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Piano Lessons

The 50’s

Ken Carle sat straddling the piano bench, looking through the large living room windows that exposed Chesapeake Harbor. Nice view, he thought as he watched small tourist boats ply the circular harbor and pedestrians dart in and out of the small shops and eateries that lined the dock. This was his first visit to his parents’ expansive new apartment after they sold the family estate on the eastern shore of Maryland and moved to town. Now in their seventies, they no longer wanted the burden of house and property.

Ken, or Kenneth, as his parents called him, had grown up as a member of the landed gentry and, like others of his ilk, took on the affectations common of those who attend private schools and have vacations in Europe and trips to New York City to wallow in the culture and rest at the St. Regis.

“What would you like to do today?” Mr. Jason Carle would ask of Ken and his older brother William on such trips.

William was now fifteen, and his body had turned his mind to something that his family had no ability to understand. When he wasn’t hiding in his room picking at his face and doing heaven only knows what else, he was talking about girls and trying to emulate his father.

“Bob Munzer is in town with his parents, and we plan to meet at the Museum of Natural History and then spend some time with other friends in Central Park. If that’s all right with you, Dad?”

“It’s fine with me, and I think it’s fine with your mother.”

A few years younger than his brother and not yet able to explore on his own, Ken added, “I’d like to go for a ride on the carousel in Central Park. I like the carousel music and painted horses. And then Mom and I can take a walk through the mall in Central Park, and maybe we can hear some other kind of music.”

It had been clear for some time now that William and Ken had vastly different sensibilities. William, who was very much like his father, had eclectic tastes and, like his father, was a thoughtful reader with an academic bent. Ken, also like his father, was an analytical person but demonstrated a clear preference for the arts, especially music. When the boys had different preferences, Mrs. Carle was always there to make sure they each had the opportunity to exercise those preferences. “Okay boys, to keep each of you happy, let’s split up. William, you and your father may go do the things you like, and Kenneth and I will make a separate agenda. That should make everyone happy. Do you agree, Jason?”

So Ken and his mother would have musical adventures built mostly around Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center (especially the opera and the symphony), and Broadway. When it came to theater, their taste ran toward musicals. Mother always met friends when they went out, and they always had great seats and dined well. Like his mother, Ken had a love affair with New York, and the two returned as often as they could. In time, Ken could not hide the fact he one day wanted to be a great New York musician.

Now, as evening approached and shadows from the buildings surrounding the harbor moved across the water, light reflecting from nearby commercial establishments danced and glistened like the western sky at night. Watching the harbor lights change from the heights of his parents’ penthouse apartment, Ken was inspired, so he turned to face the eighty-eight keys of the Steinway grand and laid his hands on the keys, first a single finger and then a chord, as the music that defined his adult life broke through. In his hands, the melodies of Berlin, Rogers, Carmichael, Mercer, Ellington, and others filtered through a jazz idiom that spilled out onto the keyboard effortlessly and transformed Ken’s early evening through the magic of the Great American Songbook.

This piano is a wonderful instrument, he thought, and with that, his musing changed to a different scene. A distant and cherished memory from long ago.

A flashback, the early ’50s

“What kind of music are you whistling?” An eleven-year-old Ken asked the man repairing the bit and replacing the reins used to guide a favored pony. The man, Bootsy, was concentrating on his work and failed to process this question from a boy he saw only once in a while. Apparently the boy had no affection for horses and did not like to ride. The stableman rarely saw him and consequently felt no affection for him. The man saw the boy asking questions as just another silver-spooned ofay kid annoying him. The kid was the younger brother of William, who he liked, and the second son belonging to his cracker boss, who underpaid him and assumed the only reason he existed was to serve the boss’ needs. He also knew only some of that was true. It was just a reflexive response to the poison he’d been injected with throughout most of his life, poison brewed by pervasive racial discrimination that broke his heart and shattered his dreams. The boy had done nothing to him and did not deserve his gruffness. At his job on the Carle farm, he was treated almost like a person worthy of at least a little passing respect. Even so, he was like an invisible cog in the machinery that supported Mr. Carle’s belief that wealth justified fealty, even if you don’t show it.

