So that was when I said what I said about that and I don’t remember having ever said it or even thought about like that before. I said that there never was a time when I wanted to become a musician per se. I said as much as I always wanted to do things like Luzana Cholly, who was my very first legendary hero in the flesh, I don’t remember ever wanting to become a guitar player, not to mention a twelve-string guitar player. I said old Luzana Cholly’s sporty limp walk was in itself a downright epical statement but whenever I did it, the imaginary object that I would be pretending to be holding so expertly would not be a make-believe guitar but old Gator Gus’s baseball pitching glove. I said, even when little Buddy Marshall and I tried to skip city by hopping a northbound freight train to follow him that time and he himself caught us and brought us back to Three-Mile Creek bridge, neither one of us had thought of ourselves as hitting the troubadour trail as an itinerant guitar player.
And the same was true of old Stagolee Dupas fils, the flashy-fingered jook joint and honky-tonk piano player from down in New Orleans, the Creole and voodoo and steamboat city beyond the Gulf Coast Mississippi canebrakes and bayous where the L & N Railroad made its junction with the California-bound Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe. I used to spend hours just listening to him practicing, sometimes on the piano at home and sometimes all by himself some mornings in old Sodawater’s empty honky-tonk, just practicing and playing for himself or making up new numbers or new twists to use on old numbers. But I didn’t ever really want to become a piano player either. I just wanted to do whatever I decided to try to do like he did what he did playing the way he played the piano.
I said, With old Luzana Cholly what I heard was blue steel routes and destinations and what they required was rawhide-tough flexibility. I said, With old Stagolee Dupas fils and his custom-tailored big-city clothes and jewelry, it was the sights and sounds along patent-leather avenue canyons. I said, I told you that time about Papa Gladstone’s band. But I must say, maestro, as many of those rehearsals as I used to go to and as many of his dance dates as I began listening to from outside the dance halls even before I was old enough to buy a ticket even if I had been able to afford one, I don’t remember ever having any urge to play any instrument for him someday, even though I memorized and could hum and whistle just about every part of most of the numbers in his book and could spot any phrase that any newcomer didn’t get right.
And that was when he said what he said about having not only the knowledge but also the feeling about how it all goes together and if the feeling comes first, so much the better. He said, Our friend Hortense knew exactly what she was doing when she gave you that bass. She knew good and well that a special scholarship college sharpie like you could and would pick up on the basic technical facilities in no time at all and that whatever skill you were capable of just naturally followed.
We came on across Forty-fourth Street and into the building where the studio was, and as the elevator started upward he said, So with that kind of background you actually came into our band knowing why I sometimes kept the fluffed notes in. And I said, Because if you like how it sounds, it becomes the right note. And that was when he said what he said about sheet music versus ear music. So far as his band was concerned, sheet music was there to remind you of ear music.
When we came on back into the studio where Old Pro was waiting for him at the piano, he gave me the old mock French military one for each cheek farewell for now routine and said, And incidentally for whatever it’s worth, I also want you to know how pleased I am that you’re still touching base with old Daddy Royal. Ain’t but the one. As I’m sure you already know, and as I’m also sure you already know what it means to have somebody like that expecting something special from you, even before you yourself have settled on what you would really like to do with yourself.
When I went back to the studio at the end of the week for my this-time-around get-together with Joe States, the very first thing he said as we came on out onto the sidewalk en route to Sam’s Musical Supply Shop on Forty-ninth Street between Sixth Avenue and Times Square was also about something that Royal Highness had said about me.
Well now, just let me say this, my man. Old Daddy Royal has got your number. So if the impression you’re making on them profs down there at that university is anything like your hitting it off with him, you got this grad school gig off and popping like these old thugs in this outfit hitting when the Bossman sics them on with one of our old surefire getaway jump tunes. Man, talking about a bunch of jackrabbits! Man, when the Bossman sics them splibs in that outfit on a Broadway audience they hit like they got the lowdown on the mainstem of every metropolis there ever was.
XII
When I finally told Taft Edison about the time I had spent on the road with the band, I said, Man, it began as an incredible summer transition job that I needed because I had to get enough cash from somewhere to supplement the graduate school fellowship grant that I had been awarded along with my B.A. degree at commencement
