The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto Read online

  There’s a hint.

  The young blond girl with too much lipstick would have died had Frankie not done what he did. But he was too young to understand such things, or to even know he possessed such power. . . .

  My apologies.

  Up here.

  On the windowsill.

  I have been listening to a kitchen radio playing Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” into the alley behind the church. Did you ever notice how music sounds different played outdoors? A cello in a garden wedding? A calliope in a seaside amusement park?

  That’s because I was born in the open air, in the breaks of ocean waves and the whistling of sandstorms, the hoots of owls and the cackles of tui birds. I travel in echoes. I ride the breeze. I was forged in nature, rugged and raw. Only man shapes my edges to make me beautiful.

  Which you have done. Granted. But along the way, you have made assumptions, like the more silent the environment, the purer I am. Nonsense. One of my disciples, a lanky saxophonist named Sonny Rollins, played his horn for three years on a bridge in New York City, his tender jazz melodies wafting between the traffic noises. I would pause there often, on the girders, just to listen.

  Or my beloved Frankie, born amid the cacophony of ringing bells and clamorous destruction. Remember that night, inside the burning church? Carmencita, Frankie’s mother, had to keep her newborn child from crying, lest they be discovered by a murderous militia. So, lying together on the gray blanket, she hummed a song in his ear. It was a melody from the past, well known in the town of Villareal, written by one of its native sons, my brilliant guitarist Francisco Tárrega. Carmencita hummed it as purely as any song has ever been hummed, tears falling from her cheeks to the newborn’s skin.

  He did not cry.

  A good thing, since, within minutes, the raiders had reached the main altar and could be heard destroying everything below. They were drawing closer and would soon ascend the steps. The nun with the hazel eyes and the gap between her teeth was trembling. She knew the new mother could not be moved; she was too weak, there was blood everywhere.

  She also knew the raiders would kill any nun they discovered.

  She mouthed a prayer, pulled her tunic off over her head, and pressed her fingers against the flames of the candles, extinguishing the light.

  “Silencio,” she whispered.

  Carmencita halted the only melody she would ever sing to her son.

  The song was called “Lágrima.”

  It means “teardrop.”

  Of course, all this seems incongruous if you only knew Frankie Presto from his most popular years, the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they called him “the next Elvis Presley” and he made records that led to television appearances and raucous concerts and an iconic photo of him smiling in a tan sports coat and a pink-­collared shirt, leaning out a car window to sign the hand of a pretty brunette.

  That photo, used by LIFE magazine, became the cover of his most commercial album, Frankie Presto Wants To Love You. It sold millions of copies and earned him more money than he ever imagined during his childhood days on the poor streets of Villareal, where men transported oranges in horse-­drawn carts.

  But by that stage of his life, Frankie was an American artist with an American manager and there was no trace of a Spanish accent in his singing. Even his guitar playing had been pushed to the background. The songs they made him play, quite frankly, were beneath his talent.

  But I haven’t even told you of his first instrument, or the hairless dog, or the girl in the tree, or El Maestro, or the war, or Django or Elvis or Hank Williams, or why Frankie disappeared at the height of his popularity.

  Or how he died, rising over a stunned audience.

  Frankie’s journey. Such a rich tale to share. You show interest. That is tempting. I am always tempted by an audience.

  The cars arrive. The sun climbs above the city. The priest is still dressing in his chambers.

  There is time, I suppose.

  Let us jump right in then, as befits a man named Presto. Today it may be a word you exclaim after a magic trick. But it was once used by composers to signal my quickest tempos, bright, jumpy, and energized. Presto.

  It also means “ready.”

  Are you ready?

  Here is the rest of my child’s story.

  3

  EVERYONE JOINS A BAND IN THIS LIFE.

  You are born into your first one. Your mother plays the lead. She shares the stage with your father and siblings. Or perhaps your father is absent, an empty stool under a spotlight. But he is still a founding member, and if he surfaces one day, you will have to make room for him.

  As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it.

