October 20, 2022 • 68 mins
An extraordinary number of the greatest jazz musicians were deeply involved in psychoactive drug use – to the extent that the history of jazz and the history of drugs during the middle third of the 20th century are inseparable. The King of Jazz, Louis Armstrong, never went a day without marijuana. The great “Lady Day,” Billie Holiday, became during the 1950s “the most famous drug addict in America.” Most of the great saxophonists – Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Art Pepper, Gerry Mulligan, Dexter Gordon and many more – used heroin as well as other drugs. Martin Torgoff, author of Bop Apocalypse, has probably thought about this subject more deeply than anyone else. Why did so many jazz musicians use heroin and other drugs? How did it impact the music they made and the lives they led? What role did racism and the nascent war on drugs play in all this? And what’s the connection with famous Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and the poet Allen Ginsberg?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,
Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed, as
(00:23):
an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use
any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners, Well, today's episode
(00:45):
is fairly close to my heart. It's on the subject
of jazz and drugs and race and the beats. My
guest today is Martin to Goof. He's an award winning
journalist and author. He's a documentary filmmaker. He's an Emmy
nominated television writer, director and producer. Uh. He's got two
(01:09):
books of great relevance to the subject and also to
my life. The first one was a book called Can't
Find My Way Home about America and the great Stoned
Age to two thousand and we'll talk about that a
little bit, but we're really focusing on a book that
he published a few years ago called Bop Apocalypse, Jazz Race,
(01:31):
the Beats and Drugs. So, Martin, thank you so much
for joining me today on Psychoactive. Thank you for having
me Ethan. It's always interesting and fun to talk to you.
I think when we think about the origins of jazz
and drugs and especially marijuana, there's no place to start
(01:52):
but with Louis Armstrong. So Louis Armstrong and marijuana. Martin
talk about Louis Armstrong, how special and incredible he was,
and and his connection to marijuana. What always fascinated me
about this subject was that marijuana appears on the streets
of New Orleans at just around the same time that
(02:14):
jazz begins to percolate. So they were always there together,
um you know, and it was always a kind of
symbiotic relationship from the very beginning. Like you're talking around
nineteen eleven. So by the time, um, you know, Armstrong
is a teenager in New Orleans, that entire culture has
(02:39):
been just beginning to really coalesced in a very significant way.
What happens is that the artists begin making their way
up the Mississippi River to Chicago, and in a way,
the marijuana follows them. So in a way you can
like follow the story of marijuana, want to and jazz
(03:00):
together with Louis Armstrong up to Chicago where it begins
to blossom at the Lincoln Gardens with his creativity up there,
and then it goes down to Kansas City, it goes
across to Harlem, and that's really the beginning of it.
(03:21):
So Louis fell in love with jazz and fell in
love with weed. I mean, jazz came first. Uh, he
did not turn on until he got to Chicago, and
all of the musicians of the time talk about his
love affair with it. So he's he's his powerful figure.
But marijuana, I mean, was there any way which marijuana
(03:43):
was a negative in his life or was it all positive?
Not in his life? Not in his life, And he
would talk openly about, you know, the many ways that
he characterized it as a positive impact on his life.
One of the really amazing things about looking at um
(04:04):
all of these jazz artists, the many different ones and
their journeys through the use of different substances, is how
from the very beginning you can see people who were
able to use it in a positive way and set
boundaries about it and those who um, who weren't who
(04:28):
had a very different um kind of relationship with the
substances that became problematical really the difference between use and
abuse in you know, and and it's very kind of
organic application, right, But with marijuana it typically was not
a negative in the way, whereas heroin became a very
(04:50):
much more mixed story in subsequent decades. Right, yes, yes,
you know, I mean absolutely. It wasn't like he was
a propagator, um, a soletizer for it, because that wasn't
the case. But he was just honest about it, and
you know, he believed that it was positive to a
lot of people. His relationship with it always kind of
(05:12):
embodied his kind of genial, live and let live kind
of attitude about life. You know, his kind of enjoyment
of things. You know, he was a really beautiful man.
You know, you sort of look back and you look
at his smile. He had a philosophy of life that
was really positive. He had a philosophy of America that
(05:37):
was really positive, and you know, his relationship with the
weed was really very much embroidered into that philosophy. I
remember one time meeting um, somebody who had been in
charge of his U s I a U S Information
Agency tour in Africa maybe in late fifties early sixties.
(05:58):
I remember describing to me what it was like, you know,
because he was not going to travel anywhere without his weed,
and she had to make sure that that was not
going to be a problem as they crossed borders. But
he was determined, and in a way, it was a
small world around him that I think made sure Louis
Armstrong was not going to spend another day in jail,
even though marijuana was inna you know, part of his
(06:18):
everyday life experience. Yes, Um, he was literally the first
celebrity marijuana bust in American history. It happened in Los Angeles,
and um he was actually set up, and um, when
he came back to Chicago, he was really worried that
it was going to, um have a negative impact on
(06:40):
his career. And it didn't. And the reason that it
didn't was because by that time, the people who were
listening to jazz were really beginning to coalesce into a
whole culture, into a viper culture. Um, you know, in
in Harlem, around places like uh, you know, the Savoy Ballroom,
and it was more widespread. I mean, it certainly wasn't,
(07:03):
you know, a mainstream thing. Obviously that didn't happen until
you know, the mid to late length nineties, sixties and seventies.
But there were enough people who were, you know, listening
to jazz, going to see jazz, buying jazz records, who
were aware of marijuana, and you know, they weren't going
(07:25):
to hold that against him by any means. I think
you write in your book that he sat down he
wrote a letter to President Eisenhower telling him that marijuana
should be legal. So he was not inhibited about expressing
his views on that thing. You know, No, No, he
wasn't inhibited at all. So the question that rises with
marijuana is why the connection between marijuana and jazz. I mean,
(07:47):
at one point, you quote Norman Mailer is saying he
couldn't think of one without the other. But for the
musicians themselves, what was it that made it um, that
made marijuana special. Well, for one thing, it was just there,
you know, and it was just a part of their lifestyle.
I think it was Dexter Gordon, the great saxophonist, who
(08:10):
who called jazz lifestyle as music and um by the
same token you could call the beat generation lifestyle of literature,
and marijuana was was an integral part of that lifestyle.
So so it was just there, and from the very
(08:33):
beginning it was obvious to the people that smoked it
and played the music that you know, there were aspects
of the marijuana experience that resonated powerfully and creatively for
them in playing it, in playing it alone, and in
(08:55):
playing it with each other, so that it became a
part of the experience ense of performing it, and it
became part of the experience of recording it. Well, you know,
in the book, I mean you talk about some of
these I mean, it was all subtle and nuance and
as you say, interwoven. The cause of relationships are hard
to identify, but that sometimes marijuana gave some players, you know,
(09:17):
a sense of courage if they were a young musician
coming up, and would able them to just feel that
much more confident, which would shape their jazz because feeling
confident was better in performance than not. You talk about
maybe it helped to reduce inhibitions and therefore, you know,
led to greater improvisation and experimentation. Uh. You talked about
some of these writers saying that they could. Actually it
(09:37):
wasn't they played better, but that they could hear better.
Here one another better, right, I mean, I mean that element.
Never mind the fact that it was preferable to all
the other psychoactive substances like alcohol and heroin, which we'll
get into shortly, in terms of one's health and not
giving people a hangover and staying healthy for a lifetime.
You know, there are so many different opinions about it.
I mean, for example, John Hammond, who was you know,
(10:01):
like a major figure in the jazz culture of that
era in terms of like producing the music. He hated
the presence of weed in the lifestyles and the musicians
because he felt that well, for one thing, it made
them liable for persecution, but also he felt that it
(10:21):
played havoc with their sense of time. And a lot
of musicians would disagree with him about it. I mean,
he wasn't a smoker, so he wouldn't have known. You know.
At one point, I was reading something that Charles Baudelaire
wrote about the effects of hashi, you know, Charles Baudelaire,
the French poet. He called it a mirror that magnifies,
(10:44):
yet only a mirror, And I found that to be
very very useful in considering the relationship between you know,
the substances and the musicianship. These musicians were all unbelievable artists.
They were disciplined, they practiced endlessly, you know, their entire
(11:07):
lives were devoted to their art form. And I don't
think that marijuana, you know, in and of itself, you know,
made any of them innately better musicians. Um. You know,
it couldn't like put talent uh there that wasn't already there.
But what it could do was it could amplify that
(11:29):
talent in different ways. And I think I think that
the answer is like somehow contained in that kind of thesis.
I'll tell you that even today, when I find myself
now is things are opening up post pandemic. I find
myself going to jazz clips in New York more and
more frequently. And what they I like to do is
to like take a little finally grammedable before I go,
and it just enhances the appreciation and especially my ability
(11:54):
to appreciate some of the more out there improvisation. M Yeah,
I think you know, you hear it over and over again.
I mean I think it just opens your musical mind, uh,
there's just something about it. As Mesro, there was a
musician who fell in love with the blues, fell in
(12:14):
love with weed, and he and was himself, I mean
when he played clarinet or something. Yeah, he was. He
was a clarinetist. But there in his book Really the Blues,
there is a passage in which he describes the first
time that he ever smoked and went out on the
(12:35):
on the bandstand to play. And to me, it's one
of the most resonant pieces of writing that I've ever
come across about, you know, the potential of taking a
musician's mind or a listeners mind and just kind of
(12:55):
like opening it. Um. It's really it's really a remarkable
piece of writing. If you want, I'll read you a
little a little passage of what he wrote about. This
is him, um, going out to play under the influence
for the first time. The first thing I noticed was
(13:17):
that I began to hear my saxophone as though it
were inside by head. But I couldn't hear much of
the bend in back of me, although I knew they
were there. All the other instruments sounded like they were
way off in the distance. I got the same sensation
you'd get if you stuffed your ears with cotton and
talked out loud. Then I began to feel the vibrations
(13:38):
of the read much more pronounced against my lip, and
my head buzzed like a loudspeaker. I found I was
slurring much better and putting just the right feeling into
my phrases. I was really coming on. All the notes
came easing out of my horn like they had already
(13:59):
been made up, greased, and stuffed into a bell. So
all I had to do was blow a little and
send them on their way, one right after the other,
never missing, never behind me, all without an ounce of effort.
The phrases seemed to have more continuity to them, and
I was sticking to the theme without ever going tangent.
