The Jazz Kid (6 page)

I didn't wait a minute after the last bell rang, but grabbed Rory and off we went to the five-and-dime. The same guy was there. “Well if it isn't the jazzbo kid. Got hold of some money, did you?”

“I borrowed it off my brother.”

He looked at Rory. “You having trouble at school, too?”

“Hell, I got left back.”

“I'm shocked,” the guy said. He took a record off the shelf, and handed it to me. It was the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. One side was “Oriental” and the other “Farewell Blues.” “I'm recommending this one,” the guy said. “It's the cat's meow.”

“I thought it was the cat's pajamas.”

He gave me a look. “You got a pretty smart tongue for a kid who isn't doing so hot in school.”

I didn't want to argue with him, but I gave him the money and we walked back to Rory's, me holding on to that record with two hands and walking slow so I wouldn't trip. It was a thrill just to have that record in my hands. In my whole life I never owned anything that gave me such a thrill—not the fielder's mitt Pa got me for my tenth birthday, not even when I got my cornet from Hull House.

Rory's apartment was on the third floor—just a kitchen, and two other rooms with a bed in each, a table, a couple of chairs. Rory had cut out pictures of guys from the
Cubs
and stuck them on his walls, and Mrs. Flynn had put up a few ads from magazines in the other room. There was a calendar in the kitchen, but it was two years old and was there for the pictures, which Mrs. Flynn changed around from time to time, so that even the right month wasn't up.

They didn't have a toilet up there—you had to go down to an outhouse in the backyard. The phonograph was in the room where Mrs. Flynn usually slept. Some old boyfriend of hers had given it to her a long time before. It was pretty beat up—the box all scratched and the handle loose, so you had to hold it at a certain angle when you wound it up. I tell you, my hand actually trembled when I slipped that record over the spindle. Rory wound it up good and tight. I pushed the lever to set it spinning, and put the needle on. Out came the music.

Well, it was something, all right. I stood there with my mouth open, just hypnotized. Of course it was sort of tinny, nothing like as clear and alive as the real thing. But it had that magic to it, that bounce, that sparkle, and it made me sparkle inside, too.

“What the hell kind of music is that?” Rory said.

“Shhhh,” I said. Rory sat down and began tapping his foot to it, but I went on standing, not able to move.

Finally the record got done. “Boy, isn't that something,” I said.

“I didn't get it,” Rory said. “It sounded pretty confused.”

“You got to get used to it.” I turned the record over and played the other side, standing as close as I could to the phonograph so as to hear it as good as I could. Then I turned it back to the first side and listened to it all over again.

“How many times you going to play that damn thing?” Rory said.

“I don't know. A lot.”

“I don't know if I can stand it, Horvath.”

“You'll get used to it,” I said.

I
COULDN
'
T LET
that New Orleans Rhythm Kings record alone. I hated leaving it at Rory's house for fear of it getting busted—they weren't too careful about things around there. But I didn't have anyplace to hide it at home. Ma was always going into our room for some reason or other—put away clean clothes after she washed them, or pick up my mess when she couldn't stand it anymore. There was no telling when she might decide to air out our beds or clean out our closet; it was too risky to hide anything there.

So I left the record at Rory's, and every afternoon I went there and played it over and over. Finally Rory said he couldn't take it anymore, he was being driven out of house and home. So I started playing it at Hull House in the room where they had dancing class. Most of the time nobody was there. And about the second day I was playing it there I got the idea of trying to play my cornet along with it. I took a straight mute out of the closet in the band room—the closet was supposed to be locked, but you could open it if you twisted the knob real hard. I picked “Farewell Blues” to start with. With the mute in I was able to hear the record over my playing. It didn't take me but a minute to realize I was out of tune with the music. But there was a knob on the phonograph which you could turn to speed the turntable up or slow it down, and by fooling around a little I got myself in tune. Then I tried this note and that note until I got a few that fit in here and there. It was funny, though: I'd find a note that fit in pretty good, and then it would go sour. What was that about? It seemed like they were changing keys or something. I decided the best thing to do was to copy off exactly what the cornetist was playing.

It was mighty hard. I'd play the first couple of measures of the record and try to get it on my horn. It was a struggle, and by the time a half hour was up I was pretty discouraged and ready to give it up. But I stuck to it, and after a while I saw that if I learned to sing what the cornetist was playing, I had an easier time of getting it on my horn. So I kept on banging away, and after an hour, when my lip was red and sore, I'd
got
a chunk of it—the whole first eight bars, except for a couple of spots here and there where it seemed like he was playing in between the notes or something.

That was the way it went. Every afternoon I'd go over to Hull House and bang away at “Farewell Blues” until after a few days somebody came out of the director's office and told me that much as they appreciated my love for music, I was driving the staff crazy and I had to give them a rest for a while. I started taking the record and my cornet to Rory's until he couldn't stand it either, and then I snuck back into Hull House.

By this time I could see that I could learn stuff off records, if I stuck with it. I also could see that if I learned “Oriental” and “Farewell Blues,” it might be enough to persuade Tommy Hurd to teach me, if I could ever find him again. So I buckled down to it every day.

Then at night I'd have my regular practicing to do for Mr. Sylvester—exercises from the Arban book,
Clarke's Method for Cornet,
the songbook. My lip was sore half the time. And naturally, I didn't do a lick of homework, from one week to the next. Before, I'd always managed to get just enough done so I'd pass. I knew it would worry Ma something dreadful if I got left back, and somehow, when danger threatened, I'd pull and haul myself through.

