“It was the combination of Black music and sports that saved my life.” From schoolyard hellion to award-winning student. From Newark, NJ to Hollywood. A journey towards adulthood where the life lessons of youth prove invaluable…
by: Alan Swyer
During every Q&A following festival screenings of my documentary When Houston Had The Blues, I knew a strange question would be forthcoming. “How,” someone would inevitably ask, “did you learn so much about Black music?” My response, which always engendered surprise, was that I never learned about Black music. Spending my early years in a predominantly Black neighborhood, Black music was simply there, in the same way as the trees, the sidewalk, and the lampposts were. Ray Charles, Fats Domino, and Little Richard were played in my friends’ homes. Wynonie Harris, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Elmore James were favorites at the soul food restaurant where the fare, unlike what was served by my mother, actually had taste. Monk, Mingus, and Charlie Parker were in the air thanks to countless record players heard through open windows. Add to that what I heard on the radio hidden under the covers every night, where instead of sleeping I listened to Big Joe Turner, LaVern Baker, and Clyde McPhatter, played by Danny “the Catman” Stiles on New Jersey’s own WNJR.
What I chose not to add in these Q&A sessions was something more poignant — it was the combination of Black music and sports that saved my life.
My mother, who tried to rule our household with an iron fist, sensed from the moment I entered the world, peeing on everyone in reach, that I was a threat. No wonder that she forever referred to the Ob/Gyn who delivered me as “The sadist who ruined her life.” Even after I moved to California, on rare those occasions when the two of us happened to be on speaking terms, a civil phone conversation was nearly impossible. If I said hot, she said cold. If I said day, she countered with night. Plus she loved to remind me of the world of the shame I aroused at a family gathering when I was only four. Asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I happily replied, “A garbage man.” “Why?” wondered my Aunt Clara. “Because,” I announced, “they drive a big truck and get out of the house before the screaming starts.” My mother never forgot or forgave.
No surprise that from my earliest years, I spent as little time at home as possible. Though it was my mother’s dream to own a house in the suburbs, for me apartment life in Newark was heaven. Thanks to population density, everything I wanted was available simply by stepping outside. It was older kids on the block who taught me how to play stoop ball and ride a bike. With them, I would amble to the playground to shoot baskets on the lower hoops, or to Weequahic Park to play baseball.
Given the reputation for violent crime that Newark would later acquire, it’s amazing how innocent life was in those days. Even as a 2nd grader, student bus tickets enabled me to ride unaccompanied to my grandmother’s place, which was half a block from the Nation of Islam bakery. Not knowing that members of the adjacent mosque would later be accused of murdering Malcolm X, I would often pop in for a bean pie before catching the bus home.
School posed a unique set of problems. The entire class would far too often have to wait, and wait, and wait some more until the slowest learners — usually kids who had stayed back — finally caught on. To fight the resulting boredom, I learned to misbehave, a pattern that continued all the way through high school There, when I cut class, or started a food fight in the lunchroom, instead of detention, or worse a suspension, I was eventually given what was meant to be a devilish punishment. I was forced to enter essay contests with subjects that seemed purposely dreary to a wiseass like me: patriotism, free enterprise, or the terrors of Communism. In 10th grade, to the dismay of the powers that be, I won a countywide competition. As a junior, to their chagrin, I won one for the entire state of New Jersey. But the real coup came my senior year when I took first place in a national contest awarding me the then-serious sum of $100, which I happily announced I would spend as frivolously as possible. What my embarrassed principal and vice principal never figured out was though I hung with the jocks and tough kids, there was a hidden side to me. As a secret reader, I made my way first through Hemingway and Fitzgerald, then Damon Runyon, Raymond Chandler, and Kerouac. No one, either at school or in my family, had any way of knowing that just a few short years later, beginning with the Paris section of a travel guide for the youth market, writing would serve as my main source of income. Truthfully, nor did I.
My more immediate hope, after outgrowing plans to be a garbage man, was to succeed in the two fields that I cherished most: the aforementioned music and sports.
My goal of becoming the next Fats Domino or Little Richard ended promptly when my mother issued an ultimatum. If I wanted to continue playing piano, not only did I have to give up playing what she called that music, but I would have to practice in the afternoon so that she and my father wouldn’t have their evenings spoiled by me banging away. Because there was no way I was going to relinquish after-school sports, it was bye-bye piano.
