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to make it as a dancer and not interested in singing. And he was a switch on me in another way. My singing voice is clear but my speaking voice is husky; Mel’s speaking voice was clear but his singing voice sounded sort of cloudy and foggy. I tried to tell him he had something different in the way of sound and encouraged him to try singing. He never seemed to want to listen. Maybe a lot of other people told him the same thing, but anyway, I was pleased later to hear he was making it. I always liked his singing, too. No matter what he was doing, he wasn’t imitating anybody and he had that beat.

Another raggedy youngster I met at Billy’s in those days is a big man today. He was as broke as me and Lester then. We used to sit on a fence out back of the joint, talking big and dreaming big, and then pool our money to go off and buy Chinese food. He had a good mind and loved jazz. “John Hammond thinks he’s something,” he used to say. “Someday I’m going to be really big, and when I do I’m going to do something for Negro jazz musicians.” He got there and he did, and he’s been a good friend of mine from that day to this, Norman Granz.

This was the time when Billy Eckstine’s band was playing at the Plantation Club in Los Angeles. Lester and I used to sneak over there and catch Billy’s group and the new things they were doing. Sarah Vaughan was singing with Billy then and just getting started. It brought back the rough old days with the Basie band to see the way those kids had to work.

All of them, including Sarah, wore some damn uniforms and they were a mess. I used to try to get Billy to get Sarah a couple of gowns, but he wouldn’t get her a spool of thread. He had his troubles, I guess, making payroll at the end of the week. But I looked at it from Sarah’s viewpoint. If I had to work like she worked, I’d have died of shame.

Even in the worst Basie days I paid the cleaners for cleaning and pressing my gowns before I ate. And I knew what a hassle it was to keep your foot out of your mouth on the road on the salary that chick was making. So when Billy couldn’t do nothing to help, I went to see a dame I knew who sold me a beautiful three-hundred-dollar evening gown for a song. I went out to the Plantation and gave it to Sarah. She didn’t know where the gown came from and I didn’t tell her. But the moment she put it on she looked more like a girl who was going somewhere. And she did, and I was happy she did.

During my first Hollywood earthquake I was drinking champagne with Bob Hope. My second one happened while I was balling at Joe Louis’ place. There was a mob of people there, but I was leaving early because I had a recording date the next day and I had a helluva toothache.

There was a young cat there who told me he had something for my toothache and asked me to come outside. When we got out, it turned out he had some pot. He gave me some of it, told me to put it in my tooth, and we stood there underneath this big tree and smoked up the rest. I was in the middle of a drag on this cigarette when the damnedest feeling came over me. It came so fast and was over so fast, I didn’t know what had happened. But this young cat was smart; he gave me a shove that landed me on the ground a few feet away, and there was a whoom and this big tree crashed over with a wham and a bang.

It just wasn’t my time, I guess. Joe had driven off just a few seconds before then in his car with some girl and they didn’t feel a thing.

It only lasted two or three seconds, but when we went back in Joe’s house every damn glass and dish in the place was broken. Furniture was upside down and people were running around screaming. One of Joe’s friends had been upstairs with some broad, sneaking himself a little time, and he came running down the stairs half dressed, and half out of his head screaming, “Joe, save me!”

I stopped this son of a gun and told him to go back up and finish dressing. “Joe needs somebody to save him and he ain’t even here.”

Chapter 12

Mothers Son-in-Law

I’m not the first—or last—chick who got married to try to prove something