Charles Mingus wrote a 10-minute-long composition. He called it Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting. Mingus's mixed-up father was an African-Methodist-Episcopal. Mingus's stepmother was a Holy Roller. The AME Church is just the Black side of the White Methodist Church. Their music is at its most swinging boring. The Holy Rollers, Black or White, do adhere to swing in everything they do from their sing-song sermons to their audacious praying aloud to their outrageous choirs and their use of all kinds of musical instruments, sackbutts and harps and reeds and skins stretched over jars and jugs--those sounds via which the Holy Rollers follow the biblical command "to make a joyful noise unto the Lord." Mingus's Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting is filled with blues praying and moanin' and the answers from the Great God Mingus are followed by shouts of praise through vocalized flatted 5ths and blues 3rds and instinctual rhythms entangled within outlier rhythms twisting and writhing, all swinging, all very African in instinct but very American in motif, in drive, the true energy behind any drive the dynamic of the brain of man and woman. From those brains come this idea of there is a universal groove we can all get into and find peace and harmony and cookin' togetherness in--like how dancing brings us together for several minutes of perfect togetherness no matter the dancers's skills. This all depends on if we follow the conduction of the right leaders--and after you listen to Mingus's "Prayer Meeting" you see just how progressive, how advancing Mingus's Holy Roller feelings dressed in complex Afro-Los-Angeles emotions were. After such a "Prayer Meeting" you shout, "What a wonderful experience life is...in spite of the bullshit...in spite of all the deceit...in spite of the force of the evil side of worship, the billboard side of worship--the wrong side--the out-of-sync-side."
"What makes that damn rooster crow at the crack of dawn?" Those are the kind of questions on our minds at the break of every day. "Is this a new chance or is it going to be the same old-same old?" "What's for breakfast? Hell, what's then for lunch?...and forget about supper...or dinner...or whatever the fuck you want to call that meal that's going to be missed." You see, by Wednesday evening, we are in need of listening to and saying some prayers. And at Wednesday Night Prayer Meetings you get it all out! The service starts with the band blasting out the theme, Amen, and then the preacher comes out. Why it's Baron Mingus himself leading the prayer service. And Mingus is praying first low and then suddenly he gets gripped by the blues-idiom spirit (La Frontera azules-Los Angeles azules) and then he's praying heavy; he's praying seriously; he's praying out problems, descents, blues, roosters crowing before dawn--roosters even crowing at midnight! And all of this comes from the bible that's rooted in Mingus's mixed-minds head, his view from beneath the belly of his underdog...blues and roots. And Mingus is praying out from under the "jungle" canopy, from back in the time he was Pithecantropus Erectus--remember Duke's in Mingus's blood...Duke, Monk, his admiration for Bud Powell...his use and consideration of Jaki Byard--and remember, he's calling from the ancestral jungle of us all. And Mingus prays and in response to his call these sackbutts and trambones and sax-o-phones start pouring back on Brother Mingus heavy, driving, swinging to and fro, holy rolling, and soon the congregation is up dancing their asses off and for brief moments all over the hall there is peace, harmony, togetherness, and prayers are being answered spontaneously and prayers soon become straight out old C major praising and shouting and offbeat clapping and moaning respect for those who were once there and those who are now and are to come.
We've sold all our art to the instant pop world? We followed phonies like Andy Warhol and not great thinkers and teachers like Charles Mingus.
For the Charles Mingus Discography: www.jazzdisco.org/charles-mingus/catalog/
60 MPH in a Volkswagen Beetle
OK, I was in love with this guy's wife. My wife knew it. That's why she almost spit on me when she told me, "Your girlfriend's in town." I did the normal "guilty" overblown doubletake, "My girlfriend? My girlfriend's right here in front of me." "Cut the crap. That bitch and her husband are in town and want to get together."
My wife and I had just moved to New York City. We had moved here from San Francisco where my wife was a dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, though she wasn't so serious about performance as she was the kinetics of dance itself--like what causes dance in animals! That's one reason I married her. She was interested in causation. "Why?" was her constant countenance. Even in sleep her pretty face seemed to be asking "Why?"