Mr. Jason Carle, purchased the land in the late 1930’s from William Ogden, whose family had owned the land since the 1860s, and in the spirit of the times and the politics of the south, treated people of color as things to be lauded over and handled. On the other hand, Mr. Carle did not sympathize with Southern politics, but neither did he stand against them in reaching the heights of society’s privileged few. The only time he interacted with the help was to have a worker satisfy a want he thought he needed. Otherwise, he knew nothing of people dissimilar from him. Regardless, most of the time, he had the humanity and good judgment to treat them fairly.

As Ken passed the dimly lit stables on this day, he noticed not much had changed since last he’d passed. Some stalls were clean; others needed attention. The sound of horses bumping against stall walls and the smell of urine-soaked hay and manure filled the air, mixed with periodic neighing. Past the stalls, through to the other end of the stable, the afternoon sun illuminated a great willow oak tree under which the stableman sat at his work.

“What kind of music were you whistling?” Ken asked again.

“It’s just a tune. What difference does it make? Right now, I’ve got to fix this rig.”

“I would really like to know,” Ken replied. “I liked it.”

Impatiently, the stableman said, “It’s ‘Honeysuckle Rose.’” He looked up at this lanky kid standing rigidly upright, with penetrating eyes and long fingers, and said “You like music kid?”

“I like all kinds of music,” said Ken. “Classical music and American show music are my favorites.”

“Is that all you like?” the man asked.

“I do enjoy other things, like puzzles and mysteries. I like math and I’m way ahead of my class and I’ve read almost all of Agatha Christie.”

“You good at those things?”

“Yes, but what I like the best is music.”

“Why?” the man asked.

“Because I’ve always liked it. I can remember it, and it stays with me. I love to listen, and when I play, I lose track of time and I can concentrate. Most of all, it makes me feel good.”

“That’s good. Can you play an instrument?” asked the stableman.

“I’ve been taking piano lessons since I was seven years old, and I’m eleven now,” answered Ken with some pride.

“Can you play European classical music? You know, people like Chopin, Stravinsky, and Debussy.”

“I’ve played those and others,” answered Ken. “You’re just a stableman. How do you know those composers, and why do you ask me if I can play their music?”

“You ever heard of Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Fats Waller, Nat Cole, or Bud Powell?”

“I never heard of those. You made them up, didn’t you?”

“You ever heard of jazz? If not, boy, you’ve missed the great American piano players. If you want, someday I’ll show you what they can do and how they sound.”

At that moment, another worker came calling for Kenneth to tell him he was wanted at home. The boy picked up the stick he was carrying and, without another word, ran across the meadow through the knee-high grasses and wildflowers in the direction of the Carle family house.

One afternoon, while Bootsy was currycombing one of the horses, which had been ridden pretty hard by a visitor, Mr. Carle stopped the stableman to ask him about the conversation he had with his son Kenneth.

“Kenneth tells me you and he were having a talk about music.”

“Yeah, the boy told me he was good at math and liked puzzles. Those two things will carry him far,” said Bootsy in an effort to tilt the conversation in a direction away from music.

“He is good at those things,” said Mr. Carle, “but he was very interested in why you’d asked him about music.”

“I didn’t ask him. He asked me about a tune I was humming.” Jason Carle was an astute reader of men, and he knew instantly that Bootsy had tightened and become defensive.

“Maybe. But there was something in the conversation about music that caught his attention. Something about American piano players. He’s asked me three times to find out what you were talking about. I know little about music except what my wife and son tell me. The only people he has to talk to are his teacher and his mother, who doesn’t play an instrument. So I’m here to find out about what you said to him and why he found it so interesting.”

“Mr. Carle, I had no intention of getting into your family’s business and disturbing that boy of yours. I only wanted to talk to the boy. The last thing I wanted to do was upset him. I like my job working for you and I don’t want to lose it.”

“I think you misunderstand, Bootsy. Talking about my son and his love of music is all I wanted. Are you willing to sit and have a chat with me?”

