by Thom August
Yeah, life sucks. What are you gonna do? Play on.
I sneak another look at the guy in the doorway. Leaning on the frame again. Do I know this guy?
CHAPTER 15
Vinnie Amatucci
Airport Marriott—The Gig—Second Set, Third Set
Saturday, January 11
After Jeff implodes, and I hope it’s the last time I ever have to see this shit, Paul calls for “Mood Indigo.”The whole song is built on this trumpet and sax duet, the sax a minor third over the trumpet. I wonder how we’re going to make this happen, but Paul just ignores the harmony part and plays the song as if the harmony didn’t exist. It’s just a naked melody and it sounds so different all alone. On the chorus, he plays the long tones of the melody, then adds little runs and obbligatos at the end, as if he’s playing the melody and also playing another melody around the melody. After the first chorus, Paul hands me a few choruses, playing long tones underneath into a mute. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but it comes out lilting and longing and sweet.
Then I pass it off to Sidney for a rare bass solo, and he starts with the bow, long strokes like he’s caressing your heartstrings. After one chorus with the bow he tucks it away and fingers the strings. He’s getting deep, and he rides over the second chorus’s end and pushes into a third. This is rare for Sidney, and even rarer still, he glides into a fourth, and all of a sudden the bow is in his hand again and he’s stroking away, a throbbing sound in the low register, until at the end he brings it way down like a whisper, like a lover murmuring, “It’s all right, take it easy, it’s OK.”
And even stranger still, Paul turns to Akiko. A drummer rarely takes a solo in this music, and never on a slow ballad or blues. Akiko has her brushes in her hands and doesn’t hesitate. Paul makes a little signal and we go to stop-time, just the first beat of each measure, quiet and staccato, as Akiko deconstructs the rhythm a phrase at a time. I’m in heaven now—this is too much—and she’s getting into it and the crowd is hushed and leaning in. And as I hear her wrap up her second and last chorus I feel a shadow move across my face and who’s standing there, next to Paul, but the guy, the guy who was at Midway but didn’t want to stay, the guy with the funny suitcase. And he’s holding a cornet, an old-fashioned-looking one with that shepherd’s-crook bend in it and he’s standing there next to Paul.
Paul jumps in on top of Akiko’s last few bars, bringing us back to the chorus, and here’s that harmony thing, Paul on the melody and the guy with the cornet playing the harmony part on top. It’s a little backward, tonally—the mellower cornet should be underneath the brighter trumpet—but nobody in the room knows this but me. Paul wags his fingers and they start trading fours. Paul improvises the first four bars, then the guy plays the next four, and back and forth they go. The guy has an uncanny ability to both blend with where Paul was taking the tune and also to kind of comment on it at the same time. He’s got this beautiful tone that I can’t quite place and then I flash on “In a Mist” again and it’s like Bix Beiderbecke, who they say played like someone hitting a golden bell with a silver hammer. And that’s the way this guy sounds, each note ringing out pure and rich, all honey and sunlight, and he’s got Paul in this groove with him and it’s like watching two old lovers make love—they know each other’s moves and are responding before the other one even realizes it.
And it’s building in waves, each wave a little bigger. We hit the bridge and the guy does an almost trombone kind of thing, two valves pressed halfway down and sliding up to the note as Paul lets the melody speak. Then into the last eight bars, and they’re so together even their separate vibratos seem to shimmer at the same rate, and as it slows in the last two measures, they trade off, Paul holding a long note while the other guy dances around it, then the other guy holding one while Paul adds a little coda at the end, and we fade to pianissimo and it’s over.
The crowd is half-stunned. They know they’ve heard something beautiful but gape for a full two seconds before they’re willing to let go of it. And then they erupt, not just applause but this deep-throated roar of release, which pulls them out of their seats and up onto their feet. Clarence the manager has been drawn to the front of the stage as if by a magnet and his eyes are sparkling, his light-cocoa face flushed and shining. And he’s not the only one; we’ve wrought some kind of cathartic release.
