This American Life; From a Distance; Part 2

It's this American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Quincy Troupe spent three years collaborating with Miles Davis on Daviss autobiography, talking to Davis and interviewing him actually until Davis got sick of being interviewed to create a book written in Miles's voice and syntax, it sold over a million copies. And if you ask Quincy, when did he stop seeing Miles Davis as the mythic, legendary figure and start seeing him as just another friend, he really can't tell you. It was gradual. One day he was on the outside of Miles's life looking in and then at some point later he realized that he was on the inside. You know, I got very close with Miles. I mean, I was in his pocket and he was in my pocket for like two and a half, three years. I mean, until the time he died. I mean, I was really close to him. And so I saw, you know, flaws in his personality that, you know, you know, because I think when you idolize a person like him, like he was one of my heroes, especially when you're young, you don't think they have flaws. You kind of see them through these rose tinted glasses and and you kind of look at them as perfect. And so when I started to see some things that that was not perfect about

Miles, like his way of treating women and his way of treating other people sometimes and the little small things, you know, like cleanliness, sometimes cleanliness is coming up in this interview a lot more than I ever would have guessed. Yeah, well, I mean, Miles was a clean person. I mean, in terms of like his his body and the way he dressed. But, well, there are a couple of times when I went over his house one day and I went over his house, I and it was it was a mess. I mean, stuff was everywhere, closed, toothbrush, toothpaste, you know, music, trumpets. And I said, Byles, man, I said, Miles. I said, You living like a pig man living like a pig. This is a pig sty. He said, so what. So. So what is a pig sty. What do you expect. I just play music. Jump. He said somebody cleans it up. That's the deal. When I would see some of that and first I would say, man, this guy could be a pig, you

know, but then I got to the point where I said, no, he's just a human being. He's a human being. He has flaws. He plays beautiful music. But he had these he had these little areas where, you know, he was just a human being, where he was plowed by. I never thought Miles would be as country as he was. You know what I mean by country? I mean country, country, like a Southern, you know, instead of a jazz musician. When you got to know, Miles, like some elegant jazz musician, you know, Miles was like a country blues singer when we said that you first saw that that side of him really clearly when I was doing the book and I was about three or four months in when he started dropping the mask, you know, and he just dropped the mask and I'd come back and have food and, you know, he cooked for me. And we look at boxing matches and look at the basketball games. And at first when I would go over there, he would always be dressed elegantly, you know, and very fashionable stuff. And then after that, he started dressing just really casually and especially on the West Coast when I grew up, that he'd have on blue jeans, a torn sweater, you know, and he would

just cook. And we just sit there and look and tell lies and he'd listen to the fights and we go for long walks on the beach and he'd take me for rides in his car. So it was just, you know, it was a beautiful kind of relationship. As a matter of fact, I told him, I said, you know, when you're in California, you much different than you are in New York. And he said, yeah, after a while he knows that. He said, yeah, because in New York I got to keep my mask up. I said, Yeah, that's right. You got to keep it up. When did you first figure out about the way he was treating women? When did you first figure out that he was kind of abusive? Well, when I started to hear some of the stories because, you know, Miles was brutally honest, he was brutally honest when he did that. But he told me I remember he was telling me the stories of him beating up these women and chasing his wife around the basement of their house. And and you know what, with a knife and a gun. And, you know, so I started thinking to myself, wow, this is out. You know, I mean, this is a strange kind of situation because I'm just the opposite. I don't you know, I don't believe in hitting women, you know, I don't believe in hitting anybody like that. But I figured out that Miles Davis was the kind of person

he wasn't an intellectual way he could respond and talk it out, you know, talk the whole thing through. So if you got up in this faith, whether you were a man or a woman, you know, he would hit you. That was the way he was, you know? I mean, he would hit you. I can be truthful and say I didn't like the way he did certain things, you know, but then at the same time we who knew him really well, knew that he was a warm and generous person to us, you know, and we'd look at those things and say, man, that was kind of cool what he did there. But, you know, I mean, the way I look it, I'd say, well, you know, that's between him and that person, you know? I never saw him hit a woman in front of me because you got to remember, I knew him from 1985 until he died, which is a period of

