by Renée Rosen
Evelyn glared at him. “Are you crazy? They’re making fun of a U.S. senator who just passed away.”
“A senator who was a bigoted son of a bitch. Not to mention anti-Semitic. I’m telling you—you have to put this record out. You just record the motherfucker and I’ll sell it.”
• • •
In the sweltering September heat, Leonard hefted up his suitcase and set it in the trunk of his Buick next to the boxes of records. Three thousand pressed copies of “Bilbo Is Dead.” The first five hundred had already been dropped off at local deejays, record stores and jukebox distributors in Chicago—the same folks who had helped Leonard launch Archia’s “Fishin’ Pole” record.
Leonard closed the trunk and walked back across the lawn to where Revetta stood with Susie on her hip, five-year-old Marshall at her left and three-year-old Elaine at her right.
He patted Marshall’s shoulder. “You’re the man of the house while I’m gone. You take good care of your mother.” He stroked the silky hair on Susie’s head and reached for Elaine’s chin, tilting her face up to look him in the eye. “You be a good girl. Listen to your mother.” He leaned in and gave Revetta a loud kiss on the lips. “You need anything, you call Phil.”
She nodded, but he saw she had her jaw clenched. And that killed him. She was used to him working long hours at the Macomba, but this would be his second road trip down South in a few months. He’d made the same trip when “Fishin’ Pole” came out, and one thing that record taught him was that if Aristocrat was going to be successful they needed the South. There were thousands of Negroes down there who were hungry for race records. A huge market was just sitting there waiting for someone to develop it. Leonard didn’t have any contacts in the South, no one he could ship the records to, so he had no choice but to do it himself.
“I’ll be back before you know it.” He got in the car, calling back through the open window, “Remember, if you need something, you go to Phil.”
Leonard drove away, looking back through the rearview mirror until his family disappeared in the distance. He fiddled with the radio as he drove past Cottage Grove and out of the city.
The first night Leonard made it to Memphis, and after some barbecue at the Rendezvous he checked into the Hotel King Cotton on North Front Street and Jefferson. He sat on the side of the bed in his boxers and undershirt, reached for the telephone and called Revetta.
“I have a collect call from Leonard,” said the operator. “Will you accept the charges?”
“No, operator, I’m sorry, I won’t.”
Good. Long-distance calls cost a fortune and Revetta knew the only reason to accept the call was if something was wrong. This was their signal, his way of letting her know he’d arrived. If there was something on his end, he’d call back a second time. On Sunday, when the rates were cheaper, he’d call and talk to her, maybe have her put Marshall and Elaine on the line, too.
The next morning, Leonard’s first stop in Memphis was at WHBQ, where he met with the station’s top deejay, a guy who called himself Piper Pete. Pete was a scrawny-looking guy with a long face and a blond crew cut. He spoke with a twang that he accentuated over the air. With sleeves rolled to his elbows, Piper Pete sat hunched over his microphone, the turntables at his side. While he had a long song playing over the air, Pete gave a listen to “Bilbo Is Dead.”
“Well?” Leonard tried to read his face. “Isn’t that something?”
“Oh, that’s somethin’, all right. I like the tune and all, and your singer’s mighty fine. But I’m ’fraid I can’t play that over the air.”
“But you just said you liked it.”
“Them lyrics.” Piper Pete shook his head. “Well, you’re just asking for trouble.”
“But I know you play race music on WHBQ.” Leonard reached into his pocket and slipped a twenty across the console. “And you know you got a lot of Negroes listening to you.”
“Well, you do have a point ’bout that.” Pete started for the money but stopped himself. “I sure am sorry, but I’m ’fraid I can’t play that kind of music on this station.”
Leonard moved on to the next station and the next, working his way from Memphis to New Orleans, hitting every station that played race music, even if for just a couple hours in the evenings. Those were the stations that had the reach—the stations they needed. But “Bilbo Is Dead”—even with a fistful of money—didn’t interest them at WROX in Clarksdale or the radio stations in Jackson and New Orleans.
