Oral History Interview with Jack Waters, 2018 February 21-22
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Oral history interview with Jack Waters, 2018 February 21-22 Funded by the Keith Haring Foundation. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Jack Waters on 2018 February 21- 22. The interview took place in New York, N.Y., and was conducted by Alex Fialho for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art's Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project. Jack Waters and Alex Fialho have reviewed the transcript. Their corrections and emendations appear below in brackets with initials. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview ALEX FIALHO: This is Alex Fialho interviewing Jack Waters at the Visual AIDS office in Chelsea, New York City on February 21, 2018 for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Card number one. So, Jack, let's start at the beginning. When and where were you born, and can you tell me a little bit about your early childhood? JACK WATERS: I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 14, 1954. I'm the fourth of seven children, and I was born during Hurricane Hazel, which apparently was the worst hurricane of the year at that point. My early childhood was—I don't know. My parents were both working parents. My mom at that point was doing housekeeping and domestic work, and my dad was working for the United States government. His job at that time was called Signal Corps, and then a few years later, his job was changed to the Army-Navy Electronic Supply Agency. Basically, he was doing visual information: early imaging, photocopies, microfilm, stuff like that. ALEX FIALHO: And how about your family? Tell me a little about brothers or sisters, and your home growing up, please. JACK WATERS: Well, I have five sisters and one brother, so my family was pretty female-dominated, just in terms of numbers and also in terms of the general energy. My parents were very cultured. They were really interested in art and music, though neither of them were artists. They made sure that we were surrounded by art classes, music of all kinds, and dance, dance training. My oldest sister was the first to do dance training, with modern dance, and then my two next-older sisters were also dancers. [00:02:29] But we were like a party house, and we had a lot of music. My parents were particularly interested in blues and jazz. So, you know, that was really the favorite music. Both their parents were deeply religious, and both of my parents rejected religion vehemently, my father more vehemently than my mother. My father I often describe as a devout atheist. He was so adamant about there being no God and no afterlife. It was basically like a point of religious fervor. Like his atheism verged on religious fervor. My mother, on the other hand, was like an avowed atheist. So, yeah, we had a lot of music in our house. Early in my life, my mother befriended someone named Chris Albertson, and he was very young, of Danish descent, and was also really interested in blues. I think she met him as a housekeeper. She basically was his housekeeper, and when he realized how interested she was and how knowledgeable about blues, and particularly Bessie Smith, he asked her to assist him with his research. And so, she's credited as a research writer for Chris's book called Bessie, which is the book that this recent HBO movie that Queen Latifah stars in, is the subject of. He interviewed people who were still alive that knew Bessie Smith. So, growing up, we kind of referred to Bessie Smith by her first name. [00:04:37] Yeah, so, he also—Chris was really into bringing old blues singers back into performing, because a lot of people who had reached a certain age weren't making any money and would go into labor, you know, just working. So, another person was Elmer Snowden, who is credited among jazz circles as the inventor of the Harlem banjo. He kind of took this music style that was basically Kentucky banjo, but made it relevant and pertinent to music that was on the East Coast, Harlem. He was also— ALEX FIALHO: And he would come to your home, or he would be performing? JACK WATERS: Well, he lived with us. He was like a de facto—my house was like an open house, and so people came into our house. We would adopt. So, Chris, we grew up calling Uncle Chris, and Elmer was like our grandpa. Both of my parents' parents had died before any of my siblings were born, so we didn't have, like, elders, you know, in our family circle. I mean, my mother's grandmother—my mother was raised by her grandmother. Her mother died at a very early age, so I have very peripheral memory of her. [00:06:03] But at the same time, she also kept this, like—my mother was the family historian on her side of the family, and so she told us stories about her mother, her father, her great-grandmother. But, I mean, generally leaning towards the women. So, we knew more about three and four generations of grandmothers than we did about my immediate grandparents. So, Elmer was like a de facto grandpa for us. I mean, in jazz circles, he's known as the father of the Harlem banjo, and he was also the lead of a band that would later become Duke Ellington's band. There was some misunderstanding around the band's funds that caused Elmer to go into exile, [laughs] so he had to disappear. I think he went to California for a year. ALEX FIALHO: That's diplomatic: "misunderstanding of the band's funds." JACK WATERS: Yeah, [laughs] yeah, yeah. It's kind of a gray—there's, like, this foggy issue, which is documented. It's traceable, but it's not really clear. Like, no one actually says anything, but there was a question and Elmer left town. And then he came back, and I think that was when Chris kind of discovered him, and then he was broke. And we had a big house, which was why we were such an open house, and Elmer ended up living with us. ALEX FIALHO: Where in Philadelphia? JACK WATERS: West Philly. West Philadelphia, near what's now called University City. We're bordered by Fairmount Park on the north and Lancaster Avenue on the south. Today, people call—they talk about West Philly and—you know, I grew up with what people are now—which is now kind of a young sort of activist—is southwest Philly. But we're 41st and Ogden Street, which is kind of right in the heart of the urban city in West Philadelphia. [00:08:18] ALEX FIALHO: So just tell me a little about how that culture of music in particular, but also dance classes, came to you as a young person, and the young person who eventually became an artist. JACK WATERS: Well, I grew up around music, so Elmer became—my sister Sheila is the next oldest to me, and she's also the sister that's a lesbian, and she—well, Elmer was her guitar teacher, and I think he also tutored her in the recorder. I mean, as she was the next oldest to me, I imitated everything she did, so I kind of learned guitar chords. Anything she did, I did. She was also into crafts and art. But my dad was also really into arts and crafts. We would paint tables and do collage work with him. And then because of the people that Chris would bring into the house—he would bring in people from New York that were —Chris was gay, is gay, and so we had this very queer extended family life from a very early age. My dad tended to gravitate towards friendships with lesbians, which was very interesting. I didn't know as a child, but my mother kind of filled me in. So they had this very interesting queer orientation from the time that I was a kid. And then also, they were all in various areas of the arts, like friends of Chris's and then other people that would come in and out of my family life as a child. [00:10:16] So, we learned just at home and then we had classes. You know, there was something called Fleisher Art institute, where we did drawing and painting. There is a woman named Noreen Beckwith who was my sister's dance teacher and then later would become my dance teacher. So, music, and art, and performance. There was a period, I guess, where I must have been around nine or 10, where—our family entertainment was play-reading, singing spirituals and folk songs and any other music book that we would have. And we had a really extended library. The family library was the largest. It was in our living room, and it was kind of everyone's library. And then my mother had her library, and my father had his library, and then we would all get books.