Street Player

by Danny Seraphine

  I let out a nervous chuckle. I was a little worried, but there was no turning back. The Franklin Park guys were already making their way across the parking lot toward us. I glanced up to see a gang member running at me. I ducked his punch and connected with a jab that stunned him. He careened into a car and I followed after him to finish the job. The rest of the JPs jumped in to help me, but by that time guys had flooded in from every direction and the lot turned into total chaos. It was like a saloon fight from an old western.

  At one point, I looked over and saw Steve on top of a small Italian kid, who was even shorter than me. Steve had him pinned down on top of a car hood and was beating the hell out of him. Suddenly, I saw him lift his jacket and reach for the gun.

  “No, no, please!” the short kid cried at the sight of the pistol. He held his hands up in defense as he squirmed on the hood. Steve held him by the neck and raised the gun up over his head. He was about a second away from tearing the kid’s face apart when I lunged over and grabbed his arm.

  “That’s enough,” I told Steve. “You don’t need to do that.”

  He looked over at me with an incredulous expression. Seeing I was dead serious, he gave the guy a final punch to the ribs and headed off. I pulled the kid off of the hood of the car and pushed him away.

  “Now get the hell out of here!” I yelled after him, not wanting to appear too soft.

  What I lacked in size I made up for with heart and determination. I was one of the crazier kids in our hundred-strong crew. We spent hours on end drinking beer down at Riis Park and shooting pool at a place called Little English, owned by a well-known Outfit guy named Chuckie English. When we wanted some action, we crashed the local dances held at places like the Hi-Spot and started fights. Every time songs like “Shout!” or “Hot Pastrami With Mashed Potatoes” by Joey Dee and the Starliters came on over the speakers, we ran out onto the dance floor and started pushing guys around. It became part of our routine.

  The head promoter of the dances at the Hi-Spot, an Italian guy named Joe De Francisco, was never happy to see us causing trouble in his joint. He was a giant, barrel-chested Italian who didn’t take shit from anyone. He’d charge the dance floor and start chucking guys out of the way like they were rag dolls.

  “Get the fuck out of here!” he yelled, dragging kids by the back of their jackets toward the rear exit.

  I made sure I got the hell out of Joe’s way. Whenever he showed up on the scene, everyone knew the party was over.

  In the afternoons, we frequented a hot dog stand called Grace’s across the street from Riis Park. The place was owned by a big, stocky Italian named Pete Schivarelli. All the corner guys had great respect for Pete because he was well connected within the community. He knew everyone. We were on our best behavior anytime we hung out at his joint.

  Despite our age difference, Pete and I became fast friends and he took me under his wing. We went on long drives together around the neighborhood in his brand-new forest green Cadillac convertible after he closed up the hot dog stand. I felt safe riding around the neighborhood wherever we went. Pete took me by places like the Colony House Restaurant on the corner of Grand and Harlem, which was a local hangout for the older neighborhood guys who were part of a crew that was soon to become one of the most powerful arms of the Outfit. Pete introduced me to people like Tony “the Ant” Spilotro and his younger brother, Michael, Jimmy Leonetti, and Joey Lombardo. Although I only had a limited relationship with the older guys, it still felt like an honor to be in their presence. They demanded respect on the city streets and were untouchable wherever they went. Nobody—and I mean nobody—fucked with these guys.

  “Hey fellas,” Pete would tell them. “This is a friend of mine, Danny. He’s a drummer.”

  To them, a friend of Pete’s was a friend of theirs, and they welcomed me in. When I was looking for a ring for a cute neighborhood girl named Franny I started going out with, Michael Spilotro, Tony’s younger brother, was nice enough to give me the hookup. We met up one afternoon in the parking lot behind the Colony House at the trunk of his Cadillac. Michael crouched down and flipped open a suitcase full of rings, bracelets, and watches. Of course they were all hot items, but I had no problem with it. I picked up a beautiful ruby ring at a bargain price. Talk about the best deal in the city!

