Like Dizzy Gillespie's Cheeks

One

"I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday."

—Miles Davis

The usual routine goes like this: I'll play the piano in whatever dingy Chicago establishment will have me.

Well, that's not altogether true. First and foremost, it's got to have a piano, preferably in tune. Secondly, the establishment must also be willing to allow me to play my piano-jazz stylings. Other than that, I'm not too picky. And as we all know, dingy establishments just want live music. There's a perceived value in live music, because it's just that ... live.

Tonight's establishment, called Hip's Pocket, which sounds more like a shabby pool hall than a dingy bar with a possibly in-tune piano, was where I planned to wildly entertain whomever happened to be in said dingy establishment looking to be wildly entertained. My musical talents allow me to play virtually anything. I've been called the human jukebox for my graphic musical memory. To be honest, I'm the only one who calls me the human jukebox, which is sort of sad, but I've won a couple bar bets because of my music memory abilities, so I feel I've earned the title.

Anyway, I was armed with a musical arsenal of the popular stuff from folks like Celine Dion, Bruce Springsteen (which doesn't translate too well to the piano), and the Spice Girls (which absolutely doesn't translate to the piano). But what I prefer and what I'll play, unless asked to play otherwise, is classic jazz: Monk, Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, or maybe a couple from a lesser known musician like Bob Dorough or my close friend and mentor, Ben Webster (the piano player, not the sax player.)

Hip's Pocket was filled with a thick cloud of clove cigarette smoke and loud laughter, which emanated directly from a group of champagne-driveling revelers visiting Chicago from a dot-com located in Mountain View, California. They were attending some software convention at McCormick Place, near Soldier Field, where it was announced that their company just offered an IPO. Or an "IBO," as the straight-from-the-bottle champagne-guzzling gentleman with the sudden enunciation problem bellowed to me at the top of his lungs. Now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure how the Geek Squad stumbled into Hip's Pocket, but the crappy champagne was flowing, because crappy champagne was the only kind of champagne Hip's Pocket had to offer.

I quickly accepted the fact that loud, obnoxious drunk people weren't the best audience for classic jazz piano, as well as accepting the fact that my tip jar was filled to the point of being mistaken for one of those "Guess how much money is in this jar and win!" games. What I wasn't ready for was the fifty-year-old woman with floppy breasts, dressed in what looked like her teenage daughter's baby doll dress, tossing a fifty in my tip jar and requesting a Garth Brooks song called "The Dance."

But all of that was not part of "the routine." For the routine to happen, I'll usually play some tunes, grab a couple drinks from the barkeep, and complain about not getting many tips. And about that time, Ben will stroll in and tell me to "quit flapping my lips and start warming up the keys" for him. He'll wait semipatiently at the bar, drinking a tonic and lime juice, bobbing his head back and forth to the music, waiting for me to finish my last set. Then he'll sit down at the piano, complain about how out of tune it is, and play until the last light is turned off and he's forced to leave. More often than not, we'll play a little something together, improvise some sort of a piano call-and-response where he'll do the calling and I'll do the responding.

That's when I—a thirtysomething, moderately good-looking, underachieving Jewish man with good hair, bad earlobes, and an occasional acid reflux setback—learn the most from my wise, astute mentor. A seventysomething veteran of the era when jazz was great. An African American man who looks more like Louis Armstrong than he cares to admit. A man with a hard shell and a soft inside.