(14:22):
I felt like I could go on playing for years
without running out of ideas or energy. And that's uh,
that's it. Well, you know, it's interesting. At one point,
you know, you talked about Alan Ginsburg, the great poet,
the one who wrote the you know, the poem Howell,
which is, you know, perhaps the most famous poem American
(14:45):
poem writter in America in the mid twentieth century, or
maybe even the entire second half of the twentie century,
but him being very influenced not just by jazz, but
by mes Mesro's book that he was it was formative
for him. Yeah, he found it in the the Columbia
bookstore when he was a student at Columbia, you know,
in the forties, and he was very, very interested in
(15:09):
experiencing marijuana. And that book was like the Rosetta Stone
for him because it showed him that it emerged from
a whole cultural sensibility in the United States, and that
really began his whole lifelong interest in um learning about drugs,
(15:30):
learning about their origins, learning about their cultural origins, understanding
the spiritual connotations of them. You know, the beats were
so uh amazing because that's a literature in which the
writers were imbued with the experiences of these substances. At
(15:53):
the same time as they were trying to find a
new form that was like jazz, they were trying to
write like the jazz musicians were playing. So you have
a literature that's imbued and catalyzed by the experiencing of
these substances, about these substances, in which you have writing
(16:17):
for you know, a popular audience. Really in this country
for the first time about these substances. So it's it's
just it's groundbreaking from all of those different aspects. Well,
he's talking the book about you know, some of these
early before they become famous, they're going up to the
jazz clubs in Harlem and elsewhere. You talk about Lester Young,
(16:39):
who will get to in a moment um, you know,
giving Jack Carroll at his first joint um. So yeah,
definitely changed his life for sure. Yeah, yeah, it did,
it really did. Just to go back to the jazz
for a second, just talk about Lester Young nicknamed Praz
you know him and the saxophone to some extent, begins
(17:00):
to redefine jazz in the thirties and he's somebody for
whom also marijuana is important in his life, although he's
unfortunately caught up in other drugs, notably alcohol. But I
think at one point you say he may have been
the most influential of all jazz musicians, which surprised me
a bit. But explain why it was his style that
was really so influential as well as his unique musicianship.
(17:24):
He was such a singular personality. Um, you know his background,
he you know, he came from this band, that um,
this musical family, and he was very sensitive and he
was very devastated by his experiences of the racism of
that time. He also was really really in love with weed.
(17:45):
What it did for Prez was it pulled him into
himself and it allowed him to create his own kind
of insulated musical world in which he kind of became
this very singular personality. So that was his impact. He
drew people into that, like that little bubble that he
(18:06):
wove around himself, and in that bubble was his incredible,
fertile creativity and also his sensibility, his unique sensibility. I mean,
he really was the inventor of pool as it came
to be known in the thirties and forties and fifties.
I mean, you can almost trace it back to this
(18:30):
one individual in his demeanor, in how he walked and
how he talked, his invention of of jive, his use
of these words that became um, you know, like staples
in the vernacular. I mean, he was so unbelievably inventive
in every possible way. We'll be talking more after we
(18:53):
hear this ad. You mentioned some of the expressions that
he probably coined. I got it. Made I got eyes
(19:13):
for that copycat. Even the Big Apple is the nickname
from New York, the word crib for one's home, the
word bread for money, and would even end sentences of
conversations by saying you dig I mean, and then of
course the expression cool as in that's cool man. So
once again, as with Louie Armstrong, whether they originated or popularized,
but you know, it's a formative influence in American culture,
(19:36):
not just through their music, but even through their own
way of talking, of speaking of creating new language. And
also it's interesting to consider, uh, you know, the impact
of the weed on his musical style because it was
so emblematic really of his personality. He was kind of
(19:59):
like very very laid back in his tone. It was
a very sweet tone, and he would just kind of
like lay back and then all of a sudden, just
in the most tasteful way, just completely take over the
music and just elevate it to this very very unique place.
(20:24):
And that was how people kind of saw him. He
was kind of a very laid back guy. He was
very shy. He was like a laggard, you know, he
was just kind of like hang there and then like
draw you in and then just take you somewhere. And
his relationship with Billie Holiday was one of them, you know,
(20:45):
really signature creative relationships of that entire era in the music.
Well we'll get into Billie Holliday shortly, but once again
to jump forward into the beat, I mean for Alan Ginsberg.
Ginsburg you say was strongly influenced by Lester Young, and
notably I think his songs I got rid them Let's
(21:08):
hear a little clip and Lester leaps in Let's hear
a clip. So talk about that connection, Martin, between Lester
(21:38):
Young and his influence on Alan Ginsberg. Well, you know,
Carolac was the real jazz aficionado of the early beats,
and he um, of course, who was turned on by
Lester Young. You know, he started going to the jazz
clubs and he's the first one to write about jazz
(21:59):
of of those guys. And you know, he and Allen
were very close and they would listen to the music together,
and Caro Wac was the first one who became imbued
with this notion of writing the same way that the
jazz musicians played. He would listen to Charlie Parker and
(22:19):
he would listen to Lester young, and one of the
things that he really began to see was that they
played in these long lines, these kind of like long
unbroken lines in which one idea would like initiate like
unleash another idea, and then another idea and then another idea,
(22:41):
in this kind of endless progression of unfolding of like
ideas and melodies and with and there would be breaks,
and then the breaks would be used creatively to kind
of contextualize something else. And you know, Carolac would like
get stoned and he would listen to the jazz and
(23:04):
then he would like to think about how he could, um,
you know, right in the same way. So some of
his earliest attempts of writing um were um you know,
like long improvisations. Really, I mean his whole creation of
the manuscript for On the Road, for example, which he
(23:28):
did like putting this giant roll of paper and putting
it in a typewriter and just sitting down and like
literally like twenty three days straight just like churning out
this manuscript which became this like incredible novel called On
the Road. Alan in his development in his poetics, was
(23:52):
always looking at Caro Wac and going wow, wow, Wow,
I wonder if I can do that with my poetry.
And when he sat down, Uh, he was living in
North Beach at the time, in San Francisco, and he,
you know, he sat down to write how. Carol wac
had been living in Mexico at that time and he
(24:13):
had created this this long poem called Mexico City Blues
and he sent it to Alan, and Alan, you know,
started writing How, trying to do it along that kind
of like long saxophone line, and that's the entire first
(24:36):
movement of How is written exactly. It was almost like
he was trying to channel Lester young Um, like sitting
down and blowing. So the whole first movement of How
is like you know, him just like blowing on a saxophone. Really,
you know, this brings us to the next great revolutionary
(24:57):
and jazz, Charlie Parker and be back Jazz and Charlie
Parker as somebody who's using drugs from the time he's
in his young teens, Charlie Parker, a man of fantastic appetites,
Charlie Parker who just keeps using more and more drugs
and keeps getting more and more creative in his music
(25:17):
until a breaking point comes, so, I mean a lot
of your book obviously, the title is Bebop Apocalypse Charlie
Parker was Mr Bibop. Tell us about Charlie Parker and
about the relationship between drugs and his music. Well, he
was unique because he was so um musically driven and
(25:39):
ambitious from a very young age, and also from a
very young age he was just as driven to use
and abuse pretty much everything he could get his hands on.
And he was a genius musician, you know, addicted for
the first time as a teenager, even before he left
(25:59):
Kansas City to you know, hop the freight train that
would bring him to Chicago and then eventually to New
York and then eventually to fame. We talked extensively about
Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong, lifelong user of marijuana, who set
pretty strong boundaries about things that he would do and
(26:21):
things that he wouldn't do. He, for example, did not
like alcohol, and he wouldn't like cross that boundary into
the use of alcohol. He really really did not like
hard drugs and he never crossed that boundary into hard drugs.
Charlie Parker Bird, as he would of course become famously known,
(26:44):
He not only had no boundaries about music, but he
had no boundary about his use of substances. Not only
would he use everything, but he would make an ethos
of it. And he was so brilliant musically that that
(27:05):
boundaryless ethos about his substances became inextricable from his you know,
just boundary breaking musicianship and genius. So that's what set
those two geniuses apart from each other in terms of
their relationship to substances. Um. That's the best way I
(27:29):
could describe it. Yeah, you know, at one point you
describe there's a song, um, and let's hear a clip
from it, Loverman. This song became part of the legend
(27:51):
of his genius of Charlie Parker say something about Loverman.
You know, it's it's so interesting because he became an
addict as a teenager, and then when he got really
musically ambitious, he decided that he was going to get clean.
So when he jumped that freight trade out of the
(28:11):
Kansas City freight yard and you know, to to begin
his musical Hobysey Um, he kind of understood that he
needed all of his discipline and all of his energy
towards that goal and he kind of like, you know,
he put down, he put down narcotics at that point,
(28:33):
and then he came to New York and um, you know,
he hooked up with the small inner nucleus you know
that would form the Seminole Bebop group. You know that
all played in Mittens in the you know, the early
to mid nineteen forties, and it was a small group
of guys and Mintens was the Jazz Club. Yeah yeah,
(28:57):
but it was a small subterranean in setting up at
Harlem and all the like the musicians who were interested
in exploring this new form of jazz would kind of
gather there after their gigs, and Bird was one, and
Dizzy Gillespie was another, Kenny Clark, Max Roach on drums,
(29:19):
and Felonious Monk, you know, the great pianist. He was
a part of that group. He really became the spark plug,
like the creative spark plug of that new form of
the music. And just as that was happening, he fell
back into his use of narcotics and got really really
(29:42):
strung out, strung out in a way that he had
never been strung out before. So like right at the
peak of that he was playing in a group with Dizzy,
and Dizzy decided that he was going to take his
band out to the West Coast to showcase the music
the first time at a place called Billy Burghs. And
(30:03):
it was a big deal. Um. You know, all the
people who were in the know about jazz out there.
They they showed up because the buzz was about this
new form and and this guy Bird. And so he
got to Los Angeles. It was a new place for him.
He didn't know where to cop and he immediately got
(30:25):
in trouble and he became extremely unreliable because he was
always out scouring the town um looking for a fix.
And that was when Dizzy decided, okay, you know this
is not working. He dropped him from the group, brought
the rest of the group back to New York and
(30:45):
Bird was left out there in Los Angeles, high and dry,
badly strung out, and he ended up um like living
with the trumpet player Howard McGhee um. And it was
McGhee who got Bird a deal with this guy Ross
Russell to go in and have this recording session. And
(31:07):
when he went in to record these songs, he was
very very very badly strung out and One of the
songs that he recorded in that session was Loverman, which
had been a billy holiday song, and he played it
and he just like really really on the edge, and
(31:32):
he just he did what he what he always did.
He just went for it and the track was recorded
and that was when Bird had his breakdown. You know,
he goes back to the hotel. He and he ended
up um in Camarillo in the uh the mental institution there.
(31:54):
And when he got out, that was when the track
was released, and he came back to New York and
you know, he was healthy again and he formed this
group Miles Davis was a part of then, even I
mean he's just about barely can get it together. But
(32:14):
it turns out to be one of his great recordings. Well,
he never liked it himself. He understood, you know, the
kind of shape that he was in it when he
recorded it. But the impact that it had on his
musical community was powerful because by then everyone kind of
knew about his lifestyle. And he came, you know out,
(32:37):
and he went back to New York and played at
the Royal Roost and his band just tore it up.
