A Conversation with the Mann (15 page)

Out on the street, in the cold, a stack of people waited to get into The Spot. A twenty to the guy at the door got me and
Tommy inside in under half an hour. We got a table at the back of the house, the house being so small, the back was practically
the front. We were just far enough away from the stage that we could carry on a conversation. Not far enough away that some
jazz artist on a xylophone—and don't ever make the mistake of not calling them artists—sent some stink-eye our way for not
listening while he was trying to school us.

To hell with him. I was with Tommy Montgomery.

We had a few drinks and smokes—you weren't hip without sticks—and Tommy brought me up to speed on the short history of Miss
Montgomery. She was a Philly girl, younger than even I had originally figured—in some states me just smiling at her was skirting
the law—but already a veteran. She'd won her first talent contest at eleven, been playing clubs in Pennsylvania and Jersey
since turning thirteen, and laid her first sides at fifteen. She'd even managed to squeeze in backing up the Godfather of
Soul. That gig didn't last long, and what she said—or didn't say—about the man made me think there was more than just music
to their relationship.

The thought of it, the thought of her with him—no matter how big a star he was, no matter at the time I didn't even know her—made
me somewhat but very instantly jealous. I knew then if I hadn't already fallen off the deep end for Tommy I was taking a fast
run at that cliff.

Tommy turned the questions to me, and I ducked and dodged some. Did a Philly girl need to know I was a dirt-poor Harlem kid?
Did a nice young lady from a good home have to hear about the pharmacy of a father I had waiting sprawled out for me? I wasn't
trying to lie to her about who I was … what I was. I was just trying to hide it a little.

Changing tracks, Tommy asked: “Why do you want to be a comedian?”

I shrugged. “Probably for the same reason you want to be a singer.”

“That's not an answer.”

“I want to have a life, and it's the only way I know how.”

“You don't have a life now?”

“Not like the one I could have.”

“And you could have … ?”

“Nothing but glad hands and backslaps. A life of getting what you want when you want it. You get to be somebody and nobody
pushes you around. And if they do, you push them back. You push them hard.”

I realized my tone and volume had jacked. I realized I was ranting, and that Tommy was staring.

She said as soft as I'd been harsh: “You've got a lot of anger in you.”

I went soft, too. “I've got a lot of anger in me because that's where
they
put it.”

“Laughing in the … What do they say about comics? Laughing on the outside, crying on the inside?”

“Crying on the inside, getting laughed
at
on the outside.”

“And that's why you want to be a comedian? To not get laughed
at
? To get even?”

A guy on a bass finished up what seemed like ten minutes worth of solo, and the place broke out into hand claps and finger
snaps, not so much because he was good but because that's what you were supposed to do when a jazz artist finished ten minutes
worth of solo.

I asked Tommy: “Why do you sing?”

“Because I have something inside me that I want people to hear, some part of me that's worth listening to.”

“There are parts of you that are worth looking at, too.”

“You're not listening to what I'm saying.” Tommy was just slighdy sharp with that. Comedy is about timing, and when a girl
like Tommy—a girl who lived for song—was telling you what music meant to her, it wasn't time to be cracking wise.

First date. I was turning it into our last and only.

Tommy: “I want to say something with my music; I want to speak to people. That's important to me. If you don't have something
to say when you're up there”—she flipped a hand at the stage just beyond us—“what's the point of going on?”

“You talk like … I'm just telling jokes. I'm not delivering the Ten Commandments.”

“It's whatever you want it to be.”

“Yeah? Well, I want it to be my ticket to a better place. That's plenty.”

Dissatisfied with my answer, Tommy aimed her attention at the quartet, their riffs suddenly more interesting than anything
I had to say.

I
WALKED
T
OMMY HOME
, west from Bowery, cutting through Washington Square Park, then up Seventh Avenue. The distance from The Five Spot to her
apartment helped warm the frost that had collected between us. I could barely feel my steps on the concrete. The drinks, the
jazz, the secondhand smoke from the reefers toked back at the club … Tommy: They all got jiggered into a cocktail that got
me good and lifted and very nearly spoiled me for any other kind of a kick.

“Jackie … Jackie!” Tommy's bodiless voice called to me from some other place.

I stopped. I turned around. Tommy's voice had no body because she was standing in a doorway ten paces behind me. I was so
far gone on my trip, I hadn't even noticed she'd stopped walking.

“This is my apartment.”

I just sort of nodded to that incidentally, didn't say anything, as if it was nothing but normal for a guy to leave a girl
standing.

“Are you all right?”

I was flush and I was sailing. I was a man in love. “Yeah. Fine.”

I walked back over to Tommy and stood.

She stood.

I kept standing.

We both stood around.

Twenty-some years old. I might as well have been in high school.

Tommy broke up our mime act with: “How come you never asked me out?”

“I did. Tonight.”

“Before tonight, and you didn't ask me. I asked you.”

A hesitation, then: “I wanted to. Almost did a dozen times. I just figured you must've had all these guys after you.”

“All what guys?”

“Well … you're this big-time singer—”

“Big-time?” If she'd been in the audience watching my act, Tommy couldn't have caught herself a bigger laugh. “Coffeehouses,
a couple of clubs. That's getting over?”

“When you're on the outside looking in …”

Tommy stopped laughing. She gave me a serious study. “Is that the only reason you wanted to go out with me, because you think
I'm some kind of celebrity?”

“I wanted to go out with you because before I met you, before I even knew you existed, for my whole life I've been in love
with you.”

That was some swinging poetry. It was the kind of jazz a guy doesn't normally try to put over on a girl, and for sure not
on the first date. Maybe it was part of my leftover high that got me talking that way. Maybe. Or, maybe it was the straight-from-the-soul
truth. I figure it had to have been, because the way Tommy x-rayed me looking for any sign of a come-on, a play, or an angle,
if I'd been giving her any less than what I felt in my heart she would've bounced my black behind all the way back to Harlem.

