Washing the Goddesses Hair

Thanks to my Editors - Gandalf4217 & Fuzzywuzzy

It was nearly 3AM in the morning, and from the sound of the fighting going on next door, I wouldn't be getting any sleep soon, so I got out of bed, got dressed and went back downstairs to the piano in the small bar area. If the past was any experience, I'd find out what was going on quite soon enough. Sure enough ten minutes later, she came downstairs into the semi-darkened empty bar where I was playing, pulled up a bar stool next to the piano and laid her forehead right against the top. "Déjà vu, all over again... isn't it".

I laughed weakly and gave her a wane smile, and said "Well, I guess it's good that if you have to tell your troubles to the piano player, there's an advantage to at least choosing a piano player that already knows your name and most of the problems. A real time saver, it is that way!" I stopped my playing, I was just running random chords trying to pick out a new melody anyway, and added softly, "It's all over now for good this time, isn't it Elizabeth?"

She kept her head down on the piano and didn't look up, but managed a "Yes, I really think it is this time". We said nothing more to each other for a good long while, and I softly played for her a few old show tunes that she had once requested of me a long ago. Long, well not quite, seems it was only last month on that cruise from Athens, but let me try and explain the story from its very beginning.

My name is Saul, but most of my music friends call me Smiley. I'd been in the music business for nearly 25 years (I had made my first recording on an already obsolete shellac 78-rpm record in 1961 at the age of 17) mostly playing piano or keyboards, and had gotten my start as a studio or session musician for other artists as the rock and roll explosion of the 1960's took off. I had developed a good reputation of being able to learn a song in just one take and play exactly what the record's producer was looking for (usually as the drug addled band member I had replacing looked on). My name became known in session circles and I was in constant demand in the recording studio and even occasionally as a band member replacement or backup musician for large touring bands and I worked steadily into the 1ate 1970's. As the stadium rock era grew, the demand for computer electronics and synthesizers grew, and there became less work for old piano dogs like me. I managed enough odd day jobs doing over-dubs for 2nd rate and worse bands that didn't rate the normal full production package to keep the food on my table and keep up the payments on the seaside house I'd bought in Marin County when times had been good. I also played with several Bay Area retro "Dinosaur" bands full of "B- Team" guys just like me enough to keep the fun alive and get an occasional decent paycheck, but as the 1980's began I found myself working a little bit less each year and sometimes had to teach music part-time to keep all my financial wheels steady on the road.

That was my biggest blessing that I had been relatively smart with my money and had put away nearly half of what I had ever earned when times were good and the paychecks nice and fat. The problem was my investment wasn't paying off particularly well yet. For 20 years, I had been buying up the music rights for long forgotten bands, one-hit wonders, and other relics of vintage music history that no one seemed to care about. Certainly the major record companies didn't seem to, and rarely seemed to care about repurchased lapsed rights to talent they considered had little if any reissue value. I had seen the future, CD's, and thought someday if they became cheap enough to produce, recording fanatics would want a modern "newly remastered" CD reissue rather than rely on an increasing rare slab of worn vinyl or the scratchy original shellac. Maybe someday, but for now I could still afford to wait for my ship to someday sail in.

It sailed in sooner than I expected! Well, not that ship, but another nearly as good. In the middle of the night one early summer's day in 1982, I got an overseas call from an old friend Randy in the UK music business (naturally he'd forgotten about the +10 hour time difference from Greece to California). He had been mostly working as an Agent these days, and he had been landed a plum job opportunity that required at least "B+" grade talent, but was in a jam. One of the major Aegean cruise lines had contracted for piano player to handle a main lounge show every night. He had contracted for an artist to handle the gig with 3 Gold records to his credit from the 1970's, but was definitely on a steep track downwards nowadays. The guy had disappeared with the travel money advance and hooked up again with his old heroin fixer, and was now very much out of commission. Randy needed someone on a flight to Athens "yesterday" and if I would just say "yes" my plane ticket would be waiting for me at the airport, and I would get the star treatment for a few months.

