* * *
As a preteen, I could take the A train by myself down through Manhattan, under the East River, and into Brooklyn, where I got off and caught the bus that dropped me off at Throop and Kosciusko. Manhattan was majestic, but Bed-Stuy was my bedrock. By the end of the week, I couldn’t wait to get back to Brooklyn.
I’d go with Grandma to the houses she cleaned.
I’d go with Grandpa to the public library, where he’d check out an armful of books on history and philosophy.
I’d run the streets and hang out at block parties.
I also saw sex. The boys started early. Girls started having babies at thirteen. I caught my nine-year-old buddy Tommy humping a girl by the front door of his house. After they were through, he turned to me and said, “My dick needed something to eat.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. I didn’t know anything about sex.
Years passed before I lost my innocence.
* * *
As a kid, my Afro was a big deal. It was a big part of my identity. In addition to the Jackson 5, it had been inspired by eleven-year-old singer Foster Sylvers, who had a hit record I loved. I couldn’t catch the name when it came on the radio, but I memorized the melody. One Saturday morning in Bed-Stuy, I ran over to the record store on DeKalb Avenue and sang the song for the man behind the counter. He told me it was Foster singing “Misdemeanor.” Then he showed me a publicity photo of Foster sporting a globelike coif so gigantic it practically covered his eyes. That’s when I decided I had to out-Foster Foster. Though just a kid, I was Black and proud.
* * *
At the same time, I was a multicultural kid, too, and, like my Jewish cousins, I wanted to have a bar mitzvah. Mom and Dad had no objections. That’s when I learned that yarmulkes weren’t made for Afros; I couldn’t get the thing to stay on my head! Also, as the only Black kid in Hebrew school, I felt a little out of place. The rabbis and the other kids didn’t say anything; they didn’t have to. Their looks said it all. I could almost hear them thinking, What’s this kid doing here? I didn’t stay long, and the bar mitzvah never happened.
But that didn’t keep me away from Jewish tradition. Grandma Jean and Grandpa Joe always had us over for the holidays. I remember one Hanukkah celebration at a big social hall on Long Island. My cousins and I got ahold of a bottle of Manischewitz, snuck into a corner, and finished it off. At first all was fine, and when the party was over, my folks drove me to Bed-Stuy. That’s when I started to feel funny. By the time I got to my grandparents’, I was losing it. I went upstairs with Grandma Bessie, who put me in bed with her. I tried watching The Waltons Christmas special but couldn’t focus. The room started spinning. Dizziness turned to nausea. I got up to change the channel, and before I knew it, I’d thrown up all over the television. That’s when Grandma took me downstairs to the bathroom and put me on the toilet. It was coming out of both ends. It was a mess. I was sick for hours and spent the next week in bed. I never felt worse. I have never been drunk since.
MASTER LEONARD
One summer, Mom brought me to California to visit my godmother Joan Hamilton Brooks. Aunt Joan, along with her husband, Bobby, and daughter, Heather, lived in Santa Monica. My first impression of Southern California was positive. I liked the beach. What I liked most, though, was the music I heard at the Forum.
Seeing the Jackson 5 at the Garden was life-changing, as was seeing James Brown at the Apollo. But never before had I seen anything like Earth, Wind & Fire. The spectacle was mind-blowing. The songs—“Shining Star,” “That’s the Way of the World,” “Reasons”—were monumental. The costumes were otherworldly: the band looked like alien kings from another planet. The polyrhythms, amplified by the pyrotechnics, intoxicated me. Even as a kid, I sensed that underneath the huge Egyptian symbols, the pyramids and icons, were hidden messages.
The EWF audience was more mixed than that for James Brown at the Apollo, but the funk was just as strong, the crowd just as wild. I loved watching Verdine White poppin’ his bass while levitating over the stage. Verdine’s big brother, Maurice, was the maestro. On his recordings, he seamlessly stacked multiple melodies: vocals, strings, horns, percussion, backgrounds. At the same time, his tracks never sounded choked. They breathed. How’d he do that? I’d have to figure it out. I spent years studying his techniques.
* * *
The opposite of the EWF experience were evenings spent with Mom and Dad at the sophisticated Carlyle Hotel, on the Upper East Side. Another family ritual.
On any given Saturday night, we’d take a pleasant stroll down Madison Avenue. Mom in a black cocktail dress, Dad in a dark suit, and me in a sport coat and bow tie. The Carlyle was an old-guard establishment where presidents, ambassadors, and movie stars stayed without drawing attention to themselves. To the right of the lobby was Bemelmans Bar, the walls decorated with illustrations by Ludwig Bemelmans, the man who drew the famous Madeline children’s books. Then we’d proceed to our spot in the Café Carlyle, where Mom’s friend Bobby Short held court.
It was an intimate space. The lights were dim. Women in pearls smoked Parliaments. Men in Brooks Brothers suits drank martinis. And Bobby was in a tux, complete with patent leather pumps with black satin bows, and no socks. “Now, that’s chic,” my dad noted.
Bobby called himself a saloon singer, but he was much more than that. He played piano effortlessly. His repertoire was vast. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Great American Songbook. He knew every tune Cole Porter ever wrote. He’d actually known Cole. He also knew the history behind each song—what musical or movie it was written for and who first sang it. He was pithy and witty and the kindest man alive. Because he adored Mom, he made sure we had a ringside table. A pink spotlight caught his smile. He had an aristocratic bearing. He performed with such natural grace that even a kid like me—in love with the Jackson 5, James Brown, and Earth, Wind & Fire—learned to fall in love with songs written a half century earlier.
I wasn’t crazy about the food at the Carlyle—it was too fancy and saucy—but I liked how the maître d’ and the waiters called me “Master Leonard.” After the first set, Bobby would make his rounds. The so-and-sos from Newport, the French Riviera, and the Amalfi Coast craved their audience with this extraordinary gentleman. They fawned over him as though he were the queen of England.
He’d wind up at our table, where he’d sit to catch up with the Kravitz family news. What was Mom’s next production? What story was Dad working on at NBC? Did we know that Nina Simone came by to see him last night? And what about you, little man, are you causing trouble at school or being a good boy? He’d rub my head and say he saw me studying his piano playing. He knew that I loved music. “Next set,” he said, “child, I’m goin’ play you some funky blues, so you know I ain’t no old fogey.”
And he did. Bobby belted out bawdy Bessie Smith blues. I was still too young to understand the sexual innuendos, but I felt the raw rhythm. He performed a rendition of “Romance in the Dark” where he got up from the piano, turned his back to the audience, and began to grind and hug himself as if his arms belonged to a beautiful stranger we couldn’t see. I was entranced. Bobby taught me that no matter how sophisticated the style or elegant the setting, soul is the bottom line.