Tiger Rag

by Nicholas Christopher

  Bella came downstairs in her nightdress and sat down. She was a fine-featured Creole woman, tall, with small hands. Her eyes were sharp and she wore her hair long, pulled back in a bun.

  Cornish held up the cylinder. This ain’t going nowhere anytime soon. Not for the fifty dollars National offered. Not for a hundred. Not until there’s real money to get Charles out of that place.

  She was surprised. What are you saying?

  You heard me.

  Honey, I’m sorry, nothin’s gonna get him out of there. Including that, she added, pointing at the cylinder.

  You don’t know that.

  I do know, she thought. The moment her husband had arrived home, his suit rumpled, his boots caked with dust, and took that cornet out of his suitcase and laid it down beside his trombones without a word, Bella saw how much frustration he was holding in.

  He’s safe there, isn’t he? she said gently. You must’ve seen that he’s safe.

  I seen that he’s near dead.

  And you think money’s gonna bring him back?

  Cornish set down the cigar. What I know is that no one’s gonna get his music for nothin’ just because he’s locked away.

  You call fifty dollars nothin’?

  Indestructible gave fifty to Mutt Carey. He couldn’t stand up to Charles.

  You think Buddy would want it this way—holdin’ out?

  Damn right. I promised him. He tossed back the rye. And you’re gonna promise me, in case it comes to that.

  Me?

  Something happens to me, I want you to carry on my promise.

  It took her a moment to take this in. Willie, you talk like you’ve got a gold brick in your hands.

  I do. He leaned in to her. Listen, the bands are recording left and right—the Imperial, the Onward Brass—hell, even the Tuxedo next month. But if—if—you’re right, and he don’t get out, and get his health back, this will be the only complete recording by the Bolden Band. By Charles. Maybe that don’t mean much now, but someday it will. You understand?

  She looked hard at him. All right, then, I promise.

  NEW YORK CITY—DECEMBER 22, 8:00 A.M.

  Ruby had called in their hotel reservation from the J. Fenimore Cooper rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike: a two-bedroom suite on the sixteenth floor of the Pierre that went for $4,200 per night. When the gold lamé drapes were drawn, there was a spectacular view of Central Park. The Jacuzzi was Carrara marble, the wet bar was stocked with four kinds of champagne, there were three flatscreen televisions, Bose speakers in every room, and the beds had Tempur-Pedic mattresses.

  “Best sleep I’ve had in weeks,” Ruby observed, gazing out at the mist rising from the trees in the park.

  Maybe so, Devon thought, but by her calculations Ruby could not have slept more than three hours.

  They had garaged the car and checked in late the previous night, and after the obligatory order of a porterhouse steak and a bottle of 1988 Chateau Latour, Ruby planted herself at the marble-topped desk in the sitting room, switched on her iPod, and tapped away at her laptop until four A.M. When Devon awoke at seven-thirty, Ruby had already showered and returned to the desk in a plush robe. She had a pot of coffee beside her and a large bowl of raspberries that she was popping like mints.

  “How’s the speech coming?” Devon asked, still wary about the prospect of Ruby’s public speaking.

  “Almost done.”

  “Can you read me some of it?”

  “Here’s what I just wrote: ‘After surgeries requiring general anesthesia, forty percent of patients experience long-term memory loss. Most of you attribute this to factors beyond our control: low body temperature in the OR, postoperative inflammation, trauma. I’m in the minority who believe we might solve this problem by eliminating certain substances from our procedures.’ ” She looked up. “How’s that?”

  “Couldn’t be clearer.” How was it that this particular part of her mind remained so lucid? Devon wondered. No matter how upset she was, or how great the distractions she generated, did her professional knowledge simply remain off-limits?

  “The technical stuff is secondary,” Ruby went on. “What I’m getting at is a moral issue: knowingly destroying someone’s memories.”

  “But it’s a side effect, right?”

  “Loss of appetite, dizziness, blurred vision: those are side effects. We’re talking about erasing a chunk of someone’s life.”

  “The memories never return?”

