The Magic Keys by Albert Murray (romantic story to read txt) 📕

the magazine rack said, Mobile, old Cootie Williams used to play all that signifying trumpet with Duke was from Mobile. And somebody else said, old Satchel Paige. Old Satchel already had all of them fancy strikeout pitches, including the fadeaway, before he left Mobile and freelanced and barnstormed his way to the Kansas City Monarchs.

Joe States was standing up then and as Gabe went on to finish brushing and whisking him, he said, And don’t forget the one and only Mr. James Reese Europe, the head honcho of the famous Clef Club back in the States when Hotel Marshall down on Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third Street was the main hip brownskin hangout in midtown. I’m talking about where you’d find all them old pioneering show cats like old Will Marion Cook and old Harry T. Burleigh and where Bert Williams and George Walker used to touch base regularly.

Old Jim Europe came to New York from D.C. but he got his start right down there in the Bay-City-on-the-way-to-the-Gulf-Coast-town of Mobile, Alabama. Yeah, old Jim Europe, Gabe said. Man, back during World War I old Jim Europe took a band of syncopating hellfighters from the old Harlem 369th to France and became the rage of Paris! And even before that he was the one that helped that classy ofay dance team of Vernon and Irene Castle establish the fox-trot. Good-bye, cakewalk, and look out, waltz! Here come the shout, the shimmie-she-wobble, the mess around, the stomp down, the Birmingham Breakdown, not to mention the Charleston and all them Lindy-hopping jitterbugs!

Nice to meet you, Mobile, Gabe said as he walked us to the door. Come on back and touch base with us from time to time. This a regular checkpoint for a lot of down-home cats, especially ones in showbiz and sports. Also a few grad students from Columbia. Now old Joe here usually pops in here when the band’s in town long enough, but always whenever they’re heading across the water. Got to get that fresh touch-up, boy, especially back in the old days when the conks were in. Them Euros dig our music and jive, but they’re not quite down with our hair styling yet. Although they like what we do with it. They’re coming along, but they ain’t quite there yet and so far all them different kind of Africans over there speaking the hell out of all them European languages plus educated British English, don’t add up to much help in the barbershop.

As Joe States and I came down along Broadway toward the subway station he said, Hell, let’s walk a while. You know me. I’ve got to keep myself in shape for driving that twenty-mule team. As you well know, the goddamn Bossman expects me to be as ready as he always is, and I mean always is. So let’s go see who’s at the Y.

And when we came to 145th Street we turned east and headed toward Convent Avenue, which would run on past Hamilton Mews and into the campus of City College to the turnoff path that you could take downhill to St. Nicholas Avenue and 135th Street.

Now look, he said as we stopped for a red light at Amsterdam Avenue, all you’ve got to do is just say you already have enough plans of your own. This is just something we came up with when I heard what I heard from my man Eric and mentioned it to the Bossman and talked to Old Pro. My man Eric just happened to ask me if you had mentioned anything about getting away from that Ph.D. jive for a while and do some thinking and researching on your own while doing a little part-time college teaching back down on your old stomping ground.

Then as we came down the sloping sidewalk to the Convent Avenue turnoff he said, So the three of us put our heads together and the boss came up with something so fast that we realized that he already thought about it some time ago, and Old Pro and I said, Why not? This is just the thing! And I said, Let me be the one to take it up with him, because if the boss suggests it he’ll say yes whether he really wants to do it or not. Because he feels he owes him anything he asks for and the same thing goes for you, Pro.

So here we go, he said, punching me playfully, And I can help you lie your way out of it if you’d just as soon not take it on. We could just say sometime later after you check out the routine down the way.

Then when I said, What’s the proposition, Papa Joe? he said, First let me say this. Because this is not just some kind of stopgap favor. This is foundation stuff, a real fundamental research and writing project and the thing about it is that the man had you pegged from the get-go. And I’m talking about all the way back to when he heard you in that combo with the one and only Miss Hortense Hightower. She wanted him to hear you in that combo in that lounge that night, not because she thought you might be on your way to becoming a musician, but she just wanted him to pick up on how you listen.

Man, he then went on to say, you may not have ever really thought about becoming a musician, but your ears are something else! So who the hell knows? Maybe it’s a part of your gift as a storyteller and lie swapper like back in primitive times even before English was English or, hell, even Greek was Greek or the Bible was the Bible. I don’t know, but I do know you’ve got the musical version of a photographic memory. You hear it, you’ve got it. And that includes absolute pitch, and along with all that, you hum everything like a conductor who knows how all the sections hook