by John Okas
“Still the skeleton, eh, Bonesy,” Laudette says. “Since I’ve been gone there’s no one to put some meat on you.”
“You have some nerve bringing up the subject of weight, Mama. If it weren’t for the forty pounds you’ve gained I’d say you haven’t changed a bit in ten years.” He presses a kiss on her, squeezes a joyful noise out of her, and passes her to the Real McCoy.
“And Earl! Why, you darling, you’re a right sight for sore eyes.”
“Ha ha ha ha.” Earl’s laugh is soft and gritty, like sand on stone. It infects Laudette with gaiety, and makes Gloria feel at home. She can’t remember when she’s seen the stalwart sitter having a better time.
“Ha, ha, and who’s this?” says Earl. “Is this little Gloria? Good gosh, child, how big you got to be! Ha ha.”
“Today’s her twelfth birthday.” Laudette says proudly. “Baby, these are your uncles, Bones and Earl. You knew them when you were just knee high. I hope I don’t have to tell you to say ‘hello’.”
Glory Bee knows what real uncles are made of. Bones has gleaming black skin, considerably darker than hers, and Earl’s complexion is a kind of lackluster yellowish brown. It would be hard to see either as close blood, but the mixed Gloria will take family where she finds it. “Hello, Uncle Early, Uncle Bones. I’m very happy to meet you again.” She knows that catching people off guard is the best way to pump them for information and wastes no time trying to get a line on the old days. “But you’re not really my father’s brothers, are you? Did you know my father?”
Of course everyone around Kane’s knew Corn Dog and heard about what happened to him. And anyone who has been harassed by the police is a brother of Earl and Bones, who each have been in trouble and been unfairly treated. When Laudette got the letter from Earl saying they were going on tour with Apollo and that they hoped to see her in Empire City, she wasted no time writing back underlining in red ink that if they met Gloria, they were to stay clear of the subject of Corn Dog.
Earl rasps, “Sweetheart, Bonesy and I consider all men our brothers. That way we have lots of nice little nieces. Ho ho, right, Bones?”
“Mais oui, mon frere.”
Gloria is about to ask him to clarify this when the backstage door opens again. Whoosh! Autumn leaves rush in on a breeze and with them comes Apollo Cotton, carrying his charts and his horn in matching alligator cases. Cotton is tall, dark, cool, and handsome; he’s dressed in a very natty black silk suit, sharp alligator shoes, kid gloves, a crisp white linen shirt, black tie, and matching gold clasp and cufflinks. He smells like spice and wears sunglasses even though it is night and the room is poorly lit.
“Apollo,” says Bones, “this is Laudette Lord. Remember, we told you about her? She used to take care of us out on the coast, back in the old Hot Number days.”
“How do you do, Laudette? This is a real pleasure for me. I’ve heard all about you.”
Laudette giggles like a girl. “Now, now, Mister Cotton, you heard about me? Aw, shoo, don’t go laying it on so thick. I’m already under your spell completely. I swear I buy all your records and play them until the needle goes through to the other side.”
“And whom have we here? Is this your youngster?”
“No, but I’m proud to say I’m her baby-sitter. This is Gloria Beatrice. Today’s her birthday. She’s just twelve years old. I brought her here to listen to you play. Just the first set,” she makes sure she points this out as a reminder to Gloria not to get her hopes up for too much ecstacy. “Oh, yes, it’s a big night all around. Not only her birthday, but it’s the Eve of All Hollers and I’m glad to be inside someplace cozy with friends, celebrating my reunion with my boys, too.”
Earl says, “When you called and said you were coming we saved the best seats in the house for you, Laudette, front and center. And the drinks are on the house.”
The Bee glows. To be treated like royalty by the Real McCoy and other men you respect and admire is a thrill she could get used to. Her expectation of hearing some very fine live music is enhanced by the honor. She is also thoroughly amazed at her sitter rubbing more than elbows with the giants of jazz. And all along she thought Lawdy was an incurable pill!
When the waiter comes Gloria orders a cola and Laudette orders a gin and ginger.
Laudette drinking? She thinks, I’ve never even seen her loosen up! Cool!