six years. And so when he was in his most desperately insane period of really doing these kind of things, the women this was from nineteen sixty eight, nineteen eighty twelve years. And I didn't know him then, so I never saw that, you know. So there'd be occasional moments sometimes once you get to be friends, then where it would suddenly strike you, man. I'm friends with Miles Davis when a generally happen was when somebody would come up to me and say to me, man, what is it like to be with Miles Davis? You know, I always wanted to be with Miles Davis. And then I would then I would think, Whoa. But for me, after it got to a certain level, you know, I never thought about it because, you know, I just I mean, we just had this natural relationship. He called me up. I called him up. I remember telling somebody what time Miles called me up from Japan. He had just taped this new thing and he said, What do you think it is?

And he put it on and a play for about five minutes. And he said, What your think? And I would tell him what I like the idea. And if I didn't like it, I told him I didn't like it. And I was relatedness to somebody and they said, You mean Miles Davis calls you up and puts on the tape and you listen to it? And I said, yeah. He said, Well, what's that like? I said, I guess it's like any one of my friends who's a poet, you know, who said, listen to this poem. You know, I mean, just so happens, this is Miles Davis is music and he happens to be internationally famous. Many public figures up close lose the larger than life quality that they seem to have from afar, but there's something about Miles Davis that even today, even though Quincy Troupe was as close to Miles Davis as he's ever been to anybody in his life, even today, it's easy for Quincy to see Miles as this mythic figure. He says Miles just had this effect on people.

I remember one time it was like I was with him. I can't remember the Japanese, not Miyoshi, but it was another Japanese designer and he had his clothes in New York and he had his clothes and he had Andy Warhol before Andy Warhol died. And Miles Davis modeling as the star models of the clothes, along with all these beautiful, gorgeous women. So Miles said, you want to go down with me? I said, Yeah, I'll go with you. So we go in this place called the Tunnel. It was a some kind of a discotheque. So we in there and a man in the clothes and everybody is going out. Miles would walk out, Andy Warhol would walk out. So I'm backstage and with Andy. And these are two legends. You know, these are two American icons and culture. So Miles was the finale and he had this outfit with this gold lamé cape that he was supposed to walk out with a hat. So he started to walk out and Andy was standing, looking at him and the Cape was dragging on the floor. So he started to walk and he turned around. Look at Andy Warhol and he said, Andy, Andy, pick up that Kate. And he picked up the tape and they walked out together,

you know, I mean, like Andy had a sheepish look on his face and mouths out land. It was holding the cape off the floor and they walked up the thing. And so everybody in the room, they left us in the room. And his handlers, they were like shocked. They had never heard anything like that. They were like, wow, did you see that? Did you see that? But Andy was smiling and he was, like, happy to be in it. He was like, happy to be in it. And so that was Miles you know, Miles Davis was like almost like a king, you know what I mean? He was like a king. And so that particular moment, I remember him saying, I remember his attitude was like, I'm the king here. Pick up the cake. You know, we both might be icons, but I'm a big icon then, you know. Quincy Troupe coauthored Miles Davis, his autobiography, Miles, he's a poet and journalist and essayist and author of several books.

His latest is called Avalanche from Coffeehouse Press. Well, now we have this artifact, this is Act three of our program, Snuggles from nineteen eighty three, nineteen ninety five. A guy in New York ran what he called an apology line. And the idea is that people would call up, they would call this anonymous line and they would apologize for anything they believe that they had done that was worthy of apology. Eventually, this guy started to call himself. Let me tell you this from the start, Mr. Apology, his real name was Alan Bridge. And over time, you know, people would apologize and some apologies would be real and some would be fake and some would be some combination of the two you couldn't really tell. And then people could call in and respond to the apologies that we're hearing as well. Anyway, this particular apology was transcribed in the magazine of the apology line, Apology magazine, volume one.

