The new drummer was all wrong. “Hold up, guys. Okay, hold it!” Exasperation burred Stick Lewis’s voice. It was a mid-afternoon rehearsal and we were all ragged after two lousy one-nighters with bum turnouts. The air was chilly but sticky, an odd combination but uncomfortably real. “Sounds kind of gimpy in there, drummer,” Stick said. “What’s your name again, anyway?” I leaned into the bass and stared wearily across the empty ballroom. Would anyone show up tonight?
Typical Stick, not to remember a sideman’s name. Not that it was anything personal—I don’t remember him calling me by my name but once or twice. His mind was simply above all that. The cloud across the drummer’s face, however, showed that he did take it personally. “Mutch,” he said, overly brightly, “Ernie Mutch.”
Stick did his patented one-shoulder shrug. “Yeah, okay—Ernie. What’s that you’re playing there? It don’t feel right.”
Mutch thumped his bass drum and his snare in a broken pattern. “It’s a loping beat. It’s a special thing I do, gives it a bounce, like.”
Mutch’s “loping beat” sounded more like a plain old Charleston, and it imparted no bounce whatsoever to “I’ll Remember April,” just as it had not to the previous rehearsal number, which my scribbled notes (I was, and still am, a dedicated note-taker; that’s how I can write this) tell me was “Breezin’ Along with the Breeze.” In other words, the guy wasn’t swinging. And if I’m going to thump a doghouse bass four hours a night, I want to swing.
So did Stick. “Yeah? Well, it’s coming out gimpy. It don’t swing, see, uh, Mutch. ‘Don’t swing Mutch’—huh huh…” Dry tittering rustled and died in the cavernous ballroom. Stick said, “Let’s just stick to the straight beat, okay? Stick to the straight and tight, all right? Right and tight.”
Mutch’s head drooped. “Gee,” he muttered, “okay—sure.”
I had to feel for the guy. We all had our band handles, and at that particular moment he stood in imminent peril of being dubbed “Don’t Swing” Mutch. How he would live with that, as a drummer, I couldn’t imagine. But that’s the problem with drummers: So many of them seem to have their “special things” that they think are a big improvement on the standard rhythmic patterns. What’s worse, they think everyone else is interested. Generally speaking, they’re wrong.
Me, I like smiling faces, in the crowd and on the stand. And that usually—no, always—means smooth. Not gimpy, chopped-up, hopped-up, loping, or moping. Smooth. And, being the bass player, it especially annoys me when the drummer starts pedaling his “special thing,” because it’s me who’s stuck with smoothing it out. And that’s more work than I’m being paid for.
There were eight of us on the Stick Lewis Orchestra. Eight, plus one: Stick. A passable clarinet player and front-man who somehow made people like him. Of course, “Stick” was not his right name. It was Stickney. Hell of a name, Stickney; I don’t know how he escaped being called “Stinky” on the band, as I have no doubt he was in school. Guess “Stick” is easier to say—musicians are nothing if not lazy. The handle was all the more apt because Stick was a bean-pole, tall and slick-haired and full of the fidgets. I don’t remember ever seeing him eat, just drinking coffee and smoking Luckies. Your classic musician’s diet, almost like he was consciously trying to be a stereotype. Which, now that I think on it, was damn likely.
The drummer being properly wised-up to the Stick Lewis way of things, we read “I’ll Remember April” down once more, this time to Stick’s apparent satisfaction. Stick lit another coffin nail and waved us off. “Okay, guys, I guess that’s it. Be back here at 8:30, all right? Downbeat’s nine.” Then he disappeared to whatever secret place bandleaders disappear to off the stand. Stick Lewis did not fraternize.
I’d been on the Stick Lewis Orchestra eight years, and we had hit hard times. Eight years: a long time, you say? Right enough. But aside from Ernie Mutch, I was the newcomer; the bulk of the band had been together long before I joined, and collectively we were about on par with some old married couple who bitched and cursed and couldn’t get along without each other. Overall, ours had been a decent “marriage,” with steady dough, good music, and good times. We were swinging, playing our distinct brand of little-big-band dance music, and thanks to a couple of the guys who were also good writers, we had some good hot charts in the book; “Cock-a-Leekie Cheeky” and “Redskin Rhumba” were solid and kept us in good standing on our territorial circuit around Pennsylvania and Jersey.
Then, people stopped coming. One date after another, turnouts were terrible. Even the joint in Trenton that we’d hit big just a year before: this time—where was everybody? When the manager handed Stick the pay envelope, I happened to be within earshot, and I did not like what I heard. “Sorry, Lewis,” he said, “but the gate was lousy. Folks just ain’t comin’ in no more, everybody’s stayin’ home watching Sullivan. We’re gonna hold off on any more dates for a while.” He turned abruptly and walked away, leaving the band with short pay and me with my first real taste of cold fear.
Then, King left. Danny King, our drummer: the powerhouse, the spark, one of those personalities that shines. Radiates. And radiation is a good thing to have in the band business. Danny’s smile, his flying blond hair, and his beat made the whole room feel alive. No gimping, no gimmicks, just snap-crackle-pop. Made even the old chestnuts, which we had plenty of, sound fresh. And what he did to our hot homemade originals was something else. With Danny behind us, people dug us—they wanted to get near us.
But as I say, he skipped. “Hangin’ it up, guys,” he says in his lazy, Hoagy Carmichael drawl, hair drooping down in that way the girls swooned over. “Times are changing. Gonna park the tubs and make some real money. Real estate, boys, that’s where the dough is.” I have no doubt that Danny has the prospects and the prospects’ wives eating out of his hand and maybe somewhere else too.
That left the rest of us at the Faire Deal Ballroom in Shamokin, PA. It was 1957, the gigs were drying up, and we were scuffling around the hinterlands in our 1939 Reo, pounding our guts out for a bunch of drunken Elks and Rotarys, compromising our considerable dignity at body shop openings and auto wreckers’ conventions, and living on intimate terms with each other’s baloney sandwiches, Lucky Strikes, and flatulence.
There was one other little incidental that had some bearing on our situation: a passing fad known as rock and roll. The new sound, the one that had musicians from Cucamonga to West Jockstrap wondering, Where the hell did that come from? Well, wherever it came from, the public didn’t waste too much time before starting to ask for it. “Come on guys,” they’d say, “rock an’ roll! Rock an’ roll!’ Naturally, the club owners started bugging us, too.
But Stick wouldn’t budge. He hated rock. “It’s just a fad,” he said, “it’ll pass.” Then he’d go off and leave us, the sidemen, to field the damn complaints. So we, we in the minority who could actually see beyond visceral disdain for rock, tried get Stick to bend a little. “Stick,” we’d say, “they’re begging for it. Isn’t the customer always right?”
