Thursday, July 14, 1927: Cleveland
The Kid.
Schoolboy is still damaged goods, and still subsisting mostly on coffee and codeine. The result, as he succinctly puts it is:
“I can’t sleep. And I can’t shit.”
Both in the locker room and back in the hotel, Hoyt spends most of his non-sleeping hours sitting on the toilet, reading and waiting.
“In the last two weeks I’ve read five books. Babbitt, Elmer Gantry, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Showboat, and now The Great Gatsby — Gatsby for the second time. They’d all make great movies.”
“What are you up to in Gatsby?”
“I’m near the end. They’ve just run over Tom’s mistress.”
Schoolboy’s telling me this in his hotel room, through his open bathroom door, while sitting on the john. He’s been reading Gatsby and hoping to go for half an hour. I’m lying on his bed reading a two-day-old newspaper, specifically an article all about Henry Ford’s public apology to the Jews of America.
“Did you read Henry Ford’s apology?” I call into the bathroom.
“No,” Schoolboy calls back. “I haven’t been reading the newspaper since I got back into novels because of the codeine. Sittin’ on the can for an hour requires a book, not a newspaper.”
“Well, then listen to this,” I say. “Ford’s made this big public apology to this Jewish lawyer in Chicago named Sapiro — and to all Jews in America — and it’s being published in every paper in the country.”
“What did the old man apologize for?” Hoyt asks through the bathroom door.
“Sapiro sued Ford for a million dollars after Ford’s newspaper ran a bunch of articles saying that the lawyer had masterminded a Jewish conspiracy full of — quote — ‘Jew bankers, lawyers, money-lenders, fruit packers and advertising agencies’ to take over the wheat market and fix farm prices.
“Get this. It says Ford even claimed there weren’t any real Jewish farmers anywhere in America, that they all were just price-fixers and bankers disguised as farmers.”
This next part stuns me. “And get this: A few years ago, Ford even offered a bounty of $1,000 for each Jewish farmer his readers could identify.”
“Well,” says Hoyt, his voice echoing slightly off his marble and porcelain surroundings, “have you ever seen a Jew farmer?”
“Actually, yes,” I tell him. “We had a Hebrew family near where I grew up outside of Penn State. They raised cows on a dairy farm.”
Schoolboy makes a grunting sound I’ve never heard before, and then says, “Too bad you didn’t regularly read the Dearborn Independent — you missed out on collecting an easy grand.”
I continue reading the news to his open bathroom door.
“In Ford’s apology, he now says he’s — quote — ‘mortified’ that his newspaper — quote — ‘gave currency to the so-called “Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion” book, which has been demonstrated to be gross forgeries.’ And Ford also says he’s going to stop distributing his anti-Jew pamphlet, ‘The International Jew,’ that he displays and gives out at all his dealerships.”
“Wow!” says Hoyt. “You know what’s really incredible?”
“What?”
“That Gatsby loved Daisy enough to do all that — to take the rap for running over Tom’s mistress, and then take a bullet for it.”
Tuesday and Wednesday we took the first two games of our four-game series against the Indians, 7–0 and 5–3. Urban Shocker and Dutch Ruether both pitched complete games, and Ruth walloped his 30th dinger, to put the Babe one up on Gehrig in their Home Run Derby.
When we get back to the Hollenden House hotel after the second game, Schoolboy is fiending for Chinese food, so we head out to the Far East, our favorite Chinese restaurant in Cleveland, down on Euclid Avenue.
Euclid Avenue is the Fifth Avenue of Cleveland. It starts off lined with enormous mansions, and then its millionaires’ row turns into a business district full of stores and dance halls.
The Far East is run by two Chinese brothers, Donny and Kam Chee, who are both baseball crazy, so they’re always glad to see us. The Chee brothers are an interesting pair, tough guys in their 50s. They survived the local Cleveland Tong Wars of a couple of years ago — during which one Chinese waiter in town got his head chopped off, and then every chinaman in the city got arrested. Honest, every single one of them. Close to 500 were rounded up and dragged into police stations from their homes and work.
