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I went downtown one night and sat down with Arthur Herzog; he played the tune over on the piano, wrote down the words, changing two or three phrases, softening it up just a little.

This is one song I couldn’t sing without feeling every minute of it. I still can’t. Many a bitch has told me she broke up every time she heard it. So if anybody deserves credit for that, it’s Jimmy, I guess—and the others who keep coming home with lipstick on their faces.

When that stops happening, “Don’t explain” will be as dated as the Black Bottom. Until then, it will always be a standard.

I was with Jimmy Monroe for a year before I got wise to something else that was happening. Jimmy smoked something strange. I didn’t know for sure until one god-awful night at Mom’s place in the Bronx when he got sick.

He was sweating something fierce. Then he’d have the chills and then a fever. Naturally Mom was hovering around wanting to do something to help, wanting to get a doctor. All Jimmy wanted was for her to stay away from him. I tried to explain him to Mom and Mom to him, and Jimmy and I got into one hell of a fight. Then he slapped me.

Mom stepped in and told him not to hit me. Then the three of us got into a bigger fight. Jimmy said he was leaving, and I left with him.

We moved into a hotel first; then we got a little apartment of our own. I was where I wanted to be, with Jimmy. We had our own little place to be happy in. But I wasn’t happy. Then Jimmy started letting me lie down with him. My marriage was coming apart. And it was during this time that I got hooked. But one had nothing to do with the other, really, and Jimmy was no more the cause of my doing what I did than my mother was. That goes for any man I ever knew. I was as strong, if not stronger, than any of them. And when it’s that way, you can’t blame anybody but yourself.

I was working at the Plantation Club in Los Angeles and Jimmy was out there with me when he got into trouble.

Suddenly I was alone and on my own. I had never realized what that would mean. I had to get it myself and didn’t know where to begin. I was as helpless as a week-old baby left all alone in its crib, hungry and unable to do anything about it except cry.

I cried until I was sick, exactly the way I had seen Jimmy sick at Mom’s apartment on 199th Street. Sick as I was, and alone as I was, I headed back to New York.

Then, the way you always do, I met someone. He was a young boy, fresh up from the South—Alabama or Georgia. He played trumpet and his name was Joseph Luke Guy. He was new on the scene, just getting started as a musician. And he could be a big help to me.

It wasn’t long before I was one of the highest-paid slaves around. I was making a thousand a week—but I had about as much freedom as a field hand in Virginia a hundred years before.

Mom was unhappy about me living all alone in a little apartment on 104th Street. It was near her place on 99th Street, but she thought I should stay with her like I always had. I had no husband. Now we had something else in common—both of us were grass windows. She didn’t know I had Joe Guy on the string then and I didn’t tell her. Finally we compromised and I used to spend three evenings a week with her and the rest with Guy. But that wasn’t enough. She was lonely without me and beginning to be real worried about me.

I tried to tell Mama she had the dog, Rajah Ravoy, to take care of her. Rajah was a skinny run-down mutt when Dr. Carrington, a West Indian doctor friend of mine, had brought him to me to take care of. He was a sad dog then, and I didn’t have time to take care of him so I took him to Mom.

Sometimes when I was working at Café Society I used to take him to work with me. He was so low, I figured he needed the grandest name in the world. So I borrowed the fancy name from a magician who was working a joint in the Village at that time—Rajah Ravoy.

This dog was amazing, he was so smart. In the morning Mom would leave the Bronx and take the