No dice. “I’m supposed to buy a whole new book for something that’ll be dead next year?” Maybe he had a point. Only, it’s turned out to be a pretty long year. Then he gets down to the real reason he won’t play the new sound: “That stuff is crap,” he says. Okay, fair enough. To thy own self be true, as the famous forgotten one said. Only, don’t be surprised if you find yourself playing for an audience of one. You can’t buck trends forever. Hell, even the old March King, J. P. Sousa, jazzed it up when jazz hit.
And frankly, some of the rock and roll is pretty slick. Take this “Rock Around the Clock”, a catchy little number; we could have made us some new friends with that. It doesn’t take much, and me, I like smiling faces and I like dough. But no; “It’s all crap,” said wiseman Stick, and instead of staying fresh and current and hot, our repertoire shriveled up like an old man’s libido. Stick, who once actually considered himself something of a hepcat, became content to leave the original charts in the bottom of the box and lean on the moldy stock arrangements of “After You’ve Gone” and “I’ve Found A New Baby” and that goddamn “Whispering.” Stuff that had whiskers in Benny Goodman’s time. We tried to get him to keep playing our stuff, but he brushed us off. “Got to keep it commercial,” he’d say.
In our business, this is not an unreasonable line to take. But there is more than one way of defining “commercial,” especially since it had not been all that long ago that we had been getting solid audience response with our charts. So, morale skidded. “Back to the cornfield again,” trombonist Sol “Whorehouse” Morehouse grumbled, as Stick waved us into yet another old chestnut. “What do you mean, back?” retorted lead trumpet Mario “Punchy” Punnicello. “We never left!” By way of added commentary, they’d slip into exaggerated Guy Lombardo-isms, vibratos you could throw the Queen Mary through. Stick never got it–in fact, he liked it. At heart, Stick Lewis was strictly a square egg.
Not all of us were in accord. Second trumpet Mort “Frowzy” Frowze was the old man of the band, pushing sixty and looking every minute of it with his little rummy eyes and blotchy complexion and rubber lips drooping in a perpetual frown. Mort played a beat-up old Buescher that he dropped one night, resulting in a bent bell joint that complimented his hang-dog look perfectly. Frowze had been with Stick near on fifteen years and practically worshipped the guy. “Come on, fellas,” he’d whine when the guys started cutting up, “knock off the crap and play what’s written.” He honestly felt it was detrimental to the “section work.” That was a good one. Our “sections” by this time were down to a bare nubbin of three reeds, two trumpets, trombone, drums, and bass. No piano, no guitar. The result being, our sound, if you could call it that, was a pretty thin gruel. No Stan Kenton walls of brass here, and if one guy was having even a moderately bum night, it showed—badly.
One funny thing about all this was, however schmaltzy the Stick Lewis Orchestra may have become, its verbal vocabulary did not follow suit. “Fuckin’ sliphorns.” We were slouching and lounging around the empty ballroom, lighting smokes, and staring into nowhere. Whorehouse Sollie was fiddling with his trombone slide. He was always fiddling with his trombone slide, and the more he fiddled with it, the worse it seemed to get. “Goddamn cocksucker…”
Punchy grinned at him. “So, Whorehouse, get any last night?”
“Nah,” Sollie growled, “fuckin’ cunt wouldn’t even show me her tits.” I wondered how Lombardo’s boys conversed off the stand.
Sol glared at his dinged-up trombone. “Don’t know why I mess with this goddamn thing…”
Punchy grinned and stuck the needle in. “Dorsey didn’t seem to have much trouble.” Punchy loved ribbing Whorehouse about his pet hate, Tommy Dorsey.
“That mick.”
“Admit it, Sol,” said Punchy, “Dorsey was hard to beat.”
“Dorsey, schmorsey,” rasped Whorehouse, “he was a businessman, not a musician. Played like his spincter was permanently puckered.”
Bernie “Shorty” Short, our six-foot-two (naturally) lead alto was genuinely aggrieved. “Dorsey not a musician? Gee, Sollie, I guess a few million people must have tin ears.”
“Few million my ass,” Sol grumbled. “The public don’t know from shit.”
“Shyster” Van Hyster, our jazz tenor, joined in: “What’s your assessment of Jack Teagarden?”
“That drunken Indian?”
Shyster corrected our genial trombonist. “No Indian blood in Big T, Sol, He’s a purebred son of old Deutschland.”
“Sounds like you got a bad case of penis envy, Sollie, if you want my honest opinion,” Shorty said.
“Which I don’t,” Whorehouse grunted, still worrying his slide. “And you can stuff the two-bit Freud act while you’re at it.”
“Shorty may just have something there,” said Shyster.
“Got nothin’ except his head up his spincter.” It was his current pet word; it made you sick after a while. We laughed, even Frowzy. What else could you do? “Sollie, Sollie…” chuckled the Shyster, lighting his pipe. Our resident intellect was a calming influence on the band.
Punchy changed the subject. “So how long we stuck here in—what the hell’s the name of this place, anyway?”
“Shamokin,” Frowzy rasped, laying his crooked horn in its case.
“Croakin’ in Shamokin,” said Artie “Barroom” Barthun, second tenor, a jaded man of uncertain age who would never talk about where he came from. No doubt he had his reasons.
“Sounds like a chart,” mused Punchy.
“Shithole Shamokin…”
“Fuckin’ one-nighters,” continued Whorehouse. “When the hell are we gonna pick up something decent?”
“Not so many good gigs left,” Punchy replied, “or ain’t you heard?”
“Yeah, like it or lump it.” Shorty’s vocab was stuck in permanent adolescence.
“I don’t gotta like nothin’,” Whorehouse snapped.
Punchy scratched his armpit. “So, what do they do for kicks here in smokin’ Shamokin’?”
“Screw the cow,” Barroom muttered.
“Hey, guys,” yelped Mutch, who had been hovering on the periphery, “anybody want to go look over the town?”
“Nah,” barked Whorehouse, “I seen this shithole before. It stinks.”
“I don’t think so, Ernie,” demurred Shorty.
“All these hick towns is the same,” said Barroom. The rest of us said nothing. The way the light dimmed in Mutch’s young eyes was terrible to see. He shrugged and slouched off toward the door, stood and looked out a while, then reentered the ballroom and stretched out in one of the leather banquettes.
Punchy looked curiously at Whorehouse. “When were you here, Sol?”
“When was I here? Oh, let’s see now…May the fifteenth, nineteen hunnerd an’ forty-four, between the hours of one forty-one and three-quarters and three fingers up your fuckin’ ass o’clock, p.m. How the hell do I remember when the fuck I was here?”