  I loved spending time around the older neighborhood guys. I even started getting my hair cut at the same place as some of the Outfit. It was a neighborhood barbershop called the House of Igor, run by a one-eyed barber named Igor. On any given day, I saw the Outfit guys in there getting their hands manicured as I got my hair trimmed and slicked up into a pompadour. One afternoon, a passing car backfired just outside the front door of the shop. After the loud bang, every guy in the joint dove down to the floor and reached into their waistbands for their pieces. I couldn’t believe how on edge they were. Is that how life is as a member of the Outfit? I asked myself. I wasn’t sure if I could ever get used to something like that.

  Aside from our stops at restaurants and other neighborhood hangouts, Pete and I paid visits to a local whorehouse. It was an old dilapidated motel called the Near Loop in the seediest part of downtown Chicago. We dropped by on Friday nights after Pete closed up the stand. A man with a limp who went by the name of Tennessee ran the place and sat behind the front desk eyeing Pete and me every time we walked in. As soon as we’d arrive, Pete vanished up the stairwell and I continued to my favorite girl’s room at the end of the hall to take care of business. Her name was Kim and she was the most beautiful black girl I had ever seen. She took a liking to me from the first time we met because she said I was gentle and treated her better than her other clients. I was the only one of her clients who held her after we had sex. Although Kim charged me twenty-five bucks for the first time around, the second was often on the house. Being a tender lover had its privileges.

  Just because the JPs were one of the most feared gangs in the area didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous out there on the streets. We took some brutal beatings along the way. They came with the territory.

  One night, a group of us went down to St. Pascal’s Annual Church Carnival to see what we could stir up. It was always one our favorite places to cause trouble and get into fights. We typically traveled in large packs, but on this night we got careless. For some reason, only fifteen guys came out that night as opposed to our usual thirty or forty.

  As we walked down the center of the street, the carnival started emptying out. People disappeared behind game booths and squeezed in between vendor trailers. I always trusted my gut, and it was telling me this was the calm before the storm. Everything got quiet, too quiet. Suddenly, the Madison and Crawford guys, the MCs, appeared at the opposite end of the parking lot. They were armed to the teeth and there must have been at least 150 or 200 of them! Our gang had beaten up one of their guys at a party a few nights earlier and they were back looking for blood.

  “Let’s go, motherfuckers!” one of the MCs shouted toward us.

  The rest of the JPs and I traded worried glances. We didn’t stand a chance. I tried to look tough on the outside, but on the inside my stomach churned. In my mind, I was walking toward my death.

  And then up the block, a siren cut through the night air.

  I looked up to see a dozen police cars racing toward us from every angle. They had set up a full-on dragnet. Typically we made a run for it when they showed up, but not this time. I had never been so happy in my life to see the cops! They rounded us up and we spent the night in a holding cell at Austin Police Station. I figured it was better to be locked up in the local jail rather than lying on a bed in the emergency room down at Cook County with a busted head.

  But my luck took a turn for the worse in the coming weeks. One of my cousins and I were involved in an awful car accident that left me in a hospital bed. I suffered a few broken ribs, and at one point the doctors thought I had ruptured my spleen. It was impossible to breathe without feeling pain throughout my body. Being laid up in the hosp
ital gave my friends and family the perfect opportunity to get their licks in. There was no shortage of suggestions about what to do with my life. Everyone saw that the next step for me was going to be jail . . . or maybe worse.

  “Maybe you should join the Marines,” my mother told me. It looked as though the music career she envisioned for me had faded into oblivion. She was looking for any way to get me back on track. I rolled away from her in the hospital bed and sighed. I didn’t know much, but I had no interest in becoming a soldier. Deep down, however, my mother was right; it was time to do something constructive with my life.

  My sense of guilt for not being there for the daughter I had had with Elsie weighed heavily on me. The child support loomed over my head like yet another dark cloud. I was behind in my payments and couldn’t put off getting a job any longer. After a short search, I found work at Polk Brothers Appliance Store for $1.25 an hour, but it didn’t last. The car accident had left me with a weak back, so it was impossible to move refrigerators and televisions all day. Later I worked on a factory assembly line for another few weeks, but that was also short-lived. My piddly musical income didn’t amount to anything at the end of the day either. On average, I was playing out maybe once a month.

