Bertha Hope

It was right around the year 2000 that I met Bertha Hope. We briefly played together in Frank Lowe's band. She is such an accomplished musician, but this was a different musical environment for her.  I will always remember as I was fascinated to watch someone of her caliber approach this music almost like a beginner - decades of expression at her fingertips, with ears wide open for something different. 

We reconnected in March of 2022 and it had been more than 20 years. In 2018 she won In 2018 she won the National Jazz Museum in Harlem’s Legends of Jazz Award and I went to hear her perform with her quartet at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem  (they were so great!).  We got together the following afternoon in Central Park. 

Catching up in the park we were pretty loose, just talking about music and stuff, and her insight is gold. It may take a little experience to even have the capacity to glean the lessons from the wisdom from her experience - I'll admit I heard more with each listen. Indeed, even though I had heard some of these ideas before, they bear repeating. Thus the value of recording these conversations. 

The following month I recorded a call to help inform the May 2022 Cover Story for The New York City Jazz Record. That article provides an overview of her lifetime in music. 

She is the subject of a chapter in Jeremy Pelt's first volume of interviews: Griot: Examining the lives of Jazz’s Great Storytellers.  Also, Ethan Iverson does some great interviews, including one with Bertha Hope.  

2023 marks the Centennial of Berha Hope's late husband, Elmo Hope, and she will continue to celebrate his legacy with new events in 2023 and 2024 ! 

In person: March 18, 2022 in Central Park 

picking up mid-conversation ... 

Bertha Hope: That’s why the words are so important - well, I believe - the words are so important to a song. If a song has words, then they give you some shape for how you can move the music along. 

Anders Griffen: Convey that music. 

BH: Yeah. At least have that opportunity. I can’t remember which horn player it was that said, you know, learn the lyrics. If the song has lyrics, learn the lyrics. 

I was just listening to Doug and Jean [Carn(e)] the other day on the radio, I think it might have been WKCR, because their programming is far superior to WBGO. 

AG: Even without Phil Schapp, huh? 

BH: Oh, well, they still play Phil. They still have his spot. They still have his Bird… 

AG: Bird Flight. They can still play him anyway, right? 

BH: Yeah, I guess whatever they have in the library, they replay. I don’t remember what day because I wasn’t faithful to it, but I just heard him last week. 

AG: I’m still learning that you can play all the radio stations online, because I’m up in Massachusetts now. 

BH: Oh, yeah, you can do that. Where are you? Amherst? 

AG: Northampton. It will be eight years in October. It’s been a good place for my son to grow up, but I like to bring him back to town too, so he can remember. 

BH: When’s the last time he was here? 

AG: We came down last summer. 

BH: He’ll remember. Can you remember your earliest memories? 

AG: Sometimes it’s hard to tell because I know I heard certain stories. 

BH: Right. The stories get mixed up with your real memories. The earliest memory was when I was three. And it’s only one, because other things that were significant happened in my life when I was three, but I don’t remember, they told me about them. I have perfect pitch. But my parents discovered that because they had the radio on and after the radio played I went and played what I heard, which happened to be Brahms - the lullaby you sing to your kids? 

AG: Yeah 

BH: I played that and they said, oh, my god, how’d you do that? 

AG: Because you were so little 

BH: Because I was three. There was a piano in the house, and I don’t know if I had an attraction to play piano before them - my father was a singer - but, they told me that. But I have a memory of being in St. Louis when I was three and my grandfather took me to the circus. And it was an open air, coliseum type, with slats for benches where you could see the ground. And I remember having this fear that I was gonna fall through and that the lions and the tigers were gonna get me. 

AG: Oh, no 

BH: I remember that. And then, I fell asleep. And my grandfather was unbelievably distressed with me because how does a kid fall asleep at the circus with all of this?…  

(laughs)  

BH: So, I don’t know if they were so far away that they didn’t catch my attention, but I fell asleep. And I remember my grandfather coming home and telling the whole family, she fell asleep at the circus! 

(laughs) 

AG: You were out there visiting family, huh? 

