Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners, Well, today's episode
Speaker 1: is fairly close to my heart. It's on the subject
Speaker 1: of jazz and drugs and race and the beats. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Martin to Goof. He's an award winning
Speaker 1: journalist and author. He's a documentary filmmaker. He's an Emmy
Speaker 1: nominated television writer, director and producer. Uh. He's got two
Speaker 1: books of great relevance to the subject and also to
Speaker 1: my life. The first one was a book called Can't
Speaker 1: Find My Way Home about America and the great Stoned
Speaker 1: Age to two thousand and we'll talk about that a
Speaker 1: little bit, but we're really focusing on a book that
Speaker 1: he published a few years ago called Bop Apocalypse, Jazz Race,
Speaker 1: the Beats and Drugs. So, Martin, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today on Psychoactive. Thank you for having
Speaker 1: me Ethan. It's always interesting and fun to talk to you.
Speaker 1: I think when we think about the origins of jazz
Speaker 1: and drugs and especially marijuana, there's no place to start
Speaker 1: but with Louis Armstrong. So Louis Armstrong and marijuana. Martin
Speaker 1: talk about Louis Armstrong, how special and incredible he was,
Speaker 1: and and his connection to marijuana. What always fascinated me
Speaker 1: about this subject was that marijuana appears on the streets
Speaker 1: of New Orleans at just around the same time that
Speaker 1: jazz begins to percolate. So they were always there together,
Speaker 1: um you know, and it was always a kind of
Speaker 1: symbiotic relationship from the very beginning. Like you're talking around
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven. So by the time, um, you know, Armstrong
Speaker 1: is a teenager in New Orleans, that entire culture has
Speaker 1: been just beginning to really coalesced in a very significant way.
Speaker 1: What happens is that the artists begin making their way
Speaker 1: up the Mississippi River to Chicago, and in a way,
Speaker 1: the marijuana follows them. So in a way you can
Speaker 1: like follow the story of marijuana, want to and jazz
Speaker 1: together with Louis Armstrong up to Chicago where it begins
Speaker 1: to blossom at the Lincoln Gardens with his creativity up there,
Speaker 1: and then it goes down to Kansas City, it goes
Speaker 1: across to Harlem, and that's really the beginning of it.
Speaker 1: So Louis fell in love with jazz and fell in
Speaker 1: love with weed. I mean, jazz came first. Uh, he
Speaker 1: did not turn on until he got to Chicago, and
Speaker 1: all of the musicians of the time talk about his
Speaker 1: love affair with it. So he's he's his powerful figure.
Speaker 1: But marijuana, I mean, was there any way which marijuana
Speaker 1: was a negative in his life or was it all positive?
Speaker 1: Not in his life? Not in his life, And he
Speaker 1: would talk openly about, you know, the many ways that
Speaker 1: he characterized it as a positive impact on his life.
Speaker 1: One of the really amazing things about looking at um
Speaker 1: all of these jazz artists, the many different ones and
Speaker 1: their journeys through the use of different substances, is how
Speaker 1: from the very beginning you can see people who were
Speaker 1: able to use it in a positive way and set
Speaker 1: boundaries about it and those who um, who weren't who
Speaker 1: had a very different um kind of relationship with the
Speaker 1: substances that became problematical really the difference between use and
Speaker 1: abuse in you know, and and it's very kind of
Speaker 1: organic application, right, But with marijuana it typically was not
Speaker 1: a negative in the way, whereas heroin became a very
Speaker 1: much more mixed story in subsequent decades. Right, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean absolutely. It wasn't like he was
Speaker 1: a propagator, um, a soletizer for it, because that wasn't
Speaker 1: the case. But he was just honest about it, and
Speaker 1: you know, he believed that it was positive to a
Speaker 1: lot of people. His relationship with it always kind of
Speaker 1: embodied his kind of genial, live and let live kind
Speaker 1: of attitude about life. You know, his kind of enjoyment
Speaker 1: of things. You know, he was a really beautiful man.
Speaker 1: You know, you sort of look back and you look
Speaker 1: at his smile. He had a philosophy of life that
Speaker 1: was really positive. He had a philosophy of America that
Speaker 1: was really positive, and you know, his relationship with the
Speaker 1: weed was really very much embroidered into that philosophy. I
Speaker 1: remember one time meeting um, somebody who had been in
Speaker 1: charge of his U s I a U S Information
Speaker 1: Agency tour in Africa maybe in late fifties early sixties.
Speaker 1: I remember describing to me what it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: because he was not going to travel anywhere without his weed,
Speaker 1: and she had to make sure that that was not
Speaker 1: going to be a problem as they crossed borders. But
Speaker 1: he was determined, and in a way, it was a
Speaker 1: small world around him that I think made sure Louis
Speaker 1: Armstrong was not going to spend another day in jail,
Speaker 1: even though marijuana was inna you know, part of his
Speaker 1: everyday life experience. Yes, Um, he was literally the first
Speaker 1: celebrity marijuana bust in American history. It happened in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and um he was actually set up, and um, when
Speaker 1: he came back to Chicago, he was really worried that
Speaker 1: it was going to, um have a negative impact on
Speaker 1: his career. And it didn't. And the reason that it
Speaker 1: didn't was because by that time, the people who were
Speaker 1: listening to jazz were really beginning to coalesce into a
Speaker 1: whole culture, into a viper culture. Um, you know, in
Speaker 1: in Harlem, around places like uh, you know, the Savoy Ballroom,
Speaker 1: and it was more widespread. I mean, it certainly wasn't,
Speaker 1: you know, a mainstream thing. Obviously that didn't happen until
Speaker 1: you know, the mid to late length nineties, sixties and seventies.
Speaker 1: But there were enough people who were, you know, listening
Speaker 1: to jazz, going to see jazz, buying jazz records, who
Speaker 1: were aware of marijuana, and you know, they weren't going
Speaker 1: to hold that against him by any means. I think
Speaker 1: you write in your book that he sat down he
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to President Eisenhower telling him that marijuana
Speaker 1: should be legal. So he was not inhibited about expressing
Speaker 1: his views on that thing. You know, No, No, he
Speaker 1: wasn't inhibited at all. So the question that rises with
Speaker 1: marijuana is why the connection between marijuana and jazz. I mean,
Speaker 1: at one point, you quote Norman Mailer is saying he
Speaker 1: couldn't think of one without the other. But for the
Speaker 1: musicians themselves, what was it that made it um, that
Speaker 1: made marijuana special. Well, for one thing, it was just there,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was just a part of their lifestyle.
Speaker 1: I think it was Dexter Gordon, the great saxophonist, who
Speaker 1: who called jazz lifestyle as music and um by the
Speaker 1: same token you could call the beat generation lifestyle of literature,
Speaker 1: and marijuana was was an integral part of that lifestyle.
