Central Avenue Sounds: Horace Tapscott, Interviewed by Steven L. Isoardi
Department of Special Collections
University of California, Los Angeles

Contents

CONTENTS

1. Transcript

1.1. Tape Number: I, Side OneMay 1, 1993

Isoardi
All right, Horace, we're ready to go. Shall we begin at the beginning? I know you weren't born in L.A., so let's go back to day one if possible.
Tapscott
The beginning. In the beginning, what I remember was a lot of darkness.
Isoardi
[laughter] Well, right away you've gone further back than anyone else. [laughter]
Tapscott
And then, boop! It was from Robert [Tapscott] out of Mary [Lou Tapscott] on April 6, 1934, at a hospital in Houston in segregated Texas called Jefferson Davis [Hospital]. I was locked here on this earth. You know, I was raised down in Houston where everything was one thing, you know, one family- The next-door neighbors were like my family when I left the house, that kind of thing. Of course, in those days there were no doors locked. I have to set up how it was. I was coming up in this kind of environment.
Isoardi
It was a really close community.
Tapscott
Very close. Very, very close. It was the kind of community that when you went to school, if you were a child going to school and you might do something wrong in your class at school- In those days you got a switch or a belt on you for doing something not right in class like missing a spelling of a word that you were supposed to have known before you came back to class. Well, you had the kind of community where the teacher would chastise you and then send you home and then come to your house and tell your parents, and, boom, another chastisement, another- Pop! You know. That same word that you missed and got that first pop for is a word that stays with you all the time.
Isoardi
Boy, no kidding. You're never going to forget it again. [laughter]
Tapscott
Never again will you misspell this word or any other word. I mean, it was that- I mean, you're talking about a tight kind of upbringing.In those early days of segregation, I imagine- Like, those were the early thirties, the late thirties I'm speaking about, and the early forties. There was a lot of activity going on at the time all around the world. But I was only surrounded by this block, this area that I lived in, you know. It was like sitting on your front porch, on your stoop of your front porch, watching the whole world pass you by, all in one color. But all these people that passed here made some kind of significant contribution toward the whole settling of this whole country. You know, at the time it was just a thing to do, I would imagine, because here I am, I'm six, seven years old. Have you ever heard of this black sailor's name, Dorie Miller?
Isoardi
No.
Tapscott
You see, well, he's just been written up, naturally, in the last twenty-five years, into the history. But he was a black sailor in the navy in World War II. He was a cook in the navy. Blacks weren't allowed on top. They were always in the galley, in the kitchen. So some kind of attack came from the Japanese, and Dorie Miller ran to his position as a gunner, and he wiped out several of the enemy aircraft. And that was hushed up for many years. But, see, the black community in Houston knew about it. This person, Dorie Miller, came right into my pathway, right in front of me as a kid with his white uniform on. I'll always remember that. My mom and my stepfather [Leon Jackson] and all my grandparents, they were all- Everyone was sitting on the porch in those days just talking and looking. He passed by, and he was waving at the folks. And I asked my mother, I said, "Is that Dorie Miller?" She said, "That's Dorie Miller." I ran and caught him and pulled him by his coattail and asked him, "Are you Dorie Miller?" He said, "Yes, I'm Dorie Miller." And I said, "Wow-" You know, I spurted out something and cut out, ran back to my house. Those heroes of those days, being segregation in the South, naturally the only place they're coming is just that one place in this particular village. In that case, that particular village was the Third Ward. It was called Third Ward in Houston at the time. And I had a family there. I came out of the family of the Malones and the Tapscotts.
Isoardi
Did this guy live there? Was he a neighbor?
Tapscott
Dorie Miller?
Isoardi
Yeah.
Tapscott
I don't think so. No, he was just passing through, I imagine, just coming through. And he had to come on the block where everybody was so they could see him. You know, in those days people were all in the streets. Whatever was going on- There wasn't any crime to speak of. There were none of those kinds of things going on. The worst crime that would happen during those times that I remember was the black male getting away from the white policeman, you dig, getting away from a lynch mob. And that's all I remember. I don't remember anything like purse snatching or- I remember fights and things down the street.See, I had an uncle, his name was Willie Malone, and he was a heavyweight in the community. It's like he had a number of people in the community that were under his particular command. He was a painter, that kind of a guy. They'd go out and paint these mansions in the white neighborhoods. They had two cars. And I would travel with these cats. From that point of view, I was learning about what kind of problems the black men were having in those times and how we had to always get out of the way for some reason. I'd be on the road with him, traveling with him to these big, big houses, man, you know, things I'd never seen. I didn't have any idea what was happening. It was frightening some of it. And how these guys would be making their living doing that- None of this dawned on me for many years. But I remember seeing so many things happening growing up in the community that I lived in, the Third Ward. My address was 2719 Dowling Street at the time. It was the kind of neighborhood, like I said [where] everybody knew each other. It was a big, old, wide street. It was kind of paved in early days. It was still paved-There was a guy who was a pastor in the church named [Sanders] Alexander [Pleasants]. He would walk through the community, walk from his home to the church house. He had a big large ten-gallon hat, and he had one of those coats that used to swing, those tuxedos, penguin kind of coats.
Isoardi
Yeah, tails.
Tapscott
Tails back there. And he'd walk through, and everybody would stop doing what they were doing and say good morning to the reverend. The so-called prostitutes at that time, they'd come out of the beer joints, because he'd walk into the beer joints on his way to church. These things stayed in my head. On his way to the church to preach the gospel, he'd step into the dens of iniquity, so to speak, and spoke to everybody, made them feel good, those kind of things. All the kids would be on the porch, "Hi, Reverend Pleasants." And he'd be tipping his hat everywhere, all the way to church. So immediately after he gets to the church, everybody goes back in and gets ready, dressed, and [whooshing noise] right through the church. I mean, the only people that weren't at church were the so-called sinners, and they'd feel so bad they'd stay off the street, because there wasn't anybody on the streets, you dig? Everybody knew who everybody was at the church. All the genders all the way from A to Z. Everything was hooked up with the community in the church.That's the way I see churches today. That's why I'm probably not at this moment a part of any particular church, because I remember growing up in a church where it took care of the community. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it made sense being at church, you dig, because the pastor would come through your home. No one starved, that kind of thing. No one had any problems, because everybody was there at church. If you needed somebody to help you fix your outhouse, then there's a guy there that can do that. [They] just made sure that this person, I imagine, was taken care of by the whole church. In other words, if they came and did something for us, I probably didn't have to pay him anything, because the church was paying him. And we're members of the church, so we- You know. That's the kind of attitude that was rolling through the community, because everything was provided for the youths in the community. They had a playground for us. They had areas for us to go in and run and play while other things were happening.But the emphasis was on study at all times. They made people study hard all the time. I mean, there were a number of us growing up together- In those days a class, a bible school, might have one to two hundred children. And one person would come up to the pulpit and perhaps snap his or her hand, and we'd all start in unison the books of the Bible and sing them to the end in unison. I mean, it was just like- And then [recreates climactic chanting sound, then stops], and we'd sit down. Every one of those people that I remember liked it. I'd be around a couple of those guys that we grew up together doing that, and each one of them, it's still in the back of their head, the books of the Bible. They could just run them off [snaps fingers] just like that. It was a brainwash of the type that would just soak you right on into the fabric.Everything was pushed toward brotherly love, to taking care of each other, to care for each other. And it was really dangerous for us during those days anyway to be alone on the highway, because you might get pulled over, killed, or something like that. So naturally it was like that, because there was no other way to be.As I got older and looked back, I'd see why it was what it was. I could imagine the Native American villages being that way, you dig, because that's what it was. But now it had to be woven into the rest of the society that was going on around you. You had to become aware of different things. And I enjoyed those days, those early days in Houston, Texas. I got to see a lot of things that later on in my life I began to understand why things were happening as they were.But, see, I had a real thing about racism as a little child because of the fact- I have a vision, a thing that stays in my head, totally, you know. Even today I might have a dream, or go to sleep or something, and wake up, and all of a sudden it's back to that day, that evening in Houston, Texas, when I was in bed. I was about five, six years old. I was laying in bed with my mother. It was late at night I imagine, but it was dark, I do remember. And I remember this white guy with a coat and hat on breaking my window, just coming through the window.
Isoardi
With his fist?
Tapscott
With his fist, yeah. He pushed through. He had this gun in this hand like this. My mother was laying in bed, and he put it to her head. And I'm on this side. I'm a little cat. But I was looking at this cat, and that's all I remember. He said, "Where's your brother? I'm going to kill that nigger tonight." You know, this is the police. So I don't know, that's all I remember. And I was crying, I guess. Years later I found out that they were looking for my uncle.
Isoardi
Your mom's brother.
Tapscott
Yeah. And across the street from my house was a Chinese store. In the early days, the Chinese were in the black community. You didn't have to pay money. You'd go get food and merchandise and write your name down and pay later. Anyway, they had this two-story building. My uncle was on top of this building, he said, and he had a rifle. And he had it pinned right at this guy that had the gun in the window's head, and he said he was about to shoot him. He told me this later on. He said- I guess he took his gun out of the window and left or something, because he had scared my mother so bad.But that vision stayed with me a long time. It stayed with me for so long that everybody I saw that was white I was afraid of and I didn't like because of what they did to my mother, you dig? And that went on through the years.When we finally in about 1943, my stepfather- His name was Leon Jackson, he was a real dynamite kind of a person. I guess he was half Native American and African American. I had a lot of interest in this guy. He had a great look, and he could run fast. And I loved to run. [laughter] That was one of my biggest things. [When] I used to have a problem, I'd just take off running, because I felt like I was like the wind. And this guy could run fast, because I remember him running from the police shooting at him. He had his gambling house on the railroad track, and every now and then the police would break up these gambling houses. I'd see these guys busting out running all different ways, and my stepfather was whipping. I used to love to see him. They'd be shooting at him. Yeah, he'd be doing it, man. I liked him. We used to run a lot.See, he was the reason why we got out here in Los Angeles. He came out here in about 1943 to work in San Pedro at the shipyards in the days when the migration came.
Isoardi
During the war when all the jobs were opening up here?
Tapscott
Yeah, during the war they were opening up. Because the best job that the black men had in those days was being a chauffeur or working on a train as a porter. Those were the two highest-paying outside the preachers in the community, the two highest-paying jobs black men had-if they got them. When that happened, though, that boom out here in California, that's why most of the people left Texas and Louisiana at that time. Black men and their families were coming toward the West because of that. And that's how we got out here.
Isoardi
Let me ask about that incident when you were five. Was that-? That was clearly an important incident in your life. Was that your first experience with racism?
Tapscott
That was my first experience with racism.
Isoardi
You hadn't really been outside the neighborhood until that happened?
Tapscott
No, I had never seen a white person in my life.
Isoardi
That was the first time?
Tapscott
That was the first time. And so, you know, you'd wake up with that like a nightmare, just to see that this gun busts through, a little old lightweight scream, and [he] comes in and puts the gun to your mother's head. That was terrible enough in the first place. It wouldn't matter what color he was, putting a gun to your mama's head, but that all you saw was this white guy putting his gun to her head talking about he's going to "kill that nigger tonight. Where is he?" That soaked in, as well. We left there and came to California. When we got here, that was a whole other experience, coming to California.
Isoardi
Before you get into that, did you have musical training before you came out here?
Tapscott
Before I came out I did. It started at home with my mother. She had her own group in the early part of the century-the 1900s-playing jazz, I guess, in a segregated area, of course. She had her own group, a woman.
Isoardi
So she was a professional?
Tapscott
Yeah, a woman jazz lady, Mary Lou Malone. So we had this home on Dowling Street, and this house was a shotgun type of house. You come through the front, and you see the back. You can go straight through there. She had a big old stand-up grand in those days. It was very large and it hung right near the doorway. It took up part of the doorway, in other words. So when you came in my house, you had to play the piano to get to the dufold, the couch over there. [laughter] That's how it was. And the seat, if you had the bench out, that took up all the room. You couldn't even walk down the hall. You had to wait. Some of my friends, they'd come in and they'd play little things as they came in.
Isoardi
So from day one there was music around.
Tapscott
From day one it was music, man. And I had a sister [Robbie Tapscott Byrd] who sacrificed so I could play music. My mother saved her money from the jobs they had in those days, like making $9 a week or something like that. She saved and bought me my first instrument, a trombone. We already had the piano in the house. And I wanted to play- Like I said before, in those days growing up, if you'd play the piano and the violin, you'd go outside and the cats [would] want to beat up on you, because-
Isoardi
[laughter] Even the piano, eh? [laughter]
Tapscott
That was just for girls, playing the piano, you know what I'm saying? If you're going to play an instrument, you're going to play an instrument; you're going to play a horn or something.
Isoardi
Right.
Tapscott
And on Sundays, most parents might take their youngsters to some kind of sports activity. In my case, the activity I had was a musical activity, some kind of concert somewhere in the community at some church, anywhere, that featured orchestras. And everything was full orchestras and stuff. I had to go. My mother loved it, and she'd always take me and my sister to these concerts. There was one particular concert we went to- I think it was the William Tell Overture. There's a part in the William Tell Overture that features the brass, and it's real majestic and real macho. [mimics bold, militaristic passage] I was watching. That's the one I wanted; I wanted that instrument. She saved her money, man, and one day she came down to the area that I was playing in and gave me my signal. We had a signal in our house, a whistle that she always whistled, and wherever I was I'd hear it, and I'd know it was her. And she gave me that whistle. By the way, that particular whistle that she gave me is in one of my compositions. It's been written in. She had it behind her back. She said, "What do you think I've got behind my back?" you know, playing. "I don't know." She gave me that trombone. And I remember the first time I blew on it, my neighbor said, "Oh, my God, the boy got a horn!"
Isoardi
[laughter] Yeah, all the neighbors.
Tapscott
Yeah. And every day they'd hear me, and they-
Isoardi
How old were you when you got it?
Tapscott
I was about eight or nine.
Isoardi
Had she had you on the piano before then?
Tapscott
Uh-huh. I was six when I-
Isoardi
You started then?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Did you want to?
Tapscott
I don't know what I wanted to do, man, because I was being raised up and- I don't know, maybe this was the thing to do. Evidently. Because everywhere we went- My mom played in two bands at the church itself, two full orchestras, I mean, full bands, twenty and thirty people. Sitting on this side was the junior band; that's about thirty people. On this side was the senior band.
Isoardi
Oh, man, what a sound that must have been.
Tapscott
And my mother played in the senior band. Lawrence "Tricky" Lofton, he was the trombonist in the band. He was in the junior band. And I was about to get in the band, but we cut out and came to California. I had to spend a lot of time with music.
Isoardi
Where does your mother's background in music come from?
Tapscott
I have no idea, because my grandmother [Pearlina Fisher], her mother, was- I was raised with her, and she was always humming, but she never did anything.
Isoardi
She never played?
Tapscott
She never played or anything. Maybe my father's parents. I'm not sure, because I have a brother [Robert Tapscott] that I never knew that's a musician in Texas. We met each other through the years. It must have been on that side, a little bit on that side. But I do know, as far as my mom is concerned- I don't know what got her into it. I don't know who got her started. I don't know what the reasons were for it. But all I remember is when I came to being, all I saw and heard around me was music. All these blues cats would be coming by my house, Floyd Dixon and Amos Milburn.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. And they lived in the neighborhood. My sister and Floyd Dixon were-
Isoardi
Talented company.
Tapscott
They were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they know each other today. Floyd Dixon and- I mean, there were just all kinds of people around, see, in those days, naturally, because of segregation. Whoever you were, whatever class you were in, you still had to live in this area, which kept things going on and on, and you took it for granted.
Isoardi
Do you know much about your grandparents and where they came from or their background?
Tapscott
I know about my grandmother, my maternal grandmother. I knew about my great-grandmother, Amanda Steptoe. She was a slave, I know that. And as far as my grandfather, I think I was told that before the one called Tommy Malone there was another cat who had the name of Steptoe or something.As usual, the men were dead, you dig? They done made the babies like the black widow, I guess, because they weren't going to last. Black men are scheduled to live up to thirty or something like that. If they made forty they were lucky. And it was always the women that seemed to preserve and last long. So I didn't get to know that much, because I was raised in a house full of women, from my grandmother to my two great-aunts, my mother, and a rooming lady, a woman that she rented a room to up front.
Isoardi
All women.
Tapscott
All women. I had a stepgrandfather named- All I knew him as was Reverend Fisher. He used to wear overalls, the old-time overalls. He was always building something. He never spoke much. He always said the grace at the table or something. He might say something real wise to me that I wouldn't understand. He didn't talk much to me, but he was always guiding me in a lot of ways. But it was mostly the women. It has a lot to do with what I think about women, you know. I have a lot of respect for women because of the things they went through for us.Because dads at that time had the opportunity, or actually it was necessary maybe, perhaps to save a race of people- Men at that time had families in the same block, two or three houses from each other. Everybody else knew it, you dig? And this cat stayed in none of the places, but he could go in to eat. It was accepted in church that these are his children, and their brothers down the street. They might see each other every now and then, but they know who they are. It wasn't like the women would get that friction, because they had to sit together and be together for the sake of the children, for the sake of keeping everything tolerable.
Isoardi
Yeah, getting along.
Tapscott
Getting along. Because it wasn't even- I mean, it wasn't like you would expect it in a Mormon kind of atmosphere. However, I guess it was a holdover from the days of early Africa, the days when cats had so many wives. And the reason why they had them was because they could take care of them. That was the reason why: there was a shortage of males. I imagine that carried on over up until- Maybe the early fifties is when they started cutting that away, that that was dead. That wasn't any good at all. That wouldn't be part of the thing anymore. But in those early days, I remember- I wasn't the only one like that. My friends were the same way. I could go to some cat's house, see his daddy here, and go three or four houses down and he'd be down there. But it wasn't anything that was hidden anymore. Like my father, man, he had two or three ladies in church, you dig, at the same church. They all went to the same church, and they all had his babies.
Isoardi
Did you know him well?
Tapscott
I met him twice. No, once. I was on the street one day in Houston. I was about six, that age, in those early days in Houston. I was standing on this corner, and this real tall guy reached down to pat me. "Hello, son," and he gave me what must have been silver pennies at the time or real small dimes. I remember him giving me twenty cents. That's all I can remember, counting those. See, in my mind that's all I remember about him. I remember he was a big guy. Like my son, my older son, is six feet eight or nine. That's the way he was, this cat was. That's all I remember. Because I remember him being in the area, but I only had communications with him, that I recall, only that one time. That was vivid in my mind.The next time I saw him was a picture of him in a casket. I was told that the guy died jumping off of a truck, you know, moving his seventh wife. He was in his sixties at the time, and he was still, I guess, he was pumping them. [laughter] And it got too much for him. It took him on out. But that's what I knew about him.My mother, though, she lived to be about ninety-two. You know how especially men are about their moms. They're the queen. I mean, there's nothing like them. And that's true. There's nothing like them, especially when you think of what they had to go through with their own kind first, as well as being- Like my mother had her first child- For some reason they told me she was put out of the pad. Somebody put her out of the house. I never got it together what it was about. She was pregnant when she was a teenager. She didn't let it bother her. She just kept on stepping.
Isoardi
Strong-willed. A lot of strength.
Tapscott
Yeah. And she was very attractive and everything, because there were a lot of cats trying to get to her. I remember that. But I remember one person always coming back, and that's the cat she married, because he treated her children all right, I guess. He liked kids. He liked us for real. He wasn't just trying to get to my mom only. So he took me on. He was the father that I remember as being my father. I always introduced him as my stepfather, and I always called him Mr. Leon. I was raised to call him Mr. Leon and called him that all his life. [laughter]
Isoardi
How nice.
Tapscott
Me and my sister, we called him Mr. Leon. I never said the word "daddy" to anybody. But the feeling was the same. It was like I didn't have to say that word, because I knew what was happening now. I understood what it was and where it was and how it was to that point where I'd say, "Oh, okay." I didn't have anything against my old man either, because I knew where he was coming from in that day and age.
Isoardi
It sounds like you were awfully wise awfully young.
Tapscott
The wise part came later on in California when I had this uncle [Lawyer Lusk] I was living with and this aunt [Jenny Lusk] that were in the country. That's when all that stuff started coming to me. He started doing prose and poetry and all kinds of things. "What is he saying? What in the world is he talking about? Is he loaded? Or what is happening?" [laughter] He was out, man. But that was later on.But those early years in Houston, though, I could say more or less shaped me for what was to come. I just enjoyed everything that was happening. It looked like everything was cool to me. And then, once again, that pain of segregation, that pain of prejudice. Every now and then you had to go downtown in Houston, you know, in the early days. That meant you had to ride in the back of the bus. I remember this incident, me and my mother again, getting on this bus, and I sat down in the middle of the bus, because there wasn't anybody on the bus, man. I'm a kid, you know, I don't know I'm supposed to sit in back. I was sitting in front of the colored sign. The colored sign was back behind the back door, which left us about one, two, three, four seats to sit in. And I sat in front of it. I remember the bus driver looking in the mirror. And I remember my mother saying, "Come back here. Come on." I said, "Why?" And she wouldn't tell me I wasn't good enough to sit up there.
Isoardi
That's got to be the hardest thing for a parent to give her kid the first inkling of that.
Tapscott
Yeah. What was she going to tell me when I said, "How come I have to come sit back there?"
Isoardi
Yeah, what's she going to say?
Tapscott
And I know that must have been rough, man. I don't know what eventually happened. But I do remember this guy looking in the mirror, the bus driver, at me sitting in front of the- And I remember the colored sign on a copper plate that was about that wide and about that long and sitting right on the edge on one side. I'll never forget that, man. That was another experience.But she never said I wasn't good enough. She said, "Well, I want you to sit back here," because of this, because of that, but never because I was black. She didn't say anything like, "You're black and you're supposed to get back. You ain't good enough to sit up front." She put it another way. It took me later on, naturally, to figure it out. But that was really- I put her through a whole lot of things, because I can remember the pain in her eyes to have to tell me this, to come back here in the back with me. There were about three people on the bus, man, me and her and one person and the bus driver. They were passing through our neighborhood, so we had to get on. We'd get on in the front to pay and walk straight. And if there wasn't any room back there and it was empty up front, you just had to stand up. Stand in a crowd, you know.
Isoardi
You must have been-what?-six, seven, maybe, something like that?
Tapscott
Six or seven, yeah. Those kind- There were good times, a lot of good times. The only time I saw white people is when I went to town. The first time I went to town all these things were fascinating to me, because I hadn't been out of the neighborhood to remember there was something else happening. But the fact that you [would] find out there are things happening was always good, because we always went somewhere. She always took us in places- Not like it was a bad environment in the first place, because it wasn't. Everybody, every house, was intent, so to speak, about their children learning to read and write and count and comprehend. I remember that well. And learning about the Bible. I remember those things, they dominated your mind especially. They were ordered to constantly, constantly- You know, respect for elders, that kind of thing constantly, to make you a whole person. And I appreciated all that.Then it got to the point where I started seeing things differently from what they were telling me to see. That was after that move from Texas to California with that attitude that I had. It started to grow inside me when I began to realize that racism- It took front row in my mind, especially after we moved from Houston, Texas, to here.
Isoardi
It sounds like while you were there in Houston, too, you were exposed to a lot of different kinds of music. I mean, you heard church music, you heard classical music, you heard jazz, blues, you heard everything.
Tapscott
All of it, yeah. And I had to play all of it.
Isoardi
Really? Is there anything that you liked especially then? Or did you just take it all?
Tapscott
I took it all, because in those days the blues was a lot of singing. And the women- They used to take the blues, and some cat is singing the blues about his woman. It would become part of their everyday life. I mean, if the cat stopped making the records, then something was wrong. You've got to have the music all the time, the blues, talking about his woman went out on Saturday night and didn't come home Sunday and that kind of thing. "I hear you," you know. And guys not wanting to hear certain women singing the blues, like Billie Holiday-talking about cats, you dig? They would talk about how bad they treated their woman. But it was part of the fabric. And on Sunday that same blues became the spiritual the next day. I mean, all of it to me was blues, man, because I could hear the blues running through every phase of all the music that came out of the community. It was all based on that "hmmm." Out of that came the spiritual and the blues and the rock and roll, the rhythm and blues, all of that. Because they were all trained the same way. I mean, every one of them, every woman singing the blues came out of the church choir, because that's the way it begins. It all begins in church. The church was our thing, man. Everything happened at the church. I mean, all the activities. Anything that was organized was a church activity. Anything: Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, everything came through the church. Everybody had to meet at the church. The church was open every day up until about seven or eight at night. Because doing something within the community, children learning different kinds of things, always being taught about African American history- I mean, it was just part of it. That's how we learned about black people, because living in segregated days it was just part of your studying. It wasn't written in the regular public school books. But there were always manuscripts around that the teachers found and used.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. It was part of it. We knew all about everybody that had anything to do with anything during that time, and it was still happening at that time, different things that had to do with racial equality in those days.
Isoardi
So like the sailor you were talking about, although he certainly got no recognition in the white world, everybody in the community knew about this guy. He was talked about and studied. The word got around.
Tapscott
Exactly. That's right. How did we know about that? "Is that Dorie Miller?" How did I know to ask, "Who is Dorie Miller?" It was like we knew Joe Louis because- Well, the whole country was behind Joe Louis in those days when he was fighting the German cats. So you got more exposure with the Joe Louis kind of thing. And through that I imagine that opened up the doors, you know, with the colleges back in the South, and they're passing the word down. Through the drums and all kinds of things they were doing, man. But I was living in that time, that turning point of that era of emancipation, so-called, when it was really taking a form into itself. I mean, like we could have what they called a Juneteenth celebration. That's when the slaves were supposed to have been freed in Texas, on the nineteenth of June. Well, that really had a meaning to it. And today- It's a large thing today. But in those days, it brought all the community from all over to come to one park, and everybody giving everybody something, passing gifts and things. You know, it was just nice. It was beautiful, and it was something that- "Well, this is what happens." You didn't think about it until later on in life, what it was really about, what that meant, and why wasn't it put down on paper? Those kinds of things.But it was at the time- Some of the black folks they claimed couldn't read or write, but at that same time there were some that could and did, those unsung heroes that you never will hear about. But it's because of their contributions to that little old, lightweight-our story- that we had at that particular time- [That] is the reason why we knew what was happening in our own community, even if it was, say, in Louisiana somewhere or something. There might have been a lynching in Louisiana on Monday. Well, maybe we might have gotten the word by Wednesday or Thursday, but we knew what happened, and everybody's on guard. It wasn't that big of a community, because everybody was in one area.And I was just thinking, if in those times all the people that I remember meeting and being around and how famous they were, like Marian Anderson- Every Sunday, listening to Marian Anderson-

1.2. Tape Number: I, Side TwoMay 1, 1993

Tapscott
Marian Anderson had that look, that classy look of my grandmother and my aunt. They all had that same look: those high cheekbones, that stare, that open stare that's like an open forest, an evergreen. They just look at you and- We would all sit in our homes and listen at the radio and listen to Marian Anderson sing. And once she came through the community and sang at church or something. We got to see and hear all those people up close, you know. Hall Johnson Choir. Some of the early, early musicians that have made such a contribution even to the European classical music, even in those days. Roland Hayes. We used to have to listen to him. He was in my house singing.
Isoardi
No kidding!
Tapscott
Yeah, man. And they would all be-
Isoardi
Singing in your house?
Tapscott
Not in my house, not singing. But he was in the community. We would have those Victrola kind of turn boxes. It might have [been] a little old lightweight, so-called, wire recorder or something. You'd get to hear them. You see, my mom had that kind of thing in the house for some reason-I don't know how she got it-so we could hear old records and stuff.
Isoardi
Boy. Supposedly he had a magnificent voice.
Tapscott
So my place was full of music. I mean, my sister was taking piano as well. She got into the European classics. She got to playing very good until she was seventeen, eighteen. She said, "I'm through with it." [laughter] She started doing other things. She's a scholar. She's an orator now. She started studying all the languages. She learned several languages, and she started acting and writing. And all her children now speak five different languages, all the girls anyway. The two guys, they're still just into English. [laughter]But, you know, she raised her children under the same kinds of ways that she was raised, exposed them to everything, just threw them out there first to see what they did with it. That was good. And all the time that we were together- Like I remember things with my sister. To show you how much I love her, I always remember her- At certain times we didn't have too much to eat in our home in Houston. My mother would be sitting on the couch, and she'd be thinking about how to get some food. I'd be hungry. You know, I didn't care about nothing, man. I'm hungry. So something happened; I got some food. Somebody brought us a plate of something. So they were halving it up. She gave me mine, and she gave my sister hers, and my sister said, "No, I don't want it. Give it to Horace. He's hungry." I never forgot that, man. She went without eating so I wouldn't be starving to death. It was those kinds of things that- We were just raised like that.I used to go out- When I would be out in the street, I guess I was begging for money like the kids do in Haiti when you get off the train or something. Some cat gave me a nickel. I said, "Well, I got a sister; give me two." I had to get a nickel for my sister. [laughter] She's in walking distance from us now.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
You can walk and see her and her family. She's a grandmother now. That's how Mary Lou raised us mostly: always take care of each other in some kind of way.
Isoardi
Her name is Robbie?
Tapscott
Her name is Robbie. She was named after our father. Robbie Tapscott Byrd is her name. Mary Lou was my mother's name. Her friends called her that, Mary Lou. She was always the life of the party.
Isoardi
Was she your main teacher?
Tapscott
Yeah. I mean, I would say like getting me ready to be formally taught by teachers. What she laid on me was discipline and getting to it and working at it and listening and learning from her, what she was doing. She would play something and she'd say, "Now I [will] play this tune called `I Like Coffee, I Like Tea.'" I'd get up and I'd be practicing. And [then] my sister. Then she'd get back at me, then I'd go back and that kind of thing. So I don't read anything yet, now. No notes. All in here, you dig?
Isoardi
Yeah, that's wild.
Tapscott
And then all through the years, I had a teacher- When she bought me that trombone, she got me a teacher then. I had to learn to read now. Now I had to get off into this. So I had a teacher named Professor Hogan. The first thing Professor Hogan did was put a sheet of music in front of me. That kind of thing. That's when it got started. And I'll never forget, the first tune was the "Blue Bells of Scotland."
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
In the key of E-flat. I had to learn that. I learned to read that. And I started applying. I'd say, "Oh," and I'd put it on the piano. So it got to the point where the time I spent in the house, like four hours a day, two of those hours was on one instrument, two hours on the other instrument.
Isoardi
How did you handle a trombone then? You couldn't make all the positions, could you?
Tapscott
No, I was working. I had long arms, and I was going to seventh position, and I was learning stuff in each position. I got to the point where instead of just going and practicing scales and stuff, I started taking one position to see how many notes were in there and I started to try and hum while I was playing, all crazy kinds of things at the time.
Isoardi
You were an experimenter when you were really young?
Tapscott
Yeah. And you know who really turned me on to trombone, now? I was listening to Tommy Dorsey and J. C. Higginbotham and Kid Ory and Dicky Wells. These guys, in person, you dig?
Isoardi
You saw them in person?
Tapscott
These guys, yeah, Dicky Wells- Out here in the early days when they had the black union [American Federation of Musicians, Local 767] on Central Avenue, I got to see them. But, see, all that happened after I got out here. But I really got turned around on trombone by Dizzy Gillespie.
Isoardi
Dizzy Gillespie?
Tapscott
I tried to play the trombone like he played the trumpet. And I had the jowls and all. I had the whole thing. I used to play all his tunes. [sings Gillespiestyle bebop phrase] And then I had a car wreck when I was in high school, knocked my teeth out. I had them put back in. I went into the service and stopped playing after- I got in the service playing the horn because they didn't want you- They wanted marching instruments. But before, I had that teacher in Houston at an early age, and I learned that tune "Blue Bells of Scotland." So I started learning to read before I learned to- I just started recognizing notes in time before I learned the comprehension of how to read and what I was reading. But it was necessary. It helped me, because when I did move on I was able to acquire a little bit more discipline toward reading music, learning how to read it properly, dynamically, all those hard kinds of things. That came later on when I moved.But before then, all the time [I] was just playing and listening, learning how to adjust myself to the instrument, my body to the instrument, you know, where I could start putting it where it fits. I just kept doing that and that and that. I used to play- I had set up some old stoves years ago, and I had my first band. I would play the drums. I had the cats up front playing whatever instrument they had. This was still in Houston, you know. I'd spend all that time-
Isoardi
So you weren't even ten years old, and you were putting a band together.
Tapscott
Yeah, we were putting a band together. We had four cats and me sitting in the band.
Isoardi
Did everybody play then? I mean, most kids played?
Tapscott
Yeah. It seemed like everybody had instruments or wanted to. It was just a certain few that didn't- Like, say, a family of three or four kids, one of them would play but the other three would be support, yet they didn't play. They'd be supporting this one that did play. Of course, you'd always have an audience, because the whole family would sit down and listen to you sometime during the day, just sit and-
Isoardi
I guess there wasn't as much entertainment at home then.
Tapscott
No. I mean, you just-
Isoardi
So you entertain yourself.
Tapscott
Yeah. You know, each person did what they did well in front of the rest of the relatives and their friends from down the street. They would be encouraging you to do so much. That was the kind of atmosphere we were raised up in. A lot of the cats that were into whatever- I think it was like artists, those things- If they could draw good, so to speak, the parents would make sure they had something to draw with. Naturally, everything in those days was made by hand, so it was made very special. So everything you used was usable, good: crayons and pencils and things and the kind of paper they used to use.Everybody would be supportive of the family. That's the way it was. It was based on family early. Everything that I remember had to deal with family. And everybody had that. Family values were actually valuable things that people passed on from one to another, from one family to another and from one person within that family to another. Like at school functions that we had, it was always a family then, the whole family. I mean, it was a big thing. You get let off from your job early so you can go and make your son's or your daughter's little recital that they had at school, that kind of attitude. And everybody was there. You could walk down the street the next day, and the ice man might pull his truck over and say, "That was a good recital you had, son," that kind of thing.So my experience growing up in those early days of segregation in the south of Houston, Texas- I guess if I had to do it over again, I'd love to, because I never- All those great moments that I had and those great people that I met and the values that were instilled in me by being there, by having the family that I was with, by living under the kind of situations that were dominant at the time, learning how to deal with different kinds of problems having to do with living with other people.I remember Gypsies being in the neighborhood and Native Americans and Spanish people, but not as much as Indians. There were more Indians than black people. But, like I said, the white people might come through every now and then as some kind of authority figure, and that's the only way you knew them.I remember going to the movies and seeing all the movies made by the old black movie producers. I guess they had a little way to pipeline from Philadelphia to the South to show all their movies, because the guys, they were putting the movies together. They had black movies in Texas, and we'd go see all-black movies. That's all we saw. Like Herb Jeffries cowboy movies. And then we might see some Hoot Gibson every now and then on Friday and Saturday. The movies cost a nickel to get in. Everybody would leave the movie together, you walked home, no cars. I can't remember anybody getting in their car and leaving from the movie. Everybody would take off walking back home. You'd see them changing the marquee, that old small-town stuff.It was really nice in those days just watching things happen, not realizing so many things are going to happen, but watching things happen around you that at the time you were taking for granted. But those were some of my more meaningful days growing up, those things that I can remember, what was happening socially at the time as far as being an adult during those days, up against the fact that you were a child being raised under those adults in that time. And what you received at the time was all good things.I remember there were bad times as far as the economy and having food is concerned, because I remember we used to get food from a barbecue place. My stepgrandfather I was telling you about-his name was Fisher-he would go pay a nickel for a bag of garbage food they were throwing out and then we'd eat that. Anything that would happen- You'd go out on a hunt and bring something- But I don't remember not being-other than the time I'd just be real hungry-I don't ever remember starving. You can always go out in your yard, too, and get some food. People always made things for you. Grandparents would be sewing the sole on your shoes so you could go to church. Because I was getting tired of going to church every day- You know, we had to be in church every day, man, all the kids, all of the kids, not two or three, but twenty of them, all of them, the ones you'd been to school with all during the day. [laughter] Here they are at night, about six o'clock in the evening, sitting there, and leaving at seven and going home and going to bed and getting up the next morning, here we are again. And always learning, trying to learn, being taught something, you know. You got so that you knew what was happening, and you were just programmed. I mean, all the guys I grew up with, we were just programmed, man. When it was time to be silent, we just became silent. That's how it was. You could be standing up at the pulpit and you do one of these numbers. You could hear a pin drop. I've thought about that. I've said, "Wow, man, suppose you could do that today."
Isoardi
[laughter] That's a long shot.
Tapscott
And everybody in there is an A+ student, because they had to be.
Isoardi
Yeah. You didn't have much choice.
Tapscott
You didn't have any choice at all, man. You wanted to live in this house, you wanted to be able to grow up in this community, you wanted to eat, then you had to learn how to speak and write and talk and understand. You know, "Okay, so I understand." No, no, no. You've got to be able to understand what you're doing. Like multiplication tables? They'd have it in every house, man. You might not be able to come in the house if a person- You knocked on the door, and you wanted to go see a girlfriend or something, and maybe the girlfriend's parents or an older brother or somebody who's in there would say, "Well, how bad do you want to get in here?" You'd say, "Real bad." He'd say, "What's nine times ninety-nine?" [laughter] That kind of stuff. If you get the right answer, you come in. If you don't- It was just part of the whole thing.
Isoardi
Everything reinforced it.
Tapscott
Everything. One worked into the other. So you always had to think, "What [will] they ask me now?"
Isoardi
[laughter] You have to study before you go out on a date. [laughter]
Tapscott
Right. If you wanted to make a date you have to answer a question. [laughter] "Did you get it today?" That was something, man; that was really something. I enjoyed that, too, after you think about it, because- I remember, even today, those friends that I'm talking about are still around, it still happens.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. It still happens, because something will click in your brain, and then everything will start replaying all over again, your whole thing, your attitude, how you act, you know. That's what's so fascinating about life. There's always something else to make you say, "Wow." Sometimes you get wowed out.
Isoardi
[laughter] You hope you never do.
Tapscott
Yeah, you hope you never do.
Isoardi
So then you came to California.
Tapscott
Came to California in '43.
Isoardi
And was it your uncle who sent for you, who came out here?
Tapscott
No, it was my stepfather. It was my Uncle [Willie] who tried to keep me in Texas. He wanted me to stay with him, because he dug me, man. He was teaching me how to use firearms. He was a gangster, so to speak. I mean, he was a survival type. He never was without anything. He brought a million dollars to my mama's house, he told me, one year, and they refused to let him in, because they knew it was gambling money and it had to do with mob money in the black community.
Isoardi
This is in Houston, right?
Tapscott
In Houston. In those days he would get busted by the police, and the judge would cut him loose right away, because they knew all the black cats that they had trouble with they put in jail. He was the kind of person that, when we were younger, my mother was telling me, and my grandmother, how he was such a tough guy, so to speak, a bull kind of, a real huge black man, a real huge cat. They had him fighting bears. The white people had him paying to come and wrestle bears. That's how bad he was.
Isoardi
Jeez.
Tapscott
My mother one day went and got him and pulled him by his ears, grabbed a baseball bat, and said, "You wrestle that bear and you're going to wrestle me." She took him home, man, because he was ready for it.You know, he had to prove something evidently. Because in our neighborhood, where we lived, my grandmother-his mother, Pearl [Pearlina Fisher]-was crippled. She had been crippled since she was a child in slavery. Something happened to her; she got burned, and a leg was shorter than the other. Well, one day she was walking through the neighborhood, and some person made a statement about this crippled lady, man, and he was in there. He hit this guy so hard, Steve, the guy went through a plate glass window all out in the street and got all cut up. And he didn't know what he was saying. He never came around anymore. But my family could walk the streets without- Everybody would be tipping their hats to the women, you know, the women in the family, because they knew they belonged to the Malone clan. And like I said, he had a gang of cats to work for him.
Isoardi
To work for him?
Tapscott
Uh-huh. He used to run the liquor run.
Isoardi
Ah, Prohibition.
Tapscott
Prohibition. Yeah, he had that going. So that's how he got all that dough in those early days. He had to hide it, and he was trying to hide it at my mother and grandmother's house. I remember that. He got out, and he died a natural death.
Isoardi
He survived it.
Tapscott
All of that.
Isoardi
Jeez. That was a long shot.
Tapscott
Sure was, man. He wanted to keep me there. My mother said, "My son would be dead or in the prisons if he was here with you, Willie." He said, "You don't need to take him to California. He can stay here in Houston with me." She said, "Uh-uh."I remember backing out in a- It was a 1941 car. I mean, it was the last time they started making cars during the war. A '39 something maybe, a Packard, backing out. I was sitting in the rumble seat backing out, going to the train station and getting on the train to come here.
Isoardi
Did you want to stay with him? Or did you want to go to California?
Tapscott
I didn't want to leave my mother, man. You know, I really dug her, man. I liked my uncle because- He was sitting on the porch; he was mad, man.
Isoardi
As you guys were pulling away?
Tapscott
Yeah, he was mad because she was taking me. He was a baby brother to her. She was the older sister, and she could handle him. She was the only one who could handle him. He was scared to make her mad. To make my mother mad- You know, he won't say nothing. And don't nobody look at her hard, you dig, because- It was that kind of thing. So naturally- And he had his own, several- Man, there's a bunch of Malones in Houston, Texas, today. His son had nothing but sons, and their sons had nothing but sons.
Isoardi
A lot of cousins.
Tapscott
There's a bunch of them. One year I went to visit, about twenty years ago. My cousin took me through the projects. Every one of those houses belonged to one of the Malones, all of my relatives. They don't know me, you know, they're so young, but they all come from that seed.So during those days, like I said, there was an accepted kind of thing. They were all different moms, of course. They all had their babies. There wasn't anybody having an abortion, because nobody was ashamed of having a child. And they claimed they loved the daddy. The daddy didn't have a job even then, man, even then at the time, unless he was on the railroad or something. No work came for the black cats until after the war or during the war.So I was on the train heading toward the west, Los Angeles, California.
Isoardi
When you got on that train, I guess in Texas they probably had segregated cars then, as well.
Tapscott
Oh, yeah. It was segregated all the way. They had the cars we got on and had the porters come through there, and the porters go up front and take something from the white cars and bring it to the black cars, because it wouldn't have gotten back there otherwise. That kind of thing. But nobody even thought about it, you know. "Okay, so they ride up there; we ride up here." We had our things back there. It was cool. And singing, cats singing on there, and cats meeting- I saw my first sexual act on the train.
Isoardi
On the train coming out here?
Tapscott
Yeah. Some soldier got on and met this woman as she was going there. They just met on the train.
Isoardi
I take it they liked each other. [laughter]
Tapscott
I guess by the time they got to Arizona they were humping. I was sitting right behind them, you know.
Isoardi
In the seat in front of you?
Tapscott
Yeah, you know, and I was supposed to be asleep, you dig? I was a little old kid about nine, ten years old. I remember all that. And then I remember them getting off at Union Station, saying good-bye to each other. [laughter] That was out.My first scene getting off at the Union Station was watching that city hall building. The city hall at the time was the tallest building in the city. And, man, it was another kind of city. All these fruit trees.
Isoardi
I guess the Union Station itself must have been something.
Tapscott
It was beautiful, man. I mean, it was busy. You'd see the movie stars coming through. I was really taken: "All these white cats, man. Where am I, man?" Then all of a sudden you'd start seeing palm trees. I mean, right on the street, fruit: pomegranate trees, avocado trees. And it was cool for you to pick them as you walked along the street. They didn't belong to anybody. All that was colorful, man. We got into this car, started driving down Central Avenue.
Isoardi
What did you think California was going to be like? What were you guys expecting?
Tapscott
Well, you know, the land of golden opportunity, honey. They was talking about the fruit trees, all of the vegetation, all those greeneries and grapes and all the things you could pick off. That's the land, Los Angeles, the village of beauty, small-village-type attitude about it. I got down on Central Avenue, man, and I started seeing things unfold in front of me. The first place we went before I got to my house, my mother told the driver to stop the car. Our suitcase was still in the trunk. And I said, "This is where we live?" She said, "No, this is not where we live. I want to introduce you to your first music teacher."
Isoardi
Your first music teacher? How did she know who was the music teacher?
Tapscott
She'd already picked him out.
Isoardi
[laughter] Oh, man. She was serious about you and your music.
Tapscott
We hadn't gotten to the house yet. I don't know where I live. It's the first time I'd ever been in California in my life, and we're driving from Union Station, going home supposedly to where I'm going to live. Before we got there, man, I was introduced to my first music teacher. That's the first person I met in Los Angeles, Harry Soutard. He was a barber in the barbershop on Fifty-second [Street] and Central. I got out and met this guy. He said, "I'll be seeing you, son." I got back in the car and went home. The next day I was at music lessons. I was taken down to the black musicians union.
Isoardi
The next day?
Tapscott
Yeah. He said, "You'll be here a lot."
Isoardi
Wow. They thought you were going to do something. They really had faith in you.
Tapscott
Yeah. So I went there. I spent my time there sitting on the stoop.
Isoardi
Even before you were a member?
Tapscott
I couldn't join until I was- I wasn't a teenager yet. I'm just twelve years old now. [laughter] I wasn't a teenager, man. Every cat in the world, every black musician in the world touched me on my head and my shoulder and my back and told me something. I was sitting there, just sitting there all those years, man. And me and like Eric Dolphy and Don Cherry and the young guys at the time were sitting there all the time, man. That's where I met Larance Marable, the drummer. And it was just rich. It was very rich. Naturally I didn't realize it until afterwards, of course, but I was taking advantage of it, because you didn't have any choice but to take advantage of it. Because one teacher knew the other teacher. "I teach you something, and then what I taught you you're teaching this other person, and it's coming back around with another flavor to it to me again." In other words, they were putting things to you, and they were doing it and pulling it out of you. How many mentors you'd have in a day was impossible to count. I learned how to write from those cats: Melba Liston, Gerald Wilson. Gerald Wilson was the first guy that got me into writing.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah, I mean, to arrange and compose for a big orchestra. I used to hang with him. Gil Fuller, I used to hang with him, one of the writers for Dizzy Gillespie. John Anderson, one of the great writers around here. So many cats were writing, and they'd always turn you on, man. You had to learn how. I didn't go to a class to learn to write. I went to the action to learn to write, you know, looking and listening and asking questions, and hearing it right away, so you could know where you were from that point. And that way of passing on teaching was very good for me, because I could handle that-all different kinds of people telling you different things about the same thing and their approaches to it and how many ways it can be done. So I refused to go to [the] Juilliard [School] because of that. My mother had saved up some money. My sister had given away the money that was saved for her so that she could go to college for me to go to Juilliard.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
I said, "No thank you. I appreciate it. I love you." And it was inspiring to me. "But I have the best right here. You already put me in the best atmosphere. And I can't leave." It was SWU, "sidewalk university," because these cats would be on your case, steady all the time.I went to learn the formality thing about it through colleges and music classes just from that point of view so that maybe I could interpret or try to communicate with other musicians of another caliber in Europe, anyway. So that was my point of learning the technical part of it. But I made sure that everything that happened happened from here and feeling first. Then, based upon that, knowing that the solution came before the formula- That's how I worked it out. So I learned when I had students, cats that I would be instructing, that's the way I'd put it to them. They'd say, "Well, when are we going to get to so-and-so?" "We're already in it." They'd say, "Oh, am I?" What had turned them around is the word itself, what kind of music he was going to get in-eurythmics. He said, "When are we getting into eurythmics?" "You're already playing a different kind of rhythm. That's your eurythmic period." They begin to understand that it's all one kind of sound going on. It's how you apply it. That's the way it was shown to me. It wasn't so stiffly passed on to me, the music, the technology of music. I had an understanding of it from the jump, from hearing it all of my life mostly, and being able to see.Like I've been looking at Duke Ellington's writing since I was thirteen. I could walk right through the sections and look at the music while they were rehearsing. It was cool. Like the Fletcher and Horace Henderson band. I could walk through there and look and ask a question if I wanted.
Isoardi
You mean they're rehearsing at [Local] 767 or something, and you could just-?
Tapscott
You could go in there- You were expected to be there. You were expected to ask questions. They know who you are. They've seen you.
Isoardi
And they welcomed you.
Tapscott
Yeah, you're welcome. All the cats were welcome.
Isoardi
Jeez, what a school.
Tapscott
That's what I mean, yeah.
Isoardi
You couldn't get that just anywhere.
Tapscott
You could just sit there and ask. Or if you don't understand what just happened with that flow of music, say, "What was that?" And you might look at the score. And then they say, "That's the- Bam. You can do that with the so and so and so."And the best part about it- See, like with Duke Ellington, it said in his book, man, the best part about having a band is that you can write anything you want and immediately you can hear it right away to see if it's cool. And that's why I always had the Ark [Pan-Afrikan People's Arkestra]. I would write something, and I could hear it right the next day, you dig? And I tried to make my relationship with other musicians on that kind of level. In fact, they are artists themselves, and I had them in mind when I was writing this and all that, and that kind of attitude about the music, because you know you want to get all you can out of the person's creativity area to put into this music.That was most of my tutoring and all the mentors that I had. There was a main one all the time, you saw all the time, you would report to, like Samuel Browne or Lloyd Reese. But then during that same period you're with Gerald Wilson, you're with Buddy Collette, you're with [John] "Streamline" Ewing, you're with Red Callender, you're with Wardell Gray, you're with so-and-so. You've got somebody you want to ask questions, "How far could I write this for a trombone?" So Britt Woodman might be interested in that, that kind of thing. "Can the saxophone play this this way?" "Yeah, the fingering to do it to the point that it might so and so and so, so don't write it like that." So you know that if it's the baritone [saxophone], that's a bad fingering position if you write that note in that area. That kind of stuff, little small things. And that's how I learned most of it. And then I went to [Los Angeles] City College.
Isoardi
Well, before you get to City College, though, let's go back to- Where did you live? Your mother introduced you to your teacher. Then where did you go?
Tapscott
We went to the 1900 block of Naomi Avenue. That's a street about a block east of Central Avenue between Washington Boulevard and Twentieth Street. That's the first place we lived. It was a two-story house.
Isoardi
And your stepfather had been living in that place?
Tapscott
Yeah, he'd gotten that place for us. We lived upstairs. Me and my sister were in one room, and my mother and my stepfather were in the room up front. Then there was another room across the hall. And an old lady, who was the landlady, who was a soothsayer kind of lady, lived up front. I used to be scared of her. [laughter] I used to not like to come in the house by myself when she was there.
Isoardi
Afraid she's going to put a spell on you or something? [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah. She was out, man. She was a real short lady. She had that Maria [Ouspenskaya] look, you know, that actress lady that played in the werewolf movies with Lon Chaney Jr. She had that kind of thing about her. She'd be sliding through the hall like that. [laughter] An upstairs place, too, you know, one of those old mansion kind of houses. [We] stayed there a little while, man. Then the money got a little better and we moved across Central onto Twenty-first Street. Actually, you could stand on top of the house I lived in on Naomi and see the new house I was going to live in on Twenty-first. And we stayed over there on Twenty-first and Griffith Avenue and [I] started going to Lafayette Junior High [School]. Lafayette is a school that's off Central and Fourteenth Street by the classic Coca-Cola [Bottling] Company, the first place. Me and my wife [Cecilia Payne Tapscott] met during those days.
Isoardi
Junior high school?
Tapscott
Yeah, we were fourteen years old.
Isoardi
That's when you met?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Wow! [laughter] That doesn't happen much anymore. Too much!
Tapscott
No, it doesn't. We used to walk the streets together and got to see all these people through the years. We used to walk the streets and listen to Art Tatum at the window. We were too young to go in.
Isoardi
Where would you hear him at?
Tapscott
At a place called the Washington Hotel, the Washington Annex. It was a hotel right on the corner of Washington and Central at that time. And then across the street from it on the same corner was the Washington Annex. And Red Callender used to live on a street called Newton Street, next to the police station.
Isoardi
Oh, yeah, the Newton Street station.
Tapscott
Yeah, and we used to go around his house on his way to the gig. Me and his son [Ronald Sibley] at the time, stepson, were close in school together, and that's how I met Red. I'd be over at his house all the time when he was on his way to work around the corner at the Clark Hotel. That was the name of it, the Clark Hotel. So I'd be leaving Red's house and walking with my wife. She lived on Pico [Boulevard] off of Central, and we'd be walking to my house on Twenty-first off of Central, which meant we went past the Clark Hotel on Washington and Central. And you'd walk past. Being so young, we weren't able to go into the club part. You'd see Art Tatum in there and Red Callender and Bill-
Isoardi
Bill [William] Douglass?
Tapscott
-Bill Douglass playing, and Art Tatum looking out the window at us. We'd just be sitting there, and he'd be playing. And then you'd go across the street and Billie Holiday is there. Down the street, a big band: [Jimmie] Lunceford, [Fletcher] Henderson, all of them playing all the way up Central. And that's what we used to walk through, you know, be a part of.
Isoardi
Do you remember the first time you saw Tatum? That must have been something.
Tapscott
He had that blind eye. That's all I used to look at. Because I'd see him daily up and down Central. And Dorothy Donegan, I loved her.
Isoardi
Well, what a beautiful woman.
Tapscott
I love her today, too. She told me, she said, "Horace, you want that old picture of me?" [laughter] When I was a teenager I loved Dorothy Donegan. She'd be playing- I didn't even bother about her playing she looked so good. But, yeah, we'd see all these people, you know, going to the store. They'd be shopping.
Isoardi
Do you remember what your first image of Central Avenue was? You're going down there for the first time. That's pretty different from where you came from.
Tapscott
It's heartbreaking now.
Isoardi
Oh, now, yeah.
Tapscott
Yeah, I hate to go down there. You know, because when I came there it was just live. It was live.
Isoardi
It must have made a big impression on you when you first saw it.
Tapscott
Yeah, well, it was like- Because Houston was live. I was in that part of Houston where it was a main part of town, so to speak, where you saw a lot of activity all the time.
Isoardi
Oh, so it wasn't that much of a shock in a sense.
Tapscott
Not that much of a shock. The only difference was that fact that there were so many musicians, live musicians at one time, playing all the time at one time. And listening, getting a chance to listen to each other doing a job- Like they'd have an intermission, they'd come across the street or next door to go hear the other cat, and those in turn do the same thing, you know, all night long.

