The MacGuffin, Vol. 4, No. 3, Fall 1987
By Ed Peaco
Pete Schere thought he was the best tenor saxophonist between Chicago and San Francisco. It wasn’t just brag; he had heard players from big cities, but he never heard anyone who could touch him. Then somebody named Barry Levitt, who played at a resort on the Lake of the Ozarks, but who was originally from Connecticut, came to Springfield, Missouri, and blew Schere away.
Schere had been playing around his hometown of Springfield for five years, since he quit college. He thought of himself as the derelict of everything in 1983 and didn’t care, except for jazz. He played often at each of three bars that offered jazz occasionally, and he had played at a series of jazz clubs that went out of business almost as soon as they opened. He had tried to find jobs through friends in Kansas City and Chicago, but usually partied too much during visits. Those jobs he got quickly fizzled.
He had been the best in school. Woody Herman did a clinic once in Springfield and said he had never heard so much maturity in anyone as young as Schere. Herman offered him a chair in his saxophone section, but Schere turned him down. Schere told this story whenever he felt his integrity or ability challenged.
“You should have gone for it man,” Barry Levitt said when he heard the story.
“And play ‘Woodchopper’s Ball’ every night?” Schere said. “I don’t play that shit.”
“It would have been your ticket out of Springfield, though,” Levitt said.
Levitt had hooked up with Schere’s group through Hegpeth, the drummer, who knew a guy in the house band at Osage Lodge, where Levitt played. Levitt was looking for a way to stretch out on nights when he didn’t have to play at his regular job. He seemed cool enough, but Schere was expecting some country musician who wanted to play jazz. It turned out that Levitt had come to Missouri because he couldn’t find work in New York. He had called a college friend who now was a high school music teacher in Camdenton and worked in the band at Osage Lodge. Levitt learned the resort needed a saxophone.
“Crazy, the way the biggest zero from school becomes my best contact,” Levitt said when he met Schere and his group. “It’s been hard to adjust to hillbillies. They think Willie Nelson wrote ‘Stardust.’ Do you still call them hillbillies?”
None of the musicians seemed to know. “Goddamn hillbillies,” one of them finally said. They all laughed.
“Nobody says that,” Schere said.
The first set Levitt played with the group was a real shocker for Schere. He chose the tunes, all standards, and Levitt kept up all the way. Levitt had a smooth tone that betrayed no effort or strain. He rounded off his phrases smartly and heightened his solos with controlled shrieks and growls. Levitt knocked out everybody, even the crowd.
To calm himself between sets, Schere tried to remember the licks he was playing a few nights earlier, licks Hegpeth said he had never heard Schere play before. But they wouldn’t come. He fingered his saxophone idly as he sat at the bar waiting for the second set, and his fingers kept slipping into those familiar patterns he played night after night, patterns which always made him sound the same to himself, but which impressed his small following. He knew those patterns never would impress Barry Levitt. Distracted, he ordered another beer. There was no use playing any more that night. If only he had some excuse to get away — but that only would make him look worse.
Levitt approached Schere and made room for himself between bar stools. Levitt had short hair that defined the contours of his head. In Springfield, only a few rock musicians wore their hair that short, Schere thought.
“Hey, Pete baby, you’re really sounding good up there,” Levitt said.
“You think so?” Schere asked.
“Yeah, you got that double time under control.”
“Shit. The only thing I got under control is my liquor.”
“Hey — modest, modest!”
“No really,” Schere said. “I had some things I was working on, and now I lost them. I can’t figure out what I was doing.”
“No problem man, it’ll come back,” Levitt said. “The music is there, whether you play it or not. You have to immerse yourself in it, and you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
Schere considered how long it had been since he had talked about music in that manner, and said nothing.
“You know ‘Love for Sale’?” Levitt said.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s do that. We do that in our revue at Osage Lodge. It’s as hip as we get. Can you believe it?”
Schere thought about “Love for Sale.” He hummed part of the melody, then his mind seemed to go blank.
“I used to play that, but I forgot what key it’s in,” Schere said.
“You gotta be kidding.” Levitt gave him a funny look, squinting and showing his upper row of teeth. “You can play it in any key,” he said.
Schere stared at the condensation rings his beer mug had left in front of him. He hoped the tune would come to him before the next set began. He hoped he wouldn’t have to ask Levitt about it again.
