“Izzy,” said Orly, pleading now.
“One minute, honey.”
“Can we at least talk later? After the show?”
Across the stage, Zutty Singleton had finished securing his bass drum in its case and was about to vanish into the smoky fervor. “Give me a second,” said Isadore, and he turned his back on Orly.
The crowd was too thick to negotiate, so he hopped onto the stage, hurdled across its length, and reached Zutty just as the drummer was being received in the arms of a pale, dark-haired sporting girl. Isadore recognized her: Sadie Levy from Countess Piazza’s Octoroon Club.
Zutty started when Isadore touched his shoulder. “Who’re you?”
They’d only met about a dozen times, and Zutty must have seen Isadore perform another dozen times in the streets of Storyville, even if he’d never caught one of Isadore’s regular gigs at Mix’s or Savocca’s. But Isadore knew better than to point this out.
“Slim Izzy Zeno.” He brightened his face into what he hoped to be a projection of radiant confidence. “I’m on next.” He nodded at Sadie, hoping for some affirmation, but the old sporting girl didn’t seem to recognize him either. Had he changed so much in the last year? Or perhaps he cherished the ladies of the Octoroon more than they cherished him. The Countess was his first patron; he had begun gigging in the club’s greeting room during the morning shift not long after his fourteenth birthday. When Sadie didn’t have customers she got boiled on strawberry wine and requested “Careless Love” or “Melancholy Baby.” During breaks she dandled Isadore on her lap like an infant and poured wine from the bottle directly into his mouth. She kept that up even after he was fully grown, to the amusement of the other sporting girls. Isadore never complained. Sadie had a soft lap.
“Our drummer didn’t show,” said Isadore.
“Sorry for hearing it.” Zutty turned back to Sadie.
“I’ll pay you.”
Zutty pivoted halfway around. “Pay what?” he mumbled over his shoulder, so noncommittal he was barely audible.
Isadore considered the arithmetic. The Reverend would pay a group as popular as Fiss Fass about five dollars a musician, give or take. Isadore couldn’t match that, of course—the Slim Izzy Quartet usually received eight dollars for their honky-tonk gigs, or two per person, and tonight they were playing at a discount. The Reverend knew he was giving them a break, putting them on after Fiss Fass, so when he offered three dollars and twenty-five cents Isadore accepted without hesitation. He would have played the Butt for free, just for the chance to perform for Achille, Heads Big and Little, and, yes, Zutty, not to mention any advance men who might attend. The advance men were most important of all. In the last year King Oliver, Jimmie Noone, and Sidney Bechet had all fled to Chicago; Fate Marable, Frankie Dusen, and Johnny Dodds had left for the riverboat circuit; Ferd Morton had gone to California, and Bunk Johnson was wandering the Delta. Their positions were vacant, and the advance men needed new men with new style. It was, when Isadore thought about it, the most important night of his life. That’s what he had tried to explain to Orly.
To his bandmates too. But they lacked his vision. They claimed to be offended by the Reverend’s offer. Finally Isadore proposed that his three bandmates split the take, a buck each, plus tips, leaving him with the remaining two bits. They went along only because they saw how badly he wanted the gig. Though perhaps Sidney’s loyalty was not quite as strong. No doubt someone had offered him better pay that night, which was why he was nowhere to be seen, and why Isadore was in trouble.
The Reverend waved at Isadore from across the stage. Ready? He tapped his wrist, though he wore no watch.
“One dollar twenty-five cents,” said Isadore. “That’s Big Nose’s share and mine combined.”
Zutty turned the rest of the way around. He seemed conflicted, surprised, and also gently patronizing—as if he were going against his own interest by responding, but had no choice. He had a lesson too important to withhold from a youngster who had yet to figure out how the world worked.
“Boy, I asked you an honest question,” said Zutty. “The least you can do is deliver an honest answer.” He looked at Sadie, hoping for a partner in incredulity, but her eyes were clouded over in a hop glaze. She was at a different bar, in a different city, on a different planet, in a different galaxy. “Now please,” Zutty continued, pained by the effort. “Do you fail to observe that I have some sweet stuff here?”
