No one ever said life was supposed to be fair.  But some get better breaks than others.  Roosevelt Jones played the best hand he was dealt, played it well and left a lasting legacy of music that would live on -- long after he was gone.

July 1928 --

        It was 1928, the end of the jazz age and Calvin Coolidge, 30^th president of the United States, was still in office.   It was also the year that 40-year-old Lillie-May Jones, a hard-working cotton-picker from Alabama suffered a massive stroke and died.  It was a tragic end to a hard life -- Lillie-May’s death left behind five fatherless children, including her only daughter and the youngest, Rosella, 13.

         The burial was swift and simple.  Now Rosella was alone.  She gently folded up her mother’s few nice belongings and her Sunday-go-to-church outfit to give to an aunt. The cabin was sweltering with the heat of the day.  Sweat poured down her face.  She walked outside.   It was going on 9 p.m. but the air hung heavy with the summer’s heat.  “Oh Momma, what should I do,” Rosella cried out.

         The brilliant stars in the navy blue sky shimmered like the tears trickling down her cheeks. “How do ya live without a wonderful momma like we had?” Rosella implored the night air.  There was no one else to ask. Two days after they buried Lillie-May, her brothers had gone off to seek work. Her stomach growled from hunger, but Rosella had no appetite. A sudden burst of wind, which meant the air was changing, swept along the dusty dry terrain. A piece of it caught in her eye.  It stung, but not as bad as the hurt she was feeling.  It was cruel to lose the person who cared the most about you.

        “What am I gonna do now, without you?  What can I do Momma?” she cried out again.  But in the dark summer's night no one heard her. What will become of me?” she screamed even louder, feeling far younger than her thirteen years on earth. Suddenly the scriptures she'd been taught returned to remind her that she must honor her mother, not worry about her own fate. With all the strength left within her, Rosella Jones called upon her fading faith. “Oh momma, dear momma, I pray you’re in the Lord’s loving hands.”

                                      *****

        1928 was also a year when the financial state of the world was teetering. Happy days were coming to an end.  President Coolidge left office just before the stock market failure of 1929 devastated the economy. Within a year the crash destroyed lives and fortunes and led to the Great Depression.  Millions of people were about to find themselves unemployed and in need of public assistance.

        In the deep South, where Rosella was raised, blacks were already used to an impoverished existence.  Life was harsh, real hard for the poor and uneducated. Rosella and her family’s meager beginnings were out of Childersberg, Alabama, a dirt-poor farming area many miles from Birmingham.  Her parents had been tenant farmers, toiling in the cotton and cornfields.  Called “day-hands,” many were the children of slaves. They worked from dawn until dusk.  It was grim. It was dismal.  But what else could “colored” folk do?

At the south edge of the farm, six simple cabins stood in a field of grass. Generations of whitewash were peeling from the mud-brick walls. All but one front porch had rotted away, and there were gaping holes where doors and windows used to be.  One of these decaying cabins is what Rosella called home.

Alabama was always sizzling hot and dusty.  Rosella was six when her father -- miles of life written all over his face -- died working the fields one sweltering August day. Then the final blow came when her mother suffered the stroke, and then passed on.  Rosella was devastated.  Two weeks later, relatives took her in but it was still an unforgiving life.  Family or not, they didn’t really need another body to house and feed.  She hated it, being alone, so dependent upon the benevolence of others.  “Thank you, Auntie Lucy, thank you Uncle Marcus, thank you, thank you, thank you,“ she repeated over and over and over again.  She bit her tongue so often there was a real red mark there, all to keep her feelings inside.

“There’s no two ways about it ’chile, we just don’t have enough to go around,” her aunt explained.  Rosella was forced to drop out of school to help pay for her keep.  Her four brothers had long ago gone off in different directions looking for work cross-country.  She never did hear from them again.

“Oh Jesus, are you there?  Can you help me, please?” she’d cry out silently, laying her head down on the old pillow, dirty, smelly, without a case, her only buffer against the hard mattress beneath.  Finally she’d fall asleep.

 It was the dark days just before the depression. A desiccated, difficult time for millions of Americans, black and white.  For Rosella, life was sometimes unbearable.  All she had left of her beloved mother was a modest bible and the positive philosophy she’d preached.  It wasn’t enough.