But that was before, when I didn't have anything else I was interested in, and might as well study instead of sitting around reading John's old
Wampus Cat
I'd read six times already. Now homework was in the way of practicing. Oh, I knew it was going to be nothing but trouble if I flunked. Pa would raise hell and Ma would go around looking worried. It would be smarter to do a little homework now and again. But I couldn't make myself do it. I'd promise myself I was just going to practice for an hour, and then do my history or whatever it was. But, of course, I'd run over the hour by fifteen minutes; and tell myself I might as well make it an hour and a half, so as to have it come out even. Then I'd put the cornet down, pick up my history book, and about two minutes later I'd remember something I wanted to try on the cornet, which wouldn't take more than a couple of minutes; and the next thing I knew Ma had poked her head in our bedroom, saying it was time for bed.

Of
course Ma noticed—she couldn't help but notice with me banging away at the horn all the time. She'd come into our room and say, “I hope you've done your homework, Paulie,” or something like that. I'd say, “I'm going to do it in a minute.” She'd say, “Just remember, Paulie, if you don't do good in school, no more cornet.” So I'd promise myself I really would start doing my homework. But the next day it'd be the same thing all over again. The shame of it was that Ma and Pa wouldn't give me any credit for working hard at music. To them, that didn't count; to me, doing good in school and rising up in the world didn't count.

But Ma had other things on her mind besides my schoolwork. Grampa Horvath had taken sick. It didn't look too good and Ma had to keep going out to take care of him. Pa's brothers and sisters all lived downstate or out in California and couldn't be much use. So it was left to Ma.

After about two weeks of working on that record I'd pretty much got both sides of it down, and was trying to figure out a way to get another record, for I knew that John wouldn't give me any more money. Then one day when I came in for my lesson, I noticed Mr. Sylvester staring at me close. “What have you been doing to yourself, Horvath?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look like somebody popped you in the mouth.”

I rubbed my lip. “Yeah, I've been practicing a lot recent.”

“I'll say you have. How much are you playing a day? A couple hours?”

“More, I guess,” I said.

“How much?”

“Well, generally a couple of hours in the afternoon.”

“And?”

“A couple of more hours after supper.”

“My God,” he said. He grabbed hold of my chin and took a close look at my lips. Then he let go and pointed to some music on the stand. “Play that.” I played a few bars. He sat bent forward, watching my mouth. “Okay, that's enough.” He leaned back
and
crossed his arms over his chest. “What made you get serious about music all of a sudden, Horvath? Up till now you weren't my worst student, but you weren't my best by a long shot, either.”

I didn't want to mention about the jazz. “I decided to be a musician. Somebody was telling me about this kid Benny Goodman who used to go here. He's already making good money.”

“Well, sure, but Benny's something special. They don't come along like him very often. I'm not going to say you couldn't be pretty good if you worked at it, I wouldn't even guess about that. But you shouldn't expect to be a hotshot like Benny right away.”

“I can try, though.”

He uncrossed his arms and took hold of my chin again, turning my face this way and that so as to get a good look at my mouth. “Well,” he said, “If you're really serious, we'll have to start over again.”

“What?” My heart sank.

“For one thing, you're developing a roll. You can split your lip that way. For another, you're using too much pressure. Feel your teeth—I'll bet they're already getting loose.”

I grabbed hold of my upper front teeth and wiggled them. He was right; they moved just a little.

“How high have you been playing?”

Of course I'd been going up to wherever that cornetist on the Rhythm Kings took me. “I can make an A pretty easy. Sometimes a C.”

He shook his head. “Nope. We've got to start over again.”

“You mean you were teaching me wrong all along?”

“Horvath, be sensible. I got thirty kids, I can't baby all of them along. Anytime I see a kid who's serious, I'll work with him. But you couldn't make most of these little dears into musicians if you were a fairy godmother with a magic wand. They're only interested in marching around in those uniforms. You were all right the way you were
going
so long as you were like the rest of them—practice half an hour a day at best, rehearse once a week, play six concerts a year. On that schedule you couldn't hurt yourself no matter what you were doing wrong. But four hours a day—that's another story.”

I hung my head down. I felt just sunk. All that work for nothing. The whole thing had been a waste. I looked up at him. “How long will it take?”

“Six months and we'll have you in some kind of shape.”

“Six months?” It sounded like forever.

He laughed. “You'll live,” he said. “You'll come out ahead in the end. We'll give you a nice firm embouchure, good intonation, some range without all that pressure.”

There was no way around it. I could see that he was right. My lips had a nice red ring around them all the time. Either I had to quit or do what he told me to do. Oh, but it was awful. At first he had me playing nothing but long tones: start down at the bottom on F-sharp and work my way up, holding each note out until I ran out of breath, all the while trying to keep the pitch centered. I was so used to digging the mouthpiece into my lip, the first couple of days without pressure I could hardly get a tone out. But it began to come along, and pretty soon I could see some progress. Before, when I hit a note, it was likely to be a little off at the first instant—flat or sharp or rough or choked—until I pulled it to where it was supposed to be. The ordinary person wouldn't notice exactly what was wrong, but they'd know it was some kid playing. Now I was beginning to hit the notes right on the nose. Seeing some progress cheered me up a good deal, for I knew that in the long run I was going to be way ahead of the other kids in the band. I knew what they were doing wrong, and I wasn't doing it anymore.