“If I wrap it around the other way it’ll come apart.”
“No it won’t,” he said. “Try it.”
I tried it. “See, Rory. I told you it’d come apart.”
“You didn’t do it right. You got to push it up through there and then around here.”
“I could do that easy enough if I had three hands,” I said.
“Like this,” he said, grabbing on to one end.
“Leggo, you’re strangling me.” But in the end we got a knot that I figured would pass—about the size and shape of a crabapple, I had to admit, and the thin part of the tie stuck out below the fat part a couple of inches, but at least I had on a necktie. Then we flew out of there and over to Halsted Street.
The tea dance was being held in a Jewish temple and was supposed to run from four o’clock to six. Not being Jewish, I didn’t know what the dance was for, but it didn’t matter. We marched up to the front door. A fat guy in a yarmulke was standing there. “I’m with the band,” I said.
He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “Around back,” he said. “Musicians around back.”
We went down the alley, up a short flight of iron stairs and in. There was a low stage at one end of the room, flowers in vases on tables against the wall, a couple of potted plants. Already a bunch of kids dressed up in suits and dresses were milling around. Tommy and the others were on the stage—saxophone, another saxophone doubling on the clarinet, drums, piano, banjo. Tommy looked at me, but didn’t say anything, just went on warming up. Me and Rory went down to the bandstand where there was a row of chairs against the wall, and sat down. I felt pretty nervous. We couldn’t get away with claiming we were with the band when we weren’t up there playing. I tried to think up a good story, like how a couple of the musicians weren’t feeling too good, and we were there just in case. It didn’t seem like a very good story; luckily, nobody bothered us.
Then the band started to play and I was in my glory. I sat there tapping my foot, swallowed up in the music. The world around me was gone—Rory was gone, the dancers were gone, the temple was gone—the only thing in the world for me was the music. On and on it went. Time stopped moving.
Finally they took a break. Tommy laid his horn on the piano and came over to me. The other musicians drifted outside into the alley. Tommy put his hand on my shoulder. “You got your horn?”
I gestured down under my feet. “It’s there.”
“I talked to the fellas. This clarinet player, Teschemacher, he’s the leader. The one with glasses. He said to come up at the end of the next set for a number.” He stuck his thumb at Rory. “Who’s this? He want to sit in?”
“That’s Rory I told you about. He doesn’t play anything.”
“My ma has a phonograph,” Rory said. “Otherwise Paulie wouldn’t pay me no attention at all.”
“Shut up, Rory,” I said.
“I’m going to catch some air,” Tommy said and went outside.
I didn’t know how I was going to stand waiting through a whole set. I was nervous and excited as could be. What if I made a mess of it? What if I hit a couple of clams and couldn’t get straightened around? Tommy always said you got to allow for clams: the trick was to forget them the minute you hit them. Some musicians, he said, you’d go on hearing a clam for eight bars afterwards. If you hit a clam, forget it and go on.
But suppose I didn’t forget it. Suppose I hit a clam and froze up—just stood there with my cornet up to my lips and nothing coming out? Finally I said to myself, damn it, I’m not going to freeze. I’m going to play it just like I was sitting on Rory’s back porch. Still, I wished somehow I had a chance to warm up.
The musicians came back, joking quietly about something. Again I fell down inside the music, but this time I listened more careful, so as to get some idea of what I might run up against: the kind of backup figures they were using, the order of solos, if they gave the bridges on the ensemble to the banjo the way bands sometimes did. Playing a tea dance for a bunch of kids wasn’t a big job—two or three hours, five bucks a man, and then they’d go off to their regular jobs, if they had any. With a sub in there on cornet they wouldn’t be able to play any little head arrangements they’d memorized. They were just jamming, sticking mostly to pop tunes the kids knew, like “The Japanese Sandman,” “Wabash Blues,” “My Buddy.” Generally Tommy played the lead, but sometimes he’d lay out, the clarinet player would switch to sax, and then two saxes would harmonize on the melody. It was a nice effect. I wondered if they worked that stuff out in advance, or were faking it. Tommy said a good musician was supposed to be able to cook up a harmony part on the spot.