Isadore cursed himself. What was he thinking—$1.25 for Zutty Singleton? Sure the man was insulted. Onstage, Sore Dick sat mute at the piano bench scowling at Isadore. Drag hunched behind him, doubled over coughing. His bass remained in its case. Isadore scanned the room but couldn’t see whether the two white men were still in the hall. If so, they wouldn’t be for long.
“Fifteen dollars,” he shouted, much too loud, and he inflated with terror and glee upon hearing himself pronounce the figure. “And twenty-five cents.”
Zutty froze, perhaps uncertain whether Isadore was joking or just being stupid.
“Yay,” said Sadie, her eyes traveling all over Isadore without ever alighting on his eyes. “Slim Izzy? That you?”
“What you playing?” said Zutty, skeptical.
“The old pretty stuff at first. ‘Sweet Adeline.’ ‘Cornet Marmalade.’”
“Grown big, huh?” said Sadie.
“I know ‘Clarinet Marmalade,’” said Zutty, prodding Sadie out of the way.
“The drum is the same. Hi, Sadie.”
Sore Dick glared imploringly from the stage. Isadore checked his fob. It was half past midnight; the larger part of the crowd starting to bleed toward the door. “We work up to ‘Pallet on the Floor,’” continued Isadore, speaking double-time, trying delicately to steer Zutty toward the stage. “‘Pallet,’ ‘Chicken Dog,’ then we break into full swing. Later there’s some inventions of my own but nothing you can’t handle.”
Zutty stuck out his palm. Isadore took it for a handshake, but when Zutty’s eyes narrowed in displeasure, Isadore withdrew his hand as if from a flame. Of course: Zutty wanted the jack up front. Why should Zutty Singleton trust a no-count such as Isadore to make good on fifteen dollars and twenty-five cents?
He checked his pockets—frantically, to sell it—but he was just buying time. He knew what his pockets contained: four dimes and two pennies, all he had left after reclaiming his John B. Stetson. He could ask Drag or Sore Dick for a loan, but even if they had enough coin in their pockets, which they certainly did not, they wouldn’t hand it over to another musician, not even Zutty Singleton. And the crowd was tearing out. The Onward Brass Band was playing a block away at Ferrantelli’s, Kid Brown’s tonk had a two-for-one on Ojen frappés, and the ladies who used to work Mahogany Hall were offering their services at the Christian Woman’s Exchange. The Reverend came stomping toward him. Isadore’s hand, palpating his inner pockets, closed around the only thing of value he possessed.
“It’s worth at least thirty dollars.” He detached the ribbon from its T-bar and held out the watch.
“That’s a heirloom,” said Sadie, resurfacing briefly into consciousness. “Silver.”
“It’s real?” asked Zutty, analyzing the gleaming metal.
“Real as rock,” said Isadore.
Zutty took the fob from Isadore’s hand, bent over, slipped his foot out of his purple suede loafer, placed the fob into the shoe, and slid his foot back over it.
“It ain going to break,” he said, seeing Isadore’s reaction. “If’n it’s silver.”
“I’m going to need to buy it back from you at a later date.”
“You can have it for fifteen dollars and twenty-five cents,” said Zutty, suddenly magnanimous. “Let’s git.”
The Reverend’s eyes got white when he saw Zutty making for the drum set.
“Pelicans and pirates!” he whooped, leaping back onto the stage, arms waving at the backs of his receding patrons. “Squirrels and mongoosers! Zutty Singleton is back! Please welcome Zutty Singlet
on and the Slim Izzy Quartet!”
* * *
At least half of the crowd had filed back into the club by the time they rounded into “Sweet Adeline” and some even began to sing along. A few couples Slow Dragged and Fish Tailed—but still Isadore felt the disappointment rise in him like a black fog. He couldn’t account for it. He had every reason to be excited. Onstage at the Funky Butt, playing alongside Zutty Singleton no less, and the band, he had to admit, was parlaying a heavily inflected Spanish: Sore Dick’s piano was a babbling stream, Drag Nasty was a locomotive, and Zutty hit harder, more precisely than Big Nose ever had, even in the original numbers. Orly was watching pridefully somewhere—where, exactly, Isadore couldn’t tell, he couldn’t locate her magnolia in the crowd, but no doubt she was somewhere, beaming. The hall wasn’t full anymore, but there had to be at least two hundred people, more than he’d ever seen from a stage. The Reverend had to be satisfied. Still he could see no representatives from the hotels. Face it, there was a better chance of encountering someone who’d recognize him as the highwayman’s accomplice. The rumor about the hotel men scouting new acts probably wasn’t even true. White New Orleans despised jass music. Check that—white New Orleans didn’t even recognize jass as music. The Times-Picayune, the voice of the gentry, called jass a vice and an atrocity, like the grease-dripping doughnut and the dime novel, its musical value nil, its possibilities of harm great. Still—so what? Why should Isadore care about impressing a bunch of ignorant milksops?
