used two sugar cubes.

Breakfast with him was the greatest because we’d have these wonderful talks. I’d be sitting there, nine years old, waiting for him. He’d come down the hallway every morning in his grandpa uniform, his tank top and his boxer shorts with just a hint of his balls peeking out of the right side. Just enough to terrify you. I’d scream, “Joel! Grandpa’s got an octopus in his shorts!” Some days, gravity would be a little stronger than other days, so from behind he looked like a Great Dane walking away.

“Billy, Billy (fart, fart, fart).” I couldn’t help it, I started to giggle. “What’s so funny? What are you laughing at? What, do you wake up laughing (fart, fart, fart)?” I was laughing so hard my ribs hurt. “Oy, I want your life.

“Billy, you’re nine years old. What are you going to do with your life? You should know.

“When I was your age . . . I was nine years old. And I wasn’t living in America. I was living in Austria in the village of (two coughs and a fart), and my parents wanted me to have a better goddamn future, so they put me on the boat alone at nine years old. The SS
Rotterdam
. I came to America. I landed at Ellis Island August third, l903. On August the fourth, I got a job. Nine years old, I got myself a pushcart, and I would push it up the street. Which is how it got its name, pushcart. So I said to myself after a month of doing this, ‘Schmuck, put something in it. You’re pushing an empty cart!’ That’s why business was off. I didn’t have a plan! So, I bought a piece of cloth for three cents, and I split it in half. I sold them both for ten and made a goddamn profit, kid. So, now I had a plan. I would buy cloth. I would split it, and I would sell it for a profit. And I would save my money, kid. Because, Billy, I had a plan.

“After a while, I bought my first store, a little dress shop, Fulton Street in Brooklyn, proudest day of my goddamn life. Then I wanted the store next to me so I could expand. So I worked harder. Every day, forty-eight hours a day, saving my money. I ate wood. I drank sand. And I bought the store next to me, knocked the wall down, now it was bigger yet. Then I bought the next store, bigger yet, bigger yet. I had the whole goddamn block. Saved my money because I had a plan, kid. I reached back across the Atlantic, got my family, and we were reunited here in America. Then I turned ten.”

I believed every word. Here was a self-made kid. Heroes don’t have to be public figures of any kind. Heroes are right in your family. There’s amazing stories in all of our families, you just have to ask, “And then what happened?”

And heroes don’t have to look like Derek Jeter. They can also have way too much makeup on and cotton candy hair, like my Aunt Sheila. She’s heroic to me because she’s a tough lady. Some people say she’s got a big mouth, and she does, but I admire that about her, because she speaks the truth, and sometimes people don’t like to hear the truth, especially in families.

She lives in Boca Raton, Florida. What a shock! It’s a perfect place for her to live because in Spanish, Boca Raton means “mouth of the rat.” She’s been down there for years, and never once has she had a tan, because she’s always inside, talking on the phone. Recently, she went through something that was very tough to get through, and she came through it with flying colors . . .

“Hello. Hello, Reba. How are you, dear? I got your message, we were at the movies, we went to see
The Passion of . . . you know who. Can I tell you something, I was outraged . . . No, the movie was fine. Popcorn was seven dollars! Leonard said, ‘Watch . . . this they’ll blame on us too.’ Hold on just for a second.

“Leonard, get the car . . . Leonard, get the car . . . Get the goddamn car . . . Just pull it up, please. I’m tired . . .

“Hello? . . . No. He and I are in the middle of a thing . . . Because he lied to me . . . He bought something off one of those fakakta TV ads . . . He bought a videotape for nineteen dollars and he kept it from me. He didn’t want me to see it, but I found it when I was looking for loose change. It’s the one with the college girls that come down here on spring break and show their knockers . . . So I didn’t know that he had it. He would disappear into the TV room with this knocker tape, close the door, and for hours at a—hold on just a second . . . LEONARD! Maybe it’s not tennis elbow!

“So, Reba, I stormed in there. I said, nineteen dollars for knockers? Nineteen dollars for knockers? So, I hiked up my blouse and let them out. ‘Look, these you can have for free!’ He said, ‘No, thank you,’ and ordered Volume 2.

“LEONARD! Get the goddamn car, please . . . Pull it up . . . You’re on my list, mister.

“Hello . . . ? Hello? Reba . . . ? Reba, Reba . . . ? Hello? Hello . . . ? Oh, there you are. I was afraid I lost you. I walked over to a place in the hallway where the phone never works, right in front of a picture of Leonard’s mother.

