the meantime had ordered filler discs and selected hits from out of town, just in case. Stop gap, for the time being. It looked like we would ride this thing out The jukebox operators had not been approached by the Benotti crowd. All was peaceful.
Like once before, I thought. When the hoods didn’t show, but the jobber got snagged.
“And a guy by the name of Conrad called,” Lippit said. “He was trying to reach you.”
“ What? ”
“Conrad. I don’t know the guy, but he said he knew you.”
I sighed, part relief and part worry, and then I said, yes, I knew who that was, and it wasn’t important.
“He didn’t say it was important. He just said he was trying to reach you.”
Maybe he had called while I had been in the shower. Or while the phone had been off the hook.
Lippit said I should rest for the day and I said thank you and he should stay in touch. Then I called Blue Beat.
I didn’t get Conrad. Herbie answered the phone and said Conrad was taping background for yesterday’s vocal, one of those teen-age turmoil groups who were doing well around town. This was not for the Blue Beat label. This was paid for by their agent.
“Conrad tried to reach me,” I said. “That’s why I’m calling back.”
“Oh! About the girl. Oo-man! Nice.”
“Singer?”
“I don’t care. Oo-man!”
“What did she want?”
“She said she knew you and this was a surprise for you. Oo-man would I like to be…”
“Shut up, Herbie, will you please?”
“What I mean is, any time she…”
“I got that. What’s her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Little?”
“Little? Certainly not, Mister St. Louis.”
“What I mean is…”
“I know what you mean. And she said she’d be back, say at two.”
“To see me, or Conrad?”
“To surprise you. She wants to cut a tape.”
I hung up on the next oo-man bit and had some of my coffee.
I don’t like surprises. I especially didn’t like any surprises at that time, under those circumstances, and with me trying to take a rest for the day. I knew I had told Doris I’d give her a try some time, but that needed preparing, in more than one way. So I checked the time-noon almost, checked my patch-tickling on the inside, and got dressed for the street. I remembered I didn’t have my car and walked.
The inside of the building on Duncan is quiet. The entrance is dark, cool and quiet, the elevator is slow like an old man, and the tenant list tells you very little. It says things like B. B. Recording, Duncan Service, Inc., Lieb Associates, Modern Times Co., that kind of thing. I have no idea what any of those offices did.
B. B. Recording, of course, was my place. You go from the big, quiet, cool corridor, into the small, noisy, hot studio. First thing is a desk and a cable snaking across the floor. There is a phone on the desk, but the cable is for something else. Conrad explained it to me once, but I forget what. There are signed photos on the wall-I know one of them; it’s of Conrad-and posters of high school hops. The agents like the place looking that way. It impresses the talent. Next comes a room which is hard to describe, containing, as it does, tape and record racks, coffee urn, coats and hats, chairs piled with sheet music, disc cutter, tape splicer, sink and towel. There is that cable across the floor and another one hanging in midair and a window which shows the big room for the sessions. The cables in that room defy count, but you can see mikes standing all over, piano, bandstand stuff, and the soloist’s booth. Draped like shrouds across parts of the ceiling is fiberglass batting, to catch dust and kill echoes. One of the things hangs down vertically and Conrad does not permit tacking it up. It fell down that way while they were taping a mountain- type ballad and the record sold two hundred thousand.
Conrad himself was in the holy of holiest, a closet with fan, light, chair, and the mixer. There was a mike on top of the mixer and another window showed the recording room. Conrad, who had curly hair, gray and blonde, was pushing the headphone back down over his ears. The claim goes that his hair is so wiry, it not only pushes the headphone up and away from his ears, but causes special static. He tapped the mike and said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”
The combo in the recording room stopped one after the other.
“Milton,” he said, “I get a nice ping on your pickup but your bass washes out. Move your mike down.”
The pianist did.
“And Skinny is early all the time. You’re early on the bridge and on the break. You got to follow the fiddle.”
Skinny was on the horn and there was an argument. I could see through the window but I couldn’t hear it.
“I got the earphones turned off,” Conrad said into the mike, “so don’t waste your breath.” Then he smoothed them down and said, “I just want you to be better than that West Coast clan. You’re good as them, but I want you better.”
Talk rough and carry a lollypop, is the way you do it with musicians, was Conrad’s opinion.
“All right, this is live,” he said. “You take two, you four, and Skinny builds it for eight. After that, just get back together.”
I sat around in the room with the sink and waited for Conrad to finish. But he jockeyed the combo till they looked ready to drop. “It’s got to sound tired,” I could hear him say. He was working them up to it.
Once I talked to an agent who dropped in for coffee and once I got a word with Conrad, but not enough to make sense.
“What’s the name?” I asked him when he stopped the music again.
“‘I got nothin’ but want a little more.’”
“I don’t mean the piece. The girl.”
“Nice. But I meant to talk to you about that.”
“That’s why I’m here. I want to…”
“Later.”
He put the headpieces down over his ears and talked to the mike again.
I had coffee, I watched the clock, I told Herbie to be sure and let me know soon as she showed. He said, “Why? Are you worried?” and I said, “Yeah. I’m worried.” He liked that and patted his hair and I went down to the restaurant, nervous.
I used the phone there and called Lippit but he wasn’t around. The foreman told me one of the drivers had spotted a Benotti man on the South Side run, and Davy said Lippit was at the jobbers. I called his apartment on an off-chance but Pat didn’t know anything and was in a hurry to hang up on me. I took a short walk and before two o’clock went back to the studio.
Herbie was grinning and grimacing. “Oo-man,” he said.
“Is Conrad done?”
“No. But…”
“Bring her out here,” I said. “She and me are leaving.”
“Sorehead,” he said, and went to get Doris.
I sat on the desk and when Herbie opened the door again I got up and got ready with a busy smile. I should have been readier than that. Pat walked in.
Chapter 14
I asked her to come down to the restaurant with me and she said no. I asked her to step out into the corridor