BH: Yeah, we went to visit, my Mother’s family lives in St. Louis. They’re still there. And I know that trip took place when I was three because her sister had just had her first baby, and they all went to celebrate the baby sister’s first baby, so the whole family went there. And that was a special trip for us, to come all the way from California. I’m sure that wasn’t very much money… in 1939, that was right at the beginning of the war. 

AG: Your mother was an artist too, right? 

BH: Yes, she was a dancer. 

AG: I’ve read whatever interviews I could find, but some of them are hard to access because you need a subscription to this or that. 

BH: Really? 

AG: I could email you about that. 

BH: Would you? 

AG: Yeah, because some of them I couldn’t get to, but I got some information, and I got Jeremy Pelt’s book, and I think he interviewed you just three years ago. 

BH: Yeah, he interviewed me for his first Griot book. And I think the second one is out now. He said he had 45 musicians that he interviewed, and they were going to be 15, 15, and 15. The first book is black, and the second cover is red, so I’m assuming the third one is going to be green. I was delighted that he put three women, I think, in that book. Terri Lyne Carrington was one, I can’t remember the other one was besides me, but I enjoyed that he did include women in the narrative. I mean, it’s already getting to be a little better. He has a fantastic woman in one of his bands. The vibraphonist, Chien Chien. I think she’s Taiwanese, I’m not sure. She can play. 

AG: Oh, wow 

BH: Great. I heard them only once. Up at Smoke before everything locked down. Really, really good. 

AG: I always do something for Women’s History Month… 

BH: At the library? 

AG: Well, at the library too, but for The New York City Jazz Record. They always devote the March issue 

BH: Oh, I didn’t know that 

AG: I talked to Terri Lyne… I don’t know, four or five years ago now, and it’s, you know…. Sometimes I don’t know what I want to ask. The two schools of thought tend to be, like, well, nobody says anything about men playing the music or when it’s a man’s band, what difference should it make if it’s women? Or, there’s the other view that, yeah, women need to have their voices heard and be featured more. At the time…. I can’t remember verbatim what Terri Lyne Carrington said, but, I think she kind of put it like, just over time there seemed to be more, like, she said she didn’t put a band of women together on purpose, there were just more and more great women to work with all the time. 

BH: Oh, that’s interesting. 

AG: But, looking at certain groups, and I don’t know [exactly] who we were talking about then, but people figure, yeah, you put this group of women together 

BH: yeah 

AG: so that you would be all women. She was like, ah, not really, they’re just great musicians. 

BH: That’s interesting. Maybe that’s a point of view that people are trying to give some support to so that eventually it won’t matter. Especially since now there are hundreds of women that are in the universities in a variety of positions. There are a lot of ethnomusicologists that are women, and there are more women that are sounding better and better because they’ve been given the opportunity to work, you know? I mean, I remember when women didn’t want to work with each other. I had several women turn me down because I wasn’t good enough. You had to be really considered better than the men in order to even be recognized. I didn’t have those kind of credentials, so they just turned me down, they did not want to be identified with other women, regardless of where the were in their growth. 

AG: Because they wanted to… 

BH: They wanted to be recognized by men. 

AG: So that they were on the same level or whatever 

BH: Yeah, or so that they would be recognized and be able to play with men and not be downgraded or denigrated or… you know, because they were women. So those are the women that say, “Well I never had to worry about being a woman, I just played better than everyone else, so, I got hired,” and, so… “I was the best.” I mean, you hear that a lot. But the problem for me is that there are so many mediocre men that other men were given opportunities to work when that doesn’t happen for women. So, women, if they entered in a mediocre place, the more they play, the more they learn, the better they get, and pretty quickly too, because they understand what the issues are. 

Women who are really honest - see, there are some people who had all the advantages that nobody else ever had. Being able to play with people who were already out there from the time they were eight or nine years old. Who gets to do that!? On a regular basis. So that’s already a big push for them. Big! But most of the women that I talk to, and who I’ve worked with, if they’re really honest they will talk about doors being closed to them because they were women. Period. Not even given a listen. Or age being a factor. 

