By John Beecher
For Joseph “De De” Pierce, 1904-1973
“De De” is gone, and that rhapsodical
cornet which soared above the golden horns
of Preservation Hall is stilled. Packed flank
to flank we’d stand and cheer to hear him blow
his magic horn while Billie chomped the bass
on that decrepit old piano, all
the low-down tonks and blues they’d played and sung
for nickels in the kitty out on Marais
at Luthjen’s beer and dance hall all those years.
Sallee Dame and Eh, La Bas in Gumbo
patois always brought down the house for him.
“Be-bop,” “progressive,” “rock,” the crazes came
and went. They played on in the old-time way,
the solid down-home beat of Buddy Bolden
and Bessie Smith, whom Billie long ago
accompanied. (Great Bessie bled to death
by a Delta roadside with a severed arm.
The white folks’ ambulance just passed her by.)
All this was in their music, deep and strong,
a race's tragedy and Bacchic joy
crushed under heel but forever unsubdued.
Glaucoma struck “De De” down. Billie had
a stroke. He’d been a mason, a Creole trade
his father taught him. While the night closed in
he built with his own hands a two-room hut
of concrete blocks to shelter them. He picked
a backyard on North Galvez. Corpus Christi
was just around the corner. Billie led
him there to Sunday Mass when she could walk
again. He quit his horn. How could he play
that intricate music, those riffs and breaks,
with no eyes for his cues? Starvation line
was theirs on his blind pension. Beans and rice.
Then someone touched his eyes. He saw again,
not outwardly but by the inner light
of memory, brilliant as day. Fumbling,
he fingered the keys of his cornet, tarnished
with verdigris. The sound came out, trembling
but golden pure. Friends flocked around to help
once more. Billie kept a gumbo always
a-bubbling on the stove, the best in town.
Bring her a mess of shrimp from Pontchartrain
and bayou crab and she would cook you up
a feast. With Albert Giles on drums they formed
a trio. Through forgotten years he’d lived
sweeping out coaches for the L&N.
A week or two before retirement date
he swept his last coach out. They found him dead,
his broom in hand. With Billie and “De De”
we knelt in Corpus Christi Church and heard
that jazzman’s requiem, Gregorian
High Mass chanted in Latin. Mother Church
forbade jazz obsequies a decade back.
Then all began to change. The dozen buffs
in Preservation Hall swelled night by night
till hundreds stood. Then Europe took them up,
Japan, Carnegie Hall. At sixty-nine
“De De” became a super-star. Standing
ovations everywhere. In San Francisco
twenty-five thousand crammed Stern Grove for him.
But none who heard his golden horn dreamed what
claws clutched that pulsing throat. The doctors tried
cobalt. He wouldn't halt his tour. Stricken
at some small Texas town he was flown back
to San Francisco. More cobalt. He shook
his head and asked them, “Can I ever blow
my horn again?” “Well, could you blow it now?”
a doctor answered. So. He had the word.
He turned to Billie at his bedside. “Get
my old banjo out and have it fixed.” He’d played
it fifty years before. They flew him home
to die. All the way from Corpus Christi
to the Bienville Gate where angels perch
with folded marble wings, the Olympia,
the Young Tuxedo, and his own Jazz Band
from Preservation Hall escorted him
with a sound of golden horns, The Westlawn Dirge,
When the Saints Go Marching In, and afterwards,
wild second-liners weaving in and out,
umbrellas twirling dervish-like, the shout
of happy triumph, “Oh, didn’t he ramble!
He rambled till the butcher cut him down!”
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