Dizzy Gillespie & Miles Davis Combo

Guzzo

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"I worked at the Village Gate in New York, one of the few clubs that didn't object to the new material I was performing, which the more conservative bookers considered inflammatory. The money aspect also interested me, but far more important at the time was meeting jazz great Miles Davis who was the club's headliner."

"Miles and I were brothers waiting to meet. Kindred spirits. Before we even spoke, he did something that no one else would've done, because no one would've understood the shit I was going through without a detailed explanation."

"But, Miles' radar picked me up like a lost plane. About half an hour before the show, he had one of his guys come to my dressing room and tell me the lineup had been changed. "Miles is gonna play first," he said. "What?" I asked, wondering what the fuck was going on. "Miles is going to open. Then you follow." The gesture was pure Miles-intuitive, supportive, generous and in sync with the moment. By trading places, he was giving me a vote of support."

"After the show, Miles invited me to his dressing room. When I entered he was kissing Dizzy Gillespie, with his tongue and shit. This made me wonder what kind of shit he had planned for me but Miles played a different tune with me. We got in a cab and went to a midtown apartment where he introduced me to a woman I called Gypsy Lady. She was dark and mysterious with eyes as hot as fire, she had the best cocaine I ever tried. It was a big rock. Like the Hope Diamond. We chopped and snorted until the sun crept through the windows and then we disappeared like vampires."

"From now on, you get your coke from her," Miles said as we left. "She's got the best."

Source: "Pryor Convictions," by Richard Pryor & Todd Gold

Junior

Finally got round to reading the Pryor autobiography beginning of this year and already feel like I need to read it again. There were many parts that were unsurprisingly laugh out loud funny but a lot of it was far darker in tone than I expected even coming into it with a reasonable knowledge of how fucked up his life got. I ended up still full of love for him and his performances while at the same time wanting to slap some common sense into him.