Giggling, the two sidemen punched each other good-naturedly, then Punchy asked, “So, they got any single, unoccupied dames in this dump?”
“Dames?” said Sol. “What do you want with dames, anyhow?”
“Take too long to explain it to you.” They gleefully resumed their punching, glad for some kind of physical activity.
“No, really,” said Punchy, pulling a cheese sandwich from his grip, “what brung you to shittin’ Shmokin?”
Whorehouse laid down his long-suffering horn. “If you must know, I was on Barry Campbell’s band.”
“Bum job, huh?” said Punchy, between bites.
“Eight weeks with the bastard. Called himself ‘Barry Campbell and his Makes-You-Go-Home-Humming-the-Melody-Orchestra.’ Leastwise, used to. Hear he’s pretty much washed-up nowadays, drivin’ an ice cream wagon or some shit, last I heard.”
“Ice cream wagon? That’s funny!”
“Yeah, a real scream. Only, who knows what we’re gonna be doin’ next week.”
“‘Makes-You-Go-Home-Humming…Sheesh, that tag’d gag a elephant.”
“Campbell was even more of a stick-ass than Stick, if you can believe it. ‘Melody’s what they come to hear,’ he says, ‘melody’s what they come to hear’! Never let you forget it. So all freepin’ night it’s nothin’ but the goddamn head, over and over and over again. And then, every number had a motherfuckin’ key change: up a step, every freepin’ number. Made you want to take a nice refreshing dip in formaldehyde after one set.” Sollie wiped his brow and sighed. The memory of bad gigs stuck to you like grease stench from a cheap diner.
“Okay listen up, you hopheads!” Stick materialized from that place he was forever disappearing to. His eyes darted around the room, as if he was looking for a way out. “Okay, now, this hasn’t been any easy cinch, here, but I been pulling some strings with a guy who owes me some favors, and he’s workin’ on gettin’ us a West Coast tour.”
“L.A., Frisco—what?”
“Holy freepin’ Christ.”
“Yeah”, said Stick, “Jesus Christ is right. And he better be riding along with us, ‘cause it may be our last chance. As you know, the bookings have been flat lately. I don’t know where they’re all going, but I do know this rock and roll has really been hurtin’ us. Anyway, you know as well as I do the turnouts haven’t been much lately.”
‘Lately.’ Like he just noticed?
I spoke up: “Wouldn’t hurt to give ‘em some of the new stuff, Stick.” Never say die, that’s me.
“Look, we been all through that. This orchestra has its own brand of music and we’re not deviatin’ it. Okay, so the deal is, the Hi-Lite Ballroom in Portland, Oregon, one night on spec with five nights straight if we do okay. And from there I’m workin’ on Seattle, Tacoma, maybe more, all right? Like I say, this guy owes me.”
One night on spec? What did that mean?
Punchy looked skeptical. “Shit, clear across the country?”
“Yeah,” echoed Whorehouse, “how’re we getting all the way out there?”
Stick waved his hands. “I’m workin’ on the details, all right? But there’s a slight catch, fellas.”
I knew it.
“Okay, it’s kind of embarrassing to have to bring this up, but the deal is I owe one more payment on the alimony, then I’m free and clear.”
Huh?
“The problem is, I don’t have the five-hundred bucks. I’m free and clear after this payment, all right? But without it, we don’t go to the coast.”
“I don’t get it,” said Barroom.
Whorehouse did. “Jeez, Stick, are you asking us to pay your fuckin’ alimony?”
Stick held up a beseeching hand. “Look, fellas, think of it as an investment. Believe me, this job’ll pay it all back easy, all right? And it’s a cinch to lead to others.”
An investment. You had to love the guy.
“Jeez,” said Punchy, “that’s, what—fifty, sixty bucks each.”
Shyster wasn’t smirking anymore. “Oh, dear, dear, dear…”
Punchy’s face darkened. “Stick, now, we heard that kind of thing before…”
Stick was not fazed. “Not with a chance like this, you haven’t. This contact of mine, he knows and he owes me. He’s got good connections and he’s convinced our sound would go over big out there. People are gettin’ sick of combos and this rock an’ roll garbage.”
Our sound. Yes, he actually believed it.
“Jeez,” said Whorehouse, “can’t this friend of yours get us an advance or something?”
Stick shrugged. “Nope, he’s already in Dutch linin’ up the date. Got to be cash money.”
We looked at one another, stunned. I was trying to figure just how this contact of Stick’s could be in hock over booking a gig. And what the hell does making alimony payments have to do with where you’re working? Something else was in play, all right: Stick was playing us for saps.
Just then, the manager of the joint waddled up and motioned Stick to join him in the office. I didn’t much like the looks of that, either.
“Hell,” muttered Punchy, “who’s got fifty bucks?”
“Aw, there ain’t no tour,” said Whorehouse. “He’s just stringin’ us along.”
Well, there it is. Life is basically uncertain. We depend on others for our livelihoods, our, sanity, our faith. When any of those begin to fray, what can you do? Hope, pray, lose yourself in the little details of your particular craft or calling. Keep your eyes and your mind open to new opportunities. Well, sounds good in theory, anyway.
The guys kept bantering while I busied myself giving old Kay a rub-down. My bass is a good, dependable co-worker: plywood back, maple front, not much on the tone but built like a brick shithouse and perfect for road work. She had a lot of good miles in her, yet, and so did I. To no one in particular I said, “I still say we need to put some rock and roll in the book.”
Frowzy grimaced. “This is not a rock and roll band, Bob. It’d never go over. It’s just not our style.”
“I’m afraid you’re both right,” said Shyster, his pipe puffing smoke rings. “You can only bend an oak tree so far. We have to face it: our music’s on the way out.”
Frowzy reddened. “Ah, baloney.”
“I don’t know,” said Shorty, “lots of folks still like to dance.”
“Dance,” Whorehouse snorted. “Dance—before fuckin.’ Trouble is, there’s lots more people stayin’ home doin’ just that, anymore. Without the dancin.’ Let ‘er rip, spit, an’ goodnight, Irene.”
“Wham, wham, good night ma’am,” echoed Punchy.
Mort blew a gust of air through his rubber lips. “The trouble with you guys is you only see the crass side of things. You’re nuts if you think folks are gonna quit dancing.”
Shyster shrugged. “All the same, you can’t ignore the trend. These days, everybody’s a homebody. Captive to the magic box, Sullivan and Lucy. Homo-sapiens-booberus-tooberus.”
“So,” I asked, “where does that leave us?”
No one had an answer.
