by Renée Rosen
“Walter here’s the best harp player I’ve ever heard,” Red said to bolster up his friend.
“And I sing, too,” said Walter, nodding. “Don’t forget, I ain’t just a harp player.”
“What about you, Red Dupree?” She raised her martini to her lips, fanning her lashes some more. “I suppose you’re a musician, too?”
“I play guitar.”
“And I bet you sound good, Mr. Dupree.”
Walter’s eyes shifted between Red and Mimi. Red felt the table shaking as his friend bobbed his leg up and down. Yep, Walter was twitching, getting ready to spring, and Red didn’t want to be anywhere near him when that happened.
“Well,” said Red, standing up, “I’d best be going.”
“Oh, don’t.” Mimi reached out and touched his arm. “We were just getting to know each other.”
Walter’s leg was bouncing up and down so fast now Red could see the whiskey in his glass rippling. Red watched the veins in Walter’s neck jumping and his face had broken out in beads of sweat.
“Another time,” said Red.
“Yeah, that’s right.” Little Walter sprang to his feet, staggering while he knocked the table over, drinks and candle flying as he whipped out his gun. “You better damn well make it another time.”
Mimi screamed, jumped out of her chair and ran to the other end of the bar. Walter threw his head back, raised his gun and fired three quick shots into the ceiling. Pop. Pop. Pop.
The band stopped playing and people ran for cover as plaster rained down on Little Walter. Big Gene and the Chess brothers rushed over as Walter dropped the gun to his side, laughing, clutching his sides like it was the funniest damn thing.
“Aw, c’mon, Red”—Walter was still laughing—“I ain’t gonna shoot you.” He dropped down in his chair next to the overturned table and snapped his fingers, calling out, “Let’s get us a drink over here.”
Red looked around the club. Mimi was gone. Everyone else had gone back to their conversations. The band went back to playing the rest of their set. It was just another night at the Macomba.
TEN
• • •
“I Can’t Be Satisfied”
LEONARD
Nine o’clock in the morning and Leonard was on a stepladder with a spackling knife in his hand, a bucket of plaster resting on the top rung. He was spreading it like cream cheese across a bagel. Another hole needed to be patched at the Macomba. Some stupid fuck—that harp player—pulled a gun and fired off a few shots the night before. A week or two ago, another jackass had put his fist through the wall. It was always something.
A year back, when Leonard first started working with Aristocrat, he was certain his days as a nightclub owner would have been over by now. Instead he was working two jobs, hoping the club money would keep the record label going and eventually turn a profit.
Phil came up from the back of the club and propped his foot on the first rung of the ladder. “We should close the club at two a.m. like everyone else,” he said.
“But it’s that two a.m. to six a.m. crowd that pays the bills.” Leonard spread the last smear of plaster and made his way down the ladder.
“And that’s the same crowd that gives us trouble. Revetta and Sheva want us out of this racket—you know that, don’t you?”
“I’m working on it.” Leonard dusted the dried plaster off his hands.
“Let me ask you something,” said Phil. “When was the last time you sat down and had dinner with your family?”
“I don’t even remember the last time I saw my kids before they went to bed. If I’m lucky, I see them in the morning when I’m coming home from work and they’re just getting up.”
“What kinda life is this, huh?”
“I’m working on it,” Leonard said again. “I’m gonna get us out of here.”
Phil didn’t say another word and went about his routine of looking under the bar stools. He found a few packages of drugs and went to the john and flushed them.
• • •
As far as Leonard was concerned, Evelyn Aron should have been kissing his tuchas. That was his thought later that morning as he unlocked the front door at Aristocrat and flipped on the light switch at 5249 South Cottage Grove.
Leonard lit a cigarette and swung his legs up on the desk while eyeing the ledger with a frown. The numbers didn’t lie. They were always coming up short. It was the nature of their business. The studios and record pressers wanted their money up front, and each time they put out a new record it would be at least six months before they’d see any revenue from it. And then there were returns, like after the “Bilbo” disaster. They’d already tried for a loan and had been rejected by every bank in town. They were on their own to keep the label afloat.
