Speaker Now, I understand that, you know, the question that the court. No, no, no.
Speaker My manager, Mr. Liddy, might have known. And because he went to New York long before I did Mr. Smith, and they worked at the Capitol Society and I understand that they knew was associated with that. But I was in Chicago, Illinois, so I didn’t know. When did you first get to see firsthand the motion pictures? And there was I was happy for just a moment to my questions will never be heard.
Speaker So when. I I thought, OK, we can start to.
Speaker OK, well, let’s backtrack for a moment, for the first time you ever have, the first time I saw Lena Horne was on a theater screen, Regal Theater in Chicago, Illinois, and she was singing with. That doesn’t seem with no system in Missouri words and wearing a white satin dress.
Speaker And looking like could be something I had never seen before, and then I met her again by way of recording and she was recording with the Taliban. And so I guess she did a thing called good-For-Nothing Joe. And then I fell in love with her, really her voice and interpretation that she had a marvelous teacher. People like Zephyr was and went before. And I think that even later I would say that she learned a great deal just listening as far as I know I did because she sang such beautiful.
Speaker But that was the first time I saw that lovely lady and she only went on to become more and more beautiful and more versatile.
Speaker She did more than almost anybody else did. And she changed motion pictures so that if someone to do something, they got to fly instead of just an all being black and white as it was. Let me ask you about that, because at that time.
Speaker I mean, she changed the nature of the world.
Speaker Well, she was the first one to come along. Lena Horne was the first person to come along and didn’t wasn’t the maid or the servant of some kind.
Speaker And she was the love interest. And and it was very hip that she was in love interest because she was a pretty lady. I remember Billy Eckstine saying in 1946 that I was pregnant. You said to him, we want to find out the right story for you, Billy, and for Lena Horne for motion pictures. And we must have the right people. But they never found the proper vehicle, which is silly because, you know, boy meets girl, boy and girl like each other and they get married and then fight him after. You know, that’s all they had to do was to write the story like anything else. But they didn’t. And so consequently, she was a thorn in the side.
Speaker Then what are we going to do with her instead of like he is a pretty girl, find a pretty man and put them together.
Speaker Did it ever bother you that she was always sort of in the separate section of the film or just did you just love to.
Speaker I loved seeing her just as I did the Nicholas Brothers and the fact that they were there and made it possible for somebody else to be there. That was when she was in motion pictures. It meant that Dorothy Dandridge was coming in and somebody else was going to come by. Diahann Carroll was going to come. And today it was married to the baseball player just as the ladies play. Now, just play parts they can play. I remember who wasn’t. One can really play do Shakespeare in Central Park and Cicely Tyson and Gail Fisher, but they had to find something to these brown skinned black girls to play, they think special. They never did figure out you just.
Speaker But here’s a lady and here’s a man.
Speaker Well, going back to that recordings with a child.
Speaker Yes. What’s the one that you remember the good-For-Nothing joke? That’s the one that I remember. Of course, he’s just good, Jo and her recordings with Charlie Brown. And that’s the only one I remember kind of thinking.
Speaker But it’s just you had to see her in person, must see in person because she paints a picture and. She’s a part of an era that was elegance, wife, time to satin dresses and beauty and dignity and always fighter that she has all of those marvelous attributes and she shares them with us when she’s performed excitement in. Life and she she gives you life, so make you live it in her word and and she’s a living. I had a chance to sing with her, you know, and I must say that because I just want you to start right at the top of the world, for that matter. I had a chance to sing Lean Horne years ago. She did an album called Men in My Life or something like that, and which she sang with Sammy Davis Jr. and she sang with me. And I loved it. It was exciting. I was out of breath most of the time, but I loved the experience of being with her. Being in her presence is a wonderful thing, sharing her aura with saying, you know, sharing space with her. She’s excited. Wonderful people as a singer. I mean, the two of you singing together.
Speaker What was what is it about as a singer that. All right, that’s really cool.
