Brownie: the Professional Gambler and the St. Louis Blues
Born July 5, 1914, joined A.A. in 1950, died November 23, 1983.
In this (and the following) chapter we will read a lead given by Harold “Brownie” Brown around 1972, when he had been sober about twenty-two years. Brownie’s talk that evening was tape-recorded; this is taken from a transcript of that tape printed in Glenn C., The Factory Owner & the Convict. By 1972 when Brownie spoke these words, he had become a great hero in South Bend, not only in A.A. circles but among numerous people all over the west end of the city, of all races and nationalities. He talked the same to everybody, and he helped everybody the same.
Harold Brown was born on July 5, 1914, in St. Louis, Missouri. The city he knew during his childhood was the Mississippi river boat town, forty-five per cent black, immortalized in the great jazz classic, the “St. Louis Blues,” composed by W. C. Handy the year Brownie was born. He spent his teenage years during the Golden Age of Jazz in one of the great centers for this new American music—an exciting time for a young black man. Portions of his tape-recorded lead were difficult to transcribe because he continued, even in later years, to speak in the heavy black idiom of that river port, the language of the gamblers, hustlers, prostitutes, nightclub denizens, and singers and musicians who kept the town going at full blast at all hours of the day and night. It was a place of river boatmen, railroad workers, cargo handlers and streams of travelers passing through, a city of bright lights, loud music, and wild women—all of which the young Brownie thoroughly enjoyed!
The year Brownie turned 18, Duke Ellington composed and recorded a song called “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” and the period of the great swing bands began—the era of Ellington, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, and Benny Goodman. St. Louis was one of the places where this music grew and flourished, and Brownie became the emcee at a nightclub there, hearing singers and musicians at first hand, and introducing their sets—people whom he would in later years hear spoken of as the great legendary figures of jazz.
In September of 1938, when he was twenty-four, Brownie married Evelyn Rogers there in St. Louis. But he did not let being married keep him from continuing in the nightclub scene.
The nightclub emcee who loved laughter and good times
I like to start off saying, I really don’t think that I was an alcoholic when I first started drinking. Now a lot of people say that they was an alcoholic when they first started drinking. Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I was. I think I had to go into different channels to become an alcoholic. I probably had a tendency to become an alcoholic. But I really don’t think I was. I think I went along, as times [changed], and [went into] different channels, and become this alcoholic.
Because I wants to be believed, but I were a amateur drinker when I first started drinking. It was because I used to giggle at everything; I used to get half-high and I would giggle. And I don’t think alcohol to me, at that time, was a problem to me. I used to just like to laugh. People say something funny, and I would just bust out in this laugh, and just fall out on the floor just laughing. You know, because I don’t know why I got so tickled over what they said.
But as time marches on, I went into another channel, of a social drinker. Now I used to drink it, or leave it alone. I once were the master of ceremony at a [St. Louis] nightclub. I have set down and talk with Billy Eckstein—King Kong—just like I’m talking with you. And I don’t think I’se [doing more than] social drinking. I talk with some of the big people, today that I see on television, that they used to sponsor into [that] nightclub.
And I used to introduce them, master of ceremony. They might [talk with me first, and then I get up and say] what I’m supposed to say, and get peoples in the spirit. And ask them, “Was they all happy?” Naturally they were, ’cause they were drinking, they say, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, just let us get together,” and we did.
But, getting together, as years passed on—and continue drinking—I think I went into another channel, of a heavy drinker. Now, yes, I got drunk doing my heavy drinking, but I always could remember what happened, the next day. I used to fall down and couldn’t get up again—I knowed I was down. But yet I could not help myself.
When as time marches on, I went into I guess the last stage beyond an amateur drinker, social drinker, heavy drinker, into I guess a alcoholic. I used to say, “Man, did we have a good time last night? Where was I?” Didn’t even know where I was at! My drinking kept picking up.
The professional gambler
Now, being the master of ceremonies at [that] nightclub, my job, I used to gamble a whole lot. I never did have a [normal everyday] job. Really, most of my job was gambling all the time for my living. I raised my family on gambling.
Now, individual tell me that he’s a gambler, and broke all the time. Some gambler! Hey you! A gambler don’t get broke. Because, what I had to put down on you, I couldn’t afford to get broke. Because I would put down three-dice combination on you in a minute.
Now, sometimes it’d take two of us to do this, or sometimes it’d take three to do it. We always running in a pair to put down this game. Now, I may come into a game first, and my friend come in maybe about a half an hour after I been in there. He [pretend he] knows nothing about me. We cut to one another, just the same I would do somebody else in there. But yet we well knows one another. And when the betting start off, then that’s when we’ll start in.