The front door opened and the sounds of the street filtered in along with Leeba, who was carrying a bag with a newspaper sticking out the top. She shimmied off her sweater, reached inside her tote and plunked a hard-boiled egg down on his desk.
“You need to eat some protein,” she said.
“And good morning to you, too.” He picked up the egg and set it aside. “I already have a mother, you know.”
“And you don’t listen to her, either.”
“Like you listen to yours?”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Aw, what’s the matter, bubelah?” he said mockingly, getting up from his desk and going to Leeba, cupping her face in his hands. “Such a shaineh ponem, such a pretty face. Don’t you worry, I will make a shidduch yet! I’ll have men lining up outside the door, waiting to come for Shabbos dinner.”
Leeba wiggled away from him, laughing. “Very funny.”
He was about to say something else, when Evelyn showed up in some ridiculous-looking hat and a getup that must have cost a fortune. He’d never seen that dame in the same outfit twice and yet she was always crying poor.
He waited till she got her coffee and settled in before tackling the payables. They sat with Leeba, who announced the new total after each check was cut. When they hit a balance of thirty-three dollars and seventeen cents left in the account, Leonard said, “We gotta do something to break out of this rut. We need to take a risk.”
“Oh, another risk like ‘Bilbo Is Dead’?”
“What? You think ‘Chi-Baba’ was any better?”
“Truce!” Leeba stood up between them, arms outreached.
“Okay, all right.” Evelyn backed off. “Lee Monti has some new polka music he wants us to hear.”
Leonard was done with polka music. His gut told him that the way to make their mark was with race music. “Don’t we have a session coming up with that one guitar player we recorded?” he asked. “You know that guy, Dirty Rivers, or something—”
“You mean Muddy Waters?” said Leeba. “That’s tomorrow.”
“Do we even have the money to cover the session?” asked Evelyn.
“Hell, I’ll pay for it out of my own pocket if I have to. I just hope that motherfucker’s worth it.”
• • •
The next day Leonard and Evelyn were at the studio with Muddy, backed by Sunnyland Slim on piano and Big Crawford on bass. Leonard brought Leeba along to handle the paperwork and to keep an eye on the clock so they didn’t go into overtime.
The first song they laid down, a number called “Good Lookin’ Woman,” sounded too much like other songs he’d heard. Leonard leaned over the control console, watching through the window, trying to keep the stomach acids at bay. After another two takes he told everyone to take a break.
Sunnyland Slim and the engineer stepped outside for some air, but Muddy and Big Crawford stayed back in the studio and started fiddling around. Leonard was adding up the costs in his head: more money down the drain.
He looked through the picture window and watched Big Crawford laying down a syncopated bass lin
e. Muddy adjusted the tuning on his electric guitar and slipped a three-inch metal pipe on his little finger and started sliding it up and down the neck of the guitar, giving off a whining, piercing feedback that hurt Leonard’s ears. He’d never heard a guitar make that kind of noise. It sounded like a mistake, and once Muddy started singing, it got even worse.
“What the hell is that?” he said to Evelyn.
“You said you wanted different. And that’s definitely different.” Evelyn smiled and lit a cigarette. “I like it.”
The engineer came back in from his break and Evelyn told him to roll tape.
“Wait—whoa, whoa. I ain’t paying for this.”
“Fine. Then I’ll pay for it.” She turned to the engineer. “Go on, roll tape.”
Muddy started at the top and Leonard slapped his hands to his head. This was bullshit. It reminded him of that other guitarist, that Red Dupree. Leonard pressed the talk button and stopped Muddy in the middle of his song. “What the hell are you singing? Sounds like you’ve got goddamn marbles in your mouth.”
Evelyn pulled Leonard’s hand from the talk button and said, “Don’t listen to him, Muddy. I want to see where this song goes.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” said Leonard. “It’s just a guitar and bass.”
