DEBUT - A SHORT STORY

A few weeks ago I made contact with two men, Ade Holland and Ian Murray, both of whom are professional musicians. Ade is a guitarist and Ian is a drummer. Both go back to a time in the Sixties when I was a teacher and when I started a jazz club in the school where I worked. They were stalwart supporters of the club. What made this club different was its programme of professionally played jazz. There was, at the time, no other school in the UK doing this. I would put on an obviously popular event, such as R&B or 'trad' jazz, which made money, and then use the money to subsidise 'modern' jazz which had not at the time found a large audience. We were visited by stars such as Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott, Bill le Sage, Dick Morrissey and we hosted the American singer Mark Murphy on three occasions. I also organised visits to BBC Jazz Club recordings and to concerts by the American greats who were then coming to the UK quite regularly. We saw the Count Basie Orchestra. We had seats behind the band and I was sitting quite close to the drummer Sonny Payne. I have only just been reminded by Ian Murray that he, already getting work as a drummer although still at school, was there too and tried unsuccessfully to grab a few minutes with the great man - although he did get to speak to Basie in the interval. I managed to get Payne's autograph in my address book - and still have it. Until fairly recently I thought that time of my life was lost in the mists of time as the cliché goes and then, to my huge delight I made contact with Ade and Ian.


I have pulled the story that follows from near the bottom of the pile of posts on the left of this text
and re-present it now because I think Ade and Ian will find it resonates with their early lives and it may amuse them. Other readers may also find the story pleasing. The story is set in the Sixties. I hope you like it.

Jacko was already there, pouring the flaky dregs of a crisp packet down his throat. He was showing his good side, his right side, and keeping the other close to the wall by the corner where he stood. Beer spilled from the sleever in his hand as he coughed. Conversation with George, the guitarist, was temporarily halted. They both then drank deeply before turning to face him. George smiled and nodded a welcome. Jacko grinned a tight, lopsided grin.

Later, sitting around a formica topped table, wet, laden with glasses and messy ashtrays, they talked business. The others had come in by now. He knew them. Eddy, drums, short and thin, rough hands, pock-marked complexion on a cheeky-boy face that went uneasily with his forty years. Eddy drove a lorry and when long trips took him away he sent his brother-in-law to dep, a dance-band man who couldn’t keep time. Barry, piano and Rick, string bass, brothers in their mid-twenties, both still affecting the Buddy Holly look with slick black hair and the glasses. Good looking lads these who knew what they were about and pulled the birds as easy as anything. Ken, tenor sax doubling clarinet, plump, pale, Jewish, around thirty, wife who led her own life while he spent the hours from seven pm to seven am with Simone, brooding, beautiful Simone ho did hair and loved him enough to listen to dance music and jazz all week long. Vincent, trombone, a teacher of mathematics whose knowledge of the minutiae of jazz inhibited relaxed conversation on the subject but who could feather his way through any arrangement on sight and could really swing. Guitarist George, amateur potter and member of the TA who prayed nightly that he wouldn’t have to go and fight anywhere, a pedestrian player who could throw the chords when he knew them and played quietly when he didn’t.

And Jacko, leader of the band.

They sat in a rough horse-shoe facing him. They’d been grilling him.

Jacko turned and faced him square on, the left side of his face a shocking concave with a red-rimmed eye pulled tight down at the corner by scar tissue. He wouldn’t wear an eye-patch. A motor-bike accident coming home one night from a gig. He pulled on his fag end before dropping it into an empty beer glass.

‘Well, Sunshine, do you take this job or don’t you? It’s the fucking big time is this, you know’.
Jacko started to laugh almost before he finished speaking.

By the time the towels went up his position as Manager of the band had been confirmed and toasted several times. £25 for the Monday club night in the big hall of The Raven and a share, a full one eighth share, of all the other gigs.

It was Saturday the next day. By the time he arrived in the market square they had dismantled most of the stalls. Fruit and veg boxes were stacked at one end ready for collection. Cartons and wrapping paper drifted and tumbled as the wind blew across the open space of the Civic Centre. A few people from nearby villages clustered around the tea-counter of the bus depot. The music shop was still fairly busy.

He looked up from the browser and stared at the girl with the short dark hair who was serving behind the counter. When she looked at him and smiled he dropped his eyes and flipped through empty LP sleeves.
At home he ate his tea while the two girls in their pyjamas watched television before they went to bed. He held the album sleeve and looked at the stylised portrait of Ellington, smooth and young, turning it to read the brief notes. Yvonne came in and flicked the television into darkness before lifting the younger one and shooing the elder before her, through the door and up the stairs. She was wearing turquoise fluffy slippers he noticed. When the bedroom door closed upon the noises of protest he rose and walked over to the record player.

Ellington for starters then, just a few tracks. In My Solitude, ‘A’ Train, Sophisticated Lady. He sang to the first track, quietly, turning so that the orchestral sound was behind him. I sit in my chair, filled with despair. There’s no-one could feel so bad.

