In this issue, we've tried to present a mini-anthology of stories about how events
from our pasts have influenced the way we are today. Something we haven't mentioned
yet, and maybe the biggest influence of all, is the persistence of friendship,
especially during trying circumstances. The following article is a remembrance of
one of those times.
This is a story about how I won --
and lost -- a bet. The bet was with Harlan Ellison, and it was his idea. He was
wrong and I was right, and in the end it didn't matter.
The year was 1960. My first wife,
Sylvia, and I had moved to New York City in the summer of 1959, finding -- after
several weeks of searching -- a pleasant five-room apartment in the west Village, a
block away from Sheridan Square on Christopher Street. The apartment was on the
fourth floor of a five-floor building that had no elevator -- good for catching a
vagrant breeze on a hot summer's day, but lousy for easily coming and going. Those
four flights of stairs could get to you after you'd been up and down them a few
times.
Harlan moved back to New York City,
after a year or two's stay in Chicago, in the spring of 1960. He had been editor on
Bill Hamling's Rogue magazine, one of the few Playboy imitators to
make a serious job of it. (Hamling had been offered a 50% ownership in
Playboy when Hefner started that magazine, but turned the opportunity down
and had been kicking himself ever since. Rogue, once a pulpish 35¢
men's-sweat magazine, was transformed in 1959 into a slick competitor to
Playboy.) As a struggling young writer, I'd been submitting short items to
both Playboy and Rogue (my first sale -- at 50¢ a word! -- was in
fact to Playboy), and had been getting back rejection notes from Harlan
(although he did send me a check for a five word sale -- the title for an
article Rogue used which I'd suggested to him at the 1959 Worldcon -- in the
sum of 25¢). So perhaps that is why, when Harlan returned to New York City, he
moved in with us until he found a place of his own.
Of course, I'd known Harlan for some
years by then. We'd corresponded in the early fifties, and he'd contributed to my
fanzines of that era. (I in turn had illustrated a story for his fanzine in 1953 --
and in retrospect I'm damned grateful neither the story nor my awful illos were ever
published; Harlan had a massive file of unpublished material when he gave up putting
out fanzines.) We met in 1955 at the first Worldcon I attended, and saw each other
on and off in the years which followed, usually at conventions.
I held Harlan in awe in those days.
He had enormous energy, and it fueled not only his talents (as a writer, editor, and
-- now mostly forgotten -- cartoonist), but his activities. A trip to a restaurant
or a store with Harlan was an entertainment, with Harlan the Master of Ceremonies
and Star. Harlan decided at the 1955 Cleveland Worldcon to help George Young
select and purchase a tie at a nearby men's store, and led half a dozen of us along
on a short walk to the store. Along the way we encountered a construction project:
men digging a deep hole in the street. Immediately Harlan took charge, issuing
directions to the men in the hole and to the growing crowd of bystanders. He was
funny, and he had all of us -- fans, workers, passersby -- in the palms of his hands.
There was applause when he was done and turned to continue to the store. Although
he was only a few years older than I, there was a huge gap between us in terms of
experience and knowledge and I looked up to him.
By 1960 I was no longer a callow high
school kid but the gap remained. Harlan had by then sold dozens of stories and one
or two books, served a tumultuous stint in the Army, been married and divorced, and
had been working at Rogue. And he had no less energy. He seemed to sleep in
half the time most people did, and to use the extra time to write new stories. He
could write anywhere. In later years he would write stories in store windows and at
Worldcons. I watched him write "Daniel White for the Greater Good" (an excellent
story) in my living room, in the midst of a party, pausing every two or three pages
to announce, "Listen to this!" and then read us what he'd just written. I learned
from Harlan how to write finished copy cold, in a single draft.
My own career was just starting to
take off at this point. I'd joined the staff of Metronome magazine, then the
world's oldest (and best) jazz magazine, which had resumed publication in the spring
of 1960 after a six-month hiatus, during which a new publisher and production staff
had been found. My article on Ornette Coleman -- then a very controversial and
misunderstood figure in jazz -- was the cover story in the first new issue of
Metronome, and earned me a lot of respect in the field when Coleman said (in
print) that I was the first to understand what he was doing. This led in turn to my
becoming a columnist for Ted Wilson's Jazz Guide, getting liner-note
assignments, and covering a wide range of jazz concerts and events for
Metronome, for which I also reviewed books and records.