She changes her order to what the sitter is having minus the gin, and she pretends that the amber soft drink, her birthday soda, has the same spirit as the one Laudette is sipping. Gloria breathes in the atmosphere of the club. A showplace in the early thirties, done in a slick modern style, with chrome, mirrors, black lacquer, and an intricate parquet dance floor, the Cootie Club is now a bit dingy and shabby. The polish has been replaced by an air of assurance. Those walls have absorbed so much great music in the last decade it would be a shame to repaint them. There are photographs of the performers, all the jazz greats, tap dancers, revues, and the follies that featured the leggiest chorus girls in town, the tall, tan, and teasy “Cootie Cuties.” Everything—the menus, glasses, musician’s stands, curtains—is labelled with the club’s trademark: a staff of parallel wavy lines with the first two bars of the classic Midnight Blues. Gloria loves the smoke in the air, the tinkling of ice in the drinks, the women in furs and high heels, and the men who remind her of her Daddy-o.
Then the house lights go low; spots shaft columns of smoke on the stage. The conversations, the laughter, the clink of glasses, the tinkle of ice, go hush. Eighteen men come out and take their seats on stage, Apollo Cotton and his Orchestra. Shining in the smoky spots are thirteen horns with a five-piece rhythm section. Earl sits at the piano, puts his hand over his eyes to shade out the glare from the stage lights, and sees Gloria and Laudette in the front row. He blows a kiss. Heads turn their way.
I can’t believe it, these cats are hip, and they definitely don’t see Lawdy as the old lump I take for granted. It’s plain that uncles Earl and Bones are really crazy about her, and Apollo Cotton was actually happy to meet her! Wait’ll I tell Daddy-o. He’ll be sorry Mummy wouldn’t let him out tonight.
In her wildest dream Gloria could not imagine what Art in Heaven can show us: back in the old days her baby-sitter had no qualms about making the scene, and was always up for the after-hours jams and wild parties. In fact she often carried the tea for the Hot Numbers, rolled up in a stash between her breasts, and didn’t hesitate to get whacky on the weed herself from time to time.
Without a lot of fanfare and introduction, Cotton counts, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, and the band goes to work. From the very first note of Swing on the Wing, a Cotton classic, Gloria is transported on a cloud of unadulterated blue blowing rhythm. The sound builds from the bass and drums, the bass a primitive heartbeat, the drums a wild wood and skin tattoo, echoing the deepest darkness of rhythm with light. The drummer salts and peppers the bass line with a series of rim shots, taps and high hats that sound like the rings of quicksilver bullets on the wing. The cymbals hiss like steam heat and the bass drum knocks like the subway car on the track they took uptown. Apollo stands front and center conducting, his tenor saxophone dangling from his neck. He points to Earl and McCoy charges the band with his muscular, expressive style. The Earl of Swing, the Real Thing turns tempo tricks that fascinate Gloria. One measure, his big hands are both astride the rhythm, timing it perfectly, clockwise, four-four for four measures, then he takes off, ringing clear of time, doing flat flops and sharp speedy right-angle handstands that seem as if they will never find resolution, but somehow they do, land feet first, hoofing one-two-three-four, measuring square to the beat he left behind.
After several choruses to warm up the rhythm, the horns come in, polished, sassy, brassy, reedy, crispy, stinging, and sonorous. Apollo’s arrangements make his clean tenor lines stand out loud and clear, and with Bones chasing him on the alto, each riff in the unison and counterpoint sections is bursting with life and drive. The music makes everyone want to danc
e, and a dozen or so couples do get up to shake their happy hips, to clap their hands, and slip and slide smoothly across the floor. Gloria clasps her hands in her lap, closes her eyes and nods her head with delight, listening with all her power. The sound has the impressionable girl so high she feels her head is plastered to the ceiling.
She goes to hear live music regularly with her Daddy-o in Symphony Hall. But there the program is never so compelling. The plush box the Swans have is a good place to listen to the delicate strains of strings and soft horns and to relax and dream. The music is there, was there yesterday, will be tomorrow; there’s no need to hang on every note. But in this live jazz there is something more: urgency, the sound of the newborn baby wailing. The music, the loudness of it, the liveness of it, the energy and mass of it, blows a barrier in her mind. She could always see music, but never before has she experienced the fullness of the silence surrounding it.