December 1931 --

Christmas was coming but so what.  No money to buy gifts.  When Rosella found herself pregnant at 16, she was humiliated.  It was so wrong, a flawed choice made early in life.  Worse, it was the one time she’d committed a sin.  She craved affection, a warm kind word from anyone.  And now this.  Rosella shed quiet tears for months.  Mortified, she didn’t dare tell anyone.  They had their own burdens.  But she knew she could only hide it just so long.

 What’d become of her?  “Dear Lord, please show me the way out of this,” she’d pray.

She continued to work, in spite of the awful morning sickness that came upon her.  She needed to keep the secret.  “What on earth was she going to do?” Rosella asked herself, time and time again.  Mercy, Jesus, Mercy! -- how could she take care of a baby?

She saved every spare penny, worked seven days a week and as many hours as possible.  “Oh lord, show me what to do,” she wailed, muffling the sounds into the pillow as she cried herself to sleep.  Her two cousins slept nearby, all in the same small windowless room. She didn’t dare let anyone know.

Finally Rosella devised a plan.  She’d go to Freddie Mae’s, a cousin living in New York City, somewhere on 125^th Street.  She’d heard her relative, who’d left Childersberg in 1925, was doing real good.  Everyone said she was a good, kind person.  Rosella couldn’t hide her condition much longer.  The baby was beginning to show. She copied Freddie Mae’s address into her mother’s tattered bible.  She’d beg her cousin to take her in.  She’d enough money to pay her keep ‘til the baby was born.

Rosella took her savings, rolled it up tightly in a tiny rag and knotted it into her bra for safekeeping.  Packing her meager belongings she slipped out at the crack of dawn to get to the main dirt road.  There was always some traffic there.  

She stood on the lonely road all day long, the hot sun beating down on her swollen belly.  Her feet were hurting, her back was aching, and the sweat was dripping down her face.  It wasn’t easy getting someone to stop.  Not too many Negroes had cars.  Many passed by without slowing down.  “Hey little lady, hop in” the old man said, stopping a few feet up the road.  His old Ford pick-up truck was laden with bushels of potatoes.  Finally she’d been able to hitch a ride with a good Samaritan.

“The name is Henry,” he said, “Headed for Birmingham.”

“Oh very good, sir, I need to get to the Greyhound station there,“ she answered.

The rest of the trip was easy.  The truck driver was friendly and talkative, didn’t ask many questions.  He figured a girl of Rosella’s age was running away. Wherever she was headed had to be better than where she was coming from.  Hell, he didn’t mind helping.   Finally they arrived at the bus depot.  “Thanks Mister, thanks a lot for the ride,” Rosella said gratefully.

“Hey times are tough.  You go where you can do better for yourself, girl,“ he said with a smile big enough to reveal a few of his front teeth missing.  Life wasn’t easy for him, either, but at least he had a job. 

Rosella bought a ticket and waited all night on the wooden bench for the morning bus.  Finally she boarded a Greyhound departing for New York.  It was 1932.  A new life lay ahead.

        Into that world, a baby boy destined to become a force in the music business, would be born. His name was Roosevelt Jones.  Smiled on by fate, this man who began life in poverty and grew up in a Harlem tenement, would ultimately achieve enormous success and rub shoulders with people from all walks of life.  Among those he’d meet would be Annie, and he’d make a difference in her life.

        Franklin D. Roosevelt had taken office on March 4, 1933.  His “Forgotten Man” speech lifted Americans out of their deep malaise.  It would become an inspiring era in American history.  “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” came over the air like a ray of sunlight.  For Rosella, too, there was hope.

“Of course, child, we got room for you,” Freddie Mae said, hugging her warmly.  Rosella found the uptown apartment easily, but the rickety stairs up to the third floor was tiring.  She was exhausted.  She didn’t have to explain much to Freddie Mae.  Wise beyond her 26 years, Freddie Mae knew Rosella wouldn’t have traveled three days on a bus if she didn’t have a real strong reason to come there to stay. She could tell Rosella was pregnant, and didn’t sit in judgment.  That was the Lord’s job.

  While it was a modest railroad flat, to Rosella this refuge was more like a palace.  Besides, she was thrilled to learn there was a bathroom down the hall.  No more having to walk out the back way to the outhouse like she had to do back home.  Things were looking up.

   After a delicious hot meal of ham hocks and turnip greens, a plate Rosella downed so fast she burned the roof of her mouth, she was shown to the room she’d make her own.  She quickly lay down on the neat single bed.  She fell into a bottomless sleep and slumbered for hours and hours. 

On August 16, 1932, her only child, Roosevelt Lincoln Jones, was born. Rosella had named him after the presidential candidate she admired, the one she believed could do the most for the poor -- and for good measure, gave her newborn son the middle name of the first president who cared about her people. 

        Soon after Roosevelt’s birth, Rosella took up housework to make ends meet.  It was a hard life, but Freddie Mae looked after a few infants, and another one was just fine.  And the work was better than down south that they all agreed, anything was better than Alabama.  Some days Rosella made as much as $5, including the ironing she took in.

Sensitive and soft-spoken, Rosella worked hard, saving every penny she could. Resolute, unwavering she’d make sure her boy had a much better life.  She was determined he’d never have to struggle like she and her brothers.  Rosella was indomitable in helping her child -- Yes -- anything was possible, if only you believed.

She taught her son that even though he would grow up never knowing a father, that he was a Somebody  -- to stand tall, to mind God and to believe in himself.  She guided him gently, but made sure he developed an interest in learning.  It would serve him well.

 When Nathaniel Brown came courting, Rosella spurned his advances.  Nothing was going to interfere with building a better life for her boy.  She went without fancy clothing in order to buy Roosevelt a second-hand piano so he’d develop the talent that was so obvious when she saw him tinkling with the keys after Sunday church services.  They squeezed it into the small living room.  Hell, Freddie May liked gospel music and she loved the idea of a piano even if there was little room. Rosella believed music could open doors in Roosevelt’s life.  She always dressed him in the best clothes and taught him to care about his appearance.  Yes, she made sure Roosevelt had the finest she could afford.

All she had to do was look around her to realize the alternatives.  Rosella saw the wasted lives, the dreams that drink and drugs depleted.  Possessing a wisdom well beyond her years, she had a keen instinct for what was good for her child.  She never let a moment go by when she didn’t inspire him towards the best he could do. 

Over the years, Rosella would dispense advice to her son like a doctor giving pills.  Hers were coated with sugar.  She wanted him to be careful with his money.  “The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket,” she warned.

Roosevelt Jones remembered all his mother’s advice.  He followed her good words and example, earnestly studying, seeking every opportunity that came to him. Yet somewhere along the way, neither knew that fate would take it’s own stance.

                                        ****

The civil right protests that gripped the South in 1968 followed years of upheaval.  It rippled north, where Negroes who were supposed to have equal rights damned well knew they didn’t.  But the courageousness of those who stood up and wouldn’t take it any more made it better for everyone.  Being called a “nigger” was the cruel rite of passage for black children the country over.  “Nigger. Nigger. Nigger.”  They were sick and tired of it all.

In the end there wasn’t much sense of victory among blacks for barriers came down slowly and integration arrived only after years of battle. Progress, many blacks said, had gone only so far. Many remained in their separate world, profoundly wary of whites. In New York, in the tenements of Harlem, bitterness and suspicion were everywhere.  Unless you were one of the lucky few who broke through the economic barriers you knew you were destined to live your life in poverty.

        Not Roosevelt Jones.  Nurtured and nourished with attention and love he grew up and up into a giant of a man.  “Lord, I told you to drink your milk, but I never expected you to have to bow your head to get through the door, son!”  Rosella said lightheartedly.  Six feet 6 inches tall, you couldn’t miss him. 

         Roosevelt’s size 16 shoes turned in a trace giving his stance a military manner. While his gait was slower, his stride was longer than most men. His music was his mission in life and the work he was to accomplish would be measured in small, vital victories.

        And my oh my, Roosevelt was handsome.  He never possessed bodacious black male vanity, yet he was the quintessential black male -- tall, lean, muscular with a wonderful energy about him and a warm, open smile that beguiled women and men alike. Walnut-skinned with chiseled features, his nose resembled a Roman warrior more than his African American heritage.  His voice, deep and resonant, was good enough for him to demonstrate his own songs.  (In fact, later on, he cut a few records of his own.)  But it was his mesmerizing laugh, rich and throaty, that everyone remembered most.      

        Roosevelt wasn’t bothered being black, though blacks were often bothered.  “Hell, mom, others have it so much harder,” he said when he won the music scholarship that enabled him to study composition at the Julliard School of Music.   He knew how his mother, against all odds, had labored six days a week to take care of him. This empowered him, gave him the energy to want to be all she knew he could be. What a damned good woman she was! 

