Thunder and Roses (28 page)

“He got his foot on the bass pedal and filled out his beat some. Before I knew it the cats were out on the floor, letting the chairs get cold for the first time that evening. Well, that was all right with me too. I like to see people enjoying themselves. All hands were cutting it, and my trumpet man, Stompy Pearle, was sitting up straight for the first time that night.

“There was a change in the tone of the drums, but not the beat. Manuel had dropped the brushes and grabbed the sticks. And without seeming to make a move, he brought a lick out of those drums that was like a bucket of gas on a coal fire. It brought me right up on my feet, and Brot Hoffman—well, you could see him shiver from the far end of the floor. He pointed his clarinet at the roof and blew out a climbing riff that’d make your hair curl. It got Stompy too; he stood up on his chair and caught the riff at the very top and brought
it back down again with the trumpet. Joey began stroking all the upbeats—something he only did when he was really sent. Every gate in the place said ‘Ah-h-h’ at the same time and stopped dancing.

“They stopped dancing! What was going on on the stand was just frantic, but nobody moved. They just stood there and soaked it in, with their mouths and nostrils open. Something went
pop!
inside my head. I was wild. I’d had ’em driving before, but I’d never seen the lid blow off like that.

“I went up to the stand and back to the drums. I nudged Manuel. He was adrift. I nudged him again. He looked up, still working, waking slowly. I said, ‘I’ll take it.’ He slid out, and I slid in. I got the sticks from him without missing a beat.”

Red brought his gaze down to me and shook his head slowly. “You’re a cat. You know. You’re playing along, all of a sudden something happens, the whole place is twenty-two thousand feet altitude—and all of a sudden you’re back to earth. You don’t know when or why it starts or stops, but there it is.” He shrugged. “That’s what happened when I took over.” He turned a thumb down. “Like that. The boys fumbled it for a measure and then slipped into our usual arrangement of ‘Whispering.’ But it was all gone. I wanted to take them out one by one and husk them. I didn’t like it a bit. I was mad clear through.

“We finished it somehow. On the last beat I threw my sticks on the floor and beckoned to Manuel. When you want to tear into somebody, call them over. Don’t go to them. I waited until he was standing by me. He looked very worried and anxious. I guess he could see I was mad. Joey Harris put down his guitar and came over too. I said to Manuel, ‘Who told you to horn in?’

“Manuel just stood there licking his lips. Joey spoke up. ‘I told him to sit in, Red,’ he said. ‘Somebody around here’s got to play drums once in a while.’

“I told him I’d talk to him later. I said to Manuel, ‘Look, bud, you know you’re a little out of your element around here.’ He just looked at me, sort of squinching up his face. He knew what I meant. Joey and Brot and Stompy and Fred—that was the guy playing alto—and
me, we were all from the resort. There were no tracks around there, but this Manuel, he was from the wrong side of them. Dig me? I said, ‘Maybe you ought to go graze in your own pasture.’ ”

Red went back to his cola. I watched him. I didn’t quite know what to think. I said, “I thought you were going to tell me how a drummer gets into the real big time.”

He flashed that grin at me. “Stick around. I’ll get to it. What it amounts to, a guy’s got to be good. Then, he’s got to be smart. He’s got to be smarter than anyone who tries to crowd into his spot. Well …

“Joey and Brot were still hanging around. They watched Manuel climb off the stand and amble across the floor and out. Then they looked back at me. They just stood there. Nobody said anything. Well, I guess they didn’t like it. But a guy’s got to look out for himself. Those skins were important to me, see?

“Those guys surprised me after that. They sort of ganged up on me. No kidding! Can you tie it? Wasn’t much they could do. There was nowhere else to play around there, and they knew that a word from me would bring another outfit into the resort. I had ’em, but all the same they laid down some law. I was supposed to keep hands off Manuel. I was even supposed to let him sit in sometimes.