  “Rarely. Amnesia by Anesthesia, I’m calling it.” She glanced at her watch. “Anyway, who knows, I may chuck this speech and write a whole new one. I’m just spouting what most of these other doctors don’t want to hear and a few others already agree with.”

  “You’re joking about writing a new speech.”

  “I’m not. There’s still time.” She picked up the house phone. “I’m going to reserve a sauna. Apparently the saunas here are constructed of Sumatran teak, with polished stones from Swedish fjords. The toxins just flow from your pores.”

  For a few minutes there, Devon thought, we were moving along a straight line together—we were conversing—but we’re veering again.

  “Sounds relaxing,” Devon said, flipping open her cellphone. “I’m going to call this guy Browne again.”

  Ruby shrugged.

  “You’re not even curious?” Devon said.

  “About Valentine Owen? Why would I be?”

  “But it’s more than that.”

  “I know. ‘Musical rarities.’ So call him.”

  Another man answered this time. “Emmett Browne Company,” he said in a gravelly voice.

  “Mr. Browne, please. This is Devon Sheresky.”

  Browne came on the line. “Miss Sheresky, you’re in New York? Welcome. Can you come by my office? Today, two o’clock?”

  “All right. My mother will be joining me.”

  “I expected she would. 167 Madison, eleventh floor.” And he hung up.

  Devon turned to Ruby. “He wants us to come by today at two.”

  “Fine. My sauna is in a half hour. Now, what were we talking about?”

  “Your speech. And the possibility that this won’t be the speech you give.”

  “Oh, look, it’s starting to snow again.”

  Flakes were falling slowly, far apart, over Fifth Avenue. Ruby thought they looked like the snowflakes she’d seen on a vintage kimono.

  “Before you were born,” she said, “your father and I came to New York for the holidays when his mother lived here. He took me to good restaurants. He even took me shopping. He’s probably on his new boat now, sailing the Grenadines, with the new Mrs. Sheresky. Your stepmother.”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  “Well, she is. But maybe I should stop blaming your father for everything.”

  “He was a cheater.”

  “Sure, but if I hadn’t been so busy fooling myself, I might have saved us a lot of grief.” Drumming nervously on the desk, Ruby ate the last of the raspberries. “My grandmother used to say that if you only see what you want to see, you’re doomed—the word in Spanish is condenada, which sounds even more ominous.”

  CHICAGO—NOVEMBER 10, 1922

  He was twenty-five years old and had been playing the clarinet professionally since the age of eleven. After leaving Bunk Johnson’s Eagle Orchestra, he was a member of the Onward Brass, Superior, and Imperial bands. He had performed in St. Louis, Kansas City, and all around the South before he moved to Chicago at nineteen. During the First World War nearly all the prominent jazzmen came north from New Orleans. After seeing Buddy Bolden and Freddie Keppard self-destruct, he was careful with drink, but not with the ladies. He was a sharp dresser, free with a dollar, and he had a weakness for tall women. He had been jailed twice on trumped-up charges, in Galveston, Texas, and London, England. In August 1919, before his run-in with the London police, he gave a command performance at Buckingham Palace for King George V and a thousand of his guests. In the front row, the king tapped his fo
ot discreetly. When the clarinetist launched into his solo on “Characteristic Blues,” the king stood up clapping and the rest of the audience followed. When he sat down again, everyone else sat.

  Now Sidney Bechet was playing for a packed house at the Dreamland Cabaret on State Street alongside another king, Joe Oliver, and his Creole Jazz Band. King Oliver had assumed Bolden’s crown after Keppard’s flameout. He was a barrel-chested trumpeter with a big sound who wrapped a bath towel around his neck when he began to sweat. Before sailing to England, Bechet had been Oliver’s clarinetist. Bechet was alternating solos with the newest and youngest member of the band, Louis Armstrong, just up from New Orleans. They had known each other growing up, when Armstrong was a ward of the Colored Waifs’ Home for Boys and Bechet was a member of a tightly knit Creole family on the prosperous side of town. Both had heard Buddy Bolden play at Lincoln Park and Funky Butt Hall, across the street from the apartment house where Armstrong once lived with his mother. Armstrong remembered Bolden leading a small parade up Perdido Street, playing loud enough to shatter windows, streetlamps, even a drinking glass filled with hootch. Before entering the dance hall, Bolden always performed a few numbers on the front steps for hundreds of his admirers who couldn’t get in, including Armstrong, age six.

