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Chapter 89
"This sure is a hell of a party," the lead guitar player of the country-western band thought. "I just wish Karen hadn't been hitting the punch so hard."
Karen, the lead singer, actually could do pretty well for a country-western bar band. She had one of those thin, screechy, nasal voices that country-western fans kind of like, and she sounded a little hillbilly when she sang. But now, as she was trying to pick her way
through "Your cheatin' heart," she wasn't doing too well. Halfway through the song, she dropped the mike on the floor and raced for the ladies room, presumably to blow her cookies.
He glanced over at the steel bass player and shrugged. There was nothing to do but finish the song, and then he'd have to sing again, until Karen could make it back. If she did.
He was still trying to put things back together when a blonde girl in a really well-turned-out cowgirl outfit walked up on the stage, picked up the microphone, and said, "Hey, turkey. You know `Smoke-Filled Room'?"
"That chestnut?" the steel bass player said. This evening had been a loss, anyway, a total disaster, and now it was obviously going to be amateur hour. "Sure, we know it."
"Play it, then," Jenny said.
"Oh, well, what the hell, we're getting paid for this," the lead guitar said.
The band didn't know "Smoke-Filled Room" very well, and they were off key, but it wouldn't matter a whole lot, with some amateur singing. They swung into the opening strains, and the girl started to sing.
She wasn't more than about five words into the song when the lead guitar player realized that this girl really could sing. This brassy girl in the cowgirl costume and the big hat really did know "Smoke-Filled Room", at she grabbed the crowd right now. Karen, the girl
puking her guts out in the ladies' room, couldn't have handled that song like that in a month of Sundays, and it brought the crowd to their feet. Everyone was paying attention; even the dancing came to a stop to hear that bell-clear, husky voice. As it finally wound down, the room
filled with applause -- not the polite stuff that had been heard once or twice, but a thunder that filled the room.
"That was pretty good," the lead guitar said. "You want to try something else?"
"Sure, why not?" the girl in the cowgirl getup said. "Can you guys do `Help me make it through the night' without screwing it up too bad?"
"We can do that," the steel bass said. If this girl wanted to give him some lip, she'd proven that she could sing worth it. This standby wasn't something that called for a lot of beat, but Karen usually screeched it so bad that they didn't try it; she was better with
something with a beat.
"Take the ribbon from my hair," the girl started, in a voice so sweet and sexy and plaintive that it made you want to cry. The band swung into it, and she went on "Shake it loose, and let it fall . . .
A hush came over the crowd. There was something about the husky, sexy way this girl, and the steel bass player could see that there were a lot of men in this crowd that would have loved to indeed take this girl in her arms, and help her make it through the night. By
the time they'd reached the end of the song, she had the crowd totally under her control, and all of a sudden, it was more like a concert than a party.
It took a bit of talk between every song to figure out what to do next, since the girl knew a lot of things they didn't know, and they had a lot that she didn't sing, but it wasn't any trick to put together half a dozen numbers that were as good as any as the band had ever
done. The way she tied into "Goin' to the Twist and Shout" was awesome. Not only did the girl know what to do with a beat, she knew how to do it showy. She danced around the stage, body totally in motion, setting the crowd to clapping along. It was a tough song to do right,
but she carried it off like she did it every day.
To do it like this in Nashville, just once . . . what a dream that was.
"We better wrap this up," the girl said. "You guys know `Fever'?"
A couple guys in the band did, but not the whole band. "Well, fake it, and I'll carry it," the girl said.
The couple of guys that knew something about the song picked away at it, and a couple of others joined in, more or less trying, but the girl's opening notes brought the crowd to their feet with a cheer. "Why the hell would that song go over so big with this crowd?" the
steel base player wondered as he mangled the backup.
Finally, the whole band just quit playing, watching with wonder as the girl went on without backup, the crowd roaring with approval. That brought the house down; cheers rolled on for a long time, before it died down enough for the girl to say over the mike, "All right,
these poor guys have got to take a break, but let's see if we can get some of those great sixties sounds from down at the other end of the hall."
The crowd howled in protest, but the other band struck up "Proud Mary", and that was the end of that. The band clustered around the girl in the cowgirl outfit. "That was the greatest set I've ever been in," the drummer said, "And it wasn't us. You did great."
"Yeah," the lead guitar player added. "Thanks for digging us out."
"Wow," the steel bass player said, "The way you did `Smoke-Filled Room' and `Fever', that was great. You sound just like Jenny Easton."
"Thanks," the girl snorted. "I damn well better." She turned on her heel and was gone.
"Somethin's funny here," the lead guitar player said.
"Yeah," the steel base player agreed. "Karen would give both her tits to sing like that."
"Karen got upstaged so bad, she may not want to sing ever again," the lead guitar player agreed. "But somethin's still funny." He stopped one of the waiters, who was going by with a tray full of glasses. "Hey," he asked, "You know who that girl is? The one that was singing?"
"Her?" the waiter snorted. "Hell, I thought everybody in the building knew that. That was Jenny Easton."
It was several seconds before any of the band members could say anything. It was the steel bass player that broke the deadlock: "Well, I will be dipped in shit."
