"Perfect Music"

It's hard to know where the actual beginning of my twelve-year musical
experiment really began, but I suppose we should start in New York. I had
remodeled a loft which at one time was an employment agency. It was in the
early sixties, probably 1961. I was staying with my friend Bill Gamble and
his wife and new family in a flat on A Street. He owned a large panel truck
which he used to haul people's stuff. Because owning a car in New York was
so much of a parking problem, this was a viable business. We hauled
furniture for people who were moving. We hauled a lot of plaster removed
from the brick walls it covered. People were tearing it off to expose the
old brick surface. It was quite a popular style of remodeling in the older
buildings being occupied and turned into dwellings. Of course this was a
messy process and after the dust, powder and plaster were removed from the
wall and cleaned up, the owners of these flats and lofts were left with
stacks of small cardboard boxes filled with decomposing plaster. The boxes
had to be small because the plaster was so heavy it would break through the
bottom of a big cardboard box. Only small boxes were light enough to be
manageable. All these older buildings, though naturally attractive, were
without elevators. That meant carrying the boxes down three, four, or five
flights of stairs, then climbing back up for the next load. Even though the
tenants had removed the plaster themselves, they were more than happy to pay
someone else to perform this arduous task. These older relics of another age
were so popular in Manhattan at the time, that we never lacked for work and
had to schedule appointments days or even weeks in advance. One load a day
was all we could handle, but the business was amazingly profitable. Bill
called his service "The Celestial Movers." Bill's real passion was
photography and he was quite good at it. He furnished his photography studio
and supported his family with this low-profile business.

We would load up the van, then drive back to his place, have dinner and wait
for darkness. In New York there was no place to dump these boxes of plaster.
The municipal dump was off the island over a toll bridge and many miles and
several hours of travel to and from. It was expensive with gas, tolls, dump
fees and time, so our method was to find a street or alley with access to
the bay or river under the freeway; we would unload the contents of the
boxes into the water as fast as possible and leave the scene before the dust
settled. We could leave the empty boxes to be picked up by the New York
garbage trucks. The empty boxes stacked and nested together were acceptable;
filled with plaster they were not. Because of the reduced expenses of our
process, our rates were quite competitive and our profits reasonably
gratifying.

I saved up enough money to get myself my own loft. It rented for eighty-five
dollars a month. The loft was located on the corner of Houston and Third
Avenue. This was the heart of the "Bowery." Both sides of the street were
daily lined with drunks, mostly winos, mostly veterans. The loft itself was
ankle deep in used kitty litter when I found it. Before I could move in I
had to remove this mess. There was a trash container on the corner and a
mailbox. The loft was on the second floor. With the help of a relatively
sober wino, calling himself "Super," I shoveled the kitty litter into a lot
of brown paper grocery bags. When the trashcan, a wire mesh affair about
two-and-a-half feet in diameter and three-and-a-half feet tall, was filled,
I "mailed" a few of the bags. It took about a week to clean the place up
enough to start working in it to make it liveable.

The floor plan was simple. A large front space perfectly suited for a
painting studio and music rehearsal hall, with two large windows in front
overlooking the street and a small metal balcony, fire escape. This was an
antique building and both windows were tall and went almost to the floor.
There was a narrow glass casement door that opened in, granting access to
the fire escape. The front door of the loft was metal and opened off the
landing at the top of a long narrow staircase. The outside wall leaned a bit
with a bulge that slightly tilted the stairs. The wall itself with its
crumbling mortar no longer able to support the brick seemed to be held
together by an advertisement, hand-painted annually on the outside of the
wall. It bore the slogan, "Say Seagrams and Be Sure!" in large white
letters, half the words on the top of a circle, and half on the bottom,
surrounding a bottle of Seagrams whiskey.

The stairwell created an alcove in the three lofts above the heating and
cooling service on the first floor. In each of the alcoves was a small room
with a toilet and a window next to it in the back wall, looking out onto a
tar and gravel roof. On the small wall created by the toilet enclosure was a
sink. That was all there was. With a hammer, a saw, a screwdriver, a pliers
and a wrench, I turned the rest of the alcove into a shower-bath, a bedroom,
closet, and a kitchen.

I drove a used VW bus at the time and used it to pick up discarded furniture
and materials off the streets of Manhattan. I found a large wooden barrel
and lined it with waterproofed canvas to create a tub to shower in. I piped
water from the sink to a combination showerhead, round shower curtain rod
and hot and cold water faucets.

At that time wooden milk crates were still in use. Restaurants and grocery
stores would leave stacks of these oaken crates on the curbside to be picked
up by the milkman on his delivery route. Although it was frowned on by the
legal establishment, it was easy to gather five of them, out of which with a
two-by-four frame and two-by-two runners I created a chest of drawers which
also acted as a pedestal to mount one corner of my loft bed. Walking under
it, one entered the kitchen and then the sink and enclosed doniker.
The side of the chest also served as a ladder to gain access to
the bed. Next to it I installed another post which was also a holder for a
closet pole, creating a closet that was hidden by the chest of drawers.