He was like at the top of his game and
that's when really his legend began. And so this track
comes out and they hear this man who now everybody
(32:58):
knows had been a junk and is a junkie. And
what they hear is this statement of this artist like
essentially playing his pain. And they were terrible, terribly, terribly
moved by it, just by the pathos of it and
(33:19):
by his commitment to his art, and somehow the fact
that he was a dope feed um, you know, it
just created this aura of this kind of dark romanticism.
Really at one point might use his phrase, I don't
(33:52):
know you're quoting somebody else, but saying that with the heroine,
I mean, and everything else that was going on. It
wasn't just heroin, because Charlie Parker many others, they were
using a lot of stuff. They were Sometimes there was
a lot of alcohol. Sometimes alcohol was a dominant drug.
It was wed, of course, but they're also bends, a dream.
There might have been other stuff, but in some level
they were playing their lifestyle. I think you put it
(34:14):
that way for better or works, Uh, you know, you
describe another moment to I think it's Norman Grants, the
jazz producer is putting on jazz at the Philharmonic, and
Charlie Parker is supposed to be there, Um, you know,
he's trying to score. Finally shows up and I think
(34:34):
the song was sweet Georgia Brown. Yeah, yeah, what happened there? Well,
he just like you know, he comes on stage and
and blows everybody away. Let's hear a clip of that.
(34:55):
So that and the rest of it blew people away
that evening, huh, and he was totally high as it,
but pulling it together. Well. The thing that people don't
really get about, um, you know, Heroin is that these
guys were not shooting dope to get high and go
on stage and play. Um. You know, if you shot dope,
(35:19):
you would go on the nod. Um. You know, that's
not really where they wanted to be when they played.
What Heroin did was it made them what they called straight,
they called it getting straight. It kind of stabilized them really, um,
you know, it's that's one of the misconceptions that you know,
(35:40):
people have about heroin and jazz is that, you know,
when these guys were addicted, you know, they would shoot
dope and like you know, get on the stand and
like be high out of their minds. And play. No,
that's not what was going on. What was going on
was that this drug, which had created this metabolic need
(36:01):
for it um, was being satisfied and and so that's
what would allow them, you know, the kind of stability
be anchored, you know, back again in their music, in
their creativity. You remind me, Martin, of years ago I
read the biography of Stan Getz, who was the great
(36:22):
um White jazz saxophonist, and what it described it there
was his addiction to two drugs, heroin and alcohol. But
its story, I told, was that alcohol was the drug
that turned him into an asshole, and that screwed up
his playing and messed up everything you know in his life.
That with heroin, it wasn't the drug itself. It was
(36:44):
the need to score, to find a place to score,
to get the money together, to find a place to use,
to do all that and then get to his gig
in time. And it was to some extent, not the drug,
but the illegality of it, the criminality of it um,
which might have been in some respect it's part of
the enticement for a whole bunch of rebellious personalities who
were pioneers in jazz. But that was also the destructive,
(37:06):
harmful element of it. And I think what you described
by Charlie Parker as well, right, Um, another point you described,
there's another protege of Charlie Parker, Jackie McLean, who I
think was one of your key sources because he was
still alive and available when you write in his book,
and I think you quote Jackie McLean saying, you know,
Harold was kind of a working drug for Yeah, for
a lot of them, it was. I mean, you know,
(37:28):
it's very complex, um when you think about it. I mean,
these were brilliant musicians, highly evolved, highly sensitive people devoted
to this art form, devoted to like really pushing it,
and a lot of them believe that, you know, it
had not only creative capacity but socio cultural racial ability
(37:54):
to bring people together. And yet the irony was that
it was making them vulnerable to prosecution and the element
of racism. You know, of course not all of the
musicians were African American, you know, but um, a lot
of them were. And they're the whole role that Heroin
(38:18):
played in as an anodyne to the racism of that time,
and and what these people had to endure is also
a significant factor, I believe. So they were all very
different people having different experiences. And in Jackie's case, who's
a wonderful man, by the way, it took him twenty
(38:41):
five years to get clean and he would never have
been able to do it without method on and that
that was his bridge to you know, getting clean from
heroin was through use of in another opiate. So it
was a very complicated thing. I just to give the
audience here a sense of how pervasive this was, I mean,
(39:04):
it really happens. I think the heyday of Heron and
jazz is really from nineteen forty seven to nineteen fifty seven,
give or take a few years here or there. But
at one point, one of the famous jazz critics that entoff,
he goes to the Newport Jazz Festival of nineteen fifty seven,
and he surveys over four hundred jazz musicians from New
York City and asked them about their drug use and
(39:26):
with marijuana, he finds, according to people who self reporting,
eighty two percent say they've tried marijuana, fifty four percent
say they've used that occasionally, twenty three percent say they
do so regularly. With heroin, fifty three percent said they
tried at twenty four percent say they used it occasionally,
in sixteen percent say they use it regularly. And separately,
(39:48):
there was another jazz historian, Lincoln Collier, who claimed he
thought that up to seventy five percent of all jazz
musicians used heroin during the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties.
So this is a period when heroin was becoming a
little more prominent in the black community. And Claude Brown
and his famous Bookman Child in a Promised Land writes
(40:08):
about what happens in the late forties and the fifties
where heroin does get take off, but the vast majority
of the culture is not using it. So this really
is a subculture of jazz greats and jazz great wannabes
who are also using heroin. And of course many people
put the blame on Charlie Parker about how many musicians
would listen to Charlie Parker play in a way that
(40:29):
nobody had ever played before, and it seemed almost impossible.
And you know, oh, it must be because he shooting heroin.
And if I become a Heroin user, I can be
more like my hero, Charlie Parker, and maybe I can
play more like Ken. I mean, there's some truth to that,
I guess Martin writes that people you know kind of
either let down their guard visa the heroin or even
(40:49):
went into it. Because Charlie Parker was the infamous heroin
using jazz great yes, UM, and he recognized that and
he was deeply unhappy about it. Bird was um a
very complex uh human being. UM. And you know that's
(41:12):
one of the challenges of you know, writing about people
like Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday, these mythic figures who
um you know, at the same time became addicts and
their myths essentially um become their stories, you know. And
as you mentioned, this is like happening on stage, but
(41:36):
the backdrop is something that's happening, you know, to an
entire community really up there in Arlem. You know, you
mentioned Claude brown Um writing about that manchild and Promised Land.
I had the honor of interviewing Claude brown Um for
my books before he passed away. And one of the
(41:59):
things that really um comes across is how these individuals, um,
these artists became really really prominent and heroes really to
the community up there, and UM, you know, their lifestyles
(42:22):
became inextricable from their accomplishments as as artists. So really
what you have for the first time is a group
of individuals who become role models for UM, a phenomenon
of heroin use in a community at large, UM, a
(42:45):
community that finds itself in the cross hairs really of
forces in which you know, the lives of these musicians
is really just one thread really where so much else
is going on, you know, about crime in public policy
(43:06):
and racism and things like that, and that's when the
whole thing becomes extremely complex and in its own way tragic.
Let's take a break here and go to an ad.
(43:36):
You also bring out something else there, which was specifically
about bebop. I mean, your book is called Bebop of
Popplix and Charlie Parker is a key figure in it,
and you talk about bebop music to some extent um
kind of intersecting with heroin. But also it's the type
of music that reflects and that manifests the feeling of
(43:58):
resentment that's so many black people feel, especially after World
War Two. Of people had served in the army in
World War Two, served in the military, coming back and
then being thrown back into Jim Crow America, and even
the racism in the in the Northern States. And then
you have, of course the great evil you know, human
being throughout all this period, Harry Anslinger, who becomes the
(44:20):
founding director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in thirty
and rules that agency for thirty two years until nineteen
sixty two, who is by all accounts a racist, right um,
and who somebody is initially focused on heroin, but by
the mid thirties begins to focus on marijuana, the demon drug,
and the era of reefer madness and really conflating you know,
(44:41):
the whole fear of white women having sex with black
men in the role of drugs and music and all
of that. So say more about bebop and racism and
heroin and net interweaving of those elements with the revolution
within the jazz community. Um, it was a revolutionary kind
(45:04):
of music. I mean, it evolved from swing, but it
turned swing on its head really and there were people
who hated it as a result of it, jazz critics
and jazz musicians. So the music itself was considered to
(45:24):
be um subversive, and so on top of that you
have it being played by these individuals who were very
very aware of that and also aware of the fact that, um,
you know, they were African Americans and that the music
(45:46):
was to them. They saw it as a vehicle to
express um you know. There they're absolute awareness of and
condemnation of the racist society that they lived in. A
(46:11):
lot of the people who are who are jazz lovers
of that time were very very sympatico with that entire sensibility,
and Slinger from the very beginning understood that this was
a subversive culture socially and raciully. I mean when he
(46:38):
decided to, um, you know, conduct the entire anti marijuana crusade,
he was compiling a list of jazz musicians and his
idea was that with the marijuana law of seven, he
was going to go after all of these jazz musicians
and basically, you know, further into isn't so from the
(47:02):
very beginning there was this sort of adversarial relationship between
the jazz community and and Harry Innslinger and the Federal
Beeau of Narcotics. In a way, that's where the culture
war over drug use in this country really really begins.
(47:24):
So it's couched in this racism. From the very very beginning,
you have, you know, this phenomenon of you know, what's
called the Great Harlem heroin Epidemic. You know, some people
have a problem with the use of the word epidemic,
(47:45):
but it's used to express the fact that you have,
for the first time, you know, this community which is
really really suffering from addiction, heroin addiction on a level
that's never really been experienced before in American society. So
(48:09):
while you have that happening, you have these laws being
put into effect so that, um, people who are addicted,
there's only one thing that can happen to them, you know,
them to be thrown into prison and buried, you know,
for decades. At the same time, you have what is
(48:29):
really the first popular movement to try to medicalized, to
try to take heroin addiction and bring it back to
the purview of you know, people in the medical community. Durminding,
I should say, Olso Martino, at the beginning of this thing,
I wanted to actually, for the first time I ever
(48:51):
dedicate an episode of Psychoactive to somebody, and that person
is doctor Professor John P. Morgan. As professor at City College,
he taught the mixed undergraduate graduate medical program there. But
he was one of the America's great drug experts, the
one who coined the term opio phobia. He was probably
(49:11):
the most frequent expert business on drug cases for the
defense in America. But he was also an extraordinary ethno
musicologist who had a library of thousands of songs and
and also somebody who had like audiographic memory, where he
actually had in his head the lyrics of of thousands
of songs that had drug references in that. He passed
(49:34):
away at a fairly young age, But I would like
to dedicate this episode to him. And I know you
mentioned him in your book you acknowledge his role in
helping inform you as you were writing about this. Yeah,
he was an amazing man. I mean, I you know,
I'm very grateful to you, by the way, for when
I really really started delving into the whole um subject
(49:55):
of drug culture. You know that ended up in you know,
my two book books and the various documentary and television surians.
