Los Angeles Stories. Ry Cooder

five-­four, with a big hair­do and a sly look. I tried to talk to her, but she didn’t speak English and I didn’t have the lingo down, so I just pointed and held up two fingers. “De qué?” she asked. “Make mine soft and easy, but I mean good and greasy!” I replied. She laughed; she got the message.

      I was motor­vating home late one Friday after dropping off a load of pants, when I came upon a police roadblock at Broadway and Second. It had been raining, and the street was glowing red from squad car lights. I made a quick right turn and saw two guys, one in a suit and the other in trousers and a sleeveless undershirt, running down the sidewalk. That’s what caught my eye in the dark, the under­shirt. I pulled alongside and shouted out the one phrase I knew from movies, “Vamos muchachos!” They jumped in. I ran the light at Spring, made a bad left and pulled up in the alley behind the Times building. I cut the lights.

      “Zoot patrol,” said Smiley. “They will catch all Mexicans wearing clothes!”

      “Pendejos! Pinches gabachos!” said Kiko. Two police Fords went flying by on Spring, their sirens blasting.

      “I happen to have a friend here,” I said. “Let’s go say hello to Herman.” Herman “Ju­Ju” Doxey, the night watchman at the Los Angeles Times, spent most evenings in the backseat of his ’37 Buick, listening to the radio, off the street and out of sight. I knocked twice on the window. Herman rolled it down and peered out through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke.

      “Here we have Brother Ray and two young fellas,” Herman said. “I’m always glad to make the acquaintance of young people. Gettin’ hectic over on Broadway, it’s protrudin’ on my mood.”

      “We have to get off the street for just a little while.” I said. I sat up front; Kiko and Smiley got settled in back.

      “You boys just relax,” said Herman. “Listen, there’s Johnny Mumford on the radio, and now he’s crossed over Jordan. Ain’t that a shame?” He passed the Chesterfield pack around and we all lit up.

      “Chonny was over there at the Big Union, we saw him!” Kiko said. “He sang ‘My Heart Is in My Hands.’ ”

      “With his eyes to Florencia,” Smiley said.

      “Florencia?” I asked.

      “Qué chula chulita!” Smiley whistled.

      “I know you got some fine, healthy mamacitas, and that’s a fact,” Herman said.

      “Healthy?”

      “You know, solid.”

      “Solid?”

      “Man, dig it and pick up on it!” Herman motioned for quiet while poor Johnny’s last platter got moving on the radio — a slow-­thudding blues, the horns sustaining in big harmony blasts, like the Southern Pacific Daylight pulling into Union Station:

      Got me a fine healthy mama, she’s long and she’s tall

      Built­ up solid, like the L.A. City Hall

      From the top of her head right down to her feet

      She’s a high­-grade load of sugar freightin’ up Main Street

      Fine and healthy, yes she fine and healthy

      So doggone fine and healthy, boys, and she ain’t no hand­-me­-down!

      “High-­grade load of sugar?” Kiko pronounced it sookar.

      “As in, juicy!” Herman said.

      “Sólido!”

      Herman began. “All right, then. John Mumford. Born, Los Angeles, 1923; died, 1949, cut down in his prime. The prodigal son was a forward child; his mind was not to obey. But he gave his all. The band would lead off so as to get the beat planted in the mind. At the turn­around, Johnny would move up to the front. Very smooth. But on the chorus, he might start slappin’ his left knee in time whilst holdin’ the microphone in his right hand. Ol’ Johnny’s gettin’ ready! On the second verse, John hold back just a little, walkin’ around and shakin’ his shoul­ders out, like a fighter. Next chorus, he tighten up! He grab a handful of Ray’s gabardine, ’bout mid­thigh! Clutchin’ at it! Them little gals run for­ward as close as they can get. He let the guitar work. He back up. Last chorus, he commence to stompin’! He grab his waistband and jerk his pants up, on the beat! All the gals throw pocketbooks, handkerchiefs, anything they ain’t gone need later on. They don’t throw they hatpins or they guns, nossir, they don’t throw that! Heh, heh, nossir, they don’t.”

      I said, “Was it a woman got him killed? You know he didn’t do it.” Herman had the inside dope on all subjects known heretofore and as yet undesignated.

      “Right now, I got to make my rounds. What good it is, I don’t really know. Look like a newspaper building to you? It’s a Temple of Secrets, the High and Mighty Church of the Next Dollar, and ain’t nary a one of ’em mine. What they need a watchman for? Our Lord and Savior had a marvelous trick bag, I’m told, but even he couldn’t break in here.” Kiko and Smiley crossed themselves. Herman laughed. “Don’t you boys be concerned, I’m strictly spiritual! My mind is stayin’ on Jesus! I’m a deacon in the Church of the Rapid Bible and the First Born, on Thirty-third. Worship services are spontaneous and unscheduled, but all are welcome! Right now, you folks better sit tight and let me have a look around on the boulevard. I’ll be back.”

      Kiko said, “Man, he’s been at a lot of shows.”

      “Actually, no. You dig Herman right here, every night. No need to go further. He’ll be on the radio in a little while. We don’t check him with no light­weight stuff.”

      Saturday and Sunday nights it was Leon the Lounge Lizard’s radio show, The Rump Steak Serenade. Leon featured the cool sounds of jazz from midnight to 3:00 a.m., broadcasting live from Doctor Brownie’s Famous Big Needle, the jazz record shop on San Pedro open twenty-four hours a day. At two o’clock, Herman came on for a fifteen-minute interlude: “It’s time once again for Dig It and Pick Up On It, with Herman the Human Jukebox!” Folks would call in with questions and try to stump Ju­Ju, but it had never been done. If a caller asked about a record, he could name all the players, the label color, matrix number, and chart position. He’d know how many suits Billy Eckstine had and what brand of gin Fats Waller preferred. Tonight Ju­Ju was sharp and on the money, as always. A white man in Glendale, who wouldn’t give his name, asked, “Is it legal for colored men to call them­selves ‘King,’ ‘Duke,’ and ‘Count’?” Ju­Ju answered politely, “Yes, if jazz is legal. If not, all bets are off, and you had better stay right there in Glendale!” Next came a brother from Watts, one Horace Sprott. “How many times has guitarist Irving Ashby been stopped by the LAPD on his way home from the nightclub job with Nat Cole?” Answer: “Eighty­-seven times to date, and always by the same motorcycle officer, William ‘Bitter Bill’ Spangler, badge 666. Officer Bill asserts that John has been entertained in their home by his wife, Mabel, repeatedly and often, whilst he is out on patrol. ‘She plays those records by that spade, Cole. I hate music! Every time I come in from work, the place stinks like fish. I hate fish!’” The third caller was a white woman with an East Tennessee drawl that made a question out of everything: “Hello, Herman? This is Ida from Thirty-third Street, and I have a garage full of old 78 records? They belonged to my husband; he liked that music you like? I’m moving to Spokane, so what should I do?”

      “ ’Scuse the hat, Miss Ida, ma’am, but that’s me you hear a-­knockin’!” Ju­Ju laughed. “I declare now, don’t you go answering that door for nobody else!”

      We were sitting in front of their house in Chavez Ravine, up in the hills behind Chinatown. Kiko got a jug from the house and we passed it around, listening to Billie Holiday on the communal jukebox that was wired up to the lone streetlight.

      My man, he don’t love me, he treats me awful mean

      He’s the lowest man I’ve ever seen

      “Help me out, lay something on me,” I said. “Like, ‘May I ask your name?’, ‘When