Bootsy hung the curry brush back on the nail inside the barn and walked the horse back to its stall, all the while trying to still his thumping heart and relax and ready himself for a talk with the boss. He had been here before. Most black men worried about their jobs because of a minor infraction they didn’t know was an infraction. At the hardware store, he was let go by the owner who wanted to have a casual talk because he didn’t charge enough for a bag of feed when the price he charged was written on the bag, then again by a landscaper on account of not cutting down a tree he was told to cut down but the homeowner wanted to save. He never received payment for the work he had done. This kind of treatment was fairly common, but still he would have to go, hat in hand, looking for another job that would sustain him. He steeled himself as he returned from the barn, stood by the rail fence next to Mr. Carle, and waited for the hammer to fall.

Mr. Carle looked at Bootsy and asked, “So what do you mean when you refer to an American piano player?”

Bootsy thought for a moment that the question might have a double edge. Mr. Carle might be looking for a reason to assume that he was an uppity black man. In the political history of the area, that alone would have been justification enough to terminate Bootsy. Or it may be a real question in search of a genuine answer. So with some nervous hesitation, he chose the latter and answered honestly.

“Okay, so an American piano player is an American who can play the piano, but that is not what I meant when I was talking to the boy. What I was talking about was a jazz piano player. A player who knows the music of America and can play it with a jazz feel. It is not European music played in that style. It is one hundred percent American. It is what some musicians call American classical music. It springs from the American experience and sounds like the American experience. How the music sounds is different. The scales are often different. In one common blues scale, for example, the third, fifth, and seventh are flat.”

“You mean it’s played differently than serious music?” asked Mr. Carle.

“First of all, people make a big mistake when they talk like that. Jazz is as serious and as complex as any other music. I think the only way you would understand is for you to listen and try to appreciate it.”

Even though he had no real way of judging, what the boss heard first was his stableman talking intelligently about something that he, Mr. Carle, knew little about. It both surprised him and made him more curious about what else he didn’t know. It seemed that the essence of this man went beyond caring for horses and cleaning stables.

“Do you play an instrument Bootsy?”

“Yes. I started out playing guitar when I was a kid, and then I switched to the piano. I just play for myself now. I used to play for a living, but that was a long time ago.”

“Did you play jazz?”

“Yes. I played jazz and everything else.”

“What do you mean by ‘everything else,’ Bootsy?”

“Just that. After years of studying European classical music, I switched to jazz. So yes, I can play anything.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Mr. Carle. “Who taught you to play the piano? What I mean is, where did you get the exposure?”

“Mr. Joe Alfred lived down the road from me and gave me lessons. He was a great teacher and an expert musician. When I was in New York, I met a few people who remembered him.”

Bootsy could tell that Mr. Carle did not believe a word he was saying. Mr. Carle himself began to think his stableman was outright lying and had a vague notion that the whole episode was somehow comic, maybe even sad. What it said about a man who could create such a fantasy out of thin air was beyond his ability to grasp. Nevertheless, he kept his conversational composure and continued to be polite to his stableman.

“That’s great, Bootsy. It was nice talking to you. We like the job you’re doing out here. Keep up the excellent work.”

“Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, boss.”

Bootsy turned and walked into the barn past the horse stalls. He showered, changed his clothes, and prepared to leave for home, where, at the end of this day, he would make himself dinner and, like every other day, would watch the news on TV. He would then sit at his beloved piano and work his talent on the things he could not yet play, always searching for the pieces that could help him maintain his technique and inspire his imagination.

For reasons that eluded him, Mr. Carle was haunted by his conversation with Bootsy. It played in his mind repeatedly as he looked for the key that would open the door of truth. How could his stableman have achieved what he professes? The years of study it would take to develop the required knowledge and skill would not land him in a place like the stable. On the other hand, at no time in the years that Bootsy worked for him had he been disingenuous or a teller of tall tales. Other men who worked on the farm had tried to bullshit him and were noted storytellers, but he never had reason to suspect Bootsy was one of them. Until today, he saw him as a good, trustworthy employee. Was he telling the truth, or was he just another prevaricator?

