Tale 32

Respecting Mr. Waring

personal gift to Fred Waring from American cartoonist Grover Page[1]

Bill said, "Let me tell you what Fred's like now, give you a rough idea how he fights my doin' big things for him now."

He wanted to add another story to the long list he had told so far, over hours of time, trying to answer mj’s big question, why he would want to leave Fred; and mj nodded and waited, of course. He needed as much data as he could get to save his fairy tale, a goal he had come back to as many times as he had given it up, discouraged or disgusted with Fred.

Bill churned water, showing it on his face, then let loose a barrage of rhetorical questions: "I get the Dinah Shore Show for him? Go out to the coast with him? I meet him at the airport? He bitches all the way in from the airport!"

He did a petulant teenage Fred with no manners or people skills: "'Goddam it, Bill, I'm hungry'!"

"I says, 'Well, I thought of that’. And I'd give him his little snacks, which I called and got from Virginia, the things that he likes to eat. I got 'em ready!"

Bill sighed, probably to get a handle on himself.

Betty Ann interrupted. "But he didn't even want to do that show to begin with, 'cause he was stayin' out there in order to play golf!"

Bill agreed, respectfully. "He wanted to play golf. Now he needs these shows tremendously."

"When I called him he said" – Bill did a Fred who was deliberately pulling ‘petulant’ from his own file of vaudeville acts, and not being funny about it – “'Well goddamit, Bill, that's my day off. You people don't care about me. You never think of me. All you think of is yourself’.

"And I said, 'I haven't had a day off in months’.” Bill sounded tired, but firm and professionally considerate, respectful, and even caring. “That's what I said in reply, ‘Working on trying to get you on this show, now this is the only time I can get you on this show, otherwise –’.

"'Well cantcha have another day'?" A petulant teenager.

"And I said,” Bill looked like he was wrestling with emotion, “'Mr. Waring, you have to realize, it was an effort to get you this show'."

"Do you always call him 'Mr. Waring'?" mj asked, still looking for a sure fireway to understand and settle the dispute between the two, once and for all; an approach; some star to doggie-paddle by. He was utterly lost even though he had been told several times that the three-way relationship had been the root of the problem, Fred’s jealousy of Bill, in other words. But he kept seeking other explanations, other problems that might be fixable. Maybe jealousy was not the whole thing. Maybe they were wrong. He hoped it was not the whole thing, for if it was, there was little you could do with a jealous man but stay out of his way, and that was the exact thing mj was trying to avoid, since he wanted Bill to keep working for Fred. There was no way to avoid Fred if you worked for him.

"Always. I never called him 'Fred', and that's another part of this. He has said to me, 'Call me "Fred".' And I explained it to him, I said, 'If I call you "Fred", we go into a studio, that's worse’. I said, 'If I go in a studio and I call you "Mr. Waring", that engineer respects you, and as long as he respects you, I'm gonna get better work out of him. But I call you "Fred", then he's gonna call you "Fred". And you get a twenty-two year old kid in that studio that starts callin' you "Fred Waring", or "Fred", immediately he's lost respect for you'."

Bill chuckled, pleased with himself. "He said he never thought of that, heh heh heh.

"I have never called him –. I kid about it. I've said to him, 'Fred', in a joking way, when we're alone or something. That was part of the build-up of keepin' 'im at arm's length."

"Yeh." Mj remembered that Bill had thought it best from the beginning to stay a safe distance from the man.

Betty Ann agreed. "You have to do this."

"Because the minute you call him 'Fred' –," said Bill. "There for awhile he called me 'Mr. Blackburn'. He was puttin' me down 'cause I was callin' him 'Mr. Waring', you know, and..."

Betty Ann laughed, delighted with her cute monster Fred.

"...I –, I liked it. Heh heh!" Bill laughed at length. "He'd say, 'Mr. Blackburn’? I'd say, 'Mr. W-, Mr. Waring’?”

