Jack of Diamonds (26 page)

‘Old man like me don’t hear that ’lectric sound too good. For me it got a twang like there’s cats caterwauling on a tin rooftop. But that don’t mean it ain’t good. I ain’t saying that. I got to keep my heart from decidin’ and my min’ open. It a good jazz sound, and it young and got good rhythm and can go solo. All that gonna be mighty handy in a jazz combo. Floss, she like it, but she ain’t sure ’bout the boys back home. They ain’t worked with no ’lectric guitar before and we don’t want no dis-cor-dant note in the band music. Mr No Pain says no problems, ain’t no ’lectric guitar gonna concern him wid the piano.’ Joe paused. ‘That worth considering seriously; when the piano man don’t concern himself, then no trumpet or sax or rhythm section got nothing to complain themselves about. Mr Shantyman says he worked wid one such before in Chicago and he say it was just great. He says that ’lectric sound is where jazz music heading in the future, and we gotta in-cor-por-rate it because Mr Gibson and Mr Fender, they made a whole new ’lectric sound that gonna stay wid us a long, long time.’

All this discussion would take place in Harlem or Greenwich Village, where we’d go someplace Joe knew for our dinner, because you had to be careful you were welcome, him being Negro. We went to a different place every night and then afterwards we’d hit the clubs.

Now, I’m going to begin with Billie Holiday, nicknamed ‘Lady Day’ by her great friend and musical partner Lester Young because of something she sang that I will never forget. Now that I’m older and can understand even better, it makes me want to cry for the human race every time I hear it sung. But when she sang it that first time at the Café Society in Greenwich Village you wanted to cry anyhow. It was so sad, but also so beautiful.

But first about the name, ‘Café Society’. Miss Frostbite explained that it was a send-up because a lady named Clare Boothe Luce, who was the wife of the man who started
Time
magazine, had coined the phrase ‘Café Society’ to describe the rich New York socialites who were still plentiful even during the Depression. I think they must have been the same people coming out of the Waldorf the night we arrived, the men with cigars and white silk scarfs and the women waving their long red-painted nails and wearing gold high-heeled shoes.

Miss Holiday had her shiny black hair pulled back tight over her scalp and tied at the back, like my mom sometimes wore hers after I’d brushed it to a shine every bit as good as hers. As a matter of fact I think my mom’s hair was even better. On one side of Miss Billie Holiday’s head were these white flowers Miss Frostbite said were gardenias. She had a beautiful voice but when she sang this song I could see there were tears rolling down Joe’s cheeks and he didn’t speak for quite a while afterwards. Miss Billie Holiday was dressed in a red evening gown, and she had a nice figure and was also quite pretty.

The song was ‘Strange Fruit’, and the description of southern trees hanging with the bodies of lynched Negroes almost made me cry, too. After listening to a song like that, I was really scared Elmer Perkins might be like those southerners who hanged Negroes, being from Tennessee as he was. I couldn’t help it, although as it turned out I was proved quite wrong. I thought perhaps that was why Joe was a bit concerned about the electric guitar player, and that the ‘discordant note’ wasn’t about the music at all but about having a white man and a southerner in the band.

But Elmer Perkins loved jazz, black music, and even sang the blues real well, but when he did, those people would have this look on their faces as if they couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. Surely it wasn’t coming from the white beanpole with the blue red-rimmed eyes and hair going every which way? Because hearing blues from somebody who looked like Elmer was truly weird and unnatural. Joe would sometimes chuckle and shake his head. ‘Elmer, when you singing them blues, it like Mrs Roosevelt using bad cuss words when she givin’ out her famous quotes to American women. Ain’t never suppose to happen.’

Elmer would laugh and pick up his electric guitar and sing a verse from Dixie. Joe would later say, ‘Inside Elmer, his soul, it black as the ace o’ spades, only that the good Lord, He spilled too much Clorox in the mixture when he was stirring up to make him.’