  And, as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up—­through distance, differences, divorce, or death.

  Frankie’s first band was a duo—­mother and child. By the Lord’s good grace, they had not been discovered by the raiders that night, and had managed to escape the burning church. But traumatized by the horrific events, the woman moved to the farthest end of town and never spoke of what she endured. There was great distrust in Spain during those years; you kept your secrets to yourself. When towns­people walked past, the mother lowered her head, avoiding eye contact.

  “Qué niño más guapo!” they would exclaim. Such a beautiful boy!

  “Gracias,” she would mumble, quickly moving on.

  The child developed a full head of dark hair. As the months went by, the woman noticed he would turn whenever church bells chimed. Once they passed a street musician playing the flute, and young Francisco held his hands out as if to grab more of me (although he had quite enough already, thank you).

  He was a normal infant in most ways, except that, for the longest time, he did not cry. He barely made any sound at all. They lived in a one-­room flat above a panadería, and when they went hungry, which was often, the mother would go downstairs and wait for the elderly baker to ask about her quiet baby. She would lower her eyes, and he would sigh sympathetically. “Don’t worry, señora, I am sure he will speak one day,” he’d say, and he would give her a plate of rolls soaked in olive oil. Occasionally she earned money from sewing or washing clothes. But the country was struggling with its crippling war, money was scarce, and alone with a baby, she could hardly work. Month after month, she barely kept them going.

  “Go to the church, let them help you,” the neighbors said. But she never did. She wanted no part of a church anymore.

  When Frankie’s first birthday arrived, to break the monotony, she carried him to the one paved street in town, Calle Mayor, and into Casa Medina, its largest store, to look at things they would never own. She lingered by the new strollers, wishing she could afford one. The store also featured a wind-­up gramophone, and on her way out, she stopped to admire it. The owner, a well-­tailored man with a thin mustache, stepped forward, noticing perhaps that she did not wear a wedding ring. He smiled as he put on a new shellac disc.

  “Listen please, señora,” he said proudly. The artist on that disc was a Spanish guitar player named Andrés Segovia. What he played that morning held the baby Frankie mesmerized. His head tilted. His little hands clenched.

  And when the song finished, he finally cried.

  Loudly.

  The baby’s voice was as powerful as a grown man’s. The owner grimaced. Customers made faces. The embarrassed mother shook him harshly, hissing “Silencio!” But his piercing noise continued, so loud it could be heard from one end of the store to the other. Another salesman grabbed a pi
ece of candy from a counter dish and pushed it at Frankie’s lips to make him stop, but the child waved his hands wildly and cried even louder.

  Finally, the flustered owner put the gramophone’s arm back on the disc.

  Segovia played again.

  And Frankie fell silent.

  You don’t need me to tell you the song.

  “Lágrima.”

  From that day forward, the child was never content. He would cry all the time. No hour was immune. No bed or blanket soothed him. He wailed louder than the roosters or the alley dogs. It seemed he was screaming for something he could never have.

  “Enough!” the neighbors would yell out the windows. “Give him milk! Make him stop!”

  But nothing seemed to work. Night after night he howled, even as fists banged on the walls and broomsticks pounded on the ceiling. “Do something!” “We need to sleep!” No one could recall a baby that loud. Even the baker downstairs ceased giving the mother bread, in hopes that they would find someplace else to live.

  Without aid, and with food so scarce, the poor woman was at her wit’s end. She didn’t sleep. She grew depressed. She ached from hunger and her health deteriorated. As winter approached, she caught a fever and suffered fits of delirium. She would walk the streets with a red towel around her neck, leaving Francisco to cry alone in the flat. Sometimes she mumbled words she thought were being spoken to her.

  One cold morning, with nothing to feed the child and no way to stop his shrieking, she carried him to the outskirts of the town, where the Mijares River runs to the sea. She descended a hill to the riverbank. A strong wind blew, swirling leaves from the muddy ground. She looked at the child, wrapped in a gray blanket. For a moment he fell silent, and her face softened. But then the distant church bells rang and his howling resumed. She threw her head back and exhaled a shriek of her own.

