She said: "Let me tell you, they didn't let too many women come on up to that place. It was sure enough a man's world up there. They let me come up because I could sing and I could scat and I could play piano. Mostly, though, they let me up because I could put up with them and I could drink any of them under the table, and I didn't mind the mice and the bugs and the drugs. It was considered to be bad form to show up before 1AM, and often we didn't leave until the sun came up, whenever that was. The music changed every night, depending on who came to play. Man, we had us some WILD times. I remember Monk the best, but there was a whole bunch of players that you would probably never have heard about. The walls rocked! There wasn't any complaints from neighbors because in that part of the city there wasn't much in the way of anything, especially neighbors. We didn't have heat. We didn't have a toilet. We sure enough didn't have no refrigerator, and you really couldn't even see out the windows. That's how dirty they were. But we sure enough had ourselves a good time and we sure did learn a whole bunch from the people there who played that sweet sweet way on into the night!"

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