Babs Gonzales (October 27, 1919 – January 23, 1980),
Early life
Gonzales was born Lee Brown in Newark,
New Jersey, United States.
He was raised solely by his mother Lottie Brown alongside two brothers.
Of his nickname, Gonzales explained: "my brothers are basketball players... there was a basketball star in America named Big Babbiad, and so they were called Big Babs, Middle Babs, and I'm Little Babs."
As a young man, Gonzales worked as
Road crew for swing bandleader
Jimmie Lunceford,
after which he relocated to
Los Angeles. To circumvent racial segregation, Gonzales wore a
turban and used the pseudonym Ram Singh, passing as an Indian national.
Using this identity, Gonzales worked at the Los Angeles Country Club until becoming a private chauffeur to movie star
Errol Flynn.
While hospitalized for appendicitis in 1944, he assumed the Spanish surname Gonzales as he "didn't want to be treated as a Negro",
later explaining that "they was Jim Crowing me in
ofay hotels and so I said if it's just simple enough to change my last name, why not?"
After the outbreak of World War II, Gonzales was forced to return home to Newark to report for military duty, but was declared unfit for service after arriving to his inspection
Transvestism.
Music career
1940s
After working with
Charlie Barnet and
Lionel Hampton's big bands, Gonzales moved to New York and became involved with the burgeoning sound of bebop,
a style which initially confused him. "I didn't understand what
Charlie Parker was playing," said Gonzales, "I did not understand anything about bebop until
Dizzy Gillespie who - showing me chords, explaining to me what the melodic lines were that he was playing - opened up the music to me."
Despite being a trained pianist and drummer,
Gonzales preferred to sing rather than play an instrument, stating that "it's easier to sing and, above all, it's less tiring. We don't sweat while playing and we always look handsome. Plus, a singer usually earns more money than an instrumentalist."
Gonzales formed his own group, Babs' Three Bips and A Bop, releasing a number of 78rpm singles for Blue Note, Capitol Records, and Apollo labels in the late 1940s. Tadd Dameron, Sonny Rollins, Roy Haynes, Wynton Kelly, and Bennie Green were among the musicians who performed at these recording sessions.
The most notable of Babs' Three Bips and A Bop singles was "Oop-Pop-A-Da". Its prominent scat singing was credited with originating "an Vocalese which is still employed by jazz aspirants the world over."
Friendship with Sonny Rollins
Saxophone Sonny Rollins' debut recordings were made with Gonzales at a
Studio recording for the Capitol label in 1949.
"Babs was a very wonderful guy," Rollins reminisced in 2019, "he gave me an opportunity to make my first recordings, and a chance to work with the older, more prominent musicians than myself at the time... Fats Navarro,
Lucky Thompson, people of that stature.. I was just a kid coming into the business." Reflecting on Gonzales' personality and achievements, Rollins remarked, "Just thinking about him makes me laugh... in a respectful way, not
at him but
with him. He needs to be recognized and praised for what he did. I never forgot him. We were great friends. I admired him tremendously and respected what he was doing."
1950s and 1960s
Gonzales released a string of albums and singles throughout the 1950s and 1960s, but became only a
Cult following, ultimately self-publishing his own recordings.
As
composer and arranger, Gonzales provided music for Bennie Green ("Soul Stirrin'" and "Lullaby Of The Doomed"),
Johnny Griffin ("Low Gravy"), James Clay and David "Fathead" Newman ("Wide Open Spaces" and "Figger-ration"),
Paul Gonsalves ("Gettin' Together") and others.
As a guest vocalist he appeared on releases by James Moody,
Eddie Jefferson, Jimmy Smith, Bennie Green, Johnny Griffin,
and
Savoy Records supergroup The Bebop Boys,
where he appeared alongside musicians such as
Fats Navarro and
Bud Powell.
