Pete took off his blue mechanics overalls, splashed on some Brut cologne and slid into a beige suit and chocolate, wide collared shirt before calling an OJ to pick him up. The overnight man had just arrived. Once he clocked in Pete clocked out. He could have taken the late model Caddy he had stashed in the back of the garage, but he wanted to make a few stops and parking uptown could be a bitch. The OJ that arrived at the midtown garage was a Deuce and a quarter driven by his main man Carlos. Pete had an account with this service, but would always hit Carlos off lovely. They took the West Side highway as Pete gave himself a bump in the backseat and then passed the $20 bill up to Carlos who took a hit with one hand on the wheel.
Sylvia’s was the tourist soul food hot spot in Harlem but Pete, who’d once been a short order cook, liked a spot up on 45th Street better (technically it was 145th Street, but lots of uptown folks left off the 1). Pork chops, greens, mac & cheese and an iced tea sweet enough to break your teeth later, Pete was ready to start his “day.” It was just after Midnight. He pulled out a roll of quarters, stationed himself at the pay phone by restrooms and left messages with several people saying simply, “It’s me. Come through.” Then he washed his hands, checked his reflection in the men’s room mirror and then hopped back into Carlos’s ride and headed farther uptown.
The bar was on a corner Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard across from the Esplanade Gardens, housing development. The Bartender shouted him out when he entered. One of the Waitresses gave him a kiss on the cheek when he asked for “some sugar.” Pete sat at the bar, ordered a screwdriver and then headed through a swinging door into the back. The Manager was on the phone behind a cluttered desk. He pointed to a small wooden box, which Pete opened, slipped a role of 20s and 10s into and then removed a cellophane bag with a valuable substance inside. Pete slipped into his suit’s inside pocket, nodded at the Manager and exited the room.
When he returned to the bar Lonnie Youngblood was on the small bandstand backed by a small combo, playing a mellow alto sax solo. He was billed as “the prince of Harlem” and it was hard to debate that status since there was a time when Youngblood could play thirty-five different gigs – all above 125th Street. While the music scene uptown had shrunk over the years this was one of Youngblood’s three gigs on this night. To rock music fans Youngblood was a link to Jimi Hendrix who, as jimmy James, played guitar in his band in the early ‘60s. But to hard core Harlemites like Pete, Youngblood was important because he was a staple of a particular nocturnal world, a part of the night from 110th Street all the way up to Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. Pete was a aficionado of melancholy jazzmen with a taste for self-destruction – his records collection included trumpeter Chet Baker and saxophonist Gene Ammons, both of whom indulged in heroin and spent time behind bars. By his bed side were two volumes that sat by atop each other – the red covered Encyclopedia of Jazz by Leonard Feather and the Holy Bible. He read one or the other at night depending on his mood and his needs.
Pete traded nods with Youngblood and then went back to the bar and sipped his screwdriver. Fifteen minutes later Joe walked in. He was coming from the after party for Rick James, who’d headlined at the Garden earlier in the evening. Joe wasn’t on staff at Motown records, but was in “independent promotion,” which meant he was paid a fee to use his “relationships” to gets on the air for Motown or anyone else willing to meet his price. Not being on a label’s staff gave the company a degree of distance from any “transactions” (cash payments, paying for prostitutes or gifting drugs) between Joe and radio station personal. Joe lived in that space where the music world and the underworld co-existed. He very much enjoyed that oxygen.
Joe shared the duality of all true record men – incredibly cynical about the deal making mechanics of the business (he knew how treacherous the fine print was), yet always ready yo be awed by some talent that popped up out of the ghetto. He’d see Trane at the Five Spot, driven Mahalia to revivals and shared Newports with Sam Cooke. Not much knocked him out anymore. His ears were spoiled and his heart was hard, but you never knew what you might hear next.
Pete and Joe had been friends, sometimes business associates and participants in the rituals of Uptown nightlife since the late ‘60s. Kindred spirits in the ever changing same. They sat through Lonnie’s set, chatted with a comely, dark skinned woman in a denim jump suit and white cowboy hat who said her name was Peaches. Lonnie came over and traded record business gossip with Joe, while Pete continued conversating with Peaches. Once Lonnie went back on stage for his last set the Pete told Joe it was time to make that next move.
They walked up Powell Blvd a couple of blocks and then made a left onto a block of decaying tenements. It was September, so the hot summer humidity that made Harlem streets teem at night had abated. But two unsupervised teenagers hung on one stoop and eyed them. Sitting between the legs of one a boom box played a cassette tape of DJ Hollywood rapping with Luv Bug Starski on the turntables. When Pete and Joe got close the another teen began gyrating his body and doing what the kids called poppin.’ Pete looked this as some ghetto curiosity. He grinned but kept moving. Joe slowed down, not out of appreciation, but irritation. A couple of white label owners has asked him about this “rappin’.” That Sugar Hill Gang record had sold a ton of vinyl. Mercury even had a gold 12 inch with a fool named, of all things, Kurtis Blow. The white boys wanted to know if he could find them some kids to rap. Joe was torn. He thought this mess was a terrible fad. But if he didn’t find them some young rapping Negroes someone else would.
