by John Ridley
It wasn't that I'd suddenly gotten tough with myself, gone Charles Atlas and was paying back some sand-kicking bully. It was just that I wasn't a kid anymore. And same as I no longer believed in imaginary monsters under my bed, I knew my pop wasn't a demon, just a sad old man who no longer had a hold over me.
From the floor he looked up at me with a hurt that was greater than his little bit of physical pain. His kid—his weakling kid—had just shoved him down. Whatever manhood Pop had left had just taken a beating.
I said to him, said very clearly in the same manner used to communicate with an animal that doesn't have the capacity to dig your lingo: “Sid has set up some club dates. I'm going with him on the road. I'll send you some money for rent, food. Use it for booze. Use it for whatever. I don't care. Not anymore. But I'm going, Pop. I'm going away.”
The last time I'd told my pop I was going off on my own I spent the night on the floor—belt-whipped and bleeding—and slinked away while he was passed out. This time I would pack a bag and walk out the door when I was good and rested and ready.
THE IDEA OF GETTING DRESSED UP and going out to a club for a meal and a show is laid up in the same burial ground with the notion of not buying a car because its tail fins aren't big enough.
But used to be …
Used to be a guy would put on his sharkskin, his lady would get dolled up in a beehive and pearls, then head off for a night of adult entertainment. Adult meaning steaks, some drinks, and a smoke before settling in to watch a name act from so close, you had to dodge the sweat that flew from their hardworking showbiz bodies as they gave and gave and gave until you had no choice but to jump up and put your hands together.
And real suddenly I was part of that. Sid had pulled his strings, and I was part of the High Life opening up for talent I'd previously been no closer to than my TV screen.
Week one: Club 500 in A.C. opening for Buddy Greco. Good Guy. Nice Guy. A guy who never knew how to do a show that was less than one hundred percent. Sid figured Jersey to be a good place for me to start things off: out of New York, out of the Village with its Village clique and coffeehouse scene but still near enough the city to be “my” crowd, the kind of people I'd been cracking jokes for since I'd first hit a stage and with just enough boardwalk tourists mixed in so as to tell me what would and wouldn't fly beyond the bridges and tunnels.
Sid came along, would be along for the whole tour. He told me he wanted to get out of the office, that every now and then you've got to go shake hands with the owners and the bookers. The hidden truth: He wasn't along glad-handing, he was hand-holding. Mine. He made the trip to be sure everything was okeydoke for me.
But I didn't need a minder. I was a professional. The three bills a week I was earning said so. Not that there weren't things to learn. I learned when you're an opener you've got to get your audience, get 'em big and get 'em fast. The suits in the seats didn't pay to see you, had probably never heard of you, didn't want to know you (GUEST ACT FOR YOUR LAUGHING PLEASURE was all the more billing I got one week). You opened, and you were just a little something to let the lobster thermidor digest before the real action started. So with all that working against you, there was no easing into the act; there was no moseying to your good bits. They all had to be good, and they had to be good from the first word from your mouth or you had twenty minutes of two hundred people giving you the igg while they tried to flag a waitress to freshen their drink.
I'd open my sets with local bits—bits a comic makes seem local, like he'd actually taken the time to find out something “unique” about the town he was playing: “Boy, you people in Nowheresville, you all drive like the speed limit is just a suggestion. I don't want to say there's a lot of construction around here, but the state flag should be one of those orange cones.” Follow that up with a quick platitude supporting a position nobody could argue with: “Is it just me, or is this Khrushchev cat crazy?”
Wait for the applause and whistles to die off.
Then a joke about the obvious just to keep Mr. and Mrs. White America from getting too nervous. “I guess you can tell from looking at me … I'm a New Yorker.” Then into my bits on my relatives—nobody couldn't relate to jokes about relatives, even though my bits were made up. Some made up. Some borrowed. Sid kept on me to write more of my own stuff. Get my own voice. I told him I would. Eventually.
Mix in some charm with all that, plenty of personality, timing, and talent, add an olive, and you're a comic.
