I met Jean in the lobby of the hotel on a Friday evening a few days after I started running the small lounge and restaurant on the property. It had been a hectic few days getting in the groove of the new job and when the general manager of the hotel, Steve, introduced us he assumed I knew who she was. Jean was elegantly dressed as if on her way to a New Year's Eve party or the opera. Her white hair was perfectly made up and she wore just a hint of red lipstick. A simple string of pearls was around her neck. She could have been anywhere from fifty to sixty years old. I later found out she was, in fact, seventy. She carried a notebook with a single musical note on its cover. She was so classy and charming that I wondered what she was doing staying at the Holiday Inn rather than one of the upscale resorts down along the Delaware River.
We shook hands and she said she was truly delighted to meet me and her eyes sparkled with mischief. I left her and Steve chatting with each other in the lobby and went to the kitchen to review the specials for the weekend with the chef. Other minor tasks kept me running around for an hour or so and when I finally had time to walk through the dining room just before the seven o'clock rush there was Jean playing the old upright barroom piano near the dance floor that separated the lounge from the restaurant. I knew we had a piano player on Friday and Saturday nights but I figured it'd be some cheesy schmaltzy slick kid playing contemporary songs rendered unlistenable due to a general lack of talent that seems to be the hallmark of hotel bars. But this was something altogether different. What came from that beat up and aged piano was pure beauty. Jean gave me a quick wave as her hands gracefully moved with what was effortless passion.
I watched her performance that night with a bit of awe. People stopped by to talk with her and make requests and drop large bills on to a silver tray that sat next to a candelabra holding three tall white candles that gave Jean's smile a glow that only added to her air of elegance. Something out of Renoir or perhaps Rembrandt. She never missed a note even when acknowledging her admirers or turning the page of her music book.
She played straight for two and a half hours and when she finished both the bar and the dining room gave her a loud round of applause. I followed her out to the lobby to tell her how wonderful I thought her playing was and she thanked me for the compliment. Her husband, Fred, was waiting for her. Together they looked like a couple right out of the jazz age, artful and witty with a lust for life. They were on their way to a party and held hands on their way out to the car.
I found out Jean was a musical fixture in Buck's County. She played somewhere almost every night. That the Holiday Inn managed to secure her talents for the weekend evenings was due to her friendship with one of the owners. And our simple dining room that on most nights resembled any one of thousands of similar dull and nondescript chain hotel lounges, nothing special, just a place to relax after a day of travel before hitting the road again in the morning, became when Jean sat at the piano a very special place. She had a following and her friends were a wonderful and eclectic group. On any particular night she would be visited by other local musicians and theater people. Often past students of hers would stop by from Philly or New York City to watch their friend and mentor. And then there were the jazz lovers who knew a fine thing when they heard it. You could close your eyes while you sipped your manhattan and listen to her play and pretend you were at a party with Jay Gatsby or Cole Porter.
Her love was the great American songbook and her mastery of jazz standards was breathtaking. From her fingertips came the sounds of joy and love, melancholia and heartbreak, hope and peace. All of life's emotions flowing from this elegant lady's art, she was a treasure to watch perform.
It became a habit for me to stop by the piano for a minute or two and listen to a few songs and Jean would tell me about them, who wrote them, where she first heard them, who performed them best. She was a deep well of musical knowledge and it delighted her to share it. One night she was playing Stardust with such grace and soul that the room became entranced. An old raconteur at the bar said to me, "Hoagy Carmichael, nobody plays him like Jean."
Later I told Jean of the compliment and she laughed, "Hoagy certainly played it better than me." And then she told me she roomed with Carmichael's sister in college in Indiana and, in fact, it was Hoagy who taught her to play it.
