BLM/Independence Day: Drummer Warren Smith Reflects on Growing up on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s

KIRPAL GORDON: I had a peek at the memoir you are writing on your life in music. On Independence Day during this national moment of Black Lives Mattering, would you share some of your experiences coming up in Chicago?

WARREN SMITH: At the time of my birth (5/14/1934), Black people lived south of 12^th Street. Chicago was fast, hip, intense---whatever was in style at the time. There was music, dance, theater, opera, night clubs, blues joints, jam sessions. Prohibition had just been rescinded, and now marijuana was illegal. I remember my father, a musician, putting on his tuxedo and tying his bow tie to go to work at the establishment whatever it was (sometimes the establishment was run by gangsters like Al Capone). Here it was right after the Depression, and everyone dressed up formally to go to work. It never occurred to me at that time to ask, who covered the costs of all that production?

We lived south of the Loop between 12^th Street and 31^st Street next to the Lakefront. The real estate phenomena that continually occurred when Black residents moved across that line resulted in their getting harassed and/or vandalized initially. Then there would be a “White Flight” as the Caucasian residents moved further south to avoid integrating with Black folks. The family rumor has it that our Uncle Steele and Uncle Lloyd had bought a house on 37^th Street and Ellis Avenue, in which several of our families were living along with our paternal grandfather, James Madison Smith. Someone set off a bomb in front of the house and blew out most of the windows. My younger brother Frank and I were untouched, but there was glass embedded in the wall above our crib. Our grandfather died not long after, certainly not helped by the experience. Other cousins and friends had similar experiences as we gradually expanded further south, but eventually the violence stopped, at least the physical violence. Until I left for New York in 1957, not much had changed. But things are quite different now for our next generation of cousins, at least geographically, as far as I know. I don’t live there anymore; I’m going on hearsay.

The important point I want to make is that this segregated segment of Chicago society felt completely empowered and pretty much self-sufficient. We had our own school system with Black superintendents, principals and associate principals. For context, let me add that I started teaching in “integrated” New York City in 1958. They got their first Black principal in 1966.

We had our own Musicians Union, with its own Credit Union. The first building it owned was on State Street at 40^th Street. When urban renewal caused that whole neighborhood to be raised, the Union bought another on Cottage Grove and 61^st Street. And they owned an apartment on Drexel Blvd in Hyde Park which afforded many of its members an affordable home during trying times. Many of these resources were lost to us when the AF of M integrated Local 208 with the White Union Local 10 becoming the present Local 10-208. Chicago’s South Side, however, has retained its power as a thriving black community. And it was so much that way during my youth that I almost never ventured outside of it except to go to school. I joined the Musicians Union at the age of 14 and got my driver’s license as well. I didn’t realize there was a Local 10 until I was 21. I was playing music in church, in social affairs, in parades and summer concert bands. 

KIRPAL GORDON: You also lived in Maywood? How did that move come about?

WARREN SMITH: Moms did not like the environment around A.O. Sexton Grade School, so in my second year my brother Frank and I transferred to Washington Grade School in the mostly Black school in District 89, Maywood, Illinois, where my maternal grandparents lived, some twenty miles due west of the Loop. Chicago’s South Side was completely urban and paved with asphalt, but Maywood had cobblestone streets.  We lived in a big two-story house with a basement, large side yard and a back yard that featured a vegetable garden cultivated mostly by my father, produce we ate daily. There were cherry trees, a rhubarb bush, currants and my grandfather’s herb garden with mint and other medicinal plants. We had a well from which we drew water daily and a rain barrel for utilitarian purposes. We raised chickens.

Maywood was just west of Oak Park/River Forest, a rather affluent area with many Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie houses in the residential neighborhoods. Maywood went from 1^st Avenue in the east to 26^th Avenue in the west and from St. Charles Road on the north to Madison Avenue on the south. All the Black people in the town lived between 10^th and 14th Avenues. One wealthy businessman owned a nice home on the corner of 15^th and Oak Street. The renowned scientist Dr. Percy Julian lived on the corner of 14^th and Oak. A few years later Dr. Julian had the temerity to move to Oak Park itself, and of course his house got bombed in true Chicago style.