1.3. Tape Number: II, Side OneMay 1, 1993

Tapscott
We were still on the train coming from Houston and going to Los Angeles, getting to Los Angeles, going through those things with my mother [Mary Lou Tapscott Jackson] and I and meeting my teacher and on into living on Naomi [Avenue] and meeting my wife, Cecilia [Payne Tapscott], and going to-
Isoardi
Did you do this in school?
Tapscott
Yeah, we were in the eighth grade when I met her. There was another girl that was with her that was the sweetheart of the campus. This girl- You know how certain people you never forget, I don't care how long you live?
Isoardi
Yeah. [laughter]
Tapscott
I remember this girl from when we were in grammar school on Twentieth Street. By the way, I lived at this place on Naomi, where I said I lived, on Naomi Avenue, when we first came to L.A. And growing up, my school was right across the street from my house, which was Twentieth Street [Elementary] School on Twentieth and Naomi, which meant that I walked to school every day. My neighbor was Etta James.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
See, we used to go to school together and lived across the street from each other. We'd wake up and run and play together. We had a lot of people on that street that were musicians, you know. And Etta, she used to sing at the church called Saint Paul [Baptist Church] every Sunday. She'd go around there. She started when she was about twelve years old breaking people up.
Isoardi
Really? Jeez. I didn't know she was from around here.
Tapscott
Yeah, we grew up together. After the Twentieth Street bit, this girl I was talking about that you never forget, one of those types you never forget, that was the school sweetheart, she would stand at the gate every day after school, you understand? And this is elementary school, now; we're in the sixth grade. She'd stand there at the gate and kiss all the boys. [laughter]
Isoardi
So she knew it, too. [laughter]
Tapscott
Good-bye till tomorrow. Her name was Dorothy [Starks]. So Dorothy lived in a house where I knew that two other girls lived, where my wife lived. All three of these families lived in this pad. So we naturally all started going to junior high school, Lafayette Junior High [School]. And I saw this girl in this auditorium-we were sitting in the auditorium-and this person turned around with all these eyes. I said, "Who is that?" I wanted to meet her. And so Dorothy, being who she was, introduced me to her and told me she lived in the same house, which was on Pico [Boulevard] and Central [Avenue]. And, man, after that things started happening, you know, like every time I'd play my wife would hide her face. Because I'd be playing all through school. I had my horn and would be playing "Marie" from Tommy Dorsey. Me and a couple of cats on drums and stuff used to entertain the people at lunchtime musically. I became the student body president.
Isoardi
You did? Of your junior high school?
Tapscott
Yeah. And she became the student body vice president of the junior high. And, man, we were running things. We had concerts there. It was a lot of fun.Lafayette Junior High School was really my first time-well, my second time, rather-being with such colorful groups, ethnic groups.
Isoardi
Lafayette was very mixed?
Tapscott
Very mixed. I got a chance to hear a lot of different kinds of music and started to play a lot of different kinds of music, you dig, being at Lafayette. We had a band at Lafayette. The bandmaster was Percy McDavid, who taught Illinois Jacquet and all the cats in Houston, Texas. So that's how I got hooked up with Illinois Jacquet and the Jacquet brothers, Arnett Cobb, and all those guys, through this teacher. And [Charles] Mingus. He'd have a band. He had Charlie Mingus in it. Well, all of us were in this orchestra they had around here, you know. All the cats were in, and he was the bandleader of that. I met William Grant Still, Mr. [Samuel] Browne. William Grant Still gave me a critique on one of my compositions that the orchestra played. He was there listening.
Isoardi
So you're in junior high school, right? You're playing in this band? And you're composing already?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Wow.
Tapscott
And I played with this band from junior high school until they grew up, all of us, the guys that were in there, in the junior high school. I just grew up with the band.
Isoardi
You guys stayed together for a while.
Tapscott
Yeah, as long as the band was there.
Isoardi
What an experience.
Tapscott
We played every Sunday.
Isoardi
Where at?
Tapscott
At different parks around in the city. It was a $75 job.
Isoardi
Oh, it was a paying job, too?
Tapscott
It was a paying gig, yeah, part of the municipality.
Isoardi
It was a city-supported project?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Oh. So Percy McDavid was doing this for the city?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Damn.
Tapscott
Percy McDavid. So, you know, that opened the doors for a lot of opportunities. You had a chance to realize what part of music you were born to be in now that you've been a part of the music, period. The roots of cats. Like being around Earl "Fatha" Hines and Erroll Garner. I loved those two cats, man, just like I loved-
Isoardi
I believe it after listening to-
Tapscott
You know, like [Art] Tatum, Erroll Garner, man.
Isoardi
A beautiful player. He could never read, could he?
Tapscott
No. And I'm glad he never did. Yeah, he never learned to read. But his siblings did. I mean, his brother and sister were mean. You know, his sister is a concert player. But guys like him and Fatha Hines, people who would stretch out on the piano, you know, they played the whole piano at some time or another. It was a great feeling being up around all those people.By being in junior high school, every certain night of the week there was a rehearsal with this municipal band, which brought all these people that I named, Britt Woodman and-
Isoardi
They'd come to work with you guys?
Tapscott
They'd come to rehearse at the junior high school. So we'd play that Sunday or something.
Isoardi
Jeez. What support and encouragement.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was very much so, man. It was just taken for granted at the time. But everybody took advantage of it, too. There was a Monday night- They had some kind of Monday night community scene, and would bring people together to sing together and play music. Tuesday night, something to bring them together- Wednesday night. Then on the weekends you've got the nightclubs to play in, which we- I was too young, and a couple of other cats were too young. But every now and then we'd get in. Gerald Wilson would sneak us into his band.
Isoardi
Sit in?
Tapscott
We were real tall, so we could look like we were old enough to be there.
Isoardi
No kidding. What a thrill that must have been.
Tapscott
Gerald used to come to my house, pick me up for rehearsal. My mother saw to that. Red Kelly, a trumpet player, used to come to my house to pick me up. All the musicians would come pick you up, the young cats, and take you to rehearsal and bring you back home.
Isoardi
Wonderful.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was something, wasn't it, man?
Isoardi
Yeah, really.
Tapscott
I mean, you'd come out of the house, here's a well-known, world-renowned trumpet player waiting to pick you up to take you to a rehearsal. And they were serious, man. They wanted you to learn. All the time you were riding with them they're talking and they're jamming you.
Isoardi
What a scene. It's so amazing, the people of my generation and younger, too, because there's less and less of that. It doesn't happen.
Tapscott
No.
Isoardi
Where do kids have a chance to have anything like that?
Tapscott
Yeah, but I look at it now and it was during those days that segregation was the art of the day. So naturally you're brought together by force-
Isoardi
Adversity forces you together.
Tapscott
There it is. And now you have another shot. If you do it now, it would be at an even greater length probably, because it would be all voluntarily- I mean, you wanted to do this. It's something that you think should happen. And it's a microcosm, that thing happening down on Degnan [Boulevard], down here on Fifty-fourth Street. That is to say artistically speaking, musically and artistically speaking, that kind of atmosphere and that kind of environment is available in this area here under these circumstances. Nothing was going to ever be like it was before. But this generation has to have something itself to speak of rather than what it has to speak of so far.
Isoardi
But the sad thing is the people like you who are doing that, and Billy Higgins, who are working over on Degnan, you're the exception. Most guys, leading jazz artists now, they live up in the Hollywood Hills or something.
Tapscott
Looking forward to another record.
Isoardi
Yeah, another record, another tour, or whatever. They've got their own thing going.
Tapscott
Well, that's good, man. But to me, even should I have had that-and I've had that opportunity, as others have-it just didn't make any sense to me. I was on the road when I figured it- I was with Lionel Hampton, traveling through the South. I said, "What is the point of all this? Why did I get into music in the first place? Did I get into it to become this or become that, to make this or that? Or did I get into it because I love the sounds and trying to make the best music I can think of or be a part of?" And I questioned myself. The band was here on the gig. Lionel Hampton's band was out on Sunset Boulevard, I'll never forget, the last gig before we were going back to New York again. This was about 1959, '60. I got off the bus, see, at four o'clock that morning and Oliver Jackson, the drummer, said, "Where you going, Horace?" I said, "This is it, brother."
Isoardi
You made your decision.
Tapscott
Four o'clock that morning, I said, "I've had it." I wanted to do something else. I wanted my own thing, and I wanted to write about it, and I wanted to help preserve the music. The music is just going off, and nobody knows who wrote the music or cares. I was in school- Me and Richard Berry were in school together when he wrote "Louie, Louie." He's just now getting money from it. So, you know, those kinds of things. I got so gung ho on it that I just- In 1961 I didn't want to be away from home. And my wife and I had a son; Niles [Tapscott] was born. I said, "I can't do this." Because I remember Don [Cherry] saying that he was living on Washington [Square] Park when he was in New York the first time, and he said, "I can't grow my kids up, man, in the streets, on the sidewalks, in New York." I said, "That's right, man. I can't do that." He stayed as long as he could there, but I cut on out and came back here and started making that endeavor. And still I'm at it. At this point it's to the point where I can travel now around the world and feel good about traveling. I just take my old lady with me, and we just enjoy it. Making that contribution toward what Duke [Ellington] always called good music. His music wasn't jazz or swing music; it was just good music, you dig? And that's the way I wanted to do it. I wanted to just be able to play good music every time I perform. You can call it this and you can call it that, but to me it's all blues, you know, the type of attitude about it.
Isoardi
Let me ask you, when you first came here and you started going to grammar school and junior high school, you were coming from an area that wasn't quite as mixed? It was much more segregated?
Tapscott
Right, right.
Isoardi
So how did it feel being in a much more mixed environment? Did it take some adjusting for you?
Tapscott
It took me quite a bit of adjustment. See, when I first came to L.A. and was going down Central Avenue to my first home, I only stayed there about six or seven months, because it got really crowded in the place where we were living, which meant I had to go somewhere else to live. And I went to Fresno, California, at about twelve years old. I stayed there about two to three years on a farm with my uncle, my great-uncle and my great-aunt. That's when thing started opening up to me about life and things, because of this uncle. His name was Lawyer Lusk.
Isoardi
Lawyer as in L-A-W-Y-E-R?
Tapscott
That's right, Lawyer Lusk. And his wife, my aunt, was Jenny Lusk. And they were a strange group of people. They always wanted to go everywhere. And they settled down, and then they wanted me there in the country.I would get up mornings, four o'clock every morning, picking cotton. When the grape time came, four o'clock in the morning going and cutting grapes. This went on every day. In the evenings, people would be sitting in the sunset, all the houses, everybody on the front porch, the kids out in the road playing, people are singing, talking, dancing. All the way down that street activity was going on family-wise, because everybody had just come out of the fields, and they'd be tired, and they took their bath, and they were sitting around just cooling it for the night. [They'd] turn the radio on for a few things, but most of the time the communication was one to the other. You know, the kids playing games. And I grew up in that atmosphere, man, and I got turned on. My uncle would be walking with me, and we'd be walking through some meadows, and he'd be explaining why this is happening and how nature and you are one thing together and how to treat people with respect.So I was going to school in Fresno, my first mixed school in my whole life, the first time I'd ever gone to school with anybody white, anybody. I went to school with these other black cats that lived on the street. They were going to take me to the school. I'm just from Houston, Texas, had been in L.A. a few months but didn't go to school, then came to the country. These cats, "Okay, we're going to take you to school." We walked through the country road to school. The first thing, I got on the school grounds, there were two white guys fighting. It was this big old blond cat. He was beating up on this brown-haired cat, see. I got on the school ground, and I ran over there to these cats fighting. I pushed them aside like this-these two white guys-and I looked at the big one. I pushed the little one away. I said, "Try that on me, man." And this cat said, "What?" I said, "Do it, do it. Hit me." And I don't know who this other guy is, you know. And this guy had the blue eyes, and I caught myself looking right at him, man. I had never seen anybody who looked like him. And he said, "Aw, go away." And I walked away from him. I'm really mean now, man. I'm in a mean stage. I was really mean. Prejudiced. Whew.
Isoardi
So you wanted him to hit you, then, because you wanted to fight the guy.
Tapscott
Yeah, I wanted to fight him. He didn't hit me, so I hit him.
Isoardi
Oh, man.
Tapscott
Okay, I hadn't even registered in school yet.
Isoardi
Yeah, this is your first day.
Tapscott
First day of school. I haven't signed anything. So I'm going to class, and I looked over across the room, and there was this beautiful blond girl, blue eyes. I started looking at her, man, and she looked at me. And she was so beautiful. That turned me around, man.
Isoardi
Just that first-day experience.
Tapscott
That first-day experience. And she became my girlfriend. Her name was Barbara.
Isoardi
No kidding. [laughter]
Tapscott
And I'd be talking to her, and I'd always be looking at her, and we'd be talking about her race and stuff, and she said, "You have to be-" She was trying to cool me down, because I was fighting white cats all day every day. I had a note sent home to my aunt to tell them that I was very racially prejudiced against the boys, and "He has to learn how to get along," and that kind of thing.It was a colorful school, man. It was beautiful. They had this Indian girl there named Carmen. I'll never forget her. She had long black hair. And some of the things she made me do I don't even want to mention. [laughter] Then there was- I had this fight with- My first Mexican friend was a cat I had a fight with. We fought all day. He wasn't giving up, you know; he was macho. And I wasn't giving up. And I started the fight. So we were kept after school, and the teacher wasn't going to let us go home unless one of us apologized. So we made a deal. But he said, "You're going to have to apologize first." So I was learning- Me and this cat became great friends after that. And I started trying to get along with the rest of the people.But I never could get along with the guys. If the guys saw me coming they would move to the side, because I had gotten that rep by then, because "It's crazy kid from the South." And they had passed the word on to stay out of my way until I started getting used to the fact that there were other people in the world. Like their parents started talking to me and saying things to me. They were trying- I thought I was- I didn't know what to think. I was kind of confused after a while. I felt ashamed of being so crazy and mean, disrupting class.But I do remember demanding how come the history wasn't talking about black people. And everybody would look at each other, because, see, I was mentioning somebody like Frederick Douglass that I had learned about in Houston. I wanted to know how come the history I was reading didn't have me in it, only as a slave. And I had some teachers, some white teachers, that I'll never forget that sat down and explained to me why.
Isoardi
Told you the truth?
Tapscott
Told me the truth why things were like they were. Then I began to understand more. I still had that prejudice, but I wasn't as crazy as I was at first. By now I'd made a friend, a white guy. He was another person- I was learning very slowly, because all I saw was a guy with the gun at my mama's head each time-male, you know. And I didn't get past that almost until I got into the service, man. And when I got in the service, there was a whole new set of rules. There was a whole new racial thing there, Steve, because that was right after [Harry S] Truman had integrated the service. And it was hard for both sides to get used to each other. But that's a whole other area. But before that, during [the time] in Fresno, that's where I got to realize that things- Take it easy and smell the flowers and listen and look and watch the ants and check out different things like that. You know, open up your ears to what is and what isn't and how you should guide yourself and your seed. How should you treat your seed? Those kinds of things were coming to me.
Isoardi
It was important.
Tapscott
Yeah, those small things that can't be taught to you technically or through a book on how to act.
Isoardi
You've got to experience it.
Tapscott
Yeah. And I enjoyed those two to three years in Fresno, California.
Isoardi
What happened to your music when you were up there?
Tapscott
I was playing all the time. I was just in the backyard.
Isoardi
By yourself.
Tapscott
By myself.
Isoardi
You didn't have a teacher then? You didn't study at school?
Tapscott
No.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
I didn't then.
Isoardi
You were pretty committed, then.
Tapscott
Yeah, but I'd been brainwashed from the time I could remember.
Isoardi
You're not going to go back to L.A. with no chops. [laughter]
Tapscott
[laughter] Right.
Isoardi
Even better than the-
Tapscott
I still had to face Mary Lou, you dig? She wanted to hear a tune, and she wanted to hear it right away. "Would you play so-and-so for me, honey? You've been practicing?" I practiced. I played all the time. Just the radio was your entertainment, and other people. And I got to playing, and I'd be playing my horn and playing the piano, picking berries, learning, and got back. That's when I got all the activity, as soon as I got back from Fresno.
Isoardi
Why did you come back?
Tapscott
Well, we had a bigger house.
Isoardi
Oh, that was the thing, then?
Tapscott
That was the thing. We didn't have any room. I had to wait until the family got their moneys together to get a pad for us so that me and my sister [Robbie Tapscott Byrd] could have different rooms and all that. So I left and left her here; she stayed here. And I was in Fresno. I lived there. I loved Fresno, man. I mean, I fell in love with it. But all parts of California at the time, they were all just beautiful. And living in that country atmosphere, that was different for me. Going to the outhouse was the biggest problem with living in the country. [laughter] The outhouse. That was a terrible experience, especially at nighttime.
Isoardi
[laughter] In the winter. [laughter]
Tapscott
The outhouse was about forty, forty-five yards from the back door.
Isoardi
Yeah, you've got to plan it. When you get the urge, you don't want to plan.
Tapscott
A cesspool in the back. And I used to have to dig in the cesspool.
Isoardi
Oh, God, you had to clean it out?
Tapscott
Me and my uncle. He taught me how to do it. And we had pigs; we had sloppy, nasty pigs. All this was close to the outhouse. They had two spots in the outhouse, and every now and then you're sitting there with your uncle, and you'd be reading the newspapers, watching out for spiders or snakes.
Isoardi
Well, this would make me practice more, too. [laughter] I'd think, "Shit, I've got to practice to get out of here." [laughter]
Tapscott
Man. And then finally they got a toilet in the house. Boy, that was a big deal on the block, when the people started being able to get the inside toilets.
Isoardi
Oh, I'll bet.
Tapscott
Because everybody had an outhouse, you know, everybody down the street. That's why I guess all the food and stuff grew like it did, man. [laughter] They don't do that anymore. [laughter]
Isoardi
Right. [laughter] Plenty of fertilizer.
Tapscott
They've got a sewer now, man. But that was really a thing for me, like having to get up late at night, and the slop jar you had to take out. The hardest part about living in the country was the outhouse, because it was scary in there, you know. Spiderwebs, snakes. Then, after you finished, the newspaper and all you'd used on it, then the ink would be- [laughter] You're walking out, and you've got to get back to the house now, and that's a long walk. [laughter] And it's dark. And your imagination starts working on you. You start seeing spirits dancing and jumping all out in the backyard. Oh, that would be a trip. But, you know, it was all enlightening after a while, because it made a lot of sense.We used to write by the- I remember my sister had to study by the lamp. You know, you had to light the lamp so you could do your homework or whatever it was you were doing. But the lamp would always be lit, and everybody was always into something, just into something. My sister, she had quite an impression on me. And then she bought me the book of W. A. Rogers about blacks and race in America.
Isoardi
When was this?
Tapscott
In 1950.
Isoardi
Oh, you remember it.
Tapscott
Yeah. I read it and I said, "Wow." I said, "Wow, really?" and all that. And that's when I first- That was when the Emmett Till thing happened. That took me all the way back to the gun to my mother's head, and that set me off. That was the fifties, right? That's a whole other- That's when the turning point of the racial situation in this country started changing. I mean, because there were a lot of cats long before the ones that we'd been hearing about, you know, that they publicized. They were really into the community doing something, straightening out different things. And they weren't prisoners. They didn't have to go to jail to go through all that. They actually saw it and tried to put it across. But those kinds of cats, they used to call them slick niggers. You had to get rid of them. You either kill them or put them away forever, because you don't want them to teach anything.
Isoardi
Stirring it up.
Tapscott
Stirring it up. And there were a lot of cats- Like a guy named Robert Williams in the early days in the fifties and a pilot. And somehow or another I was always hooked up with these guys some kind of way. I was in an environment where they would come around. Maybe it was the music that we were playing, understand? They used to bring around different people who were against the way this society was functioning, because they knew that my message was coming through the sounds. This was my contribution to what I think should be dealt with. And that's the reason why I left Hamp [Lionel Hampton]'s band that night. I told you I got off the bus. That's when I had decided in my mind that what my family has gone through for me to get into the music is for this particular reason. And that reason is to make a point, to say something with it, for it to be accepted as good music and to be accepted as part of the fabric of the whole society that we all dream of having. Then I got off the bus, and that was the end of it, man. And I've been in it since then up till now until the dirt is thrown in my face, so to speak.
Isoardi
When you came back from Fresno to head back to school in L.A., you were a different person, then. You were much more a man of the world, a boy of the world.
Tapscott
Yeah, I was different. I was really different. I started thinking about compositions now. I started to think about dancing. I started thinking about plays I wanted to write.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
I was off into that. I started writing a play in high school. I wrote a tune, my first song I ever wrote, called "Bongo Bill." I remember doing it with Samuel Browne listening to it and critiquing it. My thought pattern started stretching out. I wanted to play different music. I wanted to hear- And I remember the Peer Gynt suite that I used to play a lot, those kinds of things that had to do with composers. I started listening to other composers, cats that were looked upon as the revolutionaries or the outcast cats, what they were writing. And all their music was great, all those kinds, even the Beethoven and Haydn cats. I started listening to the other side of the coin, you know.
Isoardi
Well, you also mentioned that you got elected student body president in junior high school.
Tapscott
When I was in junior high.
Isoardi
So you're also getting politically active. You're not introspective at all. [laughter] You're pretty outgoing. You're taking over. [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah, man, I was student body president and changed the rules that were going around in the school, you dig? And they went for it. I've got the book here now. I'll find it and show it to you. I've got my wife- She's on the cover of the school [year]book. She was the girls vice president in school. We used to make laws in student council about how we don't want anybody running through the hallways with such and such, don't be walking through the halls with the huaraches on flopping and popping gum and, you know, that kind of stuff. And there will be music at noon hour all the time. [laughter] I had all the ladies running after me, you dig? That was nice.Me and Roy Brewster, one of the musicians, we grew up together there. He was the main cat that got me elected president. He made up a placard. And he walked around the junior high school, him and a couple of other cats in the band, "Vote for Horace, Vote for Horace." [laughter] I'll never forget that. That was something. He'd get all the cats and everybody to vote, because I would come up there on stage- Like I said, there were the kids who didn't have enough money to eat in the cafeteria, and then they brought their lunches. And there was more of them than there was anybody else, so they would all have to eat in the auditorium. Well, I was on the stage crew as well, and I'd be in the auditorium, and we'd put on these old Billy Eckstine records and be mimicking Eckstine while they were eating, all these races of kids out there. It was a rainbow looking out there. And they'd be clapping. So when it was voting time, they remembered Horace. [laughter]And another thing I was active in was track. I loved to run.
Isoardi
You loved to run, so you ran.
Tapscott
I ran a lot. And I ran- It was always-
Isoardi
Distances?
Tapscott
No, it was fast.
Isoardi
Oh, really?
Tapscott
At that time it was called a distance though. I used to run the 100[-yard dash], and they said I started too slow, or I had such a stride, so "Why don't you try the 220[-yard dash]?" But my best run was the 440[-yard dash], because I could take those long steps and push, and I could run a long time before I got tired. Like I could stay underwater for a long time. But track in those days, man, people would be taking off- We're talking about people are taking off from their jobs early for the track meet on Fridays at Jefferson High [School]. I mean, the whole area closed up. Everybody came to the track meet. Everybody. And they all were betting on who was going to take second, what school was going to take second, because they knew Jefferson High was going to take first. In each race it was first, second, and third place. The next fastest school was fourth place in that particular run. Three cats, man, from the same school hitting the tape. We'd be racing against each other in practice and in the meet against each other, because nobody could outrun us. It was out, man.
Isoardi
That's great. So you were running track when you went to Jeff from junior high.
Tapscott
Oh, yeah, from junior high. Like they used to come over and get you ready for high school at junior high. "You're going so-and-so, and you are going to be on the track team." Mr. Browne would come over and say, "So you're going to play in my orchestra. You're playing second horn," and all that.
Isoardi
So he would come out to the junior high school, Sam Browne, and he'd listen to you guys play.
Tapscott
That's right, and get ready for you when you come to high school, get you in and ready and get you started even before you graduate from Lafayette or from Carver [Junior High School] to go to Jefferson. Those two schools went to Jefferson. Carver had a band, and Lafayette had a band. All the schools had bands.
Isoardi
Gee. So you guys had a big band setup.
Tapscott
Yeah. Mr. Browne would come over and recruit.
Isoardi
For his band.
Tapscott
At Jefferson. So the cats knew. The same way like they do sports they did the same way with music. "Well, you're going to play halfback, because when you get to Jeff we're going to run you in halfback." Or "You're going to run the 440 when you get to Jeff." "Well, you're going to be playing first trombone or piano when you get to Jeff." That kind of attitude. And the cats, naturally, they'd be practicing, because they wanted to do it. I mean, it was so inspiring, people taking off work to see you run, you're going to be in great shape. You're going to be proud and run, man, or you're going to play, you dig? That's long gone now. It would have been nice to be able to keep that going with the talent that the youngsters have today.
Isoardi
Yeah. But what a support structure. What a support structure you guys had.
Tapscott
That's what I mean. Me and Cherry, Don Cherry, were just saying last night that was a good time. We came up in a good time, you know, real good times. There ain't nothing to do now but give it back in some kind of way, because the fact that- I mean, I can think of all the cats that passed on things to me, man, and I'll never forget these people. Sometimes the names might leave, but their faces I remember. And I've got books on them, so I can see them, I can read about them now. I can point to them. Like Roy Porter, who is still around here. He was around here with his band playing. I mean, we were just surrounded by music, just surrounded by it. It was a good time to grow up in, Central Avenue, when I came there. I saw it, I was in the middle of it, and I saw the end of it.
Isoardi
So you go to Jeff, then, from Lafayette. What's it like when you go to Jeff?
Tapscott
Oh, it's happy times now.
Isoardi
[laughter] More so than junior high school? Did your wife come over, too?
Tapscott
No, she went to Manual Arts [High School]. She's one of the few black students that started at Manual Arts High. There was Yvonne Brathwaite and her and a couple more black women. There were more black women than there were black guys because all the black guys went to Jeff.
Isoardi
What was Manual Arts's status then? Why was that-?
Tapscott
It was a white school still. It hadn't integrated yet.
Isoardi
So they were the first ones.
Tapscott
The first ones. Manual Arts. They wanted to go there because that's where the mixed schools were going. And I was going to Jeff mainly because of the band and the track. I wasn't even thinking about the other things. That wasn't even on my mind. [laughter] I knew I was going to the champion's place. I knew where I was going. It was set up for me. And, man, she'd be over to Jeff all the time, of course, watching her school lose to our school. She would even sit in our section. Well, she had to. [laughter] She'd be over there in Jefferson's section watching Manual Arts lose in track. We knew that. Manual Arts just came to the track meet just to be there, to watch the Jefferson cats run, and all the rest of the schools, you know.But coming to Jeff, it was something, man. There was a lot of activity. Anything you wanted to get into was available to you on the campus. Everybody stayed on campus. There were no gates, no fences, no locks, no graffiti. That wasn't even heard of. They only thing you went off school ground for was to get some hamburgers. That was the worst thing you could do: eat the hamburgers across the street, the best hamburgers in the city, right across the street from Jeff. Most people talk about it right now still. But, see, the cafeteria was full of good food. My mother worked in the cafeteria.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Everywhere I was she worked at. She was on my case, man.
Isoardi
She really was. She was serious. [laughter] Was she playing much anymore?
Tapscott
No, she had stopped playing. Her hands- You know, she had started working, and she just stopped playing. But she never stopped playing, actually. She kept on saying, "All right, I haven't heard you play in a little while," and that kind of thing. And I'd bring her to my concerts, and she'd be happy about that. But there were certain things that she really enjoyed that I did.

1.4. Tape Number: II, Side Two May 1, 1993

Isoardi
Okay. So your mom is working at Jeff. She's on your case. She's watching out for you.
Tapscott
Yeah, you know, like I'd had nothing to eat, and I'd come in- Then she started working at the junior high school [Edison Junior High School] down the street from Jefferson, and we'd go down there, me and my partners, after school, pick her up. I had a little old lightweight car and pick her up, and she was going to bring some food home, some sweets for dessert on Fridays, you dig? That's how they got rid of the food, give it to the family. So, yeah, man, in Jefferson High, during that time Jesse Belvin was going there, Ernie Andrews, the other singer, "Little Green Apples," what was his name? O. C. Smith. There was an opera singer, I forget her name. She was Ella Lee I think. She's back in the country now. And she was teaching around the corner. Thirty years later she had my granddaughter. She said, "Are you related to Horace Tapscott?" She was working anywhere so she could have the kids in this area of music, that live in this area, go over to Europe in exchange. She's a black opera diva. Well, I don't know if she's still singing now. But she hooked up with my granddaughter. My granddaughter is a flautist. So she found that out. But she also was a Jefferson person. And she was taught by Samuel Browne. There are a lot of opera singers, black opera singers, that went over to Europe, you know, France and places, to work that were under Samuel Browne. All these people were at the school at one time. So we had a choir there under a guy named Mr. Moon. Then they had the orchestra under a guy named [Stewart] Aspen. A band, rather. He had the regular marching school band music. And then you had the swing band, Mr. Browne's function.So, I mean, Jefferson High was a proud school, a very proud school, man. Everybody wanted to do their best for it. That's why schools in those days, 90, no, 95, no, 98 percent of the students were able to read, write, and comprehend. There were opportunities that weren't available to me. Like I was taking drafting in Jefferson, and one of the [white] teachers told me, he said, "Horace, there isn't any point in you taking drafting. Black people aren't going to be architects." I said, "Well, weren't black people architects thousands of years ago?" He didn't care for that. [laughter] Some of the teachers there were discouraging. They called themselves "telling you what was happening." He could have been pissed off because it wasn't available for me. And he was right; it wasn't for me at that time. So what if I learned to be a draftsman or architect. I couldn't get the gig to do it at this time because I was black. That's what he was telling me-1950. Because that was one of the things I would like to have been a part of, as well. So now I've got a niece [Robin Byrd] who is a professional architect.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
She's getting her master's degree now at that college in- What's that college back East? Anyway, she's going there, so I guess it must have run through the blood to her. She graduated, and now she's into it. She's into it heavy. And I wanted to do that. I thought about that. I also used to fantasize and think about being a truck driver, going out in the wide open spaces for many, many, many days alone, you know, that kind of thing. I used to like that, thinking about that as a job. That wasn't open to me at the time either, you dig? [laughter] So all the things I wanted to do- But I never have- I thought I never wanted to be a pilot. [laughter] I keep wondering why I never thought about that.
Isoardi
Yeah. Talk about being up in the wide open spaces.
Tapscott
Because looking up at those airplanes when I was a kid, I just used to look at them. I didn't think anything special except for what my mother said: "Ain't nothing supposed to fly but a bird." [laughter] And she never took an airplane. She said, "The only way I'll get on an airplane is if I'm somewhere and you're shipping my body back." She never got on an airplane. And each time now- I'm used to traveling on airplanes okay, man. And now when I get on there, you know, when you hear that chatter at the top when people are boarding a plane- Maybe you've got your seat already and you're sitting down waiting for the rest of the people, and you hear that chatter all the way down the plane. When I'm sitting there waiting, this voice comes above all the rest of it and says, "Ain't nothing supposed to fly but a bird." [laughter] And there I am. I'm shook up like clabbered milk. I'm already shook up, but now- Then the motors are starting by then; I say, "Ah." And I've got to go to Europe. I always go through that, man, each time going. And the cats in the band mess with me.
Isoardi
I'll bet, I'll bet. [laughter]
Tapscott
They'll be messing with me, because they know how- We've been on planes for years, man. But all of a sudden now, boy, it's really something. And when it goes up like this-
Isoardi
Yeah, takeoff.
Tapscott
Oh. And I used to love that. You know, I would even look out the window and say, "Oh, that's smooth going up like this." But now-
Isoardi
Not so much.
Tapscott
Not so much, man. I keep the voice loud and clear, "Ain't nothing supposed to fly but a bird." Now, what is this big piece of iron doing up here? [laughter]
Isoardi
That's good. That's really good.
Tapscott
Yeah, it makes for a really- You know, you can be real shit when you get off the airplane. You have to take a day before you play the gig. And then you start thinking about catching the plane going back and how you're going to be. [laughter] You don't have any time to relax in between.
Isoardi
[laughter] In a couple of years they're going to have to knock you out. Put you on the plane, and then-
Tapscott
I dropped Valium, I did everything, man. You know when the Valiums worked? After the plane landed.
Isoardi
Really? Oh, no.
Tapscott
Everybody on the plane was asleep, and that was intimidating to me, man. I was on the plane- Me and Andrew Hill were traveling to Italy one time, and I was so scared, man. I was just shaky. And I wasn't ready for those bumps in the sky and all that kind of stuff. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. And you'd be sitting up there waiting, "Is it going to happen now? What if-?" You know. Andrew's up there [mimics snoring]. [laughter] This cat went to sleep from here to Italy.
Isoardi
No kidding? What ten, twelve, fourteen hours? Damn.
Tapscott
I'm staying awake, and I'm getting pissed off at him and the band, because they're all sleeping well, and my wife, everybody's sleeping, and I'm- I caught myself dropping Valium, man. I got that from my doctor. I said, "Give me something, man." He said, "Okay." And he gave me some, and they didn't work.
Isoardi
Oh, you were just so wiped out- [laughter]
Tapscott
When the plane landed. [laughter]
Isoardi
Oh, jeez. As soon as your system relaxed a little bit, it all kicked in.
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Oh, man. [laughter]
Tapscott
I'm off the plane now. I'm supposed to be awake now. Yeah, that was some kind of experience. But you have to get on them. And I keep hearing that, "Ain't nothing supposed to fly but a bird." So I get on a plane now saying, so I don't have to wait for her to sneak up on me- I don't want it to just be all over me. I start off with it. So I can say, "Okay, I'm going to start off with it now. And all my activity will be this from now until I get off of here." You know, it's gotten a little better. But, see, I haven't been on a plane but three times this year, and, see, that's too long to be off to get back on them.
Isoardi
You're going to spend the summer doing all the festivals.
Tapscott
Now I've got to get on a plane again, you dig? And, see, you're traveling, and you're forgetting what country you're in. That's when you know, man, you've really been doing it. You say, "Where are we?" [laughter] I woke up one morning and said, "Celia, what country are we in?" That time we were in Maryland I think. I thought I was in Germany. I woke up thinking I was in Germany and went that way for ten minutes, because everything was clean and old-fashioned. In Germany they're so clean and- I woke up. We were getting ready to go eat breakfast. And I looked out there, and I said, "Where are we?" And she said, "We're in Virginia." You know, we had been back East, back West, then to the South. By the end I was totally confused. All I knew was when concert time was. That's all I was aware of. But the rest of the time I didn't even try, man, because, see, I can get really confused. I get confused and I get my stuff all crudded up in my head and I can't function correctly. So I find out what the itinerary is, and I try to memorize it, and that's it. I don't want to be bothered with it, because it's too many plane rides. And that has a way of working on my psyche that doesn't come out too well. The blood pressure might rise, you know. I can't afford that.
Isoardi
No, no. So you had all these amazing bands at Jeff. What was the music program like? Would you study a lot of music classes? Would there be a lot of classes you'd take?
Tapscott
There were two harmony classes, there was a counterpoint class, there was a music reading class, there was a solfeggio class.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
It's a big program. This isn't just-
Tapscott
And they had art for artists, young artists, you know. They had everything. They had to go through sketching and clays. And I was doing ceramics and things of that nature. They had classes in it.
Isoardi
So it was most of your class work? I mean, you probably did some English and history, but you did a lot of music, then, also, a lot of art work.
Tapscott
Yeah, a lot of music. See, but by then, at Jefferson, you could read and write and comprehend. You had the chance to do other things or stretch out your abilities as much as you were allowed to, curriculum-speaking. And they had libraries you'd go to; they had libraries in the school.
Isoardi
Music libraries?
Tapscott
Just your regular library. And you could get the music out. And part of the library, the art books. And these libraries were in the community. You didn't have to go that far. You'd leave school and there would be one within two blocks, within three or four blocks from your home. The library was open until eight o'clock at night. And families would go there and study together and read all the books that were written by black writers that had to be distributed by hand to the people.

1.5. Tape Number: III, Side OneMay 15, 1993

Isoardi
Okay, Horace, we're back at Jefferson High School, when you first go to Jeff. You want to talk about your years as a high school student?
Tapscott
Yeah, that was quite an interesting area in those days, like 1949 up to 1953, in that period of time.
Isoardi
So you start Jeff in '49?
Tapscott
Yeah, I did, in '49. I enjoyed going to the school because I was already scheduled to be in the band with Mr. [Samuel] Browne. I had mentioned before, I think, that he had come beforehand over to Lafayette Junior High [School] and recruited.
Isoardi
And he told you you were going to play 'bone in the band.
Tapscott
Yeah, I was going to be in the band when I got over there. Like, you know, you stand in line, how you used to have to get your classes together? Well, that was already on your enrollment thing.
Isoardi
Oh, really? Boy, he did his homework.
Tapscott
Yeah. And sixth period every day, about two o'clock in the afternoon.
Isoardi
So this was the big band.
Tapscott
Big band, yeah.
Isoardi
So you had one hour every day playing in a big band.
Tapscott
Every day. Right.
Isoardi
Jeez.
Tapscott
Five days a week. And sometimes he might call- Say he got some kind of concert that's important, like going to Fairfax High [School] or out in the [San Fernando] Valley to Taft [High School] or going to one of Stan Kenton's early rehearsals in Hollywood.
Isoardi
He would take you guys to hear the Kenton band rehearse?
Tapscott
Yeah. You know, introduce the legends. That's how I first met Shelly Manne, when Shelly Manne was in his band. You know, he was taking us all around, to the Hendersons [Fletcher and Horace]'s band, you know, all these cats. Wherever they're playing at, he'd make sure at least the majority of us who were really interested in playing the music- There were a lot of cats that played good, but it was just part of their thing. They didn't want to continue to play it as much as maybe a few guys out of the band did, I would say about seven or eight of us, you dig? And the Doctor [Samuel Browne], he'd take us to different places to hear people and introduce us to musicians, certain musicians, and writers. The cats would be coming over to the school. You'd have different guys coming to the school to talk to you.
Isoardi
How fantastic.
Tapscott
Yeah, man. And he got us to meet everybody. Like Lionel Hampton always came over. He brought his big band over.
Isoardi
To Jeff?
Tapscott
Yeah. And I told Lionel, I said, "Man, I'm going to get in your band one day." He said, "Okay, man." [laughter] That's in 1950 or something like that, you dig?
Isoardi
Oh, man, what an experience!
Tapscott
You know, they'd come over and play, and the whole school would be screaming and hollering and dancing up and down the aisles especially- That's when Hamp used to really be dancing up and down the aisles with the whole band. The whole band would come over, and the kids would get up and march and dance. It was just natural for them to come by. In other words, like, the whole school would look forward to something happening in the auditorium for them that had to do with live music at Jefferson, because of Dr. Browne. Because his affiliation with- All the musicians on the avenue knew who he was because he had been there a long time, before a lot of them got there. And he was setting up- He was with the Les Hite band on Central Avenue. He was a piano player and a writer for that.
Isoardi
Sam Browne did?
Tapscott
Samuel Browne, yeah.
Isoardi
I was going to ask you if he had performed at all.
Tapscott
Oh, yeah. He was a performer, man. He stayed in the community totally, Steve, totally. You know, he taught. And he'd drive down the street and everybody, "Hello, Dr. Browne."And he'd be coming to certain musicians' houses to see that they're taking care of business. He'd be at my house all the time, man. Or at Frank Morgan's house. You know, he'd stop by the cats' pads. A cat, Joe Villareal, a trumpet player we had, who was a real, real strident player, you dig. He'd stop by to see him, meet- The family knew him. He knew your family, you understand? My sister [Robbie Tapscott Byrd], my stepfather [Leon Jackson], my mother [Mary Lou Tapscott Jackson], he knew them. They knew him, you understand, that kind of thing he had of making sure he was setting up the foundation correctly from the family on up. And he saw that the family is inspiring the youngsters. That's why the youngsters are doing what they're doing. He was able to come in and to teach or to inspire, just come and talk with you. But he made sure he kept an eye on you. He really dug you. He'd say, "I dig you, man." That's what he'd tell you. "But you don't understand that yet. But I dig you." You know, "I dig you."
Isoardi
What an amazing man.
Tapscott
Yeah, he was, man. And he never worried about anything. I mean, he worried about it, but we wouldn't see him worrying about anything, when they'd be putting him down-for a lot of reasons.A lot of times the band would be acting up individually in the other classes, you know. And like in another class- We had a trumpet player once named Troy Brown. I still see Troy today. He was off into Diz [Dizzy Gillespie] and Babs Gonzalez real bad, and he'd learned all the bebop charts, and he'd sing, and he had perfect pitch for that.So we'd be in this other class we had with our teacher- She was a redheaded teacher. She was a very good teacher, man. I don't know- She would have us listen in the music appreciation class. Mrs. [Helen] Redmond; that was her name. She would have us in music appreciation letting us hear people like Dvořák and Beethoven and Wagner. And we raised our hands a couple of times. We'd be nodding off and stuff in class and looking out the window while these guys were playing the symphony, but we are- She wanted us to appreciate this, and we understood that. And we made a suggestion about "Okay, let's have some Duke Ellington in here and some of that." So she couldn't find any or something didn't happen; she didn't get it.So Troy Brown, who sat in the back in the class, what he said he was going to do, he was going to fix her today. So what he did, he stared at her, Steve. He started staring at her at the beginning of the class while the music was playing. [laughter] You know, I visualize it so well now, man. I was sitting there and looking at her, and she'd be talking, trying to tell us something, and she'd try not to look at Troy. She'd have to look at him, and she'd look away. And all of a sudden, man- He kept staring at her; he didn't change his stare at all.All of a sudden she jumped up from her desk and ran out of the class, "Stop it! Stop it!" and ran down to Mr. Browne's bungalow, "You've got to help me! You've got to help me with one of your boys." One of "your boys," the Browne boys, that's what they used to call us. "He's up there acting up.""What did he do, Mrs. Redmond?""He didn't do anything. He just stared at me.""Well, what can I do?"But she was the kind of teacher, she really loved the music. The cats realized that. She was a real sophisticated woman, real small. She was about five feet tall, and all the cats were taller than her. But she was real comfortable around us, and we felt comfortable with her. But when she ran out of the class that day and started crying- She had really flipped because he had scared her to death.
Isoardi
He must have a hell of a stare.
Tapscott
He scared her to death, man, and she ran out screaming and ran to Samuel Browne. And Mr. Browne had to come up, and he looked at us. And he just looked at us. He used to have a- He knew what was happening.
Isoardi
He had an even worse stare. [laughter]
Tapscott
He looked at Troy, and Troy looked away, because Troy hadn't done anything, he hadn't said anything. But those kinds of scenes, man, at Jefferson High are unforgettable.In that same room there used to be sessions up there during the lunch hour. And some of the cats might come over, like Sonny Criss and those cats might come back and be just playing upstairs. All the players around the city would come back to Jeff.
Isoardi
They'd just come to hang out and play.
Tapscott
Yeah, they'd come back, because, you know, the band rehearses at the end of the day, and they want to go over. They might have some arrangements they want to play, because they were in the band when they were at school. They were out of school now, you dig? And they were working on the avenue and up and down the [West] Coast. But when they were at home they'd come back to the school and sit in and might say something to the cats and tell them where they're playing and all that. It was always some kind of hookup. Buddy Collette was a main part of that, too, you know, getting around to- They could see that the music was being played in the right places. And all the bands that were around got some attention from the other musicians, from the older musicians, and made sure that the band had a stockpile of original music by these people, all from Central Avenue, that kind of thing. Jordan [High School] had a band. And Santa Fe [Avenue High School] at the time was supposedly the bad guys' school. The bad boys went over there, you dig?
Isoardi
Where? To Santa Fe?
Tapscott
Santa Fe. You know, when you got too rough being in Jefferson or Jordan-like you might be skipping classes or whatever-they'd send you to Santa Fe, where they guard you all the time. And they had a hell of a band over there. [laughter] The cats would be coming from Jefferson and Jordan and going to Santa Fe and making their own band up.It was still a communication thing, a hookup. All the cats had been in each band, anyway, one way or the other. So it would be- Like you had Billy Higgins and Frank Morgan and Hadley Caliman, all these cats would be around there, Walter Benton. You had all kind of players around, you know, and seeing each other all the time. Of course, naturally all the clubs were set up on the weekends, and the guys from Jefferson were large guys, tall guys for their age, so we could go into certain clubs at the age of seventeen maybe-you know what I'm saying?- and play. All they wanted to hear was you playing anyway, you dig? They don't care how old you are. A lot of the young cats would meet these dancers, these chorus ladies that would be dancing at the clubs. They'd be jamming the young cats. [laughter] That was always a plus. [laughter]
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
But it was a lot of fun, man, growing up in that time. Also, you didn't have to- I mean, can you imagine walking down the street being able to pick a pomegranate off of a tree that's growing out on the sidewalk, that kind of feeling? Naturally that's going to put a whole other aura on the whole area. And I really appreciated it at the time, during that time. I appreciated that time then as if I was realizing there was going to be a change-up. I soaked all of it in.Because I had so many mentors, like I was speaking about, up and down the avenue at the black musicians union [American Federation of Musicians, Local] 767, you couldn't go wrong if you tried to. They were telling you about everything: you know, the music and the dope that's coming in and what to do and what not to mess with. If you're going to deal with it, don't deal with anything that's going to cripple you. And you don't learn how to play by shooting dope, you dig? If you're going to shoot dope, you'd better learn how to play first, be able to play. [laughter] Don't get the impression because you see and hear about certain cats, the dope addicts, that they're playing so well that you want to play like them that you have to shoot dope like them. They were talking about it then. They weren't trying to turn on the young black musicians, because the dope wasn't in the neighborhood. The only thing in our neighborhood was marijuana, and that was almost legal still, so to speak. Because nobody was imposing any laws on that at that time because most of the people that were smoking it were just like the African Americans and the Indians and the Mexicans that were in the community. It wasn't rushed into the white community, so it wasn't a problem. But the dope came along, you see, and then a whole other scene started happening with a lot of the young cats. A lot of the young cats did, and a lot of them didn't.
Isoardi
When did you notice it start coming in, the hard stuff?
Tapscott
I'd say about 1951 into the Central Avenue area. It was about over then, anyway, Central. But, yeah, it started coming into the neighborhood then. And it was all a big deal, you dig? I mean, it was like being in a clique. If you didn't shoot smack- I don't care how good you play, but if I shot smack, then I wouldn't feel comfortable playing with you because you don't shoot up like I do. As long as you're playing, we're cool. But if you're one of those outstanding players, then they might put up with you. But it used to be like that, because all they had was each other. They would be making great music, though. The only thing that was a problem was the narcotics that were overtaking. A lot of cats were able to handle it and made it. A lot of them couldn't handle it. A lot of real gifted players couldn't handle it or just stopped playing or killed themselves some kind of way or another or just gave up the whole thing totally. Then there are those who went through those desolate times and came through it, getting out of it and never to return-it can happen-mostly because they had the support of a family, too, people that really dug them and knew what they had to offer and really said, "Well, you can get off it."So a lot of that happened. I saw a lot of that happen. I saw a lot of our cats die early from not being able to handle the narcotics in the area. And the narcotics, when they came in, it was really a monster, because you'd start seeing cats changing personalities. Then all of a sudden you don't want them to come to your house anymore. This cat used to be able to run through your whole pad, you dig? You didn't have to worry about him. But now he's got a jones. He might love you and stuff-
Isoardi
Yeah, but he's got to take care of it.
Tapscott
You've got to take care of it. And, see, he can get a dime or two off of your television, and then he'll come back and tell you he did it and give you your television back. But he did it. You know what I'm saying? He didn't want to do it, but he did it. And that's when you knew that they had become zombies, you dig?
Isoardi
Yeah, nothing else matters but scoring.
Tapscott
Nothing else matters. That's when it really hit to the bottom. All you wanted to do was just get high and nod. And you've got too much talent for that and that's whipping you, too. While you're nodding they're just slapping the shit out of you, telling you, "Man, you don't need this."And, man, like I mentioned, some made it and some didn't. And some wanted to make it. Some thought it was no problem. I've seen a lot of cats come out of it, like I said, on their own, what's now called "cold turkey." They just stopped, because what was around them was so well put together that they felt out of place themselves, you know, from the in with the out. Because they know what's really happening here. When they begin to understand, they can say, "Oh, well, I'm hooked by this, so I can deal with getting out of this." And slowly- And cats would offer their support, man, the best they could. Once they knew that and they really wanted it and realized how important they are to the whole scheme, their part that they play, that they mean something, the "If you're out of the thing, the thing ain't going to work" kind of attitude, then he understands that he has a part here now. He doesn't have to try to kill himself for no reason at all, knowing that it's not good for you. I mean, right away it lets you know. You get to feeling too good, so to speak. You don't want to do anything but feel good. [laughter] And you don't really feel good, because, you know- Like some of my times with some of these older pianists that were supposedly hooked on drugs and how they took so much time with me to show me what they knew in case they wouldn't be able to do it anymore because, "I'm hooked, you take it," and that kind of attitude about it. For me it was an advantage because of the fact that most of these people that I'm speaking about or knew at the time were good people in the first place. They wanted to build something. They wanted to be part of a movement, so to speak. They wanted to be recognized for their contributions to this whole thing and got detoured on a whole other area that was strange to them, and they didn't know how to deal with it.It didn't have to do with just narcotics. It had to do with more than narcotics. It had to do with everyday living in the kind of society at that time under the cloak that it was under during those early fifties for black people, and the black male in particular. He still today has got that kind of cloak over him. However, he had to think of all those other things that had to be done. Maybe he had a family. Maybe he was starting a family. Maybe he couldn't work the way he wanted to. Maybe he was worried about getting drafted and going into the army and going on the front line, where they were putting all the black soldiers at the time, and dying. But they had a lot of things on their minds. They knew that it wasn't right. They couldn't raise their families because of this or because of that. And then they got the attitude and got the jacket on them by not being black men, "weren't good fathers" kind of attitude. That whole thing started after the war, that whole kind of downtrodden kind of a man.And their daddies had to go through that same kind of thing. But their daddies were more- Like my father, he was in the thick of segregation. He was in the thick of it. He was invisible totally. I mean, he was never seen or recognized as a person. And then he had me, and he had to pass that on to me, and he didn't know how to do that. I mean, "What is this? What am I going to show this guy? What can I show this guy?" Then there were guys like my stepfather who came along, who tried to show me something regardless.So it was a kind of a- I don't know. I mean, you have things that lay with you at certain periods of your life that stay with you all through your lifestyle and patterns.
Isoardi
So for a lot of guys, you think the drugs were a way of escaping the realities, the pain of everyday living.
Tapscott
More or less, yeah. Like before then it was the liquor. But the drugs say, "Well, I can feel a little better about such and such for a few moments" or something.
Isoardi
Gee, that reminds me, I think Louis Armstrong at one point said that he smoked pot every day of his life, and he said it was the only time that he could escape the pain he felt in his daily living of racism in this society.
Tapscott
That's it. And Satchmo sat me down, man, to talk to me about it.
Isoardi
About drugs?
Tapscott
About smoking reefer.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
When did he do that?
Tapscott
Oh, this was a little farther- This was like in 1959 or something.
Isoardi
Well, if you want to wait to get to it, fine.
Tapscott
Yeah. But, see, that was what was happening with the men during those times. And the music that they were playing at the time was called too out for anybody to listen to, you dig?
Isoardi
Which made it even tougher, then, in some ways.
Tapscott
Yeah, because they were really creating. I mean, creativity was the call of the day every day and every night. "Let's create something" kind of attitude. And the drugs were just a by-product. You'd have to put it like that. They didn't go there to get the drugs to create. They went to create, and then got some whatever they wanted to do. But the first thing was creativity. Before they got started in drugs, these people were coming together. Two cats or three, but always some people were trying to put something together, you know, some music together, all kinds of different instruments, just the three of them. Maybe it wouldn't be a formal kind of an organization of piano, bass, and drums. It might be a flute player and a tuba player and a violinist. But they've got something they want to try. That kind of thing was going on all the time.
Isoardi
There was that consciousness of doing something new all the time.
Tapscott
All the time.
Isoardi
And doing it your way and being individual about it, not just following.
Tapscott
No following.
Isoardi
That's exciting.
Tapscott
That was, man.
Isoardi
That attitude, to have so many people thinking that way.
Tapscott
And they'd say, "Come by my pad. I've got some music I did for so-and-so. You have a little time?" "Yeah, I'll be by." They'd come on by and they'd go through it, "Hey, why don't we add this or do it this way?" Because it was like "There's four or five of us in here, and we're here to make music. We're not here to compete. We're here to contribute," in other words. So that meant they were all open, regardless of how out their ideas were about the thing, you know how they want to put it. But if he can show you how he wanted it done, you would try to do it. And then all of a sudden you would hear what he was talking about. Because here it is; because you helped put it together. And you know him and that kind of thing, too. But still you understand where they're coming from. It was that kind of a closeness that brought about the creativity that came out of those early years of the music, from the 1940s and fifties and sixties. It was a closeness.It's why so much music was created during those years, I mean, from the so-called blues and jazz and pop and what have you. But there was so much music created because of the feeling that people had with each other. I mean not only in the music I'm a part of. I mean even the so-called pop music. The cats, the [Richard] Rogerses and [Lorenz] Harts and those cats would be writing good music during that time. And there was a separation between the races, you dig, but everyone had respect for the music that was coming together. And because musicians didn't have that kind of- I mean, white musicians and black musicians had an understanding of what was going on. White artists and black artists had an understanding of what was going on, you know, and they were able to communicate. That's one time it didn't have anything to do with race then. It had to do with a feeling and a hookup to creativity and understanding, you know, and how people can come together regardless of what's happening around them, because of the creativity, because of the naturalness. That kind of attitude, that kind of thought pattern, was always shown to me when I was growing up, you know. Because of the racist society I had to understand that everyone wasn't a racist in its worst sense, that is. But I had to understand it through- Because there was certain music that I would hear by European composers that was beautiful to me, you dig? And it was totally European, totally. So that says, "Oh, okay, now I have to erase this other part of me and open up to something else."It's like not being able to see nature in its finest everywhere, letting it be what it is because you'd be missing out on something if you didn't. There's so much going on that you never have- I never think of having the lock on what's happening, in other words. But I do think of being able to catch on to how it's happening, what's happening. I have no verbal explanation for what's happening, but I know the feeling I have. So maybe if I want to talk to someone else or let someone else know about how I'm feeling, maybe I can do it through creating, that kind of thing. Some cats are verbally gifted to write it and talk it, you know, write it on out, which is really beautiful. But it's still the art of creating.And being around those kind of surroundings for the most formative years of your life was quite an experience for me as an individual, as a person, and as a father, even though it was strange, you dig? "The Tapscotts' house, that's a strange house." Strange in the sense that it's cool; they liked it. You know what I'm saying? "But they do other things." I mean, "They have fun together." Because, see, in my case, me and my wife, me and Cecilia [Payne Tapscott], we had to grow up with our children at the same time that we were raising them. So, man, I'd find something out today, I immediately had to practice it on my children. I have to do that right and see if- I didn't read what's his name, Dr. [Benjamin M.] Spock's books. I didn't read him. My wife wanted me to, but I'd say, "Uh-uh. This man, what does he know about raising my family?" [laughter] You know, that kind of attitude, you dig?I take my kids to so-and-so. They go to the most unwanted places to go, and to the most wanted places to go, so they would have all of it. They can't come up and say, "Well, this is this and that's that." Now they know there's a whole of things going on that they must have a part in and contribute to in that sense, which way that they see it. Every one of them had different ideas about one thing. They had the basic same idea about it, but they had different ways of approaching it. Because they were shot out there, exposed to it. They got to know all kinds of personalities. They weren't afraid of anybody. They were able to walk up to a person and say, "Hello, how are [you] doing?" and talk to them, regardless of whether he was acting crazy and people wanted to walk around him. My daughter [Reneé Tapscott Wilcots] would walk up and say, "Hi," and he'd come out of his act because here's somebody who really meant "Hi" to them.But, you know, those kinds of things, those are the kinds of ways that I thought about passing on to my children and for them to pass on to their children, to reach an area where you can be respected for being who you are and what you contribute, and you're part of this society. Because you're part of this society as well as anyone else.
Isoardi
Yeah, and also appreciate differences.
Tapscott
Appreciate differences, because that's what nature is all about: differences. And all of it together makes one beautiful landscape. That's the way I have to see it, because everything you see is like that. Everything that we see is like that. Everything that we feel seems to be like that. So what are we talking about?
Isoardi
Well, it's interesting. Your music seems to reflect that. Your music goes in so many different areas. I mean, it touches so many different things.
Tapscott
And I've tried- Like I said, I walk that way. That's the way I walk, man. That's why I love traveling, going someplace and listening and looking and understanding about the human race first, particularly. What's happening with the human race, regardless of what all of us have been taught and cultivated. What is happening with the human race as a whole, as one thing, and what is your part in this? And if you think in these ways, how can you get these things that you are feeling and thinking are a part of this because of your appreciation for the whole? That kind of thinking gets confusing sometimes, because it's like running through a maze. You know what I mean? But it's a way of life that I guess I've chosen to live, and so far, up to this third score of my life, it's still the same kind of thought pattern. Even though it's flexible, basically. It has to be flexible. Of course it has to be. But it has to have a base on which to be flexible. It's not one of those rays that just shoots t through whatever at this point, in my sense of life, of time. It still has a foundation to it. It's still like the Ark [Pan-Afrikan People's Arkestra] itself, a saving, preserving kind of attitude, like the trees. The roots are still there, but it's flexible. It might grow this way. I had to keep that in mind at all times.When I talk with my young people and I talk with all young folks and people even my own age, I have to always be reminded that I'm speaking with someone that is like myself, environmentally speaking. I have to speak to them from that point of view, the environment that they're a part of and can recognize. So how can I do that? You get to the point where you want to be able to communicate with people so badly that you go to all lengths to do that because you really, really, really feel like this is a way toward people reaching those famous sayings they use at Christmas and all those holidays: "Peace, and to all men goodwill." It's like it happens about a week out of every year, that kind of feeling. So at least you know it can happen, that kind of feeling. So if you want it-It's like the Negro history. When it began it was Negro History Week. So you have a week to realize that Negroes exist at that time. Then a few years, a couple of decades later, it became the Negro History Month. And it seemed really strange to be set in the shortest month of the year. [laughter] But, you know, the African American today can be appreciated all year long for his contributions. He's just part of the society now. If you're going to have a holiday, let's have a holiday for the human race. That kind of thing.All those are little small things. All my life, those little old things are like ticks on me, chinches in the bed. You're trying to sleep on a good mattress, and chinches are biting you, but the bed seems comfortable. That's what it's been, those little old small things that-what's the word?-subtle things that they use and that they're beginning to work with, putting it in your mind, the subtleties on the television commercials- subliminal messages. I don't look at the commercials; I look at what they're doing. I can't appreciate anything for what it is because the thing behind doing what they're doing is bugging me to death. I can't appreciate that. "You're not telling me anything." So I'd rather watch an animal show. I'd rather watch something that I can see that's acting for real. They're not just doing something for a camera, that type of attitude.Like if you notice, I don't care what commercial comes on-this has to do back with racism again; we never leave that- But to show you how it's just so blatantly done in this decade, and it's accepted because it's part of the thing, like little small, small parts, like they might have a white male and a female white woman and a black male and at the beginning of the commercial- The commercial might be having to do with toothpaste maybe. At the top of the commercial-it has to do with the editing, I'm sure-but at the top of the commercial you might see the black cat up there.
Isoardi
Brushing his teeth.
Tapscott
Brushing his teeth for about a split of a second. And then the white lady and then the voice-over thing and then the white guy. Then it goes back again to the white lady. And at the end of it-it might be a little set in between to throw you off-and then the white guy comes back again to end the commercial. If it's a little kids' commercial, the same thing happens. The same things happens. You know, I say, "Hey, I've seen some black kids and people in the commercial, but it was their whole commercial." In other words, it had to do with a pick maybe, one of the African combs, of course. But I'm speaking about like every day, Doves and Palmolives and Jergenses, these people like that.And I know it comes from up top, you know, from top down, what's happening, because this is the way the society is made up. In other words, they can't help but do this. They have to do it this way. "We have to do it this way because we at this time, the white Anglo-Saxon at this time, hold all the cards. And we want to keep the cards in place so it can be passed on down to our families." Of course, that's the first thing. It's built on their standards that didn't have anything to do with minorities of any sort. I don't care who you were. It's to build on that standard. So you have to understand that from the beginning. That's what it is.So, all right, you get to thinking, "Well, then maybe I live here in America, too. I can get free enterprise. But I'm still going to have to go to this section of the population to get started," you dig? Okay, well, maybe this section of the population doesn't want me to get started, so they're going to put me through some red tape and make me get pissed off. "I can't follow through with this, so I give up" kind of attitude. Those kinds of things- And everybody's nice to you. Ain't nobody saying anything nasty, you know what I mean? [laughter] And I haven't disrespected you in any kind of way. You understand what I mean? But the big thing is, "You can't get this, man. You can't handle this, because I know what you're going to do when you get it. You're going to make everybody have some money, and you're going to make everybody feel good, and that ain't the way the shit goes." [laughter]

1.6. Tape Number: III, Side TwoMay 15, 1993

Tapscott
Like looking at South Africa right now and the changeover that's bound to come, there's another example of taking a look back at Jim Crow. Now, Jim Crow was the same as apartheid. If [Nelson] Mandela or any other- Not Mandela, but if some of the younger people get into office, Africans get into office over there and run the country, it's going to be really a lot of turmoil once it gets started, when they finally allow racial mixture, recognizing black men and women as people. They've got the coloreds there, the so-called coloreds, you know, the mixed groups. You can imagine in 2000, by 2010 and beyond, the situation that's going to take place there. However, this country, America itself, shows itself as being a leader in that kind of a bringing about after all the years of Jim Crow, after many hundreds of years of it. Then again, it would be just like all black people all over the world do in America. They watch the African American people to see what they're going to do, how they do it, because they are supposed to be right in the stomach of the enemy, you see.
Isoardi
Yeah, Che Guevara said "the belly of the beast."
Tapscott
That's right. Right there, you dig? So they know everything. They've raised their children. They've done all their things. They know all the ins and outs. So "Whatever the African American gets into, we're going to do it here." And that's the way it's been. You go down to the Caribbean, you see the young black cats down there were just like the young black cats that were here in the sixties. And a lot of them will come in here; it's known as the mainland for the blacks coming from other countries. But, see, they all find out it's the same kind of thing even if they were in their own country. It would be the superiority, the Caucasian superiority. And he said, "Well, I'm superior." Then the arguments begin.But in this country, the people here, the African American here that went through all the changes from slave, and then they had to have two or three generations to get rid of the slave mentality totally in the young person growing up- The black kids that are growing up now are about in the same boat at a whole other level, though, a whole other level. And that's because racism hasn't been touched in this country as it is now being touched on by all the people in the country now. Everybody is tapped in now. So things can happen now because everybody's tapped in.And the surprising part about it is in this country they talk about integrating. To integrate, it would have to be a whole other section built where they're told that they want all races to live. Because they have to live there first to integrate, you know, to go to school and get equal. Now you have that opportunity to do that. I mean, just a big old sign that said "Interracial Communities" all over the country, if they want to check it out to see how it works, that kind of thing. Because the main thing is I believe that the country is wasting time, and it's going to loose the power that it needs, all the people with the resources in this country. If it were treated correctly it would make it the real high, strong country it says it is, that the world would look up to.
Isoardi
That's the key, who controls the resources.
Tapscott
That's right.
Isoardi
I think that's what people have found out in this country, perhaps more so over thirty years, that even if you get political equality, that's just step one. And that in itself doesn't mean you're going to have any power.
Tapscott
It doesn't at all, does it?
Isoardi
That's what's going to be facing and is facing people in South Africa now. Well, suppose you can vote. Suppose you can elect some blacks to office. But what difference does it make if you don't control the economy? How far can you go with that? So maybe you've got to push further.
Tapscott
That's what I mean, when they start pushing that ball we're talking about. They had those special shows on public television where they get into it, and they get into all those deep things. That makes sense to me. And there would be all races there talking. And all of them are intelligent enough not to be just so abrupt in their manner about how they're feeling about this and that and whose- Every now and then they'll have a street person, one of those youngsters there to talk. I like that.But see, back to where we were in the early fifties, so to speak, that wasn't the thought of the day. The thought of the day was to survive most of it and to try to stay away from it in a way of speaking. Like if you're so used to living segregation and you're so used to having your own way and learning your own things, okay, "We have to be much better than the guys that go to Hollywood High [School]." That's what Dr. Sam Browne always said, you dig? See, "I don't care how good you are, man; because of the racist society you live in, you're going to have to be much better than the student over at Hollywood High School."
Isoardi
He would talk to you guys about that?
Tapscott
Yeah. He said, "You can play, but you've got to learn how to read and write and count and comprehend what's going on. You've got to learn what words mean, man, when people are talking to you. You just can't go for the `okeydoke.'" That's what he used to say. "You've got to think, man. Think. Because I've been here; I know what I'm talking about." And we knew he knew what he was talking about, because we saw him. He was right there. "I've been here, and this is what's happening. Now, you can fool around if you like." This is after somebody would be messing up in these other classes like I was telling you about. "You can fool around if you like, but those guys out at Palisades [High School] and Hollywood High, they're going to be the ones that took care of business. And you're going to be hip." [laughter] "All you're going to be is be a hipster. That's all you want to be, is that it? Okay, you're going the right direction if that's all you want. But if you want more, you'll try to do more. You'll try to study and learn more." That was the thought of the day all the time: try to do better.And then you'd go home and you'd get that same kind of atmosphere: try to do better. Like your parents, they went so far and said, "Now, I'd like to see you go farther." In those days, they wanted you to go to college. That was one of your main objectives. I don't care- Because we didn't know about city college or community college, whatever college, you dig, as long as you went to college at the time. They didn't never think about going to a college like 'SC [University of Southern California], because that wasn't part of you. You had to be rich and all this. But they would say city college, any college. So they'd say, "My child goes to college."Most people did it because they dug their parents and they wanted to make them feel good, but they didn't care for it. In my case, I went, but I was getting- See, I was satisfied with my knowledge of what I had at the time playing-wise. I was just going to college just because I didn't have anything else to do during the day. And all I did was go take music at the college and get in the European orchestra so I could see what was happening there and conduct one of those European symphonies. That's all I wanted to do. Then I split, because by then I was starting to play and going on certain gigs. And that was more important, you dig, making those $10 a weekend. It bought a lot of groceries.
Isoardi
No doubt.
Tapscott
However, that was the kind of situation that was going on at the time, during those years at Jefferson High.
Isoardi
So Sam Browne really shaped a lot of people. He touched a lot of lives.
Tapscott
He did. A lot of lives, man. Quite a bit, quite a bit. There was one Spanish cat named Charles Caballero. He was one of Samuel Browne's earlier protégés. He got out of Jeff, he graduated from Jeff. He was in the band, a Mexican cat that lived on, I don't know, Forty-something and Hooper [Avenue], in there. Anyway, he went to Jeff, and Mr. Browne was interested in him and his ability. He learned piano, and he started tutoring this cat all the time, man. This cat would come back. He'd bring him over to school. We all got to know him. He was a pianist and a musician. He went to 'SC, too. Charles Caballero. So what happened to him, he got out of that, and he became a principal of a junior high school, Edison Junior High [School], down the street from Jefferson High. And then he went on to become the principal of Carver Junior High [School]. And all the people at the school knew him, you know, Charles Caballero, a Sam Browne protégé. He was the one that called all the people for the Sam Browne celebration. So, yeah, he touched Caballero and others. But I remember Caballero because he was during my time. And he's still passing it on. The Doctor gave it to him. He's still at it. Yeah, he touched quite a few people.
Isoardi
Truly. Was there any other place that had a program like Jeff's? Was that pretty unique, as far as you know?
Tapscott
As far as I know, because, Steve, in segregation you had everything in your schools. You had bands, you had a choir, all the art things, especially in those days. All schools had art and music in them. But some had a little more added to it than what it was scheduled for. I think Jefferson and Jordon were the only two that had swing bands. I don't know about Fremont [High School]. Those schools were still white, Fremont and Manual [Arts High School] and all those. But we knew there were two bands, because we would play at all these white schools. The only other band was Jordon, actually, outside the Santa Fe band.
Isoardi
Where was Santa Fe?
Tapscott
On Washington Boulevard over on the east side. I tried to find it one day, but it's been torn down.
Isoardi
Oh, really?
Tapscott
You know, it's really gone. You'd think nothing was ever there now.
Isoardi
What were you doing-? You're going to school during the day, you're studying a lot of music. I guess you're taking other classes as well.
Tapscott
Yeah. [laughter] I took- What did I have? I had some kind of literature class. I didn't have anything to do- No academics, you know, because I didn't want to get into that anyway, like those required subjects for you to become a college scholar. I wasn't going after any particular degree or anything. I was going there, and I didn't want to go to the service at the time in Korea, but I was going there just because. Because I asked Mr. Browne about it. He did one of those numbers like, "You can go. You don't have to go. Or you can go straight on and get in the service band since they're going to call you." So that's how- Between him and Buddy Collette and Red Callender, [John] "Streamline" Ewing, a cat named Red Kelly, and Gerald Wilson, all these guys had been in the band.
Isoardi
Oh, the military band during the war.
Tapscott
Yeah, the navy band. And they were saying that they had gotten us ready enough that we could go in this band, because we could read anything now. Because they saw to it that we took care of reading music to the point where, when we did go to the service, we could get into the bands. And we did. We got the rest of the experience. But other than that, man- Because, see, you know, being younger out on the streets in those days, we didn't have anything to do but hang around on Central Avenue. [laughter] We weren't going to do anything else but hang on Central and try to get a gig playing- You know, you could get a gig easily because you were a young player now and you were out of high school.
Isoardi
And there were plenty of clubs.
Tapscott
Plenty of clubs, even though they were closing up, starting to shut down slowly. And then different cats did different things. We stayed around the community. We'd see each other all the time like we did in high school.
Isoardi
Were you playing at night while in high school? Did you get any gigs then?
Tapscott
Just maybe like with the band, if the high school band had a gig, but other than that, no. We couldn't because of age. But like I said, every now and then, like on the weekend, we would be with bands. Like when I was fifteen I played with a guy named Monroe Tucker. That was my first professional gig, fifteen years old. So I was still in high school. But I played that weekend with him, because I was in the band. He'd come through, and he needed a trombone player, and that was me. I sat right in there and got it. That was my first gig. Cecilia was there with me. She remembers that gig. The piano player was the leader, and they had to carry him in, you dig, because he didn't have any legs. He didn't have any legs. Monroe Tucker. So, yeah, I guess eventually the cats would be playing. I know like Clifford Solomon and Hadley Caliman and those cats would be around, and "Sweetpea" [Leroy Robinson] and Frank Morgan. You know, they were playing around, too. And some of them were a little older, so they had a better shot. Some of them were already twenty-one. We were seventeen and eighteen.
Isoardi
So you graduated, then, in '53?
Tapscott
No, in '52.
Isoardi
'Fifty-two.
Tapscott
Yeah, the summer of '52.
Isoardi
And then what are your plans? What do you figure you're going to do when you graduate?
Tapscott
When I graduated, I was thinking about- I had thought about leaving Los Angeles and going- What was I going to do? I was going to do something altogether different. Actually, you didn't have any real plans, Steve. All you knew was that you were trying to stay out of the service.
Isoardi
Sure. This is the middle of the war, middle of the Korean War?
Tapscott
Yeah, and that part was on your mind, because you're out of school now. You're saying, "Oh, man. Maybe they won't take me." You knew they were going to get you. And I got a greeting.
Isoardi
You did?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
How soon after you graduated?
Tapscott
It was about a few months after I graduated, very few months, man. I mean, like I graduated in June, and I had my greeting I'm sure by October.
Isoardi
Not much time to think.
Tapscott
Not much time. So I said, "They're going to give me six months, I know, before they call me." Because they'd already told me that I'm on it, you dig? "You will be called." So I said, "Uh-" That's when we started talking with the cats, and they told us about the band, the navy band, and all that stuff.So my first thing was to join the navy, Steve. Me and a couple of other guys went down there together. A lot of the guys were already- It was at a place called Mode O' Day on Washington Boulevard. It used to be on Washington and Main [Street] or Figueroa [Street], one of those streets, that big building. That's where we had to join the service. A lot of the cats got turned down. The man asked them, "Has anybody here ever smoked any marijuana?" [laughter] The cats raised their hands. They put them to the side. They wouldn't take them, you dig? And we were on the other side in another line.
Isoardi
You saw what was happening. [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah, and we were cracking up, man. So the navy- The cats had told me, "Okay, man, you can join the navy." At the time, I couldn't swim, man, but I felt I could rectify that. If I got there I could- I didn't have to go through that all the time. But, see, what they told me, they said, "Hey, man, the first thing you've got to do is jump off a twenty-foot tower into the water." [laughter] I backed out, walked around the corner to the air force.
Isoardi
Did you really? [laughter]
Tapscott
That's how I joined the air force, man. That's exactly how. Because I was going to the navy. Dorie Miller and all that in my head, too, and then the band. I was going to the navy, man. And Dorie said about how "I never came out on top of the ship." I didn't care. I was going there so I could say, "Well, I'll be in the band. I won't have to be stationed on one of those ships or anything." Because you're not; you'd be in some place, you dig? I went to the air force, because I didn't have to worry about flying no airplane. [laughter]
Isoardi
So you figured you'd be on the ground.
Tapscott
Yeah, I figured I'd be on the ground. [laughter] So that's how I got in the air force and the air force band, too.
Isoardi
So you went into the air force, you went into air force basic training, and then you got slotted into the band.
Tapscott
Yeah. They had you go for a basic first, and then you said you wanted to be a musician. They gave you three choices you could try for. My first was musician, my second was musician, and I said the third was like maybe Morse code. Because, see, I'd passed the Morse code test, because most musicians pass it they say, and that's how they tell what's happening. If you couldn't get here, you could get there. And so I started. I went to the band barracks.
Isoardi
Where was that at?
Tapscott
That was up in Pleasanton, California.
Isoardi
Oh, just up around the [San Francisco] Bay Area?
Tapscott
Around that area, yeah. In those days they had barracks there with the band school. You had to go to band school for about a month, and then it was time for the test. And if you passed the test, then you go to a band. If you don't, you have to be assigned something else.And by that time, Steve, I was pretty cocky. And the services had just integrated themselves. So I was still in a war in my mind, and some of the white cats were still Ku Klux Klan thinkers in their minds. And I knew this. So, like, I'd walk into the place and register, and I had my horn. I had a baritone horn and the trombone. And I'm so cocky. The guy who gives you the test, the warrant officer who gives you the test that says you pass or fail, was a trombone player. And the white cats and some of the black cats, they were glad to see me go in there, because, "This sucker, man, he makes me sick. He's so cocky." [laughter] So I said, "Where is the room that I go in?" And I said, "Where is the music?" I walked in there, and here are these two guys in there, the warrant officer and the sergeant, and they all play instruments. They had a stand of music up there for the trombone, and they had this exercise for the trombone that all the trombone players were supposed to play. And I played it. They gave me another thing to play, and I played it. They said, "You read that pretty well, eh?" I said, "Yeah." "Are you a jazz player? It's always a treat to see a jazz player who can read music. Most of them don't read music." I said, "I came in here under those kinds of thought patterns, knowing that that's what you were thinking." [laughter] That calls from my attitude I had. [laughter] I played it, man, so they couldn't get me that way.The cats that were heading the band school, a couple of white sergeants, they didn't like my ass, man. They were pissed off at me. They were a trumpet player and a saxophone player. They didn't like my attitude. So they said, "All right, man." They started passing out the bases where you were going to, and I tried to get- I wanted to stay near Los Angeles, man. I wanted to go to March Air [Force] Base or something and get in that band. They had a band then, you know. And that meant I could come here and play here in town. I had it all set in my head. I knew I was going to be in a band with- Clifford Brown and those cats were starting to come to town here then. And I said, "Let me get my thing where I'm going." All these cats were getting these places: "So-and-so, Honolulu." "What? Honolulu? Oh!" "So-and-so, New York." "Oh!" "So-and-so, San Francisco." "Oh!" "So-and-so-" All the good places, you dig? And I said, "Oh, man, I'm in!"
Isoardi
Oh, man, what did they give you? Alabama or something?
Tapscott
I was waiting. "Tapscott, Fort Warren Air [Force] Base, Cheyenne, Wyoming."
Isoardi
Oh, man. [laughter] Oh, God! They probably never even heard the word jazz there.
Tapscott
Dig this, Steve: It was a base at that time where they sent all the cats that they couldn't make into soldiers, they claimed, regardless if you're a musician or if you're in the medics or-
Isoardi
Sort of like the Santa Fe [Avenue High School] of the air force.
Tapscott
That's it. There it is. The Santa Fe of the air force. [laughter] And all the cats were there, man, all those kinds of cats. And you'd be snowed in.
Isoardi
Yeah, for a lot of months.
Tapscott
For a lot of months. And if it was a full moon at night in the snow, you had to wear black glasses.
Isoardi
Oh, with all the reflection.
Tapscott
The air was fresh. The water was great. No kind of stuff in anything you ate or drank. That was it, man.
Isoardi
Yeah, nothing else.
Tapscott
That was it.
Isoardi
You guys could play a lot, if nothing else. [laughter]
Tapscott
All day, all night. They had a full band there, man. When I came there they had a barracks. It was on the edge of the base, on the end part of the base. The base was about four miles long. And you're on the end because of the music probably, I don't know. They had a giant building that had a basement, a big, full basement all equipped with music things. The first floor, that was equipped- That spread out from here to Crenshaw [Boulevard], about a hundred, two hundred feet across. And then you had upstairs, which was where the bunk beds were, the room full of bunks, and then you had four or five or six private rooms, I mean rooms where two cats could be in together. Then you had an attic. You had the whole thing, man. You had coal- You had to shovel coal in this thing.
Isoardi
No central heating.
Tapscott
That's right. You had to do that all the time.So I was the only black cat that came in the band. They already had one black sergeant [William McCoy] there, but he didn't live in the barracks, he lived off base. He was a vibraphonist and percussionist. So the rest of the guys in the barracks were white cats. I met a couple of them.They had this one guy named Sergeant [Paul] Moriarty. He was a short guy. He wore glasses, and he had one cockeye, had real black, wavy Italian hair. He wore glasses. And he had been an old soldier, you dig, and he was a sergeant. He had four stripes. And he played trombone. So, okay, I come into this secluded part of the country, Cheyenne, Wyoming, where nothing is there, but everything is there I guess if you become a part of the thing. But my first impression was, "Man, where am I?" And immediately that shadow came back on me again, man. [growls] And Sergeant Moriarty made the statement, "If we get any more of these guys in, we're going to have to use these white sheets as covers.
Isoardi
The white what as covers?
Tapscott
The white sheets they had.
Isoardi
Oh, man! He said that to you?
Tapscott
No, not to me. He was saying it to the other white guys that were downstairs. And I'm on the stairway, you dig? I said, "No, I'm not going to relate to this this time. I'm going to leave this alone for this time." Because I wanted to know where I was.So one of the white guys from Arizona, a guy named Bill Smith, he was a tuba player, big guy, he came up and he said, "My name is Bill so-and-so. Did you hear what this guy said?" He said, "Not all of us are thinking like that." I said, "Thank you." Then he went upstairs. Then the guys came out who went along with it, "Hey, how you doing? How are you doing?" I said, "How are you doing?" So that went on for a while, man.And then all of a sudden- You know, like I was mentioning, you had to go downstairs to the boiler room to shovel coal, and each guy has a roster to go down and shovel coal.
Isoardi
Yeah, you take your turn?
Tapscott
Yeah. And I found myself being placed down there twice a month.
Isoardi
And everyone else about once a month?
Tapscott
Once- No, like you might have three days that you had to shovel the coal. It's on you, you dig? Everybody does it. All right. I was on there six days. So I said, "Man, I'm not going to shovel anymore."We started having problems, me and Moriarty, you know, even in the band room. Especially when he couldn't read something. So rather than fight this guy- You know, I didn't even think I had to find a way to get to him, because it wasn't that I hated this guy. There was something about him. But he was just prejudiced, you dig? He was prejudiced. But I found some more things out about him. Looking into myself and being isolated like that, you have time to muse and things like that on things that bother you. And this cat was right down the street. He lived off base, too, and he'd come in. So I'd catch him, caught the cat in a rehearsal. I started in rehearsal. He'd miss a note, and I'd say, "Let a real trombone player show you how this is supposed to sound." Those little old things. He turned red in the face.So one night we had a party. Now, this is after a while. Now, we done went all through our things. Meanwhile, before this party, this guy had reported me to the captain because I refused to shovel any more coal, you understand? And he took me down. I had to go down to the captain of the squad. This is a big long Texas white cat, you dig, a big, mean cat. So he was saying, "Airman-" You know, this and that while the sergeant was in there. So he told the sergeant to go out, and he said, "Airman, settle down a minute," because I had told him while the sergeant was in there. He said, "You know, you can get busted for this." I said, "You can take these stripes, sir. Take them. I'm not shoveling any more coal." See, he didn't scare me by taking my stripes and talking about allotment from my family, you know, that kind of bit. So he sent the sergeant out, and he said, "I understand what you're talking about. This guy is an old soldier, and he's a prejudiced so-and-so." I said, "I don't care about that, captain. You're not going to mess me over. You understand what I mean? I'm not going to shovel no more coal. I'll go to the prison, I'll do anything, but I ain't shoveling any more coal, period." And this cat, man, he said, "Okay, I'll straighten it out." I didn't shovel any more coal, man, you understand? That pissed the sergeant off.This same captain, Steve, meanwhile- I'll tell you about this same captain. But meanwhile, getting back to this Sergeant Moriarty, a party was put on a little later on, after a concert or something. I said, "I'm going to get this cat, man." So we were in this room in this house, and his wife came out. My wife was with me, too, you dig; there were all of us. His wife got drunk. And he was laughing and talking, you dig? See, that's what I mean; he was just prejudiced, but he'd be around you. He'd learn how to- His old lady got drunk, Steve, and she had pinpointed- She wanted me. She wanted my pants, boy. I mean, that's just the way it was. I had no idea that this was going to happen. And she just walked over to me, man. She was so loaded, talking loud, and he was trying to shut her up. She said, "I'll go sit over here." And she came and sat on my lap and put her arm around me and kissed me on the neck. And, boy, I looked over at this cat. Whew! He was flushed. His face was flushed. But he was trying to smile. He was flushed. I said, "I've got it." And he would rather I had hit him, I should have hit him, than what his woman did. So, not long after that, this cat started crying, man, and apologized to me.
Isoardi
At the party?
Tapscott
Yeah. He apologized to me for that statement about the sheets. And that had been six months earlier, man. You dig? He apologized.What really broke the stick with this cat, what made him cry one night and apologize to me, was I got promoted real fast. I got four stripes before he got out of the service. And he couldn't stand that, man. He said, "I've been in the service- It took me thirteen years to make this stripe, and you've been in here two and a half. What's happening?" And he started-
Isoardi
Sad case.
Tapscott
He let it out, man. And after it was all over, man- This was the most prejudicial cat in the place. I mean, if he had a night that they could have beaten me up, he would have done it, I mean, and a bunch of cats. But his turnaround, man, was such a unique way that it was done that I began to realize that anything could happen, man. Because when we first met, this guy was a staunch racist against me. And then, not only that, even if he wasn't a racist, he just didn't like me, period, and my attitude. And he had to go through all those things. He went through the race thing, then he went through the attitude thing. And his wife sparked it. Because here he is all this time, and he had no idea that his wife would do something like that in 1955, '56.But at another time at this same base, man, this same captain- The band being like they were out on the edge of the base, there were a lot of women that came into the band, mostly white women. So we're in this city where all these cats come from the South, and everybody was carrying rifles. And they got upset because these chicks were with the black cats, you know. And it got all the way to the captain. So I got called, me, I got called down again to the captain's office. I was told that there could be trouble on the base, you know, and there are some guys from the South that are upset. "I have nothing to do with that." He said, "You know, I'm not blaming you. I'm not saying to stop-" I knew where he was coming from. But anyway, he said, "What do you think we can do?" I said, "Well, Captain, you can send in some black airwomen." And, Steve, do you know, man, two weeks later at the train station in Cheyenne, Wyoming, there was three carloads of black WAF [Women in the Air Force]s on my request, three train carloads of black women. And there was a white woman [Mary Cantor] that went and picked them up, because she used to hang with the band. She married one of the cats- She married Donald Dean, the drummer that lives down the street here, and had kids by him. She used to babysit my oldest daughter [Reneé Tapscott Wilcots]. She led all the chicks to where they'd go.
Isoardi
They were worried something was going to happen. That was serious, then, to respond like that, man. They were expecting a war.
Tapscott
It was serious, man. It was serious. Two weeks later, my man, three carloads of women, black women on my call. I said, "Wow!" You know, that's the kind of experience that we had in that kind of land.However, there's one experience that I had that- This will be the first time I ever shared it with anyone.

