Low Down: Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales From Childhood

by A. J. Albany

  One night, I was rudely awakened by the sound of Ronda yelling at my dad. They were holed up in the bathroom, the fate of all his encounters, since I slept in the only room, and he was thankfully discreet in these matters. “Deeper, harder.” Ronda was barking orders at Dad like a brigadier general. Though I had some vague notion of what was afoot, it sounded so severe I barely resisted running interference on my dad’s behalf. It was clear she wasn’t going to shut up anytime soon. I tried burying my head inside of the couch bed, but she was a bigmouth. I started to feel inexplicably sick from it and turned my thoughts to the poor, unsuspecting Tunnel Rats and the various fates that awaited them. “Now. Do it now!” she continued. There were vipers hidden in bamboo, rigged so a solider could unwittingly tip the deadly snake out, and onto his neck or face, if he hit the bamboo with his helmet. “Give it to me harder!” Spears were mounted below that would run through their groins as they descended. “Deeper, deeper.” Baskets of scorpions were released from the ceiling when they stepped on a tripwire.

  It was no use. My head was imploding. Just as I was removing myself out to the fire escape to get some sleep, I heard Dad speak. It was a comfort knowing he hadn’t been beaten into a coma. “Ah, why don’t you SHUT UP?” he yelled. Lovely silence. Next day, Dad looked haggard and somewhat disheartened. “I think she’s gross,” I volunteered in an attempt to cheer him up. He chuckled weakly, nudging me on the head. “Yeah, well, she’s pretty young.” I hoped that I wouldn’t have to explore the dark, mysterious tunnels of sex for many years to come.

  lyrics

  One night while sitting on the sofa bed watching Top Hat on Movies Till Dawn, Dad grabbed my hand, saying, “Listen, listen to this.” The song was “Cheek to Cheek,” and the line that caused his rapture was “The cares that hung around me through the week, seem to vanish like a gambler’s lucky streak.” Dad sang this as if Irving Berlin had given him the key to squaring his sins with God and the Devil. “The existence of songs like that give one hope in this lousy world,” he exclaimed.

  This remark was a revelation to me. The next day, I began writing parts of lyrics that in some way inspired hope in me, until I had filled up both sides of a sheet of notebook paper, which I folded carefully and carried with me everywhere. In moments of upheaval, spiritual or otherwise, I’d take it out and read these words like sacred scriptures.

  School was the ugliest word I knew. I had a knack for attracting abuse from students and teachers alike. Perhaps my appearance was off-putting; I was oblivious to the fashions of 1970 and favored some bright yellow shoes and a red vinyl raincoat that I wore regardless of the weather. When no women were in my life to tend to my hair, it resembled a large, deserted nest, and my incessant wheezing didn’t help my case much either. I’d pull out my lyrics often during class, which roused the curiosity of future cheerleader Susie Wheeler, who sat to my right. “What’s that? A letter from your boyfriend, Stinky Sid?” Stinky Sid was my male equivalent: a shy, skinny, friendless nose picker who was also obsessed with horror movies. I tried to ignore Susie’s taunts, but she wouldn’t have it. She grabbed my paper and began reading it aloud as I chased her around desks and felt my chest turn to brick. For a moron, she was surprisingly adept at running and reading at the same time.

  “‘I’d tear the stars down from the sky for you.’ Hey! This is a love letter! ‘You’re the purple light of a summer night in Spain.’ You are such a freak!” she wailed. “‘Where troubles melt like lemon drops—’” She ran to the window to throw the paper out, and as she leaned over, I crashed the window down across her back, holding it fast. I thrilled to hear her laughter turn to screams. Our ineffectual teacher, Mrs. Stern, finally intervened, grabbing my hair in an attempt to pull me away. However, hate and adrenaline made me strong, and I would not be moved, not until Stinky Sid looked at me as if to say, “It’s no use—not for the likes of us.” Only then did I loosen my grip. Susie’s parents filed a complaint and called my father, who told them flatly that they were a family of square turds. Glorious suspension followed, and for one week, I read—and listened to—all the lovely lyrics I desired, without fear of interruption.

  terry

  Terry loved Dad. She cooked for him, occasionally copped for him—and was a big jazz fan. When he was abusive, she cried silent, dignified tears. Her appearance was striking. Waist-length honey hair, neatly pressed minis, matching bags and shoes.

