Outside the Box

      


 When I see the advertizements for individual gigs from other musician friends on Facebook it only reminds me that we are in a much different era. Professional musicians are papering the house instead of going from town to town entertaining the locals.Yea , yea , there are the shows , those venues of indifferent bigness but that is another illusion that really doesn't support many people for very long.Musicians were traveling across this country long before I ever went to work. Road life was a way of life and being a musician was also a means of support as well as an art.When did it change? I don't know ,it was a gradual thing like the climate of the world changing or the cowboys vanishing as the trains took the cattle across the country instead of trail driving men.Where did the cowboys go ? What did they do ? I might find out ,or maybe I won't.

 

    This morning I woke up thinking of gigs ,past gigs .For some reason I was hung up remembering singing "Can't Turn You Loose" in front of a band(the Otis Redding song)and it wouldn't stop playing round my mind. That wasn't my usual fair ,really ,yet it was fun and exciting to see the crowd moving to the rhythm . Each gig has it's character , the individuals , the weather conditions, the load in and out, as well as the excitement of the audience's reactions as a whole and individually.I can float thorugh decades of gigs in my memory ,entire eras that are gone now . Somehow this morning ,I found myself remembering DC in 1964 playing the stringed bass at the "Brass Rail"with Charlie Hampton and Philly Joe Chavis.Buck Hill often sat in with us .Steve Novacel stopped in and I would switch to piano and Charlie picked up his alto or flute. The club was a nice little jazz scene five nights a week. On NY Avenue there were clubs in a row that sometimes I would peek in or have a beer between sets. There was another place called "New York ...Something" that had other musicians from out of town . It was before the rock thing took over everything . I would catch strange combos ,combinations that seemed unlikely like violin ,trombone , and piano .Such strange combos that I had to wonder how they did it . A Duo with Violin and drums seemed kind of brutal.

 

    Ten years later ,I remember a violinist , Morgan Bear, who was a local booking agent  here ,booking society music . He sold continuous music for the four or five hours they palyed and that would get down to strange combos ,too,as the musicians had to leave the stand occasionally. The trumpet players lips would fall off . Even the drums and bass had to stop sometime but the music went on . Out of Morgan's office there was another fellow ,Tommy Miropolis, a drummer who used to work for Liberace . He gave me some work . I played pop music then ,mingling in jazz ,but popular songs and what were becoming soul oldies.It is ironic that another agent there, Gene Donati , wasn't interested in pop and wasn't even booking any acts ,didn't give me a contact at all , but it wasn't too much longer that his jobs became so pop oriented that the pop format became known as a "Donati gig"to the musicians in DC. When I met them , they looked down their noses at popular music in favor of the standards ,two beat, and maintaining the society and political jobs of Washington DC.

 

     One morning Miropolis called me and asked where I was playing. I didn't think too much about it at all and told him , "The Back Alley" a place I had been for a little while playing solo piano and singing. I played five or six nights a week there .There used to be other guys too.One of the guys was "Trey Hur", who played a knuckles O'Toole kind of bar room piano of real old songs. He once was a winner on the "Gong Show". My pop format kind of overtook the sing along thing somewhere along the way.I never papered the house or solicited friends to come to my scene as I met new friends and entertained the local people who lived in which ever part of town I found myself for a few months.Schmoozing on the phone with owners and maintaining contact ,over time ,I would go back again and again ,as I did in the "Back Alley". That afternoon , as I started at happy hour , I noticed Morghan Bear's man,Tommy walking through the place . He didn't stop to say hello but seemed in a hurry. I knew he was trying to cop the gig . I did speak with the owner later who quipped ,"Friend of yours? ..Yes, ,with friends like that ,pal.." Anyway , while I maintained contact with Tommy , I didn't mention my gigs to him anymore but Gigs come and go.

 

    One time when I was out of work Tommy gave me a contact ,a position at a strip club to make a few bucks. I went out in the afternoon and met cab drivers at the hotels across town and told them that I would give them two dollars for each man they brought to the club. Later , I would be outside the club ,sometimes acting as a doorman ,but paying off the cabbies as they came and went . The "Show Palace" was on 11th Street when it was a strip mall ( haha .. real strippers , that is ) .There was a comedian-MC introducing the girls ,doing schtick between acts ,saying things like ,"Oh Newark , yea ..and he would have a joke about Newark or what ever town . The comedian was Jay Leno and he was doing the same act he does now,really.He was a nice guy at the time and seemed genuinely interested in you when he spoke with you ,just as he seems to be at the distance of TV.The girls were very attractive and were dressed in very little  between their exotic dances.They tantalized and came to the tables to speak with customers who often bought them drinks .They ordered champagne but the waiter would bring ginger ale and charge the customer for champagne.That was like working at a carnival and I didn't do it very long and didn't keep touch with the Morgan Bear office too much after that.