Jeri Jones

Speaker When I first saw currency, when we were in high school, we were rehearsing for what they called the Funfest. It was a school production of the chorus.

Speaker And I was sitting on the stage with a girlfriend of mine. And I looked down into the orchestra pit and there was this beautiful little face and it was Quincy.

Speaker And I just was mesmerized. And I turned round to my girlfriend and I said, Oh, Tony, look at him, I’m in love.

Speaker And it was so funny because I never even thought about an interracial situation or anything.

Speaker It just didn’t have anything to do with that. He just had the sweetest little face. So then I you know, that was the first time I saw him.

Speaker It’s like, why are you so upset? What about you?

Speaker What were your first? How did you get to know? Well, where were you? We were in Garfield High School.

Speaker And he was. Oh. Oh, yeah. Quincy and I were in Garfield High School and I was a sophomore and he was a junior. So we didn’t have any classes together.

Speaker And I probably never would have gotten to know him except for doing this production that involved all the chorus classes from freshmen through senior. But after I saw him, then I would try to run into him and he had a chorus class that he had to come down the stairs from. And I have another class that was sort of passing in the hall. So I knew he’d be coming down that staircase. So I would sort of try to be there when he came down and hope that he noticed me. You know? Well, I found out later that he had noticed me before and, you know, but I just didn’t know it. So I hang around the water fountain and he’d walk by the water fountain and I’d take a sip of water and he’d take a sip of water. And finally he said hi. And so little by little. Around the water fountain, we kind of got to know each other.

Speaker What was he like? My little. Fix that as we go. Extroverted, wanting to be the balance. I want to ask about your personal.

Speaker I wouldn’t say he was that Quincey was necessarily extroverted, but he wasn’t shy either. He had a very pleasant personality and yet charisma. He always had that. And people went just like I saw his face and thought he was so beautiful. I think most people reacted to him that way, you know? So it was easy for him to.

Speaker You interact with people. Cause he people found him charming, he is charming.

Speaker What did you learn about his family situation was so difficult?

Speaker Well, Quincy’s family’s situation in Seattle was, you know, he lived with his father and his stepmother and his brother. That was his biological.

Speaker I mean, you know, his his. You say that. OK. Well, anyway, he had he had step brothers and sisters in that relationship.

Speaker And I think it was I didn’t really realize what a difficult situation it was until later after we got to know each other very well, that he told me about how difficult it was living there because he felt like he was sort of a stepchild and was treated differently from Alvera. That was his stepmother’s, you know, the children that she’d had with Quincy Senior.

Speaker But are you talking about that? Are you talking about that part of his family difficulty or the difficulty with Sarah?

Speaker His real mother or, you know, just, you know, right where you are.

Speaker Yeah.

Speaker Thoughts you have on how that meeting.

Speaker Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker Well, one of the things that I found very interesting after we. Well I guess I should tell us after she steps.

Speaker It’s all right. You can kind of talk. Appearance. OK.

Speaker One of the things that I found really interesting after Quincy and I started living together, really living together after Jolie was born and he left the band and we had an apartment together. He never would go to the refrigerator and take something out. And I say, honey, why don’t you go to the refrigerator and get what you want? He would always wait to be offered or he would ask, but he would never go and open the refrigerator. And the reason for that, it turned out, was because in his house, he wasn’t allowed to do that, I guess because she had so many kids that people couldn’t you know, the kids just couldn’t be going and taking a glass of milk or a glass of juice or something. You got what she gave you, you know, or something. And it took him a while to get used to the fact that this was really his house and that he was paying for the food. And if he wanted something, he could go and open the refrigerator, you know, but that was really that was profound to me to realize that it was, you know, things like that.

Speaker I just say, oh, that was a problem just set up for us.

Speaker When you when you were just.

Speaker Oh, well, you know, we’ve got.

Speaker So if you’re interested in a topic sentence, give us a sense of who you married.

Speaker Since his mother wasn’t around, but he was being raised by step by his father’s.

