The cop insisted.
"Man, I told you," Benny repeated, "I ain't going to jail today for nobody, no-body! Understand?"
Just then the old policeman made a fast grab at Benny's trousers and got a good hold on them. "You're under arrest," he shouted.
Benny leapt up from the barrel like a shot and started running directly across the street with the cop still holding onto him. Benny ran so fast the cop couldn't keep up with him. The policeman slipped, lost his balance and took a header into the mud. Benny stood on the other side of the street and watched the cop pick himself up. His face was so spattered with mud that he looked like a black face comedian.
"I told you I wasn't going to jail today," Benny shouted at him, and went on about his business.
A week later Benny gave himself up. He told the Chief what had happened and what he had said to the cop. The Chief laughed and thought it was cute.
Black Benny gave me the first pistol I ever had in my life. During the Christmas and New Year's holiday season, when everybody was celebrating with pistols and firecrackers, he and some of his friends used to make the rounds of the neighborhood. Whenever they saw some kid firing a gun in the street Benny went up behind him and stuck a pistol in his back.
"I'll take this one, buddy."
The kids always forked over. I have seen Benny come around with a basket full of guns of all kinds which he would sell for any price that was offered. Oh, what a character!
In 1918 things commenced to break for me. For a time I took Sweet Child's job hopping bells at the saloon on my corner in the Third Ward. I liked being a bell boy. All I had to do was to walk up and down the streets waiting for one of those hustling gals to stick her head out of the window and call to me.
"Bell boy," she would shout.
"Yeah," I would answer.
"Bring me half a can."
A half can meant a nickel's worth of beer. A whole can meant a dime's worth. When you bought a whole can in those, days you were really celebrating. Even for a nickel they gave so much that most of the time you would have to call one of your neighbors to help you drink it up.
I kind of liked hopping bells because it gave me a chance to go into the houses and see what was going on. Lots of times when one of the gals did not have the price of a half can I would buy it for her out of the tips I had made. They were always nice to me. However, it was just my luck to have Sweet Child come back to his job. He never did lay off again.
After that I had to go back to my job on the coal wagon. As usual stepdaddy Gabe was glad to see me again, and of course I was glad to see him. Many times I tried to get Mayann to take Gabe back, but there was nothing doing. She just didn't like Gabe. I thought he was the best stepfather I ever had and I still do. Any time I wanted it I could always get a quarter out of him. Those other stepfathers of mine seemed like a bunch of cheap skates. But I just could not run Mayann's life for her.
While I was working at the coal yard Sidney Bechet, a youngster from the Creole quarter, came uptown to play at Kid Brown's, the famous parachute jumper who ran a honky-tonk at Gravier and Franklin. The first time I heard Sidney Bechet play that clarinet he stood me on my ear. I realized very soon what a versatile player he was. Every musician in town was playing in one of the bands marching in the big Labor Day parade. Somehow, though, Bechet was not working. Henry Allen, Red Alien's daddy, had come over from Algiers with his band to play for one of the lodges. Old man Allen was short a cornet, and when the bands were gathering in front of the Odd Fellow's Hall Allen spied Bechet. Allen must have known Bechet could play a lot of cornet, for he sent him into Jake Fink's to borrow a cornet from Bob Lyons, the famous bass player. Bechet joined the band and he made the whole parade, blow ing like crazy. I marvelled at the way Bechet played the cornet, and I followed him all that day. There was not a cornet player in New Orleans who was like him. What feeling! What soul! Every other player in the city had to give it to him.
My next great thrill was when I played with Bechet to advertise a prize fight I have forgotten who was fighting, but I will never forget that I played with the great Bechet. There were only three musicians in our little band: clarinet, cornet and drums. Before I knew it, Bechet had gone up North. Then he went to Paris where he was a big hit, and still is.
chapter 9
Along about the middle of the summer of 1918 Joe Oliver got an offer from Chicago to go there to play for Mrs. Major, who owned the Lincoln Gardens. He took Jimmie Noone with him to play the clarinet.
I was back on my job driving a coal cart, but I took time off to go to the train with them. Kid Ory was at the station, and so were the rest of the Ory-Oliver jazz band. It was a rather sad parting. They really didn't want to leave New Orleans, and I felt the old gang was breaking up. But in show business you always keep thinking something better's coming along.
The minute the train started to pull out I was on my way out of the Illinois Central Station to my cart – I had a big load of coal to deliver – when Kid Ory called to me.
"You still blowin' that cornet?" he hollered.
I ran back. He said he'd heard a lot of talk about Little Louis. (That's what most folks called me when I was in my teens, I was so little and so cute.)
"Hmmm…" I pricked up my ears.
He said that when the boys in the band found out for sure that Joe Oliver was leaving, they told him to go get Little Louis to take Joe's place. He was a little in doubt at first, but after he'd looked around the town he decided I was the right one to have a try at taking that great man's place. So he told me to go wash up and then come play a gig with them that very same night.
What a thrill that was! To think I was considered up to taking Joe Oliver's place in the best band in town! I couldn't hardly wait to get to Mayann's to tell her the good news. I'd been having so many bad breaks, I just had to make a beeline to Mayann's.
Mayann was the one who'd always encouraged me to carry on with my cornet blowing because I loved it so much.
I couldn't phone her because we didn't have phones in our homes in those days – only the filthy rich could afford phones, and we were far from being in that class.
I wasn't particular about telling Mama Lucy just yet about my success, because she would always give me a dirty dig of some kind. Like the night I played my first job. That was more of a hustle than anything else; in fact, I didn't make but fifteen cents. I sure was proud to bring that money home to my mother. Mama Lucy heard me tell my mother:
"Mama, here's what we made last night. Saturday night, too. We worked for tips, and fifteen cents was all we made, each of us."
My sister raised up out of a sound sleep and said: "Hmmm! Blow your brains out for fifteen cents!"
I wanted to kill her. Mama had to separate us to keep us from fighting that morning.
So when I got my first big break from Kid Ory, I looked up my mother first, instead of my sister. I just let Lucy find it out for herself. And then when Lucy praised me with enthusiasm, I just casually said:
"Thanks, sis."
Cute, huh? But inwardly I was glad they were happy for me. The first night I played with Kid Ory's band, the boys were so surprised they could hardly play their instruments for listening to me blow up a storm. But I wasn't frightened one bit. I was doing everything just exactly the way I'd heard Joe Oliver do it. At least I tried to. I even put a big towel around my neck when the band played a ball down at Economy Hall. That was the first thing Joe always did – he'd put a bath towel around his neck and open up his collar underneath so's he could blow free and easy.