AG: Well that’s been changing, right? I mean, when you talk about when women didn’t want to be associated with each other as much, you’re thinking about, like, the 60s when you came to New York, right? And I guess moving forward, not like it changed over night 

BH: Yeah, well, that was true in Los Angeles too. I didn’t know very many women. I only met one woman who played a horn. And that was Vi Redd. There were others there. Clora Bryant was there when I was there, and Melba Liston was there, but I did not know them. And there was no agency or anybody that put women together or even said, “Oh, wow, you should know so and so,” because they were deeply embedded in women’s bands. The trumpet player, Clora Bryant, sounded so much like Louis Armstrong, high notes and all. Brilliant. And they might have been a factor in why she didn’t get more popularized, because she sounded so much like Louis. 

AG: Why not say, wow, you sound like Louis Armstrong, let’s give you a job? 

BH: Right. I don’t know enough about that history to know which way it went. And it may be that that’s why she worked a lot because she did. But, I’m sure that the same people booking Louis Armstrong were not booking that because of her. You know what I mean? 

(laughs) 

AG: Right. Talking about having to play twice as good, Joanne Brackeen said - and she was teaching a lot for a while - she said that’s what she would tell her female students 

[admittedly, I don’t think non-binary students were addressed during our conversation], 

to get the opportunities you had to be twice as good, or you really have to play at a higher level to get opportunities that the men get more easily. 

BH: It’s true. It’s still true. I think it’s still true but women are finding their way into the platforms more on their own now. They are getting a little bit more […]. But I don’t know what it’s like booking, and the agencies, how they decide there’s a certain amount of women they would deal with, or if they have yet to find people who are “the best” - whatever that’s being measured against. 

It took Wynton Marsalis 30 years to put a woman in the band, The Lincoln Center Orchestra. 

AG: 30 years? 

BH: I think that orchestra’s 30 years old. 

AG: Wow. Yeah, I guess it must be. That makes sense. 

BH: And she was a permanent sub. She wasn’t even really a permanent hire. She was a permanent sub for somebody who was going to be out, I think, for a year. 

And so that gave her a lot of exposure that she was able to capitalize on. 

AG: I would hope so. Anyone who gets to go through a group like that, an organization with that much money behind it, really. 

BH: Yeah, money and clout, and the ability to put you in a fabulous space, a place where you can be presented with all of the best around you in terms of support, instrumentation, sound equipment, you know, you’re being treated - and she should be. There’s so many little places that struggle to stay alive, they never really get up to being the best place to hear music but they find their own niche and, you know, they gradually grow; but a place like Lincoln Center has everything you need all ready for you. Presents yourself in the best light. 

AG: I would think it - I mean, I’m not in the industry in that respect; I’m not doing any booking or management - I would think it would be in fashion to, you know, hire women. There’s just so many great players - kind of like Terri Lyne Carrington said, there’s so many great [women] players. I don’t know what the mentality is. 

BH: Yeah, I haven’t done any real research lately on [whether] there’s any agency out there that says: women are welcome; I’m looking for women clients. 

AG: Right. Women please apply. 

BH: Yeah, right. 

AG: It makes me think of the education thing too because… I don’t know, a lot my elders - and I didn’t go to “jazz school.” I learned by going to all the jam sessions: Lickety Split and Lennox Lounge and St. Nick’s Pub, and just go every week … 

BH: Yeah. Oh, my goodness. 

AG: Soak ‘em up, and then, you know, people give you a chance to play, but some of my elders, like, did you ever know Alvin Fielder, drummer? 

BH: Alvin? A drummer? Hmmm… 

AG: [Among other things], he was an AACM guy. He was in Chicago in the 50s and 60s. 

