Later that spring it occurred to me that with my working after school at Clara Music and the $190-a-month stipend from Harry’s foundation, I could afford a small place. I took Astley’s advice and rented a room from Mrs. Miller for forty dollars a month. I can’t say Miriam was happy with my decision, but it was time for me to find my own space. What I really liked about my new place was that I could practice my trumpet long into the night. I’d sit in my room and practice my scales and then play some of Clifford’s, Miles’s, and Dizzy’s licks. A drunken tenant from across the alley would be my audience. “Blow dat horn, ma’fucker, blow dat ma’fucking horn. You one soulful nigger. Blow dat horn, ma’fucker!” he’d yell out to my dicey new neighborhood, which was teeming with heroin junkies, pimps and prostitutes, numbers runners and drug dealers.
Around this time a new influx of South African exiles began migrating to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic United States. Miriam and I were overjoyed about this addition to our growing South African community. She really enjoyed for all of us to come over for dinner, have drinks and bury ourselves in nostalgia, and end the night singing songs from home, followed by a grand finale with Bongi, Miriam, and me singing the traditional ethnic chants. Miriam was the toast of New York’s African community, and America in general was fascinated by her charm and seeming simplicity, as well as her exotic looks, magical voice, and overwhelming personality.
Miriam, Mburumba, and Jane introduced me to people from all over the world. Miriam had performed at John Kennedy’s inauguration, at the opening of the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa, at Carnegie Hall, at the Hollywood Bowl, and in almost every prestigious arena, forum, night club, amphitheater, auditorium, and stadium in the world. Even more amazing was the fact that all this had occurred over less than two years.
Although Mrs. Miller was warm and motherly and treated me like a son, she did not allow me to have female company in my room. I was beginning to feel caged in. After a few months I went looking for places to rent below Harlem, but was always rejected for any number of reasons. I was a foreigner. I didn’t have full-time employment. I was a student. I soon figured out that the problem was the color of my skin.
One afternoon I walked up 57th Street with Belafonte to the Russian Tea Room, where we had lunch with his guitarist Ernie Calabria, Diahann Carroll, Anthony Quinn, and Sidney Poitier. Harry had wanted to host an evening of poetry reading at his home—nothing elegant, just an artistic, creative, fun-filled evening with his close friends and musical accompaniment by Ernie, John Cartwright, and me. Walking back to his office, I told Belafonte about my problem finding an apartment. He turned me on to Millard Thomas, his other guitarist, who lived at 310 West 87th Street, between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive, where there was indeed a one-bedroom flat for rent on the ground floor. The proprietor, who lived on the floor above, was Mrs. Edith Marzani, a radical socialist who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy witch hunts. She liked me right on the spot and told me to move in as soon as I wanted. She was in a wheelchair, having been paralyzed from the waist down, but her spirit was dynamic. Mrs. Miller was sad that I was leaving. She liked my midnight horn serenades. I would miss her wonderful cooking and motherly care. “Be sure to come and visit me, you hear?” she said, misty-eyed.
I took off from school the next day and bought a bed and other household goods from the Salvation Army. I painted the apartment walls flat white and the window frames glossy black. Miriam gave me some sheets, pillowcases, a bedspread, and a few kitchen items. That Friday night I slept in the first bed I had ever owned in my life.
I got a telephone and regularly spoke with Sonny and Pat in London. Pat told me she’d be coming to New York to spend a few weeks with me before continuing on to Barbados. Sonny had secretly warned me that Pat had been living part-time with Ben “Satch” Masinga, who was in the cast of King Kong, which was now a big hit in the West End. Although we had been apart for almost a year and I also had had my fair share of dalliances, still I felt betrayed, mainly because Satch was an old friend from African Jazz and Variety days. However, Pat had a very logical explanation—she described their relationship as purely biological. The tables were turned.
Still, we had a very enjoyable two weeks together. I took her to see Miles, Belafonte, Dizzy, Miriam, and a Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald concert at Carnegie Hall. We also had a few dinners at Miriam’s, and when we left her place, Pat brought up an old subject again.
“Hughie, she still loves you,” Pat said. “Remember what I told you before? I’m a woman. I can tell.”
