Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [33]
That did it. Artie waited for me all night at the Uptown House and put me right in his car to take me to Boston for the opening. Georgie Auld, Tony Pastor, and Max Kaminsky were with him. Before we left, we drove over to Mom’s and she fixed fried chicken for a 6:30 A.M. breakfast for the whole gang. The chicken knocked Artie out. He never ate anything like she fixed it. When the chicken was gone, we piled into his car and were off.
Boston was jumping then. We were booked in Roseland. Glenn Miller was working just around the corner, and a block away there was Chick Webb and his band with Ella Fitzgerald. Chick’s group was the best known; but we were still better known than Miller.
The sight of sixteen men on a bandstand with a Negro girl singer had never been seen before—in Boston or anywhere. The question of how the public would take to it had to be faced opening night at Roseland. Naturally Sy Schribman, the owner of Roseland and a guy who did a lot for bands like Dorsey, Miller, and others, was worried.
But Artie was a guy who never thought in terms of white and colored. “I can take care of the situation,” was his answer. “And I know Lady can take care of herself.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” I told Artie, “I don’t care about sitting on the bandstand. When it comes time for me to sing a number, you introduce me, I sing, then I’m gone.”
Artie disagreed. “No,” he insisted. “I want you on the bandstand like Helen Forrest and Tony Pastor and everyone else.” So that’s what I did. Everything up in Boston was straight—but the real test was coming up. We were heading for Kentucky.
Kentucky is like Baltimore—it’s only on the border of being the South, which means the people there take their Dixie stuff more seriously than the crackers farther down.
Right off, we couldn’t find a place that would rent me a room. Finally Artie got sore and picked out the biggest hotel in town. He was determined to crack it—or he was going to sue. I tried to stop him. “Man,” I said, “are you trying to get me killed?”
Artie had taken the band on the road for a good reason—he wanted to play to as many people as possible before risking a New York opening. The band had enough work to do without looking for lawsuits around every corner and doing a job for the NAACP.
But there was no moving Artie. He’s a wild one; he has his own peculiarities but he’s amazing and a good cat deep down. He’s not one to go back on his word. Whatever he says, Jack, you can believe that’s it. Whatever he’d set out to do, he would believe in it. He might find he was wrong, but rather than go back on his word, he’d suffer. That’s the way he was and that’s why I liked him, and that’s why he wouldn’t listen to me in Kentucky. He got eight cats out of the band and they escorted me to the registration desk at the biggest hotel in that little old Kentucky town.
I don’t think anybody black had ever got a room there before, but the cats in the band acted like it was as natural as breathing. I think the man at the desk figured it couldn’t be true what he thought he saw, and I couldn’t be a Negro or nobody would act like that. I think they thought I was Spanish or something, so they gave me a nice room and no back talk.
The cats had a little taste of triumph, so they went on from there. All eight of them waltzed into the dining room, carrying me with them like I was the Queen Mary and they were a bunch of tugboats. We sat down, ordered food all around and champagne, acting up like we were a sensation. And we were.
After that scene I guess the management thought they were getting off easy in letting me have a room.
It was a one-man town. And the sheriff was the man. He ran things. He was on the scene that night when we opened in a real-life natural rock cave. The sheriff was haunting the place, letting kids in for half price. They were selling kids whisky right under his nose. But he didn’t pay any mind to that. He was too busy dogging me.
When it came time to go on, I told Artie I didn’t want any trouble and didn’t want to sit on the