Each night that cocktail did me well, Buddy pulling me back up onstage and milking some extra applause out of the audience for me. Each set I got a little more confident, and confidence was the mortar that cemented my act.
Six nights and our stand was done. On the last night I said my good-byes to Buddy, told him what a talent I thought he was and how I'd love to work with him again.
Buddy, turning to Sid, pointing at me: “Remember that, pallie. I'll need a witness a couple of years from now when I come looking to open for him.”
Good Guy. Nice Guy.
The following week: a two-week stand at The Latin Casino in Philly, opening for Janis Paige. She was a different kind of act from Buddy. Slower, more mellow. Torchy in her singing. Coming hot off my week in A.C. my act was tight as a harp string. Opening night I whipped the crowd into a stir Janis had to work to follow and even at that didn't follow very well. The next day Sid came 'round to tell me that Janis's guy had come 'round to tell him to ask me if maybe I couldn't tone things down some. And Sid added that Janis's guy told him to tell me that Janis was asking me in the kind of way that would get me asked right out of the club if I didn't comply.
Something else I was learning: As opener you could be as good as you pleased just so long as you weren't better than the name on the marquee.
The next night I took a dive. I was subduedly humorous, and I was that way the next four nights, twice on Friday and Saturday, and the same the week after.
Philly done, me and Sid trained our way to Cleveland, where we did a week at the Empire. After that we railed it up to Milwaukee for an eight-show stand at the Riverside.
Five weeks.
Thirty-five days.
I was noticing something. The nights, after the shows, sometimes I would notice myself feeling … depressed is how I guess I would call it. Having a club full of people laugh at you, clap for you, is a high hard to come down from. It's not made any easier spending the dark hours by yourself staring at the bad art hung on the wall of your hotel room. After being loved, the empty room had a way of making you feel all the more lonely. There was Sid to spend time with, but Sid, friend that he was, wasn't what I needed to keep me lifted. There was liquor, but that was a habit I didn't want to learn. There was Tommy. As often as I thought of her, after a show, lying on a bed, staring at a ceiling, I thought of her all the more. Thinking of her was a tease that made me desire her voice. And calling her, hearing her voice … that just made me feel lonely all over again. Sometimes, when I got that way, I would allow myself half a drink, then some sleep. If I was lucky, Tommy is what I'd dream of.
After Milwaukee was Chicago opening for Vic Damone, the Jr. Sinatra, at the St. Clair. His wife, that looker of an Italian actress, was in attendance every night. And every night, as her husband sang, she would cry nearly out of control. She must've really been crazy for the cat.
I worked those Chicago shows. Worked them hard. I honed and trimmed my act. Made it tight, then got it tighter. I was a fighter at camp. That week in Chicago was my last week before hitting Miami, before taking a shot at getting into the Copa by way of the Fontaine-bleau.
It would also be the last week in my life of never having been almost lynched.
MIAMI WAS A JEWEL, a vacation paradise split between art deco hotels and beach resorts. Home to the rich, retreat of the stars, playground to anyone with dough enough to toss around. Miami was Hollywood east. Vegas with shoreline. Glitz, glamour, surf, and sun.
And it was territory to some of the biggest white
trash, pecker-wood, black-haters in all of America. And why shouldn't it be? Florida is as far south as south in America gets. Virginia, the Car-olinas; Florida is below them. Mississippi, Alabama; you still got some southward traveling to do before you hit Florida. Florida is straight down.
So is Hell.
The similarity didn't come to me until much later.
From the moment Sid and I stepped off the train the signs of racism were all around. Literally, WHITES ONLY. COLOREDS NOT ALLOWED. A pleasant one written up: NO DOGS, NO NIGGERS.
They'd take dogs before they'd take blacks.
There were other signs, subtle, but obvious: the way some blacks walked the hectic station head down and gaze turned so as not to risk locking eyes with a white; an innocent act so often confused with being uppity, defiant, and in need of being taught a couple of things. The few blacks who did speak with whites started every sentence with “Suh” and ended them the same.