So on they went, and after they banged their way through “My Honey’s Lovin’ Arms.” I saw Tommy looking over at me. He gave a little wave. My heart jumped. I grabbed my cornet case and trotted up onto the bandstand. “My God, Tommy, the kid’s still in knee pants,” Teschemacher said.
“It’s all right, Tesch. These kids ain’t gonna notice.”
“Okay, kid. What do you want to play?”
“Farewell Blues,” I said. I’d played that thing almost every day for six months. I wouldn’t have thought of playing anything else.
“Stand here by me,” Tommy said. “Back me up until you get loose. When I point, take your solo.”
“Solo?”
“Sure,” he said. “What the hell’s the point of sitting in if you don’t get a solo?”
That sure took me by surprise: I didn’t have any idea they would let me play a solo, and it scared me some. But I didn’t have time to be scared, for Teschemacher was counting off, and then we were into it. I played along behind Tommy, so quiet at first I could hardly hear myself. Just being up there on the stand with real jazz musicians excited me so much it didn’t matter whether anyone could hear me or not.
What surprised me most was the difference it made to play with a real rhythm section. I could feel it going through me in a way I couldn’t playing with a record. That was the most exciting part of it— having that rhythm there to float on.
After about sixteen bars I remembered I wasn’t up there just to feel good; I was supposed to make music. I began to blow out a little, trying to find something to put in behind Tommy—sometimes just a couple of harmony notes, sometimes a little idea to fill in a gap. We came to the end of the second chorus. Tommy swung around, pointed his cornet at me, and blew a little run-up figure to send me off.
It took me by surprise, but luckily I was already into a little idea I was going to use to bridge across from one chorus to the next. It came out stark naked, and scary: ready or not I was playing a solo. To get a grip on myself I dropped back onto the melody, which I’d played hundreds of times, and stuck with it through the first eight bars. But it wouldn’t prove anything to me or anybody else if all I played was melody. I had to take a chance and turn myself loose. So I ran up a scale to a G, and hit a clam—missed the G and got a note that was part E but mostly broken glass. Forget it, I told myself. Forget it. I ran back down again nice and firm to a middle C and I was all right. I sailed on to the end, feeling better and better. By the time I hit the turnaround I was game to take another chorus. But Tommy came back in with the lead, I fell in behind him, and we jammed on out to the end. I stood there, holding the cornet by my side, my hands shaking. I was a jazz musician.
Tommy put his arm over my shoulders. “You did good, kid.”
Teschemacher put the cap over his mouthpiece. “Yeah, you were all right, kid. Tommy must have taught you something. You know all the tunes?”
I thought about lying, but Tommy was standing there. “A few,” I said.
“Stick with it,” Tesch said. Then they all went off the stand and out into the alley
Rory and I followed them. They stood around talking. I figured that me and Rory would stand around and listen to them talk, just so we could feel like we were jazz musicians, too, but Tommy gave my shoulder another squeeze, and said, “See you around, kid.” I guess there was a limit to
how much they wanted kids our age around.
AFTER THAT, ANYTHING to do with school went flying out the window. Same with the plumbing business. I was a jazz musician, and that was that. What difference did it make that Pa had a good thing set up for me and John? I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. John could have it, and the money that went with it, too, even if we could end up on Easy Street the way Pa figured—put on a suit and tie and never pick up a wrench again. What did any of that mean to me? What did I care about a suit and a tie? What did I care about Easy Street? The only thing that meant anything to me was standing up on some bandstand with that rhythm sliding through me, flinging out a string of notes like a shower of water drops shot out into the sunlight. Sure, maybe I’d get rich and maybe I’d get famous, and maybe I wouldn’t get either. It’d be nice to be rich and famous, I figured. But getting rich and famous wasn’t the point of it. The point was that rhythm and those notes like drops of water flying in the sunlight. That was all I wanted, ever, and I wasn’t going to let anybody get in the way of it.
