And I said, Hey, some kidding! And then I said, For which much thanks, and when she said, I just didn’t want you to forget your down-home upbringing, I said, Not me. When they used to say if you could make it down there on the outskirts of Alabama you could make it anywhere else in the world, I believed them, especially one very special teacher once I got to the third grade.
Which I could tell as soon as old Joe left you with me, she said. Then she said, So let me let you go now. I just want you to know that I’m looking forward to what you’re going to be doing with old Royal Highness. That’s old Joe, Old Pro, and the man for you. And I also got a pretty good idea of what you might be following it up with. So if your research brings you back out this way, let me know if you can. And by the way, our Miss Jewel still has most if not quite all of her blue-eyed American sparkle.
XXXI
When I called Royal Highness that Saturday morning he said, Hey, here he is. Hey there, young soldier. What you say, young soldier? Things shaping up on schedule down there? You ready to lay that comp on me yet? And I said so far, so good in the English Department and that I was just about ready to find out if he thought I was ready yet.
And he said, OK. So let’s see which way you think this thing should go. You know what I mean? Not just another record of the same old rags-to-riches and fame and fortune and comfort jive. I’m not saying that that’s not a part of it. But the main part of it was that I was dancing. That’s what I’m about. That’s what I have always been about, and that’s what this book’s got to get across. Just like the Bossman’s book’s got to be about him and his music. With him it’s food, clothing, shelter, and music. And with me it’s food, clothing, shelter, and dancing, with or without music.
So me and you, young soldier, he said. You’re the schoolboy and I’m the subject matter in person, talking about the natural-born flesh and blood. So let’s figure out how you’re going to get me to tell them in words what I’ve been showing them from up there on the stage in all these different ways over the span of all these years I’ve been up there in the spotlight. Because, hell, you know how folks are. You draw them a picture or show them an act and an imitation of a picture in the flesh and they want you to explain it with a legend or something. Or if you start out with a legend they’re going to want to see it as a picture, and let me tell you something, young prof, being a schoolboy you know even better than I do that pictures were mostly about action long before moving pictures as such came along. Hell, all that was right there for you in primer grade readers and them Sunday school cards, and what about old Santa Claus and them rein-deers in the sky? And don’t let nobody tell you that them so-called still-life paintings can do without rhythm. I’m a dancer. What about when I hit them with a freeze? It’s like a bolt of lightning! Wham! Take the breath out of the whole audience.
But you get my point, he said then. So you tell me what was on your mind about this thing when you decided to pick up the phone and call me this morning.
That was when I said that the theme that I had been playing around with was the dancing of an attitude, which I said was like saying dancing is what I’m all about because this is the way I deal with what life is all about, because what I’m doing when I’m dancing, it is like saying this is the way I see it, the way I feel it, and the way I feel about it. And this is the way I say what I have to say about it.
So then I said, What I jotted down was ROYAL HIGHNESS, The Dancing of an Attitude.
And he said, Hey, yeah, young soldier! You really mean business, don’t you. I can already see right down the road you’ve got me headed along. Boy, you already got me going back to the days when I first found out about this kind of music and this kind of dancing.
Because first there was the church and that kind of group clapping and strutting and shouting. And then there were also the jook joints, honky-tonks, barrelhouse dives, and all that shuffling and slow dragging and bumping and grinding and then the traveling tent shows and all that fancy solo stuff, and that was for me. And then somewhere along the line I realized that I was doing what I was doing the way I was doing it because the solo was like a sermon, a foot sermon in the spotlight. Like the spotlight was my pulpit.
And that was when I said, Hey, I think you just said it, Daddy Royal. Man, I think you just said it. So how about this?
The Dancing of an Attitude
The
Footnotes
of
the One and Only
ROYAL HIGHNESS
And he said, See there? There you go, right on the afterbeat! Footnotes! Boy, you got it! Boy, you know something! Boy, them thugs in that band mean it when they call you our schoolboy. Notice they don’t call you the Professor or young ‘Fess or anything like that, because they know that the Bossman and Old Pro wouldn’t have had you in that band if that was the case. And