“But aren’t you listening to the words?”
“Words? What fuckin’ words? I can’t understand a goddamn thing he’s singing.”
“I think they’re onto something,” said Evelyn.
“C’mon now, Lenny.” Leeba got up and stood in between them. “Just give it another listen. It’s definitely a different sound. It’s what you say you’ve been wanting.”
Leonard dragged his hand back through his hair, took a deep breath and plopped down hard in a chair. He sighed, deflating like a tire losing air. “You realize that if we do this and the record flops we’ll be out of business.”
“Yes,” said Evelyn. “But at least we’ll go down fighting.”
Before the session was over, Leonard and Evelyn agreed to record two of Muddy’s songs: “I Can’t Be Satisfied” for the A-side and “I Feel Like Going Home” for the B-side. After about two and a half hours, they had it in the can, but Leonard wasn’t ready to pull the trigger and release it.
“What are you waiting for?” Evelyn asked the next day. She leaned over his desk, her diamond necklace swaying back and forth like a metronome. “You know I could override you and do this.”
There she went again, lording her fifty-one percent over him. “Yeah, but we both know you won’t.” He didn’t know that at all, but he was taking a chance. “You won’t because without me you won’t be able to distribute it.”
Evelyn clenched her fist and narrowed her eyes. He knew she wanted to slug him and tell him to go fuck himself, but Evelyn Aron didn’t do that sort of thing, so instead she said, “I’m telling you, you’re wrong about this record.”
“Yeah, well, I sure as hell know that Muddy Waters ain’t the answer to Aristocrat’s problems.”
ELEVEN
• • •
“Old Buttermilk Sky”
LEEBA
Leeba walked into Aileen’s kitchenette on Jefferson Street and found her sitting on the floor, her hair held back with a scarf tied at the nape of her neck. She was staring into a droopy houseplant in a cracked clay pot. There were fruit flies everywhere, hovering above the leaves, clinging to the mirror, lingering above the drain in the kitchen sink. Aileen seemed agitated by them, as if they were some sort of enemy. One crawled along the floor and she squished it with her finger.
“What’s wrong?” asked Leeba. “Did something happen?”
Aileen nodded, her eyes fixed on the flies, crushing another one that landed near her foot. “J.J.’s back.”
“J.J.? I thought you told him to get lost.”
“I did. Twice.” No matter how hard she tried, Aileen couldn’t get rid of J.J. After two years she’d broken it off, but he refused to accept that it was over. “He’s telling me we’re meant to be together and all kinds of hogwash like that . . .” Aileen killed another fly. “I’m sick and tired of everything. Sick to death of nothing going my way. You know what I made in tips last night at the Trigger Lounge? Three lousy bucks. Damn cocktail waitresses made more than me. Don’t you ever get sick of everything being so damn hard? Sick of writing songs that no one wants to hear?”
Leeba thought about the music she’d been writing. Basically mimicking songs on the radio by singers like Dinah Shore and Peggy Lee. She’d always heard music inside her head, but lately that music was starting to change. Now it was the music of the delta. But that was Negro music and it felt off bounds to her. She pushed it down, denied it, but still the tunes kept surfacing.
“Well?” asked Aileen, hugging her legs to her chest.
Leeba recalled the session she’d been in with Muddy Waters, Sunnyland Slim and Big Crawford. “What I’d really like to do is write something new. Like the stuff Leonard’s recording. That kind of music makes you have to move, have to dance. It’s wild and exciting and you can’t get enough of it. It makes you come alive.” She sighed. “I’d love to try and write some blues.”
“So what’s stopping you?”
Leeba laughed. “I’m a white, Jewish girl, remember? I can’t do blues music.”
“Ah, excuse me. Have you taken a good look at Leonard and Evelyn? Last I remember, they was white.”