The revelation deepens her and by the time they get around to playing Complicated Lady, a big billowy ballad which features Earl at the piano with an elegant, light-headed introduction that bubbles like champagne, Gloria is enjoying the most wonderful sensation that her body is an instrument, a box that develops the sound and gives it sense. Even as her ears give her the distinct feeling being part of the music, and the music part of her, the listener who listens to her mind is relating to both the sound and to the void, the womb of the sound.
She opens her eyes to catch her breath and notes her uncles Earl and Bones, who a moment ago backstage seemed froggy and skinny, now in the smoky spotlights, the shine of performance, are the equals of handsome Apollo. And how can Gloria not renew her infant crush on Earl when, before the last number of the first set, speaking for their cool-cat, silent-on-stage leader Apollo, he announces the names of the members of the Orchestra and says they are going to take a short break and be back in a half hour, and then adds in his gravelly laugh, “Ha ha, but before we go, heh heh, we’d like to dedicate this last number to a couple of very special ladies.”
Vain Glory has no doubt whom he means.
The band plays It’ll Be Too Late Later. One of Laudette’s favorite ballads, it brings tears to her eyes, memories. Prez Shaver, the other tenor man takes a solo singing “shush, little baby, don’t you cry” in a tone which there aren’t enough o’s in smooth to describe. Gloria has heard the song and digs the variations. The notes well up out of Earl’s piano and swirl in his peerless, classy, classic style. He plays single notes as if he were singing a love story. When he smoothly slips a few warm notes of happy birthday to her in his improvisation, Gloria feels the melting thrill of romance.
Afterwards, when she and Laudette are going out the back way they came in, they get to shake hands with the drummer Woody Bell, the bassist Alkie Baldwin, and a trumpet man Russell Barrow, as well as Prez Shaver. While Bones makes some little jokes with Laudette, squeezing her roly-poly arms and neck, Gloria says to Earl, “Goodbye, Uncle, I wish I could stay and listen to you all night. But Lawdy thinks I have to be home by midnight or I’ll turn into a pumpkin. I hope I get to hear you again soon. Do you think we could, Lawdy?”
“Well if you’re a good girl, and these boys are willing to keep that table open for us, I just might see about it.”
Out on the street, walking back to the subway, Gloria is a different girl. Everything—the cars’ engines, brakes and horns, the people laughing, many in costumes on their way to parties, those walking in and out of bars and restaurants, the lights, the overflowing garbage pails, the drunks, the fancy folk out for dining and dancing or a show, the strains of children out late trick or treating—seems to be moving to that complicated syncopated swing beat, in harmony with the tingle in her heart.
Flapjacks Again
In the music room of Saint Bernard’s, just above the piano, lettered in gold leaf on the wall, is something old Clara always said, Music is to the arts what love is to the virtues, the greatest. From the time a Saint Bernard girl is in the second grade she is formally exposed to the strains of the Old World, music appreciation class twice a week, and by the time of her graduation will be expected to identify every name brand in the classical music book, to know a fugue by Geisenheimer Muenster Huff from one by Corvo Pecarini, to tell a concerto by Kreuszer from one by Lieberstrom.
The Monday morning after her Friday outing to the Cootie Club, Gloria still has music coming out of her ears and, as fate would have it, music class first period. She comes into the room, more intense than usual, charged with the echoes of her birthday party, All Hollers Eve, and the swinging Apollo Cotton Band. The music teacher, Mrs Melanzano, the wife of the late cello maestro Erno Melanzano, normally demonstrates to the music class just what class music is about by playing phonograph records, directing the girls’ attention to the speaker with her baton.
The lesson for today is on the grand Kirschelmeister, Kleinz Kreuszer. “Of all composers, there are none like Kreuszer,” says Irene Melanzano with a sigh of devotion. “He is our best-loved, and most prolific. Even though he was only in his mid-thirties when he died, he penned more great music than an ordinary great composer could hope for in ten lifetimes …” It doesn’t take Mrs Melanzano long to stack the platters that offer Emmet Franks’ rendering of the adagio movement of Kreuszer’s Piano Concerto in G Major on the spindle.