I've done it of opening up that whole network of
those people who had a huge impact on me, and
he was certainly one of them. I mean, he was
a great lover of jazz, and he was incredibly knowledgeable
(50:17):
about it, and at the same time that he was
like so obviously incredibly knowledgeable about drugs from you know,
from a scholarly and medical point of view, at the
same time that he was aware of, you know, the
sort of cultural dimensions of it. And I think that's
(50:38):
really appropriate that you would dedicate this, hyeh, this episode
to him. Yeah, okay, well to John to Dr John P. Morrigan.
So Martin, you know, just going back, so we get
into the fifties and Miles Davis who becomes a chief
figure it has his been John Coltrane, and John Coltrane,
(50:58):
who really, of all the as great is the one
that has the most personal impact on me. But I
noticed in writing you know, Coltrane goes through this terrible
period of heroin and alcohol really messing him up in
in a in a in a significant way, and he
then finally goes through this experience that he describes as
(51:19):
a spiritual awakening where he puts it all behind him,
and that unleash is you know, one of the most
extraordinarily creative periods in the history of all of jazz.
But I noticed in reading about this that you wrote
about John Coltrane's transformation, and there was something personal in it.
(51:40):
I don't know if you specifically said in the book,
but I remember when you came to see me, you said, Ethan,
you know, I'm somebody who's had my struggles with drugs
and I had to, you know, put them behind me.
But I'm also somebody who gets it about all the
positive ways that drugs play in life. So what to
just explain a little more from a personal side, how
the story of John coltraneans um spiritual awakening as he
(52:02):
comes leaves his heroin addiction and alcohol adiction behind him.
What it meant to you? Well, I mean I come
to this subject as someone who pretty much crashed and
burned on drugs and had to, you know, get clean
and sober at the age of thirty seven. And initially
(52:22):
my whole interest in this subject became about trying to
understand its impact on me and trying to sort it
all out. And then I began to sort of think about, Okay,
what was its impact on my generation? And then I
began to think about, well, what was its impact on
(52:43):
my country? And in my experience of recovery, of the
recovery culture. You know, I was kind of thinking about,
you know what Bill Wilson had to say, you know,
the founder of alcoholics Anonymous, and his uh correspondence with
the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Young, in which they began
(53:07):
to postulate about how what they call the spiritual awakening
could transform the landscape of the addict and the alcoholic,
and how that was, as they saw it, like the
most beneficial, the most advantageous. That would kind of like
(53:28):
give the addict and the alcoholic the best shot at,
you know, living a different life that was not consumed
by the destructive impact of these things, um by addiction
and all the kind of side effects of being addicted
to whatever it was that you can be addicted to.
(53:50):
M So, you know, when I really began to um
look at the transits of these different musicians through addiction,
what really really leapt out at me was Coltrane's experience
and him directly referring to what happened to him to
(54:14):
him leaving Heroin behind as a spiritual awakening, Because what
happened to Coltrane with it, he had tried numerous times
to kick and he couldn't do it, But finally he
reached the bottom, and he went to, you know, sequester
himself away, and he basically shut himself up in a
(54:36):
room for a couple of weeks, and he told people,
you know, only just bring me water. Um, you know,
I'm going to stay in this room, and what's ever
going to happen to me is going to happen to me.
And at some point during the experience, and when he
(54:56):
was suffering from the agony, the physical agony of withdrawal
from Heroin, of how he called out, he reached out
to a higher power of his understanding and ask for
help and asked for this terrible experience to be lifted
(55:19):
to be removed from him. And he he writes about it,
and he basically says that he experienced the piece a
kind of inner peace, and also at the same time,
he asked his higher power to be able to use
his gift, to use his art in a way that
(55:41):
would spiritually uplift people. And that was his entire approach
to his art as he left Heroine behind. So that
when you were listening two that wonderful track, that amazing
(56:02):
his version of My Favorite Things in which he picks
up the soprano saxophone in essence what you were hearing
is that love, that expression of that love, of that
awakening that he was experienced as a result of that.
(56:24):
And it's really amazing because, I mean, Cultrane's music is
actually used in you know, the numerous churches, you know,
the same way that the music of both and you
know St. Matthew's Passion would would be used in a church.
And it's for a reason. It's because that music is
(56:47):
just completely about his relationship with his church in San
Francisco still in existence. So it's uh, you know, in fact,
it's funny disc of jazz, um and drugs without discuss
a jazz musician who in the nineteen fifties is described
(57:09):
as quote unquote the most famous drug addict in America
UM and who was simultaneously one of the perhaps the
greatest jazz vocalist in American history and global history. And
that's Billie Holiday. I mean, somebody who liked Charlie Parker
struggles with all sorts of drugs and although heroines, you know,
(57:30):
as a UM, somebody for whom the drugs seemed to
have UM I think probably thinks and speaks politically about
the war on drugs. So you have a lot about
Billie Holiday in your in your books, say something about
her that stands out? Oh God, where did begin with
(57:51):
Lady Day, someone whose life was shrouded in myth in
the very beginning? Well, how about how about let's just
hear a ve clipped from her one of the most
famous songs, Strange Fruit, so the cheese that's strange true,
(58:20):
blot on leaves and let it. Strange Fruit was a
song that Billy began performing at Cafe Society in the
late dirties when she came down from Harlem to like
really become just an absolute phenomenon um, you know, in
(58:45):
the first like really important downtown inter racial jazz club.
And you know, I'm sure you know that it's a
song about lynching a guy by the name of a Mire.
Paul wrote the lyrics and her musical director there at
Cafe Society gave it to her when she began performing it.
(59:08):
And the thing about Billie Holiday that was so unique
was here with someone who just instinctively understood how to
take a composition and translate it, transform it, express it
um as a deeply personal, deeply moving uh piece of
(59:33):
art and have that impact on the also had an
impact Onstlinger. I think it's the first time he really
becomes aware of Billie Holiday, because that, you know, is uh.
It's one of the really maybe the one of the earliest,
if not the first, really great protests song against racial injustice. Yes, yes,
(59:57):
it was the first time that someone had used UM
an art form, really a popular art form, to make
a statement about lynching and racism in America. It was transformative, really,
and yes it was a bold political statement. Her record
(01:00:20):
label at the time would not release it. She had
to find another record label to release it. And and yes,
that was what brought her on the radar screen of
Harry Anslinger, you know, of the FBI, of the New
York Police Department, and of course in her case, it
would make her vulnerable to UM prosecution because of the
(01:00:46):
fact of her relationship to drugs, specifically her heroin addiction.
So from the very beginning from on, she had to
do walk this type brobe really between her public legend
and you know, these forces that we're going to use
(01:01:08):
that to try to bring her. You know, from very
early on, she decided that one of the ways she
was going to deal with this very difficult situation, this
very dangerous situation where she was just going to talk
about it, and she was really one of the first
people to do that. He she was busted three times,
(01:01:32):
you know, and each time basically she just like you know,
talked about it. And one of the things she talked
about was what bullshit it was, you know, the fact that, um,
she was being hounded by the police. She was aware
of the fact that she was a public figure, She
was aware of the fact that she had these problems
(01:01:52):
with addiction. She was aware of the fact that people
were going to listen to what she said about it,
and so that's what she did, and she talked about
how she believed that it was more of a medical
problem than a criminal justice problem, and that was anathema
(01:02:12):
to what Harry Anslinger wanted to put across to him.
It was all about, you know, these people were weak,
they were depraved, they were evil, they needed to be
locked up. And anyone who expressed the point of view
that was sympathetic to the idea that these people they
(01:02:35):
needed to be cared for. They weren't even allowing them
in hospitals. It was illegal to allow a drug addict
in Harlem to be admitted to a hospital. Think about
that until Billie Holiday in n died in a hospital
(01:02:59):
on Harlem. But there are these moments. Billy Holliday had
a really close friend, um. She was a dancer and
a singer and an actress. Her name was Marie Bryant,
and she said something really interesting. She said, people like
Billy Holiday and Lester Young, they were real and that reality,
(01:03:23):
just how real they were, is what made them so vulnerable.
You know, for people like that who were so just
like so so vulnerable, it just made it very very
hard for them. You know. There's a wonderful image that
Bono puts forth about Billie Holiday in his song Angel
(01:03:44):
of Harlem, which I think also kind of gets to
that when he sings Lady Day had Diamond Eyed she
sees the truth behind the lies, you know, and I
think that's what Marie Bryant was talking. Well, Mark, let
me ask you this, you know, because you do. I mean,
you know, obviously one key part of the election with race,
(01:04:06):
and we've been talking about, you know, the ways in
which racism, uh, you know, it was one of the
reasons why so many of these musicians, you know, found
drugs as a way of kind of insulating that from
that or defying it, or whatever it might be. I mean,
the book's worth reading because you get so much more
deeply and nuanced about so much of this. But you know,
(01:04:26):
the fact of the matter is it was also true
of the white jazz musicians. I mean, if I think
of the famous you know, white white jazz saxophonist, when
you think about not just Stan Gets, but Jerry Mulligan
perhaps the greatest of all. You know, baritone saxophonist Art Pepper,
you know the vocalist Chet Baker. You think about the
singer Anita oh Day, you think about Zoots Sims and
Alcohon and Red Rodney, even Drift, I'd think, because there's
(01:04:49):
more of a theme around race there. But just say
a little more about that. That that experience of the
white jazz musicians and all of this, well you they
were just as prone and just as vulnerable to it.
You know, all of the same forces culturally and musically
were at work on them. And they were you know,
(01:05:09):
the brothers and sisters of the black jazz musicians. I mean,
they all lived in this world. They all had this
experience together. Listen, addiction, it knows no race, it knows
no socio economic level. I mean, it's just it's human.
I mean, this is fundamentally a human experience. It's not racial,
(01:05:35):
it's not musical, it's not white. It's just fundamentally human
and um, it knows no bounds. Listen. And it wasn't
just white jazz musicians. I mean the white community of
jazz lovers, the hitsters. You know, they were just as
prone to you know, the use of the drugs and
(01:05:58):
the possibility of addiction in as you know anyone who
was black. So Martin, listen. I mean, I've loved our conversation.
I hope for our listeners that for those you've already
into jazz, you'll track down and listen to some of
those songs that we play clips of and some of
the other references. So Martin, thank you ever so much
for joining me and my listeners on Psychoactive. Thank you
(01:06:21):
and all the all the best for you and all
the work that you do. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please
tell your friends about it, or you can write us
a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like
(01:06:44):
to share your own stories, comments, and ideas, then leave
us a message at one eight three three seven seven
nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you
can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com on
or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You
can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive
(01:07:07):
is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures.
It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Noam
Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden,
Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures,
Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and
me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and
(01:07:30):
a special thanks to a brios f, Bianca Grimshaw and
Robert BB. Next week I'll be talking with the founder
of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. Her name's Lynn Paltrow
(01:07:52):
and she's the leading advocate at the intersection of drug policy,
reform and reproductive rights. I once got a call from
a drug testing representative on his way to a hospital,
and he said, I'm going up to talk to this
hospital and I want to convince them to use our
drug test because it will help them treat pregnant women.