Throughout this time Gonzales remained a behind-the-scenes influence in the jazz world, linking musicians to one other and introducing them recording to companies.[ To Bop Or Not To Be: A Jazz Life, NRK Television 1990]
Nightclub ownership
From 1958, Gonzales operated a nightclub called Babs' Insane Asylum, located in Sugar Hill, New York at 155th Street and St. Nicholas Place.
The house band included
Hank Jones, Roy Haynes, and
Milt Hinton.
"These guys could have made some crazy money in the studios or with another orchestra, but they preferred to work at home for $100 a week," said Gonzales, "simply because it was a great place where all the jazzmen came."
Gonzales refusal to work with a talent broker or
Talent manager caused social tension. "
Joe Glaser hates me", claimed Gonzales, "he could not understand that Louis
Louis Armstrong or Lionel Hampton come to my house to play while I'm independent. And all the other
hate me because I never wanted to fall under the thumb of any one of them. I am free and I owe nothing to anyone."
Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen helped to promote the club; however, it eventually closed in 1959 due to a rent dispute.
Gonzales explained, "I quit after two years when the guy who owned the building asked for a bigger cut. We threw his piano out the window!"
[Ralph J Gleason's liner notes for Babs Gonzales "Live At Smalls Paradise" album, Dauntless Records, 1963]
Gonzales attempted to open a similar club in Paris, named Le Maison Du Idiots, but lost access to his $10,000 investment after a general strike.
Written works
Gonzales wrote and self-published two books,
I Paid My Dues: Good Times... No Bread (1967) and
Movin' on Down de Line (1975). The books were largely autobiographical but also featured short stories about the exploits of "shyster"
Talent agent, hustlers, pimps and
Prostitution who were known to Gonzales.
Jazz writer
Scott Yanow described the books as "more colorful than accurate."
Gonzales also printed a small "bebop dictionary".
He personally sold these books at jazz concerts.
Due to Gonzales' esoteric, jive vocabulary, he was dubbed "the inventor of the bebop language".[Liner notes for Jimmy Smith "A New Sound... A New Star..." album, Blue Note Records, 1956.] Jazz writer Nat Hentoff elaborated, "Gonzales is always among the first to use and introduce the newest shifts in the argot, and he may indeed have Protologism a few himself."[Nat Hentoff's liner notes for Babs Gonzales "Tales Of Manhattan" album, Jaro Records, 1959.] An excerpt of Gonzales' writing was later included in the historical collection The Cool School: Writing from America's Hip Underground, whose editor Glenn O'Brien defined Gonzales' voice as one of many "outsider voices ignored or suppressed by the mainstream that would merge and recombine in unpredictable ways, and change American culture forever."
Personal life
From 1951, Gonzales began to travel regularly to Europe, and remained there for months at a time.
Though he makes no mention in his autobiographies,
it appears that Gonzales was married for some time. A 1953 issue of
Jet published a photograph of him posing beneath the
Eiffel Tower with his "Swedish wife, champion swimmer and model" Sonja Juhlin;
however, he later stated that he was not married, explaining: "I love freedom too much... there are too many girls on earth to choose just one."
Gonzales had earlier been characterized as a "hard playboy" by magazine columnist Jack Jackson,
and claimed in his autobiographies that he had slept with hundreds of women.
editor Chester Higgins Sr. reported in 1970 that Gonzales had been living between Sweden and Denmark "for several years".
Death
Gonzales died of
cancer at Newark's College Hospital in January 1980.
Discography
Albums
-
Voila (Hope, 1958)
-
Tales of Manhattan: The Cool Philosophy of Babs Gonzales (Jaro, 1959)
-
Sundays at Small's Paradise (Dauntless, 1961)
-
The Expubident World of Babs "Speedy" Gonzales (Expubidence, 1968)
-
No Names Please -- Guess Who? (Expubidence, Unknown date)
-
The Ghettosburg Address (Expubidence, 1970)
Compilation albums
-
The Be-bop Story (Expubidence, Unknown date)
-
Weird Lullaby (Blue Note, 1992)