A far door slammed and Stick came sloping in, shoes clacking hollowly on the dance floor. He did not look pleased. In fact, as he came closer and peered up over the lip of the stage, he looked like hell. “Uh, fellas,” he muttered, “listen up, here. Okay, so I been in there with the manager, and the dope is we’re going on early. Downbeat’s at eight. One set.”
“One set?”
“Wha…?”
“What about the dough?”
“Okay, okay, it wasn’t my idea, all right?” Stick looked worn out. Suddenly, I felt sorry for him. Then he laid another bombshell on us: “Okay, so—we’ll be splitting the door.”
My heart raced. What did that mean?
“Splittin’ the door?” asked Barroom. “Splittin’ with who?”
Stick’s face sort of crumpled up into a wan half-smile. Stick’s mug was one of those that did not really take to smiles. It generally made you wish he hadn’t bothered. Then came the real clincher: “The deal is, they got these rock and roll brats comin’ on after us.”
“What the fuck?”
“Rock an’ roll, here?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I don’t call the shots, all right? Still, one set’s better than…”
Stick stopped short of saying the unsayable. I was glad he did, and glad I wasn’t standing in his shoes. “Anyway,” he concluded, “we’ll be splittin’ the take with ‘em.” He peered vacantly around the room, not daring to look at us. “Sorry, but that’s how it is. Best we could do. Be on the stand at—hell, I don’t know, seven-forty-five.”
Stick shrugged again, this time like nothing mattered, and disappeared back into Cloud Cuckoo Land, leaving us to digest the full implications of this development.
“Well for the love of…”
“Split the take with a bunch of kids? What gives here, anyways? Can’t this dump pay us or not?”
“Fuckin’ prick club owners.”
“Absolute b.s.”
“Well, brothers,” said Shyster, “it’s the changing of the guard. The brats are taking over. That’s the long and the short of it. So they run us out of here? They’re running us out of everywhere else.”
“Ain’t no big loss, anyways,” said Whorehouse.
“Just our livelihood,” I said.
“Sure,” said Punchy, “I’ll just go get a gig as a goddamn janitor.” That sent a chill up my spine I can still feel.
“Jeez,” said Shorty, “now what?”
“Shit,” groaned Whorehouse, “I been a musician most of my life. I wouldn’t know what the fuck else to do.”
“Goddammit,” rapped Barroom, “we were doin’ good! What happened, anyways?”
Shyster slapped us with another brutal truth: “What happened, my friends, is we’re getting old and so is our music.”
“Hey, speak for yourself, Shyster,” Shorty cried.
I couldn’t leave it there. “The band business is dying. At least, the way we know it. And you’re asking, why stick around? Well, in my own particular case, I’m thinking I’ve come this far, and I want to be here to see it go. Some sort of morbid curiosity, maybe—to be on deck when the ship goes down. Stick it out to the bitter end.”
“‘Stick it out’—that’s a good one!”
“Well said, boyo. I’d say the Goose has hit it spot-on.”
“Well,” sighed Punchy, “looks like we’re all in the same boat.”
“Aw hell,” said Barroom, “I been on bands that had bum spells, then come back. And this ain’t the worst of ‘em, neither, not by a long shot. Try workin’ with Elmer Scheeler.”
“Scheeler,” said Punchy. “I remember him.”
“Worked out of Lansdon. Lush king of PA, tipped it up right on the stand. Big lummox, conducted with his finger—his fuggin’ finger! Half the time the damn finger’s goin’ one way and the beat’s goin’ the other. So anyways, we’re headin’ for some dump in the Poconos, it’s about five above, and the goddamn bus conks out. Well, what do you think but numb-nut Scheeler asks us to fork over for repairs. ‘Top of that we got stiffed on the goddamn job—shitheel manager said weather kept everyone away. Hell, we showed up!”
Shyster tamped down his pipe and gave a lugubrious chuckle. “That’s the painful truth, son. We, the professionals, you name it: lion-tamers, chorus girls, movie actors, strip-tease girls, hell even musicians. ‘The show must go on’. That’s the code. And we honor it, honorable souls that we are.”
“You’re damn right we do,” said Punchy.
“Amen,” echoed Whorehouse. “So, if we all know the score here, then why can’t this outfit get with it?”
“Yeah,” echoed Punchy, “loosen up a little. Get back into the hot stuff. Folks went for those charts.”
“And rock and roll,” I barked.
“That Elvis guy.”
“Presley. He’s cleanin’ up.”
“Elvis Pretzel.”
“Sounds like a mouthful of mush.”
“Yeah,” retorted Barroom, “on Sullivan. We should sing so bad.”
“The girls sure dig him,” said Shorty.
“Fuck girls,” muttered Whorehouse, “Fuck Sullivan. What is he, God?”
“Sure, Sollie,” said Barroom, “‘Fuck Sullivan’ all you want, but you can’t fuck public taste. And Sullivan sets it.”
“Oh, ‘Sullivan sets it’? What’s that supposed to mean? ‘Sullivan sets it’. Bullshit! I tell you, we set it. Us, the artists. Wouldn’t be no music without us workin’ musicians.”
I stepped in: “Artists’—a bunch of has-been dance-band junkies?”
“Hey,” objected Punchy, “speak for yourself! We had some damn good shit goin’!”
“Yeah,” said Whorehouse, “trouble was, even when did the hot stuff, Stick’d fuck it up. No sense of timing. Got to build up the dancers, get the girls wet, then hit ‘em with the hot stuff.”
“Never got a dime for them charts of mine, neither,” said Punchy. “Four of ‘em, good charts, and there they sit in the bottom o’ the box. Shit, ‘Canary from Canarsie’ coulda gone somewhere! And no credit for nothin,’ either. Like my modulation in ‘Peg o’ My Heart’.”
Whorehouse snorted. “What do you mean, your modulation? That was my idea.”
“Nope,” countered Punchy, “I thought of it first.”
“Shit too, I was the one took it to Stick.”
“I devised it, Sollie. You stole it from me.”
“Stole it, my ass.” By way of emphasis, Whorehouse patted his generous posterior.
Punchy sighed. “Aw, who in hell cares? Like it matters…”
“Oh, but it does matter,” said Shyster. “Those little things can grow mighty big. Like Artie Shaw’s beguine beat: that was a million-dollar riff. And yet, who can name the poor unsung hero who came up with that little kernel of inspiration?”
“Some poor dope now cleanin’ commodes in Canarsie.”
“Hey, sounds like a chart!”
We savored a healthy laugh then Shyster continued. “It was Jerry Gray, who in addition to ‘Beguine’ was responsible for an obscure little number by the name of ‘A String of Pearls.’ You may have heard of it. Yes, my wastrel friends, that little kernel landed Artie and brother Jerry in the big money. Many a door opened to him on the strength of that one ‘little thing’.”
Sollie’s eyes flashed. “That’s what I’m sayin’ about us musicians leading things. Shaw, this Gray guy, whoever—he did it. This Elvis, now: I wouldn’t exactly call him a musician like us, but right now he’s leadin’ the pack. Draggin’ the whole John-Q-Public along by their suspenders—this little punk kid crooner.”
“So,” I said, “one of us comes up with some gimmick: How does a dance-band hack like one of us take it to the big-time?”
“I resemble that,” said Barroom.”
Punchy snorted. “Goose said it right. We are hacks. We don’t rock an’ roll, we don’t even jazz any more. We got nothing we can really call our own except a few old charts we don’t even play any more. Still, boy, when we’re on, like that night in Harrisburg. Remember that? When the crowd was really with us!”
“Yeah,” sighed Whorehouse, “that was a good night.”
“That was a good gig,” agreed Frowze. “We were on, that night.”
“Well,” said Punchy, “nights like that, I can still hear it. When we hit them lines solid, hit them tones in there all together…”
Barroom shook his head. “Yeah, but who gives a shit?”
Punchy, who had, after all, poured heart and soul into creating original charts for us, was vehement: “Who gives a shit? Everybody gives a shit! That’s precisely what Jerry Gray knew and what the fucking John-Q-Public buys, for Chrissakes! Them little things. The million-dollar riff. And when we’re on, boy, there’s voices in there an’ they’re talkin’ to us! If only we could bottle ’em up, get ‘em out, somehow. Could be the payoff. The big-time!”
“You think?”
“Maybe…”
“Happen to us good as anybody!”
“The pay-off.”
“The big-time!”
“Only one little bitty fly in the ointment here,” Punchy growled. “Stick.”
“Yeah,” nodded Barroom. “Stick. Turned a good hot outfit into a Mickey band.”
Shorty chimed in: “What if we went out on our own?”
“A co-op band,” I said. “I don’t know why not. We’re no worse than the next guys, why the hell can’twe come up with something that’d knock the almighty public on its tin ear?” Oh, I really wanted to believe it.
“Long odds, boyo,” said Shyster, “long odds.”
“What about Casa Loma? That was a co-op, worked pretty well, too, I believe.”
“Yeah,” said Barroom, “Casa Loma! They didn’t do too shabby.”
Whorehouse shook his head. “Aw, it’d never pan out.”
“Aw, nuts,” said Punch, “You’re just giving up. Afraid to get your feet wet. Well, ‘fraidy cats don’t get the fish.”
“Jeez, where’d you come up with that clinker?”
“You know what I’m saying, dammit. We here, right now, with our experience, our know-how: we got as much talent here as anybody. Like Goose says. It’s just whether we decide to make an exploitation of it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s revive Punchy’s charts and tell Stick we’re taking a new direction. We can write a whole new book…”
“After which he says, ‘You’re fired’.”
“No, we tell him, ‘Stick, you’re fired!”
“I don’t like it,” croaked Mort.
“Goose may have it,” said Punchy. “Stick, hell–all he can do is walk out. No big loss, the way things is goin’.”
I went out on a limb: “Get a girl singer…”
“Oh, Lord,” muttered Whorehouse, “songbirds…”
A string of female vocalists had passed through the band in my time, but they never lasted long. Stick’s concept of vocalising was strictly follow-the-bouncing-ball, and when one of our luckless warblers tried to interject a little taste of Billie Holiday, for example, he’d tell them, “You’re draggin’ the beat, there, let’s keep it on the beat, straight and don’t be late.” It was painful to hear, but Stick mostly ignored the singers and left them stewing off in the corner, waiting for their little moment of glory. Poor birdies, you’d feel for ‘em, sitting there. After a few nights of that, they’d walk—and this at a time when girl singers were bigger than ever. Club owners had begun to demand them, and I know that we lost at least one job on this account. Strike another blow for commercial savvy.
“Goose is right,” said Punchy. “The public wants singers. A good vocalist’d open some doors.”
“Maybe so,” nodded Barroom, “maybe so. We got to exercise a little creativity and start gettin’ actually serious about what we’re doing, here. Artie Shaw and Benny and the rest didn’t hit it big just sittin’ around bellyaching. They hammered it out.”
“Okay,” interjected Sollie, “so who’s gonna take over the bookin’, you or your Aunt Fanny?”
“Stick Lewis Orchestra minus Stick,” said Shorty. “Don’t sound right.”
“It isn’t right,” mourned Frowzy.
Maybe it was too much. We were about played out, and facing reality is not for sissies or musicians.
“Let’s face it,” said Barroom, “in this racket you got to have something to fall back on during the dry spells. You got to have a plan.”
“So, what’s your big plan?”, dared Whorehouse.
Barroom crossed his arms. “As a matter of fact, I got my own food line.”
That stopped us cold.
“Food line? What–shit on a shingle?”
“You ever hear of Spaetzle?”
“No,” replied Whorehouse, “and neither has my lucky dumb son of a bitch gut.”
“Well, Sol, you’re missin’ out. Spaetzle is German noodles. My ma made ‘em. Real good, ‘specially with beer.”
The Shyster nodded: “I’ve had it. Toothsome fare, that Hoch Deutch cuisine.”
Whorehouse was unimpressed. “This is your food line? Some kind of Kraut noodles?”
“No, it is not. If you’d let me finish, here, my food line is an Americanized invention of it. I call it ‘Schmetzels’.”
“Schmet—huh?”
“Elvis the Schmetzel!”
“Schmetzel. You take your spaetzle noodle and make it little harder so you can eat it out of the bag. A nice light crust with a little bit of salt, see, like a pretzel, only softer, creamier. A pretzel combined with a spaetzle: Schmetzels.”
“Holy bleedin’ Christ. Where are you gonna dig up the dough to make these schmatzels or whatever you call ’em, anywho?”
“Schmetzels. I got avenues…”
“Avenues.”
“Yeah, avenues. ‘Cause it’s getting pretty obvious to me, maybe if not to you geniuses, that this band business is dyin’.”
“I’m afraid brother Barroom is right,” sighed Shyster, who had been quietly studying the ceiling. “This is twilight time. You know it, we all know it. Where are the dance halls today, if you please? The Palomars, the Palladiums, the Aragons? Closed, that’s where. Just the other day I happened to read a little piece in Esquire entitled ‘Ballrooms of the Past.’ ‘The past’—how does that grab you? Television and rock and roll have triumphed. And ‘the past,’ me boys, is we.”