I had come to New York City on a throwing and interpretation of the I Ching, that ancient Chinese amusement some White "Far Eastern Studies" academic discovered and published and made a mint off of in the Beat 1960s. I found following the I Ching fun and intriguing. I had learned how to read palms from my Gypsy grandmother. "It's all in how seriously you present your interpretations of your Interested's palm. When you depart futures you must act like you know exactly where those futures are." She called the people who came to her for advice The Interested. If she believed in her palm readings herself, one never knew. She never read palms as an entertainment. Like she never read palms at family get-togethers. The irony was, she was a believing Christian, a Protestant, a Baptist! All of this to explain that I had decided to uproot my wife and me and come to New York City on the throwing of the I Ching one night at a party over in Marin County at the home of the man and woman who were now in New York City and wanting to hang out with my wife and me.
I was very happy with my wife. We had a most compatible marriage of three happy years. It was just this guy's wife. What can I say in male terms that both males and females would understand? Males I know understand. My wife, however, no matter how logically I explained it could not rationally understand it. She especially didn't understand how just looking at this woman for the first time in a certain male way had made her the matter of a conquest in my male ego. You know, looking at her, attaching to her eyes, her darkly encircled dark-chocolate eyes, and instantly connecting with her. Was it sexual? Not at first. Ironically, in fact, not until that night her husband called and my wife answered the phone and told me "my girlfriend" was in town and wanting to get together. Until then it had been a fantasy both of us were wanting to live out.
Yesterday, I had seen in the paper that Charles Mingus in a lot of hoopla was returning to the jazz scene after being out of it for several years, suffering problems with his hands that kept him from being able to play bass or piano. But now he was coming back. For one night at The Top of the Gate, the upstairs club in the big downstairs Village Gate club in Greenwich Village. It was a big occasion among jazz aficionados all over the country. "We are going, baby," I had told my wife last night, now, the night before.
I never could tell if my wife really liked jazz or not. She was a classically trained dancer but she was also thoroughly trained in modern dance, in what they were beginning to call jazz dance. But when I played her my jazz albums over and over never did I see her foot tap! Never did I see her shaking her head from side to side. Never did I see her clapping on the upbeat! And, yet, after we divorced, she became a jazz deejay on a Tampa, Florida, FM station and had an affair with a semi-famous jazz saxophonist.
"So do you mind getting together with 'my girlfriend' and Beezo? You know how Beezo admires Mingus." "And I know how much you admire her." "Oh, come on, you want to see Mingus and why not take them along?--he'll pay for everything, you know that." "OK, but I'm not going to be happy around that bitch and you'd better not try and sneak off with her." "Come on, it's Mingus!" "Yeah, sure," my wife replied begrudgingly.
The couple arrived at our apartment around three in the afternoon. "Oh Christ," my wife was hollering, running around in her underwear, "what the fuck are they doing here...." "Maybe it's the paperboy...take your top off. Give him a thrill." She shot me the bird. "Hell, even if it's Beezo and Betsy, take your top off," I teased back. Without missing a beat I knew in my lusting mind that Betsy maybe had my wife beat in the top department. My wife was "large chested," as Jane Russell used to put it on her "big girl" commercials for Maidenform (I love that name for a bra), but so was Betsy.
My wife screamed, "Hold on!" Then softer, "It's them, dammit. You answer the door." She ran off toward our bathroom, which was straight down the hall as you entered the apartment.
I opened the door. It was Betsy. I got an immediate frog in my throat. I gulped like a dog choking on a chicken bone. "Am I that scary!" Betsy sang in her light fluttery California-girl voice. "Oh, hell no. You're awesome." "You sound like a kid." She fell into my arms...it sounds corny rereading it as I write it, but she did, she fell in my arms and I automatically kissed her and she responded by opening her mouth to my kiss. There was something very very hot against my loins. I mean furnace hot. A hot spot pressuring against private area. My penis became a thermometer accepting the role of measuring that hotness. My penis was shaken awake. My penis exploded with a rush of lustful blood. The hotness became the soul of my whole attention. I knew it was her vagina then. Her vagina was on fire. Could that be?
She pulled away just in time for my wife to fling herself out of our bathroom to promenade up the hallway with her best "face" on. "Betsy!" she exclaimed and came at Betsy with unflailed arms. Betsy was exhausted and slumping as if fainting. I was still stuck between the urge to push into that hot spot again or run for the bathroom before my wife could get a sight of the raging erection that was choking me dumb...sucking all my blood into its head to leave me gasping for relief. I fled like a frightened rabbit to the bathroom. The bathroom still smelled like my wife's Estee Lauder, which did nothing to mellow me out and bring my desires back into my brain--the Estee Lauder put me on a fucking merry-go-round, my wife and Betsy were the horses, galloping along, their rears in the air begging me to try and grab on for a big ride. Me, like a knight of auld rampantly ready to mount one of them, my lance at the ready.
