The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (19 page)

Django did not come out until the end, and was accompanied only by Duke Ellington on the piano and a bass player who tried to follow. There had been almost no rehearsal. But someone once said of Reinhardt, “He is music made man,” and I accept the compliment. He was one of my prizes. His playing that night, on Frankie’s well-traveled guitar, was so remarkably original, even the band members were yelling, “Go to it, Master! Go to it!” He did four songs, each one making a bigger impression than the one before.

The next morning, in the hotel, Django asked Frankie to find a newspaper and read him anything that was written about him. Frankie turned the pages until he saw a headline:
FRENCH
GUITAR
ARTIST
STEALS
DUKE
’
S
CONCERT
.

“Hmph,” Django said, sipping his coffee. “As it should be.”

Their time together was so eventful and so fast, that years later, it would feel to Frankie more like a dream than a memory. But one night in the city of Chicago, Frankie watched the band setting up, and noticed the bass drum featured a drawing from the RCA Victor record label—a dog staring into a gramophone.

Frankie’s stomach went weak. He thought of the hairless dog and the phonograph in El Maestro’s flat. He thought of all the parts of his life he had left behind. He was suddenly and profoundly sad. This trip was exciting, but he was still a child, and all children eventually want to go home.

When the tour reached Detroit, he set out to do it.

23

1969

THE WOMAN IN THE VAN RAN HER TONGUE OVER HER TEETH.

“That is such a mind-blowing story,” she said. “You just traveled all over when you were a kid? With Duke Ellington?”

“Yeah.”

“So cool.” She dragged on her rolled cigarette then handed it to him. She leaned over his legs.

“I want to see this guitar.”

She undid the clasps and opened the case.

“Careful,” Frankie mumbled.

“Why careful?”

“It does strange things.”

“Like what?”

“Magic. Stuff like that.”

She grinned.

“You’re funny.”

“I’m not.”

“I think you are.”

Frankie looked at his hand. It seemed huge. The smoke left him blinking. The woman slid closer.

“Take one of these.”

“What is it?”

“A Lemmon. Don’t you like Lemmons?”

She put a small green pill in his mouth, then swallowed one herself. She curled up against him.

“What’s with the eggs?”

“My wife. They’re for my wife. I have a wife. We’re having a baby.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“You don’t know?”

“At the stage.”

She smiled.

“Then she’s not here, is she?”

She put her face close to his.

“What happened next?”

“Next?”

“The story. After you left the band?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Try.”

Frankie closed his eyes.

“It was cold.”

24

1946

IT WAS COLD. SNOW WAS FALLING.
Frankie tugged on the wool jacket Django had bought him and adjusted his thighs on the concrete stoop. At this point, he had been in America for October, November, and part of December. He didn’t know how people lived in such weather. Once again, for the thousandth time, he opened his guitar case and took out the piece of cloth with an address written in Baffa’s handwriting, the address of his sister: 467 Claret Street, Detroit, Michigan
.

Frankie had already knocked, many times. No one had answered. He’d been waiting on the steps most of the afternoon. Django had offered to come with him, but Frankie, quite bold in his independence by this point, told the guitarist his aunt would likely want to hear all about Baffa, so he would be there for a while. And she would probably want him to live with her until she could get him back to Spain.

“If this is so, you must come to say good-bye,
chavo
,” Django said. “We leave tomorrow, yes?”

“Okay,” Frankie said.

He tugged on his coat. The small brick house resembled others on the block; each had a short, straight driveway, like frets lining a guitar neck, with parked cars collecting snow. Big cars. Long cars. It seemed to Frankie that everyone in America had a vehicle, unlike Villareal, where people still used carts and horses.

Frankie closed his eyes and pictured Baffa’s house on Calvario Street, sitting in the garden, listening to the radio, the hairless dog by his side. He remembered those days as warm and sweet.

“Are you lost, son?”

Frankie opened his eyes. A mailman with a blue uniform and a large leather bag was in front of him. Snowflakes dotted the brim of his cap.

“No, sir.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m waiting.”

“In the snow?”

“Yes.”

“Who for?”

“My aunt.”

Frankie held out the piece of cloth.

“Well, you got the right house. She’s your aunt, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Mr. Django paid a car.”

“You mean a taxi?”

“I think so.”

“Does she know you’re coming?”

“I’m late.”

“Were you supposed to be here this morning?”

Frankie shifted on the concrete. “Later than that.”

The man pressed his lips together, considering the boy in front of him. He handed over several envelopes.

“Want to give them their mail?”

Frankie took the letters.

“Stay warm,” the man said. “They should be home from work any minute.”

