Someone shouts out, “It’s a great way to make a living!” and everyone laughs. Sol says the man played all the clubs on the Cape, and in Nantasket he loved beach towns. The drummer would play eight measures of free improvisation, and the tap-dancer would echo - to infinite perfection - those rhythms with his feet. After singing the melody (the “head,” as Sol calls it), his friend would trade solos with the drummer. The man’s routine consisted of singing “Sunny Side of the Street” or some other ripe standard from the 1920s. He is telling a story about an old musician who made a living by tap-dancing and singing. Sol is among them, a black man, at least sixty, neither heavyset nor thin. They have shine in their eyes, they rock. ![]() ![]() Some of them tell musical jokes, humming the punch lines from albums which appear to be sacred. All the players sit in the living room, drinking beer and telling jokes. When she first sees Sol, he’s telling stories at a party, a party for musicians.
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