Now, if I let him win, he’ll go, or I’ll win. We understand who, [and] which one’s gonna win the money. Now, I may bet against him, and he would fade anybody around the table. Well, my little money I had paid in, he bet you I hit, and “I bet I win,” and “I bet you don’t.” And when he pass [Brownie chuckled gleefully] he picks up all the money around the table, and my little bit.
This thing kept rocking on, steady drinking. Now a gambler’s not a happy type of an individual. I didn’t care for friends, I didn’t care too much for friendship. I wasn’t particular about you liking me too well. It was because you may be my next victim. So I didn’t have time for friends. In other words, friendship costs too much anyhow. Always got to give something when you’ve got friends. So I wasn’t particular about friends. They always want favors.
That thing kept up, and at that time I run an alcoholic water joint we call it. And at that time [in the wee hours of the morning], the red light districts was off, in which the girls and things, when they get off [their night’s work], they always used to flock to my place, because I would stay open practically all night. Only thing we had in there was a piano player and to sell that booze.
I kept on drinking, and drinking. Drinking kept picking up. I was getting to the place where I couldn’t gamble too good. For the cards and things, the dice and things, would all go together.
Well, it’s a dangerous job gambling, because you liable to get killed at that game any time. ’Cause people think they can just get in you—something for nothing.
I went home one night and I told my wife that I was going to get a job, and I was gonna quit doing what I was doing, and I’m going to take care of you and the kids better than what I’m doing. I’m gonna take some of this worry off your mind. And I’m going to get me a job.
Cutting off his finger at the steel foundry
Now my intentions was good. I went to the American Steel Polity, and just to see would they hire me. At that time, they used to have you all standing out. You didn’t have to fill out no application, they’d just look through the crowd and pick you out, “Say, boy, come here,” anywhere, “Come a-here, I can use you.” Now I wasn’t particular about ’em calling me, but I just wanted my wife knew I went there. And I was the first one, he looked over and say, “Hey, come here”! [Laughter] I went with the work.
Now I worked there for a little while, not too long. And I got tired working, because this wasn’t the type of work I choose to do, because it was dirty, greasy: sand, and all that stuff. And I knew that I could do me better than this.
So I don’t know what thought came in my mind to do what I done. That night I came home, and the next night I had to go back to work, and it was bothering me to go back to work, so I got about half drunk, and I told my wife, I says “Now, I’m going to tell you something. If someone come here and tell you about me, don’t you get alarmed. If the police come here, whatever he say, don’t you get alarmed.” She said, “Well what you going to do?” I said, “I’m not going to do anything, just don’t you worry.”
With this stupid, rubber-base mind that I had, I went over there. We’s bringing sand out of the foundry. And I was the guy was a-supposed to uncouple the box car, then give the signal to take it away. This train brought it out. I stuck my fingers up under the box wheel and cut both of my fingers off. That one, and this-un; they sewed that one back on. And I was in the dark, I didn’t know if this was off completely or not but I done like that, and I found this was hitting back and forth, and I said, “Yeah, she’s off.”
I tore out and begin to run—for the doctor, because I didn’t want to die. They alls are a-going, “What’s the trouble?” I said, “Finger off.” And they was running behind me with the stretcher, hollering about “Wait, and lay down on the stretcher,” and I said to myself, “Why in the hell am I going to wait for ’em? I’m in front! Catch up with me! If you look like you going faster ’n me then I’ll lay on the stretcher!” [Laughter]
Well, I got there to the doctor, and he was out to lunch. And they buzzed him to come in there, so he rushed in there right quick, and he gave me a shot in the arm. Now I’m pretty well loaded anyhow, drunk. Any[way] I don’t feel too much. I’m looking at him, you know, and all this raw meat, and the bone sticking up, you know. But you know what I was really thinking?—when he was sewing on the thing, and fooling around, and fumbling with it? I wasn’t thinking about the finger so much, I was thinking about how much insurance I was gone get. [Laughter] How much money was they gone pay me for losing both fingers?
They didn’t do the operation right this morning [when it happened.] They had to put me to sleep where they could really cut it and saw it off.
At that time they didn’t have the stuff that they got now to put you to sleep. They had ether. And they put this cap over my nose, and told me to take a deep breath and inhale it. And I said to myself, “I ain’t gone go to sleep, I don’t give a damn what they do.”