  Bechet’s brother Leonard, a failed trombone player who had become a successful dentist, was in the audience at the Dreamland that night in 1922. Sitting next to him was Willie Cornish, who had traveled to Chicago with Bella to visit her sister. Cornish had come to the Dreamland to hear his old friend Kid Ory, the greatest trombonist of the day, but it was the virtuosity of Armstrong and Bechet that gripped him. At forty-seven, Cornish was old enough to be their father. They were the next generation. Their faces were plastered all over town. People waited in line for their autographs. They performed for millionaires and royalty—something Cornish and Bolden could never have imagined when they were playing smoky bars in Algiers and juke joints in Plaquemine. Later that evening, in a speakeasy on Thirty-fifth Street, Leonard described to Cornish how Sidney, in a white tuxedo, had shaken the hand of the king of England.

  Cornish and Leonard Bechet had become friends back in 1910 when Leonard tried to make a go of it with his short-lived band, the Silver Bells Brass. Leonard was an elegant man with a pencil mustache and a keen eye. He was short and bald like his brother, with a large head and delicate fingers; he had expected the latter to abet a career in music, not dentistry. He had a penchant for bow ties and alligator shoes. Famously generous to musicians, he fixed their teeth for free, lent them money, and helped them find lawyers. The satisfaction he derived from this had taken the sting out of his thwarted musical ambitions and his brother’s tremendous fame since boyhood. Each year, Sidney seems to get bigger while I get smaller, Leonard thought. But I made my peace with that now. I’ll even pick up the trombone now and then. For a long time, I couldn’t do that.

  Cornish had sought Leonard out that night because he wanted his advice.

  It’s about Bolden, Cornish said, ordering a pint of gin.

  Willie, I’ve told you before—

  It’s not about that.

  More than once, Cornish had asked Leonard to intercede on Bolden’s behalf, to get him out of the state asylum. You’re a doctor, they’ll listen to you, Cornish insisted, and though Leonard wasn’t convinced, he agreed to drive up to Jackson one spring day in 1920 in his Model T coupe with Cornish beside him puffing a cigar. But after a conversation with the superintendent, and a visit with Bolden on the rear portico—during which Bolden managed to remain motionless in a rocking chair for twenty minutes, staring into the distance—Leonard had come to the same conclusion as Bella years before: Bolden was never getting out of there.

  It’s about his recording, Leonard, Cornish went on.

  What recording?

  I got a cylinder. 1904 we set it down. The real Bolden Band. Charles when he was on top.

  So Bolden did record.

  Yes, he did. We did.

  And you kept quiet about it all this time? Leonard said, cleaning his spectacles with a handkerchief.

  I kept it close. I did try selling it to the companies, but the time wasn’t right.

  And you think now it is.

  I do. It’s a four-minute Edison cylinder. I was hoping you could help me get the music out there.

  Willie, people are listening to records now, on the Victrola.

  I know that. I got a Victrola. I hear Armstrong on it, and Sidney.

  That’s the future. You record a song and a hundred thousand people are gonna hear it.

  They should hear Charles.

  People don’t know who he is. He softened his voice. Even in New Orleans, how many people truly remember? He disappeared overnight. Outside New Orleans—he never had the exposure. What’s the furthest you fellas ever played from New Orleans? Arcola? Baton Rouge?

  You don’t have to know him to appreciate the music.

  It’s four minutes—one side. A record’s got two sides, ten minutes to a side, four cuts. Willie, it’s hard enough when a musician’s out there playing every night. When did Bolden last play his horn? He himself couldn’t tell you.

  Cornish sat back slowly. I was gonna talk to Sidney about it, too. He heard Charles play.

  He can’t help you with this. I’m sorry. I know what those days mean to you.

  I’m telling you, it’s not the memories, it’s the music.

  Leonard poured them both another shot of gin. I have to tell you, this isn’t the first I’ve heard of a Bolden cylinder.

  What do you mean?

