Uncle Ike Miles was the father of all those kids. His wife had died and left them on his hands to support, and he did a good job. To take care of them he worked on the levees unloading boats. He did not make much money and his work was not regular, but most of the time he managed to keep the kids eating and put clean shirts on their backs. He lived in one room with all those children, and somehow or other he managed to pack them all in. He put as many in the bed as it would hold, and the rest slept on the floor. God bless Uncle Ike. If it weren't for him I do not know what Mama Lucy and I would have done because when Mayann got the urge to go out on the town we might not see her for days and days. When this happened she always dumped us into Uncle Ike's lap.
In his room I would sleep between Aaron and Isaac while Mama Lucy slept between Flora and Louisa. Because the kids were so lazy they would not wash their dishes we ate out of some tin pans Uncle Ike bought. They used to break china plates so they would not have to clean them.
Uncle Ike certainly had his hands full with those kids. They were about as worthless as any kids I have ever seen, but we grew up together just the same.
As I have said my mother always kept me and Mama Lucy physic minded.
"A slight physic once or twice a week," she used to say, "will throw off many symptoms and germs that congregate from nowheres in your stomach. We can't afford no doctor for fifty cents or a dollar."
With that money she could cook pots of red beans and rice, and with that regime we did not have any sickness at all. Of course a child who grew up in my part of New Orleans went barefooted practically all the time. We were bound to pick up a nail, a splinter or a piece of glass sometimes. But we were young, healthy and tough as old hell so a little thing like lockjaw did not stay with us a long time.
Mother and some of her neighbors would go to the railroad tracks and fill baskets with pepper grass. She would boil this until it got really gummy and rub it on the wound. Then within two or three hours we kids would get out of bed and be playing around the streets as though nothing had happened.
As the old saying goes, "the Lord takes care of fools," and just think of the dangers we kids were in at all times. In our neighborhood there were always a number .of houses being torn down or built and they were full of such rubbish as tin cans, nails, boards, broken bottles and window panes. We used to play in these houses, and one of the games we played was War, because we had seen so much of it in the movies. Of course we did not know anything about it, but we decided to appoint officers of different ranks anyway. One Eye Bud made himself General of the Army. Then he made me Sergeant-at-Arms. When I asked him what I had to do he told me that whenever a man was wounded I had to go out on the battlefield and lead him off.
One day when I was taking a wounded comrade off the field a piece of slate fell off a roof and landed on my head. It knocked me out cold and shocked me so bad I got lockjaw. When I was taken home Mama Lucy and Mayann worked frantically boiling up herbs and roots which they applied to my head. Then they gave me a glass of Pluto Water, put me to bed and sweated me out good all night long. The next morning I was on my way to school just as though nothing had happened.
chapter 2
After a week or two mother recovered and went to work for some rich white folks on Canal Street, back by the City Park cemeteries. I was happy to see her well again, and I began to notice what was going on around me, especially in the honky-tonks in the neighborhood because they were so different from those in James Alley, which only had a piano. On Liberty, Perdido, Franklin and Poydras there were honky-tonks at every corner and in each one of them musical instruments of all kinds were played. At the corner of the street where I lived was the famous Funky Butt Hall, where I first heard Buddy Bolden play. He was blowing up a storm.
That neighborhood certainly had a lot to offer. Of course, we kids were not allowed to go into the Funky Butt, but we could hear the orchestra from the sidewalk. In those days it was the routine when there was a ball for the band to play for at least a half hour in the front of the honky-tonk before going back into the hall to play for the dancers. This was done in all parts of the city to draw people into the hall, and it usually worked.
Old Buddy Bolden blew so hard that I used to wonder if I would ever have enough lung power to fill one of those cornets. All in all Buddy Bolden was a great musician, but I think he blew too hard. I will even go so far as to say that he did not blow correctly. In any case he finally went crazy. You can figure that out for yourself.
You really heard music when Bunk Johnson played the cornet with the Eagle Band. I was young, but I could tell the difference. These were the men in his orchestra:
Bunk Johnson – cornet.
Frankie Ducson – trombone.
Bob Lyons – bass fiddle.
Henry Zeno – drums.
Bill Humphrey – clarinet.
Danny Lewis – bass violin.
You heard real music when you heard these guys. Of course Buddy Bolden had the biggest reputation, but even as a small kid I believed in finesse, even in music.
The king of all the musicians was Joe Oliver, the finest trumpeter who ever played in New Orleans. He had only one competitor. That was Bunk and he rivaled Oliver in tone only. No one had the fire and the endurance Joe had. No one in jazz has created as much music as he has. Almost everything important in music today came from him. That is why they called him "King," and he deserved the title. Musicians from all over the world used to come to hear Joe Oliver when he was playing at the Lincoln Gardens in Chicago, and he never failed to thrill them.
I was just a little punk kid when I first saw him, but his first words to me were nicer than everything that I've heard from any of the bigwigs of music.
Of course at the age of five I was not playing the trumpet, but there was something about the instrument that caught my ears. When I was in church and when I was "second lining" – that is, following the brass bands in parades – I started to listen carefully to the different instruments, noticing the things they played and how they played them. That is how I learned to distinguish the differences between Buddy Bolden, King Oliver and Bunk Johnson. Of the three Bunk Johnson had the most beautiful tone, the best imagination and the softest sense of phrasing.
Today people think that Bunk taught me to play the trumpet because our tones are somewhat similar. That, however, is all that we have in common, To me Joe Oliver's tone is just as good as Bunk's. And he had such range and such wonderful creations in his soull He created some of the most famous phrases you hear today, and trends to work from. As I said before, Bolden was a little too rough, and he did not move me at all.
Next to Oliver and Bunk were Buddy Petit, a Creole youngster, and Joe Johnson. Both played the cornet, and unluckily both died young. The world should have heard them.
Mayann enrolled me at the Fisk School, at the corner of Franklin and Perdido Streets. I was an active youngster and anxious to do the right thing, and I did not stay in the kindergarten long but was soon in the second grade. I could read the newspaper to the older folk in my neighborhood who helped mama to raise me. As I grew older I began to sell newspapers so as to help mother to make both ends meet. By running with the older boys I soon began to get hep to the tip. When we were not selling papers we shot dice for pennies or played a little coon can or blackjack. I got to be a pretty slick player and I could hold my own with the other kids. Some nights I would come home with my pockets loaded with pennies, nickels, dimes and even quarters. Mother, sister and I would have enough money to go shopping. Now and then I even bought mother a new dress, and occasionally I got myself a pair of short pants in one of the shops on Ram part Street. Of course I could not get a pair of shoes, but as we went barefoot that did not matter. Instead of a shirt I wore a blue cotton jumper, a kind of sport jacket worn over suspenders.