Broken-Finger Boogie:
On the Road with Miss Lavelle
"You
done got off on my wrong foot," said Lavinia Lavelle White, handing
me a CD so I could learn her songs for the tour. She didn't invite me
to get out of the car. I had pulled into her driveway in the Heights half
an hour late, trying to make sense of her telephoned directions, which
had included neither the name of her street nor the number. "Already
coming late and ain't started yet."
I knew Miss Lavelle by reputation. She had written some great songs, classics
like "Lead Me On," a hit for Bobby "Blue" Bland. And
the CD was wonderful. "Voodoo Man," her signature song, was
incredible. She had the soul and the pipes, no doubt about it.
So I took notes, made myself a couple of charts, loaded my gear in the
car, and went off to my first rehearsal, only to find that Miss Lavelle
didn't want to do any of the songs I had learned. She announced that she
was through with the blues and would be doing funk music from now on.
(She would make this decision once a week or so.)
I had been warned. Six other piano players had turned down the gig. Robert
Lewis "Pee Wee" Stephens would only shake his head and laugh.
Eugene Carrier wanted no part of it. Apart from the blow to my ego --
how would you like to be someone's seventh choice? -- there were, let
us say, tales and rumors of wild doings.
I took the gig because I knew Lavelle was going to play the New Orleans
Jazz Heritage Festival, and it was my long-held dream to play that greatest
of musical venues.
I did get to play Jazzfest. I also came away from the tour with two broken
fingers and a series of marriage proposals.
In Austin, at the Continental Club, a fan got too close to the stage,
saw my plastic splints and screamed, "Are you playing that piano
with BROKEN FINGERS?!?!" When I grinned and nodded yes,
he nearly fainted.
In New Orleans, backstage at Tipitina's, when I was trying to make a good
impression on Marcia Ball and Johnnie Johnson, Lavelle walked past me
and, without stopping, said, "We get back to Houston, I wanna see
you nekkid."
"How long have you been with Lavelle?" asked Marcia Ball, with
a smile such as I never want to see again.
Johnnie Johnson said nothing. But then, I had let him use my keyboard,
so he owed me one.
The road can do strange things to your sense of time. In one club, Lavelle
came onstage, sang two songs, did a little patter, and then began telling
people they had been a beautiful audience. We tried frantically to signal
her that we still had over an hour to go in the set, but Miss Lavelle
misunderstood our gestures as an impertinent effort to "tell her
what to do," and walked abruptly offstage to show us who was boss.
But let me make one thing clear. Lavelle may be what the New Orleans folk
call a "character" -- pronounced (like carry) CHAR-actor. And
yes, you better watch out -- but you don't have to watch your back.
I did have to watch her back one night. It was the night I broke my fingers,
trying to load my gear in the van. After the X-rays, I went to her room
to tell her I'd have to leave the tour for a few days.
"So you ready to run out on me," she sighed.
"Lavelle, I can't play with my hands like this. I have to go see
the doctor."
"Leave me hanging high and dry. Out here in the middle of noplace.
I'll get by some kind of way."
I waited a minute, feeling like a bellhop lingering in hopes of a tip.
(There were no bellhops in this place: the club owner had put us up in
what I can only describe as a crack motel. People with six-inch heels
went up and down a metal spiral staircase all night long.)
I coughed and said I needed to be paid. Lavelle said nothing aloud but
made a face that said and now this too. She sat on her bed beside
an enormous handbag. It would have held most of my gear. Rummaging in
the bag she produced first a fortune-teller's eight-ball, the kind with
little messages like "Ask again later" and "Not this time"
floating in it. Next she withdrew a turkey legbone and then a butcher
knife, both at least ten inches long. Something indescribable, wrapped
in a napkin, followed. At last she found a roll of bills.
She stood and then elaborately turned her back and began counting off
twenties.
"Lavelle," I said, "if I was gonna rob you, turning your
back wouldn't stop me. And if I was gonna kill you I'd have done it a
long time ago."
At length she turned back around, held out my money, and said, "Take
care."
I played many shows with Miss Lavelle, some of them marvelous and some
of them perfunctory. In my mind, the greatest was at Ruby's Roadhouse
in Mandeville, Louisiana -- a honky-tonk with a lending library! The funniest
was an in-store performance at a now-defunct record shop. In the middle
of a song, a little girl handed me a notepad and asked for my autograph.
I whispered, "My hands are kind of busy right now. Can you wait a
minute?" She answered, "Ok. You are Lavelle White, right?"
Lavelle, sitting on a stool beside me, almost fell off it laughing.
I never married her (how could I? she's my sister and I love
her way too much) but I'm glad I know her. Because Lavelle White
at her worst is better than most entertainers at their best. If she can't
get you on the floor, somebody must have nailed yo ass to the chair. And
you can throw your music charts away, boys and girls. She'll rarely do
a number the same way twice, and some nights she invents more song ideas
onstage during her show than most songwriters turn out in a year.
She's a genius, pure and simple (ok, not so pure -- and far from simple),
and decades of playing small clubs and sleeping in cars and dealing with
obstinate musicians have not diminished her. But as she puts it in her
brilliant CD, It
Haven't Been Easy. Yes, Lord, it haven't.
rebelangel
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by David Vest
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