When I read, I sometimes listen to music. Sometimes I listen to one of my Pandora stations. Sometimes, especially when I’m on my boat, I have my TV tuned to one of the cable music channels. The other day I was listening to the BLUES station when “Caldonia” pulled me out of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DIXIE.

It was one of those moments when my senses conspired against me and took me back to a moment in time that I hadn’t thought about in years. One moment I’m sitting on the quarter-berth in the main cabin of my Grampian-26 reading a book and the next, I’m sitting in a dark, cave-like room listening to Memphis Slim. I’m not 64. I’m 17 and sitting with two friends in the basement of a Paris nightclub listening to one of the icons of American music playing the piano and entertaining an eclectic group of international music lovers.

My parents had a habit of getting rid of me for the summers. Not that I’m complaining. I didn’t then; I’m not now. I actually enjoyed the places they sent me. There were six years of summer camp on Cape Cod; school in Pully, Switzerland and a summer school session in Paris, France. As an only child, it gave me a chance to be me… or, at least, be someone other than the kid I was in Middlebury, CT.

In Paris an elderly woman put some of us up in her apartment in Neuilly-Sur-Seine. She supplemented her income by hosting students from other countries. There were a couple of guys from our group and a couple of stunning young ladies from Yugoslavia. Somewhere I have photographs of a wedding procession that I took from her balcony. I remember the trumpets and the horse drawn carriage with support vehicles. It was like something out of another century.

For some reason, the boys from my group were reassigned to other families. I moved from Neuilly to live with a family on Avenue Neil. I remember that I was just down the street from the Metro stop Place Pierre and not that long a walk from the Arc de Triumph. I did a lot of walking that summer (tripping from cafe to cabaret thank you Joni Mitchell) and spent a lot of time on the Metro or on a bus. Our school was located over near the Sorbonne and it was our responsibility to get to class on time. After class, our time was our own. I spent a lot of time walking the Champs-Elyées and hitting all the typical tourist spots. I climbed the Eiffel Tower, spent hours in the Louvre, toured Notre Dame and saw Napoleon’s tomb at the Invalids. And that was just during the day.

Paris’ nights are something you never forget. There was onion soup in Les Halles, all kinds of little restaurants in all kinds of nooks and crannies. I remember walking down the street with Pug and Harvey and a good looking young prostitute grabbing Pug by the coat and trying to entice him into the brothel. I remember his embarrassed look and the way he said, “No thank you” in that southern drawl of his. (Apparently the touch of a good looking young woman who was willing to have sex for money made him forget all of his French.)

Pug (I don’t remember his real name) was a short fellow. I’m just shy of 6-feet and Pug only came up to the tip of my chin. We called him ‘Pug’ because of his nose. This was in the days before plastic surgery was something everyone turned to and Pug’s nose had come up against someone’s knee playing sports and, on the whole, as nick-names go, Pug really wasn’t all that bad. Pug, Harvey and me hung out that summer. Yeah, we broke a few rules, like the time we were in the Louvre and took pictures of us standing behind headless statues giving the ancient cold marble current human heads. Apparently taking pictures was a no-no as several guards pointed out. They didn’t confiscate out cameras so somewhere in the world is a photo or two of the Prince of Lagash with my head and some armless statue with Harvey’s hairy arms.

The three of us went everywhere. We even took the train and went to the 24-hours of Le Mans. But one night, Pug called me up and said he had found a great club with an American playing. I called Harvey and the three of us met up and hoofed and Metroed it over to Les Trois Mallietz where someone named “Memphis Slim” was playing.

I had never heard of Memphis Slim. This was in the late 1960s. Equal rights was still being fought for and some artists and musicians left America for Europe where a black man would be recognized for his talent and not his skin color. In America black songs were still being covered by white singers because many radio stations would not play “black” music.

Slim had moved to Europe in 1962 eventually setting up shop in 1965 at Les Trois Mailletz in the heart of the Golden Triangle in Saint-Michel. I have no idea how Pug found this place. But it was great. The place has a front entrance, but I don’t remember using it. I remember having to go down a dark alley and an even darker set of stairs and through a door and into what seemed to be an ancient cellar with a cold stone vaulted ceiling that if you weren’t careful, you’d bump you head on. And Slim had to be careful. He was a tall black man. As I said, I’m close to 6-feet and I remember looking up at a tall black man with a white streak in his well pomaded hair. He sang songs (and I later learned that he had also written them) like AIN’T NOBODY’S BUSINESS, BORN WITH THE BLUES, COLD BLOODED WOMAN, HARLEM BOUND, PIGALLEY LOVE and 500 others. After his death, he would be elected to the Blues Hall of Fame, but that was still 20-years in the future.