Speaker Well, when you hear her, you know, it’s it’s like when you hear the sound, she has honed his skill to the point where whenever you hear her sing, you know that voice, you know, the inflections sound. And to even today, she has such a straight tone. And that’s the vibe that will come in at the end of the note when she’s singing it. She’s just one of a kind. When you it’s like a diamond and it sets to sit. And Lena Horne, is that one of a kind? And nobody can do about that except just enjoy it for a moment.
Speaker Well, that was going back to what you were just saying about her.
Speaker Yeah. You when we spoke on the phone, you described to your response when you went to see. And what she said to her backstage, would you tell me about that?
Speaker I said she cut the other girls in the middle of my brother.
Speaker Yes, I just I just need you to practice. That is when I saw the.
Speaker Yeah, yeah, after seeing her show later on when I saw her show in New York, MediaNet music and I went backstage afterwards and told her how much I enjoyed whispered in my ear, and she cooked the other ladies in the middle of there by Bravo and straight told them to a point of where they couldn’t get back. Yeah. See, she has full command of the instrument and knows what she’s doing and knows how to handle it.
Speaker There’s only one thing when you say that before that for the lady.
Speaker Could you give us a little bit of what you want to say? She spoke to today what it would sound like if she didn’t like the format that she did an example?
Speaker Well, anybody listening to a singer recognized by Bratten Persay, it means the wave of the voice.
Speaker And for those that can sing straight tone and then let the the vibrator come in at the end of the term, that is that that seems to be the best way to do it.
Speaker And I don’t listen to this point.
Speaker I just listen to people as they are rather than see what’s he doing there.
Speaker What are they doing there that I don’t analyze other singers. I listen to other singers and enjoy them. If I don’t enjoy them, I then I would start down like, why now? Why don’t I enjoy that? But I don’t if I never go to analyze this thing, I’m not a critic. I’m a I’m a fan. I’m a I’m a real fan. I go and enjoy people. I go out to enjoy people, go to see them to do it. And Lena Horne, take it a little bit and actually perform more because we can see more of it. But I can understand that when they did that, how did you feel?
Speaker Did you see a difference in the way that we saw in The Lady of the Music with the woman who had been performing in front of the world? Is it?
Speaker Yes, I think she and Lena Horne, she was at the Waldorf Astoria. I remember feeling some tension and she was out there on the floor. She could be too uptight, you know, most, you know, and but Lena Horne, who was doing the made her music, was another lady altogether and warmer and more depth and more perception of her that she realized that and that I’m sure she must know because it’s such a joy she gets when she’s working.
Speaker You get this feeling of Subaru’s joy coming from her. And so she must know that that is that we are reflections of each other and we keep bouncing back to her really good experience.
Speaker I’m glad that she happened during her lifetime along with Duke Ellington and Time magazine and all of her buddies.
Speaker Did you know much about her relationship with what’s going on?
Speaker I knew that they loved each other. Yeah, that I don’t know if everybody understands how we are in show business. I mean, anyway. And the people that those of us in the performing arts. But I can best express it this way where Lena and Strayhorn with same.
Speaker We we love each other.
Speaker I didn’t say it was Lester Young said about Billie Holiday. Oh, yes, we love each other, but we don’t nasty.
Speaker Elegant, to put it, we love each other very much. That’s why there’s a lot of hugging and kissing when you see us, we see each other, you know, hey, you know, men, the women and everything, you know? And I told somebody in the elevator and lady asked me what the elevator in Denver, Colorado, we had a chance thing. And the people, all the men and women went up. And which group are you with? I said, we’re here for the jazz festival, that’s all. So there’s a lot of hugging and kissing going on. And I was about to get out of that turn to I said yes. Did you notice there was no time? So, you know, we we love each other very much and they loved each other very much and still do because you do feel the African and American Indian of which we are very much a part of it.
Speaker We do spirit of those of us and that we love and they’re always with us these wonderful free spirits.