Paul grabs the mike, more animated than I’ve seen him in years. “I’d like to welcome someone I met last year and who just seems to have shown up here, out of nowhere—and, I might add, not a moment too soon—” which gets a big laugh. “Just a few minutes ago I was talking about Bix Beiderbecke, who composed the tune Vince started this set off with. This cat and I met last summer out in Davenport, Iowa, at the annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival. We jammed until dawn one night, and I haven’t seen him since. Maybe if you are all very nice to him, he’ll stick around. Would you please welcome, on cornet, Mr. Jack Landreau.”
And the crowd gives him a nice hand. He and Paul shake, and we’re all beaming, but he has no expression on his face. His eyes are cast down, shy almost, not smiling, not frowning—he could be waiting for a bus or doing across word in his head. Paul whispers into his ear, and he mutters something back. Paul turns to me and says “ ‘I Got Rhythm,’ in F, a little quick, give us an intro,” and without a pause I launch into four bars of lead-in and we’re off. It struts right out and the magic is still there, Paul and this guy Jack playing like they’ve known each other for twenty years. There’s something bothering me about this song, but Akiko and Sidney are wailing. Toward the end, Paul motions for Landreau to solo and he shakes his head emphatically, twice, No, and holds up four fingers and they’re trading fours again, this time for four or five choruses, and it’s building with all the momentum of a freight train charging down a mountain, until the transition to the final melody when he plays a curious lick and bumps us up a key. Akiko pushes the tempo a little and it brightens, and the guy, Jack, takes the lead line and bumps up the key again, and then again, and we’re spinning at the edge of control until we run out of measures and abruptly stop, but he plays on in a long eight-bar coda, bringing the key back in steps to where we started and bringing the beat back to a jumping stride and we all join in and wrap it as pretty as a package at Christmas.
The crowd goes nuts.
It suddenly strikes me that the last time we played “I Got Rhythm” was the night Roger Something got killed.
Was it really the last time we played? Only two nights ago? Jesus.
The universe has somehow shifted. I have been transported to a different plane.
Paul turns and says “I Got the World on a String,” and we’re off again, on a loose loping pace, and the magic is still there. Paul seems less cool, less distant, like he’s been playing with a mute all these years and has finally let his sound ring free. Then it’s “Sing, Sing, Sing,” the old Benny Goodman raver, except this time it’s nothing like that, a little slower with some bounce to it. Akiko has studied the tapes and she has the Gene Krupa solo on the tom-toms down, and it bounces right along. Then it’s “St. James Infirmary,” and about halfway through it strikes me that the guy hasn’t soloed all this time, not once. He has stayed back, just filling in but leading from the back somehow, and I make eye contact with Paul and make a head wag to point to the guy. I’m finishing my own two choruses and Paul picks up the mike from the piano, says “Mr. Jack Landreau,” puts down the mike and steps off the stage.
There’s an awkward pause there, and the guy seems to take a step back. He looks up at the spotlight and seems to shrink. Akiko and Sidney and I vamp for a few measures, waiting.
Then he reaches down toward a table close to the stand. There’s a black hat on it, a fedora, and he scoops it up and hangs it over the end of the horn and starts to blow softly, haltingly into the hat, a real old-school thing. He’s going into a modal version of the key, all Middle-Eastern-sounding, weird and strange and soft. There’s a melody there, but you have to search
for it among the silences. This is something new for me, the way he uses the silence as well as the sound. Sidney and I pick up on it and work with it. Toward the end of the chorus Akiko even throws in a little vocal throat-warble, like the Arab women do when they’re protesting The Great Satan—that would be us—and it’s crazy but funny, and then he echoes the same noise on his horn—how does he do that?
The next chorus the hat comes off and his sound just opens up. He’s playing this new take on the melody and then playing a counterpoint to it, like a duet with himself. I stop trying to figure it out and just go with it. On the turn, he builds to this beautiful note in the upper register and holds it. He’s varying the loudness with his breath, which I can’t believe hasn’t run out until I see he’s doing some kind of circular breathing thing, which I thought only reed players could do, for God’s sake. This whole time he’s standing stock-still, his head pointed down at a forty-five-degree angle. He’s still holding the note, letting it shimmer, and the tension cracks as he arpeggios out of it and runs down the scale and back up again. Then hits it again, the same note, except it’s now in a different harmonic context and it sounds different. Then some syncopated figures, quoting his modal approach from the first chorus, twisting it back on itself, then he quotes “In a Mist,” a version of the chords at the start as they build up, like a humorous aside, and then down to the tonic and out.
