play, and awards ceremony we ever had, not to mention chaperoning some of our field trips and dances. He cooked dinner for us every night and made sure our ears were clean when we got out of the tub. He did everything.
“Well, then. Don’t go blaming her for your anger, because your idea of a family is what you saw on television. Louise did what she thought was right and proper and keeping her from that might have done more damage to our family than good. We just happen to be on the shit-receiving end of the stick. Hell, I miss her just as much, but your mama loves you and she shows that by sending you cards and gifts when she knows you don’t even open them.”
I sit embarrassed. Pops always defends her, no matter what, and I can never find it in myself to really get to the heart of the issue with him and yell at the top of my lungs how fucked up it was growing up without her.
My mother and father were both extremely involved jazz musicians back in the day. They met at a music festival in Monaco. Popsfinished high school and did one year at Juilliard. My mother dropped out of high school after winning a talent show when she was sixteen. Her parents moved her from Houston to New York to do amateur night at the Apollo and although she won two shows back to back, no immediate music career came out of it. She worked part-time as a housekeeper and made the other half of her money as a singer.
My mother, Louise Angelina Alston, became a very popular vocalist who performed with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, and even Benny Goodman before she was twenty years old. These connections came about when she was in Monaco attending a music festival with some of her singer friends, hoping to pick up a record deal. Pops had a gig playing keys for a small group that Miles Davis and drummer Roy Haynes had put together. Pops had met Miles at a rehearsal one night, and from there he played keys with the group for two and a half years. At the end of the second year they went to Monaco, Pops was looking to start his own band. He formed the Alston Jazz Quartet, and my mother auditioned and was the chosen vocalist. Back then, Sarah Vaughan, Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, and other female singers were on the rise and my mother never seemed to be able to penetrate the market in the United States as a recognized jazz singer. She had a sound that floated between the operatic soul-filled Sarah and the high-spirited Ella. Unfortunately, America was already full of Sarahs and Ellas. Plus, my mother was young and nobody wanted to deal with a teenage jazz singer. Respect in the jazz scene came with age and experience, neither of which my mother had. I suppose that’s why she never could get her big break here.
I vaguely remember hearing Mom sing in rehearsals. I was three or four then. She had a voice that could make a man break down to his knees and beg for more. Her singing voice was slow, full of raw soul, and very mellow, but crystal clear. I mean glass-breaking clear. And when she hit those soprano highs like Sarah, everyone in the room would go to shouting and hollering like they were in church. She and Pops used to take me to some of their gigs at the clubs and I sometimes still dream about the smoky rooms full of dark, sweat-linedfaces. It’s funny, because when she talked, her voice was raspy and low like she was hoarse. Real jazz musicians couldn’t get enough of her, and sometimes she did a gig every night for weeks on end. She recorded a few songs, but they were never released in the States and were never enough to get her name in the mainstream.
When Louise became pregnant with me, she was twenty-five and Pops was twenty-nine, but they kept traveling and performing until it was time for me to enter school.
Before then, Mom would take me everywhere with her. Even though I was Pops’s “Little Man,” Louise hardly let me out of her sight. She would talk to me all the time about anything and everything I asked her
“Well, then. Don’t go blaming her for your anger, because your idea of a family is what you saw on television. Louise did what she thought was right and proper and keeping her from that might have done more damage to our family than good. We just happen to be on the shit-receiving end of the stick. Hell, I miss her just as much, but your mama loves you and she shows that by sending you cards and gifts when she knows you don’t even open them.”
I sit embarrassed. Pops always defends her, no matter what, and I can never find it in myself to really get to the heart of the issue with him and yell at the top of my lungs how fucked up it was growing up without her.
My mother and father were both extremely involved jazz musicians back in the day. They met at a music festival in Monaco. Popsfinished high school and did one year at Juilliard. My mother dropped out of high school after winning a talent show when she was sixteen. Her parents moved her from Houston to New York to do amateur night at the Apollo and although she won two shows back to back, no immediate music career came out of it. She worked part-time as a housekeeper and made the other half of her money as a singer.
My mother, Louise Angelina Alston, became a very popular vocalist who performed with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, and even Benny Goodman before she was twenty years old. These connections came about when she was in Monaco attending a music festival with some of her singer friends, hoping to pick up a record deal. Pops had a gig playing keys for a small group that Miles Davis and drummer Roy Haynes had put together. Pops had met Miles at a rehearsal one night, and from there he played keys with the group for two and a half years. At the end of the second year they went to Monaco, Pops was looking to start his own band. He formed the Alston Jazz Quartet, and my mother auditioned and was the chosen vocalist. Back then, Sarah Vaughan, Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, and other female singers were on the rise and my mother never seemed to be able to penetrate the market in the United States as a recognized jazz singer. She had a sound that floated between the operatic soul-filled Sarah and the high-spirited Ella. Unfortunately, America was already full of Sarahs and Ellas. Plus, my mother was young and nobody wanted to deal with a teenage jazz singer. Respect in the jazz scene came with age and experience, neither of which my mother had. I suppose that’s why she never could get her big break here.
I vaguely remember hearing Mom sing in rehearsals. I was three or four then. She had a voice that could make a man break down to his knees and beg for more. Her singing voice was slow, full of raw soul, and very mellow, but crystal clear. I mean glass-breaking clear. And when she hit those soprano highs like Sarah, everyone in the room would go to shouting and hollering like they were in church. She and Pops used to take me to some of their gigs at the clubs and I sometimes still dream about the smoky rooms full of dark, sweat-linedfaces. It’s funny, because when she talked, her voice was raspy and low like she was hoarse. Real jazz musicians couldn’t get enough of her, and sometimes she did a gig every night for weeks on end. She recorded a few songs, but they were never released in the States and were never enough to get her name in the mainstream.
When Louise became pregnant with me, she was twenty-five and Pops was twenty-nine, but they kept traveling and performing until it was time for me to enter school.
Before then, Mom would take me everywhere with her. Even though I was Pops’s “Little Man,” Louise hardly let me out of her sight. She would talk to me all the time about anything and everything I asked her
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