1.7. Tape Number: IV, Side OneMay 15, 1993

Tapscott
There was a time we had a concert, the air force band I was in had a concert, somewhere in Montana. And Montana is even much more than Wyoming. The water is great and the air is great, but you don't see anything. It's like looking into another dimension. You're just looking. And it's out, man. So the gig was over. The sergeant, the other black cat that was a sergeant in the orchestra [William McCoy], the percussionist, he was driving back. He and I were going to ride back in his car back to Cheyenne. So we started driving back toward Cheyenne on this highway, this two-lane highway, this barren area. And we had a lot of gas; we were hoping we would never run out, because there wasn't any gas station. We kept moving and moving and moving, Steve, we just kept moving. And, man, we didn't even have tapes. There wasn't even an eight-track in those days. Anyway, we were moving and talking, I guess. It was like being in an airplane. You know how you'll be in an airplane, and you look out the window, and you're just standing still?
Isoardi
Yeah.
Tapscott
That's how the car got. We started feeling like we were standing still. We weren't going anywhere, man. Nothing changed. As we were going, nothing changed, man, and that got to be something. And it started getting dark. And I looked out of the windshield-you know, those cars had the windshield that came all the way down-I looked to my right, and I saw a whole posse of Indians on horses, like Chief Red Cloud, and they went over the car.
Isoardi
What?
Tapscott
You know, they were at about the height of the top of the car, a whole posse. And they didn't even look at us but they were [recreates sound of posse]. I saw that, man. And we're still driving now. I didn't say a word. I was just like this here.
Isoardi
They just went across the road in front of you?
Tapscott
Yeah. But up high, like over the car.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
And I said, "I'm hallucinating" to myself. The man who was driving, he looked over at me. He said, "Did you see that?"
Isoardi
Two people don't have the same hallucination.
Tapscott
Man, that's- Whoa!
Isoardi
You both saw this? Man, I think I would have pulled over.
Tapscott
I wasn't going to say anything. I wasn't going to say that I just saw this. "Did you see that?" Man, that really- It didn't- It scared- I don't know what it did to us, man. But we were just driving like this from then on, you know, quiet, and still you were just standing still. And no sound but just the motor of the car. He never experienced that before. That guy died years later, McCoy. He went blind too. But he and I were the only ones who could talk about that.
Isoardi
His name was McCoy?
Tapscott
William McCoy.
Isoardi
Jeez, what an experience.
Tapscott
That was something. Now, you know, I don't know if the effect- See, I believe anything can happen, because if you can think of it, it can happen. But the effect of it, that land out there, it had something beautiful and eerie and spiritual about it.
Isoardi
Yeah. You know, if it just happens to you, it's very internal, you can find ways of dismissing it. When a person you're sitting with saw the same thing-
Tapscott
He said, "Did you see that?" just like that, and we all became silent. I don't remember what happened after that. But we wouldn't stop the car and get out because you were looking for flying saucers-
Isoardi
You would have gotten out of the car and found out there was not road underneath you or something.
Tapscott
I'd never had that happen, but it's a vivid thing that remains in my mind, and I'll never forget it. Because, you know, speaking of Montana and Wyoming and that type of landscape at that time, it hasn't changed much now I'm sure.
Isoardi
Probably not. You had your wife [Cecilia Payne Tapscott] with you when you were up there?
Tapscott
Yeah, she came later.
Isoardi
When did you get married? You hadn't mentioned when you got married.
Tapscott
I got married in 1953.
Isoardi
So after you joined the service.
Tapscott
Exactly. As a matter of fact, I joined the service like on March 27, and I got married on July 5 of that same year.
Isoardi
Before you went to Wyoming.
Tapscott
Yeah. Then I went to Wyoming. I went alone. My wife was having our first child [Reneé Tapscott Wilcots] and she was staying here. She would come every now and then. She could only last so long. One time she came and she wanted to stay, because she'd gotten to know the people around there. She stayed my last two years there. But I didn't go anywhere else. They didn't ship me anywhere else.But I had a group called Nu-tones with Billy James, the drummer who played with the female organ lady on the old Groucho Marx show. My man's ex-wife, the saxophonist [Stanley Turrentine]- Shirley Scott. Yeah, Billy James, he's the drummer with Shirley Scott. But he was in the Nu-tones band. He was the drummer. And we had a bass player, Herbert Baker, and a saxophonist, Robbie Robertson. And we used to travel from that base in Wyoming to all the other bases.
Isoardi
Oh, really? To play jazz?
Tapscott
Yeah. They had a contest called Tops in Blue, you know. We rehearsed for the contest, and we went all the way to the finals in Las Vegas. We knew we were going to lose in Vegas, because this cat- We knew where it was. This white cat had his band, a Dixieland band, he had the trombone, he walked through there- He knew the people that voted for it. They gave it to these cats. And what we had- They gave you Oscars, what looked like an Oscar. They called them Rogers in those days; for the service they would call them Rogers. And we had the silver Roger. The gold Roger was first place and the silver Roger was second place. Now, we had played all these places, man, and got all these things, but they weren't going to let us win because our shit was- We played "Blue Room." [sings melody] It went over, and they enjoyed it, but the contest judges voted for this cat.
Isoardi
[laughter] You got a trip to Vegas out of it anyway.
Tapscott
Yeah, we went to Vegas. And while I was in Vegas it was- Remember, now, Las Vegas is still segregated, you dig?
Isoardi
That's right. So you stayed on the west side of town or something like that?
Tapscott
Yeah, across the tracks over there. At any rate, while we were there, after the contest this guy said, "You guys played so well you can come and play in the bar here, and I'll give you so much for drinks when the people come in." It was a white guy's place. So we were playing in his place. The drummer had set up his new set of drums, and we started playing. Meanwhile, here comes six couples. They come in through the door and sit down. The blond was with this cat, and she spotted me, and she just went and sat down in the seat. And, you know, the cat saw me and- [laughter] And I'm playing, Steve.So okay, we took an intermission. We were standing at the bar talking about what we were going to [play] next, and here comes this blond. She went past me. She looked at me and went past and went to the bathroom. And we're standing at the bar talking, and she came out of the bathroom and walked straight to my mouth and stuck her tongue in it. And, man, the guy behind the bar-[laughter] He got off into a state of shock. My drummer-this is what I'll never forget about Billy-he said, "Time to tear down." [laughter] He started tearing down the drums and getting away, man, because these cats over here were pissed off. Man, they were pissed off. And she was with them. She was with them. I don't know if she might have done it to get them upset. But she just came straight up to me and did that. And they didn't bother us, but they wanted to. But we were ready for them. My man said, "I've got my drum rack here."But that was the kind of experience we had. We had to leave. The bartender said, "I guess you guys had better go now," you dig? "Get on out of here right now while you can." But that kind of experience was a trip, man. In those days, in Las Vegas, that hadn't been too long after Wardell Gray had gotten killed up there. They didn't fool around. And nobody gets blamed for the murder if you're black.
Isoardi
Does anybody know what happened to him? To Wardell Gray?
Tapscott
No, you know, in those days the cats were saying it had to do with narcotics and white women.
Isoardi
One or the other or both?
Tapscott
One or the other or both. Because, you know, he wasn't by himself. There was another cat they were after, see. So that's why they knew it was like one of those mobs up there, that kind of thing. It wasn't just a random thing. Because they made sure. They cut his neck off and left it in one place and the body in another. And the dancer got away-I think he's dead now-Teddy Hale or something. I understand he didn't ever go back to Vegas. [laughter]
Isoardi
No kidding. No kidding.
Tapscott
He said, "That's the end of that." However, that was during those early years. My air force adventures, so to speak, were musically like going to these towns- Like I had my wife with me, Cecilia, and my daughter Reneé, she was a little baby, my oldest child. She was a little black baby, you know. And we went to this town in Wyoming-I can't ever think of its name, it's so small-the whole marching band, the air force band from Cheyenne. We went there to do a concert and marched in a parade. After the parade was over- See, these kids had never seen any blacks before and their mamas either and daddies evidently. So I took my baby and was walking through with her, and all these kids were following us. "Please, can I see her? Please, can I see the doll?" "She's not a doll, she's a kid." "She's black. Let me see. Can I touch her?" And we went to a restaurant, and they were at the windows with their faces-
Isoardi
This was Arizona?
Tapscott
No, no, Wyoming.
Isoardi
Wyoming still.
Tapscott
In a small- I can't even think of the name of the town it was so small. And they were just peeking through the windows like that while we ate. And they stayed on us until we left town. I mean, these people have never seen black people and never had been around them. Maybe they had heard about them, maybe in the newspaper, but evidently they had never seen one, because they followed us all around there. And the white guys with us, they were getting pissed off and stuff. But I told them, "Man, these people have never seen black folks before." And they were being nice about it. Like a little girl would come up and ask, "Please, may I see her? May I touch her?" Because they couldn't believe it. They'd be looking and touching and giggling, "She's so pretty." [laughter] Yeah, we let them do all that because they were kids, man. And I knew they was doing this for real.
Isoardi
Yeah, they didn't mean any harm.
Tapscott
They didn't mean any harm. So I let them rub on her. "It doesn't come off." Because they thought all the people in the world were white. Like when I was a kid I thought all the people in the world were black. So, you know, that's the way it was. They had never seen it. And that kind of experience was really different. I had never had that happen.
Isoardi
Well, you also think then, too, that that means, well, their situation at home, at least they didn't pick up their parents' racism if that was there. If it was there, they hadn't been exposed to it, anyway.
Tapscott
They sure weren't, because they didn't even know it existed. [laughter] They had no idea it existed. It was invisible to them.But they were pretty much some good learning years for myself personally, because, like I said, I had all this hate for white men and all that because of my mother's scene and all that. And then when I got to the air force, I started seeing other things happening, because- And it happened mostly with this southern- We had a southern bass player in our band, a short guy, named Spiller. He was from Georgia or Mississippi, the deepest part of the South, he said. Shmelling is what his name was, Shmelling. He had been in the service a few months, and he had gotten transferred to the band. And there were four of us in the band, four black guys in the band. It was about a thirty-five to forty-piece band. The rest of the band was white, and they were from all different parts of the States, of course.So this bass player came up one day. We were standing in the dayroom talking-and segregated, of course, all the black cats talking-and this kid came up- And he's real short, now, see. All the black cats are six feet and over and big and mean and nasty. And he came over here in between and said, "Can I talk to you guys for a minute?"We said, "Yeah, yeah."He said, "When I was a kid, man, I was raised in Mississippi, and I was raised to think of black people as being monkeys and having a tail and that y'all carried razors and you had big dicks and"-what else?-"you're lazy and you don't have any intelligence." He said, "My parents, my whole relatives, all my people, that's all I grew up around, to think of you as being nothing." And he said, "My people lied to me, man. I've been here a year with you guys, and my people lied to me. And I wanted to tell you this because I'm apologizing for being brought up to think that way."And the cats said, "Oh, yeah? Okay, man."And Cecilia, he loved my wife. We played a gig in one of those- I think it was the officers' club. He wanted to dance with my wife. And he danced with her. And some cat said something to him about it, and he went off on him.
Isoardi
Did he really? [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah, we got put out. We couldn't even play there anymore.The same thing happened- We had a white pianist there named Dick Shreve. He lives here in L.A. now. We talk to each other. His wife, she danced with one of the black cats in one of the clubs, and one of the sergeants said, "What are you doing dancing with that nigger?" She said, whomp! [mimics sound of being struck]
Isoardi
She hit him?
Tapscott
Hit him.
Isoardi
[laughter] All right!
Tapscott
And when she hit him, all of us on the bandstand jumped down on the floor; we started fighting these cats. We were hitting them, boxing, and then the military police stopped us and they put us out again. We never played- This is all on the base. This is not downtown. This is on the base in Wyoming. This is not downtown. This is happening on the base. We were barred, barred out of it, you dig? But those kinds of experiences were something, the racial attacks and things of that nature and how a lot of white people- The reason why they were there was because they were against all that racism. You know how a lot of cats got- I know some guys now, a guy living in Colorado named Gene Miller- He was a drummer. He was in the Airmen of Note, that high band in the air force that you had to be special- Nobody gets in that band unless you go through some documents and that kind of thing. He was in that band. He was one of the main drummers, the head drummer of that band. And here he comes to Wyoming, and I wanted to know why. He said, "Hey, man, the Airmen of Note are so prejudiced it's terrible, man. There are no black players in the band; they don't even want them." And he said, "What really did it for me is one night they had the Airmen of Note party after a concert, and they wanted to swap wives." And Gene had one of those sweet German women. There was no way in the world, he said, he was going to swap his wife with any of those fools. So he left the band. He put in a complaint about the prejudices and all of that other stuff. And naturally, they wanted to get rid of him quietly so it wouldn't become something in the newspaper, so they just transferred him. They didn't take away his stripes or anything. They transferred him to that base where they sent all the cats that they didn't want. After he left, though, they finally busted that band [because of] a lot of the kind of stuff he was complaining about.
Isoardi
Oh, really? Jeez, wife swapping in the air force in the 1950s.
Tapscott
In the 1950s, you dig? And they didn't have any black cats in there. There weren't any Jewish cats in there-known, anyway.
Isoardi
That took some guts for him to do that.
Tapscott
That's why we're friends today, man, because he just- Because they could have wrecked his career. They did wreck it, actually, you know, as far as having a career in the service is concerned, because he had planned on doing that.This drummer, Billy James, that I talk about so much started playing in the air force band- Because Billy wasn't even in the band. He wasn't even playing. He was in another part of the service, and he'd come over to the band barracks and play bongos and congas with us. And Gene Miller said, "Man, this guy's got impeccable rhythm. How come you aren't in the band?" He said, "Man, I can't read, and I'm not playing any drums." "Hey, I'll take care of that." By being in that Airmen of Note, it gave him that kind of prestige, I imagine, that he wrote back and called back to Washington, D.C., to a couple of guys back there. Next thing we knew, Billy James was in the band, had been transferred to the band. And he taught him how to read.
Isoardi
No kidding? That's how he started?
Tapscott
That's how he started, in the service. This cat Gene Miller lives in Denver, Colorado. He's a wrought iron maker now.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. He's a good cat, man. Those kind of guys you don't forget. He had one of those kind of faces that you don't forget: round face, blond hair, and he wore glasses, and he was intense. He was always intense. He said what he felt. And he gained your confidence. Our daughters grew up somewhat together, because he was a family person. He was really out on his family. And he had a sweet woman, man. I could see why he told them, "You come near her and I'll cut your throat." He made some kind of remark like that to one of those generals or colonels. [laughter] And he wasn't anything but a sergeant, you know what I mean?
Isoardi
Yeah.
Tapscott
They were going to take his woman because he's a sergeant, you dig? [laughter] And he had just gotten her from Germany in those early days. They were still Germans in those days. They had the customs, and she acted like the man was important to her and stuff.Like Dick Shreve and Gene Miller, some of the Caucasian guys I met in the service were the real deal, the real human beings, and I still know them today. Dick Shreve is still working out in Hollywood playing the piano and things, and, like I said, Gene Miller has this wrought iron shop in Denver.Also, I had a friend there in the service who was an artist, a black guy named Merton D. Simpson. He's now a big-time artist in Paris and New York. He's got galleries in both places.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
He got out of the service for painting the general of the air force's portrait. He painted so uniquely and so convincingly, the general asked him what did he want. And he said he wanted to get out six months early to enroll in a particular college. He got out of the service with all the benefits. And now, you know, when I was in the [Village] Vanguard two years ago, he came.
Isoardi
Oh, really?
Tapscott
Yeah. And when I first went to New York, when I was with Hamp [Lionel Hampton]'s band and we didn't have anyplace to stay, I stayed in his gallery, you dig, and ate his food. Now he's stretched on out. Now, he's one of the derelicts from that base. All those kinds of cats were stationed there.
Isoardi
[laughter] Yeah, all the castoffs were actually the best.
Tapscott
Yeah, that's where we were, right there. And he's a musician, too. He plays tenor. He does a lot of- Him and George, George Coleman, the tenor player back East- They seem to work a lot back there. And I see him when I go back East now, you know. I'll see him next week, actually, that kind of thing. But these are all people I met in the air force. And now things have been different with them as well as myself. I kept up with most of them that I knew.
Isoardi
A lot of good experiences, in a way, from those years in the air force.
Tapscott
Oh, yeah, it certainly was, man. About life itself, period.
Isoardi
Could you say how going through the air force experience changed you?
Tapscott
Well, it got me ready to come out into the world, because I was out of high school, and I'm, boom, right into that kind of society, you know, discipline. And I could have used that very much, the discipline part of it, being able to set your mind to something and carry it through.
Isoardi
Yeah. How long were you in?
Tapscott
Four years.
Isoardi
You were in from '53 to '57?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
That was a long hitch. Was that typical then for enlistment?
Tapscott
Yeah, that was typical then. And then they tried to get me to stay in, you dig? They were going to make me a master sergeant. I told them if I had the band- See, because I had my own band within the band, and then I was writing and putting things together, concerts. I had a radio show in Wyoming called "Beyond the Blue Horizon."
Isoardi
Really? Was this a base thing or something in town?
Tapscott
It was in town. I came on every day at 12 [o'clock] till 12:15 playing, talking-
Isoardi
Doing what you want to do?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
[laughter] All right.
Tapscott
Yeah, that was nice. I don't know whatever happened to those radio tapes. I know they're gone.
Isoardi
Too bad.
Tapscott
But, yeah, we did that every week, every Wednesday or something like that. And I got a chance to hone on my writing skills, having a band there, you know, to play it the next morning.
Isoardi
How aware were you up in Wyoming? I mean, an awful lot was happening during those four years in the country and in the world. How aware were you of what was going on in jazz then, of what was happening, and what was happening in the rest of the country? The beginning of the Civil Rights movement and things like that.
Tapscott
You didn't have anything but time to stay on that. That was really what was sparking everything there, because what was going on out here [Los Angeles] and what they said was going on in the service that wasn't going on- It was going on in the service as well as out here, you dig? The news- We kept up with what was happening with the black folks all the time, because a lot of places we would go is where a lot of these things would be going down. So we were aware of it and who was playing, too, you know. Because at the time it was all New York by then; everybody was there. And like I said, they were coming out here slightly during those days, because there was like a vacuum in between 1953 and 1957 of no music around-I mean, being around but not significantly enough to be paid attention to at the time by anybody at the time because of what was going on in the Civil Rights movement. And music was being made during those times because of the Civil Rights movement. A lot of music was in the garage, coming out of the garage. And that was what was happening in the service, too, with certain cats. Like we would have different music going on in the service, playing different kinds of music, and they'd say, "What's that?" you dig. "What are you doing? What is that, that out shit you're all playing? What is that?" Then somebody said, "Avant-garde," starting using that word.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. "Avant-garde," you know. That sounded nice to the brothers because it was a French word. [laughter] You might as well call it- They had no idea what it really meant at the time, you know. But then some educator, some wordsmith laid it on, you dig? That shit is "abstract," you dig? First they would call it "abstract" music. And this is going on in the fifties, man. Like that Ornette Coleman and- It was George Newman and Don Cherry, then Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, the "abstract," they called it.However, it was because of what was going on. Nobody had any real explanation for what was going on. All they'd see was- They called it the Civil Rights movement. Okay, but what's going on? The music came out of all that crud that was happening, being in the heart of what is happening, then reading about what- Society is supposed to look at it through the media rather than what it was from being in the core of it and living it and hearing what it's thought about. They'd say, "Wow."It's just like with the rebellion last year [Los Angeles uprising of 1992]. I mean, on the television all you saw was a helicopter view of what was happening. So naturally, "Shit, everything is worse over there." People were in the streets going to the stores. They were left open and walking the streets, and kids were playing in these neighborhoods here, in the neighborhoods where all the shit- The fires were all around us, Steve. But they never showed that part. They just showed where the fire was burning and where gangs of people were running and carrying- Everything going on wasn't as bad as they were saying it was as bad as. And then, when you keep saying things like that, then somebody will say, "Okay, well, I'm going to make it like that." You keep saying, [makes growling fierce sound] "Oh, yeah." Like the taggers, like this guy called "Chaka." I mean, "Chaka" has been in the black neighborhood- That name started in the seventies. And here's some other kid who got it from a whole other neighborhood, and he got famous for it because they said "Chaka" is written everywhere. And so they kept saying that, so "Here I am," you know.Like talking things to happen, making things happen. The media we have is so strong. And that's what's happening with everything else that would be going on, unless you're a part of it. If you're not a part of a thing, then you shouldn't have any kind of thing to say about it until you become a part of it and know what you're speaking about if you have that responsibility to report things about- That's keeping people away from each other. That's polarizing just to a whole other degree, a whole other level that didn't have to be like that, didn't have to make people put up their guards on both sides.But by being in the service and seeing those kind of things in a kind of a microcosm kind of way, I guess, that they're all happening at one time in different areas, but they have something to do with keeping things in order- Everything that they're doing to you has to do with keeping you in order to the point where you won't be able to advance yourself forthright, unless you become a criminal, that type of attitude.You know, everything is here for you, but there's so much red tape and so much bureaucracy to keep you out of it so that your patience is going to run out and you're going to say, "Well, I'm just going to go down to the Bank of America" or something like that. It's almost like what is known as a catch-22, a double-edged sword, I guess, because you do it this way, it's going to stop you. And I'm speaking this from the point of a black male vision of life. That's the black male. That seems to be the biggest problem in our society; it's supposed to be the black male by everybody concerned.So by being in the air force, the service, and going through all those kinds of things under a real tightened and disciplined kind of an organization, real set to psychologically gain control of your thinking parts, to perhaps dampen or corrupt your creativity capabilities in some kind of way by putting all this other crud in your face for you to work through before you can get to this, this kind of a steeplechase you've got to run to get so far- In the service it helps you to know how to go about the best way for you, up to a point, to get your part into this, to raise your family, to have your piece of the action. You learn that, and you learn that it wasn't going to be easy. And you knew why so many cats had gone to prison after that, because a lot of the guys, most black cats who went to prison, were really from out of the Jean Valjean syndrome, you dig? It wasn't violence they were after, it wasn't a crazy- They were hungry, and they had to feed their families. That's when I first thought I saw it in the cats that I remember going to prison-outside of being black, the reason why they went. Because they stole a loaf of bread. So from there it built on to there.Like when they all turned out the black cats in the armed service during the Korean conflict, all of us had bags of Demerol on us that we could shoot anytime. But you're on the front line, too, you know. You might get shot. And you [are] all right. As soon as you got discharged, if you made it, your name was sent to the nearest police station. This really happened. As soon as you got out of the so-called Korean conflict, they sent- All the cats, all the black cats, for sure, that I knew of, that came out of my neighborhood, started going to jail for being junkies, because they were junkies by now, when the service is over. They're junkies by now, and no rehabilitation, no help medically, nothing, just out in the cold. "Make sure you watch this guy. He's a dope addict. He's liable to do anything. He just came out of the service and he's still trigger-happy" and all that. Whatever.I had a partner [Jerry Elster] that I grew up with. When he got out of Korea, man, he started immediately going to jail. Had a family- And he finally died.
Isoardi
From the drugs?
Tapscott
I guess so. Because it was just about ten or twelve years ago, I think, he was sitting on my front porch, and that was the last day I saw him. We were good friends. But it all had started from- And he wasn't the only one, but, I mean, he was the one that was close and I knew and saw and the change-up had come on him. I saw cats that used to be real factually minded just go off and don't remember anything, just be-And, you know, it wasn't till years later I understood that it was all a plan, a genocidal plan. Start with the men, of course. It was similar to the syphilis tests that went on in the forties, you know, with black men, when they gave all of them syphilis, twelve of them, shot it in them. You had to deal with all this, man.You've got to raise your children in that kind of crud and tell them this is that. And they'll say, "But daddy," and you've got to be ready to deal with that "but" part, because they've seen something else, and something else has been said to them, and here you are talking this stuff, you know, confusing them. So it was a lot of problems, man, in those kinds of situations when you call yourself having a family and trying to raise your family to the best that you would like to see. You'd like to see your family raised a certain way and give your contribution to society in that way. All these kinds of things at the time, see, were on a lot of black cats' minds that they never talked about to people, because who cares? "What do I care, man? You get yourself a job and take care of them kids." Right! Right! Exactly. But that's not where we're stopping. We're talking about me getting myself a job and me taking care of my kids. It's not that I can't and I'm not able to, but I'm not allowed to. You're not allowed to, man. The only job you could get then was a janitor down at the bus station. By then you've got three children now, and you're living with perhaps one of your wife's parents or your parents. But you're living with somebody until you can get your own place.And those kinds of small things that are really large things when you think about it, and you had to go through it, were the topic of the day and always what was happening. And those of us who were players, and specifically musicians, were able to play a little bit.
Isoardi
So that really powerfully influenced your music.
Tapscott
It would, yeah. Because first it was a way to ease you out. You just gave yourself a shot to create something the way you're feeling about what just happened, even though you might not sit down there thinking about what just happened and how you felt about it, but it came through you, how you really feel about what's really happening, your real feelings about the real happenings, whether they're good or bad. And, yeah, if you were a painter, you probably could paint something to relieve you, you dig? But your everyday cat, maybe he had to go have a drink, or he might have to do this or might have to do that, because he wanted to stay sane the best way he knew how during that time, even today. But during that time it was very specifically- If you had your own way of thinking, you were a threat, too, at the same time, because you thought for yourself. You know, "Everybody go do this on Saturday," you didn't do it. You did it on Sunday because it was better for you on Sunday. It didn't have anything to do with going against the thing; it was just how you felt. You have all kinds of blocks you have to cross.

1.8. Tape Number: IV, Side TwoMay 15, 1993

Isoardi
It's interesting when you talk about the shaping forces of an artist's work, influences, etc. You start talking sociology, which is important. You start talking about the events, the way society affects you and your friends and the people around you.
Tapscott
Yeah. That's the way, man. It's always been a big thing to me, I think, about realizing where we are and acting accordingly somewhat to the best of your ability for you to be able to function, to go through this forest, this jungle, and get through it the best you can.
Isoardi
But also seeing yourself and the music as part of this.
Tapscott
As part of it, part of the whole, yeah.
Isoardi
What about musical influences at this time?
Tapscott
Musical influences. Starting-
Isoardi
I mean, your music is so unique. Well, starting from whenever. Maybe you can just talk about people who were important. Although you strike one as somebody who listens to a lot but has so much of your own vision of things.
Tapscott
Well, first I was influenced, naturally, by my mother [Mary Lou Tapscott Jackson]. Then my second influence was Samuel Browne. And as far as regular players that I loved listening to, that maybe didn't have any reason for me to want to play the piano but I recognized I liked what they were doing right away, were like Art Tatum and Erroll Garner and Earl "Fatha" Hines, those kind of cats, you know. I used to like the way they played. And then I started listening- As far as influences were concerned, I would be much more influenced by Duke Ellington, his playing. I loved the way he played. I guess that's as far as it goes as far as influencing me. There are certain players that I would buy their music, so to speak, other pianists, because I respect their playing as well as their creativity and the way they approach most- But I haven't had anybody like I'd just follow, totally wanted to be like, that kind of thing. But everyone has influenced me. But these people that I named are the ones that I paid more attention to, that brought me to the light of what was going on musically.
Isoardi
Do you give Sam Browne a lot of credit for your individuality, your uniqueness? I mean, you really have your own voice, more so than so many people. Did those early years really reinforce that in you? Did you ever go through a period where you were following someone else's sound like a lot of people do? Or have you always sort of felt you're playing your music, or you're playing someone else's song your way?
Tapscott
Yeah, I'd put it like that more or less. Because my sister [Robbie Tapscott Byrd] can tell you when I was a kid I used to have a gang that would follow me. [laughter] She'd tell you when I was young I had my first band. I made my drums out of tin stoves and pots and pans. I had three or four people in front of me playing so-called instruments. That was in my mind at all times. "Let's go here. Let's take this mountain. Let's go to this hill. Let's-" You know. Yeah, it's more or less like somebody else's music- This is the way I interpret someone else's music that I enjoy listening to as well as playing.
Isoardi
Let me ask you- We've gotten a little bit past, certainly, Central Avenue's heyday-and as you said, it was starting to decline when you were in Jeff [Jefferson High School]. Maybe you could talk a little bit about why it was declining, as you saw it.
Tapscott
Well, you know, it's politics again, and if you ask a lot of the older guys, they start blaming different people. At the time that we were coming up, during that time, Gilbert [W.] Lindsay was the councilperson. That was his district. A lot of people thought he could have done much more to save the district. Meanwhile, while they started rezoning the areas in the district, which would call for this and not call for that, certain beverages, and this type of establishment in the block or in the neighborhood, is what- There's no need for it. We have taxed up on this- You know, anything to become a nuisance.
Isoardi
Make it tougher to maintain a club, you mean?
Tapscott
Make it tougher to maintain, right. Maybe taxing or any kind of thing.
Isoardi
So city hall was kind of cracking down?
Tapscott
Yeah, that's what happened. It was a city hall crackdown. And that was because of the racial harmony that was happening between- Well, mostly it was white celebrities that would come through there and bring attention to the place. Why should they-? In other words, why couldn't they go somewhere else in Hollywood? But they'd come down [here]. And even the bands that played in Hollywood, the white bands that played in Hollywood, after hours they'd come on Central so they could play, the cats, in all-night sessions. And that wasn't too sweet.
Isoardi
So city hall didn't care for that, either.
Tapscott
Not for that. Especially when the blonds like Lana Turner and Ava Gardner come down. Ava Gardner would be in- There's an old Ebony, an old magazine, Ebony or Sepia, that Ava Gardner is in. It's in a black magazine by [John H.] Johnson, I'm sure. Ava Gardner is in there with Dizzy Gillespie, and the item says, "Diz and Bird [Charlie Parker] show Ava Gardner how to eat a banana."
Isoardi
[laughter] Oh, no! Are you kidding me? Oh, man! Holy shit! [laughter] I never thought Ebony was X-rated. [laughter]
Tapscott
In those days, that was the early days- I'll never forget that, man. I can't recall what date or edition that was, but it was in there, the picture of Ava Gardner, and the picture of Diz grinning at Bird. And all the cats at the union [American Federation of Musicians, Local 767], they made a big joke out of it.
Isoardi
Oh, man. Wild.
Tapscott
And to top it off, one year I was playing at the Troubadour, when I was gigging at the Troubadour in the year of 1962. I'm sorry, 1958 I was playing at the Troubadour. And the piano was- They had a little old stage right in the middle of this little place. The seats were right that close, where you and I- The piano ends here, and the seats begin where you sit. And I looked up one night, man, and there she was sitting there.
Isoardi
Ava Gardner?
Tapscott
Yeah. Long, pretty, with some jeans on, with some old cat she was with. And he was trying to kiss her all over. You know, it was dark in the club; there was just a little candlelight. She's trying to listen to the music, and he's trying to [mimics his kissing]. She's trying to hear the music. And, man, I used to have fantasies about Ava Gardner. I looked up and there she was. I said, "Wow." And she stayed that whole set. So, you know, then my mind went back to that advertisement and I cracked up myself. I said, "This cat is with her, though." But that kind of thing is what closed the avenue, I'm pretty sure.
Isoardi
The fact that Central was integrated at night.
Tapscott
Yeah, integrated, man. Naturally, all the black celebrities were there: Joe Louis and cats, and all the people- Naturally, they lived at the Dunbar [Hotel] and they'd come down. But the white ladies were coming down. And there are so many people who are still around who can tell you a story- [tape recorder off]
Isoardi
Okay.
Tapscott
So actually that was the beginning of Central Avenue closing down. And it was mostly because of, like I mentioned earlier, the rezoning lines, and it had to do with that particular district. I don't know what the district was called at the time. But some of the people that were living here then that are still alive, they still blame certain different things, of course. And to top it off, during that time, that's when the Local 767 was dissolved.
Isoardi
Oh, the amalgamation [of Local 767 and Local 47] took place then, right.
Tapscott
Yeah, that's when that happened. By 1951 it was starting to happen. And the promise of better jobs for black musicians that were in Local 767 in the studio was the main reasons for the amalgamation.
Isoardi
Maybe we can talk about that a little more next time, because you were around, I guess. You were in high school, but-
Tapscott
Yeah. I was still affected by it, because I was seeing it happen and being a part of it. Because Gerald Wilson had paid $25 for me to join the 767 union, and he told me that it would be transferred to the 47. To be continued. [laughter]
Isoardi
To be continued. All right.

1.9. Tape Number: V, Side OneMay 29, 1993

Isoardi
Okay, Horace, last time I guess we got up to the end of your air force years. But before we continue on from '57, let's go back and talk about the amalgamation of the two unions [American Federation of Musicians, Locals 47 and 767] in the early fifties as you saw it.
Tapscott
Yeah. We were looking forward to making a little bit more money, having more gigs, by the amalgamation. That's what the idea was about, rather, since by that time Central Avenue was closing down during those days of the amalgamation, about '51, '52. It was on its way. As a matter of fact, it didn't have but a few more feet to go before it was over.
Isoardi
Oh, really? So most of the clubs had folded by then?
Tapscott
They had folded by then. And they were all out in Hollywood now, all the clubs. They started opening up the so-called jazz [clubs] out in Hollywood.
Isoardi
Does that mean a lot of the Central Avenue musicians were getting jazz out in Hollywood?
Tapscott
Yeah. It was supposed to have meant that. It was supposed to have been that they were getting jobs in the studio. That was the biggest jump that the amalgamation was all about was for getting black guys into studio music where they could make some of the moneys as well. That's what it was about. And then, you know, jobs out there out in Hollywood, too. The biggest thing that happened- I think it was Benny Carter and Buddy Collette and Gerald Wilson and all those cats, and Bill [William] Douglass. They were the head cats; they were the vanguard of this whole thing. So they figured it would be better for us. They had proven the point that they could write and read the music as well as play it. So what was the problem, you know? The problem was that when they did have the amalgamation, some guys got called for different jobs, some of the white musicians-and they were used to being called-then some of the black musicians came, and then the cliques started forming all of a sudden.
Isoardi
This is after amalgamation?
Tapscott
Yeah, you know, during when blacks first came in. So some of the white cats, some of the cats who were working good, they'd hire different black cats, and then they'd have their little old clique. And that particular black group of guys would work all the time because of being in that particular clique with these particular guys that run the studios. The big-time name cats want to hire you, and all the rest of them- Like Gerald Wilson would be hired as a ghostwriter, and he would write a lot of [that music that was written in the early days, so-called written by Dmitri Tiomkin.
Isoardi
That was Gerald Wilson's stuff?
Tapscott
[inaudible]. But see, you know, that's undercover because it was a contract, and he was a ghost, you understand. But the fact of it is, for the generations coming in the year 2000 and beyond, Gerald wrote the music. You know, he wrote a lot of music. He did a lot of ghostwriting for a lot of these Hollywood writers. They would write like four bars-
Isoardi
[laughter] And Gerald would fill in-
Tapscott
Take the rest of it, you dig? That's the way I got the bulk of writing experience, from Gerald Wilson, being around him and cats like Gil Fuller. I used to be Gil Fuller's protégé; he'd take me everywhere he went. He wrote for Diz [Dizzy Gillespie] and those cats and "Manteca," in all them days, early days. And he was also the composer of that tune ["The Shadow of Your Smile"] during the late sixties and early seventies with Elizabeth Taylor, The Sandpiper.
Isoardi
The Sandpiper. That was with Steve McQueen.
Tapscott
Steve McQueen and her. But the music- Don't you remember that theme for that?
Isoardi
I haven't seen that in so many years.
Tapscott
Yeah, that beautiful thing. It got real popular.
Isoardi
Gil Fuller's?
Tapscott
Gil Fuller's. His name wasn't on it at all. They used to tell me all that. And I'd see the music. It wasn't a lie. They'd show me the scores right there in front of me. They might have changed the name of the tune a little bit or bought it from him, whatever, but he wrote it. And he didn't get the money. All this is after the amalgamation, you dig? You know, "You want to make a gig, you do this like I ask you."Now, in my case I started working in the studios because of that, because of cats like Gerald and Buddy Collette. You know, they would hire me, hire their guys, so to speak, to come in. They'd hire and make sure we acted correctly. We were young cats and all that. We could take care of the music, but now how is our attitude? That was the biggest part. That was where the biggest problem was, you dig? And, you know, I had my run-ins with a lot of the white musicians down there in the studios. Because we'd go to the studios for about, say, two or three times a week to make tracks for vocalists or whatever, certain kinds of group singers. You never see them, but you'd just make these tracks. So that was money. And we'd come in and make the horn parts or the rhythm part and make- At that time, $75 was the top price for about three hours of studio work. The lowest-paid cat, that was his top price, that is. My chair, you know, that kind of thing.So you'd be sitting there waiting in the studio, and one of the white guys said, "Hey, Tapscott, what's the problem with you? Why are you sitting there sulking? You're making $75 an hour doing nothing." And that pissed me off. So I jumped up- And he happened to be one of the top-notch trumpet players. I wasn't going to hit him in the mouth, and he wasn't going to hit me. You know, we started- I shoved him. I found out later his father was a head studio cat, one of the head trumpet players at the studio.Okay. After that, I stopped getting called for a lot of dates because of my so-called attitude, racist attitude, that the black cat had-me, you dig? And not just me but others that were in there, because of the way they would talk music and what they were used to doing. There were a lot of problems, of course, when you just break into integration right away, and the culture started clashing, even though the music made the difference. But when you stop playing the music, everybody goes their different way. It was real strenuous during those days with my daughter [Reneé Tapscott Wilcots] there. She was a little girl. And I was making money for- In those days, $10 would buy you four or five bags of groceries.
Isoardi
So you were doing well.
Tapscott
Yeah. So making the $75 during the week and the $10 on the weekend at the Bucket of Blood down on Vernon [Avenue] and Main [Street] or something like that, playing a weekend. And it was pretty nice. It was the lowest rate, but it was all the time. It happened constantly. There was always something to play at. This is long after Central Avenue, now. We'd travel around and play Hollywood parties, all those kinds of things, you know. That was because of the amalgamation of the unions that that was allowed.
Isoardi
So the amalgamation, in one sense it benefited, say, you personally in the sense you got these gigs. And the pay was better, then.
Tapscott
Much better, yes.
Isoardi
I guess the scale was better in [Local] 47 than [Local] 767. That was one of the reasons also for fighting for the amalgamation.
Tapscott
That's right.
Isoardi
But you're also saying, too, that even after amalgamation the cliques were still forming. It's just a handful of people who were in the right position and who really kind of controlled the jobs. And if you weren't running with them, there was no difference. Amalgamation didn't mean anything to you.
Tapscott
It didn't mean anything. And that part didn't have to do with color mostly, because it was black and white. You know, I'm talking about the cats- Some of the white cats that were in power, there were certain black cats they liked. So they became part of the clique. It wasn't a racial thing after a while, it was a clique, really a clique thing, cliquish, you dig?
Isoardi
Yeah, it became more personality and culture.
Tapscott
Personality and culture, yeah.
Isoardi
That kind of thing like that? Yeah.
Tapscott
But all of that added to the music, though. I mean, all that was put in- Each one of the cats, all of the cats that put upon it just threw it into the music. And it was always nice after a gig. Everybody was glad to be with each other, because they came to a center. We were all in the center now, and we had to play the music. That was the most important thing. And the feeling of the music was important. It was like if so-and-so gave me a gig and it paid, say, $25 for that evening, and I'm playing with some cats that live out in the [San Fernando] Valley, we've never seen each other before, we come right in- And with musicians it's easier regardless. It's still easy. Even though it was bad, it was easy for cats to get along, because the cats that were into the music, white or black, they had another thinking pattern going, anyway. I mean, they thought about people as humans, anyway, from the jump. Otherwise they probably wouldn't be into what they're into. Because it's going to bring you about. But it was just a lot of confusion going on.The work was getting better, seemed to have gotten better for certain people, after the old Local 767 closed up. A lot of the older players I didn't see anymore. I didn't see them anymore. Like they used to be around all the time on Central at one gig or another. But after the change-up came they were like left over on Central or wherever was left to play, or else they just stopped, because all of them used to hang around the union. You know, they'd just be there. A lot of them I never knew played. I'd never seen them play; I'd always see them in the office. But they were all musicians, the black cats. When that closed down, they didn't have anyplace to go. When they went to 47, those offices were all filled. [laughter]
Isoardi
Forty-seven is a place nobody ever hangs out at.
Tapscott
No, they don't hang out there at all, man. It was for the best, though, because a lot of the deserving African American musicians like William- Bill, the teacher-
Isoardi
Oh, Bill Green?
Tapscott
Bill Green. You know, that cat plays all instruments. And he plays them like it was just one. I mean, each instrument he picked up, he mastered it. And he was supposed to be there. He's still around, and he's made it off of that. And then Buddy with his versatility. And when Britt Woodman was living here, he had that shot, and he split with Duke [Ellington] after that.But all that was happening- Like I said, certain people were in there and certain were not. There were those that would be around all the time. Say, like, if you stuck around all the time and being around the band cats who are trying to get into that clique, you say, "Hey, come on, sit down and play, man. I'd like you to work with me this weekend."And that's how I started working with some of the- Some of the white cats would call me personally, cats like Jack Millman, all the out cats, the so-called out white boys that were into the music. You would be together all the time because you had a hookup. So he was having a hard time, and so we had our hard times together. And we made a niche for the music that we were in. There was a niche made that everybody- They said, "All that strange marijuana music kind of stuff," you dig, "that mood music." They didn't like that because it wasn't commercial. But this white guy, Jack Millman-he died a long time ago-we were in college together, [Los Angeles] City College. He started off there, being out, so to speak. The instructor, Donaldson, Mr. Donaldson at City College, he'd have problems with him. But his best man was the blind piano player that's making so many records now, Bob Florence. Yeah, see he was one of those talented cats. He was blind in the college. But he was a favorite of Donaldson. But, see, Jack Millman could write and play as well, but he had his thing he was thinking. So me and Jack Millman and all these people that were in this college at the time-this was after the amalgamation, during the amalgamation, rather-and all of the mixtures in the school and in the band-And I got to meet a lot of the white musicians at the City College, the bands that became famous, those cats. I remember those cats personally in the old days. And every one of them, every one of them now is living on mountains and lakes, four or five Rolls Royces. [laughter] One cat stopped playing altogether and started managing, Jules Chaykin. And all these cats, their sons or daughters are in the business, but they're pulling over that big, big dough.The black cats, man, I'm the only one that is left. There were only three of us. Lester Robertson was one of the cats, and he died last year. And another guy named Bobby Gross was the drummer. There were like three black cats in this Los Angeles City College recording band. That was the band that [Stan] Kenton and Woody Herman and cats would hire their people out of.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
That was that kind of band. Donaldson had that hookup, and they'd always come over there to get their cats.
Isoardi
When did you go to City College?
Tapscott
I went there in 1952.
Isoardi
So just after you went to high school and before you went into the service you were in City College for a little bit.
Tapscott
Just for a few months.
Isoardi
But you sat in with that band or played with that band?
Tapscott
Yeah, I was in the band. They put me out of the band, though. He told me there was some kind of a- There were still these problems, these culture problems going on, Steve, you dig? And me, I'm a young, cocky black musician, and this is an older white instructor. He'd been around, been with all the cats, and all that stuff. And he told me- We were playing a tune called "My Silent Love." I was playing the trombone in there with him. And there was kind of a solo; it was written. The cat who would usually played it, the Tijuana Brass cat, the trombone player with them-I can't think of his name-he would play it just like that and-
Isoardi
Note for note.
Tapscott
And a great sound. And I played it one time, and I played it all funny styles and shit. [laughter]Donaldson said, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute."I said, "What?"He said, "Why don't you play it like it's written?"And I said, "Well, I don't hear it like that."He said, "All you guys from Jefferson [High School], you're not God's gift to music." He said that to me, Steve, in the class.I laughed with all the rest of the white cats in there. I said, "Well, maybe I'm not the God's gift, but I'm one of them." [laughter]He said, "Get out." [laughter]He put me out of the band. I was the only black cat in there, and they put me out. But Lester Robertson, another guy-came in after me-my best friend he came to be during those days, up to last year when he died.But there was so much going on. And I didn't care for anything, because I was in the class at City College where one of these harmony teachers had the gall enough to stand up in front of his class and say, "Duke Ellington's music was wrong, was written wrong." I left. That did it for me, man. I said, "That's it."
Isoardi
Yeah, that's a waste of time.
Tapscott
Yeah, that was a waste of my time, man. That was a waste of my time. When he said that- I mean, it was a personal insult, as well, a standard. I just got up and left. Because, you know, he didn't like the way I was taught solfeggio at Jefferson High by Samuel Browne. That's hearing the notes and writing them without playing them. So there were three of us, three black cats, Jimmie Woods, an excellent saxophonist, musician, myself, and Lester Robertson. Okay, they'd play something on a tape for you to write down, and you're supposed to have three to five minutes to write it on the blackboard. So naturally we'd be up at the blackboard. This cat said [makes sound], we said [claps hands]. [laughter]
Isoardi
You wrote it all down.
Tapscott
Yeah, all down, you dig? [laughter] And he'd check it, and he'd check the other one-
Isoardi
And then he'd get angry.
Tapscott
He'd get pissed off.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
He got pissed off because we were so- I was eighteen, nineteen. You know where I was coming from. I knew I could do it. I'd been doing it all my life. So I did it like that because of his attitude in music. He was leading up to saying what he said about Duke Ellington. He hadn't said it yet, but he was leading up to it, man. I mean, like, "The music that you guys are supposed to do is supposed to be controlled. That's why you're in this class where you're studying the Bach method of music." I said, "Bach is fine, man. I don't have anything against that. I understand that." I understand Bach, because we were taught that, too, in Jefferson. We were taught all of the European composers' music. So he wasn't telling me something I didn't know about. But he was telling me that it was supposed to be played this way, though. So, okay, to pass the test, all right, we do all that. But when he made that mention about what he said about Duke Ellington and said that in harmony you're not supposed to double thirds and have parallel fifths going. "Well, why not?" is what I wanted to know. "Why not?" And he couldn't explain. "Because it's incorrect." He says, "It's incorrect. You're playing the wrong notes." Then I said, "Okay." Then we finally got to that day, Steve, he played a little bit, just a tiny bit, of "Black, Brown, and Beige" and said it was written wrong.
Isoardi
Oh, man.
Tapscott
I left City College before I got in trouble, because, see, I wanted to hit him, because he had pissed me off actually to that point where I wanted to just jump on this cat. And when he said that, the best thing for me to do was to leave, because that's what I was going to do next. When I left, I didn't ever come back to this cat again. I left the whole school and went back to the "U of S," "university of the streets."But I only went there because these same cats from the university of the streets, my mentors there, told me to go there, because that's what they're going to ask for when you go- You get in the service, you have the college music. You know, you've got to have that before you can be even paid attention to. So I went to college. Then there's your mom, your parents telling you- And that was a big thing for black folks. It didn't matter what college, just as long as you went to college, you understand? I mean, that was one of the things you had to reach in the forties and the fifties. When you were a black cat, you went to college, and everybody in the community was celebrating. You'd get free bread at the store. "This boy is going to college." And a male, too? Okay, the females, they would make it. But a black male going to college and he's not an athlete? I mean, you're not going on an athletic scholarship. But in those days, if you could read and write and comprehend and spell, you could make it through college until they got into the sophisticated subjects.When we were going there, they were just giving us passing little things to keep you busy and the music. And I didn't take anything but music, anyway. See, that's all I can speak for is the music part of the college at the time.But there was one instructor there, Dominic Disarro, at City College, that I had an open line to. Now, he was the conductor of the symphony orchestra of the college, and he was really into it heavy. But he gave me time. He listened to my things. He asked what I was doing.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. We got a thing going. And he let me conduct the orchestra.
Isoardi
No kidding. That must have been exciting.
Tapscott
He dug me. He stayed on my case. That was the only cat- That's the reason why I stayed as many months as I did was because of Dominic Disarro. And every time I had a class- I cut my classes down, and both of them were with him, because he had a little bit wider scope of things. Even though he was a European master of the music, and he knew all of it, he allowed-
Isoardi
He knew that would not be the only way to do music.
Tapscott
Yeah. He said, "But there are no boundaries." When he said things like that, I said, "This is the cat to be with." And all of these people were in the union as well. You'd go down to Local 47- They started having their meetings. Things started getting kind of rough there. You know, gigs started just going to a certain few. Then, all of a sudden, certain communities where they would pay money, when they started giving money for playing, like trust fund money they gave out at the union-
Isoardi
Like the union would sponsor concerts in some places.
Tapscott
Yeah, in some places. Like I was part of Professor Percy McDavid's orchestra. This was the big orchestra that he had out at the union. It was made up mostly of African Americans, but it was a mixed orchestra. He was the conductor. There were about thirty-five of us. And to name a few cats in that band, there was [Charles] Mingus and Eric Dolphy and Buddy Collette and Britt Woodman and John ["Streamline"] Ewing, and all these cats, Red Callender, in this orchestra. And we played every Sunday at a different park. And usually the parks were out in the Valley or the park that's over in mid-L.A. over there, MacArthur.
Isoardi
Oh, MacArthur Park.
Tapscott
That's when it was a beautiful, groovy park, and people would come to the concerts every Sunday. So they were paying so much money for that. Like my pay would be $20.75. You'd have your family there at the thing, and they'd hear this last composition; wherever they were in the yard, they'd run toward the band, because it was time to go home. All the cats would bring their families and kids, you dig? We played "Stars and Stripes Forever," that was the last tune, so you see all the families gathering. But that was the kind of thing that was happening on the basis- Like McDavid himself had gotten that niche because he was who he was. He had this orchestra, and they would pay him and stuff.So after a while it wasn't happening in a place like South Park at the time. It wasn't happening in East L.A. at the time, at that park in East L.A., you know, the bands. All of them were in the white communities. And they'd all be there, man, the whole community. They'd be filled up. All kinds of people would be in the white community, but they'd all be there for the music. And they'd listen. We were playing different composers, black composers and certain European composers. For a while there, it was okay.Then they had the meetings at the 47 about where the locations were going to be. I got up one day- This was a little later on, after the first part of the amalgamation, a few years later, after they'd gotten used to being together and everybody had polarized themselves in their regular positions. So what happened was I said, "Well, listen, you've got money for musicians. Then why don't we have some money sent down- There's a great park, South Park, on Fifty-first [Street] and Avalon [Boulevard]. They've got a great stage there. We could play there and have some money come over there. And I'll get the band." Meanwhile, I had started my own group, and we were playing in South Park already for free every weekend, just gathering and playing. People would come, and they'd fill up the seats out there to listen to that bad band, you dig? But we weren't getting paid for it because we weren't certified on the list. And that's what my argument was about. I called it racist and everything, and every time you do that, somebody- At the time they had this president of the union, [John] Tranchitella. "Tarantula" we used to call him. [laughter] Tranchitella. We used to call him "Tarantula." But anyway, this cat, all he had- Whatever happened, you hardly ever saw him, anyway, until they had a meeting. But I told him about being a racist, and that's when- You know, then they put a little mark by- [laughter]
Isoardi
Next to your name?
Tapscott
Your name, yeah. And when you come in here again, they'll know who you are. I've been in board meetings, Steve, and walked out of the board meetings that they had, called them the same thing, telling them they're keeping money, a racist so-and-so- And some of the black cats were drugged because they were in the cliques, and they were the other way. But I was talking about the mass. I wasn't just talking about the few. I was talking about the music for the black people over in the community, as well as having black cats playing and Mexican cats playing as well.
Isoardi
They didn't do anything when you brought it up?
Tapscott
No, nothing.
Isoardi
I mean, it must have been obvious that they were just playing in white communities. They didn't even say anything?
Tapscott
They didn't say anything. You know, they didn't want to come over there at the time. That was Central Avenue after the fact, now, that area. That was still over there in that area, the east side of town. Because right after 1945, as a matter of fact- As a matter of fact, it only began in 1947 and '48 that black people moved across Main Street, because we were all over here until that particular year, which meant that all the music and everything and all the people who played all lived east of Main Street. So the east side was where black folks mostly lived and a few Native Americans and stuff like that. But we would play, and people would accept us, because it was something they could look forward to. They'd bring their children. We didn't just have the music; we had dancers and poets and all different kinds of group things that had to do with communication and giving it to people. And that was all done free. All the gas money was coming out of your own pocket. Sometimes you would have to have a little pocket money. You're the bandleader, you needed a drummer, you dig, and he can get there if he's got some gas, that kind of stuff.
Isoardi
Jeez. You came back from the service in '57. Is this what's going on then?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
You come back, and you start-
Tapscott
That orchestra I had.
Isoardi
-your own orchestra and you start playing for free in the parks.
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
But you're also playing some studio scenes? You're doing a little bit of studio work to make some bread?
Tapscott
At the time I was still doing it during the day, yeah. And that was during the beginning of Motown [Records] time, when Motown was trying to get themselves together. And we would be mostly on those kinds of gigs. Those cats that used to write for Motown were black writers for the Supremes and all those people. Gil Askey was the main cat, who, by the way, made Motown. I want to put that on the record. The trumpet player, the writer- I mean, those sounds you hear behind the Supremes, that same sound-
Isoardi
It's all his stuff? Really?
Tapscott
And my man never got the notice for it. Now he lives-
Isoardi
Jeez, that's a multi-million-dollar empire.
Tapscott
He lives in Sweden now. Wait a minute. Where was he? He's over in one of the Scandinavian countries. And it was last year that somehow or another something happened. He must have had some kind of suit in, I don't know. He finally got some dough.
Isoardi
You mean against Motown?
Tapscott
I guess so. I'm not sure. But he got some dough. Because, see, this cat-
Isoardi
Damn. Good for him.
Tapscott
He was one hell of a writer, man. He made all those sounds, Marvin [Gaye] and all those people. He was the writer. He was the cat. See, he was another one of my mentors, you dig? He had me playing behind the Supremes and stuff.
Isoardi
No kidding?
Tapscott
I was their pianist when they came on the West Coast. He had the California Motown band at the time, you dig, him and Preston Love, another musician. But Gil Askey had it a while. We'd travel on the bus with the Supremes and play each place. And Diana Ross would never call my name correctly. I hated that. And, you know, the rest of the chicks, Florence [Ballard] and Mary [Wilson], would come in and say hello to the band.
Isoardi
But she always had her nose up in the air?
Tapscott
I mean, I don't know what it was, but when you're a singer or anything that needs accompanying, you want to get to know your accompanist. [laughter]
Isoardi
You want to get along. You'd better get along. They can do you in. [laughter]
Tapscott
They can do you in, man. And I started to do her in one night just because of that, man. I mean, she could have taken time to learn a name or come in to say hello to the cats. The other two would come in and say, "Hi, guys," boompity-bang, then they'd go to their dressing rooms. You know, "Hello, this and that."
Isoardi
So what did you do to her that night?
Tapscott
I was- And we were the only ones on stage. It was one of those festivals. The band had to be down on the floor, and on the stage, the piano was so large-you know, it had one of those great Steinways-so there wasn't anybody on the stage but me and the singers.
Isoardi
Oh, man. You had her in the palm of your hand.
Tapscott
Yeah, man. And she looked at me and, "Tapshoot" or "Boopdabip." You know, I would just look the other way, man. I would ignore her. Because I said, "Okay, I understand how these chicks, their head gets turned around and stuff." But the idea was that Gil Askey had made all those arrangements for those singers, Marvin Gaye, all the cats, when we used to play for Marvin Gaye and everything, the Four Tops.
Isoardi
Jeez, he created a whole generation of music.
Tapscott
Yeah, and it went unnoticed. I mean, he was just a worker, like a hand, you know, a working hand. And when he was gone, it was realized afterwards. I don't know how that happened. But they never liked to talk about it. They just said, "Them jive motherfuckers," this and that, you know. Always something going on.Like with Gerald, he used to come by here pissed off. He'd drive down there and want to come in here and just scream and holler about everything, you know, because this was the only place he could do that and not be called crazy. Then one time he just gave it up. I remember he gave it up. He just took his music out of the studio. All these guys in there recording. Something went wrong with Gerald. It must have hit him the wrong way. He went out into the studio, Steve, and took up all his music and said, "Y'all can go jump in a lake" kind of attitude. Because this cat is a master writer, man, and you have to- Because I remember all of them down on Forty-eighth Street- Duke Ellington would be passing here going up to his house to ask Gerald to do some writing for him. He said, "Gerald, would you like to do something for me?" "Okay." And he said the next two days the check would come to his pad before he finished. So, I mean, cats like that who are still alive, man- And these are the main guys that were back there in those days, the forties and the fifties. He and Diz, they were close. Clark Terry and all those cats would come around and be putting things together. See, that's why I got out of the so-called studio music after seeing all these guys, man, and seeing what happened to them.There was one cat that used to be in the band, Steve. He was a hell of a writer. John Anderson.
Isoardi
I certainly know the name, yeah.
Tapscott
Yeah, he was a hell of a writer. He was another one of my writing mentors. This guy was over there on Santa Rosalia [Drive], in the jungle, one day in the seventies begging for fifty cents. And what happened was he didn't recognize me and Lester Robertson. He hit on us, and we turned around, and he said- He just went silent, man. He wasn't working, and he wanted to get a drink, I guess. This guy was a hell of a writer, man, and trumpet player. And all this settled in my head.I got out of the service and all this started happening, and we were on the road. Meanwhile, I joined the [Lionel] Hampton band from the last part of 1958 to the first part of 1961.
Isoardi
So you were on the road with Hamp for a couple of years.
Tapscott
Yeah. And then I said, "This is not right. Something is wrong here, because after all these things I'm seeing out here, playing this music, and the racism that's still-" Because we played mostly in the South and in New York. Those are the two racist places at the time and still are-New York, that is. I said, "Well, there's no point. What's the point of playing this music here? These people who come in don't pay any attention to it and don't have any idea what they're playing. Now, if it was a European orchestra, they'd be sitting there listening and trying to hear. So what is this? And how come so-and-so isn't getting the money that he's supposed to be getting?" Like I was around Tadd Dameron and those cats, man, in those days. All these guys were at the Local 767. And by seeing all these people and knowing what these people were capable of doing and witnessing it and being a part of it, I couldn't think of anybody- That's why I never went to the school at [the] Juilliard [School] that my mother [Mary Lou Tapscott Jackson] had saved money to send me to and my sister [Robbie Tapscott Byrd], who denied her college so I could go to Juilliard. I told her, "No, thank you. I've got one hundred mentors I can go to up and down the street." And each one of them would lay something on you that was important. And that's why my feelings got to the point where these people, these men and women who really were in the music, like Melba Liston and all those folks, they should be recognized, and their contribution to this whole scheme of things should be recognized.That's why I got off the road to start my orchestra [Pan-Afrikan People's Arkestra], to call myself preserving black music at the time. And none of the cats who were out in the studio in Hollywood would touch that word, "black music," or "African American classics," because that was "those racist cats' idea of music." Well, I used that because that's the way I saw it. It was called preserving. So we'd play only music by black composers, unknown mostly, you dig?

