I grew up on Orleans Avenue in the Treme. When I was a little bitty boy one day my uncle ran out the house and left his harmonica sitting on the kitchen table. That was it. It was on. It didn’t take me but five minutes till I put that thing in my mouth, stuck it in there upside down. To this day that’s still the way I play.
Used to play along to my mother’s radio. That radio was my best friend. She used to put it way up on the top shelf, where I couldn’t reach the dial. She loved her classical music, so that’s what I played. Imagine how it sounded, little six year old boy trying to keep up with Mozart on harmonica? Yeah buddy. I caught enough beatings making noise with this thing. Then one day my mama washing clothes in the scrub bowl and she started singing “If I Love You.” I put that harmonica to my lips and I started playing along. She ran out the bathroom. She was shocked. She said do it again, play it again, do it again. My momma loved that song. From that day on, I didn’t catch no more hell for playing this harmonica.
My momma, she saw I was something special, she knew I was gonna be a entertainer. She put me in front the television and I watched Fred Astaire do his stunts. I learned how to tap dance right there in front of that TV. Upper pose, backwards flip, into a spit, come back up, forward split, forward flip into a split, tapping in cadence like a drum, yeah buddy. And I was doing all this while I was playing the harmonica. My momma bought me a set of real taps and took me out to Bourbon Street.
I wasn’t like the kids today with the tin cans on they shoes, shuffling they feet for a few seconds and then running up to the tourists with they box. That ain’t tapping, that’s begging. I was doing real tapping. Had me different color suits, white on white, red on red, black on black with a coat tail, shoes sparkling. I could show you pictures, but they all got washed away.
When I was seven a man saw me tapping down on Bourbon and he wanted to take me up to New York to be in a Broadway show. Me and my momma moved into the East Bronx. They had me in Old Man River and Showboat. I used to tap dance with the other dancers, and then I’d play my harmonica right out front with the orchestra.
I loved being on that stage, but being in that house was hell. My mother had settled in with this other man, and he used to beat her and he used to beat me. If I was five minutes late coming home from school, I got a beating. Took all my clothes off and had me in handcuffs and was just beating me up. I told my momma that she should pack up and just leave, but this man said I didn’t have no business telling grown folk how to act. I just caught more beatings.
He killed my mother... Links
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