Lie Four

Number four: that beboppers had a penchant for loose sex and partners racially different from themselves, especially black men who desired white women, was a lie.

It’s easy for a white person to become associated with jazz musicians, because most of the places we play are owned an patronized by whites. A good example is Pannonica Koenigswater, the baroness, who is the daughter of a Rothschild. She’ll be noticed when she shows up in a jazz club over two or three times. Nica has helped jazz musicians, financially. She saw to it that a lotta guys who had no place to stay had a roof or put some money in their pockets. She’s willing to spend a lot to help. There’s not too much difference between black and white women, but you’ll find that to gain a point, a white woman will do almost anything to help if it’s something that she likes. There’s almost nothing, if a white woman sees it’s to her advantage, that she won’t do because she’s been taught that the world is hers to do with as she wants. This shocks the average black musician who realizes that black women wouldn’t generally accept giving so much without receiving something definite in return.

A black woman might say: “I’ll love him … but not my money.” But a white woman will give anything, even her money, to show her own strength. She’ll be there on the job, every night, sitting there supporting her own goodies. She’ll do it for kicks, whatever is her kick. Many white women were great fans and supporters of modern jazz and brought along white males to hear our music. That’s a secret of this business: Where a woman goes, the man goes.
“Where you wanna go, baby?”
“I wanna go hear Dizzy.”
“O.K., that’s where we go.” The man may not support you, but the woman does, and he spends his money.

As a patron of the arts in this society, the white woman’s role, since white males have been so preoccupied with making money, brought her into close contact with modern jazz musicians and created relationships that were often very helpful to the growth of our art. Some of these relationships became very personal and even sexual but not necessarily so. Often, they were supportive friendships which the musicians and their patrons enjoyed. Personally, I haven’t received much help from white female benefactors. All the help I need, I got from my wife, an outspoken black woman, who will not let me mess with the money to whom I’ve been married since 1940. Regarding friendships across racial lines, because white males would sometimes lend their personal support to our music in the bebop era, socially speaking, was a major concrete effort of progressive-thinking black and white males and females to tear down and abolish the ignorance and racial barriers that were stifling the growth of any true culture in modern America.