Speaker 1: So so it was just there, and from the very
Speaker 1: beginning it was obvious to the people that smoked it
Speaker 1: and played the music that you know, there were aspects
Speaker 1: of the marijuana experience that resonated powerfully and creatively for
Speaker 1: them in playing it, in playing it alone, and in
Speaker 1: playing it with each other, so that it became a
Speaker 1: part of the experience ense of performing it, and it
Speaker 1: became part of the experience of recording it. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: in the book, I mean you talk about some of
Speaker 1: these I mean, it was all subtle and nuance and
Speaker 1: as you say, interwoven. The cause of relationships are hard
Speaker 1: to identify, but that sometimes marijuana gave some players, you know,
Speaker 1: a sense of courage if they were a young musician
Speaker 1: coming up, and would able them to just feel that
Speaker 1: much more confident, which would shape their jazz because feeling
Speaker 1: confident was better in performance than not. You talk about
Speaker 1: maybe it helped to reduce inhibitions and therefore, you know,
Speaker 1: led to greater improvisation and experimentation. Uh. You talked about
Speaker 1: some of these writers saying that they could. Actually it
Speaker 1: wasn't they played better, but that they could hear better.
Speaker 1: Here one another better, right, I mean, I mean that element.
Speaker 1: Never mind the fact that it was preferable to all
Speaker 1: the other psychoactive substances like alcohol and heroin, which we'll
Speaker 1: get into shortly, in terms of one's health and not
Speaker 1: giving people a hangover and staying healthy for a lifetime.
Speaker 1: You know, there are so many different opinions about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, for example, John Hammond, who was you know,
Speaker 1: like a major figure in the jazz culture of that
Speaker 1: era in terms of like producing the music. He hated
Speaker 1: the presence of weed in the lifestyles and the musicians
Speaker 1: because he felt that well, for one thing, it made
Speaker 1: them liable for persecution, but also he felt that it
Speaker 1: played havoc with their sense of time. And a lot
Speaker 1: of musicians would disagree with him about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: he wasn't a smoker, so he wouldn't have known. You know.
Speaker 1: At one point, I was reading something that Charles Baudelaire
Speaker 1: wrote about the effects of hashi, you know, Charles Baudelaire,
Speaker 1: the French poet. He called it a mirror that magnifies,
Speaker 1: yet only a mirror, And I found that to be
Speaker 1: very very useful in considering the relationship between you know,
Speaker 1: the substances and the musicianship. These musicians were all unbelievable artists.
Speaker 1: They were disciplined, they practiced endlessly, you know, their entire
Speaker 1: lives were devoted to their art form. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that marijuana, you know, in and of itself, you know,
Speaker 1: made any of them innately better musicians. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it couldn't like put talent uh there that wasn't already there.
Speaker 1: But what it could do was it could amplify that
Speaker 1: talent in different ways. And I think I think that
Speaker 1: the answer is like somehow contained in that kind of thesis.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that even today, when I find myself
Speaker 1: now is things are opening up post pandemic. I find
Speaker 1: myself going to jazz clips in New York more and
Speaker 1: more frequently. And what they I like to do is
Speaker 1: to like take a little finally grammedable before I go,
Speaker 1: and it just enhances the appreciation and especially my ability
Speaker 1: to appreciate some of the more out there improvisation. M Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you know, you hear it over and over again.
Speaker 1: I mean I think it just opens your musical mind, uh,
Speaker 1: there's just something about it. As Mesro, there was a
Speaker 1: musician who fell in love with the blues, fell in
Speaker 1: love with weed, and he and was himself, I mean
Speaker 1: when he played clarinet or something. Yeah, he was. He
Speaker 1: was a clarinetist. But there in his book Really the Blues,
Speaker 1: there is a passage in which he describes the first
Speaker 1: time that he ever smoked and went out on the
Speaker 1: on the bandstand to play. And to me, it's one
Speaker 1: of the most resonant pieces of writing that I've ever
Speaker 1: come across about, you know, the potential of taking a
Speaker 1: musician's mind or a listeners mind and just kind of
Speaker 1: like opening it. Um. It's really it's really a remarkable
Speaker 1: piece of writing. If you want, I'll read you a
Speaker 1: little a little passage of what he wrote about. This
Speaker 1: is him, um, going out to play under the influence
Speaker 1: for the first time. The first thing I noticed was
Speaker 1: that I began to hear my saxophone as though it
Speaker 1: were inside by head. But I couldn't hear much of
Speaker 1: the bend in back of me, although I knew they
Speaker 1: were there. All the other instruments sounded like they were
Speaker 1: way off in the distance. I got the same sensation
Speaker 1: you'd get if you stuffed your ears with cotton and
Speaker 1: talked out loud. Then I began to feel the vibrations
Speaker 1: of the read much more pronounced against my lip, and
Speaker 1: my head buzzed like a loudspeaker. I found I was
Speaker 1: slurring much better and putting just the right feeling into
Speaker 1: my phrases. I was really coming on. All the notes
Speaker 1: came easing out of my horn like they had already
Speaker 1: been made up, greased, and stuffed into a bell. So
Speaker 1: all I had to do was blow a little and
Speaker 1: send them on their way, one right after the other,
Speaker 1: never missing, never behind me, all without an ounce of effort.
Speaker 1: The phrases seemed to have more continuity to them, and
Speaker 1: I was sticking to the theme without ever going tangent.
Speaker 1: I felt like I could go on playing for years
Speaker 1: without running out of ideas or energy. And that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's it. Well, you know, it's interesting. At one point,
Speaker 1: you know, you talked about Alan Ginsburg, the great poet,
Speaker 1: the one who wrote the you know, the poem Howell,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, perhaps the most famous poem American
Speaker 1: poem writter in America in the mid twentieth century, or
Speaker 1: maybe even the entire second half of the twentie century,
Speaker 1: but him being very influenced not just by jazz, but
Speaker 1: by mes Mesro's book that he was it was formative
Speaker 1: for him. Yeah, he found it in the the Columbia
Speaker 1: bookstore when he was a student at Columbia, you know,
Speaker 1: in the forties, and he was very, very interested in
Speaker 1: experiencing marijuana. And that book was like the Rosetta Stone
Speaker 1: for him because it showed him that it emerged from
Speaker 1: a whole cultural sensibility in the United States, and that
Speaker 1: really began his whole lifelong interest in um learning about drugs,
Speaker 1: learning about their origins, learning about their cultural origins, understanding
Speaker 1: the spiritual connotations of them. You know, the beats were
Speaker 1: so uh amazing because that's a literature in which the
Speaker 1: writers were imbued with the experiences of these substances. At
Speaker 1: the same time as they were trying to find a
Speaker 1: new form that was like jazz, they were trying to
Speaker 1: write like the jazz musicians were playing. So you have
Speaker 1: a literature that's imbued and catalyzed by the experiencing of
Speaker 1: these substances, about these substances, in which you have writing
Speaker 1: for you know, a popular audience. Really in this country
Speaker 1: for the first time about these substances. So it's it's
Speaker 1: just it's groundbreaking from all of those different aspects. Well,
Speaker 1: he's talking the book about you know, some of these
Speaker 1: early before they become famous, they're going up to the
Speaker 1: jazz clubs in Harlem and elsewhere. You talk about Lester Young,
Speaker 1: who will get to in a moment um, you know,
Speaker 1: giving Jack Carroll at his first joint um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely changed his life for sure. Yeah, yeah, it did,
Speaker 1: it really did. Just to go back to the jazz
Speaker 1: for a second, just talk about Lester Young nicknamed Praz
Speaker 1: you know him and the saxophone to some extent, begins
Speaker 1: to redefine jazz in the thirties and he's somebody for
Speaker 1: whom also marijuana is important in his life, although he's
Speaker 1: unfortunately caught up in other drugs, notably alcohol. But I
Speaker 1: think at one point you say he may have been
Speaker 1: the most influential of all jazz musicians, which surprised me
Speaker 1: a bit. But explain why it was his style that
Speaker 1: was really so influential as well as his unique musicianship.
