Kid Sterling

When Christine Welldon’s publisher asked her to write a children’s book about jazz history, she spent a year doing research, “trying to find a way in.” Her investigations took her to the cradle of jazz, New Orleans, where she first learned about King Buddy Bolden. Bolden, said to be the inventor of jazz, played by ear and improvised, creating loose versions of the blues, hymns and ragtime. Welldon discovered that Armand Piron, a white composer trained in the European classical tradition, and Clarence Williams, an African-American pianist, composer and singer, formed the company Armand and Williams which published sheet music in New Orleans in the early 20th century.

Bolden, Piron and Williams are only three of the many real-life figures who appear in Kid Sterling, a novel about an African-American youth who loves the music that surrounds him in 1907 New Orleans. Just 10 when the story begins, Sterling Crawford and his 17- year-old brother, Syl, live with their mother, a laundress, and contribute to the family income. Sterling, who is in school, is learning the trumpet and, with two other youths in his class, plays on street corners for pennies. His major source of income is his shoe shine stand on Basin Street where music pours out of the saloons and dance halls. Sterling shines the shoes of the great Buddy Bolden and asks him to teach him some short repetitive musical phrases to use in his performances. Buddy promises to do so but always seems to be busy. One night, when Sterling sneaks out to find him at the Globe Ballroom, Buddy invites him on stage behind the drummer where he can see and hear the band and the dance floor. There, Sterling marvels at Bolden’s improvisations on well-known tunes.

That evening, Sterling also meets Black Benny Williams, a drummer, pugilist and sometime jail-bird. Benny offers him occasional work playing in funeral parades. The well-known tune, “Didn’t He Ramble”, a famous, historic song about an escaped bull running loose in the city and ultimately struck down by lightning, is symbolic of Benny and several others in the novel. Sterling says: “Even if a man had led a life of crime...the preacher might say, ‘Didn’t he ramble? Didn’t he shine till he was unjustly shot down...” (An internet search for “Didn’t He Ramble” calls up renditions by Dr. John; Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet; Louis Armstrong; and Wynton Marsalis - my favourite version.)

Early on, readers may be confused by similarities in characters’ names. Among the real-life characters are two men named Williams - Black Benny and Clarence. There is also Willie Cornish, a member of Bolden’s band who went on to lead bands of his own and taught music for decades. Four real characters have names beginning with “B”: Black Benny; Buddy Bolden; Bob Bartley, a hot-air balloonist; and Billy Kersands, a comedian. Faced with these similar names, an author should find ways to distinguish each character. It would have been helpful, for instance, if Buddy Bolden had been referred to consistently as “King Bolden”. Sterling, Syl and Sterling’s pal Syd (Sydney) are fictional characters whom the author was free to name anything she wished. This minor irritation can soon be overlooked in this moving, realistic story about a child’s struggle to survive and make something of his life in the face of great odds.

Both Sterling and Syl want to improve their family’s economic situation, and, as well, Sterling is saving for a new trumpet. His work is legitimate, but Syl’s is not, except for his occasional employment as a stand-in drummer. Syl works for Paulo di Christiano, a wholesale grocer who also runs a protection racket and sells cocaine. Syl supervises the unloading of Paulo’s fruit and vegetable shipments at the dock and delivers cocaine to customers. Sterling disapproves of these shady activities. Nevertheless, the brothers love each other. Mrs. Crawford, who doesn’t know about her elder son’s criminal connections, says that music is the best way for African Americans to rise in New Orleans, but she warns Sterling not to idealize King Buddy Bolden whom she considers “a drunk and a crazy man”.

Author Christine Welldon says in her interview at the novel’s end that her “story would not be authentic if [she] didn’t bring in the rampant racism that pervaded in the Deep South and elsewhere.” Race discrimination was the law, and, on a daily basis, it ranged from the casual to the homicidal. Welldon paints a vivid, horrific picture of the system. One character tells Sterling that there’s a lot of work to be had in playing for funeral parades because, “Always somebody dying.”

Sterling’s misfortunes begin when he and Syl travel by train to a cousin’s birthday party in Plaquemine, Louisiana, where Syl also has a gig playing the drums at an outdoor anniversary party. The first ominous sign is Sterling’s noticing a black prisoner in chains. When the brothers are waiting at the station for their cousin to show up, a white official accuses them of loitering, which is against the law. They walk through town and pass a shop where two young white men are bullying a black man. One calls to Sterling and orders him to go to the hardware store and buy twenty yards of strong rope. The boys suspect that the two are preparing to lynch the black man, but they don’t dare refuse to buy the rope.

At the party where Syl is drumming, some local white musicians come to listen to the music. Sterling recognizes one of the bullies from the shop and tries to keep out of his sight. That evening, however, when Syl and Sterling leave the party to find their cousin’s house, this man, a local musician named Danny, insists on walking along with them, supposedly because the police are strict about black people out after curfew. On their walk along the railroad tracks in the dark, he tries to scare them by disappearing and then leaping out at them.

Fearing for their safety, Syl picks up something from the ground and tells Sterling to get ready to run fast. When the man jumps out at them again, Sterling hears a thud and a groan, then runs. He and Syl hide in the woods, planning to hop a train back to New Orleans. In the attempt, Sterling’s trumpet interferes with his grasp of the caboose ladder and he falls off while Syl stays aboard.

Next morning, Sterling walks back to Plaquemine and seeks help from Clarence Williams, a musician whom he met the previous day. Williams (a real person) takes the lad under his wing and gets him back to New Orleans. Back home, Sterling, thinking he’s safe, makes arrangements to learn musical notation from Armand Piron and takes a part-time job with Williams. Then a “doughy” policeman shows up at his home, searching for Syl on a charge of attempted murder of Danny, the white musician. When Sterling runs away to avoid questions, the white cop catches him and hauls him off to jail. There he meets Black Benny who coaches him for his appearance before the magistrate. Sterling is sent to the Home for Coloured Waifs for three months to a year, depending on his behaviour. (Louis Armstrong was at one time a resident of this Home.)

This is not the last time in the novel that Sterling gets into trouble over something Syl has done, but the bond between them is never broken. Throughout the story, King Billy Bolden is Sterling’s bright shining star, and he and the reader are filled with dismay when Bolden’s physical and mental condition appears to be deteriorating.

Thanks to Sterling’s connections with Clarence Williams and Armand Piron, and his ambition to write down the tunes in his head, Sterling’s fortunes change for the better, and although he leaves New Orleans, it will always be in his heart as inspiration. Kid Sterling is a gritty, timely novel that will engage readers of all ages.