Now here’s where fate gets tricky. During the Second World War the common thread of thought was that Black men weren’t courageous enough to go into serious battle with the “enemy.” So all the Black soldiers from Maywood were sent out as orderlies, cooks and other non-combat duties. A battalion of soldiers containing all the White enlistees from Maywood was sent to the Pacific where they were wiped out by Japanese forces in the battle of Bataan. There was a Hollywood movie, starring John Wayne, made years later by that name. All the Black soldiers came back from the war and the town turned BLACK within that generation.

When we started school in Maywood, during the first week we had to fight our way back to our grandparents’ house every day after school, until the neighborhood kids got to know we were “Mr. Derrick’s grandkids.” Then we began to make friends that lasted for a lifetime. And we had lots of cousins from my mother’s side of the family. We all went through grade school together and high school as well. Most of our parents also had attended the same school before us.  

KIRPAL GORDON: Would you take a chorus on your family’s “pilgrimages” to North Carolina?

WARREN SMITH: Yes, but first here's the background: My mother had an older sister and a younger brother; my father had ten siblings. I never saw them all, but the ones present in my life were very influential. All my role models were organically related to me. I grew up with my younger brother and more than a dozen first, second or third cousins. They were all like brothers and sisters. We lived together, often ate together, slept together and frequently traveled together from Chicago to North Carolina to visit the Smith family homestead. I guess that was James Madison Smiths’ 40 Acres, and there was a mule involved also. In North Carolina we also raised pigs and grew peanuts. We could walk down the red dirt road in the morning and pick wild berries and fruit from the trees and bushes for our breakfast. Sometimes my brother, my cousin Ethan and I would bring back enough blue berries for our aunts to make a couple of pies. We’d go fishing and cook outside in a big kettle over an open fire. Both sides of the family preserved canned fruit and vegetables for the winter. We made wine from fruit or even dandelion flowers! We cooked the dandelion leaves as greens or used them in salads. Very little was wasted in those days.

The trips to North Carolina took several days. We would leave Chicago with enough food to last us until we got to Washington D.C. In the 1930s and 40s we didn’t know where we might or might not get served or abused so we drove straight through to where we knew it was safe. In D.C. we had relatives. We’d spend the night, re-supply our food bank and drive the last five or six hours to the homestead. After a week or two we would all pile back into the two or three car caravan and travel back to Chicago the same way. We did this annually until our grandmother died at 103. Now we occasionally return for periodic reunions or meet at some other hosting location every few years. Somehow the tradition is still intact.

KIRPAL GORDON: You were born into quite a musical family. What was that like?

WARREN SMITH: My dad played saxophone and clarinet; my mother played piano and harp. Literally every one of our aunts and uncles were musicians and were always preparing to perform somewhere. Often even as infants we went along with them, to drop them off or pick them up and sometimes even allowed to come inside and see what was going on. This was live theater with full orchestras, dancers, singers and stage lighting. You can’t imagine how early this captured my imagination. I had decided to be a professional musician by the time I was three!

One of the most exciting times was when one of the bands was getting ready to go on the road. Maybe they had a three-week engagement in Detroit or six weeks in Buffalo. The morning of their departure, women would be cooking and preparing bags of food. There would be three or four cars lined up at the curb, all being cleaned and simonized, the white walled tires painted with white wash, a water-based paint. Then the musicians would appear, each one dressed stylishly and sharper than the last. Finally, after all the loved ones got their hugs and kisses and the food bags were distributed in all the cars, the motors would start up and they’d be off to cheers from the crowd. Boy, how the young kids longed to go with them. We couldn’t wait for them to come home and tell all the funny stories and strange adventures they had experienced.

Every once in a while, one of our special talents would get the opportunity to go to New York City, Harlem. Almost all the aspiring musicians from Chicago wanted to follow the footsteps of their musical idols to the Big Apple. As Black kids our idols were entertainers, the few professional athletes who managed to break through like Jack Johnson Joe Lewis or “Sugar Ray” Robinson, and the doctors, lawyers, and educators from our neighborhoods. Our families probably had a lot more power and influence over their lives than we do now. We certainly didn’t have as much then, but it wasn’t necessary either.

I started trying to play my Dad’s saxophone at around four. In a couple of years I could play what I could think of (not much) by ear. Being precocious, actually arrogant, I thought I knew more than I actually did. I began to tinker around with the piano, by ear. My mother and no fewer than three aunts had degrees in piano and organ, but I never thought to consult them at all. I just did it by ear and my folks were wise enough to let me find my own way. Then one day at about six I went into a ballroom called the “Rum Boogie” with my mother and brother to pick up my dad from his gig. The ballroom was on the second floor. When we entered, I immediately saw in the corner of the stage a scene that changed my life. There was the drummer and he had a set of flashing lights inside his bass drum! I immediately decided to become a drummer right then.

Times were quite different then. I remember that there was a place called “Bacon’s Casino” on Wabash Avenue. It was a Quonset hut structure, that is, a long tent with a curved roof and flat sides. On many Sundays they would have jam sessions at this place in the afternoons after church and the kids could come and hear the music. Naturally the Smith clan was usually in full attendance. We heard all the cats that were in town at the time or passing through. Roy Eldridge or Coleman Hawkins or whoever, they would make that session on Sundays and we would be there listening.

My first gigs as a drummer were at the Elks social club, with my father. Actually, my very first gig also included a young baritone player named Laurdine Patrick. Everyone called him Pat. He went on to play many years with Sun Ra, touring and traveling across the world. Pat was also on the faculty of SUNY Old Westbury for many years. His son Deval Patrick is the former governor of Massachusetts. I continued drumming during my teen years and playing in the marching and concert bands in high hchool. After my freshman year I stopped taking weekly lessons from my most significant teacher, Oliver S. Coleman, because of the commute to Maywood, an expanding social life, athletics (I started running distances around 8^th grade) and just being a teenager; I grew away from music for probably the only time in my life. I still played in the school bands and did gigs with my father and cousins, but I stopped taking lessons. I also developed a greater interest in architecture, through my friend Joe Black, one of my high school teachers at Proviso, and my dad making me aware of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Bauhaus gang with their glass and steel buildings in Chicago. One of the things that kept me connected with music was the opportunity to perform with Capt. Walter Henry Dyett and his summer concert band. in Washington Park. I would go to DuSable High School every year to see the legendary “High Jinks” show the students put on with live music. My older cousin Eddie played in the sax section with Johnny Griffin, who was also a student of my father.

I mustn’t forget to mention the constant reinforcement I received within my social environment. When we had a social occasion, there was never a question about who would entertain us. We provided our own music for all occasions almost spontaneously. My maternal grandmother’s genesis came about as the result of my African great-grandmother, Nora Sellers, being raped by a white Doctor of Music, Dr. Foxx, who fathered a famous baseball player, Jimmy Foxx. However this worked, my grandmother had 11 children. All of them were thoroughly educated in music. And this musical tradition has continued through another three generations and counting.

KIRPAL GORDON: You were exposed to European classical music as well?

WARREN SMITH: From my family and my studies in school. I managed to get into the District 89 School Band, the only black musician in the band at that time. As a result of this experience, I was immediately accepted into the Proviso Township High School Concert Band. It proved a quantum leap in my exposure as the director, J. Irving Talmadge, was a big fan of Richard Wagner. So I leaned about everything from the “Ring of the Nebilungen” to “Taunhauser Overture.”

I spent four years in the high school marching band (which I abhorred except for the football games). Then at the University of Illinois I spent another four (out of five) years marching with the ”Marching Illini.” The pattern was interrupted in my fourth year when composer Harry Partch did a year’s residency. I quit the band to play tympani in the university’s symphony orchestra. All my extra non-class time was spent in Harry Partch’s ensemble. The previous summer I had received a scholarship to Tanglewood, the summer camp of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I studied with retiring Roman Shultz and the incoming tympanist, Everitt “Vic” Firth, as well as Harold Faberman, on snare drum techniques.

It was on my summer in Tanglewood that I realized how strong my cultural attachment was to my upbringing in Chicago’s South Side. I borrowed the car of my friend and fellow Illini, Harold Jones, to go into Pittsfield and get a haircut. As I drove, I turned on the radio of the car, and the first thing that came out was the blues! I, in my early arrogance, had lost respect for the form because I had not yet been exposed to its more intricate forms and variations. But the power and familiarity of what I heard changed my opinion of the form forever. I got so homesick I never forgot it. And the next time I got back to Chicago I started hanging out at all the old blues clubs and learning a lot more.

It’s been that way for me ever since.

Waiting to Exhale: Challenges in Forging a Black Identity by Charlotte Seay

Fireman: Ma'am, were you aware that your car was on fire?

[Bernadine nods her head while smoking a cigarette]

Fireman: Ma'am, did you start this fire?

[she puffs smoke and plainly looks at him]

Fireman: You know, it's against the law to burn anything except trash in your yard.

