The Last Jazz Band

By Charles Boeckman

You’ve come to the right place to hear about a delightful, insightful novel involving the hot jazz of traditional New Orleans, when carving contests focused on musical instruments and not on knives. It was the mid-1940′s, right after WWII. It features a group of zany musicians who can’t let go of the beat, the rhythm, and the soul stirring creativity of two-beat New Orleans Dixieland jazz. Progressive bebop, with its cool chord alterations, is the popular music of the day. But these vets fresh back from the war aren’t giving up their hot-licks music that makes their spirits soar. Broke but determined, they get involved in adventures and laugh-out-loud misadventures that will keep you turning the pages to see what happens next. Oh, yeah, and there’s that love story involving Jackie Haynes, the beautiful daughter of a Texas, oil rich millionaire....

Written by professional writer and musician Charles Boeckman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Boeckman
• Release date: May 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781311514998

Charles Boeckman

Charles Boeckman is a native Texan. He grew up during the Great Depression when there was no money for music lessons. Fortunately, everyone in his family played a musical instrument. Those were the days of the big bands and their sounds were on all the A.M. radio stations. Hearing Bennie Goodman and Artie Shaw, he fell in love with the clarinet. He found a fingering chart for the clarinet and taught himself to play that instrument. To get a job on a big band in those days, a reed man was expected to play both saxophone and clarinet, so he also taught himself to play saxophone. The year he graduated from high school, in 1938, he played his first professional job in a South Texas country dance hall. He continued playing weekend jobs in dance halls all over South Texas until the mid 1940’s, when he moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, and played as a sideman in bands in that city. In the 1970’s he formed his own New Orleans style Dixieland jazz band, which became quite popular. He still plays in the Texas Jazz Festival every October. In recognition of his many years on the music scene in the area, he was awarded a star in the South Texas Music Walk of Fame in June of 2009.While music has been a part of his career, his main occupation has been that of a professional writer. He has had dozens of books and hundreds of short stories published all over the world He uses his music background as setting for many of his mystery stories. In 1965, he married Patti Kennelly, a school teacher. With Charles’ help, she also became a writer. At this writing, they have been happily married for 46 years. They have a daughter and two grandchildren. In the 1980’s they collaborated on a series of 26 Harlequin Romance novels that sold world wide over two million copies.More about Charles Boeckman’s career can be found on his web site, charlesboeckman.com.

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The Last Jazz Band 131

Here’s what others have to say about The Last Jazz Band.

Charles Boeckman has done a remarkable job of capturing the humor and pathos in the life and times of professional jazz musicians, having been one himself for more than half a century. A terrific read from first page to last. Highly recommended.

Mr. Boeckman obviously knows what he is talking about! Great story (I'll swear I recognized some of the characters in the book). It is well-written, exciting and lots of fun! The characters come to life as you read about the dances they played for, the Dixieland jam sessions, and how their lives became intertwined in the meantime. Mr. Boeckman's description of the musicians and their lives is extremely believable. This is a must-read for every jazz musician, every wannabe jazz musician, and everyone who loves music or loves a musician

THE LAST JAZZ BAND

by

Charles Boeckman

Cover by Dusty White

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY: JAZZTEX PUBLISHING

Copyright 2011 by Charles Boeckman

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

All characters in this book are fictitious. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

To my wife, Patti, and my daughter, Sharla, whose help made this book possible, and to all the great jazz musicians I’ve known and played with down through the years.

Chapter 1

Ted Riley used to compare life to a series of scenes. It was a bit of philosophy he had undoubtedly stolen, but as black as Riley’s other sins were, I doubt that he would have flinched at plagiarism. He observed that circumstances move you into a scene; there are other people in it, and for a while you live in this scene with them and become part of them. Then the scene ends and all that remains are cloudy memories of the people you knew, and then you are in a new scene with a new set of circumstances and new people. The scenes you live through turn into dreams afterward except for one important thing: every time you leave a scene you are a little changed -- you carry with you something of the people you knew in it. That was the way Riley explained life; he was a philosopher perhaps more than a musician.

This scene started for us shortly after the war. (In l946, The War was World War II.) We were being discharged -- separated as they called it then -- from various branches of the service. Ted Riley and I were leaving the Air Corps, Skinny Lang and Joe Barney were being honorably discharged from the Navy, Cemetery Wilson from the Marines. Irving Schultz had missed the war by virtue of his tender years.