“Awww,” objected Frowzy, “they’ll always be a need for music.”
“And musicians,” affirmed Whorehouse.
“Aa-men,” said Punchy, who shuffled off to the john and threw himself into his afternoon ritual, gargling his lungs out. “Here he goes,” Barroom groaned. It was a stentorian thing, Punchy’s gargle: a guttural rasp embellished by whatever notes happened to be in his mind at the moment—random tones up and down the scale, little scraps of “Star Dust” or “Moonglow.” It was excruciating. Another voice muttered wearily, “You wonder he got any lungs left.” The croupy concerto went on for several more minutes, then the flimsy bathroom door banged shut. Punchy shuffled across the hall and flopped down.
“Everything come out all right?” Barroom chuckled.
Whorehouse propped himself up on his elbow. “I been meanin’ to ask you, Punchy—why is it you sing along with these gargle-fests of yours?”
“Helps clear the pipes.”
“You know, the garglin’ itself is bad enough without the grand opera. It’s a major affront, when we’re tryin’ to get some peace and quiet here.”
“A major affront?”
“Yes, I consider it to be a major affront.”
“Waaall, now, Whorehouse, I guess you can tune it out or suck on the old gas-pipe.”
“What about doin’ it pianissimo-like? Takes a real musician to play double-p.”
“If that would make you feel better, I most certainly will not.” Punchy cleared his throat one last time and settled into a booth, his feet splayed out beyond the tabletop.
“Screw you very much.”
I was hit by the sudden and painful realization that I was going to miss those two.
“Matter of fact,” Punchy continued, “you birds might try gargling, too. Cleans out the pipes real good.”
“Only pipe needs cleanin’ out is the old hose-pipe.”
“Broads—they make me want to suck the gas-pipe.”
“Gimme, gimme, gimme,that’s all dames are good for.”
The voices behind the banquettes merged together in an anonymous chorus of grievance and longing. “Yeah, well…Buncha bums like us…”
“Some little office cutie, a nice, prim an’ proper secretary with glasses and a tight little skirt. That’s for me.”
“Trouble is, dames all want somebody decent and respectable nowadays. Want to settle down with their mortgage and their slave-in-the-office-all-day hubby and crank out kids. Musicians—hell, we’re just one step from the gutter.”
“Shit, used to be, a musician was somebody. Could make a good living, show his gal a good time.”
“You mean mail her the check every two weeks, more like it. Come on, admit it, it’s never been easy in this racket. Hell, we’re always on the road, always scufflin’.”
“Makes you wonder if we haven’t traded one form of servitude for another.” Shyster hit home once more.
“Servitude? That another two-bit word?”
“Like slavery only nicer. Meaning, chums, we’re stuck whether we like it or not. Name your poison, choose your weapon, pay your money, take your choice.”
“So that’s all we’re here for,” I asked, ‘servitude’? You make it sound like a total dead-end.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Jeez,” said Barroom, “that don’t sound too promising.”
“So,” said Punchy, “we ain’t here to get hitched. We ain’t here to get nookie. We ain’t even here to make halfway decent music. What are we here for?”
“I don’t know” Whorehouse replied, “Why can’t we just be a bunch of yaps makin’ music?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “we’re getting a little existential for simple old me.”
“Exi-huh?”
“We mustn’t lose sight of the spirituality of music,” said Shyster. “Music is a high calling. And we poor saps have been chosen to follow it, come hell or high water.”
“Spirit-ality?” said Barroom. “Nothin’ spiritual about ridin’ the damn bus with you bums.”
“Or bein’ stiffed by some club-owner.”
“Hell, stiffed by the goddamn bandleader!”
“Yeah. The music game may be all right for a while. But to tell the truth, it gets old.”
“Correction,” said Shyster. “We get old.”
Whorehouse jerked to his feet. “Piss on that! Maybe I’ll pick up the guitar and get into this rock an’ roll.”
Punchy sat up. “Ahh, you’re too old to mess around with a bunch of kids.”
“Bullshit!”
Defiant, Whorehouse stood there, legs spread, arms crossed, cocksure as a young gridiron hero. And in the dim light, his features still had a somewhat youthful cast. But he fell silent and stared off into space. Punchy had said a thing that must not be said. Too old. It was true enough, sure. In our hearts, we knew it. But to single one of us out: that was stepping over the line. Our little band was most definitely showing the strain, not just of life on the road but of thinking that around the next bend the road dropped off into space.
Sollie snorted, “Yeah, well—fuck you. I’m only thirty-six. That ain’t too old for anything.”
“Yeah, sorry, Sol, you’re right.” Punchy’s voice was soft, almost gentle. “Sure…”
I had a sudden, terrifying vision of a stooped, gray-haired me mopping floors in dancehalls I’d once played. I felt sick.
Barroom‘s face popped up. “Shit, we know how to play. We know the business. The business ain’t changed so much as all that.”
“Only the music’s changing—and this rock’s a cinch.“
“Kid stuff.”
“Lead-pipe cinch.”
“How hard can it be?”
A rasping snore came from a far booth. Frowzy was down for the duration, to awake looking another year frowzier.
“Well,” sighed Barroom, “gonna get me some shut-eye. In my book, afternoons are for sleeping.”
“Afternoons are for screwin’,” opined Whorehouse.
“Afternoons are for gettin’ screwed,” added Punchy.
“Which we, as per usual, are getting, thank you very much.”
“You are most welcome sir.”
Stillness settled over the room. In the hollow void of the working musician’s afternoon, time is a lead weight. As if unable to tear themselves away, Frowzy and Shorty continued to fiddle onstage while Mutch stood in the middle of the dance floor staring out at nothing. Suddenly eager to get horizontal, I laid my bass down and headed for the shadows. One by one, the others did the same. It was a very familiar routine.
Sighing and farting, we wrapped ourselves in our topcoats and settled in for the long drag through the dead time. I’ve always hated afternoons. Still can’t quite put my finger on why, only that about two o’clock in the p.m. I start going zombie. My brain fogs up and nothing wants to work right. That, and it’s a lonely world when everyone else is at work and the sun is shining and you don’t have a special someone to help you through it. Yeah, afternoons are for sleeping, but even sleep is gamey on a cold leatherette bench. I let my eyelids droop, and hoped that come downbeat the muses would take pity on this Godforsaken old coal town and its intrepid entertainers.