Speaker OK. When I met Quincy, Quincy’s mother wasn’t around and he was being raised by his stepmother and his father and other siblings.

Speaker And then just very briefly later.

Speaker Oh, well, one of the things that I think had an effect on Quincy’s later life as a result of living with a stepmother and so many children.

Speaker You know, I’m all next step on that. Again, one of the things that I.

Speaker Your fresh.

Speaker Oh, yeah. One of the things that I, I realized was one of the things that his early childhood.

Speaker You did. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker That I would say in real life.

Speaker Oh yeah. I didn’t realize the impact that his difficult childhood had had. But one time when we were finally living together and this was when we had our own apartment and we had Joey Quincy never went to the refrigerator to get anything for himself. He would always ask for to wait until he was offered to buy. I’d say, well, honey, why don’t you just go and get what you want? And he said, well, he just didn’t feel comfortable because he was never allowed to do that in his house, I guess, because there were so many kids.

Speaker Perfect. Quincy’s passion for music as a teenager in high school, his passion for music, he just pursued it.

Speaker That was the most in Porton thing to him. You know, that was all he cared about. He wanted to be an arranger. He wanted to be an arranger and composer. And that was, you know, his goal. And his plan was that, you know, he was gonna go to school. And when he got the scholarship to Schillinger that he was going to go to school there and he would learn to be, you know, learn what he needed. And as soon as I graduated from high school, I would come there and I’d get a job and we’d get married and he’d go to college. And that was our plan. And but then he hadn’t been there for less than a semester.

Speaker And when Lionel Hampton came through and he left and went with Lionel Hampton, and I found that very I mean, it really upset me because that was the plan, you know. And now what we were going to do because, you know.

Speaker He was gonna be on the road 365 days a year, but he wrote me and said that the school, the scholarship would always be there and that this was so important for his future and his development. It was an opportunity that he just couldn’t give up. You know, and that he would go back to school. But he didn’t. Of course. And so we decided, too, that the best thing would be for me to go to New York because New York was probably where we would settle and that’s where everything was happening and jazz at that time and in music.

Speaker And so we started to plan for that.

Speaker Tell me, though, he was very forthright about his dreams. He didn’t want you, in a way.

Speaker Oh, well, yeah. He knew that he I mean, he knew what he wanted to do, not how he was going to do it or anything. But he knew that he was going to have a wonderful life in music. And he wanted to be that. And he would take every opportunity that he could to meet the musicians that had already been successful. I mean, he would go downtown in Seattle and just hang out at the theater and in the back galley until he could, you know, glom onto one of the musicians and then he would just pick their brain for what they knew and ask them to teach him a little something and just be so excited about who he met and, you know, what he learned. And and I think because he had that charming little charisma, personality thing, these guys loved him and they shared with him and they liked him and they kind of wanted to help him. And yeah, yeah, he just music was everything to him. I used to feel in the beginning that, I mean, that was definitely if there was a choice between seeing me and doing something else that had to do with music, he would choose the music. You know, I knew that even back then. But when we’re young and in love, we don’t pay enough attention to what I was thinking.

Speaker Well, what about now when you come to New York? All right, well, first off, did your parents tell me about your parents reaction when they were.

Speaker Well, my mother, my mother, I told my mother right away when I met him, actually, before I’d even gotten to knowing very well I was sitting there doing my homework. I’ll never forget it. And I she was out in the kitchen fixing something to eat. And I was saying, oh, mother, I met this wonderful guy. He’s just so durable. And I my threw in the part about him being black. But I don’t think we said black.

Speaker Then we said Negro, you know, and she came out of the kitchen and said, Cherry, what are you saying? You know?

Speaker And I was shocked because my family was really liberal and they had black friends. And I had been raised to. I knew that it wasn’t acceptable by a lot of people, but I didn’t think that was true of my parents until that day.