1.10. Tape Number: V, Side TwoMay 29, 1993

Tapscott
That was considered- We called ourselves preserving music by playing it and writing it and taking it to- We started off with grammar schools.
Isoardi
So you begin this about '60, '61?
Tapscott
About '61.
Isoardi
You put the orchestra together. You and-?
Tapscott
Me and Linda Hill, Lester Robertson, David Bryant, Alan Hines, Jimmie Woods, Guido Sinclair, Everett Brown Jr.
Isoardi
Fine percussionist.
Tapscott
Yeah, yeah. We put it together, and we held it together for twenty-five years. You know, kept playing. By being like we were, by being so staunch in our beliefs and by sticking with it every day, other people started to say, "Well, what is this? Let me check this out. I've got things I want to do." It became an open place for artists. Like they'd come to our rehearsals, and they'd bring- When music and poetry began, we were doing it here then. In 1961 we were already in poetry reading with the Watts Writers Workshop and with the Watts Prophets, with people like Jayne Cortez, the guy that wrote the book for Miles [Davis]-
Isoardi
Miles's autobiography [Miles, the Autobiography]?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Was it Quincy Troupe?
Tapscott
Quincy Troupe. Ojenke Saxon, all these cats. All these guys were there then, and every time we'd play they'd be on the set doing their thing. Kamau Daaood. Eric- I'm sorry. He wrote Raw Dog. He wrote a book called Raw Dog about growing up in Watts. Eric Priestley is his name.
Isoardi
So these guys would come out and perform on the same stage with you guys?
Tapscott
Yeah. We had a group of women called Sapphire Streakin'. They had their poetry together, had different singers. All this was happening. And this was all rehearsed during the week like we were giving a paid concert, Steve.
Isoardi
But it wasn't?
Tapscott
No.
Isoardi
So you guys had rehearsed hard, and then you'd give weekend performances.
Tapscott
Gave weekend performances, because everybody had something to do. And they were really into it. They would look forward to- The guys who had jobs or ones who were going to school or ones who had a little work to do would look forward to getting off or getting out so they could come to rehearsal. They'd call in on the phone, "I've got to get to rehearsal," riding the bus with a bass fiddle, those kind of things, coming to rehearsal to play for about four hours a night.
Isoardi
Where were you guys practicing at?
Tapscott
Different places. We had houses first. Linda Hill's house on Seventy-sixth [Street] and Central, that was made for musicians, housing musicians there. We rehearsed there twenty-four hours if necessary. The people on the block became so accustomed to the music that when they didn't hear it they thought something was wrong. That's how accustomed they became to it.
Isoardi
Gee, you guys were really serious about practicing.
Tapscott
Serious, man. And the people got the vibe. The kids would come by and the old folks would come by and just say, "That was nice. I used to do that," and all that kind of stuff. It wasn't calling the police for playing after ten o'clock, because we wouldn't just be brandishing, you know, putting people to sleep, but we'd still be playing. And they would cool it out. One day the band wasn't rehearsing or playing, and one of the winos on the street, on Central, said, "Hey, man, where's our band?" [laughter] Where's our band, you dig? He's never seen it; he'd just hear it all the time. He's never seen the cats. He's just seen maybe one cat all the time, and he'd know him, but he'd never seen it. He just heard the music. "Where's our band at? How come our band ain't playing today? I can't do my work around the house." That kind of thing.And that to me, see, was what it was about, about being a part of the community. I mean, it's no big thing. I mean, it's not nothing way over here that you can't reach. Like when the kids came out of the womb, they'd walk down the street, and they'd know, "Oh, yeah, I might want to play a horn. Where can I go to get some instructions?" Or "Where can I go to hear music?" They knew where. And that's how a lot of guys started playing. So we stayed in that community. It was mostly because there was a lot of fun in doing it, too, and working with different people and talking about getting people off drugs and getting people off their habits of hitting and stealing or shooting. Like the Black Panthers [Black Panther Party] were part of our group, cats in that group. The one that got killed [John Huggins] was in our choir.
Isoardi
No kidding?
Tapscott
Yeah. Some of the guys in the US [Organization]. That was Maulana Ron Karenga's group. And then the Black Muslims [Nation of Islam], [Louis] Farrakhan and those guys. Everytime they had a function, our orchestra was called. If these cats had disagreements and the orchestra was playing, no more disagreement. They were all in the music. And they would call us because- It was more or less I would say- I take this kind of an opportunity to say that the orchestra itself was a beacon for the rest of the community, for the other organizations that grew up out of the community, none musical, but they saw the togetherness, all the camaraderie with this Arkestra and what it was about. So okay, we're not musicians, but from this we can do something else. And that's how a lot of that got started. It really did. First we were the "wild band," that "crazy band," that "gang," that "posse" walking in. Because everywhere we went- Like I'd go somewhere, the whole group would be with me. We'd all be in cars, four or five cars, all the time, and we'd come to places together, not to play but to listen. And they'd say, "Oh, here comes the guy and the posse." You know, they'd get shook up, some of the black cats, "Oh, here come them cats, man, with them dashikis on and them long naturals." You know, at that time they weren't wearing dreadlocks, but it was the naturals and dashikis. And, you know, there wasn't anybody doing that, but now you can go to Broadway [Department Stores] and buy them. But, see, all this was going on in the community all the time. No newspaper, no news, no writers, nobody knew anything about it.
Isoardi
Did you give it the name UGMA [Underground Musicians Association, later Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension] right away?
Tapscott
Yeah, because they said we were underground musicians.
Isoardi
Why did they call you underground?
Tapscott
Because the music we played wasn't accepted on top of the ground. [laughter] The stuff we were putting out wasn't accepted, you dig? We had to go to these schools. But we went to the schools, though, Steve, because of the fact that some of the principals were schoolmates of mine. Some of the people that were in charge were people that I knew. "Oh, Horace, you want to bring the band in? Oh, that would be wonderful." We'd bring them in.
Isoardi
And then once they'd hear you play, what did they think of your sounds?
Tapscott
Well, the kids, that's what was there. And that's all we were playing for, the kids. We were playing our music, and they just went for it. And some of them even went to sleep while we were playing. But then we had- Linda Hill, at the time, she had gotten together and charted out a whole kind of thing that she was going to do with children, and she wrote this song called "Children." So she had a whole program that we'd utilize at the school that she'd do with the kids. We had a thing with Eddie Mathias, the bass player. He would have a thing called the Flute Society. He'd go to these schools and these concerts we'd have- At that time we had access to a lot of wooden flutes, would have two boxes full, and we'd pass them out to the kids. And then we'd play this tune, and we said, "Let's play," and they'd all play with us.
Isoardi
Nice. All right.
Tapscott
And that was thick, man. Today I can brag about how great that was because now it's accepted as a part of a curriculum. These guys are making money now going to these schools, the musicians in the community now. But they will not understand or will not recognize that we were doing it when it was very necessary at the time, when it wasn't a thing in vogue, but it was something to do. And it was something that we all did, people who were a part of the community doing things. They even had cats that were reading and writing, going around teaching older people how to read that weren't reading or couldn't read, that kind of thing.
Isoardi
You guys were a lot more than an orchestra.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was a lot more, man. But the Arkestra was a setup. We got busted one time, too, Steve, by the federal police [Federal Bureau of Investigation].
Isoardi
Why?
Tapscott
Because of the- See, this third house we had, the UGMA house we had, was a two-story house, and it housed a lot of musicians. We played there. And the cat that lived in the house was an artist himself. So about thirty cats would be downstairs rehearsing. And during those days of the early sixties, when the so-called revolutionaries were down there- [H.] Rap Brown at the time and all the people of that ilk in those days would come to the UGMA house. And they'd be there upstairs doing whatever they were doing, talking. So one day the police came. We had stopped rehearsing. We went outside and stood in the parking lot, smoking marijuana, and the police passing by and not stopping. All these black cats out here and some smoking over here and the police driving by, and I said, "Wait a minute, man. What is this? How come they haven't driven over here and said, what are we doing here? Why haven't they done this?" And that stayed on my mind. So one day, after another rehearsal, about two days later, we took a break, and I went home. I went and drove down the street two or three blocks, and I come back, man, all the cats were in jail.
Isoardi
They busted the whole house?
Tapscott
The whole house. There was some marijuana in the house. They went right past it and went upstairs looking for ammunition, guns. They claimed that these cats, we had guns up there, man. FBI and all of them busted in on us. And while they were in there, Steve, we started playing. [We] said, "Okay, go ahead."
Isoardi
So you went back to rehearsing.
Tapscott
We went back to playing, man. Because it was like they were invisible. We didn't recognize them. We had nothing to hide. We knew where we were, "So go and tear the place up if you like." They didn't find anything at all. But they would follow me and would follow a lot of cats. You know, like when I'd go to work, I'd have a gig at a place called the Troubadour at night, they'd follow me to work. They'd follow me home.
Isoardi
How long did that go on?
Tapscott
It went on for about a year. I'd be coming home, there would be two guys at my doorstep in Hawaiian shirts-
Isoardi
[laughter] You knew they didn't come to play. [laughter]
Tapscott
And dark sunglasses. And I drove past one day coming home from one of the rehearsals, Steve, and my wife, Cecilia [Payne Tapscott], was at the door talking to these cats. They had their back to the streets, and she was at it. She saw me coming down the street, and she made radical eye movements. And I kept driving. [laughter] I went on-
Isoardi
Just a little nod of her head was enough to tell you to keep driving.
Tapscott
Keep driving. I stayed away from the pad two days.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. Because they were after me, man. They wanted to bust me because of my affiliation, so-called, with all these groups. And they had put something on me. They were going to put something on me, so I stayed-
Isoardi
Yeah, just looking for an opportunity.
Tapscott
Yeah, and I stayed off the set. I didn't come home for a couple of days. I didn't call home. They didn't tell them where I was.
Isoardi
Of course, you were somewhat political, but had you become more of a political person during this time? Had you become a supporter of various groups or anything like that?
Tapscott
Yeah. Well, we actually got the "jacket" for bringing these groups together, because we'd bring the cats together musically. We'd talk, and the poets would say something about racism and protest in their poetry. And the music, the lyrics, were all written about our situation, everything. So cats started forming together and trying to do things in the community, and then all of a sudden they became political activists. All of us were so-called political activists. Then Budd Schulberg came down and watched, you dig, and opened a Watts Writers [Workshop] place, because he wanted to see these brothers write. And he was one of the cats that had enough kick that he believed in what these guys out there were doing.
Isoardi
How did he first get into that? Do you know? I mean, I know he goes way back in terms of his political activities.
Tapscott
Yeah, right.
Isoardi
I think he was around the Communist Party in the forties or something like that.
Tapscott
That's what it was. That's how it all began. You know, naturally they're going to throw it on that: "Oh, they're communists." [laughter]
Isoardi
Right, right.
Tapscott
Naturally, that's what happened. So he came down there, and we were called commie supporters or something like that. We weren't called communists. And we said, "Communists? Whatever. Just black. That's bad." You know, being a commie- You know, all kinds of political people came to us, white ones, you know, all the cats, cats they were after, the FBI was after. They'd come to watch. And they could sit there. They could come through there and be cool, because all the cats would know who this person was or know his car. And his car could never be bothered; he could leave it open. See, that's the kind of-
Isoardi
Oppression unites people.
Tapscott
Yeah, yeah. That's what happened. [laughter] And they were there, man. So naturally it was going to be the FBI. The J. Edgar Hoover thing was really heavy.
Isoardi
Yeah. So they probably saw your house as really a clearing place, as maybe a center, really, of all this stuff.
Tapscott
Yeah. I'm in their files just like the rest of the cats, like I was carrying a gun. But I was more dangerous, so to speak, because of the fact I could get on the microphone or say something or play something, and people would get up and understand and dance to it or stop doing what they were doing because we said something. Not just me, but cats, the band, the Watts Prophets, the people in the Arkestra. The young people would look up to you and listen to you and believe you. And they'd want to know how come you're not making this kind of money and that kind of money, and they'd do different things.It was really another kind of time, man, because of the fact that a lot of people started waking up to a lot of things that didn't occur to them before, what was happening. And they always wanted to know why I was like I was. And I wasn't the kind of cat that- I had gotten out of that real hate bag, but I was only thinking about me now and my people. I wasn't thinking about fighting anybody. I was thinking about getting my people educated enough and to respect each other again, which they were losing at the time, you know, when they started losing shit. Then all of a sudden- The narcotics had already been in the neighborhood, but then they started coming in rough, rough, real bad. That went on for many years. And then firearms all of a sudden started getting into this community, man, from out of nowhere.
Isoardi
This is when, the early sixties?
Tapscott
No, this was like middle seventies. Guns started showing up in young cats' hands all of a sudden. Nobody had a gun. They had gangs. It would be fists or maybe a knife, but there weren't any guns. The guns started coming in, and you would see certain cats buying guns on the street, and certain cats would be running them off. They'd come up in a truck, a panel truck, selling guns and ammunition. And then what was happening politically, all that was going on, [Richard M.] Nixon and all those cats were doing their thing. And then- Oh, it was really out. I mean, I had some cats in the band, it got to the point where they wanted to burn the union down. That was the first move that was going to be made to make a statement in Watts. One of our drummers, he had a Molotov cocktail.
Isoardi
When was this?
Tapscott
That was about 1968. You know, he went to the Local 47-
Isoardi
Is he the one that did it-what?-a month or two ago? [laughter]
Tapscott
No, no. [laughter]
Isoardi
He finally got around to doing it? [laughter]
Tapscott
When I heard about that, I said, "Oh, wow, man." And, see, that was twenty-some-odd years ago he wanted to do that.And then at that time the police were shooting cats in the neighborhood, man. They were shooting black cats for just running away- I mean, maybe they stole a car, and they'd jump out of the car and run. They'd kill them. What really did it, one day a kid named [Leonard] Deadwyler was taking his wife to the hospital. She was pregnant. It was on Avalon Boulevard, down the street from my house. The police were chasing him and shot him and killed him because he wouldn't stop, man. They said the gun went off- They had the gun on him after he had stopped him, and they said the guy shook the door or something. And they shot the brother in the head, instantly killed him, and the wife's water busted. And that really got it out. It got so bad after that that the police stopped coming in the neighborhood, because now guns were coming out of the house. You know, there weren't that many guns around in the black neighborhood. A few cats had them. But then they had rifles. This was still before the helicopter. The helicopter hadn't started yet. You know, that's a couple of years down the line. But they'd come through the neighborhood and just tear it up, man. And you'd have to get off the street. You couldn't be walking the street because the white policeman would shoot you and call you "nigger," and you try to ignore him, because if you say something to him, that gives him the excuse to shoot you. And he's going to get away with it.So naturally you started your music, your literature, your films, your tapes. All your activities were all focused in one area from then on. Talk about freedom and respect and those kinds of things started about 1969. Cats start cutting off their hair and wearing naturals, women wearing naturals, because now they've got something to talk about. We started going to the campuses, the college campuses. I got a job at a college [University of California, Riverside] because of the students, the black students, in Riverside. They had a little insurrection in Riverside, and they wanted me and another person to be teaching them things. It was just an example of what they were really after. But I had the opportunity to teach. It was called Black Experience in the Fine Arts.All of my moves had been made by people I played for, I mean, in my community. All of the moves that I made that would put me in another bracket all came from my own people, which I was happy about. But they didn't have any knowledge of anything about what was going on musically or otherwise-only what they were a part of. But the music to them was very important. I mean, after that day was over or that week was over, the cats would come and sit by themselves or with their women or what have you and their kids and cry at certain songs that we played. That's how we knew that we were doing the correct thing, all those rehearsals, those painful things. And people would finally listen to our music. Because at first it was that "racist music" or that "free music," that "out music" and they didn't want to hear it and all that, that "dope music" and all that. But then all of a sudden they'd say, "I listened to you the other day." See, these things were important to me, those small things. Like the cats who worked down at the grocery store would say, "I heard the band the other day, and I had never heard them play like that before," that kind of thing. They'd say that to you. And "What was the name of that song that that girl sang, so-and-so?" Those were the little small things that assured us that we were doing it correctly, even though monetarily it was a disaster. It was such a disaster, it was so bad, that it wasn't even thought about. In other words, we didn't even have to worry about it because we didn't even think about it, because we knew there wasn't any money in it.
Isoardi
Yeah, it's just like a hobby or something-just something you're going to do because you like and-
Tapscott
You're going to do it, you dig? If there wasn't any money, so what.
Isoardi
No one ever approached you to do any recordings with the Arkestra or anything like that?
Tapscott
No. Except the cat from Nimbus [Records].
Isoardi
The only one.
Tapscott
The only one. And he used to come down in the neighborhood, big, tall, six-foot German cat, American-German, just as blond and blue-eyed as he could get. He'd come down there and- As a matter of fact, I had seen him years before that. He'd always go where I was. He never said anything to me. When he came down into the ghetto, he came down there and said what he had to say, and he got the respect of the cats. So it got to be a point- Some of the better recordings were in that church, Steve.
Isoardi
What was the guy's name?
Tapscott
Tom Albach.
Isoardi
Tom Albach.
Tapscott
Yeah, he's the Nimbus cat. And some of the best recordings were done in that church, and he was a part of it. He had a hand in that. So he's got a niche in the Arkestra that no one white has ever had. He came and told his story, and he took care of a lot of the cats, helped them. He didn't just give them, but he helped the ones that were necessary. He helped some cats get back on their feet, that kind of thing. And all those guys never forgot that, you know. So we started recording. He started renting the best equipment for us to bring down to the church. They'd bring in new pianos.
Isoardi
Which church was this that you were practicing at?
Tapscott
At the Immanuel United Church [of Christ], that one on Eighty-fifth [Street] and Holmes [Avenue]. Reverend Edgar Edwards was the pastor, and he allowed us for nine years to play in his church. It got to the point where his church was getting money- It belonged to a New York organization, I guess, some kind of church organization back in New York, and they'd send different moneys out to the hardcore churches that were in the ghettos. There wasn't anybody coming to his church a lot, so they were thinking about stopping his money. So when the orchestra started playing there, people started coming to the church. And then he said, "Well, we'll use this," you know. So what we did, at the same time that we were playing there on Sunday for free, we were allowing the church to remain getting that money for a function, because this preacher, Steve, was a real deal preacher. I mean, it's what I used to look for in a preacher in a church. He took care of the community. I mean, he'd go to the people's houses, have free breakfasts every morning. I mean, that's what he'd use the money for. He'd hire people to serve the breakfast to the people in the community that weren't working that were always hungry.
Isoardi
Yeah. Somebody who really believed in his calling.
Tapscott
He believed in it. And you know, he was the first cat to have the sanctuary for those illegal aliens. It was illegal at the time for them to have it. They would be at the church, in the gym part of the church. All these cots were set up in the church, and all these Mexican cats from south of Guadalajara that couldn't speak English, they'd sneak down in the church for the rehearsal. We'd make sure he had an opening for them so they wouldn't be seen by the outside sheriff. So they'd come down through and listen to the concert and go back upstairs into their sanctuary. And he took us up there to look around; I couldn't believe it, man. He had about twenty to twenty-five people that he was feeding. I loved that old man. He believed in what he was doing. And when he allowed us to have our music there, I knew it was the correct thing to do. So that's what we kept on doing.Year after year, a lot of families that were broken up because of the cats doing the music, a lot of them came together because of it. A lot of things happened because of the Arkestra. A lot of things outside of music happened because of the Arkestra, because of its calling different groups together. You know how music can.
Isoardi
Yeah. You were also teaching kids as part of that.
Tapscott
Yeah, that was part of the function. We had music for those kids to sing. They'd be functioning with us, you know, four and five years old. Some of them cats are twenty-two and [twenty-]three now. They come up to you now and say, "I remember this and I remember that." There were kids, and their parents brought them. Everybody was a part of it. Oh, man, we'd be in the schools, where they'd look for us in schools on certain days. Because we were the underground. They called us "the musicians." "Here come the musicians." And they'd be ready for music, because they knew we weren't jiving. We had music, man. We had a book of music. But I'd always forget the music. On the morning of the concert, I'd forget all the music we rehearsed.
Isoardi
[laughter] Deliberately?
Tapscott
Yeah, they got used to that, you dig? One of the girls in the group, "Are you going to forget the music this time, Papa?" They called me "Papa" because of Pan-Afrikan People's Arkestra, P-A-P-A. And I'd say, "Yeah, I might forget it this time. I'm not sure."I had the bandleader, Jesse Sharps, he would rehearse the band after a while and go through the intricate parts of the thing after a while, because, see, I was doing all of it, you know. We got him when he was in high school, and he grew up in the Ark. All of them did. But he took on the leadership part. So he became the Ark leader, the band rehearsal man, and he was hardcore. They'd all be quiet and listening to him. And new persons come in and say, "How do these cats-?" He's really a gifted person today. He's in Germany now, but he'll be back. But he's still got that same kind of attitude toward music and he's forty-two, forty-four years old now. However, the ones that are still functioning around- You know, it's not like we're looking for what used to be. But what we're still doing now, we're trying to continue what is, what is happening. Like a lot of young cats have taken over those kinds of positions that we had, because they still see us around still dabbling in and dabbling out, and so they're doing the same thing, and they're bringing theirs up.So what I was actually saying, all of it wasn't in vain, you know. A lot of this wasn't in vain, because some of it came to fruit. That makes you feel better about the decisions that you made at the time that might have been very wrong because of your attitude and the way you were thinking at the time. But I can say I have been consistent in one way of thinking, and that is to demand a respect, to demand a recognition, and to demand all things that we contributed here to benefit from it, children and children and your children. That's why I came out of the womb-I found out before I go to the tomb-is that they have to have that respect and understanding for a race of people and their contribution to this country. America might not be known as America for everybody while you and I are still here, but the contribution that's being made is constantly working that way, which means that- Like before, it wasn't all in vain, even though things are still happening. And they're going to be happening. But to get the core, my idea is to be a part of that whole scheme, that yarn. You're stuck in there just like everybody else; you make just one big piece.So back to the amalgamation, although the amalgamation didn't have anything to do with music to me, as far as I was concerned- It didn't have anything to do with it. It had to do with economics supposedly.
Isoardi
You were in favor of it when it happened?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
How did you feel?
Tapscott
Well, you know, the guys, it was what they felt, where I was coming from, because all I knew of was I was in this black union. That's all I knew, you dig? [laughter] I got in there when I was fifteen. I had my first professional gig at fifteen. So I didn't know. When they said- "Well, we're going to have better jobs, Tapscott. We're going to do this. You'll be able to play here and all that. You'll be doing movie studios. And when television gets straight we'll be doing that, radio." I said, "Oh."
Isoardi
That sounded all right.
Tapscott
That's right. [laughter] Yeah, what did I care. I could take care of it. Let's do it. So I didn't have too much to think about it until after the fact.
Isoardi
Right. You mentioned a couple of times about different attitudes that your generation had compared to the previous generation, the guys who were able to form the cliques, etc. Was that pretty pervasive among you and your peers? I mean, you really were growing up with a different sensibility, a different attitude toward the world than the guys who came just before you.
Tapscott
Yeah. Different. We were called-
Isoardi
Why do you think that?
Tapscott
Because those guys that came before us were the guys that got the hard core of the racism in this country. So they had these children. And these cats got a little better because they didn't want to be a slave like their fathers and grandfathers-a slave of mind, under that kind of mode. They wanted to go to these great schools, the integrated schools, so they could learn what's going on and all that.So when I came along, I was still in the heart of it, too. But I came along with a different attitude, I mean my generation, because we saw so many things happen to our parents growing up and how we were treated as black people and how the black males were the ones that had the roughest part in the whole society. The teachers we had, like Samuel Browne at Jefferson High and several other teachers there, were telling us what we had to have to make it in this kind of society, in this racist society, as he calls it. You have to gain respect. You don't have to get anybody to like you. Your biggest thing is to get the respect. And once you get that, then other things can come to you. That generation I came in came up for respect, because everything that they did, from Joe Louis fighting, that brought us respect, so to speak. That's all we had. And the only outlook you had was the music and sports, so to speak, at the time, because you weren't allowed to be a doctor, an architect, or things of that nature. But there were a lot of guys in my generation who wanted to be doctors and lawyers and architects. And today there are two of them down the street here. One's a doctor, one's a lawyer. They're across the street from each other. And we were all in the same class. And when I walk past and see that, I say, "It worked."But, see, with the generation after us, that's when it seems like a hitch started to break, like it was starting to decline. I mean, the goals were different, the whole thing. They wanted to do this now. They don't want to do what their parents did. Which was cool. You know, that's the idea. you want to do something different. Well, naturally they were different. But then they got caught up in the drug scene. That was a hard scene. And the war scene. That's where they got this. They got messed up right in there between those two things. Most of the drugs started in the Vietnam War. That's where most of the drug addicts came out from. And the black ones that came out got the police on their case without any kind of- That was another terrible move of this country to show its racism. I mean, they turned these guys out in the service. The black soldiers were always on the front line, so on your belt you had your morphine, you dig? And you get shot or hurt, you're going to shoot up. So if you learn that in the service- So usually you would take a man in and try to rehabilitate this person before you let him out into the society. This guy has given his soul and his life for this particular country, and you're going to say- And that's what happened. A lot of my friends, a bunch of my personal friends, guys I grew up with that were in the war and all that, went to dope and had to go to jail and died in jail, just died out on the streets, no family anymore, none of that. They were straitlaced and everything. And when they got out, the armed forces called the local law enforcement and told them what was coming into the community again. They're dope addicts.
Isoardi
After they made them dope addicts and did nothing for them, they call the cops on them when they discharged them.
Tapscott
And they didn't only do that to the blacks. No, they did that to the white cats, too, man. I mean, all of a sudden they just became nothing, man. In the first place, their own people in the country didn't recognize them as being soldiers, right? They were going, "What are you doing over there, man, killing babies and throwing babies up in the air and shooting at them? That ain't no war." So naturally, even today, you see some of the cats, the Vietnam veterans, in their forties and fifties, and they're still mad. They're pissed off. They lost a lot of stuff.The whole society itself is in a whole lot of problems: racially is one of the main things, culturally and economically. It's still that way. I mean, things now seem to be a little bit more subtle than they've been before, but it's more dangerous, you know. When I see my children-I call all the teenagers and all those young adults my children, the black ones-and how they're acting, there's a reason for it. Sometimes I'm very pissed off at it, and then sometimes I feel very bad. It's like between- I get pissed off because I say, "Hey, man, they know better than that. They're much more intelligent. They don't have to do this." And I get mad because it was handed down to them, and I was one of the ones that handed it to them. So what am I getting mad about? So "Why didn't you take care-?" You can call yourself taking care of a lot of business, trying to help, but other things are much more powerful that you're up against out there. And money- If you notice this generation of black males, you don't see them doing most of the service work, not an American black. There's no more of them. You know, no cafeteria work. They don't do service. If they're not educated enough to be into something, then they have to get into some criminal kind of thing to survive, because they won't take these jobs anymore because it's demeaning to them. If you notice when you go down Wilshire Boulevard in the last twenty years, the last twenty-five years, there's been a changeup in the women that work out there. I remember when you were driving down there, every bus stop you'd see a black woman in a white dress and white shoes. Not anymore.
Isoardi
It's all Hispanic now.
Tapscott
Yeah. And they're young ones [who] aren't going to do it. Now they've got the Hispanics in all the service jobs. The American black male isn't doing that. He's not going to do it because he's pissed off. So you say, "What is he pissed off at?" He's pissed off at a lot of things, but most of all he's pissed off at himself, too. That's the first thing, because they didn't listen when they were told certain things-the ones who are in trouble. They didn't listen, and now they understand. It's not always that you have to go through it to understand it. Some people can learn to understand it from listening. You know what I'm saying? But they just won't do it. I don't care what city I'm in, big city- Now, maybe in small cities or in the South. But New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and here, no. And that's all because all the situation of things- Cats are getting more educated, and when you get more educated you become that much more dangerous, so to speak. You don't want to do this because of that, and don't want to work anywhere for minimum wage and at Jack in the Box and all that kind of stuff. And then they got trained for a certain kind of job level, and then that's all over. As soon as they get out of school, they have discarded that whole level. Now you've got to go back and learn something else computer-wise if you want to even have a job. I don't mean a top-paying job.
Isoardi
Yeah, just to get by.
Tapscott
Just to get by you have to learn the computer thing now. So what's next? I think, though, personally- this has always been my thought-this whole thing has to come down and go back up again. Otherwise it can't be fixed, man.
Isoardi
Yeah, the time for putting on Band-Aids is over. No way.
Tapscott
Yeah, it's just got to whoosh! And then rebuild, really rebuild.
Isoardi
Yeah. I mean, like the crap now about Rebuild L.A. is a joke. It's a joke. It was a joke when they first said it. It's ridiculous now.
Tapscott
You don't even think about it. You drive down-
Isoardi
They can't even get back to the way it was.
Tapscott
They've got seven vans that go up and down the street, and I don't see anybody in there but teenagers just driving and partying. [laughter] I said, "Lighten up, man." Whatever. They gave them some trucks. [laughter] They gave them some trucks, man. What are they doing with their trucks? Where are they going? What are they doing? Who are they feeding? Are they feeding anybody? The homeless, still, are they off the street? And the only cats begging you are black cats. And they're not young ones, man, they're old cats.

1.11. Tape Number: VI, Side OneMay 29, 1993

Tapscott
You see the brothers standing out there with gray hair, dirty clothes, no bath, nothing, and silent. Some of these guys were really, really intelligent people, but the whole thing shot out. Every time I go anywhere in the city, it's always my people I see out there on the handout. And like I said, it's not your teenagers or the young adults, it's the middle-aged cats. They didn't have a job then, you know they don't have- And then a lot of them who were sick mentally were put right out in the street. I mean, they're right out there in the street.
Isoardi
Yeah, they just closed down so many services.
Tapscott
So what do you expect when you go down the street, if you're talking about danger? Because you set all the wild things out there to work now. Now, you can sit back and say, "Well, it's dangerous there and dangerous here because of-" I mean, this whole society is so- All of us are putting our little old poison in it. It's shaken up. Everything is shaken up. Families aren't recognized as families anymore. I mean, neighbors aren't neighbors. People don't look at each other anymore. All those kinds of things that make a community happen, people are afraid to do, because, "Well, if I speak to this person he might rob me. If I look at this person he might rape me." And that's not the way to be. There are so many people who believe that that's not the way to be. But when you start talking that or preaching it or trying to do something about it that's positive-from your point of view it's positive and it's not hurting anybody-all of a sudden it's not the thing to do. I mean, you're going against this, you're going against that because of that. But the point you're trying to get over is you're trying to make something positive.If I talk to a youngster, I don't like to talk to them, Steve, unless I know what I'm talking about. I don't like to speak to them anymore, because I used to speak to them a lot. But I'm not telling the truth. I'm not telling them the truth, man, and I'm not going to talk to them until I can tell them the truth. You know, I'm not ready for the truth and they might be ready for it; that's probably why. Because it's hardcore, is what it is. It doesn't have anything to do with one race or one person; it has to do with all of us. That's part of the truth of the thing.Just across the street here at this high school, it was a first-rate high school when they first built it.
Isoardi
Crenshaw [High School].
Tapscott
Uh-huh. First-rate. It had the technical communications department, they had all the equipment, top of the line, television, radio. And after a couple of years- I think the school has been there fifteen or twenty years now. Anyway, they don't have books there, man. For the last five years, your kids go to Crenshaw, they didn't have any books. They go to Dorsey [High School], they didn't have any books. They definitely didn't have any at Jefferson [High School]. I mean, they go to school and they don't have any books to read. How did that happen? I mean, this is a school. They're supposed to have books, you dig? I mean, what happened? Man, I couldn't believe it. My granddaughter [Raisha Wilcots], she goes there, and the first day she went there she said, "They don't have no books, papa." Second year, they still don't have any books, and they don't have them now. All they've got over there is a championship basketball team. And that's beginning-
Isoardi
They're even trying to take that down.
Tapscott
Yeah. And that's beginning to be a joke. "Well, they've got a good basketball-" That's a joke. And they've got a good football team. Well, one of these guys is going to make a lot of money.
Isoardi
Yeah. [laughter]
Tapscott
That's it, man. Shaquille O'Neal. So what, man. There's twenty more like him, but they probably can't read. Why is that? I mean, all of them can't be athletes.
Isoardi
Yeah. What about the other million? Twenty of them sign NBA [National Basketball Association] contracts.
Tapscott
All black cats aren't athletic. But the emphasis is on that. "Okay, we're going to get this guy off the street from running crime and dope so he can go to school and play basketball."
Isoardi
They do it as a way of controlling people. They say, "Well, see this person can do it, so if you don't do it, it's your fault."
Tapscott
There it is.
Isoardi
And it's a scam. It's a scam that the state runs.
Tapscott
And, you know, they run it so well, and they've got people helping it happen and ourselves helping it happen by allowing it to happen. But once you say something, you're going to get silence, because you're by yourself.
Isoardi
Yeah, well, the key is not to be by yourself. The key is to get enough people with you where they don't-
Tapscott
Because they'll silence you in a minute, man.
Isoardi
Yeah, well, that's when my ideas started changing, when I was in graduate school. I started getting more radical. That's when it was made clear to me that if I kept doing that I wouldn't be taken seriously, I'd have a tough time getting a job teaching, all sorts of shit like that. That's what happened. But that's the way it is. You've just got to realize it.
Tapscott
Yeah. Don't step out there if you don't know what you're doing.
Isoardi
Just know what you're doing. You've got to know that it carries consequences.
Tapscott
Yeah, don't be going out there just to flex your muscles.
Isoardi
You've got to be aware there may be dues along the way.
Tapscott
It's going to be some dues, man, heavy dues.
Isoardi
Yeah, you've got to believe in it.
Tapscott
And, yeah, you've got to believe in it, because, see, the dues come from inside too. They make it come from inside, from your loved ones.
Isoardi
You know, sometimes there's a choice of whether you want to pay the dues on the inside or the outside, because, yeah, okay, well, gee, maybe that won't get me a job, so you do something else. You do something you don't believe in. So maybe you don't pay as many dues outside, then, but you get torn up inside, because you're not being true to yourself.
Tapscott
"What's wrong with this guy? Why has he always got that look?"
Isoardi
He's got all this money, he's got a good job, he's got a house.
Tapscott
What's the matter with him?
Isoardi
Somewhere along the line he sold something out.You made a big choice at a certain point, getting out of the mainstream, as it were, getting off the road away from the big band and turning into the community.
Tapscott
Yeah. Because I was raised in the community, see.
Isoardi
Was that a tough choice for you?
Tapscott
No.
Isoardi
I mean, did you think a long time about doing that?
Tapscott
You know, I was on the road.
Isoardi
I know you mentioned last time that all of a sudden you decided one night, "I'm not getting on that bus."
Tapscott
Yeah, "I'm not getting on the bus." It was going through the South and all that and remembering the army days and all that and how people hadn't changed. I said, "Well, man, if you don't like it, then change it." You know, "If you don't like what's happening, then do something contributing toward changing it, or else shut up. Stop talking so much about it. Stop beefing and screaming and hollering. Get out there and make a motion." Because, I mean, I had babies. I said, "Man, I'm not going to bring my kids up into this kind of society. I can't stand it. I don't want them to be in it. I'm at least going to tell them the truth." And I told every one of them the truth. But, you know, all of a sudden, "But, Daddy, you're always saying that about white folks." Then after a while it started sinking in to the point where they could understand what I was talking about when they started going to school. Then they started being a part of things and understanding a lot. And then they wanted to know how to get around it. There's no getting around it. You have to go straight into it. Cats say, "Man, you made a big decision. Man, that took a lot of guts." It ain't even over yet. It's still happening. You know what I'm saying? You know, until they throw the dirt on this, it's still going to happen. Because every day you walk out there- You can sit in here and dream and write on that board over there what you would like to hear and see. You go out here and it's still here. It is. You can see it in the communities.Cats are writing on the wall just to write. I mean, if they had something to say, it would be different. They're not saying anything. They're just saying, "They don't want me to do this, so I'll do this." I mean, what kind of attitude is that to give a youngster? I mean, where did they get the attitude from? "Well, they don't want me to do it, I'll do it." When you get started teaching them from the top, you let them know what's happening and follow through. It's the follow-through pattern that fails.
Isoardi
Yeah. I keep thinking back. I remember especially during last year, etc., that there's so much anger, but it hasn't taken the next step to form into a movement with a real political thrust to it that can change something. Instead, it was just this anger, just doing something because people don't want you to do it. You never get anywhere that way.
Tapscott
That's right.
Isoardi
That hasn't happened yet, unlike say the sixties, seventies, fifties, when you had these massive movements that were really focused, that had a direction, from the Civil Rights movement to the Panthers [Black Panther Party], really a focus. They had more of a political program. But that isn't even happening today with younger kids.
Tapscott
And you know why? A lot of the reason why is because a lot of the people-we're talking about the black ones now-a lot of the people that were in these groups sold out, so to speak. I mean, if they were going to be in it, they're supposed to be in it now, today, even if they're in a wheelchair. If they're not doing it, they're telling somebody else what to do about it or showing them which way to do it, because it's never over. You know, "Remember when we did-?" "Okay, I remember when we did, but what are we doing now?" How come what we're talking about then or practiced then isn't functioning as an everyday thing for us now? It doesn't stop. The young people that come up didn't have it because these same people that might have made a bigger difference went maybe into the White House, maybe into some house.
Isoardi
Yeah, became preachers or joined the Democratic Party.
Tapscott
Something, you know, or wrote a book on their life story of talked about everybody.
Isoardi
And then retired.
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Went off to an island somewhere.
Tapscott
Yeah. What happened? What was this over here for then, man? You know, that doesn't sit too well. I mean, because if- Like the guy in prison now, Geronimo Pratt, that he won't get out- They know he was framed, okay, but he's still in it, even though he had to be in it from hardcore.
Isoardi
He could be out now if he would admit. That's what the parole board says, "Just say you did it. We'll let you out." And he won't do it. Incredible courage.
Tapscott
Because he didn't do it. You know what I mean?
Isoardi
Yeah, they've even got hard proof now, and they still won't let this guy out.
Tapscott
We knew from the top he didn't do it, when it went down. Because he wasn't the only one, see. They had caught many before him and jammed them up when they killed this guy in Chicago, busted into his room, and shot the guy in bed. He was supposed to have been shooting at them, and he was in his bed asleep. Fred Hampton. Anyway, it had been happening all the time, Steve, and nobody believed it. And my wife [Cecilia Payne Tapscott], it took her a long time to accept that. She couldn't believe that shit was happening. "No, you can't tell me that they actually did this to do this. No, they didn't do that." And then she saw it on the news twenty years later. She said, "Oh, wow."
Isoardi
And they do it all the fucking time.
Tapscott
All the time. The truth always comes out after two generations have gone. Like they're going to tell the truth about [John F.] Kennedy maybe in 2010. [laughter]
Isoardi
I just hope I'm still alive when they- I'm just curious. Not that I believe the Warren Commission now, but I'd just like to hear it from the top for once.
Tapscott
Yeah, just once.
Isoardi
Are you following the Pratt case?
Tapscott
Well, you know, this guy down here in the community- They've got several people in the community that are always lobbying for him.
Isoardi
Because I was in a revolutionary political organization a number of years ago, and I still support them, and they've been behind him for years now.
Tapscott
Yeah, but, see, they call those people communists and all that behind him, so they don't pay them any attention.
Isoardi
Except he's gotten a lot of support, though, beyond the left because the case is so outrageous.
Tapscott
Yeah, he has. It is, man.
Isoardi
I think it was even on TV, on 60 Minutes or something. They had it on TV. So the support has really gotten pretty broad.
Tapscott
Yeah, it is.
Isoardi
But he's still in prison.
Tapscott
He's still in prison. So all they're going to do is make a movie about him when he comes out.
Isoardi
There's another guy, too, the writer in Pennsylvania. Why can't I- I'm forgetting. [Mumia Abu-]Jamal. He was framed for killing a cop in the early eighties. He was like the most important, I think, black journalist in Philadelphia, wrote for many papers- He was one of the few to defend, I think, the MOVE movement when the government was going after them, and they framed him up for killing a cop, and he's on death row.
Tapscott
He's on death row?
Isoardi
He's on death row. And this same group that I support has been trying to build support to get him out. He writes articles in the newspaper about once a month.
Tapscott
Oh, he does?
Isoardi
Yeah. So he's another one. He's in prison, but he hasn't been broken. Courageous, just courageous stories.
Tapscott
See, that's the point. They can't break you. If you can't break a cat, then you have to give it up. Once they break you, then they'll say, "I told you." But at the same time, man, like with Geronimo and the other guys that have died and were killed, all those cats that got wiped out have been wiped out systematically starting from some of [J. Edgar] Hoover's plans.
Isoardi
Man, that was a huge campaign just to imprison people, kill people, utterly destroy the movement.
Tapscott
Destroy. Having them watching your pad, having them set fire to you, getting your own kind to do you in, paying them so much money to do this and do- Oh, man, all kinds of things would happen around my pad that were very suspicious. I knew it was different than before. I said, "Now, wait a minute. This ain't cool. That pad over there wasn't there, or that shade-" You know, cats would be clicking.
Isoardi
They aren't tourists. [laughter]
Tapscott
No, they aren't tourists at all. Boy, I'm telling you, man, like in the 1965 insurrection [Watts riots]- I think I mentioned that, about how the police came around with their microphone.
Isoardi
Actually, I just wanted to get into that in a minute. No, you hadn't mentioned that. But before you do, just let me quickly ask, have you ever sent away for your file from the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]?
Tapscott
No. I had thought about it, though. But you can get them now.
Isoardi
Yeah. I know somebody who did it. I met her a long time ago. Her name is Dorothy [Ray] Healey. She was active in the left for many years. She sent away, and she got back this enormous stack. [laughter]
Tapscott
I know her name.
Isoardi
Oh, yeah. She was very prominent in Southern California. She was a leader of the Communist Party years ago. And then they said, "This is the first part." [laughter] It was a mountain of paperwork. Well, she was about to write her memoirs, so it was perfect, because it was all laid out. [laughter] They had her whole life laid out there for her, people she'd forgotten about, places she'd forgotten she'd been in. She said it was great. It was all there so- [laughter]
Tapscott
Domestic spying.
Isoardi
But, man, yeah, you never know. I'm sure they've got one on you.
Tapscott
I'm sure, because I remember not- See, because for a long time, Steve, I didn't sign my name on anything. I had to eventually, but I tried to stay out of it, because I knew, before they had the computers out on the market, I said, "They're going to jam us up in this thing. They're going to be able to find wherever we are and how many babies you have and what you do this and how many homosexuals are in your family and boom-de-bam," and that's what they're doing now, man. Just one button, they can get your whole life history on it. And you can't get around it, because you see what society is turning to. It's going to get rid of money, and you're going to just have cards, so you're going to have to stick it in something all the time.
Isoardi
So what happens in the Watts rebellion?
Tapscott
We were playing while it was going on. And the police drove by and held their microphone out for the cats downtown to hear.
Isoardi
The music?
Tapscott
Uh-huh. They said, "This is inciting the riot." That's what he said. "Listen. This is why the riot is going on."
Isoardi
Oh, man.
Tapscott
And they drove around the bandstand like that. Then I told you about the-
Isoardi
Where were you playing then? In the house? Or was this an outdoor performance?
Tapscott
This was outside, in Watts. They had just opened up an institute out there-I think it was the Mafundi Institute-at the time. It was 1965, and kids were dancing in the streets to "The Dark Tree."
Isoardi
Oh, your composition "The Dark Tree." yeah.
Tapscott
Yeah, all of that. And shooting was going on on 103rd [Street] and Central [Avenue], and we were down on 103rd.
Isoardi
And you guys were having a concert while the shooting is going on a little ways away?
Tapscott
Yeah. Yeah, that's when the insurrection began.
Isoardi
Oh, this was the very beginning of it.
Tapscott
Yeah. They started fighting in the park, Will Rogers Park, and then went all down- And then the next day, coming home, there weren't any dogs on the street, there wasn't anybody on the street, and it was in full bloom then, man. It was happening. You could start seeing smoke and hearing fire engines. And the National Guard came and blocked off my street, the street I lived on, Fifty-sixth Street and Avalon [Boulevard]. We had to be home at eight o'clock or else we couldn't get in. And I had gigs.
Isoardi
Oh, man.
Tapscott
Yeah, man. They had guns, cats right on the corner. You couldn't come in unless you lived here or you can't check out because it isn't time. I said, "No way." You know, I just broke through.I had my wife coming home one time, and they pulled us over around the corner from our house, 1965, during those five days of insurrection. And there were all these cops on our car, man. And one put his gun in there at me, and that pissed me off, man. He started talking to my wife, and she got scared. I said, "You don't have to say a word to this motherfucker. You don't say nothing to him. You don't have to say nothing." He had the gun on me, and, you know, "Don't bother my wife, man. You don't talk to her." I told her to shut up; don't say anything to these- They were on that side. This cat was getting pissed off. An older guy came over and said, "Hold it," pulled him back, pushed him out of the way, and said, "Where do you live, sir?" I said, "Around the corner." He said, "Go ahead." Man. It was really touchy, because they had killed somebody that day. They had killed a couple that day because they were speeding. The National Guard shot this woman. They said she was trying to run them down. Shot and killed her. So here I am, me and my wife, we're coming home, man. You know, they called themselves having a riot; we're trying to make it through the day, night, get home around the corner. And this cat wanted to blow us away. They would have gotten away with it, you know, because they could have said we broke a barrier like they said these other people did. But, see, I lived around the corner, so why am I breaking a barrier? If it wasn't for the older policeman, we'd have been shot, man. Because they had the orders to shoot to kill.
Isoardi
Yeah, sure, out after curfew or something, they could free fire.
Tapscott
Free fire, yeah. Is that out? On civilians.
Isoardi
Did the cops do anyting to you that first night when you were performing out in the open?
Tapscott
No, they didn't-
Isoardi
They were just driving by and getting the sounds.
Tapscott
Getting the sounds and-
Isoardi
Saying this is inciting-
Tapscott
Saying this is inciting the riot. And then one time during that same week we were playing inside in the Watts [Happening] Coffee House it was called, and they came in there, broke in there with their shotguns, and told me to stop the music. I wouldn't stop the music. And he pulled the hammer and said, "I said stop the goddamn music." I put my hand up in the air to stop the music. Meanwhile, up by the wall, they had these pregnant women standing up there. They were pissed off, and anything that was black was in trouble. I pulled the band down like that. "Butch" [Lawrence Morris] was in the band then; he hadn't left. We stopped playing. And he put his gun back on the safety and walked out. As soon as he walked out- The kids were still out there. [sings the opening bass line of "The Dark Tree"] The bass player started [sings bass line], looking at the police, and we started playing again. And they did that to us because they knew they had made a fool of themselves-just coming in there and bothering people listening to music. These women were pregnant. It was a class of pregnant women.You know, we had classes out there. We had a breakfast feeding class and teaching the youngsters. We had the youngsters in school and teaching them about their history as well as reading and writing. And that was going on for the summer program, all summer long. Elaine Brown, the writer, the ex-Panther, later, she was initially part of it. Stanley Crouch. All these people that were here had something to do with that kind of activity going on where we were trying to save our community, help our own community. That was during the War on Poverty bit and all like that. We were trying to do it the way we could do the best and see that the youngsters didn't starve. They had martial arts classes for them, they had poetry classes, music classes outside of the schoolwork. And their parents would bring them from their regular day school to this little old lightweight program that we were having. And it worked.But during that time, that's when the insurrection began, because, like I said, there was a lot of dancing and singing in the streets, because we played out in the streets all the time. The area was cut off; there wasn't that much traffic coming through, except for the people who- And I could park my car, Steve, on the street unlocked and window down. You know, a little lightweight car thief passed by and said, "Uh-uh, that's one of the guys," that kind of thing, that attitude.That's when we knew we were correct again. You're doing the right thing, because now youngsters see you all the time. You can say anything you want now. You know, they get used to cats giving a big speech and they never see him again. But they see you all the time, and they could speak to you. They could ask you a question along the street or see you at the store, something like that, real simple, that they know that somebody really cares for them, that they have to care for them. They're still here. You can go to them at any time. If they live around the street, I go by his house. It's cool. That kind of attitude. Just like when I was growing up, you could see teachers in the grocery store, you could ask them questions, you go by their house, because they all lived in the area. Okay, that's one real standard and real convincing way for a youngster to take note of a person that's around them, that they see them all the time. And they might be known all over the world, but in this neighborhood they're one of the people, one of the community. And that's how they react and act. That's the action and reaction to that kind of attitude that goes on, the kind of personalities that would be coming through the neighborhood. And that's how kids, young folks, gain confidence. "If you want to teach me something, now I can listen to you, because I believe you. I believe you because you're here." You're here is what's important. They can see you, and they don't have to say, "Oh, well, he's going to Beverly Hills. He ain't thinking about us now." That kind of attitude. But if you have a person where-If you're really thinking of trying to help the community, you can't just jump into it. You have to really figure it out. It's not easy. I mean, you've got to figure it out. Because everybody's got their personalities. And in this case, the black race, they've got all kinds of personalities in there, and you have to deal with different this and different that. So that's why I said I wouldn't talk to them at all now until I'm sure I'm telling the truth as much as I can tell them, whether they can take it or not, without them saying, "Oh, you're this kind of person. You think this way." I want to speak to them on a level that covers all the areas, you know, to being part of them. I can't do that now because I don't have that in my hands as of yet. I have a good idea about it, but I don't have it. I don't like to give it up anymore until I've got it together. Because I'll tell a youngster something, and they'll say, "Well, how come-?" You know, and that "how come" is going to always come if you call yourself giving information and knowing what you're talking about- "Well, how come this is going to happen?" I can't explain that "how come." So unless I'm asked a question directly- I'm not going to ignore a child, but I'm not going to take it on myself to call a bunch of them together, "I want to talk to you about something." When I do that and say, "I want to talk to you about something," I really will have something to say that makes sense to me first to make sense to them.So staying in the community, economically speaking, was a big move, of course, because you lost a lot of revenue. And by being married to my wife and having my family and stuff and by them supporting, it made it a little easier than it would have been otherwise, by jumping there and talking about "I'm going to do this here. I'm going to do this here." But I jumped out and said, "I want to be a part of this." I believe in people speaking to each other and having respect for each other. That's the first thing that I look for. From there you can do most anything with a person. You can talk about a lot of things.And that was one of my main reasons for getting off the bus that evening and not getting back on, because I could have stayed on the bus. I'd still be in New York making many records and have a little revenue coming in and all that stuff, you know. But I couldn't see where I'd be satisfied doing that. I'm much more happy now that I did make that move when I did make it, because even now, being alive and well, blessed to be alive and well so long, I'm still getting a piece of that, that other part of it, what the musicians, so-called, are supposed to have, you dig?
Isoardi
You're rich in many other ways.
Tapscott
Yeah. And that helps me to remain in this state of mind that I'm in. It's flexible, but the foundation of it is still the same as it was: just love and respect and recognition in its righteous ways. And that's from what I told you, seeing all these brothers and sisters that I grew up with that were teaching me and showing me and who were so great and how they become invisible again in the minds and thoughts of people. They should live, like in this thing that you're doing. You know, those kinds of things are important to all people, and if you don't have anything that you can refer to- It's like now, for instance. Okay, I understand the budget cuts and everything. Everybody's got to do their part when it comes down to it. However, you do not have to go to cut in the gut of a person, of a people, of a whole people.It's calling the budget cut, like at the [California Afro-American Museum over there on Exposition [Boulevard].
Isoardi
Yeah, they're closing that now.
Tapscott
And the regular California Museum [of Science and Industry]. What is that all about? How can you close an archival place, a library place, that has records of a race of people that live in this country? Whereas it hadn't been in the regular books, in the regular libraries, now- What does that mean? With those youngsters in grammar school going on their field trips, they'd be there too, man. And they had the tapes playing Frederick Douglass. They're not preaching to them. But environmentally, it's just osmosis-like. It takes ahold of them, and they become a part of that, because here it is. They can walk in here and say, "Oh, I can find something out about myself in this museum. I know where to go." A little kid, you know, like my grandson [Martin Wilcots]. He goes there. To him it's supposed to be there. I mean, he was born, and it was there. So that's what he expects to be there.
Isoardi
How do you explain it to kids, then?
Tapscott
Yeah, what am I going to tell them? "Well, how come they didn't do that one, Daddy-or Granddaddy-how come?" And it finally got its name on the front of the building. You can see it from the street now. And the first one to cut is that. And that's educational, man, not for just the black children, for all the rest of them.
Isoardi
Oh, it's the memory. It's the memory of a people.
Tapscott
You know, that to me- You can cut something else, man. I mean, there are things that are important that must be dealt with, and the library is definitely important in the community. A library in everybody's community, you dig? So cut liquor stores. Cut all those other things that won't be lost as much as knowledge, something as powerful as knowledge. It's so great to have this knowledge, and now you're going to just tear it down, because- Now, that's another thing we were a part of is getting that together, the Afro-American Museum. Before that it was a lady around in town who wanted to start a library, Mayme- She got a research library [Western States Black Research Center]. Mayme Clayton, I think. Yeah.
Isoardi
Oh, I think I've heard the name.
Tapscott
Yeah. In the early sixties we had an interest in helping her get to that, and her son runs it now. But she had a big deal to do with the big one here. The ideas came from her and people around in the neighborhood. That's how that got over there, out of this community. They were screaming and hollering, "I go to the library, I don't see anything about me," that kind of attitude. Now it's there. And they have already been cut, the budget for the library. They've been cut about 3 or 4 percent already. Now they want to just get rid of them. So they get rid of the other museum along with it so you won't have anything to say. I mean, what is that? The museum in the first place is important to the community.But those are the things that now have to be dealt with above ground between all people. You've got to maintain some kind of standard for the oncoming generation. I mean, that's just it, man. Because your time is almost up, so what are you going to do in your time? Is this a waste of time you've had all these years here?It doesn't seem to make too much sense for that to happen, but it's surely about to happen, though. You know, they're about to close it. But it has started something new now. They had a youngster out there in front with a sign, a real solid young black kid, "No library, no justice, no peace," standing out there. Not one sound. People started noticing that he was standing there looking. "No library, no justice, no peace." "What are you trying to do to me, man? You're trying to kill me? You're trying to destroy me totally like you did the Native American? You're not going to do that." That's the idea that the community has now. They're off the Rodney [G.] King thing now. It's just an extension. They're really into this, though. You don't hear it now. Yvonne Brathwaite [Burke], the [Los Angeles County] supervisor, she was one of the initial persons to get it there, to get the library open, as far as politicians are concerned. And she's asking all the people to write their senator. The only thing they're going to notice is violence or some kind of crowd gathering.
Isoardi
Yeah, the only thing they understand is anger.
Tapscott
That's all.
Isoardi
I really strongly believe that the people who run this country will just continually push and squeeze until somebody screams, and then they may back off a bit. But if people don't, they'll just keep screwing them.
Tapscott
Keep going all the time. And that's the only thing they're going to do. That's why the youngsters are standing out there. They say, "Okay, this is the only thing you understand, people." And there it is, man. And it won't be just black people, and that's good. There will be all kinds of people that want the library to stay open. That's the best part about it. And that crowd that gathers out there, those senators that you write will get a telegraph right away. They don't have to get a letter. I mean, they'll get it right away, and they'll stop from closing it.I don't think they will close it, though, Steve. I'm pretty sure that's going to be a real strategic move. They've got to have something else in mind if they close that. Because once it's closed, that knowledge being lost, people are going to feel very, very bad about that, black people, the young ones and the college ones especially. They're going to feel very bad about that, and they're not going to let it go unnoticed or undone. You can believe that. That's what's going to happen. If that place is closed- A lot of things could happen to it, anyway. Anything. The whole thing, man. The National Guard came out in Florida last night, you know.
Isoardi
Yeah, for the verdict.
Tapscott
And all these people, it's like the black cat, his life doesn't mean anything. Just shoot him, man. I mean, he was coming at the police, boom! So what? I don't know if he was going to attack him or not. I wasn't there. But this cat's riding a motorcycle. And who are the other cats that died? Two black cats. And this cat- You know, you keep throwing that, and these young black kids, they react to that, man. Every time they look at the news or read a newspaper or magazine or something, they see that happening. They see it happening.They see it with the black cats, and they see it with the Hispanics that come from another country-the country Hispanics, the cats that don't know anything about America, you dig? They just got here. And they're getting shot up all the time. Everything that's happening is always the Hispanic cats. I mean, crime-wise, that's what they figure. Okay. What do you expect when you let them all in here for nothing? They knew what was going to happen. They put them in here just to upset the society. See, and all those little old small things, man- And they put them in the black neighborhood. You know what I'm saying? I mean, they put them over here without telling them anything. Now, when the Koreans came here, they told them about black people. "You can't get along with them." Because they brought money with them, you know. But these guys, these Hispanics, they're looking for work, man. And they're free. They come from the country, and they're used to being free. They're used to pissing on the ground right away. And nobody told them anything. So they put them right in the neighborhoods, and they're going to clash with these black people who are already hassling, you dig?
Isoardi
In a sense it's just what they want.
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Because they get people fighting against each other so they're not going to turn against the system.
Tapscott
That's right, exactly. And you see how it was planned. They send them all to Crenshaw. Palisades [High School] said, "No." Palisades said, "No." But Crenshaw had to take them or else. Every morning there's four busloads of Hispanics. They stand out right in front, real trained, like animals, waiting for the bus. They don't move from their spot. And, you know, those kinds of things are the kinds of things that really trouble me community-wise. And like you said, they can get them fighting each other and gang-banging. Then they don't have to bother about what's going on, where the real deals are going down, the real action is going on.

