by John Ridley
“Crying on the inside, getting laughed at on the outside.”
“And that's why you want to be a comedian? To not get laughed at? To get even?”
A guy on a bass finished up what seemed like ten minutes worth of solo, and the place broke out into hand claps and finger snaps, not so much because he was good but because that's what you were supposed to do when a jazz artist finished ten minutes worth of solo.
I asked Tommy: “Why do you sing?”
“Because I have something inside me that I want people to hear, some part of me that's worth listening to.”
“There are parts of you that are worth looking at, too.”
“You're not listening to what I'm saying.” Tommy was just slighdy sharp with that. Comedy is about timing, and when a girl like Tommy—a girl who lived for song—was telling you what music meant to her, it wasn't time to be cracking wise.
First date. I was turning it into our last and only.
Tommy: “I want to say something with my music; I want to speak to people. That's important to me. If you don't have something to say when you're up there”—she flipped a hand at the stage just beyond us—“what's the point of going on?”
“You talk like … I'm just telling jokes. I'm not delivering the Ten Commandments.”
“It's whatever you want it to be.”
“Yeah? Well, I want it to be my ticket to a better place. That's plenty.”
Dissatisfied with my answer, Tommy aimed her attention at the quartet, their riffs suddenly more interesting than anything I had to say.
I WALKED TOMMY HOME, west from Bowery, cutting through Washington Square Park, then up Seventh Avenue. The distance from The Five Spot to her apartment helped warm the frost that had collected between us. I could barely feel my steps on the concrete. The drinks, the jazz, the secondhand smoke from the reefers toked back at the club … Tommy: They all got jiggered into a cocktail that got me good and lifted and very nearly spoiled me for any other kind of a kick.
“Jackie … Jackie!” Tommy's bodiless voice called to me from some other place.
I stopped. I turned around. Tommy's voice had no body because she was standing in a doorway ten paces behind me. I was so far gone on my trip, I hadn't even noticed she'd stopped walking.
“This is my apartment.”
I just sort of nodded to that incidentally, didn't say anything, as if it was nothing but normal for a guy to leave a girl standing.
“Are you all right?”
I was flush and I was sailing. I was a man in love. “Yeah. Fine.”
I walked back over to Tommy and stood.
She stood.
I kept standing.
We both stood around.
Twenty-some years old. I might as well have been in high school.
Tommy broke up our mime act with: “How come you never asked me out?”
“I did. Tonight.”
“Before tonight, and you didn't ask me. I asked you.”
A hesitation, then: “I wanted to. Almost did a dozen times. I just figured you must've had all these guys after you.”
“All what guys?”
“Well … you're this big-time singer—”
“Big-time?” If she'd been in the audience watching my act, Tommy couldn't have caught herself a bigger laugh. “Coffeehouses, a couple of clubs. That's getting over?”
“When you're on the outside looking in …”
Tommy stopped laughing. She gave me a serious study. “Is that the only reason you wanted to go out with me, because you think I'm some kind of celebrity?”
“I wanted to go out with you because before I met you, before I even knew you existed, for my whole life I've been in love with you.”
That was some swinging poetry. It was the kind of jazz a guy doesn't normally try to put over on a girl, and for sure not on the first date. Maybe it was part of my leftover high that got me talking that way. Maybe. Or, maybe it was the straight-from-the-soul truth. I figure it had to have been, because the way Tommy x-rayed me looking for any sign of a come-on, a play, or an angle, if I'd been giving her any less than what I felt in my heart she would've bounced my black behind all the way back to Harlem.
When she was done looking me over, when she was done checking me out and sizing me up: “Would you like to come in for coffee?”
“We had coffee.”
“Coffee's not what you're coming in for.” With that, a smile. A smile more mature than her years.
Just so you know, just so you don't think otherwise of the girl, nothing happened between me and Tommy that night. Nothing much other than that it was the most wonderful evening of my entire life.