Orly had asked him as much when Isadore promised he would only play before the highest society in town.
“The Roosevelt?” The preposterousness of the idea made her sit up in bed. “You think folks like the Tiltons are going to pay to hear your music?”
“They might learn,” he said, unable to fortify his voice with anything resembling conviction. “Jass could go the way of ragtime.”
“The Tiltons’ idea of music is going to the French Opera House. Jass is workingman’s music.”
“Things change,” he said limply.
“Nothing good ever came from trying to be like white people.”
“I’m not trying to be like white people. I’m trying to get paid by white people.”
But even Orly understood it wasn’t only money. It was also fame, which was another word for recognition. If jass caught on in the white wide world—on the order of ragtime—then its masters would be as immortal as James Scott or Scott Joplin or W. C. Handy. As immortal, perhaps, as J. P. Sousa himself.
Isadore pressed the cornet to his lips and the old chemical combustion—oxygen plus metal times flesh—blew everything else out of his head. He’d heard other players describe performing as a jubilant mindlessness, a physical sensation as ecstatic as sexual euphoria, but that wasn’t quite right. He used his mind too, running through scales the way Mr. Davis at the Waifs’ Home had taught him, calculating fourths and fifths; adding crooks, slurs, and drags; scanning ahead four bars in anticipation; posing and, within milliseconds, resolving questions of harmonic density, chordal patterning, and understructure—all of which was a way of saying he was playing what he thought would sound good. But good was an understatement. It was east and west, top and bottom, in and out, all at the same time. It was chaos and freedom. So even as part of his mind was occupied with time signatures, this other, greater part of him reached beyond time. Wasn’t that the very definition of immortality?
What use then did he have for the Roosevelt Hotel when he had everything he desired right here on this old choir, before an audience that was Camel Walking and Kangaroo Dipping and Chicken Scratching like maniacs? The red teakettle overflowed and people began to line their coins in pious rows along the lip of the stage. The other fellows felt it too. From the moment Drag started pulling on the bass he hadn’t coughed once and Sore Dick hadn’t scowled. You could hear his elation in his attack, the keys babbling like a brook, before cascading in a waterfall of notes, splashing the crowd—yes Dick was downright giddy. Even Zutty grinned like an oyster but maybe that was just the promise of fifteen dollars and twenty-five cents working on him, and all the sweet stuff it could buy. Dick tapered, his cascade dwindling to a ripple, and finally eddied back into the melody. The chorus rose around them and the crowd joined along:
Make me a pallet on the floor
Make me a pallet on the floor
Make me a pallet on the floor
Make it soft, make it low
So your sweet man will never know
Zutty blasted the high hat, the signal for the band to return to the refrain for another eight bars. Then it was Isadore’s turn. He pointed his horn to the sky like a telescope, the way Buddy Bolden had done, made his chest as big as a keg, and blew until he felt his eyes pop. The audience was with him now, and his spirit was high, so when the key shift presented an opening, he launched into one of his own tricks. Just a little one—a taste of the new style growing inside him. Braiding appoggiaturas with acciaccaturas, he made his horn cry like an infant—a furious, overtired, hungry infant, wanting his mama’s milk. Waaaaah, yelped the cornet. Wa-wa-aaaah. The crowd cried back at him, whining and wailing, until the entire Funky Butt was shrieking like a big colicky baby.
