Clifford's Blues by John A. Williams

Author:John A. Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504033053
Publisher: Open Road Media

Monday, October 3, 1938

Last Friday at The Nest I found Moritz in a closet playing “Deutschland Über Alles.” I was surprised at how sweet it sounded on the violin; it was very nice, and I told him so. He said it was by Haydn, from a piece he wrote for a string quartet. I said he must have been a patriotic cat. He laughed. Haydn, he told me, died in 1809, before Germany was a whole country or, he whispered, a Reich. During some of the rehearsal time now, we listen to the records that Dieter Lange and Bernhardt collect on their travels because, Dieter Lange says, “You can’t get German Brunswick, HMV, Telefunken, Odeon, Imperial—they aren’t recording jazz music anymore.”

All the labels are from America, Holland, France, Switzerland, Sweden, or England. Now we have the Benny Goodman band, quartet, and trio. I read in an old British paper that he has colored—Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, Lester Young, Walter Page—playing with him. Also some new Lunceford and Ellington, Red Allen, Mildred Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Barnet, Coleman Hawkins, Erskine Hawkins, Woody Herman, Billie Holiday, Santo Pecora, Louis Prima, Don Redman, Gene Sedric (from the Wooding band), Willie “The Lion” Smith, Art Tatum, and Jess Stacy.

After listening to Sedric’s “The Joint Is Jumpin’” and “Off Time,” everybody in the band had something to say about The Nest “jumpin’” or not “jumpin’.” “Off Time” is interesting because, while the tempo is fast, you can cut it in half, but Germans don’t know how to “Lindy,” so the side is more for learning for us than for anything we can cop and play. I can do a pretty good copy of Jimmy Rushing on “Shoe Shine Swing,” and, naturally, the people love to hear me do renditions of Louis Armstrong’s “Pennies from Heaven” and “Confessin’.” In other words, the music keeps us from going crazy, because, with each passing day, it looks like the situation in Germany isn’t going to get any better, but worse, as Ulrich said, as Werner said before him. Last week the British and the French agreed to let the Germans take part of Czechoslovakia. The problem is when. Old Gitzig was right.

Lily Bernhardt is pregnant. I’m surprised she’s alive at all, with all that piss in the tea and snot in the pudding that Gitzig served her. Now that Gitzig spends more time in camp, and gets him a little now and then, I suppose he’s not doing it anymore; too risky. Besides, he’s getting plenty of pretty good stuff in Bernhardt’s basement to keep account of, and, if I know Gitzig, he’s managing something himself. He told me, “This stuff is shit. You should see what we got in the warehouse in Munich. Bernhardt has already made a lot, believe me.” He supposed Dieter Lange was doing okay, too, and he’s right. His storeroom in the basement is crammed full; he’s also been storing stuff in the attic, including two suitcases filled with reichsmarks and food from Anna’s visits to her parents’ farm.

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