Tales of the Eighties: A Moment with Mal Waldron [by Alan Ziegler]

August 16 would have been Mal Waldron's 90th birthday (he died in 2002). I spent a moment with him in 1983.

     “Look,” I say, pointing to a sign in a Greenwich Village club window, “Mal Waldron is playing.” Mal Waldron (when I first saw his name in print I thought it was a typo) was immortalized in the last line of Frank O’Hara’s poem “The Day Lady Died,” in which O’Hara recalls leaning on the john door of the 5 Spot while Billie Holiday “whispered a song along the keyboard / to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing.”

    Someone who performed with Billie Holiday and was written about by Frank O’Hara is within reach. We get a table.

     Mal Waldron is in the middle of a set, playing melodic bebop. I am transfixed by his eyes, which seem to float in his head, not looking at the keyboard or the audience but seeing everything inside and out, past and present. We can’t see his hands, there is only Mal Waldron’s eyes and the music. I want to lean up against the john door and briefly stop breathing. 

    After his set he sits alone at a table with a drink. I muster the courage to approach him. I ask him about the O'Hara poem and he says that lots of people have mentioned it to him.

    “Do you remember the night—when Billie whisper-sang only for you?”

    "It could have been a lot of nights,” Mal Waldron says.

Comments

[David Lehman]

Great post -- and the kicker is just right.