1.12. Tape Number: VI, Side TwoMay 29, 1993

Isoardi
How about your music, then? When you come back and you settle in L.A.- I guess when you're with Hamp [Lionel Hampton] you're playing trombone, right?
Tapscott
Right.
Isoardi
And then you turn to piano exclusively?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Right away?
Tapscott
No, not right away, because, see, even in Hamp's band pianists might not show up. Every now and then he might not hire one. He'd say, "You play." And I'd play the piano on the gig. I played the piano on a few gigs because the pianist we had couldn't make it for some reason. But, see, I was just on trombone. I had almost given it up then when Lester [Robertson], my partner, the trombonist, called me up in that year of 1958 and asked me did I want to go to New York with him, with Hamp. He said, "You can play your horn." I said, "Okay." So that's what happened. I wasn't working here at the time, and I said, "Okay, I'll go make this gig," you know, make $125 a week. That was the starting pay. I started and finished with that pay. [laughter] But $125 was pretty cool at the time.But, yeah, I didn't abruptly change, because, see, people just hadn't seen me. Certain folks knew I was playing piano, you know, like the ones that would be around me, like David Bryant and Alan Hines; we'd be playing all the time. But I'd make gigs on my trombone in big bands a lot of times. And then we got a chance when I got my own group [Pan-Afrikan People's Arkestra] to working, and that's when I started exclusively playing the piano, because by then I had lost my teeth and my front- You know, I had given it up totally then. I gave my horn to my partner, because he lost his horn through the years. I've still got my first trombone my mother bought me. I've got it in the garage. It's not playable. [laughter] It's just there. But I would always- I used to play it at the pad and go over- I used to play it all the time. I played both instruments so much, all of them. And we always were doing something during the day, like I'd have a friend come by and he'd bring his duet books, do that, be playing, and go rehearse with a big band, somebody's big band, and then make a couple of record dates with it. And I cut a record with Hamp and I was soloing on trombone. I don't remember which record it's on; he made so many. So I wouldn't know which one it's on. It was called "Blue Bone" or something like that. All the three 'bones were soloing. That was the first time I had a solo on an album, you know, totally. I'd soloed on a couple of Lou Rawls's old albums with Onzy Matthews's band. But after that, man, I didn't care too much for it anymore because I was into playing the box now, and it was a little bit easier on me physically. So I stopped about fifteen or twenty years ago, totally, that is. I mean stopped.
Isoardi
Are you also still composing and writing a lot throughout all this?
Tapscott
Yeah, still composing. I'm still doing a musical that I've been writing for years about the community [Impressions of the Ghetto]. It's based on people I knew and things like that.
Isoardi
This is something you're still working on?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. [laughter]
Isoardi
Gee, finish it, Horace! Finish it!
Tapscott
I don't know if I'll ever hear it. [laughter] I might not hear it, I don't know, but, yeah-
Isoardi
Gee, by now it must be longer than a Wagner opera. [laughter]
Tapscott
And he was one hell of a cat, wasn't he?
Isoardi
He didn't know when to stop.
Tapscott
They were after him too, the government. [laughter]
Isoardi
I heard a story a while ago-talking about going on and on-about [John] Coltrane and Miles Davis. The story was Miles Davis walked up to him one day and he said, "Trane, why do you play so long?" And Coltrane said, "Well, I just can't stop. I've got to get all the ideas out," etc. "I don't know how to stop." Miles said, "Just take the horn out of your mouth." [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah, Miles was always realistic. "Take it out of your mouth, man."
Isoardi
I want to ask you something about the direction your music is going in, then. I mean, when you put the Arkestra together, you guys are considered "outside," "underground," etc., etc. Did you always have that character to your composing even when you were younger?
Tapscott
It seemed like it.
Isoardi
Did you hear different sounds?
Tapscott
Yeah, yeah. My first song I ever wrote was called "Bongo Bill." And when I saw my mentor, Samuel Browne, smiling at me, at the arrangement, I knew it was cool then. But he wouldn't let me know that he dug it, you dig? But he encouraged me to keep it up. Like I said, we had a band every day to play your stuff after you wrote it, and that helped quite a bit. So I've been writing since-This composition, that musical I've been working on, I think I should be- I don't have any kind of a timetable, actually. But once I get it copied- Because, see, I've written some things for different people, written shows, and never heard the music. I've written for- Brothers used to have a black repertoire, and I never got to hear the music that I did for them because something else happened. So I get in the habit of writing it. If it's not too much, I can always hear my music, what I wrote. I can call cats together, maybe for next week or so, and they come and go through it for me. If you get it started, though, then they start looking for it some more, and you keep on doing it. Because it's like they'll be waiting, "Somebody do it." You know, "If somebody calls a rehearsal so I can go play-" That kind of stuff. And that's what I'm doing now. I've got some music that I've done for David Bryant to record this year. It's on the copyist's table now. I thought by the time I got back from New York it would be finished, but it's not finished yet from the copyist, and I have to go get it. I'm starting rehearsals next week, though. It will be rehearsing David Bryant's music.Meanwhile, the marching band music is still being written.
Isoardi
Marching band?
Tapscott
I've got a marching band in mind that I'm going to have for the end of the year, for the Kwanza parade and for the Martin Luther King [Jr.] parade, for the parades that they have in south L.A. They never have bands, school bands, being that there are not that many, if there are any. I think Locke High School is still the only school that has a band that's functioning. And all these high schools and all these- There are no bands around for the youngsters, you know. And you should see them- They ought to be able to march down Crenshaw [Boulevard] with a seventy-five-piece [band]. So by October I should be going into rehearsal, man.
Isoardi
No kidding?
Tapscott
Yeah, even if it's just for four compositions for the marching band. Just four would be enough. I've got one already: "Lino's Pad."
Isoardi
Oh, wow! [laughter]
Tapscott
Seventy-five-piece band.
Isoardi
Playing that?
Tapscott
Yeah. I can't wait to hear it. So that's what I've been working on mostly, Steve. And these gigs that my trio and quartet have. But the bulk of the thing is the marching band and doing the musical or something.
Isoardi
Your music seems so closely associated with physical movement, with dance. Is that something conscious? I mean, do you see people moving when you compose?
Tapscott
I see movements.
Isoardi
You see movement?
Tapscott
Yeah. I see movements. I've got a tune, "Nyja's Theme," with five different patterns going in it. I let a choreographer listen to it one time, let them see what they could do with it. I never heard any more about it. But I could see groups of people doing those patterns in the music, you know, dancing step-wise. And that same way with "Lino's Pad." You know, it's marching, but it's marching in seven-four [meter]. [laughter] That's the only difference, you dig? That should be interesting.
Isoardi
Yeah, really.
Tapscott
And then Billy Higgins and those cats are starting a drum thing they're going to have for the Kwanza parade. So there's going to be lots of music coming out of the community.
Isoardi
Truly. That's fantastic. Well, you know, the schools don't provide it anymore. It's another thing missing. And where's it going to come from?
Tapscott
Yeah. That's right. So we call ourselves putting a block in that hole there, man. It's hard to do it, naturally, because it's still-And another thing: I don't like to fill out papers and stuff for grants. I hate that. You've got to have money to do certain things. They'll say, "Okay, well, if you can match this-" I cannot match it. If I could match, I wouldn't have asked for the money. [laughter] You know what I'm saying? A couple of times, people would be in the group who would want to do that. Okay. You've got that kind of knowledge, do it. But I don't like that, because what they're asking me, they're asking me in certain ways all the things that have been done. I can't categorize them as to how many times you did this and how many hours so forth happened. And did they take it any further? And what do you plan on doing with this? That kind of attitude.And dig this: I was on the board for the National Endowment [for the Arts] and on the board [California Arts Council] for the California state moneys they give away for artists. The work you have to do, man, to give the money away is a trip. [laughter] You're talking about one tired person was me. Five days of that? Whew, man, listening and looking, then planning. Then you see that they get a grant. But the idea, the feeling of it- See, I could get one easier now because I've been on the boards, and they know your name. You know how it is; if you know somebody, it's cool. No matter how much you know, if you don't know somebody, what you know doesn't mean anything. [laughter]
Isoardi
It's true. [laughter]
Tapscott
I learned that one early. I said, "Wow, this cat here played like a dog. This cat just started and he got the gig," you know, because he knows so-and-so.
Isoardi
Right.
Tapscott
But I just hate to have to make out that kind of grant, but it might become necessary, which in turn I still won't do. I'll hire somebody to do it. Because I can tell them what's necessary, and they can put it together.Like with this marching band, there are two women working on it. They're fireballs through the community. So I said, "Okay, you have it. You do it." Meanwhile, I have to get the band together and make sure that's happening. If these people downtown are going to give you a hand to let us have some money to do something or whatever, okay, but meanwhile, we've got to have the music and the marching steps together. And that's going to be important, because, hey, everybody loves a parade, and they would like to see things happen in the parade. I love a parade. I'd like to be a part of a parade with a large band and march down- You know, everybody will be looking at their kids. To me, that's nice. That's nice to be able to do that. So that's why it's very important to me that I get this marching band to working. Even if I wound up with thirty cats, I'd still have a marching band that's playing.
Isoardi
Sure, sure.
Tapscott
It might be just the thing to ignite the other youngsters. "Hey, I want to be in that band, man. Mama! Daddy!" You know, that kind of attitude, and then go buy them a trombone or a tuba, you dig?
Isoardi
That's how it starts for a lot of kids.
Tapscott
Yeah, that's right, because they see it. They got exposed to it. They didn't have to say, "You've got to learn this." They got exposed to it. "Oh, I like that." That's how I got exposed to it. I mean, it was shoved in my face from the womb. [laughter] But even so, it was still like I was exposed to it quite a bit all the time, the whole day, every day. I'd do my little kid thing when I was a kid, but I had to go through that other thing.So if I can get that started, even David's record date for this year, then I would have done the things that I wanted to do for this period.
Isoardi
Looking back at the history of the Arkestra, maybe you can talk about some of the musicians who got their training there and went on to do something with their music.
Tapscott
One that comes to mind is Arthur Blythe.
Isoardi
Oh, of course.
Tapscott
He was a stone wall, this brother. I always dug him because he'd make up his mind to do something, whatever it takes. Whatever they'd throw at him, he'd go through it to get it.
Isoardi
How did you meet Arthur Blythe?
Tapscott
At Linda [Hill]'s. He came up from San Diego. He was playing in a blues band. He came up. Meanwhile, the other alto player, Guido Sinclair, was on the set playing, and Jimmie Woods. And Arthur came. He would always play in the corner.
Isoardi
How old was he?
Tapscott
I think he was in his early twenties. He came up, and that's how we met. Because there have been so many guys, too, but some of them you remember because they'd be around here longer and other stuff. But they had a lot of great players in there and a lot of great potential players. And some of them go on, and some of them are playing in different things. But cats like Arthur that made the names for themselves, like Butch and David [Murray] and Wilber [Morris], all these guys, they're straight-based cats. They could have made it anywhere they lived. They didn't have to go there [New York]. But it was just the drive that they have. And Arthur was one of the main cats that was serious about playing. He had his own sound.
Isoardi
Then you thought he really had a distinct sound?
Tapscott
Yeah, even then. But, see, everybody that I had in that group had their own distinct sound, because there was nobody to follow. They didn't have any- They didn't hear records as much in those days to follow, like listening to a "Bird" [Charlie Parker] or somebody. They didn't hear that much. So they just started playing by hearing other cats that were alive around them playing. We had some great players in there, cats that were recognizable by their sound, the way they approached their instrument. They didn't sound like Charlie Parker. They didn't sound like Willie Smith. They sounded like somebody, but not these particular people. They had their own sound to them, because all they were used to hearing was the other cats that stood around them playing, and each one influenced the other, except for the older ones. The older ones were like Guido Sinclair and Jimmie Woods. They had been around a little while longer. And the younger players would be listening to these cats play and getting their help from them.They didn't have any teachers. They did all this on their own, learned their instrument, asked questions, learned how to read in the Arkestra, you dig? Because we used to teach each other how to read on the blackboard without any instruments, because you didn't need an instrument. You could just count. And we had the clapping class. We'd clap out the things. Then you tell them what it means after they figure out how to do it. Then they apply it to their reading abilities, and when they go somewhere else, then they've got an understanding of what time is about.That's all we had was time to teach, because otherwise we would have just been hanging. Most of the guys would have been just hanging around or not playing if they didn't have a job or were in some kind of situation that would keep them busy. These people had time all the time. They made time. And when we have a certain nucleus of people who have a lot of time and a lot of interest in something, it's very easy to recruit. People started coming by word of mouth into this Arkestra, musicians, some that were just beginning to play, some that had been playing.To name another one that's made a name for himself, there's a guy named Rufus Olivier. He's a bassoonist. He was the first bassoonist in the San Francisco Symphony [Orchestra] now. He was the first there. Then they gave the job to somebody else, and he got mad and went across the street and got the first chair at the [San Francisco] Opera [Company]. And he's a music teacher now. Me and Arthur got him off the streets one day, off of Western Avenue. He was about fourteen. He heard Arthur in there playing, came in there and listened- He played alto too, you dig, but bassoon was his major. But he had alto; [he was] learning that, too. In the alto he was inspired by Arthur Blythe, and he learned to play that well. But his bassoon work was excellent. He's an excellent player. And he's got quite a bit of students. When I do my solo work up north, he sends his students.And then, of course, Lawrence "Butch" Morris learned his whole bit in the Ark. He started writing for that TV show Avery Brooks was on called- Where he was a detective. He was a black detective, a serial he had. Hawk.
Isoardi
He wrote for that?
Tapscott
He was the writer for that. He was in the picture at the beginning of it playing trumpet. But he did the writing for it.
Isoardi
So he started writing and composing and arranging when he started working with the Arkestra?
Tapscott
Yeah, when he was a young man coming into Ark. He first started playing, then he started writing.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
And his brother Wilber-
Isoardi
Because I know he's done a lot of conducting. He'd done a lot of arranging and composition. David Murray has recorded a lot of his stuff. I think he's the conductor of one of David's bands.
Tapscott
Yeah. I remember one year going to New York, and Butch was leading the band. The whole band saw me, and they stopped playing, man, in this nightclub. People looked around and said, "What's happening?" And these cats came over and were hugging me and shit, and Butch was there leading the band just like he did in the churches.
Isoardi
Oh, nice.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was something, man. That's the first time I'd had a lump in my throat. I said, "I'll be damned." Everything was happening, and David and Will Connell, Wilber Morris, Arthur Blythe- There's a bunch of them that were in the band, and Butch was leading it.This time [when] I went back I saw my bass player, Marcus McLaurine, who used to be in Ark here. He came after these other cats. He was a little later. But he went through the Ark, and he made a name for himself there. He's on a lot of these new records that are coming out, and he's got his gigs around New York, and I went to hear him.There are so many of those guys that are still playing. A lot of them are still here, and a lot of them are back there. Some of them are in Georgia, and a lot of them are in Europe. So they're stretched out all over. Most of them are still playing though. They're still playing, and they're still writing. And they still stay in touch. Wherever I'm playing, they show up, and we talk. But it was quite a period of musicians. And in turn all these particular people I named have brought in other people themselves from other areas. Like Butch has got a great following of musicians, man. They trust him and believe him. Everywhere they go, they've got the- And they never forget where they come from. So those guys, you can appreciate them, you can appreciate their contributions. We can see that we've got their music that they wrote, the first music that they wrote-and I'm sure they'd like to hear it-and what has happened since then.But I'm pretty much satisfied with my life up to this point, musically, because I guess, one thing, I'm still here and healthy enough, and I've got a large family that's still supporting me regardless. They think their old man's a crazy nut, but they still support him. [laughter] They treat me like I'm out. I'll be cracking up sometimes the way they treat me. [laughter] I've got one grandson [Cabell Tapscott] who looks at me and just- When he sees me look at him, he just grins because his parents [Barbara and Darion Lamont Tapscott] have told him a story, and he looks at me- He collects all my stuff. He collects it all and puts it on his wall. My grandson collects all the places where I play, if I've got plaques, and he puts it on his wall. Like they might have Michael Jackson on somebody's wall in his room-
Isoardi
He's got all your- Oh, that's nice.
Tapscott
[laughter] Yeah, isn't that nice, man? Yeah, that was nice. I brought him one the other day from Germany. He's learning to play the drums as well as this one, Martin [Wilcots], over here.
Isoardi
You've got two drumming grandsons?
Tapscott
Yeah, man. They live out in Pomona. His daddy [Darion Tapscott] is a natural for the drums but he never played. We bought him a set of drums. He never wanted to be a professional musician. My oldest son [Laurence Tremayne Tapscott] is a hell of a pianist, man, but he only plays in his back room. And he writes music, but he never plays in public. He'll be back there [mimics sound of playing], and he might let me hear something that he wrote. He's damn near seven feet tall and he's sounding like Randy Weston. He'll be on the piano, and he plays, man. And then the one I told you was a drummer, who's got that natural rhythm, his son is the one who's playing now.And my daughter's daughter [Raisha Wilcots]-you've probably seen her, she'll be here shortly-my six-foot-one granddaughter, plays the flute with me every now and then when she gets serious, you dig? But, you know, she's still going through those things. She's glamorous and all that. So she has to go through that. [laughter] When she gets through with that, I told her she could come back here in the back room again. When she first started she was back here a lot, you dig? She got to be the age when they have to do their thing. And now she's at Crenshaw [High School]. When she gets ready to come back- Because she's got the chops. Because her mom, Reneé [Tapscott Wilcots] right out there, stayed on the case. Now she's going to lighten up on her, because she figured she was too hard on her. But she's still in the promenade stage at the mall, you know. [laughter]
Isoardi
It's a tough time, a tough few years that- [laughter]

1.13. Tape Number: VII, Side OneJune 12, 1993

Isoardi
Okay, Horace, last time we kind of had an overview of the period from the early sixties, when you made the commitment to the community and really focused on home, pretty much up to the present. But maybe we can go into some of those areas in more detail. I don't know where we can begin. We could start with UGMA [Underground Musicians Association, later Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension] and the [Pan-Afrikan People's] Arkestra itself and different dimensions of it, how it functioned-
Tapscott
How it functioned. Yeah, well, let's see, now. What I remember real hard and real reddish-like is how the band itself came about-I mean the real Arkestra-just as a function for a particular purpose rather than just playing concerts. That came about behind a lot of the ways the individuals would present themselves in different aggregations. Say we have a saxophone player that plays in a band across town, a band perhaps that was working a little bit, but the way he soloed, the way he approached the music was sort of out of the way for the band that he was playing with, so they wouldn't use them. They couldn't use that kind of activity, those people that are creative at the wrong moment, so to speak. So I sought out all those kinds of people, the kinds that weren't a part of the cliques, a part of the group of people that worked a particular area all the time. I looked for these people because I figured that these people had much more to offer because of the fact of where they were coming from, from how they would approach their music, from how they would approach their lifestyle and things of that nature. I would check what kind of person they were and if they had families. All those things were going through my mind, because I figured that had a lot to do with what we had to do with. In other words, the kind of thing that I wanted us to take part in would have to have some support from people that are very close. Otherwise it's not going to do very well. You know, a lot of the guys were married or living with some ladies and had children, things like that. Then there were some that were living with their parents, and some were living alone. Those kinds of people.Now, we had a place over on Central Avenue where Linda [Hill]'s house was, one of our first UGMA houses.
Isoardi
Now, you made the decision to stay here in L.A. Then did you come up with the idea fairly quickly that you wanted to put an Arkestra together?
Tapscott
While I was on the road with Lionel Hampton and going through the chitlin circuit and all those places, all these guys traveling on the bus playing music- Actually, no one was listening. I mean, they come to dance, they come to do this, they come because of Lionel Hampton. And the band was playing great music. There'd be a lot of great writers in the band and great players. But the way it was accepted, I just didn't want to deal with that kind of attitude, that kind of personality, that persona you had to have to deal with that all the time for no reason at all, under the flag of racism. That's what it was all about. So I said, "If it's going to be like this, and if I'm dissatisfied with this kind of just playing the music for people and boom-de-bam and not saying much about the music, not putting the point, why and why, why this music sounds like it is and what's the reason for it being here and who in this-" Those kinds of questions that I'd never seen answered before that a lot of people were asking at those times, like, "Who is blues? Who did play the blues? Where did the blues come from? And what's the difference between the blues and a spiritual? What's the difference between this and that?" That was very important to me, because being raised up around music all my life, I had a pretty good idea of what they were asking, what they really wanted to know, because I was raised in the whole phase of the music, from the spirituals to the blues to whatever else it was named, labeled, after it came out of the blues. So I just felt like, "What is the point of me traveling the road here playing with the band?" which I enjoyed.You know, when we worked, we made a pretty good living, and I could send money back home. And that's what my main point was, to have a job playing actually, you know, to raise my family. But still it wasn't doing what one would think it would do to a person who had a job with a professional bandleader, a real great bandleader and all and traveling, you know.
Isoardi
And plenty of work.
Tapscott
Plenty of work, that kind of- It would seem like a person in my position would be pretty much satisfied, but I wasn't satisfied. And the reason I wasn't satisfied was because I didn't feel like the music was making any point. It wasn't saying anything to-Like if we played for some children, I would like- For some youngster who wanted to know, "Where did that solo come from? How did y'all get that riff that you play on `Flying Home'? Who started that riff?" You know, people wanted to know where that riff came from. Just those little old small things, little cats. And like I said before, Steve, I was raised in segregation, so I would still react regardless. I'd react. I was used to having things around me, and I was used to touching things when I wanted to touch. Any questions I would ask, I was able to get an answer right away, regardless of if it was negative or positive. I got a response. I wanted to be around. I wanted to raise my children in that kind of society where they could feel free to walk the streets around near their neighbors. But, you know, things like that couldn't happen if you weren't there to try to instigate the happenings of it.So in 1959 or so, I felt like I should get off this road, I should think about what I want to do musically. I also have to think about what I'm going to do employmentwise, as well. "If I go into this phase of music, can I make money at this? What can I do?" So what I thought of myself doing as far as money was concerned was to become a ghostwriter, to get myself money so I can take care of my family. Yet, at the same time, I could deal with what I was talking about dealing with in the Arkestra community.
Isoardi
You mean something like Gerald [Wilson] was doing in the studios, where you just-?
Tapscott
That's how I got- Yeah. I got it through cats like Gerald and other guys that knew about my writing. But, yeah, I was thinking along those terms. I wanted to preserve and teach and show and perform the music of black Americans and Pan-African music.But first I was working on music that came out of America, because it was so much of a hassle, where the music comes from, because I remember how the music was being treated when I was a youngster. You know, it was looked upon- Well, naturally, anything that came out of the black community was looked upon as radical and devilish and this and that, especially the blues. Why was the blues so bad? Even one time I was told- It couldn't have been my mother, but someone that was an elder over me, standing by, playing the blues, you know, on a particular day, you dig, on the same piano, the same changes. "You're not supposed to play that, boy," like that. I said, "Well- Okay. All right." I didn't want to go- Because I knew where they were coming from. I had finally accepted the fact that a lot of people chuck it back into corners, and that's what they believe is happening. They wanted to be good. They wanted to be good with the Lord. They wanted to be able to wake up and go to heaven, that kind of attitude. And if you played the blues in church, then you were going to be struck down by lightning, that kind of thing.
Isoardi
Spirituals were God's music, and the blues was the devil's music.
Tapscott
That's it. That was it. And they all come from the same scale, so to speak, and they all use the same form in both places. The difference is the words. So, I mean, those things were important to me, because they were those small things that happened in the race that people never knew about, never even thought about. Like we didn't go to a movie show on Sunday. So the movie show would more or less close down, because nobody in the neighborhood- And they knew that, so they would just shut down maybe until the evening and open up, because people went to church on Sunday. So you know how it was; the spiritual and religion was a heavy thing. And growing up in that kind of society, whew, it had you going backwards and forwards. I wanted to get the real gut out of it. I wanted to find out why it was that we couldn't play this and that and so-and-so, which is different now, of course, in a lot of churches. They don't even think about it anymore. But at those times, during those days, you weren't supposed to swing [snaps fingers] in the church, even though you just did it the night before at the dance, you dig? You did it, and then you go into church the next morning. So you're supposed to change up from that, Steve, to this. But this was done every day.
Isoardi
But even in church people get carried away. They just do it a little bit differently.
Tapscott
Hey, they got carried away the night before, and they got carried away on Sunday. Only on Sunday it's okay to go down and dance down the aisle and praise the Lord. But Saturday night [snaps fingers], "Yes, sir, lay it on me!" But, see, the same music, the same changes had been used, you dig? And that was my argument. I said, "Well, that's just where you're coming from." "Well, whose music is this?" And that's what started it. See, now, like all the guys, like Thomas Dorsey, one of the black composers in church music-
Isoardi
Oh, he was a founder of gospel, wasn't he, or something like that?
Tapscott
Oh, yeah. And he was a blues pianist.
Isoardi
That's right. Before he did gospel he did- That's right. He was a bluesman.
Tapscott
That's right. And what did he do? All he did is change the words over. He was inspiring to me, to hear about how he'd done, because I remember seeing his name a lot. And I would mix it up with the white trombonist, Tommy Dorsey. But then he would spell his name Thomas, so I knew the difference. He did a special one time on PBS [Public Broadcasting System], and he explained to people he had this problem, too.But the idea was to have an aggregation that put all this music into one place, one chart, for the one Arkestra, and to play it all for the people all the time, and then see and hear the difference. If there was any difference, let them accept it the way it is. I mean, I said, "This is your music. This is black music, and I want to do a panorama of this whole thing here." That's what I had in mind in starting the Arkestra, to preserve all this music, to show the difference of this and that, go into the small details as educators or scholars would do. I would say I would provide the information for scholars to work with. That was my gig. They would know what to do with it so people could read and understand what was happening. However, it got started from that point because I was looking for different kinds of personalities, as I said before, that were in the music. And every kind of person that I met, Steve, was an outsider, so to speak, a little bit leaning, you dig? They didn't walk a straight line; they'd be leaning as they walked. But, see, they had something to offer that was very precious, as far as I was concerned, from my point of view.
Isoardi
So you began just by yourself going out and looking for certain individuals to build-
Tapscott
Yeah, to build. And I ran into different people, different people I had been playing with previously, before that, that were different kinds of characters and personalities who wanted to play something else. They didn't like what they were doing or [were] trying to find something. When I finally got several people together, which became- We started with about seven or eight people.
Isoardi
Do you remember who they were?
Tapscott
It was Linda Hill, it was David Bryant, it was Alan Hines, it was Guido Sinclair, Jimmie Woods, Lester Robertson, and a drummer, Everett Brown Jr. And then Arthur Blythe came on at that time. We had one more person. We started in a small place. First we used Linda's house that she had. I met Linda- I was in the hospital. She was a practical nurse.
Isoardi
And that's how you met?
Tapscott
That's how I met her, because I was in there, and she was taking care of me. She stayed on my case after I got out, because she knew I was into the music, and she wanted to do music. And she was talented.
Isoardi
What did she play?
Tapscott
She learned to play the piano and write. She became the most talented woman I ever met, man.
Isoardi
No kidding. She hadn't had a music background?
Tapscott
No.
Isoardi
Wow.
Tapscott
But she always had that feeling-
Isoardi
The desire to do it.
Tapscott
Yeah, desire and feeling for it, and she started writing.So anyway, she called up. We got together. We had several other people. A guy, a drummer, named Bill Madison. We had Donald Dean, a drummer. These are drummer cats coming through in the early days. We had these houses. We'd try different things. Everybody brought in something different.
Isoardi
Did you have to persuade anybody? Or did you just sort of go up, you'd tell them what you had in mind, and they said, "Yeah, let's go"?
Tapscott
The first thing you do, you start playing. We just started playing.
Isoardi
So you just invited people to come over and just play?
Tapscott
Yeah, just play. That's all we did first, sat around and played and played and played until we said, "Hey, why don't we do something with this?" And that's what I was waiting for.
Isoardi
So I guess if you call a meeting nobody's going to show up. But if you invite people over to play-
Tapscott
They come and play. And then they find out what it is, what it's all about, and say, "Hey, man, I'd like to be around you more." That kind of attitude started happening. "What else do you have? This is real strange here, man. Do you have any more stuff like this? I'd like to get into- I've got some stuff at home that I'd like-" That kind of thing.
Isoardi
So people just started bringing their own things in, then?
Tapscott
Bringing their own things in. We started putting it into a pot more or less, and then it was left up to me to arrange it correctly. You know, "Okay, here it is, Horace. Now what?" Boom! And you'd put something together. You'd put two this way, and we'd say, "You two play this and you two play this. On my signal we'll do this and we'll do that." You know, it started real, real lightweight. I mean, there wasn't anything heavy about it. It was something that people wanted to do.We started playing. We played for about six or seven months like that, all night.
Isoardi
This is a rehearsal band? You had about eight, nine people?
Tapscott
That's right. One day I brought some music, and they were looking at that. Some of the cats couldn't read right away. So out of that I would give a class in reading. You know, I'd write on the blackboard. I'd put on some time, rhythmic patterns, and tell them that one note, a quarter note and all this business- You can count. We started that project along with all that playing. See, that was one thing we had gotten started. I wanted the cats to be able to read the music and write it down, so, like I said, we had those classes.
Isoardi
A lot of guys were just playing by ear?
Tapscott
All of them mostly, except for the ones that had been doing some professional things. A lot of ones wanted to play- A lot of them had abilities to play. The only places they played were around in the schools in those days, when they had funds for orchestras in schools. However, naturally, they were prone to play one type of music, European classical. Which is cool. They were able to read, and they were able to help teach reading to the rest of the cats. So that's how we got started. And a lot of the guys learned to write from those early days. We were trying to pack it so that when problems came, Steve, like talking about- See, we were a controversial group of people by that time.
Isoardi
How so?
Tapscott
Well, the other musicians in the community, they would say, "Man, that wild band over there on the east side- Those cats that play that outside music," they called us. "All that race music and that weird stuff they'd be playing." They'd say, "Here come those guys." Because we had built up by now from eight to about eighteen cats, regular cats you'd see all the time, men and women. The girls would be bringing their children with them, babysitting. Linda, being the first lady of UGMA, she would provide for the children and the women and the mothers, so they'd have a room where they could sit with their babies while they were in here doing their dance or singing or rehearsing something.
Isoardi
When did you start calling yourself UGMA?
Tapscott
It was first UGMA because we were the Underground Musicians Association. We just separated ourselves. "We're the underground musicians." "Y'all are playing that underground music." That's what they called it. "You're working that underground shit over there."
Isoardi
So you figured, "What the hell. That's what we'll call ourselves." [laughter]
Tapscott
"Underground musicians." But going through those kinds of things, we had a lot of problems, of course. A lot of the cats and their problems, their personal problems, you know, with the police- We had a lot of problems with the police and activities because of our-
Isoardi
Why?
Tapscott
Because we'd be out on the street a lot.
Isoardi
You mean performing?
Tapscott
Performing.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
Taking our music out to the people.
Isoardi
When did you start doing that? When do you go from just rehearsing to going out and performing? How long did that take?
Tapscott
Well, after a while- Let's say about a year or so, because people got used to the music being on this particular street at the time. We're talking about the first UGMA house, which was on Seventy-fifth [Street] and Central Avenue. This was Linda Hill's home. So we started playing, and the neighborhood started accepting this group. You know, at first it was "Uh!" But after a while they said, "Oh, well-" Like I think I mentioned before, they'd say, "Where is my band? How come the music isn't playing?" So we started playing in South Park. That was outside first. That park over on Fifty-first [Street] and Avalon [Boulevard].
Isoardi
Why did you pick that place?
Tapscott
Because it was beautiful. It already had a stage and the whole setup. Everything was there. It was just set up beautifully at the time, trees, and people would just be laying around, and families, a lot of families were in there all the time. So we'd go play, man.
Isoardi
Did you get a permit or anything? You'd just show up?
Tapscott
No permit. We showed up.
Isoardi
Just went out there, got up on the bandstand, and played?
Tapscott
People accepted us. Even the guy who maybe would be the foreman of the park, he would go in, open the door, and assist us in any kind of way he could. Like they let us have some sound if we wanted some, whatever little old sound they might have had. A little old lightweight piano they might have had locked up, they'd bring it out, and they'd start tuning it after they knew we were coming. So they started accepting the fact that, "Hey, we might have some music over here on this weekend." So we started playing over at South Park every weekend.
Isoardi
Every weekend?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
After we moved from Linda's place, we moved over to Fifty-first Street and Figueroa [Street] now, to an artist's house. He [Brother Percy] let us have his house, a big giant house, to rehearse in. By this time, Steve, the band has grown to thirty people.
Isoardi
Thirty people?
Tapscott
That's right.
Isoardi
This is about a year or two years from its beginning?
Tapscott
I'd say about two years. Thirty people.
Isoardi
Jeez. That's a big band.
Tapscott
Big band.
Isoardi
Are you simply doubling on the parts? You're not writing-
Tapscott
We were writing. Every time a new person would come to the band I'd add them to the music-
Isoardi
You'd write in another part?
Tapscott
Write another part, man. And then it got to the point where I could give it to Linda, I could give it to Guido or Jimmie or someone else to do it. You know what I'm saying? They could write it now.
Isoardi
So their skills were just improving all the time. They were starting to write and arrange.
Tapscott
They were starting to write their own charts and things of that nature and then passing it on to some other young person. Like a lot of the guys would take on jobs at the schools around the city. A lot of them might have gone to school to become teachers in public school. Then they didn't like it, so they would become substitutes, and they would bring the music in when they'd sub at these places. They would be teaching about guys that made the music up who used to live in the community, giving them little history classes. We'd sneak it in. We'd meet people in school, because we knew it was important to get into the community, deep, real deep. We wanted to have them as our launching pad. We weren't making money, but we had a whole bunch of people who- We could go to any house and get served, you know, or get a ride on the street, "Hello, Horace," that kind of- Small things, you know.
Isoardi
So you're starting to make an impact.
Tapscott
Yeah, we started making an impact.
Isoardi
You mentioned the cops started harassing you when you- Does that happen right away?
Tapscott
No, not right away, because at first there weren't any people coming around while we were playing, just the people at that time at the park. And then after a while they started coming. They started looking forward to it. So naturally the policement came around to see what was going on. They didn't ask for any permits yet. Then one time they came around and they started asking for permits. And we'd just leave. We had nothing to deal with. We didn't deal with them because we had other places to go. It wasn't that they were going to get to us mentally. And a lot of the guys would get busted for parking tickets or a warrant, and they'd come get them. We'd go get them out if we could or wait until they'd come out, and they'd come right on back. I mean, they didn't kill their spirit, because they had something to come out to. And the police were- Well, they were doing it not just to the band itself. It was just the whole neighborhood that they'd ride through and just try to mess over. And we didn't like that, so we would be having-By this time we had poets now, young poets coming on. They started making these poems up about the community and what's going on in the community, police arrests and that kind of thing. This was long before these groups started recording these kinds of things.
Isoardi
Who were some of the poets? Do you remember?
Tapscott
Ojenke [Saxon] and the guy who wrote the book for Miles Davis.
Isoardi
Quincy Troupe.
Tapscott
Quincy Troupe. We had Eric Priestley. These Watts Prophets. Mostly the Watts Prophets at the time-
Isoardi
Who were the Watts Prophet?
Tapscott
That was Anthony Hamilton, Richard Dedeaux, and Otis [O'Solomon Smith]. And Dee Dee, the singer, Dee Dee-what's her name?-Dee Dee McNeil. They were all the Watts Prophets at the time.
Isoardi
So they were a group of writers who had come together and formed an organization called the Watts Prophets.
Tapscott
Yeah, from what's his name, the writer coming down to Watts, Budd Schulberg.
Isoardi
Oh, Schulberg. Oh, I see. He was working with them.
Tapscott
He was doing the [Watts] Writers Workshop there. The Watts Prophets came out of there.
Isoardi
Okay. And this is before '65, then, well before '65.
Tapscott
Well before that. And the Elaine Browns and Huey Newtons and [Maulana Ron] Karengas and all these people, and the [Black] Muslims. This was all before '65. We had a program out in Watts at the Watts Happening Coffee House on 103rd Street. We were feeding breakfast in the morning to families around and giving concerts. Elaine would be part of it, she would be singing. Stanley Crouch would be part of it, he'd be talking. He would get up and do his oratorical thing. All this was done for the children in Watts at that time. We'd just give our own things. Nobody was making any money then that we knew of, because everything we got, we passed out, was just given to us by different folks because of our function in the community. We're talking about 1963 now. By that time we had fully gotten out, gravitated in our community by now. We were so fully into the community that you could drive your car on 103rd and leave your window down and maybe your keys and all your stuff in your car and walk away from it and come back, because the youngsters out there knew whose car it was. It belongs to one of the band. That kind of thing.
Isoardi
Jeez, this is a real cultural flowering that's happening now compared to what was before, right?
Tapscott
Compared to that, yeah.
Isoardi
Or at least ever since maybe Central's heyday.
Tapscott
Central's heyday- There's a gap in between.
Isoardi
And then this thing starts emerging. How do you explain it?
Tapscott
It was a hunger, I would think. Because myself, I knew there were better things. I knew there was something better to do that had to do with me and mine, and I said, "Why don't I think about that?" There were other people that had those same things in mind.
Isoardi
Writers, poets, the whole-
Tapscott
Dancers, the whole bit. So we said, "Why don't we pull this together and put on a function and show how we feel and what we want to show: where we've been, where we are, and where we want to go" kind of attitude. And it involves a multimedia kind of scene with the poets and dancers, writers and actors, as well as the musicians. We would all work there all the time. Everybody was an artist out there. The young folks that would be going to grammer school were coming through. When they'd come out of school they'd come right to the coffeehouse. And their parents would come and pick them up from there, because they knew when they left the school they were going over into that section.
Isoardi
So this was more than just a coffeehouse.
Tapscott
It was more than that, yeah. That whole area- The coffeehouse was the biggest spot there, with the Arkestra rehearsing down the street, up the street it was the Mafundi [Institute]. We dug the ground for the Mafundi Institute. We helped put up all these things in the community so that they would happen. So different municipalities started recognizing what was happening with the people out there.
Isoardi
Who was behind the coffeehouse? How did it start?
Tapscott
It was an old furniture store. A cat- What was his name? He used to have a big cigar in his mouth. He was a big furniture salesman around here. A Jewish cat. I can't remember his name. He just gave it up, evidently, on 103rd. And we'd come out there, and there was this whole big old auditorium here that was clean. They had a stage that had been built by some of the guys that were into carpentry around in the area, you know, volunteers.
Isoardi
This guy just abandoned it? He gave it to the community or something?
Tapscott
Evidently. He just gave it to the community. He kept his picture on top of it with a cigar hanging out of his mouth. [laughter] But he just gave it. We never saw him. We knew he was still around town in other places, but-And from there, it was that 103rd spot from Central all the way to Long Beach [Boulevard], you know. They had something going on there that had to do with the function of the neighborhood. So naturally, by being out there every day- We were out there every day, all day. This is before what they have out there, you know, when they had the Watts Towers area. The towers were just there. And the people living around there then, nobody even thought about it except for the ones who grew up helping the old man [Simon Rodia] build the towers. But, I mean, there was no office there. They didn't have any of that they have going now. And everything that we were doing, remember, we weren't getting any money for it. There were no grants for all those kinds of things, because they weren't hip to those kinds of functions going on. A plan came out of those kinds of functions that happened in south L.A. to make grants and to have it correspond to giving moneys to people who were working in the community. The first people who did it didn't get any, of course; they had to make a statement. Some of the people who were in the program, some of the young people in the program that went up and graduated went on and went on and started seeing that grants started coming to their community, because they remember what happened at the time and how much it embellished their schooling that they were getting at the time, culturally speaking.
Isoardi
So this was a big performance area, this coffeehouse, and it's sort of a center, then. It becomes pretty quickly the cultural center of the area.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was. It was.
Isoardi
And you guys are playing there sometime and all sorts of other things are going on.
Tapscott
Yes.
Isoardi
And kids are coming there. The kids are being fed, families?
Tapscott
Yeah, families.
Isoardi
For a variety of things?
Tapscott
For a variety of things. They would be coming for a lot of counseling. All of a sudden we started getting educators and intellectuals, black ones, that wanted to come down here and talk to and feed the children. That's what they did, come down and psych them out and talk to the cats. It was supposed to have been the tough guys going bad, you know. It made everybody a part of the thing. Nobody was left out. Everybody felt like they were a part of it. You got some wheelchair people and people that were so-called mentally ill. They knew enough to know what was happening; they felt enough. Because they'd been treated kind of differently. They weren't expecting to be treated this way. And there were so many things happening, you might walk down the street and you might see somebody dancing or singing or playing, and here comes a youngster-I'll tell you the reason why I enjoyed it so much was because I got a piece of the action while I was there. I was able to smell the roses while I was alive. These kids, man, were outside, going down the street, dancing to "The Dark Tree." I mean, just singing the rhythm and dancing.
Isoardi
So you guys would be in there, you'd be practicing, you'd be playing "The Dark Tree"-
Tapscott
And so much for so long, I guess. So when you're on your way home, or somebody's walking down the street, and you hear [snaps rhythm to bass line of "The Dark Tree"], and they're doing their little old steps, now, that really got me, you know. It worked. Because they didn't know what they were doing; they were doing it. You know what I'm saying? They were going on. [sings "Dark Tree" rhythm]
Isoardi
So they didn't have to think. They just heard the music, they felt it, and it was part of them.
Tapscott
Yeah. They were walking home, and these cats were doing that. And I said- See, I'd point to the cat, and "It works." This type of brainwashing is what I'm talking about. This is what we have to do constantly, all the time. And we call ourselves supplying that kind of knowledge and information in the community that they had never seen, because there were people who had a lot to say and didn't have anyplace to say it where they would be listening to it and so on. That's why consequently they were coming in. A lot of good things happened out of there, as well as all the horrible things you hear about. A lot of great people came out of there that are doing things now today in different parts of the world. It proved a point to me: when you come together in your community, you can go anywhere in the world and do anything, and everybody will accept it, because they understand this. They understand togetherness and harmony.
Isoardi
I think it also empowers people.
Tapscott
It does.
Isoardi
People who think they can't do anything or don't have any power, once they get together, discover themselves, also.
Tapscott
Yeah, he starts shaking his shoulders, "Oh, yeah, I can do this." You know, that kind of attitude. And he can do this. We did a lot of that, like going to the prisons. We'd go to the prisons; they'd let us in there. Sometimes they'd let us in, and the guys would come out. Or if they were artists of some sort, or even if they were writers, whatever they did, they'd come to 103rd, where we were, and they'd get into whatever it was that they wanted to get into. Because they got there through the Ark, and they always loved the Ark because of that. "The Ark allowed me to be introduced to my wife. The Ark allowed me to do something with my kids," this and that, that kind of thing. That's how they'd hook up with the Arkestra. And that's fine, because some of them might not remember the music-and there are some that do-but they do remember being there and being a part of it and raising their children around it. And that to me made more sense than just making the records, you know what I'm saying, Steve? Being able to put your hands on somebody.Like I said, I was raised simple in segregation. I'm used to speaking to everybody, "Hello." I'm used to communicating and not being afraid or to feel strange walking down my street in my community. That's because people are together, you know. That to me is real important, and all this other thing comes next, secondary to all of this. And we didn't have this. We still don't have it to the degree that one would think it should be. But we didn't have it at all during those times. People were afraid, afraid to do this, and bugged because a lot of them weren't working. Then they were having babies, and all kinds of stuff was happening. Everything was happening down South, all over the country. The world was changing totally. And in our little area it was changing, too.So we had to make adjustments, make new arrangements, how to deal with it. All of this was a part of the whole idea of us being in the community, playing and practicing. All of this had something to do with that. I mean, we just couldn't live and play and say, "Everything is okay, and if the police come over here and harass us, we'll take care of them by coming together and demanding this and demanding black policemen." All these kinds of things were going on, you dig, all at once, all at once, all over, like I said, not just in our little area but all over the country. We were always up on what was going on in the world that had to do with not just black people but with any person that was being subjected to nothing less than being a work hog. I mean, not even looked upon for what you mean, what your point is for being here on earth. I mean, people who were looked upon as people who didn't have anything to do on this earth but to service other people. We had to bring a lot of things to light, because at first a lot of our listeners and people were saying, "Well, you guys are talking that hate talk." And I told them, "I never talk hate. We're not talking hate. We're talking about love of yourself. We ain't talking about hate." This didn't have to do with anybody else, at this point in time. "This has to do with you loving who you are. And how you do that is to be involved in what you do, in what you're a part of. You're involved in it, you have to be a part of it."We would actually- Like when I told you we'd go out on the streets, you know, in just a flatbed truck. Some guy let us use a truck. You'd jump on the back of it. Drums, piano, guys would help us, and we'd drive through different communities in the [street numbers in the] eighties and the nineties and hundreds and thirties on a weekend day and stop on a corner where they're at. [sings lively, syncopated rhythmic phrase]
Isoardi
Just whatever and start playing.
Tapscott
And they'd be dancing out there, "Yeah!" And then we'd drive on. [laughter] You know, that kind of stuff. It was nice, because it was impromptu, and everything was-
Isoardi
Talk about free music!
Tapscott
Yeah, it was free. And a lot of old pictures were taken. A lot of the guys around here still alive got a lot of pictures of those old days, and we're always talking about-
Isoardi
Oh, jeez, you've got to put them together.
Tapscott
We're talking about bringing them- "I'll bring them to you, Horace," but, you know, they might live in- Somewhere.
Isoardi
Oh, man. Do your book and fill it with pictures of these. Oh, that would be great. What a contribution.
Tapscott
Yeah. There are some great pictures, too.
Isoardi
Oh, that's a story that deserves to be told and seen and the photos seen.
Tapscott
And cats like Rahsaan Roland Kirk, he was eating it up. He'd run down here to be a part of this, man.
Isoardi
No kidding. Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. You know, a lot of cats that were professional cats, they got the word about it, they got to hearing about it, and they'd come here. They said, "I want to do something, man. What can I do?" You know, "What's my part?" That kind of attitude. And guys would see him and accept him like one of the cats, you dig, and he loved that. You know, all the ones that would come through. I guess when people see people together and they like it, they said, "Hey, what are they doing over there? Maybe I can be a part of this." That's the idea we had.And little small things were very important to us, little minute things that you could hardly see, you know, the subtleties. I was always bringing them out to the front, bringing them out. We had those kinds of cats in the band. Anything that's been hidden for a long time, they'd just bring it out. Sometimes it was embarrassing to some people, but it was done, you know. People had to deal with it. And a lot of people said, "Well, I didn't realize that what you were saying was righteous until I went out and so-and-so happened," because at the time they were afraid to listen to this kind of talk.They said, "You cats, are you guys Muslims [Nation of Islam]?""Oh, no, we're not Muslims.""Are you Black Panthers [Black Panther Party]?""No, we're not.""Are you US [Organization] people?""No.""Well, what are you?"We said, "We're black Americans." [laughter] "And we want to live in the American way." You dig?

1.14. Tape Number: VII, Side TwoJune 12, 1993

Tapscott
Also during those times, man, we'd get a lot of opportunities to go different places that we hadn't been before, like going to different neighborhoods, being invited. We started being invited. Even though a lot of it was so-called communists and all of those people, you know, the white groups that were against the government and all that kind of stuff, they would hire us for this and that. They would pay us, and that's how we got paid when we played, through those groups. Like we played for different rallies.
Isoardi
Who did you play for? Do you remember any of the organizations?
Tapscott
No. You know how their names were, they were called this and that. I remember doing- We did the Angela [Y.] Davis thing for her freedom. For a long time we were doing Geronimo Pratt's thing, and he's still in there. All these kinds of functions that had to do with so-called political prisoners, you dig? If we knew them, and they knew why they were in the jail, we would play for them. It didn't matter what group they came from. They were black, and we had to get them out, and we knew what the deal was. We knew that [J. Edgar] Hoover had an attack on the black community.
Isoardi
Oh, yeah, it was an all-out offensive.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was all-out. I'd be followed home-
Isoardi
It didn't matter how many people they had to kill, he was going to break it up.
Tapscott
He was going to break it up, man. I'd be followed to my house, be watched. And I was just a bandleader.
Isoardi
When did that start happening?
Tapscott
That started to happen-
Isoardi
Pretty early on?
Tapscott
It was early on, during '63 and on from there. Because here we are providing for our own kind in this area. And what does that mean? And then here you come with these white people who would come here, these people who had been on the out, "red" lists, you know, they'd come down there. How come they can come down there and function so well? That kind of attitude. And naturally the spies wouldn't be white, they'd be black. Naturally. The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] spies, you know. Like a lot of them- We busted a couple of them.
Isoardi
No kidding. How did you find them? How did you find out that they were spies?
Tapscott
Just different things would go down.
Isoardi
A few little things that would just lock it in?
Tapscott
They were small things, man, again. The real small things would put it together, and the cats would pass the word on them. We wouldn't do anything to them; somebody else would, but we wouldn't. We were just ignoring [them].
Isoardi
Were these people who were in the Arkestra? Or just people in the community that you knew of?
Tapscott
Some tried to get in the Arkestra.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
That's right. They tried to get in the whole UGMA thing, period. That's how they started getting busted. You know how much to expect from a certain kind of person. After a while, you've been around some personalities, you know where it is.
Isoardi
You know whether or not they really belong there.
Tapscott
You can tell by their actions regardless of how much they hide it. There's something they're going to do that's going to push them out as different from the rest of us. So we had a lot of that going on.
Isoardi
Maybe this is getting ahead a bit, but I know there were stories-I don't know if it's been proven or not-that maybe Karenga and his organization at one point were working with the FBI against the Panthers.
Tapscott
Hey, naturally they put that out. It was the Panthers against them. And then it was the Muslims that were doing it against the so-and-sos.
Isoardi
And probably Hoover stirred it all up.
Tapscott
We knew what was happening then, because these cats were actually shooting at each other. But they did stop when the music began, and they did listen. We saved a lot of lives, Steve. At least I can say pretty much openly that we did, because the music itself cooled the cat out.
Isoardi
Were you guys consciously trying to combat that? To get people to stop shooting at each other?
Tapscott
Yeah, yeah. We had guys in our choir, a couple of Panthers in that choir, and one that got killed, too, in a shoot-out at UCLA.
Isoardi
Oh, one of those two guys. Gee, that's the one that supposedly Karenga was behind, wasn't it?
Tapscott
Yeah, that's what we're talking about, see? And at the time they were in the band, all these cats were in there together. But, see, it wasn't- But it was still black cats shooting each other. That was the only point that was supposed to have been made, now. We knew that if that was happening, Hoover was behind it. Now, you can get a guy to shoot Malcolm X, you can get a guy to shoot anybody. You can buy-
Isoardi
There's somebody somewhere that's got a price.
Tapscott
Yeah. So you can't say, "Oh, wow, why did he do it? He belonged to so-and-so." Now, this cat might not have belonged to either group. He could have been an FBI agent.
Isoardi
He could have been a plant.
Tapscott
He could have been, because he has never been caught. And the guys started leaving town real quick from different organizations, not just from Karenga or the Panthers or the Muslims. They were just leaving. Different so-called professors and cats, you know. Hey, man, it was so wrapped up tight that you couldn't- I would talk to my wife [Cecilia Payne Tapscott] about it, and she couldn't comprehend what I was talking about. "What are you talking about? This can't be happening here, man." And it did happen.It seemed that in some kind of way that we, the Ark, myself, were always in the middle of it. The night that the police made the attack on the Muslim mosque, where they came- I lived down the street from the mosque at the time. It was on Fifty-sixth [Street] and Broadway. I was coming home from a job at two o'clock in the morning, and I saw them. And they won't shoot at me because I'm going home, man. I'm a black cat, and I'm going home from my job, and they had a shoot-out with the Muslims. There's a guy today, a brother-I can't think of his name-but he's in a wheelchair today. It was that night that he got shot in the back by the police. And he's right down the street here about three blocks, in the wheelchair.
Isoardi
What year was that?
Tapscott
Nineteen sixty four or five, just- It was before the insurrection [Watts riots], just about a year. Maybe '64 when he got shot up like that. And being a part of that, man, and seeing all of this, Steve, and then having to put stuff together in your head so you can stay focused at what you're talking about doing here- Because every point is being destroyed here by society, and your music is about society, so, I mean, naturally you've got to be a part of it. "So why don't you stop all this business, man, and go to New York or somewhere and make a record, you dig?" I had forgotten all of that happened. That had left my mind. I had no idea that that was happening. I had been to New York. I lived there for two years, remember. And now I had put it behind me. Records and all that, I didn't even think about it.
Isoardi
Almost like another world, I guess, after a couple of years with the Ark.
Tapscott
It was, man, because we were busy. I mean, there was always something going on every morning you'd wake up. I'd wake up every morning, going to the houses, waking up the brothers for rehearsal. You know, I used to have a lot of problems with wives. [laughter]
Isoardi
[laughter] Yeah, I'll bet. I'll bet.
Tapscott
Coming to get their old man early in the morning and that kind of stuff.But it was a point, and the point was made to a point where a lot of us got at another level of how to handle the kind of situation that society was throwing out on us-not just racialism, but just the regular business of handling this society, learning how to live in it, realizing that black men were an endangered species in the early sixties. From then on we started realizing that they were an endangered species.
Isoardi
Always in society's crosshairs.
Tapscott
That's right. Always. And the more you get rid of them, the less you have to worry about this world becoming multicolored. Because as long as the teenagers are killing each other, it's cool, the black ones. Because I've never known any eleven-year-old black kid knowing how to use a firearm, and I have never known them to get them so easy. I don't make them. We don't make them. So where are they coming from? Those kinds of things, man, those are still heavy-duty things in my head for the last two decades. Years ago I did a composition called "The Lost Generation of the Nile" and it happened, man. Twenty-two decades of lost black boys never got to get to the age of twelve or thirteen. For sure not sixteen. That's terrible, man. I cannot sleep well. How can you just walk the streets and think everything is all right knowing that's happening and knowing that the ones that are here are dead anyway, because they're made sure that they don't go any farther [claps hands] than here. And that's sickening, man, to me. To me it's really sickening, because I just can't- You can't walk down the street here and have one of these youngsters speak to you. They act like you're invisible. What is that? "Hey, how are you doing, son?" "Uh?" Because they've been raised- They've come up in the society now where they have to- bang!-and they'll never get out of the neighborhood. "Why are you looking forward to dying? What is that about? Why are you looking forward to saying, `Hey, I'm not going to live to get to fourteen.'"
Isoardi
That's like George Jackson's prison letters [Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson]. He said that in one of his letters. He says that if you're a black kid in America, you don't expect to live much beyond eighteen.
Tapscott
That's right, you didn't. In those days it was eighteen. Now it's fifteen. It's even lower now, man. It's worse than it's ever been, Steve. It's worse than it's ever been. I mean, after all of this went down, here are youngsters shooting at each other because "You're on my turf," and they don't even own nothing. And that's the sick part about it. You don't have a building you can call your own, you don't have any land you can call your own, and you're going to shoot this other person because- Because that's as far as they've gotten, and that's my fault. You think, "I'm still here." You dig, "I'm still here, and I'm black," and, you know, guys in my age bracket. And it's my son's fault now. And it's going to be their son's fault if nothing is done about it. It's terrible, man, to just be able to think of that, that these youngsters are gearing this whole society by their actions. They're running the society. They run people off the street. People don't want to go anywhere. What is that?
Isoardi
I remember a couple of years ago I read a book called Man-Child in the Promised Land by Claude Brown. A great book. I guess he wrote that about growing up in Harlem in the late forties, early fifties. He went back a few years ago to his old neighborhood, and then he wrote an article like "Return to the Promised Land," or something like that, in the New York Times. Fascinating article. I mean, he said he couldn't believe it. It actually scared him. He said when he was a kid you had some gangs and you got in some fights and some scraps, and that was about it. He said he couldn't get over the fact that to get in a gang now you had to kill somebody.
Tapscott
Yeah. Isn't that out? Just anybody.
Isoardi
It's random. It doesn't matter who. But that's what you had to do to get in, just to get entrance into a gang. He said the change was so dramatic, and he said that-
Tapscott
It's horrible, man, and it's been put upon. It's not just something that just happened; it's been put upon.
Isoardi
Oh, these things never just happen.
Tapscott
It didn't just happen. And that's the part I hate.
Isoardi
Somewhere there's an arsenal that got in.
Tapscott
Yeah. How did it get in? The dope first, now the guns. And you can see that all these little small things that- If you notice down the street, you've got these billboard posters. Years ago they'd all be white, with the cigarettes, you dig? When they got down on cigarettes, the black cats started getting the gigs. [laughter] Then that got bad, they had to put the animals up there. But first they couldn't get the gigs. I mean, those subtleties, they're still there.And these young cats, we'd be running around here and looking at them, and they'd be tagging and calling themselves writing in their particular language, whatever it means. If it meant something, Steve, if it had some meaning to do with coming together, it would be all right, but it doesn't have any meaning. I mean, if you walk the street here during the day, and, say, you grew up in this neighborhood, you were a kid and you grew up, you'd be sick by the time you'd come home, because you'd be sick at what you'd see-sick of what you don't see and sick of what you do see. So what do you do about this? So you do something. At least you try something. If you can't do anything, throw a bomb and blow it all over. Just get rid of the whole thing, man. Start from-
Isoardi
From scratch.
Tapscott
-scratch. Just blow it all up, explode it, because the tentacles just reached out anywhere. Cats are having babies every day, and they're coming out and doing the same thing. Little kids, "Man, what's up?" So they can say hello. That's cool, but, I mean, there's more to it than that. It's an ongoing thing to do in the community. You have to stay on it. You just can't call yourself, do your little old business, and split. You've got to be here, man. Even though it's rough and nasty, you've still got to be here, because even if you live somewhere else, you're going to know about this. If I lived in the mountains somewhere and I wanted to come to the city sometime I couldn't come because, "Hey, I'm scared. That's why I left."I mean, I'm not going to be content because I got something, you know, because I know how I got in and I know why I got in or what have you. I'm more content if I know our young kids are giving a better shot at living-not just at education, just a better shot at living, learning to live, having an open mind to [the fact that] there are other things going on in the world other than in their little old block they're living in. And in every city I go to that I might have a performance in, it's always the same. I mean, every city I went to, it's the same thing, man. People are saying the same thing like they're [saying] living in Los Angeles. In San Francisco, in Houston, in New York, and in Miami, they're saying the same thing about- What is this? So you know it's an ongoing plan. It's part of a master plan that has gone awry now. Even though it's gone awry, it's still taking a lot of toll on a lot of people, man, and a lot of families. Every one of these families here has been hurt by something that's going on in the society that had to do with their children, every one of us. So to run away or to move away isn't the answer for me, because wherever I go I take it with me. If I'm right here in it, at least I can say, "I don't like this, but now maybe I can go and help this guy scratch this tag off his wall." Or the side of the church.
Isoardi
Yeah. You can always do something.
Tapscott
Yeah, do something, you know. Because these cats, the only thing they're going to recognize is stamina. If you're going to be here and they keep seeing you, sooner or later they're going to approach you. They're going to hit on you sooner or later. I don't care how long it takes; they'll see if it works. They'll come and say, "O.G. [older guy], let me-" That's what they call us in the neighborhood, O.G.s, you dig? The older guys in the neighborhood there. The young call us O.G. "Hey, O.G., what's happening?" [laughter]
Isoardi
It also means old gangster. [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah. Whatever. All of that.
Isoardi
[laughter] It's got a couple of meanings.
Tapscott
If you stay around long enough, that's what they'll do, man. But it's not like I have the answers to it. All I have for myself is I think this will be the best way for me to deal with it until they throw the dirt on me, because otherwise there's no point in being here. You know what I'm saying? I gave a lot, I've added a lot to this idea. I've put a lot of kids and seeds out there, man, and I just can't abandon that just because, poof! You've got it. Like William Marshall used to say, "I did it. Make it on your own. I did." And that kind of thing. They can't make it on their own if you're not there to be a part of their own, you dig?
Isoardi
You know, when I was in the left, we used to say that if you weren't part of the movement trying to change the world, you were just living a biological existence. You weren't really living fully.
Tapscott
No. "What did you do, Daddy, in the world?" I mean, you were born and you died, so what happened in between?
Isoardi
Exactly. What did you try and do to change things? Truly. So by around '62, '63, then, you've got a band that's grown to- The Arkestra has grown to thirty people.
Tapscott
Thirty people.
Isoardi
You're out on-what?-Fifty-first? You've got another house out there.
Tapscott
Fifty-sixth and Figueroa [Street].
Isoardi
Fifty-sixth and Figueroa. You've got a house there that you got through an artist for the living and the rehearsal, and you're starting to make an impact. You've been playing in the park, you're playing on backs of trucks, you're playing in the community all over. A lot of people are writing, a lot of people are playing. Then what happened?
Tapscott
And then all of a sudden, you know, there will always be that group that wants to destroy something that's making it, that's doing well. I mean, that was from the inside.
Isoardi
You're starting to get some internal problems?
Tapscott
Yeah, you're getting some of this kind of stuff.
Isoardi
It always does.
Tapscott
Always. And like with the mixing of the men and the women, you dig, that kind of-
Isoardi
It's just a question of how you handle it. So what kind of problems were you guys facing?
Tapscott
Well, that part was like some of the cats- Well, first of all, we would always have these discussions about when we were working with people, singers and dancers- Most of them would be female, and all the females were great looking, you know what I'm saying?
Isoardi
Yeah. Were there any females playing in the Arkestra, instruments?
Tapscott
Yeah, a couple. We had a trombone player lady, and we had a trumpet player lady, and of course flute.
Isoardi
Who were they? Do you remember their names?
Tapscott
Trombone was a lady. I can't remember her name nor the trumpet player, but the flute player, Adele Sebastian. She died while she was with the group. We had a couple of female drummers, a couple of female bass players. Yeah, we had them.
Isoardi
You have Linda Hill on piano?
Tapscott
Linda was on the piano. And then we had the choir, of course. We had assembled a choir, an UGMA choir together, that had mostly women.
Isoardi
When did that happen?
Tapscott
It was during the same years, after '64 and during '65, we-
Isoardi
You put a choir together.
Tapscott
We had the choir, and we did some things. Also those internal problems had to do with a lot of jealousies in a lot of cases, you know. Like you might lay up with this lady, and if she's in the band, so okay, you laid up, and now you're in the concert and some other lady is hitting on you. So we-
Isoardi
A lot of interpersonal-
Tapscott
Yeah. At the time I said, "Look here, man, we've got a group here and the only way this group will be destroyed is by all this tension inside. Now, if you're going to lay up with this lady-or lady, you're going to lay up with this guy-you all go on and do that and get it over with. Don't expect him to be or she to be this way. Don't get strung out where you're going to mess up our group or else we'll get rid of you. If you're going to be a hassle, then you can't come anymore. You're either here to help or not. Whatever else you do, don't let it bother with the group." We had those kinds of problems. And we had some chicks who'd come to me and say, "I'm going to break this band up." I mean, this doesn't have anything to do with anything else but their thing, you know.
Isoardi
And what they think of themselves. [laughter]
Tapscott
They would try that, and we'd have to chastise them. Then they were chastised and talking about them like a dog and- You know, "You're trying to destroy me, so you ain't this and that." Then they'd cry and they'd come back, and everything would be all right. But those kinds of things.
Isoardi
You had to work through those.
Tapscott
Yeah, you had to work through those. And sometimes you would have to split up a rehearsal because somebody's crying because there isn't anybody paying them more attention about what happened. I mean, those kinds of things, Steve. I mean, I would go for it sometimes, you know. Sometimes you've got to go and pet them and all that stuff. But if they were contributing something and they were a very important person, you did mind. They weren't just there to destroy the band. They just got turned to the wrong way. That's what happened for a moment. And those kinds of things became an understanding, and some people put their grief into writing. I'd say, "Okay, why don't you just write a song or why don't you write a poem about it, or do a choreography about how you feel?" "Okay." And they got it off. Every time you'd hear the poem, you'd know who it was for. [laughter] You're doing that kind of thing. Then people got more relaxed with each other. They became family type, you know.
Isoardi
Closer, I would think. If you go through things like that, you get closer.
Tapscott
Yeah, you get much closer then. And that's when we really started flourishing. During those times, we started rehearsing, man- The music started coming in. The guys had learned to write, and guys were trying different things, different kinds of ways of writing music, and we would be rehearsing every night.
Isoardi
Jeez, how exciting.
Tapscott
It was, because we had something to go to. The cats were meeting together.
Isoardi
Plus people were doing something new all the time.
Tapscott
They were always doing something and learning something and teaching. It got to a point where it was just part of the scene. "Where is the Arkestra?" Everything was set up for rehearsal. Rehearsal was set for three days a week now. We had made a schedule now and had somebody take care of the building, all of this. And there's a clean-up afterwards, clean up the crud and everything. You know, just those little old small things. They had people at the schools in the community, the janitors, they would turn on the lights for us or open the gates for us to come in to rehearse in the music room. Guys who would be in the band worked at these schools and they would be like janitors and clean-up persons, so at nighttime they had the keys. We'd go in and utilize the music room.
Isoardi
You had a few women instrumentalists, and you had more in the choir, and singers, etc. What was the age spread within the band? Was it a kind of a mix? Or was it mostly guys in their twenties or-?
Tapscott
It was a mixed agenda. I mean, the age thing. We used to call it the Pan-Afrikan People's Arkestra, from David to David. David Bryant to David- We had a young David [Straughter] in the band.
Isoardi
And David Bryant was the oldest?
Tapscott
Yeah, and the young David was the youngest, you dig? [laughter] We'd call that from David to David. We've got pictures on that too, you dig? So it was a mixture of the age thing. We wanted it that way. It was necessary that the older cats be in the band. It was necessary in each section, because all the young cats would always turn and ask a question, that kind of thing. They'd say, "Well, how do you play this?" That kind of thing. Like we would have about five bass players all the time, and we had about four drummers all the time, and the rest were instrumentalists of different types.
Isoardi
What a sound that must have been.
Tapscott
It was. It was very nice. It was a good feeling to sit up and play a suite that you'd written about the ghetto and everybody knew what it is.So it got to a point where it became part of your function every day. You'd see a guy on the street during the day and say, "See you at rehearsal tonight." That kind of attitude. Go to the schoolhouses and, "I'd like to join your band, sir. I heard about your Arkestra. I'd like to be a part of it." Those kinds of things started happening. Cats started seeking you out, coming to join the group.
Isoardi
Now, the Arkestra is different from UGMA.
Tapscott
It was a part of it.
Isoardi
It's part of it. But UGMA has other things going.
Tapscott
UGMA is the whole building. At the time, it had a class for children in reading and writing and spelling that Linda would have them doing, the ladies of UGMA.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
They had remedial kind of classes for kids who were kind of slow, supposedly, in school. And then she'd have them doing art stuff and have them singing, learning the tunes of the band, have those classes, and I'd come in and talk to them and make them laugh and giggle and stuff like that, you dig? We'd play games with them. Some of these people grew up, Steve, actually, and stayed in the group-I mean as they were growing. And that's how the band really started stretching in the early seventies, because some of those kids from the early sixties had started expanding their thought patterns and doing things in their schools that had to do with what they were shown when they were growing up. So it was spreading out a lot.
Isoardi
Are other people coming into UGMA other than just musicians to work in these programs?
Tapscott
At that time, we had started- UGMA mostly was doing it, and then we'd have different people that would come, like actor William Marshall. He would be one of our people that would come down all the time just to help out. And Jayne Cortez was doing her thing. All these people who were there in the first place. I mean, they were already here in the community, so they were stretched out to the point where one was teaching, like Marshall was teaching how to speak and to act, if you want to get into that scene, and we had a dancing person [Queen Emanon] that was teaching you how to dance.
Isoardi
Jeez, what a school.
Tapscott
And it was not registered anyplace. It was just something that we did ourselves. And we naturally had help from the community, but the help came from the facility. We already had a facility. Then we had people offering their facilities to us. There was a man that gave us a whole print shop, an old Jamaican man, because he saw we were very serious, and he-
Isoardi
He gave you use of his facilities?
Tapscott
Use of it, and he sold it to us on time.
Isoardi
A print shop? You guys owned a print shop?
Tapscott
We had a print shop [the Shop] for a long time. My son-in-law [Michael Wilcots] just came through the door; he was running it in the early days.
Isoardi
No kidding. So I guess that brought in- You were doing regular print work for the business, right?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
So you make some money plus use it to do all your own stuff.
Tapscott
We had rehearsals at that same place. This was another UGMA house. This was on Vermont [Avenue] and Eighty-fourth Street.
Isoardi
When does this happen? When do you get the print shop?
Tapscott
It happened in the seventies, along about 1973.
Isoardi
Okay, so that's coming up. All right. We'll get back to that, get that story in.
Tapscott
And of course we had this whole church at Eighty-fifth [Street] and Holmes [Avenue] for ten years. The Reverend Edgar Edwards turned it over to us, as a matter of fact.
Isoardi
What was the name of that church?
Tapscott
Immanuel United Church of Christ. By being at that church, too, we brought about a lot of people, man. A lot of people from- When white families from the [San Fernando] Valley started coming to Eighty-fifth and Holmes, man, about our fourth year there- Now, they'd come down in the section where they said any white person was scared to go, and these cats would be bringing their families, man. They'd be bringing their families and jumping out of the car, and the kids were running around playing, and we never had any hassle. Now, the sheriff would be coming around to check it out all the time, but the music, the music itself, had gotten to the point where it just drew. It really drew. It was nice just to be able to sit in the church, and these cats are playing, and I'd look around the church- At first it used to be an all-black crowd; then all of a sudden it started just mixing black and white.
Isoardi
Jeez. When did you start playing at the church?
Tapscott
It was 1974 that we started down there. And we stayed there for nine years. After the pastor died is when we left.
Isoardi
Jeez. Tremendous impact.
Tapscott
And, you know, this church I had seen in a vision before I'd gotten there.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
Yeah. And when I got to the church, I said, "Oh, this is it, man."
Isoardi
So you recognized-
Tapscott
I didn't get excited or anything, Steve. You know how you do "Oh!" I just walked in, and I said, "Oh, yeah. That's it." I saw the whole thing. So the next thing I knew, we were in there. We hadn't planned to go in there. There weren't any plans to play in a church like that or in that kind of situation. But the pastor was so cool. He was ready. He was ready for it. And we found out a lot about him. See, I fell in love with this pastor because he was different. I mean, he was what I'd call a preacher in the community. And that's what I've always recognized preachers as being, a part of the community, helping the community. He would feed the community in the mornings. They had a lot of brown people over there, poor, going to school, and he would feed these people every morning for free. On their way there they'd find him, looking for jobs. You know, that knocked me out, man.
Isoardi
Yeah, somebody who took his calling seriously.
Tapscott
Yeah. We wanted to be a part of that. So he invited us, and we became a part of it. And he didn't have a congregation, so to speak. He was getting moneys for the church from New York from some church office back there. They were going to stop his money because he didn't have any people coming and didn't have any activities. However, he used the Arkestra. The Arkestra was bringing in people, so the money kept coming to the church. And that really made us feel good, because now we know that we're helping this church stay, and the reverend can continue.
Isoardi
Yeah, somebody who was doing good work.
Tapscott
Yeah, he can continue. And he had problems with the other preachers, Steve, in the community, down the street from the church. "What kind of music is going on at that church there?" They said, "What are you all doing down there? You're blasphemy!" All that kind of stuff. Those are the kinds of problems you had amongst your own kind.
Isoardi
You're not going to please everybody. Some people you just-
Tapscott
No. And they're not going to go for it, man. So he told them. He said, "Well, I thought that I had read out of the same Bible that you read: `And I heard the trumpets sound. Let the trumpet sound, let the sound of the music roar,'" you know. That was his back-up, you dig?But see, those kinds of opportunities, we made these things happen. That's the best part I liked. We instigated all this. We started this. We'd say, "Well, let's just do this." When we used to play, there were more people in the Ark than there were in the audience. We used to play to one or two people in the audience like they were two or three thousand. Now, that's the kind of spirit that the band had.
Isoardi
Commitment, spirit.
Tapscott
And the cats knew the music, because I would lose the music at every concert. You know, all that rehearsing, you dig, I might lose the music, so you had to rehearse. I remember one of the girls, Adele Sebastian, one of the members, said-she called me Papa-"Papa, are you going to lose the music this week?" [laughter] "Do we have to rehearse this particular tune this week? Because you might lose it." And now we started getting invited out, out of the county every now and then, you know, to come to Pomona, and then all of a sudden you got farther and farther. Different communities were inviting us to come and play in their festivals and things. That's when they started paying us a little bit of money for coming up there, just driving out there.Meanwhile, I am doing a little ghostwriting from-
Isoardi
To get by.
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
So we're talking about the mid-sixties now. That's how you're getting by.
Tapscott
Yeah, I'm getting by. Because different professional black musicians gave me a hand because they found out what I was into, and they said, "Oh, man, I can't believe this. Come on. Since you're doing that, I've got this here. Maybe you can make some money doing this." And then it started working from both sides. Cats started accepting me as a person, and they liked my work first and then my attitude, and they started getting me gigs-silently. I didn't want it any other way but silently. Kirk Stuart, the pianist, the late pianist, used to give me a lot of work for Sarah Vaughan and people he was writing for. A lot of ghostwriting work.
Isoardi
So that got you by financially.
Tapscott
Somewhat.
Isoardi
Were you taking occasional paying gigs?
Tapscott
Every now and then, because it would always be out of town that occasionally paid. Or then it might be something I might be given to present with so much money. So much money to present. That's how I was making it. When I would make the money with the Ark, that's how I would make it. Like a school, a college, would call, and they'd have a black students union and all this, and they'd raise so much money to give to the Ark to do so-and-so for them. That's how it started, when these black students unions started helping me work, because they knew about the Ark and they enjoyed my commitment.
Isoardi
And this is even '64 or so?
Tapscott
Yeah, this is still happening. Now, all this is happening in the sixties and the seventies amidst all the things that I've been telling you about.
Isoardi
Right.
Tapscott
I still had to make some money to bring here, right?
Isoardi
Sure.
Tapscott
So all this was happening during those times, the good and the bad of it. I hardly ever left town, though.
Isoardi
Sounds like you had plenty to keep you going here. It was busy.
Tapscott
It was busy, really busy here.
Isoardi
You mentioned some of the personal problems that started surfacing after a year or two. Were there any political problems and differences that surfaced in the Arkestra?
Tapscott
No. Some of the guys were going the Muslim way, they believed in the Muslim way. They were trying to change their names and become Muslim. Some of the guys were Black Panthers. Some of the guys were with the US Organization.
Isoardi
So there were plenty of political differences, but when people came together in the Arkestra-
Tapscott
There was one goal, you dig? "You see, each of you cats is talking what we believe in. So you go on about your way. We're going to sail this way on the Ark. So we want to get all of us here together." And they would come together, man. Then they started the Black Caucus.
Isoardi
Within the Arkestra?
Tapscott
Within the neighborhood, where all the black groups started meeting: the US, the Panthers, the Muslims, and the New African Army group. Yeah. And the Ark cats would be right there while they're going through their things, and they'd recognize us for who we were in the community, each one of them, each group. In each one of these groups we had somebody in our group. But we were one group. We were the Ark.
Isoardi
So the Ark touched everyone it sounds like.
Tapscott
Yeah, because we were functioning here in the neighborhood early. We got started early, and the ones who were here remember that, or don't want to, but they do remember. That's how we got out on the streets early and rallying behind different things. We had been known for that, you know. And that's how I've been known for years. That had to do with a lot of work I didn't get, too, that I could have gotten in the Hollywood studios, because of my jacket that I was wearing. I played everything that was "against the American society." The communist thing, we'd be playing there, we'd play at the Muslim thing, all the things that Hoover didn't dig, you dig? [laughter]
Isoardi
Yeah, truly, truly.
Tapscott
But, you know, actually the people that I had been affiliated with were really talking about just respect, man. "Have respect for me and mine, and I'll have respect for you and yours. Then we can have respect for each other." That's all it was about. It had nothing to do with hate and killing, but all that came in, naturally, because at the time the police were killing us off before we started doing it ourselves. We were getting killed off my them, one by one, for stealing cars. Kids stealing bicycles were getting shot in the back running away, you dig? What is that? And that got to be too much. We couldn't stay in the community any longer, so you had to do something about it. Because you didn't have any arms to do anything about it with, so there were ways of doing it and getting people to think and educating and getting the guys and ladies to think about where they were living at and try to do something better for the next group of kids that are going to come out of them, you know. Have something a little better here than what you have. You don't want them to go through the same kind of thing, so how do you do that? There are so many ways of winning that you don't have to think about only one particular way.

