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Authors: Aisha Duquesne
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Lexis to find out who these artists were that she was referring to. She boosted careers overnight with her diatribe. Because she knew herself what they were going through. She had sent her demo tapes in, she had applied for a Factor grant—that great government financial angel of struggling Canadian musicians—and she had gone to sit-down “chats” with the label executives. She wasn’t what they had heard before, and they were not going to take a chance.
So she came to New York because it was New York. And because she couldn’t do what she wanted so badly to do in Toronto. “Oh, Michelle, this is not where the music starts,” she said as we made our goodbyes outside Union Station, “this is where the music ends up getting heard.”
I already told you how she met Easy. Her short apprenticeship as backup singer, jingle vocalist, waitress in a Third Avenue diner has all been well documented. What the books and
Rolling Stone
never got right, never heard of at all, was how Erica met Morgan and how he became an influence in her career.
Morgan. His voice always sounding like a bass drum dropped at the bottom of a well. His one nervous habit was to tug on the salt-and-pepper curls of his modest beard as he sat on his piano bench, and he would look at the keys as if he had been waiting to recite a great truth for a long time. Morgan never told me how old he was exactly, but he always looked middle-aged and yet ageless. His freckled caramel skin was etched with character lines, and you knew that wasn’t just a name for them with Morgan, that they really were folds and crevices of his maturing character. He didn’t have a potbelly or that hard look older men get. In fact, his body seemed to be always straining the cloth of his shirts, and I kidded him once or twice about it to learn if he worked out. This, too, he never told me.
Like everything else, there is Erica’s version of their first meeting and Morgan’s that you can check from old magazines or articles posted on the Internet. Whoever you believe, the locale and minor details don’t change. He lived on the whole top floor of a block above 125th near Fifth Avenue zoned as “artist space” but what really meant cheap apartments with stand-up showers and communal toilets down the hallway. I think Morgan was probably the only tenant who had his own washroom, though he said he took the place because it had a freight elevator that could take his upright piano. On the wall was “A Chart of Basic Jazz Scales,” which had columns and rows with headings like C, Db, D, Eb, F, Gb, G matched with “Enigmatic, Chromatic, Augmented, Whole Tone” and so on. Since I’ve practically forgotten all of my music theory from high school, it looked to me like a musician’s Periodic Table. He says the chart was a gift. Morgan would say that many of his possessions were gifts from friends, like the framed poster for the movie
Paris Blues,
the one where you’re supposed to believe Paul Newman could ever jam on a horn with Louis Armstrong, and of all things, the black lacquer bust of Beethoven on its kitschy pillar next to the Sears couch and coffee table.
The freight lift was also the way you got into Morgan’s place, and one day, Erica lifted the wooden slats of the guard door and stepped into his living room.
“She walks into my place like she’s coming in to buy a paper or something, as if I expect her,” Morgan told me, “and she sits down at my piano and says, ‘I’m Duane Jones’s kid, so that’s how I found you, but it’s not why you should let me stay.’ And she rips into ‘A Train’ and plays the improvisation off a Stan Getz album I
know
Duane must have. And for three quarters of an hour, she’s showing off. The only guy I know who can mimic other pianists that well is Oscar Peterson, who I used to work with. I mean, she did Ahmad Jamal, and if you listen to him, he’s all about space between the notes. She did that tinkling Basie, she did Ellington.
So she came to New York because it was New York. And because she couldn’t do what she wanted so badly to do in Toronto. “Oh, Michelle, this is not where the music starts,” she said as we made our goodbyes outside Union Station, “this is where the music ends up getting heard.”
I already told you how she met Easy. Her short apprenticeship as backup singer, jingle vocalist, waitress in a Third Avenue diner has all been well documented. What the books and
Rolling Stone
never got right, never heard of at all, was how Erica met Morgan and how he became an influence in her career.
Morgan. His voice always sounding like a bass drum dropped at the bottom of a well. His one nervous habit was to tug on the salt-and-pepper curls of his modest beard as he sat on his piano bench, and he would look at the keys as if he had been waiting to recite a great truth for a long time. Morgan never told me how old he was exactly, but he always looked middle-aged and yet ageless. His freckled caramel skin was etched with character lines, and you knew that wasn’t just a name for them with Morgan, that they really were folds and crevices of his maturing character. He didn’t have a potbelly or that hard look older men get. In fact, his body seemed to be always straining the cloth of his shirts, and I kidded him once or twice about it to learn if he worked out. This, too, he never told me.
Like everything else, there is Erica’s version of their first meeting and Morgan’s that you can check from old magazines or articles posted on the Internet. Whoever you believe, the locale and minor details don’t change. He lived on the whole top floor of a block above 125th near Fifth Avenue zoned as “artist space” but what really meant cheap apartments with stand-up showers and communal toilets down the hallway. I think Morgan was probably the only tenant who had his own washroom, though he said he took the place because it had a freight elevator that could take his upright piano. On the wall was “A Chart of Basic Jazz Scales,” which had columns and rows with headings like C, Db, D, Eb, F, Gb, G matched with “Enigmatic, Chromatic, Augmented, Whole Tone” and so on. Since I’ve practically forgotten all of my music theory from high school, it looked to me like a musician’s Periodic Table. He says the chart was a gift. Morgan would say that many of his possessions were gifts from friends, like the framed poster for the movie
Paris Blues,
the one where you’re supposed to believe Paul Newman could ever jam on a horn with Louis Armstrong, and of all things, the black lacquer bust of Beethoven on its kitschy pillar next to the Sears couch and coffee table.
The freight lift was also the way you got into Morgan’s place, and one day, Erica lifted the wooden slats of the guard door and stepped into his living room.
“She walks into my place like she’s coming in to buy a paper or something, as if I expect her,” Morgan told me, “and she sits down at my piano and says, ‘I’m Duane Jones’s kid, so that’s how I found you, but it’s not why you should let me stay.’ And she rips into ‘A Train’ and plays the improvisation off a Stan Getz album I
know
Duane must have. And for three quarters of an hour, she’s showing off. The only guy I know who can mimic other pianists that well is Oscar Peterson, who I used to work with. I mean, she did Ahmad Jamal, and if you listen to him, he’s all about space between the notes. She did that tinkling Basie, she did Ellington.
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