SID WAS A MAN not without abilities. Chief among them, as far as I cared, was the ability to work small-scale miracles. He was able to swing me some decent stage time. He was able to finagle Fran a recording deal. Deal was, some little label would press and promote a single as long as the total expense didn't top five hundred dollars. Five bills to cover studio time, session musicians, plus the pressing and the promotion with whatever was left. It wasn't a money gig. At best, if things worked out, it would be an opportunity to get Fran heard outside of clubs. Still, there was enough excitement to go around: Fran's first deal, her first record. The first real break for either of us. We couldn't help but feel it was the beginning of all things good.
The five hundred dollars didn't leave enough cash to hire a producer. Sid would be at the session to make sure things ran smooth. I would be there just to be there, to share Fran's moment.
The little bit of studio the budget allowed knocked the glamour right out of the gig. Nothing fancy. Not the Brill Building or anything close to it. A place on the West Side near the old Tin Pan district. Dirty walls, carpeting decorated with coffee stains. Butts. Everywhere, all over the floor, were cigarette butts smoked right down to the filters. Who in the hell, I wondered, smoked so much?
Like a musical zoo, the space was full up with booth after recording booth of acts laying down tracks glimpsed through glass windows as you passed. The zoo had many creatures. Milk-faced acts, their eagerness busting through the soundproofing; seasoned acts, relaxed and steady—one more session for one more record. It was a job, and there's nothing special about doing your job. Nervous acts. Nervous not because they were new to the music scene. It was opposite of that. They were nervous because they'd been around too long, gone hitless too many years. They were looking at last chances, failure blocking the road ahead, defeat racing up from behind. The truth of things made them sweaty and pasty as they paced their tight little booths—rats desperate to find a way out of their traps. Bad as their I-ain't-gonna-make-it mojo was, as thick as it floated through the studio, it got the big igg from Frances. For the minute, she was still riding high.
Sid got Fran checked into her recording space, introduced to the session musicians. She gave them enthusiastic hellos. The enthusiasm didn't catch. They were by-the-hour guys. Pay-me-and-I'll-play boys. A first-time singer showing up, smiles and ideas about breaking big … ? Nothing new. Where's the money, and what's the music?
The music, the song Fran was going to record, was “Let There Be Love.” It was a light little number, a popular tune with some jazz phrasing. Framed only with piano, snare, bass, and xylophone, it left plenty of room to showcase a good voice. It would make a real nice cut for Fran.
She did a rehearsal with the musicians, did another, did one more, and everyone seemed to be on the same page. There were some instructions passed to Fran from an engineer. Fran nodded to them. The engineer set the tape rolling, the musicians played. Fran sang. From the engineer's booth me and Sid listened, my pant legs used five or six times in a couple of minutes to dry my sweaty palms. I was that nervous for the girl.
Fran finished the track, and it was good. She laid down another one, and it was good, too. A third that was as good as the first, and when she finished that one I read the worry on Fran's face, and on Sid's. The tracks were good … and that was the problem.
They were good and nothing more. Not sensational. Not unique. They didn't make you want to jump up and run out and buy the wax after hearing them. I was Fran's friend, maybe her best friend, and even to me she sounded no different from any other girl singing just an other song. The thing she had going for her onstage—magic, spark, style, whatever—was absent from her now.
So Fran took a little time, studied the playback, asked for a couple of adjustments from the musicians, then laid two more tracks back to back. Like the first three, they were good, that's it. On the next track you could hear stress starting to do things to Fran's voice. Her range got trimmed a little, whatever bounce and spontaneity she had sounded forced, thrown in as an “oh, yeah” afterthought. The number was getting worse, not better. All those spots in the clubs, all those early mornings at Fourteenth Street she'd spent sharpening her craft, didn't matter. Done night after night, year after year, working a stage got to be as demanding as singing in the shower. It got to be routine. The here and now, this recording session: That carried weight. The weight was making Fran choke.
Sid called for a break, ordered up some coffee and sandwiches, gave Fran and the musicians time to regroup. While they were recharging, I saw Sid talking to the guy who managed the studio. The session was going long and it would probably go longer. No doubt Sid was trying to work out a financial arrangement to get Fran whatever time she needed to get the cut right. The look on Sid's face when he was done dealing told me the negotiation hadn't gone very well. He said nothing about it to Frances. For her he was all smiles. He wasn't about to let the expense of things jam up her thinking.
