Streets of Gold (52 page)

I suppose I was spoiled rotten even before the album took off. Success is difficult to resist; it is exceedingly difficult to resist. It has been personified as female, the Bitch Goddess, but I firmly believe it is male in gender and exclusively American in origin. (John Wayne probably thinks of success as a voluptuous full-blown woman; what can I tell you, Duke?) I have seen this hairy male beast (success, not you, Duke) attack and devour the strongest men and women. He stinks of booze and fornication, his breath can knock you senseless for a week. He belches and farts in public, he uses obscene language, he is a braggart and a dullard, and he has but a single ear. Yet when he clutches you in his powerful arms and plants upon your lips a kiss that surely reeks of all things vile (it is the kiss of death, make no mistake), there is nothing to do but succumb. The Beast is too strong, he N can break you in two, he can scatter your limbs to the four winds after he has picked them clean of flesh (he will do that, anyway), and it is better to suffer his crushing embrace (it’s what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?) and let him take you where he will.

It is no accident that America is the nation that pioneered the best-seller lists, the record charts, the best-dressed lists, the ten-best-movies-of-the-year lists, and (God help us) even the ten-
worst
-movies-of-the-year lists, a distinction in itself; if you cannot be one of the ten
best
, there is some satisfaction (but only in America) in knowing you are listed among the lousiest. In America, if you are eleventh, you might as well be dead. And if you are Number One, then you are exactly what America itself desires to be, ever and always. I do not wish to raise problems, forgive me. But what is so terribly wrong about being number two? Or (God forbid) number eleven? In 1960,
Dwight’s Blues
was number One on the LP record charts for more months than I can recall, and something began happening to me.

I was spoiled rotten even before the raging success of the album; I had, after all, been successful since 1955. I was used to making my demands known and having them satisfied, I had grown accustomed to deferential treatment from headwaiters and recording executives, music publishers and nightclub owners, hotel managers, airline hostesses, everyone. Everywhere I went, they asked, “Is everything all right, Mr. Jamison?” Yes, everything was all right. When I was a boy, my grandmother Tess had treated me like an Italian Prince, which is one step higher than a Jewish Princess. My brother Tony could sometimes escape her solicitous clutches, being blessed with vision and a pair of stout little legs that could carry him scurrying away from her advancing embrace. I
never
escaped her. “I’m going to
get
you, Ignazio!” she would say, and those loving grandmotherly arms would snatch me up, and her tongue would cluck in deep affection, and sometimes she would sing to me in Italian, and press me against her pillowy bosom, and tell me what a darling little boy I was. If I had been left solely to the care and training of my grandmother Tess, I would have grown up to be a hopelessly dependent vegetable. It was my grandfather who taught me to stand on my own, blind or not. But my grandfather was Italian, you see. And I was American. And starting in 1955, I was a
successful
American. And in 1960, I became a
ragingly
successful American, and the world was full of Grandma Tesses eager to tell me what a darling little boy I was, eager to turn me into a hopelessly dependent vegetable. And something began happening to me.

Maybe I only (only!) wanted to go to bed with my mother. Maybe those tales of Charlie Shoe exploring her youthful quim had incited me to fantasize wildly about the joys to be experienced between those maternal thighs. Success had brought me power, after all, the power to command whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it. So why not now dismiss my father, who had peed his own pants when he was but a mere lad, and take my rightful place in bed beside my mother? Maybe that was it. Or maybe I had to prove to Jimmy Palmer that his own fumbling attempt at adultery (had there
really
been an Irish whore on Pelham Parkway?) could be topped by his famous blind son, show him I was not only a better musician than he was, but also a better swordsman, a man who could screw every beautiful woman in the universe without having the Virgin Mary appear to Rebecca, without getting
caught
, and certainly without leaving any telltale evidence about golden earrings with sapphire chips in my dresser drawer. That’s another possibility. Or maybe, being blind, I just
naturally
demanded more of everyone — more and more love, more and more respect, more and more proof that I was not what I (and thirteen other little blind bastards) thought myself to be — nothing.

