The summer after Maddow’s death, McKenna went into the
Lobster Boat, several miles down Route 28 toward Hyannis. It has a huge white
mock ship’s prow that points into a parking lot that runs along the highway.
Behind the prow are a lozenge-shaped lounge and a big, boxy dining room. The
lounge has a bar and a small bandstand opposite, which holds an upright piano.
The wall back of the bandstand is curved and contains a couple of dozen
portholes, each of them fitted out with a hanging plant. The piano bench is
flanked by carriage lamps fastened to the wall, and there are candlesticks on
the piano and a glass chandelier over it. The ceiling is beamed and decorated
with signal flags and ship’s wheels, and the patrons sit below in a comfortable
rummage shop furnished with sofas, director’s chairs, captain’s chairs,
overstuffed chairs, side tables, and standing lamps. It is three New England
parlors placed end to end.
This passage is an excellent example of the type of detailed
interior description that I want to consider in my “Paper Rooms” piece. Mindful
of Balliett’s penchant for revision, I compared the New Yorker “Super Chops”
with the version included in his great 1986 collection American Musicians. I
discovered a number of interesting changes. For example, the magazine piece
begins, “Some lives pivot on paradox”; whereas, the American Musicians version
starts with, “Like his friend and great admirer Bobby Hackett, Dave McKenna’s
life pivots on paradox.” The magazine version describes McKenna as “a
man-mountain, whose perfect proportions contain a massive eagle’s head, a
logger’s forearms, and hot-dog fingers.” The book version deletes “whose
perfect proportions contain.” Its description is as follows: “McKenna is a man-mountain. He has a massive eagle’s head, a logger’s forearms, and hot-dog
fingers.” The description of McKenna’s music, in the New Yorker version,
includes this line: “The rock-rock, rock-rock, rock-rock of his time becomes
irresistible: it is hypnotic, ecstatic.” In the book version, this is trimmed
to “The rock-rock, rock-rock, rock-rock of his time is hypnotic.”
The depiction of the Lobster Boat’s interior, quoted above,
remains unchanged. But another of my favorite passages – a description of
McKenna’s style, as he duets with Teddy Wilson – has been altered. In the
magazine, Balliett wrote, “It is a joyous, triumphant, foraging style, and by
the end of Wilson and McKenna’s second number it was clear that McKenna was
helplessly blowing Wilson out of the water.” In American Musicians,
“triumphant” and “helplessly” are cut, and the line simply reads, “It is a
joyous, foraging style, and by the end of Wilson and McKenna’s second number it
was clear that McKenna was blowing Wilson out of the water.” Adjectives have
been deleted from several other lines in the book version, as well. It appears
that Balliett’s revisions were aimed at making the piece leaner. I find the
American Musician’s version slightly preferable. But there’s one line that I wish
Balliett hadn’t changed. It’s a description of Teddy Wilson’s technique:
Wilson would effect an almost transparent pointillistic
chorus, and then McKenna, his left hand rolling and rumbling, would roar into
his chorus, and all memory of what Wilson had just played would be gone.
In American Musicians, this is changed to:
Wilson would effect resplendent chorus, and then McKenna,
his left hand rolling and rumbling, would roar into his chorus, and all memory
of what Wilson had just played would be gone.
Why did Balliett change “an almost transparent
pointillistic” to “resplendent”? Perhaps the use of the qualifier “almost”
bothered him. But, it seems to me, in scrapping “transparent pointillistic,” he
sacrificed an inspired description of Wilson’s delicate, subtle style.
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