As she promised Laudette, to try to fit in with the crowd, Gloria pretends to be like the average Saint Bernard girl: terribly smart, terribly rich, and terribly bored, even when the subject happens to be something she’s interested in. Ho-hum, her classmates yawn, flapjacks again. But today Gloria’s feigned boredom in music class is suspended. Her ears have an increased depth perception. Wide awake to the power and delight the listener has in adding dimension to sound, she hears full musical spheres in the thin sound coming from those flat spinning disks. Listening is the key, the listener being the essential part of every instrument. Her body-mind is a sensitive sound board, reverberating with the tones of strings, wind, and percussion in the opening orchestral flourish.
Another thing gives her listening an edge over her classmates’: she is familiar with the piece. She’s heard a different recording of it many times in her house coming from her mother’s phonograph, and knows it as a call for her Daddy-o to come to bed. When the orchestra rests for a measure, the rest of the class hears the rush of crackle and surface noise which all the fanfare was drowning out, but the amplifier in Gloria’s ears also filters out the static, nicks, dust, and scratches, and cleans the clatter clear to silence. The melody slowly unfolds and the piano between her ears trills like a mating songbird, but with different accents, slightly altered cadences from the version she is used to. She finds herself starting to merge the two static, recorded performances into a living one, an original form that exists nowhere but in her mind, that has the identity of the two renditions, but is itself beyond reproduction. The abstraction augments, rather than diminishes, her enjoyment of the particular interpretation she’s hearing.
The teacher never plays the whole piece. After the first cadenza, Melanzano picks the tone arm off the record, scratching it slightly as she does, and goes rattling on about Kreuszer and tonic, dominant, sub-dominant.
Gloria is surprised to find herself considering a serious study of music. Perhaps not a career, but at least she has a burning itch to put herself to the test of learning more of the mechanics of the art. She knows what theory her mother does and that is too little. Sarah plays almost entirely by ear and her renderings of any piece are highly erratic, subject to change without notice at any point. On occasion Gloria has heard Melanzano play the piano for the class and her playing, in contrast to her mother’s, is halted, studied, as if the piano were a horse on stilts and she were trying to ride it to a perfectly bland, accentless drumbeat. Still perhaps there is something to be learned from her. Gloria startles even herself when, after class, shy and rose-flushed in her tan, she stays to talk to her teacher. “Excuse me, Mrs Melanzano, …”
“Yes, M
iss Black.”
“I would be grateful if you would teach me a little more about this Kreuszer music.”
The teacher looks at her with surprise. The girl has barely said “boo” in the whole time, going on six years now, that the two have known one another. “Why, Miss Black, I’d be delighted. Nowadays not many young girls love the great music of the past because they pollute themselves with this modern day filth called ‘jazz’.”
Mrs Melanzano steps on Gloria’s mulatto understanding as well as her sympathy for swing. The teacher says that she believes the musical fashions which are popular today will be forgotten tomorrow and fervently hopes that jazz, which she calls “the product of depraved, uncivilized imaginations”, is the last thing that is here to stay. “It has no place in the life of a young lady. Too much rhythm, if you understand what I mean.”
Of course, I do, you close-minded crank, thinks the hep young kitty, but she knows better than to argue. Gloria recognizes that no music is better or worse than any other, that in the ears of the muse all men and their musics are created equal, and that beauty is in the ear of the listener. If her teacher cannot see the value of something spontaneous she won’t bother to tell her, but Gloria has already figured out how jazz is a metaphor for freedom, a sign of democracy, and is denoted by equal rights for composer, performer, and listener, while classical music is not about freedom at all, but about power, control, and dominion. When she is out for knowledge she is at home with contradiction, and compromise. In young Glory the free and slave states form a more perfect union. She wants to play for the sake of play itself, not necessarily to mistress the most demanding technique, but at least to get better than her mother and Melanzano, and extend her ability to listen intelligently regardless of whether it’s Kreuszer or Cotton in her ears. To her mind the true maestro is the eternal beginner.
She emphasizes Harry Swan’s role in her musical upbringing. “My Daddy-o once told me, ‘Any two can tango, but it takes a special someone to help you enjoy serious music.’”