By the time I calmed down, Beezo had joined the affair and they were all in the livingroom. I heard my wife asking Beezo if he wanted a beer. "Hell yeah! Where's that fucking husband of yours, sweetie." My wife hated being called sweetie.
Betsy was sitting on our yellow couch when I came into the scene. She looked tired. Her dark eyes were sunken back darker into her eye sockets. Her tight dress was pulled up showing all her long legs. I was transfixed. I was hung up on looking at her.
My wife came out bringing Beezo a Heineken.
"Hey, Macho, remember me?" It was Beezo. He was sitting on our other couch. The French provincial couch we called "Her" couch. Betsy was sitting on the Eames-style couch we called "His" couch.
"What did you do, get into my Estee Lauder?" My wife said coming over to me after depositing the beer in Beezo's greedy hand reaching out like a baby bird with jaws split open and begging for fish guts to be vomited down its throat. "Jeez, you smell racy!"
I had to think about that. I smelled "racy." Did she mean raunchy? Did I smell musty? Oozing pheromones?
We went out to go to the Top of the Gate about 8 figuring it would take us twenty minutes maybe to find a parking place. The Junior Mance Trio was playing the first set at 9 and then Mingus was due on at 10. We walked what seemed like forever over to Beezo's rental car. I was expecting at least a Buick, preferably a Cadillac, but instead it turned out to be a Volkswagen Beetle. I sat with Beezo in the front seat. "Holy Shit, Beez, you're a Jew driving the automobile Hitler designed." "Yeah, and the ashtray seats 5 Kikes, or so it says on that little sign inside it." As we drove crosstown, I soon noticed Betsy's knees and exposed legs were almost in my face the backseat was so uptight against the front seat. I caught myself reaching to run my left hand up under her legs to touch that wonderful smooth part of a woman I so like, the inside of her upper thighs. I mean I almost touched her right in front of my wife and her husband. I actually felt sweat dripping from under my arms. Whew. I was suddenly sweltering.
Then that Volkswagen hit a bump as Beezo turned onto Second Avenue to head downtown. My body flew up and my head hit the roof of the car. And then something went wrong with Beezo and the car shot forward like a bullet, roaring down Second Avenue. "God-dammit, I can't stop this Nazi son of a bitch," Beezo was hollering. The women were screaming. And I took advantage of the excitement and put my hand between Betsy's legs.
The Top of the Gate was a plain place. Unvarnished wooden floors. Sagging. You walked in and it was all like a big square ring before you, a rail, then tables and chairs, to the right a big bar section. Junior Mance was still playing when we got there. The room was half full. We went to the bar. The bar was packed. We found two stools down at the far end of the bar. My wife said, "Look, there's Les McCann." It was. Across the bar on the opposite side. He was talking to a woman. Beezo was beside himself. "I'm going over and at least meet the dude...come on, man."
We met Les McCann. Then we brought him over to meet the ladies. He especially liked my wife. My wife was very pretty. Still my eyes caught the way Betsy was sitting on the bar stool. I shivered all over every time I hung my eyes on her. Then McCann left and my wife said he propositioned her. I laughed. As Junior Mance was finishing his set I spotted a stage-side table come open and rushed over and grabbed it.
I drank Brandy Alexanders in those days. Bartenders hated me but waitresses loved me because Brandy Alexanders were a couple of dollars more expensive than regular cocktails or straight shots. I was sitting right by the low-level stage. My wife was next to me, Betsy next to her, and Beezo on the end. Beezo was enjoying himself immensely. My wife and Betsy sat silent. Madly I reached my arm around back of my wife's chair and found Betsy's arm and pulled it out to where I took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back and I was in love.