The crowd is half-stunned, they can’t applaud except for a few yahoos who don’t know what they’re hearing or why they’re cheering; they just know it’s expected. He holds the cornet close to his waist and waits. I jump in and take a short solo chorus while Paul steps back on the stage, and then they chase each other around the melody one more time until it’s through.
I look at my watch and we’re twelve minutes over with two fewer songs than we usually play and it feels as if we just got started—it’s that aspect of the Flow when you feel, “Where did the time go, are we done already?”
Paul gives me a sign and I start in on “The Days of Wine and Roses,” sort of our theme song—Old Wine, New Bottles, get it? But it’s a song I love, full of sweetness and longing. Paul picks up the vocal mike and says, “We’re ‘New Bottles,’ and we—d like to thank Clarence and all the folks at the Airport Marriott for having us. Once again, Vince Amatucci on the piano, Akiko Jones on the drums, Professor Sidney Worrell on the string bass, I’m Paul Powell, and I’d like to particularly thank our special guest, Mr. Jack Landreau, on cornet, for sitting in.”
And with that the last chorus is upon us, soaring as the melody rises, and it’s just magic again, and we wrap up nice and tight and they applaud loudly and we’re off.
Paul takes Landreau by the elbow and they step off the stage, with me a half a pace back. The crowd starts to part as we head for the door and a space opens to reveal a woman, all dressed in red, looking absolutely magnificent, one god damned hell of a woman, directly in front of us. The crowd keeps parting and she holds her ground and we stop dead in front of her. She shakes Paul’s hand and tilts her head up at an angle and gives him a soft kiss on the cheek, then turns to Landreau, curtsies deeply, raises his right hand and kisses it. He’s staring at her, not looking away at all, and she’s looking at his hand and then up into his eyes, and a quizzical expression crosses her face and it’s only then that I see that he’s missing the pinkie on his right hand, and has only nine fingers.
CHAPTER 16
The Cleaner
Airport Marriott—After the Gig—The Parking Lot
Saturday, January 11/Sunday, January 12
11:15 A.M.: I see the hand when she kisses it. All I need to see.
I pull on the gloves. Drain the ginger ale. Slip the glass into my coat pocket. Stand up. Get my coat off the back of the chair, the hand holding the handkerchief. Give the chair a wipe. Leave the change on the table, untouched. Give the table a wipe. Turn to leave.
I see something on the floor. Shining. Kneel down, retie one shoe while I look at it. Small, brass, with a pearl inlay. One of the keys from the saxophone. Must have come flying off when he smashed it. Scoop the thing up with my handkerchief. Tuck both into my breast pocket. Jam the hat on my head so the toupee will not come off. Head for the door, head down.
Go through the revolving door before anyone else has thought of leaving. Go straight for the car. Unlock it, get inside, start it up, crank up the heat. Leave the lights off. Keep my foot off the brakes. Waiting. Really cold. Let the engine warm up while all the other cars are starting up. When they are mostly gone, shut it off.
Know what I am waiting for. Know what I need to see: Who she walks out the door with. All the years I am doing this. Always comes a moment when things change and they cannot change back. That is the moment I look for.
11:40 A.M.: First one out is the string bass, big guy, hard to miss with the bass and the tuba. Guy is not wearing a coat. No hat, no gloves, not even a sweater. Steam coming off his bald head. Jesus. Heads over to some little Toyota, ten years old, the color of puke. Do not know how he gets himself in there and the bass and the tuba, too. But he does. Starts up, drives off. Rolls the window down as he goes. Makes me cold, just watching him.
Five minutes later, Piano. Stops in the doorway to light a cigarette. Looks around like he does not remember which car he drove. Stares at the stars in the sky. Pulls his collar up. Heads for an old navy blue VW. Fumbles for his keys, hands shaking. Gets in, smacks his head on the door frame, rubs it. Closes the door. Starts the car, lets it idle, warm up. A minute. Two minutes. Almost three. Fumbling around with something in his lap. Finally puts it in gear, takes off.
