Radio mirror (May-Oct 1939)

Artie, aged six months — just one of New York's million or so kids. In Buster Brown suit and haircut— a true American at three. People in the danceband business learn to nap whenever they can. counts. It doesn't take much experience to learn that you can wear only one suit at a time, eat only one meal when you're hungry, drive only one car. The years behind taught me that. This May those years will number 29. THEY began on Manhattan's 7th Street between Avenue C and the East River. That's the section which belongs to the Dead End Kids. I suppose I was one of them. If you've ever seen a movie of a New York tenement house, you've seen the kind of place I lived in. Two or two and a half rooms in a wooden firetrap. Dirt and discomfort on all sides. Unhappiness the dictator whom only the children could escape. In the summer, we'd go down to the oily, ship-soiled East River to cool off. That was the Riviera of the tenements. My earliest recollection of my father was of an unnourishing photographer. He never settled down very much. After a while he gave up pictures to work with my mother, a good dress designer. They opened a shop together which made a little money. First result, of course, was to move up to a better neighborhood. They picked out St. Mark's Place — the same block, incidentally, from which Al Smith came — and I began to go to grammar school. I was seven and a half when they decided to move to New Haven, Connecticut. I'll never forget the night we arrived there. It was late when we got off the train and the three of us checked in to the Royal Hotel. I couldn't wait until morning. Ignorant little New Yorker that I was, I thought sure I'd wake up to look out on farm lands and cows and chickens. I rushed to the window at 6:30 — and saw a scene that wasn't much different from what I'd been looking at all my life. But I was grateful for that change of location. For years I had been cursed with a Buster Brown haircut. One of those straight bobs that come down just below the earlobes. I'd been afraid to beg my mother to cut it off while we were still in New York. I knew the kidding afterward would be worse than it had been before. That New Haven barber shop was a wonderful place. My mother and dad opened up another clothing place. For a time they did very well. Then we began to have less and less money. We moved to worse and worse places. Finally — I was already in high school — I realized that I came from a very poor family. But to a boy of 13, finances weren't as important as playing hookey. Boards of education can lecture all they like about the evils of playing hookey. But one such expedition was probably the most earthshaking event that ever happened to me. I used to spend those free mornings and afternoons at the Palace Theater, the domicile of vaudeville in New Haven. One week a band came through and I watched them work. During an unimportant spot, a saxophonist stood up and played a short solo. For the first time, I became aware of the saxophone as a music-making instrument. I rushed home — completely forgetting the consequences of playing hookey — and asked my father to buy me a saxophone. He laughed at me. I can't blame him when I think back on it now. Then, though, it was the most important thing in my life. I began to think of ways to make money. The first thing I tried was selling newspapers. After a couple of weeks of that, I calculated I was making only one-third of a cent for each paper sold. That was the hard way. I had to find a system for making money quicker. Summer vacation started and I managed to land a job in a grocery store at $5 a week. At the end of eight weeks I had $40 — enough to buy a cheap horn. I was supposed to get five free lessons for the purchase price. I took two of them — and quit. The teacher didn't know much more about the instrument than I did. He started me off all wrong. For example, he taught me the G scale instead of the C as the basic scale. Right up to the present, I have to transpose mentally whenever I play. It's like thinking in French and talking in English. I really learned by practise. The whole idea fascinated me — I had heard the musician in the theater play the sax so beautifully and when I tried to do the same thing all I got was a lot of squealing noises. It was a problem that had to be licked. I did it by practising eight hours every day. Eight hours of it, broken only by a quickly gulped meal — and back at it. The noise drove my father crazy but the idea of learning how to play had a terrific pull on me. He would ask me to stop and I'd refuse — the only defiance I ever showed him. My work reached a climax when I entered a local amateur contest. I remember that night, too. I played a tune called "Charlie My Boy." I can't even hum it now — but it won me $5. That prize shocked me — up (Continued on page 68)