[3] "There are jazz people whose influence can be described as minor," wrote Val Wilmer, "yet who are well-known to musicians and listeners alike ... You'd have to be hard-pressed to ignore the wealth of legend that surrounds Babs Gonzales.

[4][7] While hospitalized for appendicitis in 1944, he assumed the Spanish surname Gonzales as he "didn't want to be treated as a Negro",[4][7] later explaining that "they was Jim Crowing me in ofay hotels and so I said if it's just simple enough to change my last name, why not?

"[5] After the outbreak of World War II, Gonzales was forced to return home to Newark to report for military duty, but was declared unfit for service after arriving to his inspection dressed as a woman.

[4] After working with Charlie Barnet and Lionel Hampton's big bands, Gonzales moved to New York and became involved with the burgeoning sound of bebop,[4] a style which initially confused him.

"[8] Gonzales formed his own group, Babs' Three Bips and A Bop, releasing a number of 78rpm singles for Blue Note, Capitol, and Apollo labels in the late 1940s.

Tadd Dameron, Sonny Rollins, Roy Haynes, Wynton Kelly, and Bennie Green were among the musicians who performed at these recording sessions.

[11] "Babs was a very wonderful guy," Rollins reminisced in 2019, "he gave me an opportunity to make my first recordings, and a chance to work with the older, more prominent musicians than myself at the time... Fats Navarro, Lucky Thompson, people of that stature..

[9] As composer and arranger, Gonzales provided music for Bennie Green ("Soul Stirrin'" and "Lullaby Of The Doomed"), Johnny Griffin ("Low Gravy"), James Clay and David "Fathead" Newman ("Wide Open Spaces" and "Figger-ration"), Paul Gonsalves ("Gettin' Together") and others.

"[16] From 1958, Gonzales operated a nightclub called Babs' Insane Asylum, located in Sugar Hill, New York at 155th Street and St. Nicholas Place.

[8] "These guys could have made some crazy money in the studios or with another orchestra, but they preferred to work at home for $100 a week," said Gonzales, "simply because it was a great place where all the jazzmen came.

"Joe Glaser hates me", claimed Gonzales, "he could not understand that [Louis] Armstrong or [Lionel] Hampton come to my house to play while I'm independent.

"[17] Gonzales attempted to open a similar club in Paris, named Le Maison Du Idiots, but lost access to his $10,000 investment after a general strike.

A 1953 issue of Jet published a photograph of him posing beneath the Eiffel Tower with his "Swedish wife, champion swimmer and model" Sonja Juhlin;[21] however, he later stated that he was not married, explaining: "I love freedom too much... there are too many girls on earth to choose just one.

"[8] Gonzales had earlier been characterized as a "hard playboy" by magazine columnist Jack Jackson,[22] and claimed in his autobiographies that he had slept with hundreds of women.