Monday morning I marched off to class. At noon I was called into the office of my company commander. “You do not follow the chain of command by what you have just done. You are supposed to bring it to me, and I refer it up the line.” Laughing, he added, “I have just delivered a lecture to you on the chain of command. You have an appointment with the base IG [inspector general].”
I was interrogated intensively by the IG, a captain, who concluded that I was acting from conviction. I was given an assignment as an Information and Education instructor and relieved of all normal duties. After learning that my unit was to be assigned to Korean occupation duty, I visited the instructor who had provided me with his statement. He told me that all of the units on the base had been summoned to a formation to hear an announcement from the commanding general that the base would not tolerate discrimination in the barbershops and that the soldiers were to report any infractions immediately. In response to my expression of concern regarding my probable assignment to Korea, he directed me to visit the officer in charge of the assignment section and to request compassionate leave, ostensibly to visit my girlfriend in Europe. Following his instructions, I was greeted by a black warrant officer who smiled broadly and ushered me into the office of the captain in charge. He listened to my story and then proposed to assign me to European duty, so that I would not have to use up precious leave time for a visit.
In Germany I was assigned to an artillery unit. While on maneuvers in the Black Forest, I shared Thanksgiving dinner with a small group of soldiers. Seated across from me, a corporal commented that I appeared downhearted. I said that I was just thinking I would rather be in Paris. The corporal said he was being assigned to Paris. I remarked on his good fortune. “Don’t sweat it, man. I am the chauffeur of Senator Harry Flood Byrd. I just wrote to him that my buddy was being sent to Paris, and so I wanted to be sent there too. You just write to the senator and tell him the same thing. I will give you his private mailing address.”
I thanked him for his kindness and rushed off to write a letter to the senator. The following Monday, having returned from maneuvers, I had a reply from the senator—the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of the most powerful politicians in Washington—acknowledging my request and stating that he would follow my progress with great interest. I obtained a pass to visit Heidelberg, where I called on the general in charge of legal matters for the U.S. Army in Europe. I asked to be assigned to Paris, where I proposed to study Civil Law, since I spoke French. The general granted the request. I was assigned to the Claims Office Team in Paris, a NATO liaison office that dealt with claims by French civilians against the U.S. Army.
On New Year’s Eve, I was on a train to Paris. Arriving the morning of New Year’s Day, I walked down the Champs-Elysées, oblivious to the cold. For seven months, I lived on the French economy, wearing civilian clothes and with a generous cost of living allowance for rent and food. I worked closely with a staff of French civilian women in the glass pavilion of the former Rothschild mansion in the Bois de Boulogne. I lived on the Left Bank and frequented the cafés, where I once observed tiny, white-maned Bertrand Russell swoop into La Coupole with a retinue of admirers.
Through mutual acquaintances, I met Henry Miller and Richard Wright. I went to Miller’s small apartment on the Left Bank, which was cramped and filled with books. A man of advanced years, he was brusque but civil. Wright received me in his classic high-ceilinged Paris apartment. He was cordial, and we had a brief conversation. I was just curious to meet this celebrated and controversial expatriate.
I also attended performances by the Red Army Choir, the Beijing Opera, and Yehudi Menuhin, and the Russian opera Boris Godunov. In mid-August I was transferred back to Germany for the remainder of my tour of duty, until January 1956.
After your military service, what did you do?
Upon discharge I returned to New York and was admitted to the state and federal bar. I returned to my hometown, Plattsburgh, and hung out there for several months, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. The town had become foreign. Thomas Wolfe was right: you can’t go home again.
After that, I went to Tucson, Arizona, to check out the region. I found the desert magnetically attractive, but the local culture felt alien, except for a small community of artists who welcomed me.
Returning to New York, I met a young woman at a modern dance performance and was captivated by her. She was a designer of woven fabrics. I leased a large sunny loft at 329 East 47th Street—what is now United Nations Plaza—as a design studio and installed her in it. The rent was modest because the building was to be demolished in a few years. I bought hand looms and hired weavers. The enterprise attracted the interest of chemical companies that had developed synthetic yarns. We created demonstration fabrics for various applications, utilizing the considerable colorization skills of one of the weavers, Elsa Rush. The National Council of Negro Women rented space from me to hold meetings. After a year my partner started turning out designs that were purple-and-black combinations, and walked out. I realized this would not be my career of choice, so I dissolved the business.
2 Music and Law
Into the Deep End Fast
In 1960 you worked as an unpaid assistant for Florynce Kennedy, the attorney and activist. How did you meet her?
As a law student I attended huge parties that Flo Kennedy and her two statuesque sisters threw in their large Harlem apartment for law students. Later, when I found that she was practicing law in midtown Manhattan, I approached her directly and offered her my services as an unpaid gofer.
In Flo’s office I met Doris Parker, who claimed to be the widow of Charlie Parker, and Louis McKay, the widower of Billie Holiday. I had never heard of these artists. Flo obtained the representation of the Parker and Holiday estates through the efforts of Maely Dufty, a Rumanian-born publicist in New York who had managed Billie Holiday and been married to William Dufty, the coauthor with her of Lady Sings the Blues.
Two months after joining her office, I found out that Flo had scheduled a press conference in which she identified me as her associate counsel. I had no such formal standing. More importantly, Maely Dufty came to me and urged me to leave Flo, as “something is about to blow up.” Maxwell T. Cohen, Esq., a prominent Manhattan entertainment lawyer, had been retained by Chan Parker, the actual widow of Charlie Parker, to enforce her rights to the estate. I left abruptly. Flo lost the representation of the estate.
Where did you go from there?
I rented a room in the law offices of Bruce McM. Wright, who later became a state supreme court justice, and Harold Lovette, Miles Davis’s manager—a small suite at 120 East 56th Street. I was there for a year trying to form a practice. I had little interest in dealing with the typical problems and challenges of a conventional law practice. Prominent black musicians, clients of Bruce and Harold, came by and I met them. I found these artists interesting people of depth and dignity, more sympathetic than the average run of humanity.
My first victory, while I shared the offices, was on behalf of three jazz bassists: Art Davis and Reggie Workman, and a third whose name escapes me. All of them had sent their basses to Chicago to be repaired, and the instruments had been damaged in transport by TWA. C. C. Tillinghast was its president, and his employees refused to respond to our claims. I hit on a stratagem: I called TWA and asked for Tillinghast, saying that it was a personal and confidential matter. They put me through to him in his home, as he was having dinner. He got on the phone, and he said, “What is this?!” I said, “Mr. Tillinghast, I’m a lawyer. Basses were damaged, and we’re being brushed off by your staff.” He hit the roof! “How dare you call me at my home?” He was incensed! I apologized, and he settled our claim.
Composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams—brilliant, saintly, and influential—paid
