Otis Redding from chapter #28
I finally got around to calling Sammy in California. He had made his connections all right. He was back home with a smile on his face. He thanked me for hanging out with him and making his vacation a great one. He couldn’t wait to ask me when I would be arriving. I knew I would be disappointing him when I told him that I was going to hang in the city for a while. He was saddened by my decision, but he understood how I could stay there to deal with the residuals of the party. I told him that I would try to get there later in the month. I was trapped between my two cousins, making one happy and the other sad. Actually we were all happy for each other and it really didn’t make any difference where I stayed, as long as I was happy. We hung up the phones, knowing that we would get back together at some point in the in future. I really did want to take a trip out to California, but I had a bit of unfinished business in the city.
Bobby was happy to hear that I wasn’t going to LA., but he still wondered if I was going back to Richmond or not. I was not prepared to answer that question yet, because I really hadn’t given it any thought at this point. I realized I have a job that I should be at Monday morning, and I had my band in Richmond that didn’t know of my whereabouts. In fact, no one in Richmond knew where I was because I didn’t let anyone know I was leaving town, even for the weekend. Yet here I was in New York with no particular plans for the future. Bobby poured a couple drinks and we listened to the sound of Mongo Santamaria jamming in the speakers. We had barely recovered from the party and we were toasting to my visit to the city. The conversation circled around what I was going to do. How long was I going to stay? And where was I going next?
After a couple shots of scotch went by, Bobby took me out for a ride around the area. . We discussed the potential of me staying in town. He had his own business as an exterminator and he wanted me to stay and help him with his work. He knew my main interest was music and art and he told me about some of the connections he had. He told me that he could hook me up with a job the next day. My ears grew larger and my eyes bulged as we drove through the city streets. I became very excited about the things that he was telling me. I t wasn’t long after that before I had made up my mind. I knew I would be staying in the city I was hooked already. He stooped by a couple of his friend’s places before returning home. He introduced me to quite a few people during our spin around the town. The number of people and the amount of drinks we had consumed during our trip overwhelmed me. He was right about the scotch being easily consumed, once you acquired the taste for it. I still remembered the good, old port wine days, but I had to admit the scotch was a much classier act.
The next day he took time off from his work to introduce me to sign shop owner in a busy district along Nostrand Ave. the owner was a short, brown-skinned woman of Jamaican decent, with a small-featured face and sparkling eyes. She had been in the business for quite a few years. She was stern, very serious about her work, and wasted no time telling me about herself. She was the only person for which my cousin appeared to show a great deal of respect. I could sense the humbleness emanating from Bobby as she asked me few questions about my experience with sign painting. I carried my portfolio with me most of time so it was easy for her to judge the caliber of my work she was impressed when I showed her my work. I had the sense she hadn’t seen many things that impress her in some time. I was sure she had seen it all, probably more than once. I swallowed hard when she asked me when could I start. Bobby regained his composure as he interrupted to tell the lady that he would bring me in to work on Tuesday. He had other plans for me that day.
We were really thrilled that I had landed the job, because that settled the question of where I was going, and it certainly wasn’t back to Richmond. It was lunchtime now, and I was in the mood for some real barbecue chicken. Bobby knew just the place. It was a small storefront located in the basement of a typical Brooklyn brownstone in a residential neighborhood. A few customers were placing their orders as we arrived. When they discovered that I was a first time visitor, they started to pass hints around the room about how hot the barbecue was. They had overheard me discussing the hotness of the barbecue, and they heard me ‘selling tickets’ to my cousin about wimpy sauces I had tasted in other places.
Everybody was making various kinds of grunting noises, trying to intimidate me into not buying the hot shit. In other words, they were trying to use reverse psychology on me. But that didn’t work I ordered the hot chicken sandwich any way. It was an ample amount of chicken, smothered in homemade island-style barbecue sauce. The chicken was placed on a bed of coconut bread in a paper tray, and it was ’good to go’. I suspected that the chicken was hot because everybody was ordering two sodas with their sandwich. I followed tradition and ordered the two customary drinks. I took a bite of the chicken and I started to break out in a sweat right away. I could feel all the blood traveling through my veins and the pupils in my eyes were drowning in tears. Now everybody was laughing at me sympathetically as if I had just initiated myself into a club. I continued to stand my ground and took another bite. I figured that by the time I finished this sandwich, I would have to shave, because the hairs on my face felt like were starting to grow. I was in pain, but the flavor was so wonderful I had to continue. After that experience, I never challenged Bobby again about hot barbecue.