Speaker Then I realized that, you know, it was. And so from then on, I was a little more discreet about it. And I didn’t talk about it and I was kind of secretive. But eventually I told mother and she went down to meet Quincy and he got all dressed up in his little zoot suit. You know, they were those funny looking baggy suits when they were on the bandstand. And that was the only suit he had. And then they called them zoot suit, I think. And he went to this restaurant and she went down and met him. And they had this talk. And I was at home just dying, you know. And she came back and she said, Oh, honey, I can understand why you love him. He’s just so sweet. His eyes are so beautiful. And he told me that he just loved you and he wanted to marry you and that he would always take care of you, you know. But she said, you know, you you’re too young and you can’t do this and you can’t tell daddy and you can’t, you know, so just, you know, promise me that you won’t see him anymore until after you get out of school. And if you still feel that way, you know, like you feel now, and he does, too, then you know what can you know, then maybe it’ll be all right and you know. So I promised her, but I didn’t keep the promise.

Speaker Great story is your difficulty in particular, you just speak to the nature of being young couple.

Speaker Yeah, being an interracial couple was where a couple was really difficult in those times. And I and I think I was too naive about how difficult it was. Quincy had a better handle on that because he traveled down south and he’d been around with the band and he knew.

Speaker But I did really do. And I’m finding apartments was difficult. I know the apartment that I eventually found that we had when Quincy left Hampton Band. I was pregnant when I was looking for it. And I would carry around a picture of Quincy because he was such a sweet looking person that when I would tell them that this was an interracial couple, I’d show them the picture and the picture, you know, made a difference. And so here I was, seven months pregnant, eight months pregnant out there with my tummy. And I’m up here in this little attic apartment showing this guy the picture of my husband, you know? And he said to me, well, I’m sure if he’s as sweet as you are, you know, and they branded us the apartment because there weren’t any black people living in that neighborhood even at that time. And we got the apartment. But one of the things that happened that I just recently remembered, that was such an example of of that situation. This was later when we moved to a garden apartment and my mother was in New York and she was babysitting for us. And a girlfriend of mine, a white girl, had come from Seattle and was staying with us. And Quincy took us out and we went to a nightclub downtown and we were coming home in a taxi that with the two girls in Quincy. And there was a car of young guys. I don’t know if they were servicemen or what. And they saw us and they were yelling kind of obscene things at us. But we got out of the car and went into the apartment, which was a garden apartment. Well, within about a half an hour, the doorbell rang and there were police like ten or twelve police there. And they said we got a call that an officer was in trouble in the backyard because he’s guarding apartments, head garden backyards, and they trump through the apartment. And of course, they saw me and they saw Janie, my girlfriend, and they saw Jolie, my daughter and my mother and Quincy. Evidently, these guys must have thought that maybe we were prostitutes and this was a house of ill repute or something. And by saying that an officer was in trouble in the backyard, that would mean they’d have a right to go through our apartment and they’d probably find something that shouldn’t be going on, you know, but that was just so scary and, you know, really scary.

Speaker Yeah.

Speaker So, you know, you had an urban legend.

Speaker Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, that was that was before that was when I was pregnant, too. And I hadn’t I had moved in with Oscar Pettiford s wife down in the Lower East Side to save money because Oscar was out of town and Quincy was out of town and they had this four room railroad tenement type apartment on the fourth floor and she only paid twenty two dollars a month rent for it. So for eleven dollars a month, I could stay there while I was pregnant and I was working and I could save money. And Quincy was saving money so that we could get an apartment by the time Jolie was gonna be here. So I found this apartment and it was in and around in a similar neighborhood. Wasn’t a great apartment, but it was an apartment. And the woman was selling in those days.

Speaker The racket was that you sold your furnishings and you’d make money on that so that you could get the apartment and so you’d buy the furniture and even though the part, the apartment had a reasonable rent. So that was what she was doing. So she sold me this furniture and it was pretty nice, relatively new furniture. And she said she had made arrangements for the landlord for me to have the apartment. And all this was going to be worked out. And I gave her the money and then she was supposed to meet me and introduce me to the landlord or something. And she ran out. She left the key with Harriet and she just ran out. So I had the key to the apartment. And so I went and introduced myself to the landlord and the landlord took my application and I had to put down there where Quincy worked. And it was I gave the name of the band and it was Lionel Hampton. And when the people who did the credit check or they didn’t do credit checks. Whatever they did then found out that it was a black band. She wouldn’t give me the apartment and she came right out and told me that that was the reason, because in those days, they could tell you that there were no laws that said you can’t discriminate and rentals, you know.

