I had gone to spend the afternoon at a friend's house. His name was Bob Bach, married to Jean Bach, who was a mine of information, as far as jazz is concerned. She wasn't there that day. It was just Bob and I. We were talking. He had a mini mini record company. I think they put, at the most, two records out. We were talking, and then he got a phone call. He said, "Are you busy?" I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "There are two guys. Do you know Dave Lambert?" I said, "I met him once." He said, "He's got a guy called Jon Hendricks. They'd like to come over and demonstrate an idea that they have, which is singing all of the Basie things." Of course I was curious, and I said, "Yeah, I'll stay."Jon and Dave walked in. They put on a record of Basie, and they proceeded to sing the solos. I thought that was very interesting. I'd already done Twisted and Farmer's and all that. So, the doorbell rings, and in walks Jon and Dave. They proceeded to demonstrate what they were doing. We said goodbye, and I went home. I thought, that's weird, they didn't ask me to sing on it. However, it wasn't my decision. It was theirs. About a week later, I got a phone call from Dave Lambert, who said, "We want you to come and sing with us, because we have" - I don't know if it was six or seven singers, professional, who could read music. He said, "They hit every note, but they don't swing.Can you come and teach them?"I thought, shit, you don't do that. You don't learn to swing in an hour or a day, whatever.I was kind of miffed, because I thought, why didn't they ask me in the beginning? I went down to the studio. Creed Taylor was the producer. Boy, I heard the playbacks, and they didn't swing. So I tried to give them a few accents and different things. It didn't work. Creed was going crazy, because the money had been spent. There was no product. I didn't know what to do under the circumstances. Neither did Jon. But Dave Lambert said, "Wait a minute. I have an idea. Let's just the three of us record" whatever tune it was. "If we can learn the other parts, we'll add them on." So instead of three people singing, it would be that much more. We did that. That's - one of the greatest moments in my life was standing in front of the speaker and hearing the basic track that we recorded, because I knew we had something great, at least I thought I did. We - I think we recorded two or three other songs. Jon doesn't read music. So we had no need for music, except what we had in our heads. But I knew, when I stood in front of that speaker, that it was innovative. I went home. I had a little tape. I called Miles [Davis]. I said, "What do you think of this?", and I put on the tape. Less than a minute, he said, "Wait a minute. Mingus, Mingus, get on the phone." So Charlie Mingus picked up the phone, and they both went crazy. Oh, it was unbelievable. We got a gig. They offered us a gig in the banker's club in Hollywood, New York. We went up by bus. We got up to this place, which had been a bank. Al Haig, I think, was playing opposite. The people went crazy. I was sitting with Jon and Dave afterwards - just before the intermission - and they said, "Yeah, we're a hit." I said, "No, we're not.No." I said, "We have to practice, because we're not hitting all the notes," and blah blah blah. We finished that night. I think we got 20 - $15 each for the night. We went up the next week. We never rehearsed. We rehearsed on stage, while we were doing it. Our skills were such that the people didn't know if we had missed a note or whatever, but we didn't. We were really good. After that, we worked at the Apollo a lot, especially with Sarah, Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx, unbelievable company. We stopped the show every time we were at the Apollo. I'm not sure what dates we did, but we did a lot of dates. Finally we did the Newport Jazz Festival. That was the year of the riots. I think it was Oscar Peterson who couldn't get through the people who were protesting. I forget what they were protesting about. Don't even know. But they said to us, "Don't just do 15 minutes. You can do half an hour," which for us was incredible, because we were always being told, "You have 15 minutes" or 10 minutes, and we were just starting to stretch when we got to that point. So they told us to do a half an hour, which we did. That's where I got a chance to dress with the Raelettes. Ray Charles was on. He was phenomenal. But dressing with the Raelettes was a trip. It was wonderful. They loved our music, and we loved them. We went on and on. We played all over the place. We did a one-nighter in London when we were working in San Francisco. We flew over. It was for the ban-the-bomb or something. It was a worthy cause. It was amazing, because that's a long flight. But when we got up on stage, all tiredness vanished. We played in Europe. Not enough. We should have had more exposure. Jon would say, "I've just written words to" - and we'd get together. Jon would always come in with a crossword puzzle. I would come in loaded with newspaper, because I loved newspapers. Dave was busy writing down notes, musical notes. After about an hour and a half, we'd say, "Okay, let's try this." We'd do it. We'd clean it up. Then it was test time. We had to do it on stage, live, which we did. It was tremendous, because we swung.The guys, they were playing Basie arrangements. So that was brilliant. What else? Let me just think for a minute. We had a lot of fun. Relationships were good. When we started getting a little bit of a name, things began to change. My motto was, don't believe your own publicity, because you'll be in big trouble. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to be the rule for certain people.If you tell yourself something enough times, I suppose you get to believe it. But it wasn't right, all the time. Jon had a very annoying habit of telling any woman that he wanted to be with, "I'll make you a singer." It was awful. I'd have these hostile women saying, "I can sing. Jon Hendricks told me." I'm sorry. I cut that. "I was told that I could sing, and I will to replace you," which I thought was pretty lousy. It was usually when alcohol had been prevalent.I'm trying to think of outstanding things. Oh, after we had done Basie, I left for Europe. I went to France on holiday. I kept getting letters from Jon and Dave. "Come back. We can do an act." I thought, they're nuts. How can three people get up, except with smoke and mirrors, and get up? How are we going to do this? Maybe we'll do it like Les Paul and Mary Ford, where they dubbed in their voices. "No, come back."Willard Alexander, who was an agent, said that he could use us. He could place us. He loved it, because he was a big Basie fan. I just couldn't see it. But we got a gig. We worked out. We appeared. It was incredible. Like I say, we rehearsed on the stage. The Basie band used to come by, if they weren't playing behind us. I'm sorry. I'm not making much sense. We played L.A., and then difficulties began to arise, because I had a very bad habit of heroin, cocaine, anything I could get my hands on. We went to Europe, to tour with Basie. We went to England. I knew that if I went back to America, I felt I would die, because I was a terrible junkie. I didn't know one thing from the other. So I used to mix all kinds of stuff. I never missed a gig. But it was awful. I was hearing voices and all that. I just thought, no, you've got to get yourself together. You're not going to do it in New York. Before that, Jon and Dave called me up and told me to meet them at Willard's office, which I did. They said, Annie, we're going to put you in what is now known as rehab.There was no facility at the time, except they said, we're going to check you into this hospital. Your doctor will come every day and take you down, down, down, in your dosage. I thought, that can't be bad. I'll be in a kind of nursing home. I don't have to pack and take clothes, because there's nothing to be dressed up for. So I went to this place. It's not far from here, on about 73[rd Street]. It's a famous place.Max Roach was in there, all kinds of people.