1.15. Tape Number: VIII, Side OneJune 12, 1993

Isoardi
Okay, Horace, what happens in the [Pan-Afrikan People's] Arkestra when the Watts rebellion occurs in '65?
Tapscott
Well, the Arkestra remains the same. It was more like the Arkestra saw it coming, saw it happening in its-
Isoardi
Is it something you guys were talking about ahead of time, saying people are getting angry?
Tapscott
That they're angry- With all the poets and the music, it was climbing down. The Watts Prophets were screaming the poetry that they had about black people and the police and dying. By that time, the tension had built up already, and it was just a matter of time before it was going to happen. That particular day, the first day that the insurrection began, we were on 103rd [Street] playing at the time. It had started down at Will Rogers Park on 103rd.
Isoardi
Down in Watts.
Tapscott
In Watts, yeah. We were out in the streets at the time playing as usual. People were dancing in the streets. And the police came down the streets. I think I told you about how they held the guns on us and things of that nature and claimed that we were one of the reasons the riots had begun, because of our music that we were playing and the kind of music that we were playing. They held their microphone up to the music so they could hear downtown and said that this is why the insurrection is beginning. Meanwhile, you get started hearing the ambulances and the police cars coming in the neighborhood. That was the first day. And they quelled it somewhat, supposedly.The next day, it began all over again, and it just spread from then. We were still playing, we were still down there playing, and they had different black so-called leaders at the time come down and speak to the kids in Watts, because that's where they had all gathered. They figured it was in south Los Angeles; that's where the meeting place was. That's the way I recognized it being, because that's the way all the people were at the time. We were doing our particular things as usual during the day, and the so-called riots did not upset our day at all, because we didn't have a piece of it at all where we were playing. All of the fires and burning had left us. We were still playing, and had come all the way downtown-I mean, going toward where I was living at the time, in the fifties. I was living on Fifty-sixth Street and-
Isoardi
So it was rolling up.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was rolling up. And I wasn't supposed to get off my street. The National Guard had us blocked.
Isoardi
Oh, that's right. You mentioned that.
Tapscott
We weren't supposed to leave, but we left anyway, and we had a curfew that we didn't make anyhow, because I didn't believe in it. Now, by this time, I'm very angry, because my kids can't go down the street, and one of the kids on the block could get shot at any time just because they're out in the street playing like they usually play, you dig? That made a lot of us fathers and mothers angry. I would take my wife [Cecilia Payne Tapscott], and we'd go where we had to go, man, because wherever we went it had something to do with the riot. And in putting ourselves in harm's way, so to speak, coming home at night- Because you were supposed to be home by eight o'clock, you know, and I'd get home at one and two. It even got to the point where they had these young white National Guards guarding your street, and every time I passed by, I used to go, "Oh, man." He didn't want to be there himself, actually. He said, "Just go ahead, man." He was supposed to hold his piece toward you and have it cocked when he talked to you, see. That's what they told him. And they killed several people, Steve, right in the neighborhood. You know, a man and a woman driving a car, man, like me and my wife.
Isoardi
Trigger-happy kid with a gun cocked, and the first thing he's going to do is fire.
Tapscott
That's the first thing he's going to do, man. He's going to fire. And that's what they did to a lot of them, because somebody was supposed to have been breaking- The police said that this car wasn't stopping when they told it to stop, so what they did was shoot both of the people in the car. You know, it was part of the function. It was okay. It was cool. And that made me very, very- It put me in a very hard place to be in thinking-wise. I had to get myself together again, because I was angry. Especially when they held the gun against my wife and were going to scare her, and she had nothing, she hadn't said anything, nothing, you know, and that pissed me off. We were ready to get shot. I was ready then, because I had to have some respect in my family. You're just going to come over here and put the gun in my car, and I live around the corner, you know. That kind of thing was really- Those small things, that's what the stuff was about. Because I knew that it was a racial thing, but that wasn't any big thing; we had already understood that. It was just the fact that this guy is going to say, "Well, you can't go home. You can't leave your house. You can't do this. You're under siege." You know what I'm saying?Every chance I had after that, I was writing that music. I did the Elaine Brown album [Seize the Time], and I put my heart into it, man, the way I really felt about it. It came out all right. I put all that into that, because I was- It really had gotten to me, man, to the point where I couldn't- I was almost like the people that we were trying to counsel, so to speak, that were really wild. We had a lot of wild brothers that just wanted to die, you know, go downtown and kill everybody.
Isoardi
People in the Ark?
Tapscott
Uh-huh. Not only in the Ark, but I mean in the rest of the population, the area that we played in.
Isoardi
All sorts of people you knew and-
Tapscott
Yeah, they were pissed off, and they were gathering together to throw firebombs. It was really out. So we said we'd best do it the best way we know how, and that was through the Ark. And the Ark got stronger and stronger. The people got strong behind it. We settled down a lot of people into thinking again instead of destroying.
Isoardi
By playing or talking or both?
Tapscott
By playing and talking both, by just being there. To the kingpins, the guys that we knew had some say-so in what's going on- People had respect for these people. Of course, we had a lot of times at one of our UGMA [Underground Musicians Association, later Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension] houses, during those times, during those sixties, during the revolution time, as it was called then, guys like [H.] Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael and different cats at that time, they were at the UGMA house.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah, making their plans while we were downstairs rehearsing. And they had all kinds of weapons. The UGMA house got busted by the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation].
Isoardi
When did that happen?
Tapscott
That was during the sixties when these guys were there. They had followed them. They didn't bust them. Some guys were smoking reefer in the yard after rehearsal, and the L.A. police would pass by and see all these black cats in these parking lots. They'd just see them there, and they would want to stop and hassle them, but they would pass by in two and three carloads, just pass them by.
Isoardi
Two or three carloads of cops?
Tapscott
Yeah, not doing anything. And I see these guys out here puffing, and I said, "Wait a minute, man. They see these cats are puffing. What's happening?" They wouldn't bust us because that wasn't what they were busting for. So the FBI came the next day. See, they weren't supposed to bother us.
Isoardi
Oh. They were just scoping it out for the FBI.
Tapscott
They were scoping it out. They weren't looking for any dope anyway. They were looking for firearms. And they came into the place and took everybody away. And the ones they didn't take away, they ran them away from the pad. The pad was empty when I- Because I had just left.
Isoardi
Which house was this?
Tapscott
This was the Fifty-sixth and Figueroa [Street] house, yeah. I had just left and gone home to my dinner-it was Fifty-sixth and Avalon [Boulevard]-and come back, and all that was over. They told me what had happened. They didn't find any weapons or-
Isoardi
Nothing.
Tapscott
They didn't find anything; they just harassed us. That same evening, we came back and rehearsed like nothing ever happened. The police came through again, just rolling through. We were just rehearsing and doing the same things we were doing. And because we knew now that it was, as a standoff, that this- We were targeted now, you know. This wasn't just random. We were targeted at this point. And we stayed that way for a long time. Like I said, I had a tail everywhere I went. And I'd go out late at night, about ten, I'd leave my house on Fifty-sixth, Steve, and look in the rearview mirror, here comes the car.
Isoardi
Plainclothes.
Tapscott
Uh-huh. And I'd just drive to where I was going, and then I wouldn't see them anymore. But I'd get back home- They wouldn't be there every day, but they'd be there.
Isoardi
Just to remind you.
Tapscott
Yeah, just to remind me. They can never catch me doing anything, you know. And they weren't actually- They wanted to know- That was during that [J. Edgar] Hoover thing. That was when they really had the attack on us. Anybody that had anything to do with any particular people that they knew about that they called being rebellious, they ran a check on them. However, during those times, even though all this pressure was on us, it seemed to have inspired the guys in the Arkestra. They wanted to write more. They wrote about it. They wrote about several different streets that different killings happened on. Title their songs "Fifty so-and-so and so-and-so Street."
Isoardi
So the rebellion has the impact, then, of really even galvanizing and inspiring the Arkestra more than before.
Tapscott
More than before, because of the fact that rebellion showed that people were listening and people were tired of racism and people were tired of just any kind of bigotry, all kinds of things.
Isoardi
They could really be moved to action.
Tapscott
Now they're ready. What can we do is the question now. How can we do it? All kinds of things started happening right after that. All kinds of classes came about. All kinds of money started coming down.
Isoardi
Really? What kind of classes? And where was the money coming from?
Tapscott
The money was coming from the War on Poverty evidently or something.
Isoardi
Oh, the government started pouring some money in.
Tapscott
Yeah, here they come. Here they come, man. And they came. Because if you remember, during those years, '64 to '67, there were the major rebellions in the cities all over the country. Detroit.
Isoardi
Yeah, sure. Yeah, and Newark.
Tapscott
They were saying, "Wait a minute." And then when LeRoi Jones was on the hook-he changed his name [to Imamu Amiri Baraka] at that time- The FBI was on his case because he was leading all those people in Newark. Can you imagine? He was living in Newark-in the "ark"; everything had to do with the Ark. We hooked up behind all that. [laughter] So, you know, it really did encourage a lot. He wrote poems and did those plays he did, that subway play he did about a white and black person. Oh, man, it started- Things started blossoming. Even the common everyday person, black folks in the neighborhood, started asking questions-people that used to go along with everything and just say, "Okay, I guess that's the way-" They said, "Well, why?" And that was during the time Muhammad Ali said no, too, you dig?
Isoardi
That's right.
Tapscott
We rallied for that.
Isoardi
He said, "No Viet Cong ever called me a nigger."
Tapscott
That's right. We rallied for that. We were down on Fifty-sixth and Broadway when he was there. "Hell no, I won't go" kind of attitude, and we were playing behind it. So by that time, everything had come all the way up to the ceiling then. Man, everything was happening. I mean, there was so much going on rebelliouswise, Angela [Y.] Davis speaking, the [Black] Panther [Party] on the rise, and Huey [P.] Newton taking pictures of people up in Oakland, the police, and things we were trying to do down here at the same time. Stanley Crouch speaking hardcore, talking against the police and the white- Oh, man, it was happening. So we were in danger.
Isoardi
How was Stanley Crouch surviving? Was he part of the Ark?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Now, how was he getting by? Was he teaching then, also?
Tapscott
Teaching, yeah.
Isoardi
He was teaching as well.
Tapscott
He's a big voice in New York now. So all those people, all those people had something to do with what had happened here in this particular part of Southern California that I've named so far. And some of them have become famous or are known, are infamous as well. Some are dead, and some have just closed up, a lot of guys. Today they say, "Well, I don't feel like talking anymore." Because they're discouraged, man. You walk out in the streets and see- Because all the stuff that you can build doesn't mean anything. You walk out on the street and some young black kids are shooting each other. What have you done that you can't walk the street? All that kind of stuff. You can't be at your own home in peace.
Isoardi
Yeah, it's demoralizing.
Tapscott
It is. So it's not like it's almost over or over. It's nowhere near it. It's like it's starting again from the beginning. Maybe your values have to change. "What did I miss? What was it I did wrong?" kind of attitude that people that are still around have. "What can I do now? What happens now?" Either it comes that way, or either it's the bomb, man. You destroy it and start all over again. That's the only way I can see it now, the whole thing. If it's not going to straighten up, it has to come down and be replanted. If you've got that much poison in it, it has to come down, because it's been passed on from generation to generation. And each generation takes it farther. And everybody, we all have to come back to basics, but it seems to me like when the shit hits the fan and it spreads, that's when it can begin again, because by the time you get everything together, there's always going to be something that's not right."So what are you after? What are you trying to prove in this society? What kind of statement do you want to make?" I just want some respect. I want real respect though, you know, because I give real respect. That's all I'm looking for in this world, from man to man and woman to woman, man or woman, that kind of thing, respect. They say, "What are you doing this for?" Respect. That's all it comes down to. I mean, I'd like to be able to, again, before they throw the dirt on me, to walk through a neighborhood and everybody's speaking. I mean, and bars are off the windows and doors. I mean, that's really dreaming, but I'd love to see that one more time, to live in that kind of community, man. Like if my grandkids are way down the street, well, this lady across the block there is going to say, "What are you doing over here? You belong down there. Do your parents know you're here?" That kind of attitude. Because you're caring about each other. You go to the store and buy something and- Or you go to your children's school, and you might see the teacher shopping at the same place that you go to. Those kinds of things would tighten up. And that's very simple. All that's simple stuff. I mean, that goes back to my most simple times that I can remember, how people were treating each other. I grew up in that kind of setting, which made me like I am today, always ready to accept a person for who they are, and they accept me for who I am. Respect for one another. I've been asked the question, "Why are you doing all this, man?" And that's my same answer. And instill that answer, you know. I'd like to have some respect as a person, as a race, as a country, as all that.And as far as our whole country is concerned, it's not going to make it if it doesn't start taking care of itself. It's not going to make it through another millennium of its being the number one or whatever it is it's supposed to be, man, because all your troupers in here are down. You don't have anybody here to keep it up, because you're segregated so much. You gave this one a little bit and a little bit, and now these people over here want to take everything, and now you don't have any way to defend it because you haven't taken care of your own. And education, economics, all those things, you know, it's very simple to do that. You can have your arguments in between, but the biggest thing is that you all respect each other and everybody loves this one area that they live in and it belongs to.Respect. And you can't get that without giving it. So my way of seeing, of getting it and giving it, is in the little functions that I'm into, those little small things you do every day, and they have to be done every day. Contact, information, actions, that kind of thing, and passing it on. Like Mr. [Samuel] Browne told me, if I promised that I'd pass it on, he'd give me the magic, so to speak. That's what I want to do, man, and I've been doing that. And so far it's got to this point where now I'm back to, "Wow, what can I do? What is it I can do? I don't like this. What can I do?" But at least you have a vision of what's happening. You don't go out and do like you used to do, because things aren't like they used to be. You have to do it the way they are today to get to it.
Isoardi
You mentioned how the rebellion really starts affecting your music as well. You mentioned the album you did with Elaine Brown. Maybe you could talk a bit more about that. How is your music changing in this time?
Tapscott
You know, in a way it seems like it's staying the same from the time it started to where it is now. It's still talking about the same kinds of things, it still has the same kind of fire or non-fire that it had before. There are no basic changes in my way of approaching my music. It's all mostly written out of the same vein the same way. Because it still has something to do with every day to me. Every time I write something, it's about something that I've been a part of or seen.
Isoardi
I mean, your music is so much a part of you involved in the community that there is no reason there should be a change in a sense.
Tapscott
But if the community is changing, then yeah, right. That's the way it goes; so goes the music. I don't know. That's just the way it is. It seems like that's just the way it is. I couldn't write about red- I can write about red roses on a bush like everybody else because we have them here, you know, but it's where those red roses are growing that is really what my music is based on. And it's always been based on that, because that's how I learned, that's how I got hooked up with music is by what I heard and what I felt. I was always shown that this is the way I feel about so-and-so, this is why I call this the sad blues, this is why I call this the happy blues, because today I did so-and-so-and-so. I thought I'd share this with you. That kind of attitude. I've never tried to do anything different, but only what I hear. And I'd be hearing so much in that that I don't think I'll ever be able to get it all. You can hear things when you see it happening. The only way you can record it is put it in your mind and come back to it. But yeah, my music, I don't think it has changed.I have a critic, I have a lifetime critic that I grew up with, and every time he hears my music, he just stands up and- He's not a musician at all. He doesn't have anything to do with music. He just knows me, you dig? We're best friends. He'll say, "Well, Horace, your music is sounding different." I say, "Different how? Different how? Tell me." "Well, it's got a little bit more-" I said, "Come on, tell me." [laughter] He always does that to me. He's the only cat I really listen to, because actually he's been there and he always has something to say about it. But he always comes where I play, and the next day he's always over here. The next day he says, "What was the name of that second tune you all played last night?" I say so-and-so. "Sounded like it, man. It sounded like when we were-" That kind of stuff. You see, it's a suite I've written, and inside the suite, in one part of it, there's a signal that when we were kids we used to use all the time, you dig, a whistle signal. So I put it in my music. The flutes are playing. He reacted with a widening of the eyes and a sunrise smile.
Isoardi
[laughter] He recognized it.
Tapscott
[laughter] Right. That kind of stuff. I've got a suite called "Ancestral Echoes." My mother [Mary Lou Tapscott Jackson] used to always have a particular whistle for me, and I mean, I wrote a tune off of it.
Isoardi
A whistle for you?
Tapscott
It was a whole line of that whistle in there. So when he heard that, he said, "Oh, yeah." He said, "Still back there, eh?" So that cat's my major critic. Wendell Black is his name.
Isoardi
About this time, you go into the studio with a quintet, and you recorded an album that's still being talked about.
Tapscott
Nineteen sixty-nine, yeah.
Isoardi
The Giant Is Awakened. What's the story on that?
Tapscott
Some years ago in my mind I thought about this sleeping black giant somewhere finally waking up and taking care of business and freeing his people. That was the story about this big, long giant sleeping somewhere in the jungle or wherever he might be. He woke up and he started thinking about it. And then John Coltrane writes "Giant Steps." So the giant, it was awakened, and then he started taking those steps from Trane's music. But the idea was from that tune-
Isoardi
Well, you had written that tune quite a bit earlier.
Tapscott
I had written that in the 1960s.
Isoardi
Oh, just about the time that "Giant Steps" came out.
Tapscott
Right. And I said, "Wow." My sister had an old, old book like Aesop's Fables-not his fables-some old stories of old folklore, black folklore, a big old thick book. I opened the book, and it opened right to High John the Conqueror. He was a giant, a sleeping giant, that came to save his people. I said, "Oh." Now, I hadn't read High John the Conqueror first. I thought about the giant that's awakened first. Then I saw the book. It said High John the Conqueror was the giant. It was how The Giant Is Awakened came about, man.
Isoardi
I'll be darned. A lot of connections.
Tapscott
Yeah, a lot of connections not realizing that they were connecting. Just something that you felt like you'd caught hold to and realizing at the same time that you're not the only one who catches hold of this. You know, it seems like a lot of us get it maybe at different times, different places, but that same idea comes to each person, I think, simultaneously without us realizing it in different parts of the country and the world or wherever. And I was in this part of the world, and that's how I was thinking, and the other guys were doing it at the same time, but they called it something else. But in my case, I was thinking about the giant is awakened, and we did that with that in mind. Every time we'd play it, the audience would just- Oh, man, if you would see how the audience went when we'd play that. They'd just get up and they'd start- They had that salute, and they'd all be standing up.
Isoardi
Yeah, fist up in the air.
Tapscott
And they'd be crying and-
Isoardi
Jeez. It's like an anthem.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was. And we always played the black national anthem after every concert in the early days. But we were significant. We were really definitely, seriously into it, to the point where it didn't have anything to do with any one person or star; it had to do with everybody putting in a little sharing. So 1969, I didn't want to make the album.
Isoardi
Why didn't you want to do an album? Now, you hadn't done any albums before then as a leader, had you?
Tapscott
No. Right. No, I hadn't.
Isoardi
Why not?
Tapscott
I just didn't want to do it. I said, "What are you going to do with this?" to Bob Thiele, you know.
Isoardi
Thiele produced it, right.
Tapscott
But see, I didn't want to do it because I was still- I didn't know what he was going to do with my music and all that kind of attitude. And Stanley Crouch was trying to get him to do it, John Carter and them.
Isoardi
They were talking, trying to get you to do it?
Tapscott
Yeah, yeah. So I talked to Arthur Blythe and David [Bryant] and Walter [Savage Jr.] and Everett [Brown Jr.], and I said, "We have to take a vote on this, man. If you cats want to do it and you outvote me, okay." They outvoted me. I said, "Okay, we'll do it." I knew that we could do what we wanted because Bob Thiele came looking for me. He came into my neighborhood when I was on Fifty-sixth Street and Avalon, where you don't come by yourself if you were a white cat from New York with a pipe. This cat drove up just as big, and I told him I'd do it.
Isoardi
[laughter] That's a New Yorker.
Tapscott
When he did that, I said, "Oh, okay." He came back in the garage and said he wanted to record it. I said, "All right." See, it wasn't any big thing to me. He recorded two things. One was never released.
Isoardi
Oh, he did another album?
Tapscott
Part of another album. I never finished it. We'd have our arguments and stuff about- I told him, "Okay, I'll do the album, but I want to do the finish work."
Isoardi
The mixing or whatever.
Tapscott
Here or in New York if necessary. And he gave me some wild story in a letter that they couldn't do it here, and "We're going to hold your ideas in abeyance." I'll never forget that word. That was the first time I'd seen that word. [laughter]
Isoardi
That's what he said?
Tapscott
Yeah. So meanwhile, they took it off the shelf. And then some of the out people, so-called, heard it, from San Francisco and overseas and everything, and they started playing it. That's where all my money came from, in the communist part of the country, the Eastern bloc.
Isoardi
No kidding. They got a lot of play there?
Tapscott
Yeah. In Poland and Russia.
Isoardi
So they went ahead and they- Thiele just did the album without you getting any input in the post-recording phase.
Tapscott
Yeah, that's what he did. He did that without my putting anything in. He just did it.
Isoardi
What would you have done differently with it?
Tapscott
Oh, I would have voiced it different. That's all. I had other ideas of how I wanted it to be heard: the piano to be at a certain level, the saxophone, you know, the soloist to be above. But the piano- Because the way I was playing, I just wanted it to float. It was just floating through. It was just like a seam, just floating through the whole thing, instead of being dominant, so to speak, over everything else. It would be a part of everything that was going. And I felt like with that technology during that time, it wouldn't be that hard to do. But it's just a matter of him not allowing me to be a part of it that really ticked me off.
Isoardi
Right. So they did produce it, it did go out, and it really did well abroad.
Tapscott
Uh-huh.
Isoardi
I'll be damned. The Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries? I believe that. It makes sense. [laughter] More power to you. [laughter]
Tapscott
That's what happened, man. And now twenty years later, then they want it over here, you know.
Isoardi
They just rereleased it, didn't they, on RCA Novus, pairing it with Bobby Bradford and John Carter.
Tapscott
Because we did it at the same time. John was instrumental in getting me to do it, between him and Stanley Crouch.
Isoardi
Gee, you haven't talked much about Bobby Bradford and John Carter, but they're a part of the scene back then.
Tapscott
Yeah, back then.
Isoardi
In this period of the sixties, aren't they?
Tapscott
Right, exactly.
Isoardi
What are they doing? Are you into them much?
Tapscott
We were all in the same groups. We did the same concerts.
Isoardi
But they weren't part of the Arkestra.
Tapscott
No. They were just added. Like they'd play and the Ark would play and that kind of thing.
Isoardi
And they had-what?-their old quintet sound?
Tapscott
Yeah, that old quintet. And they had those [sings flurry of notes] together, and it was so- You know, it was just a part of everything. Yeah. So we'd give concerts in the neighborhood. We started playing on Sundays at a junior high school [Foshay Junior High School], both of us, both groups.
Isoardi
Was that the Sunday cultural afternoons or something else?
Tapscott
No, this was before that.
Isoardi
Before that, okay.
Tapscott
This was at a junior high school. We did it every last Sunday of the month, and we had people showing up, and we'd- John and Bobby and ourselves and every now and then Sun Ra.
Isoardi
Sun Ra? Whenever he was in town?
Tapscott
Yeah. He came and had his Arkestra. We played our Arkestras together in concerts at Widney High School [for the Handicapped].
Isoardi
No kidding. Both orchestras put together.
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Man, that must have been a sound.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was.
Isoardi
Did you ever tape any of that stuff?
Tapscott
Yeah. I don't know what he'd done with it.
Isoardi
Oh. He just died.
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
Gee, it would be great to hear those tapes.
Tapscott
We did a lot of work together.
Isoardi
Did you guys mesh? I mean, musically, could you-?
Tapscott
Because before we played together. After that, he came out to my house with his whole band in 1978 on his way up north. We had done the other playing together previously in the early seventies. So he was passing through again, and he even thought maybe we would be playing, but he heard I had that aneurysm, that stroke, so to speak, and he came through and talked to me with his whole band. Half his band's in the car asleep. The women, the dancers, were coming in and going to the toilet. John Gilmore and the other cats, we were up front, and I'm sitting there like this here, in a state of oblivion. And Ra's [makes animated blabbing noise], and my wife's in here asleep. She didn't wake up. The sun started to rise and Sun Ra was still talking. [laughter] And they said, "We've got to go, we've got to go." John's here, "We've got to go, we've got to go." They finally left. They were here about four hours. They got here at about two o'clock in the morning, bamming on my door at two o'clock in the morning. [laughter]
Isoardi
That's nice that he came by.
Tapscott
It was very nice. That was good.
Isoardi
He must have had the whole neighborhood wondering what the hell was going on. [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah, "What's going on over there at the Tapscotts?" [laughter] Yeah, that was something. So we had done a lot of things in the community together that we didn't advertise; we just did it for the community.A lot of cats came through. From back East they would be coming in, and they would call me.
Isoardi
They'd know what was happening.
Tapscott
They'd call, and they'd come on down to talk to the children. We'd get the children ready for them and they'd be looking out. And [Rahsaan] Roland Kirk would have his two horns in his mouth, and they'd be in total glee, mesmerized.
Isoardi
That's how I react whenever I see clips of him doing it. [laughter]
Tapscott
And they loved that. They loved him. And he did it, man.
Isoardi
Who else would come down and contribute?
Tapscott
Let's see. Every now and then you would see a lot of- Who was it? Most of the time it was mostly just those groups when they came to town, just Sun Ra and Roland Kirk, people who were considered outside, anyway, first of all. So naturally they come where they'd feel comfortable, of course. But Sun Ra, he proved himself by being in what he was being in for forty years.
Isoardi
Right.
Tapscott
And I always appreciated that, you dig? I appreciated that, and I appreciated how his attitude was.
Isoardi
He really had a vision and he stuck with it, boy, from early on.
Tapscott
Stuck with it, man. I guess the band is busted up now. It's going to bust up. Because John Gilmore is not well supposedly.
Isoardi
So there's really nobody to carry it on?
Tapscott
I don't think so. Maybe there could be. There could be somebody in the band now that might do it or see that it's done.

1.16. Tape Number: IX, Side OneJune 19, 1993

Isoardi
Okay, Horace-
Tapscott
One thing: happy freedom day.
Isoardi
That's right, Juneteenth Day.
Tapscott
Right. Okay.
Isoardi
Okay, before we get back to the late sixties, early seventies, let me ask you some specifics that I wanted to clear up if possible. First off, do you remember the address of the first UGMA [Underground Musicians Association, later Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension] house, Linda Hill's place on Central [Avenue]?
Tapscott
It kind of escapes me, but I remember the street. It's Seventy-fifth Street.
Isoardi
Seventy-fifth and Central?
Tapscott
It was between Central and Hooper [Avenue], yeah. That's about all I can remember about that.
Isoardi
You also mentioned last time that you were in the hospital in the early sixties for a brief while. What happened?
Tapscott
Let's see. This time I think it had to do with my having kidney stones. They were awfully painful. They started happening to me about when I got out of the air force. It started to happen to me every year in the month of June for the next ten years. And then it disappeared. But it got me so bad that time that I had to go to the hospital, because I hadn't had any experience in that kind of activity and pain before. I had to spend a little time in there behind that, and all they could do was go through that terrible kind of investigation of all of your lower body area. And, I mean, it was a kind of pain that I'd never like to have again, you know what I'm saying, because it was a mystery pain to me at first. I didn't know what was happening. I think this one time that I had gone to the hospital, my wife [Cecilia Payne Tapscott] had given a party for us, some kind of anniversary we had, and we had invited people, and that's when I'd gotten ill. I started having those convulsions and pain things, so they took me to the hospital and tried to check it out to see what it was. And that time I spent in the hospital was when I met Linda Hill.
Isoardi
That's when you met Linda, yeah. Okay. You also mentioned last time that one of the two Panthers [Black Panther Party] that were killed at UCLA was in the UGMA choir. Bunch Carter and John Huggins were the two killed. So was it John Huggins who was in the choir?
Tapscott
It was John Huggins. I loved John. He had a great personality.
Isoardi
The description that Elaine Brown gives of him in her new book is really very nice, a very moving description. Also, I suppose we're getting up to this, but maybe we could get it down now, when did the name of UGMA change? When did you go from Underground Musicians Association to Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension?
Tapscott
I guess it would be about five or six years after the inception of UGMA, that period, because we spent those first few years actually underground, because we were doing things with music, with bands, big bands, and it wasn't at the time very popular to do. That was to learn our music by memory, to learn everything about the music, and then to try and perform it in such a way that it was like you were choreographing somebody's mind in sound. Because our approach to the music- We'd have a dance going to the melody, and we'd have some words or some poems that might have been written for the tune. Everybody had a shot at creating something because of this particular composition. The poet might write a beautiful line behind here in the composition, and we started adding that to it. The dancer might have a nice step for it in the choreography, something very nice, and we'd utilize that as far as presenting the tune itself. We'd try to present the composer in all the facets. That kind of stuff became what we did daily. When we had rehearsals we would be approaching music from the angle of the writer's point of view, regardless of what it was called or this or that. Whatever the title was, we would try to depict that, do the way we approached the music by having dancers, maybe a saxophone player might do a thing with the trumpet player between them, and they'd have a motion between them. We used to be on stage, and we'd move around according to the sound. Probably the only stable person was this trap drummer, the bass player. They were stuck down to the foundation.But we would do things like- There was a play that was written. Some guy had written a play in the community, and it had to do with the mind-set of the people in the community; it was based on that kind of thing. So with this kind of play, we started doing things between the actors and the musicians. We had three actors. This cat had written a play for three actors. And each of the actors' thought patterns were depicted through some musical instrument by somebody standing behind them as they walked and thought and played behind them, playing different patterns. As this guy would walk, he changed expression. He would never see the musicians; like they weren't there. We were supposed to be invisible to the crowd, you dig? And they were so taken by this kind of activity on stage that they didn't know what to think. What was going on? It was avant-garde as far as they were concerned.
Isoardi
But also in a way getting back to almost the roots in music and dance.
Tapscott
We called ourselves trying to put it together. Like, see, one of the characters in the play would be thinking explosions. This was just about three brothers. This play was written by one of the guys in the community. It was about three brothers during the days of the early sixties, during the revolution, you know. One was like Martin [Luther King Jr.], one was like Malcolm [X], one was like Medgar [Evers], and they were trying to decide what to do about all of this crud and this discrimination that was going on. One wanted to do this- One was a rebel, one was somebody who was thinking wide, and the other one was a whole other approach behind blackness in this community. These were three brothers, and they had different ideas about gaining freedom. So with that kind of attitude, we would utilize certain musicians in the band. For example, one of the players would be going around- He'd be making a plan how he was going to bomb the city or bomb some area, some city hall or someplace. The flute player would be walking right behind him in step and he'd be doing these kinds of things [mimics sounds and motions of the flute player]. The flutist would fit sounds with the actor's expressions. Those kinds of motions, you know. They weren't moving, they weren't saying anything; the actors were. They were thinking now, and that's where the music came in. When they spoke it was silent, and then after they started thinking the music began again. And at the end of the play, everybody is dead on stage, the band and the actors. Everybody dies. Cecil Rhodes is the author of this play.
Isoardi
Do you remember what it was called?
Tapscott
The play was called Three Brothers. It had to do with three brothers being each other's keeper, something like that. It was one of his first plays that he'd done, and he wanted to experiment with it.
Isoardi
Did he write every line out? Or did the actors have some freedom to improvise themselves?
Tapscott
They had a lot of freedom to improvise, but he had like a chord change for them to improvise off of, the way he had written.
Isoardi
All right. So they could interact with the musicians behind them.
Tapscott
Exactly. Because the most important thing was expressions on the actors' faces, because the lines that they had were very few according to the way he had the play structured. There was some dialogue in there, but it wasn't full of dialogue. There was a lot of choreography in there, you dig? And a lot of thinking, you know, trying to find a way. And all this thinking going on was where the music was.
Isoardi
So the play was never the same. Every performance was different.
Tapscott
Every performance. And we'd give it in the community each time, because it was so out that we couldn't give it anywhere. [laughter]
Isoardi
Sounds very powerful.
Tapscott
But those were some of the kinds of things that we were doing with the [Pan-Afrikan People's] Arkestra. And the UGMA foundation was bringing those kinds of talents together and putting them together into one thing. So everybody gives a little piece of their talent to make one thing happen, particularly on the last Sunday of the month. In this case we played every last Sunday of the month. Every last Sunday we had some program to give that had something to do with a message. It wasn't hard or hardcore. It was easy to bring to kids. You know, we tried to set it to where they wouldn't feel strange where they were.But that time with that Three Brothers play by Cecil Rhodes, it was the first time that we had done those kinds of things. And I was told it was likened to the Japanese theater, where they had a spirit that would always be following the actor around and never saying anything. They wore a hood, and they would be the mind of this character, but only this one. It was with musicians behind them. And who thought of that? We just thought of it all of a sudden. We just said, "Let's do this." "Okay." That kind of attitude. The hardest part was the choreography, the steps between the actor and the musician. There wouldn't be any accidents. [laughter] And those flute players, and cats would be walking behind them with flutes and small instruments so it wouldn't get in the way. But each line had something to do with the next phrase, the next few bars of music that would be playing. Cecil would write a line where it says, "Well, I'm going to incinerate the establishment." And then [sings ominous musical phrase]. He'd walk across the room after having made that statement. And there might be another few seconds before he adds another statement made by another actor. "Well, I'm going to-" That kind of attitude. We spent a lot of time doing, creating those kinds of things, things that we weren't used to seeing around.
Isoardi
Powerful.
Tapscott
I'm glad you asked about that, because I wanted to mention that play. Now, this was like early, early sixties.
Isoardi
Right. So you're still underground. You're still calling yourself the Underground Musicians Association.
Tapscott
At that time we were still underground, right.
Isoardi
When do you surface, then?
Tapscott
I guess this was after a few years of building your own clientele of people, listeners, through the years by constantly being there for them and taking the music all over the community and all of the so-called institutional area of the community where there are children. It was the kind of thing that you just forced on people, where they just had to accept you, even if they didn't know what was going on, what it was about. That's when we started to be- You wanted to reach certain kinds of families and certain people, like we wanted to reach parents where they got to the point where they weren't afraid to send their children to us or bring their children to us.So at the first the underground, being underground, was always a target for, I guess, the lawful faction of the community. They called us "that radical group of musicians," "that underground group of radicals that are producing those `hate songs' and those kinds of themes and all of that," and we had to get out of that, especially for your own community. You wanted your own community, the black community, to accept you at least, so you didn't want them against you more than they were already in a sense. So naturally we were underground, because they weren't used to what they were hearing, they weren't used to the way it was being presented, they weren't used to the way the people were dressing for these events. Like in those times the Arkestra would only wear African clothing, you know, from cats from Africa. And in those days, in the early sixties, that was intimidating to wear them, intimidating to white and black people, you know. So we had to learn how [to make it] where it wouldn't be sticking pins into your own people behind what you're trying to get over to them about themselves, what you see the society doing to a race of people, and you want to show it to them through the arts, but you want to be able to approach them first with it. Because a lot of times you get shunned away, because "all that crazy music, that horrible hate music, racial music. I want to hear something else. I want to hear some blues." You know, and that kind of act.We had to make sure that they understood that we understood what they were talking about, that we were part of what they were. We were just messengers. We were more like the vanguard to show this is what's really going on behind the African American, which at the time they weren't being called because that was intimidating, you know, calling them African Americans, calling them black Americans. Just some small words. We had these people who were writing these poems and things who were using all of these names about themselves and changing the names of who they were. So they were making up different words for kids to learn to express themselves other than the way that they were expressing themselves. Those little tiny, minute things that people hardly think about was what we were working on, those subtleties behind race. Those subtleties behind being proud of yourself by showing how you're proud of yourself by creating something, by giving something to the society regardless of whether you agree with the society or not but you are a part of it.So we stayed underground until those times when people started coming to our concerts with their children and their grandparents. That kind of attitude came. People would leave the regular Baptist church on Sunday sometimes, and they would come down to listen to us at the [Immanuel United] Church [of Christ]. At first they didn't know who you were or where you played at. We had to play in different- Like I said, we were out in the streets playing, on the back of trucks. We didn't have any facilities except for our own UGMA house for rehearsing. You couldn't have concerts there, so you had to find places to give those concerts outside. That's when we started going to South Park over on Fifty-first [Street] and Avalon [Boulevard] and had a showcase for the Arkestra. During those years we were a rallying kind of a group at the time. We started becoming a rallying group for the whole community, and that's how we really started coming out from under the ground, because now- We might have a speaker come to town. Maybe somebody like Malcolm X would come and speak or some professor from the South would come and speak. For the gathering, we'd have the music there first. The speaker would come on, and then the music becomes a part of that.After a while we became above ground, and we started realizing what our real role was. Because at first it was more like just breaking the old mold away. Just take a bulldozer and run it down first. Then we'd have to think about how to build it back up to the way we're talking about. So that's what we were about. It was tearing down all that old derogatory thinking-all of that we called ourselves-as artists the best way we could, from film and sound and things like that. Ultimately we became the Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension. We knew what we were trying to get across finally. And when someone asked you, "What does UGMAA mean?" we knew what to tell them instead of saying, "We're the Underground Musicians Association." Because now we're not hiding behind a cloak. "What is this band about?" This band is about depicting the lives of black people in their communities all over this country, where it had been turned around and been just [made] to fit the mode of being black and unworthy. We were trying to kill that kind of attitude about black folks through the arts.
Isoardi
Why that name?
Tapscott
You mean why the UGMAA name?
Isoardi
Yeah. Why the Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension?
Tapscott
Because basically, we, the black cats that I had known in my age bracket, were all brought up under a highly strict religious kind of atmosphere, you know, in the South. I mean, "You will." You know what I'm saying? "You will be at church, and you will do this, and you will learn these things." See, I had respect for- All these things that I was talking about that I didn't care for that my people seemed to accept, I respected why they accepted it. I knew that. But, see, I was a younger person. I wasn't supposed to go through what my father and mother went through. They didn't have me for that particular reason, for me to go through the same kinds of things. I'm supposed to make something else happen. That's the way I felt about being here. That's the way I was born, to say, "Well, I don't like this. Let me see about changing it." So I was in a position where I could speak like that. In those early days, if you spoke like that you were a radical in some kind of way, you were communistically informed. All those things that were against the way they wanted you, "they" being, at the time, the powers that be didn't want it to be this way. I mean, they wanted you to remain the way that it was set up. And knowing this and realizing this, speaking against it and talking about it made you all of a sudden an enemy to the status quo, so to speak. So the reason we took that Union of God's Musicians [name] was because most of the fellows in my age bracket at the time were raised in segregated America, which meant we spent a lot of time, when we left our homes, the homes we had, going to church. We spent all day in churches. So having a respect for that type of feeling that the religion's supposed to have been depicting, I would act accordingly to older people who were saying, "Well, son, you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't say that, because so-and-so and so-and-so." I tried very hard not to disrespect my elders by thinking because I was young and thinking the way I was thinking- I learned quickly not to just try to- I wanted to tear things down, you know, what they had gone through, without realizing what they had gone through, to the point of where I had to have some sensitivity in my way of actions around my people and my peers and all those kind. That's how I learned how to act regardless of what was happening so that you could be accepted by your own much better. By saying the Union of God's Musicians- They understand the word "God." That's all they've been hearing all their lives. Okay, so utilize it. The Union of God's Musicians and Artists. I just picked that because that was the idea we had in mind, that we're going to ascend through the arts, a nation, to bring about recognition and understanding of each other before you can reach out to someone else.
Isoardi
You mentioned that early on the Arkestra would dress in African garb. How big an impact did Africa exert upon you guys?
Tapscott
Well, it was a very big impact. In the first early years- Jomo Kenyatta had to go into the mountains, the hills, in the early days, and I wondered, "Well, why?" I wanted to know why at the time so-many-million black people were ruled by so many thousands of white people. I wanted to know why. I couldn't understand that. I couldn't understand why they couldn't do what they wanted to do in their own countries and I wanted to know how come we never had any kind of hookup to Africa. When I was growing up, you didn't want to be African, black people in America. They were a whole different people. That's how we had been turned.
Isoardi
Like the light-skin/dark-skin kind of concept.
Tapscott
Yeah, they cut the string, and didn't have anything to hang onto. You say, "Wait a minute, man. What is this?" So for those kinds of things that were going on, I said, "Wait a minute. Now, why-?" I would ask questions in my school. "How come I don't see anything in here about black people? "All I read was that we were slaves. So what else was happening?" Those kinds of things. In high school. Because when I was in grammar school in Houston, Texas, all we were studying about was black people. It wasn't a large thing to do. I mean, it was just part of the thing that you did. You studied about people like Frederick Douglass and lesser-known people. We had a lot to do with stress toward the freedom of black people in America, to be gaining some recognition and respect in this country as people, as citizens, as human beings. And that's what was in my mind. I was being thought of as less than a human being, and I didn't like that. I didn't like people thinking of me like that when they saw me or my kind.Being that we didn't want to be Africans when we were growing up, I was more or less proud of who I was, because that's all I knew about. They didn't tell me anything about Africa for a long time. I was introduced to it through my sister [Robbie Tapscott Byrd] and her knowledge that she was seeking all her life. She just turned me on to certain things literature-wise, book-wise, what to read about. There are things that are talked about, black folks during slavery, that we should know about and should be expounded upon. I was introduced to that very early in life. And knowing how I was being raised and where I was as a youngster, I started putting it all together. Then I started relating myself with Africa.Because before that, it was a joke to me. Like it was getting a gig in Tarzan movies here, living in Los Angeles. You know, they would come by and pick up the blackest guys in the community for these parts in these Tarzan movies. And I noticed a friend of mine and me would never get picked up. We asked the guy one time how come he wouldn't pick us up. He said, "You're not African-looking enough; you're not black enough. Your hair is not nappy enough, and your chops are not big enough." That kind of stuff. What is that? And people like Willie Best, the old black actor, I got to be friends with this guy through the years and got into the real things about what was going on in the early days of the movies and what he played a part in and how a lot of black people were pissed off at him because of his actions in the movies. Like they did Stepin Fetchit. But, see, I had the opportunity of meeting these guys on a one-to-one level. His son was upset because of the way people thought about Stepin Fetchit. He wasn't that kind of person they saw on the stage. He was over here one day crying because when they started talking about the history of black people they started putting people down like Stepin Fetchit. We were calling them this kind of person. We didn't like them.But in the Arkestra we had learned to accept all of the cats after a while, because we started realizing why things were happening like they were. So if you know why it's happening like that and you don't like it, then you start. You present something that's totally opposite of that. Which had been going on for years before I was born, you know, all these kinds of things. Guys in the community were putting things together, and how America's culture was born musically, by these cats doing their little old shuffle along, all these plays and things that they wrote in the early days that wouldn't be accepted, of course, because of their being black. Those kinds of things were one of the main reasons for the Arkestra to come together, for the whole UGMA foundation to become what it was supposed to be. This was before there were foundations that housed all the arts and had something to do with speaking about issues of race. That was our main objective, was to get that out that we were people, and that we were going to do it through the arts. That's how we approached it.So naturally, unifying all these different parts of the art form in this one area, the Union of God's Musicians and Artists, we were heading to a way where we were going to bring us, bring our people out of this descending mode they'd been in for years and start having them feel proud of themselves, because there were a lot of black people who didn't realize how much they had contributed to this society, because they were never told. We tried to show them that in our actions and the things we did.
Isoardi
So in terms, then, of looking back to Africa and then also as a way of doing that, going even further back, then, and showing a proud heritage.
Tapscott
Exactly. That's right. Having educated black men and women come and speak, who knew what they were speaking about, knew what they were talking about, and they could talk to you. Those kinds of things that we made happen. We saw that they happened so that our community could be informed about what was going on. Then they could start making up their own minds what they wanted and what they didn't want, because a lot of things we were accepting because we were told to accept them. We didn't know why. But now, here you have these people telling you, "This is what's supposed to be happening. You had a whole culture years and years before they had their culture." You know, "What are you talking about?" And you had to show them what you were talking about. In some kind of way you had to bring it together to a point where you could exactly try to show these people what you were talking about without intimidating them any further than they had been.
Isoardi
You guys even had speakers coming? You promoted that, as well? To talk about the heritage?
Tapscott
To talk about it. Guys that had spent their time, like my sister and those kinds of people that studied. I mean, they got into the books. They read every book that had to do with black folks and they could start interpreting to the people what really happened. Because it would be like, "Oh, is that really happening?" You know, "Underground Railroad? What was that about?" And here some of their relatives probably had to run it. And they never told anybody because there was silence anyway; it was a secret.
Isoardi
They might have heard the name of Harriet Tubman, but they had no idea who she was or-
Tapscott
Yeah, right. That's what I mean. And that's why it was so important for these kinds of groups. And they started sprouting up all over the place.But the UGMA had founded roots early in the community because of its- I mean, we just took it over, just took over, just came in and took over, so to speak. About thirty or forty people, men and women, just come in and just actually take over. We'd go to these schools and just take over. And we would be accepted, you dig, because we had something to offer. We had everything, man, for everybody. I mean, it was studied, it wasn't just strong. It was thought about, man. I mean, everything we had was gazed upon: the gender, whatever, I don't care. But it had to do with black people, the oldest, the youngest, the ones that had been exposed to this and something, because it was so different from each other and our way of thinking. Tribally thinking, in other words.And anybody who would go against the man-I'm talking about the white man-was dangerous. Anybody who did that, it would talk against what had already been brainwashed into us. If anybody would say something about Jesus Christ being black, whoa! "Are you crazy? You'd better get out of here. Don't come on this block no more. Don't even walk near this church." That kind of attitude. And you had to realize that without getting crazy and mad behind it, because you would get mad, but then you had to realize why they were acting like that. Well, what are you supposed to do, man? Just get mad because they think like that? If you don't like it, why don't you try to let them see something else. Let them see what is happening. Show them what is happening to the best of your ability, and then let them decide. Then they would start asking you questions. Now you can answer the questions. You've got their interest built up then.They might see something happen. They might see a little old lightweight play about Frederick Douglass and so-and-so. "What! What's that word you called, `abolitionist'? What does that mean?" That was a sign of somebody paying attention to you. "What does `abolition' mean? And how come you're saying-?" You know, those kinds of things you try to put out there. Then we'd have a reason for saying what we were saying now, because now we're being asked why you feel like this. What made you say so-and-so and so-and-so? And how come you said this? You know, those kinds of questions you'd begin to be asked about. Not just young people but older people, even people older than us. They said, "I always thought-" Or "When I was a kid-" Or "I do remember-" Then all of a sudden they started remembering things, pulling out things that we need to put together.That's what we called ourselves doing during that time, and they had done it under that foundation. And naturally, downtown, that foundation was a part of the wing of the Communist Party or-
Isoardi
Yeah, right. Really subversive.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was a subversive back- So it had to be hooked up with something like that. "So we don't want to hear that." They put another brand on you now.So consequently UGMA became the Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension because of that, because we wanted to reeducate, we wanted to show that you had something to be proud of by being of this heritage and of this race. We wanted to show how much contribution that they had made, black people themselves had made, to this whole society. And they hadn't been given the credit for it, and we want to demand that this happen. We wanted our grandchildren to grow up realizing that they were not just here, that they had something to do with this country. So it was very important that you isolated yourself and made that motion, that sound, that moan, that move where they started looking and saying, "Well, maybe that's not hate. Maybe they're not teaching hate. Let me see." And anybody who had any kind of campaign that had to do with uplifting black people, the UGMA foundation was right behind them in any way they could assist them. We'd be asked to come to schools and colleges and junior colleges all over the state after a while because of our activities. They had come down and they'd heard, and they'd passed the word back, and all of a sudden it started happening in all of these little spots.
Isoardi
Was there much of an African influence on the music of the Arkestra? I mean, were some people getting into like West African sounds? Was this entering into the sound of the Arkestra at all?
Tapscott
Uh-huh. The drums began it, you know, and the dance. The drums and the dancing. So the music- Because I remember, my first composition that I wrote in high school was called "Bongo Bill." I didn't know why, you know. What was it about calling it "Bongo Bill"? It had to do with "Caribbean Joe" or "Run, Joe" by Louis Jordan, calypso- It was the kind of thing that started just flowing. You'd be thinking that you're thinking about this, or you might have made this up in your mind, but it's already been here. You've just been influenced by it to the point where you want to know- Well, all the music that I heard by Africans in the movies was just [sings cliché drumming and chanting phrase]. So all of a sudden- I had some old records; some guitar players from Africa. Well, we had access to a lot of the old African records that some people had and they owned.
Isoardi
This was when you were younger.
Tapscott
Yeah, when I was younger. You got to hear the lines that they were singing, and I started writing the lines as a chart, a tune, you know, and added to it. So we got into it very early, the African sound, the Arkestra itself, because it was supposed to depict black people and their functions when they first came to this country up to that point at the time in the sixties, from 1865 to this point at that particular time in the early 1960s, where nothing had changed at all.The late fifties, rather, started bringing about different changes, because in the early fifties is when I started, through my mentor, Dr. Samuel Browne- He would tell us different things that we didn't realize about black people and how they were going to be treated when they came out of high school. "I don't care how great you are-" We were always told we had to be triple better than the next race of people, because we were looked upon as not being able to or were not aware of it. So being constantly talked to, and listening to the older guys, the ones that were supposedly put out in the limelight because of their thought patterns, cats like Paul Robeson or something like that- You'd go around to where those kinds of people were and listen to what they were saying and why they were saying it. You could ask them questions why they were doing that. "Is it true that so-and-so-?" All the subtleties of segregation during those times that we didn't even think about, these people came along and let us know, these professors and things of that nature. We needed some information; we needed some kind of stuff to shoot out. Because the only way we figured we could change it, Steve, was to inform people of what's happening.So that's the gig we took on. "We're just informing you of what's going on. We're not telling you what to do or how to do it, and we're not putting this person up against this person because he or she speaks about black people better or- All we're doing is trying to show you the whole picture of what's happening because of our lack of knowing and realizing, educating and enlightening our children about this and that. We have to show you what it is that would gain you respect in this country. We feel it would help you to gain the respect." Because they were looking for help, actually. I mean, they weren't going around saying, "I need help," but you could see it in their actions and their faces and then the way we were being shot out by the authorities, being just disposed of, and no one thought about it anymore. "You're just a guy that got in the way of these white folks, and they killed him." "Next" kind of attitude. So we became that kind of organization that was going to inform and to somewhat entice, I guess, and to help bring a community to the point of recognizing who and what they are, and before they can make their dent or make their mark in the society they-rather we-had to learn who we were and what our function is and why, and now we can speak."How come I want to go to college? How come I can't go to college? How come my curriculum at my high school is a little lower level than-?" You know, it's starting getting to those little things that were snuck through segregation to keep you at a level of thinking where you would never think about becoming a ruling part of this society-I mean making laws and governing it. "Are we going to be able to govern this society?"