BH: No, I didn’t know too many of those guys. That was an interesting group. But, the closet I got to the avant-garde, which is where I put them, was Ornette. And we never worked together but I listened to that band. You know, I was around a lot. And I think some of that rubbed off on me. A little bit. But it was never a real field of study. I didn’t look for other people to explore that… 

AG: Well the reason I mention Alvin is because if I would ask him his views on jazz education or jazz in the colleges and stuff, I just remember he said, “Well, I don’t really like to talk about it too much.” And I said why not? And he said, “Well, frankly, I start to get a little pissed off.” The little he said about it, he said there’s just something essential missing - (Bertha Hope raises her eyebrows and kind of laughs almost like that’s an understatement) - from the [curricula], especially when there got to be so many programs that a lot of instructors have never been anywhere except academia. It just brought up a lot of issues for him. 

BH: Yeah, I can understand it, because the experience… the music is a… 

The music comes from a cultural and social place, first of all. It’s spirit music. Music of a peoples’ spirit to survive. That’s my belief. 

AG: To survive. 

BH: Yeah. I mean, music was the part of the African continent, culturally, in almost every part I know of, where we were enslaved and transported. You know there was nothing… Music was a part of how you got through the day. You greeted the sun with music. You planted your crops to music. You made your breakfast, you milled the corn by music. Everything! …had a sense of rhythm to it, and a sense of universality to it. The schools don’t deal with spirit. …and people’s cultural identity with music. They deal with notes on the page. 64th notes, as fast as you can play them. Backwards, forwards. Can you play slow? Can you play fast? Can you play a blues? Can you play bebop? Can you play swing? Can you play funk? Can you play… street music? Can you play… you know, whatever the categories are. 

AG: Anything you can put a checkbox next to so you passed the test. 

BH: But you can’t put a checkbox next to spirit. 

AG: Right. 

BH: And you can’t teach spirit. 

AG: Right. 

BH: And you can’t really teach rhythm. 

AG: Mmm 

BH: I mean, you can teach rhythmics and how to play triplets. But I mean the inner feeling of what connects the music to the music. I don’t think it can be taught. So, the schools, they put everything in a box so they can sell you, and you can go play that box and get paid. You can go play that box and get paid. And check all the boxes and pass all the requirements for those boxes. I was horrified when I saw kids up on the bandstand with their phones! And I said, “well, what is that?” “Well, we’re going to play “All the Things You Are.” “Yeah? You need the music to “All the Things You Are”?”  

AG: You’re gonna play it with your phone? 

BH: What are you doing with the phone? “Well this is the changes.” 

AG: Oh. 

BH: Really? Put that phone down. This is me in the beginning. I can’t do that anymore, it’s so part of everything. I wasn’t successful in my rant to keep the phones off the bandstand. I said (points to ear) just… I mean, have you ever heard the song before? “Yeah, I’ve heard it.” Well then put the phone down and listen. 

AG: Yeah. 

BH: The bass player, I say, come stand by me and watch my left hand. Or at least get involved with what I’m doing, whatever we’re doing on the bandstand, not involved with what you’re looking at on your phone. 

AG: Right. That reminds me of a time playing a gig with Frank Lowe’s buddy, Michael Marcus, and we had a college kid playing bass who had his Real Book, so Marcus walked up next to him and he just started playing the top of the form gain at any random place to make the kid listen. 

BH: Oh, right. 

AG: and the bass player felt terrible because he didn’t know what was going on. 

(laughs) 

AG: but Marcus hated to see that Real Book. You gotta use this (points to ear), you know. What if I start playing an A section for the fourth time? 

BH: Right, right, and they’re not there. 

AG: or not enough As or something? You gotta pay attention. 

BH: Sometimes I’m listening to records and hear they mess up the form. The drummer’s trying to bash his way into a solo, which they didn’t give him. 

(laughs) 

BH: Somebody sticks an extra measure in. Or you can feel the music getting slower or speeding up and you wonder if it’s the record or the tape. [10:13] Just what was going on on the bandstand? Because things do… It’s about dealing with the shift - that’s the other thing: if a band is becoming a working band, it disappears a little bit, this idea that everybody plays for himself, everything he ever learned, every minute of the set. So they don’t sound like they’re listening to each other, have a good time, or have a conversation, or answer a phrase, or make - make - music on the bandstand. Everybody’s just playing at the top of their level of expertise, and that becomes what people hear. 

