Talk Stories by Jamaica Kincaid Read Free Book Online

corner of Forty-second Street, and this man came up to me and said, ‘Rise, and go forth and be a vegetarian.’ One thing I can say—I was lucky he didn’t pick my pocket. Vegetables are funny. They have a great sense of humor. You drop their seeds in the
ground and they rub around in the dirt and then they grow up and you can eat them. Politicians are always doing things to Negroes. One will be standing on his head, another on his ass, and another on his foot. Politician to Negro: ‘Look, buddy, this is what I can do for you.’ Negro to politician: ‘Man, will you take your foot off my mother?’ I’m trying to figure out things to sell to the Chinese. They don’t dig Joe DiMaggio. How about an album of Mao’s greatest hits? I was born under the sign of funny. I haven’t met the other people born under that sign yet, but I think a couple of them became scientists. You know how I get to be funny? I go to sleep for about a year. I wake up with cobwebs all over my face. I roll them up in a large ball with milk and sugar, eat it quickly, and then I start laughing. People say, What’s so funny? I tell them. They start laughing. Then I have lunch. Some of the things I say are true, some are not, but it all happened.”
    â€” January 12 , 1976

Bells and Drells
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    We recently got an early-morning phone call from our friend Weldon Arthur McDougal III. He is the energetic promo man for Philadelphia International Records, the Philadelphia-based, black-owned record company, and he reminded us that once in a conversation with him we had said that, along with Brenda and the Tabulations, Jay and the Techniques, and Martha and the Vandellas, Archie Bell and the Drells, the black singers from Houston, Texas, had the best name for a singing group, and that their two hit songs from the late sixties, “Tighten Up” and “I Can’t Stop Dancing,” had remained in the best-for-dancing category. “Well,” McDougal said, “Archie Bell and the Drells are now with us. They have a new album, and I’m bringing them to town tomorrow to meet New York, and then I’m throwing a party for them at Leviticus.”
    At noon the next day, with McDougal, we hopped over to the Statler Hilton hotel, where Archie Bell and the Drells were staying, to get a daylong view of them. McDougal, who
was dressed from head to foot in black, introduced us around—first to Archie Bell and then to Willie Parnell, James Wise, and Lee Bell (Archie’s brother), who make up the Drells. When we were introduced to Archie Bell, he said “Hey, what’s happening, ain’t nothing to it” in one breath. Later, we learned that this is his favorite way of greeting people. We focussed on Archie Bell, because the Drells deferred to him, and because, while the Drells wore a collection of patchwork-denim and polyester outfits, Archie Bell was wearing a smart-looking leisure suit. It was beige, with deep-brown stripes running down the pants legs, and the jacket had darts and tucks that made it fit snugly. After telling us how glad he was to be in New York, he said, “I would like to mention that we have one of the finest tailors in the country. He’s from Houston, Texas, and his name is Johnny Burton. He makes clothes for people like the Temptations and James Brown. He made this suit I am wearing, and he made the suits we are wearing on our album cover—the ones with the little bells all over them.” Then Archie Bell said, “We have been waiting so long to come back. When I had those hit songs ‘Tighten Up’ and ‘I Can’t Stop Dancing,’ I was in the Army, so I couldn’t do any entertaining. When I got out, I was cold. James and Willie and me have been working since we were in high school. We lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same high school. My brother Lee joined the group in 1969. But all the time we