Sammy Davis Jr(6)

“Well, at the sixtieth anniversary they did a montage of footage with voice-overs of me talking about ‘Mr. Bojangles.’”

Pop continued, “Fact was, I could not do a show without including ‘Mr. Bojangles.’ Every finale, I performed that number. It was very special to me, hit close to home. I almost feel like it was written for me, but it was not. Nor was it written about Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, as some people say.”

“Who wrote it?” I asked.

“Jerry Jeff Walker of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for his 1968 album,” Pop explained. “Jerry composed it about a white homeless vagrant he met in jail who called himself Mr. Bojangles. This white guy was down and out, drunk, talking about how his dog up and died after fifteen years traveling around together, making a buck off the remains of his talents wherever he could. So the inmates tried to cheer him up, asked him to dance across the jail cell. So I did my own heartfelt version of it. You remember my version, Trace Face?”

“Of course, Pop! I only watched you perform it a zillion times! You always whistled the melody opening that number.” I remembered.

“Start out soft, make the audience strain to hear you, that’s how you captivate them.” Dad said.

“That song always makes me want to cry.”

“Cry?”

“After your finale, fans would swarm me, ‘Oh, you’re Sammy Davis, Jr.’s daughter, you’re so beautiful, blah, blah, blah . . .’ it was just overwhelming.”

“You’re too sensitive, Trace Face!”

I’ll never forget how Dad got me to sing that song with him on the spot that day—impromptu duet. Our indelible performance was a precious rhapsody that I would tell my children about in years to come.

Pop went on to explain, “I did ‘Bojangles’ the first time live with Tom Jones, in 1970, on his television show. In that skit, Tom sang the song by himself, while I silently played the part of Mr. Bojangles, dancing and doing routines in sync with the lyrics.”

Pop started to relate the song to himself—a speech I had heard him announce in public before. “‘Bojangles’ was special because I hated the song. Well, I should say, I had a love-hate relationship with the song. I was afraid to do it because that was always my fear—that I’d end up like Mr. Bojangles . . . drunk, alone, dancing in a jail cell.”

“Surprise, surprise! You didn’t end up drunk dancing in a jail cell!” I told Pop.

“But I still had the fear. I told the press, my fans, when I would do that number some nights, I would get so hung up on it. One night in Vegas, I said, ‘Oh my God! That’s me! I’m projecting! That’s how I’ll be when I’m seventy years old. I’ll be working little joints, talking about what I used to be—and that’ll be the end of it.’ That man, that culmination of different black performers, minstrels that I’d known—performers who got hooked on junk, who got wiped out by alcohol, got wiped out by the changing of times—I’d seen them disappear, great dancers. But, Trace Face, I wouldn’t end a show without ‘Mr. Bojangles.’ It was deep in my heart and soul, a spiritual journey through life.”

“No one performed it better than you, Pop,” I said.

“Damn straight.” He cajoled and howled, hoping that his own laughter would distract us from the onslaught of his medical condition. I saw the exhaustion in my father’s eyes, fatigue was setting in. It was time to rest and refresh.

“Hey, Pop, let me grab you a Strawberry Crush to perk you up,” I said.

I headed over to the downstairs bar. I grabbed my father a Strawberry Crush and myself another Coke. I couldn’t have been gone more than five minutes. By the time I returned to sit on the couch, Pop had nodded off. The radiation was taking its toll. It hit me yet again: my father was ill, he was dying, and our tête-à-têtes that I cherished so, would one day cease to be.

Tears welled up in my eyes, as I placed a throw blanket over him, tucked a soft pillow under his head, kissed him on the forehead, and whispered, “I love you, Popsicle.” I proceeded to the kitchen to tell Lessie Lee and the nurse to watch over him, that I would return in the morning.

Every time I walked out his front door it felt like an apocalyptic warning. I would take a moment to glance at the moon pasted in the evening sky, praying that throat cancer would not desecrate my father into a coma by morning. As I climbed my pregnant body into my car, I wondered if that would be the last time I would ever see Pop. But I did not want to invite that notion in. I trusted my father would stick it out long enough to see the birth of his grandchild. Nothing would keep him from that sacred moment, not even the grim reaper himself.