Where was that?

The “Theatrical Beauty Salon” was on 18th Avenue, near Spruce Street. So what happened was she started working for this older lady, I think her name was Mrs. Wardell. I guess she was very happy about how enthusiastic my mother was and my mother showed a little bit of talent. So, to make a long story short… she started doing hair. By the time she was thirteen, the owner started preparing her to take over the shop, because she was going to retire. Before my mother was fifteen she inherited the shop, so she inherited the shop before she had a working permit; you had to have a working permit. She had the job, so as soon as she became fifteen she got the working permit and a license. So it was legitimate. She started the “Theatrical Beauty Salon.” Before my mother took over, I think a lot of theatrical people frequented that shop. My mother inherited a lot of those kinds of customers. My mother, later, when she was sixteen or seventeen, met my father. All of her life she was really close to Sarah Vaughan. Sarah and her went to high school or grammar school, or both. Sarah was like my aunt. My mother was with Sarah from the day she got the gig at the Apollo until the day she died in California, she was at her bedside. They were like sisters.^[3]

I grew up in a very musical atmosphere…. At a very early age I was exposed to a variety of entertainers…. I was exposed to a world that was so rare… I didn’t know… all I knew was I had a very beautiful childhood.

Sarah and my mother, being that they were very close, and my father a musician, I guess they were all close in business and stuff. I grew up in a very musical atmosphere. When I was two or three years old, my father was recording with people like Billie Holiday, and working with big bands, even some of the white bands like Paul Whiteman. The Savoy Sultans had disbanded and he started freelancing with different groups. At a very early age I was exposed to a variety of entertainers. All my life. I would say… by the time my mother had the beauty parlor on 18th Avenue, we had a two-story house. I’m not sure if my mother was the owner, but she owned part of the house. What I do remember was that after we moved down there, the next most significant place that I remember growing up was on High Street; she bought a house on High Street, and this was at a time when the whites were moving out. We were about the third black family to have a house on High Street. We were opposite the Krueger’s Mansion.^[4] Some of the Krueger family was still there. I remember 602 High Street was a very popular house; because the beauty parlor was in the basement. Dinah Washington… Dinah didn’t come much to the beauty parlor, but my mother worked for her as a cosmetologist. She was more than a hairdresser; she developed styles for entertainers, like hair color way back before that was fashionable. She went to Paris and learned haircutting and hair color. She was very advanced and a lot of people catered to her because she was very updated and very modern. So I was exposed to a world that was so rare… I didn’t know… all I knew was I had a very beautiful childhood. I had my chores… we had a fifteen-room house; I was an only child for seventeen years, so I had a lot of responsibility to keep the house clean. But I had an allowance, so I was pretty cool.

When I was nine years old, my father came in with a trombone.