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1 TOOK CALIFORNIA |
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George Brown out of gas. Took all the movie-star trade away from him. Then Brown moved a half a block from the Cadillac (that was on Central between Fifth and Sixth) with his eight-piece band and did fairly well from the overflow trade, but it wasn't long till all the movie stars drifted back to us and Brown cut his band down man by man until he had nobody left but Hageman. Finally he let him go and closed the place. That left me with George Brown as a real enemy from then on.
The Cadillac was again in bloom. Of course, the musicians couldn't play the tunes we could in New Orleans; they didn't have the ability. So we had to play what we could—The Russian Rag, Black and White, Maple Leaf Rag, Liza Jane (a little comedy song, the whole Coast went for that), Daddy Dear,, Tm Crying For You, Melancholy Baby—these were quite prominent in 1917, if 1 don't get the years mixed up. Then I wrote a tune and called it Cadillac Rag that we used to do with a singer.
I often seen my brother-in-law, Bill Johnson, who was so crazy about California, and I would constantly ask him where Anita was, but he wouldn't never tell me. Finally I runned up on her old lady, her mother, and she says, "Oh my, how Anita would like to see you!"—and she got me in touch with Anita. Anita had bought a saloon business in a little town called Las Vegas, Nevada, and she had made a lotta money. When her mother notified her I was in L. A., she came up to see me and we got back together. She said she should let the saloon go unless I decided I Bked Las Vegas. So I tried Las Vegas a while, but it was too doggone cold in the winter and too- hot in the summer. We turned the place over to Bill Johnson and, when we saw him next, he was riding in a MacFarland automobile, which they was plenty high those days.
Anita decided to stay in Los Angeles. She bought a small hotel on the comer of Central near Twelfth and named it The Anita. By that time I had several little businesses branching out, myself, I had a little dance hall, but because you had to close a dance hall at twelve o'clock, I went partners with Pops |
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