With Billie (20 page)

‘This is Stump Daddy talking.’

It was 1936 and I just came to New York from Philadelphia. I was a Philadelphia boy. And it was my good fortune to be in front of the Alhambra Grill on 126th and 7th Avenue and there was this cab that had a slide-open roof and this lady was standing up through the roof and smoking a cigarette and looking
so happy!
At that time there was no cigarette I knew could make you
that
happy!

I said to the cab driver – his name was Billy Wood – ‘I’m late, man! I’ve gotta get to the Cotton Club! The show is in seven minutes!’

So he said, ‘Lady, can I take him?’

And the smiling lady with the cigarette said, ‘Yeah, you take him! Take him, baby!’

And the cab driver said, ‘Come on in, Stump! Lady, this is Stump from the Stump and Stumpy Show! And this is Lady Day, this is Billie Holiday!’

And she looked down and grinned at me with the prettiest smile. Oh, that smile melts you; you gotta go when that smile comes! And she said, ‘Hi there, Stump Daddy!’ And that was my name to her from then on.

She was at the Hot Cha while I was at the Cotton Club, but then we worked together at the Club Ebony with Count Basie and then at the Strand Theater. I was with her from ‘Lock Away My Heart and Throw Away the Key’ through to ‘That Old Devil Called Love’.

I was one of her boys. One of Lady Chatterley’s lovers. She used to say, ‘I don’t go
anywhere
without Stump Daddy!’ And she wouldn’t leave until she heard my voice. I was a sort of charm. We were sweethearts in a sense. We loved each other so.

I loved her because of the way she said, ‘Good morning, Stump Daddy!’ and because of the way she dressed and the way she dragged her fur around. She dragged her minks from Broadway to Kelly’s Stables, to the Royal Roost, to Birdland. She wore out more minks than anyone I knew.

Lady was handsome. She strolled through the street and she was such a charm. She had the most charming face; a face that grew and grew into a beautiful thing, and her voice grew with it. Oh, her face, there’s none like it! Her face – a sculptor could tell you more – it was such a beautiful, pure little face! A little turned-up nose, beautiful eyes, luscious mouth, very regal chin and
neckline. She was a Lady! She was Queen Bess! Her taste started with those little flowers in her hair and all of a sudden as time went by she became wise as to what to wear and how to wear it.

Lady was always part of the band. She was a band singer. She had little melodies
^*
that she’d give to each musician, ‘Here you are … Here you are … Now, come, sing with me!’ It was so pretty, like she was sending out sparks. She never scrambled. She never hurried. Ben Webster stands up and goes, ‘Bahdooodooo … deedoobahdoodende … dah!’ and she’s close to the mike and it’s Singing Time! She starts pumping with her right elbow and she’d tap with her left foot, like she was grinding it out and she has those lights on her that go from magenta to pink to green. Going off, she’d nod just to the side with a pretty smile and she walked off regal! The other broads used to come to watch her, to try to steal from her, but they could never get her thing. Oh, to see her eyes when she sang ‘You’re My Thrill’!

Lady inspired everybody because she had a knack with a lyric. She knew the verses to every song that everybody ever sang! She’d sing anything of
Carmen
, anything that knocked her out. She had no great knowledge of music or reading musical notes. She just knew it! She’d look at a music sheet. Put it down. Walk away. Have a drink. And come back three minutes later and sing the whole thing! She was singing arias, in her style. Between the lyric and the drink, I don’t know what happened; it must have come from somewhere. There must have been a Lyric Angel who came down from the clouds and said, ‘Here, Lady, you get ’em!’

Lady’s favourite tune was always the next song she was going to sing. She loved ‘Gloomy Sunday’, but she got tired of it; it was so real to her that as she sang it she would
see it
and it would get to her. She loved it,
but she hated it – Lady being Lady and the things she’d been through. She hadn’t been that far south, but she’s from Baltimore: the men, the speakeasies, you know … With her vivid imagination, when she sings a song like that, the tears come down.

To Count Basie she was William. She’d call him Bill and he’d say, ‘Yes, William!’
^†
Louis Armstrong was The Landlord – like he owns jazz and any room he’s in, that’s jazz! – so he’s The Landlord. She’d say, ‘Come on, Stump Daddy, let’s go see The Landlord!’ He would make her day, just to hear him play. And she would interpret what he played on trumpet into her thing. She would do any tune that he did. She said he had more soul than any singer.

