The Jazz Kid (13 page)

A
FTER THAT
,
ANYTHING
to do with school went flying out the window. Same with the plumbing business. I was a jazz musician, and that was that. What difference did it make that Pa had a good thing set up for me and John? I didn't want to have anything to do with it. John could have it, and the money that went with it, too, even if we could end up on Easy Street the way Pa figured—put on a suit and tie and never pick up a wrench again. What did any of that mean to me? What did I care about a suit and a tie? What did I care about Easy Street? The only thing that meant anything to me was standing up on some bandstand with that rhythm sliding through me, flinging out a string of notes like a shower of water drops shot out into the sunlight. Sure, maybe I'd get rich and maybe I'd get famous, and maybe I wouldn't get either. It'd be nice to be rich and famous, I figured. But getting rich and famous wasn't the point of it. The point was that rhythm and those notes like drops of water flying in the sunlight. That was all I wanted, ever, and I wasn't going to let anybody get in the way of it.

Why couldn't they give me any credit for how good I was doing with my music? By now I was about the best kid in the Hull House band—even Mr. Sylvester admitted that. He said, “Well, Horvath, you got a ways to go, but it wouldn't surprise me too much if you got there.” I told Ma that. All she could say was, “That's fine, Paulie. I'm real proud of you. But you've got to remember, your schoolwork comes first.” It hurt me when she said that. It sure didn't make me any more interested in doing homework.

I spent the fall on a roller coaster—up half the time when my playing was going good, down the other half when I got a thirty-five or something on a test, and remembered how hard Ma was going to take it when I got left back.

But I was making my way into jazz. Whenever Tommy had something he figured I could handle he'd bring me onto the gig to sit in for a few numbers. The first two or three times he stayed up on the stand and played along with me. But when he began to see that I could do okay by myself, he took to going outside for a breath of air
when
I was on the stand, and let me carry the lead for a couple of numbers. I was building up my confidence, and I was learning new tunes, too, for while I was waiting my time to go up and play, I'd memorize a couple of tunes, and work them out on my cornet later on.

Tommy fixed me up with a new mouthpiece, too. The one I'd been using had come with the Hull House horn and was probably as old as the horn. The cup was too shallow, Tommy said. I'd get a fuller sound with a deeper cup, and he gave me one he figured was right for me. He said it was one he'd bought by mistake and didn't like but I didn't believe it; I was positive he'd gone out and bought it for me. And he was right, for I did get a better tone with it.

But I was in trouble at school almost every day. My eighth grade teacher, Mr. Ward, wasn't the type to squeeze anyone through. In fact, he was the other way around. Whenever I didn't do my homework, which was mostly, he took it as a personal insult. By October I could see clear enough that he was going to leave me back if I gave him the least chance. The only way I could pass was to quit everything else and spend my waking hours doing schoolwork. There wasn't any hope I could make myself do that, and I didn't even bother to try.

I guess Ma had an inkling of what was up. She was always asking me how I was doing at school, if I had done my homework, and such. But the fact was that she had a lot of other things on her mind besides me. Grampa had took for the worse. It was nip and tuck if he'd pull through and Ma was always running over there to see to things. He was Pa's father, of course, not hers; but being as Pa's brothers and sisters weren't around, she took the whole thing on herself. That was the way Ma was; and I guess that compared with Grampa dying, whether I did lousy in school or not wasn't so important.

Pa was mighty busy, too. Things had got slack after the war ended in 1918, what with the war industries slowing down and the soldiers coming home and looking for jobs. But by 1923 the papers were full of talk about prosperity: everybody was to have a chicken in the pot and a car in the garage. Pa had more work than he could handle. He had John out on jobs so often, for the first time in his life he missed turning in a couple of
homeworks;
and me out there, too, whenever he could catch up to me, for I was quick to get out of there on Saturday mornings and hide out at Hull House. Once he even sent John over to Hull House looking for me. Finally Pa bought his truck, a 1919 Ford and took on a couple of extra men, so me and John wouldn't miss too much schoolwork—not that it mattered in my case. Pa came home late pretty frequent, and sat there with a pencil planning the next day's work while he ate his supper. He said, “When you're paying a man a day's wages you better be damn sure you got work for him to do.”

But busy as they were, they had an eye on me, too. I tried to keep my mouth shut about music, and do my playing when Pa wasn't around, but it was all I ever thought about and they could see that.

Pa made no bones about it. “I'm giving you fair warning, Paulie. If you don't do good on your next report card, I'm going to chuck that damn cornet in the lake.”

Then one day I came out of school and there was Tommy Hurd lounging against a lamppost. “Listen,” he said. “I took this damn tea dance for five bucks and now a job on an excursion boat for a double sawbuck come along. Come on down to the tea dance and take over for me. You can have the five. If I cut out after the first set I'll just be able to make it over to the lake on time.”

“Five dollars? I can have the whole five dollars?”

“Keep it. You got to start saving for a horn, anyways. You can't go on playing that piece of tin forever.”