Speaker And so there I was. And then she also told me and she said and it’s probably just as well because that furniture isn’t paid for. They you know, this woman bought this furniture on time and just ran out on it. So I was devastated. It was horrible. It was I felt so stupid.

Speaker And I lost all our money, you know, and now we didn’t have any money and we didn’t have an apartment. My mother was here at the time. And so she said, well, we’ll just move the furniture into storage. But she didn’t have any money here. And at least you have the furniture, you know. So I had to tell Quincy that I had done this, you know, terrible thing. But he was really wonderful about it. And he just said, well, honey, we’ll get some more money. And that was such a relief, because that night I was just I wanted to die. I was pregnant. I didn’t have a home. It was just awful.

Speaker And it was, you know, but that’s the way it was as far as the interracial situation was. You had to know.

Speaker That’s great. Just well, I just want to get one topics. And just again, as insurance, which was getting, you know, duration really difficult, just getting an apartment as an interracial couple was really hard in those days.

Speaker Really hard.

Speaker Perfect. Let’s do a quick shot here. Right.

Speaker Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker I just want to spend my money raising it. If you’d help us from here, from from being a teenager, you had this idea of a divine inheritance. What what was Quincy what did money means, Quincy?

Speaker Well, Quincy had an attitude about money that he didn’t want to worry about it, that he believed it would come. I worried about money all the time and he let me handle the bills and everything. So, of course, I worried about money all the time. And I try to talk to him about it. And I’d say, you know, well, you know, I try to talk to him and say, oh, honey. Not before breakfast. Oh, not before lunch. Not before dinner. Now, before we go to bed. Well, not today. Because he would say that he just he just wanted to make enough money so he’d never had to talk about it again or worry about it again. You know, and he believed he wouldn’t he say, well, all I can do is my very best and I’m doing my very best, and that’s all I can do. So I just can’t I just can’t worry about it, you know? And somehow some way we never went without. I mean, we never couldn’t pay our rent or never, you know, we didn’t have very much. And we lived on a very meager budget in the beginning, but we were always OK. So he was right. But I just it was really hard for me because until he went to work for Mercury Records, he never had a steady job. I mean, it was if he got an arrangement to write, you know, that would be the money that would be coming in and we’d wait for it for a long time. And sometimes people didn’t pay on time. And, you know, it was. So even though you had enough this week, you didn’t know you were gonna have anything next week. It isn’t like when you get a salary. And. And I had trouble adjusting to that, you know, and it was wonderful when he finally got the Mercury record and our job and we actually got a paycheck, you know, it was so great. But somehow it did always work out.

Speaker Does it surprise me since the surprise now?

Speaker Yes, because I, as you know, financially successful.

Speaker Oh, well, I never could. I mean, I never imagined that he would be as successful as he is. I don’t know. I don’t think I mean it. I’m not even talking about the money. But just to be so well known, his name. I mean, you say his name anywhere in the world and people know who he is. You know, I would never have expected that, you know, but I think I did expect him to be successful.

Speaker But I am not that successful.

Speaker Tell us just about your life. You know, I know job and you played a part is getting arrangements, just describe what you know, what a normal what your daily life.

Speaker Well, Quincy always, you know. Yeah.

Speaker When we were living in Quincy, left the band and started to stay in New York. He couldn’t work as a musician because he had a rule that you had to be there six months, too, in the union to be able to work. So he would scuffle around and go downtown. He he’d go and every night he would take two subway tokens. We didn’t have enough money for him to even buy a drink. And he would go down to Birdland and he would hang out and be with the musicians and get to know people and try to get work writing music, because that’s all he could do then.

