of his house and they just stand there. They try to do something—he goes into a rage. I’m forbidden to play with him cause my parents know right away he’s crazy. My only friend: Gone.
Dave never says a word to me, even our Sunday fried chicken dinners with the tablecloth are silent. Until she utters something, and he tells her, “You’re drunk!” Dave doesn’t drink. The man can eat though. He can eat, I tell ya. Nice, little napkins at that table, but no talking. He just eats.
Dave’s dream is to get rich. He has a stable of sixteen fighters, some rough, some mean, some just good, hardworking men, but all of them look like dollar signs to Dave. He buys or sells them at the drop of a hat. Whatever will put more cash in his pocket. You don’t want to buy a car from him.
As the son of a manager, Stan had opportunities to hang around the gym and step into the ring, but it was his size and strength that allowed him to break into professional boxing while he was still a teenager. Six-foot-two Levey qualified as a heavyweight in the 1940s. Though he weighed only a hundred and seventy-eight pounds, Stan’s leanness was deceiving. He had hands like catcher’s mitts and a heavy jaw anchored by a brick of a chin, which looked specifically designed to take a punch. Throughout his life, the hulking drummer gave off an impression of hugeness that was universally intimidating. Stan’s wife Angela recalled an inside joke that Stan was from the ape family. “He’d see an orangutan on television and say, ‘Oh, look, it’s my uncle Abe,’” said Angela, “‘and there’s my brother the chimp.’”
But young Stan also had another pugilistic attribute. Like so many other boxers, he had learned to take a beating early, at home.
Like every other kid in Philly and the world, I always pretend to be sick to stay away from school, but this one morning, she’s got half a load on already, and she says, “Get the hell out of here,” and bam—a belt with a big buckle. Whacks me. Opens my head up big time. I’m maybe seven, so she calls the doctor. Two-dollar doctor, comes to the house for two bucks. She gets nervous. “Tell him . . . tell him you fell down.”
He says, “What happened?”
She says, “Oh, he fell, he fell,” and I say, “Yeah, I fell.” It’s a good whack.
The old man, he’s like a gorilla. That’s where I got these long arms, these shoulders. He’s bald and hairy. Big arms. Takes me down to the basement and says, “You’re gonna learn to box!”
Now, I’m really young—nine, ten. I’m saying, “This is great, man, I’m getting attention.” We start pummeling. He starts laying right into me. He hurts me, but I enjoy it. Stomach, face . . . beats the hell out of me, but I enjoy it. Then I start to lay back into him and he doesn’t like that. He hits harder. We have a coal chute down there. The truck puts that chute down through the window and the coal comes down for the furnace. Big empty place, coal dust in the air. Breathing it. He’s beating the shit out of me. Says, “Come here, I want to show you a couple things.” I say, “Yeah, great, he’s talkin’ to me!”
He drops it like a bomb at dinner one night: “We’re going to the fights!” First time, very exciting. Thursday night fights. I’m maybe nine. Down on Broad—the Olympic Fight Club—South Broad Street, at night. School doesn’t matter at all. My mom maybe worries about my grades a couple of times, but it passes. Him? Never.
Takes me right back to the dressing room. They’re taping up and he introduces me to a couple of his guys. It’s a thrill to be there. I’m saying, “Wow, look at these guys, they’re gonna go in and fight!”
The Olympic holds maybe three hundred. Smoky, man—the whole place stinks just awful. All the beat-up ex-fighters selling peanuts. We get peanuts. Ring announcer’s a little guy—shirt and bow tie, high voice, no microphone—introduces the fighters, kind of nasal, high-toned, piercing voice so it projects, cuts through. They bet the white corner or the black corner. Bet on the round, the knockout. The lights dim and these two guys come out. Our guys are later.
I’ll do anything to gain his attention, my old man. That’s why I become a boxer. He takes me down to the gym, where all his boxers are. Right away they like me and I start working out with them. I’m a big kid. First time I must’ve been twelve or thirteen. Eventually, I’m working out with Bob Montgomery and Ike Williams—world champions—not really realizing how important they are at that particular time. But that’s to get my old man’s attention when I go in and start boxing. He doesn’t even come around, just takes me and shows me off.
“That’s my boy. Look how big he is.”
“Yeah, he’s a big kid, Dave. Big, strong kid.”
But once we leave, it’s not a word. Zip.
Stan got his first drum set a couple of years before he started working out at the gym. He was walking past Ted Burke’s Music Store with his mother, and they saw it in the window. Stan’s reaction was so passionate that it moved Essie to sober up long enough to speak to Dave.
Somehow, my mother gathers herself.
“Dave. Dave, are you listening to me?”
“What the hell? You been drinking?”
“Dave, the boy’s got nothing. Nothing.”
“Whattayamean nothing? A roof over his head? Three squares? A freaking radio for Christ’s sake! What do you want from me? Leave me alone.”
“David.”
“Oh, now it’s David! What the hell, I know you’ve been drinking.”
“No, I haven’t. Not this time. He’s got nothing. Listen to me. Be a father. Buy him drums. He’s got a beat, Dave, he’s got rhythm.”
“What? I don’t have that kind of money. What are you talking about?”
“There’s a little set. We saw it at Ted Burke’s, a kid set, cheap. A man does this, Dave. Your son has nothing. You’ve never given him anything. Give him this. Be a man. Be a man, huh?”
The one Christmas this Jewish boy ever gets. Put up my little tiny gorgeous set right in front of the Majestic and let those Eskimos guide me into the music. Play along, feel my way, carried along . . .
One time! One time, I catch my folks sitting, arms around each other behind me on the old sofa, just watching me play, holding each other. Never again, but that’s all it takes. I know I have something, man—something special to make them do that. That tiny bass drum, snare, cymbal, those brushes, my folks watching me like that . . . Nothing else to say. Nothing else to do.
When Stan was thirteen, his family moved into a two-story row house in West Philadelphia. On the surface, the move indicated an improvement in the family’s fortune. They were still renters, but their new house was more spacious, with three bedrooms, two baths, and an outdoor patio. While their old apartment had been coal-fired and sooty, their new dwelling was powered by natural gas. Stan became friendly with the gas man, a fellow jazz lover and aspiring trombonist named Bill Harris.
But for Stan, the new house represented the end of his parents’ marriage. Essie’s drinking worsened and the animosity between her and Dave climaxed on the staircase one evening with Essie wielding a thirteen-inch butcher knife in a drunken rage. Dave walked out and divorce followed.
Stan started cutting school so he could study the drummers at the Earle Theater’s live music matinees. Sometimes it was just the pit band, other times it was a headliner like Gene Krupa or Buddy Rich playing with Artie Shaw. Stan absorbed ideas, memorized licks, and ogled the mother-of-pearl drum kits that made his little practice set seem like a mere toy.
Stan also came to realize he’d been playing backwards, as if he were left-handed, but he made a conscious decision not to change what “felt right.” For the rest of his career, Stan’s southpaw stance was a distinguishing quirk and a source of curiosity for young drummers who studied him, just as he’d studied the drummers at the Earle. Rumors floated that it was a crafty offshoot of his boxing strategy, but Stan always admitted that it was simply