It would be too simple to say it was “different from upstairs.” I expected the lighter, brighter atmosphere and a hum of conversation between diners. What I could never have anticipated were the two ladies in charge. They ran the line of diners along the rails with personal, down-home good humor and an efficiency that would have stood them in good stead with Chrysler or Boeing. They knew who I was and what I’d just been through and added their own “special” iced tea for “loosenin’ up jaws that been smilin’ too much.” I found a small table for one between the main section of tables and the food line, feeling better and more comfortable by the second. Those ladies had no idea that they had just saved Bob Brock a tremendous cussin’ out.
That was when I saw one of my real heroes. The owner and publisher and one-time sole representative of soul magazines, Mr. John Johnson. Here, for me, was a real Chicago celebrity.
As a child, when I’d visited my mother on Sixty-eighth Street between Wabash and Michigan, the neighborhood had been changing into a magnet for the upwardly mobile and quite a few celebrities and famous faces; I met Cubs pitcher “Sad” Sam Jones and Olympic hero Jesse Owens, whose feats in Berlin over those two weeks in 1936 were tremendous, winning four gold medals in the House of Racism in front of a hundred thousand fanatic followers of a religion of hate who believed him less than human. Haters. That was pressure. And I applaud every reference to his courage and dedication to athletic excellence.
But my admiration for Mr. John Johnson was special and personal. Not just because I got to see a few lines I might have said paraphrased as “the quote of the week” from time to time. What I really appreciated was that when Mr. Johnson was probably still working for enough profit to reclaim his mother’s furniture, he wrote about my father.
Looking at John Johnson, I had that autograph impulse again. The first time I was on both radio and television I’d had it, too. On Ossie and Ruby’s radio show with John Killens and John Williams I’d wanted autographs. On Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane I’d had a seat next to Elvin Jones and I’d wanted to say “sign this, sir” instead of “nice to meet you.” In the meantime, I’d met Quincy Jones, Miles Davis, Roland Kirk, Chico Hamilton, Gato Barbieri. Man, I’m telling you, I could have had a great collection. But I had tried to get over it.
Mr. Johnson strode full of energy through the cafeteria in his own business, tossing small waves and hellos as he passed. He included me in the waves and when I stood he took a second look and we stepped toward each other.
“How are you, son? Scott-Heron isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I heard you were having a look around.”
“Yes, sir, it’s very impressive. I just came through to see if I could get a write-up in Ebony like the one you did for my father.”
That comment brought the publisher’s eyes up sharply as he took a closer look at me.
“Your father?”
“Yes, sir,” I cut in trying to joke. “Named after me and featured in a nice article you wrote in ’47 or ’48.”
“Scott-Heron,” he said, trying to place the name.
“No, sir, his name was Gil Heron, not Scott-Heron. He played soccer for a team here and you wrote him up.”
“We should go and take a look,” he said, looking at my tray.
“Oh, I’m finished. I couldn’t eat another bite.”
It was a good time to move along. I could sense other folks feeling as though they might approach and I understood why he was setting such a brisk pace across the cafeteria. At the same pace we moved along toward what Mr. Johnson called “the morgue.”
It wasn’t quite that bad. That’s one of those publishing words they used to refer to where the history of the publication was kept. In a subbasement of the building were two huge rooms. One was stacked with file cabinets full of microfilm and the second was even cooler, with actual copies of the magazine lying across rollers in perfect condition.
It didn’t take him long to find the right light switch and come up with index information that led us to the right aisle and the right roll, and I saw a cover I recognized too late to say anything except, “Yep, that’s it.”
Whatever strategy might have been used to minimize my curiosity about Gil during my childhood, it had been effective. Any question I asked about him was answered immediately, honestly, and without negative connotations, but only that. There was nothing further. As a result I knew little beyond that old three-page story in Ebony. Otherwise, I saw only the same half-dozen photos in the family album. There was no real incentive to maintain concern about him, no more than my curiosity about my grandfather or my grandmother’s parents. He just wasn’t important.