Who is next?
Nobody is next. Twelve o’clock. One o’clock. Two o’clock. My hands are frozen. My feet are numb. Cannot sit in a car with the motor on, middle of the parking lot. Cannot stay much longer with the motor off. The windows are getting frozen up. Hard to see.
Who is left? She is still in there, Laura. Can still see her car, the Mercedes, thin coat of frost on it. Trumpet? Do not see him come out. Drummer, do not see her come out. Would have spotted all the drums. The other guy, the cornet, do not see him come out either.
Too many to still be inside. Only eliminates two, and does not really eliminate them.
2:17 A.M.: Trumpet comes out, the black one. Powell. He is bouncing, not gliding like before. Has a hop in his step. Heads straight to a black Taurus, not even locked. Gets right in, drives right off. See him buckling his seat belt, turning on the lights as he goes.
Down to two of them, and the worst two at that. Jones the drummer and Nine Fingers the cornet. It just cannot be easy, can it?
CHAPTER 17
Vinnie Amatucci
The Apartment—Hyde Park
Sunday, January 12
I wasn’t driving today, and the band didn’t have anything scheduled. Last night’s magic was still with me, in the back of my head. And it was talking to me. Maybe I’ve been resting on my laurels, which is kind of stupid because I don’t have any laurels to rest on—I’m a second-tier piano player in a second-tier jazz band. This is why I’m flushing my $100,000 education down the toilet, so I can be barely adequate? This is why I’m busting my ass driving the Fat Man’s cab, because it gives me time to avoid practicing? Lazy, self-deluded, self-satisfied, and stupid.
After this first little lecture, I started to do what I’ve been settling for: I turned on some music to listen to other people play, as if I can learn what I want to sound like by listening to what someone else sounds like. The truth is, it can sometimes make it worse. When you listen, you pick up a few licks from whoever you’re listening to, without even trying to. Even if it’s Art Tatum or Earl Fatha Hines or Horace Silver or Coltrane or Bird—the greats—it’s someone else. But surprise, surprise: I caught myself at it and wouldn’t settle for it, for a change.
So I plugged in the keyboard, unplugged the speakers, slipped on the headphones and played. I picked a few standards, played the melody, the accompanying chords, then a few choruses o
f solos on each tune. But I was just doing what I already know how to do. It didn’t hurt to get the mechanism moving, but it wasn’t what I was looking for.
So I went to the bookshelf and pulled out the old practice books. Exercises, chords, arpeggios, runs, octaves, triplets, the whole classical thing. It was a start, but it wasn’t enough. So I started transposing it all into different keys. I’m most comfortable in the flat keys: F, B-flat, E-flat, A-flat, plus, of course, good old C-major. There’s nothing inherently tougher about the sharp keys than the flat keys—the white keys are still white and the black keys are still black. But most of the tunes we play are in the flat keys.
By the time I got into A, four sharps, I started making mistakes, stumbling, and this pleased me, showed me I was outside my comfort zone. I’m not going to say “I played until my fingers bled.” My fingers don’t bleed from playing the piano, nobody’s do. Whenever I fucked something up, I stopped, took the tempo way down, and played it again, slower, until it was right. Then I moved it faster until the tempo was where it was supposed to be. And after that, I did it a few more times until it sounded less mechanical, until it had some feeling to it.
I took a couple of handfuls of ice cubes out of the freezer, dropped them in a bowl, filled it up with cold water, and dipped my hands in there, slowly stretching, then making fists, for ten minutes, until they started to get stiff. Then I plugged the sink and started to run the hot water. I went back to the stretching and clenching in the hot water, resting every now and then, turning the water off when it started to get too hot. This wasn’t punishment, it was work. A chiropractor recommended this to me when I sprained a thumb once. He called it “The Pump,” and said the idea was to get the blood flow going to pump out the lactic acid that builds up and stiffens the joints and muscles. If you just use heat it feels good for a while but increases the swelling, leaves all that blood pooling. If you use just cold it feels good for a while but it traps the toxins. With any kind of muscular inflammation, he said, use some ice to get the swelling down, then go back and forth, hot and cold, as long as you can stand it.