Tiger Rag Read online

  Tiger Rag is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Nicholas Christopher

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by The Dial Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DIAL PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Christopher, Nicholas.

  Tiger rag: a novel/Nicholas Christopher.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-679-64534-4

  1. New Orleans (La.)—Fiction. 2. Louisiana—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3553.H754T54 2013

  813′.54—dc23 2012013491

  www.dialpress.com

  Title-page photo: © iStockphoto

  Photo of Edison cylinder on this page by the author

  Jacket design: Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich

  v3.1

  AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, THE PREMIER JAZZMEN—KID ORY, MANUEL PEREZ, JOHNNY ST. CYR—WERE CUTTING CYLINDER RECORDINGS. BUT NO RECORDINGS SURVIVE OF THE MAN THESE MUSICIANS SAY INVENTED JAZZ. RUMORS OF A RECORDING HAVE CIRCULATED EVER SINCE, YET HIS REPUTATION IS ENTIRELY BASED ON WORD OF MOUTH, FROM THOSE WHO HEARD HIM IN THE BARS, DANCE HALLS, AND PARADES OF NEW ORLEANS. IT IS GENERALLY BELIEVED THAT WHEN THE LAST OF THOSE WITNESSES DIED, THE SOUND OF HIS MUSIC WENT WITH THEM.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  New Orleans—July 5, 1904

  Saint George, South Carolina—December 20, 2010

  New Orleans—July 7, 1904

  Florence, South Carolina—December 20, 1:30 P.M.

  New Orleans—March 6, 1906

  Rowland, North Carolina—December 20, 3:10 P.M.

  New Orleans—September 3, 1906

  Washington, D.C.—December 20, 10:00 P.M.

  Baton Rouge—June 1, 1909

  Philadelphia—December 21, 12:00 P.M.

  Jackson, Louisiana—September 6, 1911

  Philadelphia—December 21, 12:30 P.M.

  New Orleans—September 6, 1911

  New York City—December 22, 8:00 A.M.

  Chicago—November 10, 1922

  New York City—December 22, 1:00 P.M.

  Baton Rouge—May 12, 1930

  New York City—December 22, 2:10 P.M.

  Jackson, Louisiana—June 4, 1931

  New York City—December 22, 4:05 P.M.

  New York City—July 28, 1949

  New York City—December 22, 5:20 P.M.

  New York City—December 23, 10:00 A.M.

  New York City—December 23, 8:40 P.M.

  New York City—December 24, 7:00 P.M.

  New York City—December 25, 1:00 A.M.

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  NEW ORLEANS—JULY 5, 1904

  Suite 315 at the Hotel Balfour on Oleander Street, the honeymoon suite. The heat was stifling. In the large sitting room the windows were shut tight. A long mahogany table and two chairs were pushed up against the wall. A carpet had been nailed over the door, to block out sound. Myriad scents—lavender hair oil, talcum powder, cinnamon—were interlaced. Also the lingering smell of lunch: fried catfish and roasted corn. On the table there was a bucket of beer, a pitcher of ice water, glasses. The musicians were accustomed to performing at night, so at four o’clock, with the city bathed in sunlight, they had drawn the curtains.

  The Bolden Band. Seven musicians in a semicircle tuning their instruments: drums, guitar, stand-up bass, valve trombone, two clarinets, and a cornet, played by Charles Bolden himself. All of them tuning to the cornet, including the drummer, Cornelius Tillman. Bolden would not be accompanied by untuned drums. And he would only play a Conn Wonder, manufactured in Elkhart, Indiana, a triple-silver-plated cornet, the inside of the bell gold-plated, the finger pieces inlaid pearl. In the right hands, Bolden’s hands, the Conn could project a powerful sustained sound on a single breath.

  The musicians were in shirtsleeves, sweating, all except the trombonist, Willie Cornish, who never took off his chalk-striped jacket, even when his shirt was wet through. He kept his hat on, too, for luck. He was studying the sheet music, running his finger along it, pointing out something to Bolden, who nodded and looked away. Bolden didn’t want to think about notes on paper when he could already hear himself playing them, could see them dancing in the air. He and Cornish were the only band members who read music. Bolden had learned in church as a boy, Cornish taught himself while working as a pressman at Montgomery Brothers, musical publishers. Bolden was wearing a red shirt, red tie, and yellow silk vest. His handkerchief, too, was red, and after he mopped his neck, the dye ran so that the drops of sweat on the floor looked like blood. Which he was aware of. Also that this was the honeymoon suite, which amused him.