From there we took a trip down to the market area in lower Manhattan. I had never seen so much fruit and vegetables in my life. We scooted around the densely populated area in our VW bus like two hippies on a joy ride. We were still burning from barbecue when we saw a huge stand of tangerines that sold for a dollar per dozen. It was hot that day anyway, and eating really didn’t make it any better. Somehow we thought we might get some relief from sucking on a few tangerines, so we bought a couple of dozen and kept riding around the city. We knew I would be working tomorrow, so this trip around the town gave us a chance to organize and get acquainted with one another as well as the city. We were really having a grand old time as we bounced around the city streets plugging away at the huge box of tangerines we had conveniently place on the rear seat of the van. I simply had to reach back and with two rips I could totally disrobe the little orange and pop it into my mouth. Bobby could do the same thing while he was driving and giving me a tour. We thought we were having a blast, but the real blast would come later. We just made it home in time before Bobby’s lower intestines exploded from the mixture of the hot barbecue and the all those tangerines he had eaten, coupled with bouncing up and down in the van, gave new meaning to the “Big Bang”. He was laughing at me earlier, and now it’s my turn to laugh. I didn’t have the same problem that he had, because I didn’t eat as many tangerines.
I was fully recovered from the adventures of the barbecue shack as I settled into my new job, and we were still chuckling about it when we told my boss the story. Bobby left me in the hands of my new boss and was off to his own work. I was having flashbacks of my last job working as a machine operator, as my new boss was giving me instructions on how to cut plastic letters on a commercial jig saw. I tried to keep my focus on her instructions, knowing the machine was capable of cutting fingers as well as plastic. I had been trained to operate all types of machines, so I wasn’t afraid and developed the touch in a short time. There were three of us working and we developed into a good team. The pay and the working conditions were good and I enjoyed working there very much. My co-worker was a handsome young man of mixed Latino decent. He was soft spoken, focused on his work and kept to himself most of the time. I had no problem with that because we all had separate jobs to do that really didn’t include socializing. He was so quite; I sometimes felt he had the whole world on his shoulder. I never bugged him about his personal life, so that gave us the space in which to function professionally. Sometimes we would have to hang the signs we made at different locations around the city. He tended to open up a little more when we were outside of the shop. He had been working with the shop owner for four years before I arrived, and had developed a bit of respect for his work and the business.
As we were finishing a sign-hanging job, we stopped into a variety store to use the phone. While my partner was waiting for me a cop came into the store and stood in line behind me. I was digging in my rear pocket for a phone number I had written on a piece of paper when a pack of Easywiders fell onto the floor. I knew that was it for my partner and me froze as the papers hit the floor. Luckily the cop just chuckled because he could see the panic in our eyes. I quickly hung up the phone and got the hell out of there. Our hearts were still beating fast when we got back. We knew that if we had gotten into any trouble our boss would have killed us. That little incident caused my friend to start talking all the way back to the shop.
I had been working for a month, when my boss told me that I could stay in an apartment she had available above the sign shop. It was a cool one-bedroom apartment that over-looked the front of the shop. This was my first New York apartment and I was sure I would enjoy it. I was getting anxious to get into the music grove now that I had my own place. Immediately hooked up with some musicians that lived next door to me. They were also my boss’s tenants. The guy that lived was an upright bass player, and he was glad to have me over. He gave me a few lessons and would practice together sometimes. He had a gigantic Saint Bernard, which had a bad attitude. He would always have to secure the dog before I came over. The dog had the biggest head I’ve ever seen on a dog and he knew that I didn’t particularly care for him. I’m allergic to cats and dogs anyhow, so I could easily use that as an excuse any time I didn’t want to deal with someone’s pet. My neighbor was from Africa, but he had been in the States for half of his life. We became good friends in spite of his dog, and he invited me over for some wonderful African dishes he had made. One of the dishes was a spicy chicken stew flavored with certain African spices with a side dish of cous cous rolled into balls that were meant to be dipped into the chicken as you ate. It was a spicy dish, but still not as hot as the barbecue Bobby and I had previously. He turned me on to a few other musicians that kept me inspired, but I still hadn’t found any guys with whom I could play. I was in no hurry to join a band anyway, because I was making enough money to live comfortably in the city. In addition to painting signs, I was helping Bobby with maintenance on a few buildings and his extermination business. We were very organized and worked big hours, but when Friday we were ready to party.