  She flung the baby into the water.

  And she ran.

  A mother should never do such a thing. But this woman did, tears falling from her hazel eyes and past her gap-­toothed mouth. She ran until her lungs nearly burst, and she did not look back, not on the child, not on the river.

  A mother should never do such a thing. But this woman was not Frankie’s mother. That woman died in the chamber of the church, draped in the tunic of a nun.

  Clem Dundridge

  Backup singer, the King-­Tones, the Jordanaires, the Frankie Presto Band

  HOW YA DOIN’? . . . YOU WITH A TV STATION OR SOMETHING? . . .What time they gonna start this here funeral, any idea?

  Me? Nah . . . I never been to Spain—­but I kinda like the music. Ha! You know that song? . . . Who was that? Dang . . . Three somethin’ . . . Three Dog Night! That’s it . . . What kinda stupid name is that?

  Shoot, I know. Where I live, funerals never start on time, neither . . . Greenville, now. South Carolina. America . . .

  Naw, I hadn’t seen Frankie in about twenty years. Just lost touch, you know? Most ­people lost touch with him, right? That’s how he was. I didn’t even know he was still playin’ until I heard how he died. . . .

  Met him? Ha! You ready for this? I met him with Elvis Presley on the Louisiana Hayride circuit, 1957. . . . Yes, ma’am. . . . Yes, ma’am. . . . Well, hell yeah, it’s a true story. I don’t mind sayin’ it now. I was supposed to keep quiet till the day Elvis died and the day Frankie died. But they’re both gone now, and I’m eighty-­two years old. What am I waiting for? I’m figuring to maybe tell it in the church. Are we allowed to speak during the ser­vice? It’s Catholic, isn’t it? Maybe they don’t let you . . .

  Right now? . . . Tell you what. You lemme have some of that coffee you’re sippin’, I will . . . Thank you . . . much obliged. . . . Mmmph . . .

  Okay. So this is what happened. I was singin’ those days with the Jordanaires, which was Elvis’s backup group. Lot of guys came in and out of the Jordanaires over the years, mostly gospel singers, some of them was ministers who eventually went back to the church. I was with them just a brief stretch, but during that time, Elvis was catchin’ fire. Every show was bigger than the last.

  Now Frankie looked a lot like Elvis, there’s no denying that. They both had them toothy smiles and all that hair, real dark, although Elvis was dyeing his, its natural color was more like reddish-­brown, and Frankie was a little taller and a little skinnier. But in those days, nobody knew Frankie could do anything besides play guitar. I’m not even sure how he got to Louisiana. Someone said he came from Detroit in the trunk of a car. Seriously. But he kept to himself and didn’t smoke or carouse, and if you don’t do that in a band, there ain’t hardly time to get to know you. . . .

  So anyhow, this one afternoon, we’re at the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium—­that’s where they taped the Louisiana Hayride, a real big radio program down there—­and we’re doing our sound check for that night’s show, and Elvis was out with a girl somewhere doing who knows what. Colonel Parker, Elvis’s manager, was so angry he was ready to jerk a knot in someone’s tail. The Colonel ran a tight ship, and he hated anyone being late—­even Elvis. We waited five or ten minutes, he kept looking at his watch, and finally he screamed, “Play somethin’! Let’s get going!” Well, you didn’t cross the Colonel, no, sir, so the band just started into the show’s first number, “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” and the Jordanaires did our background parts. But of course without Elvis it sounds kinda stupid, just a lot of “Whooooo, whoooo,” and you can feel the Colonel’s anger from a hundred feet away, his face is getting all red, he keeps looking at the doors, pacing back and forth. And suddenly we hear a voice singing the words, you know? And it sounds like Elvis, except it’s Frankie, up on the mike. He’s singing it perfectly. And I look at the other guys, thinking, the Colonel is gonna string this kid up! Imitating Elvis in front of the boss? I mean, you just don’t do something like that. The Colonel stares real hard, pushes his jaw out and bites on that cigar he always had in his mouth, and I’m thinking, Nice working with you, Frankie. But the Colonel doesn’t stop him. We finish the song, and all he says to the sound guy is, “Are we done here?”

