If Only for a Song

 

Wayne Michael Winfield

 

 

 

 

Sonny Stitt sat in the dressing room, immune to its shortcomings. The naked light bulb, the filthy bathroom, the dead radiator: he was rarely disappointed. He got up slowly and gave a perfunctory glance in the mirror. He walked out into the back of the club, taking in what looked to be a full house. A horn held aloft in each hand, he cut a path through the tiny, dime-sized tables. The rhythm section was already on the bandstand. He was fifteen minutes late, which for him was early. Club-owners endured it, audiences embraced it, eager as they were to soak up as much moody, indigo atmosphere as possible. Nowadays Sonny was content to go through the motions: he had earned the right after so many years and so many indignities. Still, his timing and phrasing were so perfect that he resurrected not only a genre but an era. Within twelve bars you were breathing the air of post-war New York, the city's perfume at its headiest. You floated on a cloud of adrenaline, rubbed against the night until you were raw. The air crackled with the fevered pitch of promise, with the euphoria of merely being alive, of not being counted among the maimed or the dead. The clubs on 52nd street shone like a string of neon pearls. Firebrands rubbed shoulders with traditionalists, young lions traded fours with elder statesmen. The musicians performed without a net, walking a tightrope between art and the abyss, the risk only heightening the rewards. And Sonny, lean and crisp in a double breasted suit, would count off a furious tempo and proceed to cut a colleague to ribbons, his outward calm at odds with the roil and churn of his playing. But even if he had stopped taking risks, even if his edge had been dulled by alcohol, there were still times when he succumbed to the flirtation of a ballad, when the cynicism fell away from the bone and exposed the marrow of his emotions. Conversation came to a halt, even his demons stopped to listen. And you hung on his every inflection, immune to life's shortcomings, if only for a song.