One major event was the Newport Jazz
Festival, still held then in Newport, Rhode Island. Sylvia and I drove up, along
with Metronome's associate editor, Bob Perlongo, to find Newport a scene of
near-chaos. George Wein (festival manager) refused to honor my Metronome
credentials despite Perlongo and Metronome's editor, Bill Coss, vouching for
me in person, so Sylvia and I drove a mile away to the Cliff Walk Manor, where an
insurgent jazz festival was being held, featuring Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and
Ornette Coleman. The streets along the way were full of rowdy college-age kids
(some were mooning passersby in the mid-afternoon) and beer cans littered the
sidewalks. During the evening's concert at Cliff Walk Manor, our eyes began
stinging and we discovered that the police had been using tear gas at the main
festival, a mile away, in what turned out to be a riot by kids outside the festival
walls. We left after the concert, driving up to Boston to stay with our friends at
the Ivory Birdbath in Cambridge. I called Harlan (who was then still living in our
apartment) to tell him what had happened.
"Geeze, Ted," Harlan exclaimed.
"That's a great story. Why don't you write it up for Rogue? I'll call Frank
Robinson and set it up for you."
This led directly to my first major
sale to Rogue, "Riot At Newport." It wasn't, as I wrote it, a very good
piece. But Harlan rewrote the lead, and Frank edited it into acceptability. (I've
said it before and I'd like to say it again: Frank Robinson is the best editor I've
ever had. He turned my dross into gold, and always claimed: "It was all in your
piece, Ted; I just rearranged a few things." I learned a great deal just by
studying the changes he made, and my subsequent sales to Rogue appeared
pretty much as written.)
That summer Harlan found his own
apartment -- three doors up the street, in a building with an elevator. And he met
a woman, Linda Solomon, who also lived in the same building. Linda would go on to a
career of her own in writing and editing, but that was mostly ahead of her in
1960.
Linda had a small but well-selected
record collection, containing a goodly amount of jazz. One of the records she had
was a premium offered by Tom Wilson. Now, Tom is worth an article in his own right.
He started up a very important small jazz label while he was still in college --
earning an MBA at Harvard. The record company, Transition, was essentially his
thesis project, but it also released the first albums by people like Sun Ra and
Cecil Taylor, and all Transition lps are collectors' items now, going for hundreds
of dollars apiece.
In late 1959, Tom, with a partner,
began doing jazz radio programming in New York City. They leased six hours an
evening -- six pm to midnight -- on a local FM station, and presented some of the
big names among jazz critics, like Nat Hentoff, in one-hour shows, every weeknight.
I listened to it regularly and subscribed to the program guide, Jazz Guide.
The first issue of Jazz Guide came out the same week as the first revived
issue of Metronome, and Tom liked my work in Metronome so much that he
called me up and invited me to write for Jazz Guide, which is how I met and
got to know him. (I also subsequently introduced Harlan to him, and Harlan became
another columnist for Jazz Guide.)
The radio thing did not last -- Tom
and his partner had a falling out -- and Tom dropped radio to get into publishing
(he started up a magazine designed to be sold at record stores, called 33
Guide, to which both Harlan and I contributed reviews) and return to record
producing, first for United Artists and Savoy, and later for Verve, where he
produced the first Mothers of Invention album (adding 'of Invention' to their
name).
But while Tom and his partner were
promoting their jazz radio programming, they offered albums as premiums to
program-guide subscribers. The albums were in blank, white jackets, but the actual
lps inside (obtained very cheaply sans covers) were a jazz sampler issued five or
six years earlier on the Period label.
And Linda had one. So did I, but
mine had the original Period cover, complete with liner notes and personnel listings
for each track, since I'd bought it (for $1.98) when it first came out. Tom offered
me one of the ones he was sending out, but I turned it down; I didn't need another
copy, much less one with a blank cover.
I tried to tell Harlan that when he
came over one Friday afternoon to rave to me about Linda's copy of the album, which
he'd just heard.
"Great stuff, Ted. There's lotsa old
historical tracks. There's one with Mildred Baily singing with the John Lewis
orchestra!"
"With who?"
"With John Lewis! You know, the
pianist in the Modern Jazz Quartet! I know you like him, Ted -- you've got most of
his albums!"
In fact his "European Windows" and
"Golden Striker" albums were heavy favorites of mine then. "You don't mean John
Lewis," I said. "John Lewis never played with Mildred Baily. You're thinking of
John Kirby. She sang with him on those 1939 tracks."
"No, Ted," Harlan insisted. "John
Lewis. It was John Lewis she sang with."
I tried to explain that Lewis' first
recordings were done after WW2, with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, and that in 1939
he was probably still in school somewhere. Then I hauled out my copy of the Period
sampler, to prove my point.
But Harlan was not impressed. "This
isn't the same album, Ted," he said, with only a glance at the jacket. "I'm right,
I know I'm right, and you know I'm right."
"Aw, come on, Harlan," I said. "You
know you're wrong. You got the names wrong, that's all. It was John Kirby. She
sang with him for years."