“We tell them we sell chop suey, not opium. But they arrest us, anyway. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha.” says Donnie. “Then lawyers come and they let us all out of jail. The mayor make big deal and apologize. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha. Fuck the mayor.”
The Chee brothers love that Hoyt can speak a little Chinese — they’re always laughing themselves into coughing fits because of how Schoolboy speaks Cantonese with a Brooklyn accent. And, boy, do they love teaching him how to curse in Chinese.
Schoolboy’s gotten almost as good at swearing in Chinese as he is at ordering food. Sometimes in a game, when he feels he’s getting screwed out of a decent strike zone he’ll scream “Sow-Nee-Zoo-Zong!” really loudly, and the umpire has no idea that Schoolboy’s telling the whole stadium that the umps doing terrible and obscene things to his own mother, or that Hoyt’s just cursed all of big blue’s ancestors.
Schoolboy thought he had this little magic trick all to himself, but then last year we were playing the White Sox in Chicago, and Hoyt had a no-hitter going into the seventh inning. He lost it after he was sure he’d struck out Earl Sheely on three pitches, but the ump called the third pitch a ball. On the next toss, Sheely lined a single to center to break up Hoyt’s no-hitter.
Schoolboy started swearing in Cantonese, and suddenly one of the Sox was screaming back in Chinese. It was their new shortstop out of Princeton, Moe Berg. Apparently he can curse in Chinese pretty good, too.
Then, this season, back in May, when Hoyt was pitching in Chicago during our first trip out west, Berg was heckling Hoyt in Chinese the entire goddamn game.
The Chee brothers love hearing Hoyt tell this story. They say Moe Berg comes into the restaurant every time the White Sox are in Cleveland, at least once a trip.
“He curse better than you, Schoolboy. But we know you mean it more.”
Schoolboy’s the most competitive guy I know, so tonight he asks the Chee brothers to teach him a string of new swear words. He’s even brought a pocket-sized notebook with him, to phonetically write down all the Chees’ choice epithets, so he can memorize them before we get back to Chicago in two weeks. He’s really got it in for Berg.
The Chee brothers are also jazz crazy, so a couple of years ago they convinced the owner of the restaurant to hire a jazz band run by Joe Cantor, which the Chees named, “The Far East Orchestra.” Now the band plays at the Far East, day and night, from noon until 1:00 a.m. during the week, and even later on Saturdays.
“Lunchtime, girls who work in office come and dance together,” says Donny Chee. “Men mostly watch. We get plenty more men now because of dancing girls.”
The Yankees haven’t had an off-day in Cleveland since I’ve been with the team, so I don’t know about the lunch crowd, but nighttime at the restaurant swings. Joe Cantor’s crew plays 6:30 to 8:30, and from 9:30 until closing. They’re a helluva white jazz band.
Tonight, about about a half an hour into their set, they play “Singin’ the Blues” — Bix Beiderbecke’s tune — but they play it a whole new way.
Bix is probably the best trumpet player on earth, except for Pops Armstrong, and even folks who don’t love jazz know his recording of “Singin’ the Blues.” Every jazz musician plays that tune — hell, every one of them’s bought the record, and I’ve met a few who even carry copies around in their instrument cases, just so they can listen to it when they’re on the road.
“Singin’ the Blues” starts out with this trumpet solo, and the whole thing has a lazy riverboat feel to it. But that’s not how The Far East Orchestra plays it — they’ve turned it into a hot jazz number.
They start it off with the same trumpet introduction but then this kid they got who plays the clarinet takes it over, and suddenly instead of feeling like you’re on a riverboat, it feels like you’re on a runaway locomotive.
Tonight the band’s version of “Singin’ the Blues” is so hot that no one in the restaurant wants them to play anything else. As soon as they start a new tune, everyone just shouts and whistles, and pounds on their table until the band goes back to playing their hot version of “Singin’ the Blues.” The band ends up playing it three times in a row — and each time it’s like a runaway freight train is plowing through the restaurant, and blowing the roof off it.