I found a picture of the piano bar at Les Trois Mailletz. In it everyone except one young man is looking at the performer. The young man is looking directly at the camera. He’s sitting in my seat. The piano-bar was in the basement. The basement was a long rectangular room. Think of a wine cellar in a old monastery. There were no windows. There were tables down the center of the room and tables in the alcoves made by the ancient stone arches. There was a small stage at one end of the room and the bar was at the other.

That first night, we were all mesmerized by Slim, his singing and his story telling. During one of his breaks, Pug got the courage to go and talk to him. I’m sure that the rum and coke had fortified his courage a little.

That’s right… rum and coke… Cuba Libre. The three of us were only 16 or 17 years old and we were sitting in a night club drinking and listening to one of the icon’s of music performing. It was Paris. There was no drinking age. We paid the cover. We paid for our drinks and that’s all the management seemed to care about. We also did not act like three kids on a weekend binge because their parents were out of town. Our parents were thousands of miles away and we thought we were so sophisticated. (Damn those were good days.)

Slim was standing at the bar. Pug walked up to him. Slim had to have been at least 6’4” and Pug was all of 5’6”. Slim was a tall black man. Pug was a short white guy. Pug stuck his hand out.

“Hi, Slim. I’m from Memphis.”

Slim smiled a big, toothy smile. “Good for you, boy. I’m from Chicago.” His voice was deep and rich and melodic. The two of them shook hands.

From then on, all summer long until we had to head back to the states, every night that Slim played, we were there. We were regulars. We were so regular that one night we showed up and our drinks were already waiting for us at our table by the arch.

But Slim wasn’t the only person playing. There was a German band, not an oompa band, but one that played contemporary cocktail kind of music. Slim was obviously the headliner and the German band filled in during his breaks.

I began to notice that we were not the only regulars who showed up for Slim’s performances, either. There was a very beautiful (exotic) woman with dark hair and blue eyes who always sat center front when Slim was playing. And there was a slim Englishman who always wore a suit and stood at the bar when Slim played. However after a couple of weeks, something unusual happened. The Englishman and the woman began changing seats during the German band’s performances. They would sit at the table next to us and make out like two teenagers in the balcony of a dark theater. It happened over and over again. Whenever Slim played, they would be at their places front center and at the bar. When the German band played, they would be by us kissing up a storm.

One night, curiosity got the better of me. When Slim started playing, and the Englishman headed back to the bar, I walked up next to him and offered to buy him a drink.

“Why, thank you,” he said. “You must be friends of Mr. Slim. I see you here practically every night.”

“I see you too,” I said. “But one thing has been driving me crazy and I hope you aren’t offended, but I’ve noticed that you only make out with the pretty brunette when the German band is playing.”

“Oh, you’ve caught that,” he said.

“I couldn’t help but wonder… why?”

“Oh, that’s easy enough to explain. I’m having an affair with the young lady and her husband is the band leader.”

Okay, too much information, but then it was my fault for asking. “You’re making out with a man’s wife directly in front of him?”

“Almost,” he said. “You see, when he’s on stage, he can’t see through the stage lights. He can’t see us sitting by you. When his set is almost over, he always plays the same break song. It let’s Mr. Slim know that he has to get ready and it let’s us know that we have to separate before the song ends otherwise he would see us.”

“Isn’t it kind of dangerous?” I asked.

“But that’s the most exciting part,” he answered.

They were still at it when our summer semester ended and we had to head back to the states. I never told my parents this story. I doubted they would appreciate it. I did tell it to Russell, my hippie/druggie friend. He knew who Memphis Slim was and for a while held me high in his esteem. Eventually, I started hanging with my old neighborhood friends and went back to being a typical American teenager.

(If you liked this post, you might also like my SciFi/Mystery novel, MURDER BEYOND THE MILKY WAY http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Beyond-M... )