AG: That reminds me about how people hardly have rehearsals - speaking of an identity of an ensemble. I guess certain people that work together more may establish a rapport, but… 

BH: Well, I have rehearsals. I rehearse. 

AG: That feels better. 

BH: Well, just because that’s the other element. You eat together, maybe, talk about the rest of your life and how this takes priority over everything but where do you fit other things in. We do have open discussions. Even my mixed bands, bands that have men in them. We have rehearsals where we try to incorporate other things about the music, what the music is about. You know, the music is about your little, sick kid that you can’t stay much longer, you gotta get home to relieve the babysitter. There’s a life involved. There’s the respect that everybody has for what somebody else has to do, and we’re all open about it. So we have rehearsals like that. And, as a result, it feels more collegial than to just call somebody up and, you know, give them the details of the gig, and I’ve had to do that sometimes too, we don’t even have a rehearsal. But I try to keep a band together with the music. That the music is interesting enough that people want to stay in the band. [12:46] And so far I’ve been fortunate to have people who… Elmo Hope’s music was the drawing part. They had never heard it. Other people don’t play it so much. One song at a time you might hear. One band every five or six years might play an Elmo Hope composition and record it. So it was music that was fresh to them, because they had never heard it, and they did commit to wanting to learn it. So I have a working band. 

AG: You mention eating together and stuff, I can feel - like spending time with Frank, not playing music and just talking and stuff, then we pay music together and we have a different kind of understanding. We can hear things differently because we know who we’re dealing with. 

BH: Right, right. You’re dealing on a different level now. Not just notes on the page. You’re dealing with this whole person, or more of this person is revealed too you than you would have known about if it was just the music , only just the music. I mean, you could have some rehearsals and not say anything about it and just let the music speak for itself and just talk about the rehearsal from the standpoint of what’s on the page. How do you want that? Do you want that first note to be right on the one? You have those kind of discussions. Is that a short note? You have it marked short, is that what you really want? What we just played isn’t what’s on the page, is that an error? Let’s open it up. 

I was trying to learn a song that I haven’t been able to find - I’m sure it’s there and I didn’t look hard enough - but I found four different versions of it on YouTube, and I could tell how the performers grew as I listened to this composition being played by four different groups. The writer of the song was the same in all the tapes, but the personnel was different.  I could really tell how it started, which one was done first by how close to the written page it was. And I could hear it open up as she took more chances with the music and it started to open. So each performance was distinctly different from another.  It was interesting to be able to hear that. 

[A little bit later...] 

AG: You played at Bradley’s, speaking of nice pianos 

BH: I did. (smiles) Oh, yeah, that piano was a dream. I loved that gig. George Coleman came in and sat in on that gig one day and, whatever the song was that got called, and he just decided he would give me a lesson and go through all the cycles, all the keys, and then makes everybody take a solo in a new key. I was like, “this is my gig!”  

(laughs) 

BH: But it was a real learning experience, trying to negotiate the song in all keys, going around the cycle. It was a real challenge. I do that sometimes, but I don’t do it to people on the bandstand. (laughs) 

AG: Is his wife Gloria? 

BH: (eyes light up) Yes, Gloria Bell. 

AG: Organ player? 

BH: Singer too. She could swing, and she had that blues feel. And the look on her face when she played was like… just… (smiles) “I’m giving this all I got.” She had a real expression on her face when she played, it was wonderful to watch. She was great. 

AG: I never heard her. 

BH: There must be some records of hers though, with George in their own trio. 

AG: I’ll have to look. 

BH: Oh, yeah, you have to hear it. 

AG: Maybe on a Leo Wright record, the one where he’s playing at himself, there’s a double image on the front?  [Soul Talk, Vortex, 1970] 

BH: She was wonderful. 