I was like, no, it won't. It will be used
(01:08:14):
to turn those women over to police or punitive civil
child welfare folks and used against them. Subscribe to Cycoactive
now see you don't miss it
Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,
Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed, as
(00:23):
an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use
any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners, Well, today's episode
(00:45):
is fairly close to my heart. It's on the subject
of jazz and drugs and race and the beats. My
guest today is Martin to Goof. He's an award winning
journalist and author. He's a documentary filmmaker. He's an Emmy
nominated television writer, director and producer. Uh. He's got two
(01:09):
books of great relevance to the subject and also to
my life. The first one was a book called Can't
Find My Way Home about America and the great Stoned
Age to two thousand and we'll talk about that a
little bit, but we're really focusing on a book that
he published a few years ago called Bop Apocalypse, Jazz Race,
(01:31):
the Beats and Drugs. So, Martin, thank you so much
for joining me today on Psychoactive. Thank you for having
me Ethan. It's always interesting and fun to talk to you.
I think when we think about the origins of jazz
and drugs and especially marijuana, there's no place to start
(01:52):
but with Louis Armstrong. So Louis Armstrong and marijuana. Martin
talk about Louis Armstrong, how special and incredible he was,
and and his connection to marijuana. What always fascinated me
about this subject was that marijuana appears on the streets
of New Orleans at just around the same time that
(02:14):
jazz begins to percolate. So they were always there together,
um you know, and it was always a kind of
symbiotic relationship from the very beginning. Like you're talking around
nineteen eleven. So by the time, um, you know, Armstrong
is a teenager in New Orleans, that entire culture has
(02:39):
been just beginning to really coalesced in a very significant way.
What happens is that the artists begin making their way
up the Mississippi River to Chicago, and in a way,
the marijuana follows them. So in a way you can
like follow the story of marijuana, want to and jazz
(03:00):
together with Louis Armstrong up to Chicago where it begins
to blossom at the Lincoln Gardens with his creativity up there,
and then it goes down to Kansas City, it goes
across to Harlem, and that's really the beginning of it.
(03:21):
So Louis fell in love with jazz and fell in
love with weed. I mean, jazz came first. Uh, he
did not turn on until he got to Chicago, and
all of the musicians of the time talk about his
love affair with it. So he's he's his powerful figure.
But marijuana, I mean, was there any way which marijuana
(03:43):
was a negative in his life or was it all positive?
Not in his life? Not in his life, And he
would talk openly about, you know, the many ways that
he characterized it as a positive impact on his life.
One of the really amazing things about looking at um
(04:04):
all of these jazz artists, the many different ones and
their journeys through the use of different substances, is how
from the very beginning you can see people who were
able to use it in a positive way and set
boundaries about it and those who um, who weren't who
(04:28):
had a very different um kind of relationship with the
substances that became problematical really the difference between use and
abuse in you know, and and it's very kind of
organic application, right, But with marijuana it typically was not
a negative in the way, whereas heroin became a very
(04:50):
much more mixed story in subsequent decades. Right, yes, yes,
you know, I mean absolutely. It wasn't like he was
a propagator, um, a soletizer for it, because that wasn't
the case. But he was just honest about it, and
you know, he believed that it was positive to a
lot of people. His relationship with it always kind of
(05:12):
embodied his kind of genial, live and let live kind
of attitude about life. You know, his kind of enjoyment
of things. You know, he was a really beautiful man.
You know, you sort of look back and you look
at his smile. He had a philosophy of life that
was really positive. He had a philosophy of America that
(05:37):
was really positive, and you know, his relationship with the
weed was really very much embroidered into that philosophy. I
remember one time meeting um, somebody who had been in
charge of his U s I a U S Information
Agency tour in Africa maybe in late fifties early sixties.
(05:58):
I remember describing to me what it was like, you know,
because he was not going to travel anywhere without his weed,
and she had to make sure that that was not
going to be a problem as they crossed borders. But
he was determined, and in a way, it was a
small world around him that I think made sure Louis
Armstrong was not going to spend another day in jail,
even though marijuana was inna you know, part of his
(06:18):
everyday life experience. Yes, Um, he was literally the first
celebrity marijuana bust in American history. It happened in Los Angeles,
and um he was actually set up, and um, when
he came back to Chicago, he was really worried that
it was going to, um have a negative impact on
(06:40):
his career. And it didn't. And the reason that it
didn't was because by that time, the people who were
listening to jazz were really beginning to coalesce into a
whole culture, into a viper culture. Um, you know, in
in Harlem, around places like uh, you know, the Savoy Ballroom,
and it was more widespread. I mean, it certainly wasn't,
(07:03):
you know, a mainstream thing. Obviously that didn't happen until
you know, the mid to late length nineties, sixties and seventies.
But there were enough people who were, you know, listening
to jazz, going to see jazz, buying jazz records, who
were aware of marijuana, and you know, they weren't going
(07:25):
to hold that against him by any means. I think
you write in your book that he sat down he
wrote a letter to President Eisenhower telling him that marijuana
should be legal. So he was not inhibited about expressing
his views on that thing. You know, No, No, he
wasn't inhibited at all. So the question that rises with
marijuana is why the connection between marijuana and jazz. I mean,
(07:47):
at one point, you quote Norman Mailer is saying he
couldn't think of one without the other. But for the
musicians themselves, what was it that made it um, that
made marijuana special. Well, for one thing, it was just there,
you know, and it was just a part of their lifestyle.
I think it was Dexter Gordon, the great saxophonist, who
(08:10):
who called jazz lifestyle as music and um by the
same token you could call the beat generation lifestyle of literature,
and marijuana was was an integral part of that lifestyle.
So so it was just there, and from the very
(08:33):
beginning it was obvious to the people that smoked it
and played the music that you know, there were aspects
of the marijuana experience that resonated powerfully and creatively for
them in playing it, in playing it alone, and in
(08:55):
playing it with each other, so that it became a
part of the experience ense of performing it, and it
became part of the experience of recording it. Well, you know,
in the book, I mean you talk about some of
these I mean, it was all subtle and nuance and
as you say, interwoven. The cause of relationships are hard
to identify, but that sometimes marijuana gave some players, you know,
(09:17):
a sense of courage if they were a young musician
coming up, and would able them to just feel that
much more confident, which would shape their jazz because feeling
confident was better in performance than not. You talk about
maybe it helped to reduce inhibitions and therefore, you know,
led to greater improvisation and experimentation. Uh. You talked about
some of these writers saying that they could. Actually it
(09:37):
wasn't they played better, but that they could hear better.
Here one another better, right, I mean, I mean that element.
Never mind the fact that it was preferable to all
the other psychoactive substances like alcohol and heroin, which we'll
get into shortly, in terms of one's health and not
giving people a hangover and staying healthy for a lifetime.
You know, there are so many different opinions about it.
I mean, for example, John Hammond, who was you know,
(10:01):
like a major figure in the jazz culture of that
era in terms of like producing the music. He hated
the presence of weed in the lifestyles and the musicians
because he felt that well, for one thing, it made
them liable for persecution, but also he felt that it
(10:21):
played havoc with their sense of time. And a lot
of musicians would disagree with him about it. I mean,
he wasn't a smoker, so he wouldn't have known. You know.
At one point, I was reading something that Charles Baudelaire
wrote about the effects of hashi, you know, Charles Baudelaire,
the French poet. He called it a mirror that magnifies,
(10:44):
yet only a mirror, And I found that to be
very very useful in considering the relationship between you know,
the substances and the musicianship. These musicians were all unbelievable artists.
They were disciplined, they practiced endlessly, you know, their entire
(11:07):
lives were devoted to their art form. And I don't
think that marijuana, you know, in and of itself, you know,
made any of them innately better musicians. Um. You know,
it couldn't like put talent uh there that wasn't already there.
But what it could do was it could amplify that
(11:29):
talent in different ways. And I think I think that
the answer is like somehow contained in that kind of thesis.
I'll tell you that even today, when I find myself
now is things are opening up post pandemic. I find
myself going to jazz clips in New York more and
more frequently. And what they I like to do is
to like take a little finally grammedable before I go,
and it just enhances the appreciation and especially my ability
(11:54):
to appreciate some of the more out there improvisation. M Yeah,
I think you know, you hear it over and over again.
I mean I think it just opens your musical mind, uh,
there's just something about it. As Mesro, there was a
musician who fell in love with the blues, fell in
(12:14):
love with weed, and he and was himself, I mean
when he played clarinet or something. Yeah, he was. He
was a clarinetist. But there in his book Really the Blues,
there is a passage in which he describes the first
time that he ever smoked and went out on the
(12:35):
on the bandstand to play. And to me, it's one
of the most resonant pieces of writing that I've ever
come across about, you know, the potential of taking a
musician's mind or a listeners mind and just kind of
(12:55):
like opening it. Um. It's really it's really a remarkable
piece of writing. If you want, I'll read you a
little a little passage of what he wrote about. This
is him, um, going out to play under the influence
for the first time. The first thing I noticed was
(13:17):
that I began to hear my saxophone as though it
were inside by head. But I couldn't hear much of
the bend in back of me, although I knew they
were there. All the other instruments sounded like they were
way off in the distance. I got the same sensation
you'd get if you stuffed your ears with cotton and
talked out loud. Then I began to feel the vibrations
(13:38):
of the read much more pronounced against my lip, and
my head buzzed like a loudspeaker. I found I was
slurring much better and putting just the right feeling into
my phrases. I was really coming on. All the notes
came easing out of my horn like they had already
(13:59):
been made up, greased, and stuffed into a bell. So
all I had to do was blow a little and
send them on their way, one right after the other,
never missing, never behind me, all without an ounce of effort.
The phrases seemed to have more continuity to them, and
I was sticking to the theme without ever going tangent.
