When I got back to East St. Louis, I went straight out to my father's farm in Millstadt. My sister came down from Chicago and me and her and my father took a long walk around the grounds. Finally, my father said, "Miles, if it was a woman that was torturing you, then I could tell you to get another woman or leave that one alone. But this drug thing, I can't do nothing for you, son, but give you my love and support. The rest of it you got to do for yourself." When he said that, he and my sister just turned around and left me out there by myself. He had a guest house with a little two-room apartment in it and that's where I went. I locked the door and stayed until I kicked the habit cold turkey.
I was sick. I wanted to scream but couldn't scream because my father would have come from his big white house next door to see what was wrong. So I had to keep it all down inside of me. I used to hear him outside, walking past the guest house, stopping and listening to see what was going on. When he'd do that I wouldn't say nothing. I'd just lay up there in the dark, sweating like a motherfucker.
I was so sick trying to kick that habit. I got to feeling bad all over, all stiff in my neck and legs and every joint in my body. It was a feeling like arthritis, or a real bad case of the flu, only worse. The feeling is indescribable. All of your joints get sore and stiff, but you can't touch them because if you do you'll scream. So nobody can give you a massage. It's the kind of hurt I later experienced after an operation, when I had hip replacement. It's a raw kind of feeling that you can't stop. You feel like you could die and if somebody could guarantee that you would die in two seconds, then you would take it. You would take the gift of death over this torture of life. At one point I even started to jump out the window—the apartment was on the second floor—so I could knock myself unconscious and get some sleep. But I thought that with my luck I would just break my motherfucking leg and be laying out there suffering.
This went on for about seven or eight days. I couldn't eat. My girlfriend Alice came over, and we fucked, and damn if that didn't make it worse. I hadn't had an orgasm in about two or three years. It hurt the fuck out of my balls and everyplace else. It went on like this for a couple more days, then I started drinking orange juice, but I would throw it up.
Then one day it was over, just like that. Over. Finally over. I felt better, good and pure. I walked outside into the clean, sweet air over to my father's house and when he saw me he had this big smile on his face and we just hugged each other and cried. He knew that I had finally beat it. Then, I sat down and ate up everything in sight because I was hungrier than a motherfucker. I don't believe I have ever eaten like that, before or since. Then I sat down and started thinking about how I was going to get my life back together, which wasn't going to be an easy task.
CHAPTER 9
1953 IN DETROIT
As soon as I kicked my habit I went to Detroit. I didn't trust myself being in New York where everything was available. I figured that even if I did backslide a little, then the heroin that I would get in Detroit wasn't going to be as pure as what I would get in New York. I figured that this could help me and I needed all the help that I could get.
When I got to Detroit I began playing in some local clubs with Elvin Jones on drums and Tommy Flanagan on piano. I did use some heroin up there, but it wasn't so strong and there wasn't a lot of it around. I still hadn't gotten dope all the way out of my head, but I was close, and I knew it.
I stayed in Detroit for about six months. I was pimping a little then. I had me two or three girlfriends. I was even enjoying sex once again. One of the girls was a designer who tried to help me all she could. I don't want to name her;
she's a very prominent person now. She took me to a sanatorium to talk with this shrink. He asked me did I ever masturbate and I told him, no. He couldn't believe that. He told me that I should do that every day instead of shooting dope. I thought that maybe he should put his own goddamn self in the nuthouse if that's all the motherfucker had to tell me. Masturbating to break a habit? Shit, I thought that motherfucker was crazy.
It was so hard to break that habit. But I finally did. But goddamn it took a long time, because I just couldn't seem to stop altogether. I would dip and dabble and tell myself I was clean and then I would start all over again.
I had this real raunchy friend named Freddie Frue, at least that's what we called him. Anyway, I was staying in a hotel, and I would never eat or anything. He was my dope contact in Detroit. Freddie would come upstairs and bring my care package for the day. It was hard to kick my habit because of guys like him and because I was weak. I had to make up my mind in my own head all over again to kick the habit. I even thought marrying somebody might help; I was thinking about asking Irene. So I took a trip to St. Louis and asked my father if he could marry us. But then I thought again.
Rather than do that shit, though, I just up and left and went back to Detroit.
I had met a nice young girl while I was staying in Detroit. She was real sweet and beautiful. But I was fucking her over like I was fucking over all the women I knew at that time. If they didn't have no money I didn't want to see them, because I still hadn't gotten that monkey off my back yet. He was loosening his grip but he hadn't completely let go yet. I was still thinking like a junkie.