One Friday at the end of the day we had a visit from a guy from our anonymous street person who sold some very nice clothes indeed. He would conveniently come to the shop every Friday and we would surrender part of our paychecks to him. He always had the latest styles and he knew what type of clothes we like. One Friday evening I purchased a combination suede and knit sweater shirt from him. It was more expensive than what I usually got from him, but this shirt looked nice on me and I couldn’t resist. I went upstairs to my apartment and got dress for the evening. I was wearing my brand new shirt when I went next door to visit my African friend. I guessed he thought his dog was secure when he opened the door to let me in, but we miscalculated and in an instant the dog charged down the hall toward me.
I was barely inside the door when I saw him coming. My friend tried to restrain the two hundred-pound, big headed beast, just as he clamped down on my wrist, ripping through my new sweater and my wrist. I had jerked my arm away from his mouth just as his canines started to pierce my skin. I still had my other hand on the doorknob that allowed me to get back outside the door so quickly. The dog had made a large rip in my sleeve and his tooth had punctured my skin. I went into my apartment to get cleaned up and my neighbor came over to apologize and to make sure I was all right. “It was no problem,” I said. I just came by to show you my new shirt. We laughed as he offered to pay for the shirt; I had at least ten other shirts that I had purchased from the street guy over the past few weeks. But I wasn’t going back into that apartment for a while. I just put a bandage on my wrist, changed shirts, and took off for the evening.
I hooked up with a babe that Bobby had introduced me to while were doing our exterminating work. I took her to see Otis Redding at a theater in Brooklyn. We had a wonderful time watching the horn sway back and fourth as Otis sang his most soulful songs, i.e. Fa Fa Fa (the sad song, “These arms of mine”, ”Pa Pa’s got a brand new bag,” and many others.
Otis Redding
After the show I met up with a friend and his date at a park in Brooklyn, where we played on the swings and other park fixtures while we sip booze from a neat little canister my friend pulled from his jacket pocket. He also had a couple of joints pre-rolled and ready to smoke. We were having a great time puffing and sipping on those elements that were acting like aphrodisiacs. In reality, all of the elements of the evening, the Otis Redding show, the park environment, those two lovely ladies and the effects of the drugs came together in concert to form the aphrodisiac. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, and it was getting to bit over-whelming watching the two mini skirted babes bounce around the playground apparatus like Mexican jumping beans in a frying pan. Sure it was a warm summer evening, but our activities were doing much to raise the ambient temperature. When my date told me to jump on the opposite end of the seesaw, I thought mine eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the lord. This activity raised my sexual libido to new heights, and I knew it time to get out of there. Somehow the four of us had created a mini tribe, exhibiting our truest animalistic behavior. We were out of there, making out as we drove the ladies back to their apartment.
I didn’t realize that my date was the daughter of the women with my friend. I was in the back seat of the car when my date told me the other was her mother. It really didn’t matter to me at this point. I knew my date was over twenty-one and that was all I cared about. I was just thinking numbers, with one babe being a ten and the other was at least an eleven. Earlier I thought the two resembled each other, but I was half in the bag and it didn’t make any difference any way. We continued to make out in the back seat, not to be out done by the activity going on in the front. We arrived at the apartment and my pal and the older women when inside, leaving my date and me lumbering behind. The lobby inside the building was dark, allowing our mischief to take place. I realized some lines were obviously drawn between the young woman and her mother, when she said we had to keep our business out side for now. Not that she was playing hard to get, it’s just is too small for all of us to be there at the same time. It was too late to make any other arrangements right now, so we just stayed in the lobby and did what we had to do. Eventually my friend emerged from the apartment to find us huddled in the corner of the lobby like two homeless people. When we left there I knew it would be a while before I would come down from this cloud.
