The King of Ragtime Read online

  Halfway back in that third colored car, a man in his mid-thirties, with a thin, stylish mustache and a forehead extending all the way to the crown of his head, sat hunched over lined music paper. He hummed short passages, changed a note here, a chord there. Occasionally, he smiled, or said, “Yeah, that’s right.”

  As he stretched and gave a tug at the starched collar on his brand-new white Arrow shirt, a man who’d been sitting across the aisle got up, stepped over, and started eyeballing his music. The bald man put down his pencil and looked up. Young guy, not even twenty, nice-looking kid except for a three-inch raised scar along his left cheek, and a nose that had been broken and not set back nearly straight. Skin like coffee with a good shot of cream, big brown eyes, ivory-white teeth set just so. Dark hair rippled over the top of his head, parted cleanly in the middle. But the suit of clothes on that boy—where on earth did he get those duds? Yellow and black checked jacket over a black vest and a bright pink silk shirt. Black patent leather shoes with pearl buttons. Just a kid puttin’ on the style, thinks he looks like the last word, but what he looked like to the older man was a pimp who couldn’t keep clear of fists and knives. The boy fiddled absently with his trousers, pulled at his vest, straightened his tie. “You write music, huh?”

  St. Lou to New York could be a damn long train ride, the bald man thought, but nasty just wasn’t his style. He half-turned in his seat. “Yeah, I write. Play piano, too.” He extended a hand. “My name’s Eubie—Eubie Blake. Pleased to meet you.”

  The young man answered with a handshake too energetic by a country mile, then slid past Blake to settle into the inside seat, and turned to face the older man. “I be Dubie. Dubie Harris.”

  Blake laughed out loud. “Dubie and Eubie? You pullin’ my leg?”

  The boy shook his head. “No stuff. It’s short for DuBois, my gramma was Creole. An’ Mr. Blake, I done heard of you. ‘Chevy Chase’? ‘Baltimore Todolo?’ Those ain’t no easy pieces. He glanced at Blake’s hands. ‘Less, maybe, a man got fingers long as yours.”

  Blake tried not to smile. “You a musician, Dubie? Takin’ yourself off to the Big City?”

  Dubie grinned extravagantly, opened his eyes wide as nature would allow. “Betcha sweet patootie, Mr. Blake. St. Louie ain’t near big enough to hold me. I play clarinet and horn, and of course, pianna.” Dubie pointed toward the overhead storage across the aisle. “Got my instruments up there. Going to get me a spot in Mr. Jim Europe’s band, learn me all of his tricks, and in a couple a years, gonna have my own band, just see if I don’t. I write, too—but I ain’t no dummy, gonna let some two-bit publisher in St. Lou or Chi or Kay Cee jew me. I’m gonna take my music straight on over to Tin Pan Alley.”

  Where every music publisher is a Jew, Blake thought. He couldn’t decide whether this kid had moxie to burn, or if he was just plain foolish. “New York can be a tough place, boy. I hope you got yourself somewhere good to stay.”

  “Oh yeah, you bet. My uncle and auntie got plenty room. They went up to Harlem a few years back, buyed themselves a nice house on West 131st Street, and put in a grocery on the ground floor. They live in the upstairs. I’m gonna stay with them, ‘least till I get my own place.”

  “They’ll meet your train?”

  “Naw. I tell ‘em don’t bother. I know how to get myself around a city.”

  This kid’s gonna get some lessons in a hurry, Blake thought. For sure he had a little money in his pocket, a plum ripe for picking. But that’s how you learn. Blake hoped the boy was a quick learner. “Been playin’ in St. Lou?”

  “No, Sedalia. You know Sedalia?”

  Blake shook his head. “I grew up in Baltimore, and I’ve pretty much lived east my whole life. I was just out to St. Lou a couple of days, business, and that’s the closest to Sedalia I ever got. I hear it was a damn good music town, say twenty years ago, then all the joints got closed up a little after the eighteens went away. Where ever you been playing in Sedalia?”

  Dubie paused. “Well…actually I was at the George R. Smith College, studyin’ music.” His speech moved up-tempo. “But I played in every place I could, dances and balls, concerts in the park, marching bands—”

  “You don’t mind me saying, boy, music school and marching bands ain’t likely gonna get you too far in Harlem.”

  Dubie moved in his seat like his pants had suddenly gotten too tight. “Well…”

  Whole-story time, Blake thought.

  “Sedalia still got some places where a colored man can play, for sure on a Saturday night. They’s bars, a couple houses…sometimes they get a professor in from Kay Cee or St. Louie, maybe somebody come up from N’Orleans. And I always listen hard. ‘Course the college don’t want us doing that stuff, they ever found out, they’d’a expelled me right that minute. But they can’t keep watch on everybody, every night, can they?” Dubie’s face relaxed into a full smile.

  My, my, Blake thought, what fine and gorgeous teeth. Flash them pearls like that, this kid could get trampled to death by women.

  “And I tell you the truth, Mr. Blake. Nobody—I mean nobody—could get ‘em up and hollerin’ like me when I start in to blow. Sure, we learned all them dead European composers, but that didn’t do me no harm. After classes I’d go take a walk out in the trees where nobody’s gonna hear, and I practiced my Schubert and my Mozart, they be my warmup. Then I played that New Orleans music I learned from the professors. Sometimes I played till I seed blood on the reed.”

  Blake thought Dubie might just jump up, grab his saxophone out of the overhead storage, and start playing, right there in the train car. The kid’s eyes widened, shone. “Day I finished school, I say to myself, now it’s New York for me, that’s the onliest place to be. I blowed for near-on two months, any place they pay money, any music they wanted. And I saved every penny, bought me a good suit and shoes, and a ticket for the train.” Dubie pointed at a slip of paper peeking out from his shirt pocket, behind his vest. “See there—that be my ticket to tomorrow. Gonna take me to a chair in Mr. Europe’s Society Orchestra.”

  “Sure enough,” Blake said. “You’re gonna walk right in and say, ‘Mr. Europe, here I am. Make space.’”

  Dubie fumbled behind his vest, came out with a limp piece of paper, which he unfolded and passed to Blake, who read silently, James Reese Europe. Superior colored musicians. 67-69 West 131st Street, New York. Telephone 7930 Harlem.

  “See? You see now?” Dubie could barely contain himself. “Mr. Europe ain’t only got just one Society Orchestra, he got a barn full of them. Send one out here, one there, go to all sorts of fancy dances, white, black, whatever. That man need a passel of musicians.”

  Blake took care not to say anything that might let the cat out about how tight he was with James Reese Europe. Then, there’d have to be an introduction, and Blake had long ago learned the folly of giving a man a reference based on what he tells you he can do.

  “My auntie, she be the one tell me about Mr. Europe, and you know who she get it from? Mr. Scott Joplin’s missus, no other. Joplins live right nearby, and Miz Joplin sometimes buy groceries at my uncle and auntie’s. You ever meet Scott Joplin?”

  Blake took a deep breath. “Oh, I heard Joplin play a couple times.”

  Dubie’s eyes were like lanterns. “You ever hear him play ‘Maple Leaf?’ People in Sedalia, they still say hearing Scott Joplin play ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ was like hearing Gabriel blow his horn on the Judgment Day.”

  “Some men get to be more in remembrance than they ever was in life,” Blake said. “Fact is, there was lots better players than Scott Joplin, but never a composer could touch him. Scott Joplin is the King of Ragtime. He says it himself, and it’s truth.”

  Dubie flashed a look like a six-year-old whose mother had just walked out of the kitchen and left cookies on the table to cool. “But all the newspapers say Mr. Irving Berlin be the King of Ragtime.”

  The boy burst into hilarious laughter, but stopped on a dime at the sight of
Blake’s face. “I’ll tell you, and I’ll tell you true,” Blake said. “No one ever lived on this earth, had ragtime in his soul like Scott Joplin. There were plenty of rags before ‘Maple Leaf,’ but it was ‘Maple Leaf’ and Scott Joplin, put ragtime on the map.”

  A thought crossed Blake’s mind; he stopped, considered, then decided to come out with it. “All right, here’s something for you. If you want to take your tunes to the very top, go see Irving Berlin. I used to play at the Boathouse in Atlantic City, and Mr. Berlin would stop by, Lord, those pointy bright-yellow shoes he always had on.” Blake shook his head. “He’d holler, “Play my song for me, Eubie, you know which one. So I’d play ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ for him. That man can’t even play piano himself, and his music ain’t in any way ragtime, but oh my, how he does know just exactly what people want. Give him a few years, and mark my word, he’s gonna be the biggest composer and publisher in the whole country, never mind just in New York. You want me to write down his address for you?”