It is important at the outset to explain that we were all a little insane, not that that in any way detracted from the quality of our music.

It was 1946 when Joe Barney’s band got together in Corpus Christi, Texas. All the members of the band converged on Texas from distant points of the compass, driven by some dark fate. Joe Barney hailed from St. Louis, Skinny Lang from Arkansas, Cemetery Wilson from New Orleans, and Irving Schultz from an East Texas dirt farm.

Ted Riley was the only native South Texan. Freshly separated from the Navy, his fifth wife, and his severance pay, Riley had arrived by thumb, hitching the last twenty-five miles’ ride on the back seat of a motorcycle. He had arrived hot, dusty, and extremely thirsty.

Riley later wrote a letter to me, describing that afternoon in detail. Between his fifth wife (an English girl) and a crap game, Riley had been relieved of all his worldly possessions, except for the uniform he was wearing and his battered tenor saxophone. Riley later told me that if you want an unforgettable experience, you should try holding a tenor sax case under your arm while riding on the back seat of a motorcycle driven seventy miles an hour by a raving lunatic.

When he finally pried himself off the motorcycle in Corpus Christi, Riley had two immediate problems: getting into civilian clothes and relieving his thirst, which had by then become a matter requiring urgent attention.

Riley attacked the clothing problem by heading straight for Joe Ramirez’s Men’s Furnishing Shop on Mesquite Street. Riley was short and round and he had an inexhaustible supply of energy and he never walked, but bounced. I can see him now, bouncing down Mesquite Street, tenor sax under one arm, fingering his dapper, pencil-line moustache as he planned how he would con Joe Ramirez -- to whom he had owed a hundred and thirty-six dollars since before the war -- out of a new suit of clothes.

A cornerstone of the philosophy by which Riley lived was that everything in life is salesmanship. Riley, himself, was one of the best natural born salesmen I’ve ever known. All the years I played with Ted Riley, I never knew him to be without a dapper suit, a Homburg hat, and a flashy car. Also, I never knew him when he wasn’t one jump ahead of a credit collection agency.

How Riley managed to purchase new automobiles and expensive suits in the face of having the poorest credit rating of any human being on the North American continent, I can only attribute to his persuasive salesmanship. He could charm a fellow into loving him even while he had one hand in the guy’s pocket and the other on his wife’s knee.

I can visualize Riley on that day as he bounced into Joe Ramirez’s clothing shop, talking when he hit the doorway.

Joe was polite. He was glad to see Ted back safely from the war. He understood that Riley had acquitted himself gallantly in the line of duty. Now there was a small matter of a hundred and thirty-six dollars, which has been on the books since….

Riley wrung Joe’s hand again. Well, now, why do you think I’m here, Joe? Ted beamed in his most beguiling manner. As soon as I hit town, I said to myself, ‘Ted, the first thing you are going to do is see your old friend, Joe Ramirez, and clear up that little bill you’d overlooked.’

Joe regarded him with mingled hope and doubt. You really gonna pay that, Ted? he asked wistfully. All at once?

Riley continued talking, switching the conversation glibly to other topics. A half hour later, Ted bounced out of Joe Ramirez’s clothing store fitted out from head to foot in blue suede shoes, a gray pin-stripe suit, a fine broad-cloth shirt and imported maroon tie and a Homburg hat. He looked like a successful banker.

Joe Ramirez beamed after his departing customer. That Ted Riley. He’s one fine guy, he smiled. Then he thought over the transaction more carefully without Ted’s running chatter to confuse him, and it began to dawn on him that not only had Ted not paid the hundred and thirty six-dollars he had owed since before the war, but he now owed for the new shoes, suit, shirt, tie and Homburg hat as well.

Joe’s wife came running into the shop from a back room, drawn by an agonized outburst of colorful Spanish in which both murder and suicide were freely mentioned.

Having solved the clothing problem, Riley walked over to a music store where all the cats in town hung out. There, he met a very excellent string bass player named Skinny Lang. Skinny was from Arkansas. He had been stationed at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station during the war and he liked the area so much that when he got his discharge, he decided to make this city his home. He built a trailer house and moved his wife, Leona, and all his worldly possessions into the trailer.

When Skinny and Riley became acquainted, he invited Riley over to his trailer. His wife was leaving on a trip to visit relatives in Arkansas and he told Riley they’d have the trailer to themselves. Riley said he gathered that Skinny’s wife was quite a shrew, while Skinny was one of those patient, kindly souls who put up with interminable nagging.