After a week, Leonard switched his strategy and decided to take “Bilbo” straight to the colored market. He turned heads as he walked through those Negro neighborhoods with a stack of records tucked under his arm, sweat trickling down his white skin.
“You with the police or somethin’?” asked a record store owner after he heard “Bilbo Is Dead.” Leonard could tell he thought it was some sort of trick, a white man coming into his shop with a song like that. But Leonard assured him he meant no harm. The man took a hundred copies.
From there Leonard played “Bilbo Is Dead” in the barbershops and drugstores. He went into the diners and got the record put into their jukeboxes. Once they heard the song, there wasn’t a Negro selling records who didn’t want to stock it. But he still needed airplay so he traveled down to Broward County in Florida and paid a visit to a small Negro station with a tiny audience, but, hell, it was radio. The deejay gave a listen and loved it so much he played it on the air while Leonard was still in the booth and then three more times in the first hour. Soon another station picked it up and then another.
Driving back up North Leonard must have heard “Bilbo Is Dead” a half dozen times on the radio. With each spin of that record, his pride swelled. Look what this little putz from Poland just did. Only in America. The song was working.
At least it was for a little while. The day after he got back to Chicago, Billboard magazine called Aristocrat, wanting to speak to him. The voice on the other end sounded gruff and Leonard didn’t catch the reporter’s name.
“Is it true that you were recently in Tennessee to distribute a record about the late senator Bilbo?”
“Yeah, yeah. ‘Bilbo Is Dead’ by Andrew Tibbs. That’s T-i-double-b-s. It’s already climbing the charts.”
The reporter laughed. “Then I guess you haven’t heard.”
“Heard what?”
“They’re calling for a boycott of that song. People are up in arms over this record of yours. They want it banned in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. We’re running a story on it and I was wondering if you’d care to comment.”
“You go ahead and print whatever you want,” he said. “No such thing as bad publicity.” Leonard hung up and didn’t give it a second thought.
He spent the rest of the day making arrangements to have more “Bilbo” records pressed and shipped to stations and stores up North where Evelyn had established contacts. Everything was going great, even better than he’d expected.
But two weeks later Leonard arrived at Aristocrat one morning and Leeba handed him a stack of messages and said, “We got a call from a station owner in Rochester. He’s getting complaints from listeners about the ‘Bilbo’ record. Their sponsors have threatened to pull their advertising if they play the song again.”
“See?” said Evelyn.
“So what? That’s one station.” Leonard went over to his desk, shuffling through the message slips.
“One station up North,” Evelyn said, glowering at him from across the room. “This is Rochester, New York. We’re not talking about the Deep South. People are offended. They don’t want to hear it on the radio. They want the record off the air.”
“It’ll blow over. And like I said, no such thing as bad publicity.”
Evelyn marched over to his desk and ripped the message slips from his hand. “I don’t want that kind of publicity.”
The following we
ek, though, he got some calls from his colored customers at the record stores down South, saying they were too scared to sell the record anymore. They wanted their money back. That was followed by angry letters and telegrams from whites. The record was getting airplay in the northern sections of the country, but the more it played, the stronger the backlash. Leonard was beginning to question if this much publicity was such a good thing after all.
One afternoon Leeba put an urgent call through to him. Leonard assumed it was another reporter and picked up the extension. “Chess here.”
“Leonard Chess?” said the caller.
“Yes.”
“You’re a dead man, you nigger-lovin’ kike.”
Leonard froze before he dropped the phone. Dropped it like a hand grenade. He was shaking.
He spent the rest of the day looking over his shoulder, certain that someone was going to jump him for putting out that record. There were more calls, more threats and more telegrams. Leonard tried not to let the panic show, but he was scared. More than that, he felt responsible. He’d been the one to push for the song and now he was fearing for himself and Evelyn, too.