And then Billie Holliday. He mouthed the words that he knew so well, feeling the sweeping sorrow of the notes with the dying fall. When he did sing it was pretty well perfect and he knew it.

When Yvonne returned to the room he stopped, quickly turning off the music and switching on the television. She sat on the coach, crossing her legs so that one turquoise slipper dangled and patted the space beside her inviting him to sit there. She reached for a packet of cigarettes and her lighter from the small table. He sat down beside her. The television showed pictures.

He arrived early at The Raven on Monday, straight from work. Half a pint, a cheese roll and then he was in the big hall that they used for dances and wedding receptions. He arranged two tables by the entrance and went on to put the chairs around the walls. He shoved the piano across the floor so that it was alongside the rostra that made up a low stage. The mike and amplification system were in place already so all he had to do was to switch on at the wall. He pressed the mike switch and the room was filled with an electric hum followed by the whistle of negative feedback. His voice sounded unreal as he spoke the ritual One – Two – Three.

The landlord passed the cashbox over the bar telling him that there was a ten pound float in notes and silver inside. He slipped the battered box into the table drawer and then went to search for the Club sign. It was in the cleaner’s cubby hole, a large, garishly painted four foot high sign that read, JACKO’S ONE EYED STOMPERS, and was illustrated with various treble and bass clefs and an ill-assembled assortment of crotchets and quavers. He lugged the heavy sign outside and rested it against the pub wall so that it could be clearly seen.

The members of the band arrived individually. Each member looked around the door, greeted him sitting there at the table, walked over to the stage, depositing an instrument case, or bag or coat and went out into the main bar. By a quarter to eight they had returned as a group and they were tuning to Barry at the piano. Outside, in the corridor, people were gathering and there were one or two impatient knocks on the frosted glass. They were mainly girls.

At eight he opened up and started to take money from the men. Girls were free. Jacko’s idea.

The band went straight into The Sheikh of Araby, fast and unsubtle as though to inject some form of life into the almost empty hall. The girls sat in groups and talked over the sound. The men moved in and out of the hall carrying drinks.

It was full by nine thirty. The air was heavy and smokey and the band could not be seen because of the mass of people grouped around it. The room was in partial darkness with the stage area illuminated by spotlights with coloured gels. The music was immeasurably better now with Jacko’s trumpet riding high and fierce over the mellow underlay of Vincent’s trombone. Ken’s tenor solos were an accomplished tribute to the nostalgia of jazz; he played husky or pert as the mood required lacing his simple improvisations with apt quotations from the classics. As he made change, giving out cloakroom chits as tickets, trying to work out who had and who had not paid, he felt very good.

He felt someone stand beside him and saw it was the girl from the record shop.

‘Go on, take a breather’, she said. ‘It’s all right. I’ve done it plenty of times before’.

He moved along so that she could stand before the cashbox. She was quite short with an almost plump figure. She had a pretty face, well made up. Her appearance owed nothing to fashion yet she was not unfashionably dressed. He put her age at perhaps twenty-five. She was wearing a perfume that made him pause. As he stared she suddenly turned and looked at him. They smiled quickly.

It was after the break, at quarter past ten, when Jacko called him to the stand. He did not hear the detail of Jacko’s inevitably irreverent announcement but pushed his way through the crowd feeling almost faint with tension. The room went very quiet when he appeared in front of the band, behind the mike.

‘What’s it to be then, Sunshine?’ asked Jacko.

‘Do you know God Bless The Child?’

‘Key?’ called out Barry, quite softly.

‘G … I think.’

‘Christ’, murmured the pianist and struck a chord that would do.

‘Leave it to Barry,’ said Jacko, ‘He’ll take care of you.’

And he sang to them. All the people standing, watching, wondering who this person was. Alone but for Barry at first. Then Eddy came in, gentle on the brushes. Then Rick instinctively meshing into the chord sequence along with guitarist, George. Ken, Vincent and Jacko stood and listened. When he finished the number it seemed as if there was as much applause behind him as in front. He sang the next two songs with greater confidence.

As he dragged the sign back into the empty pub he met Jacko and the band.

‘You are a fucking star, Sunshine’, said Jacko, ‘Just don’t ask for a pay-rise. See you tomorrow night. Where are we? Fuck knows. You’re the Manager. You tell me. Give me a call tomorrow morning, about twelve.’

As he opened the door of his car ready to drive home he saw the girl sitting at the wheel of her car. He walked over to her. She wound down the window.

‘Thanks for your help,’ he said.

‘A pleasure.’

‘Will I see you next Monday? Here?’

‘You’ll probably see me tomorrow. You look as if you might need some help.’

‘Indeed I do.’

‘I think you’ve got a future,’ she said enigmatically.

And then she was off.

As he drove home he was singing.