"Oh, yeah? You wanna bet? Huh? You
wanna bet on it? Come on, Ted -- you know you're right, so let's bet on it,
okay?"
"I don't want to bet on it, Harlan.
I'd win, so what's the point?"
But Harlan insisted. Harlan can be
very insistent. "I'll tell you what," he said. "I'll bet my entire record
collection against one record in your collection, your 10-inch X-label album
by the Original Dixieland Jass Band!" This album documents the earliest known
'jazz' recordings, circa 1917, albeit by white musicians. The 10-inch lp was issued
in the very early fifties by RCA Victor on its jazz-historical X label, and was by
then itself of some historical importance. I consider the music on it of little
value (others have other opinions) except as a historical document, but at that time
I was trying to build a major jazz collection (in part to make me a more-rounded
jazz critic), and the album was important to me for that reason. Harlan's
collection, on the other hand, was as big as mine (over one thousand lps), and did
not overlap it too much. He had a lot of classical albums I didn't then have, and a
lot of the more or less 'hip' popular albums as well. He had one album that I
really wanted, because I'd never seen it anywhere else (and still haven't to this
day): a Johnny Mathis album arranged by some of the top jazz arrangers of the day,
like Gil Evans. It was tempting to think of owning Harlan's collection.
Harlan did not drop the issue until I
said, "Okay, Harlan, if you want a bet, you've got a bet." When Sylvia came in, he
excitedly repeated the whole story to her, re-emphasizing the bet. One record in my
collection, against his entire collection.
Sylvia got excited. "When can we
collect?" she asked.
"We can't settle the bet,"
Harlan said, gently correcting her (Harlan liked Sylvia quite a lot), "until Monday,
because Linda is away for the weekend. Monday we'll get together and go over to her
place and look at her record and settle the bet."
"Is this a real bet?"
Sylvia asked.
"Yeah, Harlan," I said. "No
hanky-panky, now. You don't go over first and alter the label or anything."
"Aw, come on, Ted! Do you
think I'd do a thing like that? This is a serious bet, man!"
Boyd Raeburn was in town that
weekend, and at one point a crowd of us were in a subway car when the story of the
bet came up again, Harlan excitedly telling Boyd about it. By now the stakes had
escalated again: Harlan was betting not only his entire record collection, but his
custom-made record cabinets as well. I watched all this with numb amazement. It
was beginning to dawn on me that I was going to win a lot.
I'd had vague doubts. Although I
knew it was John Kirby and not John Lewis -- and I had my own copy of the
record to back me up -- Harlan was so dead-set insistent that I couldn't help
wondering if, maybe, possibly, there had been a typographical error on the
radio-premium copies (maybe the reason they'd sat in a warehouse somewhere for
years), or some other explanation that could cost me the bet. After all, it was
Linda's copy of the album that would decide the bet, and I'd never seen her
specific copy.
If Harlan had wanted to drop the
bet, if he'd come up to me and said, quietly,"You know, I think I'm wrong -- I don't
want to bet on it any more," I'd have let it drop. I was embarrassed by the
lopsidedness of the stakes. And winning the bet would be like taking candy from a
baby. It wasn't right.
But on both Saturday and Sunday,
Harlan reiterated the bet. It made a good story and he told it well, to a number of
people on a number of occasions. And every time he told it within my hearing, I
believed a little more that it was really going to happen: I was going to win
Harlan's entire record collection and cabinets! I started to feel lust for that
collection. I began planning how I'd rearrange my living room to make space for his
cabinets, handsome furniture in their own right.
In the back of my own head, I knew
this was not good: too close to stealing. I'll winnow out the records I really want
and he can keep the rest, I decided, full of magnanimous feelings.
Monday dawned. Harlan phoned. He
was at Linda's and I should come on over, he said, his voice gleeful. He was
already at Linda's. I was filled with foreboding as I went up to her
apartment.
Linda greeted me at the door and I
went in to find Harlan sprawled in a nearby chair. Without comment, Linda held out
the album to me. I slid the record out of its blank jacket and looked at the label.
There, neatly typed in the distinctive face of Harlan's Olivetti, was a thin strip
of paper taped over the record label that said, "Mildred Baily with John Lewis &
His Orchestra." I turned the record over; there was a second Mildred Baily cut on
the other side. Here, too, was a typed line taped over the actual credit: "John
Lewis Again, Ha ha."
I looked at Harlan with what I
believe was sorrow in my expression. "You promised you wouldn't do this," I
said.
"Yeah," he said, crestfallen.
"Well, you know." He fished out his keys. "Here," he said, and handed them to me.
"I don't want to watch."