Speaker And then when he would get a job, writing was difficult for him. He worked at home and it was difficult because the ideas didn’t come all at once and he would stay up for days and he would scuffle. And when it got to the point that he had real record sessions where people had hired a recording studio and they’d hired musicians and the pressure would be on him to come up with whatever it was, six or seven arrangements for this record date. And it would be getting so close to the deadline. And then it would always start to come, you know, but late. And he’d still be writing the arrangements on his way down in the cab. And I’d go through the stress and worry with him, you know, and then he’d go down to the record session and it would end up going all right.

Speaker But I wouldn’t know that he’d still be scared and worried and like, it’s not finished and what am I going to do? But somehow he’d write some of it right at the date or whatever he did, and it would turn out wonderful. And then, of course, he’d be there and he’d have the adulation and the satisfaction of it going well and I’d be home. A nervous wreck, wondering if it did. And he’d forget that maybe he should call me and tell me that it was OK. You know, so that was very difficult for me. You know, I could understand it. I mean, he was tarried. He’d gotten swept away with the moment of it going so well. And then, you know, it was party time afterwards probably and all that. But I just felt, you know, it would be that was difficult.

Speaker And I couldn’t seem to get that across, you know, because that’s just the way it was. So that was hard.

Speaker And it was hard to have him working at home all the time. Some parts of that was really nice, but some parts of it wasn’t so nice because he always liked although one of the cute things about Quincy is that he liked to work at the kitchen table. He liked to work at that, you know. And then when we had a dining room table, he’d like to work at that dinner table. But so his stuff was always over the table so we could never sit down and have a meal because his stuff was always there, you know? And I was trying to be a housewife and I kind of wanted to sit down and set the table and have a normal kind of a thing. But he liked to be right in the midst of the noise and the household stuff that was going on, because that helped him creatively and that never changed. I don’t think that’s changed even now because I’ve been to his house in the dining room table is all for newspapers. So I think that’s the same.

Speaker That’s great. Tell me about your day.

Speaker Oh, we’re getting married or not getting married, which was really the sad thing we plan. Finally got to New York and I got a transfer on a job that I had in New York, in Seattle, so that I could talk my mother and father into my coming to New York.

Speaker And I got here and we were planning to get married and I had these notarized papers from his parents saying because he was 19 and I was 18, I didn’t need permission, but men needed permission until they were 21.

Speaker So I had gone down to the city hall and showed them the papers and it all seemed okay. And they said that that would be fine. So when Quincy got here, we had planned that we were gonna get married and then we were gonna have our little honeymoon. I’d go on the road with him, too. I think it was Philadelphia or someplace like that. And we you know, so all the band was expecting us to come married, but we went down there to get the license. And when he was with me and it was an interracial thing, they told us that the papers weren’t good and that we had to get their papers. And, you know, but it was clear that it was just that there was an interracial couple, you know? So I was really devastated and so was he. And we were so disappointed. So we just decided that we would tell everybody that we. Married. And so we told everybody that we got married. And I never told anybody differently until the last few years, actually. It’s, you know, actually when it was when Quincy was going to do his autobiography, the book, you know, I just thought, well, I’m going to tell the truth about this now. But Jolie found out when she was about 15. She. You know how kids will go rummaging through your papers. And she found our marriage certificate that week when we finally did get married. It was after she was you know, I don’t know how old she was three or four years old by the time we finally did it. And she was devastated because in those days, you know, it wasn’t as casual to have children and not be married. And she was really upset over the fact that, no, we weren’t married when she was born.

Speaker Friends, supposedly Paris place were created. What was it like to go?