He was such a sweet man." She said with a gleam in her eyes. It was then I took a look at the red music book and saw that it was just a list of songs, no music, just song title after song title written in Jean's immaculate handwriting. This whole time I thought she was reading music. "Heaven's no!" she said, "I don't like to repeat a song for a few days so I just go down the list when I'm not playing requests and that way I don't get stale. And it's fun to come across a song I haven't visited in a long time. It keeps me sharp."
I was amazed, her list must have had three hundred songs on it, page after page.
"Oh sit down here." She said to me one night as I stood next to the upright. "You look exhausted." And she slid over on the bench and made room for me. It became a favorite spot of mine to relax and listen to her play and occasionally I'd get a story or to be more precise, a confirmation of a story that I'd heard about her.
"Yes," she said, she once played in an old movie theater in Philadelphia that only showed silent movies. She provided the soundtrack to old black and white films of all genres. Westerns were the hardest and she had to rely on some of her classical training to make the music fit. "And," She noted, "This was before Ennio Morrcione scored all those Italian westerns, I was ahead of the trend."
New Hope is a gay community. ”Gay clubs are so much fun." She once told me. "They love the old show tunes that are so cleverly crafted and even the young boys know their jazz. They comment on my clothes as much as the music and I so enjoy dressing up and playing for such a sophisticated crowd. Most of the men I know from these bars have lost so much in the last ten years that I'm surprised that they can still muster up a passion for living. Aids has scarred everyone I know over in New Hope. Yet the clubs are havens from a world that is bigoted against non conformity."
She still played a few nights a month at a club in New Hope. "While in college I played for a radio station that had a call in show. You called us and tried to come up with a song that I or another gifted musician, a handsome saxophone player named Phil, couldn't play. If you stumped us the radio station would send you a case of champagne. Can you imagine? A whole case of champagne if Phil and I didn't know a song. We played together for about a year and only cost the station one case! Listen to this." And Jean played a wandering melody letting her fingers command the keys as she softly hummed along.
"Picasso by Colman Hawkins, isn't it pretty? That's the song that neither of us knew." She laughed as the notes faded and the crew at the bar clapped and raised their glasses, many of them knowing the story. "It was new and rather obscure at the time. Phil moved to France a long time ago but he still calls every few years late at night and sets his phone down and plays it for me. His horn from so many miles away never fails to cheer me.
At around the same time both of us found better paying jobs, Phil in a touring swing band and me at the Emerald Room at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Philadelphia. The radio station replaced us with a trumpet player and another pianist. They weren't up to the standard set by Phil and me. Every time Phil came through town he would stop by my apartment for a visit and drop off a case of champagne he'd won by calling the station and tricking the new musicians. "I just couldn't resist." he'd say. The program manager finally switched to an all request show and saved a lot of money."
Jean invited me to Fred's birthday party that July. It was being thrown by and held at a friend of their's house that overlooked the Delaware River. The gentleman was a business partner of Fred's and his "River Cottage" was an old family property built in the style of the grand homes of the rich who would escape from the City for the summer. Cocktails were served at four on the lawn that sloped down to the river. It was a relaxed and perfect summer afternoon and to be included at this gathering of Fred’s and Jean's group of friends was a treat. Conversations flowed around art, music and poetry. And we were drinking the most sublime wine I had ever tasted, Chateau something-or-other from France. I tried to remember to write down the name but the evening just got away from me.
After dinner we adjourned to the wide second floor veranda for chocolates and Armagnac as the last of the sunlight faded into the west and the summer constellations began to wink into the night sky. A few of the men lit cigars and I remember one charming older man telling a story about a bar he owned in San Francisco. He handed out cards and promised if any of us showed up there we would always drink for free.
"He's telling the truth." Jean whispered to me.
Then our host, who's name I've forgotten, asked Jean if she'd like to play for us. She tried to decline but was encouraged by everyone present including Fred. We were led, still clutching our armagnacs, to a large room with a fireplace and leather chairs and couches. Great glass doors opened to the croquette court and woods beyond. One wall was lined with books and the others with paintings in gilded frames that commanded attention. A jet black Steinway Grand sat off to the left of the fireplace and Fred lit the single candle that stood behind the piano in a tall silver holder.