Skinny went home first to help his wife get off on the trip. Riley hung around the music store for an hour or so. Then he set out for Skinny’s trailer. The rickety trailer was covered on the outside with tarpaper and was propped up on bricks. It was situated in a rundown trailer camp on North Beach, across the ship channel. To get there, it was necessary to cross the Bascule Bridge.

Riley said he could hear Skinny coughing two blocks before he reached the trailer park. Skinny suffered from what he claimed was asthma and bronchitis, but which sounded more like galloping consumption.

Ted found Skinny sitting on the ground in the shade of his trailer, looking at his toes. Back in the part of Arkansas where he came from, they didn’t think much of wearing shoes. Ted placed his tenor sax case on the ground beside Skinny, dusted it off and sat on it. They began chatting and after a polite interval, Ted asked Skinny if he had anything to drink. The long walk from the music store had increased Riley’s thirst.

Skinny led him into the trailer.

In the center of the floor sat a five-gallon crockery jug. The snout of the jug was plugged with a large cork from which protruded a glass tube. A steady procession of bubbles formed around the lip of the tube, making an ominous glug…glug…glug…glug sound.

Ted stared at it. What’s in the clay-clay? he asked, pointing. (Clay-clay, his favorite expression, could refer to almost anything.)

Home brew, Skinny explained. When Leona decided to take the bus back to Arkansas to visit her folks for a coupla weeks, she didn’t leave me any drinking money. My folks back home in Arkansas used to make home brew all the time. You can make it pretty cheap if you know how.

Well, any port in a storm, Riley sighed and reached for a tin dipper hanging nearby.

But Skinny stopped him. It ain’t done yet. I just timed it a few minutes ago.

Riley’s patience was beginning to grow short. What do you mean, ‘timed it’?

It ain’t done until it’s bubbling twenty-four times a minute. That’s how you know when it’s done.

Riley hung the dipper back on the wall with disgust, and they went back out in the shade. Ted sat on the tenor case and Skinny sat on the ground and dug his toes in the dirt.

A strong breeze laden with salt moisture and the tang of dead fish swept in from the bay. Sea gulls circled and swooped above the trailer camp.

Skinny and Riley discussed many things: the war, Skinny’s endless marital troubles with Leona, the music business, but inevitably, Riley would bring the conversation back to the home brew. The long walk from the music store to the trailer park had added a whole new dimension to Riley’s thirst.

It ought to be done by now, Riley said.

No, it couldn’t be, Ted. We just timed it, Skinny said.

That was an hour ago.

Well, I know, but it’ll take more than an hour before it’s right

Riley uttered an impatient profanity.

I’ll tell you when it’s ready, Ted. It just isn’t ready yet, and I ought to know.

You don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground, Riley said insultingly.

Skinny looked hurt. He dug his big toe in the dirt. Ted, don’t tell me how to make home brew, he said in a hurt voice.

I’m not telling you how to make anything.

My folks made a living off that stuff in Arkansas during the Depression, Skinny continued, still defending himself.

All right, you damn hillbilly, so you know all about it, said Riley, who could become highly exasperated when thirsty. So you invented it!

It ain’t ready until it’s bubbling twenty-four bubbles a minute, Skinny continued, still defensively. He had already patiently explained this business about the bubbles to Ted six or seven times that afternoon, but since Riley had just cast a slur on his knowledge of the art of making home brew, he felt the necessity of explaining it again.

Well, then, said Riley impatiently, let’s go time it again.

But it hasn’t been long enough.

Riley dropped the argument and stubbornly made a sally into the trailer. Inside, the trailer was even more dilapidated than outside. The walls were cluttered with cooking utensils and clothes, which hung from ten-penny nails driven in at a slant. One end of the clap-trap dwelling was taken up by a radio work bench where the naked chassis of several radios were currently under diagnosis and repair. Skinny Lang, in addition to his talents as a bass fiddle player, was studying radio repair by correspondence course.

Riley, who by now had not had a drink in twenty-four hours, moistened his parched lips and sat on the floor beside the jug and began counting the bubbles. He had pawned his watch several days ago, so he had to time the bubbles by a clock which hung on the wall between a rusty frying pan and one of Leona’s old brassieres. At the end of a minute, a look of chagrin crossed his face. He went back out and sat on his battered tenor sax case and stared gloomily across the bay.

Skinny patiently rolled a Bull