She had a beautiful personal touch with people, like they loved her immediately and she loved musicians no end. I don’t think Lady ever found a musician she
didn’t
love! She always found good in them. And there were so many musicians that loved her. They were playing through their hearts and crying out to Lady! They would be calling to her, through the piano, the trumpet and the trombone.

She had a knack for picking a piano player. She’d say, ‘You! You’re going to play for me!’ And the next recording date, this cat would be there. Like ‘A Sailboat in the Moonlight’ and the piano did ‘ding-a-ling’ and she’d just go her way and you’d just play the melody and she’s got you in her Lady Day Magic Bag. That little tinge she had, that little whine, it was like an echo in the night from Valhalla.

Behind the pimps and the parasites – like Jimmy Monroe, like John Levy, like all those guys who really robbed her heart – behind all of them there were these virtuoso piano players that loved her secretly. Men like
Eddie Heywood,
^‡
who used to cry when she sang. So did Sonny White, but she loved him for playing for her, so it was two-sided.

Sonny White was so beautiful and I think she threw him a curve. He was a little chubby man, a brown, pretty man, a dear boy. He was a cherub. And he loved Lady. He knew all about her life and her thing, but he played for her regardless. I’ve seen him come off the stage and break down. She’d just sung ‘You’re My Thrill’ or whatever, and Sonny White would walk away and hide in a corner and cry.

Lester Young adored her. He loved Lady like he loved spring, summer, winter and fall and every day that broke at dawn. It was not a love-love thing, it was just a passion. She inspired his playing and he loved being around her so. I don’t think she realised that he was deadly in love with her and that he loved her for ever. He’d look at her – the look in his eyes when he played for her! He’d play his whole soul. But he wasn’t her type of man.
^§
He wasn’t manly. The kind of guys with big Cadillacs, big Packards or whatever, they represented something to Lady. I imagine her father must have been like that. I imagine he was that type of man.

In 1938 it was a Basie time,
^‖
it was a coke time. Cocaine. Oh goodness, yes! Basie’s an avid cokehead. Basie snorts whatever you’ve got! George Raft and all them used to do it. Happy Dust, it was called, and you’d buy a bottle like that for twenty dollars, and this was great coke. I don’t think opium thrilled Lady too much. Opium is a relaxed ritual, when you have nothing to do tomorrow, so today we smoke. She didn’t like laying on her side and hugging this thing that smells like burnt
chops, and pretty soon you’re in the dream world and you have to cover the doors with wet towels. She dug it. She did it. But she was someone who wanted to get high
fast.

We were staying up until early in the morning every morning, not leaving one another until we saw that each one got home, and I mean
in bed
got home. Or maybe we’d just continue and stay with each other at Lady’s house, or at Lester’s, or at Sweets’ house, or at my house. There was camaraderie. We’d go to the oddest places – like a corn joint where they’d sell white whisky with orange peel in it: pure alcohol mixed with water and slices of orange that cut into the alcohol. We would go there and sit all night and remember tunes and sing them to each other.

I first met Tallulah in New York, and she loved me and called me The Being. I don’t know what this meant, but everyone understood I was The Being. And she’d say, ‘Dahling, I’m looking for The Being, not you, not any of you other peasants’, and I would come out and kiss and hug. And then Tallulah, Lady and I were bosom-buddies. You couldn’t separate us, except for the job. Tallulah came to the Ebony
^a
every night, just to see us. And then we opened at the Strand with Count Basie and she used to come and sit in the front row, centre, as if this were the only show in the world.

Tallulah and Lady were like sisters. Lady called her Lula. They used to carry me piggyback.

Tallulah would come thundering down the stoop and she’d say, ‘Stump, dahling, will you please announce me!’

I’d say, ‘Miss Day! Here comes Talluh!’

Lady would say, ‘Lula! Come here, Lula!’ in her cute little voice, because she sang as she talked and her voice was always a melody.

Tallulah would come and say, ‘Next week, dahlings,
it’s Connecticut!’ And we were off to her house just outside Greenwich on Long Island. And we would paint the little room downstairs. Tallulah would say, ‘I think it should be green this week!’ and the three of us would paint the room green.