  It was a scary period in my life and I aimlessly roamed the streets day and night. The one thing I had a talent for, playing drums, I wasn’t using. It wasn’t going to be long before I tried my hand at robbing and stealing to make ends meet. Whether I liked it or not, the currents were pulling me in that direction. It was part of the natural progression in the life of a corner guy ascending up the ranks into the Outfit. It was an important line to cross, because after that there was no going back. My life was already intense enough. Time with my gang was turning into a whole lot more than hanging out, drinking beer, and fistfights.

  One night, five carloads of us went out looking for a rival gang of Puerto Ricans who called themselves the Simon City Gang. The week before, they had trespassed in our neighborhood and beat up one of our guys. It was now our turn to exact our revenge. Once we made it to their neighborhood, we began combing the streets. Word of our arrival spread, and not long after, the Simon City gang rolled up on us. An all-out brawl ensued until the sound of police sirens could be heard in the distance. We ended up having to scatter into the unfamiliar neighborhood.

  Once the police had come and gone, the Simon City guys came back looking to finish us off. I and a few other guys were separated from the pack and started walking home. Suddenly an old black Chevy came screaming by. One of our toughest guys, a crazy Irish kid named Dougie, kicked the side of the car. It sped on for another twenty feet or so before coming to a screeching halt. Suddenly, two shotgun barrels popped out of the passenger-side window.

  “Run!” someone shouted.

  I took off toward the entrance to a back alley just as a shot rang out. I ducked and heard the buckshot ricochet off of the brick wall above my head. I hit the alley and kept running until I was completely out of breath. Somehow, I managed to make it back to my neighborhood alive that night.

  I jogged back to my parents’ house and went straight to my room. I spent a sleepless night shivering in bed. It was only a matter of time before someone got killed. The tire irons were being swapped out for knives, the baseball bats for pistols and shotguns. Straight-up fistfights seemed to be a thing of the past. Everywhere we went there was another gang looking to take us down. I had to have my head on a swivel at all times and I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I was crazy and tough in many ways, but more and more I began to understand that I didn’t have the same ruthlessness as the other JPs. There was no way I would ever carry a gun or a knife. There wasn’t that same level of violence and rage within me. The other guys were in a different league.

  A few days after Christmas in 1965, I couldn’t have felt any worse about my life. Standing alone in my parents’ kitchen early one morning, I hit rock bottom. Nothing made sense. What was going to become of me? Was I going to spend the rest of my life grinding it out in mediocre cover bands? Would I die in a street fight . . . or survive long enough to become a member of the Outfit?

  The time had come to reconsider everything. Sure, I thought of the JPs as brothers, but I also understood that they ultimately would lead me down the wrong path. It was a place I no longer had an interest in going. I stared down at the linoleum where I once used to sit for hours on end banging on my mother’s pots and wondered what had happened. I was a high school dropout, a teenage father with a daughter I never saw, and I spent most of my time drinking and fighting. Above all, my music was going nowhere. I had lost hope, and for the first time a thought crossed my mind . . .

  I am going to quit playing the drums.

  What was the use anyway?

  I was so distant at that moment that the sudden ringing of the telephone rattled me. I stared at the phone. What if it’s one of the JPs? I thought. Should I answer? I wasn’t so sure.

  “Yeah,” I finally said into the receiver.

  “Hey, is this Danny?” a voice boomed on the other end of the line. “This is Tommy Ullo, man. I’m calling because Jimmy Ford and the Executives are looking for a drummer.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Jimmy Ford and the Executives,” Tommy repeated. “Dwight Kalb, the band’s drummer, is splitting to spend more time on being an artist. They need somebody right away. Would you be interested in auditioning for them?”