Speaker It was very exciting to go to Paris. And it was you know, it was I mean, it was so flattering that this record company wanted Quincy to come over there and teach the French musicians how to play jazz and I mean, and that they would bring his family over there with, you know, it was really a fantastic opportunity. But unfortunately for me, I mean, it was a great experience. But for me, Joey was only four, I think. And we got we arrived there and we went to this lovely hotel. And Leonard Herman there, Herman, Leonard, Herman, Herman, Leonard, the photographer med’s at the airport, took us to the hotel and he said, Quincy, I’ve, I’ve found this apartment. I want you to go look at it. I think it’s going to be great for you and Jerry. And they left Joli night at the hotel and they went out and they came back and they had rented this fabulous apartment. But this fabulous apartment was in the suburbs of Paris. It was in New York. Well, my idea of going to Paris was to be in Paris and not to be living in a suburb. I didn’t even want to live in a suburb, the New York. We lived right in the city. You know, not only that, it had belonged to this elderly, retired couple and it was beautiful. And they were renting it out with all their furniture. And it was just magnificent and beautiful mahogany furniture and gorgeous carpeting and satin bedspreads. But I had a four year old, you know, and there was no place for finger painting or for anything like that. And I spent so much of my time. Oh, and there was this little matchbox of a refrigerator. So I spent my life walking eight blocks to a grocery store and and cleaning that apartment, you know, so it was exciting. But for me, it wasn’t that great. Because of that, you and I knew that he thought he’d done something wonderful because he was giving me this beautiful place to live. But, you know, those are the kinds of things that that that happen, you know, but he did blossom there, Quincy Blossom there. And he started studying with Nadia Boulard Adjaye. And that was wonderful for him. And that gave him a lot of confidence in his, you know, composing. And plus, he had all that experience with the French musicians and got to record with strings and do wonderful things. It was oh, it was a real growing experience for him and for me, too. It just wasn’t exactly what I wanted it to be. Yeah.

Speaker The French people, regions treated jazz players, interracial couples different.

Speaker Oh, absolutely.

Speaker It was so nice to be someplace where jazz musicians were respected. And, you know, that was considered a real art. That was America’s, you know, art. And they just really respected it. And the racial thing was not an issue at all. And so from that point of view, it was very comfortable to be there as an interracial couple. And people were wonderful to us. Yeah, that was nice.

Speaker How would you react if you’re pregnant?

Speaker Oh, well, we didn’t plan the pregnancy, you know, and I had gone I’ve come to New York and thinking that I would see him from time to time, even though he was with the band. But I was there for nine months and I only signed three times and I got really lonesome. So I went home for a while and then he was going to be back a lot around New York. So I came back and I met him in Detroit. And he was at this funky little hotel and he didn’t feel comfortable with my going out at all or anything. So we spent a week in this funky little hotel and I got pregnant.

Speaker And so that wasn’t what we had planned at all. But.

Speaker He you know, we hadn’t planned it, but we he was great about it. You know, he he was. He was great about anything adverse happening or anything unexpected happening or he he always felt like we’ll find a way. He always felt that way. So that was you know, that’s that’s a wonderful thing about him.

Speaker But as a father, you said example, his father was a guy and just basically he wasn’t like today we’re fathers are expected to speak at all.

Speaker I don’t want you. Do you think my father. That’s not. Yeah. Well, you know, I’m saying like. Yeah, different. Let’s do it this way. The life of a jazz musician.

Speaker OK. The life of a jazz musician is not at all conducive to being a father. Because basically all jazz musicians sleep all day and work all night. Whether that has to do with playing an instrument or being a composer or whatever it is. And that’s and family life is just the opposite schedule. And so he wasn’t you know, he didn’t participate in the normal ways, however, because he worked at home. He was around Joli all the time. He wasn’t participating in things necessarily. But it was close because he was there. He was working. And she’d jump up and scribble on his, you know. Music, paper. But but it’s not conducive to being a good father. And then then there was a lot of travel and he was away a lot.

Speaker Were also very young father. He was guys.

Speaker Oh, we were so young. I mean, I was 19. He was 20 when Jolie was born.

Speaker And I don’t know how we did it. I mean, you know, we were really young. So that was you know, it was difficult.

Speaker The free No. One, let alone somebody who’s was not just musician, can be proud. Where were you, please? Oh, no, we were getting to what was a free.