So imagine my surprise when I arrived at a place where he was important. It was the beginning of a European tour that would take in seven countries over a three-week span. The dates began and ended in England, but in between the opening shows in northern England and the closing five days in London’s Jazz Café, we had three days in Scotland and then shows in Belgium, Austria, West Germany, Switzerland, and Paris. For the most part we played medium-sized clubs or midsized concert halls.
We arrived in England on a Tuesday and were picked up and taken to the hotel. While the band and crew got organized for sound check, I checked my phone messages and ran up an exorbitant phone bill. (Hotels in the United States charged by the sentence back then; in Europe it was by the word. Sometimes I made calls over there and was totally speechless. At other times I should have been.) Two of the messages were from a guy who was promoting the shows in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, Scotland. His calling me, twice, wasn’t real good news. I called him.
“I need some help,” he said. “Edinburgh’s okay, but the other two are weak. I need you to do some radio and press. I need you to do two phone interviews tomorrow for weekend editions, and do you have any objection to live TV? I’ve got to let them know today.”
“Any time after noon would be good for the phoners,” I said. “As for the live TV I can do it, but if they want a song before dark I’ll play and you can sing—my voice is on a vampire schedule, no appearances during the day.”
“No, no singing, but it’s a good show for promotion. And we’ll probably need a lot of things during the day Friday, okay?”
I made a train reservation for an early whistle out of Manchester for Glasgow on Friday morning. The band could hold on for the minibus while I got up with the sun and did the rails north.
When I arrived in Glasgow, the promoter met me smiling and styling, looking good in a sports jacket and feeling good for a reason.
“All three shows are sold out. All the press is done. You just need to be there today for Glasgow at Five. And be ready to talk about football.”
He meant soccer, the world’s football. But why the hell would I need to talk about it? What would I say? Do Cole Porter: “I get no kick . . .”
He handed me a newspaper. On a page he had marked was a full-page story on me, my music, and my albums. And there was a picture of a young man in uniform kicking a soccer ball. “The Black Arrow,” said the caption. It was a picture of my father.
The most intriguing question on Glasgow at Five on the evening of my appearance could have been “how could the son of the Black Arrow not know what a bull’s-eye is?” But because the promoter had told me to be prepared to talk about football, I was prepared. A little bit. I knew Pelé wasn’t spelled P-A-Y-L-A-Y. Still, the more detailed the questions on football they asked me, the more likely it would be that their television audience would call in for a DNA test. Huge questions would be raised about my right to be an Arrowhead.
It was too bad I wasn’t a big star who could tell these folks what questions to ask. Too bad this wasn’t the old days of television when the phony quiz shows “prepared” their contestants by giving them the answers in advance. I would have been willing to pause dramatically while some “thinking” music played. And then, just when it looked as though I was stumped, I would bring on my big hundred-
watt “aha!” before I gave the right answer.
The promoter had told me the combination of elements on this show would be a Scottish orgasm: there would be talk about soccer, nostalgia about soccer, and living evidence that they had never allowed their racism to interfere with soccer. It was just like they’d been telling all the other Europeans: “You can carry that racism thing too far, you know.” Too far would be if it interfered with soccer, particularly anything that delayed or brought any controversy to how the Scots maintained their interest in the most intense rivalry in sports, Celtic (Glasgow’s Catholic team) versus Rangers (the team favored by the city’s Protestants).
I listened in from backstage to the charming and amusing recollections of the team captain of Celtic during my father’s tenure. He had been invited in for the show. I don’t mean to give you the impression that I was nervous. Because I wasn’t. And to prove to all of Scotland that they couldn’t unnerve me, on my way to the TV station I had stopped by a sporting goods store. You don’t have to be prepared to understand the rivalry between Celtic and Rangers, but maybe you have to be a little something to come onstage wearing a Celtic scarf and a Rangers hat. I’d bought them at the sporting goods store. I pretended not to notice the director and cameraman collapsing with laughter.