“It can’t be anymore, Pat, come on,” I replied. “Since I’ve been in the States, Miriam’s been having affairs with Pernell Roberts, Horace Silver, Max Zollner, a West African diplomat, and Kenneth Dadzie, a United Nations officer, all of whom she has introduced to me as her lovers. That is ample proof that she’s gotten over me a long time ago.”
“On the contrary, Hughie,” Pat continued. “She’s doing all of this to make you jealous. Can’t you see?”
My head was swimming in confusion as our cab meandered back to my apartment. I was over Miriam, and she was over me. She had her lovers and I had mine. I had just lived with her for more than six months and we’d never spent a night together. What was Pat tripping about? If there was anyone I had strong feelings for, it was Pat. Regardless of Satch, I was still madly in love with her. Belafonte saw that I was crazy about her, and thought Pat was the ideal person for me. “Why don’t you marry her, Hughie?” Harry’s question had gone over my head at the time, but checking out Pat staring out the taxi window, I began wondering if I should seize the moment.
One night Pat and I had just returned from a movie when the phone rang. It was Millard, asking me to come upstairs for a minute. As soon as I walked in, Millard put five fat marijuana joints in my shirt pocket, lit the one he was holding, and said, “I know you are accustomed to only the best where you come from. All along I didn’t want to waste your time with the bullshit smoke I been holding. Last night a friend of mine scored me a couple of ounces of Panama Red, the connoisseur’s smoke. I know you’ll love this, Hughie,” he said. Without waiting for an answer from me, he passed me the joint and I proceeded to savage it, passing it back to him from time to time. When the joint was finished, Millard said, “Hurry back to your lady, man. I know you’re gonna enjoy yourselves tonight.” He wasn’t lying.
Pat and I made torrid love until morning. I asked her to marry me a few times during the course of the night, but she just giggled and kissed me all over my face. I passed out until midmorning, when Pat asked if I was ready to get up and eat some breakfast. She was weeping. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Nothing,” she replied. “I’m just sad because I’m leaving in a few days and we are having such a wonderful time together. Shit, man, go and wash so we can eat.” It was a beautiful summer Sunday morning. I suggested that we take a stroll through Central Park. Again, Pat started crying. “What’s the matter, baby?” I asked.
“Hughie, I want to marry you so badly,” Pat began, “but my parents will not hear of it. I have already asked them, but they say I can’t marry some musician who has no future to talk about. My father is the head of Barbados’s hospital system and the medical association, and all my siblings and cousins are doctors, lawyers, bankers, judges, and ministers of state. I am expected to marry into such a family, and they refuse to listen to why I want to be with you. I just don’t have the strength to go against the grain, Hughie.”
A few days later we took a taxi to the airport. We said very little during the ride. This time there were no tears when we said our good-byes. We both knew that we most probably would never see each other again. Back at the office a few days later, Belafonte asked me about Pat. I told him she had left for Barbados. “You should go fetch her back, man. You’ll never find another one like her,” he said. “Not for a long time.” He was right.
During the summer of 1961, Miriam and Bongi left for an extended tour of Europe, Asia, Canada,
the United States, and the Caribbean. With school out, I worked full time at Clara Music and kept up my private horn lessons with Cecil Collins at his home in Tenafly, New Jersey. Bob Bollard thought I was doing so well that he recommended me to Hugo Montenegro, Belafonte’s new music director. At the time, Hugo was arranging orchestral music for Harry’s upcoming summer tour, which would include a large dance troupe selected by the great choreographer Walter Nicks. Among the dancers were Paula Kelly, Altovise Davis, and one of New York’s greatest dancers and choreographers, Pearl Reynolds. Hugo hired me to notate Nicks’s dance sequences as a guide for him to translate them into an orchestral score for the concert tour. For me, this was the biggest challenge I’d faced since King Kong. I managed to pull the task off over three days and became good friends with the dance company, especially Pearl. Hugo Montenegro was so impressed with my work that he proposed I work with him as his orchestrator.
