by Renée Rosen
She smiled. “Okay.”
As they slid into the backseat of the taxicab, she leaned forward and gave the driver the address. “Three fifteen East Thirty-seventh Street.”
“East Thirty-seventh?” Avrom hiked up his eyebrows. “That’s on the South Side. Near Bronzeville.”
“Actually, it’s in Bronzeville,” she informed him.
“Not a great neighborhood, Leeba. Why are we going all the way to the South Side?”
“I’m meeting my friend Aileen at the Sunset Café. You remember Aileen, don’t you? She went to Marshall High.”
“You mean the colored girl you ran with?”
“I’m meeting her at a black-and-tan club.” A black and tan was one of the few places where Negroes and whites were free to socialize together without anyone raising an eyebrow, let alone a fist. A black and tan was different from a place like the Macomba. That was a Negro club and it always took a good five minutes or so before everyone got comfortable having a white girl at the bar. But the black and tans were easy to slip in and out of. Leeba and Aileen had been going to them for years, sneaking in before they were old enough. Those were the clubs Aileen first performed in, the clubs where Leeba learned to swing dance and where she’d had her first martini.
“A black-and-tan club, huh?” Avrom ran his tongue across his teeth, making a sucking sound.
“It has some of the best jazz in town. But if you don’t want to go, that’s fine,” she said. “I can drop you somewhere else or—”
“No, no.” He straightened his necktie. “I’m going. I’m just surprised is all.”
“Don’t say anything to my mother. She’d have a fit.”
“Not a word. Promise.”
Leeba knew her mother would be furious at her for discouraging Avrom’s advances, but then again, her mother was always furious at her for something. She’d never understood why until a few years ago when Aunt Sylvie explained everything. According to her aunt, her mother, Freyda Bartosz, married Jakub Groski when she was twenty-three—ancient compared to the other girls in the shtetl. But at last her besherit came along. Jakub the musician, the mason, her savior. She couldn’t have been happier. Until Leeba came along. Jakub, so dazzled by this little girl, couldn’t walk past her without scooping her up in his arms, never missing a chance to bounce her on his knee. Baby Leeba had captured her father’s heart completely and her mother found herself competing with her newborn for her husband’s affection. Over time she became jealous of her own baby. The resentment grew until Golda came along and Freyda decided she would show Jakub what it felt like to be second best.
Leeba and Avrom heard jazz coming from the club as their taxicab pulled up. The music swelled, growing louder as they entered the crowded café. Avrom was uneasy, Leeba could tell. He wore the same expression on his face that she’d seen plastered on the rare white face that dared to enter the Macomba. It was a bright cheery mask that said, See, I’m here. I’m not a bigot. But she saw beneath the mask. He was self-conscious and trying too hard to appear as if he didn’t notice that half the people there were Negroes. Didn’t he understand that the mix was the whole point of a black-and-tan club? Leeba and Avrom weaved their way through the packed room until they found Aileen sitting at a round table near the stage, nursing a drink. She looked up, stunned when she saw Avrom.
Leeba sat down and said under her breath, “Close your mouth. I’ll explain later.”
After Avrom ordered drinks he announced a little too enthusiastically, “Your people have a way with music. It’s lively. Very lively.”
Aileen burst out laughing. “You ought to take him to the Macomba or the 708.”
“One step at a time,” said Leeba.
Avrom took a long glug from his drink and gradually began to relax. They were listening to the music when Leeba spotted J.J. stumbling over to the table, drink in hand and already looking sloppy.
“Oh no,” Leeba groaned. “Did you tell him you were going to be here?”
“No.” Aileen shook her head. “I swear I didn’t.”
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said J.J., looking at Avrom. “I’m Johnson Junior, but you can call me J.J. And I see you’ve already met my woman.”
“Knock it off, J.J.,” said Aileen. “I’m not your woman. And Avrom is Leeba’s date.”
“Date?” Leeba looked at Avrom and laughed. “This isn’t a date.”
“That’s right. We already established that. This is not a date.” Avrom’s eyes stayed on J.J., who was wrestling with a chair at the next table.
J.J. finally got the chair turned around and clumsily dropped into it. “Now see here,” said J.J., draping his arm around Aileen’s shoulder, “this here’s the way it’s s’posed to be. Me and my woman.”
Aileen shifted in her chair. “I hate it when you say shit like that to me.”
“Now, baby, don’t be like that,” said J.J. “I got you somethin’. Somethin’ real special.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bracelet, shimmering, dangling off his fingers. “What do you think of that?”
“I think you stole it,” said Leeba.
J.J. turned to Aileen. “What you doin’ hanging round with her all the time?”
Aileen ignored him, stood up and reached for Avrom’s hand. “C’mon. Let’s dance.”
“Dance?” Avrom looked as if she’d asked him to commit a crime.
“Go on,” said Leeba. “She’s a good dancer.”
Leeba sat back and watched Avrom. He was as stiff as cardboard at first, but later, after two and a half glasses of whiskey, he began to lose his inhibitions on the dance floor. Soon he was clapping, shimmying his shoulders and thrusting his hips. At one point he looked up at the ceiling, raised his hands high above his head and yelped so loud Leeba heard it above the music.