27
I met Lurma Rackley at a club in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., when a friend introduced us. I was enchanted, impressed, captivated, fascinated, all within the first fifteen minutes. She was kind, beautiful, warm, intelligent, had a lovely smile and a pleasant sense of humor, and she gave you her total attention when she spoke to you. And she got all of my corny jokes.
When we’d met I was still teaching at Federal City College and living in northern Virginia; she was a journalist living on Georgia Avenue. We’d begun to see each other regularly. My music career was doing quite well, and I was traveling a lot with the Midnight Band, but by 1976 Lurma and I were a recognized pair.
We both believed she could not have children, even though I knew she loved children and had wanted a family. But she must have discovered she was pregnant in late August or early September of 1976—without ever telling me—and suddenly I could not get in touch with her and didn’t know why. I was confused at first, and then upset and a little angry. She could have told me if she had someone else. I decided she would have to get in touch with me.
Washington was a major city, but really a small town with a thick grapevine. In mid-1977 I heard that Lurma had given birth to a son. At first I dismissed the idea as absurd. Then, on accepting it, I concluded that she indeed must have found someone else. And I gave up waiting for a call or explanation or reprieve.
I met Brenda Sykes in November of 1977. She came to a show of ours at the Roxy, with her former UCLA classmate Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem and I went all the way back to his days at the Dyckman Houses, where I worked as a summer gardener. We had also seen each other around various basketball courts in the summer when folks were calling me “Little Lou.” I’d had a decent game as a two guard, but two years playing forward at Fieldston, at six-foot-three, did my ballhandling and jump shot no good. Kareem had told Brenda we were friends, and she had asked to go with him to a show next time we played in L.A.
We were doing a run of shows at the Roxy, and had two that Thursday night. Kareem brought Brenda backstage between them. Naturally I recognized her. Aside from having seen her in a couple of movies, her picture regularly appeared in Black magazines. She honestly looked better in person. She had beautiful eyes and a lovely smile, and seemed sincere when she said she had enjoyed the show.
They had to leave because Kareem was in training, but I made a point of inviting Brenda back when she could see both shows. Later in the week, she did come back.
In December 1978 we decided to get married, and when we were planning the wedding we had to call Kareem up about the date, to be sure he was free. It had to be a day when he had no game, he was in town, and he had time, because I wanted him to be my best man.
Not long after Brenda and I were married, we decided to have a child, and Gia, our daughter, was a couple of months old when Lurma came by my house on Martha’s Road in Alexandria with Rumal. I had never seen the boy, but I didn’t need DNA confirmation to know he was my son. He looked exactly like pictures I’d seen of myself on the front porch in Jackson at his age.
Lurma had a request.
“I came to ask you not to tell anyone that he’s your son,” she said, and the expression on her face was so serious that I never hesitated to give my word.
I was so stunned at the sight of this pint-sized me running around on stubby little legs in front of my house that I don’t really remember if anything else was said.
And then they were gone, turning left and around the circle that was Martha’s Road. The whole event might have lasted three or four minutes, but I stood out front there for a long time reviewing what I had seen, what she had said, and what I had promised.
Over the following years I fell into a pattern, even after I left Brenda and Gia on Martha’s Road and moved into my own studio apartment. When I was approached and the subject of a son in Virginia was broached, I laughed it off as though the question was a joke, nothing serious, nothing real, nothing I ever gave a legitimate response to.
I never mentioned Rumal to anyone. I never talked about him with Brenda. My mother remained a close spirit despite living in New York while I bounced around D.C. and Virginia and eventually headed west, but I never even got close to a discussion with her about her grandson.
I rarely went a long time without wondering how Lurma was doing and how my mini-me was coming along, but it would be many years before I found out.
