Stewart Levine and me with singer Minnie Ripperton, who was known for her angelic five-octave vocal range, in the early 1970s at Wally Heider Recording Studios in Hollywood. Minnie died of breast cancer in 1979. Photo by Jim Marshall.
The Union of South Africa—Ndugu Chancler on drums, Caiphus Semenya on saxophone, and Jonas Gwangwa on trombone—performing at Lincoln Center, New York City, in 1970. Photos courtesy of the author
Jonas, Caiphus, and I take a break after a gruelling performance in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Photos courtesy of the author.
PART II
The World
7
AFTER LANDING IN LONDON, I took a bus to Victoria Station to meet my friend Sonny Pillay, struck all the while by the uniformity of the architecture. It became immediately clear why the little box houses in the townships in South Africa were all arranged in endless, identical rows—the British had simply transposed their unimaginative town-planning to South Africa. The view from the bus was miles and miles of identical semi-detached homes that made me feel like the same street was repeating itself, as in a cartoon, even though the bus was moving at fifty miles an hour. It was neat and orderly, but dizzyingly boring.
Sonny was waiting with Woodrow Lekhela, the former classmate at St. Peter’s who had taught me to smoke cigarettes so I could sing bass; his father was now teaching high school in London. The three of us were young and newly free, buzzing with excitement at our sudden new lives—we were joking and riffing at the tops of our lungs as we rode the underground train back to Sonny’s place in Hampstead, alarming and appalling the stiff commuters hiding behind their morning newspapers. They just made us laugh louder.
Sonny had a tastefully furnished ground-floor flat in Hampstead Heath—I could see his singing career was going well. But what fascinated me most was Sonny’s television set. I had never seen television before; Verwoerd had banned it in South Africa because he considered it a source of dangerous information. Later that summer we all watched the Olympic Games from Rome. Sonny and I sat drinking whisky, cheering Tennessee State University’s “Tigerbelle” Wilma Rudolph win her three gold medals; we jumped and screamed during the marathon as Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila, the skinny barefoot policeman, became the first African to win a gold medal in Olympic history; we were dazzled by an eighteen-year-old American boxer named Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., who won the light-heavyweight gold medal.
We spent that first evening drinking and reminiscing about African Jazz and Variety, St. Peter’s, Sharpeville, Mandela, Sobukwe, Verwoerd, the Spoilers, the Young Americans and Msomi gangs, the BMSC, Dorkay House, international politicians, the girls back home with their gigantic butts, and everything else pertaining to South Africa. Sonny and Woodrow told me about the anti-apartheid protests outside the South African embassy in Trafalgar Square, and the fiery speeches by Trevor Huddleston and other radical activists who led the huge gatherings.
Later we went to a nearby Indian restaurant where we had dinner and drank more whisky. I wouldn’t leave my passport behind, and every time I saw an English policeman, I reached for my back pocket the same way a gunslinger reaches for his pistol in a western film. My friends laughed at me and tried to assure me that in England the police were there to protect and not harass me, something that took me a very long time to get used to. Being able to walk around freely, enter any establishment, not worry about curfew, socialize with anybody—all this was new to me. The apartheid laws had become etched into my subconscious. I lived with a private fear of uniforms. Even now, I react whenever I see a policeman; I have to remind myself constantly that I am a liberated human being, more than forty years after I first left South Africa.
Back at the flat, we carried on celebrating. By two in the morning we were unaware of how loud our conversation had gotten, but we must have been screaming at the top of our lungs. Just before dawn, we finally passed out after Sonny went through a painful session of vomiting all the drink and food he had consumed. Later that morning the landlady came and gave Sonny a week’s notice to vacate the apartment because of the noise we had made the previous night.
During that first week, I went to greet Huddleston in Holland Park, his church’s headquarters. As usual, he was preoccupied with organizing anti-apartheid strategies, but gave me a hearty welcome. He pointed out that Yehudi Menuhin and Johnny Dankworth, to help me get out of South Africa, had only arranged for the letter from the Guildhall School of Music that had enabled my exit—to enroll, I would have to pass the entrance examinations. In the meantime, he told me to call Dankworth, who was keen to meet me.