Sounded like fun to me, there was just one catch. I couldn't sing, nearly not a lick. Sort of like Grace Slick, I only have a musical range of about three notes, but instead of being able to shatter glass, it was more like the rumble of granite rubbing together. I could manage a bass backup for a vocalist without embarrassing myself, but I was no singer. That was why I had never released a record with my name on it since that one side on 78 shellac in 1961. Randy thought fast and said he knew of a girl that was available to accompany me. "Edna would be perfect! She's kind of a 'throwback', like you - she's got a fetish for "Hot Dance" blues and jazz music from the 1920's and 1930's." Wow, that did sound like my kind of singer.

I agreed to a more than fair compensation deal and we reviewed the travel arrangements. I turned off the gas and electricity, wrote a check to my mortgage banker that nearly emptied my account, but would keep my bills paid while I was gone, made a few calls to let folks know I was out-of-town, and then started to pack. I needed one bag of "performance" clothes, including formal dress for dinner, some odd casual pieces and I stuffed my largest suitcase with vinyl. Old, rare nearly one of a kind stuff that I knew, loved and could play by ear or by heart and that she just might have the inclination to sing. Every one, reissues of old Depression era 78's when Jazz, Blues and Country sounds intermixed into the hottest music of the pre-Big Band era.

Loaded for bear (and Edna) I caught my flights and sixteen hours later was sitting in the cruise line main office in Athens, waiting for Edna so we could officially sign in as part of the 'talent staff' for the cruise. With a name like Edna, I was fully expecting a mature woman 20 years my senior. Not a problem for me as long as she had the pipes for the job, but I was surprised to discover that "Edna the Throwback" was a young tasty morsel not yet out of her 20's (28, I later found out - almost 10 years younger than me!). We exchanged greetings, signed our paperwork and got escorted to the ship's Talent Coordinator, our boss for the gig, who gave us our work schedule (2 shows daily), and then showed us around a bit and got us placed into our staterooms.

Jet lagged or not, we got to work nearly right away, I grabbed Edna from her stateroom (next to mine both equally decent) and we went straight to the lounge to see what kind of act we could scrape together at nearly the last minute. We had less than 24 hours until our first show and we had no idea what we were going to do. Since Edna was going to be our voice and main attraction, I started by seeing what was in her repertoire. What wasn't! She knew all of the standard Show Tunes and could do any Cole Porter or Gershwin number in her sleep. We decided to keep our lunchtime show light and airy and do that sort of Broadway and musical show tune stuff then.

We scribbled out a decent set list of 20 songs we knew we could both do 'cold' tomorrow and made out a secondary list of another 30 odd songs that we could definitely also do, but a practice or two beforehand would be beneficial for the tricky parts. We then settled down to the main problem, the evening show. Actually, we were not the "Main" evening show really; there was a Paris/Vegas style variety act with a cast of dozens that operated in the main showcase theater next door. Our lounge might seat 100 or so, if folks were friendly.

We banged around a few ideas and started to develop the kernel of some ideas. Neither of us were crazy about doing modern pop covers, and even the thought of doing older 60's covers wasn't terribly appealing either. This was supposed be "fun" for us, and the thought of singing even the classic songs of the Beatles for three months straight had zero appeal. Torch songs? Maybe occasionally, but that wasn't much fun for her, she did too much of that at the clubs and lounges back home. That left us with retro; stuff so old and obscure that we could maybe make it sound new. She loved Depression-era "hot dance", and I knew quite a lot of that sort of material from the original 78's (and had some with me on LP as reissues).

I grabbed her by the hand and we ran back to my cabin and grabbed my suitcase of vinyl and commandeered the Disco room for the next 8 straight hours going album by album picking out songs we both knew (some of them her favorites) and we worked out an evening set list that the likes had not been heard of since Fats Waller died in 1943. We were exhausted, but happy, and with one final stop at the costume shop (every cruise ship has one) we were ready for our grand debut!