AG: So, I know, going way back to California, when you got to hear Clifford Brown and them rehearse, they put out a CD, 20 or 30 years ago, of some rehearsal recordings (Bertha’s eyes light up) that had Eric Dolphy and Clifford Brown. I remember Frank Lowe was all excited about it because he never knew they would have [crossed paths]. You guys never would have had a chance to talk about that, because you knew about that. 

BH: Right. I can’t even remember if Frank and I ever talked about me knowing Eric Dolphy. 

AG: That would have been so exciting. He was so reverent of everybody, you know. 

BH: I know. Yeah. I could just never get over (shaking her head) how I fell into that situation. 

AG: In that band? 

BH: Yeah! I just felt so awkward. Oooh, and I got some terrible reviews on that record too.  

[Soul Folks / Frank Lowe Quintet, No More Records, 2001].  Somebody said, “Oh, my god, Bertha.” - I think that’s the way that it started too: “Oh, my god, Bertha Hope, what was she doing there?” Some words to that effect. “She just was so lost.” That’s what the reviewer said and I’m like… he’s not far from wrong. 

(laughs) 

BH: He’s not far from wrong, I was… and Frank wouldn’t give me any substance that I could  ... there was a melody that didn’t even have rests in it. 

AG: Oh, right. 

BH: So if there were two notes in a measure, you had to figure out which end of the measure the notes belonged on, and where the rests were supposed to be.  I think I was just so intimidated by what I think he wanted me to sound like and what I thought I could actually sound like. So I was paying more attention to myself than I was to what was going on around me - all the stuff I was talking about before; I think I made every one of those errors. 

(laughs) 

AG: That’s so funny. I had no idea because I always thought… Well, I always thought it was very interesting that you seemed to be approaching it like a beginner because from my perspective, {not only are you not a beginner], but I thought, well you can understand this melody once you hear it - the sheet music doesn’t help a whole lot. 

(laughs) 

AG: But, once you hear it, okay, what can I do with this melody? So, I remember that. You were open to it. 

BH: I was. Definitely. 

AG: But then I remember driving you back up here and you’d be saying, “Frank, what am I doing here?” 

(laughs) 

AG: “You’re great, you’re great.” 

BH: You remember that? (laughs)  

AG: Oh, yeah. He loved it. 

BH: “You’re fine, Ms. Bertha.” He called me “Ms. Bertha.” 

AG: I wonder if that’s a southern thing or just a Frank thing. 

BH: That’s a southern thing. Young people from the south still address their elders like that. 

AG: That’s what I hear in my head. I probably called you Ms. Bertha. 

BH: No, you did not. (smiles) 

AG: I just hear that in my head because of Frank. 

BH: Oh, that’s so funny. 

BH: Did I tell you that Ethan Iverson reviewed that? 

AG: I saw that after you told me about it. He has an interview [with you] on his website, and then there’s the JazzTimes article. 

BH: Oh, he has that on his website? 

AG: Yeah, he’s got so many of them. But he really celebrated you on that recording. 

BH: Beautiful. I was lucky to get that. All of these things happened around then. [The article], the award from the [National Jazz] Museum [in Harlem], and then there was another article that came out in the Times, “10 Women in Jazz Who Never Got Their Due."

I made that list. (smiles)  So there was a lot of press in about a year. 

AG: Did you know about that? Did the Times call you or anything, or did they …? 

BH: No. Nobody ever calls me to say anything when these things come out. That’s why I get really stressed when I see the same misinformation get repeated. Please, before you release that information, would you please let me see it so we can do a light edit if you misheard something. I appreciate that. 

AG: What about the Jazz Museum award? Did they contact you before that happened? 

BH: No, they didn’t contact me. There was an announcement, or somebody called me up and said they were giving me a Lifetime Achievement Award. The funny thing about that was I was sick then, having emergency surgery. The night that they had the gala at the Danny Kaye Auditorium at Hunter College - Sheila E was one of the performers, it was really wonderful - I had to send my daughter to pick up my award because I couldn’t be there. Unbelievable. 