Speaker You told me about it, you just mentioned about the felt the world. Yes, you told me about what you said to her when you went back into the dressing room that time of the world. I didn’t say that. No, no. You said something about what you’re doing.
Speaker No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, my God. I’m embarrassed because.
Speaker But the doctor’s name is doctor in New York City and the author of the book, I tell you what, an investment, what are you doing? You’re not all that attention and all that, but that that’s what happened. I didn’t say that because I, I, I say I could enjoy what you do and you bring me uptight, then that’s you manipulating me or me allowing you to manipulate me. But I go there open so you can do that. And what she did, she did, she made it a little tense and then there was much maybe to be tense about. And where you didn’t think about it, she would make you think, OK, think about this.
Speaker How could you tell? How would you describe what many was to lose?
Speaker I think that he was in Iraq just think that I think that maybe he was her Leanna’s rock and musically, she could mean she could go to him. He had so much knowledge that he could give her and if she wanted to. And then on top of all that, he was her husband.
Speaker And we do a lot of things.
Speaker And like I was with fourth lady, my fourth wife, when people speak to me about this, at least I married them, you know, and everybody does. And then he married his leader. And I think that it was a happy situation.
Speaker People would say, oh, yes, when he gave up, what she gave up and give up everything they had each other, which was more than anything they can gain.
Speaker Talk about with financial things, you know, can’t. Can’t really enjoy that much of anything. I don’t think anybody particularly. Did.
Speaker Oh, did, and it is helping or actually in terms of creating the image that you had in the.
Speaker Lenny was an arranger, Lenny. He was an arranger. He made arrangements for her dressed in beautiful harmony.
Speaker And appropriate rhythm, anything to enhance her presentation. And he had this opportunity to present her in a way that was most flattering. And most enjoy and most entertaining, this is what an arranger does for a singer or performer or a dancer for a singer. This is what they do and they do it very, very well.
Speaker They are a special breed that arranges composers.
Speaker We stand those of us that perform stand on their shoulders, which might make us look tall, very tall, but we really standing on the shoulders of the men and the women who supply the harmony.
Speaker And the beauty in the cushions for us to soothe you with or to make you want to dance or make you want to hold someone in your arms.
Speaker They we’re all part of that one at one thing.
Speaker And we were voices that listened to each other. Many would write it in such a way that she could hear the voice, other voices. And that’s something other than your own voice so that it’s relative. What is going on? A byplay. Each song that you do is really a play, a little vignette.
Speaker And she had many calls. But she did, and he helped by putting it in its proper perspective, proper settings so people could enjoy it and against everything she did.
Speaker Do I have any favorite moments?
Speaker Oh, gosh. I love stormy weather. She did an album with Robert Palmer, and I put that entire thing on my earphones and fall asleep. It’s called Sleeping with me in my ear and singing to me. And I put it in the car and drive along the street with her sing to a very, very special, special thing to be able to enjoy someone like that, because everybody can do a lot of people in one is. They don’t know Joe Williams is, for that matter.
Speaker About Las Vegas. Yes, but the truth is that could you set the stage for me in terms of what Las Vegas was a town that was frightened.
Speaker The people that were gambling very heavily came from all over the country, and many of them brought their prejudices with them so they weren’t used to socializing with black people and the hotels were catering to these people. We’re not used to social black folks. And about 1957, not as Harry Belafonte came to Las Vegas and played the only high rise it was there. The Riviera was a very elegant and the Versailles and the room was sold out for eight weeks.
Speaker He was married to Margarita and kids and the manager told him that we’re about to bring this man in here. And my room is sold out for eight weeks. And I’m going to give him the same suite of rooms in the penthouse that Alan King has now.
