I Used to Be Coloured but Now, I'm Black!

By June Harris

This collection consists of nine of my original short stories about my personal tell it like it was 20th century history, depicting the social climate conditions of the times that was even reflected in the entertainment industry in the racially segregated city of Chicago and other Midwestern cities, throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s. Each story tells of my eventual self-awareness in each instance and life lessons learned.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453553565

June Harris

June Harris received her first encouragement in writing when she won second place in a county essay contest as a seventh grader in her native Mississippi. She continued writing through high school in Arizona, and received another writing award in college. After graduating from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, she began a life-long career in education, but she was hooked on writing and kept writing in her spare time. She received a master's degree in English from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, and a Ph. D. in reading from the University of Arizona. Her first book, a Gothic romance, was published in 1982. She has written predominantly historical fiction to this point, but she is in the process of writing a contemporary thriller. Ms. Harris currently resides in Arizona. She is the mother of five children and the grandmother of nine. She has taken up writing full time in her retirement.

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Copyright © 2010 by June Harris.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010911612

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4535-5355-8

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4535-5354-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4535-5356-5

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Contents

PROLOGUE

BACK IN THE DAY

ANNABELLE

ANNIE RUTH

BLACK SNAKE

MEA CULPA!

THIRTEEN

GOLF ANYONE?

THE COLD TRUTH

I WANTED TO

KISS THE GROUND

POCO

BRYGGEN, BERGEN

CRITQUES

Quote by Buddhist Philosopher, Daisaku Ikeda: This lifetime will never come again: It is precious and irreplaceable. To live without regret, we must have a concrete purpose, continually setting goals and challenges for ourselves: And we need to keep moving toward those specific targets steadily and tenaciously, one step at a time.

PROLOGUE

Mr. Bouras, the Club owner said We have a show with a band in the main room, but I need a strong lounge act right now, and I’m willing to give you a chance if you’ll give us a chance. If it doesn’t work out after two weeks, we’ll let you out of the contract. But if you don’t like us you can break it! Do we have a deal? I said yes. Those two weeks turned into two years and he put rhythm section in to back me up on piano. We performed jazzed up versions of classic tunes such as Besamé Mucho, Solamenté Una Véz (You Belong To My Heart) and an old Cuban religious folksong, Naguáy. Then one night about two weeks into the gig, just as I was in the middle of singing Dimí Quando, the Emcee announced the new act in the main showroom in the main showroom and the bartender told us to stop playing! The audience quickly cleared the bar literally ran to see the new act. The bartender told us to stop playing. Confused and humiliated, I went and stood in back of the semi-darkened room, the costumed artist stood and began singing accapella, with no microphone a powerful recitative in Spanish to an old Cuban folksong ‘Naguáy’. You could have heard a pin drop, as she walked gracefully and slowly mounted the stage, the band began playing. The crowds’ wild applause shook the walls. I took the chart to Naguáy from out of my repertoire and never sang it again. From then on, I timed my sets to end five minutes before show time. But Mr. Bouras and his staff always treated me like family. He would eventually come to my rescue during a time of great duress. So recently, I checked out the song on Google and found the name of the dynamic Cuban singer who had blown away the audience. It was the world renowned, incomparable singer Celiá Cruz.

BACK IN THE DAY

Written by June Harris © 1998

Way, way back in the day, when I used to be colored, before I became Black, around 1957, I had just finished a return lengthy gig as opening act for the Buddy Greco Show at one of Chicago’s hottest nightspots the Club LeBistro in the Rush Street area. I was literally ‘the’ first Black female piano bar artist to work the Near North side and had become the ‘sweetheart’ of the late night lounge scene, namely because for a while, I was one of the ‘only’ Coloured pianists working in the ‘Gold Coast’ Rush Street entertainment district. I played and sang my own arrangements of jazzed up versions of show tunes, standards, and jazz in English, Spanish, and Italian and later learned to sing Yiddish and Hebrew songs.

As an opening act, I was not only well paid, but on almost any given night would earn good tips just for playing the piano and singing. This was before the Chicago White and Black Musician’s unions would amalgamate. So I worked the predominantly ‘White area clubs’ even before they were legally merged because of my booking agent Freddy Williamson’s powerful worldwide connections and I was naïve enough to think it was due to my God-given talent.

During March 1951 at the age of seventeen, I became one of the youngest members of Local 208, (The Black Musician’s Union) with my parents permission (Back then the legal age of consent was 21) and in 1963 one of 100 Local 208 members led by then President Harry Gray, which joined Local 10 independently, obtaining dual membership. Their action, described by Local 208 officers as a raid by Local 10 on their membership, gave rise to widespread coverage.

