The old auditorium stood as a reminder of decades of entertainment. Symphonies had played there. Plays had opened, run their course, and closed on the massive old stage. It had seen conventions and political rallies, dance recitals and rock concerts. Whatever genius had designed the building had known many things about acoustics and had done his job well. From any seat in the cavernous house the quietest young actress could be heard clearly, yet the loudest electric guitar did not reverberate unintentionally.

For the past hour traffic had been heavy in front of the building. Lincolns, Cadillacs, Dodges, Nissans, Toyotas, Buicks; every brand of automobile and several types of busses had pulled up to the doors of the auditorium, dropping their human contents at the base of the wide marble staircase, then moving off into a five acre parking lot across the street.

Inside, the audience had offered their tickets to the many uniformed ushers and had taken their seats amidst a cacophony of sound; voices striving to be heard against hundreds of others. The house lights dimmed almost imperceptibly until a thousand people, all dressed as if for a society ball, sat in total darkness. The roar of conversation faded along with the lights. From a place of concealment on the left side of the stage Shane Weston had been watching the crowd file in and take their seats. It was his custom to find some hidden place from which to "scope the crowd," as he called it. He felt that he couldn't do his job without first seeing the people. Lately, though, most audiences made him sick. No, he thought, that's not the right word. Sick implies something physical, and there he had no problem. It also might imply stage fright, but he was an old hand at performing. Stage fright was for actors and dancers, not musicians, and not for the world's greatest jazz trumpeter. No, it was something else. The crowds he scoped these days revolted him. They weren't the same people who had been there when he was younger, just learning the craft. These were the people who came to hear him play because it was "the thing to do." They knew little or nothing about jazz. They didn't understand the form, didn't appreciate the complexities of it. They came because somehow they had heard that he was a "legend of jazz." He was convinced that they couldn't understand what they were about to hear, that they couldn't know what it cost him to play, would never come close to grasping the fact that he wasn't playing music for them, he was ripping out something of his soul and spreading it over them like so much pixie dust. These people-these stuffed shirts-would never have the faintest idea what they were to hear tonight. They thought it was just music. They would clap. They would tell all their "associates" what a fine trumpeter had played for them tonight, never even having an inkling of what they had witnessed. All these thoughts went through Weston's mind in the time it took the lights to dim.

When the house was in total darkness Weston left his hidden spot and went back to the "green room," so typical of these old auditoriums. Out front, everything was polished and perfect. Backstage was a different story: everything looked like a relic from the depression. He lit a cigarette and poured out the last of a bottle of Jack Daniels into a large tumbler. He took the whiskey to the lumpy, old, red sofa and lay down. "Let them sweat for a few minutes," he spoke to a torn poster of some painted, punk rock group tacked to the wall. "They need to be put in their places. Some day you'll learn that, if you're around long enough." He made the whiskey last as long as the cigarette; then, collecting the three things he needed on stage, left the room.

For ten minutes the thousand spectators waited in silence as the temperature in the auditorium built inexorably. Finally a single spotlight winked on, illuminating a stool and a small, empty table. Footsteps rang out, calmly approaching the cone of light from the left wing. As Weston entered the lighted area two thousand hands applauded in relief and appreciation. He knew he was neither a large man nor a handsome one, but he also knew he presented a magnetic aura. In the spotlight his pale face positively glowed, contrasting vividly with his all-black attire. He carried his trumpet in one hand and another bottle of Jack Daniels, a glass inverted on its neck, in the other. He set the bottle and glass down on the table and contemptuously waved once at the audience. He scowled as the applause continued, eased himself onto the stool, and poured then downed three fingers of sour mash. The pigs don't know how ridiculous they are, he thought.

Now glaring at the audience, he raised the horn to his lips. The applause died as though a stage manager had flashed a sign reading "Shut Up NOW." A moment later he lowered his trumpet and spoke. Not loudly, but not one person failed to hear his words.

"You've established my greatness by the mere fact of your presence. You've dressed in clothes that are appropriate for a state dinner, brought out your finest jewels, got your neighbors or cousins to imitate chauffeurs, crammed yourselves into this palace of a theatre, and endured a prolonged wait in the dark just to see me. The great part is that I don't need you. All I need is my horn. You see, you may think I'm the greatest musician alive, because someone told you so, but I know I am. So sit and sweat. I'll play as long as the mood stays with me, then I'll leave. There's nothing you can do that will keep me here one second longer than I can stand you."

((NOTE: for a little background music here, click the start button!))