Why couldn’t they give me any credit for how good I was doing with my music? By now I was about the best kid in the Hull House band—even Mr. Sylvester admitted that. He said, “Well, Horvath, you got a ways to go, but it wouldn’t surprise me too much if you got there.” I told Ma that. All she could say was, “That’s fine, Paulie. I’m real proud of you. But you’ve got to remember, your schoolwork comes first.” It hurt me when she said that. It sure didn’t make me any more interested in doing homework.
I spent the fall on a roller coaster—up half the time when my playing was going good, down the other half when I got a thirty-five or something on a test, and remembered how hard Ma was going to take it when I got left back.
But I was making my way into jazz. Whenever Tommy had something he figured I could handle he’d bring me onto the gig to sit in for a few numbers. The first two or three times he stayed up on the stand and played along with me. But when he began to see that I could do okay by myself, he took to going outside for a breath of air when I was on the stand, and let me carry the lead for a couple of numbers. I was building up my confidence, and I was learning new tunes, too, for while I was waiting my time to go up and play, I’d memorize a couple of tunes, and work them out on my cornet later on.
Tommy fixed me up with a new mouthpiece, too. The one I’d been using had come with the Hull House horn and was probably as old as the horn. The cup was too shallow, Tommy said. I’d get a fuller sound with a deeper cup, and he gave me one he figured was right for me. He said it was one he’d bought by mistake and didn’t like but I didn’t believe it; I was positive he’d gone out and bought it for me. And he was right, for I did get a better tone with it.
But I was in trouble at school almost every day. My eighth grade teacher, Mr. Ward, wasn’t the type to squeeze anyone through. In fact, he was the other way around. Whenever I didn’t do my homework, which was mostly, he took it as a personal insult. By October I could see clear enough that he was going to leave me back if I gave him the least chance. The only way I could pass was to quit everything else and spend my waking hours doing schoolwork. There wasn’t any hope I could make myself do that, and I didn’t even bother to try.
I guess Ma had an inkling of what was up. She was always asking me how I was doing at school, if I had done my homework, and such. But the fact was that she had a lot of other things on her mind besides me. Grampa had took for the worse. It was nip and tuck if he’d pull through and Ma was always running over there to see to things. He was Pa’s father, of course, not hers; but being as Pa’s brothers and sisters weren’t around, she took the whole thing on herself. That was the way Ma was; and I guess that compared with Grampa dying, whether I did lousy in school or not wasn’t so important.
Pa was mighty busy, too. Things had got slack after the war ended in 1918, what with the war industries slowing down and the soldiers coming home and looking for jobs. But by 1923 the papers were full of talk about prosperity: everybody was to have a chicken in the pot and a car in the garage. Pa had more work than he could handle. He had John out on jobs so often, for the first time in his life he missed turning in a couple of homeworks; and me out there, too, whenever he could catch up to me, for I was quick to get out of there on Saturday mornings and hide out at Hull House. Once he even sent John over to Hull House looking for me. Finally Pa bought his truck, a 1919 Ford and took on a couple of extra men, so me and John wouldn’t miss too much schoolwork—not that it mattered in my case. Pa came home late pretty frequent, and sat there with a pencil planning the next day’s work while he ate his supper. He said, “When you’re paying a man a day’s wages you better be damn sure you got work for him to do.”
But busy as they were, they had an eye on me, too. I tried to keep my mouth shut about music, and do my playing when Pa wasn’t around, but it was all I ever thought about and they could see that.
Pa made no bones about it. “I’m giving you fair warning, Paulie. If you don’t do good on your next report card, I’m going to chuck that damn cornet in the lake.”
Then one day I came out of school and there was Tommy Hurd lounging against a lamppost. “Listen,” he said. “I took this damn tea dance for five bucks and now a job on an excursion boat for a double sawbuck come along. Come on down to the tea dance and take over for me. You can have the five. If I cut out after the first set I’ll just be able to make it over to the lake on time.”
“Five dollars? I can have the whole five dollars?”
“Keep it. You got to start saving for a horn, anyways. You can’t go on playing that piece of tin forever.”
