The Day The Music Died

by Jesse Gloyd

There’s something warm about Avalon. I’ve only been there once; crossing the sea and landing in the bay of the Channel Islands’ only town. It was Easter weekend; we stayed for day and a night in a hotel that backed up to the water. We came in on a boat that set out from San Pedro and landed at a dock where calico bass and sheephead floated just below the warbled clear blue surface of the pilings and docked boats.

Benny Goodman discovered Lionel Hampton playing on the island. He had been working in a club or something of the sort. There was a song Benny’d play that was called Avalon and I imagine had something to do with their time spent there. I watched The Benny Goodman Story several times as a kid. Steve Allen, who starred as Goodman, personified the hip to be square mentality with his dark rimmed glasses and dry demeanor. He was also a pretty good jazz piano player and accompanied Jack Kerouac on some recordings.

I started playing clarinet in the sixth grade because of Benny Goodman. I was always hovering near last chair of the best band. I was never very good. I would go to a jazz player’s house every Tuesday and practice. My mom had him teach me to play Stranger On The Shore, a nice warm song written by British clarinetist, Acker Bilk. The man’s house was kept nice; with tasteful posters of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, DNC stickers, and thousands of records and CDs.

We went to watch him play in a tribute to Goodman at Pepperdine University. I sat in the balcony that night and looked down on the piano player and vowed to spend more time practicing. The band cooked; each solo the struggling studio musicians blew or pounded shot across the auditorium and bounced off the once modern art deco fixtures, filling the place with lines of sound and shockwaves of energy.

The piano player worked with the jazz band at my middle school. We’d practice every Monday and Wednesday after school. It was a time that I dreaded; skipping out occasionally to eat Charleston Chews and drink ginger beer in abandoned lot behind Mandell’s Liquor. I played piano with the band and the piano player usually filled in my parts, so there really wasn’t any need for me.

The last I heard of the piano player, he was living in Juno Alaska working for a jazz quartet. He would work during the summer on a fishing boat and play jazz in the evening to all the alcoholic Eskimos.


“Hey,” I said. “Come here.”

“What?” said Noah.

He walked over to me as I lifted up a board. Two small green frogs about the size of the nail of my pinky finger hopped out from under. Noah lived on five acres of land off a canyon back road between Ojai and Santa Barbara. His dad, a German who’d pack his lower lip with tobacco the second he’d step outside their house, had dug a pit that he’d later fill to make a pond. The pond was going to be used to irrigate the dozen or so greenhouses that held rows and rows of brilliant red Poinsettias. He’d started letting the small tree frogs loose on the property to eat bugs off the flowers.

Noah’s mom called us in for dinner. I’d stay the night out there every so often. His dad had bought a satellite dish and would have people over to watch Canadian Football. His neighbor, Alan Thicke, was a frequent visitor. We’d spend the night in the living room, many a morning waking up to watch Throw Mamma From The Train while wrapped in a pile of unzipped sleeping bags and pillows.

We got to go to Alan Thicke’s house one time. It was a barbecue. We walked down a road that was covered in overgrown ferns, over a bridge, and up a path; he lived that close. Noah and I hung out near the stables where the miniature horses were kept. I’m not sure how it happened, but Noah ended up running a rusty nail through the bottom of his shoe. It crushed through the sole and broke the skin about a quarter inch deep. The horses stood calm and held their own while a crowd formed and gawked. Alan Thicke was drunk and concerned. He kept asking Noah’s mom if he needed to call an ambulance and kept apologizing for “leaving junk all around.” Noah’s mom was cool and composed, holding Noah to her, while crouching up to him. I didn’t see him much after that and wondered if he ever had to get a tetanus shot in his stomach.


Poppo bought me a Benny Goodman cassette when I was twelve. I liked Sing, Sing, Sing a lot; I think it was in a cookie commercial at the time. Glenn Miller was interesting too. I was standing ankle deep in the ocean a few weeks ago and String of Pearls got caught in my head. Not the song, rather the song’s title; it ran through my mind like a cool breeze in a dark hot void, black except for pearls like rain drops falling down, bursting, smashing into each other and bursting again, creating more, doubling, blasting, exploding with hot white light. In a flash, it ends like a Super 8 home movie being burned up from the inside out.