Around this time I met Valentine Pringle at the Belafonte office. He was Harry’s new protégé. A tall, ebony-complexioned, bass-baritone singer with a voice very much like Paul Robeson’s, his spirituals and folk songs made him popular on the club and concert circuits. Val’s guitar player was Bruce Langhorne, a curly haired, light-skinned musician with a delightful sense of humor. The three of us hit it off hard and started hanging out at my apartment, where we would listen to music, drink a lot of cognac, and laugh our asses off. Sometimes we hung out at Bruce’s apartment on 48th Street, where he lived with Georgia, his dancer wife, who was a product of the Katherine Dunham dance ensemble and a close friend of Pearl Reynolds. Although Bruce worked with Val from time to time, his regular gig was as an accompanist for Odetta. He played on recordings for folk-music giants like Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, and Pete Seeger.
One evening Pearl, who had just returned from a Belafonte tour, invited the Langhornes and me over for dinner along with Ernie Calabria, Belafonte’s guitarist, who came with his wife. Pearl was very heavy into African tradition, culture, and dance. She was also crazy about Cuban music, which she played throughout dinner, especially the Juajuanco music of Tito Rodriguez. We drank a lot of sangria wine, and then Pearl pulled out some of that Panama Red smoke, which we had with dessert. Before I knew it, I was helping Pearl wash the dishes and saying good-bye to the guests as if I had been the host. With the doors firmly locked, we sat in the candlelight, deep in discussion about African liberation, art, and dance while we graduated to some fine cognac and more Panama Red with Tito Rodriguez. This night was the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship and love affair.
One day Jimmy Lee, the hip trombone player from Mount Vernon, who was also in my class, invited me to a penthouse loft party where Prophet, the great artist and designer, was having a farewell party for Quincy Jones’s band, which was leaving the following day on a European tour with Dizzy Gillespie. He asked me to bring my horn because there was going to be a jam session, but there were so many gate-crashers and musicians trying to sit in that I lost the desire to play. Instead, I enjoyed the 360-degree view of the Manhattan skyline, Brooklyn Bridge, the Battery, the East River, and faraway New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Prophet’s wraparound penthouse porch. Jimmy Lee introduced me to a tall, blond, mischievous-looking young musician by the name of Stewart Levine. Right away Stewart and I were rapping about Africa, Asia, and the rest of the world. His girlfriend, Susan Carp, was a leader of the Young Socialist Party, which is how he came to know so much about Cuba, China, South Africa, Vietnam, North Korea, Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Lumumba, and so many other elements that had become troublesome to America’s political and business establishments.
During our discussions, Stewart corrected me on many issues with facts that let me know he was very well read—a quality that distinguished him from most Americans, who knew nothing about matters outside their little neighborhoods except the anticommunist propaganda they got from the national media. Stewart was different.
On the first day of my second year of school, Stewart walked into Music Literature class and sat next to me. Right away, we sensed that we were on the way to becoming friends for life.
My reputation as a musician was beginning to grow. I was getting work as a session man on recordings and club dates with the help of Al Brown. The extra money helped toward my tuition. Mrs. Marzani offered me a larger apartment on the same floor for only fifteen dollars more a month. I took it.
Jimmy Lee and Stewart came over to help me paint my new place. Stewart asked me if I smoked grass—a question he first hit me with at Quincy’s party. He found it very odd that a musician from South Africa didn’t smoke dagga, when that country was one of the world’s biggest exporters of the herb. But I was suspicious; Millard had once been set up and busted for marijuana, and warned me to keep my habit a secret because the penalty for possession was stiff.
We drank vodka and orange juice while my friends helped me with the painting. Sloshed and exhausted, we finished on Sunday morning, passed out, and woke up that afternoon with painful headaches. Later, Frank St. Peter, a saxophonist friend of Jimmy and Stewart, came over and, without asking, lit up a joint and began to pass it around. It was strong Colombian smoke. I had totally forgotten my denial.
“You bullshit motherfucker,” Stewart admonished. “I knew you were full of shit when you told me you didn’t smoke. I said to myself that you definitely must have been putting us on, you jiveass motherfucker. Light up another joint, Frank.”