But you know, if an individual die, like [just at the moment when] he go under ether, he dies a horrible death. Now I know that most of this was because I had this alcohol in me, or what. But boy, with this alcohol and ether—man, you got yourself something, believe me when I tell you that! Seemed like the world had turned bottom side upwards. And it was dogs and cats was fighting in the air.
Now ether starts swelling your feets first. You feel it come up in your feet. Then it goes up a coming up around your hips here. And boy, when it get up toward this heart, you into something! And don’t let nobody tell you you ain’t!
And they put me to sleep, and I was a sick man the next morning behind that ether. And if they were using ether in here I could tell you. Wherever I go, I smell it, I can tell you if it’s there or not. Once you’ve been under ether, you never forget that smell.
Alcohol to an alcoholic is his best friend
So the next morning my wife, my cousins, and some of the alkies that I drank with came over to Granite City, Illinois, where the hospital I was in [was located], and brought a half a pint, well! And when they brought this half a pint, I was sick. But I didn’t want the nurse to see this half pint.
You see, alcohol to an alcoholic is his best friend. Bestest friend he got when he become an alcoholic. He likes to know that he got more for the next day. And if [a recovering alcoholic] ever go back to drinking, he gets soon back up [to drinking just as bad as he was before he got sober].
I remember hearing a guy said, and I think he told the truth—just a alcoholic, but he wasn’t on the A.A. program; he was just talking, and we was in the barbershop, and he had a half a pint in this pocket—and he said, “I love my wife and kids . . . .” He says, “No, now let me take that back.” He said, “I love my whiskey first, then I love my wife and my kids.” And I think that is the truth. I think alcoholics love they’ drinking better than they do they’ family.
It is because they drinks for everything. They drinks if it’s wintertime to keep [warm]. Summer he drinks to keep cool. If somebody die in the family, he drinks for that. If somebody gets married he drinks for that. And if he lose his job he drinks for that. And if he get a good job, he still drinks for that! So he drinks to everything. So alcohol, to an alcoholic, is his best friend.
Well, . . . he brought that half a pint to me, over there in Granite City, Illinois, and I was pretty sick from that ether. But do you know, [lying in that hospital bed, that alcohol] there is the only thing—with all the fine food they brought me to eat . . . I couldn’t keep it on my stomach—the alcohol was the only thing I could keep on my stomach. It was because I had become allergic to alcohol. It would stay when nothing else wouldn’t stay. I wanted to drink when I couldn’t eat.
You know, it’s a funny thing about an alcoholic, if he would eat some food, or whatever his favorite food was, and made him sick, he’d never eat it no more. But alcohol makes him sick all the time, and he go right back to drinking.
Powerless to pull out of the self-hate, and what seemed like a perverse love of pain
I want to believe that an alcoholic enjoys suffering. It’s because he suffers a many years to get this A.A. program. I’se drinking for thirty long years, or better, before I found this way of life, of Alcoholics Anonymous. Yes, till I get to the place where that I want to quit drinking, and seemed like I could quit.
Now people used to tell me that, “Use your will-power.” Well, alcoholics don’t have no will-power! He have will, but not no power! The judge said that “if you drink, the next time, I’m going to send you up”—I will drink. Say that “if you do this, then I’m going to do this to you”—I will do that.
But power, no. He don’t have any power. Got a lot of will, yes, he have a lot of will!
So, I got so bad in my drinking . . . me and my wife was sleeping in the same bed together. I would get to running in the bed, run all up and down her back and all that stuff, running from something, I don’t know what I was doing, I must ’ve been into [delirium] or something. I would get up at night, thinking I’m going to the bathroom, and would go to the corner, and do all my business in the corner. I would pull the drawers off [the dresser and chest of drawers], and wet a pile of clothes, then go back and get back in the bed.
The next morning I’d get up, my wife say, “Well, whuh . . . ?” I say, well, I asked her, “What these clothes doing wet? I do what?” She say, “You don’t mean nobody getting up here at night, and putting all this water, and doing all this stuff in these drawers, and pull these out?” I say, “Naw.” So I kept doing that, and I was ashamed of myself for doing these things.
So, it was [my wife Evelyn’s] birthday or Christmas, or something, I don’t know exactly what it was, and I asked her what does she want for Christmas, or the birthday, or whatever it may be, and she said “Twin beds.” [Laughter] I said, “Well, you got your wish.” So I bought twin beds, and I thought twin beds was better anyhow, because [Brownie chuckled] I could have the whole bed to myself!
