I was sitting in the Coal Yard Coffee Company bobbing my head to the bump of the upright bass when a man approached me and said, “You shoot pool? Your hat…” I looked up, surprised, then took off my hat: It was not the black hat I thought I had chosen as an accessory to my black outfit, but a hat that indicated that I might indeed, be a pool player. The ball cap has a graphic depicting a pool table on the crown, and two pool balls on the bill. Colorful lettering calls out “APA Pool Leagues.” I said to the man, “Yes: I shoot pool.”
One need only to know me casually to find that I have a passion for playing pool; those who know me more intimately — or more, at all — will know that I love jazz. When I read in The Weekly View that jazz musicians were going to be playing on Thursday, Jan. 28th, at the Coal Yard, I was briefly conflicted: shoot pool that night, as I regularly do, or go hear the jazz. Jazz won, and I met a man who is, like me, a fan of both jazz and pool.
Don Banning and I shared stories of pool and pool playing, while Charlie Ballantine’s muted electric guitar under- laid Nick Tucker’s thumping bass; Jay Tibbets maintained the acoustic balance on his drums, always under-laying, never intruding. And Don and I — we talked pool.
Don told me that he has a pool table in his house, but that the table is buried while he is remodeling. I told him of my first bride’s grandfather, an ex-pool-hustler, who tacked my hide on the wall behind his pool table; this, while Charlie and the boys played, “Straight, No Chaser.” I told Don about having kidnapped my son and taking him to St. Louis (where I lived, at the time) to hear one of his favorite jazz pianists, Hiromi, who was playing with bassist Stanley Clarke. I told him that I had to keep my son in town until I was finished playing pool in two leagues. The unintended consequence of that visit was that my son saw pool players his age, and he became a pool player. And maybe, a jazz guitarist, drummer and keyboardist.
Charlie, Nick and Jay laid down “Afro Blue” as Don and I continued our discussion of jazz and pool. The band had just finished playing Charlie’s composition, “Green,” when Don introduced me to his lovely bride, Margaret. (She may have given him the “side-eye” because he had waited so long.) The evening ended with Charlie Ballantine citing, with appreciation, the people who still clung to the chairs and walls of the coffee house as “die hards;” I made a weak reference to Bruce Willis, which was warmly ignored.
That night was a good night: I met a pool player, a jazz lover, while I sat beside the artist currently known as Rita Spalding. My librarian was there, as well, and I told Sue Kennedy that I used to visit the Irvington branch before I got my Wi-Fi privileges. I met another man that night, and we talked about the jazz band, Weather Report, and the song, “Boogie Woogie Waltz.” I told him about how my son would play the song as he drove to work, and it would last a long as it took him to get there: 13 minutes and 9 seconds. I own the CD of the movie, “The Hustler,” the Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason pool playing story. I wish that there had been a jazz soundtrack to that movie.
Maybe Charlie Ballantine can write it. And Don and I can shoot under it.