With Billie by Julia Blackburn

Author:Julia Blackburn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307829214
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-02T21:00:00+00:00

* Jimmy Rowles was born in 1918 and died in 1996. An obituary by John Fordham in the Guardian described him as ‘a subtle, laconic and all-but-psychic pianist, who elevated the art of creative jazz accompaniment to the status of a miniaturist wonder of the world’. Linda Kuehl interviewed him on 23 August 1971, at the Montecito Hotel, Hollywood.

† The band leader was Lester’s brother Lee (short for Leonides). He played drums and, according to Jimmy Rowles, ‘He speeds something terrible. He’ll start out slow and wind up in a horse race. And that was a drag because if he had been any kind of drummer we would have had some hell of a band. Nobody ever said a word about it.’

‡ Jimmy Rowles also had his own theory on Billie’s sexuality. ‘She’s a masochist. She digs punishment. She was unfortunate enough to be mentally arranged so she had to have a cat that beat the shit out of her three times a week, to keep her happy.’

§ Arthur Herzog remembered coming to see Billie after a show and she ran around to embrace him, even though she didn’t have a thing on. ‘The maid looked horrified and Billie said, “Oh, he sees me like this all the time!” ’ Elizabeth Hardwick, writing about that same period of time, said, ‘Sometimes she dyed her hair red and the curls lay flat against her skull, like dried blood.’

‖ In fact Lester Young was happily married to his Italian wife, Mary. Jimmy Rowles described her as ‘a small dark girl who he called his Teddy Bear’.

a Billie and Lester couldn’t work out Jimmy Rowles, either. In a conversation that was recorded during a rehearsal with Art Shapiro in 1955, Billie said of her first impression of him, ‘That damn little boy was scared. He was a little piss [a kid] and he was a grey [white], you know, and me and Lesta put the eye on him [got his measure] right away.’

b Going on with his explanation of Lester’s language, Jimmy Rowles says, ‘Chicks were hats. He’d look at the cat and look at the chick and say, “I see you’re wearing a new hat. Skull cap? Homburg? Mexican hat dance?” They were discussing her pussy, you see. He’d say, “How’s 143?” and that means a head job. “A little 143 is good for a cold!” ’

c Everyone called Lester ‘Buppa’ at this time, because that was what nephews and nieces and his younger brother Lee had called him since childhood.

d This must have been in Los Angeles in April 1943, when Billie was working at Club 331. Jimmy Monroe was in jail on drugs charges from May 1942 until February 1943, and the two of them did attempt a brief reconciliation.

e He says, ‘John Levy was stronger than Billie and he had her nailed. My idea would be that he used her as an implement to make money.’ According to Jimmy Rowles, Billie’s arrest in January 1949 was a set-up job, and John Levy arranged with the Federal Narcotics men to have her ‘smashed in Frisco.

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