Then the next thing that happened to me that was connected to the Museum was when they opened the display for Soul, the Disney movie, that was my gig, and that was going to be streamed like it was last night.  But it was the opening and I had covid, so I called to cancel and they canceled the whole band; they said they didn’t want to take any chances. 

AG: I read about some formative experiences, including Lionel Hampton playing “Flying Home” in the theater next to the Dunbar Hotel when you were maybe 9 years old? People were shouting “the war is over!” 

BH: Yeah, my father took me. I think the whole family went to that concert. It was unbelievable. War, to a nine-year old, was ration stamps, air raid sirens, and blackouts. That was my sense, my knowledge of the war. Planes could have flown over, nd we were required to turn off all the lights in the city. Lights went out, and you couldn’t turn them back on until you heard this siren.  So, that was the war. To go to that show and see a live band celebrating with this movie screen full of these B52 bombers flying and making this roaring sound. That was the war, to me. So that really stood out. People were ecstatic. The war was over, everybody was on their feet dancing in the aisles. 

AG: That spectacle, besides even the music, it was just… 

BH: Yeah. War is over and this is how people are responding to that news. 

AG: Do you think that was came out in your interest in music at the time. 

BH: I don’t know, because I was really young. I was already playing because I remember I was taking music lessons, but I don’t think I had any knowledge of expression, and going to something like that, what kind of impact it would have on a later way of playing. I mean, I was still studying Bach and, you know, technique. 1945 the war was over, so that would make me nine. 

AG: And then accompanying your father not too long after that. 

BH: That was a wonderful experience because he concertized bel canto and German lieder, and he also added the Negro spirituals to all of his programs. I remember he had a church concert where he was performing the Negro spirituals, and I used to practice with him all the time, and so he asked me if I thought I was ready to play with him.  So I said yes. And I remember it was actually the first time I was able to think about the music connected to money. You know, I was a kid. And he gave me seven dollars. And I think that probably - then, seven dollars was a lot of money; especially for a kid. And then he got into movies. He was very versatile. 

AG: What did he do in the movies? 

BH: During the time of the big studios and the big lots - 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner Brothers - he was one of the Black actors, you know, they were these menial roles, some of them were very demeaning. But, for the most part, he was able to avoid most of those. People in Hollywood recognized his abilities, so he had speaking parts. That was part of what he did to keep us afloat. So he took me on to the lot. 

AG: You went to the lot too? 

BH: I worked in a movie when I was 15, playing a 10-year old. I got all the same treatment everybody else gets on the lot. Eating in the commissary with all the stars. I had a tutor, because we had to go to school when we weren’t on camera. And, I don’t know, I got paid something like 100 dollars a day. 500 dollars for the week! That was a lot of money in my neighborhood. 

AG: Amazing. What was that film? 

BH: It was on Sol Hurok, who was an impresario. I think he was the first person to bring Marian Anderson - a Black contralto; she was the one who sang… 

AG: Yeah, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  

BH: They wouldn’t let her sing at Constitution Hall, and then Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), which led to the performance at the Lincoln Memorial. 

AG: Oh. 

BH: He was one of the first people to manage and line up concerts for her. So the movie is about his life and how he started out with children’s concerts and I was one of the children. It was a B movie, but it was an A movie for me. 

[ The movie was called: Tonight We Sing (20th Century Fox, 1953) ] 

AG: What an experience.  So at 15, you had probably already heard that Bud Powell record by then [Un Poco Loco, one of her early favorites]. You were into jazz music at that point. 

BH: Yeah, right there. Right around that time. That’s when Danny Johnson - Danny Johnson, Billy Higgins, and I, we were the jazz people in my high school; I didn’t know anybody else that was interested in jazz. He’s the one that gave me the record - he didn’t actually give it to me; he said I’m gonna let you hear this record. You know, it’s like, you’re gonna want to listen to this record a long time. Oh, my goodness… yeah, it kind of changed how I heard the music. It really did. 

... to be completed by April 11, 2023 

The transcript of our conversation on April 8, 2022 will be shared at a later date. The May 2022 Cover Story for The New York City Jazz Record contains much information gathered during that call.