Well, it was some feeling. It was one thing to sit in here and there; it was another to go out and play my own job. Oh, I didn’t expect they’d let me call the tunes and set tempos—somebody else would do that. But I’d be out there on my own. It’d be up to me to set the lead for the others to follow. And I’d get paid. I was making my way into jazz all right. I was going to be part of the whole thing. I walked home smiling.
Naturally I got to the job a half hour before anybody else. Tommy didn’t even bother to stay for the whole first set. After about fifteen minutes he called me up, played one number with me and started packing up his horn. “Kid, take it easy. Don’t try to hit no home runs.” He snapped the case shut. “Call your own tunes and set your own tempos where you’ll be comfortable. I gotta run.” And he was gone.
Well, that was a surprise: I was just a kid in knee pants and I was going to run the band on the stand. I wondered how the others would take it. I looked around at them, left and right. “Margie,” I said, and tapped it off, half wondering if they’d come in behind me. But they did, just like they always did with Tommy—no difference at all. It was amazing to me that they would. But of course they were pros, and would do their job, regardless. And I could see the point of it: I knew what tunes I could play, what tempos I was comfortable at, and they didn’t. It made sense to have me call the job. Still, it felt strange, for I wasn’t used to it. Maybe one day I would be.
I got through the job okay, and collected my money, a brand new five-dollar bill. I folded it up real careful and stuck it in my shirt pocket. Then I went on home. Pa, Ma, and John were already at the table, eating chicken and dumplings.
“You’re late,” Pa said. “Where you been? Playing that damn cornet?”
I gave them a big grin and set the cornet case down. “You bet I’ve been playing that cornet.” I pulled the bill out of my pocket. “Look,” I said, holding it out where they could see it. “Five dollars. For playing music.”
They all stared. It wasn’t the Paulie they knew. Then Pa said slowly, “Lemme see that.” I handed it over. He looked at it. “Seems like a good bill,” he said. He looked up at me. “You sure you didn’t steal this, Paulie?”
“Frank,” Ma said. “Paulie wouldn’t steal.”
“I got it playing a tea dance. If you don’t believe me, go over to St. Anthony’s Parish House and ask
them.”
“St. Anthony’s?” Ma said. “On Halsted?”
Pa sat there staring at the bill and shaking his head. “You really earned this here five dollars playing in a band?”
“Yep. You can ask them.”
“Paulie, sit down and eat your supper before it gets cold.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” Pa said.
“Frank!” Ma said.
“Now you can pay me the seventy-five cents you owe me,” John said.
But Pa was smart. He dwelled on it overnight and saw what the catch was. The next night at supper he said, “Paulie, I’m real proud of what you did, going out by yourself and earning that five dollars. But you can’t let it go to your head. Music isn’t no way for a man to make a living. It isn’t reliable. Someday you’re going to want to have yourself a family, and then you got to have something steady. Now, if you want to go out and play at these here dances and make yourself a little something on the side, why I’m all for it. I like to see a boy who’ll hustle for a dollar. But don’t think of music as a real job.”
“Why isn’t it a real job? Look at Paul Whiteman, he makes millions.”
“Maybe so, but for every Whiteman there’s a hundred out there starving.”
I knew there wasn’t any use in arguing with him, but I couldn’t help myself. He was wrong. “Tommy Hurd does real good. While I was making that five dollars he was out on an excursion boat making a double sawbuck.” To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what a double sawbuck was, but it sounded like a lot.
“That the guy who was giving you free lessons? That shows how much he knows about running a business. In this world you don’t give nothing away free.”
“Will you two stop arguing,” Ma said. “Paulie doesn’t have to think about his future. He’s got his schooling to worry about first.” But of course I was so dizzy with jazz there wasn’t any room in my brain to worry about school.
My first report card came just before Thanksgiving. Ma and Pa being so busy, they didn’t notice I never brought home a report card, and being as John was in high school, he didn’t get a midterm report and they weren’t reminded of it.
The Jazz Kid Page 9