Even after the second encore the audience is still acting like a dog with a bone — they won’t give the band their song back. So the Far East Orchestra gives up and takes a break.
After a few minutes, the Chee brothers stop by our table and tell us to come out back to the alley behind the restaurant where Joe Cantor and the band have gone for a smoke.
Most of the band is standing together, sharing flasks and smoking muggles, but the kid who was playing the clarinet is off by himself, about a pitcher’s mound length away from the rest of the guys. He’s walking in a circle, nodding his head to his own beat, looking like a chicken stuck in a box. He’s just finished stamping out his cig when I walk up to him and offer him one from my pack.
“Thanks,” he says.
“That was really great,” I say.
“I know,” he says.
“You guys should record that.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
I’m not in the mood to take crap from a snot-nosed kid, so I turn and head back to Hoyt and the Chee brothers.
“You guys live in the city or up by the Stadium?” I hear him ask over my shoulder. I turn around and look him over. He seems to have calmed down a bit — he’s no longer doing his chicken scratch, although his fingers are fluttering like he’s still playing his clarinet, even while he’s holding a cigarette.
“What?”
“The Chees told us you guys play for the Yankees. Do you live in the city or up by the Stadium?”
“Most of the guys on the team live up by the Stadium, but I live in the Manhattan. Why’d you ask? Are you from New York?”
“I grew up there. Lower East Side, but my asshole of a father moved us to New Haven. That’s a dump. But I’ll be coming back in three years.”
“Three years?”
“Yeah, that’s how long it’s gonna take me to get good enough. Maybe two and a half. But I’m going to give it three years.”
“You’re pretty good now, kid. How old are you?”
“I don’t want to be just good enough. I’ll be great before I go to New York.”
He takes a long drag on his smoke.
“I turned 17, in May.”
I’m shocked by that number. I figured him to be 20–19 at the youngest. Not just because of the way he looks, but also because of the confidence and seriousness with which he plays. He’s already a seasoned pro.
“Does your mom know you’re out this late?”
“Yeah. We moved out here from New Haven together when I signed my contract with Joe and the band. She didn’t think I should come out here alone. I didn’t mind either way. I can take care of myself.”
In some ways he obviously can. In other ways, I’m not so sure.
“Myles Thomas,” I say introducing myself.
“Artie,” he says. He hesitates, then adds, “Shaw.”
“You sure about that?” I joke.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he says taking another drag. “It used to be Arshawsky, but I changed it before I came out here. I still have to think about it, sometimes.”
I tell him, “I’d think a Polish name would go over good here in Cleveland.”
“I’m not Polish,” he says. “I’m Jewish.”
“Oh.”
I don’t think I would have known it. He’s a handsome young man. All the women back inside the restaurant certainly think so.
We’re interrupted by the sound of Hoyt and the rest of the crowd laughing uncontrollably. Both of us look back down the alley to see them practically falling down.
“No weed for you?” I ask him.
“No. It screws with my timing. Anyway, I’m trying to figure out a new arrangement that’s been stuck in my head. That stuff is fine if you want to laugh and feel good, I guess. At least that’s what they keep telling me. But I’ll have time for that after I’m famous.”
“In three years?”
“No. I’ll be in New York in three years. I’ll be famous in four.”
I’ve seen this sort of raw, uninhibited ambition in ballplayers, but never in a musician before. This kid isn’t playing for fun. He’s playing for fame.
“How’s the town treating you?” I ask him.
“It’s a strange place. It’s not like New York or Chicago.”
“How so?”
“Just two years ago, in ’25, they published all these ridiculous regulations about dancing. Apparently the upper crust was scared shitless that jazz music was going to turn Cleveland into Sodom and Gomorrah. Or worse, Chicago.”
He turns his back to me, and starts taking a leak against the restaurant wall. While pissing he recites the rules from memory.
Male dancers are not permitted to hold their partners tightly.
Gentlemen must wear coats when dancing.
Suggestive movements are not permitted.
Dancers are not permitted to copy the extremes that are now used on the modern stage.