The official word on Glenn, was that his plane went down over the English Channel during World War II. There’s another report that has him dying of a heart attack while sleeping with a French prostitute in a Paris brothel. He was a heavy drinker and probably didn’t take care of himself too well, so it’s plausible. The cover up, they say, was to keep the troops’ morale high. When you’ve wiped the blood and guts from your best friend’s head off of your face, the death of an alcoholic trombone player would seem pretty insignificant, I think. They also say he could’ve been a spy; though I assume he could’ve been a spy who died in a brothel.

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“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” said the bartender as he wiped the spot of condensation from the counter and threw away the bottle.

“Sure, I suppose,” said the man. He was about forty with dark horned rimmed glasses and dark hair held down with a thick dose of Vitalis. “How ‘bout another beer?”

“Sure thing,” said the bartender, reaching under the counter and popping off the cap. “What’s in the case, a tuba or somethin’?

“Or something,” said the man. He had his arm resting on the rounded top of a black trombone case. “You’re not Harry James or some guy like that, are you?” said the bartender wiping his hands on his pants.

“Nope.”

“Ted Williams stopped in about a month ago.”

“Is that right?” The man turned around on the barstool and leaned against the counter. “That guy can hit a baseball.”

“Sure can,” said the bartender. “It’d be a shame if he were to take a hit over here.”

“Yeah,” said the man, preoccupied with a woman with blonde hair that spun down her face like Veronica Lake before she cut it all off. He lit a cigarette and let the smoke blow straight from his nose. She brushed her hair back and cut him through with a glare that would burn up the heart of even the lousiest fascist son of a bitch.

He got up and walked towards her. “Hello,” he said. “Hello” she said with a smooth French accent. She cut into a piece of steak. Her fork pierced the flesh and let out the juices onto the plate.

“I haven’t seen a piece of meat that juicy since Kalamazoo?”

“It’s camel.”

“How’s it taste?”

“Warm and tender.” she said. “Want a bite?”




He held a cigarette between his lips and leaned up against the headboard. She nestled her head against his stomach and hummed Mood Indigo. He shifted his cigarette to his right hand and picked up a warm glass of scotch. Her hair smelled clean to him. It reminded him of a Cherokee girl he’d see whenever he was in Wichita.

“Do you have anymore cigarettes,” she asked.

“This is my last,” he said, sniffing his drink. He held it down to her and she took a drag.

“How long are you here?” she said.

“A few more nights.”

“Are you going to stay with me?”

“I assume,” he said. He took a sip and set the glass on the bedside table. She reached across him and rubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray.

“What’s in the case?” she said, looking across the room.

“A trombone.”

“Can you get it out and play something for me?”

“Sure,” he said stoically, sliding out of the bed and walking naked across the room. He laid the instrument on its side and unlatched the metallic hinges.

“What would you like to hear?” he said crouching with his back to her. He reached into the hollow end and slowly pulled out a Lugar he’d taken off the rotting body of a Nazi officer he’d stumbled across in an alley in St. Lo.

“String of Pearls,” she said. He turned and fired two shots that hit above her head and sent plaster falling down on her. “I heard you were a better shot,” she said, sliding out of bed. The gun dropped from his hand and sweat began to run from his face.

“Before your tongue swells up and your heart explodes, I wanted to tell you that it brings me great pain to see you go.” She leaned over him and caressed his face as he shook violently, foaming from the mouth and turning a sickly pale white.

When he was still, she covered him with a sheet and went to his overcoat. Rifling through his pockets, she took his wallet and a half-pack of cigarettes. “He lied to me,” she thought. “He lied to me, but I killed him.” And with that, she pulled one out, lit it, and leaned out the window to smoke over the streets of Paris, with a relief and a sense of accomplishment.