(14:22):
I felt like I could go on playing for years
without running out of ideas or energy. And that's uh,
that's it. Well, you know, it's interesting. At one point,
you know, you talked about Alan Ginsburg, the great poet,
the one who wrote the you know, the poem Howell,
which is, you know, perhaps the most famous poem American
(14:45):
poem writter in America in the mid twentieth century, or
maybe even the entire second half of the twentie century,
but him being very influenced not just by jazz, but
by mes Mesro's book that he was it was formative
for him. Yeah, he found it in the the Columbia
bookstore when he was a student at Columbia, you know,
in the forties, and he was very, very interested in
(15:09):
experiencing marijuana. And that book was like the Rosetta Stone
for him because it showed him that it emerged from
a whole cultural sensibility in the United States, and that
really began his whole lifelong interest in um learning about drugs,
(15:30):
learning about their origins, learning about their cultural origins, understanding
the spiritual connotations of them. You know, the beats were
so uh amazing because that's a literature in which the
writers were imbued with the experiences of these substances. At
(15:53):
the same time as they were trying to find a
new form that was like jazz, they were trying to
write like the jazz musicians were playing. So you have
a literature that's imbued and catalyzed by the experiencing of
these substances, about these substances, in which you have writing
(16:17):
for you know, a popular audience. Really in this country
for the first time about these substances. So it's it's
just it's groundbreaking from all of those different aspects. Well,
he's talking the book about you know, some of these
early before they become famous, they're going up to the
jazz clubs in Harlem and elsewhere. You talk about Lester Young,
(16:39):
who will get to in a moment um, you know,
giving Jack Carroll at his first joint um. So yeah,
definitely changed his life for sure. Yeah, yeah, it did,
it really did. Just to go back to the jazz
for a second, just talk about Lester Young nicknamed Praz
you know him and the saxophone to some extent, begins
(17:00):
to redefine jazz in the thirties and he's somebody for
whom also marijuana is important in his life, although he's
unfortunately caught up in other drugs, notably alcohol. But I
think at one point you say he may have been
the most influential of all jazz musicians, which surprised me
a bit. But explain why it was his style that
was really so influential as well as his unique musicianship.
(17:24):
He was such a singular personality. Um, you know his background,
he you know, he came from this band, that um,
this musical family, and he was very sensitive and he
was very devastated by his experiences of the racism of
that time. He also was really really in love with weed.
(17:45):
What it did for Prez was it pulled him into
himself and it allowed him to create his own kind
of insulated musical world in which he kind of became
this very singular personality. So that was his impact. He
drew people into that, like that little bubble that he
(18:06):
wove around himself, and in that bubble was his incredible,
fertile creativity and also his sensibility, his unique sensibility. I mean,
he really was the inventor of pool as it came
to be known in the thirties and forties and fifties.
I mean, you can almost trace it back to this
(18:30):
one individual in his demeanor, in how he walked and
how he talked, his invention of of jive, his use
of these words that became um, you know, like staples
in the vernacular. I mean, he was so unbelievably inventive
in every possible way. We'll be talking more after we
(18:53):
hear this ad. You mentioned some of the expressions that
he probably coined. I got it. Made I got eyes
(19:13):
for that copycat. Even the Big Apple is the nickname
from New York, the word crib for one's home, the
word bread for money, and would even end sentences of
conversations by saying you dig I mean, and then of
course the expression cool as in that's cool man. So
once again, as with Louie Armstrong, whether they originated or popularized,
but you know, it's a formative influence in American culture,
(19:36):
not just through their music, but even through their own
way of talking, of speaking of creating new language. And
also it's interesting to consider, uh, you know, the impact
of the weed on his musical style because it was
so emblematic really of his personality. He was kind of
(19:59):
like very very laid back in his tone. It was
a very sweet tone, and he would just kind of
like lay back and then all of a sudden, just
in the most tasteful way, just completely take over the
music and just elevate it to this very very unique place.
(20:24):
And that was how people kind of saw him. He
was kind of a very laid back guy. He was
very shy. He was like a laggard, you know, he
was just kind of like hang there and then like
draw you in and then just take you somewhere. And
his relationship with Billie Holiday was one of them, you know,
(20:45):
really signature creative relationships of that entire era in the music.
Well we'll get into Billie Holliday shortly, but once again
to jump forward into the beat, I mean for Alan Ginsberg.
Ginsburg you say was strongly influenced by Lester Young, and
notably I think his songs I got rid them Let's
(21:08):
hear a little clip and Lester leaps in Let's hear
a clip. So talk about that connection, Martin, between Lester
(21:38):
Young and his influence on Alan Ginsberg. Well, you know,
Carolac was the real jazz aficionado of the early beats,
and he um, of course, who was turned on by
Lester Young. You know, he started going to the jazz
clubs and he's the first one to write about jazz
(21:59):
of of those guys. And you know, he and Allen
were very close and they would listen to the music together,
and Caro Wac was the first one who became imbued
with this notion of writing the same way that the
jazz musicians played. He would listen to Charlie Parker and
(22:19):
he would listen to Lester young, and one of the
things that he really began to see was that they
played in these long lines, these kind of like long
unbroken lines in which one idea would like initiate like
unleash another idea, and then another idea and then another idea,
(22:41):
in this kind of endless progression of unfolding of like
ideas and melodies and with and there would be breaks,
and then the breaks would be used creatively to kind
of contextualize something else. And you know, Carolac would like
get stoned and he would listen to the jazz and
(23:04):
then he would like to think about how he could, um,
you know, right in the same way. So some of
his earliest attempts of writing um were um you know,
like long improvisations. Really, I mean his whole creation of
the manuscript for On the Road, for example, which he
(23:28):
did like putting this giant roll of paper and putting
it in a typewriter and just sitting down and like
literally like twenty three days straight just like churning out
this manuscript which became this like incredible novel called On
the Road. Alan in his development in his poetics, was
(23:52):
always looking at Caro Wac and going wow, wow, Wow,
I wonder if I can do that with my poetry.
And when he sat down, Uh, he was living in
North Beach at the time, in San Francisco, and he,
you know, he sat down to write how. Carol wac
had been living in Mexico at that time and he
(24:13):
had created this this long poem called Mexico City Blues
and he sent it to Alan, and Alan, you know,
started writing How, trying to do it along that kind
of like long saxophone line, and that's the entire first
(24:36):
movement of How is written exactly. It was almost like
he was trying to channel Lester young Um, like sitting
down and blowing. So the whole first movement of How
is like you know, him just like blowing on a saxophone. Really,
you know, this brings us to the next great revolutionary
(24:57):
and jazz, Charlie Parker and be back Jazz and Charlie
Parker as somebody who's using drugs from the time he's
in his young teens, Charlie Parker, a man of fantastic appetites,
Charlie Parker who just keeps using more and more drugs
and keeps getting more and more creative in his music
(25:17):
until a breaking point comes, so, I mean a lot
of your book obviously, the title is Bebop Apocalypse Charlie
Parker was Mr Bibop. Tell us about Charlie Parker and
about the relationship between drugs and his music. Well, he
was unique because he was so um musically driven and
(25:39):
ambitious from a very young age, and also from a
very young age he was just as driven to use
and abuse pretty much everything he could get his hands on.
And he was a genius musician, you know, addicted for
the first time as a teenager, even before he left
(25:59):
Kansas City to you know, hop the freight train that
would bring him to Chicago and then eventually to New
York and then eventually to fame. We talked extensively about
Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong, lifelong user of marijuana, who set
pretty strong boundaries about things that he would do and
(26:21):
things that he wouldn't do. He, for example, did not
like alcohol, and he wouldn't like cross that boundary into
the use of alcohol. He really really did not like
hard drugs and he never crossed that boundary into hard drugs.
Charlie Parker Bird, as he would of course become famously known,
(26:44):
He not only had no boundaries about music, but he
had no boundary about his use of substances. Not only
would he use everything, but he would make an ethos
of it. And he was so brilliant musically that that
(27:05):
boundaryless ethos about his substances became inextricable from his you know,
just boundary breaking musicianship and genius. So that's what set
those two geniuses apart from each other in terms of
their relationship to substances. Um. That's the best way I
(27:29):
could describe it. Yeah, you know, at one point you
describe there's a song, um, and let's hear a clip
from it, Loverman. This song became part of the legend
(27:51):
of his genius of Charlie Parker say something about Loverman.
You know, it's it's so interesting because he became an
addict as a teenager, and then when he got really
musically ambitious, he decided that he was going to get clean.
So when he jumped that freight trade out of the
(28:11):
Kansas City freight yard and you know, to to begin
his musical Hobysey Um, he kind of understood that he
needed all of his discipline and all of his energy
towards that goal and he kind of like, you know,
he put down, he put down narcotics at that point,
(28:33):
and then he came to New York and um, you know,
he hooked up with the small inner nucleus you know
that would form the Seminole Bebop group. You know that
all played in Mittens in the you know, the early
to mid nineteen forties, and it was a small group
of guys and Mintens was the Jazz Club. Yeah yeah,
(28:57):
but it was a small subterranean in setting up at
Harlem and all the like the musicians who were interested
in exploring this new form of jazz would kind of
gather there after their gigs, and Bird was one, and
Dizzy Gillespie was another, Kenny Clark, Max Roach on drums,
(29:19):
and Felonious Monk, you know, the great pianist. He was
a part of that group. He really became the spark plug,
like the creative spark plug of that new form of
the music. And just as that was happening, he fell
back into his use of narcotics and got really really
(29:42):
strung out, strung out in a way that he had
never been strung out before. So like right at the
peak of that he was playing in a group with Dizzy,
and Dizzy decided that he was going to take his
band out to the West Coast to showcase the music
the first time at a place called Billy Burghs. And
(30:03):
it was a big deal. Um. You know, all the
people who were in the know about jazz out there.
They they showed up because the buzz was about this
new form and and this guy Bird. And so he
got to Los Angeles. It was a new place for him.
He didn't know where to cop and he immediately got
(30:25):
in trouble and he became extremely unreliable because he was
always out scouring the town um looking for a fix.
And that was when Dizzy decided, okay, you know this
is not working. He dropped him from the group, brought
the rest of the group back to New York and
(30:45):
Bird was left out there in Los Angeles, high and dry,
badly strung out, and he ended up um like living
with the trumpet player Howard McGhee um. And it was
McGhee who got Bird a deal with this guy Ross
Russell to go in and have this recording session. And
(31:07):
when he went in to record these songs, he was
very very very badly strung out and One of the
songs that he recorded in that session was Loverman, which
had been a billy holiday song, and he played it
and he just like really really on the edge, and
(31:32):
he just he did what he what he always did.
He just went for it and the track was recorded
and that was when Bird had his breakdown. You know,
he goes back to the hotel. He and he ended
up um in Camarillo in the uh the mental institution there.
(31:54):
And when he got out, that was when the track
was released, and he came back to New York and
you know, he was healthy again and he formed this
group Miles Davis was a part of then, even I
mean he's just about barely can get it together. But
(32:14):
it turns out to be one of his great recordings. Well,
he never liked it himself. He understood, you know, the
kind of shape that he was in it when he
recorded it. But the impact that it had on his
musical community was powerful because by then everyone kind of
knew about his lifestyle. And he came, you know out,
(32:37):
and he went back to New York and played at
the Royal Roost and his band just tore it up.
He was like at the top of his game and
that's when really his legend began. And so this track
comes out and they hear this man who now everybody
(32:58):
knows had been a junk and is a junkie. And
what they hear is this statement of this artist like
essentially playing his pain. And they were terrible, terribly, terribly
moved by it, just by the pathos of it and
(33:19):
by his commitment to his art, and somehow the fact
that he was a dope feed um, you know, it
just created this aura of this kind of dark romanticism.