Mingus was surprisingly big when he finally came out. He came out before the band and walked around like he owned the joint. He brought a stool out from against the back wall. Then he studied the stool. He moved it to the right and stood back and studied it again. Then he moved it to the left. Then he looked at us--we were mesmerized watching him--grinned and said, "Silly ain't it?" Then he left the stage. Then the house lights went down and the band filed out as the announcer called their names. Danny Richmond came out, bowed, then took his seat behind the drums and started rattling off rolls and cymbal hits and shit. Then Jaki Byard strolled out and took his position at the piano. My wife pinched my leg when Jaki came out. She knew how much I admired Jaki Byard. Then Bobby Jones the saxman came out with a young saxman I didn't recognize. Then they announced Mingus and he came back out, this time with his big bass in tow. He bowed then moved over to the stool and started a routine that first involved his sitting on the stool, getting up and moving it a half-an-inch or so toward the piano, then he sat back down and started fiddling with his bass's peg. Then he picked the bass up and slammed it down into stage floor. He was mumbling things to Danny Richmond and Danny was grinning showing his big bad ill-arranged teeth and saying Amens back at Mingus's mumbles. Again Mingus adjusted his bass peg and again slammed the bass hard down onto the stage. Suddenly he started playing. A long sweating solo. And then as the solo dragged into an intro thing, I knew it was going to be Mingus's goodbye to Prez..."Goodbye to Pork Pie Hat." That's a tribute that makes me cry with its bluer-than-blue theme, twisting and turning yet smooth as a Lester Young solo--yelling out some moanin' in the blues idiom for the man who took the wind out of Coleman Hawkins's sails and used it to blow his own invented saxophone sound in soft winds with soft touch yet causing major deep-down penetrating blowing and soon the Mingus Band was swirling Lesterisms melodiously around the room.
"Pork Pie Hat" went on for at least 20 minutes. Mingus stayed on the stool the whole time. His hands were hammy huge. Bloated. He played well enough but there was something missing. His fingering was half what it had been at the peak of his development. And he was overweight.
After "Pork Pie Hat" creeped to a stop, Mingus got to the routine of adjusting his bass peg again. Then he tested his microphone, moved it a little, then unlocked the stand poles and slid the mic down a notch. Then he reversed himself, unlocking the mic stand poles and sliding the mic back up where it had just been. Then he moved the stand back and went back to adjusting the bass peg again. Then he looked over to Jaki Byard. "Jaki Byard!" "Yes?" Jaki said back. "Get your passport ready, Jaki Byard, you're going to Europe. You're going to Europe, Jaki Byard." Then Mingus turned back around and the band dropped down into "Fables of Faubus"--"Who's the meanest, nastiest, eviliest man who ever lived, Danny Richmond?" It was near the end of this piece that Mingus fired the young saxman I didn't recognize. I thought the young man was interesting. He had a lot of African jewelry and elephant bells and shit hanging around his neck and he was wearing jingle bells around both his ankles. He kept time with the bells as he soloed. He didn't bother me, but he bothered Mingus. Maybe it was the bells. But near the end of "Faubus"--maybe during Danny Richmond's solo--Mingus nodded at the kid and the kid looked back and Mingus nodded toward the end of the stage. The kid stood there looking at Mingus. It was like, "No, God, why are you punishing me?" Mingus just kept nodding and finally the kid left the stage defeated. Then the band took the 11 0'clock break. It was like midnight. Beezo and I went over to the bar. The kid was over there getting paid off. "Sorry, kid," I said. He looked at me. "Thanks, man." "At least you got to play almost all the first set," Beezo said. "But I've been rehearsing with Him and he's never said anything...I don't get it." And he walked away toward the door.
Back at our table Beezo said, "Man, Mingus is too big to approach. He's a hard cat to worship." "He expects it but resents it, too," I chirped in. My wife and Betsy got up and went to the ladies room.
Beezo began acting fidgety; he knocked his drink over. It wasn't that bad; he had already drank most of it. His nose was getting red. "Listen, old man," he slurred. "Let's get this out in the open." "What Beezer?" "You and my wife." "What about us?" "I know you have the hots for her...and she has 'em for you, too, I'm big enough to admit that." "Come on, Beez, I've got a top-drawer wife, why would I be hitting on your woman?" "Come on, man. I know my wife. I sense her feelings. I know you two are flirting...and I saw you feeling her up all during that set." "Beezer, listen, man, I don't know what to say." "I'll tell why I'm not worried." "Why's that, Beez?" "Because Jewish men know that even though their wives are having affairs, eventually they are going to end up coming back home to their Jewish family. No matter what kind of affair you and Betsy are having, she'll come back to me...she'll always come back to me."
During the second set, things on stage started degenerating, as did things at our table. Betsy had come back without my wife. "She's up there hanging with Les McCann. Looks like they've got a thing going on." Then Beezo got up and went to the restroom.