With a little rest finally, we did "ok" for our luncheon debut of Show tune favorites and got nice applause. Having had no time to practice together we did not yet fit together like a pair of gloves, but no one but another professional would have noticed where we both had screwed up in places. We grabbed some lunch, and managed a few private hours in our lounge and practiced what we felt might be our rough spots in our program, and feeling encouraged we even managed to grab a few hours sleep (separately) before our Main Act began at 8PM, and after grabbing a few extra last second props as we could find them.

When we had started to plan for this show, I had asked Edna one simple question, if she could have been any singer in the past - who would she have been? Her answer floored me, "A twisted sick combination of Annette Hanshaw and Victoria Spivey", she replied. OMG, what had Randy unleashed on me? The sheer insanity of the possible combination of the greatest female songbird (Hanshaw) of the 1920's combined with the wailing wicked whorehouse blues sounds of Spivey set my head spinning. But there were possibilities here, oh yes!

As the stage lights came up on up, our audience (perhaps 20 folks) were initially surprised to see us, or rather how we were dressed. The stage (to the best of our limited time and available stage set items available in storage) looked like everyone had gone back in time and back into old-time New Orleans "Storyville". I was the whorehouse piano player, and Edna was just one of the girls who was there to entertain folks before conducting "business upstairs".

We started right off with a bang, an old favorite Fats Waller tune "Ain't Misbehavin'" that we could both do in our sleep, and which certainly had been played in old Storyville, and at the end of each song Edna and I exchanged suggestive banter. We continued without a break or noticeable pause between songs, without pausing for applause. Our songs and our banter got hotter and wilder. Our audience was initially puzzled, but became more and more entertained. This was something "new" and not the comfortable retreads of popular cover songs they were expecting. These were cover songs all right, but from their grandparent's era, instead, spiced up and presented as hot as we could cook it. Edna was the best pure Blues/Jazz singer I had ever heard!

By the time our show ended at 10:15 (we had run a little over our time to no ones complaint), there wasn't a seat left in our lounge (and darn little standing room either). Amid cries for an encore, we tried an impromptu version of Victoria Spivey's & Lonnie Johnsons "Black Snake Moan" (butchering it horribly, but no one noticed - we got it right the next day and it became our show stopping closer for the rest of the season.) We left to a full standing ovation. Our boss the Talent Coordinator was confused (didn't understand our act at all) but liked the crowd reception we received and so our jobs were safe. He also promised to get us a prop painter to do things up a bit better for our next shows, which happened first thing the next day.

Each show just seem to get better, and by our 4th night at sea on this first cruise (these were 7 day cruises of the Aegean hitting most of the popular islands) we were considered the "must see act" of the ship and had standing room only even for our tame luncheon show. We played some more LP's on a borrowed crewman's old portable player in my cabin nearly every morning before our lunch show and added at least a solid new song or two to try out each day. Afternoons we rehearsed songs and our salacious and witty cross banter. Soon we had a working play list of nearly 100 vintage songs, spiced up and ready for perversion at our eager hands.

By the end of that first cruise, I knew I was falling in love with Edna, and by the end of the second week I could barely stand the times that I was not together with her in the same room, beside her. One night, just after the end of our show (now usually close to 11PM), we were taking our evening deck stroll to wind down before bedtime and without thinking or comment took her hand in mine. She did not object. Stopped a few moments later at the stern to look out on the Aegean ocean in its moonlit star filled beauty our lips somehow accidentally bumped and before I could help myself, I was kissing her. I pulled back a little disconcerted, the last thing I wanted to do was upset our work relationship and make her feel uncomfortable being with me. She pulled me back close and with the moon in her eyes smiled, and said "Well it's about time, I was wondering how many real "suggestions" I was going to have to make in our act before you got the hint. Shut your mouth now "Big Daddy" (my stage name in our act) and come up with me to my room upstairs... we've got some 'business' to conduct". Oh, how we did! Neither of us ever slept alone again the rest of that cruise, and we made a deal to turn in our two cabins for a slightly larger one (with a balcony! I knew then that management loved our act and wanted to keep us happy).

