| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
|
|||
|
Diamonds Pinned to My Underwear |
171 |
||
|
|
|||
|
He used to take me along on his trips as a front man—I guess you might say he used me as a decoy the very way 1 used my piano in my pool-playing days. One trip I left Horace in charge of the band. That fool pulled his stand way up high, pointed his finger at the dranimer and hollered, "You the first man to go. Don't miss that beat. All right, boys, let's go."
The drummer threatened to leave, so I had to demote Horace. He took the whole thing as a joke, "If I'm going to be a leader, Til be a leading son-of-a-gun!" he told me.
Horace had a lot of good offers and pretty soon he quit us. This time I had a hell of a time getting his replacement across the Canadian, line. The opposition came from the Canadian Musicians Union. I realized 1 had to break down these barriers, so I called up Weber, who was president of the union, and threatened to have all the Canadian musicians thrown out of the U.S. if he didn't let me alone. He became very nice after our conversation. Things went well until summer, when business slacked and I began gambling again.
One night through my boss, Patty, I got hooked up in a game with some of the biggest gamblers in the country— Nigger Nate, Chinese Smoke, Guy Harte, Russell Walton, and BlacMe Williams. The smallest bet on the table was $100. I lost $2000 before I knew what happened. They broke me and I was sitting there wondering what to do when Bricktop came in. I asked for a loan and Bricktop said, "All Tve got is $10 and I wouldn't loan it to my mother/'
Finally Patty gave me $5 and let me ride on his money. He hit eighteen straight licks and 1 stayed with him till I had my $2000 again, when 1 began to bet for myself. At the end of the game I had $11,000. A little guy named Jimmy had cleaned everybody else completely out—and that meant he had to pack his winnings off in a suitcase; those guys carried their money in bales.
Anita, who had been running a rooming-house, was feeling restless, so we sold out, put all our cash into diamonds and hopped on a boat for Alaska. I wore diamonds pinned to my |
|||
|
|
|||