Partners are not permitted to dance with cheeks touching. When dancers put their cheeks together it is simply a case of public love-making.
“What bullshit,” he says, turning around and zipping himself back up.
“It’s all bullshit, kid. Who cares? There are laws against drinking, too, in case you haven’t noticed. But the war’s over. Jazz won.”
The kid laughs. But he’s laughing at me.
“What’s so fucking funny?” I ask him.
“You don’t know what jazz is.”
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Jazz isn’t any one fixed thing. It’s like evolution. And those guys over there,” he says pointing towards his bandmates, “they’re like creationists at the Scopes trial. They just want to feel good and play what’s on the page. They’re not looking to move the music forward, to make new sounds that have never been heard before, the way Pops does. The way Bix does.
“They’re happy playing in their white world. The same way you’re happy playing in your white world. But evolution’s going to change both our games. Give me another cigarette, will you.”
I toss him my pack.
“For a guy who doesn’t smoke weed, you think pretty freely.”
“No. No, I don’t. I’m just good at math. I’m just good at trigonometry, and seeing angles and intersections. And figuring out arrangements.
“You and I, Myles” — I’m a little surprised he’s remembered my name — “We’re playing in the two biggest games in town, baseball and jazz. But you’re just along for the ride.”
Hoyt leaves around midnight, but I stay till the band finishes at one, so I can watch the kid play some more. After all, he’s going to be great one day, and I want to be able to say, “I saw him when…”
Afterward, I’m saying goodnight to the Chees when the kid comes up and asks me, “Hey, you want to go hear some real music?” I tell him sure.
We get in his car and drive south about 20 minutes till we get to the dark side of town. The kid takes his clarinet case out of the car and tells me not to bother locking the car door — “If anybody wants something from the car and it’s locked, they’ll break in, so just leave it open” — then he walks across the street and down an alley. He rings a hidden doorbell that’s located about half a foot off the ground. Then he takes out a pack of cigarettes. We each pull out a cig and stand there smoking, not saying a word.
The kid walks to the other side of the alley, takes another leak, and then starts doing that quiet chicken dance of his, while listening to whatever’s inside his head.
My cigarette’s about halfway done when a Negro as big as Ruth opens the door. He looks at me with a “Who the fuck are you?” expression, and then he sees the kid. With a gold-toothed smile he says, “Hello, Arthur.”
The kid stops his chicken dance, opens his eyes and says, “Hello, Big Mike. Anyone else here yet?”
“No. You’re the first, again.”
We sit down in an empty room, about 30 by 30 feet, with a brick bar and a bunch of empty tables. Big Mike brings us a bottle of gin and two not terribly clean glasses. The kid hands him a $10 bill.
“Here’s how crazy this town is,” the kid says to me. “White bands are only allowed to play in front of white audiences. And colored bands can only play in front of coloreds. The whites get the clubs till midnight. The coloreds take over after 12.”
In New York and Chicago the color of the audience doesn’t matter. If you’re a colored jazzman in New York or Chicago you can perform in front of whites — and in the black and tan clubs you can perform in front of mixed audiences.
“Shit,” the kid says, “in New York, a black band and a white band will even play in the same joint on the same night — they’ll even play against each other, the way Fletcher Henderson’s band and Goldkette’s band did last year in the Battle of the Bands — ”
I cut him off to tell him that Benny Bengough and I were there, in the Roseland Ballroom for the Battle of the Bands last year. It was just a couple of days after we lost the seventh game of the World Series to the Cardinals.
“Holy shit! What was it like?!” he says, sounding his age for the first time all night.
“It was like a heavyweight prize fight,” I tell him.
“It was packed. And the crowd was black and tan, though it was a ton more white. Everyone thought Henderson’s band would win easily — cause they’re great, and cause they’re colored — but Goldkette’s band just blew them off the stage. Especially Bix and Trumbauer.
“Everything Goldkette’s orchestra played, the whole place went nuts for and demanded an encore, just like tonight with your band and ‘Singin’ the Blues.’ Even the coloreds were hollering for Bix and Trumbauer — it was all about the music.”
