The Cool School Read Free

muddy water, Lord,
    sleep in a hollow log,
    I’d rather drink muddy water, Lord,
    sleep in a hollow log,
    Than to be up here in New York,
    treated like a dirty dog.
    J ACK TEAGARDEN sang that lament on a record of ours called Makin’ Friends, and it should have been the theme-song of the Chicagoans. The panic was on. When we bust in on our pals we foundthem all kipping in one scraggy room, practically sleeping in layers. They should of had the SRO sign up. Eddie Condon was out scooting around town with Red McKenzie, trying to scare up some work. There wasn’t a gas-meter between them all, and they couldn’t remember when they’d greased their chops last. “Wait’ll you get a load of this burg—don’t lose it,” Tesch mumbled in his signifying way, cocking his sorrowful eyes over those hornrimmed cheeters.
    They’d had a job all lined up when they first breezed in, but when they made the audition the boss got one earful of Chicago music and yelled “Get those bums out of here!” That was how jazz hit the tin ears of Tin Pan Alley. After one week at the Palace, where they played slink-and-slump music behind a team of ballroom dancers, they all holed up in this cubby, singing those miss-meal blues like Doc Poston had predicted. They picked up on some vittles once today and then again the day after tomorrow.
    Well, we all laid around in that fleabag-with-room-service for a couple of gripy weeks, and then, through a fiddle-stroker who was crazy about hot music, I landed a job in a roadhouse called the Castilian Gardens, out in Valley Stream, Long Island. Gene, Eddie, Sullivan and Billings made a beeline for the suburbs with me. Soon Gene left for Chicago. Then we eased our guitar player out and moved in Eddie with his long-necked banjo; next the piano player quit, by request, and Sullivan took over his place; finally our tenor sax player said, “Milton, Tesch needs to be in this band, and I can go with a straight dance band, so I’ll gladly leave if only you’ll teach me how to play jazz,” so in a few days we began to sound like something. Talk about infiltration tactics—we just surrounded that band from within. The trumpet player quit soon after because he didn’t know a single tune we played, as we kept reminding him, and right after that our leader got a bigtime offer somewhere, so he turned the whole band over to me. The boss wouldn’t hire Tesch, and I couldn’t get Gene and Bud back from Chicago, but still, out of seven men we were left with four and three of them were Chicagoans, so the band didn’t sound so bad.
    One night Jack “Legs” Diamond fell into the joint with scumpteenof his henchmen and ordered the doors closed, and Jim, it was on. Our music hit Legs’ girl friend so hard, she jumped out on the dance floor and began rolling her hips like she was fresh in from Waikiki, with ball-bearings where her pelvis should of been; then she pulled up her dress till it was more off than on, showing her pretty linens or what she had of them. I nearly swallowed my horn, gunning Legs to see how he felt about it. I was all set to stop the band as soon as he batted an eye. The boss almost shook his wig off giving me the office from behind a post—he knew Legs wasn’t so well liked in the underworld, and the last time this gang was in they almost wrecked the place. But the moment the music stopped this grave-bait ran pouting to her daddy, and Legs motioned to us to keep on playing. Before his finger stopped wagging we were halfway through the second chorus.
    We were at the Castilian Gardens for about three months, right through the summer season. While we were out there Tesch left to go with Sam Lannin’s orchestra, and I never did get to see him again before he got killed in 1932. Then, one night after Labor Day, when we all came to work togged in our tuxedos to open the fall season, we found a brand-new padlock on the slammer and we couldn’t get in. The boss showed up and sighed, “Well boys, this