Tiger Rag

by Nicholas Christopher

Genres: Cultural Heritage; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

The acclaimed author of Veronica and A Trip to the Stars returns with a dazzling new novel based on one of the great legends of musical history.
 
New Orleans, 1900. The virtuoso cornet player Charles “Buddy” Bolden invents jazz, but after a life consumed by tragedy, the groundbreaking sound of his horn vanishes with him. Rumors persist, though, that Bolden recorded a phonograph cylinder, and over the course of a century it evolves into the elusive holy grail of jazz.
 
Florida, the present day. Dr. Ruby Cardillo’s life is falling apart. Her husband, a prominent cardiologist, has left her for a twenty-six-year-old. Her daughter, Devon, a once promising jazz pianist, has recently finished an enforced stint picking up trash along the interstate after a drug conviction. Ruby’s estranged mother has just died, but not before conjuring up ghosts that Ruby thought she had put behind her long ago. After a long career as a well-respected anesthesiologist, Ruby suddenly jumps the tracks, forgetting to eat and sleep, indulging her every whim, wearing only purple, consuming only bottles of 1988 Château Latour.
 
Then Ruby enlists Devon to accompany her on an impulsive road trip to New York, and both mother and daughter get more than they bargained for, discovering that their own shrouded family history is connected to the tantalizing search for Buddy Bolden’s long-lost cylinder.
 
Ranging from turn-of-the-century Louisiana to Roaring Twenties Chicago to contemporary Manhattan, Tiger Rag is at once a moving story of loss and redemption and an intricate historical mystery from one of our most brilliant storytellers.

Praise for Tiger Rag
 
“The structure here is like a long and complex jazz arrangement. There is a comparatively simple theme set up against what might be thought of as distinctive chord changes. And then, against this main story, the author sets up what might be seen as highly individualistic solos. The themes of the male performers and the female audiences come together, separate, then come together again. If you love the world of jazz, if it’s a little like a religion to you, you’ll love this ambitious, thoughtful novel.” —The Washington Post
 
“Describing music in a book is a bit like trying to describe color to a blind person; it rarely goes well. The opening stretch of Nicholas Christopher’s latest novel Tiger Rag, however, paints a picture of a jazz recording session so vividly that the reader might want to keep a towel handy for mopping his brow James Brown-style.” —GQ.com
 
“Nicholas Christopher's new novel, Tiger Rag, is a New Year's treat that lovers of good music and good writing should not deny themselves. . . . Nicholas is a master at building a rich story populated with vivid characters on the bare foundation of historical record. Although no recording of Bolden and his band has yet surfaced, his sideman Willy Cornish, a trombone player, died claiming a recording session took place. Nicholas has imagined a satisfying and engrossing tale about what might have happened. He has fleshed out the lives touched by the wax cylinders that stored three versions of “Tiger Rag.” From the musicians who played with or followed Bolden, to the recording engineer and his assistant at the fateful recording session, Nicholas has created a colourful cast whose stories draw readers into their lives. . . . Nicholas is a poet as well as a novelist, and the book sings, thanks to his compelling descriptions and use of imagery. . . . [C]ompulsively readable.” —The Toronto Star

Release date: January 1, 2013

Publisher: The Dial Press

Print pages: 288

Sample

New Orleans—­July 5, 1904

Suite 315 at the Hotel Balfour on Oleander Street, the honeymoon suite. The heat was stifling. In the large sitting room the windows were shut tight. A long mahogany table and two chairs were pushed up against the wall. A carpet had been nailed over the door, to block out sound. Myriad scents— lavender hair oil, talcum powder, cinnamon—­were interlaced. Also the lingering smell of lunch: fried catfish and roasted corn. On the table there was a bucket of beer, a pitcher of ice water, glasses. The musicians were accustomed to performing at night, so at four o’clock, with the city bathed in sunlight, they had drawn the curtains.

The Bolden Band. Seven musicians in a semicircle tuning their instruments: drums, guitar, stand-­up bass, valve trombone, two clarinets, and a cornet, played by Charles Bolden himself. All of them tuning to the cornet, including the drummer, Cornelius Tillman. Bolden would not be accompanied by untuned drums. And he would only play a Conn Wonder, manufactured in Elkhart, Indiana, a triple-­silver-­plated cornet, the inside of the bell gold-­plated, the finger pieces inlaid pearl. In the right hands, Bolden’s hands, the Conn could project a powerful sustained sound on a single breath.

The musicians were in shirtsleeves, sweating, all except the trombonist, Willie Cornish, who never took off his chalk-­striped jacket, even when his shirt was wet through. He kept his hat on, too, for luck. He was studying the sheet music, running his finger along it, pointing out something to Bolden, who nodded and looked away. Bolden didn’t want to think about notes on paper when he could already hear himself playing them, could see them dancing in the air. He and Cornish were the only band members who read music. Bolden had learned in church as a boy, Cornish taught himself while working as a pressman at Montgomery Brothers, musical publishers. Bolden was wearing a red shirt, red tie, and yellow silk vest. His handkerchief, too, was red, and after he mopped his neck, the dye ran so that the drops of sweat on the floor looked like blood. Which he was aware of. Also that this was the honeymoon suite, which amused him.

