Fulbright riffs, 1991 — day 88, Sunday August 25th
The day starts badly. The muffins bought only yesterday for breakfast are mouldy, so it’s back to the shop to exchange them. On my way out of the apartment, cursing East Village food shops and their poor standards (this is the second lot of rubbish groceries in a week), I trip over a chair and bruise my shin.
We leave the apartment around 11:45 and take a quick look around St Mark’s Bookshop on East 3rd Street [a famous independent bookshop that closed down this year] before we make our rendezvous with Maria at Penn Station. I asked Jayne to bring a present for Maria from England — a book on English gardens. Jayne hastily wraps it in Woolworth’s paper while we’re on the bus.
We’ve reserved a table for brunch at Sweet Basil. Maria believes this is an occasion for dressing up and arrives in Sunday best white, making us two look decidedly under-dressed in our jeans. Jayne and Maria get on well instantly and Maria adores her present. We grab some Haagen-Dasz tubs to cool off and then hop into a cab down to Greenwich Village.
There’s time before the music for a walk around some of the literary and historic landmarks of the Villlage, such as Chumley’s speakeasy in Bedford Street, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s house, the Cherry Tree Theatre in Commerce Street and Dylan Thomas’s favourite haunt, the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street.
We arrive at Sweet Basil at 2.30 pm for Doc Cheatham’s first set and brunch. Doc Cheatham is a veteran from the 1920s jazz scene, now aged around 86 but still blowing hot and singing fine. [I had recently seen him in London as a guest in an Ellington tribute lineup directed, I think, by Brian Priestley. They were rehearsing in Baden Powell House in South Kensington and had just got to the last, climactic choruses of Cotton Tail, Doc on lead trumpet. As the trumpet riffs peel off like jets flying in formation, Cab Calloway walked in, heavy overcoat on his shoulders, his broad grin saying “That’s still my man!”. I always considered that one of the best purchases I ever made for The British Library’s jazz collections was the double LP, Jezebel JZ 102, Adolphus Doc Cheatham accompanied by just a piano or rhythm section in 1973. There’s no pretence in Doc’s playing, no showing off, just musical integrity and distilled experience].
He plays some of my favourite numbers, such as Have you met Miss Jones and Peggy a tune he co-wrote with Don Redman. We have a great time, Maria loves her first time in a jazz club, and we ate well.
We resume our literary walk, taking in e e cummings’s house and both of Mark Twain’s Village residences. The violinist, Young-Uck Kim, who Jayne used to represent at Harold Holt’s also lives in this neighbourhood. We call on him but like most other busy artists at this time he is either on tour or on vacation.
Maria’s train back to Trenton leaves at 5:30 so we take another cab and make our farewells at Penn Station, unsure when or if ever we’ll see each other again.
As usual on a Sunday evening, there’s free jazz in Damrosch Park. Today it’s Roots of American Music and we arrive just in time for a fine klezmer band playing Romanian-Jewish music, most appropriately, given today’s company.
We leave Damrosch Park at around 7 and take a bus across the bottom end of Central Park to the 68th Street Playhouse to see a recent Italian film The story of boys & girls. At a farmhouse, a large family cooks mountains of food for the next day’s engagement party for Silvia and her city fiancé, Angelo. The film features a twenty-four course meal. We get back to the apartment at about 11, ravenous for spaghetti and tuna sauce!