When Leeba got home that day she went straight to the piano. Instead of suppressing it, she let her fingers feel the energy and the music welling up inside her. She reached for a pad of paper and scratched down notes and phrases, propping the pencil between her lips while she played a verse and then the next one and the one after that.
• • •
The following Saturday evening, the song she’d started writing was still in Leeba’s head, competing with the sounds of the band playing and the crickets chirping. A breeze set the paper lanterns swaying on the rooftop overlooking Douglas Boulevard.
Leeba was attending a dance at the J.P.I., the Jewish People’s Institute, but she wasn’t planning on staying long because Aileen was waiting for her at a club on the other side of town. The only reason Leeba agreed to go to the dance at all was to pacify her mother. She’d been to the J.P.I. dances before and it was the same every week. Every Saturday night, after the Sabbath, all the single Jewish men and women in Lawndale could be found there, hoping to meet their besherit, their one and only.
A few months shy of turning twenty-six, Leeba was among the oldest women going to those dances and with each passing week it grew more humiliating. Other girls had been picked off like ducks in a shooting gallery, but here she was, still standing, still waiting.
At that moment she spotted Avrom Yurzel standing across the way, brushing crumbs off his lapels. She was surprised to see him there because Avrom wasn’t a regular at the J.P.I. dances. In fact, that was the first time she’d seen him since her mother invited him for dinner some three or four months back.
He came up to her just as the band began playing “Night and Day.”
“It really is you,” she teased. “I thought I was seeing things.”
He smiled and plunged his hands in his pockets. “I had nothing going tonight. Thought I’d wander over here. See what all the fuss is about. I’ve never been to one of these before.”
“Believe me, you haven’t been missing a thing.”
They made small talk for a few minutes and when the band started playing “Ole Buttermilk Sky,” much to her surprise Avrom asked if she’d like to dance. He was about an inch shorter than Leeba, but that didn’t seem to faze him.
“So what are the chances of your mother inviting me back over for dinner?” he asked.
“I thought you were booked up through Yom Kippur.”
He stopped shuffling his feet and stood back, a s
mile on his face. “I’ll break my plans.”
She was confused. Was he flirting with her?
“Or if you prefer,” he said, pulling her in close, running his hand along her back, “we could have dinner, just the two of us.”
Oh my, he was flirting.
Leeba and Avrom shared another dance—ironically it was to a rendition of “Chi-Baba Chi-Baba,” which everyone from Louis Prima to Perry Como to Peggy Lee had recorded back in ’47 when the Sherman Hayes Orchestra did it.
“Well, thank you,” she said when the dance was over. “This was fun but I have to go.”
“Not yet. It’s a nice night. Come, take a walk with me.” He held his hand out to her.
The next thing she knew, she was standing in the middle of Douglas Park kissing Avrom Yurzel. Mostly because he was Avrom Yurzel and as a young girl she had dreamed of this moment while kissing her pillow. The opportunity had presented itself and she had to see her fantasy through. But did she like Avrom? Did she feel something for him? Anything? And why was she wishing he was Red Dupree instead? She let Avrom kiss her again before she pried herself away.
“I’m sorry.” Her hands pressed against his shoulders. “But I really do have to go now. I’m meeting a friend.”
“Don’t leave.” He ran his fingers through her curly hair.
“What has gotten into you? I thought you weren’t ready to—”
“Shh.” He leaned in to kiss her again, but she backed away.
Here was a nice Jewish boy wanting to kiss her, maybe court her, maybe marry her and give her children, and she wasn’t interested. Or maybe she was just being smart. “C’mon, Avrom,” she said. “I know you’re lonely, but you don’t really want this.” She indicated the two of them.
He dropped his hands to his sides and furrowed his brow. “I’m sorry. Weekends . . .” His voice faded for a moment. “They’re hard for me.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
He plunged his hands into his pockets and cocked his head to the side. “I don’t want to go back up to that rooftop. Would it be okay if I came with you tonight? I won’t try anything, I promise.”