Can't We Be Friends by Eliza Knight

Author:Eliza Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

Pete Kelly’s Blues

Ella

(1955)

The rhythm of rubber tires bouncing over a rocky road is a melody I thought I’d never hear again. For a moment, I feel like shouting over my shoulder and inviting the band to join me for a jam session. Let’s do as we used to with Chick Webb and His Orchestra traveling on the bus from city to city, small town to small town. We’d grab any reason to make music. The bus engine’s roar, the blare of the horn, the soft shuffle of a deck of cards.

Norman’s JATP tours are first-class travel and accommodations all the way. We even get a handful of spending money for the road. But this year in Texas, flitting from airport to airport is impractical, Norman says, and for the first time in a decade, I am on a bus with the boys in the band. Of course, my manager, and Georgiana, are on board too. But for this particular leg of the trip, Georgiana is in the back playing bid whist, and I’m near the front chatting with Norman. We are on opposite sides of the aisle, a clumsy metaphor for how I am feeling when decisions are made about my career. Still, I’m striving to make it a friendly conversation.

“There are other things I want to do besides JATP tours, Norman. Songs I want to sing and singers I want to sing with.”

I start off speaking in generalizations. No name-dropping, no direct finger-pointing, only implied. Norman sits cross-legged in the aisle seat, an elbow propped on the armrest. A toothpick is dangling from his lips. In other words, if nonchalant disinterest was a photograph, I am looking at it and getting more riled up by the minute.

“You control every song of every set and every place we perform. Now that you have Verve, your very own record label, you want me to stop working with Decca Records. I’ve been with that label for more than twenty years. Verve isn’t even off the ground yet. A change now is too risky.”

He removes the toothpick he’s been chomping on. “Decca is stuck in the past. You’ve performed in concert halls, nightclubs, and festivals since you came on board with me. The Hollywood Bowl is coming up soon, too, and you just finished at the Flamingo in San Francisco. You need to keep pushing forward with a recording label that produces albums as impressive as your performance schedule.”

“But why should I walk away from a sure thing? I need stability, Norman. I’ve been pushing for years. Yes, I want to continue to grow my career, but why must I keep reinventing Ella Fitzgerald every time you have a whim?” I dig my fingernails into my palms nervously. What Norman wants is what he expects to get.

“A whim? Is that what you call making a movie like Pete Kelly’s Blues? It was a bad film. You are a singer. It’s a waste of your talent making movies. You do your best work in a recording studio or on a stage.

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