On the last cruise of our summer contract, we asked the Ships Captain to marry us, and it was the happiest day of our lives together. We happily did the next years Summer and soon even the Winter cruise schedule, spending the remaining six months of the year at my (now our) home near San Francisco. We started trying our act at home, at small Bay Area clubs and soon built a slowly growing but rabid fan base of weirdos, misfits, shellac addicts, and 'musical contrarians' and met many old (and new) lovers of 78-era recordings. Our play list eventually reached about 1000 songs and we could now do shows for a week straight without a song ever being repeated. Our cruise pay, doubled and yet doubled again, and we attracted numerous European repeat customers who would only book their cruise if it was confirmed that "Edna and Smiley" were going to be performing.

We were doing great financially, and Edna wholeheartedly agreed with my unconventional "retirement plan" and our library of song "Rights" steadily grew.

Edna seemed a little weak and tired for the start of our Cruise season in the summer of 1986, but neither of us though much about it and thought the sun and sea would restore a little life to her, and it did, for a just a little while, but she seemed to get continuously worse. The ships doctor seemed to think it was urinary tract related (she had a recent kidney stone attack a few months back), but his limited on-board equipment didn't show anything that seemed serious, Edna seemed to get continuously worse and was now often in severe abdominal pain, the severity of which she hid from me, and took pain pills constantly to keep the show going. If I had realized just how bad the pain she was in was, I would quit for the season entirely and forced her to go home or into an Athens hospital. Instead we stayed right to the end and she sat for her final performances looking so obviously in discomfort that it was obvious to everyone that she was very sick.

We left as flew home as fast as we could but the damage was already done, she was in final renal failure with internal infections that were devouring everything from her kidneys to her urethra. She died by painful inches in bed at our home, there was nothing the doctors could do for her. At her request, her ashes were scattered on the beach by our back door. It was her favorite place to sit and think by herself and she especially didn't want her ashes decorating my fireplace mantle where I could just sit and brood looking at them for the rest of my life. My loving wife knew me oh, so well.

I told Randy that my cruising days were done, but he had a slightly surprising alternative offer to make. Would I consider just performing "Piano Lounge" for a season? Less work (less money, but not much so), I wouldn't have to sing and could just play sad piano songs at 2AM in the morning for the insomniacs and the broken hearted crowd. I laughed and laughed at the thought of this and didn't quite say no (or yes for that matter) and received my plane tickets to go a week later. Since I had never bothered to call and cancel, I somehow found myself on my annual flight to Greece for the start of the summer of 1987.

The new job wasn't nearly as taxing, and the Cruise Line management was delight to see my return (and were genuinely sad for our loss - they had even sent flowers for her memorial service). They let me set my own hours, but asked if I could play from at least 11AM until 2AM every evening. I resisted the urge to throw myself overboard that first night as everything I saw, touched or did seemed to remind me of Edna; where we had met and fallen in love, but I forced myself into the new work routine and I found myself enjoying the freedom of just playing whatever I wished, when I wished, and soon was nearly a constant sight at all hours of the day or night in the piano bar. My music became a mirror of my moods, surrounded by delighted little old ladies from London, Berlin or Paris, I could play old big band favorites or classical works. For folks of my generation I'd bang out pop songs without limit (often giving them little odd jazzy twists), and for the growing number of gay and lesbian guests ("Rainbow Cruises" were now starting to be en vogue) I could perform show tune standards or soothing piano Jazz. Word spread that my late night playing was "different" I began to attract an eclectic crowd of admiring listeners.

Late at night was when I missed Edna the most, and I usually played the blues, letting my piano do my mourning for me. I even began for the first time to start composing new material of my own. It didn't come easily, but for the first time in my musical career I felt like I had songs inside me yearning to be written. A voice, all of my own that was waiting to be expressed and by the end of the season I had at least five songs I was not ashamed to play in public, and more that I could see hints of waiting to be released from my subconscious. I left that September a somewhat happier man ready to go on with life, and the Cruise management was happy to continue my old two seasons a year, Summer and Winter work schedule. This provided both financial security and emotional comfort, and I was happy to accept this arrangement.