Bernadine Harris: [flicks off ashes from her cigarette] It is trash.

Fireman: Look, this is a nice area. Luckily, a neighbor cared enough. Listen, the next time you want to burn something...

Bernadine Harris: It won't happen again.

[she shuts the door in his face]

One can only dare to be such a badass like this character. A noble African American woman named Terry McMillian wrote a novel titled Waiting to Exhale which was adapted into a two-hour dramatic film in 1995. It is a story about four African American females struggling with romantic relationships, causing them to lose their sense of identity in the process. The scene above is about Bernadine Harris burning her soon-to-be ex-husband’s car with his clothes inside because he was leaving her for another woman. This scene displays two things: destruction and cleansing. Although one should never deface someone’s property, sometimes one must break down and dismantle themselves in order to be reborn.  In the end, one can emotionally rehabilitate oneself and begin to create a new canvas and embrace the person one is meant to be. Personally, I have not had romantic relationship problems that have hindered my growth as a person. However, just like those four women, I have allowed the people in my life to define who I am and how I behaved. Worse, in acting the way I wanted to, it always felt like an act. When I attended church, I had to be very proper and modest in my behavior and appearance, yet the next day at school, I would be cursing and wearing crop tops and a fake septum ring. My personality just did not seem to fit into any one place. I divided myself into the multiple dimensions of my life, each one requiring a different characteristic for be to embody. I have been waiting for a chance to exhale and be satisfied with the person I am.

The first time someone called me an “Oreo” was in middle school in the seventh grade. Just like the cookie, being an Oreo is when one is black on the outside but acts white or behave in ways that are not associated with the African American community member stereotype. On a good day, this need to be properly black and properly American would not affect me so much. But being told by a girl who was lighter than me that I am not black enough to be black caused me to feel rejected by a whole community. I suppose I did not act black enough to have a lot of black friends or act white enough to have any white friends. I was in sort of a limbo state. I had friends, but I never felt like I belonged anywhere which made me feel insecure in the way I spoke. Over the phone, one of my aunts---that is, someone who shared my DNA---told me I sounded like a little white girl: “so proper.” I knew she did not mean any harm, but that comment felt so ignorant. I wanted to throw those words in a car and watch the whole thing burn. Can I not be a proper black girl?

Gloria Anzalduá was ridiculed for the way she spoke while she was in the United States. When she went to attend “Pan American University, [she] and all Chicano students were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of [their] accents” (Anzalduá, 8). Both Anzalduá and I had people in our lives telling us who we should be and who we already are. I strongly believe that the way one speaks and writes is strongly connected to one’s identity. Consequently, I have gotten bolder over the years which has changed the way I act around people in certain situations. My boldness gradually showed in my writing, and I had to learn how to cohere my thoughts concisely. Yet something in my head told me to hold my tongue and my breath as I slowly faded into the background.

Like school, like theater: an ensemble member does not have a significant role. They are just there to fill up some of the space on stage in the background. I was an ensemble member in my own life. It is funny because that carried over to high school when I became an ensemble member in musicals and plays. I never drank, smoked, or had sex during middle school or high school. It seemed like all my friends were partying and getting boyfriends and I was just there alone. I began entertaining myself with the thought of becoming promiscuous. This idea was a mixture of many things: I wanted to experience being with a guy myself, and I wanted an escape from my “goodie-two-shoes” life. Although I never actually put any effort into being promiscuous, it always lingered in the back of my mind. I incorrectly associated promiscuity with freedom because I believe that if one can do whatever one wants with one’s body and with whomever, one is free. One is doing those physical actions on one’s own time which I had never done before. I also felt that if I became this kind of girl, I would be free mentally. I was born into the Christian faith, but I never saw Christianity fitting into my life as I got older. In the Bible it clearly states, "Nevertheless, [to avoid] fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband” (1 Corinthians, 7:2). Christianity promotes sex after marriage, not before. Just like Plato’s cave allegory, Christianity was my cave. I did not live or explore outside of that reality. My mother made me go to church every Sunday, even when I told her that I did not want to go anymore. She yelled at me and made me go. I wanted to rebel and go against my mother’s wishes.

As time went by, I stumbled across a book in high school titled Loose Girl by Kerry Cohen at a local thrift store. It is a memoir about her journey of promiscuity. At the back of the book, I read an interview with Mrs. Cohen:

Q: Why did you write this book?

A: My own saving began when I saw myself in the pages of my book, so my hope is that girls and women will find themselves in Loose Girl. 

