| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
|
|||
|
The Boys in the Bands |
73 |
||
|
|
|||
|
the old quadrilles from eight to four and a set would last two hours.
"In those days the girls were crazy about musicians. They all fight to carry your case home. Then they ask you to their house to take *a little rest/ You see, you feel so tired you couldn't carry your own instrument home." Picou said this in a plaintive tone and then laughed as if perhaps some young girl had carried his clarinet home only the night before. There came a rustling and sniffling from the ladies in the dining room. . . .
"I joined The imperial, the finest band in town at that time. Manuel Perez, a cigarmaker by trade, was our leader—a tough cornet, a man that never fail. I worked at my trade all week, but all day Saturday I would play in a wagon to advertise the dance that night. Play all night. Next morning we have to be at the depot at seven to catch the train for the lake. Play for the picnic at the lake all day. Come back and play a dance all Sunday night. Monday we advertise for the Monday night ball and play that Monday night. Sometimes my clarinet seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. . . .**
We heard feet on the stair and the door pushed open timidly. The little man, who shambled in and edged across the room, bore the same resemblance to sturdy old Alphonse as a withered orange peel does to an orange. He was a bag of stooped, toothless, withered, and debauched old bones, dressed in rags and greasy shoes and hat. This was Alphonse's "little brother" Ulysses, composer of Creole songs, junkman by trade, and anxious to sing.
As the recorder began to spin, Ulysses was seized by a spasm of coughing. He began again, fortified by a bottle. Again the horrible alcohoHc cough choked his voice off to silence. At last, Ulysses managed the following Creole ditty in his hoarse fragment of a voice, while Alphonse sat back in the shadows, weaving clear, sweet clarinet passages behind him. |
|||
|
|
|||