Out we jumped in the warm mad night hearing a wild tenorman bawling horn
across the way going “EE-YAH! EE-YAH! EE-YAH!” and hands clapping to the beat
and folks yelling “Go, go, go!” Far from escorting the girls into the place
Neal was already racing across the street with his thumb in the air yelling
“Blow, man, blow!” A bunch of colored men in Saturday night suits were whooping
it up in front. It was a sawdust saloon, all wood, with a small bandstand near
the john on which the fellows huddled with their hats on blowing over people’s
heads, a crazy place. The
behatted tenorman was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory free
idea, a rising and falling riff that went from “EE-yah!” to a crazier
“EE-de-lee-yah!” and blasted along to the rolling crash of butt-scarred drums
hammered by a big brutal Negro with a bullneck who didn’t give a damn about
anything but punishing his tubs, crash, rattle-ti-boom crash. Uproars of music
and the tenorman had it and everybody knew he had it. Neal was clutching his
head in the crowd and it was a mad crowd. They were all urging that tenorman to
hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes; and he was raising himself from a
crouch and going down again with his horn, looping it up in a clear cry above
the furor. A six foot skinny Negro woman was rolling her bones at the man’s
hornbell, and he just jabbed it at her, “Ee! ee! ee!” He had a foghorn tone;
his horn was taped; he was a shipyard worker and he didn’t care. Everybody was
rocking and roaring. Helen and Julie with beer in their hands were standing on
their chairs shaking and jumping. Groups of colored guys stumbled in from the
street falling over each other to get there. “Stay with it man!” roared a man
with a foghorn voice, and let out a big groan that must have been heard clear
out in Sacramento, ah-haa!
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