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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 55: Brown 301
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 101
The band didn’t usually play on Sunday; Missus Johnson held the opinion that it wouldn’t be right for them to work on the Sabbath. Derek pointed out that most of their songs were hymns and other anthems, and she relented slightly but insisted still that they needed a day off. So that Sunday they decided to buy lunch there and introduce Hannah to Lei.
She eyed him up and down, with a suspicious glance at Derek, and then said, “You play six days a week, unless it’s a holiday; I pay you fifty cents and give you whatever the lunch special is that day for lunch, along with drinks. This is the same deal I have with them, except for Mister Beaufoy, who insists on playing free and buying his own lunch. This, of course, is dependent on what you sound like tomorrow, and whether I think you work in our dining room. Understood?”
“Shay-shay,” Lei replied; “thank you velly much.”
Turning her eye back to Derek, she said, “How many more stray musicians are you planning to bring me?”
“I do apologize, ma’am; I didn’t expect to bring this one, but we did need a drummer, and the King, the good Lord, seemed to have sent us him. Besides, my understanding is that Dixieland bands are usually a five-piece combo, and he makes us five.”
She nodded and let Henry escort them to their seats. Derek introduced, “Henri, this is Lei He; Lei, his name is actually Henry, but when he’s at work they use the French pronunciation.”
“Pleased to meet, Ahnlee.”
“I hear you're the drummer. Any good?”
“We think so,” Pierre said. “But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.”
“Alas, I won’t be here tomorrow. I have to work Thanksgiving, so Hannah is giving me a few days off beforehand. By the way, you’re all invited, on the house; I know Hannah intends to invite you, so she’ll probably get to it eventually, but I thought I’d let you know.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Maurice said.
After lunch they retired to the shack, went over their complete repertoire, and then Derek said, “I’ve thought of two more songs I’d like us to try. One I’ve been thinking of for a while, but it wasn’t until Pierre brought his bass that I thought we could do it. It’s called Also Sprach Zarathustra, and it’s a short fanfare sort of thing, but it’s got a very dynamic baseline in places.”
It only took about three quarters of an hour for them to figure out their parts; the song was probably under two minutes in length, but it was obviously a great opener.
“So, what’s the other?” Pierre asked when they were comfortable with this one.
“I thought of it when I realized that we had a really good drummer and should showcase him in something. It’s really a Christimas song, but it’s almost Christmas and we could do it all year. It’s about celebrating by playing instruments--”
“Oh, I know the one you mean. In French we call it Guillaume, prends ton tambourin; in English that would be something like William, take your tambourine--”
“Pat-a-pan,” Derek said. “We call it Pat-a-pan.” It wasn’t the song about the drummer he was remembering, but he remembered this one, and probably the other hadn’t been written yet. Also, this one was probably easier--faster, more challenging to play, but not as complicated, easier to remember. “I like it.”
Composing his mind, he decided, “Let me sing one verse for you, and we’ll know roughly how it goes. Then we can work out how to break it up into several verses and, this might sound crazy, a drum solo or two.”
It was a very challenging song. On the first verse Derek and Vashti played the melody line in two-part harmony while the low brass instruments provided the pat-a-pan feeling; then for the second verse they reversed it, with the high instruments doing the pat-a-pans and the low brass playing the two-part melodic line. Coming out of the second verse, they had Lei play two measures of intricate drumwork, and came back with a third verse in which the background rhythm was all drum and all four instruments played harmony on the melody. Coming out of this, they gave Lei eight measures, and then the last verse was the most intricate, tossing the melody from one instrument to another. Derek thought it was a nice touch that when they reached the words too-ra-loo-ra-loo for the pipe they had Vashti play it unaccompanied, and followed it with the drum and the tuba doing the “pat-a-pat-a-pan” that descended from it, and they ended on full chords.
As they finished, Maurice complained, “Man, d’you ‘spec’ me to remember all that?”
“We’ll go through it again. And we’ll practice again tomorrow; we’ll save it to play on Tuesday, when Henry is there to hear just how good our drummer is.”
They were still stumbling through it, but they did it thrice more, and then Derek said it was good enough and they should get some food and some sleep.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #505: Versers Advance. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