  Dubie, open-mouthed, and, for once, silent, nodded.

  Blake pulled a blank music sheet from his pile, picked up his pencil, and wrote, in heavy block capitals, WATERSON, BERLIN, AND SNYDER. STRAND THEATRE BUILDING, BROADWAY AND 47TH STREET. Then he gave the paper to Dubie, who smiled, folded it, stuck it into his shirt pocket along with James Reese Europe’s address. The kid’s smile grew into a full-faced grin. “I’m sure on my way, now, Mr. Blake. Not very long, an’ you gonna be playin’ my tunes for people.”

  Eubie Blake smiled. “Good luck, boy.”

  ***

  Five o’ clock. The young couple hurried out of the office, skipped down the stairs, through the door, and out into the swirling, boiling mob on the sidewalk. The girl reached for the boy’s arm, then grasped his hand instead. The crowd pressed them together; he felt the softness of her breast against his elbow. His heart leaped, and he stopped walking to admire the treasure at his side. Full lips, neatly painted, flashed him a smile of expectation. Warmth beamed from wide brown eyes. She was beet-cheeked, breathing heavily from the heat of the day, and maybe more. The boy grabbed her by the arms, pulled her to him, and planted a hard kiss on her mouth.

  She quickly pulled away. “Martin, not out here on the street, with everybody watching.” But she was still smiling.

  “Where else, then? We have no place we can go.”

  “We will.”

  A fragment of a tune ran through Martin’s mind. ‘Oh, tell me how long…do I have to wait. Why can’t I get you now? Why must I hesitate?’ Hesitation Blues was what he had, all right. But the piano tune reminded him of his appointment; he put his hand to the girl’s back, started steering her along the sidewalk. “Come on, we don’t have much time. I have to be up in Harlem at seven.”

  Half a block down, they went into Schneider’s Deli. The boy inhaled the fragrance of corned beef, pastrami, smoked fish. His stomach growled. He and the girl took a table, ordered. As the waiter walked away, Martin said, “Your old man’s not going to let up an inch, is he?”

  “He says I’m only seventeen, too young to get married.”

  “How old is old enough?”

  Birdie shrugged. “Who knows? But what difference does it make? If it’s not my father, it’s yours. He won’t ever think a stupid little Litvak is good enough for his Austrian son.”

  Martin tried to swallow his anger. His girlfriend was a doll, round and soft in all the right places. But his father was not impressed. “Give her ten years, she’ll be so fat you won’t be able to shtup her with a putz three feet long.” Nothing Martin could say would make it right with his old man. The Niederhoffers were Austrian Jews, at the top of the Hebrew social heap, and for one to marry an Eastern European peasant was almost as big a shame on the family as marrying a shiksa.

  “My father can think what he wants,” Martin said. “But I’m twenty-four years old, and I’ll marry who I want…which is you.”

  The vinegar-faced waiter slid plates in front of them, then moved off, not a word said. The girl cut a piece of blintz with her fork; Martin lifted the top piece of rye bread off his corned beef sandwich, and spread mustard. “Well, we’re not going to wait forever. One of these days, I’ll get a car, and we’ll go down to Elkton and get married. Then, it won’t matter if your father says ‘Too young,’ or if mine says, ‘Not good enough.’” He took a savage bite, as if the sandwich had somehow insulted him.

  Birdie’s high color faded. “If we do that, your father might never talk to you again.”

  “Good, “ Martin muttered around a mouthful of corned beef. “I’ve heard more than enough from him for twenty-four years now. What is he, anyway? A lousy fruit peddler. But he’s Austrian, so his blood is noble. Well, this is America, not Austria, and I’m going to make my own money. I’m not going to be a bookkeeper forever. I keep my eyes and ears open, and one of these days, I’m going to get myself into music publishing for real, maybe even the theater. Then we can get married whenever we want, no matter what anybody says.”

  Birdie put down her fork. “Martin, dear, you don’t have to get so worked up all the time. You know I’ll marry you and no one else. And I don’t care if you’re a bookkeeper. We could live on that.”

  He patted her hand across the table. “I’m not going make you live in a cold-water flat, one dirty room, our children hungry all the time. My mother says, ‘Love is like butter, it goes well with bread,’ and I’ve seen enough to know she’s right about that.” He shot a glance at his wrist watch. “I’ve got to go. Mr. Joplin gets sore when his pupils don’t come on time.”

