Enough to Cure the Blues

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The way we got booked into Sarasota, you could laugh about it or cry. The outfit is called Three Beats and a Belle, a name I think we could do without. But Cuddis, who books us, likes it extremely, mostly because he made it up. I’m Harry, on piano. There’s Lew on bass, a nervous, dark, wispy little guy. And there’s Buck on the horn, very fine horn indeed. He’s a big type who looks Princeton, about the fifth reunion bracket, but isn’t. We’re the Three Beats. The Belle is Vicky, 5-foot-5, hair like black ink, dimensions like those you read about after they’ve elected a Miss Potato Crop, or a Miss Extruded Plastic.

What Vicky does, she sings in a raspy little voice which I find pleasing because it’s a true voice, and the timing is there. Too many times I hear big rich voices with as many flats as old trolley wheels, and about as much timing as a cracked distributor.

About this Sarasota thing, we’d been booked in Miami, at the Carralonne on the Beach until February last, and then it was roar across state in the wagon to hit the opening of a new club on Lido Key called — honestly — The Inside Track.

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