Number four, this is a code snuggly bear from August nineteen ninety three. This is a transcription of something somebody said on the phone line. I have an apology to make and I suppose this is a good place to do it. This morning I was watching TV and a commercial came on. It was a commercial for fabric softener. I believe it was a small furry bear, snuggly bear and snuggly bear. I was extolling the virtues of this product, this fabric softener, I believe, and I don't know what it was about this bear, but I was fascinated. Small bear, high pitched voice, indeterminate sex. Not sure if it's male or female. I was fascinated. A few days later, another commercial came on again. Once again, I stopped what I was doing and I watched. This time I kept watching and hoped I kept the station on. I hope that the commercial would come back. And sure enough, later on in the evening, another commercial came on a different commercial with the same snuggly bear, same product. I went to the supermarket and I saw the product and I saw the picture of Snuggly Bear, I purchased the product, I didn't use it to soften any fabrics.

I just wanted to have a picture of Snuggly Bear. I wrote an Ugly Bear letter and I was hoping for an answer, but I didn't receive one and I wrote another one. I was hoping to get some sort of response, a photograph and autograph something. Still no response. I wrote a third letter, and I'm afraid I was rather upset when I wrote the letter. I have since learned that the letter was turned over to the FBI. I was warned not to try to contact snuggly Baragon. Snuggly beer travels around, I believe, the bearer's one residence in Martha's Vineyard and another residence in the West Coast, I'm not sure where the West Coast residents is, but I've been to the Martha's Vineyard residence, let myself in. It was, of course, a certain amount of security around the house. But I got myself in a kind the gate and I found a window open around the back of the house, a rather large house, and I wandered around. It was a home, of course, here. She wasn't home. I'm sure he was out on the road doing his pitch. But the fabric softener.

Well, I if I can only read Snugly Bear, if I can only make snuggly bear understand that. I understand. I'm sure if I get through to snuggly bear that I'm sure we could establish a relationship or just an understanding. But the way it's going now, everything's in limbo. Every time I try to contact this bear, I'm thwarted. I'm going to apologize because I guess I've been a bad boy. I'm not stalking Snuggly Bear, they've accused me of stalking Snuggly Bear, but I'm not a stalker. I simply want snuggly bear to understand that I understand, that's all. But somebody heard that apology and the apology line and they called in with this message. This is out to the man who has the fixation on snuggles bear. I do understand and I would really like to give you my emotional support. I do care. I sort of had a similar experience with McGruff the Crime Dog. And actually we managed to get together.

I can barely even say his name. Now, we did manage to get it together. And I got into his life. He he accepted me. He cared about me. But you can imagine you see him all the time on TV and life with a cop is difficult. I just didn't know when he'd be coming home at night and I couldn't take it anymore. Policy was sort of spraying all over the furniture. Basically, what I want to say to you is maybe loving from afar is the best thing to do. Maybe it's best that you never actually get to meet Snuggles because then you have this pure, this untainted image of snuggles. You take care. Act for one thousand women become Selena,

it's one thing to admire someone from afar and try to get close to them. It is another thing to actually try to dress as someone you admire, try to look like them, try to become them even for a day. That's what happened recently here in Chicago, Clemente High School. Let me get some sound going here. I was very impressed with her picture, please, a great cold Chicago day, two lines of women and girls stretched around the block in both directions around this high school. One line is 18 year olds in scanty clothing. Scanty, I guess, would be the appropriate word. The other line is full of eight year olds, many in school, because they're not all music blares. People are singing and dancing. And nearly every woman and girl trying not to be the star of the upcoming Selena movie has brought her extended family with her. The director of the film says that he wants to find two silliness one to play Selena as a child, one to play Selena as an adult.

Selena or Selena, depending on whether you use the English or the Mexican pronunciation, was, of course, the Mexican American pop star recently killed, widely revered. And perhaps you saw footage of these auditions on the news. We decided to send 18 year old Claudia Perez to cover the event, Courtney Love, Selena, and she wanted to audition herself. 12 year old Jessica Ladha almost didn't make it. On Friday, she and her family got seven hours from St. Paul, Minnesota. They arrived late at night and showed up at the high school at five Saturday morning for coming down to Chicago. Jessica's mom told me something terrible had happened yesterday morning, that we planned to come here. She was really sick. I ran down the stairs, know we're not going. You're very sad. I said we're going to take her to the hospital. This is yesterday. That was yesterday. Look at her now. Skorgen, my mom. You've got Sator on my return. My my grandpa is just a lovely man.