Reflecting further back upon my youth, I recall Mrs. Gamble, my nanny Pap whose parents were former slaves. She had migrated from a rural Georgian farm during the Great Depression in search of work to support her thirteen children. Pap an illiterate Born-again Christian introduced me to Gospel music, which was so unlike the traditional music that was sung in Latin in the Catholic Church and I was hooked. I actually began to sneak into Baptist Churches just to hear the music, you know, ‘feel the rhythm’. Around age fifteen, I decided to get a job one summer at a Jewish resort in South Haven, Michigan. That’s where I first heard Middle-Eastern rhythmic patterns, Yiddish and Hebrew songs. I soaked it all in like a sponge.

That same year, Mama let me go to my first ‘grownup’ dance at Chicago’s Trianon Ballroom with my girlfriends from the Chi Rho Discussion Club, a girl’s club affiliated with St. Anslem’s Catholic Church. I was wearing my ‘Broomstick’ skirt (The hot fashion then) French role and my very first pair of Cuban high-heel shoes. I also wore my first nylon stockings, hair straightend, worn in a Pompadour with bangs and horn-rimmed eyeglasses. We Cha-cha’d and Meringued to the hot rhythms of the great Tito Puénte’s Orchestra. I fell in love with the rhythms, the music and the language. Who wouldn’t?

During previous summer vacations at my parent’s country Inn in South Haven, Michigan, they gave me written permission to play piano with a blues band after I graduated from Dunbar Trade School. Of course being underage, the leader’s wife, who was about 5’7 tall, was my chaperone. Her husband, the bandleader was a little person about 4’6 with a slight hump in his back. He played baritone sax and when he was blowing his solos, had to drag it across the floor because the instrument was nearly the same size as him. But this little cat played some great ‘big sounds’ and taught music at a local high school in Benton Harbor, Michigan (About 60 miles north of South Haven), so at least he had a steady gig and paid me in cash each weekend, ‘before the gig, okay’? Oh shut up! A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

To tell the truth, the fellow had to write out chord changes for me because all that time I’d been playing by ear. My ability to memorize was so acute that once I heard melodies and chord changes, I could generally play them. The rest of the band, including me sucked, but that was what inspired me to learn more about my instrument; piano.

Besides my real father, Clarence who was a professional gambler, squinting his eyes in pain at hearing me trying to ‘make up songs’ said: Banging on the piano was cute when you were little, but you’re a young lady now and it’s not so cute anymore. You need to study music with a teacher. Now that really hurt, but it worked. So I began studies with a classical pianist Don Martin for the next couple of years. About that time, my step dad Simon retired from his job as chef on the Illinois Central Railroad due to heart problems: The economy took a nose dive and my parents resort business all but fell in the toilet.

Later in life, I’d learn to sing eventually and at sixteen I went to Wilson Jr. College in Chicago, where I studied theory and conducting. That’s where I’d meet some of the future jazz greats such as my buddy saxophonist Eddie Harris and bassist Richard Evans who’d eventually do work at Chess Recording Studios.

They invited me to jam sessions when I was nearly seventeen years old and it was at one in which the budding fifteen year-old piano wizard Herbie Hancock sat in and blew us all away. He would later perform with some of the world’s most renowned musicians such as genius Miles Davis. Herbie remains a stellar artist to this day with his clean, melodic, rhythmic groovy and swinging technique.

Feeling guilty about being in college at my parent’s expense during those days, I found a booking agent out of Wisconsin and hit the road as a piano bar artist, in order to pay for my education.

Some booking agents are honest artist’s representatives. This agent was either the latter, or just incompetent! That’s what they do, to make money and musicians are a product to be sold, period! Following my two years working joints in Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Montana and seeing older musicians that never seemed to advance in the industry, I decided to chuck it in, and go back to school, upon getting offers to play in Chicago. The very last dump I worked for this man, turned out to be a ‘country’ venue. There was ‘sawdust’ on the floor people. Some of the customers wore boots and cowboy hats. I knew I was in trouble, the minute I walked into that toilet.

That night I went to play my first ‘set’, at the Spinet piano located in the nearly pitch-blackened small lounge at the back of bar, where a few customers sat on barstools drinking beers in front of the ‘out-of-tune’ piano. An hour later, when I took my break, the bartender turned the lights up. As I was putting the music away, I happened to turn around and standing upright on its’ hind legs, was a nearly 9’ tall, stuffed ‘Grisly’ Bear, mouth agape, long tongue hanging out. I screamed! Everybody laughed and the bartender asked snidely, I might add as he opened a bottle of beer between the bear’s teeth What’s wrong? I’d just about had it when the agent booked me on a gig to end all gigs in St. Louis which, also proved to become another disaster.

Back then St. Louis was totally segregated and once again I’m in an ‘All White’ club, where there was no dressing room and the local band members were not even allowed to sit down on breaks. They made an acception for me though, because