Speaker 1: He was such a singular personality. Um, you know his background,
Speaker 1: he you know, he came from this band, that um,
Speaker 1: this musical family, and he was very sensitive and he
Speaker 1: was very devastated by his experiences of the racism of
Speaker 1: that time. He also was really really in love with weed.
Speaker 1: What it did for Prez was it pulled him into
Speaker 1: himself and it allowed him to create his own kind
Speaker 1: of insulated musical world in which he kind of became
Speaker 1: this very singular personality. So that was his impact. He
Speaker 1: drew people into that, like that little bubble that he
Speaker 1: wove around himself, and in that bubble was his incredible,
Speaker 1: fertile creativity and also his sensibility, his unique sensibility. I mean,
Speaker 1: he really was the inventor of pool as it came
Speaker 1: to be known in the thirties and forties and fifties.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can almost trace it back to this
Speaker 1: one individual in his demeanor, in how he walked and
Speaker 1: how he talked, his invention of of jive, his use
Speaker 1: of these words that became um, you know, like staples
Speaker 1: in the vernacular. I mean, he was so unbelievably inventive
Speaker 1: in every possible way. We'll be talking more after we
Speaker 1: hear this ad. You mentioned some of the expressions that
Speaker 1: he probably coined. I got it. Made I got eyes
Speaker 1: for that copycat. Even the Big Apple is the nickname
Speaker 1: from New York, the word crib for one's home, the
Speaker 1: word bread for money, and would even end sentences of
Speaker 1: conversations by saying you dig I mean, and then of
Speaker 1: course the expression cool as in that's cool man. So
Speaker 1: once again, as with Louie Armstrong, whether they originated or popularized,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's a formative influence in American culture,
Speaker 1: not just through their music, but even through their own
Speaker 1: way of talking, of speaking of creating new language. And
Speaker 1: also it's interesting to consider, uh, you know, the impact
Speaker 1: of the weed on his musical style because it was
Speaker 1: so emblematic really of his personality. He was kind of
Speaker 1: like very very laid back in his tone. It was
Speaker 1: a very sweet tone, and he would just kind of
Speaker 1: like lay back and then all of a sudden, just
Speaker 1: in the most tasteful way, just completely take over the
Speaker 1: music and just elevate it to this very very unique place.
Speaker 1: And that was how people kind of saw him. He
Speaker 1: was kind of a very laid back guy. He was
Speaker 1: very shy. He was like a laggard, you know, he
Speaker 1: was just kind of like hang there and then like
Speaker 1: draw you in and then just take you somewhere. And
Speaker 1: his relationship with Billie Holiday was one of them, you know,
Speaker 1: really signature creative relationships of that entire era in the music.
Speaker 1: Well we'll get into Billie Holliday shortly, but once again
Speaker 1: to jump forward into the beat, I mean for Alan Ginsberg.
Speaker 1: Ginsburg you say was strongly influenced by Lester Young, and
Speaker 1: notably I think his songs I got rid them Let's
Speaker 1: hear a little clip and Lester leaps in Let's hear
Speaker 1: a clip. So talk about that connection, Martin, between Lester
Speaker 1: Young and his influence on Alan Ginsberg. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Carolac was the real jazz aficionado of the early beats,
Speaker 1: and he um, of course, who was turned on by
Speaker 1: Lester Young. You know, he started going to the jazz
Speaker 1: clubs and he's the first one to write about jazz
Speaker 1: of of those guys. And you know, he and Allen
Speaker 1: were very close and they would listen to the music together,
Speaker 1: and Caro Wac was the first one who became imbued
Speaker 1: with this notion of writing the same way that the
Speaker 1: jazz musicians played. He would listen to Charlie Parker and
Speaker 1: he would listen to Lester young, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that he really began to see was that they
Speaker 1: played in these long lines, these kind of like long
Speaker 1: unbroken lines in which one idea would like initiate like
Speaker 1: unleash another idea, and then another idea and then another idea,
Speaker 1: in this kind of endless progression of unfolding of like
Speaker 1: ideas and melodies and with and there would be breaks,
Speaker 1: and then the breaks would be used creatively to kind
Speaker 1: of contextualize something else. And you know, Carolac would like
Speaker 1: get stoned and he would listen to the jazz and
Speaker 1: then he would like to think about how he could, um,
Speaker 1: you know, right in the same way. So some of
Speaker 1: his earliest attempts of writing um were um you know,
Speaker 1: like long improvisations. Really, I mean his whole creation of
Speaker 1: the manuscript for On the Road, for example, which he
Speaker 1: did like putting this giant roll of paper and putting
Speaker 1: it in a typewriter and just sitting down and like
Speaker 1: literally like twenty three days straight just like churning out
Speaker 1: this manuscript which became this like incredible novel called On
Speaker 1: the Road. Alan in his development in his poetics, was
Speaker 1: always looking at Caro Wac and going wow, wow, Wow,
Speaker 1: I wonder if I can do that with my poetry.
Speaker 1: And when he sat down, Uh, he was living in
Speaker 1: North Beach at the time, in San Francisco, and he,
Speaker 1: you know, he sat down to write how. Carol wac
Speaker 1: had been living in Mexico at that time and he
Speaker 1: had created this this long poem called Mexico City Blues
Speaker 1: and he sent it to Alan, and Alan, you know,
Speaker 1: started writing How, trying to do it along that kind
Speaker 1: of like long saxophone line, and that's the entire first
Speaker 1: movement of How is written exactly. It was almost like
Speaker 1: he was trying to channel Lester young Um, like sitting
Speaker 1: down and blowing. So the whole first movement of How
Speaker 1: is like you know, him just like blowing on a saxophone. Really,
Speaker 1: you know, this brings us to the next great revolutionary
Speaker 1: and jazz, Charlie Parker and be back Jazz and Charlie
Speaker 1: Parker as somebody who's using drugs from the time he's
Speaker 1: in his young teens, Charlie Parker, a man of fantastic appetites,
Speaker 1: Charlie Parker who just keeps using more and more drugs
Speaker 1: and keeps getting more and more creative in his music
Speaker 1: until a breaking point comes, so, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of your book obviously, the title is Bebop Apocalypse Charlie
Speaker 1: Parker was Mr Bibop. Tell us about Charlie Parker and
Speaker 1: about the relationship between drugs and his music. Well, he
Speaker 1: was unique because he was so um musically driven and
Speaker 1: ambitious from a very young age, and also from a
Speaker 1: very young age he was just as driven to use
Speaker 1: and abuse pretty much everything he could get his hands on.
