A Trip to the Stars (79 page)

Bolden told the bassist, Jimmy Johnson, to tune up again, that his A string was off. Nineteen years old, Johnson had already performed with half a dozen bands. Bolden recruited him after hearing him play with Johnny St. Cyr at the Algiers Masonic Hall on Olivier Street. Johnson started as a saloon pianist, but the bands didn’t use pianos, which were too cumbersome to transport. Johnson rode to performances on a Columbia bicycle with his bass strapped to his back
.

Frank Lewis, the C clarinetist, took off his Panama hat, lit a cigarette, and blew a smoke ring that floated to the ceiling
.

Willie Cornish was staring at the guitarist, Brock Mumford, who had missed his cue. Six three, two hundred thirty pounds, Cornish rarely smiled except with his children. At twenty-five, he had three daughters, the youngest, Charlene, named after Bolden. He had left the band in 1898 when he was drafted to fight in Cuba against the Spanish. As Cornish’s troop ship embarked, the Bolden Band, sans trombone, was performing rousing numbers on the dock. Then Bolden played a plaintive solo of “Home Sweet Home” that inspired some of the soldiers to jump into the harbor and swim to shore, AWOL in less than an hour. Cornish had sailed on to Havana and received an honorable discharge eleven months later. He had a scar on either side of his shoulder, where a bullet had gone through. When the band was in a cutting contest with the Robichaux Orchestra or the Onward Brass Band, it was Cornish who blew most fiercely, and nearly as loudly as Bolden. He called his silver Distin trombone “the tornado,” and he could finger the three valves twice as fast as a slide trombonist, with the dexterity of a trumpeter
.

Bolden was smiling again, buffing his cornet on his shirtsleeve
.

Where’d you find that opening?
Cornish said. Bolden laughed and pretended to snatch something out of the air
.

Most bands used two cornetists. It was a matter of endurance, not sound: the cornet was the lead instrument, exhausting to play, and two men, alternating, could withstand the strain of a seven-hour engagement. But Bolden went it alone, playing deep into the night, only breaking for an occasional snort of rye and a smoke. Afterward he rubbed his cracked lips with camphor and palm oil
.

He filled a tin cup with red whiskey and wandered into the bedroom sipping it, the fumes filling his head. When he met his wife Nora, she told him he moved like an alley cat. Slow then fast then slow. Always in rhythm. But lately he had been freezing at odd moments, startled by movements—darting shadows, flickers of light—that he caught out of the corner of his eye. He soon realized that no one else saw them. And that each time, it required more willpower to regain his bearings. Most nights he was afraid to be alone. He imagined he was like a ship spinnning, unsteerable, as it neared a whirlpool
.

Only Cornish called him Charles, never Buddy. Watching him pace the bedroom—not in a straight line, but a loop—Cornish opened his mouth to call out, but the word never left his throat
. Charles.
This drifting in circles had been happening more frequently. When Bolden came out of it, as if out of a dream, the world became all sound, so acute it blinded him—insects’ wings, horses’ hooves, workmen hammering, a boy whistling by the river. The other musicians thought it was his moods—the airs of King Bolden, who could be, and could have, whoever he wanted whenever he wanted—but Cornish and Nora knew better. They understood he was slipping in and out of this world, each time returning a little less himself. Day by day the clock inside him not so much running down as running faster. Still he boasted to Nora that for every calendar year, he lived five years. She retorted that he was going to die accordingly
. As fast as you play.

Bolden lingered in the bedroom, staring out the window at two boys sitting laughing atop a hill of coal in a horse-drawn cart, their cheeks so black they gleamed like coal nuggets. Bolden himself was a coppery brown. He shaved close, clipped his hair short. Many musicians were laborers by day, with rough hands. His hands were smooth. He waved to the boys, who didn’t see him. When he closed his eyes, that coal reddened into embers, inflaming the air and consuming the cart
.

He walked back into the living room, to the sofa, purposeful again, and whispered in the girl’s ear. She laughed. Her beautiful teeth caught the lamplight. Her perfume, a cloud of spices, filled his head. He could have inhaled it all day. Her name was Ella Hayes. She was eighteen years old. Cornish watched the two of them, then turned away, frowning. Bolden ran his palm across Ella’s cheek, his index finger along her lips. He was cradling the cornet. During their entire three hours at the hotel, setting up, rehearsing, recording, he never put it down. He carried it with him everywhere. It was in his lap when he sat for a haircut, by his plate when he ate, beside the cue rack when he shot pool, at the foot of the bed when he was in a sporting house. Ella blew him a kiss
.

Zahn signaled that the third cylinder was ready
.

Bolden looked into the face of each musician. He winked at Cornish. Then he stomped the floor and raised his cornet
.

Fly,
he shouted, putting the mouthpiece to his lips
.

Take Three:
exactly four minutes. Feverish drumming from Tillman, taut solos from Cornish and Frank Lewis. Bolden closed it off with yet another extended improvisation, a sizzling, intricate variation on the new opening. It took even him by surprise, since he had not heard it in his head until that moment, and the band listened in amazement as he bent his knees, dropped his shoulders, and, turning his back to them, leaned forward and blew into the corner, the music flowing up the blue shadow that ran to the ceiling
.

After Bolden held, extended, and released a high B-flat, Cornish clapped softly and Frank Lewis danced in place
. Goddamn,
Brock Mumford muttered. Ella opened her damp lashes and smiled broadly as the room continued to echo with Bolden’s solo
.

King Bolden,
Oscar Zahn said
, nobody ever played “Number 2” like that.

I expect they haven’t,
Bolden said, catching his breath. He shook his head
. “Number 2”—what kind of bullshit name is that?

Needs a new name now,
Lewis said
.

Bolden began pacing, working it over in his mind. He looked at Ella, who lifted her palm as if to blow him a kiss, but instead, in a throaty voice, sent him a word:
Tiger.

Tiger,
Bolden repeated, his eyes locking on hers
.

Ti-ger Rag,
she whispered
.

He smiled
. Tiger Rag. I like that.

So be it,
Zahn said
.

The crowds at Johnson Park had crowned him King Bolden in 1900, after he won all the cutting contests. At the end of each number they cried out
, King Bolden, play it again!
He was twenty-three years old
. Play it again, and bring us home!
People started addressing him as King Bolden. Housepainters, dockworkers, the ladies on Basin Street, bartenders, commissioners, doctors, even the police
. King Bolden.
In July 1904 he and the band were at their peak. The previous day they were first among all the bands, leading the Fourth of July parade along the traditional route: Elks Place to Gravier to St. Charles to South Rampart, around and down to Esplanade, through the French Quarter, then to Chartres and Canal and back to Elks Place, where the city councilmen, dressed like undertakers in black coats and stovepipe hats, sat cross-armed in the reviewing stand, their wives in flouncy pinks and whites and yellow sunbonnets sitting behind them. King Bolden liked those bonnets
.

The biggest venues in the city were Johnson Park and Lincoln Park. They were three hundred yards apart, separated by Short Street, both parks fenced in. Some warm nights, the air heavy with vapor, Bolden would stick his cornet through a gap in the fence and blow as hard as he could, summoning the crowd from Lincoln Park. And no matter what band was playing there, the crowd would come running. He was that good, and that loud. Some musicians claimed you could hear his horn from a mile away, others that you could tap your foot to his music all the way down Melpomene Street and across the Mississippi (carrying fast across the water) to Algiers
.

He played louder than anybody else,
according to Frank Lewis
.

Louder and clearer,
Willie Cornish would say shortly before his death in 1942
. Like a knife flashing light, a shark’s fin cutting through water. And Charles always played in B-flat.

Always
.