Aside from reinforcing my distaste for authority, this made athletics even more crucial. Though my primary focus remained baseball and basketball, I later added a third sport. Suspecting that I’d encounter hazing when I reached high school, I made my way to the Police Athletic League, where I took up boxing. Sure enough, when I tried out for basketball my sophomore year — instead of middle school, we had junior high, which meant entering high school for 10th grade — after surviving the first two cuts, I had a make-or-break moment. On a fast break, instead of simply playing defense, a guy named LeGrand low-bridged me, sending me flying in a way that could have resulted in a broken neck. Though he surpassed me in height, weight, and strength — he was 6’3” and muscular, while I was barely 5’10” and skinny — I got up and approached him without a word. Knowing that we’d quickly be separated, I flattened him with a sucker punch. A week of running laps was well worth it, since no one thereafter messed with me. Even better, for our remaining years together, if I had the ball on a fast break, I never failed to fake a pass to LeGrand, then either dish to another guy or take a shot myself. Payback was sweet.
Because of my success with the essay contests, I was recruited to work on the school paper. Though dubious, I first wrote about sports, then took on the role of activist, investigating everything from the mystery meat served in the lunchroom to the ban on wearing jeans. The result was that kids I’d never spoken to started expressing how cool it was to have someone telling it like it is. Despite my reputation as combination troublemaker and muckraker, midway through my junior year the advisor — Mrs. Firkser, who looked like she could played linebacker in the NFL — appointed me as the following year’s editor-in-chief.
Before assuming the job full-time as a senior, the last issue of junior year would serve as my trial run. As luck would have it, Mrs. Firkser wound up in a car accident that resulted not just in a broken leg, but also blurred vision. Unable to read the copy before it went to print, she summoned me to her house to read articles aloud for her approval.
I promptly made up two separate versions, one written by the staff. The other, entirely by me under a variety of pseudonyms. What Mrs. Firkser approved was not what I then submitted to the printer. On the morning the paper was distributed during homeroom, shrieks were heard due to the scurrilous content. There were pieces about giant rodents in the lunchroom, coed skinny dipping at swim practice, acts against nature in the boys’ bathrooms, plus a rumor about an orgy in the teachers’ lounge.
Though I took my suspension as a badge of honor — greater validation of my writing ability than the essays — my parents were not amused. Aside from shame, which I didn’t share, they believed it would stop me from getting accepted by an even halfway decent college.
Their fear grew into an obsession during my senior year, especially from my mother who was desperate to impress her friends.
I couldn’t have cared less. College struck me as having little appeal. From early on, it seemed corny to me when rich kids at the Jersey Shore wore t-shirts emblazoned with CORNELL, PENN, or COLUMBIA, as though that made them superior. My disdain doubled when I visited ex-high school teammates in their dorm rooms or frat houses, which seemed to me like sleep-away camp with beer. Most importantly, there was no way I wanted to give my mother the bragging rights she so desperately craved. Despite SAT scores that shocked the school guidance counselor, I chose not to send out applications.
By then, I’d discovered something far more appealing: Greenwich Village. To prepare for excursions, a friend named Bixie — a Black guy who starred on our high school football team — would come over on Saturdays afternoons. Together we filled baggies with a mixture of catnip, oregano, and twigs, then took a bus to Port Authority in New York, followed by a subway downtown. With phony driver’s’ licenses that made us eighteen — mine said I was Todd Gallagher — we financed our evenings at the Village Vanguard or the Five Spot by dealing to kids who came in from Long Island with the hope of getting high. Figuring that we had the perfect out if busted — what we were peddling wasn’t contraband — we got to see the likes of Mingus, Dizzy, and Ornette. It seemed like a foolproof scam until one Saturday, near midnight, I spotted first one group to whom we’d made a sale, then another, approaching from different directions. Though I was tempted to run, Bixie simply said, “Be cool.” To my amazement, both groups wanted more, teaching me lots about the power of suggestion.
It was the Vietnam War — specifically a notice from the Draft Board — that made me reconsider my stance about college.
After no more than a couple of weeks of classes, my dorm floor’s preceptor, a do-gooder overseeing the freshmen, warned me that my carousing would likely result in flunking out.
“Let’s make a bet,” I insisted. “A free dinner says my grades will be better than yours.”
“With all your running around?” replied the grinning preceptor, whose name was Lenny Kaplan. “An expensive dinner, before you start packing!”
What Kaplan thought was arrogance on my part was actually a realization about college. In the Humanities, I discovered, the keys were writing skills and memory. Both, luckily, were areas where I was more than comfortable.
Instead of burning Kaplan for a costly meal, I let him off the hook with pizza at a little Italian place. Once again victory was tasty.
Bored with college, I decided I would rather be in Paris. That idea was presumptuous, given that aside from not being bilingual, I knew no one there. Worse, I didn’t have the means to travel, or to survive if I somehow managed to arrive.
Putting out feelers everywhere imaginable, I discovered that Simon & Schuster was prepping a travel guide for the youth market. After begging for a meeting with the editor, I had to wait for what felt like hours. When he finally came out of his office and approached, he found me reading the outline. “Pretty good, huh?” he said proudly. “Sure,” I replied, “if you’ve never seen Harvard’s Let’s Go.”