Eventually I would hook-up with some musicians from Queens. The group had recently loss their bass player to some college in the south. I met the guys through a music agent that had come to the sign shop, and through conversation he knew I was a bass player looking for a band to join. The agent hooked me up with Richard and I took it from there. I went to Richard’s house in Queens to meet a couple of the guys in the band. We had a meeting and jam session in his basement. The guys liked me, and they accepted me into the band. Of course I was very happy about that, and I knew my cousin Bobby would be happy as well. Now my mission was complete. I had been in the city for almost two months before I got the hookup, but I knew New York was very competitive and I shouldn’t have expected more than that. Even my neighbor next door was an accomplished bassist and he wasn’t working. He was very surprised as well that I had gotten a job so quickly.
The name of the band was “The Flames”, and they we well known in their little New York circle. Most of the gigs they had done were in the Queen’s area and downtown Manhattan. After I joined the band we continued to play at some of the same places where they had already performed. We became a little more sophisticated by adding a couple more horns and a male singer. The singer’s name was Jimmy and he did a lot of James Brown songs. He was a very energetic little guy who really couldn’t sing much better than James Brown, but he did have the dancing part quite together. In fact, if it weren’t for his dancing we would have sent his butt back to Long Island, where he originated. He lived in the far Rockaways, and when we went to meet him for the first time, we found out why it was called the far Rockaways. The area was obviously nothing more than a New York land fill with virtually no trees or wildlife other than rats and roaches.
When we emerged from the subway, we found ourselves in an area that looked like the aftermath of an atomic explosion. To be precise it looked like it had been hit by a Neutron bomb, but I don’t think we had that capability in the early seventies. The cement streets were cracked, and unkept. The town looked deserted and it reminded me of some western cowboy town, with an occasional tumbleweed floating by. This Rockaway needed to be far. Far away the city where no one could see it. Most of the stores were closed and many of the buildings were deserted, as if everybody decided to get up and leave at the same time. Typically the liquor store; convenience store and the check cashing store were the businesses still there, most other stores were closed. The few people I saw were heading for the check-cashing place. Un-employment rates were high at that time and the city needed somewhere to place the people who were on welfare, and I think this was the place. We met Jimmy at his apartment, where we listened to a couple of tapes he had made of his previous band. The tapes sounded very good, so we help him gather his gear and we were out of there.
The whole band met back at the trombone player’s house for our first rehearsal with the singer. We were jamming big time when our agent came by to inform us that we would be playing at Lloyd Prices’ place as the house band. This was really great news and now I knew for sure that I would be playing on a regular basis. The money would go far to supplement my income, even though I was doing very well at the sign shop and helping my cousin with his exterminating business. We played on a regular basis for Lloyd and his club was doing well every weekend. It was a fun gig because it allowed us time to get the band tight before we would hit the road. At the club we met “Red”Prysock, the brother of Arthur Prysock, who invited us to some after hours sessions at his house. He was a practical joker and over a period of time we would be careful whenever we hung out with him. He was really a funny guy and became very good friends of the band. We also met and played at a birthday party for Ruth Brown. Other guess included Willis “Gator tail” Jackson, ”Gator’s Groove” and Chuck Willis, “C.C.Rider”, ”What am I living for.” After playing for Lloyd for some time, we started to venture out more and more, and the party would be one of the last we would have in New York. We were all pumped up after the party and the band met at the trombone player’s house to finish the party we couldn’t have at the club. We were very happy with our playing and we had a good show with our imitation “James Brown” character. In the middle of our glee and while the tremendous ‘bones’ were being passed around the room, we thought it was time to hit the road. In a mysterious flash of a thought we grabbed our instruments and whatever we had with us and jumped back into the van, which was already loaded with the equipment and headed north to Cape Cod.