Speaker 1: And he was a genius musician, you know, addicted for
Speaker 1: the first time as a teenager, even before he left
Speaker 1: Kansas City to you know, hop the freight train that
Speaker 1: would bring him to Chicago and then eventually to New
Speaker 1: York and then eventually to fame. We talked extensively about
Speaker 1: Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong, lifelong user of marijuana, who set
Speaker 1: pretty strong boundaries about things that he would do and
Speaker 1: things that he wouldn't do. He, for example, did not
Speaker 1: like alcohol, and he wouldn't like cross that boundary into
Speaker 1: the use of alcohol. He really really did not like
Speaker 1: hard drugs and he never crossed that boundary into hard drugs.
Speaker 1: Charlie Parker Bird, as he would of course become famously known,
Speaker 1: He not only had no boundaries about music, but he
Speaker 1: had no boundary about his use of substances. Not only
Speaker 1: would he use everything, but he would make an ethos
Speaker 1: of it. And he was so brilliant musically that that
Speaker 1: boundaryless ethos about his substances became inextricable from his you know,
Speaker 1: just boundary breaking musicianship and genius. So that's what set
Speaker 1: those two geniuses apart from each other in terms of
Speaker 1: their relationship to substances. Um. That's the best way I
Speaker 1: could describe it. Yeah, you know, at one point you
Speaker 1: describe there's a song, um, and let's hear a clip
Speaker 1: from it, Loverman. This song became part of the legend
Speaker 1: of his genius of Charlie Parker say something about Loverman.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's so interesting because he became an
Speaker 1: addict as a teenager, and then when he got really
Speaker 1: musically ambitious, he decided that he was going to get clean.
Speaker 1: So when he jumped that freight trade out of the
Speaker 1: Kansas City freight yard and you know, to to begin
Speaker 1: his musical Hobysey Um, he kind of understood that he
Speaker 1: needed all of his discipline and all of his energy
Speaker 1: towards that goal and he kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: he put down, he put down narcotics at that point,
Speaker 1: and then he came to New York and um, you know,
Speaker 1: he hooked up with the small inner nucleus you know
Speaker 1: that would form the Seminole Bebop group. You know that
Speaker 1: all played in Mittens in the you know, the early
Speaker 1: to mid nineteen forties, and it was a small group
Speaker 1: of guys and Mintens was the Jazz Club. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was a small subterranean in setting up at
Speaker 1: Harlem and all the like the musicians who were interested
Speaker 1: in exploring this new form of jazz would kind of
Speaker 1: gather there after their gigs, and Bird was one, and
Speaker 1: Dizzy Gillespie was another, Kenny Clark, Max Roach on drums,
Speaker 1: and Felonious Monk, you know, the great pianist. He was
Speaker 1: a part of that group. He really became the spark plug,
Speaker 1: like the creative spark plug of that new form of
Speaker 1: the music. And just as that was happening, he fell
Speaker 1: back into his use of narcotics and got really really
Speaker 1: strung out, strung out in a way that he had
Speaker 1: never been strung out before. So like right at the
Speaker 1: peak of that he was playing in a group with Dizzy,
Speaker 1: and Dizzy decided that he was going to take his
Speaker 1: band out to the West Coast to showcase the music
Speaker 1: the first time at a place called Billy Burghs. And
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. Um. You know, all the
Speaker 1: people who were in the know about jazz out there.
Speaker 1: They they showed up because the buzz was about this
Speaker 1: new form and and this guy Bird. And so he
Speaker 1: got to Los Angeles. It was a new place for him.
Speaker 1: He didn't know where to cop and he immediately got
Speaker 1: in trouble and he became extremely unreliable because he was
Speaker 1: always out scouring the town um looking for a fix.
Speaker 1: And that was when Dizzy decided, okay, you know this
Speaker 1: is not working. He dropped him from the group, brought
Speaker 1: the rest of the group back to New York and
Speaker 1: Bird was left out there in Los Angeles, high and dry,
Speaker 1: badly strung out, and he ended up um like living
Speaker 1: with the trumpet player Howard McGhee um. And it was
Speaker 1: McGhee who got Bird a deal with this guy Ross
Speaker 1: Russell to go in and have this recording session. And
Speaker 1: when he went in to record these songs, he was
Speaker 1: very very very badly strung out and One of the
Speaker 1: songs that he recorded in that session was Loverman, which
Speaker 1: had been a billy holiday song, and he played it
Speaker 1: and he just like really really on the edge, and
Speaker 1: he just he did what he what he always did.
Speaker 1: He just went for it and the track was recorded
Speaker 1: and that was when Bird had his breakdown. You know,
Speaker 1: he goes back to the hotel. He and he ended
Speaker 1: up um in Camarillo in the uh the mental institution there.
Speaker 1: And when he got out, that was when the track
Speaker 1: was released, and he came back to New York and
Speaker 1: you know, he was healthy again and he formed this
Speaker 1: group Miles Davis was a part of then, even I
Speaker 1: mean he's just about barely can get it together. But
Speaker 1: it turns out to be one of his great recordings. Well,
Speaker 1: he never liked it himself. He understood, you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of shape that he was in it when he
Speaker 1: recorded it. But the impact that it had on his
Speaker 1: musical community was powerful because by then everyone kind of
Speaker 1: knew about his lifestyle. And he came, you know out,
Speaker 1: and he went back to New York and played at
Speaker 1: the Royal Roost and his band just tore it up.
Speaker 1: He was like at the top of his game and
Speaker 1: that's when really his legend began. And so this track
Speaker 1: comes out and they hear this man who now everybody
Speaker 1: knows had been a junk and is a junkie. And
Speaker 1: what they hear is this statement of this artist like
Speaker 1: essentially playing his pain. And they were terrible, terribly, terribly
Speaker 1: moved by it, just by the pathos of it and
Speaker 1: by his commitment to his art, and somehow the fact
Speaker 1: that he was a dope feed um, you know, it
Speaker 1: just created this aura of this kind of dark romanticism.