Well, it was some feeling. It was one thing to sit in here and there; it was another to go out and play my own job. Oh, I didn't expect they'd let me call the tunes and set tempos—somebody else would do that. But I'd be out there on my own. It'd be up to me to set the lead for the others to follow. And I'd get paid. I was making my way into jazz all right. I was going to be part of the whole thing. I walked home smiling.

Naturally I got to the job a half hour before anybody else. Tommy didn't even bother to stay for the whole first set. After about fifteen minutes he called me up, played one number with me and started packing up his horn. “Kid, take it easy. Don't try to hit no home runs.” He snapped the case shut. “Call your own tunes and set your own tempos
where
you'll be comfortable. I gotta run.” And he was gone.

Well, that was a surprise: I was just a kid in knee pants and I was going to run the band on the stand. I wondered how the others would take it. I looked around at them, left and right. “Margie,” I said, and tapped it off, half wondering if they'd come in behind me. But they did, just like they always did with Tommy—no difference at all. It was amazing to me that they would. But of course they were pros, and would do their job, regardless. And I could see the point of it: I knew what tunes I could play, what tempos I was comfortable at, and they didn't. It made sense to have me call the job. Still, it felt strange, for I wasn't used to it. Maybe one day I would be.

I got through the job okay, and collected my money, a brand new five-dollar bill. I folded it up real careful and stuck it in my shirt pocket. Then I went on home. Pa, Ma, and John were already at the table, eating chicken and dumplings.

“You're late,” Pa said. “Where you been? Playing that damn cornet?”

I gave them a big grin and set the cornet case down. “You bet I've been playing that cornet.” I pulled the bill out of my pocket. “Look,” I said, holding it out where they could see it. “Five dollars. For playing music.”

They all stared. It wasn't the Paulie they knew. Then Pa said slowly, “Lemme see that.” I handed it over. He looked at it. “Seems like a good bill,” he said. He looked up at me. “You sure you didn't steal this, Paulie?”

“Frank,” Ma said. “Paulie wouldn't steal.”

“I got it playing a tea dance. If you don't believe me, go over to St. Anthony's Parish House and ask them.”

“St. Anthony's?” Ma said. “On Halsted?”

Pa sat there staring at the bill and shaking his head. “You really earned this here five dollars playing in a band?”

“Yep. You can ask them.”

“Paulie, sit down and eat your supper before it gets cold.”

“I'll be goddamned,” Pa said.

“Frank!” Ma said.

“
Now you can pay me the seventy-five cents you owe me,” John said.

But Pa was smart. He dwelled on it overnight and saw what the catch was. The next night at supper he said, “Paulie, I'm real proud of what you did, going out by yourself and earning that five dollars. But you can't let it go to your head. Music isn't no way for a man to make a living. It isn't reliable. Someday you're going to want to have yourself a family, and then you got to have something steady. Now, if you want to go out and play at these here dances and make yourself a little something on the side, why I'm all for it. I like to see a boy who'll hustle for a dollar. But don't think of music as a real job.”

“Why isn't it a real job? Look at Paul Whiteman, he makes millions.”

“Maybe so, but for every Whiteman there's a hundred out there starving.”

I knew there wasn't any use in arguing with him, but I couldn't help myself. He was wrong. “Tommy Hurd does real good. While I was making that five dollars he was out on an excursion boat making a double sawbuck.” To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what a double sawbuck was, but it sounded like a lot.

“That the guy who was giving you free lessons? That shows how much he knows about running a business. In this world you don't give nothing away free.”

“Will you two stop arguing,” Ma said. “Paulie doesn't have to think about his future. He's got his schooling to worry about first.” But of course I was so dizzy with jazz there wasn't any room in my brain to worry about school.

My first report card came just before Thanksgiving. Ma and Pa being so busy, they didn't notice I never brought home a report card, and being as John was in high school, he didn't get a midterm report and they weren't reminded of it.

Christmas came and went. By now I was playing little tea dances pretty frequent—maybe every couple of weeks or so. Mostly they came from Tommy, when he had a better job and turned it over to me. But some of the other musicians were getting to know about me, and sometimes they'd send for me. I wasn't anybody's first call, not by a long shot. For one thing, nobody liked having a kid in knee pants on the bandstand. It didn't look good. For another, I didn't know all the tunes. Right about then the big thing
was
novelty numbers like “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” and “It Ain't Gonna Rain No Mo'.” I had a little money now, and could buy sheet music to the new tunes when they came along, but I was trying to save for a new cornet and didn't like spending money for sheet music, so I had to scramble to learn tunes the best way I could.

A couple of times I got asked to play dances on Saturday night. Pa was of a mind to let me do it, for I'd earn at least ten bucks and maybe more. Ma wouldn't hear of it. “It's one thing for Paulie to play a tea dance in the afternoon at the temple, or St. Anthony's, where the Father is keeping an eye on things. But I'm not having him out in some rough dance hall where there's liquor and heaven knows what else going on.” She was right about the heaven knows what else part: at those low-class dance halls the girls drank beer right along with the boys, and sneaked out in the alley together. I knew about it, because John told me. Ma didn't want him going to such places, either, but he went anyway; he just didn't tell her. Of course, he was sixteen and there wasn't much they could say to him.