  Terry was a transvestite. She would say (I must say she, never having seen her as a he) that if real women spent half the time that she did “enhancing their femininity,” the world would be full of happy men. Terry was forever saving money for her sex-change operation, and Dad was forever blowing her savings on smack. To further complicate her life, she got saddled with the responsibility of caring for me. Terry often read me fairy tales. It was a treat to hear “Little Red Riding Hood” read by someone whose natural baritone made as convincing a wolf as her cultivated high voice did a Red Riding Hood.

  By mid-1970, my asthma had spiraled out of control. I spent a large amount of time at the Children’s Hospital ER on Vermont Avenue waiting for adrenaline shots that brought only short-lived relief. The doctors seemed at a loss to offer any sound advice concerning my condition and would suggest odd things like “Drink a lot of Bubble-Up” or “Try breathing like a fish,” whatever the hell that meant. My world was a steaming inferno of vaporizers, and I was constantly slathered in Vick’s.

  Dad decided that a couple of days away from the L.A. smog would help free my laboring lungs, and so a road trip ensued: Dad, his friend Vince, who was the only person we knew who hadn’t had his driver’s license revoked, and Terry. Though this time it was not the great Terry Southern but our new Terry in the car. We headed up the 610 to Arrowhead in a ’66 gray-primered Fairlane. Vince was the poster boy for junkies everywhere, with skin like school paste, sunken black eyes, and concave cheeks. He would’ve had better luck frightening predators away with a single glance than with the small pearl-handled revolver he brought along for protection. “Vince, you mook, that’s a chick’s gun,” Dad laughed.

  Dad packed for this outing like he would for a weekend gig in Vegas—cuff links, Aqua Velva, shoe shine kit, and a sheet of blotter acid he had procured from some young musician who was playing with the Mothers of Invention and who assured Dad that Arrowhead would be the ideal place to trip for the first time. If there was ever a person born who should have steered clear of LSD, it was my father, who spent much of his life plagued by wild flights of paranoid fancy without the aid of hallucinogens. Terry looked like the Swiss Miss cocoa ad come to life in two-dimensional drag, with long hair braided and looped over, and size eleven white mary janes. Always astonishing and impractical, from head to toe.

  Upon arrival, we explored just long enough to find a clearing, where we parked ourselves on airline blankets and Dad said, “Isn’t this the grooviest?” as we squinted at the sunlit pines, a group of city vampires who would have surely perished in the wild after a very short time. The day seemed endless—I imagined the lake being dragged for bodies and robbers on the lam hiding out in forest cabins. Anything to make it interesting. Boredom eventually prevailed, and I fell asleep around seven, listening to Dad and company preparing to take a second hit of acid, having felt nothing from the first after all of fifteen minutes. Stretched out across the front bench seat of the Ford, I was startled out of sleep by a mad howling. Looking out the windshield, I saw Dad crouched on a boulder baying at the moonless sky, as Terry danced around him, a demented Isadora Duncan, singing in a sweet falsetto. Vince was lying silently on his back. After a while, I too lay down, staring at mysterious stains on the headliner. I decided then that there was nothing terribly relaxing about nature. I couldn’t particularly breathe better, and the cafeteria counters at the On Tray or Clifton’s were far more attractive than any grouping of trees. At least in the city, my enemies were not so faceless.

  Terry proved to be a much better mother than my natural one. She baked cookies,
put me in French braids with blue ribbons to match my eyes, and even joined the PTA—June

  Cleaver with a dick. Unfortunately, some concerned father had figured out that she was a he, and made the mistake of confronting her after school one day. Now Terry Femme, in her prior incarnation, she had been Terence the Terror, Golden Gloves, and with one left jab to the sternum she set this asshole on his knees. She smoothed out her skirt, gently took my hand, and earned herself a place on my short list of heroines.