Speaker 1: Really at one point might use his phrase, I don't
Speaker 1: know you're quoting somebody else, but saying that with the heroine,
Speaker 1: I mean, and everything else that was going on. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just heroin, because Charlie Parker many others, they were
Speaker 1: using a lot of stuff. They were Sometimes there was
Speaker 1: a lot of alcohol. Sometimes alcohol was a dominant drug.
Speaker 1: It was wed, of course, but they're also bends, a dream.
Speaker 1: There might have been other stuff, but in some level
Speaker 1: they were playing their lifestyle. I think you put it
Speaker 1: that way for better or works, Uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: describe another moment to I think it's Norman Grants, the
Speaker 1: jazz producer is putting on jazz at the Philharmonic, and
Speaker 1: Charlie Parker is supposed to be there, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: he's trying to score. Finally shows up and I think
Speaker 1: the song was sweet Georgia Brown. Yeah, yeah, what happened there? Well,
Speaker 1: he just like you know, he comes on stage and
Speaker 1: and blows everybody away. Let's hear a clip of that.
Speaker 1: So that and the rest of it blew people away
Speaker 1: that evening, huh, and he was totally high as it,
Speaker 1: but pulling it together. Well. The thing that people don't
Speaker 1: really get about, um, you know, Heroin is that these
Speaker 1: guys were not shooting dope to get high and go
Speaker 1: on stage and play. Um. You know, if you shot dope,
Speaker 1: you would go on the nod. Um. You know, that's
Speaker 1: not really where they wanted to be when they played.
Speaker 1: What Heroin did was it made them what they called straight,
Speaker 1: they called it getting straight. It kind of stabilized them really, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's that's one of the misconceptions that you know,
Speaker 1: people have about heroin and jazz is that, you know,
Speaker 1: when these guys were addicted, you know, they would shoot
Speaker 1: dope and like you know, get on the stand and
Speaker 1: like be high out of their minds. And play. No,
Speaker 1: that's not what was going on. What was going on
Speaker 1: was that this drug, which had created this metabolic need
Speaker 1: for it um, was being satisfied and and so that's
Speaker 1: what would allow them, you know, the kind of stability
Speaker 1: be anchored, you know, back again in their music, in
Speaker 1: their creativity. You remind me, Martin, of years ago I
Speaker 1: read the biography of Stan Getz, who was the great
Speaker 1: um White jazz saxophonist, and what it described it there
Speaker 1: was his addiction to two drugs, heroin and alcohol. But
Speaker 1: its story, I told, was that alcohol was the drug
Speaker 1: that turned him into an asshole, and that screwed up
Speaker 1: his playing and messed up everything you know in his life.
Speaker 1: That with heroin, it wasn't the drug itself. It was
Speaker 1: the need to score, to find a place to score,
Speaker 1: to get the money together, to find a place to use,
Speaker 1: to do all that and then get to his gig
Speaker 1: in time. And it was to some extent, not the drug,
Speaker 1: but the illegality of it, the criminality of it um,
Speaker 1: which might have been in some respect it's part of
Speaker 1: the enticement for a whole bunch of rebellious personalities who
Speaker 1: were pioneers in jazz. But that was also the destructive,
Speaker 1: harmful element of it. And I think what you described
Speaker 1: by Charlie Parker as well, right, Um, another point you described,
Speaker 1: there's another protege of Charlie Parker, Jackie McLean, who I
Speaker 1: think was one of your key sources because he was
Speaker 1: still alive and available when you write in his book,
Speaker 1: and I think you quote Jackie McLean saying, you know,
Speaker 1: Harold was kind of a working drug for Yeah, for
Speaker 1: a lot of them, it was. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very complex, um when you think about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: these were brilliant musicians, highly evolved, highly sensitive people devoted
Speaker 1: to this art form, devoted to like really pushing it,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them believe that, you know, it
Speaker 1: had not only creative capacity but socio cultural racial ability
Speaker 1: to bring people together. And yet the irony was that
Speaker 1: it was making them vulnerable to prosecution and the element
Speaker 1: of racism. You know, of course not all of the
Speaker 1: musicians were African American, you know, but um, a lot
Speaker 1: of them were. And they're the whole role that Heroin
Speaker 1: played in as an anodyne to the racism of that time,
Speaker 1: and and what these people had to endure is also
Speaker 1: a significant factor, I believe. So they were all very
Speaker 1: different people having different experiences. And in Jackie's case, who's
Speaker 1: a wonderful man, by the way, it took him twenty
Speaker 1: five years to get clean and he would never have
Speaker 1: been able to do it without method on and that
Speaker 1: that was his bridge to you know, getting clean from
Speaker 1: heroin was through use of in another opiate. So it
Speaker 1: was a very complicated thing. I just to give the
Speaker 1: audience here a sense of how pervasive this was, I mean,
Speaker 1: it really happens. I think the heyday of Heron and
Speaker 1: jazz is really from nineteen forty seven to nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: give or take a few years here or there. But
Speaker 1: at one point, one of the famous jazz critics that entoff,
Speaker 1: he goes to the Newport Jazz Festival of nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: and he surveys over four hundred jazz musicians from New
Speaker 1: York City and asked them about their drug use and
Speaker 1: with marijuana, he finds, according to people who self reporting,
Speaker 1: eighty two percent say they've tried marijuana, fifty four percent
Speaker 1: say they've used that occasionally, twenty three percent say they
Speaker 1: do so regularly. With heroin, fifty three percent said they
Speaker 1: tried at twenty four percent say they used it occasionally,
Speaker 1: in sixteen percent say they use it regularly. And separately,
Speaker 1: there was another jazz historian, Lincoln Collier, who claimed he
Speaker 1: thought that up to seventy five percent of all jazz
Speaker 1: musicians used heroin during the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: So this is a period when heroin was becoming a
Speaker 1: little more prominent in the black community. And Claude Brown
Speaker 1: and his famous Bookman Child in a Promised Land writes
Speaker 1: about what happens in the late forties and the fifties
Speaker 1: where heroin does get take off, but the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the culture is not using it. So this really
Speaker 1: is a subculture of jazz greats and jazz great wannabes
Speaker 1: who are also using heroin. And of course many people
Speaker 1: put the blame on Charlie Parker about how many musicians
Speaker 1: would listen to Charlie Parker play in a way that
Speaker 1: nobody had ever played before, and it seemed almost impossible.
Speaker 1: And you know, oh, it must be because he shooting heroin.
Speaker 1: And if I become a Heroin user, I can be
Speaker 1: more like my hero, Charlie Parker, and maybe I can
Speaker 1: play more like Ken. I mean, there's some truth to that,
Speaker 1: I guess Martin writes that people you know kind of
Speaker 1: either let down their guard visa the heroin or even
Speaker 1: went into it. Because Charlie Parker was the infamous heroin
Speaker 1: using jazz great yes, UM, and he recognized that and
Speaker 1: he was deeply unhappy about it. Bird was um a
Speaker 1: very complex uh human being. UM. And you know that's
Speaker 1: one of the challenges of you know, writing about people
Speaker 1: like Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday, these mythic figures who
Speaker 1: um you know, at the same time became addicts and
Speaker 1: their myths essentially um become their stories, you know. And
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, this is like happening on stage, but
Speaker 1: the backdrop is something that's happening, you know, to an
Speaker 1: entire community really up there in Arlem. You know, you
Speaker 1: mentioned Claude brown Um writing about that manchild and Promised Land.