Toward the end of 1961, Belafonte thought I was ready to record my first album, especially after the success of Miriam’s last album. That night I walked to my apartment oblivious of the twelve blocks in the subfreezing temperatures; my thermal underwear and the cashmere coat Dizzy had bought me kept me warm. Inside, my soul was fired by the prospect of recording. I was very excited.
Around Thanksgiving, the first wave of South African students from the PAC and ANC refugee camps in Tanzania arrived in America to attend school at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. I had been very close friends with some of them back home. At the beginning of the Christmas holiday season, Joe Louw, Willie Kgositsile, and Peter Davidson came to visit. George Molotlegi, who had been studying at Howard University in Washington, D.C., since 1959, also arrived. They all laid down their bags and made themselves at home. They had come to celebrate the festive season with me. George was a family member of the Royal Bafokeng Nation, recognized globally as one of Africa’s richest tribes. His family ruled a kingdom of more than 300,000 people spread over 750 square miles in South Africa’s Northwest Province, home to some of the richest platinum deposits in the world.
Schools had closed, and they had nowhere else to go for the holidays. I was the only person they knew would welcome them. At first I was worried about how my landlady would react to my boisterous guests. On the contrary, Mrs. Marzani stopped by my apartment as was her custom, greeted my friends heartily, and welcomed them to America. But the arrival of my holiday visitors didn’t go unnoticed by federal authorities. To my surprise, an unmarked car suddenly appeared and stayed parked outside my apartment building. In South Africa, I had grown used to being shadowed by the police and informers. One day I asked one of the trenchcoated men in the car why they were always parked in front of my place. I was abruptly told, “None of your business.” I reported the matter to the police and was told they were the FBI, and that their surveillance superseded local police jurisdiction. Although this brought back memories of South Africa’s Special Branch Gestapo, we decided to ignore them. And throughout the holidays we partied openly, showing that we were not intimidated by their arrogance. My friends returned to their respective schools following the Christmas holidays, but the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, and U.S. drug enforcement officials would keep an eye on me. My telephone was bugged for the next three decades that I spent in America.
9
IN EARLY 1962, Belafonte asked me why I hadn’t started on the record we had discussed. I’d started selecting the material, but I’d made a mistake
choosing Hugo Montenegro as arranger. Coming as he did from a Lawrence Welk/André Kostelanetz background of very Muzak-like arranging, Hugo had no knowledge of African music except what I had exposed him to thus far. The choice of songs for my album was basically gleaned from the repertoires of Harry and Miriam Makeba. The excitement of working with a big band composed of top session musicians whom I had idolized for years took precedence over actually coming up with a style that fit my background. The closest we came to my musical roots was Miriam Makeba’s famous lament “Umhome” and “Merci Bon Dieu,” a Haitian folk song from one of Belafonte’s previous albums. That I didn’t tap into my township dance band experiences with Zakes Nkosi, Ntemi Piliso, Elijah Nkwanyana, and the Merry Makers, or even my Huddleston Jazz Band beginnings boggles my mind to this day. What was I thinking? Harry had assumed that because Hugo was an orchestral arranger, my album would at least have taken a more traditional African dance band route.
The outcome was an album called Trumpet Africaine, and it was a disaster, an unlistenable mixture of elevator and shopping mall music. Belafonte was disappointed—and infuriated. After the album’s release, he ripped the project to pieces, calling it “antiseptic, jive, white music.” It received poor reviews and very little radio play. Sales were dismal. Embarrassed, I shelved my album dreams for a while, and began working hard on losing my stupid fascination with all things American and developing a style that better fit my skills and tastes, based on the African music I was raised on back home.
My disappointment didn’t dampen Miriam’s confidence in my abilities. She asked me to do the arrangements for her next two albums, Voice of Africa and Makeba Sings. The reviews of both albums were great, but they didn’t set the world on fire. All the songs were South African traditional and township favorites. I infused the music with a back-home flavor, but once again my arrangements smacked of the Hugo Montenegro influence. RCA Records persuaded Miriam to consider other arrangers for her future projects. I had been given a chance that many other deserving musicians would have killed for, and had failed in my first three attempts. I immersed myself in my studies and worked feverishly with Cecil Collins at improving my trumpet technique.
Still Grazing Page 21