"Thuh hee," mj laughed.

"And yet, now the people around him, the Clyde Sechlers, these guys lick his boots. They call him 'Fred'. But they CRAWL. They're too buddy-buddy with him. They play golf with him and all this stuff, and he goes out to CRUSH them. I wasn't about to become one of these people. I'm still not going to accept it."

The musical organization got loud while a tenor belted it.

So whaaaaahy pre-teeeehnd aaaahh (diminuendo)         (so why pretend)

And leeeeeht it liiiiihn-ger oaaaaaaawn...                     (and let it linger on)

Trumpets, crescendo; cymbals! fortissimo:...

Bill sighed and paused. "And ah—..."

Tenor: The thriiihll... men: the THRIIIHLL, is gone!... tenor: Goaaaaaaaaaaawn.... sudden decrescendo...

Mj thought he was starting to feel sick to his stomach again. Nausea was about to take over, but a new hunch took his mind off it just in time. "Do you know anybody else that has maintained this kind of 'safe-distance', fatherly posture with Fred?"

"One left here. Not totally the same. He's got to be a sicky, the one I know about."

Chorus and orchestra were sad, mezzopiano, and fading, in changing tones and harmonic modulations:

Gonegonegone...; gaawne; Gone...; gone! gonnnne!

Two weeping violins whimpered off into the fog to die.

Betty Ann took off like mad on this answer of Bill’s, leaving everyone in her wake. "Ah-oh Bill, really, he did not put him in his place."

"Whudayou talkin' about?"

"Are you kidding?" she said. "I was on Tour when that guy was on Tour. He licked his boots like everybody else, Bill."

"Betty Ann, their arguments were legendary."

She was ruffled. Her pitch rose. "All-right, so they had a lot of fights, but he still is not –, not like you."

"I'm –,” Bill backed off: "I wasn't here then, so I don't know."

"Well, I was here. I was on Tour with that –. I had that man tell me that if Fred Waring died, that would be the end of his life. Now, would you say that?"

"No."

She built, repeating for effect. "Is it the end of your life??"

"No!"

"Would you not go on living when he died?!" She was stirring up a tempest at sea, just to make a point with super-high drama.

"Have you ever,” mj looked at her, “seen anybody relate to Fred like Bill does?" If he had not waylaid her, she might have drowned them all prosecuting her case, just to show how important it was that she was right about it.

"No, I haven't. But then I haven't been here that long," she dodged. It was less than adroit because she had been with Fred longer than any other woman.

Seasick, mj fought upheaval, and her answer, both at once: "No, but you've been around fifteen years," which was a long time.

She thought about it and offered delicately, "Well, a lot of people hate Fred."

"Well,” mj said hopefully to Bill, “I don't think you hate Fred."

"No, I don't hate him."

"Ah hah heh," Betty Ann qualified.

"No, I don't!" He was sure of his answer.

She wasn’t. She yawned to play down the disagreement: "There are times you do."

"Oh he pisses me off. I come back mad. I mean that's normal in any human being, but I don't hate the man."

She tried a different approach: "You have no re-spect for him." She sat forward in her judge’s seat.

Fred's hands went up again in the mirror and an orchestral opening implied ethereal peace.

"I have no respect for him," said Bill. "That's –, y'know. But I don't hate. There's a big difference there."

The glee club struck soul-stirring chords.

When you waaahlkk throoough a stooohrm,

Keeep your chiiihnnn up haaaigh...

Betty Ann got up from her judge’s chair and, as she left, she tossed out a line so powerful and provocative it discovered Pandora's Box in the brine, finally, and opened it. "You have respect for some of the things he's done!" she said decidedly and left the courtroom for chambers.

Bill nodded in her direction. "In his lifetime!" he qualified; but not recently; and he certainly respected nothing about the way the man was treating him.

...And dooohn't be afraaaid of the daaaahrk...

Muted trumpets suggested lurking harm.

Young Dr. Lorenzo liked Betty Ann’s line at first. He picked it up where she’d dropped it and every jiggle he made on that line produced a tug at the other end, but only unlocked a new woe, unfortunately, as he discovered too late.

"I think you're intrigued by some of the things he's done." That was his first jiggle on the line.

"You know what I see in him?” said Bill.

The volume of the orchestra built:

At the eehnd of the stooohrm

Is a goohl-deeehn skaaahy...

The tympani rolled.....:

If Bill couldn't forgive or understand the man, he might at least remember some of Fred Waring's good points. That was the way mj took Betty Ann’s line. Maybe they could salvage the relationship if Bill remembered Fred’s good points, at least.

"There is an element of greatness," he said to Bill, "in people like Fred." That was the second jiggle, and it merely opened the box of woes further; because, all the jiggles on the line were making Bill look at the man philosophically, and mj was not going to like that philosophy. 

And the sweeet sil-ver soohng of a laaaahrk...

An extravagant flute riff fluttered like a lark.

"Now wait a minute," said Bill. "Now let me tell you: if I were sittin' here, and a man who worked and lived with Al Capone for ten years –. I'd sit here and I'd be –," Bill looked awed. "Really! Or Jesse James." He sipped martini. He had consigned Fred to hell and damnation with those two comparisons, in a word, but he admired Fred’s pluck. Great! "I could sit for DAYS and listen to those stories, because it intrigues me that Capone attained the heights he attained, and no matter what he did, how bad he was, to have to admire the fact that he organized all of crime, and all of the syndicate and everything else."

Bill was veering the boat abruptly with an idea so extreme. He had never talked about Fred like this before. "I love reading history, I'm a nut on history. I could sit down and read books and books about Hitler. That does not say I respected him."

Mj was even more stunned by this Hitler tack. "R-right," he stuttered.

Walk aaauon through the wiiihnd...

The singers built, strings rustling.

Bill said, "I could be intrigued by this man."

This was going too far, wasn’t it? Fred Waring was a childhood hero for some, wasn’t he? maybe even for someone in the room? Mj said, "I would still think you could respect certain –..." It was another jiggle on Betty Ann’s line, and one too many.

"Qualities?"

Walk aaauon through the raaaain...

The orchestra was tempestuous.

"...qualities about him!" he said, feeling palpably injured by his own weird over-identification with Fred Waring; only to then hear Bill compare his childhood hero with history’s biggest criminals and worst despots. It was revolting. He felt attacked deeply personally inside of him this time, deeply wounded.

Though your dreeeams beee taauossed aand blooohwn...

The orchestra crescendo-ed.

"Oh, yes I could."

"I mean, every man has positive qualities!" The poor interviewer thought he might gag, trying to say this without hysteria.

The glee club harmonized, tymps rolling.

Walk aauon, walk aauon, with hope in your heaaahrt,

And you'll neeh-veehr waaahlk aah-LOOOOHNE!

(rrrrrrrrumbleroarr-rcrescennnDOCRASSSSSHH!!!)...

But Bill was not going to baby him a bit. Not this time. And not tonight. Those days were over for mj. He had to hear the truth. It was time. "Sure,” Bill said. “Mussolini! This man did wonders for Italy! No matter what he did wrong, he did a lot of great things, so in that light –!"

Mj’s fairy tale days were over right here, one had to assume; if they had not been over by now already.

They decrescendo-ed.

You'll NEEEH-.. veehr.. waaahlk.. aah-.. looohne!...

Softly, the strings modulated toward an upcoming second verse.

Bill spoke in a convicted tone as if reciting the Apostles' Creed, but with more feeling and sincerity than most Christians would have shown while saying that ancient creed of theirs in church. Reciting the Orphic Mysteries, maybe, is how it sounded. He rocked the boat with plenty of dramatic emotion while they drifted anchorless, still lost interminably, and without course or direction, as it felt to mj, who was still in the brine, in any case. Bill, from where he sat, without rising, addressed mj lorenzo, the one person in the world lucky enough to be witness to this; and addressed posterity too, counting on mj to get it from tape to book so the whole world could hear of it.

                     Bill Blackburn's Fred Waring Creed

"...I respect Fred Waring's abilities as a conductor.

"I respect all of the things he accomplished

          in his life.

"I know he accomplished a lot of them

by absolutely crushing others.

I don't respect that.

"But I also know life well enough to know

          that some of those things are necessary

if you are really going to become a super man,

                    in any way.

Especially in the music industry....

"I can even laugh with Fred Waring

                    about the things he's pulled,

                    with women and whatever,

sit back and really, really enjoy laughin'

          about him.

"And when Betty Ann tells these stories,

like when he –;

the auDACity of the man:

"he'd even get mad at God for letting it

rain over his...

Annual Buffet Luncheon at the Inn!"

Bill laughed a good one before proceeding with the second half of his Fred Waring creed, because a healthy life rested, in part, he knew, on laughing toxins out of the blood at frequent intervals; whereas this creed of his required seriousness, and was long, so cried out to be split into two parts.

The Fred Waring in the corner of the living room encouraged more laughter with his new, mock version of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” entitled, "You'll Never Eat Pork and Beans Alone".[2]

Harp and celli painted ethereal peace.

"He sat out there by himself

          and ate in the rain!…" said Bill.

And laughed himself to distraction.

Mj watched in the mirror as the neatly aligned chorus began a hymn religioso.

The Pennsylvanians had all gone inside the Inn that day to stay dry, as Bill recounted. But Fred had stayed outside, and he looked like a drowned rat in a tux. He was still in his seat at a table where they’d all been sitting, outside the Inn, on the lawn, when it had started raining, a drenching, pouring Atlantic seaboard rain. Fred was still eating his pork and beans with one hand, alone in the pouring rain, and had just begun to conduct – with the other hand – his way around a gravely rising Delaware River:

When you eeeat through a stooohrm, Keep your feeeet up haaaigh...

They hummed from inside the Inn, pianissimo; soprano solo:

And dooohn't bee afraaaid of the pooooooohrk! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Fred ate with his right rat-hand, conducting left, wetly.

"...While the people went inside!!" Bill managed to blurt out, before he gave in to silent glee bottled up so tremendously tightly it looked like another guaranteed stroke-maker. His big face turned red.

Soprano: At the eehnd of the stooohrm...

chorus: 'Aaaaaaaaaahhh' Is a gooohlden skaay... 'aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh'

And the sweeet sil-ver saauong of a... cooohrk!...

"I mean, I could sit and,

and I don't know if it's respect or what it is,

"I just sit in AWE

          of that man's audacity!"

Full chorus, unison: Eat on through the wind!

Full orchestra with vicious backbeat: Eat on through the rain!!

Building to fierce climax: Though your BEANS be toss'd and bloooooooohwn!...

"Mm!!" mj agreed, relaxing a little. Maybe Bill could forgive the man after all, some day, eventually.

"That intrigues me," said Bill. "How could a man BE that, ah—..."

"Outrageous!" helped mj.

Fred's two soaking rat-claw paws, now, spraying water in streams across the lawn every time they rose and fell, controlled the beautiful choral voices inside the Inn, in four-part harmony, a cappella, rubato:

Eat on! eat on!... with hope in your heart!

(natural echo: 'heart!';

hymn-like crescendo, smooth…:)

And you'll neeh-veehr eeeat aah-looooohne!

It was full choir now, triple forte, girls prominent, Fred opening and closing two glistening rat paws with each tone-syllable. Then a decrescendo:)

You'll NEeeeh-VEeee rEEeea tAaaaah-loooohne!...

(Band:  <<>>   <<>>   <<>>   <<>>   <<>>   !!!...)

But relaxing after so much protracted tension must have done something drastic to mj’s stomach. Something –. He rushed to the bathroom and let go the beans, potato and pork. He let go the Cretan bull too, and the vomitous tales of Fred Waring, every last one.

And he swam back after a while to the boat.

He felt more man – for a second at least – than beast, since he felt cleaner now, and sharper, and more brilliant. He thought he was in a dry white tunic, ablaze with light; strumming a lyre on a trip to hell. He thought he was Orpheus suddenly, and was headed to the underworld, being rowed by Hercules himself, not as a bull now, though, but as a man. And he was back in the boat, he realized.

Bill looked at him in thought. "I don't even think that's the word, y'know. 'Outrageous' is a good word for it, though!" He laughed.

Bill just rowed and rowed on, tracing Fred's whole un-pilgrim-like progress to the underworld so untiringly he was taking Fred and mj there with him. Mj had heard a few reports in his life critical of his childhood hero, but the stories had been humorous and introductory. What he was hearing now felt to him more like being told in private, by Moses, that God the Father Almighty, whom his parents had taught him to love and worship and trust, no matter what, was really Satan.

"I used to give a good guess,” said Bill, “what that man was going to do, and he'd do it! I could catch him unawares."

"Mm huh."

Bill was chasing Fred Waring to Hell and Hades, both, without even asking mj’s permission, leaving it to the poor boy to discover for himself what good, if any, might be in it.

"I seemed to be capable of hitting him with verbal shots that he couldn't handle,” said Bill, “and I like this."

Mj thought he saw a little light suddenly, another Freudian father-theory glimmer: "Do you know of anybody else like that?"

"I don't know of anybody around him that can handle him."

"No, no.” Mj’s hunch was about Bill, not Fred. “Have you ever known anybody like Fred, that you could read like this before?"

"Oh yeh, I had an experience like this with Frank Sinatra when I was in the Philippines and he came to Australia."

"I was thinking of your father."

Bill’s painful experience with Fred at work had triggered painful memories of Bill’s father, mj was sure suddenly. Bill had mixed his father and Fred up in his emotions after that, causing the misunderstanding and conflict with Fred. It was a different kind of Freudian father theory than the one he had been going to promote, but it was still pure psychoanalytic schtick.

"Who???"

"Your father, maybe." If Bill had confused Fred with his – Bill's – father, misjudging Fred on that account, that too could have been a way to correct an error, and save a working relationship.

But the budding shrink’s unwilling patient made quick work of this piece of analytic kaka, just as he had every other piece. "Oh I could read my father, yes, but more than Fred. My father was not a challenge to me." He protested, maybe a little too much. "He's no superhuman being by any means, or his methods. He's a very physical man.

"Where Fred Waring challenged me mentally. There's no doubt about it, this is a brilliant man. All the things that can be said, he is without a doubt a mental giant! In my estimation. I wouldn't put him in the same breath with an Einstein, academically. He's a mental giant in maneuvering. And I appreciate this, or something. I'm the same way in some respects, because I've maneuvered him!"

Another brilliant Freudian interpretation had been washed out to sea, like so much Augean dung.

The men did perfect tone-syllable unison, pianissimo, ritardando:

You-, 'llneeeeeeeh-, veeeeeeeh-, rwaaaaaaaaaah, lkaaaaaaaaaah-, looooooooooooooooooooooooohne.    (You’ll never walk alone.)[3]

A harp arpeggio drifted heavenward and a single string note held a delicate sostenuto.

Fred's shiny wet rat claws went: Cut!

enlarged signature and note at bottom of cartoon
the whole of which is shown at the top of the present page:

“Grover Page, Courier Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, August 20, 1955”

“ ‘H’-URRICANE FALLOUT!”

“To Fred Waring the young flood mudder

from the old (’37) Flood Mudder Grover”[4]

one more illustration of the fact that Fred's cartoonist friends
in their cartoon gifts to him
often included jokes, references and messages

of a private and very personal nature