LOIS BLUE

What can I say about Lois? It must have been 1993. Recently divorced, I was living alone for the first time in a while. One evening I got a call from an old friend in San Francisco who told me that a very special person she wanted me to meet was coming through Chicago. High maintenance but well worth the trouble. A week later I got a call from Lois Blue. An 83 year old Jazz singer from Argentina, she was grand and formal in a very old-fashioned way. Her accent was utterly charming. I said that of course I'd be happy to show her around and introduce her to some of the fine older musicians around town that I knew. I mentioned Floyd McDaniels, Ron Dewar, Bill Russo, Allan Batts, and a few others. Our conversation was brief but delightful. I had no idea what I was in for.

A couple of weeks later I got another call. This time it was a crisis! Lois was at a truck stop south of the city. Something that I couldn't make out had gone terribly wrong. Could I come pick her up? Could she stay with me just for the night? She was embarrassed to ask, so she said, but had nowhere else to turn. Knight in Shining Armor, mind you, isn't exactly the role I was born to play but I have to admit I was intrigued. And we had been introduced by a dear friend. I agreed to meet her at the truck stop's diner.

As I walked through the door of the diner she wasn't hard to spot. Lois was sitting alone in a booth, a tiny birdlike woman wearing a ratty thrift store wig, rhinestone glasses, and a badly mismatched, strangely accessorized, so-loud-it-hurt-your-eyes pant suit. Most of the truckers in the half-empty diner were staring at her, and they stared at me as I joined her. She had no money, no bags, and a half-eaten meal in front of her. And quite a story to tell.

It seems her traveling companion, a young gay man, had been arrested in New Orleans. The car they had been driving was a stolen vehicle and had been impounded with all her luggage and identification still in the trunk. Intrigued by the sequined gowns, the police apparently weren't able to distinguish between homosexual and female impersonator. Lois' passport made it into a missing persons/identity theft/homicide case. It didn't help at all, I'm sure, that Lois slipped out the back door of the hotel they had been staying at and hitchhiked to Chicago. Lois wasn't concerned about his plight. What was she to do without the gowns that she performed in? She needed to find some gigs in Chicago. She needed new clothes, both for day to day living and a few more extravagant outfits for performing. Did I know where the good thrift stores were? She would be staying with me for no more than a couple days, no more than a week. Oh, and could I loan her a couple hundred dollars, just until she got back on her feet?

As she chattered on I couldn't help but notice the little bits of tape sticking out from under her wig. Later I would learn that it was surgical tape that she used to give herself a home made face lift. She must have thought I was looking at the wig. "Terrible, terrible." Her good wigs were also in the trunk of that impounded car. She would need to find better ones as soon as she could. For the duration of the two years I knew Lois, ferried her to and from gigs and jam sessions, ran errands for her, took her shopping and looked after her in general, I never saw her wear any other wig.

I'll cut to the chase. I had a new roommate. It was a good thing that I had a big loft by Maxwell Street because she quickly commandeered the bedroom and had me rig up sheets and blankets on clothesline for her privacy. I slept on the couch. It was Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert on acid. "You don't have a TV? How can you not have a TV?" And she took over the phone. She had been supplementing her music income for years by doing phone sex. Her large stable of regular customers must have been missing her terribly.

And it was one of those regulars who bailed me out. It was an intolerable living situation for me. But what could I do? Throw her out on the street at 83? She was a wonderful musician. And she was hustling some gigs. It wasn't hard to project myself into her situation a couple decades down the road. A long time phone sex customer who lived in Chicago, affluent and forty years her junior, was itching to meet her. He put her up in a SRO hotel not far from my place. I had my home back, but I still had a dependant. And a new friend.

Her life story was one of those truth-stranger-than-fiction sagas. You couldn't make something like that up. She had been a star in Argentina, not exactly a hot bed of Jazz. Billie Holliday was clearly her model but Lois was a unique stylist in her own right. As the local Jazz celebrity she was invited to the American Embassy whenever an American Jazz band was in town. Quite a beauty in her prime, Lois knew, jammed with, and had sex with, a veritable who's who of Jazz from the thirties through the fifties.

