Evan Hunter - Streets of Gold

“Black bastard,” Luke muttered under his breath, and then said, “Give me your hand, Iggie,” and led me up the steps and to the piano.

I played. I wish I could report that all conversation stopped dead the moment I began, that Biff came running out of the men’s room hastily buttoning his fly and peeing all over himself in excitement, that a scout for a record company rushed over and slapped a contract on the piano top. No such thing. I played the two Tatum solos exactly as I’d lifted them from his record, and then I stopped, and conversation was still going on, laughter still shrilled into the smoky room, the bartender’s voice said, “Scotch and soda, comin’ up,” and I put my hands back in my lap.

“Yeah, okay,” Biff said. I had not realized he was standing beside the piano, and I did not know how long he’d been there. I waited for him to say more. The silence lengthened.

“Some of the runs were off, I know,” I said.

“Yeah, those runs are killers,” Biff said.

“They’re hard to pick up off the records,” I said.

“That where you got this stuff? From Art’s records?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s not a bad way. What else do you know?”

“A lot of Wilson, and some Waller and Hines...”

“Waller, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Takin’ it off note by note from the records, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Mmm,” Biff said. “Well, that’s okay. What’ve you got down of Fats?”

“ ‘Thief in the Night’ and ‘If This Isn’t Love’ and...”

“Oh, yeah, the sides he cut with Honey Bear and Autrey, ain’t they?”

“I don’t know who’s on them.”

“That’s all shit, anyway,” Biff said. “That stuff he done with ‘Fats Waller and his Rhythm.’ ‘Cept for maybe ‘Dinah’ and ‘Blue Because of You.’ ”

“I can play those, too.”

“Can you do any of his early stuff?”

“Like what?”

“Like the stuff he cut in the twenties. ‘Sweet Savannah Sue’ and... I don’t know, man... ‘Love Me or Leave Me.’ That stuff.”

“No, I don’t know those.”

“Yeah, well,” Biff said. “Well, that wasn’t half bad, what you played. You dig Tatum, huh?”

“Yes. That’s how I want to play.”

“Like Tatum, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you doin’ fine,” Biff said. “Jus’ keep on goin’ the way you are. Fine,” he said. “Fine.”

“I need help,” I said.

“Yeah, man, don’t we all?” Biff said, and chuckled.

“A lot of Tatum’s chords are hard to take off the records.”

“Jus’ break ’em up, that’s all. Play ’em note by note. That’s what I used to do when I was comin’ along.”

“I’ve tried that. I still can’t get them all.”

“Well, kid, what can I tell you? You wanna play Tatum piano, then you gotta listen to him and do what he does, that’s all. Why’n’t you run on down to the Street; I think he’s play in’ in one of the clubs down there right now. With Slam, I think.”

“What street?” I said.

“ What street? The Street.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, kid, what can I tell you?” Biff said, and sighed. “While you’re down there, you might listen to what Diz is doin’. Dizzy Gillespie. Him an’ Bird are shakin’ things up, man, you might want to change your mind. Hey, now, looka here,” he said.

“Hello, mothah-fugger,” someone said cheerfully.

“Get up there an’ start blowin’,” someone else said. “We heah to help you.”

“Don’t need no help, man,” Biff said, and chuckled.

“Whutchoo doin’ in this toilet, anyhow?” the first man said. “ Dis graceful!”

Biff chuckled again, and then said, “Kid, these’re two of the worl’s worse jazz musicians...”

“ Sheeee -it,” one of them said, and laughed.

“Been thrown off ever’ band in the country ’cause they shoot dope an’ fuck chickens.”

All three of them laughed. One of them said, “We brung Dickie with us, he gettin’ his drums from the car.”

“The shades is he’s blind,” Biff said, and I realized one of the other men must have been staring at me. “Plays piano.”

“Hope he’s better’n you,” one of them said, and all of them laughed again.

“What’s your name, man?” Biff said. “I forget.”

“Iggie.”

“This’s Sam an’ Jerry. You sit in with ’em, Iggie, while I go dazzle that chick. I’m afraid she goan git away.”

“Hey, come down, man,” one of them said. “We here in this shithole to blow with you , not some fuckin’ F-sharp piano player.”

“I’m not an F-sharp piano player,” I said.

“Hey, man, gimme a hand with this,” somebody said. I figured that was Dickie, who’d been getting his drums from the car. “Come on, Jerr, move yo’ black ass.”

“Any blind piano player I know’s a F-sharp piano player,” the other man insisted.

“ Tatum’s blind,” Biff said, “and he can cut your ass thu Sunday.”

“He only half blind,” Sam said.

“I can play in any key on the board,” I said.

“There now, you see? Sit down with Iggie here, an’ work out a nice set, huh? And lemme go see ’bout my social life. Play nice, Iggie. Maybe you can cover up all they mis takes.”

“ Sheeee -it,” Sam said, and then laughed.

I listened as the drummer set up his equipment and the trumpet player started running up and down chromatics, warming up. Sam asked me to tune him up, and when I asked him what notes he wanted me to hit, he said, “Jus’ an A, man,” sounding very surprised. I gave Jerry a B flat when he asked for it, and he tuned his horn, and meanwhile Dickie was warming up on his cymbals, playing fast little brush rolls, and pretty soon we were ready to start the set. I’d never played with a band before, and I wasn’t particularly scared. I’d listened to enough jazz records to know what the format was. The piano player or the horn man usually started with the head chorus (I didn’t yet know it was called the head), and then the band took solos in turn, and then everybody went into the final chorus and ended the tune. I figured all I had to do was play the way I’d been playing for the past seven months, play all those tunes I’d either lifted from my brother’s record collection or figured out on my own. Biff, after all, was a well-known and respected jazz musician, and he had told me that what I’d played wasn’t half bad, which I figured meant at least half good. Besides, he was the one who’d asked me to sit in.

“You sure you ain’t a F-sharp piano player?” Sam asked behind me.

“I’m sure,” I said.

“ ’Cause, man, I don’t dig them wild stretches in F sharp,” he said. “You got some other keys in your head, cool. Otherwise, it’s been graaaand knowin’ you,”

“Well, start it, man,” Jerry said to me. He was standing to my right. The drummer was diagonally behind me, sitting beside Sam. I took a four-bar intro, and we began playing “Fools Rush In,” a nice Johnny Mercer-Rube Bloom ballad, which I’d never heard Tatum do, but which I played in the Tatum style, or what I considered to be the Tatum style. We were moving into the bridge when Sam said, “Chop it off, kid.” I didn’t know what he meant. I assumed he wanted me to play a bit more staccato, so I began chopping the chords, so to speak, giving a good crisp, clean touch to those full tenths as I walked them with my left hand or used them in a swing bass, pounding out that steady four/four rhythm, and hearing the satisfying (to me) echo of Sam behind me walking the identical chords in arpeggios on his bass fiddle. As I went into the second chorus, I heard Jerry come in behind me on the horn, and I did what I’d heard the piano players doing on the records, I started feeding him chords, keeping that full left hand going in time with what Sam and the drummer were laying down, though to tell the truth I couldn’t quite understand what the drummer was doing, and wasn’t even sure he was actually keeping the beat. It was the drummer who said, “Take it home,” and I said, “What?” and he said, “Last eight,” and the horn man came out of the bridge and into the final eight bars, and we ended the tune. Everybody was quiet.