  However, this scene of twisted domesticity was short-lived. Terry had never had a real habit—just the occasional “joy bang,” as they say—but soon she was using in earnest. She was so tormented, one couldn’t blame her. Maybe she was testing Dad’s devotion, seeing if he’d intervene, she pined over him so. The problem is, junkies are usually self-absorbed. I don’t think he noticed her decline—but I did. She started turning tricks, and after being picked up on a second charge of pandering and possession, she cut a deal with the DA to avoid a two-year stretch in a men’s prison—her worst fear. After informing on her dealer, she simply disappeared, and I never saw her again.

  So began one of life’s little slumps. School became simply unbearable. Even in Hollywood, my home life was fodder for gossip. Now I had Dad picking me up stoned at the front of the school. He would wait by the gate, scatting to himself and swaying, grabbing at the invisible fairies that danced above his head. One boy, Dougie, took to impersonating his strung-out state for the class’s amusement, including the teacher, who seemed to get the biggest bang out of it. This went on for a few days until I finally snapped. It was a Thursday when I kicked the offensive boy’s ass. I bloodied his nose and cut his lip. When they finally pulled me off him, I called my teacher Mrs. Stern an ugly old cunt, and at the tender age of eight, I was expelled from Grant Elementary School.

  mr. tambourine man

  My father’s firm conviction that I possessed some singing ability can only be chalked up to irrational parental love that rendered him totally deaf. When the time came for the school variety show, it was decided that I would sing a song. “Why don’t you do that ‘Tambourine’ number you always sing along to? You sound like an angel.” He beamed reassuringly. “Mr. Tambourine Man,” the Byrds’ version, was my favorite 45, and I played it constantly and sang along to it like a castrated mouse, not an angel. On the night of the show, I knew I was doomed, even before the rusty relic accompanying me on the piano botched the opening chords. I stood on the auditorium stage looking out at all the kids and their parents and started to drown. I attempted to sing, but hardly any sound came out of my mouth. Someone shouted “louder” while others rolled their eyes, nudging each other, and some kid named Raymond made lewd gestures, sticking his tongue through the V of his fingers, which threw me so much I forgot my place in the song. When it ended, so too ended any further thought of it. I’d had worse ordeals, certainly, so I filed it away, knowing I had tried my best.

  Ten years later I’d have more success performing the same song for what appeared to be a Japanese Mafia convention. That time I kept my mouth shut. I danced with nothing more than a pair of tambourines and a see-through poncho covering my only natural talents. It was good money the first few times I did it, but the money, to my thinking, was the only reason to do it. I’d never get that “buzz” from performing that Dad so often spoke of. Getting up in front of a roomful of strangers, whether they liked me or not, would never give me any pleasure. However, had I possessed even half of my dad’s talent, I might have had a different song to sing.

  speeding

  Certain people are not compatible with certain drugs, in much the same way that one can meet a person and have an immediate affinity or a violent dislike toward them. They say it’s chemistry. I’m sure it is, in the case of drugs. I don’t know the precise time when Dad got into speed, but I do remember the first time I saw him on it right after he fixed. He and speed were a match made in hell. Maybe he used too much, or he shot something weird, like human adrenaline, but it was the first time I felt truly fearful, along with the usual frustration and sadness.

  We were alone in the apartment, and Dad had been acting cagey and distracted, when he left for the bathroom, leaving me to watch On the Waterfront on our lousy TV. It had a broken vertical hold, so you watched movies with a constant black vertical band moving up the screen at half-second intervals.

  The first thing I noticed was how quickly he emerged from the bathroom, not like his usual rendezvous with heroin, where he’d stay ten minutes or so while he came on, and then, when ready, float onto the couch, keeping one toe in my world. A conscious effort, I felt, not to shut me out completely. On this day, he charged into the room, making a hole in the wall where the knob crashed into it. He paced around madly, sort of hunched, and for a minute, I thought he was doing an impression (which he was great at) of Groucho, one of his favorites. Then I saw the torrents of sweat pouring off him and the veins on his neck and forehead bulging and straining against his flesh. His mouth was pulled tight, teeth clenched hard, like a death’s-head. He rubbed his arms and looked at me with wild eyes that tried to communicate but couldn’t.

