backseat as we headed down Beach Street.
I was drifting into neutral as I watched Harryâs fresh footprints in the snow. My last impression was of the steamed-up windows of the coffee shop on the corner and the three sets of equally fresh footprints that came from the door.
8
IT WAS JUST PAST MIDNIGHT when the cab pulled up outside of Daddyâs Club. The cabbie gave me a gentle nudge, and the brisk bite of the snow-carrying wind brought me the rest of the way back to the outskirts of the land of the living. I was fighting the temptation to jump back in the cab and call it a night, but Monday night is Monday night, and there are some things that feed the soul more than rest.
I passed a couple of departing, slightly lubricated college kids on my way down the narrow cut-back staircase to the below-ground haunt ofone of Bostonâs great assets. The club draws a spate of yuppies and college types earlier in the evening, but around midnight they begin to dwindle. After the other clubs and restaurants have closed, Daddyâs pulls in jazz musicians from in and out of town, as well as devoted listeners who can handle the late hours. It undoubtedly violates the cityâs code of closing times, but the police give it their best benign neglect.
The whole room is about forty feet by twenty, with a miniscule bandstand at the front and a bar that runs the length of the left side-wall. It is either meticulously clean or filthy enough to drive cockroaches to cleaner surroundings. I have no idea which, because the lighting, or lack of it, would make a mole feel at home.
I slid up onto a bar stool at the near end of the bar, and every muscle in my body rose up in rebellion for not taking it home. But then, this was Oz, Valhalla, Never-Never Land. When I came through that door, the world out there dried up and blew away.
One of the most serious elements of my education at Harvard came from a luck-of-the-draw roommate. My first two months with Harry Ortlieb were, if not hell itself, at least a lower ring of purgatory. Harry was a music major with an addictive penchant for modern jazz. In particular, Harry idolized that rebellious cluster of jazz musicians who took the idiom out of the bounds of comfortable, decent harmony and pushed it into the sometimes discordant world of newfound chords. He personally stocked every recording made in the fifties and sixties by the principal emissaries of that assault on the ear and central nervous system called âbebop.â
For the first two months of our freshman year, I spent every torturous moment in our dorm room at Holworthy House fighting the urge to rip whatever CD by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Mingus, whoever was fouling the air at the moment, out of his state-of-the-art player and tuck it as far up Harry Ortliebâs ass as the length of my arm would permit. My only regret in my fantasy was that CDs have no sharp corners.
Then the third month came, and to my own shock and surprise, ifnot Harryâs, I started to like it. I started asking for particular pieces and actually listening to Harryâs explanation of what they were doing. Life became not only livable, but I started looking forward to our late nightly CD concerts with Harry playing DJ.
The effect went further than that. My father/guardian, Miles OâConnor, was, among his many other talents, an accomplished piano player. He drew me to the instrument out of sheer admiration for him. It stuck, and I found that at every stage of my life, whatever demons were haunting me could be tamed, or at least sedated, by an hour or two alone at a piano.
Enter Harry Ortlieb, and every moment I spent at the keys from freshman year on was turned to working out the intricacies such giants as Thelonius Monk had woven around the old standards. And every Monday late night in recent times was spent in that preview of heaven called Daddyâs Club.
I GAVE A THREE-FINGER SIGN to Marty behind the bar. He
I was drifting into neutral as I watched Harryâs fresh footprints in the snow. My last impression was of the steamed-up windows of the coffee shop on the corner and the three sets of equally fresh footprints that came from the door.
8
IT WAS JUST PAST MIDNIGHT when the cab pulled up outside of Daddyâs Club. The cabbie gave me a gentle nudge, and the brisk bite of the snow-carrying wind brought me the rest of the way back to the outskirts of the land of the living. I was fighting the temptation to jump back in the cab and call it a night, but Monday night is Monday night, and there are some things that feed the soul more than rest.
I passed a couple of departing, slightly lubricated college kids on my way down the narrow cut-back staircase to the below-ground haunt ofone of Bostonâs great assets. The club draws a spate of yuppies and college types earlier in the evening, but around midnight they begin to dwindle. After the other clubs and restaurants have closed, Daddyâs pulls in jazz musicians from in and out of town, as well as devoted listeners who can handle the late hours. It undoubtedly violates the cityâs code of closing times, but the police give it their best benign neglect.
The whole room is about forty feet by twenty, with a miniscule bandstand at the front and a bar that runs the length of the left side-wall. It is either meticulously clean or filthy enough to drive cockroaches to cleaner surroundings. I have no idea which, because the lighting, or lack of it, would make a mole feel at home.
I slid up onto a bar stool at the near end of the bar, and every muscle in my body rose up in rebellion for not taking it home. But then, this was Oz, Valhalla, Never-Never Land. When I came through that door, the world out there dried up and blew away.
One of the most serious elements of my education at Harvard came from a luck-of-the-draw roommate. My first two months with Harry Ortlieb were, if not hell itself, at least a lower ring of purgatory. Harry was a music major with an addictive penchant for modern jazz. In particular, Harry idolized that rebellious cluster of jazz musicians who took the idiom out of the bounds of comfortable, decent harmony and pushed it into the sometimes discordant world of newfound chords. He personally stocked every recording made in the fifties and sixties by the principal emissaries of that assault on the ear and central nervous system called âbebop.â
For the first two months of our freshman year, I spent every torturous moment in our dorm room at Holworthy House fighting the urge to rip whatever CD by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Mingus, whoever was fouling the air at the moment, out of his state-of-the-art player and tuck it as far up Harry Ortliebâs ass as the length of my arm would permit. My only regret in my fantasy was that CDs have no sharp corners.
Then the third month came, and to my own shock and surprise, ifnot Harryâs, I started to like it. I started asking for particular pieces and actually listening to Harryâs explanation of what they were doing. Life became not only livable, but I started looking forward to our late nightly CD concerts with Harry playing DJ.
The effect went further than that. My father/guardian, Miles OâConnor, was, among his many other talents, an accomplished piano player. He drew me to the instrument out of sheer admiration for him. It stuck, and I found that at every stage of my life, whatever demons were haunting me could be tamed, or at least sedated, by an hour or two alone at a piano.
Enter Harry Ortlieb, and every moment I spent at the keys from freshman year on was turned to working out the intricacies such giants as Thelonius Monk had woven around the old standards. And every Monday late night in recent times was spent in that preview of heaven called Daddyâs Club.
I GAVE A THREE-FINGER SIGN to Marty behind the bar. He
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