Hey, but look, he said as we came along Convent Avenue to the 140th Street entrance to the campus, I know that I don’t have to go into all this. You already know that you’re as much our own special schoolboy as anybody else’s, including who else but the one and only Miss Hortense Hightower, who sold you to the Bossman in the first place and is in on this, too. In case you haven’t guessed.
Then he said, So here’s the proposition. The Bossman wants you to write up Daddy Royal. When I told him what my boy Eric told me about you thinking about taking a term or so off to do some part-time teaching while deciding what you really want to do with all that big-league education besides teaching it, what he came up with was Daddy Royal and all them prizes and souvenirs and stuff that he’s accumulated over all these years.
All I could think to say was, Hey, man, this is some pretty heavy stuff you guys want to lay on me. But even as I said it I began to smile because it was as if I were all the way back in Miss Lexine Metcalf’s third-grade classroom in Mobile County Training School again and she was going to say, “Who if not you, my splendid young man?”
By which I knew she meant that I, who was only nine, was already her preteenage choice candidate for Mr. B. Franklin Fisher’s Principal’s Corps of Talented Tenth Early Birds.
So I also said, But after all, this is not the first time you guys would be taking a chance on a novice. And he said, Man, the boss already had your number months before Shag Phillips’s emergency came up. Our Miss Hortense Hightower saw to that just out of Alabama pride because she herself was impressed.
Then when I said, What about Daddy Royal himself? he said, The boss is ahead of all of us on that, too. And I mean way out in front of everybody. Didn’t he take time out to personally take you up to see him the first break he got on your first trip to New York? As busy as he always is when we’re in town, he took time out to personally take you up there and introduce you to him. Not as a new sensational fiddle player, but as a schoolboy who was trying to learn how to fit a whole lot of stuff together.
As we left the CCNY campus to come down the steep slope and across St. Nicholas Avenue to 135th Street, he said, Now get to this: when we brought Scratchy Mac into New York with us that first time, the Bossman and Old Pro couldn’t hardly wait to send a limousine up to the Hill so Daddy Royal could put on his light fantastic patent leather boots and come down and pat his feet and wiggle his toes while old Scratchy and me did what we did to Broadway. But he didn’t take Scratchy up to Sugar Hill to go one on one with Daddy Royal.
On the way along 135th Street to cross Eighth Avenue all he said was, Of course you know good and well who the Bossman had called all the way down in Alabama, even when he and Old Pro and I were still talking about what my man Eric had told me. And she also thought that working down there was not only a good idea but also a lucky coincidence.
Then there was only the sound of the traffic and our footsteps as he let me think about what I was thinking about for a while. But when we came on to the corner of Seventh Avenue and stood waiting for the green light with the Harlem YMCA pool-room now only half a block away, he said, So, what say, States? What do I tell the man and Old Pro? Check with Miss Fine People and buzz me anytime tonight or before ten in the morning and if I’m not in, I’ll be buzzing you from wherever I am, because I’m buzzing the boss around ten, probably about lunch.
And I said, Me and you, Papa Joe.
And he said, Charm Miss Fine People for me, Old Pro, the Bossman Himself, and Daddy Royal. Not that I have my fingers crossed, because I know one when I see one. And she’s for real.
XXIII
Well, here’s that down-home johnny-right-on-the-dot schoolboy, Royal Highness said as soon as he heard my voice saying hello into the telephone that Wednesday night. Then he said, What say, young soldier? Damn if I wasn’t already thinking about you just before the phone rang because I was actually expecting to be hearing from you round about now. So, the Bossman and Old Pro sicced old Joe States on you.
And when I said, You know them, Daddy Royal, you know them better than anybody else I know, including everybody in the band, he said, Hell, I probably do at that. And as I’m sure you already found out before I said this the first time, that band is a family, and I guess I’m something like a godfather and grandfather or granduncle all rolled into one. I told you about me and the Bossman and me and Old Pro. And I’m absolutely certain that old tight-butt, trigger-footed Joe States clued you in on himself and the two of them as well, you coming right in there with him and the boss in the rhythm section plus also being from Alabama and all.
Then when I said what I said about what I would be doing on the campus back down in central Alabama, he said, So before you go down there, why don’t you just come on back up here the first chance you get and let’s see what the hell we can do about this thing while you’re down there. You know you’re long overdue on your next visit up here anyway.
And when I