Speaker And Harry, of course, came in, came and told us to put our swimming trunks, take him downstairs to him in the pool. That was 1957. I happened to be in town at the time, working at the Dunes with Count Basie. Next, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong and. Eartha KITT. All of them. Nina, it was it was a group of those those of us that. Weren’t going to hold still the status quo. In 1957, I stayed on the strip, it’s called the desert spot, just across the street from people that I walk to work every night down to the dunes. And Las Vegas was funny when you checked in, when we start checking it out basically on the strip, the pool’s drain mysteriously and something was wrong with the pool pools. Never were working when we went out. We’d been there for weeks in the pool. Something was wrong. And that was the place that was the way it was. But Lena Horne and Harry. And a fellow named. And I did this to Doc, they broke it down. He was the head of the NAACP here in Las Vegas, McMellon. They broke it down, booklist, Dr. Westernport. That exist. And eventually things are where they are now, Don King town.
Speaker But, Nina, it’s not that.
Speaker But you must understand, too, if you look at it, Lena Horne and Belafonte and the and those people, it’s the same all over the world.
Speaker The phrase I go to prepare a place, usually wherever I go, you may be on some. And it’s like Marian Anderson’s mother telling her, darling, wherever you go and whatever you do, someone may be watching and would like to be like you, please try not to disappoint them. So it behooves all of us to realize that these are the people that made a way for us, made the way they paved the way so that you could go wherever you want to go and people would accept you as you are known as a shining light.
Speaker She’s a marvelous civil rights worker. She did things that people don’t even know about in the civil rights era.
Speaker Are there specific things that you think Lena worked very closely with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on? And it’s, you know, what we did when it was needed? Yeah, what what is it?
Speaker I don’t know.
Speaker She probably made them very jealous that I’ve been around black and white. We said, oh, my God, I hate it. Nobody’s supposed to look that good, you know, on it. But if they looked at it properly, they should be like a kid in a candy store saying, go ahead, do it.
Speaker Yes, that’s right.
Speaker Because she is really all women and especially black women since quote unquote, they make such an issue of being being black, someone being black, someone being covered.
Speaker It’s made such a prominent issue to a point. But it’s really all women who have all the glory and people who accomplish things that Lena Horne and, you know, and think she’s accomplished and touched the lives way she’s touched lives and had the.
Speaker The good is a good word, good to love someone and be loved by someone.
Speaker And the torpedoes, meaning the people would be damned. Anyone who didn’t think that it was right and had a negative way of expressing it or people who would put roadblocks in your way, roadblocks become stepping stones. Because I have a dear friend named Bob UDCA said hate is too important an emotion to waste on someone you don’t even like.
Speaker This is the reason I asked you that question is because you would sort of describe like an Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker Aura of glorious beauty and fire and and talent and stardom and still be a mother and a grandmother. She she did look, women do see people always talk about this thing about women being what is never women’s lib and all that. And women do it, women doing what they want to.
Speaker I always felt they didn’t always feel the woman did anything she wanted to, always let them do anything they want to do to me, you know, and Lina’s a prime example. She did what she wanted to. She’s not in a loony bin, so they have to go to a loony bin, a go getter, you go to psychiatrist and get head straight because she’s she’s got a handle on life. I think that all of it guarantees all of it to everything. And I hope she doesn’t find out as I have that growing old. And what is what’s the guy’s name?
Speaker Art Linkletter. I used to do his television show and he wrote a book called Growing Old is Not for Sissies. It’s a little stuff keeps going wrong all that. But one guy who lived to be 90 on stand, he was a sweet ask him, how do you do it? He says, well, you just keep getting up. You keep getting up the morning. So I mean I mean, it just keeps getting up and doing what she does.
Speaker Miss Horne, now and forevermore, you know, just get up and do what you do because she is an inspiration. Not only she’s the inspiration to the human race. I think if you have the depth and perception to perceive. She makes us all proud.
Speaker You know something, I was informed that when you began to tell us about the party in Las Vegas that there were planes flying over. I want you to tell me that story again, there was a plane crash. Yes. So if you could just tell me how you’re coming to put some clothes on to send them into the small boat. Yeah, that would be really good for me. And when you when you say that he had a son put his clothes on suspended to just say what the significance of that was at that point.
