MUSIC, GIRLS AND FAMILY

MUSIC, GIRLS AND FAMILY

I had a friend from high school, name was Jake, a Mexican kid. And he was hangin’ out in the Latin scene, you know, mambos and all that kind of stuff. So he introduced me to a guy named John Thomas who had a Latin band. I got the gig, played quite a while with the Latin band.

By now I was a real gigolo. Once I was in that band, the girls were coming down on you like rain. I’d never had an experience like that before.

My first wife, I met her there. I did her wrong so much, she paid me back later. I started playing in a club in East Oakland, I went to a lot of clubs. She is the mom of my second daughter.

I married her, but she paid me back for all that fooling around I did. She ran off with another tenor player. He was more famous than I was. I found out because my 3-year-old daughter told me. “I told Gloria not to do it. I told Gloria not to do it”.

The little girl stayed with her grandmother, they had a home, they were very stable. Her grandfather was nuts about her. I would take her and her older sister to the zoo together, so they’re friends now. My first daughter, I got together with her mother, but I was such a gigolo, I couldn’t stay faithful to anyone.

I would come to LA a lot for the music scene. I thought at that time I could do more in LA. Eventually, I got a job in LA driving a bus and moved my wife Carla and my son Bob down here. But I didn’t like it. I was about to buy something once, and I realized I would be stuck in this if I bought it. I didn’t want to be driving this bus for the next 10 years or more cuz I owe bills.

So, eventually, I moved back to Oakland. I would come down to LA for 3 months and then go back to Oakland. I realized I needed to be in school. I had dropped out of high school, and whenever I looked for a job, they always had some requirement and I didn’t have any requirement.

So I decided that I would get an AA degree. I wasn’t thinking about 4 years or anything. But once I got in there, I really started studying hard.

By then I had my son Gus along with Bob.