When he arrived the next day, Bootsy saw the boss’ truck parked near the barn under the umbrella of the willow oak. Mr. Carle leaned out of the window of the truck and waved Bootsy over. The sun had not yet warmed the atmosphere, nor had the stableman gotten warm enough to want to talk. At this time of day, Bootsy saw talking as an annoyance.

“Is all that stuff you said yesterday true, Bootsy?”

“What stuff, Mr. Carle?”

“Can you really play anything on the piano?”

“Well, I might have stretched the truth a bit, but to the unschooled ear, the answer is yes,” Bootsy answered.

“Okay then. Jump into the truck and come with me to the house.”

“The man wants to test me,” Bootsy said to himself. “I’m not up to this shit this early in the morning. Why can’t this motherfucker leave me alone?”

They drove the short distance to the house, and Bootsy followed behind Mr. Carle through the back door and into the kind of wealth he had not seen since he played for the private parties of the well heeled on Fifth Avenue and Central Park West. He shook off the morning slows and, out of necessity, cleared his head. He instinctively knew where he was being taken. So wide-eyed and slightly nervous, he readied himself for the challenge. Bootsy followed his boss into a well-lit room with sunlight streaming in through the floor to ceiling windows on the east and south side of the house. There, in the middle of the room, stood a 1916 ebony Steinway Grand, model A3, that Mr. Carle introduced with pride, even though he knew nothing about pianos. This was the quality instrument that a talent like Bootsy should be playing, but he rarely got the opportunity.

“Here is our piano, Bootsy. The one Kenneth plays.”

“This is a beautiful instrument, boss. Your son is an incredibly lucky boy to have the opportunity to play it.”

Bootsy walked over to the piano and smiled as he stroked it like one would touch a lover or beloved child. He turned to the boss. “Is there something you’re in the mood to hear, Mr. Carle?”

The evening before, Mr. Carle called Kenneth’s piano teacher and asked her about difficult pieces. “If one were to ask a piano playing braggart to play a piece of music that would expose his or her limited knowledge and talent, what piece would that be?” Then armed with a request that a man like Bootsy could not possibly know, Mr. Carle asked for Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2. They were now at the Rubicon—the moment when Bootsy would be slapped down by his own exaggeration. The moment when his stableman would be publicly humiliated and marked as a liar. Mr. Carle had practiced the speech he would give if this whole thing was a mistake. He would pile the stableman back into the truck and dump him into a pile of horseshit where he belonged.

There was no sheet music to read, so the stableman sat quietly for a minute with his head bowed as if in thought and his hands in his lap. For Mr. Carle, time seemed to have stopped. All his questioning, all his need for truth, and the consequences he had imagined if Bootsy was not genuine hung in balance in a ball of anticipation. Then Bootsy raised his arms, and his fingers lay softly on the keys without making a sound. First, a two-hand chord followed by a bass note and then another followed by a bass note, and then the sound of the concerto filled the room produced by fingers so swift and smooth that they could not be seen. Mr. Carle could not believe what he was hearing and seeing. Mrs. Carle appeared with the household staff and gathered around the entrance to the piano room to hear music as they had never heard it before in the house. He played for five minutes to demonstrate his ability, and after the point was made, he stopped. The maid and cook clapped and cheered without inhibition, and Mr. and Mrs. Carle stood speechless, knowing that they had just witnessed something special. Something out of the ordinary had been loosed in their music room that was worthy of being heard in a grand concert hall. Then the room fell silent, in part because of the unforgettable sound they had just heard. The incongruity between what they knew of their stableman—the almost ragged work clothes he was wearing versus his display of pianistic ability—made the scene almost bizarre. The myths of magical transformations take place in literature when frogs become princes and farm girls lead armies. But here in front of them, a similar emergence had taken place. Hidden in their stables was something beautiful, something that no one would have ever suspected. It left them agape with surprise, speechless, and palpably excited. In a word, they were all stunned.

“Would you like to hear something else?” asked Bootsy, who watched the whole scene with a touch of “Gotcha” and an internal glee that only he could appreciate.

“By all means,” answered Mrs. Carle at a volume louder than her speaking voice, which was both a sign of approval and a prod meant to accelerate the process.

