Cora Hahn Pepper Noble (Grandma): Art’s paternal grandmother. She was responsible for Art’s upbringing. Her children were Arthur Edward Pepper Senior and Richard Pepper (Dicky Boy), and a stepson, Shorty Noble.
Arthur Edward Pepper (Art Senior, Moses, Daddy, Pop): Art’s father. A merchant marine, machinist, fisherman, longshoreman, union organizer.
Mildred Bartold (Ida Bartold, Mildred Bayard, Millie, Moham): Art’s mother. Art senior’s first wife, she married him when she was fifteen.
Sarah Schecter Bartold: Married Vincent Joseph Bartold and raised his niece, Ida (Millie), Art’s mother.
Thelma Winters Noble Pepper: Married at first to Art Senior’s stepbrother, Shorty, she had three children—John, Bud, and Edna. Deserted by Shorty, she married Art’s father.
John Noble and Mildred (Millie) Moore Noble: Thelma’s son and his wife. Art considered John Noble his cousin.
Johnny Martizia: Introduced Art to improvised music (jazz). He is still a professional singer and guitarist.
Patti (Madeleine) Moore Pepper: Art’s first wife. They were married in 1943.
Lee Young: Brother of the legendary Lester Young, he has been active in all aspects of music since childhood and led the band at the Club Alabam which gave Art his start in jazz. He is now an executive at Motown Records.
Benny Carter: One of the most respected and prolific figures in jazz. He is a composer, saxophonist, trumpet player, and educator and has written numerous film and television scores. He led a band in 1943 in which Art Pepper played briefly. Patricia Ellen Pepper: Art’s daughter with Patti. She was born in 1945.
Alan Dean: Alan Dean was a pop singer in England during the war years when he met Art. He now lives in Australia, and is still a singer, touring occasionally, as well as a composer, arranger, and producer of television and radio commercials.
Hersh Hamel: Has known Art since the late ’40s. He is a bassist living in Los Angeles.
Freddy Rivera: Was one of a group of musicians, which included Art Pepper, who played jam sessions in and around Los Angeles during the late ’40s and early ’50s. He now teaches at a California college.
June Christy and Bob Cooper: Were “girl singer” and tenor player, respectively, with the Stan Kenton orchestra from the mid to late ’40s. Christy is semi-retired although she still sometimes tours and records. Coop is very active in the studios and plays jazz whenever he can.
Sammy Curtis: Was a member of the Stan Kenton orchestra. He prefers that his name and the specifics of his career be withheld.
Shelly Manne: Has been for many years one of the world’s finest and most popular jazz drummers. He was a member of the Kenton orchestra during the ’50s, ran a nightclub, “Shelly’s Manne Hole,” in Los Angeles during the ’60s and early ’70s, has toured extensively with his own groups, has composed scores for television and films, and has been abundantly recorded.
Diane Suriaga Pepper: Art’s second wife. They were married in 1957.
John Koenig: Present owner of Contemporary Records and the son of the late Lester Koenig who was Art’s mentor and friend, producer of many of Art’s finest albums.
Marty Paich: Arranger, composer, pianist. Has recorded in all these capacities under his own name and for numerous popular and jazz artists and has composed scores for television and films.
Steve Kravitz: Reed player, was Art’s student in 1960. He is an active studio musician.
Ann Christos: Has been Art’s fan and his friend for almost twenty years.
Jerry Maher: Jerry and Art became friends in San Quentin where both were serving sentences.
Marie Randall: The sister of Diane Pepper, Art’s second wife.
Christine: Art’s lover, 1966-1969.
Don Menza: Was a member of the Buddy Rich band of 1968. He is a composer, plays all saxophones, clarinets and flutes, has toured widely playing jazz, and is a successful studio musician.
Karolyn April: A Synanon alumna and friend.
Laurie LaPan Miller Pepper: Art’s third wife. They met in Synanon in 1969, and were married in 1974.
PART 1
1925-1954
| 1 | Childhood1925–1939 |
MY GRANDMOTHER was a strong person. She was a solid German lady. And she never would intentionally have hurt anyone, but she was cold, very cold and unfeeling. She was married at first to my father’s father and had two sons, and when he died she remarried. And the man that she married liked her son Richard and didn’t like my father whose name was Arthur, the same as mine.
My father’s stepfather beat him and just made life hell for him. Richard was the good guy; he was always the bad guy. When he was about ten years old he couldn’t stand it anymore, so he left home and went down to San Pedro, down to the docks and wandered around until somebody happened to see him and asked him if he would like to go out on a ship as a cabin boy, and so he did. That was how he started.
He went out on oil tankers and freighters doing odd jobs, working in the scullery, cleaning up, running errands. Because he left home, naturally his schooling was stopped, but he always had a strong desire to learn, so he began studying by himself. He was interested in machinery and mathematics. He studied and kept going to sea and eventually, all on his own, he became a machinist on board ship. He went all over the world. He became a heavy drinker, did everything, tried everything. He lived this life until he was twenty-nine years old, never married, and then one day he came into San Pedro on a ship be-longing to the Norton Lilly Line; they’d been out for a long time; he had a lot of money, so he went up to the waterfront to his usual bars. And going into one of them he saw a young girl. She was fifteen years old. Her name was Mildred Bartold.
My mother never knew who her parents were. She remembers an uncle and an aunt who lived in San Gabriel. They were Italian. They seemed to love her but kept sending her away to convents. Finally she couldn’t stand the convents anymore, so she ran away, and she ended up in San Pedro, and she met my father.
She was very pretty at the time with that real Italian beauty, black hair, olive skin. My father had gotten to the point where he was thinking about settling down, getting a job on land, and not going to sea anymore. They met, and he balled her, and he felt this obligation, and I guess he cared for her, too, so he married her.
So here she was. She had finally gotten out into the world and all of a sudden she’s married to a guy that’s been all over, has done all the things she wants to do and is tired of them, and then she finds herself pregnant. She wanted to drink, look pretty, have boyfriends. She was very boisterous, very vociferous. She would get angry and demand things, she wouldn’t change, she wouldn’t bend. Naturally she didn’t want a baby. She did everything she could possibly do to get rid of it, and my father flipped out. That was why he married her. He wanted a child.
She ran into a girl named Betty Ward who was very wild. Betty had two kids, but she was balling everybody and drinking, and she told my mother what to do to get rid of the baby. My mother starved herself and took everything anybody had ever heard of that would make you miscarry, but to no avail. I was born. She lost.
I was born September 1, 1925. I had rickets and jaundice because of the things she’d done. For the first two years of my life the doctors didn’t think I would live but when I reached the age of two, miraculously I got well. I got super healthy.
During this period we lived in Watts, and my father continued going to sea. He hated my mother for what she had tried to do. She was going out with this Betty; I don’t know what they