We’d taken it farther than we ever had on the band. Up to then, it was always the routine pissing and moaning about Stick, the bus, the grub, the gigs, the dough, the dames or lack thereof. This was a whole new territory. A minefield. What words were adequate to help us face a future that was fast clouding up? And when you get right down to it, talking—along with making alimony payments, being financially responsible, and dare I say, planning for that future—is not exactly up the musician’s alley. Bards and troubadours and gatekeepers of the world of dreams, illusion, and romance, we may be. But ask us to talk? Forget it. And you don’t even want to see musicians try to dance.
Somebody was shaking ice cubes. A dull hubbub of conversation rose and fell. Footsteps clomped on the dance floor. Shit. One by one, we stirred and sat up. A gale of laughter and applause greeted our woozy, slack-jawed faces.
Stick stood before us in his white coat, hair slicked to a glossy sheen, clarinet in hand. “Come on, fellas, everybody’s waitin’!” Faces smiled from the neighboring booths. “Hey, Sollie!” a voice shouted, “what did you drink for breakfast?” A few couples were already standing on the dance floor, looking toward us expectantly.
Waiters in short red coats bustled about, and the back bar glowed with an iridescent pink and green light. Punchy coughed and Whorehouse muttered, “Jeez, why didn’t somebody roust us?”
I felt an odd buzzing in my head. The big mirror ball hung ominously overhead, like a hornets’ nest. Somehow, we had found our way into our monkey suits.
The astonishment on our faces must have been comical. “Hey Stick,” one of us yelled, “how’d you pull this off?”
But Stick wasn’t listening. He was on the stand now, waiting. We shook the cobwebs from our heads and climbed onto the stage. Horns gleamed on their stands, music rack lights glimmered, and Stick didn’t even have to call the first number, it was already up. With a sweep of his clarinet we sailed into “Begin the Beguine.” Couples floated onto the floor, the lights dimmed to a twilight shimmer, and the ballroom was flooded with the glow of a million stars.
Something was cold and hard on my cheek. My eyes jerked open. The fluorescent lights were blinding. I clenched my eyes closed, pried them open. Somewhere, leathery footsteps creaked then faded. I rose to a sitting position on the banquette. Across the dance floor, a lone bartender slouched at the counter. I squinted at the big illuminated clock on the far wall: Seven-forty.
A groggy voice croaked from a neighboring booth, “Shit. What time is it?”
“Twenty-to-eight.”
“Shit.”
Throats cleared, tousled heads rose from the banquettes.
“Where we gonna suit up?”
“In the john, where else?”
“Where’s Stick?”
“Probably lookin’ for ways to screw us over some more. Splittin’ the take, my ass.”
I coughed and looked up. The stars were gone and so was the crowd.
We struggled to our feet, smoothed our clothes, rubbed our eyes, and stumbled off to the can to splash water on our faces and change. The typical newcomer, Mutch was first on the stand in his spotless white coat, and eagerly hunkered down behind his kit and began riffing rudiments. And at that moment, after the long interlude of deadly silence and even more deadly palaver, he sounded pretty damn good. There’s something primal in a drum, a call-to-arms that makes you feel almost invincible and ready for anything.
Shorty plumped down in his folding chair, strapped on his alto, and squeezed out a series of skirling arpeggios, while Mort put his hang-dog trumpet to his blubber lips, sighed, and went into his warmups. I picked up Old Maude and went into my customary scraping of arpeggios with the bow. Not that I ever got to use it, but it felt right to keep a hand in.
A door banged. Jangling keys, the slick-haired manager paddled across the floor and opened up. People began trickling in: three or four lone wolves in suits, a couple of gals in camel coats. No ermine and evening clothes here. A trickle it remained, and it looked like the beginning of a slim night. Still, you never knew. We’d seen plenty of what started out crumb gigs catch fire two, even three sets in. Only tonight, there’d just be the one.
The fitful nap had not banished the ball of lead in my gut. I took a deep breath and made sure my bow tie was straight. We had a job to do. Music lights winked on one by one, horns glittered on their stands, and we were, as Stick might have said in that corny way of his, right, tight, and ready for the night. No one was going to ever accuse the Stick Lewis Orchestra of being less than professional. There was only one hitch: No Stick.
He was always the first one on the stand, shuffling music, rearranging the racks, fidgeting with the lights, and looking at his watch like we should all be on the damn stand an hour before downbeat. Not now.
Someone laughed at the rear of the hall; a chair scraped. The bartender rattled ice into a glass.
“Where’s Stick?” Shorty asked, a sickly look on his face.
Punchy looked at Whorehouse. “Jeez, you figure he scrammed?”
“Don’t worry,” Frowzy muttered. “He’ll be here.”
“Maybe he flipped,” said Whorehouse.
“Stick ain’t the flippin’ kind,” offered Barroom.
“Hell, all of us is the flippin’ kind.”
The office door banged open and the greasy manager waddled toward us, his patent pumps creaking. Uh-oh.
“Fellas,” he lisped, uh, we apparently have us a little problem, here.”
I always liked that “we”. You knew something bad was coming.
He continued: “It appears that your leader has taken a walk. Yeeass…” He looked down at a small piece of paper. “Mr. Lewis apparently has left me this note here for you.” He handed the note, which he had no doubt read, up to Shyster, in the first row. He sighed, looked around at us, and quietly began to read:
Guys I have got to go to Trenton and take care of some Business. West Coast Tour
fell through, will try and regroup things soon as I can. Sorry to cut out now but cant
be helped. Will you finish the Date and then get the Bus back to Trenton and park at
Judge’s garage, he is expecting you.
I remember the note word for word, and even exactly how it looked, in Stick’s own style, if you could call it that, because I read it. Several times over, along with the other guys, standing there slack-jawed, muttering weary and wholly impotent imprecations. What the paying customers in the booths—all six of ‘em—must have thought, I don’t know. I only know that Stick had ditched us. Maybe he’d overheard us bellyaching. Maybe he’d overheard us talking mutiny and decided to jump ship first. Maybe I couldn’t even blame him.
The club manager assured us we could do the first set, under the split-take arrangement. I guess he thought he was doing the right thing. We looked at each other, then out at the scattered crowd, which by this time had swollen by two or three weedy clumps of youngsters who slouched against the back wall eyeing us sullenly.
A sudden flurry of activity erupted at the front door. A small mob of kids surged into the ballroom, led by a tall young man in a black-and-white striped jacket and salt-and-pepper slacks, holding a guitar case. He sloped toward the stage, and at the edge of the dance floor he skidded to a stop. “Oops,” he said, peering at us. Then he smiled. And in that smile was the death of dreams. It was the smile of a jackal: a lopsided grin loaded with the easy, slouching contempt of the young for the generation just past. Meaning the suddenly passe swingsters, hep-cats, jazzbos, ickies, and just plain dance-band hacks. Meaning us.
