Al Roberts’ Search For The High White Note Night-Take Three

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

A lot of guys, musical guys anyway, are always trying to reach for that high white note, that elusive note that says they have made it, that they have met god and his graces, in their chosen profession. That reach probably is what has driven more guys (and gals) to play endlessly time after time to at least get to outer contours of that big fat beauty of a sound. A few guys, guys like the Duke, Benny, Lionel, Charlie, Miles and gals, gals like Billie and Big Mama, reached it, reached it at great expense but reached it. Maybe reached it in some approaching dawn hour long after the carrying trade has gone home, the club has shuttered its doors and the guys, guys mainly, smoke wafting through the fetid air, and not only cigarette smoke, got down to the real music in their souls. Others, dog tired from a hard night’s blow, or from cracked fingers over sweaty keyboard, traipsed home to some cold-water flat, some lonely room, neon signs flickering outside their torn window-shaded view, to grab a minute’s shut-eye, maybe fix a drink, or blow a joint and try their hand at immortality.

Still other guys, guys like Al Roberts, though fall down, don’t make it. Maybe it is lack of talent, although Al Julliard –trained on the piano had plenty of talent and his teachers and fellow students stood in awe of his possibilities expecting Carnegie Hall futures, perseverance, although Al from kid time was driven by that beat in his head that would not let him alone, wit, or just plain old circumstances, bad luck or a wrong move but they fall down, fall down hard. Al Roberts, unfortunately was the guy who was the guy in the wrong place at the wrong time almost like something out of an old time black and white B-film noir from the 1940s. He had his dreams; he had his chance to take the brass ring with room to spare but some stuff, some serious stuff, got in the way so we will never know whether he had the stuff to hit that big note floating out into the film noir-like night. First it was that bogus bust for mary jane, hell, a couple of joints, for which he drew ninety days at Rikkers. And then the really bad news came through his agent that a couple of concert halls had put the nix on him, didn’t want the bad karma publicity that came with a doper playing in their venue back in the 1940s and so our man Al, all beautiful hands and ready to make that big note happen any day now, was reduced to back street supper clubs backing up torch singers, torch singers for the most part who could not make the big uptown clubs, and so joined Al’s soul-less fraternity.

Yeah, no question, Al Robert’s was born under an unlucky star or something. Here was a guy with all kinds of talent, including that classical piano training playing for dimes and donuts to make ends meet at some back street supper clubs in New Jack City and staying after hours, after the wee morning hours, tired as hell, no dope around to free his brain, trying to catch that damn note. On a lucky night he might caught a five or ten from some drunken party hungry to hear his sentimental journey stuff, stuff strictly meant for the tourist trade. Jesus. The only bright spot was that his honey, a white night torch singer whom he met at the Kit Kat Club where he had worked for a while on his way back up after the clink. Unusual for the spots Al found himself in she, Susan Sanders, was a singer on the rise with musical dreams of her own. She moreover was strictly first-rate in his book and they, if they could ever rub two dimes together, were going to get married. Oh yeah, and as if to mock him even if unintentionally, they would marry after Susan made it big in Hollywood where that song- bird was headed to make herself a star before they got around to tying the knot.

Well you know the old Hollywood fame song by now. Song- bird Susan, who had enough talent to work the back street supper clubs with Al providing superb piano to hide her rough spots, went crashing down like many young women with Hollywood lust in their eyes before her. Susan wound up serving them off the arm in some hash house in Santa Monica. It came out later, later after the dust had settled and it didn’t matter, that she had also done a few “blue”movies for select clientele after being down on her luck and meeting a“director” who promised her the moon. She too had been “moon-lighting “ a couple of nights a week at Madame DeFarge’s bordello over on Wiltshire in order to make ends meet and to be “discovered.” Don’t laugh, many a young starlet then, and some of them still famous now, turned a trick or two at that locale in hopes of attracting some knighted movie executive to her cause. Al, having come up from a place where rubbing two nickels together was tough, would have understood Susan’s need, her desire, although he probably would have drawn the line on such activity once they were married.