Speaker 1: I had the honor of interviewing Claude brown Um for
Speaker 1: my books before he passed away. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that really um comes across is how these individuals, um,
Speaker 1: these artists became really really prominent and heroes really to
Speaker 1: the community up there, and UM, you know, their lifestyles
Speaker 1: became inextricable from their accomplishments as as artists. So really
Speaker 1: what you have for the first time is a group
Speaker 1: of individuals who become role models for UM, a phenomenon
Speaker 1: of heroin use in a community at large, UM, a
Speaker 1: community that finds itself in the cross hairs really of
Speaker 1: forces in which you know, the lives of these musicians
Speaker 1: is really just one thread really where so much else
Speaker 1: is going on, you know, about crime in public policy
Speaker 1: and racism and things like that, and that's when the
Speaker 1: whole thing becomes extremely complex and in its own way tragic.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break here and go to an ad.
Speaker 1: You also bring out something else there, which was specifically
Speaker 1: about bebop. I mean, your book is called Bebop of
Speaker 1: Popplix and Charlie Parker is a key figure in it,
Speaker 1: and you talk about bebop music to some extent um
Speaker 1: kind of intersecting with heroin. But also it's the type
Speaker 1: of music that reflects and that manifests the feeling of
Speaker 1: resentment that's so many black people feel, especially after World
Speaker 1: War Two. Of people had served in the army in
Speaker 1: World War Two, served in the military, coming back and
Speaker 1: then being thrown back into Jim Crow America, and even
Speaker 1: the racism in the in the Northern States. And then
Speaker 1: you have, of course the great evil you know, human
Speaker 1: being throughout all this period, Harry Anslinger, who becomes the
Speaker 1: founding director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in thirty
Speaker 1: and rules that agency for thirty two years until nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, who is by all accounts a racist, right um,
Speaker 1: and who somebody is initially focused on heroin, but by
Speaker 1: the mid thirties begins to focus on marijuana, the demon drug,
Speaker 1: and the era of reefer madness and really conflating you know,
Speaker 1: the whole fear of white women having sex with black
Speaker 1: men in the role of drugs and music and all
Speaker 1: of that. So say more about bebop and racism and
Speaker 1: heroin and net interweaving of those elements with the revolution
Speaker 1: within the jazz community. Um, it was a revolutionary kind
Speaker 1: of music. I mean, it evolved from swing, but it
Speaker 1: turned swing on its head really and there were people
Speaker 1: who hated it as a result of it, jazz critics
Speaker 1: and jazz musicians. So the music itself was considered to
Speaker 1: be um subversive, and so on top of that you
Speaker 1: have it being played by these individuals who were very
Speaker 1: very aware of that and also aware of the fact that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, they were African Americans and that the music
Speaker 1: was to them. They saw it as a vehicle to
Speaker 1: express um you know. There they're absolute awareness of and
Speaker 1: condemnation of the racist society that they lived in. A
Speaker 1: lot of the people who are who are jazz lovers
Speaker 1: of that time were very very sympatico with that entire sensibility,
Speaker 1: and Slinger from the very beginning understood that this was
Speaker 1: a subversive culture socially and raciully. I mean when he
Speaker 1: decided to, um, you know, conduct the entire anti marijuana crusade,
Speaker 1: he was compiling a list of jazz musicians and his
Speaker 1: idea was that with the marijuana law of seven, he
Speaker 1: was going to go after all of these jazz musicians
Speaker 1: and basically, you know, further into isn't so from the
Speaker 1: very beginning there was this sort of adversarial relationship between
Speaker 1: the jazz community and and Harry Innslinger and the Federal
Speaker 1: Beeau of Narcotics. In a way, that's where the culture
Speaker 1: war over drug use in this country really really begins.
Speaker 1: So it's couched in this racism. From the very very beginning,
Speaker 1: you have, you know, this phenomenon of you know, what's
Speaker 1: called the Great Harlem heroin Epidemic. You know, some people
Speaker 1: have a problem with the use of the word epidemic,
Speaker 1: but it's used to express the fact that you have,
Speaker 1: for the first time, you know, this community which is
Speaker 1: really really suffering from addiction, heroin addiction on a level
Speaker 1: that's never really been experienced before in American society. So
Speaker 1: while you have that happening, you have these laws being
Speaker 1: put into effect so that, um, people who are addicted,
Speaker 1: there's only one thing that can happen to them, you know,
Speaker 1: them to be thrown into prison and buried, you know,
Speaker 1: for decades. At the same time, you have what is
Speaker 1: really the first popular movement to try to medicalized, to
Speaker 1: try to take heroin addiction and bring it back to
Speaker 1: the purview of you know, people in the medical community. Durminding,
Speaker 1: I should say, Olso Martino, at the beginning of this thing,
Speaker 1: I wanted to actually, for the first time I ever
Speaker 1: dedicate an episode of Psychoactive to somebody, and that person
Speaker 1: is doctor Professor John P. Morgan. As professor at City College,
Speaker 1: he taught the mixed undergraduate graduate medical program there. But
Speaker 1: he was one of the America's great drug experts, the
Speaker 1: one who coined the term opio phobia. He was probably
Speaker 1: the most frequent expert business on drug cases for the
Speaker 1: defense in America. But he was also an extraordinary ethno
Speaker 1: musicologist who had a library of thousands of songs and
Speaker 1: and also somebody who had like audiographic memory, where he
Speaker 1: actually had in his head the lyrics of of thousands
Speaker 1: of songs that had drug references in that. He passed
Speaker 1: away at a fairly young age, But I would like
Speaker 1: to dedicate this episode to him. And I know you
Speaker 1: mentioned him in your book you acknowledge his role in
Speaker 1: helping inform you as you were writing about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was an amazing man. I mean, I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful to you, by the way, for when
Speaker 1: I really really started delving into the whole um subject
Speaker 1: of drug culture. You know that ended up in you know,
Speaker 1: my two book books and the various documentary and television surians.
Speaker 1: I've done it of opening up that whole network of
Speaker 1: those people who had a huge impact on me, and
Speaker 1: he was certainly one of them. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: a great lover of jazz, and he was incredibly knowledgeable
Speaker 1: about it, and at the same time that he was
Speaker 1: like so obviously incredibly knowledgeable about drugs from you know,
Speaker 1: from a scholarly and medical point of view, at the
Speaker 1: same time that he was aware of, you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of cultural dimensions of it. And I think that's
Speaker 1: really appropriate that you would dedicate this, hyeh, this episode
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, okay, well to John to Dr John P. Morrigan.