The following night, I went to Ronnie Scott’s nightclub in Soho to see Johnny Dankworth and his band. I was unimpressed with the musicianship in England; my heart was already pushing to go to New York where the real giants of jazz reigned. Dankworth was over the moon that I had made it out of South Africa. We met again the following evening outside the Savoy Hotel to see Sammy Davis’s show at the Palladium. Davis did a two-and-a-half-hour show, singing, dancing, and telling jokes, clowning, doing impersonations, and sweating like a long-distance runner. His performance was stunning. Dankworth introduced me to the great entertainer at the backstage party, and Sammy encouraged me to study music in New York. He said he would be looking out for me when I came to America, and that Miriam knew where to get in touch with him. After Dankworth dropped me off at Sonny’s flat, I never saw Johnny again. This was no fault of his. I just had America on my mind.
Early the next morning Sonny and I packed our few belongings into an English cab and moved to a two-room flat he had found on Glenloch Road in Belsize Park. I felt immediately uncomfortable with the building because at the entrance there was a sign that read SHHHH, NO NOISE AFTER 9 P.M. At the foot of the stairs were two more signs, one saying PLEASE WALK QUIETLY UP AND DOWN THE STAIRS. The other one said NO VISITORS AFTER 9 P.M. Inside our door was another one: NO BATHING AFTER 9 P.M. We were not too happy living in this flat. From time to time Sonny would go up to Newcastle for the taping of a variety show he sang in. One day he came back from the show with three beautiful blonde dancers. They stayed until five in the morning, drinking quietly with us. We spoke in whispers after nine, but the next morning the landlady came to give us a stern warning that if we had visitors all night again and stayed up drinking with them, we would be evicted. This time we decided to quit before we were fired. Sonny found a beautiful sixth-floor, three-bedroom apartment on Finchley Road in Swiss Cottage. The building was called Bishopscourt. It was fully furnished, and really luxurious. Moving into Swiss Cottage finally gave us peace of mind. Around this time Sonny met Carol Canin, a niece of Myrtle’s who was working with a prestigious entertainment company in London.
Early one Sunday afternoon in June, Carol invited Sonny and me to a party in Hampstead where an actress friend of hers would be entertaining. At the party, guests were having drinks and finger food in a townhouse apartment. Among them were three Caribbeans: an actor, the famous dancer Boscoe Holder, who we were told was the brother of the great theater director and choreographer Geoffrey Holder, and a stunningly beautiful, full-figured woman with a face that was a combination of Ethiopian, Indian, African, and Native American features. Her name was Pat Bannister. On the record player was a Count Basie album—Joe Williams was singing “Every Day.” I pulled Carol to the middle of the floor and we started to do the Lindy hop, the bop, and the jitterbug all thrown in together. Sonny stood in a corner of the room with Pat and her boyfriend, the actor. Carol and I got so good on the dance floor that we distracted everybody from their conversations. They stopped to admire and applaud us. I was in the middle of some fancy moves when Sonny came over to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and told me that Pat wanted to dance with me next. I asked Carol to sit out the next song and danced with Pat. She was wearing her long hair up in a bun on the back of her head, and had on a red floral dress that flared from the waist down. The dress rose up into the air like an umbrella every time I twirled her around, allowing me momentary glimp
ses of her beautiful legs and ample thighs.
“Ooh, this is so wonderful,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to do this for such a long time, but I can never find a partner who can dance. You move so beautifully. I just had to dance with you. I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward.”
I said, “I am extremely honored to dance with you.” She smiled and said, “Then, do you promise not to dance with anyone else but me? Not even the white woman you were dancing with?”
“Not even,” I concluded. We danced the rest of the afternoon away in each other’s arms. Her long black hair kept falling out of the bun and she kept re-pinning it, saying, “Please hold on to me, don’t let me get away.” We danced to Nina Simone’s “I Loves You Porgy,” over and over again. I finally convinced her to let her hair hang loose.
