...is it any wonder that people have thought great things could be foretold by reading the palms of hands? Hands are wondrous. They separate us from the animals, manually speaking. Even the hands of other primates arent constructed as ours are. Its not a stretch to call them magic- hands take paint and ink and create images or tracks on paper that record stories. Hands take fruit of the field and critters afoot and turn them into delicious dinner. Hands can heal, make fire, or make music. I remember watching the hands of my mother when she played the piano. Her hands didnt amount to much in the kitchen, she was not artistic, didnt write and rarely read (other than Bible study) but when she sat at a keyboard I would see her hands- which were well past middle aged hands even in my childhood- stretch out and take elegant, graceful form. She seemed proud of what her hands could do, and I could see how even her fingers were showing off for me. Those were likely the times my attention was most held steady, and Momma knew it. I was her exclusive audience. Though she wasnt trained nor particularly gifted, she threw herself into a song- and her set list was filled with songs that were well past vintage even in my 1970s childhood. What songs these were- right off player piano rolls; Beer Barrel Polka, Bill Bailey, Darktown Strutters Ball, and Show Me the Way to Go Home. Show me the way to go home, Im tired and I wanna go to bed, shed sing, humor in her voice belying the melancholy lyrics. I had a little drink about and hour ago, shed continue as her voice and face would switch into a wistful mode, and its gone right to my head. She played Ragtime style (she and my my dad liked to call it rikky tikky) and her left hand wasnt up for more than a note or two but her right would occasionally gliss into some blue notes and she would dip her shoulder and purse her lips to get the feel right. That left hand responsible for the bassline would lightly bounce, fingers extending with put-on elegance from the root note to a fifth higher and back again- the opposite of how one would work such a coupling on a string bass. Years later in the Booming 90s, after irritating the hell out of both parents via self-educating myself on punk rock rhythm guitar then going off to wade around in higher education and establish a promising career for myself in the up-and-coming field of nightclub security, I launched an early-twenties reparation with the family. I invited Momma and Bud Fisher down to Austin from their in-arrears tract home outside of Temple to see a living legend; Roosevelt T. Williams, better known as the Grey Ghost, a black piano player in his late 80s who sang in an murky and mud-thick drawl and played in a pure barrelhouse style as he had since the Teens and Twenties when it was contemporary. His sepulchral moniker (that will be $10, please, fb reader) came from others perplexity at his ability to show up in their locales to perform- without a ride and never passing through the train station. I come up outta the ground, hed explain, like a ghost. He held a weekly Happy Hour at the venerable Continental Club, a former 50s swank joint with flooring installed by a company my old man had run at the time it opened. Talk about hands; as Ghost faced the piano (placed sideways on the stage so we could see these mitts) his hands poised above the keys like the gnarled roots of a Spanish Oak waiting to trip an unwary hiker. Knotty at the knuckles, cracked and dark as walnut stain they seemed to carry more weight than the whole rest of him together. A plastic cup of lemon wedges and a glass of brown liquor sat on the piano and (as all other Grey Ghost Happy Hours Id attended) he returned to the two in between songs and told partially-cipherable stories with pauses to look at his own hands and chuckle to himself. My folks were as infatuated as I had always been. In particular, my mother was enthralled. Dad loved music and was happy to see any caliber of live musicality; much like his taste buds, his ears were non-discriminatory and were always appreciative. Momma knew better; you could see her recognition of a master at his craft and the songs sparked an outpouring of memories. She re-told stories of meeting Bud Fisher during the war, stationed in Georgia and jitterbugging to and singing with bands in Savannah. She was equally as fond of her memories of racially mixed nightclubs as she was afraid to drive through the spots in Memphis and Kansas City where wed have to leave the sterile highways and take surface streets to the next Interstate. I cant clearly recall if my girlfriend of the time (a young lady of hippie-ish dress who truly was at odds with my throwback mid-century look) came along with us or not, yet I can clearly recall my mother singing along to Somebody Stole My Gal and other songs shed known by heart for over fifty years. Those shrunken and shriveled hands of hers pantomimed the bassline the way she would play it, hitting that high fifth. The year or so after that Happy Hour I handmade some Italian dinners for Momma, learned a couple of Tin Pan Alley standards to fingerpick on guitar for her, and harassed my ol pop into bringing his truck down so I could load an upright piano onto it for her. It had belonged to my roomies sister; I hoisted one end up onto the truck as two scrawny pals in Misfits T-shirts manhandled the other. The following year, Momma had advanced into Alzheimers Disease far past the point Dad could take sufficient care and she needed to stay in a facility. The Grey Ghost had an injury while forcefully removing a woman of ill repute from his Eastside home. He passed away at age 92 in 1996, my mother passed in 2003 at the age of 82. Somebody stole my pal, I can hear Ghost singing low. Somebody come, took her way. Show me the way to go home.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:58:55 +0000
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