Speaker 1: So Martin, you know, just going back, so we get
Speaker 1: into the fifties and Miles Davis who becomes a chief
Speaker 1: figure it has his been John Coltrane, and John Coltrane,
Speaker 1: who really, of all the as great is the one
Speaker 1: that has the most personal impact on me. But I
Speaker 1: noticed in writing you know, Coltrane goes through this terrible
Speaker 1: period of heroin and alcohol really messing him up in
Speaker 1: in a in a in a significant way, and he
Speaker 1: then finally goes through this experience that he describes as
Speaker 1: a spiritual awakening where he puts it all behind him,
Speaker 1: and that unleash is you know, one of the most
Speaker 1: extraordinarily creative periods in the history of all of jazz.
Speaker 1: But I noticed in reading about this that you wrote
Speaker 1: about John Coltrane's transformation, and there was something personal in it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you specifically said in the book,
Speaker 1: but I remember when you came to see me, you said, Ethan,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm somebody who's had my struggles with drugs
Speaker 1: and I had to, you know, put them behind me.
Speaker 1: But I'm also somebody who gets it about all the
Speaker 1: positive ways that drugs play in life. So what to
Speaker 1: just explain a little more from a personal side, how
Speaker 1: the story of John coltraneans um spiritual awakening as he
Speaker 1: comes leaves his heroin addiction and alcohol adiction behind him.
Speaker 1: What it meant to you? Well, I mean I come
Speaker 1: to this subject as someone who pretty much crashed and
Speaker 1: burned on drugs and had to, you know, get clean
Speaker 1: and sober at the age of thirty seven. And initially
Speaker 1: my whole interest in this subject became about trying to
Speaker 1: understand its impact on me and trying to sort it
Speaker 1: all out. And then I began to sort of think about, Okay,
Speaker 1: what was its impact on my generation? And then I
Speaker 1: began to think about, well, what was its impact on
Speaker 1: my country? And in my experience of recovery, of the
Speaker 1: recovery culture. You know, I was kind of thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know what Bill Wilson had to say, you know,
Speaker 1: the founder of alcoholics Anonymous, and his uh correspondence with
Speaker 1: the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Young, in which they began
Speaker 1: to postulate about how what they call the spiritual awakening
Speaker 1: could transform the landscape of the addict and the alcoholic,
Speaker 1: and how that was, as they saw it, like the
Speaker 1: most beneficial, the most advantageous. That would kind of like
Speaker 1: give the addict and the alcoholic the best shot at,
Speaker 1: you know, living a different life that was not consumed
Speaker 1: by the destructive impact of these things, um by addiction
Speaker 1: and all the kind of side effects of being addicted
Speaker 1: to whatever it was that you can be addicted to.
Speaker 1: M So, you know, when I really began to um
Speaker 1: look at the transits of these different musicians through addiction,
Speaker 1: what really really leapt out at me was Coltrane's experience
Speaker 1: and him directly referring to what happened to him to
Speaker 1: him leaving Heroin behind as a spiritual awakening, Because what
Speaker 1: happened to Coltrane with it, he had tried numerous times
Speaker 1: to kick and he couldn't do it, But finally he
Speaker 1: reached the bottom, and he went to, you know, sequester
Speaker 1: himself away, and he basically shut himself up in a
Speaker 1: room for a couple of weeks, and he told people,
Speaker 1: you know, only just bring me water. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to stay in this room, and what's ever
Speaker 1: going to happen to me is going to happen to me.
Speaker 1: And at some point during the experience, and when he
Speaker 1: was suffering from the agony, the physical agony of withdrawal
Speaker 1: from Heroin, of how he called out, he reached out
Speaker 1: to a higher power of his understanding and ask for
Speaker 1: help and asked for this terrible experience to be lifted
Speaker 1: to be removed from him. And he he writes about it,
Speaker 1: and he basically says that he experienced the piece a
Speaker 1: kind of inner peace, and also at the same time,
Speaker 1: he asked his higher power to be able to use
Speaker 1: his gift, to use his art in a way that
Speaker 1: would spiritually uplift people. And that was his entire approach
Speaker 1: to his art as he left Heroine behind. So that
Speaker 1: when you were listening two that wonderful track, that amazing
Speaker 1: his version of My Favorite Things in which he picks
Speaker 1: up the soprano saxophone in essence what you were hearing
Speaker 1: is that love, that expression of that love, of that
Speaker 1: awakening that he was experienced as a result of that.
Speaker 1: And it's really amazing because, I mean, Cultrane's music is
Speaker 1: actually used in you know, the numerous churches, you know,
Speaker 1: the same way that the music of both and you
Speaker 1: know St. Matthew's Passion would would be used in a church.
Speaker 1: And it's for a reason. It's because that music is
Speaker 1: just completely about his relationship with his church in San
Speaker 1: Francisco still in existence. So it's uh, you know, in fact,
Speaker 1: it's funny disc of jazz, um and drugs without discuss
Speaker 1: a jazz musician who in the nineteen fifties is described
Speaker 1: as quote unquote the most famous drug addict in America
Speaker 1: UM and who was simultaneously one of the perhaps the
Speaker 1: greatest jazz vocalist in American history and global history. And
Speaker 1: that's Billie Holiday. I mean, somebody who liked Charlie Parker
Speaker 1: struggles with all sorts of drugs and although heroines, you know,
Speaker 1: as a UM, somebody for whom the drugs seemed to
Speaker 1: have UM I think probably thinks and speaks politically about
Speaker 1: the war on drugs. So you have a lot about
Speaker 1: Billie Holiday in your in your books, say something about
Speaker 1: her that stands out? Oh God, where did begin with
Speaker 1: Lady Day, someone whose life was shrouded in myth in
Speaker 1: the very beginning? Well, how about how about let's just
Speaker 1: hear a ve clipped from her one of the most
Speaker 1: famous songs, Strange Fruit, so the cheese that's strange true,
Speaker 1: blot on leaves and let it. Strange Fruit was a
Speaker 1: song that Billy began performing at Cafe Society in the
Speaker 1: late dirties when she came down from Harlem to like
Speaker 1: really become just an absolute phenomenon um, you know, in
Speaker 1: the first like really important downtown inter racial jazz club.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm sure you know that it's a
Speaker 1: song about lynching a guy by the name of a Mire.
Speaker 1: Paul wrote the lyrics and her musical director there at
Speaker 1: Cafe Society gave it to her when she began performing it.
Speaker 1: And the thing about Billie Holiday that was so unique
Speaker 1: was here with someone who just instinctively understood how to
Speaker 1: take a composition and translate it, transform it, express it
Speaker 1: um as a deeply personal, deeply moving uh piece of
Speaker 1: art and have that impact on the also had an
Speaker 1: impact Onstlinger. I think it's the first time he really
Speaker 1: becomes aware of Billie Holiday, because that, you know, is uh.
