Off the Road - 11

a jazz novel on a typewriter

3

It is the st-st-structure step of the past. It is be beating of the he-art. It’s the beat to keep the beat of the heart. It is the frame within the frame that looks at the frame on No. 5. It is the explosion of the fireworks that dins without succession. And we are headed to one of its Mecas - at least in terms of rhythm and blues and rock ‘n roll and all that jazz. Memphis - home of the largest pyramid that has no function. And of Beale Street, where the popular perversion of the elite version was born and reborn to change the beat from wide awake to half asleep on the drums of the average qua Norm qua sigma a la 0. It was the home of Beale Street and that small city within a city that had music of a different beat of a beat. Forgive the Miles they know not what they do. Those of us who worship at the Temple of the Bird look with pity on the street but then realize that it is the same gospel only taken down a level to a level that is level on the sly.

 I parked the car and made sure that the meter had enough pennies in it to last a lifetime because they were pennies from heaven 1 million years BC - that was a long long time ago. The best things in life are pennies from heaven.

We were sitting in the Majestic Grill only a stone’s throw away from the center of the city within a city. I had noticed since the time we spent at Denny’s that Dean had a great deal of money which he flashed around copiously and conspicuously for conscientiously spending on food. Memphis Egypt you have no steakhouse like Memphis Tennessee. Not a jot not a jotted, not a spandaculous or scandalous pede a terre.

 Then Dean in an interruption of his mastication said: “Next time we go here we should take a stroll down to the Sugar Grits, but that will be next time or next time thereafter.”

 I looked at the setup of the Majestic Grill and realized that Dean had different levels of paying: one for when he had no money and could get other people to pay one for when he had a little money that was squeezed out of his hide, and the third level for when he was flush with a score. But it would have a rhythm and blues player that could call and repeat the 12-bar blues ABA ABA ABA. Like Cherokee in a swing style. It was like a converted garage or a six-gallery or a jazz trip with no drums. Bang-bang kiss-kiss with a cadence drawn from the holy Trinity of wind, starting with the Bird and dissenting down the line. From the outside the majestic was white tinted with that eerie green and with the lights over the door sweep and across the windows. On the inside, there were two haves one which was whiter than white with the steam vents all asunder with people talking like mad as if they were madder than mad like a Cheshire cat on steroids the other which was mahogany with tables and seats marked off from the first half by a black and white scroll on the stand. Above the letter were the pipe organs all aligned in a row aching for someone to hit the keys, I didn’t know whether this had been done as in recently but I could imagine. It was even for the police state authoritarian hereafter Putin driving Republican party samizdat paraphernalia on the Moskva Stream from the Times Radio that had the cure to the dog whistle as a fog horn curling cry that was just beyond the city limits and would rumble into the city within a city line of even good old Memphis under the One Minute chili and Dubya dee eye ah the center of Beale Street and the college of higher learning for all things music even with it integrated.

I gulped down a fist of steak, the cheapest on the menu but still oily to perfection:

“We have to make good time to Albuquerque hitting that left that will take us from Kalamazoo.”

Dean placed his knife and fork down and looked at me and said:

“I trust you to find the best route. Even if it is through Arkansas and the Ozarks.”

And the colored girls sing: “Doo, do-doo, do-doo, do-do-doo.”

 I leaned back and looked at the vast collection of the choir who were chowing down on the Smörgåsbord of all the meals that could be offered at one time starting with breakfast and ending with dinner qua supper. There was one big man with a large beard talking to the short thin lady do sure and expanding on nothing punctiliously and contagiously wondering at just how wonderful his voice sounded to himself. Clearly not from around here because any buddy who lived anywhere near Beale Street would listen rather than talk because you never knew what you would hear from a musician who was taking a break from practicing. There was a ritual of politeness that went back to the outsider who was inside and was naughty but nice and who dreamed of making a record four is dead mama’s birthday and the cup was always out.

We ate the rest of our fill and left a fine tip that was left by Dean. Then we were out on the road on I-55 to I-40. Reach that wide Mississippi overall. And God help me I was whistling the real talent potential found in “That all right moma” on the Howl with a side of Rocket 88. Good God that is what the masses were looking for. It went big with WHBQ And the DJ who people didn’t know whether he was White/Black or Black/White but he played music the all the teens wanted.

 The wind came streaming through the rolled-down Windows, which had been upgraded from NT some years back.