"The Beez told me he knew you and I were having an affair." "He's told me the same thing. Are we?" "As far as I'm concerned, hell yes." "I love you." "I love you, too. I'm crazy I know, but dammit I can't look at you without sizzling, without shivering." "What a time to make love," she said. I leaned over and meant to kiss her. She blocked me. "Come on, now. Don't start a bru-haha!" I was always saying that. I got it from a TV show I think.
Beezo and my wife came back and the lights went down and the empty stage entertained us until Mingus came out without the band. He walked over to the piano and started playing it. He was fooling around for awhile and then he started playing "Body and Soul." He'd made an album of his piano playing. "Body and Soul" was on that album. Then he got up and walked over to a table where a middle-aged white man and his young white-woman companion were sitting. Mingus picked up her drink and took a long drink out of it. Then he threw the rest of the drink in the dude's face. He explained to the frightened girl, "I'm expected to act like this, you see? People pay to see me act like this." Then he walked off the stage. You didn't dare laugh. Mingus was a totally serious cat even in his cat-and-mouse shit. It wasn't meant as comedy. He was serious. He was serious the same as Miles was serious in the same way. Like going up to Miles and telling him how great you thought he was if you were White might get you a shot in the mouth.
The second set was a total disaster. Mingus brought the band out and they played something of Mingus's I can't remember and when they finished Mingus took the mic and called Evelyn Blakely to the stage. I cringed. I hated Evelyn Blakely. She was kin in some way to Art Blakely and she showed up at every jazz gig in town and always they'd let her come up and sing and she was awful, and Mingus, in showing his hardheadedness, kept her singing beyond return, too. Poor Evelyn. She knew some good songs but the woman couldn't carry a tune in a dump truck. By the time the set was over, we all felt deflated. During the second set I had made no suggestive moves on Betsy nor she on me.
After a drink at the bar on Les McCann who came over and again paid most of his attention to my wife, the four of us tumbled downstairs and out onto Bleecker Street and the swarming of the night Village visitors. My wife said, "Look, there's the kid Mingus fired." He was standing at the curb trying to get a cab. "Hey, man, again, good luck to you, man. I rather liked your playing, but then I'm not Mingus." "He likes my playing, he just doesn't like me for some reason," the kid retorted as he climbed in a cab and sped away.
Riding back uptown in Beezo's rental Volkswagen Beetle, this time it rolling along normal speed though being such a small boxy car even going slow felt like you were flying along. This time I sat in the backseat with my wife. My wife reached over between my legs and stroked my penis through my slacks. "Is that for me or your girlfriend?" "Come on, Betsy....," I blurted out. My wife clamped down on my penis and tried to jerk it out of my pelvic by its roots. I looked at Betsy. She was looking right at me smiling.
Back at the apartment, it was 2 in the morning, we had some beers and decided to go out to an all-night diner and have breakfast before Beezo and Betsy headed back to Long Island where they were camping with his parents. Beezo and my wife left out for the elevator bank. The minute they were out the door, I pulled Betsy into the hallway that led to our bathroom and I enveloped her whole and started tongue-kissing her. A hard kiss. And as the kiss continued, I lifted up her dress, unzipped my pants, and she took my hard penis in her hand and rubbed it into her pantied bush, still a burning bush...and when I felt myself cumming, I backed away, all flush and beet red, panting, my penis cramping and pulsing up and down it was so hard. "Oh God, Betsy, I love you, I want you." She shushed me, repaired her clothing and we kissed quickly and then ran out to the elevator. "Damn, what took you two so long?" my wife asked. I wondered if Beezo had hit on my wife, you know, telling her about me hitting on his wife? I didn't notice my pants were still unzipped until I was on the elevator and we were heading down. I did however notice the quaint fishy smell that was boiling out of unsatisfied Betsy.
I woke up the next day around noon. My head was pounding. I smelled coffee. I got up, staggered to the kitchen and as I was pouring me a cup of coffee, my wife said, "Your girlfriend called a minute ago." "What?" "Your girlfriend called." "What did she want?" "I don't know; I hung up when I heard her voice." "I better call 'em back...they're leaving today, that's probably all she wanted." "Yeah sure," my wife slammed back at me. "Still, I'd better call...." "You know what you'd better do rather than call that bitch...."
austinhighchew
for The Daily Growler
another "Jazz Story" from The Daily Growler Fiction Editor, Megan Maldonado.
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