  Oscar Zahn, the recording engineer, was a stocky young man with sharp eyes and a heavy brow. He spoke with a slight German accent. He too was perspiring heavily in a high-collared shirt and a bow tie. He had a pencil behind his ear. A Turkish cigarette between his lips. He was sitting on a stool in the corner screwing the wax cylinder onto the mandrel of the Edison recorder. It was one of the new Edison Gold Moulded cylinders, hard black wax, playable hundreds of times. Its four-minute capacity was double that of the old carnauba wax cylinders. Zahn had learned sound engineering at the W. T. Bellmon Studios in St. Louis, recording opera singers and barbershop quartets. He came to New Orleans with his wife and daughter, hoping to save enough money to open his own studio. In the meantime, he was learning how to capture sound cleanly in spaces like this, or—when the money wasn’t there—far more cramped spaces in basements and back rooms. But Buddy Bolden had the money. He was in demand, every night of the week. In addition to performing with his band, he sometimes made the rounds of a half dozen dance halls, social clubs, and fairgrounds, all for a handsome fee. If you doubled that fee, he would play your private party, sitting in with the hired band and laying down a couple of solos, the flashier the better. But he had never cut a cylinder. He had resisted, not, like some musicians, because he feared his techniques could be stolen—he knew no one could truly imitate him—but because he was certain the recording companies would make good money off his recordings while he got clipped. Oscar Zahn had sworn he wouldn’t let that happen, and Bolden, knowing how many musicians were starting to record steadily, making a name for themselves outside New Orleans, finally decided to take a chance.

  Zahn’s assistant, Myron Guideau, was stuffing a towel beneath the door. He was slope-shouldered, wearing a cheap checkered suit. His eyebrows met over his nose and his mustache was untrimmed, tobacco-stained. He glanced sidelong at the slender girl in a yellow dress reclining on the sofa, ankles crossed and her shoes kicked off. Yellow was Bolden’s favorite color and he had bought her the dress that morning. Her skin was oak-colored and her long black hair was speckled gold, catching the light. Her eyes, too, were golden. They were fixed on Bolden, who was standing very still, the cornet at his lips.

  The girl smiled at him, and stomping the floor one-two-three, Bolden launched into the rag known to every band in the city as “Number 2.” Except, as often happened, his opening solo was a variation the band had never heard before, an electrifying eight bars, after which Cornish entered, cornet and trombone
playing off each other as the bass and drums rumbled in, setting the tempo for the guitar and clarinets, all of them working in sync now, flying apart and coming together again like shavings to a magnet. The piece was fast, high-pitched: veering, accelerating, peaking, before Bolden closed it off with an explosive solo.

  Take One: three minutes and forty-nine seconds.

  Bolden shook his head. He wasn’t happy. Zahn lit another cigarette. Tillman replaced a cracked drumstick. Willie Warner, the B-flat clarinetist, cursed under his breath: he had never played a better solo in his life—for nothing. Guideau handed Zahn a fresh cylinder. Zahn removed it from its gold tube with the photograph of Thomas Edison on the side and screwed it onto the mandrel. He tightened the worm gear, tested the spring, and adjusted the sapphire stylus. Sitting against the wall, Guideau waited for the stylus to dance on the turning cylinder. Four inches high, two inches in diameter, the cylinder revolved one hundred twenty times a minute as the stylus cut grooves thinner than capillaries into which the music flowed. The device still amazed Guideau, who had grown up on a pig farm in Hiram, Ohio, where there were tools, but no machines.

  Bolden stomped the floor, one two three, and the band began to play.

  Take Two: three minutes and fifty-four seconds.

  Bolden immediately signaled Zahn that he wanted to do it again. He was even less happy this time around. The segues were rough, the solos disjointed. The opening was fiery, but his closing solo felt flat.

  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.

  At dusk they began to leave the Hotel Balfour. First Warner and Tillman. Then Mumford. Then Johnson, who disappeared down Fern Street on his bicycle.

  The three Edison cylinders left that room separately:

  Take One went with Myron Guideau, who was supposed to deposit it at his boss Oscar Zahn’s studio on Richelieu Avenue on his way home.

  Take Two with Zahn himself, who dined with Frank Lewis at Ferdinand’s Steakhouse, then rode the ferry to his house in Algiers.