Look at that wicked left hand! my daddy used to say about Buddy Brown, The man plays piano like he made a deal with the devil!
I didn't know about Robert Johnson back then or else I might've questioned the originality of the comparison but my daddy was right about that wicked left hand - Buddy Brown had surely been brought into the world to make music, the raucous, hot kind of straight-from-Chicago or born-in-New-Orleans blues that most piano men only dream about.
They'd met some thirty years back, both fresh out of the service and slightly adrift in the seamy section of Boston's Back Bay. My daddy was a door-to-door salesman and Buddy played the circuit of weekend dives and underground bars, scraping by but not by much, working construction during the day and living in a completely disreputable studio apartment just outside of Central Square. They had little common ground except music but it was enough - the friendship endured for decades.
Not long after I turned eighteen, I got to hear them. By then, Buddy had a regular gig and a regular following, four nights a week in an upscale piano bar in an elegant Copley Square hotel but his true passion was the after hours, nowhere-near-legitimate club across the river. This was the inner circle - Buddy and a pick up band playing barrel house blues til dawn behind closed doors - playing for themselves, without limits, without rules.
On one very early spring morning, somewhere around 2am, my daddy knocked on a nondescript, anonymous door somewhere on Western Avenue. He spoke a few muted words through the mail slot, there was a pause, and then the door opened into a world I'd only seen in old gangster movies - sawdust floor, rickety little tables for two with spindly cane back chairs, a long, scarred up bar with an ornate mirror. The air was densely blue with cigarette smoke and most of the tables were empty, a single couple was swaying on the the tiny dance floor. From the corner, the piano player glanced up and nodded - he wore a white tuxedo shirt with suspenders and shiny black trousers, a fedora sat casually atop his glossy hair, a cigarette was clamped between his teeth and a row of empty shot glasses was lined up on top of the old upright, six in all. I had the eerie sense that we had just walked into Rick's, that Bogart or Bergman or even Claude Raines might materialize at any moment.
Instead, a tired looking waiter brought two heavy glasses and a bottle of Chivas, placed them between us and was gone by the time I looked up to thank him. Except for the scotch - vile, metallic, with a noxious after taste of diesel fuel - I was pretty sure if there was a heaven, I'd found it.
In addition to Buddy Brown on piano, there was a stand up bass played by a thin, young man wearing a ponytail and a scuffed leather vest - a saxaphone player in khakis and Buddy Holly glasses - a trumpet player in a navy blazer with gold buttons - a barefoot drummer in sunglasses and metal bracelets - and my daddy in his neat, everyday blue suit and striped tie, wailing on clarinet. I'd never seen this side of him before and was left speechless. It was the first time I'd ever heard "Tishomingo Blues" or "Juke" or an unforgettable blues version of "Old Joe Avery". The night - or morning since it was going on 5am when they wrapped it up - finished with "Buddy Bolden's Blues", and on the ride home my daddy told me the story of the legendary Buddy Bolden and how he was credited with inventing ragtime, before his schizophrenia and alcoholism, death in an asylum and burial in an unmarked pauper's grave somewhere in New Orleans.
Sad life, he said with a slight smile, but wicked good music.
I was, of course, sworn to secrecy about this remarkable night.
Your mother doesn't appreciate Buddy Brown, my daddy told me as he rolled down his cuffs and worked his collar and tie back into place, And God knows there'd be five kinds of hell to pay if she knew I'd brought you to a modern day speakeasy, so this stays between us.
There was wisdom and clarity and insight in this small bit of secret keeping, I knew. It was as certain, as true and as right as Buddy Brown's wicked left hand and while it became one of my most precious memories, I never told it to a single soul. Until now.
Some years later, so my daddy wrote me, Downtown Buddy Brown stepped off a Cambridge trolley car on a warm and still dark morning in late summer. He keeled over and fell, dead before he hit the train tracks on Massachusetts Avenue, a sheaf of sheet music in one hand and a flask of Chivas in his pocket. He was given a dixieland funeral, my daddy said, the likes of which Cambridge had never seen, the likes of which would have done New Orleans proud.
On one very early spring morning, somewhere around 2am, my daddy knocked on a nondescript, anonymous door somewhere on Western Avenue. He spoke a few muted words through the mail slot, there was a pause, and then the door opened into a world I'd only seen in old gangster movies - sawdust floor, rickety little tables for two with spindly cane back chairs, a long, scarred up bar with an ornate mirror. The air was densely blue with cigarette smoke and most of the tables were empty, a single couple was swaying on the the tiny dance floor. From the corner, the piano player glanced up and nodded - he wore a white tuxedo shirt with suspenders and shiny black trousers, a fedora sat casually atop his glossy hair, a cigarette was clamped between his teeth and a row of empty shot glasses was lined up on top of the old upright, six in all. I had the eerie sense that we had just walked into Rick's, that Bogart or Bergman or even Claude Raines might materialize at any moment.
Instead, a tired looking waiter brought two heavy glasses and a bottle of Chivas, placed them between us and was gone by the time I looked up to thank him. Except for the scotch - vile, metallic, with a noxious after taste of diesel fuel - I was pretty sure if there was a heaven, I'd found it.
In addition to Buddy Brown on piano, there was a stand up bass played by a thin, young man wearing a ponytail and a scuffed leather vest - a saxaphone player in khakis and Buddy Holly glasses - a trumpet player in a navy blazer with gold buttons - a barefoot drummer in sunglasses and metal bracelets - and my daddy in his neat, everyday blue suit and striped tie, wailing on clarinet. I'd never seen this side of him before and was left speechless. It was the first time I'd ever heard "Tishomingo Blues" or "Juke" or an unforgettable blues version of "Old Joe Avery". The night - or morning since it was going on 5am when they wrapped it up - finished with "Buddy Bolden's Blues", and on the ride home my daddy told me the story of the legendary Buddy Bolden and how he was credited with inventing ragtime, before his schizophrenia and alcoholism, death in an asylum and burial in an unmarked pauper's grave somewhere in New Orleans.
Sad life, he said with a slight smile, but wicked good music.
I was, of course, sworn to secrecy about this remarkable night.
Your mother doesn't appreciate Buddy Brown, my daddy told me as he rolled down his cuffs and worked his collar and tie back into place, And God knows there'd be five kinds of hell to pay if she knew I'd brought you to a modern day speakeasy, so this stays between us.
There was wisdom and clarity and insight in this small bit of secret keeping, I knew. It was as certain, as true and as right as Buddy Brown's wicked left hand and while it became one of my most precious memories, I never told it to a single soul. Until now.
Some years later, so my daddy wrote me, Downtown Buddy Brown stepped off a Cambridge trolley car on a warm and still dark morning in late summer. He keeled over and fell, dead before he hit the train tracks on Massachusetts Avenue, a sheaf of sheet music in one hand and a flask of Chivas in his pocket. He was given a dixieland funeral, my daddy said, the likes of which Cambridge had never seen, the likes of which would have done New Orleans proud.
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