At The Famous Door on Fifty-Second Street we heard Count Basie. How do you describe the greatest big band that ever was? They were in full-tilt boogie and it was like trying to keep ahead of a runaway express train. Then he followed this with his belting Memphis- and Kansas City-flavoured piano solos and my head was spinning. It was receiving more than it could take in in one go and still stay sitting on my shoulders. I’d lie in bed at night at the Waldorf and the sounds would come rushing, one smashing into the others, swirling and gyrating and booming and soothing and I couldn’t stop them; they were so real that I used the cushion to cover my ears.

Then, the next night at the same place we heard Lester Young play saxophone and clarinet, and it was so marvellous that for a moment there I wished I’d taken up those instruments instead of piano. Miss Frostbite said he was breathtaking and if only . . . I think she meant if only she could afford someone like him as a guest at the Jazz Warehouse.

Then, on the last day in New York Joe said, ‘This afternoon, Jazzboy, we gonna go down to Harlem and we gonna pay us a visit to my good friend.’ That morning Miss Frostbite took me up to the top of the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world! Did you know it has 2500 toilets? If you used a different one every day, it would take you six years and 310 days!

Joe was waiting for me outside the Waldorf at two o’clock. ‘Where we going, Uncle Joe?’ I asked.

‘Oh, we gonna see an old friend o’ mine I think maybe you gonna like some,’ he replied, but didn’t explain any further. Miss Frostbite said she had to arrange a few things and pack for the following morning so she wouldn’t be coming. Later Joe would explain that where we were going was sort of for men only. Not official but understood.

We got to Harlem and made our way to a restaurant called Jerry’s Chicken Place. It wasn’t ritzy or anything, not like the other places we’d been, just some restaurant with a tin cut-out of a rooster that was rusting a bit hanging above the door. I thought maybe Joe’s friend was just someone who sold fried chicken who he knew way back when and we were paying him a polite visit. Inside there were tables and chairs and a piano. A chicken shop with a piano was different, but this was in Harlem, so who knows what’s different? There was a Negro man sitting at the piano when we walked in and I followed Joe, who walked up to him and placed his hand on the piano player’s shoulder. I saw that the man sitting at the piano was nearly blind. ‘Who this?’ he asked.

Joe chuckled. ‘It your old buddy, Joe Hockey, Mr Piano Man.’

‘Hey, Joe! Welcome, back! Where you bin, man? You still that damn place in the boondocks other side them Great Lakes? They cain’t play good jazz there because you gone and stayed and they never found out you no good.’ With this he threw back his head and laughed uproariously. ‘Welcome home, brother Joe.’

‘Art, I want you should meet my good friend Jack Spayd.’ Joe turned to me. ‘Jazzboy, say hello to Mr Art Tatum.’

You could have knocked me down with a feather. I completely lost my voice and when it finally came back I squeaked, ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

Art Tatum grinned. ‘We don’t do no “sir” at Jerry’s Chicken. Here we all brothers and buddies.’ He looked up at Joe. ‘And even old chil-hood friends who once every ten years maybe they bother themselves to come by to pay their respect is still welcome.’ He turned to me and extended his hand. ‘Welcome, Jack. You play piano, white boy?’

‘Only classical piano, sir . . . but I hope to play jazz piano some day,’ I stammered. There was no way I could ever call the greatest piano player on earth by his first name.

‘That where I got myself started. It the best training if you gonna play jazz piano. It jes a matter of practice, practice and more practice. Now you remember that good, son!’ He held his hand out palm upward. ‘Let me see your hands, first the left then the right.’ I did as he asked and he gripped each hand in turn, his fingers feeling, kneading, pulling mine, then he released them. ‘Big hands, that real good, Jack. Now you got to learn yourself speed, big hands and speed, that the beginning.’ He reached out again and touched me on the arm. ‘Good luck and play good, always from the heart, you hear? Jazz ain’t about reading music, it about reading the life and the pain that’s in plain folk.’

Art Tatum then began to play for an hour and a half with only one or two pauses to drink black coffee. Joe explained that he played nights on ‘The Strip’ on West Fifty-Second Street not far from where we’d heard Count Basie, and was getting his hands limbered up. Only his personal friends were ever allowed to come to Jerry’s Chicken Place in Harlem, where he hung out during the afternoon.

When we were about to leave Joe and me went up and said goodbye and I shook Art Tatum’s hand a second time. ‘Next time you come to New York you come see me, Jack. You come play jazz piano. I wanna see them big hands working and the speed you meantime learned yourself. You come back here to Jerry’s Chicken, you hear now, white boy?’