Speaker Well, the free and easy tour started out that we were going to go. It was going to be a Broadway show. And Quincy was going to have the band. And it was going to be a very unique situation where the band wouldn’t be in the pit, the band would be part of the show on the stage, in costume and, you know, part of the show. And they were going to eventually have Sammy Davis star in it. But they had a a European person for that. Harold Nicholas. What’s his name to do? The part in Europe. And they were going to rehearse it in Europe. I don’t know if you call it rehearse or, you know, do it. They were going to do an out of town tryout.

Speaker Only an out of town tryout in in Europe.

Speaker And so they told Quincy that the only people that brought family at that point, the director and Quincy. So they were there were three wives that went along. I was one of them. And Joey stayed home with my mother. And it was only going to be for three months and then we’d be back on Broadway. But we got over there and the show closed. It didn’t do well, even though it was a great show, didn’t do well. And the band got together and they decided that they wanted to stay over there and stay with Quincy and try to make it just as a band. And I don’t know what they thought they were gonna use for money, but they you know, and Quincy had this optimism that they would work it out. I think people had said, oh, there’ll be jobs for you and, you know. And so we did that. And then some of the families. So you have to stop.

Speaker Yeah. Person, you just have to show. Free and easy show. Free show for years.

Speaker First band together and then just very quickly, the show failed in Paris.

Speaker OK, well, the Free and Easy Show was such a wonderful opportunity for Quincy because he was going to get to have his own big band. And he got to choose the very best musicians from the New York. You know, that was just an all star band. These were great musicians. They wanted to do it. It was a great opportunity to go to Europe and to be with Quincy. And they all love Quincy. And it was a unique opportunity. But then the show didn’t do well and it folded in, you know, before the three months were up. And the band was really excited about being a band. They wanted to be together and Quincy wanted to keep the band together and they voted to stay on rather than to take the transportation that was being provided, you know, at that time. So that meant that they were staying there. And it was Quincy’s responsibility to get the band booked and to pay for those musicians to go home eventually to, you know. And that was very hard. And I mean, they did get work and, you know, but it was expensive to travel. It was expensive to stay in hotels. And, you know, Quincy kept borrowing the money from different sources to, you know, taking advances on future records. I can’t remember all the things he had to do to make that happen. And it was you know, it was very scary. I mean, the band had a great time because they did get paid. And then some of the wives came over. A couple of other families came over and joined. So we were quite a large group with a few kids, you know, traveling around. And it was fun, but it was very scary financially and at the end. Well, the wives went home, but Quincy had when it came to the point where they decided they just couldn’t make it over there anymore and there was no more money to be made or to be borrowed. Quincy had the responsibility of getting the band home, and he had exhausted all his sources of where he was going to borrow money. And he called me and he said, you know, he was so desperate that he had sent telegrams to just ordinary friends, musicians and people like that in New York, telling them how difficult it was and asking them for a loan, whatever they could afford to do. He said now stay home all day because I’ve told them to contact you, you know, and be there for it. We only heard from one person. It was Milt Hinton. And he offered us two hundred dollars. But all the other people, nobody came through, you know, it was just one person, you know, and that was so disheartening to Quincy. But it was really wonderful, Milt. So he was desperate. I was really worried about him because I think he was almost suicidal because he was just so tired and so defeated. And I think he wasn’t thinking clearly and he was desperate and there was just, you know, we didn’t know what to do. So then I got this idea. We had us a publishing company called Silhouette, and he had a lot of great tunes in there. And we actually lost that company over this because in desperation, we made a deal. I called the the guy who had the publishing company. He’d already lent Quincy money, I think, and asked him if if he would let us put up our half of the publishing company as an advance to get. I think was Willard Alexander was the booking agent at that time to guarantee the money for the boat ride home. Anyway, they worked out some deal where they would do that, but we would have to pay back the money at two hundred dollars a week or we would lose the publishing company. Of course, when Quincy got home, we couldn’t pay the two hundred dollars a week, so we lost that company over the five thousand dollars that he needed just for the boat fare.

