I said I had told him about us when I told him about the campus not long after Joe States had introduced us that night at the Palladium, but it was not until Joe States told him about me showing up with Miss Fine People Herself that he not only mentioned that he had met Celeste but also that he expected to see me soon because he was coming to New York to see her.
I didn’t say anything at all to Eunice about how upset he was when he and I met at the Algonquin that morning because just before leaving Hollywood he had found out that the studio’s background check report contained evidence that suggested that Celeste was being blackmailed by somebody in Paris.
I hadn’t mentioned anything about it to her at the time, and I didn’t say anything about it later on because he had not said anything else about it since he said what he said when he called when he got back to Hollywood. I wondered what happened between that call and the next, but I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell and I acted as if he hadn’t told me anything except how much he liked everything about her.
She likes him very much, Eunice said when she came back from the luncheon date in midtown and the afternoon visit to the boutique on Madison Avenue in the Sixties. She kept saying how très gentil he is and freshly American, not fresh in the down-home sense, but in the sense of being enthusiastic instead of laid back. But as excited as she seemed about how things have been going for her in New York and now also Hollywood, and as enthusiastic as she seems about dating your friend Eric, not only because he is so nice, but also professionally involved with the movies he’s involved with, I must say I don’t think she’s about to give up Paris for New York and/or Hollywood.
And I said, We shall see what we shall see. But as for him, I can see him giving up what he’s doing in Hollywood to take a band out of New York on the road for a while, but I doubt he’ll give up what he’s into in Hollywood for what he’s likely to be doing in Paris. But we shall see what we shall see about that, too, won’t we?
XXII
When Joe States called from Chicago that night and told me that the band would be back in New York that next week for a brief stopover en route to Europe, he said, Get to me fast, as he almost always did, but this time he also added, Even if you have to skip a class session or two. Details eye to eye. Just be ready to zip to me at the time and place I’ll give you a lead on as soon as I arrive and schedule my pretakeoff errands.
They were due in at twilight that next Wednesday with time off until the night flight to Frankfurt Friday, to open in Berlin that Sunday for a week before going on to Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and back Stateside by way of Amsterdam and London.
I was to pick him up at Gabe’s Barbershop up on Broadway between 151st and 152nd Streets, and when I got there he was in a barber’s chair with his back to the entrance, but we saw each other in the mirror at the same time, and he said, Here’s that schoolboy ahead of that tardy bell as always. What say, States? Hey, Gabe, this is my young statemate from the Beel I was telling you about.
And as Gabe, who was the barber serving him, turned the chair around and shook my hand, somebody in one of the other chairs near the magazine rack said, Mobile, old Cootie Williams used to play all that signifying trumpet with Duke was from Mobile. And somebody else said, old Satchel Paige. Old Satchel already had all of them fancy strikeout pitches, including the fadeaway, before he left Mobile and freelanced and barnstormed his way to the Kansas City Monarchs.
Joe States was standing up then and as Gabe went on to finish brushing and whisking him, he said, And don’t forget the one and only Mr. James Reese Europe, the head honcho of the famous Clef Club back in the States when Hotel Marshall down on Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third Street was the main hip brownskin hangout in midtown. I’m talking about where you’d find all them old pioneering show cats like old Will Marion Cook and old Harry T. Burleigh and where Bert Williams and George Walker used to touch base regularly.
Old Jim Europe came to New York from D.C. but he got his start right down there in the Bay-City-on-the-way-to-the-Gulf-Coast-town of Mobile, Alabama. Yeah, old Jim Europe, Gabe said. Man, back during World War I old Jim Europe took a band of syncopating hellfighters from the old Harlem 369th to France and became the rage of Paris! And even before that he was the one that helped that classy ofay dance team of Vernon and Irene Castle establish the fox-trot. Good-bye, cakewalk, and look out, waltz! Here come the shout, the shimmie-she-wobble, the mess around, the stomp down, the Birmingham Breakdown, not to mention the Charleston and all them Lindy-hopping jitterbugs!
Nice to meet you, Mobile, Gabe said as he walked us to the door. Come on back and touch base with us from time to time. This a regular checkpoint for a lot of down-home cats, especially ones in showbiz and sports. Also a few grad students from Columbia. Now old Joe here usually pops in here when the band’s in town long enough, but always whenever they’re heading across the water. Got to get that fresh touch-up, boy, especially back in the old days when the conks were in. Them Euros dig our music and jive, but they’re not quite down with our hair styling yet. Although they like what we do with it. They’re coming along, but they ain’t quite there yet and so far all them different kind of Africans over there speaking the hell out of all them European languages plus educated British English, don’t add up to much help in the barbershop.
As Joe States and I came down along Broadway toward the subway station he said, Hell, let’s walk a while. You know me. I’ve got to keep myself in shape for driving that twenty-mule team. As you well know, the goddamn Bossman expects me to be as ready as he always is, and I mean always is. So let’s go see who’s at the Y.
And when we came to 145th Street we turned east and headed toward Convent Avenue, which would run on past Hamilton Mews and into the campus of City College to the turnoff path that you could take downhill to St. Nicholas Avenue and 135th Street.