1.17. Tape Number: IX, Side TwoJune 19, 1993

Isoardi
Let me ask you a big question. This is a period of a lot of ferment; there's a lot going on. Politics is moving very rapidly from the time that you begin UGMA. Through the sixties, new organizations are emerging, revolutionary organizations like the Panthers that are moving even toward a direction of socialist revolution, and there are nationalist groups emerging with a real different kind of orientation in a lot of ways, like [Maulana Ron] Karenga's group. In the early sixties, Malcolm X is becoming such a presence. Martin Luther King, of course, has been for some time. There is all this political ferment, this rebellion growing nationwide. Your activity with UGMA is a cultural uplift, but it's more than that, also; it's political as well. A lot of members of the Arkestra represent all these different tendencies. How is all this affecting you as a political person? I mean, how do you develop politically during all of this time? How are you sorting all this out?
Tapscott
Well, I'll tell you what happened politically. When I started doing those things, I noticed- I was raising a family, you understand. All of a sudden I couldn't work anywhere. I wasn't able to get any kind of job.
Isoardi
This is just as soon as you started UGMA.
Tapscott
Yeah. I wasn't able to work musically down in the studios and things like that. I couldn't get certain gigs because of my attitude, so to speak, of my persona. It affected me a lot, because, say, guys that would be running for office in the community come out to the community, they call your house and say, "Horace, could I get you and your Arkestra to play at a rally I'm having at so-and-so park? I'm trying to run for council, I'm trying to run for this or that." So politically we got hooked up. We were just hooked up with black people that we thought were going to represent us.
Isoardi
Now, was this something that the members of UGMA would talk about? "Well, are we going to go and play for this person?" Did that lead you into political discussions? "Well, what is this person about?" Or things like that?
Tapscott
Yes. A lot of times we had cats in the Arkestra that would question. I mean, they didn't just do anything haphazardly just because, say, this person was black and they were talking about doing something. They wanted to know what they were going to do, should they be in the Arkestra. What are you going to do about the street cleaning in the black community? How many times is this cat going to come down the street? We wanted those kinds of small things. What are we going to do about having the police staying out of different areas and just protecting the community? And then some guy would say, "Well, man, I don't want to play there because these people did such and such, and I don't think we should play for them." Yeah, we had those kinds of discussions between us. It didn't have anything to do with, say, your way of thinking, your politics; it had to do with the people in the politics that were supposed to have been doing for you community-wise, and that was really important. So if they didn't see you doing anything, if they didn't see you contributing toward what they were talking about and coming to their concerts, then we don't play for you, we don't rally for you, because we don't believe in you. We have to believe in what you're talking about because- Say two black people are running for the same office. It didn't matter; we played for both of them. What we wanted was the best of the two to be there.Politically, we were crunched up, because all the time these cats, these councilmen, the black councilpersons, they started calling our homes, coming to our rehearsals, different ones, and gave different functions in the community and had different speakers come to these council people. Say, monthly they would have some kind of rally and block off the streets. At the time it was Councilman Robert [C.] Farrell. He would have mostly say- We'd have parties on the street, and we'd gather all the different group of black people around politically and otherwise, coming together and listening to different speakers representing them. And the Arkestra would be there to play regardless of whether they agreed with the persons on the stand speaking or not. The point was that they were supposed to be listened to by the people in the community, so we were behind that.Everything, to call names, that [Thomas] Bradley might do in the early years when he was a policeman going to be a councilman, if it had something to do with him, we'd go and play for it, and he'd rally. Different people that came along we did it for, because they were black politicians, period, and we just felt like, hey, they should have a chance to mess up as well, and to give them the opportunity to mess up just like the white cats can. So it was mostly race all the time, because we were working from that area, gaining respect. And whatever it took to get that respect was where we were coming from. And politically, the Ark couldn't get a job maybe at one of those political rallies, because all we were talking about was the respect of the African American at the time and their seat at this particular table that runs this country. We wanted to make sure that somebody was available, someone who was a wordsmith, someone who could speak, be up front there, to take care of the technicalities of black people. Like sometimes cats get to talking about different things and they start speaking above people's heads. They start talking and saying strange things. They might as well talk in a foreign language, you dig? So we had to have people up there who were able to deal with that. Because you don't have to like it, but you have to realize that it has to be dealt with. There are black people who are like that who can deal with it, so we feel like they needed their opportunity to deal with it.That's how we were hooked up in the politics. It was mostly black politics we were hooked up in, and it had to do with the justice and all of this, peace for black people in the community, because, like I said from the front, we were coming from that area. We were demanding respect. How we get it now is by any means that we can think of that would be necessary for us to do to reach this point. Musically we could do that right away, because we can grab your attention right away. And now we can start so-called politicking if you want. You want to politick, go ahead. But everything had to be about us coming up, nothing about going down. I don't care whether I agreed with it, how they did it, or not. See, it didn't matter. The point was that the idea was the same.
Isoardi
So that was really your fundamental orientation. That was what guided your decisions and your commitments, then.
Tapscott
That's right. Exactly. Exactly.
Isoardi
So when it comes down to, say, dealing with the Panthers or US [Organization], Karenga's group, which got pretty nasty after a while- I mean, in terms of relating to them, it would be the same kind of thing. Well, if they were going to do something that you thought was positive and would help achieve this goal, then you'd work for them.
Tapscott
Yeah, exactly. We were trying to get them to stop shooting each other, because as soon as we get in one place, we're all going to get shot. So you had to realize that.
Isoardi
Yeah, you've got enough heat coming from downtown without-
Tapscott
Without doing that. So yeah, that was what it was about. It was about that. That's how we started this whole thing. I mean, all the things that I've mentioned were because of that kind of feeling.
Isoardi
Since I mentioned the Panthers, you collaborated with Elaine Brown in an important album, Seize the Time. What was behind that? How did that come about?
Tapscott
Well, I first met Elaine through Stanley Crouch, he brought her around. She wasn't a Panther then.
Isoardi
Oh, she wasn't?
Tapscott
No. She came out of a bourgeois family, a pretty woman, you know. Beautiful.
Isoardi
Straight out of Hollywood. [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah, you dig? What is this? And could sing. I mean, that's what drew me.
Isoardi
[laughter] You took a look and figured there was no way she could sing.
Tapscott
Yeah. Oh man, and here she could sing. And the songs that she sang, they were songs of freedom, man, and I loved it. I said, "Ah, this is it." So I took her, and we started pushing and rehearsing and pushing, rehearsing, pushing, until she got to the point where she wanted to sing now. And then she had joined these different groups. Now she had stuff coming out, and she started writing all these wonderful compositions, beautiful lines and words about the community and guys in it, and I loved her for it. So naturally everything she had- We had her with the Ark. We were building things around her songs. And that's how, in all these recordings- Because her ideas were going straight the way we were going. She could put it through sound, and with her expressions and how she sings, it would send chills through you just to listen to her. We became very tight because of that. It had nothing to do with her being a Panther or who she knew and all that, because those people, we had put a thing around us that everybody in those groups knew who we were. That's how they accepted us. They protected us in a lot of senses, in a lot of ways. But she was an intricate part of the music being worked coming out of the community, because she knew how to put it together, and she learned to really be able to speak to groups of people. Even if it was screaming and hollering, they had reasons for it.A lot of people who had just started changing over or realizing things, Steve, that were quiet or were raised very silent, had a good family, so to speak, in the black community, went to church, sort of a high-yellow kind of person, their attitudes were somewhat different. Even though they knew what was happening, they were raised differently.Here's an example. In Houston, Texas, when I was a kid, around the corner from me was a high-yellow family, and they loved me as a kid. But my brother, my older brother, was going with their daughter. They didn't like that part, see, because he was dark and they were light. Now, this is in your own race. You know what I'm saying? It's your own race of people. I mean, it was okay because they knew they were black people, but they were lighter than you, and their houses were kept better than yours, because they had better housing because their people had better gigs more or less, so to speak. But it was that kind of color thing that I grew up in. They didn't want my brother and their daughter to go out. But they did anyway, and they had a child come out of it. But those little old small things- We didn't have anything to do with white people at the time. It was just all inside your own village. You had certain echelons and-
Isoardi
It reflected the dominant white society whether you saw white people or not. It was there.
Tapscott
See, that's how the cloak was opened. I started reading that as I grew up and said, "Damn! I mean, this guy just put a cloak over this whole thing, and he's just sitting there watching us react to it," because one was better than the other, so to speak. The high-yellow kid was able to get shoes quicker than the black kid. In one family, there might be a high yellow and a dark, and they come from the same parents, and all of a sudden they started splitting that up. That was really the poison that was in the community.
Isoardi
Yeah, a good word for it, a poison. Just destructive.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was destructive.
Isoardi
Psychologically and emotionally and every-
Tapscott
That was something. So naturally, growing up, you had your ideas about your own people. If your hair was nappy and their hair happened to be straight, that was called good hair. Your hair was called bad hair. I mean, it became part of the conversation. It wasn't a big thing to say you had bad hair and they had good hair. I mean, it almost got to the point where it was acceptable. "Okay, I've got bad hair and you've got good hair." But those words "bad" and "good" made the difference. You had some of the black cats trying to get their hair straight.
Isoardi
Yeah, conking.
Tapscott
The mixture of the high-yellow ones, their hair was straight maybe already, because the mixture was strong on the white side, so they had straight hair. So all the girls would like this guy because he was "beautiful." He didn't have curly hair, and he had-
Isoardi
You know, there were psychological studies done of little kids, and they would show them identical pictures, except one of the kids in a picture would be white and the other would be black, but they would be the same, they would be dressed the same. And they would ask the little kids then, the little black kids, "Which is a better person?" "Which is a good person?" And they would always pick the white. And they'd say, "Who do you want to be like?" And they would always pick the white. Even though they were identical except for color.
Tapscott
And that's the poison. That's poison. That's the part that was really-
Isoardi
And at such a young age.
Tapscott
Yeah. That's where it works. You know that. So you had to come in and destroy all of this. How could you destroy all this? With a big bang. That's the only way you could destroy it. Say, "Pay attention!" Boom! "This is what it is." Before you talk about freedom and looking for this, begin in your own village, in your own family, regardless. Start remembering why it got like this, how come some people in your family are dark and others are lighter. But they're your blood relatives. They're your blood relatives. Okay, so now let's deal with that.And that example used about those little kids, man, those kinds of things were very dangerous to us. That's one of the reasons why the UGMA foundation would always attack, so to speak, kindergartens. Go in there and play kids asleep and have storytelling. Start telling stories about black folks in history, where they could start having something to hook up with, because at first there was nothing for them to hook up. Naturally they wanted to feel better. They'd feel that the white kid was in better shape than they were, because they looked better, and they felt that they had- They didn't care about themselves.And that syndrome is still around. But the cats don't realize it. They call it something else. They're killing each other. For what? Like the way it got today, it just got haywire in the last score or two. It went haywire, all the things that you had started to build in the fifties, that new freedom act, to learn and to get a better education, an equal education, rather than, you dig, separate but equal education. All that went down the drain, because these are the grandkids that are out on the streets now. What happened? What happened along the way? I mean, we got a little better economically, so what happened to the pride thing to the point where you're back to where you were at the beginning? Now they're shooting each other or killing each other and don't even know why. "Because you're on my turf." What is that? Because that's ignorance. You can't believe that it's happening, and it hurts you when it happens, because you're saying, "Man, all these guys- Mothers and fathers have died through the generations for it to come to this." And I mean, all this teaching and all this educating, all this better living, all these better jobs, all these newer cars, what happened? It is because we didn't know what it was all about at the time that we called ourselves knowing what it's all about, by raising our children under these kinds of circumstances.That's what happened. These kinds of circumstances, these same things that you've been fighting against for years are still there, and that's what happened. More subtle now and more dangerous than ever, because you don't even know it's happening. It comes upon you like in the middle of the night. You wake up, and there you are, it's on you. You become this because you had no protection against it, you had no kind of bonds between you where you could fight it off, this particular kind of poison that's seeping through the whole generations and just tearing them to pieces. It's killing them like they don't mean anything at all, and everything that you believe in and thought about, it doesn't mean anything anymore. It was like there were no grandparents; they're invisible. There were no parents. They had nothing. All of a sudden you're here, and you're out here, and you're crowded amongst each other, and "How come they didn't tell me this? Why did this happen to me?" And all the time it's been told and been shown. It's a constant thing, but no one has the answer to why that is happening to the point where it is happening.I personally believe it's because things are left undone, and that's why things are happening. The finished package is supposedly going to fall to pieces because all the intricate parts weren't put together correctly to the point where you know why this car runs like this or it doesn't run like this because you put it together intentionally.A lot of times, during the early days, during the sixties, when the guys were fighting for their freedom, so to speak, and they got it to a point where they made everybody pay attention, then they started working just for them as a game, you dig? So they're becoming the real kind of American that they're used to seeing and hearing about, and that's taking from the people for your own self now. These are black people I'm talking about. Since all the direction is one the white man, let's take a little bit here from the black. And you can call yourself filling your own pockets. That's what you got here for, for your own pockets, rather than doing it for the whole. You can't call yourself being the answer or fighting for freedom if you don't- It's just like fighting on the battlefield with a few people in this area here, and you win these little battles here, but the overall things is still facing you, because everybody hasn't come to that notion that we're all trying to become human. I mean, all races are trying to be human rather than being superior one to the other.Those kinds of thoughts were just penetrating me, had penetrated me through the years, all the time, constantly. We'd constantly be building things, and we'd be trying things in the community, because we knew that all the things that were against it, like the television, all the media and the things, the newspapers, that we didn't have a part in, didn't have anything to say about it, it was almost like the invisible man, invisible race of people, again because you're only there when you're needed or for some service. All these kinds of things just kept building and building and building, and you didn't know what to do about it except for what you did. You had to fight against it some kind of way, which meant that you had to lose a lot of so-called good friends and gain some new ones because of your activities within the community.I mean, for a while UGMA became a very dangerous commodity to the community in a way of speaking, because of, I guess, its camaraderieship. I mean, people started caring about the other kind of shit. That was dangerous, you know, because you don't watch each other's back, and you have people taking care of each other as a group of people. Then they become intimidating to the point of "This is a gang" or "This is a kind of perversion against this country." I mean, nationalists, they started calling us nationalists and all these kinds of things to destroy it, because you were trying to teach what you figured was truth and which you had been taught. Becoming an UGMAA-ite was the word of the week, you know, being an UGMAA person. And out of these UGMAA people, the Union of God's Musicians and Artists [Ascension], it took all these other groups that had their group that finally had come together as a group of people studying and informing black people.Like I said before, when they needed some kind of rally, they could always come to the Arkestra, the UGMAA group, to put it on to their people the way they wanted it put on, in other words, so they could focus on what we were talking about. And we'd do it by simple things. Like a function would be having a concert in an open space in a public place and having different speakers. Those kinds of things started happening on a regular basis, like you would go to church regularly. We started having these kinds of things. Then the community started learning a little respect for each other in a lot of ways, man. The only graffiti was still, at that time, "Kilroy was here." People had much more feeling about their community as they were growing up.So you can never say, "Well, wow, what happened? Where did all these guns and dope come from all of a sudden? What happened?" That's because you get lackadaisical in your thinking and your motions and your activities, because certain people might get in office that are going to have certain powers that you believe in, so that means you're through. You don't have to do what you have to do because they're going to do it now. But it doesn't work like that. I mean, if it was going to be done through some kind of- Your justice would come through laws, and you're used to, you know, with signings or those different things- But your activities are always important. And once you're active in the community and people see you're active, they expect you to be active. Then they start accepting you as an activist. And everything they do, they will start thinking about what they're doing in the community. In other words, they start walking down the street, they start looking in the curb to see who is in the dirt over there, for whatever reason.But to become aware of where you are and what you're doing was very important to us so that now you might have the opportunity to make the decision which way you want to go now. Are you for the betterment of the whole country? You have to better yourself first before the country can be better. You have to educate yourself before the country can become a [better] place for education. You have to do all these things yourself. You have to provide for yourself in those ways. And this doesn't have anything to do with your going to work every day and taking care of your family, to the point of where they're two different things. They are the same thing, actually. You have to take care of your family. That doesn't only mean putting bread and food in there; you have to put some knowledge and information in there. That's very important.And that's what we became known as, the UGMA foundation. People started bringing their children to us and being a family and accepting us in the community. We dealt with all the things in the community that used to make the community so-called bad. We dealt with having cats going like they used to do, helping the old senior person cross the street or helping with their package, those little things. Coming out of the grocery store they help them carry to the car without asking for any money. Just because, you know. Those small things. You didn't have old folks who were afraid to come out anymore or sit on their porch.
Isoardi
A big difference in the quality of life, just simple things like that.
Tapscott
Just simple things like that, and that was what was most important to us, the simple things. Because we knew at the time that there was no way of getting into the main course of the dinner, big-time money, because you'd have to lose all your identity to get it. It's a battle, man, that you yourself keep learning as you're, so-called, teaching. You'd be learning all the time and then saying, "Wow, I can't believe this is happening. Even though I'm standing out here talking this here and I'm looking at this happen over here, it's really gotten me excited because this really can happen." People can really believe you if you believe yourself. They will believe you regardless of how hard it gets. Sooner or later they say, "Well, he keeps doing that and saying that same thing, so maybe there's something to it."
Isoardi
Yeah, if he thinks that much of it. [laughter]
Tapscott
[laughter] Yeah.
Isoardi
Really. By the late sixties, we haven't talked so much about- We talked initially about who put the Arkestra together and the people that were involved at the beginning. Who's in the Arkestra in the late sixties now? Who's come in that we should remember who wasn't there early on?
Tapscott
Oh, with the rest of the guys like Guido Sinclair, Linda Hill, and David Bryant, Alan Hines, Lester Robertson, Jimmie Woods, myself.
Isoardi
So you guys are all still pretty much in the Arkestra.
Tapscott
Yeah, we're more or less the nucleus, I guess. And from there a lot of the younger cats started to come in. That was Arthur Blythe. I name him because his name is still known around. Arthur Blythe, and then Azar Lawrence and [Lawrence] "Butch" Morris, the Morris brothers [Butch and Wilber Morris]. These guys started coming in. We might play a gig where we played the schoolhouse or the park, and by the time the concert's over, we have two new members, two or three.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
Yeah. Two or three new members.
Isoardi
They would just be hanging out, and they'd bump into your band literally. They'd hear you guys playing and-
Tapscott
Yeah. They might be going through their different hassles on the street, and they just happen to come by, and from then on they'd be in the Arkestra and doing something. That's how we mostly recruited people, by exposing youngsters to different things that they hadn't been exposed to, and they wanted to be a part of it. That was mostly the way we got people. They were younger at first, and then they saw, and when they got to a certain age they wanted to play an instrument or they wanted to dance or do something, so they wanted to come to this particular group, the UGMA foundation. And their parents would see that their kid is interested, so naturally they'd find out where we were and come and bring them there. It kept going. And then they might bring something with them that they knew about, another kind of resource that would be helpful for us. "Well, I know this. Pass to so-and-so, and here's so-and-so," and boom, that's how things started hooking up. Because once they started believing in you and what you're saying, regardless of whether they agreed with it or not, if they saw you and they'd see your actions, then all of a sudden they began to understand different things or opened themselves up a little wider. That's how we did it mostly.Because you had to show. You had to be on the set. You couldn't just talk and leave. You had to walk it. You're just walking up and down the streets or sitting down on different areas, see. They see you there. I mean, when they're coming to school, they see you there, and they might not say anything to you, but they see you. You're doing what you were doing the other day, and you're going about it in that manner. And all of a sudden something made sense that you did. "Oh, how did you do that?" All of a sudden people started giving to each other without realizing why they were doing it. But it was just that that feeling would be there. That's why it's so important to be seen in your community if you're talking about being a part of it.
Isoardi
Yeah, truly. So why don't we carry the story on from there? It's the late sixties, the early seventies, and what's happening with UGMA and you then?
Tapscott
Oh, so many things happened in between there. So many things have happened worldwide and statewide and countrywide that affected us, that had something to do with our activities musically. So between those years, so many different things had happened: so many assassinations, so many killings, so many children who were born, so many people died that were important to movement, so to speak, at the time. A lot of music was being written about what had happened previously to different folks.
Isoardi
As the tensions grow, say, within the community between people like the Panthers and Karenga, how is this affecting the Arkestra? Is this causing problems? Or are you guys able to exercise some kind of a peacekeeping kind of force?
Tapscott
Actually, that's what we were.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
That's what we were.
Isoardi
How were you doing that?
Tapscott
By concertizing all the time and singing and dancing. Like I said before, part of the Panthers, part of the US [Organization] were part of the Arkestra. The music always brought folks together and settled them down. And it settled them down to the point where they had enough time to remember that they used to go to grammar school together, you dig? They used to live across the street from each other. Their parents and so-and-so and so-and-so and all of that- Why are we doing this? But the music has always been known to do that, and that's why we were so important in our community after a while. I mean, both sides respected us and loved us. Both sides knew what we were about, and we knew what they were about. But it was more or less egoism and all that other kind of stuff that was going on. "Who was the first and who was-?" That was very important. But the Arkestra would bring it all together each time. Like I said before, there were no weapons, nobody was doing any fighting. They'd all be at Exposition Park, they'd be off in their different areas, but they'd all be doing- The attraction is the Arkestra and what it's doing about all of us. Everybody became a part of it, and that was it. There wouldn't be any problems then. There would be no policemen around; there wouldn't be any need in those days. Because here we are, we're talking about being proud now, a proud race of people, so you had to act like it. And here the music was helping you to get that over with, if you really wanted to feel it. So we were more or less peacekeeping in the community, like music is. And the way we did it, like I said, everybody had a part of it regardless of what group they were a part of. They knew about that. They had a part of that. And that was the bonding of it. And a lot of the publicity you got about it, all of it wasn't happening like they said it was. The biggest thing that happened was the UCLA thing.
Isoardi
Well, certainly the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] was milking it for all it was worth and feeding information to the papers, just trying to fan the flames as much as they could.
Tapscott
And that's the part that [made it] very important that these two groups come together, because we knew that there was something in between there that was putting this all together. I mean, the way it was done, Steve, it was obvious. Like all of these groups, some of these shootings weren't done by these people who were supposed to be doing them. These are hired hands by our government. You know, you gave a cat $50 to go do that, he did it. Boom. So he can get killed. He was expendable. So they just blow him away and claim he did this and that. A lot of it didn't happen between these two groups. A lot of it was put on them. Inside the community, the guys who were part of the function knew what was happening. The Muslims [Nation of Islam] and the Panthers and the US, they'd all have their meetings together, and they knew there would be spies around. There were all kinds of spies by the government, informers, those kinds of people. We'd bust an informer, and we just tighten up on him, because he was going to get his sooner or later by being an informer. From one faction or the other, he still was going to get it. It was a dangerous time as well as-
Isoardi
Yeah, really. Very dangerous.
Tapscott
-a good time.
Isoardi
Well, [J. Edgar] Hoover had a vendetta. He was just-
Tapscott
He was dangerous, man.
Isoardi
He was very dangerous.
Tapscott
But he was part of the functioning for what went down. The music started changing because of it. We started calling him what he was. When we started calling Hoover a homosexual, that was because we were "racist," that's why. That's the only reason why we called him that. That's what they figured. Then they got out for real. [laughter] Because nobody's going to be that hard on somebody for no reason, just for no reason.It was a strange time, but it brought about things that needed to be brought out, regardless of how it came about. It had to be brought out front. You can't just be treated like shit all your life.
Isoardi
By the early seventies, then, as we move along, I think you mentioned last time that at one point you get a print shop [the Shop] about then.
Tapscott
Uh-huh. An old Jamaican brother saw us in the community, and he wanted to be a part of it. He was in his early seventies, and he was about to retire, and he had this print shop down on Vermont [Avenue] and Eighty-fourth Street. We couldn't buy it, we didn't have any money. So he made a deal with us. He said, "I'm going to close this place down, but you guys need some space to do your function. You need your own kind of printing press. We had guys who ran it, who knew how to run printing machines. He said, "You need your own kind of publicity thing. You need your own source to work from. You can't pay me, I know, so what we'll do is we'll make a deal here." And that's what we did, we made a deal. He let us have the place, he retired. We didn't ever see him-only on occasion. We started the machines, the printing machines were working, and the guys that were apprenticed took over. Like my son-in-law [Michael Wilcots] at the time-he wasn't my son-in-law then-but he took over the print shop. He was very experienced in printing.
Isoardi
So he gave you the entire plant, all the presses, all the equipment, the works. Jeez.
Tapscott
The whole thing. Isn't that something? Because of our function in the community. They knew we were there, they saw us there constantly, so they believed us. So "Here's my contribution to that." That's how it worked out. And we utilized it, you know, utilized it to the max.
Isoardi
How? What kind of stuff-?
Tapscott
By opening up the print shop, we had a rehearsal hall at the same time. We made a place- We had it redone by-
Isoardi
So you had a big building, then.
Tapscott
We had a big building, a two-story building. And different people with expertise in repairing and paperhanging and roof fixing came along.
Isoardi
So you redid the place to meet your needs. When was this? Do you remember what year it was?
Tapscott
Yeah, it started in '72, '73. And we utilized it to the point that the whole area started opening up. On Saturdays, it would be just really colorful down there. People were out on the streets, coming by, and just doing things, just to be there because something was happening there. And yeah, they gave all these things, all the people who were in a position to, office facilities. "I've got a facility over here; you need some storage room." "I have an old truck that hasn't run, and if you guys can fix it, you can have it." That kind of thing. Because they had finally accepted us in the community. We weren't just an orchestra rehearsing for a gig and leaving. We were something that was there all the time. They could count on it. So it was very important, our function in the community, because we were getting food for people who were hungry. Cats started donating food, and we'd pass it out. Donating their time in teaching kids different things. They'd come down to our shop, and they'd teach them, tell them how to do this and how to macramé and how to take care of themselves, that kind of stuff.
Isoardi
It became a whole center.
Tapscott
Uh-huh.
Isoardi
So you had the print shop going, you had rehearsal rooms, I guess.
Tapscott
One big rehearsal room. It had upstairs office parts where we made an office up there. We got a telephone. That's when we first started settling down in the community. We weren't moving around from house to house. We had a place now, a big place. And we had that place for four years before we moved on.
Isoardi
Jeez. And then you started food distribution programs as well? Your operation was just growing so much. I mean, this is a lot of work.
Tapscott
Of course we'd hook up with different people in the community that were community-thinking people, activists.
Isoardi
Yeah, who would come in and would help on some things and-
Tapscott
Some things. And we'd go where they got things going. It was a community effort. It wasn't notarized. Nobody knew about it but the people that lived there and grew up there.
Isoardi
Were you operating the print shop part of it as a print shop to try and generate some money?
Tapscott
Yeah, that's exactly what was happening, flyers. That was one of the reasons why the original man, the Jamaican person, was giving it away, because he was tired and there wasn't that kind of work for him, because the way the economy had changed over, they were using other kinds of mechanisms.
Isoardi
The technology and all that was coming in. So you weren't going to make a lot of money out of that, but-
Tapscott
No, we weren't trying to make a lot of money. It was more or less just survival money and being independent.
Isoardi
Well, I guess you'd use it to generate your own flyers, your own leaflets, your own printed material.
Tapscott
Our own thing. That's what was happening. In fact, we had all the machines there.
Isoardi
Jeez. Now, how were you getting by at this time? Are you still pretty much shut out of-?
Tapscott
I'm shut out, and my wife is working. I think she had just gotten a job. But, see, during those days, you know how the value of money was. It was a little bit more. You could go to the grocery store for $10 and come back with three or four bags full.

1.18. Tape Number: X, Side OneJune 19, 1993

Tapscott
Like I said, my wife [Cecilia Payne Tapscott], at the time, had just gotten a job, and on the set between us we had four children now.
Isoardi
Four by that time. What are their names?
Tapscott
There was my oldest, Reneé, Laurence Tremayne, Vincent Marcell and Darion Lamont Tapscott. I was gigging, see. I was gigging in the neighborhood in those days, in the late fifties. Places like the Bucket of Blood, those kinds of places in the neighborhood, because in the late fifties there were still a lot of nightclubs and bars and places where the music was still accepted. Live music on Friday and Saturday nights, that was when you worked mostly. And on those gigs, Steve, I would make my $10 a night. And on Saturday morning and Sunday morning the family would go to the grocery store and pick up food. We didn't go hungry because-
Isoardi
It was enough to cover your expenses?
Tapscott
To cover the whole thing and go to the movies, a drive-in movie. We had a little change left over, you dig? And this all comes from playing in the community, the music, in bars at night. I did that as long as the bars were open. I never left the city because you were working a lot. This was right after the Central Avenue [period]. This was a little bit after. It still didn't have the flourish, that kind of feeling that they had in the earlier days. It was dying at that time, but there were still places where you could make a little money. And I started working with the bigger bands in the community, the established bands that were around at the time. They were getting gigs. I would work with the Fletcher Henderson band every now and then, the Peppy Prince band, the Chick Touchstone orchestra, the Jeep Smith band. All these guys of these big bands. Sammy Franklin's band-Henry Franklin's father-he had his big band around. I'd be working with these different groups. I worked with Mr. McDavid's concert orchestra on the Sunday afternoons that they'd have, $20.70 a gig on every Sunday.
Isoardi
Was that Percy McDavid?
Tapscott
Percy McDavid. Those kinds of things enabled us to survive. I didn't have a pad. We were living with my parents in this house on Fifty-sixth Street. Then we lived with Cecilia [Payne Tapscott]'s parents on Eighty-fourth [Street]. Then we got our own place on Sixty-sixth [Street] and Avalon [Boulevard]. We were living and functioning. I was working. Like I said, the weekends were still enough to be able to pay the rent, and my wife started working finally at that time, after the kids were born. I was staying at home raising the children and disciplining them and changing diapers and teaching them, taking them to school and picking them up, that kind of thing.
Isoardi
So as the sixties wore on, it was tougher and tougher, then, for you to get gigs because of the UGMA [Underground Musicians Association, later Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension]'s activities.
Tapscott
Yeah. Now that started taking over, the activities in the UGMA. There were a lot of patrons around, like people who were anonymous the times I would receive money.
Isoardi
For you personally? Or for UGMA?
Tapscott
Personally.
Isoardi
Really? Just out of the blue.
Tapscott
Out of the blue. Sometimes when I'd look in my mailbox, there's some money from somebody anonymous. "For you and your family, Horace." "To help you along," so-and-so. Nobody would tell me who they were.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
Yeah. That was out, wasn't it? [laughter]
Isoardi
That was wild.
Tapscott
And then I finally got this gig. I had my trio working, and I finally got this gig out at the Troubadour club in the sixties, the early sixties. After I got out of Lionel Hampton's band, I came back. I worked in this Troubadour club from- I started in maybe about 1958, and I went away with Hamp and came back and regained my gig at the Troubadour six nights a week, $60 a week. Sixty dollars a week in West Hollywood, on La Cienega [Boulevard], at the first Troubadour club. Because the guy that owned the club at that time, Doug Weston, was a radical, a beatnik, and if you didn't play what he called "jazz" in his club, don't even come in there. That kind of attitude. I stayed there two years nightly.
Isoardi
Jeez, good gig.
Tapscott
Yeah, it was a good gig. Meanwhile, I'm organizing all these cats at the same time, because they'd come to the gig, and then they'd say, "When is rehearsal for the band?" and that kind of attitude. And I started getting white people interested in the music then, during those days. That's when they started getting interested in what soon became "avant-garde," you know. You'd have clientele like Lenny Bruce coming in and sitting in all the time, listening to you.
Isoardi
No kidding. At the Troubadour?
Tapscott
Yeah. Ava Gardner.
Isoardi
Ava Gardner? Oh, that's right. You mentioned her earlier. She was a jazz fan.
Tapscott
Yeah, really. [laughter] And those kinds of people would come in to hear you and listen to you, and that got your interest up. It got you hooked up with a whole other area of function. Oh, man, you could think of all kinds of- All the people that [J. Edgar] Hoover was against in those days, white and black, they would all be coming through there. All the so-called discards from the society would always be there, the creative people. That's why I enjoyed that gig, because it was creative people coming in, and I had to play exactly what I wanted to play. I had control of the music. We fed the music to them. All kinds of people came down and played with us, because we were in an integral spot at the time we were doing that. During the height of the early sixties, we were right in the core of it and had a little better handle on it.Now, during this time was when all of the hassles started between the law enforcement and us. And they would really happen out there because of all that mixture out there and all the white women coming and listening to all these black cats playing. That was dead. They would be waiting for you. They couldn't do anything to you, but-
Isoardi
Even in a place like the Troubadour that would happen?
Tapscott
Not in the Troubadour but outside, when you left.
Isoardi
They'd just wait for you to leave almost.
Tapscott
Yeah, wait for you. And you'd drive away with some lady or something, and they would pull you over. Anything to hassle you. But not at the club. They tried that one time at the club, and the whole club jumped on them, the sheriff's department.
Isoardi
No kidding. [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah, it was out. Everybody in the club came out saying, "Why are you bothering those guys, because they're black? We're the ones here making noise." These were the white hippies. They started [makes fierce, cat-like sound], telling them how prejudiced the police were, making a stand. It got to be a big thing, man. Like I was telling you, it was dangerous for me to try to come home sometimes, coming out of the white neighborhood into mine, you know, alone. I told you we got followed a lot and harassed.But as far as economically, making a little money during those times, it was pretty fruitful, because it wasn't hard. You could still spend a nickel. And the penny, it was losing its worth, but it was still worth something.
Isoardi
You'd still bend down to pick one up if it was there on the ground? [laughter]
Tapscott
And it was made out of copper, too, you dig? So, yeah, those kinds of things. With Cecilia, my wife, and myself and the help of our parents, my in-laws and all those, and the whole family-because my family was growing-we had a lot of support, see. And that was the best part about my family and her family, that a lot of them, they'd talk about you a little bit, but they supported you because you were really serious about it. And we'd make a little money here, and then all of a sudden it changed up again, and I started getting gigs, like I mentioned, ghostwriting, so I could continue in what I was doing.And these patrons would give me different checks monthly or something so I could continue what I was doing. I didn't know who these people were. They knew how to reach me and all those things about me that I wasn't aware of at the time. As time went on, then I started putting things together. But before that, I couldn't imagine what was going on. I couldn't imagine if it was a trick. "What is this, a setup?" Any kind of thing.I took advantage of every chance though, Steve, so every time it happened, I would grab it and utilize everything I had and go on to the next. I didn't get tied up in anything. I'd do some work, maybe I might be hired privately to do something for a dancer or a vocalist, a group of people I had never met before, because of my affiliation with the [Pan-Afrikan People's] Arkestra and the music that I was writing. That helped me to get gigs that I didn't even try for. People come to you and ask you to "do this for me and do that," and that's how I was getting by, monetarily speaking. I never did make big money, but it was like on a level of every week I knew I had a gig, and I was going to be playing, so I could look forward to something.
Isoardi
You knew that you could get by.
Tapscott
Yeah, I could get by. And there wasn't that much. Granted, right now we don't have our place, because now you had to have something much more stable for the household. But by staying with your in-laws and maybe with your parents, and they're helping you out, that gave you a chance to deal. And that's how I got my chance to deal, raising a family and having a band.
Isoardi
Yeah, doing what you really love. You didn't have to-
Tapscott
That's all I wanted to do. I'd be at home with my kids. They saw me every day of their lives, you dig? I changed every one of their diapers. I went through all that, sitting with them, man, you know what I'm saying?-my way, by being who I was, and it was easier for me to do that. Now, we would always- We didn't go hungry. The kids would have clothes, they'd have all their supplies for the school, and they'd know their homework, because their father would be there doing their homework with them, because I could spell and add, and I was proud of that, and I wanted them to be able to do that. I could comprehend what I read to them. I got them to do that. So they wouldn't be foolish and acting silly just because of some of the things they didn't know. I tried to expose all my whole family to all different kinds of cultures. I did pretty well up to a point. And I had a lot of help, lots of help. I didn't have any regrets, man, about how it went down. That's how we did it through those years. And the food in those days was fresh, it was easy to get to, and everything. Everything was compact. It wasn't as stretched out as it is now.
Isoardi
So this is pretty much what you're doing, then, through the early seventies. But it must be, I guess, about that time, isn't it, by the mid-seventies or so, where Europe is getting more interested in Horace Tapscott?
Tapscott
Yeah, all of a sudden.
Isoardi
Really? Does it come that quickly?
Tapscott
Yeah, all of a sudden. But you know what countries they were? The communist countries.
Isoardi
They were the first ones outside of the United States? Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. They wanted all the stuff we were doing.
Isoardi
No kidding. Well, how did they know about you? Did you find out?
Tapscott
I don't know today.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
I don't know. So I just figured it had to be word of mouth.
Isoardi
How did it happen initially? You didn't have an agent then did you?
Tapscott
No.
Isoardi
So did you get a call out of the blue?
Tapscott
I got a call out of the blue, man. Like I got a call out of the blue once to come to Minneapolis, Minnesota, or one of those northeastern cities, to have a choir, a hundred-piece choir, and a seventy-five-piece orchestra.
Isoardi
To lead that large an aggregation?
Tapscott
Me. Me. This is a white school, man. This is in the early seventies, see.
Isoardi
How did they know about you?
Tapscott
See, I said, "How do they know this? Why are you asking me to do this?" They're so far-
Isoardi
Out in the middle of nowhere. [laughter]
Tapscott
"How did they find this out?"
Isoardi
Did you ask them?
Tapscott
No. They just sent me this letter and offered me this gig and told me how much money I'd be making and told me what kind of situation I'd be in. I refused it, naturally, because they would have been all white children, and I called myself at the time trying to educate my own, and I said, "What is this? Why did I get this letter here instead of somebody like some professor I might know who should have gotten this letter, some cat that went through college and got all his stuff," you dig, "went through the whole thing? He's the one that's supposed to be getting this letter. How can I get this letter?" I don't know today. It was legitimate, too. My wife has it somewhere around here. It was legitimate. They offered me this gig, man, this gig with a chorale, a choir. They knew I had a choir I was working with during the sixties. So it was a lot of people that came around to our concerts, Steve, of all races and notions.
Isoardi
So it could have been anybody at one point who could have passed the word on or-
Tapscott
It could have been anybody. But it was just how you were presented. And above all the part that they asked me to take this gig and all this was the fact that they asked me to do something that I was doing. Somebody knew what I was into and they figured, "Well, hey, we can get him to do this." That was a great feeling. Yeah, it was a good enough feeling, just the fact that you could say, "No, thank you." It was just great, and the fact that they hit on you, you know. And this was an all, all-Caucasian school. They had all the stuff that these cats [get] that went to college and got their master's and their doctorate to do, and I didn't do any of those things to get that kind of offer. It was just a matter of yes or no. And they were sending me my ticket, for me and my family. They knew I had a family. They knew.
Isoardi
They wanted you to come out for a couple of weeks or something?
Tapscott
No. They wanted to hire me now.
Isoardi
Oh, you mean to teach there.
Tapscott
They wanted to hire me on the staff.
Isoardi
Damn.
Tapscott
On the staff, man. I thought it was a trick.
Isoardi
[laughter] What's Hoover up to now?
Tapscott
Yeah, yeah. [laughter]
Isoardi
That's it. He's trying to put me up somewhere where you freeze your ass off all year and there's nobody around. [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah, that's what I thought. I had to go through that thought pattern, because where does this come from, man, you dig?
Isoardi
Well, it's happening so much. [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah, "Well, why was that?"
Isoardi
Too much, too much.
Tapscott
Those kinds of things I'll never hardly forget, man.
Isoardi
So when does the Eastern bloc first get in touch with you? How does that happen?
Tapscott
It was 1971, right after The Giant [Is Awakened] was recorded. And the Polish cats and the Russians-
Isoardi
Really dug it.
Tapscott
Even today, the money still comes from there.
Isoardi
I'll be damned. So they wanted you to come and play? Was that it?
Tapscott
No, it was more or less like they were just playing your music a lot and they wanted your records. It was unheard of at that time for them to have anybody come and play or pay any money, because they didn't have any that was worth anything. But they were the ones who were buying the records and having them played over there, as many as could be sent over there, and it wasn't that many. But the ones who got them got them.
Isoardi
Damn.
Tapscott
Yeah, man.
Isoardi
You never know sometimes the way your work is going to spread and how many people it's going to touch.
Tapscott
You never know. You have no idea.
Isoardi
Once you do it and release it, it's kind of out of your hands in a way. It becomes a force of its own.
Tapscott
Yeah, it's out of your hands. One of my favorite musicians, Benny Carter, he came to the Catalina [Bar and Grill], because he was traveling all over the world and they were always asking has he ever heard of Horace Tapscott.
Isoardi
No kidding?
Tapscott
And he said, "I wanted to find out who they were talking about." [laughter] He came with an entourage to the Catalina.
Isoardi
No shit? This was just a few years ago?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
[laughter] Shame on him. Shame on him for not knowing.
Tapscott
Because I was a kid when he was around here. I was on Central Avenue watching him. He knew I'd been around, but, you know, he'd have been busy. He finally came and told me this.
Isoardi
What did he say? [laughter]
Tapscott
Oh, about my music? [laughter] He said, "I don't play it, but I enjoy it. I know where you're coming from."
Isoardi
Wow, good for him.
Tapscott
And then I went overseas, and we were on the same gig together on his birthday, his eighty-second birthday at the time, in Italy. And that was a great feeling.So those kinds of things that were happening to me, man, those things that stay with you, that you tell your grandkids about, that you write about, those kinds of movements with these great artists of all time. When Louis Jordan came to my front door-and I loved Louis Jordan all those years-and here he is at my front door asking me to join his band. I mean, it would be all kinds of small things. At that time they were small to you, because he was regular, you know. He was one of these guys that you grew up on and hit on you to play. To be a part of it made you realize that you are making a statement, you are important in your area, you are somebody to be dealt with.And we started having the white critics coming into the neighborhood where I was playing at because they'd heard about it, and they started writing about the Arkestra without anybody asking them. I didn't buy nobody no coffee. [laughter] I didn't ask to get any special table for anybody. I didn't even speak to them, as a matter of fact. I'd walk past them. But they'd write about your music. That's when they first started writing about me. But the first writers we had were some black writers. I kept their writings, and I don't know what happened to those guys. This was back in the early seventies. They were hooking up to everything, started hooking up to Africa, all the things in music. The music we played was this and that, it was "racist," it was "freedom," it was- You know, we had all kinds of adjectives on our names and stuff. And it was okay with me, because that meant that we were doing what we set out to do. "Well, who are these people? What are they talking about? And why did they and this-?"I mean, all political kinds of groups came. Like it wasn't anything for the Communist Party to be around at all our concerts. We accepted that right away. We knew who those people were. But then there were some others who started coming in. It was very strange, man. And I knew some of these people had to be spies. [laughter] Some of these people had to be.
Isoardi
Yeah, you'd just assume it.
Tapscott
And, oh, they'd hear this music, man, because they-
Isoardi
You just can't let it affect you too much. When I was in the left, we figured, oh well, some of these people are spies, but you can't go crazy. You can't make your organization nuts worrying about who's a spy and who's not a spy. So we figured we'll just work their asses off as long as they are here. [laughter]
Tapscott
That's about it. Yeah, man. You accept it all. Because you'd start seeing- At the [Immanuel United] Church [of Christ] over on Eighty-fifth [Street] and Holmes [Avenue], about the fourth year of our being there out of our nine years, man, you're talking about a changeover from one or two people in the audience to all kinds of people in the audiences, man, coming from all over the city, and bringing their kids. I mean, we're talking about the white families from Van Nuys bringing their babies over here to the Eighty-fifth and Manchester [Avenue] and the Compton Boulevard area. I mean, that meant whatever it was they were coming for was stronger than what it was they were supposed to have been afraid of to come. So we became so that we had to be careful what we did in our own area, because now we were looked upon as the leaders of the community.
Isoardi
Real representatives.
Tapscott
Real representatives. And everybody expected-
Isoardi
It's more responsibility.
Tapscott
Yeah, all of a sudden. You could walk down the street, and every other car stops and asks if you want a ride. Those kinds of things started happening. When bus drivers pull a whole bus over to the street to speak to you, man. You know, people would just, "I'm trying to get to work, and he's pulling over here and hollering at some cat walking down the street who ain't even trying to catch the bus." [laughter] Those kinds of things. So it meant that we had reached all areas of society, all of them: lawyers, doctors- And doctors coming to give you free examinations at your home just because. They wanted you to stay alive, they'd say. That kind of stuff. Isn't that nice, man? I mean, those kinds of things you didn't expect. "Let me check your children out for you. Let me do this. Or let me make sure that so-and-so is happening for you." And like I mentioned about leaving your car with the window down and your stuff in it in a neighborhood that was supposed to be known for thievery, and your shit is still there when you get there. Now, that to me was worth more than making any money, Steve.
Isoardi
It spoke volumes.
Tapscott
It did. [laughter] You're right.
Isoardi
That one act, you could-
Tapscott
See, that's how I've been functioning all these years, through those kinds of things. I'm just a person that is community minded because that was the way I was raised. I'm used to being in a community where people love and care for each other, regardless of what the situation may be. They're all working for one direction they want to go in, and that's betterment and family and friends and things of that nature. And they were just that simple. But it was just the idea of having a so-called dream and staying on it. You know what I mean? There are so many other people that are part of it and make it happen. And I was blessed and lucky enough to be around all those kinds of people all the time. I made sure that I was around those kinds of people so I could learn something on that. You hear cats talking, you listen, you ask questions, why this and why that, so you know how to deal with what's coming later in some way. That's what has happened to me up to this point.
Isoardi
In the seventies, then- You spend a lot of time and you're so well known now in Europe. When did you start getting calls to concertize, to play elsewhere? Does that come in the seventies?
Tapscott
Yeah, that does. It comes in the seventies because a lot of the guys who were going over and back and forth mentioned your name or something, or they might have read something where your name was mentioned that you might have played with these guys. "Well, I want to see who this guy is who we hear so much about." That's how I began. Because everybody would come back, and they'd talk about Los Angeles when they'd go overseas or back East. Like Horace Silver said, "Man, I'd been hearing about you twenty years before I met you." [laughter] McCoy Tyner said, "Yeah, man, there ain't no music unless your name is on it coming from out here." And so that's how it happened, more or less, cats leaving here and going overseas and just-
Isoardi
People overseas asking them about people and hearing your name and-
Tapscott
That's how I started. Then there was a Japanese person [Toshiya Taenaka] that was going to L.A. High School, and he had followed me, he said, all his life. He got into school listening to the music, and he enjoyed me so much during high school that he figured in his mind one day he was going to get some money, he was going to record me. So eventually that's what he did.
Isoardi
No kidding.
Tapscott
Tosh came over, wrote me a letter, and asked me, and told me the situation and that he finally was in the position where he'd like to do that. And if I would agree, so-and-so- That's how I started recording with that record company, which at the time was Interplay [Records]. Most of my recording days were often got as calling and approaching me. And then those ones on Nimbus [Records] came from Tom Albach coming to our concerts for four or five years in a row without saying anything.
Isoardi
Just listening.
Tapscott
Just listening. And then one day-
Isoardi
And you had no idea who he was?
Tapscott
No. But we had gotten to know him because he kept showing up, you dig? He never bugged you. He never said anything. He always listened, and he'd say good-bye and leave. And he'd come back. It got to the point where the cats began to trust him and look forward to him. He offered to record us. He said, "I'd like to see you get this on tape or a record or some kind of way." And he would rent these new pianos. This is all happening down at the church on Eighty-fifth and Holmes.
Isoardi
So this is also the early seventies when you first meet him?
Tapscott
Yeah, when we first met him.
Isoardi
Had he been associated with a record company? Or did he just love the music and thought it should be preserved, and that's how he got into doing it?
Tapscott
That's how he got into it, yeah. Because these cats were fascinated with the Arkestra. They couldn't believe this was happening, but it was happening. It was happening. I mean, it was just happening every day.
Isoardi
But you must have been approached. Had any big labels come after you or had any of the major jazz labels approached you guys?
Tapscott
No. Only just that time when Bob Thiele came.
Isoardi
That time you did The Giant Is Awakened. That was it?
Tapscott
Yeah, because he was the only cat that was thinking in those terms. Because other than that, they didn't want to record anything of what we were doing. Except the independents. And then came this Flying Dutchman [Records] thing. He got off into that, and he wanted to record everything that nobody else wanted, so to speak, that had made statements. He recorded a whole bunch of us from here, Stanley Crouch. Have you ever heard that record called Ain't No Ambulances for No Nigguhs Tonight?
Isoardi
I've heard about it. I've never heard the record.
Tapscott
See, we were on that. That was live, you dig? But we're not mentioned. We're in the background. You hear us in the background, the quartet, you dig? He did that album, and they put it on. And then he finally recorded us by ourselves and John Carter and Bobby Bradford. And that was it. That's all he dealt with out here, those three groups. And that's how I got overseas, through the Flying Dutchman series. That's how the name started traveling.
Isoardi
So then it was not surprising that the offers then started coming in to concertize over there.
Tapscott
Yeah, to concertize after that.
Isoardi
And they're still coming in, I guess.
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
You're over there at least once a year, aren't you?
Tapscott
So far, and back East and those places, and doing what I was doing all the time. That's the best part of it. And I think that's one of the reasons why they hire you, too. They hire this old guy that's-what do you call it?-a timepiece. [laughter]
Isoardi
[laughter] That's the phrase? [laughter] Oh, shit. Oh, man. [laughter] Oh, no.
Tapscott
Or a reminder or something.
Isoardi
Boy, you're hearing them all. You've got the kids calling you an "O.G." [older guy]. [laughter] You have somebody else calling you a timepiece. Oh, jeez. But after they hear you play, they couldn't say that. [laughter]
Tapscott
That was something, man. They'd be out on it. But, see, the respect of my peers is really what's important to me, too. Like the guys like Mal Waldron, Randy Weston, Andrew Hill, Don Pullen, McCoy Tyner, Steve Lacy. These cats, they know what's happening. They've been there. And every time you see each other, you've got something to talk about-or you don't. You can get along good because each of you knows each other, and it doesn't have anything to do with ego. That's the best part. I can go anywhere and the cats, the other piano players, it's just like seeing another cat, one of the cats, and that's what I like. Because it's not that "I'm a better player than you" kind of attitude.
Isoardi
Destructive competitiveness.
Tapscott
It's only about we've all got something to offer. It's along the same planes. And that's the way I always thought about it. I never had to think about competing to the point of destruction, like you're saying, or cats not trusting each other because he might have practiced a little bit more, he might have had the opportunity for this. And all of a sudden the music isn't music, as far as I would be concerned. I remember busting up a band a couple of times because the attitude was wrong. I didn't want to play with them, and I let them know that. That's how I started my own stuff, because there were other people that believed the same way I did, I'm sure, that had those thought patterns.But to gain the respect of your peers and knowing that you're real and genuine already puts you ahead of the game as far as your confidence and your status is concerned, and your performance is rated through by your actions and your reactions to the things that are around you. I never had any kind of strange setups between musicians. Like most of the guys would say, "Man, I thought you were older. I'd been hearing about you for so long, I knew you were in your eighties." [laughter] They look at you, "Man, you look like my little brother. What's happening here?" [laughter] That kind of stuff. And like when the cats come to town, they come over here and eat and hang out. It doesn't have anything to do with the other. They'd be coming over, and they'd want to see who's cooking and talk about it and everything else, because you've been through so many battles and wars that you're at a level now that you can just, "Hey," talk about other stuff now, what your kids and grandkids are doing and not doing, that kind of attitude.But those simple things, man, because I'm a simple person, man. Because I can deal with that. I can deal with that. Because the simpler you are, to me, the more you allow yourself to cop much more in appreciating the things that are around you that are simple and exciting. Like I said, I have no regrets up to this point. None. I couldn't say, "If I would go back, I wish I-" No, I'm cool the way I did it.
Isoardi
You're one of the few who could say that.
Tapscott
So far, up to this point. I'm not sorry for all the so-called mistakes I've made in my past, and all for the things that I've believed in, I still believe in. And to work with that kind of a covering overhead is where I'm coming from. I mean, I approached everything with that attitude.I remember being on a [National Endowment for the Arts] committee one time in Washington, D.C., for giving grants out. It was my attitude about- I guess this was another black cat who was across the state, but he couldn't understand my lack of enthusiasm, I guess, about different things that were going on. He made a report about how "He seemed to be distant from everything. His attitude is of the nature that none of this matters." Who is this guy?I saw the same guy years later, man, and he had changed over totally, because he's into a whole other thing now. He's out running around. He's still functioning with black functions, but he's not in the office anymore; he's not tied up behind machines anymore. Now he's out functioning. I saw him about three years ago in Washington, D.C., and he was working on the gig I was on, and he told me then, "Man, I had to get out of that office work. My outlook was all shot" and so on. Where he was looking at me, but now- That pressure had gotten to him that I was supposed to act like he acted under those kinds of pressures. I was like this and trying to get everything correct. But my attitude was "I'm going to get this, but I've got to take my time doing it. And all these words and these things don't mean anything to me because I'm giving this grant to the people I know of and I feel could utilize the grants," and I wasn't playing any politics. And he was into that heavy. But he had to get out of it, because it was- I don't know, man. To stay in that kind of scene would just be draining to a person like myself, draining. I'd be mad every time I'd get home. That kind of thing. And you can only do so much or else they say, "Hey, he can't get a grant because of this and that." All the rules and regulations even hang up the artistic value of what they've done.
Isoardi
Oh, it would go. You put yourself in a little box like that.
Tapscott
So my attitude and the way I approached the people at the time and told them where I was coming from, at least they'd know I'm happy about being consistent in any kind of situation. My consistency has proven to be, "Well, okay, we'll accept you as you are then, because you haven't flagged." I always stayed on the same line. You had to sacrifice a lot by doing that. Otherwise you aren't going to get all the candy that they're passing out because you didn't act right. "You were bad today. You ain't going to get no candy" kind of attitude. And I always hated that. I always wanted to give a person [something to] do [based on] what they do, on their merit, not by how much ass they'd be kissing.