In a nutty way, for these people, white and black alike, this way of living—the postings that told you which water fountain and bathroom to use, the choreography of where to look and how to speak— was stricdy normal.
I was not naive. No black in America was naive to life in the South, and after my time in that logging camp I knew there were people who couldn't hate blacks more if you'd raped their mother and shot their dog. But what was going on in Florida, it was bigotry as a way of life. It was racism as a tradition. It wasn't hidden in a cold stare or reluctant service at a place of business that was so slow in coming, you were long gone before it got to you. This racism was out in the open and proud of itself.
It took me and Sid a good few minutes to flag a porter. Even though to a man they were black, when they saw me they figured I had no money to tip with, or that if I did was too tight to part with it anyway. That's how deep Jim Crow had his hooks in that burg: He'd taught us to hate ourselves. Finally, me standing apart from Sid, he was able to wave down a redcap to take our bags to a cab.
Getting a taxi to take us to our hotel was a whole other adventure. Like everything else in Miami, there was black and there was white. The white cabs—the cabs with white drivers who took white passengers—weren't about to take me anywhere, and the colored cabs weren't allowed to take us where we wanted to go—hincty and restricted Miami Beach. Twenty dollars over the meter paid up front got a white cab to run us to the Fontainebleau. The back door of the Fontainebleau. The only door they'd let me in.
From there things only got all the more cuckoo.
“Your police card.”
“Police …”
Joe Fischetti was the entertainment manager of the Fontainebleau. From his hand I took the card he was holding out to me, stared at it like if I stared at it hard enough for long enough I might be able to figure why I needed the thing.
Joe explained: “The beach area's got a curfew.”
“A curfew in a nightclub zone? That's like having restrictions on cheese at a deli.”
Joe didn't much smile at my bits. “A curfew for coloreds. You don't have a card, the police can arrest you on sight. Can and will.”
I looked to Sid.
Sid, who'd obviously held back a few items from me concerning the Sunshine State, just shrugged and mouthed “Copa” at me.
The Copa. My reason for putting up with this nonsense.
Finishing his primer on sub-South Florida, Joe told us we'd have to work out something with the cabs. Probably get two—one for me and one for Sid—back and forth from Miami to Miami Beach.
I told him we were already cozy with the regs regarding the transportation system.
Joe, apologetic but matter-of-fact: “I don't make the rules.”
The rules: I could work the Fontainebleau, perform at the Fontainebleau, but there was no way in hell they'd let me stay at the Fontainebleau. Instead, I got put up at the Madison across the bridge from Miami Beach in Miami proper. Proper as in: Away from the ritzy hotels was the proper place for coloreds to stay.
The Madison wasn't a bad joint. Wasn't a good joint, either. Leaking pipes came standard with each room. The cold water was freezing, the hot was only warm. Housekeeping seemed to have taken the Emancipation Proclamation very seriously. Other than that, the roaches didn't much have a problem with me moving in.
I looked to Sid, shook my head.
“The Copa,” he said to me.
The Copa was becoming my mantra.
I told Sid he didn't need to suffer staying with me, that he should go find himself a decent place on the beach.
Sid told me that rednecks weren't any bigger on Jews than they were on blacks. That gave us both a laugh. The only one of the day.
We took a rest.
That night we got in our separate cabs, went over to the Fontainebleau, where I was opening for Mr. Mel Torme. The voice, that voice, the voice you know. Don't know it, get familiar with it because me describing it would be nothing but words thrown at you. The man owned a skill and an ability and a talent that is beyond verbal description. He was to jazz and scat what The Swoon was to standards. Mel the guy, he was a hipster. As swinging offstage as he was on. Mel didn't go in for any of that black/white nonsense. He was cool, and cool was color-blind. One night he got into a real beef when he wanted to have dinner with me in the hotel restaurant. The management nixed it. We settled for steak sandwiches backstage.
The shows were good. They were just about great. Maybe my best up to that time. We might have been in the heart of Crack-erville, but crackers couldn't much afford to populate the beach hotels. Instead, we got the well-to-dos, East Coast intellectuals and New Englander liberals come down for a few days of surf and sand. The audiences were smart, classy. In particular the crowd Mel pulled in were hep, progressive whites catching a primer on jazz and scat to prove how broad-minded they were, plenty receptive to the colored cat who warmed them up for it. I wished very desperately that Tommy could have been there to see me, to see those shows. Of course, if Tommy had been there, she wouldn't have been able to see my shows because the management wouldn't've let her into the hotel because she was black. Other than that, I think she would've been very proud of her man.
Saturday night. Last night of the stand. Late. Second show done and backstage meal downed by Sid, Mel, and me. Mel and I did our good-bye bits before he headed up to his room. Sid and I were ready to trek back to Miami, the city of. We called the cab company, the one black one we'd arranged to pick me up on the beach.
Sid and I waited. Sid was excited. Joe thought I was a sensation and promised to put in a word with Jules Podell at the Copa back in New York. Well, let me tell you, that was all I needed to hear. Racist, bigoted, Jim Crowed to the eyeballs, I'd put up with a city that was all that and more if it landed me at the Copacabana.
Sid and I waited. Excitement faded. Sid was looking end-of-the-tour tired. I told him to go on, hop a taxi, head back to the Madison.
“A little fresh beach air isn't going to hurt me any,” he said, indicating he didn't mind waiting any.
Sid and I waited. Excitement died. I couldn't take the guilt of his slogging through the wait anymore.
“Sid, you've been with me eveiy night at every show since we hit the road, you're staying with me at that flophouse passing for a hotel … the least you could do for me—since you're doing everything else for me—is go get some rest when I ask you.”
Sid “no” ed that, said he was fine. His drowsy eyes said otherwise.
The back-and-forth kept up until I just about pushed Sid into a taxi and sent him on his way.
I went back to waiting for my cab. A colored cab.
I kept waiting.
Fifteen minutes turned into thirty. So what? So I'd call for another cab. Only, the admiral-suited flunkies at the door weren't about to let me back in the hotel—back in through the front of the hotel—no matter that the laughs from my set weren't even cold yet. Ego wouldn't let me beg my way past a couple of uniformed Har-veys who would've been hard-pressed to scrape up the ready cash t
o so much as buy a ticket to catch my act. I figured I'd take a little walk, find a phone somewhere.
That was the plan.
But the warm night, the post-show booze I'd put down that lightened my step, applause still hot, still rippling through my memory and the good feeling the sound brought with—it all got together to make my head swim and my judgment poor. As I walked, I didn't mind walking. Enjoyed the stroll. I figured, since I had my leave-this-darkie-alone card from the police, why not just hoof it back to the Madison? I could probably make it in the same time it would take to find a phone and get a cab—a black cab—to pick me up. Yeah. Walking seemed like the right idea.
Shortly I was lost. Not completely. The combo of liquor and euphoria had distracted me and I'd wandered along a couple of wrong turns. I could see the glow of the beach hotels beyond some trees and make out the low skyline of Miami, but somehow I'd gotten on a road that took me away from one without exactly heading toward the other.
A dark road.
Okay.
Okay, I thought. I'll just head back the way I came. Head back, find that phone, and call that cab.
So I did that, started heading back, not much concerned, figuring I could untwist myself. If I thought of anything, I thought of the laugh Sid and I would have over me getting all fouled up trying to play Charlie Trailblazer.
And I wasn't much concerned when a pair of headlights came up over a rise behind me, caught me, swept over me as a car rode past.
A car. Just a car.
The car kept on for thirty, forty yards … then its taillights went from dull to bright.
It was braking.
I got concerned. Just a little. Just a …
The car sat, didn't drive on and didn't roll back. I didn't move, either. The only exchange between us was the idle of the motor and my shallow breathing. Beyond that there were no other sounds I can recall. Just myself and that car.
The little white lights above the bumper blinked on. The car crept back toward me.
The warm night went hot.
