Free The Jazz Palace by Mary Morris

just sits,” Jonah replied. He didn’t want to explain that Vlado Slovik, the piano tuner, kept it tuned in exchange for shots of gin. “Sometimes people pound on it, but not very well.” In truth, no one played much more than patriotic war tunes like “Keep the Home Fires Burning” which were sung fervently by tearful drunks, remembering the boys overseas. Or romantic ballads like “Gypsy Love Song,” which brought another set of tears.
    “Well, that’s a shame,” Napoleon said, fondling the white and shiny keys. He played a few bars and was aware of people shuffling behind him, turning to listen. “It’s a good instrument.”
    “Yes,” Jonah said with a pensive nod.
    Napoleon could see that someone took the time to take care of that piano, even if nobody played it. He thought about this for a while. He tucked his horn under his arm. He wasn’t going to play tonight in this tired saloon. He needed a rhythm section for that. “Mind if I come back sometime?”
    “No.” Jonah shook his head. “I wouldn’t mind at all.”
    —
    A few weeks later on a warm fall evening Napoleon Hill returned with his horn and a piano player with onyx skin and watery eyesnamed Earl “the Judge” Winston, who could play the blues all night. “I brought my friend along. Is that all right?”
    “That’s fine with me,” Jonah said.
    The Judge roughed out a few chords while Napoleon checked his mouthpiece, thrust a bore-brush through his bell. The Judge looked up at him with a nod. “It’s good,” he said, a smile on his face. At the Rooster where the piano was out of tune, the Judge played in a different key than Napoleon in order for them to stay in tune. Here they’d play in the same key.
    “This is a little thing I wrote,” Napoleon said. “It’s called ‘Rags ’n’ Bones.’ ” He drummed his valves and noodled with a warm-up. The Judge riffed on a melody, playing the opening run until Napoleon picked up his horn and was blasting away. He held the brass hard against his wide, red lips. He wanted them puffy, just the way they were. He never took any time off from playing because they would go down. He kept them oiled with a salve made from ground eucalyptus and pig fat. He knew horn players whose lips had split during a performance, blood flowing down their shirts. Some never played again.
    Halfway through the first chorus, Napoleon was dripping. His shiny suit was mottled with sweat, but he never saw the spots. They dried before he was done. He dabbed his face with a small towel he kept draped across his shoulder. He began with a haunting refrain that grew from his early mornings on the New Orleans streets when he collected old clothes and bottles. Even when his tunes were loose and funky, they were always a little sad. His rags and bones.
    Using a tiny pillow as a mute, he let that quiet sound start deep, then grow. He switched to the open horn, then reached for the different objects he’d placed on the piano lid—a drinking glass, a child’s sand pail. The audience laughed when he put a plumber’s plunger to his horn. “Hey,” Napoleon said to the crowd, seeing they were with him, “you shoulda seen the look on the guy’s face in the hardware store when I told him I didn’t need the stick.” But they grew still when he produced a deep sound that was almost an echo as if he were blowing at one end of a tunnel.
    He puffed up his jowls and found notes no one had ever heardon the North Side before. Or almost anywhere else for that matter. For his low notes he bent down as if he were going to pray, and for the high ones he raised his trumpet toward the ceiling as if he could make the walls tumble down. The music seeped up through the floorboards. The sound of a high-pitched trumpet and a stride piano made its way up the stairs, down a corridor. It moved like a fog, filling a room, taking up all the crevices and corners. It enveloped sleeping children as it drowned out the night sounds that made them