  It was years ago, when Sidney played with Bunk Johnson in the Eagle Orchestra. On a night when Bunk was drinking particularly hard he told Sidney and me he once had a cylinder of the Bolden Band.

  That can’t be.

  Well, he spun a whole yarn around it. Said he took the cylinder off a man in a sporting house. A white man. Seems this fellow tracked Bunk down and accused him of being a thief, riling him. We all know Bunk was on a short fuse when he felt slighted. Well, he and a couple of toughs waited on this white man one night outside a saloon, beat him senseless, trussed him up, and put him on a freight car headed to Saint Louis. No one in New Orleans ever saw or heard of him again. Bunk was proud of this.

  And the cylinder?

  He claims he threw it into the Mississippi a week after he snatched it.

  What for?

  He told us he hated Bolden because Bolden had crossed him. Probably he was also drunk as hell.

  Did he say what music was on the cylinder?

  Leonard nodded. The old “Number 2”—“Tiger Rag.”

  Cornish sat up.

  Bunk said no one would ever hear it now, except the fishes.

  That’s it? Cornish said.

  That’s all I know.

  Goddamn. It’s “Tiger Rag” that’s on my cylinder, too. The day we recorded it, Charles gave it that name.

  Then Bunk wasn’t lying.

  Bunk was jealous of Charles. After Charles was gone, Bunk boasted that he played with us, which was a lie. When we started out, he was barely weaned. Later on, Charles wouldn’t let him in the band. Son of a bitch just wasn’t good enough. This was the payback.

  The cylinder you have, who was the engineer?

  Cornish thought about it. A German fella.

  Oscar Zahn. I’ve heard other cylinders he recorded. He left New Orleans around the same time as Bolden. I heard he went to Kansas City. Hit hard times. Died a few years back.

  Cornish was combing his memory. You know, we cut three cylinders that day. First two takes weren’t as good. I figured they got destroyed. There was another white fella there that day, who worked for Zahn. It must’ve been him in the sporting house. Never knew his name.

  Bunk’s been livin’ over in New Iberia the last seven years. He’s got a new band. Been touring in Kansas and Missouri. Had some trouble in Texas. Nobody plays with him long ’cause of his temper.

  I never liked him, Co
rnish said. He was a liar, a chiseler. He reached into his coat. Anyway, I have something for your collection—your picture collection. I hear you got some rare materials from the old days.

  He handed him a photograph of the Bolden Band. Leonard recognized Frank Lewis and Jimmy Johnson, who played with his brother in the Superior Orchestra, and a young Willie Cornish, and Bolden himself, dapper and at ease, cornet in hand.

  1905, Cornish said. A fellow named Morgan took this at the Restoration Hall. Only picture of the band I know of. Only picture of Charles I’ve ever seen.

  That’s a pretty rare thing right there. I thank you for it, Willie. And I’m sorry I can’t help with the cylinder. Maybe when we’re back home, you can play it for me sometime.

  Leonard would have liked to show his brother the photograph, but Sidney had already left Chicago by train for an engagement in Detroit, the beginning of a long tour. Leonard returned to New Orleans. When he next saw Sidney, four months later, it was at their brother Omar’s funeral, and his conversation with Willie Cornish was the last thing on his mind.

  NEW YORK CITY—DECEMBER 22, 1:00 P.M.

  When Ruby and Devon walked out of the Pierre, a white stretch limousine awaited them.

  “What’s this?” Devon said.

  The driver came around in the falling snow and opened the rear door. He was a young Japanese man wearing a blue uniform with black gloves and boots. “Good morning, Dr. Cardillo. My name is Kenji.”

  As they slid into the car, Devon whispered, “We could take cabs, you know.”

  “Or the subway,” Ruby said dryly. “This is better.” She leaned forward. “Go up Madison, please, Kenji. I’ll tell you where to stop.”

  The rear seat was equipped with a television and stereo system. Behind a sliding walnut panel there was a well-stocked bar and a miniature fridge with cheese, crudités, and fruit.

  As they turned onto Madison, Ruby poured herself a glass of Moët et Chandon and Devon uncapped a Diet Coke.