Speaker 1: It's one of the really maybe the one of the earliest,
Speaker 1: if not the first, really great protests song against racial injustice. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it was the first time that someone had used UM
Speaker 1: an art form, really a popular art form, to make
Speaker 1: a statement about lynching and racism in America. It was transformative, really,
Speaker 1: and yes it was a bold political statement. Her record
Speaker 1: label at the time would not release it. She had
Speaker 1: to find another record label to release it. And and yes,
Speaker 1: that was what brought her on the radar screen of
Speaker 1: Harry Anslinger, you know, of the FBI, of the New
Speaker 1: York Police Department, and of course in her case, it
Speaker 1: would make her vulnerable to UM prosecution because of the
Speaker 1: fact of her relationship to drugs, specifically her heroin addiction.
Speaker 1: So from the very beginning from on, she had to
Speaker 1: do walk this type brobe really between her public legend
Speaker 1: and you know, these forces that we're going to use
Speaker 1: that to try to bring her. You know, from very
Speaker 1: early on, she decided that one of the ways she
Speaker 1: was going to deal with this very difficult situation, this
Speaker 1: very dangerous situation where she was just going to talk
Speaker 1: about it, and she was really one of the first
Speaker 1: people to do that. He she was busted three times,
Speaker 1: you know, and each time basically she just like you know,
Speaker 1: talked about it. And one of the things she talked
Speaker 1: about was what bullshit it was, you know, the fact that, um,
Speaker 1: she was being hounded by the police. She was aware
Speaker 1: of the fact that she was a public figure, She
Speaker 1: was aware of the fact that she had these problems
Speaker 1: with addiction. She was aware of the fact that people
Speaker 1: were going to listen to what she said about it,
Speaker 1: and so that's what she did, and she talked about
Speaker 1: how she believed that it was more of a medical
Speaker 1: problem than a criminal justice problem, and that was anathema
Speaker 1: to what Harry Anslinger wanted to put across to him.
Speaker 1: It was all about, you know, these people were weak,
Speaker 1: they were depraved, they were evil, they needed to be
Speaker 1: locked up. And anyone who expressed the point of view
Speaker 1: that was sympathetic to the idea that these people they
Speaker 1: needed to be cared for. They weren't even allowing them
Speaker 1: in hospitals. It was illegal to allow a drug addict
Speaker 1: in Harlem to be admitted to a hospital. Think about
Speaker 1: that until Billie Holiday in n died in a hospital
Speaker 1: on Harlem. But there are these moments. Billy Holliday had
Speaker 1: a really close friend, um. She was a dancer and
Speaker 1: a singer and an actress. Her name was Marie Bryant,
Speaker 1: and she said something really interesting. She said, people like
Speaker 1: Billy Holiday and Lester Young, they were real and that reality,
Speaker 1: just how real they were, is what made them so vulnerable.
Speaker 1: You know, for people like that who were so just
Speaker 1: like so so vulnerable, it just made it very very
Speaker 1: hard for them. You know. There's a wonderful image that
Speaker 1: Bono puts forth about Billie Holiday in his song Angel
Speaker 1: of Harlem, which I think also kind of gets to
Speaker 1: that when he sings Lady Day had Diamond Eyed she
Speaker 1: sees the truth behind the lies, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think that's what Marie Bryant was talking. Well, Mark, let
Speaker 1: me ask you this, you know, because you do. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously one key part of the election with race,
Speaker 1: and we've been talking about, you know, the ways in
Speaker 1: which racism, uh, you know, it was one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why so many of these musicians, you know, found
Speaker 1: drugs as a way of kind of insulating that from
Speaker 1: that or defying it, or whatever it might be. I mean,
Speaker 1: the book's worth reading because you get so much more
Speaker 1: deeply and nuanced about so much of this. But you know,
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is it was also true
Speaker 1: of the white jazz musicians. I mean, if I think
Speaker 1: of the famous you know, white white jazz saxophonist, when
Speaker 1: you think about not just Stan Gets, but Jerry Mulligan
Speaker 1: perhaps the greatest of all. You know, baritone saxophonist Art Pepper,
Speaker 1: you know the vocalist Chet Baker. You think about the
Speaker 1: singer Anita oh Day, you think about Zoots Sims and
Speaker 1: Alcohon and Red Rodney, even Drift, I'd think, because there's
Speaker 1: more of a theme around race there. But just say
Speaker 1: a little more about that. That that experience of the
Speaker 1: white jazz musicians and all of this, well you they
Speaker 1: were just as prone and just as vulnerable to it.
Speaker 1: You know, all of the same forces culturally and musically
Speaker 1: were at work on them. And they were you know,
Speaker 1: the brothers and sisters of the black jazz musicians. I mean,
Speaker 1: they all lived in this world. They all had this
Speaker 1: experience together. Listen, addiction, it knows no race, it knows
Speaker 1: no socio economic level. I mean, it's just it's human.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is fundamentally a human experience. It's not racial,
Speaker 1: it's not musical, it's not white. It's just fundamentally human
Speaker 1: and um, it knows no bounds. Listen. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: just white jazz musicians. I mean the white community of
Speaker 1: jazz lovers, the hitsters. You know, they were just as
Speaker 1: prone to you know, the use of the drugs and
Speaker 1: the possibility of addiction in as you know anyone who
Speaker 1: was black. So Martin, listen. I mean, I've loved our conversation.
Speaker 1: I hope for our listeners that for those you've already
Speaker 1: into jazz, you'll track down and listen to some of
Speaker 1: those songs that we play clips of and some of
Speaker 1: the other references. So Martin, thank you ever so much
Speaker 1: for joining me and my listeners on Psychoactive. Thank you
Speaker 1: and all the all the best for you and all
Speaker 1: the work that you do. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please
Speaker 1: tell your friends about it, or you can write us
Speaker 1: a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to share your own stories, comments, and ideas, then leave
Speaker 1: us a message at one eight three three seven seven
Speaker 1: nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you
Speaker 1: can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com on
Speaker 1: or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You
Speaker 1: can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures.
Speaker 1: It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Noam
Speaker 1: Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden,
Speaker 1: Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and
Speaker 1: a special thanks to a brios f, Bianca Grimshaw and
Speaker 1: Robert BB. Next week I'll be talking with the founder
Speaker 1: of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. Her name's Lynn Paltrow
Speaker 1: and she's the leading advocate at the intersection of drug policy,
Speaker 1: reform and reproductive rights. I once got a call from
Speaker 1: a drug testing representative on his way to a hospital,
Speaker 1: and he said, I'm going up to talk to this
Speaker 1: hospital and I want to convince them to use our
Speaker 1: drug test because it will help them treat pregnant women.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, it won't. It will be used
Speaker 1: to turn those women over to police or punitive civil
Speaker 1: child welfare folks and used against them. Subscribe to Cycoactive
Speaker 1: now see you don't miss it