I knew this guy named Clarence who was in the numbers business in Detroit. He used to say, "Man, why do you do that girl like that? She's a real nice person and she cares about you. So why you treat her so bad?" I looked at him and said,
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
So here's this big gangster motherfucker, got his boys all around everywhere. He's got guns and shit in his pocket and I'm getting an attitude with him, right? But see, it wasn't me talking that simple shit, it was the drugs. He looked at me real strange, like he was trying to figure out if he ought to shoot me or something. But he respected me because he loved the music and he loved the way I played. He said, "I said, why you treating that girl like that? You heard what I said?"
All I'm thinking about is another fix, so I tell him, "Fuck you. What I do ain't none of your business."
He looked at me like he's about one second away from killing my ass. But then this pity came into his cold eyes. He studied me for a second, looking at me like I was some scroungy dog that had crawled in out of the streets. "Man, you're fucking pathetic, a pitiful, miserable motherfucker who don't even deserve to live. You're a fucking junkie, you sorry motherfucker. And if I thought it would do any good, I'd kick your fucking ass all over Detroit. But I'm telling you this shit: you fuck over that lady again and I'll do more than that to your sorry, junkie ass!" Then turned and left.
Man, that shit fucked me up, because he was right about everything he had said. When you're getting high you just don't care because you're just trying to keep from hurting, from being sick. But after that, after Clarence shamed me so bad, I started really trying to clean up my act.
The dope was so bad in Detroit—it was like Philly Joe used to say about some dope, "You could have bought a Hershey bar and saved your money"—because it was cut so much. And so that gradually makes your tolerance for it go away;
shooting it wasn't doing nothing for me except putting more holes in my arms. I was only doing it for that fucking feeling you get sticking a needle in your arm. And then all of a sudden I didn't want to put no more holes in my arms, so I stopped.
There were some good musicians in Detroit and I was starting to play with some of them. That helped me and a lot of them were clean. A lot of musicians in Detroit looked up to me because of all the things I had done. And so one of the things that made me stay clean was that they did look up to me and since they were clean it made me want to stay that way. There was this great trumpet player named Clair Rockamore, I think that was his name. Man, that motherfucker was bad. He was one of the best I ever heard. And then me and Elvin Jones was getting it on. People were packing in to see us when we played this little club called the Blue Bird.
One of the things that I want to clear up about when I was staying in Detroit is this story about me and Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Baker's Keyboard Lounge. I had been playing the Blue Bird for several months as a soloist—a guest soloist—in Billy Mitchell's house band. The band also had Tommy Flanagan on piano and Elvin Jones on drums. Betty Carter used to come and sit in with Yusef Lateef, Barry Harris, Thad Jones, Curtis Fuller, and Donald Byrd. It was a real hip city for music. Now, when Max came to town with Clifford and their new group—Richie Powell (Bud's little brother) on piano, Harold Land on tenor, and George Morrow on bass—Max asked me to sit in with them at Baker's.
But they got the story all wrong when they say that I just came stumbling in out of the rain with my horn in a brown paper bag and walked up on stage and started playing "My Funny Valentine." They say Brownie—that's what we called Clifford—let me play because he felt sorry for me, that he stopped the band from playing whatever it was that they were playing, and then I stumbled off the bandstand and back out into the rain. I guess that would make a nice scene in a movie, but it didn't happen. Now, in the first place, I wouldn't ever just walk up on Max and Brownie's gig like that without asking them if I could sit in. Second, I wouldn't have been carrying my trumpet around in no fucking brown paper bag in the rain because my instrument is too important to me. Also, I wouldn't have let Max see me if I was so down on my luck that I had to walk around with my shit in a paper bag. I got too much pride for that.
What really did happen at Baker's is that Max asked me to play because he used to like to hear me play like Freddie Webster. I could play like Freddie and I could buzzzzz the trumpet like Freddie down in the lower register; it's a kind of tonguing, buzzing sound. That was the only time I played with that band. But I don't know where that other story came from. That's just legend. I might have been a junkie but I wasn't as strung out as all that; I was on the road to kicking my habit.
Anyway, I really kicked my habit because of the example of Sugar Ray Robinson; I figured if he could be as disciplined as he was, then I could do it, too. I always loved boxing, but I really loved and respected Sugar Ray, because he was a great fighter with a lot of class and cleaner than a motherfucker. He was handsome and a ladies' man; he had a lot going for him. In fact, Sugar Ray was one of the few idols that I have ever had. Sugar Ray looked like a socialite when you would see him in the papers getting out of limousines with fine women on his arms, sharp as a tack. But when he was training for a fight, he didn't have no women around that anybody knew of, and when he got into the ring with someone to fight, he never smiled like he did in those pictures everybody saw of him. When he was in the ring, he was serious, all business.