Break over, Fran and the musicians headed back into the booth, laid another track. Same as with the others, it was good and only good. Maybe not even as. The next track Fran busted, and one right after the bassist blew. They were all starting to go stale, the musicians getting sloppy and Fran getting tighter.
The studio manager came 'round again. He didn't say anything, just tapped a finger on the face of his watch. Sid nodded. He got the guy's meaning. More than four hours we'd taken up space that had been booked for two. From his pocket Sid slipped some cash—his own, nothing he'd been fronted by the record company—and pressed it into the manager's hand. That would stretch things some. Not much. Forced into laying out the situation, Sid took Fran aside. Hushed words were passed: There was time for one more take. After that it would just be a matter of picking the best of the bland.
Weighted with reality, slow motions took Fran back to the booth. She paused, breathed deep, then signaled the engineer.
The tape rolled.
Fran stepped to the mike. … Real quick she waved the engineer off.
The tape stopped.
Fran left the booth for the hall with no destination in mind.
The session boys did some eye rolling, some head shaking. Their every expression said, and said with much aggravation: “C'mon, girl. Just sing, girl. Lay your freaking track so we can go home, girl.”
Sid and I stepped into the hall. At the far end was Fran standing very much by herself smoking a bummed cigarette. I don't think I'd ever seen her with a cigarette before, but she worked it with a level of intense concentration as if, right then, smoking that stick was the most important thing in her life. Even at that, with all the effort she put into the action, it seemed she wasn't participating in what she was doing. She rolled the cigarette in her fingers, stared at it without really seeing it, same as you can stare at your hand and not notice your flesh. She was in some whole other place.
I started for Fran.
A hand gripping my arm pulled me back. Sid, telling me without saying so it was no good talking to her. What Fran had to work out she had to work out on her own. There was nothing Sid, or me, or anyone else could say to her, nothing we could do for her except leave her be. This was her session. This was her moment, and her moment was tearing her apart.
Dragging hard, Fran killed her smoke. She jammed the butt into an overflowing ashtray, spilled its contents onto the floor adding to the collected remains of cigarettes smoked in frustration, fear, and deep thought. My previous question was answered.
Fran came striding up the hall and once more into the recording booth. Strong, sharp eyes leveled at the boys. She said: “Follow me, and don't get lost.”
They straightened up. Their looks went from “C'mon, girl” to “Yes, ma'am.”
There'd been nothing in that cigarette except tobacco, but the smoke, the time with herself, the time to get straight, was all that Fran had needed. This was her session. This was her moment, and she wasn't about to give in to it. She was going to own it.
A nod to the engineer.
The tape rolled.
Fran stepped to the mike. Fran sang. She sang like she was singing for the very first time, full of virgin joy. She sang like she'd been singing all her life, rock-solid confident, flowing through the song as loose and easy as she'd previously been tight and constrained. What was missing, what Fran had been lacking before, was there now with every word of every verse. She felt the music. She didn't work it, didn't force it, she just felt it, the groove and the vibe, and let us—the listener—share the sensation. Eyes closed, you could hear her sly smiles and sense the dance of her hands in the air as she conducted herself through the phrasing smooth as drawn butter, as effortless as running water. Just standing there listening, you could feel her delight.
Done, last riff played, we all broke out in claps and whistles. That was the one. That was the one by a long street. The boys, the previously jaded session players, couldn't give Fran enough cheek kissing. They knew soulfulness when they heard it. From Sid she got a bear hug, and the same from me. In my arms I could feel the whole of her trembling.
Sid palmed me some cash, whispered: “Get her home. I'll take care of things here.”
Arm still around Fran, I walked her from the studio to the street. Each step she gave me more and more of her weight. By the time I hailed a cab, the grip of my hands was the only thing that kept her from melting.
“Williamsburg,” I told the driver.