Speaker Oh, well, I didn’t dream that. So when you talk about the beginnings of breaking down you you talk about the beginnings of breaking down segregation. It must be what you were talking about. But we didn’t say that exactly right.
Speaker I just needed to say to give me that answer. Yes.
Speaker And I was in Las Vegas in 1957 working at the downtown Macy’s Orchestra. And at the same time, the only high rise in Las Vegas was the Riviera Hotel.
Speaker And the man that ran and called a meeting I was about to be called a meeting of the Hotel Resorts Association to tell them that he was bringing in Harry Belafonte to the Riviera because his room was sold out eight weeks in advance.
Speaker The very same room, you know, only high rise in Las Vegas, big time, beautiful Riviera.
Speaker And he was going to give him the same suite of rooms in the penthouse there.
Speaker That heteros that Albert King was in at the time. And Harry came in and told his son, put on his swimming trunks and he took him downstairs and threw him in the swimming pool. They didn’t train them. So that was a beginning. But later on, Belafonte, there’s a kid, Louis Armstrong, and the people that brought them there, the. Well, I guess Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, they brought in the four stepbrothers and things went very, very well, but they will have enough to buy enough land there so that that time when they get ready to put up the airport and the Boy Scout did quite well for Jerry Lewis and they would bring people in, all of the different artist would bring in black entertainers. Someone brought Will Mastan in the trio on the bill with them.
Speaker I remember seeing a bill like that in Chicago. Jack Benny’s a friend of Fritz or somebody out of the Midwest, but they are the the other artists.
Speaker Like I was saying, we in the business performing we love each other. And they showed it by integrating. The strip, which was where it was in those days.
Speaker We just checked to see one of the questions I got from.
Speaker You told me about a time when we were came through Chicago and guess could you tell me about that? Because it really shows you that he was living in Chicago and we had many places.
Speaker People used to go late at night and everybody had a four o’clock license or two o’clock, and we had a place called Brass Rail. I’m forty seventh in South Park. Forty seven near South Park. Can’t admit it actually was Nelson Expressway. And one morning, four o’clock in the morning, Lena sat on the bar, Lena Horne sat on the bar and in this black neighborhood and sang. And it was wonderful things that to happen, but we also had political campaigns, society, there was a big black guy named in White and Coleman Hawkins and his orchestra playing. And I was singing in the show and about four thirty five o’clock in the morning haven’t gotten off work. At one o’clock, Art Tatum would come by and the musicians sit around in a semicircle. He would play the piano. That’s true on the south side. Sitting over the corner would be Gene Krupa and Lana Turner and. And what was really remarkable, I must tell you this story, Leonard Levitt says he knew about these things. Some drunk came out of the bar, put a nickel in the jukebox while Art was sitting at the piano. Art Tatum was a piano, you know, drinking his beer. And a policeman went over and pulled the plug out of the wall, put the man against the wall, said, don’t you move. And he called Wag. We called it Schocken. And the police came and they came to pick this guy up and they were taking him down the stairs. And he asked is, what’s the charge? He said, disturbing the peace. So Chicago was a wonderful place and Besoin made it up one night, to my knowledge. I don’t know if she ever did it again, but she did it one night.
Speaker Nelson Expressway, one of the things you told me was that everybody was so shocked about how warm she was. So she was.
Speaker Well, is warm, she’s a warm person.
Speaker You if you stay with your party when I say stay with your party, that means kindred spirits.
Speaker You don’t have any fear of relaxing, being yourself, being tired and being warm and gentle and genuine because there’s no need to be tough.
Speaker You six foot one in black, you don’t have to beat anybody up, left you alone generally unless they have one and that’s another thing.
Speaker So I guess is what you have described is that the people who came to see you were just sort of surprised to see all this stuff, which is just on the of.
Speaker The Lena Horne, the people that she saw, the people that she hung out with, were the people that loved her and admired her and she would be warm and relaxed around.
Speaker Yeah, that’s what that is, is a great bit of prose written by a man named Burbles called Weeting.