I decided that that was the way I was going to be, serious about taking care of my business and disciplined. I decided that it was time for me to go back to New York to start all over again. Sugar Ray was the hero-image that I carried in my mind. It was him that made me think that I was strong enough to deal with New York City again. And it was his example that pulled me through some real tough days.
WALKIN'
I came back to New York in February 1954, after spending about five months in Detroit. I really felt good for the first time in a long time. My chops were together because I had been playing every night and I had finally kicked heroin. I felt strong, both musically and physically. I felt ready for anything. I got me a hotel room. I remember calling up Alfred Lion at Blue Note Records and Bob Weinstock at Prestige and telling them that I was ready to record again. I told them I had kicked my habit and that I wanted to do a couple of albums using just a quartet—piano, bass, drums, and trumpet—and they were happy about that.
The scene in New York had changed since I'd been gone. The MJQ —Modern Jazz Quartet—was big on the music scene then; the kind of "cool" chamber jazz thing they were doing was getting over big. People were still talking about Chet Baker and Lennie Tristano and George Shearing, all that stuff that came out of Birth of the Cool. Dizzy was still playing great as ever, but Bird was all fucked up—fat, tired, playing badly when he bothered to show up for anything. The managers of Birdland even barred him from there after he got into a shouting match with one of the owners—and Birdland had been named for him.
All I could think of when I came back to New York was playing music and making records and making up for all the time I had lost. The first two albums I made that year—Miles Davis, Vol. 2 for Blue Note and Miles Davis Quartet for Prestige—were very important to me. The Prestige contract had not gone into effect yet, that's why I could make the Blue Note date with Alfred Lion, which I needed to do because my money was still short. I felt I had come on strong on those records. I got Art Blakey on drums, Percy Heath from the MJQ on bass, and a young piano player named Horace Silver, who had been playing with Lester Young and Stan Getz. I think Art Blakey turned me on to Horace, because he knew him real well. Horace was staying at the same hotel I was staying in—the Arlington Hotel on 25th near Fifth—so we got to know each other well. Horace had an upright piano in his room where I would play and compose songs. He was a little younger than me, three or four years younger I think. I used to tell him a few things and show him some shit on the piano. I liked the way Horace played piano, because he had this funky shit that I liked a lot at that time. He put fire up under my playing and with Art on drums you couldn't be fucking around; you had to get on up and play. But I had Horace playing like Monk on that first album with "Well, You Needn't" and a ballad accompaniment on "It Never Entered My Mind." We also did "Lazy Susan."
I had signed a three-year deal with Bob Weinstock and Prestige Records. I had always appreciated what Bob Weinstock did for me before, back in the early days, because he took a chance on me when nobody else in the recording industry thought I was shit—except for Alfred Lion, who was also cool with me. The money Bob gave me for them first Prestige records wasn't much—I think something like $7SO a record, plus he wanted all my music publishing rights, which I didn't give him. But that little money was something I used to help support my habit back in 1951 and the records that I made helped me later in becoming a good bandleader, helped me understand how records—good records—are made. We got along all right, but he always wanted to tell me what to do, how to make my records, and so I used to tell him, "I'm the musician and you're the producer, so you just work on the technical side and leave the creative shit to me." When he didn't quite get that, I would just say, "Fuck you, Bob, get the fuck out of here and leave us alone." If I hadn't done that, we wouldn't have had Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey (and later, Trane and Monk) playing the shit they were playing because Bob wanted them to play and record differently than they did for those sessions for Prestige.
Most white record producers just wanted to always make the shit sound whiter, and so in order to keep it black, you had to fight them every step of the way. Bob wanted to do some tired shit, some pseudo-white shit. But he changed after a while—I can say that much for him. He never did pay no real decent money—even later, when we was making all them fucking masterpieces—and he wanted me to give up everything for the little money he was paying me. That's the way they treated jazz musicians—especially black jazz musicians —back in those days. And it ain't much better for most today.
Somehow I lost my horn and had to rent Art Farmer's on several occasions. I used it on "Blue Haze" on the Mites Davis
Somehow I lost my horn and had to rent Art Farmer's on several occasions. I used it on "Blue Haze" on the Mites Davis