The Magic Keys Albert Murray (read novels website TXT) 📖

Rollo, old Rollo. How about that stuff, Rollo? And he said, Man, what can I tell you, man, I’m off and running like a striped-assed ape. Man, I just had to stop and buzz you before you got to bed.

And when I said, I was expecting this call, man, he said, I’m not going to keep you but a minute, but this stuff is coming at me so fast that all of a sudden I was beginning to feel like the man in that story about mounting a horse and dashing off in all directions. So I’m calling this late because I wanted to make sure to clue you to remind me to tell you about a bunch of fellow teenagers I used to hang out and make the scene in the after-hours rounds with, and how we used to sneak out after bedtime because our turf also included eavesdropping whichever any of those old rent party piano ticklers cutting contests and all-night jam sessions you could get close enough to. And man, sometimes we also used to just trail along, just following our favorite stage show entertainers to their all-night hole-in-the-wall joints. Then we would have to sneak back home to bed before daybreak. But guess what we called our crew? The Dawn Patrol. You remember that silent movie, etc.?

When he came by the library to take me out to lunch that next Thursday, he was carrying a five-by-eight sketch pad in each of the two bottom pockets of his safari jacket. And as soon as he saw me spotting them, he smiled and patted the assortment of colored felt-tipped marking pens in the jacket’s left chest pocket and said, What can I tell you, Hawk? I’m hooked. Like I told you. All directions, coming and going. Man, I don’t dare get fifteen feet away from pen and paper. Man, I have to keep this stuff in reach, even in the bathroom.

So you and your after-hours cut buddies used to call yourselves the Dawn Patrol, I said as we came outside and down the steps to Fifth Avenue and headed south to Forty-first Street on the way over to a French bistro on Madison Avenue that he wanted me to check out. And he said, Making the rounds, man. Talking about making the rounds, and we also used to call ourselves the Rounders. Here come the old rounders, bounders, and sidewalk pounders, which meant that you had to be slick enough not to get spotted by the cops walking the beats and tapping the lampposts and curbs with their billy clubs in those days.

Then he went on to remember that the main avenues were Lenox and Seventh, and the cross streets were 125th, 135th, and 145th, with 125th Street just hitting its stride as he reached his mid-teenage years. And the Apollo was becoming as famous for having the music of the great bands onstage as the Savoy Ballroom up on Lenox was for dance dates and swing band battles. Down the block from the Apollo there was the Hotel Theresa, on the corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue. It was also during this time that the Hotel Theresa bar was just becoming the mainstem where most musicians, actors, entertainers, sports-writers, entertainment page columnists, politicians, pimps, gamblers, and racketeers popped in almost every day to keep current.

There was also the Woodside Hotel, up on Seventh Avenue and 142nd Street. It’s a long block over from the Savoy on the east side of Lenox Avenue, stretching from 140th Street to 142nd Street. By the time I left town for my freshman year in college, the Theresa was the cornerstone of the mainstem and there were joints jumping in just about every block east to Park Avenue and west to Broadway and the Hudson River.

At the cozy little French restaurant, we were seated immediately, and as the waiter left with our orders, I said, Believe it or not, Rollo, but down in that sawmill and L & N section gang quarters settlement on the outskirts of Mobile that I come from, my running buddy and I began eavesdropping outside the old piano and/or guitar jook joints and honky-tonks and at about the same time that we were considered big enough to go to and from school on our own.

I said, We called ourselves the Rover Boys because we were also explorers and trailblazers. And then there was a classmate I started running around with as I moved on from junior to senior high school. We were the ones who eavesdropped on the admission fee dance hall dances, where the bands from downtown Mobile and New Orleans and other towns in the southeast territory used to play from time to time. We called ourselves the Night Owls. But actually we had to be home and in bed by midnight, because we were underage! And then we didn’t have the price of admission anyway.

The latest thing we got a chance to stay up for back then was the radio, with those coast-to-coast network hookups. Back in those days they used to sign off at midnight, so eleven to midnight in New York was only ten to eleven in Mobile. So we knew about the Cotton Club in New York, the Grand Terrace in Chicago, and old Louis at Frank Sebastian’s Cotton Club all the way out in California.

That was when we said what we said about listening to the sports announcers broadcasting the Rose Bowl games, the World Series, and the championship prizefights on radio. And he said, Look, man, we had a radio right there at home, but I’m sure you already know that the Dawn Patrol always had to get together somewhere for stuff like that even if it was in our own living room. Some things you might just take in on your own, but not stuff like that.

He had taken his work pads from the pockets of his safari jacket and I had just started looking at his