When they came back to the table Avrom had sweat on his brow and upper lip. As he unknotted his necktie and slouched down in his chair, he said with full sincerity, “This place is great.”
TWELVE
• • •
“Pistol Slapper Blues”
LEONARD
A month after they had Muddy Waters in the studio, Evelyn was still harping on Leonard to release the record. But Leonard had doubts. He added up the costs of pressing the record, plus the time and money needed to distribute it. Aristocrat barely had enough dough to carry them through the end of the month. He was pretty much resigned to the fact that the label had failed and that they were going out of business. He was hoping for a miracle and, as far as he was concerned, Muddy Waters and his down-home delta blues wasn’t it.
That was on Leonard’s mind one June afternoon when he stopped by the house before heading down to the club. He had just dropped off some money so Revetta could pay the electricity bill and as he was about to head back out to his car, he passed Marshall sitting at the foot of the stairs in the front hall, sulking, pounding his fist into his baseball mitt.
“How you doin’ there, sport?” Leonard asked.
The boy shrugged, eyes kept low.
“Hey, what’s the matter?” But as soon as he asked he remembered. Leonard felt like a shit. He’d forgotten that he had promised Marshall they’d go to a White Sox game that day. The kid had probably been waiting for him all afternoon. Raised in a houseful of girls, Leonard knew how much his son needed to spend time with him. He knew it and yet it never seemed to happen. Phil managed to set aside part of his day for his kids and wife. He took Sheva out to dinner at least once a week before heading into the club. He gave Terry piggyback rides around the dining room table and read Pam bedtime stories.
Leonard looked at his boy and did the only thing he could think of. “Hey, Marshall,” he said, “wanna come to work with your old man tonight?”
The boy was already on his feet, a smile stretched across his face. Leonard called out to Revetta, “I’m taking Marshall
with me to the club.”
His hand was on the front door when Revetta darted out of the kitchen, her fingers tangled in a dish towel. “Len, he’s five years old.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll be fine. It doesn’t get rough down there until late. I’ll have him home long before that.”
“And what about school?”
“He’s in fuckin’ kindergarten. What’s he gonna miss? So he goes in late one day.”
“I want him home by ten.”
“Ten. Okay.”
“I mean it, Len.”
“Ten o’clock. I promise.”
Revetta slung the towel over her shoulder and leaned against the doorjamb, looking at her son. “You want to do this, Marshall? You want to go down to the club with your father tonight?”
All Marshall could do was nod, his cheeks about to burst from smiling so hard.
When they got to the Macomba, Leonard propped Marshall up at the bar and gave him a Shirley Temple with an extra cherry. Between him and Phil they kept a close eye on him. He was a good boy, happy to sit there with his elbows on the bar, sipping his drink and watching the grown-ups, listening to the music. Everyone who came up to the bar stopped to muss Marshall’s hair or pat him on the back. The kid was in heaven.
Leonard went about his business but watched the clock. It was a quarter past ten and they should have been going, but the kid was having such a good time and the crowd was well behaved. At the end of Tom Archia’s set he’d take Marshall home. Besides, Revetta knew ten o’clock for Leonard really meant eleven, eleven thirty. No big deal.
Not long after that, some drunk near the bandstand shoved the guy next to him. Ah shit, thought Leonard. Here we go.
The drunk threw the first punch and Leonard whistled, motioning to Big Gene that there was trouble on the floor. Phil was already in the thick of it, trying to pull the one guy off the drunk. Marshall twisted around on his stool, not wanting to miss a second of this. Between Big Gene and Phil they got the guys separated. It was over, and things had started to calm down, when out of nowhere two other guys pulled guns and started shooting up the place. Bullets were flying, ricocheting off the ceiling fans, the light fixtures. Bottles behind the bar were exploding. Everyone was screaming, taking cover.
Leonard’s only thought was My boy! My boy’s in here. He lunged for Marshall and pulled him behind the bar. That probably scared the poor kid more than the gunfire. Leonard was shaking as he pushed Marshall to the floor, shielding him with his own body. He heard more bullets and more glass breaking. The floor was a swamp of liquor draining from the broken bottles on the shelf above. Round after round the shots kept going. Through the years they’d had a knife fight here and there, a few guns pulled, even a few shots fired inside the club—but Leonard had never seen anything like this before. Leonard knew he was crushing Marshall, but the kid didn’t let out a peep, didn’t cry, but Leonard sure did. When the gunfire subsided and he heard the squeal of the police sirens outside, Leonard rolled off of Marshall, leaned against the wall behind the bar and sobbed into his hands.
Revetta was going to kill him when she found out. That was all he could think as he told Phil to handle things at the club while he rushed to get Marshall home.
Leonard hardly slept that night. What the hell was he doing in that line of work? And what was he thinking taking Marshall down there? He knew that place was dangerous any time of day. He had to get the hell out of that nightclub. He had to get Phil out of there, too. He had one more chance to make something happen with Aristocrat and now was the time to do it.
The next day Leonard went into the office and said to Evelyn, “Okay. I’m ready. Let’s release the goddamn Muddy Waters record.”