I give him a smile. “But this was Roseland, not some Chinese restaurant.”
I refill our glasses with gin.
“And it went on like that for almost an hour before Henderson’s band had a chance to play. By the time Fletch’s band got up, they were like a fighter who’s gotten hit right after the opening bell, when he doesn’t expect it. They were back on their heels the whole night.”
“Bix,” is all the kid says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Bix.”
The kid comes out of his trance to finish his point.
“Here in Cleveland, it’s strictly whites for whites and coloreds for coloreds. No mixing.”
“That’s nuts,” I tell him.
“Not really any more nuts than the fact that we can’t play together in public, not even in New York or Chicago.” says the kid. “I mean, why do I have to come to a joint like this after hours to jam with Negroes?”
“I don’t know. It’s just the way it is, I guess,” I hear myself saying — and wondering about it for the first time.
“I just want to play with the best. I just want to make new sounds,” he says again. “I want to move the music forward. I want to play with guys who don’t just want to play notes. I want to play with guys who play between the notes.
“Don’t you want to play with the best?” he asks me.
“I already do play with the best,” I reply.
“No you don’t.”
“I think I do, son.” He’s back to irritating me. “I play with Ruth and Gehrig, it doesn’t get better than that.”
“Maybe they’re the best, and maybe they aren’t. But I don’t see them playing every day against colored players.”
“I play with Ruth and Gehrig,” I repeat calmly. “And we play colored teams all the time in the offseason.”
The kid doesn’t say anything in response.
“I play with Ruth and Gehrig,” I hear myself saying for a third time.
“Don’t get pissed,” the kid tells me. “All I’m saying is you can’t say you’re the best unless you measure yourself against everyone.”
With that the bell rings, and we can hear laughter and conversation coming through the door from outside in the alley.
Big Mike comes out from wherever he’s been and opens up the door. Three colored guys — they’re in their forties, I’d guess — come inside carrying horn cases.
The kid gets up and greets them.
“Hey, Sam. Hey, Johnny. Hey, Irv.”
“Hello, Arthur.”
They reek of weed.
“Who’s your pal?” one of them asks. “Does he play?”
“His name’s Myles. He plays. Baseball.”
“Who you play for, Myles?”
“The Yankees.”
That stops the conversation.
It always does.
Around five o’clock the kid drives me back to the Hollenden House hotel.
For the past three hours I’ve heard a different jazz than I’ve ever heard before. It was like a cross between a relay race, a game of pepper, and watching Ruth hit batting practice. It soared. Unpredictably for everyone involved.
“We don’t know where the music’s going,” the kid tells me on the drive back. “You just feel it. And then you challenge yourself to do something new. Or do something that will make the other guys do something new. Or, I’ll hear one of the guys do something I’ve never heard before, and I’ll just do what I can to support him. And then I’ll challenge him to do it again.
“It’s like dreaming,” he says. “Only you’re awake.”
I have the kid drop me off around the back of the hotel, just in case Ed Barrow has one of the guys at the front desk on his payroll.
“Get some sleep,” I tell the kid.
“Me? Nah. I can’t sleep after that. And, anyway, I still got this arrangement in my head.”
The kid drives off without saying goodbye.
As I watch his car drive toward the lake, all I can think about is — unless he’s derailed by booze and broads — he’s going to be great.
And I’m just along for the ride.
- Battle of Music: Fletcher Henderson vs. Jean Goldkette
- The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: “Dance Halls”
- The Great Gatsby
- NEW YORK TIMES, July 8, 1927: “Ford Now Retracts Attacks on Jews”
- Ohio History Journal: “Police Roundup of Chinese in Cleveland in 1925: A Case Study of a Racist Measure and the Chinese Response”
- “Singin’ The Blues”
- Box Score, September 21, 1926: Yankees 14 vs. White Sox 0.
- July 12, 1927: “Babe Lifts №30 As Yanks Win, 7–0.” New York Times article and Box Score.
- July 13, 1927: “Yank Rally Beats the Indians, 5 to 3.” New York Times article and Box Score.