Really at one point might use his phrase, I don't
(33:52):
know you're quoting somebody else, but saying that with the heroine,
I mean, and everything else that was going on. It
wasn't just heroin, because Charlie Parker many others, they were
using a lot of stuff. They were Sometimes there was
a lot of alcohol. Sometimes alcohol was a dominant drug.
It was wed, of course, but they're also bends, a dream.
There might have been other stuff, but in some level
they were playing their lifestyle. I think you put it
(34:14):
that way for better or works, Uh, you know, you
describe another moment to I think it's Norman Grants, the
jazz producer is putting on jazz at the Philharmonic, and
Charlie Parker is supposed to be there, Um, you know,
he's trying to score. Finally shows up and I think
(34:34):
the song was sweet Georgia Brown. Yeah, yeah, what happened there? Well,
he just like you know, he comes on stage and
and blows everybody away. Let's hear a clip of that.
(34:55):
So that and the rest of it blew people away
that evening, huh, and he was totally high as it,
but pulling it together. Well. The thing that people don't
really get about, um, you know, Heroin is that these
guys were not shooting dope to get high and go
on stage and play. Um. You know, if you shot dope,
(35:19):
you would go on the nod. Um. You know, that's
not really where they wanted to be when they played.
What Heroin did was it made them what they called straight,
they called it getting straight. It kind of stabilized them really, um,
you know, it's that's one of the misconceptions that you know,
(35:40):
people have about heroin and jazz is that, you know,
when these guys were addicted, you know, they would shoot
dope and like you know, get on the stand and
like be high out of their minds. And play. No,
that's not what was going on. What was going on
was that this drug, which had created this metabolic need
(36:01):
for it um, was being satisfied and and so that's
what would allow them, you know, the kind of stability
be anchored, you know, back again in their music, in
their creativity. You remind me, Martin, of years ago I
read the biography of Stan Getz, who was the great
(36:22):
um White jazz saxophonist, and what it described it there
was his addiction to two drugs, heroin and alcohol. But
its story, I told, was that alcohol was the drug
that turned him into an asshole, and that screwed up
his playing and messed up everything you know in his life.
That with heroin, it wasn't the drug itself. It was
(36:44):
the need to score, to find a place to score,
to get the money together, to find a place to use,
to do all that and then get to his gig
in time. And it was to some extent, not the drug,
but the illegality of it, the criminality of it um,
which might have been in some respect it's part of
the enticement for a whole bunch of rebellious personalities who
were pioneers in jazz. But that was also the destructive,
(37:06):
harmful element of it. And I think what you described
by Charlie Parker as well, right, Um, another point you described,
there's another protege of Charlie Parker, Jackie McLean, who I
think was one of your key sources because he was
still alive and available when you write in his book,
and I think you quote Jackie McLean saying, you know,
Harold was kind of a working drug for Yeah, for
a lot of them, it was. I mean, you know,
(37:28):
it's very complex, um when you think about it. I mean,
these were brilliant musicians, highly evolved, highly sensitive people devoted
to this art form, devoted to like really pushing it,
and a lot of them believe that, you know, it
had not only creative capacity but socio cultural racial ability
(37:54):
to bring people together. And yet the irony was that
it was making them vulnerable to prosecution and the element
of racism. You know, of course not all of the
musicians were African American, you know, but um, a lot
of them were. And they're the whole role that Heroin
(38:18):
played in as an anodyne to the racism of that time,
and and what these people had to endure is also
a significant factor, I believe. So they were all very
different people having different experiences. And in Jackie's case, who's
a wonderful man, by the way, it took him twenty
(38:41):
five years to get clean and he would never have
been able to do it without method on and that
that was his bridge to you know, getting clean from
heroin was through use of in another opiate. So it
was a very complicated thing. I just to give the
audience here a sense of how pervasive this was, I mean,
(39:04):
it really happens. I think the heyday of Heron and
jazz is really from nineteen forty seven to nineteen fifty seven,
give or take a few years here or there. But
at one point, one of the famous jazz critics that entoff,
he goes to the Newport Jazz Festival of nineteen fifty seven,
and he surveys over four hundred jazz musicians from New
York City and asked them about their drug use and
(39:26):
with marijuana, he finds, according to people who self reporting,
eighty two percent say they've tried marijuana, fifty four percent
say they've used that occasionally, twenty three percent say they
do so regularly. With heroin, fifty three percent said they
tried at twenty four percent say they used it occasionally,
in sixteen percent say they use it regularly. And separately,
(39:48):
there was another jazz historian, Lincoln Collier, who claimed he
thought that up to seventy five percent of all jazz
musicians used heroin during the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties.
So this is a period when heroin was becoming a
little more prominent in the black community. And Claude Brown
and his famous Bookman Child in a Promised Land writes
(40:08):
about what happens in the late forties and the fifties
where heroin does get take off, but the vast majority
of the culture is not using it. So this really
is a subculture of jazz greats and jazz great wannabes
who are also using heroin. And of course many people
put the blame on Charlie Parker about how many musicians
would listen to Charlie Parker play in a way that
(40:29):
nobody had ever played before, and it seemed almost impossible.
And you know, oh, it must be because he shooting heroin.
And if I become a Heroin user, I can be
more like my hero, Charlie Parker, and maybe I can
play more like Ken. I mean, there's some truth to that,
I guess Martin writes that people you know kind of
either let down their guard visa the heroin or even
(40:49):
went into it. Because Charlie Parker was the infamous heroin
using jazz great yes, UM, and he recognized that and
he was deeply unhappy about it. Bird was um a
very complex uh human being. UM. And you know that's
(41:12):
one of the challenges of you know, writing about people
like Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday, these mythic figures who
um you know, at the same time became addicts and
their myths essentially um become their stories, you know. And
as you mentioned, this is like happening on stage, but
(41:36):
the backdrop is something that's happening, you know, to an
entire community really up there in Arlem. You know, you
mentioned Claude brown Um writing about that manchild and Promised Land.
I had the honor of interviewing Claude brown Um for
my books before he passed away. And one of the
(41:59):
things that really um comes across is how these individuals, um,
these artists became really really prominent and heroes really to
the community up there, and UM, you know, their lifestyles
(42:22):
became inextricable from their accomplishments as as artists. So really
what you have for the first time is a group
of individuals who become role models for UM, a phenomenon
of heroin use in a community at large, UM, a
(42:45):
community that finds itself in the cross hairs really of
forces in which you know, the lives of these musicians
is really just one thread really where so much else
is going on, you know, about crime in public policy
(43:06):
and racism and things like that, and that's when the
whole thing becomes extremely complex and in its own way tragic.
Let's take a break here and go to an ad.
(43:36):
You also bring out something else there, which was specifically
about bebop. I mean, your book is called Bebop of
Popplix and Charlie Parker is a key figure in it,
and you talk about bebop music to some extent um
kind of intersecting with heroin. But also it's the type
of music that reflects and that manifests the feeling of
(43:58):
resentment that's so many black people feel, especially after World
War Two. Of people had served in the army in
World War Two, served in the military, coming back and
then being thrown back into Jim Crow America, and even
the racism in the in the Northern States. And then
you have, of course the great evil you know, human
being throughout all this period, Harry Anslinger, who becomes the
(44:20):
founding director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in thirty
and rules that agency for thirty two years until nineteen
sixty two, who is by all accounts a racist, right um,
and who somebody is initially focused on heroin, but by
the mid thirties begins to focus on marijuana, the demon drug,
and the era of reefer madness and really conflating you know,
(44:41):
the whole fear of white women having sex with black
men in the role of drugs and music and all
of that. So say more about bebop and racism and
heroin and net interweaving of those elements with the revolution
within the jazz community. Um, it was a revolutionary kind
(45:04):
of music. I mean, it evolved from swing, but it
turned swing on its head really and there were people
who hated it as a result of it, jazz critics
and jazz musicians. So the music itself was considered to
(45:24):
be um subversive, and so on top of that you
have it being played by these individuals who were very
very aware of that and also aware of the fact that, um,
you know, they were African Americans and that the music
(45:46):
was to them. They saw it as a vehicle to
express um you know. There they're absolute awareness of and
condemnation of the racist society that they lived in. A
(46:11):
lot of the people who are who are jazz lovers
of that time were very very sympatico with that entire sensibility,
and Slinger from the very beginning understood that this was
a subversive culture socially and raciully. I mean when he
(46:38):
decided to, um, you know, conduct the entire anti marijuana crusade,
he was compiling a list of jazz musicians and his
idea was that with the marijuana law of seven, he
was going to go after all of these jazz musicians
and basically, you know, further into isn't so from the
(47:02):
very beginning there was this sort of adversarial relationship between
the jazz community and and Harry Innslinger and the Federal
Beeau of Narcotics. In a way, that's where the culture
war over drug use in this country really really begins.
(47:24):
So it's couched in this racism. From the very very beginning,
you have, you know, this phenomenon of you know, what's
called the Great Harlem heroin Epidemic. You know, some people
have a problem with the use of the word epidemic,
(47:45):
but it's used to express the fact that you have,
for the first time, you know, this community which is
really really suffering from addiction, heroin addiction on a level
that's never really been experienced before in American society. So
(48:09):
while you have that happening, you have these laws being
put into effect so that, um, people who are addicted,
there's only one thing that can happen to them, you know,
them to be thrown into prison and buried, you know,
for decades. At the same time, you have what is
(48:29):
really the first popular movement to try to medicalized, to
try to take heroin addiction and bring it back to
the purview of you know, people in the medical community. Durminding,
I should say, Olso Martino, at the beginning of this thing,
I wanted to actually, for the first time I ever
(48:51):
dedicate an episode of Psychoactive to somebody, and that person
is doctor Professor John P. Morgan. As professor at City College,
he taught the mixed undergraduate graduate medical program there. But
he was one of the America's great drug experts, the
one who coined the term opio phobia. He was probably
(49:11):
the most frequent expert business on drug cases for the
defense in America. But he was also an extraordinary ethno
musicologist who had a library of thousands of songs and
and also somebody who had like audiographic memory, where he
actually had in his head the lyrics of of thousands
of songs that had drug references in that. He passed
(49:34):
away at a fairly young age, But I would like
to dedicate this episode to him. And I know you
mentioned him in your book you acknowledge his role in
helping inform you as you were writing about this. Yeah,
he was an amazing man. I mean, I you know,
I'm very grateful to you, by the way, for when
I really really started delving into the whole um subject
(49:55):
of drug culture. You know that ended up in you know,
my two book books and the various documentary and television surians.
I've done it of opening up that whole network of
those people who had a huge impact on me, and
he was certainly one of them. I mean, he was
a great lover of jazz, and he was incredibly knowledgeable
(50:17):
about it, and at the same time that he was
like so obviously incredibly knowledgeable about drugs from you know,
from a scholarly and medical point of view, at the
same time that he was aware of, you know, the
sort of cultural dimensions of it. And I think that's
(50:38):
really appropriate that you would dedicate this, hyeh, this episode
to him. Yeah, okay, well to John to Dr John P. Morrigan.
