Also I became more and more hooked and I went through some unbelievable scenes—running out of stuff on the road, not being able to score, having to play, sick, sitting on the stand spitting up bile into a big rag I kept under the music stand. I guess I looked sort of messed up. People started talking. Kenton became more and more suspicious. I imagined he knew I was doing more than drinking and smoking pot. So it seemed best that I leave the band and try to do something on my own, and I gave my notice. A lot of us quit at the same time. Shelly Manne quit. Shorty Rogers quit.
At first I was apprehensive. I had a lot of bills and I had a habit, so right away I did some recording with Shorty. One was Shorty Rogers and His Giants, and on one of the sides, ‘Over the Rainbow,” I was featured all the way through and got great reviews. It became one of the most popular things I’ve done. Then I formed a group of my own. I got Joe Mondragon and on drums Larry Bunker, who also played vibes. We worked out some things which we could do without the drums while he played vibes, or if he did a ballad I’d sit in on the drums and play a slow beat with the brushes. I got Hampton Hawes, an exceptional pianist. It was just a quartet, but it was very versatile.
Because I had my own group, I wanted to do my own material, tunes that would express my personality, not just standards. I had fooled around writing little things out when I was with Kenton. Now I tried writing seriously and found I had a talent for it. I wrote a ballad for my daughter, Patricia, probably the prettiest thing I’ve written to this day, and I wrote a real flag-waver, a double-fast bebop tune, very difficult, and I named it “Straight Life.”
We worked at the Surf Club and got a great review in down beat. In that same issue, announcing my starting a group of my own, I was written up in another article with another new leader who was going to throw his hat in the jazz band ring and see if he could make it, and that person was Dave Brubeck. We all know now, anyone that follows jazz, that Brubeck became, and still is, one of the outstanding leaders of a jazz group, but at that time, if you read the articles, I was the one they felt was more talented and the one that would make it bigger and make more money and be more popular. I was more of a jazz player. I swung more.
Everything was perfect. I bought a tract house on my GI bill. I had finally gotten to know my daughter and was just mad about her, really loved her. We had a little white poodle named Suzy, and I had a car. I had everything. I was making good money and I didn’t use any of that money on my habit—I was dealing a little bit of stuff to musicians, friends of mine, to support my habit. And I felt that I wasn’t doing anything wrong because I wasn’t taking food out of my child’s and my wife’s mouths by using. But I was really strung out.
I realized I had to get away from the stuff. In the latter part of 51 there began to be newspaper stories about dope. It was beginning to hit the limelight. I realized that things weren’t going to be the same, things were going to tighten up. And that meant either I had to kick or I had to go to jail. That would really ruin my career. I was thinking how nice it would be to just stop, be cool, and not pay any of the real heavy dues that you usually have to pay. So that’s what my thinking was when my dad came out to the house I’d bought in Panorama City and asked me if I’d like to come and have a drink.
My mother had gone to my dad, who was living in Long Beach, and she told him I was using. I had asked her not to say anything to him because he hated junkies; he’d always told me don’t ever do that. But he found out and came to me and said, “Let’s go out and have a drink.” He used to come with Thelma, but this time he came alone and he said he wanted to talk to me.
We went and had a drink, and then he looked at me, and he put his hand on my arm. We were in a bar in Van Nuys, a bar I later worked in with a western band. He said, “When did you start on that stuff?” He put his arm around me and got tears in his eyes. And the way he put it to me I knew that he knew. I think at first I tried a feeble “What do you mean?” But he grabbed my arm. I had a short-sleeved shirt on. I had marks all over my arm. He said, “You might as well be dead.” He said, “How did it happen?” So we talked and I tried to explain to him. I had tried to minimize the feelings I had, but it was so good to be able to tell somebody about it, to let him know how awful I felt and how really scared I was. He said, “What are we going to do?” I said, “Oh God, I don’t know. I want to stop.” He said, “Tell me the truth, if you don’t want to stop nothing is going to do you any good.” We talked and talked. Before he’d even come to me he’d inquired and found a sanitarium in Orange County, and they said they’d take me in. He made sure the police wouldn’t hear about it; I wouldn’t be reported. He said, “Will you go to this place?” I was afraid because I was afraid to kick, and I was afraid I might goof, and I didn’t want to disappoint my dad. I felt miserable when I saw how miserable he felt. He said, “Anything I can do, no matter what it costs, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about anything—I’ll take care of you.” That’s when he started crying, and we hugged each other, and we were in this bar, and it was really strange, but I felt wonderful because after all these years I felt that I’d reached my dad and we were close. And so he asked me if I’d go to the sanitarium, and I saw that he wanted me to real bad, and so I said yes, alright, that I would go.
(Sammy Curtis) As to drugs, it’s like the thing going on now. It’s a peer thing. A lot of guys are doing it, gettin’ stoned. It did feel good. People enjoy feeling good. You don’t know what it’s going to lead to. You don’t think of that. I’m a follower of Jesus now, and I look at everything spiritually, so I think that anyone drinking, getting stoned, you name it, is looking for the Lord. They’re looking for something greater but they don’t know how to go about it, to find it, and unfortunately, in the search they fool around getting stoned, and it feels better. But it’s a temporary and destructive thing. I’ve been there, and getting closer to the Lord feels much better. It’s cheaper and it’s constructive not destructive.
DOPE MENACE KEEPS GROWING
Dope is menacing the dance band industry. It has become a major threat and unless herculean effort is made by everyone concerned to halt its spread, it may well wreck the business. We are not talking about marijuana, benzedrine, or nembutal, although these are the first steps leading to the evil.
We are referring to real narcotics, heroin principally, and too many well-known musicians and vocalists are “hooked,” as they say in the vernacular. This is serious business and it constitutes a triple threat to the future of dance music.
It is demolishing the professional as well as the personal careers of the addicts themselves, many of whom cannot be spared from the ranks of working musicians because of their talent.
It is giving a bad name to ALL musicians and jeopardizing their living. We know instances in which bookings have been refused to clean units and bands because of undeserved reputation.
Most important of all, the example set by musicians who are addicts and who also are well known, is a wrong influence on younger musicians and on youngsters who may become musicians.
down beat usually has not given prominent display to news stories about musicians who run afoul of the law because of their habit. We did not wish to be accused of sensationalism. We knew, of course, that Miles Davis, the trumpet star, and drummer Art Blakey were picked up recently in Los Angeles on a heroin charge. We did not print it.
Now we are becoming convinced that we are doing a disservice to the industry by not giving wider publicity to such facts. We are beginning to believe that we should name names and state facts, even in the instances of musicians who die from the habit, without attempting to thinly disguise the cause of death as has been done in two or three cases recently.
The grapevine is flooded with rumors and rumors of rumors. A name girl vocalist and her musician husband both are said to be hooked. One of the five top tenor sax stars has flipped, it is reported. Another femme singer, who has been in trouble before, walked out after playing three nights of a two week club engagement because her chauffeur was picked up with heroin capsules in his possession and the law began to stalk her again.
We