Al, once Susan left for the coast, was lonely, lonely as hell, lonely enough without his muse that he needed to have her at his side. So Al, penniless Al, decided to hitchhike out to share his honey’s fate after he phoned her and she pleaded with him to come out. That search for the high white note be damned, he took the detour. Detoured big time before he was through. The road cross-country was nothing but a lot of short haul rides and lonely waits at miserable back road cross- roads in place like Neola, Iowa and Lawrence, Kansas until he finally got a break. A guy, Charles Haskell, a guy who was a step up in class with a big old convertible, a Packard, stopped and picked him up and said he was heading for the coast.

Yes sir, a big break finally. Except that big break turned into an Al nightmare when the apparently sickly Haskell hauled off and died out in the middle of nowhere leaving Al holding the bag. Who, after all, was going to believe a fairly young guy like Haskell with dough and a big flashy car didn’t meet with anything but foul- play from a penniless tramp out on some desolate highway. Certainly not after several witnesses at various roadside diners along the way saw Haskell picking up the tramp’s tab and buying his cigarettes and other sundries.

In a way Al was right in his thinking. But still he got a little cloudy in his thinking, a little confused, no, a lot confused. See Al came up with the bright idea that he would change identities with the deceased Haskell and abandon the car in L.A. on his way to his honey. Not the best idea, really, but an idea. So he grabbed Haskell’s clothes, wallet, and dough, tossed his body in a ravine set-up as penniless Al Roberts who nobody would give a damn about. Al cleaned himself up a bit, got some rest at a road-side motel, and morphed himself in one Charles Haskell, ah, a sportsman for lack of a better term.

Except Al made one fatal move, not intentionally, but just as fatal nevertheless to show how his luck was oozing away from him by the minute. He picked her up. Her being a wayward and mouthy femme fatale named Vera who, down on her uppers, was hitching the roads west. A kindred spirit he assumed. Just a friendly gesture for a woman on the road. Now this Vera was still a looker, although a working-class looker, one of those whose looks would fade soon, too soon, after too many nights in cheap gin mills fending off married guys looking for a quick good time, after too many night maybe working the streets turning tricks to make ends meet come rent day, or after spending way too much time figuring out the next hustle. Al though, as he looked her over, had an idea in the back of his mind that he might make a play for her just to while the hours away.

But here is where Al really was born under an unlucky star. Vera, having hitched a ride earlier with the deceased Haskell and having had to fend his advances off, knew that Al did not own the car. Vera, who Al to his regret turned out to be nothing but a flat-out gold-digger and hustler, started squawking about her cut from Haskell’s dough and car, or else. Or she would yell, no, scream copper and be done with it.

So after some very one-sided negotiations on Vera’s part concerning splits and the sale of the car she has them act as a married couple as they traveled west. Then Al’s luck got worse when Vera noticed an article in some local paper when they were passing through some hick town, maybe Winnemucca. Haskell’s estranged rich dying father was looking for him. Vera plotted to use that information to get the old man into believing Al was his long lost son. When the deal went down Al finally balked at that idea and Vera threatened to call copper on him for Haskell’s death. He tried to stop her when she was in a drunken rage by attempting to pull the telephone cord through a closed bedroom door on her where she went to make the call. All he did though was strangle her accidently when she got caught up in the cord.

Yeah, but who was going to believe a tramp, a two- bit guy, an ex-jailbird, didn’t have murder and mayhem in his heart not once but twice. So Al never did get to see his song-bird as a free man, get to breathe some fresh coast air, or get that little house in the valley. And worse, Al never got to reach again for that high white note playing after hours at some high-end beach-front supper club blowing out sounds with the wind hard into the Japan Current in the Pacific Coast night. Like I said some guys, some musical guy, just don’t make that note.