He sweated it out for another week or so until thankfully the outrage began to subside. But by then the record sales had tanked. There wasn’t a radio station south of the Mason-Dixon willing to play “Bilbo Is Dead” and the returns were already pouring in.
SEVEN
• • •
“Brown Eyed Handsome Man”
LEEBA
Leeba and Aileen stood in the alley outside the Lawndale Theater next to a door with a sign that read “No Entry.” It was a snowy February afternoon and the wind was gusting, blowing Leeba’s curls into her eyes. Aileen turned toward the door, trying to block the blast of air long enough to get her cigarette lit.
“Damn it,” she said when the second match blew out. She grabbed another blue-tip from the box and struck it so hard the matchstick broke in two.
“Give it here,” said Leeba.
She got it lit, cupping her hand around the flame, and while Aileen leaned in with her cigarette the side door opened. A man stepped out, letting Betty Grable’s voice escape. As he squinted into the daylight and turned up his collar, Aileen and Leeba slipped past him and ducked into the dark theater, where just the flicker of light from the projectionist’s booth guided them to two empty seats. Leeba’s feet began to thaw as she breathed in the buttery smell of popcorn.
Mother Wears Tights was the movie showing, and they had missed the very opening, but it didn’t matter. Leeba and Aileen had already sneaked into this movie twice before. It was a musical and by now they knew most of the songs. When Betty Grable started performing “You Do,” Aileen couldn’t help but sing along.
“Shh.” The woman in front of them turned around, finger to her lips.
Aileen let a line or two go by before she started up again with that voice of hers that boomed, echoing off the walls and ceiling. Leeba felt the whole audience shushing her this time, but Aileen kept singing until the usher came down the aisle with the beam of his flashlight leading the way.
He shined the light right in Aileen’s eyes, making her squint, but not making her stop singing. Leeba could see the gold fillings in her back teeth. The usher was asking her to keep it down and Aileen stood up, took hold of his flashlight and held it like a microphone as she belted out the chorus.
Snatching his flashlight back, the usher said, “That’s it. Let me see your tickets.”
Their tickets. Leeba stood up now, too. “We were just leaving.” She grabbed hold of Aileen, who continued to sing all the way up the aisle and through the lobby.
As they cleared the front doors, the two of them burst out laughing. “I guess this means we’re gonna have to find us another theater, huh?” said Aileen as she scooped up a handful of snow, packing it between her gloved hands.
“Yeah, thanks to you,” said Leeba, still laughing.
“But you gotta admit”—Aileen lobbed the snowball toward Leeba, who ducked out of the way—“I sounded good.”
The two of them broke down laughing all over again.
Leeba could always count on Aileen for the unexpected. Aileen had a big, bold way of living. She made things exciting, always stirring up trouble or hatching some grand scheme, and Leeba fed off her friend’s drama. It added color to her otherwise pale existence. They were still laughing as they boarded the 14/16 bus that went from Lawndale to the Maxwell Street area, where Aileen lived now, in a run-down apartment on Jefferson Street.
When they got off the bus they heard music in the distance and, despite the cold, they walked toward it, going the long way so Leeba could stop by the Maxwell Street Radio and Record Store and see her piano. She did that from time to time, paying a visit like you would to an old friend. She’d been working at Aristocrat for seven months now and had put money aside each week for it. When they went inside she was grateful for the warmth, but it came with that old musty smell that she remembered so well. She and Aileen walked over to the baby grand and Leeba was appalled to find boxes of vacuum tubes left on the lid and a pile of old newspapers on the bench.
When Abrams saw her he came over. “So she’s back again, huh?” he said. “You ready to buy this time?”
“Almost. I’ve saved up two hundred and fifty dollars,” she told him.
“The price is six—one, two, three, four, five, six,” he said, holding up five fingers. “Six hundred dollars. You come back when you have the full amount.”
“I don’t like that old fuddy-duddy,” said Aileen as they left the store. “Remember all those rotten things he used to say to you?”
