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Sample text of Daddy Plays Old-Time New Orleans Jazz
Part of the introductory chapter and two poems from the book. I remember one night Daddy sat pointing to his heart with a pleading look in his eyes. He was trying to make me understand something that was important to him — something that mere words could not convey. It was about music. The kind of music that he‘d spent most of his life making, the kind of music that defined him, his father, his grandfather and much of our family. Lou Rawls’ “Dead End Street” was on the record player. We were in the basement. That’s where Daddy kept his stack of old jazz and blues records. It was music that I didn’t much appreciate at the time. Neither did most people I knew. We listened to Motown and rock and roll on the radio, danced to it at parties and in our living rooms. He was trying to explain to me something of what that song meant to him. What all music that moved him was about. He’d had a couple of drinks, and his eyes glistened as he earnestly tried to convey meaning through his gestures. “This music has heart,” he said, tapping his chest for emphasis. “A good song tells a story.” That night made an impression on me. I remember it decades later. It was a lesson I eventually learned for myself as a professional writer. Regardless of the form, a great story makes great art. Daddy had plenty of great stories and he told them whether you wanted to listen or not. In any group, you could hear his deep, raspy voice spinning tales about his childhood in New Orleans, his life as a musician on the road, the things he’d seen and done. He would light up a cigarette, take a shot of scotch and settle down to talk your ear off. He could intoxicate you with his talk. His tales could suck in an entire roomful of people and carry them away. He couldn’t help but tell stories. One way or the other, he was always performing whether he was onstage or not. It exasperated Mama to no end. Esther Morse had been hearing Percy Gabriel’s stories since she was a teenager being courted, before she was 19-years-old bride in 1942. But Daddy’s childlike joy in being the center of attention was unending. He set the tone for what was going on. He was a musician, an entertainer, and it was his job to entrance an audience. Onstage he’d try out selections from all those songs he knew until he figured out what this specific audience would respond to. Then he would lock onto that energy and never waver for the night. “Once you get them dancing, don’t change the beat,” he always told me. That’s a pretty good piece of advice. Daddy told stories, and because of him, I can tell his story, and the story of my grandfather and great-grandfather, my uncles and cousins, all of them part of this great musical continuum that defines our family. It’s a story woven into the fabric of popular black American music. ... Around our house, people I later learned were music legends were just people to me. The singer Al Hibbler was some blind guy Daddy brought home for dinner one day. Hibbler sang with Duke Ellington for eight years and had a Number 3 hit in 1956 with the first popular vocal version of “Unchained Melody” — a song since recorded more than 500 times. New Orleans drummer Paul Barbarin, who wrote the anthem “Bourbon Street Parade,” was a friend of the family. We kids called him Uncle Paul and his wife was Aunt Oneal. They weren’t blood relatives but good friends of our parents. Uncle Paul was my big brother’s parain (godfather). Mom and Aunt Oneal become close while traveling together on the road with their husbands in the 1940s and maintained a lifelong friendship. In 1965 we spent a week at the Barbarin cottage in Mississippi on the Gulf of Mexico as a side trip from New Orleans. That was the first time I ever felt I needed to act black in order to remain safe. There were actually signs on things designating them as white only or colored only. Being from up North, I’d heard of such things but had never seen them with my own eyes. I didn’t understand that I was among great musicians. Daddy’s music was old-time. We kids grew up on the modern sound of Detroit. Our lives were lived with music by the Marvelettes, the Miracles, the Temptations and the Supremes. Daddy scoffed at that music. In the late 1950s when Motown was coming together he had opportunities to work with the label, but they weren’t paying union wages. “They called me over to their studio but they weren’t talking money,” Daddy told me. “Fellas were working for $5 per side.” Daddy was a union man, and as far as he was concerned music jobs came with union contracts paying union scale. Music jobs also came with perks that we kids appreciated. It wasn’t unusual to be awakened at two or three in the morning to partake of a culinary feast of leftovers from some affair Daddy had played. We had corned beef sandwiches, duck pâté, oysters Rockefeller, and fancy pastries — stuff that came from the dreamland of Daddy’s music jobs somewhere out there. If there was nothing to bring home from the job, Daddy might pick up a sack of hamburgers and wake us up at 3 a.m. for a little snack. You had to eat them while they were still warm. Hands-on blues — for Al Hibbler That blind man scared me, Trying to feel my head with them Big old knobby fingers Like he was a psychic feeling for bumps To tell my fortune. Mama just laughed and fed him In the kitchen with everyone else. There wasn’t anything deep about it. Daddy said that man sang the blues. Shit, with hands like that I’d have sung the blues too. Uncle Clarence’s Later Years Uncle Clarence didn’t talk much. He just played that music In the back room of Aunt Berta’s house. In the old days he’d rap that banjo With the best, played guitar and ragtime piano Like a man on a mission. One time he went wild and nearly killed a man. Instead of jail he was exiled to the back Of Alberta’s and August’s house To stay out of trouble. He sat back there with a gleam in his eyes, Music on his mind and notes under his fingers. Played his way right back to 1925 And disappeared like an unresolved note In the Louisiana sun. Contact Larry Gabriel: click here to email me
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