1.19. Tape Number: XI, Side OneJuly 17, 1993

Isoardi
Okay, Horace. Shall we take it from the print shop, which I think is as far as we got last time.
Tapscott
Oh, yeah, the print shop [the Shop], which, of course, is no more. It's a space in between buildings now over on Vermont [Avenue]. It helped hone a lot of players and people that came through there at the time. We utilized it. With the printing equipment that was left by the Jamaican guy, my son-in-law [Michael Wilcots] and a couple of other guys in the band, who did some printing at one time or another for their employment, opened up the print shop area and started working on doing things out of that to support ourselves. It didn't get all the way because the machines themselves were going bad, and we spent most of our time repairing and carrying on the machines.
Isoardi
So they were pretty old.
Tapscott
Yeah, they were pretty old. It was a long shop, the downstairs part and the back- We had to clean out a lot of areas for our rehearsal space, but we did have enough area to keep the print shop area going. And for, say, about two or three months in the beginning of getting that place, we started enterprising different things around the neighborhood. People started coming in and trying to get their little old stuff copied. This was before they had all the copy machines at the drugstores and cleaners and markets now. So they'd bring their things in to make flyers and things of that nature. That's about as far as we got in the printing area because of the machines being so old. However, like I said, we did a lot of rehearsing there. As a matter of fact, it was like a bunch of doctors in some kind of laboratory, and everybody had something to work on kind of attitude. Upstairs, we had office space up there, and we utilized that. And during that time the children were coming on the weekends, and we had children's classes, so we had to register the children and their parents in the office upstairs. We had everything that was in contact. Everything that was there, accessible for us.
Isoardi
It sounds almost like you had a school going on.
Tapscott
It was. We were still carrying on that tradition from the earlier years of having schools in different places, outside, yards, churches, and places, but now we had our own place. The clientele was coming to the print shop. We called it the Shop at the time, and we had different areas. People who were in the part of the printing, you know, you could see it, but you weren't a part of it. It was a pretty roomy kind of place. We did a lot of different things in that place, as a matter of fact, Steve, but some of them slip my mind. But I do know we spent about three quality years in that building.
Isoardi
What kind of classes and programs did you have for kids?
Tapscott
We had classes in music. There was storytelling. We had little, lightweight music classes for young people where we would try out different methods of teaching music. The first thing we did, we always said we wanted a person who was always- Maybe they couldn't read music first off, but they were very well endowed with the hearing of music. So when we would catch those youngsters, we would hone them to the point where they would be playing without knowing what they were doing. Then we'd take them to a course where they'd learn to read what they were doing. So we wouldn't lock them up from the top, starting them off with the paper and notes, things of that nature, where they have to count one, two, three, four.
Isoardi
So you're beginning by really encouraging them just to express themselves and not to censor themselves.
Tapscott
Not yet, you dig? Because they weren't ready for censorship. But we got them to a point, Steve, maybe a couple of years of that playing with each other, cats putting things together, humming out a phrase and somebody remembering their phrase, long before they reason, and next week they come back and they remember their lines that they had.Then we started a real simple class procedure with a blackboard and a piece of crayon to teach them how to read. That's all we did with the blackboard. They didn't have any instruments in their mouths, [just] learning to read. They used to use their hands clapping to clap out rhythms to know what the value of each note was and rests and all of those musical dictation things that we used to give them. It was like it was separate from their playing. It was almost like they were in another class just taking arithmetic or mathematics. So I used that kind of system. I explained to them what this is, what's a quarter note, and realize how many beats it gets in whatever kind of signature is there: a four-four signature, a quarter note gets one beat. Those kinds of simple things, and they started adding those up. After a while they became able to read and comprehend what they were reading and how to phrase and things, because the system was we started just from the natural point of view, to see who was capable of what. It was interesting because it was something that was a natural move.But the biggest problem was to have a gathering of people together and have some cooperation where the children themselves would feel relaxed. We had several instructors who had their way of getting to the children first of all. You'd play with the children, you'd get them to like you and all that. It was a whole process.
Isoardi
So these are young kids.
Tapscott
These are very young kids. That's why it was so delicate. Everything you did was delicate. It had to be from that point of view. We'd have their parents bring them to concerts that we'd be giving. We'd have them being a part of everything we did. Like I remember I mentioned to you earlier about the Flute Society that we used to have, when we'd pass out the flutes to all the young people so that they may be able to join in with the band, see. It got them to a point where they were more relaxed around all these grown-ups and all that kind of attitude and all different kinds of lifestyles, African lifestyles, getting used to all these things they were seeing. It was a whole process. It was daily. And we had a lot of help and cooperation from their parents and guardians. They got to trust us. They got to believe in us. After they're seeing all these strange people, they didn't know what to think about us at first, you dig, dressed all their different ways. You know, you hold their kid, "Wait a minute." But after a while they saw how their children reacted to us, how their children always wanted to come to the UGMA house, so they were happy about that.So those three and half years in that building on Vermont were very fruitful in a lot of ways, because we reached a lot of other people that we ordinarily didn't reach on regular occasions, at concerts. We had people coming to concerts that had never been before, had never heard the kind of music we were playing. These were all the people in the neighborhood, the African Americans living in the neighborhood. They had never heard this, never heard that. At first they were afraid of it because of everything else that was going on at the time, and here this music's just "crazy" and "wild" and all that. When they came to believe in us, they started supporting us in all kinds of ways, hooking us up with resources that we were needing, just by mouth to mouth and those kinds of things, which enabled us to stretch out. We got offers to do other things in other neighborhoods. Can you believe that? But we stayed in the neighborhood until we couldn't hang there anymore. It got rough economy-wise, as far as keeping up overheads and things. We did it as long as we could. From there we moved on to the next place.
Isoardi
How were kids getting instruments then?
Tapscott
We would have different areas like- There were instructors at these high schools and junior high schools. In those days they had thrown away all the instruments when there were no more bands. That's when they started cutting bands and music and arts and all those things. And those instruments would be laying around in those cloakrooms and those places, and the guys that were music teachers at the schools, they were part of the [Pan-Afrikan People's] Arkestra, so they'd bring the instruments that we needed for certain individuals until, of course, they see if they're interested enough. Then their parents or guardians would buy them an instrument, a real good one. But the ones that we would get them, it would be hand-me-downs, old, you know what I'm saying?
Isoardi
Those band instruments that-
Tapscott
Those old band, army, kind of instruments. And then there were some people who just donated. Once they found out about us and once they heard the music and once they saw the activities, they started donating different things that we might need. Not always instruments, but sewing machines, old sewing machines and things. Some of the women in our group were seamstresses in the first place. They always made their own things. So that came in handy. We had pretty much of a hookup with the rest of the community. That's what was very important. We had some wires and pipelines and things that we had built up through the years, and we're still building them.The way to culture was being uplifted, and the way the changes were going on all over the world and then how it had affected our own little community, it was necessary for us to have something going on organization-wise where someone would have something to come and check out, to listen to. Like when we'd give the concerts, we'd give updates and knowledge of what's going on all over the world through poems and music, that kind of thing, lightweight giving it. As you play it, you're saying- You know. We'd always mix our concerts with the so-called multimedia, what they're doing now. We used to show still shots of the tragedies going on in the black community while the music was playing. While that's shooting up above, the music is playing. Someone over here is soloing on the instrument, and another one over here is doing some poetic things, screaming some things about freedom and all that. And the people, you know, they'd say, "Wait a minute. What's going on?" After a while they got used to that kind of a function going. They'd look forward to it. Then they started utilizing what they'd hear. They'd start getting interested in the things that we would be singing and talking and dancing about, so that they laughed and talked about- They might read up on something. It inspired a lot of people in a lot of different, small kinds of ways, Steve. Some people in that audience had never liked to read or they couldn't read, but now they've got an interest because of what has happened up here on the stage, and they'd come to this and that. Other people got so involved in it that they started writing about it, writing books. People learned to be writers. We had several writers come out of those kinds of audience, people that would come up and give testimonies about what the music had done for them.Every Sunday we'd have a packed crowd after three or four years of it. Then every Sunday we started looking forward to it, people coming and bringing those resources again that were so desperately needed. But we hardly ever did leave the community to get all these things. People came to us by word of mouth and things, which meant we were stabilized in the community now, finally. "We're going down to the Shop." "Where are you going Saturday morning?" "Going down to the Shop," the little kids.So we had that going on at the print shop, where the kids came in. They weren't coming in as much as they did when we got a house, but a lot of them grew up with this program, you know. Their parents brought them when they were about eight or nine years old, and they'd be around us until they're about seventeen or eighteen. Then they'd make up their minds by then how they want their adjustment to be in this society at the time, and how can they raise their children. We did a lot of just small things that were considered unimportant, so [we] would take those unimportant things and make big issues out of them, build mountains out of molehills. Because all that had to do with the subliminal racism and all that stuff. We had to try to apprise them and their children of what we have had done to us in our lives, in our early lives, and put it back to them to know what to look out for. It was a real posture-building, community-building, backbone-building kind of an operation. It wasn't just the music. The music was more or less the premise of the whole thing, to set it off, a launching pad more or less, because a lot of guys, a lot of girls, found their way by listening to the music. People came up to you after the concerts, crying and carrying on.I'll tell you the greatest thing that happened to me, Steve, is one time, during those days, I was on the radio, KPFK I think at that time, or KCRW. At any rate, I was being interviewed, and the telephone rang. It was a woman on the telephone calling me from her almost deathbed in the hospital, calling me and telling me that my music, the music I played so far, to this point, has helped to heal her, and "Thank you so very much for playing, and please don't stop." I never knew her name, never met her, nothing. I don't know if she's still alive or not. But what she said to me had patched up everything that I believed in. I said, "Oh!" Because there wasn't anything happening money-wise. You know, sometimes you're down in the dumps, you dig? But you have to pull your head up. When things like that [happen], those little small things- A little telephone call came, and the woman was real soft and crying, sobbing, as she spoke, like she had been under some kind of dark cloth and finally some light came in because of the sounds. And that was the idea of the sounds in the first place. We started something in the early sixties called medimusic. Medimusic.
Isoardi
What was that?
Tapscott
That was about that we were going to try to take our program into the senior citizens, the mentally sick patients, and use our music and our coloring schemes for them, you dig? This was the 1960s.
Isoardi
Did you do that? Did you try?
Tapscott
We tried, but, you know, resources were very, very limited at the time. And "What are you talking about in the first place? What do you mean? Who are you? Some kind of guru or something?" Anyway, we had that program going, and we tried it out on different- We were playing the seniors' homes during the day. We'd go play this music, and they'd be sitting out there just floating because of the way we'd be doing it. We'd try different ways where it [would] just creep up on them. And the next thing you know, they're smiling and they're feeling better and their blood pressure is normal, and all those kinds of things, which was proven, what we were thinking about. Because we weren't the first to think about this, you know, but we realized that probably through the years it's been happening, but who was going to follow through? Who's going to believe in that kind of thing? Then the meditation thing started coming into the States. The kids from that era started meditating a little bit after that, you dig, using different music and waves sounding and those kinds of things. Yeah, our medimusic thing, we had about four or five papers on what this function was, you dig? It lasted about several months or so. It was a very good experiment, because it worked on people that we had-
Isoardi
Yeah, I believe it. I believe it.
Tapscott
It worked. And this was live. It wasn't recordings. And voices speaking as you're playing, saying things about- Poems that they realized that had to do with their era.Those years were much more- Some years are more colorful than others. A lot of them were good years, but a lot of them were very, very colorful years. People were coming out of pits, so to speak, out of their minds. Guys that were trapped in this society mind-wise would always come to the Ark to relax, to listen, to be able to function outside, to get up some more strength so they can leave again, go back out into the war zone.
Isoardi
Did the Ark do any traveling outside of this area? None at all?
Tapscott
None. We had an offer, we had passports to go to the first Pan-African Festival in Africa. At that time, we had thirty people in the Arkestra. And they had promised- They wanted us over to open this up, because some of the guys in the neighborhood, the Africans would be visiting them, and some of the people who they'd be visiting would bring them to our concerts. And they said, "Wow." And a lot of the times, in those days, the Africans were living out in Brentwood. They'd come from overseas and they'd be living out there, just coming to get their education. They didn't have any hookup with the rest of the African Americans. Some of the people they were staying with enjoyed our music and started bringing these cats out, and these cats started coming out. A lot of people didn't know what was going on, it was so deep in Watts, so to speak. A lot of times, we have had a lot- I'm sorry. They sent us those thirty passports for the African trip, and about a week before the departure, Steve, our passports were lost. I mean, thirty passports we worked hard to get for all these people to go overseas, waiting to go to mother Africa and all that bit, and these cats lost them. Now, this had nothing to do with race; this had to do with class, you dig? You know what I'm saying? Because it was the black cats that did it to us, man. After the first Pan-African concert, that first year, after the guys were coming back, they found our passports, after the concerts were over, and sent them back.
Isoardi
Oh, man.
Tapscott
That was coldblooded, man.
Isoardi
It really was.
Tapscott
I mean, I've had a lot of things happen to me, but that was so cold, you know what I'm saying?As a matter of fact, to get it started, me and my son-in-law spent money out of our own pockets and took a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with one of these cats who was going to help us some more with this Arkestra, one of the guys that used to be here and used to be in the community, used to be a community leader, you dig, with his group of actors and actresses. He said, "Oh, Horace, it's going to be great when I get there in Washington, D.C., and will be sitting in the chair of the National Endowment [for the Arts]. I'm going to take care of my people back here, because you all deserve it," and all that rowda-ra-ra. So, "Oh yeah, we know it's going to be cool. I want you all to come to Washington, D.C."So we came to Washington, D.C., Steve, on our own money, got stranded in Chicago because of the weather and all that, had to wait around, then go to meet him on Monday morning at eight o'clock at his office. We left here on that Saturday night or Sunday morning, one of them, to get there, and we got to his office. Naturally, we were there already by seven. We knew he wasn't going to be there till nine, so we waited around. The cat never showed up, man. Now, we had reservations; we had to catch the airplane that evening. We were calling all around, and he could never be found. His secretary, his private secretary, could never find him. And this guy, I'd been knowing him a long time, man. We had to catch the plane and come all the way back here.And then that scene I told you about, the passports, started happening. And these were happening with all black people that were in the power to do this and that. However, I think this was about the seventh or eighth one they've had, and we still haven't been there yet. But I'll never forget that losing our passports. Because they didn't want to deal with us out here on the West Coast for one thing, you dig? You're too far out here. It could have been a lot of reasons. But it was a class thing, you dig? And all those cats back East went over there, and they had a wonderful time. But we were asked to come over; that's the part. It was like they were asking for us. But we never got there.Most of our activities have been in that particular area, Steve, that local area. I've circled around this whole community for years and never left it. Like I said, the only time we were going to leave it was to go there, to Africa, but that didn't happen. So we just stayed where we were. And that's one of the main reasons why the people have got the confidence in us, because they saw us every day.
Isoardi
They knew you weren't going to take off.
Tapscott
Yeah, they knew that. They finally got to the point where they said, "Oh, okay." But those kinds of things like the passports, those things that would have probably made a different niche in a lot of things, economically as well, if the Arkestra had had the chance to get over there, but some of those things are hold back kinds of functions that they throw on you. Because our organization was tight, and there wasn't bragging, and it wasn't being publicized. All the cats respected each other. That's the way it worked. Everybody respected each other. And their families, the ones who had the families and things, it was too tight. And when you've got things too tight, some other people might get kind of shaky, intimidated, by your activities, because "How can you people do all this? You don't have anything. What are you doing? You're not making any money doing this?" So "Why are you doing this?" kind of attitude, and "Why are the people enjoying it?" [laughter]So once we started things, Steve, it really worked. All the programs, most of it that was working in this community, that deal with schools and cities and this particular district had to do with the Arkestra. They've got programs now where musicians are going to schools. We have never been called. It's like we don't exist. But we started this. I know we started it, because I remember the years it began, that [we] were initiating it, you know. I wanted to go into the schools. I wanted my kids to be able to hear the music of Louis Armstrong and talk about Duke Ellington. That was my thing. Like I said, we [made] our way in, man, in the area. They got to expect that it was no money. After a while a program came out, Title I programs, title this, title that. And some of the cats started going to the schools, taking their groups, talking to the youngsters for an hour a week or what have you, different schools, and making some money. I've never had one of those gigs.
Isoardi
You're kidding.
Tapscott
I'm not kidding. I know we started it. All the cats in my group, we would break off in groups, Steve. We'd break off in threes and fours, man, and strategize where we were going. "We're going to take this school here, so-and-so. Linda [Hill], you go over here with so-and-so and take them over there. And you go over here to so-and-so." And boom, bam, at certain times, synchronization. At one o'clock in the afternoon, all of us have finished and would be back at the print shop rehearsing and taking notes on what had happened earlier and how to do things better. Not one dime was passed. But the people enjoyed the teachers, principals, schools, the community. I mean, guys that walked through the community, the kids were speaking to them at the markets, those kinds of things. It got to be a real community functioning thing.We were just breaking ground. We knew we were breaking ground, but we weren't bragging about it or anything, because we were only doing it because we needed it. We saw it as necessary. And you can't ask anybody to do something for you that you [can] do yourself. So it was just a matter of us taking matters into our own hands and people helping us because they saw that we were in earnest in what we were trying to do. And a lot of the cats in the group had been alcoholics, dope addicts, or mentally deranged in some kind of way, or so-called, put that way, but they came together. It was like when you- No one was afraid of anything. It's the kind of thing where you don't have a timetable on you, you don't have any rules how you do it; it's an understanding that you have from the jump. It's the kind of a function that you just practice all the time by daily doing it. You don't keep talking rules and regulations. You'd be acting first. You walk it, then you talk it. That's the idea to have.Because there were a lot of cats that wanted to talk, and the idea of speaking was to get applause, you dig? And that to me- [laughter] I mean, I like a great speaker, a cat that can put words together and pump you around and all that, you dig, but once that's over, what happens? In our case, we were going around just knocking barriers down, opening up. It wasn't anything that was so gigantic; it was just a part of an everyday function.That's the way I raised my family, man. Just do it simple, because we're going to run into a whole lot of crud out here. And if we don't have a simple stabilization going on for us, we'll be lost in this crowd here, because these people are fast and high-tech thinking, you dig? And they move people. They've got a lot of slick people in the world, and smooth, you dig? We tried to stay to the simplest of things, because that way it was better for us, and we built on that.We got a lot of flak from the municipalities because of the areas we might be in. "Having crowds at this particular sidewalk is against the so-and-so rule," that kind of bit. After a while, though, see, we started getting those people like the African American council people. You start working that way, and they start calling you on the phone now, because they want to have a speech to their district, and they want to bring them together, and they know who brings these crowds together. So we would have a concert, and the cat would come and talk. It got to the point where this cat started calling our band his band. "This is our band." Then he would open up areas where we might get a grant or something for playing there. But other than that, it was all- Because, see, I'd like the councilman, what he wanted us to do. He was fixing sidewalks, he was doing those things, fixing holes in the streets and having the trees cut off of wires around the black community. He was doing all these things. So when he did that, we helped him. That was our reward, because we were really community minded.And if it's a racist kind of cat, you racism is acting out of a love thing, love for your own kind, so why don't you just go on and get down there and do something about what you don't like. If you don't like what's going on in your neighborhood, you don't like the way your kids are getting taught at school, you don't like the way they're acting, then try to interject something-your way, not just any kind of way where "I'm going to do like so-and-so did it." If you're just really a part of it, you know a way to do it, what it is you can do to help.And that's what we called ourselves doing, as well as preserving the African American culture and preserving the musics that were written by black composers that were unknown, even the ones that were so-called known, but mostly the ones that were unknown. Those kinds of things, those little small things, were on our agenda every day, just going from one place to the next.You know, there were a lot of recreation centers open to a lot of the people in the neighborhood. We hooked up with some of the other aspiring people in the neighborhood who wanted to bring people together, and we'd come together and give something all together, you know, to bring in. We're playing all these different homes, these homes where the kids were kept or old people were kept. And then we had played in places where community centers were built for the neighborhood. People were getting hired for these jobs. This was the War on Poverty; that kind of bit was after that went down.So we were functionable in that, but we had never been signed on as people who were receiving any moneys from any sort- And a lot of any moneys that we may have gotten came through the community centers just from the surplus or maybe under the table. You might not be expecting any money, and somebody, "Well, here's a little change for your gas and the guys in the band," you dig? And these cats just went along with it. It wasn't a big thing. They didn't see anybody making any money off of them. We didn't, you know. We had a point to make, and we were trying to make the point and gain the respect of the people in the community, which we did.
Isoardi
So most people in the Arkestra had regular jobs then, as well.
Tapscott
A lot of them, yeah.
Isoardi
I guess you had to.
Tapscott
Yeah, you had to. A lot of them had babies, a lot of babies. Some of them had the regular family ties. Some were schoolteachers. Most of them were schoolteachers, printers, and things that weren't heaving-lifting kinds of jobs. Not those. A lot of the guys had jobs, and there were the ones who didn't, but they were important to the ones who did. If this one who didn't have a job was in trouble, the one who did would see that he didn't get in trouble, that kind of attitude, because it's important to him that this man is cool because this man makes a great contribution even though he's a screwup. You know, some of the cats would be screwups, but you need certain kinds of attitudes around to keep things functioning. Nobody ever thought the same way about every issue, with the exception of the music. Every issue, everybody had something to say about it, but it was basically what you were there about. It was how you got there that was the difference.
Isoardi
How did you guys make decisions, then? Did you have a leadership? Or did you just arrive at things collectively?
Tapscott
Collectively mostly. And then they might ask me at the last minute, after everybody has gotten together, "So what do you think, Horace?" Or else I would have said what I had to say at the top. Sometimes they went along, sometimes they didn't. Whichever way it went, we supported whoever won that particular time.A couple of times it was, "Man, I don't want to keep playing down there, and those people don't appreciate it, and we ain't getting no money." We had those a lot of times, arguments within the group. Not to the point of busting up, though; just getting pissed off and calling each other a couple of names and getting back to it. It had to do with if you wanted to reach these people first, you had to have something to reach them with. You had to have something to get their attention and hold it. Then you can go and say what you have to say, you want to feed them, whatever. But your point here is to bring people together. "Now, you can either go somewhere else, maybe you can go somewhere and play-" These are my words to this person who's dissatisfied. "You can go play with so-and-so, make money. If not, great a player as you are, you've got to play somewhere." So they would never leave. Some guys would go away for a while, play with a group, make a little money, come on back. Go right back to their seat and be pissed off if somebody's sitting there. [laughter] After you're gone now, you dig? See, when it got to the point where everybody felt it was their Arkestra, then it became something that- I could sleep an hour longer [but] rehearsal can start now, because we had a band that would start the rehearsal. It had an organization going. It was a bunch of people, Steve. And then you had to deal with their families and stuff.So in that three and a half years down at the print shop, it was, like I said, fruitful times. All of us learned a lot of things by being down there, about how to keep overhead and all that kind of stuff.
Isoardi
All the business.
Tapscott
We had a guy that was an accountant that enjoyed it so much that he couldn't believe it. He was so inspired by our activities that he volunteered his services, man, started taking care of the books for us. Then that's when they started stretching out some more, the resources that I was talking about. He started touching other people that we never would have gotten to, because we don't know the lingo and all that. But he would go straight out there and do that.We started getting stipends from different places. That's when we started being invited outside of the community. We'd be getting these stipends for coming out to so-and-so, where each cat might end up with $15, about thirty pieces. And in those days, $15 bought them some food and stuff for their families. Say we might be in a black community in Pasadena that we'd had to go to, that's when we'd go out of the area to go play in that area. They gave us a stipend.They started giving a lot of these celebrations through the years, you know, outside, and they had problems about music, there weren't as many musicians around, so that meant that we had the gig all the time. And it was during the time when there wasn't a lot of hullabaloo going on. At that time, those that are doing the hullabaloo now were in their mama's womb at the time, you dig? That kind of thing. And they'd come out, we're there playing for them when they come out. When people in our band get pregnant, we'd make sure we'd be around for the time the baby is born, have a party. Some cat might write a tune about the newborn right then and there.It was a lot of fun, man, as well as a lot of hassles going on, a lot of small-time hassles that seemed tried to wreck the organizationship, chip at it, that force from outside. Because anything that was working- There were a few people that, like I said, were intimidated or jealous, envious, because they had a group, and they weren't- But, see, they had a whole idea about making money from the jump, which was cool for them. I wasn't against that. But I had experienced a little bit and realized that there are certain things that just weren't going to happen. No matter how good they were, it just wasn't going to happen. They hadn't even gotten to the race thing yet, you dig? They hadn't gotten past that, so they were- It wasn't just going to happen for them in the way that we reacted and the way we did things. It was so organizational that they had to come on in and give it up and say, "Well, man, I'm sorry about how we did such and such. We want to join forces."We were the reason for a lot of other groups, non-musical, non-artistic groups, to come together. Just groups of people coming together to better their community, saying, "Let's have a meeting, and let's do this, let's do that. Let's go to the schoolhouse. Let's do all this." You know, little things that they hadn't thought about doing before, and it was brought to their attention by the Arkestra and people, steady screaming and hollering, you dig, about racism and this and that, the poets and things like that and writers. Like these guys who were writing these books on it, they'd be sitting in the audience, and they want to write now. They're inspired.So we had a function, Steve. We had a function as an Arkestra. Because it was the only group outside of the church that came together all the time. And people saw it, and people had a part in it.When we used to play at the South Park over there on Fifty-first [Street] and Avalon [Boulevard], people who became a real part of the Arkestra, man- I mean there wasn't any notice about concerts. There wasn't anything in the papers, no kind of radio thing about how we were going to have a concert. But on Sundays, man, and Saturdays, they'd be piled into the park looking at the stage.
Isoardi
And just knowing.
Tapscott
Yeah, and swaying, man, with the music. And you'd be on the stage looking at all these folks sitting out there swaying and happy. [Leonard] Deadwyler might have just gotten killed by the policeman, or one of the black kids might have gotten killed, but here they all come together. We're remembering this kid, and we're swinging, just trying to bring it out, get all the frustrations out. And the people leave the concert, they were smiling and happy, looking forward to their music.I mean, I keep on talking about this cat that was drunk that time at the park. He and his partners were running around. They were loud, Steve, you know, just drunk. And all the people were sitting there knowing [mimics sound of drunken behavior]. He came up to the bandstand and turned around and pointed and grabbed my ankles and said [in drunken voice], "This is our band. This is our band. This is our band." And walked away, man. And the cats in the band were smiling because- That was really uplifting. This cat was drunk, and people were getting bugged with him because he and his partner were running around with the music and dancing with a can of- But they accepted him. When he grabbed my leg and said that, we were accepted. And the people that were mad at him, pissed off at him, started applauding after he started out, "This is our band!" [laughter]

1.20. Tape Number: XI, Side TwoJuly 17, 1993

Isoardi
Had the personnel of the band changed much from the early years by the time you're in the print shop?
Tapscott
Yeah, it had. It had changed quite a bit. As a matter of fact, a lot of the guys prior to those years at the print shop- We were at another house for several years on the east side of town. At that time, that was during the early, early, early years, when all the first cats started coming into the group. A lot of the guys, after a while, some of them migrated to New York, some of them just stopped playing, but a lot of them went somewhere else. And the Ark was changing over because- People like- Fritz [Wise] was a teenager, and he'd be around rehearsals, or [Roberto] Miranda. They'd be around at rehearsals listening. They were still younger, and they started coming around. Not just them, but people like them, and each time maybe two or three left, four or five would come in their place, you dig, and they were all ready for it, because it was like it wasn't new to them. Some of the cats were practicing to get to the Ark, because they were inspired by all these cats playing. It kept changing, but there was a nucleus that stayed for twenty years, about a seven- or eight-piece nucleus of the whole Ark, you know, the ones that did all the bidding for the Arkestra and got most of the players to come in. The word got around, so there was always somebody calling or stepping up with their instrument. It changed quite a bit. A lot of the cats, I forget their names, man. I see their faces now, they've been through there, they might have been there a year or so, and then they went to an army band, you know. There have been quite a few people in the Ark, Steve, musicians that passed through, and some of them- I remember 95 percent.
Isoardi
Jeez. That's a lot to remember.
Tapscott
Yeah, and their attitudes that they had. [laughter]
Isoardi
So what happens? You're forced to close the print shop. Keeping up the overhead is getting a bit much. And this is around-what?-the mid-seventies, the later seventies, you've got to close it?
Tapscott
Yeah, the late seventies we've got to close up and go to the next. We went to a Western Avenue house, Twenty-fourth [Street] and Western.
Isoardi
So this is a private residence again, that kind of thing, that you guys take over?
Tapscott
We took over and had the cats living there again and playing and rehearsing. It was a big, two-story, about twelve or thirteen-room place, which is now, I saw yesterday, a whole apartment complex. We passed there yesterday. Cecilia said, "Wow!"
Isoardi
The same building? Or did they tear it down and put something-?
Tapscott
It was torn down, the whole area. But that's where we went right after the print shop because- I'm sorry. I'm a little ahead of myself here. We went to the print shop after or at the same time. But when we left the print shop, we did go to this big house on Western, and from there, that's when the Ark, a lot of the guys started leaving, the older ones. Like I said, migration began, going to New York. That was the late seventies, about '75, '76, they were starting to go.
Isoardi
Now, it's interesting, because I guess about- what?-is it the mid-seventies, late seventies, there's really kind of a newer movement in New York, as well. There's this loft scene, there's a lot of new music that's going on. Do some of the people who leave here go to New York and participate in that? I mean, is there a kind of connection between L.A. and that?
Tapscott
There really is, man, and it's still going on.
Isoardi
Who were some of these-? Do you remember some of the-?
Tapscott
Stanley Crouch first, and Arthur Blythe. I think they were more the ones who were doing all the preaching about back here, because they had to stand up for their course. [laughter] They'd be talking about it so bad, because they didn't have no idea all of this was going on out here, and these cats started coming from there and they started asking them questions. "What's happening? How come so many guys come from there?" They said, "Well, the Arkestra. They come out of the Ark." McCoy Tyner used to come out here and say, "Hey, man, every time some cat plays, he's talking about Horace Tapscott and the Arkestra. Every time I've got somebody playing with me, he came out of your Ark." [laughter]
Isoardi
[laughter] Well, yeah, I mean, all of the people you mentioned. [Lawrence] "Butch" Morris.
Tapscott
Azar Lawrence.
Isoardi
Azar Lawrence, Stanley Crouch. I mean, they're all part of that. They're central to that scene in New York in the late seventies that just takes off.
Tapscott
Right. Exactly. When I'd go to New York, I'd be accepted like I lived there.
Isoardi
As a godfather. [laughter]
Tapscott
I remember one night going into-what was it?- that club in the [Greenwich] Village.
Isoardi
[Village] Vanguard?
Tapscott
No, named after that plant.
Isoardi
Sweet Basil.
Tapscott
Sweet Basil. And Butch Morris had David Murray's band in there. Butch was conducting the band.
Isoardi
Oh, two albums came out of that. Live at Sweet Basil.
Tapscott
And one, two, three, four cats in that group were from the Arkestra. David [Murray], Will Connell, Arthur [Blythe], and Butch.
Isoardi
That's right.
Tapscott
No, not Arthur. He wasn't [there] that night. It was Wilber, Butch's brother, Wilber Morris. And I walked in Sweet Basil, Steve, and the whole band stopped, man. Butch came into the aisle and hugged me, and the people in the audience were, "What the-? What's going on here?" You dig? They didn't know what happened. It was out. I'd never experienced that. I just walked in, they spotted me, and boom. That was beautiful. That was really beautiful. And these cats are steady. So we knew it wasn't in vain, because they stayed on it, and they were doing their things and adding to them and always came back here to play. If we'd give a concert, they'd come and play. They don't want their names advertised, they just want to play.
Isoardi
They've made such great contributions to the music that's-
Tapscott
Right. They're beautiful, man. And on the European classics side, one of my band members, basson player, Rufus Olivier, he was at San Francisco [Symphony Orchestra], first chair.
Isoardi
Really? First bassoon?
Tapscott
He was given the job, and he said some young bassoonist came there, and they gave him the job, so he quit and went across the street to the [San Francisco Opera Company] and played first chair. He sends his students to my concerts when we come. So he's making his contribution up there in the San Francisco area.Let's see, who else? Outside of the music that we're in, they've jumped into something else, but they all hook up to the Ark. Like we've got a kid who changed his name and went into a whole African repertoire. He was one of the Ark members, and his group is working finally. He's speaking the language now. But the Ark is really Pan-African now, Steve, today. All the guys in it are from different countries.
Isoardi
No kidding. How did that happen?
Tapscott
I don't know. You know, through the years, all this migration and immigration bit came through. Guys from West Africa, East Africa, the Caribbean. All of them are here, all the musicians they're all in the Ark now. I'm going to be featuring them in September for the L.A. Festival. Thirty pieces.
Isoardi
No kidding. Oh, outstanding.
Tapscott
We're doing my composition "Ancestral Echoes," just one composition for the whole concert.
Isoardi
Fantastic.
Tapscott
We're going to have all these cats there and dancers. It's really going into something else now. These cats are bringing in their renditions of the music to the Ark and enhancing it, just expanding it.
Isoardi
I would think so. Do they all write? I mean, do they all bring their-?
Tapscott
No. They all bring their own things over. Some of it's written, but most of it is by mouth, and they'd show you what's happening.
Isoardi
Jeez, that must be tremendous. I mean, these different ideas coming in.
Tapscott
Same blood but different cultures, and they're coming together.
Isoardi
Yeah.
Tapscott
And we'd be playing, we'd tell them, "We don't need names for these rhythms anymore, because your rhythm over here is called something, and your rhythm from this land is something else, and they're all the same to me. So we're going to call them this so we can all understand." Like Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo did. Both of them were African and one was from Cuba, and the interviewer said, "Well, man, Diz, you don't speak Spanish, and Chano, he doesn't speak English. How do you all communicate?" "Well, we both speak the mother tongue. That's how we understand each other." [laughter] Yeah, man, that's what would be going on. Because a lot of times you don't understand what they're saying or how they're putting their phrases and things, but you hear it, and once you hear it, you've got it. And they have to hear you. They're trying to speak English to talk to you, and you want to speak their language to talk to them. But the music is the universal language, so everybody understood that and understands.
Isoardi
Your piece is titled "Ancestral Echoes." I think Randy Weston did a two-CD set that came out, Melba Liston did the arranging, called Spirits of Our Ancestors.
Tapscott
I remember when he came here and did it.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah, about three years ago in Melba's house. I know she was writing it for him. Mine has never been recorded.
Isoardi
When did you compose it?
Tapscott
About 1968.
Isoardi
How often has it been performed?
Tapscott
Once.
Isoardi
You're kidding.
Tapscott
By the Watts Symphony down at the Music Center [of Los Angeles County] annex in October of 1986.
Isoardi
Why haven't you had the Ark perform it sooner or more often?
Tapscott
Well, you see, with the Watts Symphony, they had all of the instruments. They had all the full symphonic sound.
Isoardi
The Ark isn't enough. You've got this scored for something much bigger.
Tapscott
Yeah, much bigger. So you had to rearrange it for that. And that's the only time we got it recorded, but the recording was so bad. Those were about seventy-five people that played it that day. Only this time we only have thirty, though.
Isoardi
So you're rescoring it for the Arkestra?
Tapscott
Thirty, yeah.
Isoardi
Are you going to record it? Are you going to tape it?
Tapscott
Yeah. Yeah, for sure this time. And it will be videotaped, too, as well as audio. But what I really want videotaped is the parade at the last day of the year-December 26, rather, after Christmas-Kwanza [parade].
Isoardi
What did you tell me-? You scored a-
Tapscott
The marching band.
Isoardi
Was it "Lino's Pad" you were going to do?
Tapscott
"Lino's Pad," yeah. We start rehearsing in October.
Isoardi
Oh, that's going to be wild.
Tapscott
That's what I really look forward to, in the middle of the streets with a band. [laughter] You know what I mean? A drum and bugle corps.
Isoardi
That you've got to have on video.
Tapscott
Yeah, that's got to be on video. It would be nice. Because, see, on December 26 they only have the parade down the street here, Crenshaw Boulevard. There isn't anything but drummers, maybe four or five drummers, kid drummers, playing and people marching, because they don't have any high school bands. If they had any bands that played, I'm sure they'd be playing. Like Crenshaw [High School] used to have a band, the school across the street here, but it doesn't have a band. So you have to make up a band that will walk Crenshaw. Now, Locke High School still has a band, but it played a lot of other activities. I haven't seen them out here yet. I don't know if they've invited them or what, but they need to invite these young bands that are left so that they have many more bands in the parade, you know. The kids are playing and they get exposed to some band music.
Isoardi
Right, right.
Tapscott
That's really one of the things I'm really looking forward to, see. That's exciting to me, a parade. To lead a band in a parade, that's exciting to me, man. I've already got my outfit I'm going to wear. [laughter] What I was thinking about wearing, you dig? My high top hat and my dark glasses and my cane.
Isoardi
Are you serious? [laughter] Tails?
Tapscott
The tails, yeah. [laughter]
Isoardi
[laughter] This has got to be on video. [laughter]
Tapscott
Yeah, man. There are only two tunes that we're going to be playing. "Lino's Pad" is one. I haven't picked the other one, but, see, you only need two anyway for a parade, you dig, because it's going to stretch on the first two. And the pattern in "Lino's Pad" is what's fascinating to the drummers, you dig? They've got to play this march in 7/4 time, and people are used to marching in 4/4 time. And that should be exciting.
Isoardi
An education for them.
Tapscott
We've tried to get these choreographers to choreograph some steps for the marching, the drum and bugle corps, all this hooked up together, you dig?
Isoardi
It's going to be really interesting to see the effect the music has on the people watching. See if anybody can stand still listening to "Lino's Pad." [laughter]
Tapscott
And I had been thinking, see, now, I want to march, you dig, but then there's a case of a wide flatbed [truck] that's involved too. Do you want to use a flatbed? Or do you want to march? I want to march, man. The march will be from [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] Boulevard right up here to Leimert [Park]. It's not that far.
Isoardi
Oh, no. Half a mile?
Tapscott
Half a mile, I guess.
Isoardi
Not much.
Tapscott
And all the activities happen here at the park after the parade. They have the musicians and all the activities all out in the streets over here after the parade's over. People come to the function then.
Isoardi
You don't need a flatbed for something like that.
Tapscott
They can walk for that. [laughter] That will do it. But that's what I'm looking forward to, man. I'm really excited about the parade. The twenty-sixth of December. So you be sure you come by here and park your car and go stand out-
Isoardi
I'm usually up with my family in the Bay Area, but I may have to come back late Christmas night or early the next morning.
Tapscott
The next morning, yeah.
Isoardi
I'll get in the car and drive. That sounds great.
Tapscott
And I'll be playing New Year's Eve at Fifth Street Dick's.
Isoardi
Oh, really?
Tapscott
I got the gig last night. Because I opened up this year with my group, and now we're going to do it for the next year.
Isoardi
All right. That's been a pretty successful place, hasn't it?
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
That's nice. It's a great story, too, you know, a guy [Richard Fulton] who just loves the music.
Tapscott
Me and my wife, we were there this morning at about three o'clock, walked around there this morning at about three o'clock, came back home about four thirty or something. Came back in, got into bed, they were still playing, right? [laughter] They didn't get through until six.
Isoardi
Wow, that's great.
Tapscott
Anyway, man, from the print shop up to that point, that's what had happened. The print shop had pulled out a lot of things that we hadn't been a part of before, so it was very nice, and we were very thankful to the old gentleman that let us have the place.
Isoardi
It sounds like you were really able to expand, to make an impact, to do a lot of different things. Do you have to tone down your programs a bit from after you leave the print shop? Your resources are a bit more tight.
Tapscott
Yeah.
Isoardi
You said you've got some of the people who were going to New York and things like that.
Tapscott
Yeah, it had toned down. We had to reshape it. Not actually redirect it, just reshape it. The same things kept happening. The basic people that were doing the instructing were still here, most people we had. It was the players, more or less, that were leaving. And then we started going into more things. We started going into the church then. During those years, we were playing at the junior high schools on Sundays and then after that, like I told you, we got started at the Immanuel [United] Church of Christ. But I remember so many things. You say something to spark it off, and it will come back to me. I remember most of the overall things that were happening that had to do with our surviving as a group. We had a lot of problems with a lot of things because we were always traveling in numbers, you dig?
Isoardi
[laughter] So there was always a squad car around the corner, right?
Tapscott
[laughter] Yeah, always a squad car. [laughter] We traveled in numbers all the time. There was a squad car checking you out. And it got to the point where some of the white policemen got hip to us and knew us, started waving at us. Then it was cool.But other than that, it was a whole other time where you had a grasp for your community and the youngsters in it, because you were out there at the time and they knew you were there and they knew where to come. They knew they had a place to hang out or to find out something. That was acknowledged. That was the point, you dig? What they couldn't do or say or ask at school, they could come down and ask one of these people or find out what it was. Because we used to tell them about going to jail, because they was a time when kids had to go to jail to get some prestige. I said, "How does that sound? For you to get prestige, you've got to go to jail first?" But that's the way it's always been, Steve. You go to jail, then everybody in the community respects you because you got busted. So we had to try to turn that around. It was hard to do, man.
Isoardi
I wanted to ask you if you'd been able to take the Arkestra into the jails. But also, what did you try and do, then, to try and turn that around or to try and deal with it in some way?
Tapscott
We'd take the Arkestra to prisons all the time. As a matter of fact, most of the guys that- A lot of time they went to prison because a lot of them were in prison. Black cats were going to prison every day four or five times a day. Naturally, after they're in prison they'd want some activities, and they'd write us and ask us, so they have to go through the officials. Sometimes, though, officials say no or say yes. In one case, one of the cats called me to come up to Soledad [State Prison] with the band at the time. He had straightened all the stuff out, he and some more of the convicts, and then at the last minute, the warden said, "No, we're not sending the bus down there. You're in prison." So we didn't get to go there. But they used to send buses for us to come up, and we'd play [California Institution for Men in] Chino mostly, Chino and the women's prison and those places like that all the time. One time we went in and they wouldn't let one of the band members in.
Isoardi
Why?
Tapscott
Because he had been in jail. We didn't go in until he went in, you dig?
Isoardi
Sure.
Tapscott
Everybody in there had been in jail in the Ark, one way or another, you dig? [laughter] So they finally let us in. Then they wanted to tone down our poet because he was upsetting the prisoners with his poems about what was going on at the time.
Isoardi
Who was this?
Tapscott
Kamau Daaood. The warden and the supervisor came down and stopped us, because the cats were [breathes heavily] listening to all that music, and that music was going on behind him, and the words, this cat was screaming out to them, and they were crying and yelling. They closed the concert down, man, before they had a riot, you know what I'm saying? Many times we were going up to the prisons, though, Steve, and we were locked down because the cats are having a riot, a little lightweight riot on the other side of the yard. These other cats in the concert hall wanted to hear the music, and these other cats over here are having a race riot. And the same cats that were having a race riot are over here together listening together. It was out there. The Hispanics and the blacks.
Isoardi
It's a sick society in there.
Tapscott
Me and Roberto were there, and they just loved it, man. [laughter] Those cats would be sitting in there, and they'd be- Those were the ones that get really emotional, though, in the prisons.
Isoardi
I'll bet.
Tapscott
When we play they're emotional, man. They get to crying. You'd see cats crying, hardcore criminals, so-called. They'd hear this music, and they'd just- That's how we knew that medimusic had made sense, because once you leave the prison, on your way out of the prison, all the cats in the prison are waving at you and hollering at you. They're all up like this here, you know.
Isoardi
You can imagine what a change it must be from their daily routine. It gives them something.
Tapscott
Those lifer cats. A lifer in there that was a saxophone player-he had murdered his old lady or something-he'd wait for us to come there, you dig, so he could play. They're going to let him out this year, as a matter of fact. I saw a lot of the older brother musicians that got put in the joint and got forgotten about. They come out, and they come around here. Now they're playing, and their name is back out again. A lot of them that went into the joint that really had no bad dope habit, you know, where they were smoking rock cocaine that would take over their heads, a lot of those cats come out and straighten themselves out. They got busted for dealing or this or something like that, but they weren't strung out themselves, but they got busted because they were dealing. They'd come out, and they start wanting to play. A lot of the guys in our band, two guys in the band, went to jail for murder. One murdered his old lady's boyfriend, you know, one of those kinds of passion things, and he got out. He was a tenor player. It changed him around. He's quiet. He even disappeared now, as a matter of fact, after all those years.But there were a lot of things happening. A lot of cats remember. A lot of people that are gone, the ones that aren't dead, there are a lot of them that should be dead the way they'd be treating themselves. But most of all, the ones that are still here are still here surviving and trying to keep on doing what they were doing in the way that they were doing it. It was always this and that. It's the good and the bad and all that. So the Ark had all these things in it, but the biggest thing about it was our function by staying together under all kinds of stresses and strains and all kinds of things that had been thrown at you that are negative. It was one of those champions that we did, you know.
Isoardi
Just to stay together as long as you guys have.
Tapscott
For people to see you, young people to see you, and say, "I remember when I was a kid this group was together." And they come and say that shit to you. They said, "Wow, you all are still playing." Like they didn't know what it was then. They enjoyed it then, but all they knew was they enjoyed it. And here they're grown up, and here are these same guys, their hair a little grayer, they move a little slow, but they're still playing great, you dig? That kind of thing. And that in itself is a real reward. However, the fact that we are functioning together, I think it was mostly- The real search, I guess, the real struggle, it's just to prove a point that it can be done. I look at it, and it all boils down to that, you dig? "Hey, I believe this, and I'm staying here, and this will work. This can work. Believe me, believe me, believe me, watch me, watch me, watch me, watch me, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here." And finally somebody says, "Oh, you're here. Maybe you can show me what's happening. Why are you here? Why did you-? Why this?" I'd be answering some of those questions on gigs now at these colleges. You know how they have cats at the colleges, and they want to question these weirdos. [laughter] These nonconformist type attitudes. They'd be really questioning. "Well, how does this-?" And to be able to tell that to an audience of American kids of all races was really good to me, because I look forward to the young people to change the whole thing up. I look forward to that there's going to be a multiracial society. The only problem would be that there would be no respect for each other's race, and that's the only thing that I'm interested in, the respect. When they grow up together and have babies and stuff, it's going to be a whole different kind of thing. But you've got to have a background for this thing, and we are the background, we are the expendable ones. We're on the front line for a purpose. That's it, man. You don't know what's going to happen next, only that you have done your job. And you want to see that this next group that wants to go to that place doesn't have to cross this pit. They can go around it, that kind of attitude.Because myself personally, I love the human race. I love this music that I'm hearing, and I love the things that go on between people when people respect each other. I like that. Because I was raised in that kind of society, a segregated society- Segregated it may be racially, but, I mean, I was raised up in a society where people cared about each other to the point where like neighbors cared about neighbors and their children and so forth. You don't look for that to happen while you're alive, but you can work toward that kind of thing instead of trying to create some kind of chaos of some sort for no reason at all. If you're going to create chaos, at least have it for a point.I've been asked a lot of times how could I do this and why did I do that. Why didn't I leave, and why didn't I do this? And I had already left. They didn't know that I had been gone and come back, you dig? My going really made me want to come back. By being out there on the road and hearing and looking and seeing and going through that Billie Holiday kind of scene on the bus-we're driving through the South and black cats hanging on trees-that same feeling was happening in the South. And why? "Okay, Horace, you don't like it, change it. Do your part to change it." So I quit the road and came back here.I imagine if it was done all over again, I'd do it the same way, Steve, because it really hangs in my gut, in my throat, all of the lies, all of the hatred, all the putting down of certain peoples and cultures. I can't stand that, man. I have no use for that, even though I used to be one of the main ones, you dig? Now I know why I can't stand it, because I didn't like it then. I was always having to fight, to look over your shoulder.Like this incident yesterday about the cats from the white Aryan groups coming to the black community to kill and all this. Some of my friends think that's a cover-up. I mean, how in the world was that going to happen? Even though they had all these sophisticated weapons- I mean, everybody in this city is packing. You know, you can't go down Crenshaw. You walk down Crenshaw, every cat or woman you stop is packing. So, I mean, these cats are going to come over here- A lot of the guys believe it's a whole other scene to get the guns out of the black community. They said they're going to clean up. So they say, "We'll clean up this white Aryan group first." In other words, you've got all these people adding their ideas and things to this situation that's going on, which makes me suspicious. I mean, an Aryan group, as organized as they are, doesn't get caught like that in the first place. And to talk about killing [Cecil L.] Murray and Rodney [G.] King, see, the fact that they picked those names tells you that something is happening here that doesn't make too much sense, because if it's going to be a race war, I mean, it wouldn't even start with them. Who is Rodney King to be shooting, you dig? Those kinds of things. Those kinds of detours. I mean, this is the fake thing here. The real thing is coming over here while I've got you checking this out over here. This is so obvious here, but the real movement is silently creeping on you to keep your mind away from what's happening. And that's the way I see it happening in the news media.I can see it in my own neighborhood, in my community. And my community has been changing up for the last twelve, thirteen years slowly, starting down on Washington [Boulevard] and Arlington [Avenue], young white families moving in, cats with their wives and their kids, right up the hill here.
Isoardi
Baldwin Hills?
Tapscott
Baldwin Hills. Down at Lucky market you're seeing white, young families now running around just free and unintimidated, you dig? I said, "There it is, man," you see. Because this is prime land, its a prime part of the area, and they don't want it to run down. Even the people who live here don't want it to run down. The plan is still at work, in action. It's not threatening, because once you have these different races coming in the neighborhood, the neighborhood starts to perk up a little bit. The sidewalks start getting fixed and shit, you dig? The trees started getting trimmed, the curbs are cleaner. The street cleaner comes out twice a week or twice a month. Because you've got a mixed neighborhood, and everybody's going to be screaming. That's fine with me.I can do anything; I can be a part of the whole society. I just want that mutual respect. That's all. I want to be able to go here and there and listen here and there and know that the music that is playing- Say there's a play being given and some music being played written by a black composer. I want the people to know who wrote that and appreciate it for what it is.Okay, now, the way America is now today, it's subliminal racism. You can see through all your advertisements, all your television advertisements, that it's there, man. I mean, it's just there. And it's going to be there, I'm sure, you know. But the fact of it is is that if you're being treated equal it's okay to be the way you are today. Like I'll be seeing commercials on television every now and then that have to do with racism, man, and don't say anything about racism and don't even look like it. It has nothing to do with racism. It's altogether a whole other thing.But if you can keep your groups and all your brain functions together, I think that you find that it's very nice living in this society, and people start allowing you to look at the good things that have come out of this society and this particular community, which all people have been a part of outside. But I always have to try to get to that point where I can think in those terms. Before I can think in those terms, I've got to go through all this crud. There's a lot of crud out here. I've raised my children in crud, and now they're raising theirs in the crud, but at least it's less crud than the crud that they had to deal with. But even though it's getting better, it seems like it's worse.
Isoardi
Yeah, in some ways better, in some ways worse.
Tapscott
Yeah. I mean, to me, when I walk out, it's always a negative now. All I see is the worst. I see my young people just ignore you totally, don't see you. And that hurts to walk down the street and they don't even see you. They don't make eye contact. It's like you're invisible, you're not there. That's the part that hurts, because even though they're younger and you're older, you've got something in common. You can speak and teach one another and not be intimidated one by the other. [They act] like this is their world and there's nobody else in it. Sometimes you'll be driving down the streets and cats will be stopping in the middle of the streets talking, holding up traffic, like you're nothing. See, and that's the kind of brain thing that bugs me about my people, man. That bugs me to death. Because hey, man. And it's like, "You'd better not say nothing to me about standing here talking to my friend. I'll take my gun out and shoot you." That kind of thing is worse than anything you can think of.
Isoardi
Yeah. It's real poison.
Tapscott
That's dirty. I mean, it's really contaminated, man. All the way to the sperm. Just think, this cat's going to make a baby and feed that to him or her. Because, see, those are youngsters that grew up in a society where their parents had money, I mean, jobs. They weren't poor. They were poor, but they weren't poverty-stricken. They were able to get the clothes and go to school and [have] food. So they don't know of anything. But they drive to their schools here, like I mentioned before, in their [Mercedes] Benzes and new Toyotas and Infinitis and those things like that. High schoolers, black high schoolers. And then you drive up to them, and it's a loss of respect for your own kind, for your elders.When you lose respect for your elders, don't look for respect anywhere else, from anybody else. That's the biggest problem today. And to me, it seems like it's worse than it was then when we had problems on the streets, because at least then the young people had respect for their elders, and that's what's not there now. It's not there.I walk the streets every day. [It's] not all of them, but the ones that you do see are enough, you know what I'm saying? It's enough. You go down to the mall and it's enough, you dig? To shoot at each other for what? They don't even know what they're doing. They don't have any idea at all, and that's what makes them much more dangerous. They just don't care and don't have any idea. They see they're killing innocent people, and what do they care? Now, that kind of brain thing is really out, because that's the way they were raised. They don't know anything else but that. I think I mentioned before as well that a lot of the youngsters, they don't look to make it to age sixteen. And they think of themselves as being soldiers, and they're not- What are they soldiering? I want to be knowing. Nothing.But there's something that we're not doing and didn't do or should have done perhaps to stop that kind of mental function that's in the young people today. Because it had to be our fault. The elders are the ones that demanded their respect, so it must have been something we did, you dig, or said. I mean, like I said, it's not the majority of them that are like that, but the ones that are like that are enough.Like tomorrow night, Sunday night, if you're around on Crenshaw from seven o'clock to about eleven, do not drive down Crenshaw. You'll never get anywhere, because that's the night of the cruisers. They're all from Manchester [Avenue] to Washington [Boulevard] on Crenshaw. And these little islands on the side? The municipalities had to put up signs saying no parking from six P.M. Friday night to six A.M. Monday morning.
Isoardi
Really?
Tapscott
Yeah. You get tickets. And the police will be driving through, so the kids can't do nothing a lot of times. At first they were cool, though, see. They were driving through just- You know, that's what kids do, in their new cars; they drive and they pack the streets. They stayed out of the other people's way; they didn't bug them. Then after a while they just got outlandish, man. "This is my street" kind of attitude. "Nobody else comes down here but me." Several people got pissed off and put the police on them, and now they can't park, so they have to keep moving. They'll be going all around on your side streets. They used to come on my street here, but they can't come here too much. People call on them quick. And this is a hot street as far as police are concerned, because the community and high school, they want the police around to get these youngsters and that kind of bit. And they've got the curfew and- They do everything before the curfew time, because if they're out at ten thirty, then they can go to jail, see. And that curfew law has been there a long time, but it's never been enforced. Now it is.But it's that kind of attitude that they've acquired at this time. It can't work in any kind of society, especially one that's coming up out of the gutter from poverty and all the things that have to do with going down or being destroyed. They're helping to destroy it.If you notice, the young black cats do not do any more work. If they don't have a job doing something else, they don't do service anymore. It's all the immigrant Hispanics that do service. So where are they? So what are they doing? Where are these cats and what are they doing? And where are they getting their money? All of them can't be dope pushing, all of them can't be crooks, so where are they getting their money? What are they doing?All these questions need to be asked of each other. Because the black male is still an endangered species. From the 1920s on up to now, he's still endangered. And regardless of how it's done-they're doing it to themselves-it's because it's been programmed into him that this should be done. I would say about the year 2010, it might come into their minds to decide and say, "Wow, what happened to all of the black people?" Because they had no babies because the guys were dead. They weren't around. And that's terrible. It's something that is an ongoing challenge or battle, to see- About my being right across the street from the high school, you don't know if you want to walk past high schools anymore, because you might get just saddened by walking past.

1.21. Tape Number: XII, Side OneJuly 17, 1993

Tapscott
Walking past the high schools with all the gates and fences and chains and bodyguards and guards and graffiti, you can't imagine anything being taught in there, because the cats have to walk down the hall with clubs. And all the time you're doing all this here just to get some order. You haven't even started. And that's rough. Then the teachers get discouraged and scared, scared to come to school. And you can't chastise. The parents can't slap their children anymore. I mean, what do you expect to happen from that? Like you go to jail if your parents- They call it child abuse.Now, I had my own son [Darion Lamont Tapscott] chastise his son [Cabell Tapscott], and he had to go to jail for it for about three hours.
Isoardi
What?
Tapscott
Yeah. One of my sons, man. And his son went to school doing what they tell him to do. He's a kid. And they'd say, "Report it." All kinds of things are going on in your house, dope smoking and all that. You know, when they started with the kids telling on their parents- That's a hell of a way to break up a home. That was terrible, man.
Isoardi
And that's what he did with your grandson?
Tapscott
Yeah, my grandson. He told the boy to do something, he didn't do it, he went up side his head, you know, like I used to go up side his head. He went up side his head, and the boy went to school. It was over with. And they said, "Well, what happened to you?" "I don't know," he said. "My daddy hit me." That's all he said. He just told it like it was. "What?" My son said he opened the door, man, and two policemen were at the door to take him to jail for child abuse. Boy. And he couldn't understand that. I mean, they put this on the youngster, on my grandson now. Now, he could have torn up his whole family just by doing that, but he didn't know that. They told him to come and report everything that goes on in your own home.I can't see that, man. Now you've got the child turned this way, you dig? "Now what am I going to do now," you dig? He's scared to do this, he's scared to do that. There's nothing he's going to learn now, because he doesn't trust anything or anybody. Everybody's keeping an eye on everything, you dig, making him scared of his daddy. He can't talk to his daddy. If he talks to him, you break that up. But it didn't happen. But that was part of the plan.
Isoardi
And you can figure in a lot of cases it did.
Tapscott
I'm sure it did, man. Cats went to jail, too. The father and the mother went to jail for smoking reefer in their own home. Now they've got a dope record because their child turned them in, because the child was doing what the child was told to by the teacher. What the child is told to do is what the teacher says. And that to me was kind of missing a point. It's another way of destroying family life. I mean, if you want to stop the dope, then stop it at the borders where it's supposed to be. Go get those cats who are doing it. Don't put the kids on their own parents, to break up their parents, because "Just say no" and that kind of attitude and all these- See, those things, all that subliminal- And it works. It works so well because people will be looking right at the top of it. They don't know what happened to make this top happen like this.We've got so many forces against peace, having peace. Every day of a person's life there's always something to fight off. It seems like it. But these things are very important, the truth and some of the lies that have been told through the years which have helped to shape a society by just its words and people listening here and then not experiencing themselves personally because of what they heard.
Isoardi
Since you left the print shop, the last ten, fifteen years, what has UGMA [Underground Musicians Association] been trying to do to deal with some of this?
Tapscott
It can only do it through the music and the arts. It just continues to do that on another level, different areas than it was before. But it's the same thing over and over again. And like I said, now it's been accepted, that kind of a presentation anyway, and a lot of people are doing it, so it's not as it was before, at least, that nobody's taking it upon themselves to do anything about certain things in the community. Now it's almost come to be in vogue to be a part of your community if you're some kind of artist. Yeah, it is in vogue. Everybody's got to say "Watch your kids" and all this now. It got to that point where it got so crazy that everybody had to say something, I'm sure, because the neighborhoods were just terrible, Steve. It was terrible, man. It might be an isolated place, but it's terrible, you dig?I mean, my grandson, I want this guy to be able to go- It's guys his age that are dangerous now. How did that happen? Guys his age are carrying pieces, and he isn't but twelve, eleven. It's not safe for him to walk down the streets peacefully, peacefully, because somebody will go, "Hey, try this on. What gang are you in? Where do you live? What school do you go to?" That kind of thing. Not "How much do you know?" but "Where are you going? What color shirts do you wear?" That's terrible, man.You can't go to school. In the first place, you're not getting taught now in school. Like I mentioned before, there are no books in this high school across the street [Crenshaw High School]. So now a lot of the youngsters say, "Well, what's the point of me going to school now, man? It's dangerous to get there, and after I get there there's nothing to do there. So I don't want to go." So you tell them to get an education, "For what? To do what? To go where? To make how much? And how?" You can't say that anymore. You can't say go to school and get a good education and don't sell that dope on the streets, because you don't have an offer in its place.
Isoardi
Exactly. You don't even have the education to offer.
Tapscott
Nothing. But you're telling them they are doing wrong. Okay, so what now? What are you going to do, just go shoot them all down? Other than that- Go kill all the young teenagers? Males? Or all the ones that were born in 1975, kill all those? I think personally, and I have thought, that this whole program, this whole governmental country-country, state, local, everything-has to come down, man, has to come down to crumbles, to crumbs, and be built back up again correctly. Because it's been built on lies and stealing.
Isoardi
Exploitation.
Tapscott
Exploitation. And that's why things are like they are, you dig? I mean, I'm sure that everyone wants to have somebody working for them, but I mean, people have to be treated equally before you can get the best out of everybody, I think. I think the environment would be better if people were equally treated. A lot of things would be much better. A lot of the things that are used now wouldn't have to be used if people were coming closer together. In many ways, I can't see myself- Like I'd be telling my grandson not to do this, not to do that, and he'll listen, yeah, but he'll say, "Well, what is he talking about, man? Where am I going if I can't do this here?" He says, "Where are you going to send me, Grandpa? What are you going to do for me that's going to keep my mind off of this?" That's what it has come down to, Steve. I mean, you can get pieces here, pieces there. I don't care how long you've been doing this, it's still pieces.
Isoardi
Just Band-Aids.
Tapscott
That's all it is. And they've been Band-Aiding for years. And you keep on Band-Aiding until it comes to a point where someone says enough is enough. It all has to be destroyed and come back up again, because when it comes back up that time, it's for sure equal. Like in South Africa now, man, that's going to be a problem for the white South Africans to give up that land. But they took it, man. Now they've got to give it up. Now, maybe the ones that are there now didn't have anything to do with it. It was their granddaddies and their great-grandfathers.
Isoardi
Yeah, but they did everything they could to keep it the same.
Tapscott
Yeah, to keep it the same. Now they've got to give it up. Now, a lot of changes are happening before this century is over. I'm sure it hasn't stopped yet. But it seems like everything's coming to a head at the end of the century. It's like it was programmed, like everybody's [makes ascending, accelerating sound]. We're going to do this orderly. Now we're going to go into the twenty-first century together. That's the kind of attitude they seem to be having. Everything's coming to the top now to be dealt with. Something you might have been dealing with all your life and nobody even paid any attention to it, now everybody's on it. Generation after generation, it keeps on happening. I can imagine, like we're sitting here now, and twenty years from this day, what we're saying now, will it still be effective? Or will it be into something else altogether different? But it would have to do with what has happened in this century, whatever it is.And all the spoilage and all the guns, fast cars, killer drinks, killer smokes, all these things that kill you and keep you feeling good have to come to some kind of- We have to come to some kind of level here so we can understand what it is and what are we doing here and why are we here and do something about it and tear it down and start over again. Because no matter how much education, I can't see any progress happening. None. I don't see any after all this time. All the black people in little offices, I don't see any progress. This good, hearty person, whatever color he or she is, is in the office, but there's no change, because you can't move it. You can't move it.
Isoardi
It's much bigger than individuals or-
Tapscott
Much bigger.
Isoardi
No matter what individuals of what race are in power, if they try and run the same system, the same problems are going to be there.
Tapscott
Same problems. And that's why I just feel like what we've been talking about all these weeks, it would be told a whole different way once this whole empire, Babylon, is fallen and we can rise up again.
Isoardi
Yeah, hopefully people will look back and they won't need it. They'll look back on our conversation as a curiosity.
Tapscott
They'll say, "Oh, what was that about?"
Isoardi
Yeah. "Oh, gee, they had those kinds of problems then." [laughter] Yeah, hopefully they won't-
Tapscott
That would be nice, man. Otherwise, what is it all about? I don't understand. Why are we here? I mean, the asses are here in our faces, and we keep looking away from it, looking at them like they're plants or non-humans. But all these things that come together in these different colors and textures make one beautiful landscape. So that means something. All these different colors and things, that has to have a meaning. Because we as people, we're trying to put these different colors together for our own enjoyment, you know. Roses, California poppies, green this, brown that, white this, blue this, and you put them all together, and they make the picture you're after.I think it's already here. It's been here for us to see what we're supposed to be like. But we keep watering it and cutting it down and thinking of it as something that we planted. It's here for your convenience, you dig? You fed off of what comes out of the ground, you go back into the ground. The ground must be important for some reason. People start thinking above ground totally. I guess you're supposed to think above ground, but when it gets back to the basic things, people are important, people. If you get people to deal with each other, then I think for the future we would be able to have something that's real decent for the future to come up to, and they'd be proud to have had us for their great-grandparents. "They must have been a great group of people in those days, the way they changed things around."But like it is now, Steve, it's just like it is. It's all filled up to the top of the barrel, and it's the old saying: the shit has hit the fan, and now it's spreading out. I mean, it's just flat up against the fan now. And everything is out of the closet. Everything that used to be secret is out of the closet. I mean it's a big issue now. You talk about it across the dinner table now, whereas it used to be silent: abortion, homosexuality, racism, all that stuff that was always kept silent. At least now it's being dealt with every day. Regardless of that, a lot of people are making money off the deal. There's always going to be the hustler putting something together. But the fact of it is that if you bring something up front, it's up here now. We see it; now let's deal with it. We can't put it away anymore. How are we going to deal with it?
Isoardi
How does Horace Tapscott fit into all this?
Tapscott
You see, I made my contribution to all this, for one thing, by when I came out of the womb and went back into it again, and my kids came out of it. That's a large contribution to this society, as far as I'm speaking, and all these grandchildren. So that's interesting, as well as from my past- Why and how I fit in it is still a big question. But I'm realizing I can think of myself as part of the whole scheme, part of that fabric to make this whole picture show up. So my little old speck of sand will help the sand be. That's the part I play, you dig? Otherwise, it would be like, "Well, Daddy, what did you do during the twentieth century? What did you do in the war? What was your function? What did you do?" And I want to be able to say, to show, that I lived in the community and I appreciated it and I wanted to keep it up and I wanted to be a part of it, because I love people, and I wanted to be a part of it because I just like life, man. I learned to love life, because after life I don't know what's happening, and I had to get used to what life was about and why I was here.I'm just here to appreciate like the rest of the stuff, just here for a little while and do your little old bit and cut out, because it isn't going to be like you turn the mountains over. It's more like I want to be able to- Like on your tombstone, it would be, "Oh, what did this cat do, man?" He did what he did. He loved what he did and would do it again. You know, that kind of attitude. And to see it, if I can see something happening that I had a part in, it makes me feel real good, real good.You just want to hear yourself say, "Well, now, I fit. I feel like I'm a part of something. I'm not outside the whole thing looking in." So as far as I'm concerned, that's where I fit in, just my part. My part is to do this. Sometimes your part is a little bit more complex maybe to you than someone else's part is to them. [laughter] You know what I'm saying? The way I see it, that's why I'm here. That's how I feel like I fit in. And I really do want to fit in, but I want to fit in at my level, where I fit in at. I don't want to be as so-and-so was or as [John] Coltrane or somebody else fit in with it. I want to fit in from this angle, because this is where I come from.Nothing feels better to me than being able to walk through the village and see functions happening, you know, things. I like that. Because I like that, I like to be a part of that. I want to stay in it where I can be essential in that part of that. If I can do anything about helping that maintain itself, that's what I'll do.And I've gone past the hump now, Steve. I'm over three humps now. You'd have to really have something, really have something to get me out of where I am now. You'd really have to offer me something. I mean, it ain't got nothing to do with money at all, so that's dead. You'd really have to have something, man, because- There'd be a person coming along saying, "I don't believe this sucker," you know, one of those kinds that comes along all the time. Let me shovel something in front of him and see what happens. That kind of thing. But that's the part I'm really proud of. I know how I feel about things. I'm not guessing. And I'm not bitter anymore. I worked my way out of that, because I knew I had to work my way out of that if I was going to try to do anything else.So I feel pretty good about myself in the scheme of things. I'm not expecting anything special at all. But that's how I think I fit in. Now, I might be altogether different; I might be on the other side from someone looking at it. But that's the way I feel like I'm fitting in.
Isoardi
Well, I guess as we come to the end, Horace, let me ask you, looking back on Central [Avenue], what would you say was its contribution? How should it be remembered?
Tapscott
Artistically speaking, I can speak in that area, and then just from the everyday point of view. I think it made its motion. It was an area in the landscape that will always be there. It's there for people to look at and to take from and to expand themselves from, as a matter of fact. I think it was very important, that era, Central Avenue, not only because I was growing up in the midst of it. The important part about it is it brought a lot of people together musically, artistically. To bring them together to find out what is actually going on here with our music, what is actually going on here with our-You know, this was during the time of racial segregation-official, accepted racial segregation in America-and a lot of us weren't thinking any farther than Central Avenue or something that had to do with black people. A lot of us just, I guess, got content in the way you were, because you were doing all the things you thought you wanted to do in the first place. I was a kid, so naturally everything was going to look different to me than what it really was until I got in it. When I got to Central Avenue, I got educated about a lot of things from people who took a lot of time with me.I think Central Avenue is just as legendary as a place like the Great White Way that they speak about. It's about the same function as Broadway is to people who were of that time, Central Avenue is, to me and others. Because it had all of the musicians, the artists, that helped make the music of this country what it is today. That's what Central Avenue gave to this community, all these people, and these people would be right there on Central Avenue gathering together. I think it was like a bonanza, like a gold mine type of thing. There was in this gold, coming out of there from Central Avenue.Then racism raised its head and snapped it off, as usual. And that's the part- I mean, places like Central Avenue, all these other places, fine. But that part that snaps your head off is the one that should be up front now. Why snapping your head off? Why does it snap off these things that are making progress, so to speak, with all races of people? Why does this come along and [snap] us away? Is that part of the function of nature? What is it? But there must be a reason for all the things that have happened, all these places, all these notches in history, in our history, about creators, people who were born creating, just created out of the blue.To walk down Central Avenue, by the time you get to the end of the block, you've heard a whole new melody, because so many things are happening. And what I remember about it was that it was colorful to me, and it was educational, and it was an experience for me that I can't ever forget, because it was the way I was raised. It was more or less like musicians raised me. Between my mom [Mary Lou Tapscott Jackson] being a musician and putting me around these cats, these cats raised me in a whole lot of ways. I was actually raised on the avenue, me and some more of the guys. Me in particular, because I always lived on Central, a block from Central. Wherever we moved, it was always a block away walking from Central. And I saw so many things happening. I saw a lot of the so-called history go down there.I was talking with a young writer, a young black kid the other day, yesterday, and he said he wanted to do an audiovisual of Central Avenue. His great-grandfather had the Clark Hotel, Horace Clark, on Washington [Boulevard] and Central. His grandfather took it over, and that's how he got to find out about Central. They've got goo-gobs pictures of the old days and all those older people.
Isoardi
Wonderful. Wonderful.
Tapscott
The Clark Hotel and the Clark Annex, me and my wife remember that, because that's where [Art] Tatum and Bill [William] Douglass and Red Callender used to be playing every night. We were standing outside the window listening to them. Nobody in the club but them and us. We can't go in the club. But that Clark Hotel- This youngster was talking about writing about Central from his point of view. And this kid, he's about twenty-eight, h he's got a young son, himself an aspiring youngster, aspiring, which makes you happy, because here he is, he's talking about Central Avenue. He comes up to me and says, "Oh, Horace, when are you going to perform again?" So-and-so and so-and-so. And he said, "By the way, I'm from Central Avenue," boom, bam. He told me about- I didn't have any idea that he was the great-grandson of Horace Clark. And I'm named after his gradfather's name, see, Horace, Horace. It's just a coincidence. He said, "My great-grandfather's got all of this history on it, and I want to do some writing about it." I told him that I'd like to see that happen, because I can imagine his point of view about Central Avenue, especially coming out of the Clark family.But to me, that's what Central Avenue is about and what it means. It came about in my real formative years of my life when I got to the point that I wanted to know different things. I was twelve and thirteen years old growing up there. And I got the bulk of it, the last good four or five years of it. And that's something I remember. There are a lot of books being written now by the guys who were there. And I think it will live for a little while. It will live for a while. It will become what it is. They'll make a movie about it pretty soon, you dig? [laughter] There will be a movie made about Central Avenue yesterday and that kind of thing.But, yeah, during those times, like I said earlier, Steve, I learned everything in segregation because it was real nice and peaceful. There weren't any bars on the windows, none of that. It was another time, man. No curtains on the windows. These are the little small things that you remember along with those- These all make up Central Avenue to you. No fences. If you had a fence, it was just decorative. That showed you got a raise at your job. That's what a fence used to be about. [laughter] And to see this change from one thing to another sometimes intimidates you to the point where you just get pissed off. But then you say, "Just like there was a way, there's another way. There's today, there's tomorrow." I mean, if you can keep looking at things in such a positive way, you can last a little longer. But, I mean, you can't be fooling yourself, because the only person you can't fool is you yourself. You say, "Well, I'm going to do this," and your mind's saying, "No, you don't want to do that."But like you say, since it is coming to the end- Is this the eleventh tape?
Isoardi
Twelfth.
Tapscott
I hope I've said all the things that I wanted to say-
Isoardi
Well, that's the other thing that I wanted to ask you. Is there anything else we might have forgotten?
Tapscott
During the week sometimes, I say, "Now, what is it I haven't said about it?" Certain things might happen, and I say, "Oh, yeah, that's right." [laughter] "That's still happening? Why-?" You know, that kind of attitude. And it keeps on going. But we touched all the topics, the basics for it, anyway.
Isoardi
Well, what you can do is just carry a little tape recorder around with you, and anytime something like that comes up, you just talk into it. And this way, when you do your book, then you can get it all in there.
Tapscott
Yeah, you've got it all, every bit of it. Well, that's about it for me now, man.
Isoardi
Horace, thanks very much.
Tapscott
Thank you, Steve.
Isoardi
It's been wonderful.

Appendix A Index



Horace Tapscott . Date: August, 2003
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