“I okayed that. Yeah. It wasn’t backing down. It was just being smart. I told them that I had nothing against the kid, and he could sit in any time things were slow, like tonight. But not when we had a mob. That was all right with them. They wanted Manuel’s kind of drums for themselves, not for the customers. We dropped it there. After that we played a lot of music, and if I didn’t get much company from them, I got along all right without it. One of them—I don’t know who—went down to see Manuel the next day and explained things to him. He showed up every once in a while after that, when he wasn’t working the launch with his father. Sat in a few times, too. But never unless I told him he could, and that was only often enough to keep the boys happy. He was good. I had to admit that. Had the easiest attack I’ve ever seen. Strictly relaxed. A simple, shuffling stroke that left you cold—you thought—until you felt the goose-pimples.

“Couple weeks after that there was a picnic and dance down at
the Island. It was two miles downstream and out toward the middle of the river. A nice place. Pavilion, tables—you know. Most of the customers would go down in their boats. The resort hired the old launch to take care of the overflow.

“I remember it struck me as peculiar that Fred came to me before rehearsal one afternoon and mentioned Manuel. Wanted to know if the kid could sit in at the picnic. I said sure. Why not? We wouldn’t be drawing anything much but local people. He seemed happier about it than he let on. I forgot about it.

“It was Joey that gave me the first idea that there would be anything special about that picnic. As I said, Joey played very solid guitar. He could read, but mostly he ran his progressions by the seat of his pants. He broke into the middle of ‘One O’clock Jump’ and wanted to know about that modulation in the bridge section, and should he go through an augmented fifth instead of right from his tonal seventh to the dominant. Stop popping your eyes! Guitar players all talk like that. I said, ‘Let’s hear it.’ He ran it off both ways: the new way was strictly from Roxy. I told him yes, if he liked it that way. I trusted him. Next thing I know Fred is up, blushing like he used to do. His mouth was almost useless to him without a saxophone in it, he was so shy. Seems he’d worked out some counterpoint with Stompy and Brot. Could they run it off? Well, I didn’t know they’d been rehearsing among themselves, but why should I kick? I put out an ear and they tore off into this thing.

“It was a sort of fugue. It was like braiding three colors of rope together, so that you get one strand but you can follow each color of each rope all through it. I’d never heard anything like it before. Not from a jive combo, anyhow. It killed me.

“When they were finished, nobody said much. Joey was sitting back with his eyes rolled up, making little noises with his tongue.

“ ‘Fred.’ I said when I got my breath back, ‘you’ve been sneaking into dark corners, that’s what you’ve been doing, and you’ve been listening to Bach. You’re a Persian, Fred, a long-haired cat. It’s beautiful. It’s gorgeous. I’ll buy it.’

“We ran it off again while I worked the drums in. At first I accented it hard, but the three of them looked as if I was cussing in
Sunday school, and Joey held his hands up in front of his face. I got the idea and dropped off to an easy brush, just a low-down walkaway behind all that precision stuff. It was fine. And I still didn’t get the idea. Why should they take all that trouble for a picnic date?

“I got the idea the day before the picnic, though, but good—and I went up in a mushroom-shaped cloud. My uncle got hold of me and told me to play some really good music at the Island. I said we always played good music. He took out his toothpick and told me no, this was important, or it could be. Seems that one of the out-of-town guests was Phil Drago. The Marshalls were bringing him.

“Phil Drago! Can you imagine how I felt?” asked Red.

“No,” I said. “Who is he?”

“One of the big wheels in the music business. The public knows all the name bands, but the real cats know who plays what instruments how well. Guys like Drago, though, they never get a spotlight. They’re the arrangers and orchestra managers. They do the styling, making one orchestra sound different from another. And mostly, what they say goes. Drago, he was with the King of Swing himself that year.”

It began to dawn on me. “And that was the year that the King’s drummer got into that—”

He nodded. “That was the year the King was looking for a new drummer. And you know how he used to pick up players from the bush. Man, this was it!

“Well,” he went on, “first of all, I wanted to tear into that gang of mine and rip ’em apart piece by each. That bunch of so-and-so’s had probably known about this for days. Hence all that frantic arranging. Hence something else—I’d been caught unawares and made a promise to let Manuel sit in. I saw the whole pitch. If I laid down the law, they’d give me the big Or Else. They knew the spot I was on. If I was going to play the kind of drums Phil Drago would notice, I’d need a group to back me up, and if I didn’t let Manuel get in a couple of licks, I wouldn’t have a group.

