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STOKYVILLE |
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Poke (the bartender), Ed Mochez (who left a hundred and ten suits when he died) and so many more 1 can't think of them. These guys were all big gamblers, and had all the best women and a lot of them smoked hop or used coke. In fact those days you could buy all the dope you wanted in the drugstore. Just ask for it and you got it.
They had everything in the District from the highest class to the lowest—creep joints where they'd put the feelers on a guy's .clothes, cribs that rented for about five dollars a day and had just about room enough for a bed, small-time houses where the price was from fifty cents to a dollar and they put on naked dances, circuses, and jive. Then, of course, we had the mansions where everything was of the very highest class. These houses were filled up with the most expensive furniture and paintings. Three of them had mirror parlors where you couldn't find the door for the mirrors, the one at Lula White's costing $30,000. Mirrors stood at the foot and head of all the beds. It was in these mansions that the best of the piano players worked.
Kid Ross was the steady player at Lula White's. Tony Jackson played at Gypsy Schaeffer's, one of the most notoriety women I've ever seen in a highclass way. She was the notoriety kind that everybody liked. She didn't hesitate about spending her money and her main drink was champagne and, if you couldn't buy it, she'd buy it for you in abundance. Walk into Gypsy Schaeffer's and, right away, the bell would ring upstairs and all the girls would walk into the parlor, dressed in their fine evening gowns and ask the customer if he would care to drink wine. They would call for the "professor" and, while champagne was being served all around, Tony would play a couple numbers.
If a Naked Dance was desired, Tony would dig up one of his fast speed tunes and one of the girls would dance on a little narrow stage, completely nude. Yes, they danced absolutely stripped, but in New Orleans the Naked Dance was a real art- |
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