  Birdie’s lips parted in a warm smile. “You really like him a lot, don’t you.”

  “I love him,” Martin blurted. “And I love his music. I get him to play one of his rags, then I try to do it exactly the same as he does. Come on, walk me to the subway.” He threw money on the table.

  Birdie stood, walked around the table, and slipped her hand into Martin’s. The young man thought his chest might burst with love and pride. He’d get his butter, all right, and bread to go with it. And if his plan worked the way he figured it would, he might just have them both before leaves started to fall.

  Chapter Two

  Harlem

  Monday, August 21

  2pm

  One look at her husband as he walked in, and Lottie Joplin threw both hands to her brow. “Scott, your head! What on earth done happened to you?”

  Joplin slowly raised a hand to touch his forehead, then winced.

  “And your shirt. You look like you was in some kind of a fight.” Lottie’s speech faded, her eyes narrowed. “Did Irving Berlin beat you up and take away your music? Wasn’t Martin there, helpin’ you?”

  Joplin’s arms waved wildly. “Damn, woman! He was out to lunch.”

  Lottie braced herself. “Now, you tell me, Scott, I want to know. Did that jivin’ li’l jew-man steal your music?”

  “He steals my music, I’m gonna kill him. I told him that. I told him!” Joplin grabbed a vase from the little table next to the door, hurled it at the wall. Pieces of pottery rebounded in all directions. The composer, every muscle tensed, seemed to be looking around the room for his next victim.

  Least he don’t never go after me, Lottie thought. She calculated the wisdom of leaving her husband alone in the room for a few minutes, then muttered, “Ain’t got no choice.” She trotted into the hall, up the stairs, grabbed the telephone receiver from its cradle, gave a number to the operator. Then she drummed fingers against the wall until she heard the hello from the other end. “Nell,” she cried into the mouthpiece. “Can you please come over right away…yes, it be Scott again. What else?”

  ***

  Lottie was quick to answer Nell’s knock, pulled the white woman into the house, closed the door quietly. She put a finger to her lips, then led her guest into the living room, where Joplin sprawled on a sofa, feet on the floor, his head twisted grotesquely to rest on a cushion. The room was lit
tered with fragments of ceramic and glass, metal ashtrays, pictures in frames. “He done run outa steam ten, fifteen minutes ago,” Lottie whispered. “Guess I really didn’t need to call you, sorry.”

  Nell Stanley gazed at the wreckage. Them blue eyes a hers, Lottie thought. They could freeze you or they could melt you, dependin’. “It’s just I got scared, Nell. Thought he might tear the whole house to pieces.”

  Nell rested a hand on Lottie’s shoulder. “I’m glad you called. I’ll wait with you, and we’ll see how he is when he wakes up.”

  “But you got things to do—”

  Nell waved off her concern. “August’s always a slow month anyway, but with all the theaters being closed because of the polio epidemic, I really don’t have much to do right now. I could have gone along with Jim on his tour, but I decided to stay home.” She smiled. “So here I am.”

  You decided to stay because you knew how bad Scott was gettin’, Lottie thought. The notion brought such a sudden grief into her throat, she let out a sound somewhere between a sob and a honk. “Nell, I’m scared. No two ways about it, one a these days, I’m gonna have to put him away.”

  Nell pointed toward the kitchen. “Let’s have some coffee, and you can tell me what happened.”

  ***

  Joplin didn’t stir till late afternoon. The women glanced at each other, then, as if by signal, got to their feet. Joplin raised his head, grunted, dropped it back to the cushion. Lottie gently swung his legs around as Nell lifted his head. “Oh my.” Joplin groaned. “I feel like I’ve been through a war.”

  Like a newborn lamb, Lottie thought. Devil gets hold of him, then he sleeps it off, and he be gentle as a baby. She couldn’t help feeling a pang under her ribs, the way her husband looked at Nell, and for that matter, the way Nell looked at him. But she knew that was ungenerous. Without Nell’s help, she’d have long ago had to put Scott in a hospital, which would’ve been the end of him. Besides, Nell wouldn’t ever do anything out-of-bounds, and it’d been years now since Scott even could. She went off to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water, which Joplin took from her and drank down in a couple of gulps. He looked from her to Nell and back. “I’m a fortunate man,” he said slowly. “Having two such fine women to look after my well-being.”