28
One thing Clive Davis pounded into my head from our first meeting at Arista was that any act that wanted to get out of nickel-and-dime clubs and into major concert halls needed to have an AM radio hit, a single, a top-ten single that made the music directors and radio disc jockeys throw your vinyl on the turntable every two hours or so. A song like “The Bottle” or “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
In 1978 we got that kind of play with “Angel Dust.” And because of that tune we found ourselves featured as the second act on a three-act R&B get-together with Lakeside and Rose Royce at the Centroplex in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The Centroplex was located near the campus of Louisiana State University. The huge, sprawling institution was the size of a small city and practically guaranteed a sellout for major concert acts.
At about 4 p.m. that afternoon we sauntered into the near-empty auditorium and made our way to the dressing rooms. That is, all except Keg Leg, whom we left with the house “bumpers,” the guys who were there to lift equipment onto the twelve-foot-high stage on a hydraulic lift.
I never had officially determined the exact spelling for the name I’d given the head of my road crew. I suppose it was two words—Keg Leg—rather than Kegleg. It might have become moot after everyone, including his mother and his wife, cut it down to Keg. Whatever the spelling, he was my man.
One of my unofficial titles with the Midnight Band might have been Dispenser of Nicknames. It was a labor of love, something I did automatically at times, primarily for the humor. It was a habit I’d picked up at Lincoln, where almost everyone was known by a nickname, so much so that when the person’s real name was needed a lot of folks drew a blank. As a freshman, when I’d run for class president and the names of those elected were posted, several upperclassmen wondered what happened to Spiderman when they read that Gil Heron had been elected. On my floor in the dormitory I had a Hawk, a Taboo, a Butterball, and a Bird, and I had established a number of handles for members of the Midnight Band as well. Barnett Williams was the Doctor, Charlie Saunders was Cosmic Charlie, and Brian Jackson was Stickman; along with Keg Leg those were my most successful as they extended beyond their associations with the group.
At the Centroplex that afternoon, I forget what occupied my thoughts for that first hour or so, but
I do remember looking up and seeing Keg making his way toward me.
“Boss,” he whispered in his own hoarse way, “how bad do we need this gig?”
It was so direct and off the wall that I didn’t speak right away.
I am not easy to surprise. I admit that I am no Uncle Buddy with a nod and a polite “thank you” with a bee stinger in my eye, but I am not one to give you a frozen-faced grimace and silent scream if the unexpected shows up either. I had seen one of our percussionists come out of a darkened bathroom after starting to brush his teeth with Preparation H. I had seen the expression on a D.C. executive’s face after he mistook a solid piece of Colombian cocaine for a throat lozenge and popped it into his mouth. In fact, speaking of cocaine, I had been in a living room in Southeast D.C. when a brother in too much of a hurry tried to pour a half ounce of powder through a wet strainer.
Keg Leg, with his barrel-shape body set solidly on legs that were as sturdy looking as rolling logs, constantly left me with a smile or a head shaking with disbelief. He was one of the most definite Aries I had ever met, but I am positive that the spontaneous way he responded to circumstances had never been predetermined by the proclivities of his astrological placement. The things he said and the moves he made automatically prepared me, but I was not ready for “How bad do we need this gig?”
“Well, uh, we need ’em all,” I managed quietly. “But not if it’s a situation we can’t handle,” I continued vaguely.
“Thank you, boss.”
Whatever response he was looking for must have been hidden in what I had answered. Because without further syllables he turned his hat around backward and headed back out the door with all of us trailing in a ragged line behind him.
His destination was definite and direct. Striding with as much speed as his short legs would manage, he left the dressing room and headed straight down the center aisle toward the stage. Standing in the center of the stage, directing the four-man Rose Royce road crew, was one of the largest brothers I had ever seen outside of a wrestling ring. He was a good half a foot over six feet, and had left three hundred and fifty pounds far behind.
The Last Holiday Page 17
