Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [75]
But Miss Freddy was good for a million laughs and never hurt anybody except himself—especially when he tried to wear my pumps.
Leonard Averhart used to come around a lot and be my handsome escort. He would stay with me for hours and keep me from being bugged.
Joe Glaser had installed Billy Sharp, the well-known band manager, as my personal and road manager. We played a few tours together, my first date in Miami at Mother Kelly’s and other places. While we were playing in Canada I got sore at Sharp. We were due to fly direct to Detroit for an engagement at the Club Juana when I fired him on the spot at the airport.
I didn’t have a soul I could get to take care of the endless details of these tours that drag me so. So I finally persuaded a close friend, Maely—who later married Bill Dufty—to come to Detroit with me. She went with me on Billy Sharp’s ticket. She had handled other musicians, had been Charlie Parker’s personal manager at one time, and she knew the ropes.
It was in Detroit at the Club Juana that I met Louis McKay again. I hadn’t seen him since I was sixteen and he wasn’t much older and I was singing at the Hotcha in Harlem. But during that date at the Juana, one night Louis was late getting there and I cried like a baby. So I knew my resolutions with men were going down the drain.
It got to be that way, every time I’d give up on him and cry, he’d arrive. So I finally quit fighting it, got a divorce, and we got married.
Sarah Vaughan was unlucky enough to be in an afterhours joint in Detroit that week I was there when the police raided it. With anybody else, this doesn’t matter too much. So the joint is behind in its payments for protection, it can happen to anybody.
But all the cops have to do is find a celebrity, and it’s page-one stuff. When I heard about it, I happened to see Jimmy Fletcher, a U.S. Treasury agent. I went on my knees to the man.
“You’re so big,” I said, “you know everybody, do something for that girl. She’s clean, she’s never been in jail before. Neither have you, and you don’t know what it’s like. Tonight is Friday, and unless you do something she’ll have to stay all weekend in the place waiting for the judge to come to work Monday morning.”
Finally Jimmy went downtown and he got her out at nine in the morning. I had Maely call George Treadwell, Sarah’s husband and manager, to find out if she’d gotten out. All I wanted to know was if Sarah was all right. George said, “Tell Billie not to worry about Sarah.”
It’s the easiest thing in the world to say, “Every broad for herself.” Saying it and acting that way is one thing that’s kept some of us behind the eight ball where we’ve been living for a hundred years.
Louis and I came back to New York together, and we’ve been together ever since. I’m not going to try and say we walked off into a storybook sunset. We lived in a hotel for a while. Then we settled down at our own little place in Flushing, where we have our fights just like everybody else.
If it had been left to the managers and promoters, I could have shot myself long ago. But I’ve always been fortunate as far as the public is concerned. I could kill myself if it wasn’t for them.
I’m still working in clubs and concerts—although if you live in New York you’d never know it. Because as I write I still have no New York police card, and this keeps me from singing in clubs in New York. People don’t understand this usually; they can’t believe it; but when they do, they get up and holler. So many good people have hollered about this for so long that one day the police and the Liquor Board authorities are going to have to listen. Maybe this year will be the year I’ll get my card. I sure hope so.
During my years of exile from New York clubs, when I played practically