A few hours later, Carol, Sonny, and I started to leave. As we were about to exit, Boscoe Holder invited us to a party later in the week. Pat was waving good-bye with a deeply disappointed look on her face. Suddenly she yelled, “Wait for me, I’m coming with you.” She grabbed her handbag off one of the couches and ran to the elevator we were holding open. Pat’s boyfriend, a handsome, muscularly built man, was right behind her. “Listen, I can’t come right away, but can I join you people later?” he asked worriedly.
“Of course,” Sonny volunteered. “Flat 6B, Bishopscourt, Finchley Road in Swiss Cottage. Please do come.”
Pat was angry. When the elevator door closed, she snapped at Sonny, “Now why did you have to invite him?” Sonny said, “It’s okay, let the poor fellow have a few drinks with us.”
Sonny, a genius at Indian dishes, began to prepare a lamb curry and rice supper. My job was to peel the potatoes, cut the onions, and shell the peas. Pat was telling us she was a medical intern at London University, where she would be completing her studies next year, after which she would be returning to Barbados to work at the family clinic. Her brother and father were both doctors—in fact, her father was the surgeon general of Barbados. After a short while, Pat threw Sonny and me out of the kitchen and took over the cooking. She told Sonny that even though he was Indian, he didn’t know shit about preparing curry and rice. She wasn’t lying—Sonny was good, but Pat’s curry was better. Her boyfriend came just as we were about to sit down for our meal.
After dinner we had a few drinks while listening to Sonny’s idol, Frank Sinatra, singing “Only the Lonely,” “Blues in the Night,” “Goodbye,” “Autumn in New York,” and other classics. We learned a great deal about Barbados and the Caribbean from Pat and her friend, who soon got up to leave. He looked at Pat inquiringly. She did not wait for him to say anything, but looking straight at him and putting her arms around my waist and kissing me on my neck, she said sweetly, “I’m staying with Hugh.”
“All right then, I’ll be out of the way,” he said angrily. He stormed off, taking the stairs rather than ride in the elevator. I really felt badly for him.
Looking at me, Pat said, “I know what you’re thinking. You think I’ll do to you one day what I just did to him, don’t you? The man is not my boyfriend. He’s asked me to dinner a couple of times and invited me to this party today. This is only the fourth time I have seen him, and I’ve never been interested in being intimate with him at all. I really don’t like the fellow, you know.”
“I didn’t say a thing. Let’s sit down and relax. I told you I was honored.”
“I really like you, you know, not because of your dancing. I’m not that stupid. I really like you,” she repeated, looking right through me.
“I really like you too, Pat. I’m so happy you stayed.”
We embraced. Sonny interrupted our moment. “Let’s drink to this, whatever it is. I think it’s absolutely lovely.” We poured some whisky and drank to it—whatever it was. It had been a beautiful summer day. Although it was after eight, the sun was still shining brightly in the west as Pat and I walked hand-in-hand to her flat, telling each other as much as we could about who we were, about our families and our friends and what a shock it was that two unlikely people like us should be thrown together.
Pat’s sister, Olivia, was even prettier and very different from Pat. Reserved and quiet, she seemed a little surprised that her younger sister was so excited about someone she had just met eight hours ago. Olivia was practicing as a barrister in London and preparing to leave for Barbados.
I spent the rest of that summer with Pat. We had a fairy-tale romance, frolicking and kissing in the parks. We went to the movies and the theaters and even rock-climbed with her friends in Somerset. We went to countless Caribbean get-togethers, dancing cheek to cheek to slow ballads and calypso, looking into each other’s eyes, holding hands, and making love every chance we got. We laughed together even when we disagreed intensely about things. Pat turned me on to the kings of calypso, but I fell in love with the Mighty Sparrow. She sang along word for word with all of his records. Our favorite song was “Gimme the Poom-Poom, Audrey,” which was our secret signature song when we wanted to go home and get it on.