Do you have any idea what's
involved in moving 1,000 lps? They're heavy. You can't lift a stack of much more
than fifty albums at a time, especially if you plan to carry it up four flights of
stairs. Sylvia had asthma and tried to climb those stairs as infrequently as
possible. I couldn't ask her to help carry the records. So I called up Larry Ivie,
who was the only other person I could think of then who wasn't tied to a rigid work
schedule (he was a struggling artist), and he came to help.
It was summertime in New York City.
None of us had air conditioning, except maybe Linda. I don't recall it being a
terrifically hot day, but it was warm enough. With Sylvia holding fort in our
apartment and Harlan watching forlornly from his, Larry and I began the long and
arduous task of carrying stacks of records from Harlan's to my place.
Midway through the task, Sylvia,
Larry, and I agreed that once we had everything in our place, we'd tell Harlan he
could have it back -- but that he'd have to carry it himself.
I knew I couldn't keep his collection
and cabinets. It was a silly bet. Hell, it was a stupid bet, compounded by
Harlan taking an advance peek (Linda, it turned out, had gotten back Sunday evening,
as Harlan had known she would), and, upon realizing he'd lost the bet he'd foisted
upon me, typing up those silly, obvious, taped-over labels. Harlan should be taught
a lesson, we agreed -- but he should get his stuff back.
By now, Harlan's records were in
stacks covering much of my living room floor, the cabinets soon to follow. I'd
pushed furniture to the side to make room.
I'd arrived at the top of the stairs
at my floor with another stack of records, Larry Ivie just ahead of me, when I heard
quick steps on the stairs behind me. I was still holding the stack of records,
about to set them down on the floor, when Harlan burst through the open door behind
me.
He was brandishing a gun. It was a
small revolver, and I'd seen it once before when he'd shown me his 'lecturing
exhibit', of a gun, a switchblade, and brass knucks, which he kept in a box in his
closet.
"Okay, Ted," Harlan snarled. "Fun's
over. Pick that stuff up and take it back to my apartment -- and I mean
now!"
He'd been looking more and more
disheartened each time we'd taken another stack of records from his apartment, but
I'd never expected this. He had snapped. He'd been watching his prized collection
disappear, for all he knew for good, probably kicking himself for ever getting into
the whole thing, and at some point his disappointment had turned to anger. Perhaps
it had been addressed initially at himself, but by the time he appeared in my
apartment, waving his gun, his anger was directed at us.
"Don't make me shoot you, Ted," he
said. "I'll aim at your legs, but if I hit your knees that's very painful." His
revolver looked like and probably was a .22, but from a distance of eight to ten
feet, it could not only be fairly certain of hitting me, but might do significant
damage. And Harlan appeared to be in a state in which he'd not hesitate to shoot.
It was the first time in my life a gun had been pointed at me, and to this day the
scariest.
I'd never seen Harlan like this, in
such a rage. He could easily go over the top, I thought. He'd demonstrated the
capability to do so in other situations, ones that didn't involve me or guns.
"We were going to give them all back
to you, Harlan," Sylvia said.
"I know you are -- right now!"
Harlan responded. "Pick some up," he said to Larry, who had been watching all this
with a bemused look on his face.
I was still holding the stack of
records I'd just carried up. "Here," I said, thrusting them at Harlan. "You
take them."
He dodged back. "No, Ted," he said,
"I've got the gun. You carry the records. All of them. Back to my place.
Now!"
So Larry and I carried all the
records -- over two-thirds of Harlan's collection -- back to Harlan's apartment.
Back down all those stairs (and back up again for more). We were covered with
sweat, and getting more and more pissed at Harlan, who wasn't being 'taught a
lesson' after all, but who was autocratically directing us with a gun. (Harlan
waited in my apartment until the last load went out; Linda held fort at his
apartment, giving us sympathetic looks but otherwise staying out of it.)
That's pretty much how the bet ended.
I'd won, and I'd lost. I'd enjoyed a brief roller-coaster ride of emotions as I'd
contemplated and then lusted after Harlan's collection, and I'd put in half a day's
physical labor, carrying records back and forth with the unfortunate (to be caught
up in this) Larry Ivie. It had been a joke gone sour, all around. Harlan had lost,
too. He'd lost a lot of my respect for him -- not for pushing a stupid bet in the
first place, but for the way he'd handled it at the end. He should have
carried the records back, at the very least.
We fed Larry an early dinner, in
gratitude for all he'd done and gone through, and were sitting around feeling
depressed and let down when the phone rang.
It was Harlan. He was apologetic.
The gun, he said, had been unloaded. I'd never been in any real danger. He was
sorry and he wanted to make it up to us. Come on over, he said. He'd bought a cake
to share with us as a peace offering.
It was a good cake.
All illustrations by Peggy Ranson
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