Playing for a Blind Pig
I used to play [piano] in the beer gardens during Prohibition, when it was against the law to buy or sell drinks. This was during the twenties and thirties. I played in a "blind pig." It is a beer garden that sells beer and it entertains when it is against the law. So often I'd play from nine at night to two in the morning, for two bucks. And I'd get some tips. That's how I got my spending money when I was young.
People were making beer at home in the basement. They called it bathtub gin. Well that was quite some time. That is when the Depression was at it's worst. At that time the stock market had crashed. They closed all the banks; you couldn't get any money out of the banks and people were living on nothing, they couldn't get jobs. And that is when I started high school and college. I had a tough time getting though and so I played music at night to get enough money to live on. I was 16 and 17 years old.
My sister was a piano player and she taught me the scales, but I never have paid for a music lesson in my life. I picked it up from there. But musicians were a dime a dozen and they weren't being paid very much either. So, after I got out of college I had a neighbor who was the chief accountant for Chrysler Corporation, who loved me. And he helped me get a job there at Chrysler. As the years went along I got married and had a wonderful family, became a successful media director with many of the heads of the major corporations of the day, and I also became an avid gardener. But throughout all these years playing the piano always remained one of the joys in my life.
