BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Music wasn’t a hobby for Jesse. It was business. By age 10, Jesse was more than just a cute kid with a guitar. The music that echoed from his street corner was good. People weren’t smiling and tossing quarters anymore. They stopped, listened and paid handsomely for the privilege. When Jesse’s dad asked him to play his guitar in church, his response was simple and pointed: “What will they pay?” Jesse had business on his mind, and he had no interest at all in God. His parents had dragged him to Catholic Mass for years. Then, when they had a personal experience with Jesus, they joined the First Baptist Church. After that, Jesse’s dad experienced the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and joined an Assemblies of God church. Jesse attended services because his parents insisted, but he never joined. Churches and church people disgusted Jesse. They preached love, but slandered one another. They preached tolerance, but refused to let Black people join them. Jesse saw them as a bunch of sick, broke, bitter people. Of all the churches he’d attended, Jesse respected the Catholic Church most. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a church split in a Catholic congregation. Still, he stepped into the confessional each week and lied like a dog to avoid penance. Drugs and Drinking He had reason to lie. By the time he was 11, Jesse was drinking regularly. He started with beer, moved to whiskey, and settled for vodka because his parents couldn’t smell it. By age 14, he was a professional musician in every sense of the word. He brought the house down in clubs and strip joints on Bourbon Street, and rubbed shoulders with “persuasion people” in organized crime, entertaining in their clubs and on their yachts. He carried gin to school in a thermos and drank all day, then took diet pills to stay awake. Jesse used marijuana, then graduated to speed, cocaine and a little PCP. While his dad brought home $100 a week, Jesse was making $40,000 a year in cash. Jesse Duplantis knew he was a success. He also knew something else—he had become an alcoholic. He had fought his way out of poverty to success. But success would surely kill him. “I auditioned for the choir when I was in the ninth grade,” Jesse recalled. “When the choir director heard me play the guitar, she assumed I knew how to read music, but I didn’t. I didn’t play notes on paper, I played notes in my head. If I heard a song, I could play it. She sat me down at the piano and showed me a few notes. By the end of the day, I had figured out the chord structure. Within six months, I was playing in piano bars. “Whenever my friends and I ran out of money, I’d find a piano bar. I could make $250 in tips in an hour or two. You make your money by having a large repertoire of songs,” Jesse said. He knew over 3,000 songs. “My parents always told me that my musical ability was a gift from God,” Jesse recalled. “I rejected that idea. As far as I was concerned, it was my ability, my hard work and my success.” Mrs. Hubley, the choir director, also taught Jesse to sing. When he did well on a solo performance during a concert his senior year, the director asked Jesse to play guitar. Later, a man emerged from the audience to talk with the director, and offered to pay for Jesse to study at the Julliard School of Music in New York. The idea of learning to be a serious musician appealed to Jesse. But the money he could make playing rock music appealed even more. He turned down the offer. After high school, Jesse devoted more time to playing nightclubs, lounges and dance halls. Soon afterward, he and a friend entered a talent contest where one of the prizes was to be the opening act for singer Anita Bryant. They performed a duet, and won. 18 : BVOV

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