00:00 – Tom Dent interviews Andrew Young [on a flight]. He asks him to talk about the B Sharp Music Club. Young’s father Dr. Andrew J. Young formed a musical group with friends from Straight College called the Osceola Five, named for Osceola Blanchet. They went Christmas caroling every Christmas Eve. 01:30 – People from the church including the Dunn family, Genevieve Lawless, Dr. and Mrs. Young, the Blanchets, and Camille McCann were the ones involved with the B Sharp Music Club, who brought top flight concert artists into New Orleans four or five times a year. Louis Armstrong and Fats Pichon were both patients of Dr. Young’s dental practice. Young became conscious of black music. 03:00 – Young started playing in the band at Valena C. Jones School. He was forced to take piano lessons at age six. He started playing trumpet in fourth or fifth grade. 05:07 – Louis Armstrong. Gilbert Academy had a good choir and band, in which Young participated. 06:40 – Attitudes of his parents towards his interest in music. He liked Louis Jordan. His mother did not think it was good music. He also listened to what his mother thought of as good music. His father had more of an appreciation for spirituals. They never much liked gospel. 08:40 – Randolph Blackwell of SCLC talked about black people feeling that they would be accepted if they learned white culture. Blackwell listened to symphonies and the opera. One could develop an appreciation, but would still not be accepted in New Orleans in those days. 09:55 – Weather. It always seemed to be raining in New Orleans. He started reading during his time indoors. His parents bought him an encyclopedia, which he read through. He also read comic books. When the war broke out, they started making model airplanes and reading the Dave Dawson books [by Robert Sidney Bowen]. He also read books about spies, sports, and dogs. He was not upset by the rain or the heat. The breeze went straight through the shotgun houses. He remembers sudden thunderstorms. 14:17 – His father. Honesty was important to Dr. Young. He made him return extra change to the grocery store, saying “the only thing you have is your integrity.” “You’re black and you can’t be 95% right. If you’re 95% right and black, you’re wrong. You’ve got to be 200% right.” His father, Frank Young, was trusted with other people’s money. 16:33 – Track meets at City Park and segregation. Other children were getting medals for running the same times as him. He resented it when he read about it. One time, a policeman put them out of City Park when he was riding bicycles with his friends. Another time, a policeman told him to go home when he was standing outside with his white neighbors. His father taught him not to get in, but not to talk back either. He was taught not to confront racist white people; it was a problem for them that he should not get upset about. They were taught to deal with racism from early childhood. 21:25 – His parents did not talk much about lynchings. He remembers hearing Walter White of the NAACP speak. New Orleans was rather liberal. There were Black people, Creoles, Jews, and WASPs [White Anglo Saxon Protestants]. Jews were the only white people he came into contact with much. They were courteous. His mother’s family is Creole. Grandmother Fuller spoke a little Patois. They commented on his “nappy hair.” Much of his mother’s family passed for white. 24:50 – His grandmother adopted children. 26:35 – Young always thought of himself as black because the Creoles did not consider him fair-skinned. It never bothered him. 28:57 – In his neighborhood, black and white kids would fight. In most other parts of the South, they would be run out of town for fighting back against white kids. The Creoles tended to be Catholic and other black people in the neighborhood tended to be Protestant. [Recording ends 31:26. Side 2 contains microphone tests only, ends 01:28.]