The beds cost me a hundred and ten dollars apiece. I bought those chrome beds, with the chrome head and a red back seam in the middle of it, because I think that’s what it needed, kind of a chrome-steel like. Because the way I would tear up a bed was something else! And if I fall, I wouldn’t have to fall too far, just right on the floor, and that’s where I would make my home.
Sometimes ready roll all night, then get up—same woman, same clothes, please go on! So this thing kept rocking on, and I would get disgusted. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I wanted to quit.
Yes, I used to tell people that I can quit when I get ready. But I never was ready!
So it come a time in my life that I was ready. But I didn’t have nowhere to go. I didn’t know what to do to stop drinking. I joined church. Nothing seemed to help me any. I tried psychiatry. They didn’t seem to help me. I tried hospitals. For a while, long as they had me in there, it was all right, but when I got back out, I was the same thing.
I used to get up in the night, in the wee, wee hours, when everything was still. I would get on my knees and pray to God: “God, help me!” I would go out on my back porch—and look up into the skies, where [there was] nothing but the stars, and everything was still, and tears would come out of my eyes—and would ask God, “Is there any help for me?” Because I was beat in every department. I was on my last go ’round. I didn’t know what to do.
I prayed, and I had got to the place where that I had got weak like a child, where I couldn’t say no. And my friends’d say “Come and have a drink,” when I didn’t want one. And would go ahead on with ’em and drink. And would come home at night and would cry some more.
Because I was a sick man. Alcohol never lost a battle, and never will. Alcohol don’t give a damn who it works on. From the rich to the poor of all creeds. Alcohol is not prejudiced. It work on anybody. If you don’t [think it can work on you . . . well, if you] fool with it—if you keep fooling with it—it’ll let you know. It has killed just as many rich as it is poor. It don’t make no difference. “ If you fool with me, I’ll fool with you,” that’s alcohol.
It became an only thinly-veiled death wish
I was coming home once, from a tavern or somewhere, and one police [he tell me to stop and come over to him]. I was half drunk, and evil—you know, you can feel sometimes, when you’re evil—you want to halfway get into something but nobody want to start nothing, you know. And this police was saying—on Jefferson and Franklin, there in St. Louis, Missouri—[when] I passed him, he said, “Come here, boy.”
My whiskey said, “Who in the hell is he talking to?” [Laughter] I kept on walking.
He said, “Come here, boy.” I kept on walking. And he went up behind me and grabbed me in the back of my pants where my belt [is], and that was good as I wanted. He touched me!
And flat up the side of his head, I had business, you know. And I knocked him all down, and was kicking him and was going on, but whiskey say, “Kick him some more,” and I was kicking him. And he was trying to get his pistol out, and I was kicking his hand, he couldn’t get his pistol. And there was this bank, has these iron gates across—they locks that up at night to keep you from getting to the main doors, or you have some trouble [getting through ’em, if you trying to break into the bank]—me and him was rattling that gate together, you know.
But when I come to, I don’t know where the rest of them police come from! [Laughter] When I come to, I was in Beale Street Station on the floor, with the hickies so high on my head, that you couldn’t hardly touch it with just your cotton. They wouldn’t let none of my people see me. I thought that I was fighting one police—I was fighting a whole gang of police! [Laughter]
Well, I got tired of that too. I said, “Well, they all knows me downtown.” They was sometimes afraid to come that way, ’cause when they come after me, they knowed they had trouble on their hands, you know. And I didn’t mind going to jail. Or, sometimes it was better that they put me in jail. ’Cause maybe I get killed out there in the street.
The civil service job
I had got a job working for the government in civil service. And I had worked for them a while. But you know, working for the government, and you’re an alcoholic, you into something! It is because all government people stick together. If we give a party, just the government people, we throw the party between the government people.
Now my captain that I worked for, Capt. Crowley, today when I look back, I can say that he was alcoholic. I don’t know why the man likin’ed me so well. Every party was given in the government in that area, I had to be the bartender. And it’s the wrong thing, a-making me bartender, ’cause man, I would come out from behind that bar, and get with ’em. I’d be on that floor! Soon as someone tend the bar, I be out there where the rest of ’em at. Well, Capt. Crowley didn’t know, ’cause he was drunk himself. He didn’t know what was happening.
I kept on drinking, I didn’t know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous, or nothing like that. My wife got sick and tired of me, so she thought she better leave me. My wife left, because I was getting worser and worser. And desperate.
I used to come in the house, and run ’em all—kids and everybody—out of the house. Could ’ve croaked ’em all, and run ’em all out. Run my mother-in-law out in the street half-naked, and everything. They would call the police, then I want to fight the police, say “Who the hell called you? Nobody called you up here. This is my house.” He say, “Well you’re disturbing the peace.” “Yeah, in my own house.” So they didn’t bother me, so it would kind of quiet down a little bit.