Whatever it was (and I certainly do not dismiss any of these quite respectable tenets), I began to think that since my
album
was Number One, then I
myself
was Number One.
I
had cut the album, hadn’t I? I mean, after all, the album was only a mechanical reproduction of the music
I
had made, the music 
I
had pulled from somewhere inside my head and my heart; the album was
me
. Now never mind whether or not I was a good father (I was), or a loyal and devoted husband (I still was), or a man who did not cheat on his income tax (I took advantage of legal loopholes), a man eligible for the Talmadge Good Neighbor Award, an upstanding member of the town board, a pillar of the community, or an all-around darling nice guy. Never mind any of that. Never mind what the
man
Dwight Jamison was. The man was the album. And the album was successful beyond my wildest dreams. They used to touch me. When I walked toward the bar after a set, they reached out to touch me, I could hear them whispering, “Here he comes,” and then I would feel the cautious touch on the sleeve of my jacket.

Well, unless I wished to believe that America was a land of idol-worshipers bowing and scraping at the clawed feet of the hairy monster called Success; unless I wished to believe that the crowd reaching out to touch me as I walked from the bandstand to the bar was really reaching out to touch The Beast; unless I chose to come to grips with the painful knowledge that The Beast was something independently alive, standing behind my shoulder each night, leering out at the crowd and demanding adoration for him-self, then I
had
to believe the cheers were for me and not for my success, the cheers were for Dwight Jamison, the cheers were, in fact, for Ignazio Silvio Di Palermo. And why not? I deserved them.

Yes.

Deserved! Because I was giving so much of myself to the public, yes, and it was only fair that I should get something more than money in return. (Christ, was that me? Did I really believe that?) Yes. Up there on the bandstand each night, I was reaching into my head and my heart and discovering somewhere in my own experience something I was willing to give to total strangers. It leaped from my fingers and into the room, and it became theirs, no longer mine, not even mine
and
theirs, but theirs alone. My past and my present, my joy, my anger, and my sorrow became theirs to push around on their plates with their leftover dinners while they signaled the waiter for another round.

I rationalized my promiscuity (which is
exactly
what it was) on two levels. First, I told myself I had already given of my head and my heart, so what would it matter if I now gave of my cock? Giving of my cock was really giving nothing; I was still being true to Rebecca. Secondly, I played a mental trick that can only in retrospect be considered schizophrenic. (Don’t be so quick to agree, Rebecca!) I told myself all these women really did love me and my shabby, dignified good looks, and my blond hair and sightless blue eyes, and my talent, and everything about me. But at the same time, I told myself they only loved the incandescence of my success, they only loved The Beast. I zippered on The Beast’s hairy hide the way I would a gorilla suit, but at the same time I denied that he was me. All those women loved me for myself, yes, but
no
, they really loved The Beast. I was only the conduit through which adoration for The Beast flowed. The women were faceless; they would have been faceless even if I could have seen them. And I was faceless as well. The Beast was getting it all; I was only his boy. And yet I knew they adored me.

Mishegahss
, I admit it.

I’d have to be
really
nuts (I
know,
Rebecca; save it) to pretend at the age of forty-eight that all that fucking around had been caused by a capitalized Beast relentlessly stalking the landscape of the American myth. But sometimes, when I’m alone and I remember with a start that after all is said and done I am | only blind and only Ignazio Silvio Di Palermo, I wonder what it would have been like if I’d never been a big success, ma’am. Would you offer to blow me if you saw me stumbling along Broadway behind a Seeing Eye dog, with a sign ADVISING HERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GOES THEE?

Jesus, the things I remember!

Jesus.

It is the summer of 1941, and my brother has taken me to the Friday-night dance at Our Lady of Grace on 225th Street and Bronxwood Avenue. We are walking home together afterward. There are roses blooming everywhere. They line the fences outside the two-story houses as we walk in the balmy, scent-laden night.