“Tell me something you’d add,” he challenged.
“For your rich aunt or uncle.”
“Meaning?”
“You’re in Paris, London, or Rome, living on sandwiches and hitting American Express every week in the hope of finding a check from home.”
“Okay—”
“One day there’s a postcard from your Aunt Rita or your Uncle Artie, saying we’re here. Pick a place we can take you for dinner.”
“Not bad,” the editor acknowledged. “What else?”
Armed with a job that included an expense account, albeit a modest one, I found a way to avoid the draft by enrolling at the Sorbonne. Amazingly, I then came across an offer for an expiring ticket on the SS France for less than the cheapest flight.
The first night on-board, I was seated at dinner next to a young French woman returning from doing summer stock in New England, an experience that convinced her that acting was not the career for her.
Life in Paris was eye-opening beyond anything I’d ever dreamed possible. Though sleeping in a 6th-floor walk-up maid’s room with a shared bathroom at the end of the hall, I felt freer than ever before. Marie-Christine, the young French woman I befriended, and her parents showed me that family life could be warm and supportive. My assignment gave me a mandate to do everything imaginable, which eventually led to a club called Aux Trois Mailletz. There I wound up having a glass of wine between sets with the Bluesman who held court: Memphis Slim. It was also there that I met another Blues singer, statuesque Mae Mercer, who introduced me to her circle of Black expatriates. That ever-changing group included, at times, two of my literary heroes — James Baldwin and Chester Himes.
As for acquiring French friends, that owed to my shared bathroom having no shower. Not wanting to climb into a tub used once a week by others, I went to the Paris University Athletic Complex, where my services as a basketball player were immediately spurned. Instead, I joined the boxing team, which in addition to giving me fifteen new friends, plus a swim and a shower six days a week, quickly accelerated my fluency in French so to keep from getting hurt.
It was in Paris, home to two cinematheques, revival houses galore, and Cahiers du Cinema, where I feasted on Children Of Paradise, Pierrot Le Fou, La Guerre Est Finie, Yojimbo, The Organizer, Ninotchka, The Lady Eve, and so many other classics. Once I got to make a 16mm short, my dream of a life in music or sports had been superseded by a new ambition, one that I hoped would someday allow me to combine my passions.
When my writing job ended, I sadly headed home, or more specifically to what was no longer home, since my family had finally moved. Partially that was to satisfy my mother’s long standing dream of owning a house. But the real catalyst was my legacy. My parents were tired of having every new teacher grimace at the sight of my sister’s last name, then seat her in the very last row.
My disorientation was quickly compounded by a notice to report for a Draft Board physical, which arrived on the same day that I learned about the death of a friendly rival. Butchie Iannuzzi, against whom I’d competed not merely in basketball, but also for the affection of a beauty named Marianne Siano, was killed in Quang Tin Province. That personalized the Vietnam War for me, increasing my doubts about our involvement. After staying up for forty-eight hours on speed, during which I read Mailer’s Why Are We In Vietnam, I showed up at the designated address without a shower or a shave. When a bus pulled up to take everyone to Newark, I waited until the last moment to board, then complained that there were no available seats. Told to stand, I refused, as did four other guys who followed my lead.
Since I’d read that the law required a seat for everyone, the five of us — a guy with a Peace Sign t-shirt, another with a marijuana sweatshirt, a redhead who looked like a junkie, and one wearing pink ballet shoes — waited until another bus was called.
When my blood pressure was taken, I was close to breaking land-and-sea records. Brought in to see a psychologist, I was asked what drugs I took. “Whatever I get my hands on,” I answered.
Soon I was celebrating over a beer with the other guys from the second bus, since unlike Butchie Iannuzzi, none of us would not be getting a one-way ticket to Vietnam.
That I would soon be heading to Los Angeles to try my luck at the movie industry wasn’t what my parents hoped to hear. Their plans for me — finishing college, then starting law school — led to a relentless campaign to persuade, cajole, or bribe me.
“Why in the world would I spend years prepping for something I don’t want to do?” I ultimately asked.
My parents eyed each other as though deciding who should answer, then my mother spoke. “So you’ll have something to fall back on.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I replied.
Though I was ready for Hollywood, Hollywood proved to have little interest in me. While supporting myself with a series of McJobs — giving French lessons, waiting on tables at a place called The Elegant Chicken, authoring a book called The Wonders Of Yogurt — I spent every free moment writing scripts that I hoped might kick start my career.