Because at home, the point [was] they all know me. They know that I was overbearing and would fight. Because my whiskey would tell me, “Fight that son of bitch!” And I would fight if I got whupped.
Going to Chicago, thinking things might change.
My wife, like I say, left me. She went to Chicago. And I begin to get lonely. I wanted to quit, and she didn’t understand me. I didn’t even understand myself. I thought that I better leave St. Louis and go and try to find her, and maybe I could change my life different in a different city. Aw, I couldn’t change there in St. Louis because I had too doggone many friends. And I thought if I could find someplace else, where I didn’t know anybody, that maybe I could handle [it], or get myself together, and straighten my life out.
I turned in my resignation, going to leave St. Louis for to go where my wife’s at. Well at that time, you could buy a suit, dollar down, dollar a week. I taken five dollars, and got about three suits—dollar down, dollar a week—some shoes, and a hat, with about three dollars. “I’ll pay you next week!”
But I was about to leave. I packed up my clothes, and caught the train out of St. Louis to Chicago, saying to myself, “I’m going to change my way of living, and change my life.” And when I got on the train, at the Union Station, it was the first time in my whole life that I ever rode a train on the inside. All my trains been on the outside. And on my way to Chicago, my intentions were good. I think all alcoholics got good intentions. But hell, they don’t hold water.
And this urge came down on me, when I got in Chicago, for that drink. I couldn’t wait, I was nervous, I couldn’t be still, and a thought come to me and said, just one little one wouldn’t hurt nobody. Got over there to the whiskey store, I had business! Got me a half a pint, to get a “bracer.” Hadn’t seen my wife yet, really hadn’t seen nobody in Chicago yet, really—to get around, and know what’s happening. But he sold me the half a pint, [so I] run around in the alley, there I had business. I had a habit, to open a bottle, used to shuck it at the bottom, then screw the top off. I have even half bust a bottle. But I believe, that day, if I’d have bust that bottle, I’d have got down there and sucked that whiskey up! [Laughter]
And when I got to feeling my Cheerios pretty good, my intentions was to go to 5761 State Street. But my whiskey said “No, don’t go there right now, why don’t you look around over Chicago for a while?” And with this old money that I had in my pocket, that I hold from retirement, that they hand me down for working for so long for the government, I found out—less than ten minutes time, or fifteen—that I had just as many friends in Chicago in them fifteen or twenty minutes, that I had in St. Louis, born and raised there! [Laughter] I was spilling that money, trying to . . . just playing with people.
But it come time for me to go where my wife was at. I was skinny, my eyes had shrunk back in the back of my head, I was dying from malnutrition. Wouldn’t eat, just drink. Maybe sometimes a bowl of chili, but no heavy food, ’cause my stomach wouldn’t take it. I was so skinny, until I had to wear suspenders to hold my pants up. When I approached that number, at 5761 State Street, my wife wasn’t there at the time, she was staying with a cousin, and when I walked in the door, they was glad to see me, but they looked at me awful funny. And when my wife come home, she said, “My God! Wha . . . What’s wrong with you!”
And here I was standing up there. In other words, ’fore I could buck I was going to crying. And why I wanted to cry, this thing would end me—was hollering out, please, somebody help me.” I wanted somebody to help me, I didn’t know where to get help at.
Just use your will-power and quit, people told him, but he couldn’t. But my wife’s cousin’s husband was a doctor . . . . And I thought I would ask [him] to give me a thoroughly exam to find out what is wrong with me. So when he came in, I said, “Doctor, I’d like to talk to you.” His office was in his home . . . he made his runs, he made hospitals and so forth, but he had a office in his home.
He said, “Yes, Brownie.” He says, “What can I do for you?” I said, “I’d like for you to give me a thoroughly exam.” I said, “I don’t want you to say ‘Well, he’s one of the family, and I’ll give you a break.’ Don’t give me no break. You tell me what’s wrong with me, and I’m going to pay you. I want you to act in a way that you never seen me before in your life, that I approached your office.” He said, “O.K., well come in my office.”
I went in his office, he gave me the blood test, he had me lick out my tongue, and he had me to spit in some tissue, and he looked at the tissue, and he said, “Alcohol is your problem.”. . . . He said, “Another thing I like to tell you,” he said, “anything that you wasn’t born with, you can quit.” Well that sounded right to me—yeah, it’s clear I wasn’t born with the bottle.
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