We didn't make two blocks before Fran folded into me, broke down into tears. What once were trembles turned into sobs. For nearly five hours she'd given everything she had. The last track had taken everything she had left. You don't carve off a hunk of yourself and not feel it. From the West Side all the way home she kept up her crying. From the West Side all the way home I held her.
At her parents' apartment I eased her from the cab, walked her up the steps of the brownstone to the building's door. Fran looked to me. The bad light made her drained face all the more pale, her washed-out eyes puffed and blurry.
She said: “That last one was good, wasn't it?” I don't remember Frances ever sounding so lost and desperate.
I put a hand to her cheek. “Better than good. That was the best I ever heard you. The best.”
Fran worked at a smile, gave a kiss and a thank-you for my words. But truthful as I was, my saying she'd been great didn't make her believe. Yeah, she'd sung beautifully. Yeah, she'd bled song. But even at that I knew she wondered if she couldn't have given just a little bit of a percent more. Her singing meant that much to her. She loved it, and the love hurt. That's the price she paid—one of them— for being born different.
Fran faded into the building.
I got back into the cab and it took me to Harlem.
TOMMY WAS HEADLINING at Bon Soir. She was closing up her run, so I went down to catch her act. She was great as usual, great sounding and lovely and all that. Last night of a stand was always pay night, so we had to wait for the waitresses to tip out and the club manager to do his count and the paperwork before Tommy could collect her money. While the manager was doing his business we hung out in the showroom—me and Tommy, the act who opened for her and the backing musicians, the bartender and die waitresses. Maybe a couple of others. The wait got to be a while, so the piano player—his name I don't remember, but I think it was Scott—got onstage and start
ed fooling around some, playing little bits of this tune or that. Somebody, one of the bar backs, called for “Let's Fall in Love,” and he played it and then someone else called for “Lazy River,” and that got played; then he started on “A Sinner Kissed an Angel,” which was real popular just a few years prior, and people started to sing, but no one was sure of the words and we all started making up funny lyrics until finally Tommy went up onstage to set us all right but ended up hamming up die number—doing it Ethel Merman–style—and we all fell out laughing because none of us had ever heard Tommy purposely trash a song before, and she did it hysterically, big and broad and brassy and so funny that people started calling out songs for her to goof on. She did a couple— Scott's boyfriend and the bass player backing—then swapped the mike with the other act, then one of the waitresses … anyone who wanted to hit die stage and do a send-up of Judy Garland or Julie London or anybody else who rated a laugh. The manager came out of his office, count done, but by that time no one was in a hurry to get paid. Our little group had taken on size. One of the waitresses' boyfriends had come by to walk her home, a couple of people had called friends and told them to come down, a reefer got lit, next thing there's a party going on. The manager must've been feeling it because he opened up die bar and started pouring liquor on the cuff and then we were all drinking and smoking and singing and laughing and Tommy took the stage again, did another number, and somebody started going: “Jackie, get up there, Jackie” like I could sing, so I just begged off, but Tommy came down off the stage and took me by the hand and yanked me back up with her. Good luck refusing that. We spent a second trying to figure out what number we could duet before Scott just started playing “That Old Black Magic,” which I barely knew the words to. My contribution to the song amounting to little more than That old black magic ba da da a spell/ That old black magic something something so well … I had to do vocal gymnastics to keep up with Tommy, who tutored me to a fallout finish. Then the two of us started in on “No Count Blues” and got as far as the third verse before we couldn't keep from busting up and our audience couldn't keep from busting up and started clapping and whistling and hooting and hollering and Tommy and me milked some hammy bows as I announced that the two of us would be performing a limited engagement at the Copacabana with, as special guest opening act, Mr. Frank Sinatra … provided his audition for me and Tommy went well. More laughing and clapping, and then me and Tommy gave up the stage, sat wrapped up in each other, blowing hot in each other's ears, and watched another round of songs that went on until well past morning when all of us finally tumbled out of the club smiling and laughing and feeling good. Back at her apartment, still smiling, still laughing and feeling good, me and Tommy tumbled into bed.