Surprisingly, it was geography that came through for me when I spotted a notice that Jerry Lewis, who was slated to teach a course on directing at the University of Southern California, was searching for someone to help. I reported to campus at the designated time, only to find a long line of applicants. Though tempted to leave, I reluctantly lingered. An hour later, I was led in to meet the comic.
“Jersey?” Jerry wondered upon hearing my accent.
“Yup.”
“Where?”
“Newark.”
“Born at which hospital?”
“Beth Israel.”
“Me, too!” Jerry exclaimed.
Over the months that followed, my responsibilities increased. Reading scripts and serving as a sounding board for gags he was developing allowed me to joke that I was the one person in Jerry’s world who could read without his lips moving.
Also, I discovered, I seemed to be the only one willing to utter a two-letter word: No.
“How come,” Jerry asked one day over pastrami sandwiches, “you’re the only who tells me the truth?”
“Really want to know?”
“Fuckin’-A!”
“For everyone else, you’re the last stop on the subway.”
“And you?”
“Hopefully, you’re the point of departure.”
Jerry thought for a moment. “So how are you going to make a leap?”
“By selling a script or two.”
“When do I read one?”
Unbeknownst to Jerry, I’d met an agent while playing pick-up basketball, and was waiting for his reaction to the screenplay I’d recently finished.
Hoping that he’d forget, I stalled Jerry for as long as I could, not mentioning that the agent had announced that he was confident he could find a buyer.
But Jerry kept insisting, so reluctantly I gave him a copy.
A week went by without a word, then another. After a third, I assumed that Jerry either didn’t like it, or had forgotten about it. Then suddenly he insisted I come see him.
“That script, I’d like to run with it.”
“You mean option it?”
“Option money from me, your employer?”
“I didn’t write it on company time?”
“But don’t you owe me?”
“Have I ever not done everything I’m supposed to do, including covering for you when your wife thinks we’re going for Chinese food?”
Irritated, Jerry frowned. “Why the fuck would you not be thrilled about my running with it?”
“Why? Because I’m living in a dump, driving a junker, and I’ve got an offer from a producer.”
That ended my affiliation with Jerry.
Though I had projects make it to the screen during my time as a screenwriter — including a film about an early rock & roller, plus one another about a Harlem playground basketball legend — mostly the experience was unsatisfying. Part of it owed to the absence of cause-and-effect. Plus there was the sense of being only the writer, nothing but the writer, then suddenly no longer the writer once I was replaced, or the project fell into “development hell.”
I thought life would become easier, and better, when, during a lengthy screenwriters strike, I came up with something that could be filmed legally: a documentary about the Latinization of baseball. Suddenly, I had a group of producers joining forces around me. Led by Fred Roos, whose claim to fame was working with Coppola on Godfather II and The Conversation, a series of meetings ensued with so many people that I joked about needing a program to keep everyone straight. As I started getting frustrated with the number of get-togethers, Roos said he was bringing in someone to help, since I was a first-time documentary director. That turned out to be Leon Gast, whose foremost credit was When We Were Kings, about the Ali-Foreman “Rumble In The Jungle.”
When Gast flew to LA, I took him to lunch at an Indian restaurant, then to a rendezvous with my ever-increasing gaggle of producers. “Know what?” Roos announced after some chit chat. “We’ll probably have more luck with funding if we make Leon the director.”
“Where’s that leave me?” I asked.
Roos pondered for a moment. “You can write the narration.”
“On my film?” I shot back.
“Unless you have a better thought.”
“I sure as hell do,” I informed one and all. “You can all go fuck yourselves!”
Off I stormed, proving you can take the boy out of Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out of the boy.
Working with minimal funds I managed to scrape together, I traveled with a cameraman to Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic, then to Spring Training in both Florida and Arizona.
The film that resulted led to quite a few others, some commissioned, others initiated by me. Though I enjoyed exploring Eastern spirituality in the Western World, examining an experimental program in the judicial system, and documenting the advances in the treatment of diabetes, most rewarding has been the chance to immerse myself in the subjects nearest and dearest to my heart.
Thankfully I had the gumption to avoid having something to fall back. Instead I’ve made film after film, focusing as often as possible on the subjects my parents disdained: sports and Black music. I’m now in post-production on When LA Got The Blues, featuring friends I made over the years — Ray Charles, Lowell Fulson, Floyd Dixon, Mable John plus others like Nat “King” Cole, T-Bone Walker, and Etta James, who were among my childhood favorites.
And for the record, I still have problems with authorities.
Alan Swyer is an award-winning filmmaker whose recent documentaries have dealt with Eastern spirituality in the Western world, the criminal justice system, diabetes, boxing, and singer Billy Vera, plus a new one, When Houston Had The Blues. In the realm of music, among his productions is an album of Ray Charles love songs. His novel The Beard was recently published by Harvard Square Editions.