        When later he faced barriers of bigotry, he forever held his head high, shoulders set back and straight -- for he was a man with a healthy sense of himself.  Bright, talented, a musical genius, he wrestled his way through injustices.  The shadow that he would cast would be one of greatness.

 Roosevelt ventured forth at a time when some progress was made, but not enough to give him his due.  But he was a risk taker and the record business was the stage upon which he would gamble.  The stakes were many, the rewards substantial.

In the late fifties and sixties, Rock’n’Roll and Rhythm and Blues were the rage.  Groups like the Platters and artists like Bobby Darin dominated the record charts.  Their music was being played over and over on the radio.   Songwriting teams like Leiber and Stoller were turning out hits like “Spanish Harlem”, while the duo of Pomus and Shuman were writing hit after hit, eventually getting some of their songs sung by mainstream singers like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.

Enterprising young men masterminded record companies like Atlantic.  A dentist named Herb Abramson and his associates Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun built the recording label into a giant in the industry, producing hits by Bobbie Darin, Lloyd Price and by groups like the Drifters.  Later on, down in Detroit, what became to be known as the Motown Sound fashioned the Temptations and the Chiffons into hit groups and of course, the Supremes.

Sports and music.  Those were the best avenues to success for Black men in postwar America.  The GI Bill of Rights allowed many to get a college education, but the jobs available to them were few in major corporations.  Those who became professionals became doctors and lawyers who worked within their own communities.  The color line was up all over, and when jazz stars like Lena Horne traveled, she still had to stay in sub-standard hotels, and use the back doors of the major hotels to enter, even when she was starring there.

  But there were major breakthroughs in the entertainment and sports fields, giving hope to any Negro child who had a morsel of talent.

In sports Jackie Robinson had broken through the color line in baseball.  Robinson had said, “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me.  All I ask is you respect me as a human being.”  He got more than respect as he changed sports history forever. His courage in playing stoically while many southern ball players cursed at him was not wasted.  And his brilliant playing rapidly helped break the segregation line in baseball. 

The success stories were the exceptions.  Especially in the record industry where sleazy manipulators stole whatever they could from the naïve.  Dozens of black artists had one or two hits, and then faded away.  Most had poor management -- crooked con artists who sold them a false bill of goods.  They would sign contracts giving 50 percent of their royalties to their agents.  Others had drug habits that made them vulnerable.  However talented the writer was, he’d sell a song for a quick fix.  And the vultures, the greedy operators were out there, waiting to grab the golden ring out of the hands of the weaker ones. An entire subculture of slimy managers and agents worked behind the scene and scalped much of the profits from the innocent amateurs.

The fortunate few who had good guidance grew into major stardom, as Diana Ross did after she left the Supremes.  Gordy Berry, the founder of Motown, one of the few Blacks to take a leading role in those days helped many get their start. 

Roosevelt always had an ear for music.  While he had a serious bent, and played the classics during his stay at Julliard, his passion was in the rhythm and blues that was the Black sound of the day.   It was a way out, a way to make the big bucks he saw flashed around by the entertainers who had made it.

 His mom helped; first with the old Spinet piano she bought so he could practice at home.  Then she paid for formal lessons so he could learn to read the music.  After a year of studying composition, Roosevelt was ready.  Using his favorite pencil, an Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 -- soft enough to write the flats and notes he needed to tell his story -- he began to develop melodies, fast and slow with clever lyrics too.  He worked hard, and for the rest of his life kept a supply of freshly sharpened Blackwings near him at all times.

Soon Roosevelt was one of many black songwriters walking the streets of Tin Pan Alley, knocking on the glass door offices of small publishing firms at 1610 and 1650 Broadway, selling a song or leaving a demo disk here and there.  His ability to carry a tune was good enough to rate his being backup on a number of demonstration discs, and later, he did arrangements for such names as Dinah Washington and LaVerne Baker.  His talents as a writer and composer would exceed all his dreams.  During his life he would write more than three dozen songs that made it to the top of the charts.  He also was called upon to write special lyrics and music for leading singers as well as special musical scores used in Hollywood movies.

        By 1958 he had made the first rungs of the ladder, having sold four songs that topped the Cashbox and Billboard lists, including the one about the name game, banana fananana.

 The foremost element of his success was that Roosevelt was able to buy his mother a comfortable home in Jamaica, Queens.  He made sure his mother was safe. She wouldn’t have to work any longer.  He’d see to that.