Now look, he said as we stopped for a red light at Amsterdam Avenue, all you’ve got to do is just say you already have enough plans of your own. This is just something we came up with when I heard what I heard from my man Eric and mentioned it to the Bossman and talked to Old Pro. My man Eric just happened to ask me if you had mentioned anything about getting away from that Ph.D. jive for a while and do some thinking and researching on your own while doing a little part-time college teaching back down on your old stomping ground.
Then as we came down the sloping sidewalk to the Convent Avenue turnoff he said, So the three of us put our heads together and the boss came up with something so fast that we realized that he already thought about it some time ago, and Old Pro and I said, Why not? This is just the thing! And I said, Let me be the one to take it up with him, because if the boss suggests it he’ll say yes whether he really wants to do it or not. Because he feels he owes him anything he asks for and the same thing goes for you, Pro.
So here we go, he said, punching me playfully, And I can help you lie your way out of it if you’d just as soon not take it on. We could just say sometime later after you check out the routine down the way.
Then when I said, What’s the proposition, Papa Joe? he said, First let me say this. Because this is not just some kind of stopgap favor. This is foundation stuff, a real fundamental research and writing project and the thing about it is that the man had you pegged from the get-go. And I’m talking about all the way back to when he heard you in that combo with the one and only Miss Hortense Hightower. She wanted him to hear you in that combo in that lounge that night, not because she thought you might be on your way to becoming a musician, but she just wanted him to pick up on how you listen.
Man, he then went on to say, you may not have ever really thought about becoming a musician, but your ears are something else! So who the hell knows? Maybe it’s a part of your gift as a storyteller and lie swapper like back in primitive times even before English was English or, hell, even Greek was Greek or the Bible was the Bible. I don’t know, but I do know you’ve got the musical version of a photographic memory. You hear it, you’ve got it.
And that includes absolute pitch, and along with all that, you hum everything like a conductor who knows how all the sections hook up.
Hey, but look, he said as we came along Convent Avenue to the 140th Street entrance to the campus, I know that I don’t have to go into all this. You already know that you’re as much our own special schoolboy as anybody else’s, including who else but the one and only Miss Hortense Hightower, who sold you to the Bossman in the first place and is in on this, too. In case you haven’t guessed.
Then he said, So here’s the proposition. The Bossman wants you to write up Daddy Royal. When I told him what my boy Eric told me about you thinking about taking a term or so off to do some part-time teaching while deciding what you really want to do with all that big-league education besides teaching it, what he came up with was Daddy Royal and all them prizes and souvenirs and stuff that he’s accumulated over all these years.
All I could think to say was, Hey, man, this is some pretty heavy stuff you guys want to lay on me. But even as I said it I began to smile because it was as if I were all the way back in Miss Lexine Metcalf’s third-grade classroom in Mobile County Training School again and she was going to say, “Who if not you, my splendid young man?”
By which I knew she meant that I, who was only nine, was already her preteenage choice candidate for Mr. B. Franklin Fisher’s Principal’s Corps of Talented Tenth Early Birds.
So I also said, But after all, this is not the first time you guys would be taking a chance on a novice. And he said, Man, the boss already had your number months before Shag Phillips’s emergency came up. Our Miss Hortense Hightower saw to that just out of Alabama pride because she herself was impressed.
Then when I said, What about Daddy Royal himself? he said, The boss is ahead of all of us on that, too. And I mean way out in front of everybody. Didn’t he take time out to personally take you up to see him the first break he got on your first trip to New York? As busy as he always is when we’re in town, he took time out to personally take you up there and introduce you to him. Not as a new sensational fiddle player, but as a schoolboy who was trying to learn how to fit a whole lot of stuff together.
As we left the CCNY campus to come down the steep slope and across St. Nicholas Avenue to 135th Street, he said, Now get to this: when we brought Scratchy Mac into New York with us that first time, the Bossman and Old Pro couldn’t hardly wait to send a limousine up to the Hill so Daddy Royal could put on his light fantastic patent leather boots and come down and pat his feet and wiggle his toes while old Scratchy and me did what we did to Broadway. But he didn’t take Scratchy up to Sugar Hill to go one on one with Daddy Royal.
On the way along 135th Street to cross Eighth Avenue all he said was, Of course you know good and well who the Bossman had called all the way down in Alabama, even when he and Old Pro and I were still talking about what my man Eric had told me. And she also thought that working down there was not only a good idea but also a lucky coincidence.
Then there was only the sound of the traffic and our footsteps as he let me think about what I was thinking about for a while. But when we came on to the corner of Seventh Avenue and stood waiting for the green light with the Harlem YMCA pool-room now only half a block away, he said, So, what say, States? What do I tell the man and Old Pro? Check with Miss Fine People and buzz me anytime tonight or before ten in the morning and if I’m not in, I’ll be buzzing you from wherever I am, because I’m buzzing the boss around ten, probably about lunch.
And I said, Me and you, Papa Joe.
