Tiger Rag

Suite 315 at the Hotel Balfour on Oleander Street, the honeymoon suite. The heat was stifling. In the large sitting room the windows were shut tight. A long mahogany table and two chairs were pushed up against the wall. A carpet had been nailed over the door, to block out sound. Myriad scents—lavender hair oil, talcum powder, cinnamon—were interlaced. Also the lingering smell of lunch: fried catfish and roasted corn. On the table there was a bucket of beer, a pitcher of ice water, glasses. The musicians were accustomed to performing at night, so at four o’clock, with the city bathed in sunlight, they had drawn the curtains
.

The Bolden Band. Seven musicians in a semicircle tuning their instruments: drums, guitar, stand-up bass, valve trombone, two clarinets, and a cornet, played by Charles Bolden himself. All of them tuning to the cornet, including the drummer, Cornelius Tillman. Bolden would not be accompanied by
untuned drums. And he would only play a Conn Wonder, manufactured in Elkhart, Indiana, a triple-silver-plated cornet, the inside of the bell gold-plated, the finger pieces inlaid pearl. In the right hands, Bolden’s hands, the Conn could project a powerful sustained sound on a single breath
.

The musicians were in shirtsleeves, sweating, all except the trombonist, Willie Cornish, who never took off his chalk-striped jacket, even when his shirt was wet through. He kept his hat on, too, for luck. He was studying the sheet music, running his finger along it, pointing out something to Bolden, who nodded and looked away. Bolden didn’t want to think about notes on paper when he could already hear himself playing them, could see them dancing in the air. He and Cornish were the only band members who read music. Bolden had learned in church as a boy, Cornish taught himself while working as a pressman at Montgomery Brothers, musical publishers. Bolden was wearing a red shirt, red tie, and yellow silk vest. His handkerchief, too, was red, and after he mopped his neck, the dye ran so that the drops of sweat on the floor looked like blood. Which he was aware of. Also that this was the honeymoon suite, which amused him
.

Oscar Zahn, the recording engineer, was a stocky young man with sharp eyes and a heavy brow. He spoke with a slight German accent. He too was perspiring heavily in a high-collared shirt and a bow tie. He had a pencil behind his ear. A Turkish cigarette between his lips. He was sitting on a stool in the corner screwing the wax cylinder onto the mandrel of the Edison recorder. It was one of the new Edison Gold Moulded cylinders, hard black wax, playable hundreds of times. Its four-minute capacity was double that of the old carnauba wax cylinders. Zahn had learned sound engineering at
the W. T. Bellmon Studios in St. Louis, recording opera singers and barbershop quartets. He came to New Orleans with his wife and daughter, hoping to save enough money to open his own studio. In the meantime, he was learning how to capture sound cleanly in spaces like this, or—when the money wasn’t there—far more cramped spaces in basements and back rooms. But Buddy Bolden had the money. He was in demand, every night of the week. In addition to performing with his band, he sometimes made the rounds of a half dozen dance halls, social clubs, and fairgrounds, all for a handsome fee. If you doubled that fee, he would play your private party, sitting in with the hired band and laying down a couple of solos, the flashier the better. But he had never cut a cylinder. He had resisted, not, like some musicians, because he feared his techniques could be stolen—he knew no one could truly imitate him—but because he was certain the recording companies would make good money off his recordings while he got clipped. Oscar Zahn had sworn he wouldn’t let that happen, and Bolden, knowing how many musicians were starting to record steadily, making a name for themselves outside New Orleans, finally decided to take a chance
.

Zahn’s assistant, Myron Guideau, was stuffing a towel beneath the door. He was slope-shouldered, wearing a cheap checkered suit. His eyebrows met over his nose and his mustache was untrimmed, tobacco-stained. He glanced sidelong at the slender girl in a yellow dress reclining on the sofa, ankles crossed and her shoes kicked off. Yellow was Bolden’s favorite color and he had bought her the dress that morning. Her skin was oak-colored and her long black hair was speckled gold, catching the light. Her eyes, too, were golden. They were fixed on Bolden, who was standing very still, the cornet at his lips
.

The girl smiled at him, and stomping the floor
one-two-three,
Bolden launched into the rag known to every band in the city as “Number 2.” Except, as often happened, his opening solo was a variation the band had never heard before, an electrifying eight bars, after which Cornish entered, cornet and trombone playing off each other as the bass and drums rumbled in, setting the tempo for the guitar and clarinets, all of them working in sync now, flying apart and coming together again like shavings to a magnet. The piece was fast, high-pitched: veering, accelerating, peaking, before Bolden closed it off with an explosive solo
.

Take One:
three minutes and forty-nine seconds
.

Bolden shook his head. He wasn’t happy. Zahn lit another cigarette. Tillman replaced a cracked drumstick. Willie Warner, the B-flat clarinetist, cursed under his breath: he had never played a better solo in his life—for nothing. Guideau handed Zahn a fresh cylinder. Zahn removed it from its gold tube with the photograph of Thomas Edison on the side and screwed it onto the mandrel. He tightened the worm gear, tested the spring, and adjusted the sapphire stylus. Sitting against the wall, Guideau waited for the stylus to dance on the turning cylinder. Four inches high, two inches in diameter, the cylinder revolved one hundred twenty times a minute as the stylus cut grooves thinner than capillaries into which the music flowed. The device still amazed Guideau, who had grown up on a pig farm in Hiram, Ohio, where there were tools, but no machines
.

Bolden stomped the floor
, one two three,
and the band began to play
.

Take Two:
three minutes and fifty-four seconds
.

Bolden immediately signaled Zahn that he wanted to do it again. He was even less happy this time around. The segues were rough, the solos disjointed. The opening was fiery, but his closing solo felt flat
.

Bolden told the bassist, Jimmy Johnson, to tune up again, that his A string was off. Nineteen years old, Johnson had already performed with half a dozen bands. Bolden recruited him after hearing him play with Johnny St. Cyr at the Algiers Masonic Hall on Olivier Street. Johnson started as a saloon pianist, but the bands didn’t use pianos, which were too cumbersome to transport. Johnson rode to performances on a Columbia bicycle with his bass strapped to his back
.