The Cafe Down the Street (Part II)

The first time I was invited here, maybe two years earlier, was by one Trytko, a colleague from high school.

He was very musical; in school he sang and played the guitar, but mainly, like me, he interested himself in jazz.

Trytko, who I had then impressed very much with my extensive knowledge on the topic of our mutual interest, wanted to show off the group in which he had recently become a guitarist. All its members were young people wild on the point of jazz, which they tried to play in the almost unknown here jazz style BEBOP, called in this time also BOP or REBOP, HEY BA-BA-RE-BOP, like the famous and immortal hit of Lionel Hampton.

The radio to which I systematically and passionately listened, AMERICAN FORCES NETWORK IN EUROPE, put on this new music rather rarely; they played then Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Slam Stewart, Max Roach or Miles Davis.

The American radio for the American soldiers put on mainly wonderful big-band swing, meanwhile BEBOP you could hear from the Scandinavian and French radio stations, from radio Novi Sad, from radio Ljubljana, but most often in the jazz auditions that Joachim-Ernst Berendt prepared on Radio Baden-Baden or RIAS BERLIN, Radio in the American Sector in Berlin.

Warsaw radio did not put on jazz, most likely considering it an American disease. Warsaw national radio put on then already only Jan Cajmer and Wanda Odolska, because one comrade editor Martyka had some time ago in Warsaw been effectively and happily shot. But anyway I never listened to that radio.

All the guys in the group Trytko played with knew and played most of the jazz standards. The make-up of this combo was a piano or accordion, a guitar, drums and bass, who was also the band leader, and the unforgettable hits they played were:

SEPTEMBER IN THE RAIN
I’M IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE
DINAH
AUTUMN LEAVES
I CAN’T GIVE YOU ANYTHING BUT LOVE
TEA FOR TWO
CHEROKEE

And then Bunny Berigan’s known piece: I CAN’T GET STARTED—not to mention already many others.

Taking under consideration that these were sad and dismal Stalinist times, just in case the guys had in their repertoire also two Soviet songs, which they never played if they didn’t have to, and which in their execution sounded rather like ominous caricatures of Russian archetypes. For the national songs, they had a beautifully worked out bebop style intro, “Don’t be silly, little cobbler!” should Nowobogacky arrive.

Officially the guys played two or three times a week at the so-called fiver—twilight dancing popular before the war and after the war, beginning at FIVE O’CLOCK and lasting until eight, nine or ten. But here in this café, everything started and ended later.

The fiver could start between eight and nine and ended whenever it pleased. The Lwowian manager only closed the entrance and shut the curtains to the display windows tightly; the festivities were just beginning.

Obviously, jazz was officially prohibited. Often other jazzmen came in conspiracy, to play a bit with good company before an enthusiastic crowd.

But, no matter how you looked at it, this was all in a certain sense provincial and mundane, and aside from the prettiest girls who came and hung out here, the only always really great happening was the rare appearance by Sokal.

As if emerging from underground he appeared every few to every few dozen weeks. This was happening just this day, which I happily knew thanks to this that an hour prior I had talked with him at the hotel bar.

Most of the time he was not completely sober, and always dressed in the same wretched gray-blue domestic suit. He didn’t let himself get asked too long to play before from different pockets of this suit he pulled out different parts of a clarinet, which he expertly and carefully mounted into one whole, and together with a maximally excited ensemble got to work.

He always began with STOMPIN’ AT THE SAVOY, and then it ran: BEI MIR BIST DU SCHOEN, THE MAN I LOVE, DINAH… a short intermission to get a drink of something and then... GODY, GODY and the slower BODY AND SOUL and AFTER YOU’VE GONE… All of this was, note for note, bar for bar, the crispest Benny Goodman, to whom Sokal was even very similar looking, only that unlike his idol he didn’t wear glasses.

At this time the jazz, whose tempo and tone on this night Sokal dictated, took by force, and each of the musicians fell in turn into a sort of trance, transforming into the performers playing during the famous evening, on the memorable Sunday, 16 January 1938, in the largest metropolis in the world, in the most representative concert hall at the corner of 7th Avenue and 57th Street.

The pianist, day by day dull and antipathetic, suddenly became Jesse Stacy or Teddy Wilson, Jurek Grossman banged out the percussions loudly and rapidly like Gene Krupa.

Trytko, despite having a lonely acoustic guitar, in front of everybody’s eyes turned into Charlie Christian, and indisputably the best musician in the group, the bassist, grabbed the accordion and to his best ability, unexpectedly imitated Lionel Hampton’s vibraphone.

The crowded café hall simply went wild. A few show boaters got on the dance floor with their girls and, primarily to the fastest numbers, linking the jitterbug with the boogie-woogie, attempted to improvise successfully dynamic jazz dance. Complete America. JUST YOU JUST ME, CHINA BOY, AIRMAIL SPECIAL…

Droplets of sweat appeared on Sokal’s forehead, but as whenever he played, his face was lit up with happiness. He was the indisputable king of the evening. SOMETIMES I’M HAPPY, I CRIED FOR YOU, THE BLUE ROOM…

It was well after three when Sokal quite spectacularly fell into a chair. He was immediately brought mineral water.

He drank two bottles quickly, and emptied his silver flask of the rest of its contents.

Everyone looked at him. “Sorry, party is over,” from his chair he would announce loudly in English.

“Over, the music’s over, we’re all going to the factory. Hopefully, until tomorrow!”

He began to disassemble his clarinet and place the pieces back into his pockets.

The guys packed their instruments also. Because Sokal didn’t live in this town, tonight he crashed with Leszek, the bassist.

After fifteen minutes there was nobody left, and the pleased Lwowian manager could close down the locale. That night the café had a good take, which would be directly tied to how high his quarterly bonus would get.

Sokal was a dentist by trade. He lived and worked in a small town some thirty or forty kilometers yonder. Not long after the war, when he received his dentist diploma, he got a summons for work, so as the only dentist in the area in addition to his own private practice he travelled many places.

He had a house, a wife and children, and lived comfortably and peacefully. Unfortunately every now and then something in him clicked and he vanished from where he stood… I heard all of this from him on a certain May Day evening, and actually on a certain May Day afternoon or evening, when unforeseen losses sent me to the town in which he lived and worked.