I nodded, too dumbfounded to reply, knowing that I’d never, even if I lived a thousand years, be good enough to dare play jazz piano in front of Art Tatum. ‘Yes, sir . . . thank you,’ I managed to squeak.

Going home I thanked Joe over and over, and then said, ‘Uncle Joe, I don’t think I’ve got it in me. I’m wasting my time with the piano.’

Joe put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Never you mind, Jazzboy. Ain’t nobody ever heard Art Tatum play piano who don’t say that. He the best there ever was and the best there ever could be. Maybe you can be number two. That the only place left for anybody else to play piano.’

For an hour and a half almost non-stop I’d listened to the finest piano playing I had ever heard, jazz or classical. I also knew with certainty it was the best jazz piano sound I ever would hear.

We left Penn Station at eight-thirty the following morning, and as we crossed the Hudson and I saw the New York skyline for the last time, I knew I had just had the most remarkable week of my life. I also knew that my life could never be the same again and that I’d be going scuffing knowing that Art Tatum had held my hands and that this was like sitting at the feet of God himself. You can’t do better than that, can you?

CHAPTER SEVEN

DOLLY’S CLAIM THAT SHE’D
given her all during the First World War as her contribution to king and country certainly contrasted with the twins’ attitude. The time they spent on their backs had precious little to do with altruism. In fact, they planned their war extremely well, based on a healthy respect for profit. They were frequently seen, separately or together, at the Jazz Warehouse on the arms of captains, lieutenant colonels and full colonels, and occasionally the arms had even more impressive insignia.

Joe Hockey, seeing one of them squired by a top-brass military or air force officer, remarked with genuine admiration, ‘Them twins, they got foresight and behind sight and to the side sight. They got the soldier-pleasing business down perfect.’ He’d then turned to me. ‘Jazzboy, that pree-cise-ly the way you got to look at scuffin’. You don’t do no charity, you hear? Iffen you got to sing for yo supper, you make damn sure it gonna be worth yo while. Free piano playin’ soon enough make you taken for granted.’ Over the first few months of the war, Joe had gotten to know the twins well, in an entirely platonic way, I hasten to say. My fondness and respect for their father may have had something to do with it. Because Joe was a natural listener and a wise counsellor, folk seemed to tell him just about everything you could safely tell a man.

Between Mac and Joe I was kept fairly well in touch with the details of the twins’ wartime lives. While the twins didn’t entirely neglect their former customers, they near doubled their rates. The implication (never stated) was that, with so many needy military men away from home, civilian clients would need to pay a premium. According to Mac, far from discouraging their pre-war customers, this seemed to elevate the twins’ status. War is an opportunity for everyone to make money and this was the view of many former civilian clients who now saw the pair as even more desirable and well worth the higher rate.

I guess there’s nothing quite like a world war to perk up a languishing economy, and Ottawa found the resources, or simply printed paper money, until the economic wheels were spinning once again. The Depression was effectively over. Sending its sons off to die in defence of a motherland the vast majority had never seen, whether it be Britain or France, put Canada back on its feet. Meanwhile, our daughters were stoking the home fires and the wartime boom. A million young men marched off to war and were replaced by their sisters, mothers, wives and daughters, working in shifts around the clock, running the factories, utilities, transport, offices and farms, to become a workforce that not only rivalled the menfolk’s but more often than not surpassed it. It was perhaps the first time in the history of humanity that women were no longer simply taken for granted, or not entirely.

Meanwhile, I set out to find my way as a man and a musician. I was off, free of the strictures of the women who so far seemed to have largely controlled my life. I was anxious for my seventeenth year, the year of my waiting, to pass as quickly as possible, but I also wanted to test myself in an unknown environment, so that I would be worthy of wearing a uniform and doing whatever my country thought was necessary to help to win the war.

Like any guy my age I considered myself bullet-proof, and while the idea of being killed in action was something I’d considered in an abstract kind of a way, it wasn’t that I thought of it as
death
– the snuffing out of life’s candle – it was simply something that happened, a peculiar and occasional outcome of military action.