The other kids swarmed around him in a seething, babbling horde: girls in skirts and Levis, and more boys in gaudy jackets and chinos. Not any much too different from the jitterbugs a few years back. But different enough. Out onto the floor they came, jostling and joshing and giggling. More young people crowded in at the back, along with drum cases and amplifier rigs on dollies.
A doleful muttering rippled across the stand: “What the fuck…hand trucks right on the fuggin’ dance floor…the rock an’ roll brats…” It was pathetic, all right, from a particular point of view: an older, wiser, more circumspect point of view, one that respected proprieties and courtesies. The kids stood and stared, and those stares said that they could not have cared less for our so-called proprieties and courtesies. And under those stares, our middle-aged affront slumped into bewilderment. Sollie looked at Punchy, Mort looked at Shorty, I looked at Mutch. Then, we all looked at Shyster, who looked upon the seething young folk with a wry grin.
The Shyster’s cool was admirable. “Umm, yes,” he crooned to no one in particular, “I see.” I think at that moment I actually loved him. I felt a sharp regret that we had probably played our last job together. He stood and addressed the manager: “Well, thanks, old man, but sorry. Without a leader, you see, it’s no-go. We come as a package. At any rate, we understand there has been some alteration in the terms of engagement, and your main attraction is here. Ready and eager, by the look of things.”
We, on the stand, with our white coats and horns and sheet music—we were ready and eager, too. Ready and rarin’ as always, right and tight to get hot and sweet and call forth the dancers and the lovers and the yet unborn. But the eagerness of middle-aged men is not that of youth, and eight sets of flabby, churning, middle-aged guts knew it. One by one, we snapped off our stand lights and began packing up. A stripling voice yelped from the back: “Hey, Skinny, get up there, already!” Another joined in: “Yeah, come on, let’s rock!”
A rising murmur swept the hall as another gang clattered in from the cold. The mass of kids was expanding amoeba-like before our eyes, milling and jostling and joshing. The girls in their poodle-dog skirts chattered and giggled. Shyster smiled sadly at us and purred to the still-waiting manager, “I believe the Stick Lewis Orchestra will take its leave.”
It was the best kiss-off I’ve ever heard. But the manager had already swiveled his greasy head around and was surveying the mushrooming mass of young people. Young folk eager to dance—and drink—all night long. You could see him mentally totting up the receipts, and it didn’t take an Einstein to see where this particular situation was heading. “Suit yourselves,” he shrugged, and flapped off toward the front door. No offer even of dismissal money. Jerk. At that point, who cared?
Mort slipped his hang-dog horn into its case and loosed a pitiful flaccid sigh, like an ox felled by the knacker’s hammer. “Goddammit,” he croaked.
“Looks like I’m on the bum,” said Punchy.
“Yeah,” Whorehouse muttered, slapping his horn case closed, “you and me both.”
Mutch socked his ride cymbal angrily and jerked to his feet. Before gathering up his cases, he glanced around at us, and in his eyes I caught a flash of something like scorn. He was young, after all, young and eager and game for a fight. And if we’d all been young and fresh like him, maybe we would have stood our ground there and defended our territory. But we weren’t, and we didn’t. Into the box went the music, and scuffed leather cases snapped tight over the last glints of brass. I felt kind of sorry for poor Mutch; he never even got a nickname.
So that was it. The last movement, the grand finale for the Stick Lewis Orchestra. The band had been a going thing, a proud bearer of the troubadours’ banner, keeping one bandleader and eight sidemen gainfully employed. We had put green stuff into the coffers of countless greasy spoons and filling stations and bus drivers and fleabag hotels and ballrooms. We had inspired untold romances, breakups, and the spawning of new generations, like the one staring at us across an empty dance floor. But what’s the use of rambling? A new day is here, as it always is, as it was for Sousa and Jelly Roll and the fabulous Dorseys. And it sure as Shinola is going to come along one, in one shocking, shuddering moment of revelation, for our friends in the striped jackets. And what that day arrives, not a few of them will be a lot younger than we were that night in Shamokin, I guarantee you that.
So if—when—it happens, you take it in stride and move along. I like to think we did. Sure, some wake up as janitors and watchmen, basement-squatters and sidewalk-whisperers. But others, like smilin’ Danny King, ease with undimmed smiles into new lines. And what’s one line to another? I wonder if Barroom ever made out with his Schmetzles. Never saw them anywhere, but then I never went looking for them, either. As for Stick, I never heard of nor saw him again. I don’t know if the West Coast tour was really on the level, or just a ruse to buck us up a little longer. Either way, he wasn’t a bad guy, he was just trying to keep in the game like the rest of us. I hope he made out okay.
I never did hook up with a combo. After Shamokin, I headed in at Harrisburg. Nice little town, leafy, quiet, and ringed by the scenic Allegheny Mountains. I always did like the sight of far hills. Once in a while I’ll drop by some joint I played with Stick. They don’t remember me, of course, and I just sit and have a quiet one then head on home. Sometimes I’ll see a combo’s publicity glossy posted in the foyer of some lounge, and a drum set in a corner. I seldom stick around to listen–what do the combos do that we didn’t? It’s all the same deal, scuffling around trying to impress people. And when you discover you really don’t give a shit about impressing anybody, why bother? That’s for kids. Me, I joined a nice little community orchestra and keep Old Maude happy stroking her with the bow. Beethoven and Wagner offer plenty of deep water to swim in.
I worked in a hardware store long enough to discover I actually could stomach the public off the stand, then I threw in with Earl Lott at his music store. Earl is an old-time musician, actually played trombone with Sousa himself, and he likes to talk about his band days and how the Old Man had his own hard time adapting to changing tastes. I get to uncrate brand-new instruments, all shiny and virgin, and help young kids pick out their first horns for school, and guitars and harmonicas for fun. You get an idea about what they like—you see it in their eyes. When they light on a particular instrument, that’s when you know enough to say, easy-going-like, “Go on. Pick it up. Try it on for size.”
Poor dears, they don’t know what’s in store for them. Once in a while, a youngster or parent will ask about the music business: how you get into an orchestra, how much money you can make. I could share some thoughts with them—but then I think of how we shared our thoughts with poor old Mutch. I wouldn’t do that to any kid. The look in their eyes—who am I to mess with that? They only see that shining brass and their reflection in the horn. The reflection blurs out all the zits and nits and imperfections in their faces, irons out the bulges and takes down the pop-eyes, and makes them look like movie stars. And right then and there, some of them get the bug. They see the future. And who am I to say different? Sure, most of them get big ideas that never quite pan out, and instead go spinning off into the dustbin of dreams. Still, if you look into that shining metal just so, you never see bottom.