I found many flaws in myself that Mrs. Cohen had as well at my age. I am glad she wrote her memoir because it put my thoughts and potential actions of being “loose” to rest. It made me realize that it is not necessary to be a loose girl in life. It would have not made me live any more of a great life then I already had. I understood the depths and consequences of actions that I was considering. This life lesson goes along perfectly with Walt Whitman’s long prose poem, “Song of Myself.” He wrote: “Trippers and askers surround me, / People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life... / My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues… / These come to me days and nights and go from me again, / But they are not the Me myself.” (Section 4). Everyone plays a part in one’s development, which Whitman eloquently phrases in his work. It is the small things like the dues one must pay to form our identity. Perhaps it is the way one feels when dressed: am I being controlled or freed by clothes? What really defines one’s character? For me, it was the people in my life early on who influenced me, especially the people who I went to church with. All the compliments they gave me made feel obligated to attend service after a while because they were so kind and old. Whitman made me realize that these things that have surrounded me since the day I was born made me the person that I am today. The effects of these influences were inevitable. Identity is inevitable. However, in life we get to choose whether we want those influences to impact our identity, as Whitman noted. I knew I did not want to be the person who I was at church because I was just going through the motions and not living the way I truly believed life to be. I agree with Whitman’s ending line: “Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders / I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait” (Section 4). Now that I have grown and am away from that either/or middle school environment, I can breathe a little more. 

In high school things got better. During my senior year, I decided to take a creative writing class. My English teacher encouraged me to do so. He saw a potential voice in me. I am not going to say that I emerged as a great writer, but I became more articulate, more confident, more essential. He did not just let me sit in class and stay silent. At the end of the semester, we had to present our final project. It was an opportunity to get to know what everyone was thinking about and how they chose to express themselves. I decided to write a book of poems. Due to “senior-itis” (a wave of terrible procrastination and lack of motivation among students during their senior year of high school), a lot of my poems were weak. I did not commit on any one idea to really be as successful as I could have on this project. I did not fail, but I was not proud of what I produced. After this project, I learned something very important: I am afraid of being ordinary and it showed in all my writing. I tried to sound smarter than what my own knowledge could provide all because I had not discovered my authentic self, what Whitman calls "the Me myself." 

Subway Art by the author

One cannot teach oneself authenticity. I looked up to so many recording artists who exhibit this quality in their character. Since I did not know who I was, I naturally wanted to emulate those who I want to be. I am still guilty of still doing this today, but not as extremely as before. I am now more inspired by their courage rather in trying to be like them. I found great relief in Alan Watts’ concept on what being an individual means by calling all beings hoaxes. “The word ‘Individual’ is the Latin form of the Greek ‘atom’—that which cannot be cut or divided any further into separate parts. We cannot chop off a person's head or remove his heart without killing him. But we can kill him just as effectively by separating him from his proper environment” (Watts, 9). This notion of intrinsic wholeness goes back to my theory of one having to destroy oneself to find oneself. Many people, including me, have thought that entering into college is yet another journey of self-discovery. To become the person that I want to be, I could not stay at home.

Everyone’s life has different scenes, just like a movie. There is an opening and closing line. I have stepped up from behind the scenes and taken more control of my life. I have begun to Gestalt my life by living as a whole human being rather than choosing pieces of my life to live. An individual is one atom, one organism. I have lived a life where I thought I did not belong. In reality, “[I] have been fooled by [my] name…[believing] that having a separate name makes [me] a separate being” (Watts, 11). Instead everyone is connected. Once one realizes that one is neither more ordinary nor extraordinary than the other, one can live the way one pleases. I have begun to realize this which has allowed me to finally breath in and exhale.

Works Cited

Anzalduá, Gloria. "How to Tame a Wild Tongue." (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.

The Bible: King James Version. Glasgow: Collins, 2008. Print. 01 Dec. 2016.

Cohen, Kerry. Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity. New York: Hyperion, 2009. Print. 01 Dec. 2016

"Go to Bing Homepage." Plato+allegory+of+the+cave+cartoon - Bing Video. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.

Watts, Alan. The Book: On the Taboo against Knowing Who You Are (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 01 Dec. 2016

Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself” N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2016

Whitaker, Forest, director. Waiting to Exhale. Prod. Terry McMillan and Ronald Bass. Perf. Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett, and Loretta Devine. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 1995.

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