Todd Matshikiza, who had written the music for King Kong, arrived in London in June with his wife, Esme, and their two children, Marianne, eight, and John, six. Todd had come to London to prepare for the West End run of the popular musical. He was being wined and dined regularly, so Pat and I babysat the children two or three times a week. But the big news was that Miles Davis himself was about to come to England for the first time, and the excitement in London among the jazz cognoscenti was at fever pitch. Sonny and I had bought Davis’s Kind of Blue album, but had worn it out and had to buy another copy. Back home in South Africa I had left a sizable collection of Miles Davis’s records, including all the albums of his quintet with Coltrane and the sextet that was augmented by Cannonball Adderley. I also owned Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain, and Miles Ahead, the three classic recordings he had done with Gil Evans. Because of his black pride and fearlessness, Miles was a major township hero back in South Africa. We followed all of his stories and made up some of our own. He was one black man I held in high esteem.
A few days before the concert, Sonny and I stood in line for hours outside the Hammersmith Odeon Theatre waiting for the box office to open so we could buy tickets for his first concert. At the show, word got around as we waited excitedly in our seats that he was refusing to come on stage because all his shows had sold out in England and he was demanding a fifty-percent cut of the profits from Davison, the promoter. Legend has it that as Davison was nervously calling Miles’s agent in New York to negotiate the stalemate, Miles sent his colleagues Sonny Stitt (alto and tenor saxophone), who had replaced John Coltrane; Paul Chambers (bass); Wynton Kelly (piano); and Jimmy Cobb (drums) on stage. We roared when they appeared from the wings. Before he hit town, the English press had been extremely critical of Miles’s alleged arrogance; Sonny and I assumed that he had just been messing with the promoter’s head to give the media something to write about. Miles strolled on stage smiling and waving to the audience—not the arrogant Miles of legend at all. The capacity crowd jumped from their seats and gave him a standing ovation. He counted his band off with a very fast-paced “So What,” and for the next three hours played “Milestones,” “If I Had a Bell,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Freddy the Freeloader,” “All Blues,” “Some Day My Prince Will Come” among his endless repertoire—for all the shows I’d played in and seen in South Africa, this was some of the most exciting live music I had ever heard. I never went to another London jazz club. I was in a New York state of mind.
The following week, Miriam came to London to do a BBC television special. Miriam and Sonny were still married, but the communication between them had begun to break down. Nevertheless, Miriam was going to stay with her husband at his new place on Bishopscourt. I had made plans to move in with Pat for the duration of Miriam’s London visit. Even though Pat and I visited with Miriam and Sonny a few times, it was always brief.
Miriam asked me to help her rehearse the BBC orchestra she would be perform
ing with. One afternoon she asked me to join her at lunch. She told me it was over between her and Sonny. She had asked him for a divorce, and he was more than cooperative. Miriam also told me that Dizzy Gillespie and John Mehegan had gotten me accepted into the Manhattan School of Music in New York. Her attorney, Albert Geduldig, would be forwarding me the necessary immigration application forms. As soon as the immigration authorities had approved my petition, she would arrange for my air ticket to the States.
Before she left again for the United States, Pat and I went over to Sonny’s place to say good-bye to Miriam. The Austin Princess limousine, which had been transporting Miriam around London, came to fetch her and Sonny, who accompanied her to the airport. Pat and I waved our farewell from the sidewalk.
Pat said, “She’s still crazy about you,” as the limo driver took off.
I denied it. Pat answered me with a knowing chuckle, “You know, Hughie, I’m a woman, and I can tell that woman is still in love with you, mon.”
It was probably the greatest summer I’d ever spent. Not once did it rain. The English couldn’t stop remarking about the wonderful weather they were having while roasting themselves in the sun until they were beet red.
My visa application had been approved and I would soon be leaving. I informed Huddleston that the Guildhall School of Music option was obsolete now that my American scholarship had come through, but I thanked him for everything and hoped I’d see him again. On September 26, 1960, I said goodbye to Sonny, his new girlfriend Sarojini, and Pat at the Victoria bus station. When the bus finally pulled slowly out of its bay, it was one of the most painful moments of my life. Somehow I knew and Pat knew that this could never, ever be again. It was love lost painfully forever.
Still Grazing Page 16