With that, the music started. It was ethereal; impossible. Notes which might have clashed with one another instead blended, flowed, lived and died, reached from the depths of despair to the heights of praise. The sounds cascaded over the rapt audience for half an hour, then faded into memory like the last dream of a long, peaceful night. The audience sat, stunned, for a long sixty seconds, then erupted into applause.

Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, he poured a drink, tossed it down, then poured another. He sipped on it now, letting the applause ring on. He thought about how it was in the old days. The days of famine. Young musicians were supposed to starve. They had to pay their dues. There was no learning, no growth, in being well-fed. Music came from life, and life which was too easy led to music that was too bland. There were no massive auditoriums for musicians then. At least not for the jazz musicians who were developing the forms which meant so much to Weston. There were coffeehouses where poets, artists, dancers, flutists, saxophonists, pianists, drummers, trombonists, trumpeters, singers, a whole generation of soul, plied their crafts, learning by doing, learning by listening, learning by feeling and looking and intuiting. This was where his music was born, where it grew and developed, learned to love and to hate, became one with his soul. Always there were like-minded people at the coffeehouses, people who understood what it was to have to play a horn for hours, searching for the right notes, the right tones, the right statement. They felt the statement right along with him. When it was right, they let him know. When it was wrong, they often could tell him how or why. He spoke with them in words and in music, and they answered back.

After the coffeehouses there were the clubs. The only difference between the two was in the liquids served. The people were the same; if not the same bodies, at least the same minds. They knew what the music cost the players. Many of them had been there. Some had stopped playing because they didn't have the heart to continue. Some had stopped because they had too much heart. But they knew. They heard and sang and talked and sometimes jammed. It was sweet. And it paid. Not enough to do all the ordinary "American" things, like buy a car, a house, a family and an ulcer, but something to eat once in awhile. Weston had played the clubs, all of them the same. Different names, usually, but always the same beat-up stage, the same smoky room, the same stale booze smell, the same crummy backstage lounge. It was a step up in fortunes, but with still an understanding audience.

Little by little Weston progressed from small, poor clubs to larger, more "respectable" ones. But the atmosphere remained the same. His music talked to the crowd, they answered back in words, in grunts, in applause. They showed him by their responses, what worked, what they liked, and what was wrong. Then one night in Chicago Herbie Hancock was in the crowd. Hancock went ape. He couldn't get enough of Weston's music. Between sets he asked if he could jam. Weston could hardly trust himself to answer, but in the end, the two played for hours after closing time. The next day, Hancock called to see if Weston could cut some album tracks with him and the rest, as they say, was history. Club dates moved exclusively to major cities, San Francisco, New York, New Orleans. Wherever people got together to hear the top names in jazz, Weston played. He jammed with some of the legends: Monk, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Brubeck, Buddy Rich, Gillespie. It was gravy. The audiences always answered his horn. He led them, they led him.

Finally the applause faded slowly to silence. He looked out at the massed faces-to the balcony, the pit, the whole cavernous auditorium. He lifted his horn again, brought it to his lips, drew a deep breath, and began to play again. He offered the audience the elixir of his music. Some of them appreciated what he gave them. But not enough. A few were astounded at the range of sound that one man could produce from a few pounds of brass. A few hearts began beating to the rhythm of the primitive magnet of the music. It was a one-man symphony of soul, and yet few of the thousand hearing it could guess at what it cost Weston to perform.

Again the music ended, and again there was perfect silence in the huge auditorium for a full minute. Finally the applause began, but it started slowly, tentatively, then built, but only to a level of politeness. This time Weston didn't touch the bottle. He simply lowered his horn to his lap and gazed out over the masses.

He knew that the applause had changed. He'd seen it happen before, scores of times. He'd given them more than they could understand. As he looked out over this sea of formal gowns and tuxedos they suddenly didn't register. What he saw instead was the memory of the last time a session was right. No roof loomed overhead but the stars. The audience wore jeans, shorts, sandals, tee shirts, denim vests, leather. Instead of musty, cushioned theatre seats there were bleachers and blankets. It was the Newport Jazz Festival and he had just finished his set. Brubeck, next on the program, asked him to come back and jam during his set, whenever the mood struck him.