He told me to go. He wished me the best of luck. And like, because even if you're sick, you got to go. You got to go. I want to see you when I get there is a lot of people that can win, not just me to hear the family tell it. It's like a miracle that Jessica got well is like she was chosen. In fact, Jessica was chosen once before when Selena was still alive. Jessica and her family were at a concert in a little house. She and her mom were standing outside the backstage entrance. And so then my sister Suzette picked Jessica out of a huge crowd of little girls to have a picture taken with the limo. After I took the picture of Selena, the guard that was standing by the door, the guy I'll give you this picture that you took wasn't enough for like five dollars on the line. I don't have any money on me right now, but I might go back to the market and they were joking around. No, no, no, two dollars. And I said, turn around and go. I know. I know how much I want. I want for nothing. You can just keep it for free.

I said, Jessica's a beautiful little girl. She has long black hair and a cinnamon complexion. She's wearing a Selena outfit, knee-length boots, spandex pants and a black powder blue state with gold trim over the breast. It's Jessica's dream to be like Selena. She wants to be a singer and sing in English and Spanish. She came to the auditions, but not just so she could be a movie star. She says she wants to feel closer to Selena. I don't want to do the movie for money or anything because money is not the answer when you got everything. Look at what it brought to Sydney. Nothing. I mean, I wanted to I want to do it because I want Selena to see me, what I'm doing. I just want to do it for Selena and not a people to cry over Selena. She was so loveable, just her smile. She was like a little girl when she went to the Grammy Awards. She went there with her camera, wanted to take pictures with everybody. Then I put a positive role. She made it seem like it's not bad to be Mexican-American.

I asked Jessica in Spanish how she felt about Salinas that, uh, she started crying for. And then I started crying to. She is my best friend and a lot of people say things that aren't true and. The people don't know who she is, and she was a very nice person. She was a very nice person because I met Suzette and I met her and they were talking to me. And it was I mean, I was so happy after so long as the just the kind of family went to visit her grave in Corpus Christi sitting down, I was like hugging the grave. And I asked myself, how come you died this and that?

And I sang to her. I think I sang Come on the floor. And I mean, because it reminds me of her. What are your little. Love, love, love, love, love to come to tomorrow, content bubble madness, there's two. Remember that the words mean like the flower with much love and gave to me all much, I know how to lose in love, but on my how it hurts me. A lot of people say that she might be dead and stuff, but she's not dead is that she's sleeping. She's sleeping for a long, very long time. And she wherever she is in heaven or wherever, she's probably singing her heart up there to. I met all sorts of people at auditions. Everybody was really dressed up and look fabulous.

There was Selena music everywhere, TV cameras, girls were fixing their hair and putting their makeup on. People were dancing. At one point we were talking to these two girls saying, this is Selena Sung. And pretty soon people we didn't even know were doing it. Everybody was singing. It was just that kind of thing. One of the girls we met Kip, all the way from New York with her mother and her little sister. It was kind of secret mission. So there's a whole. You know, the mother to her husband that she was at a Mary Kay conference in Philadelphia and the daughters would be spending the weekend at their older sister's house. Then she flew them out to Chicago for the auditions. And I noticed first, when you finally get inside to audition, it's kind of disappointing. It's like it's over before it starts. There were like 20 girls on the stage at a time. You sit you down at these tables, give you this fake smile, sent you a card to fill

out and see one question, then turned to stand up and dance. You dance for 30 seconds. Sometimes you don't even play music. When I went up there, the woman running my table didn't even know who Selena was. She didn't bother to look at me when we were dancing. They only gave you 60 seconds total to make an impression. So what are they looking for? Magic. Well, I don't know that special magic that made Selena that she was very outgoing, an incredible entertainer, very gifted and very beautiful. This is a director, Greg Nava. He told me there were three auditions in L.A., Chicago and then Texas. I thought if he was magic, I'll give him magic. It's all about Jessica. Everyone I interviewed, she had the pizzazz. She looked like Selena. She had big dreams like Selena, and she has Selena in her heart. I want to show you this little guy. I don't know if you've seen her. Oh, she's beautiful.

