Clifford's Blues Read Online Free Page B

piano, because most clubs couldn’t afford anything else, and also the box took up less space. He told me to come look. I guess he had “commandeered” the piano, the way the SS seems to commandeer everything. He asked me did I like it, and I said yes. He told me to try it, so I played a few notes, and they came out so round and pure that they scared me. Too much piano for such a small place; it needed a concert hall. Dieter Lange nodded encouragement. He told me to practice. This room, he said, would be where people danced, that was why Anna had not furnished it. He winked. He patted the goola. Steinway, he said. Hell, I could see the name on it. From Germany, originally, the Steinways were. Two sons in piano manufacturing. One stayed in New York and the other returned. A very special German instrument, he said. And then he left me.
    I let myself fold down onto the stool; it fit like it had been made for me. I ran up and down the keys. This was the best piano I’d ever played. I laid on the soft pedal and somehow found myself playing The Duke’s “Mood Indigo.” That was one of his standards, but it seemed to work for everybody. I had all his records, and hundreds more of everybody who was anybody, when I was in Berlin. I played them right down through the shellac. “In My Solitude”: I low-sung that because it was for me, and while I was playing it, I thought how every other slow number I could think of was about love, man-woman love. Only person I think I ever loved was that strange fellow, a writer, from Rocky Mountain country. Never could figure out how his family wound up there in New York. He was sensitive about how black he was, but I always told him “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” and God it was. Called him my cowboy. He didn’t love me, though. They never did. “Ain’t He Sweet” came to mind and I ran it through kind of bouncy. When I started, my fingers were tight, bunched up at the knuckles, but the more I played, the looser they got. I played some back beat stuff, took it up-tempo, swung through some K.C. stride, and cranked my uptown hand with some bucket-bottom blues. When I looked up, it was dark outside and Annaliese was standing in the dining room doorway behind me. I felt like I’d been ten thousand miles away. Later, after I’d cleaned up, I sat on the floor in my room and thought of the band, thought of the way I’d tell it to a radio announcer or somebody else important: Well, on trumpet we had Doc Cheatham and Bobby Martin. Hank Cooper took over for Doc when we came to Europe. On the ’bones there was Albert Wynn and Billy Burns. Jerry Blake on the stick. Willy Lewis played the alto sax and Gene Sedric was on tenor. Me on piano (when Mr. Wooding and Freddy Johnson were not) and John Mitchell on the git. June Cole on the bass and Ted Fields on drums. I did the vocals. That was the band when we recorded in Paris and Madrid three years ago. When we first got to Berlin, we had three trumpets: Bobby, Maceo Edwards, and Tommy Ladnier, and one trombone, Herb Flemming. Garvin Bushnell was on clarinet. The saxes were the same, Willy and Gene, like John Mitchell, who was guitar. Georgie Howe played drums then, not Ted Fields, and John Warren played a walking bass. I thought about all of them, smoking muggles, playing the dozens, fooling around with the beat so that everybody would have to catch up, and then someone would run on out ahead and you’d have to do another 32 bars, which was all right. I cried in the darkness, missing it so much and wondering did any of them miss me, if they were asking about me. Then I heard Dieter Lange at the top of the stairs calling me in that tone because Anna had gone out to play Chinese checkers with some of the SS wives.…
    Saturday, September 16, 1933
    Dieter Lange’s first party. Oh, I was so nervous. Playing in a club is one thing; the atmosphere is different. If the