And he said, Charm Miss Fine People for me, Old Pro, the Bossman Himself, and Daddy Royal. Not that I have my fingers crossed, because I know one when I see one. And she’s for real.
XXIII
Well, here’s that down-home johnny-right-on-the-dot schoolboy, Royal Highness said as soon as he heard my voice saying hello into the telephone that Wednesday night. Then he said, What say, young soldier? Damn if I wasn’t already thinking about you just before the phone rang because I was actually expecting to be hearing from you round about now. So, the Bossman and Old Pro sicced old Joe States on you.
And when I said, You know them, Daddy Royal, you know them better than anybody else I know, including everybody in the band, he said, Hell, I probably do at that. And as I’m sure you already found out before I said this the first time, that band is a family, and I guess I’m something like a godfather and grandfather or granduncle all rolled into one. I told you about me and the Bossman and me and Old Pro. And I’m absolutely certain that old tight-butt, trigger-footed Joe States clued you in on himself and the two of them as well, you coming right in there with him and the boss in the rhythm section plus also being from Alabama and all.
Then when I said what I said about what I would be doing on the campus back down in central Alabama, he said, So before you go down there, why don’t you just come on back up here the first chance you get and let’s see what the hell we can do about this thing while you’re down there. You know you’re long overdue on your next visit up here anyway.
And when I went back up to Sugar Hill to see him that next Saturday afternoon, he said, Let me tell you something, young soldier, this proposition don’t really come as no big surprise to me at all. Hell, I know something extra special was up from the very get-go. Here you were on your very first trip to New York City and you’re going to be here for only a few crowded days with the goddamn time clicking like a goddamn roller coaster, and here he come calling to tell me he’s bringing Shag Phillips’s temporary replacement by here to make my personal acquaintance! Some nice neat kid fresh out of college down in Alabama and on his way to work on his master’s and Ph.D. as soon as he can come by enough cash to go with his college commencement grant for advanced study.
I remember, I said, and I see what you mean, but at the time I thought that visit was mainly about rhythm and tempo because he was getting me ready for my first recording session—and also because he probably knew that I grew up knowing about you from placards and also from pictures and articles in the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier.
Yeah, that’s a good point, all right, he said. But mark my words. If he had any doubts about you being ready to record you wouldn’t have been heading for that studio in the first place. No, he had something else in mind, and this proposition just goes to bear out my hunch about what it was.
And when I said, You really think this goes back that far, Daddy Royal? He said, No doubt in my mind, now that I think about it. But here you come talking about a temporary replacement and anybody could see he was already treating you like you were his adopted son or at least some kind of newfound nephew or godchild or something, knowing full well that you are not about to give up going on to graduate school to get yourself at least a master’s degree. In literature, not music, even when you stayed on beyond that first summer. I know he knew that because I know him. So I knew he had something else in mind other than keeping you out on the road with the band.
Look, he said, just think about it. This whole thing is as plain as day. All we’ve got to do now is just continue what we started the very first day he brought you up here and have continued off and on ever since you came back to go to the university.
I’m telling you, young soldier, he said, even when you left the band to stick around out there in Hollywood, he didn’t give up on you. He just chalked it up as some more useful experience that went right along with what he had in mind for you when the time came. And he knew what he was doing because you didn’t give up on school for them bright lights out there either.
We spent the rest of that afternoon looking at some of the items in his collection of show business memorabilia that he had not gotten around to bringing out for me to see before. But this time he limited his ongoing remarks to identification and chronology, saving all anecdotes for the actual work on the project.
And when I stood up to get ready to move toward the door, because it was time for me to head back downtown, he said, Of course you
know good and well by now that all this about me and my story is just the beginning of this thing. What they got in mind for you goes a long way beyond me and this. As a matter of fact, as soon as I just said that, it put me in mind of something, some old professor in Germany or Switzerland or somewhere over there said to me when I was first touring over them countries across the water years ago. It just popped into my mind again after all these years. He said people started dancing before there was any music to dance to. So dance comes first and then music. Of course, you know as well as I do them professorial cats over there got theories about everything. But I bet you music follows dance this time, if you get my point.
He had come on along the hall to the elevator with me then, and just before I pushed the button, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, Of course, you also realize that this whole thing just might have got started with Hortense Hightower down there in Alabama in the first place. This could have been the deal from the very beginning. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if all of this wasn’t the main point of the deal when she got the boss to let you fill in that summer when Shag Phillips had to check out. She knew the boss knew damn well she wouldn’t be asking him to take somebody in there that couldn’t cut the mustard. And you know as well as I do that she wouldn’t even think about asking him to do something like that before checking it out with Joe States. No way she would ever go straight to the boss with something like that without first checking with old Joe.
XXIV
So there I was once more en route south and into the also and also of a very old place once more. Me and all of the obligations, expectations, and ever-alluring and expanding horizons of personal aspirations that were already beginning to be part and parcel of those now ever so wee lullaby rocking chair storybook adventure times even before I was yet old enough to stay awake for the long winter night tell-me-tale-time semicircle around the red brick fireplace beneath the Mother Goose chime clock mantelpiece.
The Magic Keys Page 16