Lois' stories were amazing.  "Coleman Hawkins was such a gentleman.  Why, I remember one evening in 1939 when..." or "Lionel Hampton! That man was an octopus! No sooner had I gotten in the taxi when he was on top of me!" or  "Duke Ellington?  He was a genius!  It was the great honor of my life to sing with that band."  And then her voice would start to crack and turned shrill.  "But he was lousy in bed!  After he'd had his way with me he just got dressed and left!  He didn't even say goodbye!  I'll never forget the last time I saw him, slipping his suspenders over his shoulders as he closed the door."  Lois referred to Billy Strayhorn as "that nasty little faggot."  I think she was just jealous of his friendship with Duke.  And she was close friends with the under appreciated Oscar Aleman, perhaps the greatest guitarist of the thirties, and Argentina's only true Jazz giant.

Jazz wasn't Lois' only musical language. In addition to many latin standards ( the kind I love to sing), she knew dozens of tango songs that she played at Argentine restaurants. Not the sophisticated tango of ballroom dance, nor the omnivorous tango of Astor Piazzola with whom she had been friends for years, Lois sang the old tango of the slums of Buenos Aires, the songs of pimps, whores, and gangsters. And she had an inexhaustible supply of stories from that milieu.

So what was she doing in Chicago? After her marriage failed and her daughter was grown and married with her own family, Lois began to chafe at being the big fish in such a small pond. New York beckoned. And so she came to the United States. She established herself on the West Coast, made famous friends such as Steve Allen, and overstayed her tourist visa by over twenty five years. But New York was still the goal. Chicago was only a waystation where she couldn't have imagined she'd linger for two years.

And how those two years flew! I threw an 85th birthday party for her at the Bop Shop. The band was great. It was The Ellington Dynasty minus a couple players, plus Lois. She was in rare form--just "on." Never heard her sound better. Wonderful crowd. Oscar Brown Jr. brought an entourage. What a gentleman. Lois was incandescent. And then it was time for her to go.

On her last night in town I took her out to dinner at a restaurant that featured a piano player. After we had eaten she insinuated herself onto the piano bench and took over the joint with the energy, musicianship, and flair for entertaining random strangers that I had seen so many times. The next morning I dropped her off at the bus station for her long delayed journey to her spiritual home, New York, New York. If she could make it there...

I never saw Lois again. She called a few times, always asking for money which I always sent. She snookered my girlfriend who "loaned" her quite a bit and actually expected to get repaid. Lois had hooked up with Joe Franklin and was on his show. This was her big break! She was going to take the Big Apple by storm! Then one night after a gig she collapsed and was taken to the hospital. Lois died a couple of days later at 86, still making plans, still reaching for the brass ring. Leukemia finally silenced her irrepressible voice. She must have been in horrific pain the whole time I knew her. Not that she didn't complain about it. She sure did! But she distrusted doctors. And she was always about the music. She had gigs to find and play. She had audiences to charm and entertain. She couldn't let mere pain, mere dying stand in her way. Lois had soul.

From one perspective Lois was a manipulative user, a delusional loser, a fragile personality desperately needing the constant ego stroking of the limelight just to survive, but that's not how I remember her. I remember her when I play. You see, she left me a legacy. Although she played piano plenty well enough to effectively accompany her singing, Lois was no dazzling virtuoso. When playing solo, she filled the spaces between words with scat singing and mouth trombone. The trombone range was an effective contrast to her alto voice. Since I face the same issues as a singer who accompanies himself on guitar, Lois got me going on mouth trumpet. I chose the higher register because I'm a baritone. She lives again every time I play solo, which is often.

She sure was demanding. It sure was a relief to have my life back when she left town. And I sure do miss her and cherish my many memories of Lois Blue. One of a kind.