Remembering Buddy Collette's Los Angeles

Buddy Collette, the legendary jazz musician and Los Angeles native who died here on Sunday at 89, "both profited from and contributed to the rich midcentury jazz scene along Los Angeles' Central Avenue," the L.A. Times says in the intro to a 1999 conversation with Barbara Isenberg.

I grew up in Watts. There was plenty of land at a reasonable price, and many people went out and bought land. People kind of helped each other build their homes, and my father built our house with a bunch of friends.

The greatest thing was the different kinds of people — Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, black, Italian, what have you. We all went to the same school, and everybody got along quite well. It wasn't like you hear about now, where somebody gets beat up because of his race. We didn't know what that was about. It was a great way to grow up because your favorite friend could be just anybody that you chose. Everybody was accepting, and everybody was respected....

My earliest memory of Central Avenue would be when I was about 15 or 16 years old. Charles [Mingus] and I used to go there and hang out and try to meet people who were in the business, and a lot of them would go to the after-hours spots. There was a place called the 54th Street Drugstore, and if a big group was in town, the musicians would come in and hang out. Celebrities like Jack Johnson, the fighter, and bands like Cee Pee Johnson's were the local hotshots. Cee Pee Johnson's was the first professional band I joined that paid money.

It's a good read about an era in L.A. history.