“Now, you were asking me how a guy gets to the top in this business. Remember what I said? You’ve got to be good in your work.
And you’ve got to be smarter than anybody who has his eye on what you want.”

“I’m making a list,” I said. “What’s the next item?”

“The next item,” said Red, and made the grin again, “is to be quite sure of what it is you want, and then to use any material at hand to get it. And I mean
any
.”

“How low can you get?” I muttered. I was embarrassed when I realized he’d heard me. He just laughed.

“How ambitious can you get?” he said, and went on with his story.

“As I told you, this Manuel character helped his father with a launch. It was a busted-up old scow, long ago retired from harbor service, where it used to carry sailors out to ships at anchor and stuff like that. Maybe you won’t blame me too much for what I did. Manuel was a darn good mechanic and knew his boats. I really believed that he’d be happier sticking with it. He might get a disappointment with the drum deal, but he’d get over it. As for me, I felt that the drums were my high talent. I could justify what I did—to myself, anyway. And it was easy to do. You see, Manuel and his father were the only ones in miles who held inland waterway licenses. The launch had to run that night. It was chartered by the resort, and they needed the dough. If Manuel’s father couldn’t run it, Manuel would have to. You don’t take chances with the Steamboat Commission.” He shrugged. “Manuel’s father wasn’t there to run the launch that night. He was out of town. He got a telegram from his sister. She was awful sick. Or at least that’s what it said in the telegram—that I sent.” He smiled.

I said, in a certain way, “Well.”

Red gripped my arm. “Wait now. Let me tell you what happened. This is something you’ve got to hear all of, or not at all.”

I settled back. “Go ahead.”

“It couldn’t have been timed better. Manuel’s father worked the whole early part of the evening. He was at the wheel of the launch when it took the combo to the picnic. I even left Manuel to set out the drums and warm himself up while I circulated, and while the old man went
back for another load. My guys warmed up with Manuel, and they were raring to go. It was on that trip that the old man found the telegram waiting for him. He came back to the Island, picked up Manuel, and turned the launch over to him. And Phil Drago hadn’t showed yet!

“We played some great stuff. The boys were feeling good because they thought they’d put one over on me, and I felt good for reasons of my own.

“The Marshalls arrived and I had a good gander at the little guy with them. Mousy-looking fellow, with hair like an unmade bed and great big, intelligent-looking eyes. He didn’t say much to anyone. Just listened. We swung into an oldie—‘Sweet Sue,’ I think it was—and gave it a treatment. It was fine. Afterward I told the boys to take fifteen. I didn’t want to rush it. Slip it to him a little at a time. I circulated some, but had the sense to stay away from Drago. Playing sells these guys, not personality.

“In the meantime Fred went down to the dock to find out what was keeping Manuel. When he came back his, chin was dragging. He slouched up to the stand and broke the news that Manuel would have to work all evening.

“You could see the heart go out of those boys. It was as if something dropped out of them and rolled under the stand. The rest of that evening was a nightmare. Those guys played tall and green. Nobody fluffed anything, understand. But there was no jump. I did my best on the skins, and only succeeded in putting the drums front and center with nothing to back them up. I felt foolish, and I guess I looked it.

“I called a huddle in the second intermission. I said, ‘What in time is the matter with you guys?’

“Joey said, ‘Maybe we’d be better if you’d get that grin off your puss. What’ve you got to be so happy about?’

“Joey didn’t usually talk like that. I was about to pin his ears back when I noticed the look on his face. I shrugged it off. Time enough to start trouble when we were back at the resort. I said, ‘We’re serving it up cream-style to that orchestra scout over there.’ It was the first time we’d mentioned Drago right out, though I knew they’d all had their heads together. I said, ‘What say we riff off that fugue-break of Fred’s? That’ll send the whole place airmail special.’

“Fred looked up from where he’d been diddling with the spit-valve on his alto horn. He didn’t blush, either. He said, ‘No.’ Just like that.

“I looked around at the rest of them, and I could see that they’d go along with him. ‘For Pete’s sake, why not?’

“Brot Hoffman shrugged his shoulders. He said, ‘It takes a special kind of drums.’

“I got my mouth open to say something and then closed it again. I suddenly knew what he meant. That low-down, easy walkaway wasn’t my style at all. Fred had worked out that fugue for Manuel.