Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine #16

The Piano Player and the Singer She wasn’t the best piano player, though at 85, she had worked at it most of her life. Even so, she loved the music and relished playing with the boys in the band. During the past dozen years or so, she couldn’t quite keep up reading those arrangements that seemed to chug by way too fast. But she would pick out the appropriate chords now and again, if inevitably coming in just a hair too early. Her fear of improvisation kept that particular demon at bay as a viable option and she was in awe of anyone who could pull that off. She called the performance of any musician whose playing style moved off the page “in the ethers,” and “amazing.”

We met when I auditioned to be the singer with a big band in Palm Desert, California. I had moved there a few years earlier from the Northwest after a hiatus from a singing career on the road. I was eager to get back into it and knew that singing with a big band was akin to riding the cowcatcher on a noisy, speeding freight train. It’s an exhilarating challenge with all that syncopated power behind me.

There had been other candidates, none of them suitable. The band’s bass player played in my Dixieland septet and asked me to audition. “They need you,” he said. The leader left a cryptic message on my answering machine, setting the time for the audition and told me I’d sing “a couple of tunes.”

Upon hearing that, I wasn’t surprised others had failed this vague, anxiety-provoking pressure test. To allay my concern and satisfy my usually compulsive preparation, I took advantage of my bass-playing friend’s insider status to find out the likely songs and the keys. Then I got the phone number for the big band’s piano player and asked her to meet with me beforehand to rehearse. She was the only female musician in the band. I was hoping for kinship and support in this.

Irene lived in a triple-wide manufactured home in a gated senior development. As soon as she opened the door, her diminutive body seemed to vibrate with tension. Yet she was welcoming as she led me through her fussy, teddy-bear-littered living room into the stuffy music room. She pulled out a vocal chart she thought likely to be called and started the intro to the uptempo Gershwin standard, “’S Wonderful.” Fortunately, it was in my key and I had sung it many times before. When I finished, she said, “Oh, you’ll get the job.

They’d be very lucky to have you.” We went over a few more possible charts and she