Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend

map where an American citizen could not travel under the jealous and envious eyes of the world’s inhabitants. We were the peacemakers.
    With every factory in America up and running for wartime production and our victorious troops returning home––what was physically and psychologically left of them––my country turned its attention to post-war production of consumer goods, expansion, and the securing of borders and growth.
    After receiving his honorable discharge from the Army Air Corps, my father, William Levise, Sr., proved to be overflowing with the “Right Stuff.” Eventually he would sire eight children, four boys and four girls, of which I was the oldest boy.
    My father is an enigma to me, and recollections of our bonding are frustrating. He was slender, good looking, and well-built; a man who was quiet and tended to hide his feelings. Occasionally he would laugh, but not often. He was uncomfortable with the beauty of the human body, as witnessed by the belt whipping he gave my sister and me when he unexpectedly came upon our pre-school exploration of anatomical differences. My father smoked, but didn’t drink. He argued with my mother but didn’t hit her. He let things build up and then exploded, slamming doors, punching inanimate objects, even banging his head against a wall. When you’re a child you take peace for granted––until the explosions occur. His moods made me not trust him but, the few times he told me he loved me, I believed him.
    My father was an only child who did not find out until he was middle-aged who his real father was. His mother, a tall, white-haired dominating figure, kept the secret from him all the way to her grave. His response to this new knowledge was to abandon the man who had raised him, and leave him alone to die in fear, confusion, illness, and poverty. I never forgave my dad for that unconscionable act. That man, my grandfather, was a short, happy Italian immigrant. He was filled with life and a ready smile, drank his coffee out of a saucer and hardly spoke English. But he loved his grandchildren as much as he loved my father, because my grandmother didn’t share her deception with him either. He was simply a dupe.
    When my grandmother became pregnant, my biological grandfather ran like the coward he was. Before she was showing her condition, my grandmother managed to track down and seduce into marriage a man from the same village in Italy as the coward. Having tied the sacred knot of marriage, she went to bed with my grandfather in what I can only imagine as the final piece of betrayal, and for the rest of their years together they slept in separate rooms. With a sweet mom like that lay a clue to my father’s secret manner. Add to this the fact that Grandfather was a bootlegger during prohibition, and regularly changed addresses in three different states trying to stay one step in front of the law.
    You begin to get a feel for the bumps in my father’s life. But for me, the most intriguing aspect of his brooding character was his interest in the arts. He had attended art school and had also taken vocal lessons. In fact, it was his vocal performances on the radio in Detroit that drew the attention of my mother.
    My mother, Jane Lucille McDaniel, was born in a rural town on the western side of the state of Tennessee. Her father was a horse trader and a dedicated drinker who had his own still and, apparently, got out his anger about his lot in life by beating hisanimals, his children, and his wife. At the age of four my mother watched in horror and helplessness as her mother caught fire from a cooking accident. A few painful days later, her mother died.
    This was during the time of the Great Depression and her father quickly found a woman willing to marry a man of his great means and take on the task of raising his children. In truth, they were poor. My mother dropped out of school in the sixth grade to supplement the family income by picking cotton with other unfortunate children and adults in the thick, moist, oppressive heat and the deep black soil of the nearby Mississippi river.
    Eventually there came to be five children in the family and things were looking bleak until one day, the miracle appeared. Europe was going to war and America was going to supply her every need. Like many poor Southerners, my mother’s family joined the massive migration to the booming Northern industrial cities where jobs were plentiful and paid well, and life was wonderful.