Speaker Is it a regional war against time to for whatever else is in your piece? I stand many turtle weighs and what is my, you know, my face. Stars come back into the sky. Tidal waves, the sea space, the deep I can keep my own away from me.
Speaker The friends I seek are seeking me and as my wife puts it, kindred spirits.
Speaker And that’s what it’s about. And we’re very fortunate when we find them and when we are able to hang out with them.
Speaker As I said before, everything and in the spirit of great spirit, a wonderful spirit, spirit of all that. And all those members have gone before and are with us now that.
Speaker Miss Lena Horne, I want to thank you, stay in Australia, the state of Gracetown, and stay in us perfect native Greece.
Speaker Back to Billy Strayhorn for just a moment as a singer for.
Speaker That’s on. You have to be here for the title of the song. I want something to live for straight on.
Speaker You don’t have to be I felt I was a very romantic kid as a youngster when I heard it first.
Speaker To think you would have someone that would make your life with Jesus, as they say, it ought to be like life should be a gaping, happy thing and.
Speaker Someone to make me make my life is not a dream, but a reality, that character that is I told you a song is a play.
Speaker And if you can’t interpret that, so. And touch somebody and have them to feel it.
Speaker It’s like reading, reading poetry. You are you a good read it.
Speaker Oh, we are the instrument those of us are performing with the instrument through which things like this come and we are able to either do it convincingly so that people understand what it was about and even think further in their imagination.
Speaker Imagine what it could be like, because many times we imagine how wonderful things could be and should be. It’s like a king saying that Dr. King’s. I have. I had I had a dream. I have a dream, you know, and and then there’s a dream deferred forever and ever and ever. I mean, two steps forward and three steps backwards, that kind of thing.
Speaker Richard, the question that we have to deal with people who would like to turn the clock back, as someone once said, that we would be taken screaming like a newborn baby, drop into the new new world to the new century because people are so ready to set up the status quo or the way it was, there’s no way it was.
Speaker And people like. Miss Morning, they have great vision and open, as I said, when I go to see somebody, I go to enjoy it, I go open and you have to be open so you can enjoy someone you can’t presume.
Speaker As you start to meet the little girl.
Speaker What does she want? I wouldn’t want woman walk away.
Speaker Oh, I remember a funny story.
Speaker We were in the White House and an artist I won’t tell, but I could tell it was Katharine Hepburn. Two young people, Jack Jones and his wife went over to tell her how much they enjoyed your approach. You’re coming toward me. What do you want?
Speaker So, you know, that’s it. That’s the way life is. You’re coming toward me. But Lina just stayed in circles when she didn’t have to do that and someone was coming to it. Hey, baby, you know, like I am.
Speaker And can you imagine what it does to a full grown man to have to say, hey, babe.
Speaker Hi, Daddy. You know, this 17 year old woman call you daddy and make it instant?
Speaker MAN Oh, yeah. Speaking of which, you did tell you that we are grateful that I was attracted to you at one point.
Speaker Oh, no, no, I don’t think so. I mean, OK, my.
Speaker You know, see somebody toe to toe.
Speaker Told me that she was watching me perform one night. This was 1955 or 56, something like that of seven. And the young lady asks is, what does it look like to you? She seemed like a good Adam.
Speaker But I wouldn’t know how to handle that.
Speaker I wish to God I would I would need to get out of hand because besides that, I’m as I explained to you, I am I don’t like the rejection. So consequently, you have to be very explicit. Let me know what you have in mind. We are concerned and serious about you and I spending some time together sets up. But, um, before I make love to your body, I want to make love to you by.
Speaker But you know, Bill with the Bible is the Mishan. I could do that.
Speaker You know, my friends tell me you just want to use me before the before I make love to your body.
Speaker I want to make love to you by and that way, I don’t have to go through all that rejection because I look at somebody, oh, she looks good, but that’s it.
Speaker I to go especially to Dave again. I was lucky to come along during the time before. Making love wasn’t germ warfare to withdraw covid love when we came along where we.
Speaker Oh.