The foot of the bed was supported by a frame that stabilized the wooden tub
and the platform it was set on, up off the floor so it would drain. With a
short two-step stairway to get into the tub, it was also possible to climb
up to the bed loft. Inside the tub was a semicircle, two-inch-thick step
held by three thick ropes that served as a step down into the tub and a
seat. 

I took the middle seat out of the VW bus and used it as a couch. I gathered
a table, two benches and an assortment of chairs off the street. I used a
discarded large wooden wire spool as a worktable. I found a discarded
toaster, an electric broiler, and a two-burner electric cooktop to furnish
my kitchen. A couple more milk crates created my kitchen cabinet. I bought
an antique refrigerator, the kind with a round beehive-like element on its
top, for five dollars.

But first of all I had to scrape the walls which were caked with innumerable
paint layers, all peeling off to reveal a patina of colors. That was even
worse than removing the kitty litter. I left two long, narrow panels of this
original wall and framed them, one in the kitchen and one between the two
front windows, which created the impression of two tall abstract paintings.
I simply covered them with a clear glue-like shellac to keep them from
peeling further. Then I painted the rest of the walls and the tin, embossed
ceiling white. I used oriental paper lanterns to cover simple light bulb
pull-chain fixtures which were suspended from the ceiling by the electrical
wire they were attached to. The change was complete and a dramatic contrast
to the squalid building and the street outside.

I set up my record player, my radio, brought over my bass, and moved in.
Outside on the street an army of winos guarded my front door. Of course I
had to pay a quarter to get in or out of my front door, but the troops were
loyal and no one I didn't want ever got into my building.

I joined the Union but work was scarce.

I set up my painting rig and soon had my own paintings on the walls. I came
in contact with a small group of young artists, many of whom were also
interested in music and had been having experimental free jazz sessions in a
five-story loft building they had taken over. This building had a freight
elevator which was the scene of a tragic accident when one of the sculptors
fell into the shaft and broke his back and lost the use of his legs. This
didn't stop him from his creative work or his excessive drinking, but it did
temporarily slow him down. I don't know if he's still alive, but his massive
metal sculptures made him an internationally famous artist.

I met these people in the Greenwich Village watering holes, and soon was
playing free jazz music with them in their lower eastside loft building and
having sessions in my own loft with them and some other professional
musicians, some of whom had music jobs and some who didn't. They all loved
jazz but only a few could actually play tunes, so we had free sessions and
structured ones. It was this experience that first introduced me to free,
non-structured music, which I later came to call "perfect music."

A young brilliant student bassist by the name of Reed Wasson and his
beautiful girlfriend, a talented actress, often came to my loft. We played a
lot of bass duets. We had a really good drummer, Richard Scott, who often
came to play. There was a very bright and talented sculptor, artist, poet
and also saxophone player and his wife Beth who came often. Charlie was
untrained musically but could play astonishing solos in his horn. A dear
friend of mine from my North Beach days, Phil Hefferton, played freestyle
tailgate trombone. Phil, who I haven't heard from in years, and who I hope
is still alive and doing well, was a wonderful expressionist painter with a
keen sense of humor. One of his projects was medium to large size oil
paintings of imaginary money. He moved into the top floor of the loft
building I lived in. He painted in a vigorous expressionist style and his
money paintings were striking, symbolic and funny as hell. This project was
his bid for financial success. I don't think it worked, at least not when I
knew him, but I loved them and eagerly followed his progress.

At this same time I was also rehearsing my play, "Shelter," about life in a
bomb shelter after an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hollywood. Unbeknownst
to me, this serious endeavor turned out to be a very dark comedy.

Bob Dylan was just getting famous and playing in the Village. Zoot Sims was
jamming just a couple of blocks up Third Avenue, in the loft of a friend of
mine. Charlie Mingus was playing at the Five Spot a couple more blocks north
on Third Avenue. My friend from my army days, Erick Dolphy, was playing with
him and they were doing some wild experimental stuff. In good weather I
would often stand outside the club on the sidewalk listening in awe to the
fantastic stuff they were doing. Dizzy Gillespie often played at Birdland.
Since I was a member of the house rhythm section of a short-lived club in
San Francisco that he opened for, he gave me a pass to enter Birdland and
listen whenever he played there.

I remember playing one of the loft sessions with Zoot Sims. There were a few
horn players and more than half a dozen rhythm sections. Each rhythm section
lasted only one tune because Zoot played so many choruses. Normally the
rhythm section hates to play behind very long solos, but in Zoot's case his
solos just got better and better each chorus. He was unbelievably creative
and after playing just one tune with him each rhythm section was exhausted
and gladly sat down to allow the next section to take its place and sit in
with Zoot. Each of these rhythm sections lasted only one time and after all
six of them had played with Zoot, four hours of uninterrupted music had
flashed by as though it was only an instant.

One spring morning, about this time, a tiny calico kitten climbed in through
the back window and took up residence with me. I named her "Lady
Cockymoony," Lady for short.