There was a doorway in the middle of the block next to a closed garage. Pete hit the buzzer. A beat. The latch slid open on the peep hole. Two brown eyed looked out. “You’re early,” a male voice said from behind the door.
Pete said, “Couldn’t wait to see your lovely face.”
“Nigga please,” the voice replied.
The door opened. A large black man bid them enter. The Doorman actually wasn’t very tall, but his shoulders were that of a line backer. His bald dome glistened like Lemon Pledge on a coffee table. They all stood in a short hallway. Funky music came from the door at the other end. He frisked Joe, who was clean. Pete handed over the small caliber hand gun in had in the small of his back. The Doorman placed a shelf in a closet. When the Doorman said, “Have a good time gents,” the scar on the side of his right cheek spread out like a spider web on his brown skin.
Pete and Joe went through the door and entered the world of TJs, an illegal after hours spot that had been in business many years, though its location had often shifted. It’s clientele was a deeply entrenched community of hustlers, pimps, strippers, entertainers and dealers. Working men and women who’d saved enough cash for a wild night also stopped through on occasion. A barely legal woman, topless and in a g string, danced to the music from a juke box (the DJ came through later.) There was a long bar along one wall maintained by a woman and man, but there was no cash register. All money went into a little box that the House manager sat near. All seven tables at TJs had full boxes of Kleenex on them to help folks keep nostrils clean for the bar’s major feature – easy and open cocaine sniffing.
No one TJs sniffed lines of blow off the table top. Uptown it was customary for cocaine to be collected in folded dollars bills, in small spoons dangling from necklaces or on credit cards and shared with friends and folks who wanted to be your friend. Pete called the women who frequented TJs “bag followers” but, in truth, everyone who was at this point was following that bag. Pete, though he was a dealer himself, was no better. Once he’d been in bed with two women and a bag of coke on the nightstand. Despite the ladies’ best efforts it was the coke, not the sex, that got him excited. In his heart Pete knew he was as much a freak as any women in the room.
Pete and Joe took over a near the bar and immediately attracted the attention of a young woman who sat down with them. Tina was a regular at TJs who had a number of hustles, including boosting from downtown department stores and selling hand guns she’d drive up I-95 from down south. Tina, like Pete and joe, was a salesperson and a talker, which essential in TJs because if coke is good for anything, it’s for talk. In the window less room that was TJs coke was the ignitor and conversation by product. As the hours passed the talk at the table and around the room was rooted in raw street wisdom and countrified cool. Unlike the dreamy, incoherent atmosphere of heroin, Coke was a drug of verbs, nouns, and adjectives
“It’s better to be single and paid than married and fucked for nothing.” Tina observed.
Speaking of a mutual friend Pete said, “I looked over at her and she was so thin I could see both sides of her with one glance,” to which Tina replied, “But that bitch could suck some dick. I heard she could suck a golf ball through a water hose.”
Talking about a crew of enforcers Joe had employed on occasion, he said “As a matter of fact them motherfuckers was so bad back then the motherfucker would kill you on Saturday night and come back the next Saturday and kill you again.”
At the bar a middle aged man was sharing coke and conversation with a younger man on the realities of aging. “You a young man and pussy is easy for you now but wait until you’re around fifty. At fifty you’re happy to buy some pussy. At fifty you start getting bald. The dick don’t get hard like it used to. People start to call you sir. Your body gives way. The dick gives way to tongue.”
The woman bartender shouted “Who’s sitting here?” and pointed to a place on the bar where someone had left some cocaine. “Is this anybody’s? If this ain’t nobody’s I’m gonna take it.” The patrons laughed. Left unattended coke was fair game at TJs and the white powder soon disappeared up the bartender’s nose.
Pete, Joe and a shifting set of acquaintances, including Tina, Peaches from the bar and another woman who’s name they didn’t catch, sat sniffing in talking for several hours. You’d never know the men were actually waiting on someone. Just after 4:30am a man entered TJs in a white fur coat, brown tinted shades and black hair fluffed up like Farrah Fawcett. In a room full of hustlers of every variety this man – the Program Director a major radio station – was a special kind of celebrity. He sauntered over the table and took seat. When offered coke he replied, “I’m just trying to get my head right,” the universal phrase for “I’ve had my fill for tonight.” This, after all, was a business meeting.
Joe reached into is jacket, pulled out an envelop and handed it to the PD. The envelop disappeared inside the fur coat. Noting he had his Bentley waiting outside the PD excused himself and exited TJs. Joe, his day’s work done, whispered to Tina and they disappeared into a back room. Pete looked at his watch. He wasn’t due at his “slave” for another ten hours. He asked Peaches if she was hungry. He suggested they hit Thomforde’s on 1-2-5 and St. Nick, which always had a good breakfast. They each took one last bump and headed out into the world time clocks and overalls.
[Some details in this essay were taken from Terry Williams’ Le Boogie Woogie: Inside an After-Hours Club (Columbia University Press. 2020). Others came from first hand visit and some conversations.]