“It’s so hard to get a job that you can’t stick to all your life,” Slim said.
“It’s so hard to get a job that you can’t stick to all your life,” Slim said. “I wish I could get a job playin tenor in a club and make my livin that way, and express myself with that horn. Show ever’body how I feel by the way I play, and make them see how happy I can be and ever’body can be. Make them learn how to enjoy life and do good in life and unnerstand the world. A whole lot of things. Play sometimes about God, by the way I can make my horn pray in the blues and get down on my knees to signify. Play in such a way as to show ever’body how hard a man tries all the time, and make somebody learn that. I want to be like a schoolteacher with that horn, or like a preacher, but show ever’body that jess a musician can do so simple a thing as take a horn in his hand, and blow in it, and finger the stops, yet be a preacher and a schoolteacher in the result of what he’s doin. I tear my heart out wherever I go. All over this country I’ve been, and “ain’t been liked because I was colored, by people who don’t mind their own personal business, and don’t want me to do good, but I’ve tore my heart out with that horn. That horn is the only way people come to listen to me. They won’t talk on the street, but they’ll clap and yell hooray when I’m on the bandstand, and smile at me. Well I smile back, I ain’t cool about people, nor cool about nothin. I like to respond and listen and be with people. I feel good most of the time, and do it. Lord a mercy, I sure wantsa live and have my place in the world like they call it and I’m ready to work if I can only work with my horn, because that’s the way I like to work and I don’t know how to run a machine. Well, I ain’t learned yet anyway, and like my horn better, I do. Ar-tist, I’m a ar-tist, jess like Mehoodi Lewin and the columnist in the paper and whoozit. I got a million ideas and can shore pour them out of that horn, and I ain’t doin so bad pourin them without the horn. Sheila,” he say to her, “less eat some supper and worry about ever’thing tomorrow. I’m hungry and want my strength back. Throw some beans in there, and after supper make a lunch for tomorrow noontime.”