Fantastic. Is she here? She left already. She told me that she wants to be Selena. So you see me cry and she doesn't even want to get paid. Like, I guarantee you, if she gets the role of Selena she will be paid. I thought that maybe the auditions were just a publicity stunt and that serious audition, something Selena definitely will not approve of. But the director said they will most likely pick the little girl from the open auditions. And there was a 50/50 chance they'd pick the big Selena. After a long day, the crowds have cleared two cousins who flew in from Texas, were sitting outside in the cold eating pizza and waited for a Chicago family friend to pick them up. They had arrived early in the morning and didn't get much sleep. They weren't sure when the ride was coming or where they were going to spend the night. I asked them what they thought of the dishes.

I know. I don't think it went as great as I thought it would be. It was well, because, you know, it's like I don't think the producers were there when I got to see my stuff. So I don't know. I don't know. They look for something different. I don't know. What makes you think that for. Just because the people that they choose, you know, they talk to you, they don't even I don't know their parents and I'm looking for more deeply, they're not looking for Tuzla, you know, they're just looking for a parent. This is really bad. I mean, they might know who it was, but not totally what she meant to us. So, I mean, I think there has been one hundred thirty five dollars each day from babysitting to get to Chicago, but it didn't feel bad. No, it's fine because you don't get a lot too many people. And so, I mean, we know we can not get picked, you know, but we still came and took a chance because that's the thing. That's so you know what I would say? You know, you have a thing, you go, you know, go for it. You know, don't let nobody put you down because they say, well, we already chose the

person, you know, you know, give whatever you have. And that's what we did. So that's a reason why we came here. They just sat there on the bench waiting. They were really dressed for Chicago, whether they were fishnet pantyhose, real short shorts, booster's and thin leather jackets. You could tell they were really cold. They were anxious for the right to show up. A couple of weeks later, it was announced that none of the girls from the open auditions were chosen for the part, not them, not me, not Jessica. Nobody is going to Las Vegas. We don't know. We had to get a right first year. We know where to go. I could go. Some places would call me for some party tonight. Fathia, Paris, is an 18 year old former high school dropout who recently got her high school equivalency, hopes to go to the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall, is

looking for a full time job right now. This is her second report for our program. She says she wants to be famous, but up until now, we are the best she can do. So, Clélia, so. So explain why this is the song you want us to play on on our program after your story about Selena, I like you because you think they were so mad at you. And it's an old song, you know, from Mexico when I think of Selena. I don't think of her as a mariachi. But you don't. That's why she didn't sing with my dad. She was more of a beauty person, you know, with a lot of beat. And that's why this song, this one of this other song that she sang, everybody's singing when she was when she left, everybody sang when she left to sing when she died. Yeah. Listen to you. You sound like that girl in your story who's like she's not dead. She's just sleeping the way you just said that when she left, she didn't just leave her, like, saying that that song. La, la, la, la, la, la.

And. Our program is produced today by Dolores Wilber and myself with Peter Clowney, Alix Spiegel and Nancy Updike. Contributing editor, Paul Clough, Jack Hitt and Margy Rochlin. Margy helped do the reporting and the interviews for our story on Erika Yeomans. Music in Erika's story from ?Derica? Theater Company's fundraising CD "Dig This." Special thanks to Street Level Video livewire for hooking up with correspondent Claudia Perez through their programs thanks to Apology magazine. This is quite a list today, thanks to a biology magazine for our Reading Back issues of Apology magazine and tapes of the greatest hits of the apology line, which cost 15 bucks can be purchased from P.O. Box two zero six five Greeley Station,

New York, New York one oh oh oh one. If you would happen to buy a copy of this particular radio show, this one that you are hearing right now, it's only ten bucks. Call us WBEZ three one, two, eight, three two three three eight zero again three one two eight three two three three eight zero. You can write us Eight Forty-Eight, East Grand Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, six six one one or email us. We are so available to you. Radio at well dotcom Funding for this American life has been provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the members of WBEZ Chicago. WBEZ Management Oversight by Torey Malatia. I'm Ira Glass. See you next week with more stories of this American life.