  So we walk off, kinda shaking our heads, and I remember Hoot, the piano player, he handed Frankie a beer right after that, and when Frankie asked him what for, Hoot said, “Because you’re still in one piece.”

  So, okay, flash ahead now, about a month later, we’re on a tour of the Pacific Northwest with Elvis and we’re booked to play in Vancouver, Canada, in a football stadium. Well, we come to find out Colonel Parker is talking to the army about Elvis getting drafted. The army wanted Elvis to start his ser­vice, and the Colonel is desperate to get them to delay until he can get more recordings in the can. He’s got a million-­dollar tiger by the tale, and he’ll be doggone if anybody, even the United States government, is gonna take it away.

  So the army agrees to meet with Elvis and the Colonel, but it’s a secret meeting and it’s in Virginia, on the day we’re supposed to play in Vancouver. They’re not budging, because some big-­shot general is gonna be at that meeting, he wants to meet Elvis, and it’s either meet that day or get a draft notice, I reckon.

  Now, most ­people woulda just canceled the show, but most ­people ain’t Colonel Parker. He didn’t want to give up the gate from a football stadium, not for nobody. There was supposed to be like twenty thousand ­people there. That was big money.

  So the night before, up there in Vancouver, me and the fellas get called by the Colonel to come down to a little theater at midnight. It’s empty, no sign of Elvis, just a stage with all our equipment, and the Colonel is already there with—­guess who?—­Frankie. And he’s whispering, and Frankie’s nodding his head. We don’t know what’s going on. Finally the Colonel turns to us and says, “I want y’all to run through the show with the boy singing.” And we look at each other like, What? But we don’t say nothing. We do as we’re told. We play. Frankie sings. And sure as I’m standing here, by the
end of that rehearsal, if I shut my eyes, I couldn’t tell if I was listening to Frankie or Elvis. That boy was so musical, he coulda made a kick drum sound like a nightingale, you know what I mean?

  Still, we’re wondering, how is this gonna work? He looks like Elvis, but he ain’t Elvis, you know? But when we’re finished, Colonel Parker says, “Now, listen here. The boy is gonna stand way back by you. He’s not to come to the front of the stage, ya hear me? And no talking in between the numbers. Y’all just go from one song into the other. Fast.”

  Then of course he added his warning. “Any of you pickers tell one soul ’bout this, I’ll sue you so fast your head’ll spin off your neck.” He needn’t have said that. None of us was giving up the Elvis gig. We had a tiger by the tail as well.

  So the next night comes. The real Elvis is somewhere in Virginia, with the government, and we’re out in Vancouver, Canada, in a black sedan pulling up to the stadium. Frankie’s in the back, sitting between us, dressed in that gold satin jacket, wearing sunglasses, being real still. I couldn’t tell if he’s super relaxed or scared to death. I was scared to death, I can tell you that. We were told to surround him when we walked to the backstage area, and not to let anyone, not even the police, get too close to him. We hustled Frankie to the edge of the curtain, and I can hear the rumblin’ of the crowd out there. And I’m thinkin’, There ain’t no way on God’s green earth we are gettin’ away with this.

  But when we take the stage, we look at the fans, and they’re so far away, up in the stands, and there are these sawhorses on the field the Colonel set up, telling everyone they were for Elvis’s safety. We got a good forty-­yard cushion, nobody is gettin’ close, which is just how the Colonel wanted it. And it’s still kinda light out, because this is late summer, so the spotlights aren’t on, which makes it harder to see details from far away. And I whisper to Bill, one of the other singers, “What do you reckon?” and he said, “Clem, if it goes bad, run to the right, that’s where the cars are.”