 Rosella loved the little house but even more the large plot of land outside that she developed into a wonderful vegetable garden, planting everything imaginable that would grow in the east.  Rosella was back to her roots -- the land --and she made the most of it.  Her greatest joy was having Roosevelt travel out in the summer to take in the bags of vine ripe tomatoes, the corn and the rest for his family.  She was so glad to see him, to know he was doing well.

 Roosevelt did have a family, having married in his early 20’s a beautiful black schoolteacher, Mavis Johnson, whom he met in the 42^nd Street library.  His mother was disappointed that he had tied himself down so early, but she soon took to Mavis, who was a lovely young woman.  The children came quickly, one after another.  Mavis no longer could teach.  More mouths to feed, more reason to walk the pavements of Broadway, to sell a song or two. 

  It was a part of his life he’d keep very private.  In fact, many intimates didn’t know he was married.  While Roosevelt strayed from time to time, he always respected his family, remained a devoted father and for the first decade was a faithful and good husband.  But he was young and the temptations were many.  Eventually he succumbed -- there were so many beautiful women trying to seduce him -- hell, just a little on the side.  He’d do his thing in show business, keep and sleep in a midtown hotel suite and travel uptown as many weekends as he could.  That’s where his family lived -- in a grand brownstone home on the outskirts of Harlem.  He had bought it with his first big record hit.  Yes, he wandered, but he always made certain his family was well provided for.

“Mom, you always find something to smile about, don’t you?” Roosevelt teased his mother, as he took the two shopping bags filled to the brim with her freshly picked tomatoes and green beans.  She had also pickled watermelon rinds, made current jelly, gave him a dozen jars of each to take to Mavis and the kids. 

“You don’t stop smiling because you grow old, son.  You grow old because you stop smiling,” she responded.  “Now you take the goodies to Mavis and the boys,” she reminded him.  She always made sure that her grandsons got some of her prized homegrown produce.

He hugged his mother tenderly.  She was growing frail with age, but that smile on her face could light up the grayest of days.  

 Roosevelt headed back to the city -- to his ever-present crusade to get his songs sung, to get his music played.  That was the name of the game.  It was all a game.

By the early 60s, the record industry was in its heyday.  Cousin Brucie and Dick Clark could make or break a record.  The infamous payola disc jockey scandal erupted earlier, when it was learned that record company promoters were buying off the radio stations’ top DJ’s.  Powerful radio personalities like Alan Freed were ruined by the exposes in the city dailies that revealed the truth on how hit songs were made.

And so, in a natural evolution, record company executives, who would bestow a gold record upon their latest hit group, were now improvising crooked deals.  That gold record represented a million records that were sold, but what the company’s creative bookkeeping never disclosed was the profits from the other 400,000 or more in sales that they pocketed. The artists never knew so much more money was due them.

By the late 50s Black songwriters also emerged, their names now credited on many hits. Some also did arranging, and a rare few became part of management.  At a brand new record company called Scepter, the Shirelles broke through with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”  The company, started on a shoestring by Frances Rosenfeld, an overweight, overbearing, married woman from New Jersey, with her clandestine black lover, Benny Anderson, soon had a stable of artists and hits on the charts. Ensconced at 1650 Broadway, in new offices, their record label was the talk of the town.

Anderson was one of the few Blacks to make it on the management side, until Motown out in Detroit with Berry Gordy at the helm wrested some of the power away.  There were also mob connections.  All the clubs where the artists would appear were run and operated by the Italian and Jewish Mafia of the day.

Too many helpless songwriters, who scrambled for enough money to pay their rent, had to share their royalties and credit with either the singer who made the song a hit, (many unethical publishers and greedy A&R people at the management level added their names to the composer’s or lyricist’s credits).  A songwriter eager to make a record, sold his song for a quick $50, and spent it the next hour by going and getting a fix.  Heroin was the drug of the day, and too many bright lights were quickly extinguished.

Roosevelt saw how the hard stuff had done in some talented brothers. The vacant look in the eyes, the dozing off in the middle of a conversation, it was hell to witness.  He stayed away, but he loved pot, felt it made him write better.  He conducted summits at the Dorsey hotel on 7^th Avenue where he’d taken a suite of rooms after his third big hit. His work became even more prolific; soon he was writing a battery of hits. His talents were in demand by publishers, who often called to request a new song for one of their top recording artists.

*****

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