Brubeck, himself, was magical. When he and Desmond began "Take Five" the audience went nuts. Mulligan strolled onstage with his bari sax and began jamming. Montgomery came on with his guitar. It seemed everyone was joining in, making something entirely new out of the Brubeck trademark. Finally Weston couldn't control his body. His horn found his lips and he came on jamming. "Take Five" usually is over in five minutes. This time it couldn't stop. For fifty-three minutes it went on, the musicians speaking to each other in the language of their instruments, the audience crying their answers to them, everyone lost in an ecstasy of music. It was positively tribal. Finally the song faded out on Brubeck's piano. The set was over. The festival was over. The musicians were elated, the audience zombies. There were no words which could be spoken. When it's right, like that, nobody can explain what it is. The sound men had taped it all, and even they did it right. Microphones picked up each musician, other mics picked up the crowd. Thirty-two tracks of master would eventually be mixed in a studio and turned into vinyl discs. The album sold 850,000 copies, phenomenal for a jazz recording. It captured the sounds of the magic at Newport, that night, but just didn't have the spirit. Weston didn't need to listen to his copy. It was all there in his brain. That was why nothing had been right since that time.

That was why he despised his audience tonight, as he had despised every audience after Newport. They were polite. They were appreciative. They liked what they heard. But they didn't understand. Not like they did in the coffeehouses or the clubs. And certainly not like they did at Newport.

While these thoughts were going through his mind, Weston raised his horn to look at it more closely, drawing it close to his face in order to banish all other sights from his eyes. He concentrated on the gleaming brass, hearing again the sounds of Newport. Then he slowly moved the horn away from his face, staring at it as if it were some strange, mystifying archaeological find. He turned it this way and that, a puzzled expression on his face. Then he whispered two words: "The Clubs." He stood, left the stage and the lights and the thousand stuffed-shirts. He walked out into the night, still carrying his horn in front of him like something unfamiliar to himself. He slid into his car, repeating the same two words over and over, chanting them, burning them into his brain. They meant one thing to him: life. They led him to start the car, to pull out of the parking lot, leaving the theatre behind. He drove with only one thought in his mind, to find "the clubs." The words led him away from the theatre district, away from the bright lights of the entertainment part of the city where stuffed-shirts and yuppies congregated. They brought him instinctively into the slums of the city. The clubs couldn't be where the rich went. They had to be in the neighborhoods. If there were any clubs where he'd find the people who would understand, they would be in the ghetto. That's where it happens. That's where hunger and danger and sickness and alcoholism and drug use and violence and poverty and LIFE teach the people to understand what his horn had to say. He found The Street. It was unmistakable. It hadn't changed at all since he'd last been there, whatever city he was in. This was The Street. Bars in some windows, boards covering others. Neon garishly lighting the front of one building standing next door to the charred rubble of another. He stared at the buildings as he drove slowly along the street. Bars, pawnshops, missions, "bookstores," flop houses, video arcades, an endless line of heartbreak and pandering and whores. But where were the jazz clubs?

Once he thought he'd found what he was looking for. He jammed on the brakes in the middle of the street, almost causing the car behind him to smash into him. Horns blared, but he paid them no attention. He pushed the button and lowered the car window, but then all he heard was rock music. He drove off again, looking again for The Clubs. He came to the end of The Street. No, it didn't just end, but the Life disappeared. Instead there were houses. He circled around and drove up and down endless side streets, looking for even one Club. There were none. He found the entrance to a freeway and headed west. At the Pacific Coast Highway ramp he turned north.

He kept driving north; north toward San Francisco. All night he drove, his horn on the seat beside him. As dawn was breaking he reached Monterey. That name meant something to him. There were festivals here, too. But that was years ago. Before the "jazz-rock syndrome" hit. Then Monterey, too, lost touch with music.

Bitterly, Weston turned left on a road leading to a scenic overlook, high over the Pacific. He stopped his car at the far end of an asphalt parking lot. Taking his horn, he climbed a pathway that took him even higher. Finally he reached the end of the path. Hundreds of feet below the surf crashed into the rocks. To the west, the sky was still dark. Behind him, as he faced the sea, the sun was just appearing. Once more he raised his horn to his lips and began to play. An onshore wind carried the sounds inland, where no one was listening. He played to an audience as small as none and as large as the world. He played as he had never done before, the sights and sounds of a lifetime of music in his mind. He turned as he played, facing once more to the east, toward the vanished clubs of Chicago and New Orleans and New York, and toward the windswept field of Newport. His final, impossible note faded into the quickening breeze. He sat down on the edge of the cliff, staring out across the Pacific, holding his horn in his lap.

An hour later, from somewhere off to his right, came the sound of a trumpet. It was weak, hesitant, impure. It was the sound of a beginner, probably someone's child in his or her first month with a horn. Weston heard those faltering notes, lowered his head to his horn, and began to cry.

ã 2002 by Craig G. Carlson

"Harlem Nocturne" (the midi embedded within the text of this story) was written by Earle Hagen in 1940 and is, presumably, copyrighted. While not specifically mentioned in the story it is a wonderful representation of the sort of song Weston would have played. The midi version does not do justice to this superb piece of music.

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