St. Louis Blues
Setting: Missouri, Jazz Age
"I hate to see the evening sun go down", the pantheress, Florence declared as she looked across her home in Jefferson City at sunset. It was a captivating view of the setting sun from her beautiful home- a former Southern plantation which was her home. It was here that this young woman of 20 lived with her parents after graduating high school, waiting for her the right tom-cat to give her nights of love and all the things that a refined Southern lady would expect and treat her like a woman. She had, in spite of her parents' warning, been to the dens of iniquity her parents had warned about- the juke joints of the capital city where the fedora-clad bluesmen performed, telling her of stories of lost love and prodigal sons who wasted all their money on booze and women.
"Don' go lissening to 'dat music- jazz is 'de devil's music. You lissen and you shake hands wit' Satan. An' once you shaked hands with 'de devil, he grabs you by 'de hands and don't let go", her mother Amelie would say but what did she know- her music which she picked up at the church, was old and out-of-date, compared to the new music of the city with its blaring trumpets and drums that came all the way from Africa to capture the primitive spirit in us all.
And Florence's reading habits of the contemporary writers of the 1920's, did not sit well with Amelie at all.
"An' after all 'dis training in how to read an' write, you waste your time on that what's-his-face Fitzgerald an' 'dat poet Sandberg. A woman like you should be reading 'de Good Book, not pulps about 'dat awful devil's music." It was at the Blue Note that she met a young tiger named William who devoted his life to jazz and playing the trumpet. She was immediately impressed with him and took him home to meet her folks who would meet her new boyfriend, coaching him on what to say to avoid his association with the "devil's music". He was in Florence's words, a pastor's son who spent his time playing the trumpet in a Methodist church orchestra and singing in the church choir.
The dinner date was awkward for both Florence and William having to put on the charade but this was worth it, if the two would ever get married. Courtship in the 1920's was an elaborate affair which took years so the bride and groom would fall in love and not just fall in lust. And the marital vow was so much harder to break then it is now. Which made the separation after a few months even more painful- William's band was being paid well enough in Missouri's capital but he had to keep a low profile to not tip off Florence's parents. And there was more money to be made playing at the blues houses of St. Louis, off the coast of the Mississippi River, which was a mecca for the musicians, contributed to mainly by the flux of jazzmen from down south in New Orleans. With tears in her cheeks, Florence saw the tiger with the trumpet head off on the train to St. Louis.
"Feeling tomorrow like I feel today, I'll pack for a trip and make my get-away", Florence would say upon thinking back to her boyfriend as she looked east. But she had a plan- a few months ago she had joined her missionary board at the Methodist church with the stated ambition of ministering to the fallen and ill of St. Louis. This was of course just a front to get closer to her boyfriend who was playing at the hottest nightclubs and jazz bars of St. Louis.
And as she attended each and every single one of those classes on how to bring someone to Christ she would think of William the tiger now playing the hot jazz in St. Louis, where she was going. Her mother, though hesitant to let her little girl go had no choice- her "religious conviction" told her to go to the big city where she would help the "unsaved heathens of 'dat poor city". So at a station in Jefferson City, she bid a tearful goodbye to her mom.
And then that's when Florence saw it- the marquee not a block form the train station in St. Louis when she arrived.
"Kid Ory and His Amazing Dixie-Land Players". The names revealed included William Gladstone. Florence had come to the right place. She paid a pretty penny not for lodging (the church had a parsonage for the missionaries so long as she attended each of the boring meetings as expected) but on tickets to get close to her William. She listened to each song and danced when they played at the jazz clubs, trying to get William's attention. But he was not interested- eventually she had to pay for backstage passes to see her boyfriend.
"Why don' you like me anymore?" she asked after a performance one night.
"Because I've found someone new here in St. Louis. I find a girl I like everywhere I go and this one's wealthy enough for me to live in luxury for the rest o' my days" It was at that moment she saw his new girlfriend- a vixen who if they ever wanted to define "flapper" in a dictionary would have to include her picture. The redhead vixen wore a red cleavage-exposing dress sans petticoat which in Florence's town would be considered scandalous and was drinking a gin-and-tonic. There could be no good women who wore clothes that bright and drank alcohol. She wore enough eyeliner and lipstick to paint Florence's room a morbid black-and-red. Her face was powdered and her hair had been professionally styled. And the size of that diamond ring! That left no doubt about her status in society.
It was at that moment she realized that as much as she loved William, that tiger had a heart like a rock cast in the sea. How else would a man leave the sweet loving of his girlfriend who would be his bride in a matter of months? Florence had been fooled and never would have her boyfriend, who was a well-trained heart-breaker, a lecherous yet lovable playboy who would romance every pretty girl he could find. Marriage was a fate too good for him but Florence was a victim of the St. Louis blues.
And the first thing that she heard when she got home from Amelie was "How 'bout 'dat boyfriend of yours, William 'dat lived in St. Louis?"
"He can't leave St. Louis for his missionary work an' he's not marrying either. Devoted to God's Kingdom on this earth."
In her heart, she could not bear it any longer and finally told the truth about falling in love with a jazzman who broke her heart. And when she fell into the arms of her mother, she knew that someday these blues would pass and she would find the right man.