My brother picks a rose and gives it to me.

The Masters At Forcing Independents to Acquiesence came around to see me in the fall of 1961. The man who ran the Chicago club in which I was playing was a hood. There are some nightclub managers or owners who tell you to play softer or louder or faster or slower or not at all, depending on what their drinking clientele is doing at any given moment, but Al Gerardi never bothered us. He was smart enough to know that we were riding a wave of popularity, and he wasn’t about to mess with music that was causing his cash register to jingle along in counterpoint. I almost liked him. When he said he wanted me to meet a few of his friends, I honestly thought they were fans.

We sat in Al’s office, and they introduced themselves as Arthur Giglio and Ralph Isetti.

“Is it true you’re Italian?” Isetti asked.

“That’s right,” I said.

“That’s what we heard,” Giglio said.

“That makes us
’paesani
,” Isetti said.

I said nothing.

“Your album’s doing pretty good,” Giglio said.

“It’s a nice album,” Isetti said.

“This guy Aronowitz,” Giglio said. “He’s your manager, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Who else does he handle?”

“Well, he’s got a long list of clients.”

“But you’re the biggest one, huh?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Sure, you’re the biggest. What do you want to stay with him for?”

“We’ve been together for a long time now. He’s a good manager. And also a good friend.”

“They only look out for themselves,” Giglio said. “The kikes.”

“My wife is Jewish,” I said.

“Yeah, we know,” Isetti said, and this was the first warning I had that trouble was on the way. I felt my scalp begin to tingle.

“Well,” I said, “I’d better get back outside.”

“No, don’t rush yourself,” Giglio said. “Al’s in no hurry. You ain’t in no hurry, are you, AT?”

Al, who had been silent till this moment, now said, “No, everybody’s happy outside.”

“Everybody’s happy in here, too,” Giglio said.

“We coulda sold a shit pot full of that album,” Isetti said. “That’s a nice album.”

“Victor’s doing a fine job,” I said.

“Victor who?”

“RCA Victor.”

“Oh, the record company, you mean. Yeah, but maybe you ain’t getting the right kind of jukebox distribution, you know what I mean?”

“We lifted three singles from the album, and they’re all doing fine on the jukes,” I said.

“They could be doing better,” Isetti said.

“We got a few record companies of our own,” Giglio said.

“We also got some hotels in Vegas.”

“And of course we could guarantee very good jukebox exposure. Much better than you’re getting now.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” I said. I understood completely. They wanted to get into the dry-cleaning business.

“We’d like to manage you, Ike,” Giglio said.

“I’ve already got a manager.”

“Kiss him off,” Isetti said.

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Try. I’ll bet you could do it if you tried.”

“Why should I?”

“Because we can handle you better. We’re Italian, we understand you better. We like the way you play piano, Ike.”

“Well, I’m very flattered, but...”

“Don’t be so fucking flattered,” Isetti said. “We’re talking business here.”

“If you want to talk business, go see my manager.”

“We will. As soon as we settle this with you.”

“It’s already settled.”

“No, we don’t think so. Not yet, it ain’t settled.”

“Al, we’ve got paying customers out there,” I said. “If your friends are finished .. .”

“We ain’t finished,” Isetti said, “and the customers can wait.”

“Sixty-forty is the deal,” Giglio said.

“Look,” I said, “I’m satisfied with Victor, I’m satisfied with my manager...”

“And I’ll bet you’re also satisfied with Alice Keating,” Giglio said, and the room went silent.

“Yes,” I said. “She’s a very good flute player.”

“Especially the skin flute,” Isetti said, and the room went silent again.

“We’ve got pictures of you and Alice,” Giglio said.

“You like broads, huh, Ike?” Isetti said.

“We’ll get you plenty of broads, you like broads.”

“It’s too bad you’re blind,” Isetti said. “These are nice pictures.” I heard the sound of something being slapped onto the desktop. “It must be a real drag being blind, huh?”