Jean sat down at that magnificent instrument and our host said, "Jean, you're the only person I know who deserves to play her."
"For Fred." Said Jean. And then she played three songs that lasted about twenty-five minutes. She started with a soft intro that flirted around with and finally became When I Fall in Love. After a graceful interlude she held the room in awe with a rendition of Days of Wine and Roses that seemed to hold a special memory for Fred as he wiped a tear from his eye. She finished with the romantic ballad I Thought About You that had everyone in the room wiping a tear. We were all holding our breath as the final note faded and the candle flickered.
It was the only time I ever heard Jean play on something other than that beat to shit honky tonk upright that had been pounded on for years by such lesser talents and should have been donated for firewood a long time ago. It was a singular grace to watch and listen to her that night, she seemed like an artist at the peak of her powers. When I later told her that, she laughed her infectious laugh and scoffed, "You should have heard me thirty years ago." I certainly wish I could have.
The Holiday Inn and I parted company for a variety of interesting reasons and I moved away from Buck's County. I kept in touch with Jean though postcards and birthday notes. Now in her nineties she still plays the occasional party and still makes the pages of the New Hope paper's society pages. There are songs that when I hear them remind of Jean's command of her art and her devotion to her love of jazz. She has spent her life bringing beauty to her part of the world by sitting at a piano. To think of all the smiles she brought to so many faces and how many hearts were lightened by her magic is to contemplate something that touches us and makes our travels through the mundane more tolerable. Her gift to me was an appreciation of the possibility that there is more than just jobs and paychecks and daily distractions of every sort. That you can find something uplifting and sublime in the most unlikely of places. And that I did.
Coda: Several years later fate, that odd yet persistent illusion that whether you believe in it or not sometimes steers the course for you, found me driving through New Hope on a beautiful Fall evening. I had an hour before I had to get to a dinner party and took a chance at finding Jean at the hotel. It was no longer a Holiday Inn and it’s overall appearance was a little worse for wear. When I walked in the lobby I could hear music coming from the dining room. Jean’s unmistakable beauty. I snuck up behind her. She certainly did not reflect the creeping shabbiness of her surroundings. In fact, Jean was as radiant as ever. She wore an classy vintage dark dress. It was the same old battered upright and the white candle burned as always. She played with her eyes closed, a smile on her expressive face. It could have easily been 1940. As the song wound down I said, “Do you take requests?” She about fell off her seat with surprise and glee. She made room for me on the bench and time disappeared. She remembered and played my favorites including, as a nod to the season, Autumn Leaves. I had just seen Keith Jarrett a few weeks earlier at Royce Hall and she wanted to hear all about it. I got caught up on some old friends and New Hope being a hub for gay culture there was some sad news as well. We both cried a little at the losses. Needless to say I was very late getting to my dinner but of all the things I remember from that weekend it is Jean’s charm and music that still reverberates with me. We celebrated a proper fare-thee-well and promised to keep the cards crisscrossing the country. And we did.
The last few notes I received from her were short and her handwriting had become almost unreadable. She wrote that her beloved Fred had passed away and she was moving to an assisted care home. She still was playing weekly and her love of life and music was as bright as ever. And then a year went by and I didn’t here from her. I sent my usual birthday and New Years cards with no reply.
I checked the New Hope Gazette online and found out Jean had died about the time I sent my last letter. I was amazed to see that she was 102 years old. I was less amazed to read that she still played the organ every Sunday at her church.
I sat up late that night drinking an old favorite red wine and listening to Hoagy Carmichael and Cole Porter. Music has a power to not only bring back memories but also to heal a sick and wounded heart. If I am lucky enough to live to be 102 I will still think of Jean when I listen to those songs that she interpreted so poignantly. Every note she played for me still rings in my ear.
No comments:
Post a Comment