I registered for union extra work on Company Men being shot in April and May around Boston. I haven’t done this in 5 years, but it can always lead to ‘featured extra’ status where you get a line or two, and get paid significantly more, and become more than a prop. Of course, it’s all for the art.

It took all of 5 minutes to fill out the forms. SAG and Billy Dowd casting are efficient and polite, but there I was in a suit, so I decided to finally go pay for my lost book at Boston Public Library dressed nice so they wouldn’t yell at me. Upstairs there was a well picked over little book sale. There between the dated self-help books, never heard of fiction, and biographies of Katherine Hepburn, and Suzanne Summers confessionals was a beautiful weathered leather book, missing a spine, velum pages, all in Latin, dated 1837; a bible I think.
As I handed the weathered tome to the check-out lady and went for my $2.00, she says; “Oh my. I don’t know why they shelve these sometimes. This is lovely. Good heavens, it might be worth something.” Being in a coat and tie, as I was, hair slicked back, looking the age I’m supposed to look, and having acting on my mind, without missing a beat, I said; “I’m a book collector and I do happen to know this edition is worth 10,000 dollars.” The poor woman nearly fainted. Beat. “Just kidding.”

I make on my way down Boylston Street toward a little hole-in-the-wall shop across from the dirty movie store on the edge of Chinatown where I often buy for lunch delicious Vietnamese sandwiches on warm crisp rolls with unidentifiable cold cuts and hot paste of some kind for three dollars. On the way, I pass by an odd knick-knack shop filled with kitsch collectables. In the window there’s a poster for Chick Webb with Ella Fitzgerald at the Savoy Ballroom(“Home of Happy Feet”). Buddy Rich called Chick Webb “the daddy of them all”. Ella Fitzgerald actually lived with Chick Webb and his wife when she was a teenager. Anyway – this makes a nice addition to my drum studio, where I have movie posters for The Gene Krupa Story”, “Savage Drums” (starring Sabu)“ and others. The old woman buzzes me in. It’s fifteen dollars , so I take it.
“Are you a jazz fan?”
“No but I play and teach drums”
“Really that’s wonderful. I was a jazz singer myself years ago. Have you heard of the Hickory Sisters? You haven’t!? Well, we played all the clubs”

And so she goes to the back room and pulls out the scrapbook. A letter from Irving Berlin. On stage with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. In Spanish costumes playing guitars. Glamour publicity shots.
“They tried to put pancake make-up on us but we were told it would ruin our skin, so we never wore it”
On the bill with Monk. “The kids today don’t know what the black performers went through back I the day”
Booked as Identical Twins Beauties. Were you? I ask. “Oh no, they would say all kinds of things, you know.”
Posters that said; “Beautiful, spectacular. And they can sing!!”

“How’s your health”, I ask. “My sister passed away a few years ago. I have an organic farm in New Hampshire. I always ate fresh. Bottled water. I’m 85 now, and I feel great.”

I couldn’t find anything about the Hickory Sisters anywhere on the web except at Hillbilly Music.Com and they had no information. But I saw the legacy there in the scrapbook. Maybe I should help her get on the web for posterity and history?

Anyway – Here they are: