Perry Street, Greenwich
Village, 1958.
My friend set up this
picture, just for a laugh. I tell my kids, whatever you do as an artist won’t
work unless it’s fun.
Ray gets it but Ruby goes back and forth. When she starts
a poem she’s high and happy, letting the air out of a balloon and watching it
blow all around. Then she starts polishing, sitting down with that notebook and
wiggling the words around. Little frown line puckers up between her eyebrows
and you can’t talk to her. She’s like her mom that way, they get obsessed and
then they’re gone.
You’re one to talk, she
says. You sit down with Les and Bo to play and you play for hours. But I love
it, I tell her. I can close my eyes and not worry about the sound because I
know it’s going to come out. When Ray sits in with us it’s even better—and
because he’s my son, maybe? I feel like I almost know what’s coming out of that
saxophone before he plays.
When you live here in the Village you get only
one kind of story. I wish I could take Ruby on the road so she could see what Kerouac saw, only she’d see her own
road, maybe better. We play in a lot of dives—me and the other guys, Les hooked
me up with them a few years ago. We get a few supper clubs, now and again a
place where people dig the jazz. Sometimes we get a party, which is good for
the money even though all they want is the same old songs.
Couple of the guys |
We’ve been lucky the last few
times, having a car instead of busing it. My favorite bar is in Boston—it’s an
Irish bar close to the river. They give you eggs on Sunday morning, made fresh
by the owner’s wife, Marie. Blond curly ringlets and blood-red nails, I keep
thinking she must have looked like Nell when she was younger.
Nell isn’t as
blond but the ringlets are there. She likes wrapping them around my fingers
after a hair-wash. Those curls, AAAAGH. Get me every time.
Ruby says your hands have to
be big when you’re a bass player. I don’t know if I’d say that but yeah, I have
big hands. Big fingers can help, but you can do anything if you practice. Then
again, you won’t practice if you’re not having fun. The music is in you
already, right? You just have to relax and let it out. Let yourself fly with
it. Like juggling.
Ruby wants me to tell you
about that too. But it won’t be fun if I just sit and explain it to you. You
want to learn about juggling, come and find me in the subway sometime or over
at the park.
I’d start by at least throwing a ball between two hands. Try and throw it high
enough so it’s at the same level as your eyes. Try and stop tracking the ball
with your eyes – you want to catch it without doing that.
Once you start doing that
you’ll probably notice one hand is better than the other at catching it. That’s
what they call your dominant hand. Your other hand is the “second”—at least
that’s what I call it. But you can call it anything you want, even name it.
--Gary Tabeata, aka Gary
Daddy-o
Fifties
man in bar: Shallowend’s
rendering of photo by Walter Watzpatzkowski
Three
men in bar by Scanned photo from a
collection of loose pictures of Dorothea Grace Boehner.
Posted by Paul W
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