Isadore meant to transition to “Chicken Dog” but the fever in the Butt had crested and he couldn’t delay the inevitable any longer. The crowd was famished and he had to feed it or they wouldn’t come back for seconds. He shouted the name of the number to his bandmates and those standing close enough to the stage to hear it started screaming. The excitement carried the length of the room, the rest of the crowd anticipating what was coming. And to think—somewhere out there, Orly was watching! He couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say. She’d finally understand why he loved this indescribable, maddening music. She’d know, after tonight, that he wasn’t just good. She’d know he was the best.
“Cats and dogs,” he yelled, doing his best imitation of the Reverend. “Lambs and lambskins! This one is called ‘The Whore’s Gone Crazy’!”
* * *
After the third encore, the fourth fainting woman who had to be carried to the street, and the fifth (sixth?) complimentary round of beer for the band, Zutty raised his palms.
“I got blisters,” he said, cackling. Isadore couldn’t remember feeling so happy. So what if he never made hotel money? Johnny St. Cyr was happy working as a plasterer, and Alphonse Picou was happy to hammer tin. Happy enough, at least. He was starting to understand why. For another night like this, he’d be happy to slave in the Pit until the entire Industrial Canal was dug. Happy enough.
The Reverend wanted to book the Slim Izzy Quartet for another date and about a half dozen fillies wanted to ask questions about his technique but he put them off. He had to find Orly. It was like her to stand back, off to one side; she didn’t like to traffic with chaos. But he didn’t see her at the bar and she wasn’t on the floor.
There was, however, one of the blond strangers standing there. He was dressed much too sharply for the Funky Butt, in a periwinkle sack coat with matching trousers and a white straw boater encircled by a periwinkle ribbon. He fixed Isadore in a dead stare. “You got a second, Mr. Slim Izzy?”
“Sir?” said Isadore reflexively, and chided himself for it.
“You blow a whale of a cornet.”
“All right,” said Isadore, not knowing what else to say.
“You got a ratty tone too. It’s rare you encounter a musician with a tone of his own creation. Never heard anything like it, really.”
So this was how it happened. Advance men did come to the Butt after all. Come to think, the man looked familiar—he’d seen him on Iberville, hadn’t he?
“I’ll be following you. Where do you gig next?”
“We’re about to solve that. We’ll play again here before long, I suppose.”
“I’ll be there.” The man tipped his hat and made to turn to the door.
“Izzy Zeno.” Isadore extended his hand.
The man smiled awkwardly as
he shook. He gave a British-sounding name.
“Can I ask with which establishment you are affiliated?”
“Establishment?”
“Sorry. Which hotel?”
A beat passed. The pale man gave a strange smile. “I think you mistake me.”
“Ah—you’re with a benevolent hall?”
“The only establishment I belong to is the International Longshoremen’s Association.” The man laughed. “I just like Negro jass. Guess there aren’t a great deal of folks like me.”
Isadore could see now that the cuffs of the man’s trousers were frayed, his shirt collar was slack. He was also younger than Isadore had first thought—twenty-two, twenty-four at the oldest. No doubt he was trying to pass himself off as a big-timer.
“Good luck, Izzy.” The man backed away. “I’m off to Spanol’s. Mary Mack’s Merrymakers are on. Say, you oughta come along.”
Isadore couldn’t bring himself to reply. Desperate, he threw himself around the hall, looking for Orly. The crowd had thinned but still there was no sign of her magnolia. Nor was she outside, where Drag, hacking his lungs out on the sidewalk, confirmed that he hadn’t seen her. Isadore burst back into the club.
“Who you looking for, baby?”
Sadie Levy stood at his shoulder. She’d been patiently waiting for Zutty to finish speaking with a group of chippies. Isadore wondered where Sadie had kept herself since the District closed. Most of the sporting girls had taken up with the wealthiest johns they could find. If they were lucky, they got married. If not, they worked freelance, moving between boardinghouses every couple of weeks, trying to outrun the vice squad and venereal damages. If Sadie was timing with a Negro musician, even one as accomplished as Zutty, she hadn’t been one of the lucky ones.
“Orleania,” said Isadore, scanning the room.
“What?”
“My lady.”
“Girl with the oleander in her hat?”
“Magnolia.”
“She left a long time ago.”
“What do you mean, left?”
Sadie’s eyes crossed slightly as she consulted her memory. “A good thing too. Can’t be standing all night in her condition.”
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