  It was like divine intervention. Even though I had been a part of dead-end bands, I still managed to build a reputation around the neighborhood for being a good drummer. It was as if someone flipped on a bright light and everything was clear to me. Tommy’s call instantly pulled me from the depths of despair. Jimmy Ford and the Executives were one of the hottest bands in Chicago. I had regularly seen their flashy candy apple red Cadillac hearse driving around the neighborhood. They were Dick Clark’s road band for his Cavalcade of Stars national tours that featured all the major acts. Little Richard, Frankie Avalon, Fats Domino—they all did tours for Dick Clark.

  “Yeah, that sounds cool, Tommy,” I answered, trying to hide my excitement.

  “They’d love to have you come over and sit in with the guys at Dwight’s. I’ll give you the address,” he said.

  I rummaged through a kitchen drawer for a pen, but couldn’t find anything to write on. I didn’t want to keep Tommy waiting, so I began scribbling on the palm of my hand. I couldn’t write fast enough. For the first time, there was a shift inside of me. It wasn’t the type of adrenaline I experienced before a fight; it was something more positive and uplifting. Tommy’s phone call let me know there was a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe my musical dreams had a chance after all.

  3

  Jimmy Ford and the Executives

  On the morning of my audition for Jimmy Ford and the Executives, I was more nervous than I had ever been in my life. The situation didn’t get any better when I arrived at Dwight’s house and didn’t know anyone. The guys were at least three or four years older and our personal styles couldn’t have been more opposite. They were straight shooters wearing college sweaters and I was a corner kid with greased-back hair and a black leather jacket. The sax player in the band, a tall guy named Walt Parazaider, introduced me to the guys: guitarist Mike Sistack, drummer Dwight Kalb, bassist Terry Kath, and trumpet player Jimmy Ford. Tommy Ullo had recommended me, but Walt had also seen me perform around the neighborhood and liked my drumming.

  After we had gone down to Dwight’s basement, Mike strapped on his guitar and turned to me. He was running the show.

  “Okay, Danny,” he said. “We’re gonna do James Brown’s ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.’ You know that one?”

  I situated myself behind Dwight’s cool set of champagne sparkle Rogers drums and adjusted a few of the cymbals. I had heard the James Brown song on the radio, but never played it. Of course, I wasn’t going to explain that to the expectant faces eyeing me. It was time to deliver.

  My
playing was stiff and mechanical starting out, but I threw myself into the song and found my groove in no time. Once my nervousness faded, my confidence grew with each roll of the toms and crack of the snare. The guys exchanged satisfied looks with each other as I let my natural ability shine through. As we used to say around the neighborhood, I played the shit out of it. When we finished, the guys walked into the corner of the room to talk amongst themselves. It seemed like they were back there forever.

  “You got the gig, man,” Mike finally said.

  I let out a long sigh of relief as a smile found its way onto my face.

  Mike went on to say I’d be paid fifty bucks per show and would be starting at an upcoming gig the band had in Pittsburgh two weeks from Saturday. It was an all-star concert for Dick Clark with the Four Seasons headlining, and featuring Lou Christie, Chuck Berry, Simon and Garfunkel, and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. Mike explained there was also a new band on the bill called the Yardbirds who were from England. And then he hit me with the biggest detail of all . . .

  “We should be playing for around ten thousand people,” he said.

  I tried to muster a response, but it was hard to string the words together. The whole scene was too good to be true. The band was going to be playing in front of ten thousand people? The last time I played, there had been ten! I couldn’t believe I was going to step in as the backbone of a six-piece horn band that backed up big stars like Chuck Berry and Lou Christie.

  Somebody come wake me up because I must be dreaming, I thought to myself.

  Standing in Dwight’s basement that afternoon, I realized this was a crucial turning point in my life. These were the skilled musicians I had been searching for. The fog had lifted and my future could not have been clearer to me. This was what I should have been doing all along!

  I connected with the band on a musical level, but overall I was a stranger in a strange land. They were from suburban middle-class backgrounds. They weren’t Chicago street guys like me. I found myself surrounded by a professional musician’s culture, not a corner guy’s culture. Not only did they dress differently, but they also spoke another language.