Crime: The Way It's Done
Whether it's armed robbery or running a brothel, there's a right way and a wrong way.
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In fact, that's what got me into trouble this last time. This girl made a pass at my woman, my old lady, which I don't mind, but the point was she didn't know it was my old lady. Secondly she wanted to get this stripper and they were going to some stag party and they would each make a hundred or so after the party. I know what that means and one thing led to another and I guess I got kind of brutal. I told her, "You want to play pimp, I'm gonna help you," and we got into a beef and that was it. I didn't want to let her go because of what would have happened when I let her go, but I couldn't keep her either. A real switch.
Bebop
I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT dope, narcotics. Having been an addict I know something about it, one of the narcotics especially: heroin. Some people call it "the Big Boss: Horse." "Horse is Boss."
I've had several bands, been in several bands. I'm called a pretty good musician. I'm a horn player. And I have known some of the greats. Some of them were junkies, they used dope. I've seen a lot of pictures, movies, and I've read a lot of books, but I haven't read one yet that actually told about dope like dope is. I don't know, I think that all of the people that are doing the research, they never put themselves in the position that a junkie or a dope user is usually in when he is using dope, so they really don't know.
I feel very strongly about this because I don't feel that dope was the cause of me coming to prison. I don't feel that dope has caused me to do anything that I didn't want to. I don't think that dope is the controlling factor.
I've heard it said that reefer, marijuana, makes people act different or peculiar. Well, so does whiskey. If a person is gonna steal something, if he's gonna rape somebody, if he's take and beat somebody's brains out, he's gonna do that whether he has a reefer, horse, or whatever, because that's his nature. I don't feel that my nature is to kill a person, so I don't think I'd do it if I shot all the dope in the United States.
I've never seen people shoot dope and go completely crazy like they say. (I don't know about teen-agers because I've never been around them.) I know heroin makes you soothed, it gives you a soothed feeling, you want to sit still and relax. I like to get high and listen to my record player, listen to music. There's no violence in it. I enjoy sitting listening to people talk and trying to analyze what they were saying.
I like to listen to music especially. That's my business and my joy. And if I follow one horn down one time through, maybe I'll listen to one record 50 times and listen to each individual instrument. I feel that dope, as you call it, enables me to center my mind, pinpoint it in other words. I could sit up and the whole band would be playing but I could hear any individual instrument that I wanted to hear, and hear it exact without all of the other distortion.
So I'm in complete disagreement with all of these doctors and all these reports. These people don't know what they're talking about, I don't think.
I've met an awful lot of junkies. I know 'em from New York to Mexico, all through Mexico. I know fellows who steal much more and do all the crimes and they don't do nothing. Some of the worst people in the world, the sickest people I've seen in my life, were winos, drinking that fifteen-cent-a-quart wine. I've never seen junkies in that shape.
Most of the time a junkie will get up. If he has to go steal something to get that dope, he'll get up and do it. I've seen winos lay around so sick till they couldn't move. In bars in New York or by my home in Detroit, you can see them in every alley, sleeping out there. A junkie can't afford to sleep in the streets—you get chills when you get sick, and as the dope recedes your body and you need a shot you start having chills and your legs ache, your stomach turns over, you vomit, I don't know the technical term for vomit but you what we call puke your guts out. And your nose runs, your eyes run, and you can't afford to be out there, you would catch double pneumonia or something. A junkie is going to get him some money if there's any money. And there always is money.
I wouldn't sit here and say dope was detrimental to me. I will say this: Had I been a millionaire and had I accomplished in life what I wanted to—which is to become a good musician, I'm 38 now and still have a few years left—but if I had had a million dollars and a place to be left alone with it, I would prefer shooting heroin and cocaine than drinking Scotch, Black and White or Black Label, what-have-you, or smoking reefers or any of it. I prefer it to any high there is because it treats me better. I don't wake up in the morning with a hangover, I don't wake up with all the nervousness, all the hassle.
I don't know. Were I saying this to some reformer or something I would talk a whole lot different, but I'm just talking, I'm speaking my mind.
On dope, when you don't have it, you don't sleep, you can't eat, you can't do much of anything, you're a nervous wreck. It won't let you lay still. It's just like butterflies or ants or something crawling around in your stomach. Your stomach turns over and over and over and a green type mucus comes out your nose, out of your mouth. Your eyes steadily run water. Well, you're just a nervous wreck, especially if you're hooked.
Sometimes you see guys beat their heads on the walls. Well, they're just weak lilies. If you pinch 'em they'd holler. You know, some people put on a show about anything. I've seen grown men out in the street actually hungry—I think little of a man like that. If he's grown and talking and he's asking for money to go and get him something to eat, why he's no man, he's nothing. And that's the way I feel about these fellas—they holler if you stick them with a pin, they hurt.
My wife used to go to bed for a cold and I never could understand it. Weakness in people. I don't know, my dad was so strong. I guess it was the way I was raised that caused me to feel this way. But I don 't believe a person is supposed to show all of their emotions to everybody, you know.
Well, a junkie is a junkie. There is a true junkie, a person that just won't do without dope. I've known fellas that would die rather than give up dope, they'd rather be dead. It's a kick and it's pleasurable.
See, it's such a powerful thing until you never actually get completely rid of it. You hear people make these statements about "I'm completely cured, I'm this, that, and the other about dope," but to me it is the greatest high in the world.
If it was just legal, like wine. I think wine is twice as detrimental. I'm no authority, I'm going only by what I have seen. My brother is an alcoholic, the only brother I have, and I've seen him go completely blind at the wheel of his car just because of alcohol. Completely blind, driving his car 50 miles an hour! Now I've never seen a junkie do anything like that in my life, and I've been around all types of junkies—women, men, and whatever.
I know a bunch of women prostitutes, whores I call them, that are junkies. But I've never known one yet that was a junkie when she started or that she started in the business because she wanted to get some dope. They say that. But I know women that will do anything to prove that they love you, I mean women that are old women, middle-aged and on up, that have never used dope, there's nothing that they wouldn't do to prove to me right now…There's several men in this country that I could get in touch with and tell them to turn tricks all the way up here from California and bring me whatever they made and they would jump up there if I would promise them we'd be together after that. So it isn't the dope, I don't think, that makes those women get into prostitution. Most of the girls that use dope that I've talked to have used it because it was a kick. And they find that they can turn tricks and center their minds on their man and believe that it's him. You see they make-believe—as I said in the beginning—I'm able to pinpoint things much clearer, even when I smoked marijuana, it enables you to pinpoint.
When I'm playing, I stand on the bandstand, if I'm tired, I've traveled maybe 300 miles that day and I'm tired, it's the same thing over and over every night, you play the same tunes and things, so I'm just beat. It isn't a big town, there isn't a bunch of friends there, bunch a people you don't know is all, so you feel let down, you need something to give you the lift because you've got to put on a good show. And you know if you drink a bunch a that whiskey you're not going to be able to drive on that next 300 or 400 miles that same night. You'll likely have to leave right after the gig, which lets out about two, and drive on through today or maybe ten or eleven o'clock before you'll get a chance to rest. So I want something to keep me up, to keep me spry. So I get me a couple of benny tablets, I know I'll be woke then. Then I got to get something to lift me, not to get high. Juice [alcohol] will make me sluggish, I'll go to sleep. I take me a little heroin, mix it with a little cocaine, and it's such a lift.
When I hear people—get around reformers, whatever—talking that talk: "That dope really brought me down to this and it brought me down to that," well, then, I think they're just blaming their weaknesses on something else, they're just passing the buck.
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