Oscar Zahn, the recording engineer, was a stocky young man with sharp eyes and a heavy brow. He spoke with a slight German accent. He too was perspiring heavily in a high-­collared shirt and a bow tie. He had a pencil behind his ear. A Turkish cigarette between his lips. He was sitting on a stool in the corner screwing the wax cylinder onto the mandrel of the Edison recorder. It was one of the new Edison Gold Moulded cylinders, hard black wax, playable hundreds of times. Its four-­minute capacity was double that of the old carnauba wax cylinders. Zahn had learned sound engineering at the W. T. Bellmon Studios in St. Louis, recording opera singers and barbershop quartets. He came to New Orleans with his wife and daughter, hoping to save enough money to open his own studio. In the meantime, he was learning how to capture sound cleanly in spaces like this, or—­when the money wasn’t there—­far more cramped spaces in basements and back rooms. But Buddy Bolden had the money. He was in demand, every night of the week. In addition to performing with his band, he sometimes made the rounds of a half dozen dance halls, social clubs, and fairgrounds, all for a handsome fee. If you doubled that fee, he would play your private party, sitting in with the hired band and laying down a couple of solos, the flashier the better. But he had never cut a cylinder. He had resisted, not, like some musicians, because he feared his techniques could be stolen—­he knew no one could truly imitate him—­but because he was certain the recording companies would make good money off his recordings while he got clipped. Oscar Zahn had sworn he wouldn’t let that happen, and Bolden, knowing how many musicians were starting to record steadily, making a name for themselves outside New Orleans, finally decided to take a chance.

Zahn’s assistant, Myron Guideau, was stuffing a towel beneath the door. He was slope-­shouldered, wearing a cheap checkered suit. His eyebrows met over his nose and his mustache was untrimmed, tobacco-­stained. He glanced sidelong at the slender girl in a yellow dress reclining on the sofa, ankles crossed and her shoes kicked off. Yellow was Bolden’s favorite color and he had bought her the dress that morning. Her skin was oak-­colored and her long black hair was speckled gold, catching the light. Her eyes, too, were golden. They were fixed on Bolden, who was standing very still, the cornet at his lips.

The girl smiled at him, and stomping the floor one-­two-­three, Bolden launched into the rag known to every band in the city as “Number 2.” Except, as often happened, his opening solo was a variation the band had never heard before, an electrifying eight bars, after which Cornish entered, cornet and trombone playing off each other as the bass and drums rumbled in, setting the tempo for the guitar and clarinets, all of them working in sync now, flying apart and coming together again like shavings to a magnet. The piece was fast, high-­pitched: veering, accelerating, peaking, before Bolden closed it off with an explosive solo.

Take One: three minutes and forty-­nine seconds.

Bolden shook his head. He wasn’t happy. Zahn lit another cigarette. Tillman replaced a cracked drumstick. Willie War- ner, the B-­flat clarinetist, cursed under his breath: he had never played a better solo in his life—­for nothing. Guideau handed Zahn a fresh cylinder. Zahn removed it from its gold tube with the photograph of Thomas Edison on the side and screwed it onto the mandrel. He tightened the worm gear, tested the spring, and adjusted the sapphire stylus. Sitting against the wall, Guideau waited for the stylus to dance on the turning cylinder. Four inches high, two inches in diameter, the cylinder revolved one hundred twenty times a minute as the stylus cut grooves thinner than capillaries into which the music flowed. The device still amazed Guideau, who had grown up on a pig farm in Hiram, Ohio, where there were tools, but no machines.

Bolden stomped the floor, one two three, and the band began to play.

Take Two: three minutes and fifty-­four seconds.

Bolden immediately signaled Zahn that he wanted to do it again. He was even less happy this time around. The segues were rough, the solos disjointed. The opening was fiery, but his closing solo felt flat.

Bolden told the bassist, Jimmy Johnson, to tune up again, that his A string was off. Nineteen years old, Johnson had already performed with half a dozen bands. Bolden recruited him after hearing him play with Johnny St. Cyr at the Algiers Masonic Hall on Olivier Street. Johnson started as a saloon pianist, but the bands didn’t use pianos, which were too cumbersome to transport. Johnson rode to performances on a Columbia bicycle with his bass strapped to his back.

Frank Lewis, the C clarinetist, took off his Panama hat, lit a cigarette, and blew a smoke ring that floated to the ceiling.

Willie Cornish was staring at the guitarist, Brock Mumford, who had missed his cue. Six three, two hundred thirty pounds, Cornish rarely smiled except with his children. At twenty-­five, he had three daughters, the youngest, Charlene, named after Bolden. He had left the band in 1898 when he was drafted to fight in Cuba against the Spanish. As Cornish’s troop ship embarked, the Bolden Band, sans trombone, was performing rousing numbers on the dock. Then Bolden played a plaintive solo of “Home Sweet Home” that inspired some of the soldiers to jump into the harbor and swim to shore, AWOL in less than an hour. Cornish had sailed on to Havana and received an honorable discharge eleven months later. He had a scar on either side of his shoulder, where a bullet had gone through. When the band was in a cutting contest with the Robichaux Orchestra or the Onward Brass Band, it was Cornish who blew most fiercely, and nearly as loudly as Bolden. He called his silver Distin trombone “the tornado,” and he could finger the three valves twice as fast as a slide trombonist, with the dexterity of a trumpeter.

Bolden was smiling again, buffing his cornet on his shirtsleeve.

Where’d you find that opening? Cornish said.

Bolden laughed and pretended to snatch something out of the air.