• • •
Three thousand pressed records arrived at the office by the end of the week, and each one of those 78s needed to be labeled, stuffed into a cardboard sleeve, stacked and counted. Some of them had to be boxed up so they could be shipped to distributors in the South and along the East Coast.
Leonard loaded three cases of records into the back of his Buick and began making the rounds. His first stop was to see the Old Swingmaster at WGES. Leonard had talked the record up ahead of time, borrowing from Evelyn’s enthusiasm because he still hadn’t found any of his own. “A completely different sound” was what he’d said to Benson over the phone. “This is really something special. You gotta hear this.”
An hour later Leonard stood in the studio while Al Benson leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, ready to listen. Leonard dropped the needle and halfway into the first verse, the Old Swingmaster opened his eyes. When they got to the chorus he sat up and smiled.
Leonard was bewildered. What did everyone else hear in this music that he was missing? Could his instincts be that off? But he was a salesman, natural born, and so he played it to the hilt. “What’d I tell you?”
“You got something here,” said Benson.
Before Leonard made it back to his car, Benson had “I Can’t Be Satisfied” on the air. But what really surprised him was that by the time he pulled up to the curb outside Aristocrat, the Swingmaster was playing it again.
When he walked through the front door, Leeba pointed to the radio on her desk and said, “Are you hearing this?”
WGES had so many requests that day, and Benson had played that song so often, that by the next morning stores had sold out and people were calling the office, asking how soon they could get more records. Leonard got on the horn with Art Sheridan, the record presser, and ordered ten thousand copies.
Leonard still couldn’t understand a goddamn thing Muddy was singing on that record, but he understood that they were onto something that was going to save Aristocrat and make them a lot of money.
THIRTEEN
• • •
“Blow Wind Blow”
RED
The old man had that glass eye that looked like it belonged to a flounder. Red didn’t know where to look when he held up his cord and asked if he could plug in his amp. Red had been in Chicago for two and a half years and it had been a long time since he and Walter played in Jewtown. But their club gigs had slowed down through the summer and by the time September rolled around they both needed the money.
Red went back outside remembering his early days in Chicago. He had been homesick, lonely and always broke. The only bright spot in his life had been Sunday afternoons, playing down in Jewtown, looking over his shoulder and seeing that woman with the curly hair standing in the doorway of the shop. Had she been watching him? Probably not, but he had told himself she was.
The winds picked up and fall was settling in. Red could smell it in the air. The trees were nearly bare and that hickory scent was all around from folks burning leaves in their yards. Winter wouldn’t be far off and he was dreading it, thinking about working in the brickyard, shoveling clay from the quarry with snow blowing in his face, ice crystals hanging off his lashes, his ears and fingertips so cold they burned. He’d spend four and five hours out in the cold before lunch, when they’d let him inside to thaw. By the time he pulled his sandwich from his coat pocket it would be frozen, couldn’t even pry the bread off the liverwurst or bologna. The Polish guys, who mostly worked on the kilns, always got the tables near the radiators. Red and the other Negroes stayed back by the door, the draft circling them each time someone stepped inside. Just thinking about it gave him a chill.
Red plugged in his amp and went outside the radio and record store. He tuned his guitar while waiting on Walter. They had agreed to meet there at noon. It was ten after and no sign of him. Figured. Walter Jacobs was one of the most unreliable people Red had ever met. Another five minutes passed and Red was debating whether to start playing without Walter when he saw him ambling up the street, taking long pulls from his flask. Typical.
“Little early for cocktails, don’t you think?” Red plucked the flask out of Walter’s hand and
held it up like a game of keep-away.
“Hey—” Walter tried for it, swiping at the air.
“We’ll save that for later. If I know you, you’ll be working up a thirst out here.” Red stuffed the flask in his back pocket and gave Walter a pat on the shoulder.
Walter shrugged Red’s hand off him and pulled his harp from his breast pocket.
“It’s for your own good, boy,” said Red. “Drinking like that’ll kill a man sooner than those bullets in your gun.”
Walter brought his harp to his mouth and blew a riff. Nothing more was said about it. Halfway into their first number, “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” Red saw a group of people circling around them. A young couple started dancing right in front, gyrating while the others looked on, clapping, swaying in time to the music. Two guys moving a chest of drawers stopped and set it down to listen and even the old men sitting on crates playing checkers paused their game.
While people were applauding, Red reached over to adjust the tuning pegs on the headstock before launching into the next song, “Run Away Fast.” Red had written it, along with dozens of other songs, since he’d been in Chicago. Putting it all to music helped when a stranger’s bed did no good, when the mailman didn’t deliver letters from his kinfolk, when the rent was due and he was tapped and questioning whether he was wasting his time in Chicago.
But whenever he got together with Walter it took only a few bars for Red to forget all that. When they played, it didn’t matter if they were in a nightclub or on a sidewalk in Jewtown. People were people and Red could see what their music was doing to them. Gone were the bills they couldn’t pay, gone was the boss man who gave them a hard time, gone was the pain of a broken heart. Red took all that heaviness away from people with just a song.