On May 10, 1964, my first girlfriend, Marilyn Godfrey, was issued a green card by the French government. She was
seventeen years of age and living with her sister, a famous French Radical, who was once married to Les McCann’s drummer, Ron Jefferson, and later would co-author the biography of Fela.

Marilyn introduced me to Les who married Charlotte, a French woman who adopted the love of my life. She was a blond cabaret singer who had a Marilyn spend the summers in her home so she could have a reprieve from her mother who was a strict Baptist who forced me to go to church and several Billy Graham Crusades. If our Love Story were to be made into a movie, than I would be the Beat Elvis who is forbidden to see my Beat girlfriend after I refused to go down on to the playing field of the…