  I went into the bathroom and was shocked to see he’d left his works sitting out. This was something he never did. He always stashed them in a black leather bag that he kept under the sink. It chilled me to see it all there on top of the basin like a prop from I Was a Teenage Werewolf, which it appeared that Dad was acting out in the other room. Being clueless in these matters, I ran him a hot bath and wished there was some booze in the house. He’d sworn off that two years earlier, when he vomited pints of blood and was rushed to the hospital for transfusions while the doctor shook his head like an undertaker, saying, “He’ll probably die.”

  I’m not sure if the bath helped, or if he’d just passed his peak, but he started to gain some control. His mouth relaxed, and his veins subsided. He looked at me from the tub, shaking and wet. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry.” I forced an insincere smile. Poor guy. He’d just had a date with a fast bitch, a raving psychotic, who almost killed him. Best he stuck with his quiet, gentler love, the one who smoothed his brow and lifted his cares. She too might kill him, but heroin appeared to be the more painless path to travel. I returned to my movie just as Terry gave his big speech to Johnny in the back of the car: “You were my little brother, you should have looked out for me, just a little. I could have been somebody, instead of a bum, which I am.” Brando was preaching from his pulpit, and I embraced his words with my whole being. It was St. Jude’s Church of Hopeless Souls, and I was its eight-year-old, front-row-center convert. I picked at my holey, dirty socks and made a mental note to five-finger some new ones in the morning.

  music lessons

  Musical education at the hands of my dad was both exhilarating and, at times, a terrible drag. He expected so much from me, which I’m not knocking, but I was a fairly average eight-year-old, only capable of retaining so much information. Because I was his daughter and tuned into him on other levels, he assumed that I had the same ability that he did to understand jazz. Of course, I had only been listening to music for a quarter of the time he’d been playing it. I was barraged with technical terms and abstract theories. He was very keen on contemporary composers like Schoenberg too, but the whole atonal thing made me weep with confusion, so he laid off of that, and we stuck with jazz.

  As much as I like jazz, when I was forced to analyze and recognize every flatted fifth, suspended harmony, and mop-mop lick, it would start to grind me down. I was a nervous wreck when we listened to music together, because I knew I’d fail the test to come—usually figuring out the origins of bebop tunes, what popular songs they were derived from. I sucked at that, much to my Dad’s dismay. “You mean you can’t hear that ‘Hot House’ is ‘What Is This Thing Called Love?’ What a tin ear.” Oh well, I fared better with the standards—knew most of them after the first couple notes of the verse, but that was memorization, plain and simple. One Father’s Day, I bought Dad som
e Bird anthology and told him I liked the “My Old Flame” track. He let me know that this particular recording was a really poor one. “He’s so loaded—can’t you hear all the spit in his reed?” Guess not. Anyway, I’m very grateful for those learning sessions, and I’d like to think that if he were still around, he might be half pleased with my efforts to keep learning, and very pleased that the love of music he instilled in me has helped me pull through some rough times.

  Making music with Warne Marsh (sax), Bob Whitlock (bass), and Sam Dembowski (drums), 1957;

  Right combo: relaxing during the recording of The Right Combination in engineer Ralph Garretson’s living room, 1957;

  Into the light after an all-night jam session, around 1945

  Mr. and Mrs. Joe Albany, publicity shot, 1960;

  Mom, poised fragility on a Hollywood Street, 1963;

  “. . . and that was the beginning of fairies,” 1962

  Happiness with tiny Chiclets, 1967.

  Portrait, girl out of time, 1974.

  Party dress, late ’60s

  Inspiration all around, France, mid-’70s;

  Dad, older but happier for a while, around 1979

  Dad back at Gram’s for a visit from Europe, 1977;

  Getting down to business, Europe, mid-’70s

  izzy

  In 1971, Dad had a couple of friends living at the Knickerbocker Hotel over on Ivar, the most interesting being a guy named Izzy who made a living doing astrological charts. Izzy informed my dad that on the fourth, fifth, and sixth of February in 1962, a mass of people in India ran to the top of a mountain because the planets were all aligned, which signaled either the end of the world or the birth of the new messiah. Since I was born February 5, 1962, Izzy fixed on the idea that my life should be closely monitored and insisted that we visit him on a regular basis so he could see what was new in my chart. He had a studio apartment on the eighth floor that looked south to Hollywood Boulevard, and four cats that stank up the place—he never cracked a window, chain-smoked cigars.