11/5/10 G Webster @ Wetherby
The two shabby photographs lay in a small space amidst the rubbish on the table. They were laying square to each other amidst the ash and crushed butt ends scattered around them. Carl winced at the piles of trash and food scraps trodden into the floor of the greasy room. He bent over and touched the photos, they were grimy old, dog-eared, black&white prints stained to sepia by too much time and handling. The oldest image was of a half naked youth, seated and taken from the waist up, leaning against a bare wall. He’d sat side on, back to camera looking over his shoulder towards the lens with the angled light striking his every line, muscle and feature. A handsome face, broad nose and the full lips of his race all elegantly captured, and the eyes, his eyes showed defeat and submission but with a lingering spark of defiance. Carl didn’t know which upset him the most, the resigned sadness etched in the face or the welts torn across the shoulders, arms and back. Flayed whip scars had formed over grime from the fields where the slave had been sent to work, still bleeding and in agony. Carl felt the pain and resignation at such a core level he retched and had to look away. The small ugly room provided no comfort and he turned his attention to the adjoining, more recent and familiar photo. He had a photocopy of this one in the papers he got from the lawyer. From this dull image another face glanced out, there was a similar look in the eyes but here they peered out of a smiling face above an unbuttoned collar and crooked tie. There was a saxophone angled across his chest and the lapels of a creased white 1930’s dinner jacket. The image was a bit out of focus, patchy grey and was cut from a larger shot of a band, lost in context now to anyone other than Carl. Sadly, he reflected the two photos were the sum lot that made up his legal inheritance.
Two old photos, he thought bitterly, the only evidence here of the lives of slaveboy Bobby Brown, old time jazz singer and his musical son Jackie, or JB as Jackie called himself. Carl had learned that, to his credit JB had become widely travelled and in demand. While for Bobby, jazz had been an escape, a release and a survival, Jackie had used his own music and words to move in on the Motown years. Otis, Marvin, Aretha, they’d all called him Jackie Blues. He could catch a mood and weave it like honey through thorns while writing a sob into the backbeat. But he had never seen any of the fame, never got the buzz from playing his music to the audience, never got his applause, nor his ovations. That all went, with the money, to agents middlemen and thugs and to the performers who had the limelight and who got to use his music on stage. It was Carl’s only thought now as he looked at the photo and around this sad room that Jackie had given his heart while others took the joy.
The legal letter had arrived a week ago. The envelope was quality stationery and the note inside typed on good thick watermarked stock. The lawyer’s name and address made a scripted banner across the top of the page and beneath them Carl’s name and address was followed by a heading in bold uppercase print, RE: ESTATE OF JACKSON BROWN. The words in the body of the letter were abrupt, businesslike and asked Carl to urgently contact the offices of the above named solicitor. The resultant conversation was surreal. In it Carl learned who his real father was, that this father’s funeral was arranged for the following Friday and that Carl was required to claim the remains of this JB’s estate forthwith. There was no succor, no compassion, just the facts and the detail and instructions. At the solicitors office Carl had received the papers which showed him the drafts and original scores of well known songs, and the contracts releasing their rights. These he was coolly advised were just historic not valuable documents, but the title deeds for an address downtown were part of the estate and could be used as collateral to settle legal and duty fees.
The funeral had attracted no one who knew JB, just his one new 35 year old son, some people who had turned up to take photos of Carl and one scruffy music journalist . Only Carl stayed on to listen to the words of the preacher as the casket slid behind the curtain. He endured the sermon not knowing if Jackie would have sought or rejected a Christian exit. There was much Carl would never know of his family and its past.
His inheritance from Bobby and Jackie was in reality no small thing. It was his history, a recorded, documented, experienced and inherited family story of escape through music. Carl now had a family history. It mattered not to him if it was the whip or the debt that drove his forebears to sing the jazz and the blues, what mattered was that for them, as for Carl, it was always the music which brought release. He now knew it was music that these two men had given by blood to him, and that answered a bigger question. The ache that leaked from his pen to page and into tune and words now had a source, a link, a genetic trail. The warmth and the belonging he felt to R&B, to smoky jazz and to soul music, the sense of home he got from singing with his band, he now had a link that explained the depth of his passion.
Carl’s “best of” album released the following year included covers of one of Bobby’s and one of and Jackie’s old numbers and one new song slipped quietly among the compilation of Carl’s greatest hits. He called it Found and the refrain went,
From a first known father to the last birth
We play for the unknown goal
And the wind it mixes the grime of the earth
Into a wandering soul.
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