Who was “they”? Frankie thought. He watched the man finish his route, stopping at every house, until he couldn’t see him anymore. It grew dark. Frankie wondered if he’d have to sleep here.

Just then, a pale green Chevrolet turned down the street with its headlights on. As it slowed, Frankie’s heart sped up.

Stop here
, he willed it silently.
Stop here. Stop here.

It stopped. Frankie rose. He did not truly understand the purpose of an “aunt,” having never had one before. But since the moment he’d read El Maestro’s note in the hull of that ship, he had been waiting to meet her, hoping she would fix things, get him back home, reunite him with his original band.

What he saw changed all that.

What he saw was the car doors open and a man step out of one side and a plump woman with light hair step out of the other. Frankie had seen her face before, countless times, in a photograph with her arm around Baffa—a photograph he’d kept under his pillow. A chill ran through his young body and a cymbal crashed inside his head. He dropped the letters, leaped from the stoop, and as the woman’s mouth fell open in confusion, he ran across the snow-dusted grass with his arms held high, screaming, “Mama!”

In Western music, things resolve. A suspended fourth moves back to the third. A diminished chord slides to its tonic. Dissonance to consonance. I make peace that way.

Humans follow no such rules. So that night on Claret Street, Danza Rubio, the woman who’d stepped out of the pale green Chevrolet, was startled by the boy running toward her. And, having had no contact with her brother, Baffa, for many years, she was suspicious at the sudden appearance of a child. She stood motionless when Frankie tried to hug her. And when he exclaimed, “I am your son!” and told her the story Baffa had told him (about his wife, the car, the accident in America) she grew angry and broke the truth to Frankie right there in the street, like a series of hard rim shots on a snare drum.

Thwack!

She was not his mother.

Thwack!

She was not Baffa’s wife.

Thwack!

Baffa never had a wife.

Thwack!

He could never get a wife.

Thwack!

He had never been to America.

Thwack!

There was no accident.

Thwack!

There was no grave site.

Thwack!

Baffa was a liar.

Thwack!

He hadn’t spoken to her in years.

Thwack!

She assumed he was dead.

All of this took less than three minutes. Each blow stunned Frankie into a deeper silence. By the end, when Danza’s husband gruffly interjected, “Look, boy, we’re not giving you any money, if that’s what you expect,” the dazed child felt his jaw trembling. It took all he had to grab his guitar case and run. Danza yelled after him, but he did not turn back. He disappeared into falling snowflakes under pools of lamplight, tears rolling down his cheeks.

I have said that music allows for quick creation. But it is nothing compared with what you humans can destroy in a single conversation.

Burt Bacharach

Songwriter, performer, composer, producer

FRANKIE PRESTO LOVED THE STUDIO. HE WOULD HAVE LIVED IN THERE IF THEY’D HAD A BED.

Oh . . . sure . . . my name is Burt Bacharach . . . America . . . Los Angeles. But I met Frankie in New York. I produced his song “Our Secret” back in 1964. Great ballad. Did a reverb thing on his voice that made it eerie. And the string part we came up with around midnight. I started making calls and found a couple of violinists to come in at three or four in the morning. Frankie and I were from different parts of the world, but we had one thing in common: we didn’t leave a studio until it was perfect. Some musicians don’t like that. I keep them there for twenty takes, thirty takes. But what’s the point in making art if it isn’t right?

Frankie got that, you know? He was a beautiful soul—and if I had known he was still playing guitar I would have flown around the world to hear it. I really had no idea where he’d gone—or if he was still alive—until I heard about him dying a few days ago. Was it really on the stage? . . . My God . . . that’s awful. . . .

The first time I heard him play? . . . Yes, I do. That’s really how we met. I was at Bell Sound Studios in New York, before a recording session with Dionne Warwick. I got there early and the big room was empty except for this one guy who had his back to us. He wore headphones and was leaning over an electric guitar. I asked the engineer to bring up the sound, but before I could tell the guy to get out, I was frozen. His playing was incredible. He was switching between classical riffs and the jazz tune, “Body and Soul.” I said, “Who the hell is this?” And the engineer said, “You won’t believe it. That’s Frankie Presto.” And I said, “The singer?” and he said, “The singer plays a mean guitar.”

I guess he had been cutting a record just before us, and everyone had left but he’d stayed in there another two hours, messing around on all the instruments, moving from the drums to the piano to the guitars. My guys were coming in now, so I clicked on the room microphone and said, “Hey, sorry to interrupt genius, but we’re on the clock.”

He pulled off the headphones and waved like he was apologizing. I said over the speaker, “That was fantastic, you should have blasted it all over the building,” and he leaned into the mike and said, “I was just messing around.”