Philip S. Bryant’s Stompin’ At The Grand Terrace captures the heart and soul of jazz like no written words have since Jack Kerouac’s On The Road.
Whereas Kerouac took us into the smoky, sweaty, tea-and-benzedrine-fueled jazz club experiences of Sal and Dean, Bryant’s narration is that of a young black boy growing up on Chicago’s South Side in the late ‘50s/early ‘60s, watching, listening, and absorbing the relationship between his father James and James’ best friend Preston – the coolest fuck-up since … well … since Dean Moriarty. From Stompin’: “Preston worked at the steel mills and made good money at the time, was twice married and divorced, paid alimony and child support, and with the rest of his money bought records, hi-fi equipment, and brand-new Corvettes – which, like his marriages, he would then proceed to wreck. My father said he drove like a lunatic, and had vowed never to get in or near a car that Preston drove.”)
James and Preston burrow up in their jazz in James’ living room rather than the clubs; they yell and laugh and swear and shake their heads silently at a record player rather than a bandstand; and beers and Pall Malls are their vices of choice … but their passion is no less intense than Kerouac’s characters.
Written in prose whose style is as varied from vignette to vignette as the music it’s written about, Stompin’ At The Grand Terrace takes us back in time and into the world of two middle-aged men whose lives may be working class, but whose souls know no limits when it comes to the music they love. Bryant sets us right down on the sofa with the thick, heavy, wet snow falling outside and “Blue Train” roaring inside as James and Preston debate whether Kenny Drew or Hank Jones was the harder swinging pianist. We know what it is to lug the weary beatness at the end of a steel mill day and feel the soothing power of Paul Gonsalves solo on “Mood Indigo”. We pull at our Miller High Lifes and marvel over James’ story of Miles Davis stopping his band dead in its tracks in the middle of Wayne Shorter’s solo and telling Shorter, “Don’t play it that way, muthafucka, play it this way.”
And on a sweetly blue Saturday afternoon, we wallow in the sad beauty of Billie Holiday and her ability to make cover songs her own. Preston speaks:
“These are all Billie’s songs, you know.
She coulda written ‘em herself.
In fact, I think she just took ‘em
hokey and corny as they are
‘cause nobody wanted ‘em anymore.
Like in slavery days, the slaves
gettin’ pigs’ ears, snouts, feet, guts
– all the pieces
the massa felt beneath him to eat –
and makin’ ‘em into delicacies.
She mined songs,
got the diamonds in ‘em that
nobody cared for or knew how to get.
She got it.
Re-created these songs into her own.
She adopted them.
They were all her children,
and they all called her Mama.
Because she was.”
Later in the book, the words and feelings are totally Bryant’s, as he describes his own love for everything from Hendrix to John Lee Hooker … and how when Lester Young’s tenor sax fell silent, the world changed.
Beware – the passion is infectious. Stompin’ At The Grand Terrace will have you digging into your own jazz library … or pulling a Preston and blowing the next paycheck on a stack of albums that need to be taken back to your place and played. Loud.
Do it.