When she was done looking me over, when she was done checking me out and sizing me up: “Would you like to come in for coffee?”

“We had coffee.”

“Coffee's not what you're coming in for.” With that, a smile. A smile more mature than her years.

Just so you know, just so you don't think otherwise of the girl, nothing happened between me and Tommy that night. Nothing
much other than that it was the most wonderful evening of my entire life.

S
ID WAS A MAN
not without abilities. Chief among them, as far as I cared, was the ability to work small-scale miracles. He was able to
swing me some decent stage time. He was able to finagle Fran a recording deal. Deal was, some little label would press and
promote a single as long as the total expense didn't top five hundred dollars. Five bills to cover studio time, session musicians,
plus the pressing and the promotion with whatever was left. It wasn't a money gig. At best, if things worked out, it would
be an opportunity to get Fran heard outside of clubs. Still, there was enough excitement to go around: Fran's first deal,
her first record. The first real break for either of us. We couldn't help but feel it was the beginning of all things good.

The five hundred dollars didn't leave enough cash to hire a producer. Sid would be at the session to make sure things ran
smooth. I would be there just to be there, to share Fran's moment.

The little bit of studio the budget allowed knocked the glamour right out of the gig. Nothing fancy. Not the Brill Building
or anything close to it. A place on the West Side near the old Tin Pan district. Dirty walls, carpeting decorated with coffee
stains. Butts. Everywhere, all over the floor, were cigarette butts smoked right down to the filters. Who in the hell, I wondered,
smoked so much?

Like a musical zoo, the space was full up with booth after recording booth of acts laying down tracks glimpsed through glass
windows as you passed. The zoo had many creatures. Milk-faced acts, their eagerness busting through the soundproofing; seasoned
acts, relaxed and steady—one more session for one more record. It was a job, and there's nothing special about doing your
job. Nervous acts. Nervous not because they were new to the music scene. It was opposite of that. They were nervous because
they'd been around too long, gone hitless too many years. They were looking at last chances, failure blocking the road ahead,
defeat racing up from behind. The truth of things made them sweaty and pasty as they paced their tight little booths—rats
desperate to find a way out of their traps. Bad as their I-ain't-gonna-make-it mojo was, as thick as it floated through the
studio, it got the big igg from Frances. For the minute, she was still riding high.

Sid got Fran checked into her recording space, introduced to the session musicians. She gave them enthusiastic hellos. The
enthusiasm didn't catch. They were by-the-hour guys. Pay-me-and-I'll-play boys. A first-time singer showing up, smiles and
ideas about breaking big … ? Nothing new. Where's the money, and what's the music?

The music, the song Fran was going to record, was “Let There Be Love.” It was a light little number, a popular tune with some
jazz phrasing. Framed only with piano, snare, bass, and xylophone, it left plenty of room to showcase a good voice. It would
make a real nice cut for Fran.

She did a rehearsal with the musicians, did another, did one more, and everyone seemed to be on the same page. There were
some instructions passed to Fran from an engineer. Fran nodded to them. The engineer set the tape rolling, the musicians played.
Fran sang. From the engineer's booth me and Sid listened, my pant legs used five or six times in a couple of minutes to dry
my sweaty palms. I was that nervous for the girl.

Fran finished the track, and it was good. She laid down another one, and it was good, too. A third that was as good as the
first, and when she finished that one I read the worry on Fran's face, and on Sid's. The tracks were good … and that was the
problem. They were good and nothing more. Not sensational. Not unique. They didn't make you want to jump up and run out and
buy the wax after hearing them. I was Fran's friend, maybe her best friend, and even to me she sounded no different from any
other girl singing just an other song. The thing she had going for her onstage—magic, spark, style, whatever—was absent from
her now.

So Fran took a little time, studied the playback, asked for a couple of adjustments from the musicians, then laid two more
tracks back to back. Like the first three, they were good, that's it. On the next track you could hear stress starting to
do things to Fran's voice. Her range got trimmed a little, whatever bounce and spontaneity she had sounded forced, thrown
in as an “oh, yeah” afterthought. The number was getting worse, not better. All those spots in the clubs, all those early
mornings at Fourteenth Street she'd spent sharpening her craft, didn't matter. Done night after night, year after year, working
a stage got to be as demanding as singing in the shower. It got to be routine. The here and now, this recording session: That
carried weight. The weight was making Fran choke.

Sid called for a break, ordered up some coffee and sandwiches, gave Fran and the musicians time to regroup. While they were
recharging, I saw Sid talking to the guy who managed the studio. The session was going long and it would probably go longer.
No doubt Sid was trying to work out a financial arrangement to get Fran whatever time she needed to get the cut right. The
look on Sid's face when he was done dealing told me the negotiation hadn't gone very well. He said nothing about it to Frances.
For her he was all smiles. He wasn't about to let the expense of things jam up her thinking.

Break over, Fran and the musicians headed back into the booth, laid another track. Same as with the others, it was good and
only good. Maybe not even as. The next track Fran busted, and one right after the bassist blew. They were all starting to
go stale, the musicians getting sloppy and Fran getting tighter.

The studio manager came 'round again. He didn't say anything, just tapped a finger on the face of his watch. Sid nodded. He
got the guy's meaning. More than four hours we'd taken up space that had been booked for two. From his pocket Sid slipped
some cash—his own, nothing he'd been fronted by the record company—and pressed it into the manager's hand. That would stretch
things some. Not much. Forced into laying out the situation, Sid took Fran aside. Hushed words were passed: There was time
for one more take. After that it would just be a matter of picking the best of the bland.