“Good. He’s gone. Now listen. I’m going to tell you a story, Reba, but promise me that you won’t be mad. Just promise me. Okay. Julie got married . . . You said you weren’t going to be mad. Don’t make a promise if you can’t keep it. What is that . . . ? Look, I know she’s your goddaughter, but she’s my only daughter, so let me just tell you the goddamn story! Let me just tell you the goddamn story! And I promise you won’t be mad. Okay?

“You know how she always had boyfriends but it never worked out because she was so picky? She always found something wrong with them. Remember . . . ?

“Okay. Five years ago she comes down here, and she says, ‘Sit down . . .’ So we do. ‘I’m gay.’ . . . No, not me. Her. Is this how you follow the story . . . ? Yes, your goddaughter is gay. I was floored. So I said, ‘Really? Are you sure? Maybe it’s a phase. You know, maybe it’s like the Macarena. It will come and it will go and nobody will care.’

“So she said to me, ‘No, Ma. No. I think I’ve always been this way. Yeah, since I’m a little girl.’ I said, ‘What?’ She said, ‘Yeah. I just didn’t know what it was.’ She said, ‘Mom, you know what? I’m out.’ And I said, ‘Of what, dear?’ ‘Out of lies, out of secrets,’ she says. ‘No more pressure, no more hiding. This is who I am. And I feel great about it, and I want it to be okay with you and Daddy . . .’

“What are you going to do? It’s your daughter. She’s in pain. So I said, ‘Listen, darling. I don’t care what you are. I love you even more now that you were able to tell us. You’re my daughter, and I’ll love you forever.’

“I thought I handled it great. Schmendrik didn’t handle it well. No. Leonard gets upset when he hears the news. He doesn’t say anything, and his face fills up with blood. You know, his eyes bulge out of his head, his face gets all red, he looks like a cherry tomato . . . Cherry tomato? The little hard ones . . . Remember that salad bar in Aventura we used to go to, they had those little cherry tomatoes that would explode in your mouth, like some nasty little surprise . . . ? Or better yet, he looks like that baboon’s tuchis at Parrot Jungle. Remember when we went there?

“And when I see his face look like that, there’s only one thing I can say to him. ‘Leonard, get the car.’ And we took a drive up and down Alligator Alley just talking and talking. All the time he kept saying to me, ‘Sheila, how could she do this to me? How could she do this to me?’

“I said, ‘Leonard, she didn’t do anything to you. Don’t make this about you. Why are you making this about you?’

“He said, ‘You don’t understand. When Julie was a little girl, we used to play wedding together. And I would say to her, Julie, at your wedding, you and I are going to dance the first dance together to “Sunrise, Sunset” and now— Yeah . . . From
Fiddler
. Is there another one . . . ? No, Reba. ‘Sunrise, Sunset’ from
The
Wiz . . .

“He said, ‘Now it’s not going to happen. She’s our only daughter, and now she’s a gay person, and I don’t even want to talk to her.’

“I said, ‘Listen to yourself, don’t you ever say that.’ I was so mad, but inside, Reba, I was very concerned too. Because let’s face it. She is our only daughter, and Leonard and I are the only barren grandparents in our cul-de-sac.

“It was very tense between the two of them for years and years and years after that . . . Reba, I’m telling you now.

“Last month, Julie calls from San Francisco. She said, ‘Folks, sit down. I’ve got to tell you something.’

“‘Okay. What is it now?’ I said to myself.

“She said, ‘I’m getting married.’

“I said, ‘To a wo— who?’

“‘Olivia,’ she tells me.

“I said, ‘Olivia? I thought she was your housekeeper . . .’ Because every time I’d call, Olivia would answer. I figured if you’re calling and a woman’s there, she’s cleaning.

“And she says, ‘No. She’s my partner . . .’ That’s what they call them, Reba. They call them ‘partners.’ No, no, no. Tonto was a faithful companion.

“She says, ‘You’ve got to come. It’s on Valentine’s Day. It won’t be the same if you and Dad are not there.’

“I said, ‘Of course we’ll be there. Daddy and I will be there. Give my love to Olivia. We love you both.’

“I thought I handled it great. Schmendrik didn’t handle it well. No. Leonard gets all upset. He starts with the yelling . . . ‘I’m not going.’

“I said, ‘You’re going.’

“He said, ‘I’m not going.’

“I said, ‘You’re going!’

“‘I’m not going.’

“I said, ‘You’re going.’ So I made him a Judy Garland, nine Seconals, half a quart of Vodka, stuffed him in the pet carrier and loaded him on the plane.