“What about some jazz?” asked Bootsy. “That’s what I like best.”

The Carles, the cook, and the cleaning lady all found comfortable seats, and for the next hour, they listened to a master play melodies they all knew. He knew what he was doing. The intention was not just to play the piano well but also to seduce their sensibilities, so they wanted more. The rhythms may have been a little different and the melodies embellished, but they knew what was being played, and they all hummed the melodies and mouthed the lyrics to many of the songs that were played. They lost track of time and space, totally consumed by the music. After the shock and awe had worn off, Mr. Carle approached his stableman. Still sitting at the piano bench with a respectful nobility that Mr. Carle could now see, he asked the question.

“Would you like a change in your job description?” Bootsy was not expecting this, but he did know his employers had been jerked out of their business heads and into a place that allowed purely emotional decisions. “Would you like to teach my son Kenneth?”

Bootsy knew he had to strike while the iron was hot, and he did.

“Would this be a complete change in job description, Mr. Carle?” This might be a chance for him to make a living doing what he was born to do. Even though he did not consider himself a teacher, he could certainly do it, and maybe he could wind up doing something that he loved and could finally leave the filth of the stable. Finally, he might be able to get back to the thing he loved most in the world.

“Yes,” said Mr. Carle. “The only thing you would be responsible for is teaching Kenneth.”

Then he hesitated and added, “You might also be periodically asked to play for the family’s entertainment and parties. If you agree, I think it only fair that your pay would be what any pro would make putting in the same hours. I’ll check into that. I could see you becoming the boy’s musical mentor.”

“This might be too much to ask, Mr. Carle, but could you help me set up a retirement account? Right now, I have nothing to take me into old age,” said Bootsy.

“Don’t push it, Mr. Johnson. But I think we can do that.”

“Then I say yes to your offer and look forward to teaching your son. By the way, it’s been a long time since I’ve been called Mr. Johnson, and I thank you for that.”

Mrs. Carle approached and stood by her husband, trying unsuccessfully to contain her excitement. She grasped Mr. Carle’s hand and said with a slightly exaggerated sense of dignity, “Mr. Johnson, dirty work clothes are not to be worn in the house.”

The Carle family soon discovered what and who Mr. Daniel “Bootsy” Johnson really was. He was the grandson of slaves and not just an old stableman but an influential, genius-level piano player who had taken the New York jazz scene by storm in the late 30s to early 40s but did not like the lifestyle and the way he was treated, so he came home to rural Maryland and stayed.

Mr. Johnson took Ken under his wing. They spent hours walking around the farm talking about music. In the music room, sitting at the piano and on a removable blackboard that was brought in, Ken was taught theory, harmony, and composition. They practiced fingering and technique. They listened to all the great jazz piano players—Cole, Tatum, Peterson, and Garner—and with Mr. Johnson’s help, Ken had the opportunity to play with some of the quality bands in the area. He learned to play different styles of music and to do so with competence. Bootsy helped him extract from all of it a style that was uniquely Ken’s. And by the time he was eighteen years old, he was more than ready to call himself a piano player who could play with anybody in any style.

Bootsy had done his job, and when Ken left for college to study mathematics, the old man knew he had been responsible for doing something special. Before he left, Ken promised him he would take everything he learned to his beloved New York and make him proud.

*****

Evening had now settled over the harbor, and for the first time, Ken appreciated the expansive elegance of his parents’ new apartment. He knew the chances of ever approaching a comparable lifestyle in New York was impossible for him. After years of trying to make enough money to support a truly middle-class lifestyle, he was no closer than he was when he first arrived. Yes, there were memorable jobs and plenty of high times. Some people knew his name, and a few times, he recorded with known artists, but with the flood of competition and changing musical styles and taste, the opportunities diminished over time. He’d get gigs at cocktail parties and house parties and the few remaining jazz clubs, but it was not enough to sustain what he considered a respectable lifestyle. Like his teacher, Bootsy Johnson, Ken had come back home. It was not a triumphant return, and as he waited for his parents with his head resting on his hand and his elbow leaning on the piano, he wondered what tomorrow would bring.