Speaker And those songs have gone on, many of them to be, you know, very valuable property. But we were desperate and you know, but at least he got the band.

Speaker Oh, yeah, it’s a big. Let me throw it out in a different way.

Speaker When you think of the times when he came home and just celebrated, something huge happened in your life. Back to you. Lionel Hampton joining that band, I imagine Mercury Records. I mean.

Speaker Oh, about how he felt when he got that job.

Speaker That was a major moment. Yeah, that was a major moment. It’s hard to remember some of these things, you know. Yeah. When Quinsy got the job with, as in our man at Mercury Records, that was just I mean, that was just such a bonanza. I mean, it was so wonderful that we were, you know, that he was going to have that opportunity to create and to choose. You know, I have to start over that. When Quincy got the job at Mercury Records, it was really a wonderful opportunity. And he was so excited because now not only was he going to be able to do his own things, but he would be able to produce other people. And, you know, he had an eye for talent and he was good at that. And I guess that’s why Irving Green, that owned Mercury Records, recognized that these older men and business people like like Irving and like Charley Hansen, the publishing guy, and like, you know, heads of record companies and places like that. People just liked Quincy. And I mean, they wanted to help him. And he was they did have all the talent to back it up. But I think so much of Quincy success is due to the fact that he has charisma and that people really like him.

Speaker You know?

Speaker How do you describe Quincy today?

Speaker Oh, I describe him. He changed oh, he’s changed tremendously. I mean, I really I like him, you know.

Speaker OK.

Speaker Yes. Perfect. Perfect.

Speaker Raise your right hand.

Speaker One for cluelessness to please.

Speaker So.

Speaker OK, Quincy’s changed a lot, of course, over the years, and he’s, you know, had many marriages and many children, you know, serious illness and lots of things that have, I guess, come together to make him the person he is today. And I find that person pretty admirable. He’s much more interested in family. He’s really good to all his children. He makes a point of making sure that he has time with them and he tries to even make time for them individually, which he didn’t do when they were little. And so in that respect, he’s changed and he’s more spiritual. And, you know, when he was younger, when he was young and he had so much ambition and that got in the way, I think. But I think he’s a really fine, remarkable man today.

Speaker Describe it for me not to be terribly personal, but describe the period where, you know, I guess tell me right when Quincy sort of decides he’s going to go west to Hollywood, that your marriage was acting out and but just to that transition where your marriage ended.

Speaker He decided to go into some different profession.

Speaker Well, I’m not sure what you want me to speak about. I don’t know. When did you all stop sort of living together? The much was here. Hey, you already know what’s here. It was here. Yeah.

Speaker Where are you? What are you trying to focus on what? What was changing in his life that he would want to do?

Speaker That’s what I’m looking for, your moments in Prince’s life where things change. And you were a part of so many big ones early on. I’m just trying to feel my way through that important moment where things change in a different way. Yeah.

Speaker Well, it’s hard to really say. I mean.

Speaker Are you getting at. Why at that point did we separate and not before or something?

Speaker Well, down once he said, you know, we were married so young. We were childhood sweethearts.

Speaker Yeah.

Speaker OK.

Speaker I have an idea how I was going to start that, and I forgot.

Speaker Well, we were together, you know, we met when I was 15 and he was 16 and Jolie was about eleven when we separated. So we were together about 15 years is not not living together. But, you know, so a long time. And certainly over that time, there were much. There were many times when it would have been the time to separate or when, you know, things weren’t good and there was so much infidelity and there was, you know, stuff that was so difficult that that you would have thought that we would have done it at that point. But we didn’t. And I think one of the reasons I mean, divorce wasn’t an option in those days. If people just didn’t get divorced at the drop of the hat or, you know, it just wasn’t a very attractive thing to do and it was a difficult thing to do because people looked down on it.

Speaker But in the early 60s, it started to become almost kind of fashionable. I mean, Irving Green, he’d been married for 30 years and he got divorced. And some of our other friends, you know, people got divorced and it wasn’t such a big deal, whereas before you just didn’t think of that as a way to solve your problems.