So Martin, you know, just going back, so we get
into the fifties and Miles Davis who becomes a chief
figure it has his been John Coltrane, and John Coltrane,
(50:58):
who really, of all the as great is the one
that has the most personal impact on me. But I
noticed in writing you know, Coltrane goes through this terrible
period of heroin and alcohol really messing him up in
in a in a in a significant way, and he
then finally goes through this experience that he describes as
(51:19):
a spiritual awakening where he puts it all behind him,
and that unleash is you know, one of the most
extraordinarily creative periods in the history of all of jazz.
But I noticed in reading about this that you wrote
about John Coltrane's transformation, and there was something personal in it.
(51:40):
I don't know if you specifically said in the book,
but I remember when you came to see me, you said, Ethan,
you know, I'm somebody who's had my struggles with drugs
and I had to, you know, put them behind me.
But I'm also somebody who gets it about all the
positive ways that drugs play in life. So what to
just explain a little more from a personal side, how
the story of John coltraneans um spiritual awakening as he
(52:02):
comes leaves his heroin addiction and alcohol adiction behind him.
What it meant to you? Well, I mean I come
to this subject as someone who pretty much crashed and
burned on drugs and had to, you know, get clean
and sober at the age of thirty seven. And initially
(52:22):
my whole interest in this subject became about trying to
understand its impact on me and trying to sort it
all out. And then I began to sort of think about, Okay,
what was its impact on my generation? And then I
began to think about, well, what was its impact on
(52:43):
my country? And in my experience of recovery, of the
recovery culture. You know, I was kind of thinking about,
you know what Bill Wilson had to say, you know,
the founder of alcoholics Anonymous, and his uh correspondence with
the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Young, in which they began
(53:07):
to postulate about how what they call the spiritual awakening
could transform the landscape of the addict and the alcoholic,
and how that was, as they saw it, like the
most beneficial, the most advantageous. That would kind of like
(53:28):
give the addict and the alcoholic the best shot at,
you know, living a different life that was not consumed
by the destructive impact of these things, um by addiction
and all the kind of side effects of being addicted
to whatever it was that you can be addicted to.
(53:50):
M So, you know, when I really began to um
look at the transits of these different musicians through addiction,
what really really leapt out at me was Coltrane's experience
and him directly referring to what happened to him to
(54:14):
him leaving Heroin behind as a spiritual awakening, Because what
happened to Coltrane with it, he had tried numerous times
to kick and he couldn't do it, But finally he
reached the bottom, and he went to, you know, sequester
himself away, and he basically shut himself up in a
(54:36):
room for a couple of weeks, and he told people,
you know, only just bring me water. Um, you know,
I'm going to stay in this room, and what's ever
going to happen to me is going to happen to me.
And at some point during the experience, and when he
(54:56):
was suffering from the agony, the physical agony of withdrawal
from Heroin, of how he called out, he reached out
to a higher power of his understanding and ask for
help and asked for this terrible experience to be lifted
(55:19):
to be removed from him. And he he writes about it,
and he basically says that he experienced the piece a
kind of inner peace, and also at the same time,
he asked his higher power to be able to use
his gift, to use his art in a way that
(55:41):
would spiritually uplift people. And that was his entire approach
to his art as he left Heroine behind. So that
when you were listening two that wonderful track, that amazing
(56:02):
his version of My Favorite Things in which he picks
up the soprano saxophone in essence what you were hearing
is that love, that expression of that love, of that
awakening that he was experienced as a result of that.
(56:24):
And it's really amazing because, I mean, Cultrane's music is
actually used in you know, the numerous churches, you know,
the same way that the music of both and you
know St. Matthew's Passion would would be used in a church.
And it's for a reason. It's because that music is
(56:47):
just completely about his relationship with his church in San
Francisco still in existence. So it's uh, you know, in fact,
it's funny disc of jazz, um and drugs without discuss
a jazz musician who in the nineteen fifties is described
(57:09):
as quote unquote the most famous drug addict in America
UM and who was simultaneously one of the perhaps the
greatest jazz vocalist in American history and global history. And
that's Billie Holiday. I mean, somebody who liked Charlie Parker
struggles with all sorts of drugs and although heroines, you know,
(57:30):
as a UM, somebody for whom the drugs seemed to
have UM I think probably thinks and speaks politically about
the war on drugs. So you have a lot about
Billie Holiday in your in your books, say something about
her that stands out? Oh God, where did begin with
(57:51):
Lady Day, someone whose life was shrouded in myth in
the very beginning? Well, how about how about let's just
hear a ve clipped from her one of the most
famous songs, Strange Fruit, so the cheese that's strange true,
(58:20):
blot on leaves and let it. Strange Fruit was a
song that Billy began performing at Cafe Society in the
late dirties when she came down from Harlem to like
really become just an absolute phenomenon um, you know, in
(58:45):
the first like really important downtown inter racial jazz club.
And you know, I'm sure you know that it's a
song about lynching a guy by the name of a Mire.
Paul wrote the lyrics and her musical director there at
Cafe Society gave it to her when she began performing it.
(59:08):
And the thing about Billie Holiday that was so unique
was here with someone who just instinctively understood how to
take a composition and translate it, transform it, express it
um as a deeply personal, deeply moving uh piece of
(59:33):
art and have that impact on the also had an
impact Onstlinger. I think it's the first time he really
becomes aware of Billie Holiday, because that, you know, is uh.
It's one of the really maybe the one of the earliest,
if not the first, really great protests song against racial injustice. Yes, yes,
(59:57):
it was the first time that someone had used UM
an art form, really a popular art form, to make
a statement about lynching and racism in America. It was transformative, really,
and yes it was a bold political statement. Her record
(01:00:20):
label at the time would not release it. She had
to find another record label to release it. And and yes,
that was what brought her on the radar screen of
Harry Anslinger, you know, of the FBI, of the New
York Police Department, and of course in her case, it
would make her vulnerable to UM prosecution because of the
(01:00:46):
fact of her relationship to drugs, specifically her heroin addiction.
So from the very beginning from on, she had to
do walk this type brobe really between her public legend
and you know, these forces that we're going to use
(01:01:08):
that to try to bring her. You know, from very
early on, she decided that one of the ways she
was going to deal with this very difficult situation, this
very dangerous situation where she was just going to talk
about it, and she was really one of the first
people to do that. He she was busted three times,
(01:01:32):
you know, and each time basically she just like you know,
talked about it. And one of the things she talked
about was what bullshit it was, you know, the fact that, um,
she was being hounded by the police. She was aware
of the fact that she was a public figure, She
was aware of the fact that she had these problems
(01:01:52):
with addiction. She was aware of the fact that people
were going to listen to what she said about it,
and so that's what she did, and she talked about
how she believed that it was more of a medical
problem than a criminal justice problem, and that was anathema
(01:02:12):
to what Harry Anslinger wanted to put across to him.
It was all about, you know, these people were weak,
they were depraved, they were evil, they needed to be
locked up. And anyone who expressed the point of view
that was sympathetic to the idea that these people they
(01:02:35):
needed to be cared for. They weren't even allowing them
in hospitals. It was illegal to allow a drug addict
in Harlem to be admitted to a hospital. Think about
that until Billie Holiday in n died in a hospital
(01:02:59):
on Harlem. But there are these moments. Billy Holliday had
a really close friend, um. She was a dancer and
a singer and an actress. Her name was Marie Bryant,
and she said something really interesting. She said, people like
Billy Holiday and Lester Young, they were real and that reality,
(01:03:23):
just how real they were, is what made them so vulnerable.
You know, for people like that who were so just
like so so vulnerable, it just made it very very
hard for them. You know. There's a wonderful image that
Bono puts forth about Billie Holiday in his song Angel
(01:03:44):
of Harlem, which I think also kind of gets to
that when he sings Lady Day had Diamond Eyed she
sees the truth behind the lies, you know, and I
think that's what Marie Bryant was talking. Well, Mark, let
me ask you this, you know, because you do. I mean,
you know, obviously one key part of the election with race,
(01:04:06):
and we've been talking about, you know, the ways in
which racism, uh, you know, it was one of the
reasons why so many of these musicians, you know, found
drugs as a way of kind of insulating that from
that or defying it, or whatever it might be. I mean,
the book's worth reading because you get so much more
deeply and nuanced about so much of this. But you know,
(01:04:26):
the fact of the matter is it was also true
of the white jazz musicians. I mean, if I think
of the famous you know, white white jazz saxophonist, when
you think about not just Stan Gets, but Jerry Mulligan
perhaps the greatest of all. You know, baritone saxophonist Art Pepper,
you know the vocalist Chet Baker. You think about the
singer Anita oh Day, you think about Zoots Sims and
Alcohon and Red Rodney, even Drift, I'd think, because there's
(01:04:49):
more of a theme around race there. But just say
a little more about that. That that experience of the
white jazz musicians and all of this, well you they
were just as prone and just as vulnerable to it.
You know, all of the same forces culturally and musically
were at work on them. And they were you know,
(01:05:09):
the brothers and sisters of the black jazz musicians. I mean,
they all lived in this world. They all had this
experience together. Listen, addiction, it knows no race, it knows
no socio economic level. I mean, it's just it's human.
I mean, this is fundamentally a human experience. It's not racial,
(01:05:35):
it's not musical, it's not white. It's just fundamentally human
and um, it knows no bounds. Listen. And it wasn't
just white jazz musicians. I mean the white community of
jazz lovers, the hitsters. You know, they were just as
prone to you know, the use of the drugs and
(01:05:58):
the possibility of addiction in as you know anyone who
was black. So Martin, listen. I mean, I've loved our conversation.
I hope for our listeners that for those you've already
into jazz, you'll track down and listen to some of
those songs that we play clips of and some of
the other references. So Martin, thank you ever so much
for joining me and my listeners on Psychoactive. Thank you
(01:06:21):
and all the all the best for you and all
the work that you do. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please
tell your friends about it, or you can write us
a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like
(01:06:44):
to share your own stories, comments, and ideas, then leave
us a message at one eight three three seven seven
nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you
can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com on
or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You
can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive
(01:07:07):
is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures.
It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Noam
Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden,
Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures,
Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and
me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and
(01:07:30):
a special thanks to a brios f, Bianca Grimshaw and
Robert BB. Next week I'll be talking with the founder
of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. Her name's Lynn Paltrow
(01:07:52):
and she's the leading advocate at the intersection of drug policy,
reform and reproductive rights. I once got a call from
a drug testing representative on his way to a hospital,
and he said, I'm going up to talk to this
hospital and I want to convince them to use our
drug test because it will help them treat pregnant women.
I was like, no, it won't. It will be used
(01:08:14):
to turn those women over to police or punitive civil
child welfare folks and used against them. Subscribe to Cycoactive
now see you don't miss it
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