MEMOIRS

The Way I Saw It around Old Blue Eyes

In 1939, Hitler was goose-stepping all over Europe, while America was just starting to pick up the beat from the long, dragged-out Depression President Franklin Roosevelt vowed to defeat. I was ten years old and just about four feet small, but my mind was ten feet tall. I was working in a barbershop. In those days, if you wanted to know what was going on in the world and the little circle of gossip, the barbershop was the place to find out. I was taping in my head everything that was said. By the time I was seven, I knew babies didn't come from heaven. And Santa Claus ... I still believed what my parents said about him was the truth. He was the only thing to hold onto to keep my youth. My boss was always listening to Guy Lombardo and the Metropolitan Opera on the radio, but I was trained on the sounds of Shaw, Miller, James, Basie, Ellington, and Jimmy Lunsford. And when I heard a vocalist who had just started with Harry James singing, "All or Nothing at All," I followed his pipes right down the line from the very first note.

Two years with Harry James flew by, and with all the money I earned, I piled up a stack of 78s, while the state of the nation was lend leasing to keep the peace in this side of heaven. But from all the shoptalk, I sensed at eleven this side of heaven was in for a surprise. And on December 7, 1941, all hell broke loose, when Tokyo flew from its coup to a place where all our carriers were in one group. On that day, most Americans learned a little geography: where Pearl Harbor was.

Everybody between the ages of seventeen to forty-five was taking the oath, raising their hand to make a stand. I was too young to go to war and too old to play kick the can, but I did my part in my own little way, printing signs of warning—"A slip of the lip will sink a ship"—and buying war bonds. But I was still buying records of my favorite vocalist, who, by the way, transferred to the Tommy Dorsey Band to replace Jack Lenard, who answered the call of the bugler. My man blended with Connie Haines and the Pied Pipers to tunes like "I'll Never Smile Again," "Last Call for Love," "Poor You," and a slew of others. I was making all the local hops, still working in the barbershop, when I thought my world was going to stop when he didn't want to get caught in the draft and went to join the big band over there. He took his physical in New York, and for the first time in his career, they turned him down. They found a leak in his eardrum.

It was 1943, and Tommy Dorsey set him free (the rumor was for forty thousand dollars) to make it on his own. I was fourteen and one inch under five feet. I was really moving up, chinning all the bars and downing coffee cups filled with booze to the old saying, "Bottoms up." I wore a "zoot suit" which was a one-button roll, blue shadow stripe suit with twenty-eight inches of material dropped over the knee, down to a fourteen-inch peg at the bottom of my featherweight, French-toed shoes. There was a hand-painted tie with its Windsor knot under a five-inch, roll-collared, white on white shirt, with a pocket full of silver and a solid gold chain twirling around my finger.

Still too young to go to war and too old to play kick the can, I was making the scene at the Steel Pier, a mile out to sea, cutting a rug with the rest of the jitterbugs to Woody Herman's "Wood Chopper's Ball." The man made a hit with Cole Porter's "Night and Day," the one number he did in the film Reveille with Beverly. I stood in line at the Paramount early in the morning to spend the day and night. Everybody brown-bagged it in those days. With one admission, we slept through the feature and were awakened by the screams of the bobby-soxers biting their nails and wagging their tongues. We knew the movie was done, and the man wearing a cardigan jacket and silk, oversized bow tie was going to pick us up on a high without booze and drugs.

The war was moving on, and while Martin Block was spinning the records for the home front with Make Believe Ballroom Time, a couple of DJs by the names of Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally were playing the hit tunes hot off the wax from Tin Pan Alley, spinning requests for uninvited guests—one from the East and one from the West. Never the twain shall meet, for after D Day, Hitler was running out of fuel, and the world he was burning backfired in his face. But we still had a long way to go. We still had Tokyo in the race.

From 1943 to 1945, the man hit the beaches of Hollywood with Higher and Higher, singing songs by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Arlen: "I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night," "A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening," "The Music Stopped," and "I Saw You First." He sang "You Belong in a Love Song" and was starring in Step Lively, singing Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn's, "Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are," "Some Other Time," and "As Long as There's Music."

In 1944, I was too young to go to war and too old to play kick the can. There I was, in my teens, between my dreams and reality. My past was a short subject, the present was an added attraction, and the future was a distraction about what decision to make, because there was a duration on everyone's life about whether or not they were going to be called to war between the ages of seventeen and forty-five.

That year, FDR won by a landslide and was in for four more years. I was fifteen, and since the age of three, he had been the only president for me. I left the shop I was working in for the past nine years for a raise in pay from five dollars to fifteen dollars a week, plus tips. Gene Krupa with Anita O'Day inspired me to take a trip with their hit record, "Let Me Off Uptown." I was heading in the right direction after nine years in a neighborhood shop. I made the move uptown, meeting people, not just faces. The word got around there was a "singing barber" in town. I was stepping lively, building a reputation with my scissors and comb, cutting D.A. (duck's ass) style haircuts without a clipper in my hand. But in my heart, I still was following the man. Then, in 1945, I skipped a day from school and went with a bunch of guys to see him at the Earl Theater in Philly. I was sitting in the balcony, and he was singing, "Violets for Your Furs." The room was in complete silence; you could hear a pin drop. Well, some wise guys dropped some pennies on stage, and he stopped the music. He picked them up and said, "A penny earned is a penny saved." He got a standing ovation, and those wise guys had to stand and hide in the crowd to throw off the slightest evidence they caused the thundering applause. I turned sixteen that spring, twixt love and war. It was another year to go before it was my turn to exchange my "zoot suit" for a pair of khakis, web belt, and combat boots. But on August 6, 1945 a new age was about to take place. Kids my age suddenly became alive at the cost of one...