Or we’d go to the White Rose bar at 52nd and 7th Street, and there they had a chair saved especially for Lady. No one sat in that seat! It was Lady’s seat. Tallulah would tell her, ‘Sit there, Lady!’ And she had such a grand way of sitting at the bar, dead-centre, surveying it all.

Tallulah and I got Lady’s boxer dog Mister drunk, and then Basie’s little white Pekinese whipped Mister because he was too high to fight. Mister was a comfortable Boxer, a gentle Boxer. Mister was the best hangout dog on Earth. He didn’t believe in playing, and all he believed in was Lady. He would sit backstage where he could hear Lady’s voice and, as long as he could hear her voice, he was happy. Mister was a junkie, he was always high, Lady would shoot him up.
^b
The bartenders would feed him while he was sitting at the bar, or maybe Lady would leave him in the dressing room, which he detested. But he couldn’t do anything about it and so he would wait patiently until she got back and, when he hears her footsteps, he’d get up and look at her. Oh, he was a phenomenal dog! He was never on a leash, not ever.

In 1942 we were in Hollywood together. Lady was in between romances. She had just left Jimmy Monroe and I think John Levy was on the way, but not completely, and she was having herself a wonderful time. I was doing
Ship Ahoy!
with Frank Sinatra and Eleanor Powell, she was touring with Jimmy Dorsey and Tommy Dorsey, and Duke Ellington had just put
on the
Jump for Joy
musical.
^c
We were lovers then, true lovers. We had the best love affair in California. One night there was an earthquake, and as the earth shook, I told Lady to stand between the doors to feel it and she said, ‘Freaky, freaky, Stump Daddy!’

In Hollywood we lived in Clark Annex across the street from the Clark Hotel. Lena Horne lived on the top, Lady and I lived at the bottom, and Humphrey Bogart lived on one side and Orson Welles lived on the other side. Orson Welles would come every night to see
Jump for Joy
and he would go down on one knee before Duke Ellington. He was our air-raid warden in the street and Humphrey Bogart was our boy, he was the thing.

Everyone in Hollywood invited Lady: Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, the group, the would-be singers. Ava tried her darnedest to get Lady to sing in
Showboat
, but Lady thought it would be a waste of time.

My rapport did not go as far as John Levy, not in any direction. John Levy was a pimp, a hustling man, an evil-doer. He was self-living, with no sense of anyone around him. It was all
his
world, and you were welcome just so long as you were serving him. Lady was being treated so wrong by him and she was loving it at the same time. She would dissipate herself because he wasn’t there to take care of her, as he should have been. He was off at the racetrack, or with racing people, or with his ex-women.

John Levy detested Tallulah with a purple passion, and Tallulah loathed John Levy. She loathed any man around Lady Day, because she can only take men like little pawns and put them there and put them there. Tallulah would never say hello to John Levy, or even acknowledge that he was in the room.

At Billy Berg’s, John Levy told Tallulah she can’t be backstage.

I said, ‘Now wait a minute, John, you’ve got this out of proportion!’

He said, ‘She is not to be backstage. This is a show here, Lady, and I don’t want Tallulah back here!’

Tallulah said to me, ‘Stump dahling, I’ll be in the front row, waiting as you come on. Come and kiss me and I’ll see you after the show.’ And to John Levy she said, ‘You, my good man, are a bloodsucker!’ And she slammed the door right in his face.

And all the chorus girls looked at him and he was made so small, and he walked away slowly. And we died, we died of laughing. And Lady laughed until she cried, she was so happy. You see, she realised these things, but she could do nothing when a man talked his magic to her. She was a romantic. She was a very romantic lady, and those men would tell her beautiful stories about who she
really
was and what she’d be and how grand she was. It was like telling a bedtime story to a little girl, and she loved it, because she reached out for love.

Joe Glaser
^d
was the same type as John Levy. A pimp. I don’t think those two had a clean thought towards anybody; it was always about using you, squeezing you like a lemon, wringing you dry. I don’t care if Joe Glaser had eight, nine, ten baths a day, he was still unclean – to me anyway. There are nice pimps, but these two were horrible little vermin. They managed because they had a strong arm and a gift of the gab. And Joe Glaser had no problems. He had gangster connections. The word was out, ‘Don’t meddle with Joe Glaser.’ He had an office in Chicago, one in Miami, one in California; so the whole territory was covered with ex-Chicago boys.