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

on some school bell time for a while, hey statemate, Joe States said as we waited for our orders to be served that afternoon of the day before the band headed back out west by way of upstate New York and a swing over into Canada to Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto after its second trip back into town that fall.

I had come up from the Forty-second Street library and he had come across and down Sixth Avenue from the recording studio the band was using on Forty-eighth Street about halfway to Seventh Avenue and Times Square, and which was also only a few doors from the music store from which he had always bought most of his drum equipment over the years.

I can dig it, he said. And so can the boss and Old Pro and everybody else I spoke to. But what the hell, I don’t have to enumerate and elaborate and all that because I’m satisfied that you really know more about them than they actually know about you. Because you came in with us already checked out on us all the way back to our first records and broadcasts. I just want you to know there’s not just only me and the man and Old Pro. Because hey, man, these cats know a special thing when they see it and they pegged you special from day one. And the thing about how you laid that bass in there with us right from the get-go. That let everybody know that you had your own personal way of listening. Everybody in every section felt like you heard every note they were playing. Because you see, now, me, sometimes my job is to make them get to me. And the way you laid your thing in there helped them stay with the man and me. Man, you could have had that job for as long as you wanted it. I mean, even if Shag Phillips had wanted to come back we’d have had two basses. And if you’d wanted to come back we would have had two, you and Scratchy.

Hey, but the thing I’m really getting at, he said as the waiter served our orders, is not just how you fit in the band. I’m talking about how much these guys respect your judgment. Believe me, these cats will lay money on anything you decide to try. And of course that also means if you need some bills, get to us first. Don’t hesitate. Get to us first. Get to us fast.

We were in a restaurant that he had first taken me to one night between shows back during the first week of the run we had had in that showcase theater in Times Square with Earlene Copeland as our featured vocalist. He used it when he wanted to get away from the showbiz crowd he ran into in the snack bars in or near Times Square and along Broadway up to Columbus Circle. We both had ordered oxtail soup and a mixed green salad and pumpernickel bread, which was still something of a New York City novelty for me in those days.

But now what I’m also to make sure you understand is that every cat in this crew knows exactly what the Bossman and Old Pro were talking about when they said what they said when you stayed behind in Hollywood. As we pulled on out to the end of the freeway and headed into the open country again I went up to talk to them and feel them out. And guess what? The goddamn Bossman sounded like he was more concerned about how much I was going to miss having you to be clucking at and carrying on over than the effect on the music. But finally he also said, You know something, Joe? As much as we all liked having him in here doing his special little thing with us, he just might turn out to be somebody that can do us even more good out there doing his thing on his own. And Old Pro said, Whatever his thing turns out to be, I’m sure that what we’re trying to do in this outfit is going to be an important part of it. That’s been my idea about him ever since he decided to put off going right on into graduate school at the end of that first summer. Mark my words.

Now me myself, Joe States said as we buttered our bread and started in on the thick, meaty oxtail soup, as far as I can figure it out I myself was put on this earth to make music. This music we play. So what else can I tell you, my man? I’m lucky. Hell, when you come right down to the facts of life, I really owe this band. And the only way I can pay my debt is by always giving the Bossman my best, and I’m also going to do what I can to have somebody else ready to fill my shoes when the time comes.

That was also the afternoon that he told me what he told me because he wanted to remind me of several other details of his special slant on the facts of life that he had begun clueing me in on as the band bus circled down into Kentucky and back up into Ohio, rolled on across to West Virginia, and Pennsylvania on the meandering route to the one-night dance stands we were booked for beginning the weeks following the June morning on which I arrived in Cincinnati.

One thing is for damn certain, Schoolboy, he had already gone on to say during one of those early-on open-road sessions, as far as I am concerned, I for one was definitely not put here on this planet among all these possibilities just to spend my time and whatever little talent I might have going around bellyaching because some paleface somich don’t like me as much as I might think he ought