Leeba didn’t want to remember and changed the subject. “Before I forget, I’m bringing Evelyn to your gig at the Lantern Saturday night.”
Aileen frowned. “Don’t bother.”
“Uh-oh. What happened?”
“It wasn’t my fault.” Aileen raised a pointed finger. “The club owner’s a liar. He said I was drunk on stage. Said I was sloppy and ‘not acting like a lady’ and that is not true. I swear. I may have had a drink or two before I went on, but I wasn’t drunk. But believe me, I got plenty drunk afterward. That’s for sure.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“’Cause I knew you’d give me that look, like the one you’re giving me right now.”
Leeba couldn’t help it. She knew Aileen had mastered the art of self-sabotage. Even as children Aileen would leave telltale signs of their mischief—her mama’s lipstick and good shoes left out after they played dress-up; almost deliberately hitting the squeaky floorboard or letting the front door bang shut when she sneaked out of the house. It was like she wanted to get caught, as if she couldn’t discern between attention and punishment.
As they walked, Aileen continued to insist that she wasn’t to blame for losing her gig at the Lantern. “That owner had it in for me. I swear he never liked me. And I sounded good that night, too. I sure did . . .”
She was talking so fast and getting so wound up that Leeba couldn’t catch half of what she was saying, but, knowing Aileen, she was pretty certain that she had been drunk on stage and she had been misbehaving. Leeba was disappointed. She’d been trying to get Evelyn to one of Aileen’s shows, especially since Aileen was performing one of Leeba’s songs, a number she called “Hop, Skip and a Jump,” a bouncy tune fashioned after a Dinah Shore record. But still, Leeba wouldn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure if this was a weakness on her part or a sign of loyalty, but she found it hard to be critical of her friend. For anything. It was because of Aileen’s past. First her father gets killed and six months after that her mother takes her own life and Aileen finds the body hanging in the bathroom, one end of a cord fastened to the towel hook, the other wrapped around her limp neck. At thirteen Aileen was sent across town to live with her aunt Effie, who had children of her own. She resented ha
ving to look after her dead sister’s daughter, and she took it out on Aileen. How could you be hard on someone who’d been through all that? Leeba always made excuses, suspending her judgment when it came to Aileen.
“I’m sorry about your gig,” she said to Aileen, who was now sulking, walking with her shoulders hunched forward, her head down, eyes to the ground.
Leeba knew her friend was moody, prone to sadness with an angry undercurrent. But ever since they were in their teens, it had been getting worse and now she noticed a pattern to Aileen’s moods. Like hands on a clock Leeba watched Aileen move through the cycles. A bit of rage was always mounting below the surface and when that got loose there was no controlling her. Leeba had seen Aileen throw, kick and punch, saying horrible things she could not have possibly meant. Those outbursts were followed by bouts of gut-wrenching sobs until all that was left was an ember, a flicker of hope. It would catch inside her and begin to burn brighter and brighter until the darkness was gone and life was grand again. That was when she’d go from sleeping all day to staying up three days straight. That was when she was going to make it as a singer and everything would be perfect. She could sing. She could fly. She could do anything. Until she couldn’t. Something would knock her down and the sadness would return, followed by the anger and the tears until it gave way to those exhilarated bursts. But the next disappointment would be just around the corner and it would reduce her once again. Aileen seemed trapped on a carousel she couldn’t get off, and it seemed to be turning faster and faster with every passing year. Leeba was scared for her.
They kept walking and the sound of an electric guitar and someone singing “See-See Rider Blues” pulled Leeba from her thoughts. Something in the playing, something in that voice, called to her and as they got closer she saw that, sure enough, it was coming from Red Dupree. He and Little Walter had drawn quite a crowd.
Leeba didn’t say a word to Aileen. She didn’t have to. Aileen saw the expression on Leeba’s face and followed the direction of her gaze. “You got a thing for that guitar player, don’t you?”
