Ham (11 page)

After “Rainbow,” I rose and took a bow as the audience rushed down the aisles, crowding the thrust of the stage to reach up toward me. I ran the distance of the proscenium, touching as many as I could.

As I headed stage right to make my exit, I saw the gigantic Jim Welcome sweating more than ever, practically translucent. He was giving me the old showbiz signal to
stretch
and was mumbling something I couldn't make out. I strained my eyes to read his lips: “She-e-e-e's No-o-o-o-t He-e-e-e-re. We-e-e Do-o-o-o-n't Kno-o-o-o-w Whe-e-e-e-re Are-e-e-e-tha I-i-i-is!”

You're fucking kidding me.

I knew that returning to the stage after my save-the-day triumph could only go downhill from there. I should have walked off. I should have said that it wasn't my problem. I'd fulfilled my duty beyond-beyond-beyond the call. But something deep inside me, burdened and inspired by my “the show must go on” credo, coerced me to return to the fray and do something, anything, until they could locate the diva and get her onstage. I circled back to the boards, but I knew that I couldn't make the audience think it was my choice.

“They're not ready yet,” I said, convincing them the delay was about production and not Aretha, to maintain her innocence. I plopped back down onto the edge of the stage and said, “Any requests?”

“A Change Is Gonna Come!”

It was my pleasure.

I sang a song from my upcoming album, “I've Heard It All Before.”

“Anything else? What do you want me to sing?”

“The phone book! You could sing the phone book!”

“Somebody bring me a phone book!” I joked.

A stagehand came out from the wings with a phone book, getting a big laugh from the audience and me. Why not? I was relieved to have a gimmick, a bit, something to take up some time.

I flipped to the businesses that began with
A.
I sang and riffed, musically commenting on each of them. “A-1 Auto Service” had a zippy jingle and “All Saints Funeral Home” had a wailing, soulful mourning vibe. The crowd hollered with laughter and then applauded wildly when I hit a long high note. Just as I got to “Cuyahoga Community College” I spotted Jim Welcome's enormous soaking arms flailing in the wings. He was signaling for me to
wrap it up
. Aretha was standing next to him, smoking in every way, and looking impatient, as if I'd kept her waiting.

I closed the phone book and said, “They're ready now. I have had the best time with you tonight. It was scary to come out here so late, with no music, but this has been one of the greatest experiences I've ever had onstage. Thank you.”

I stood up and crossed to the down-center spot and resang the tag of my song:
“If happy little bluebirds fly
 . . .
beyond the rainbow
 . . .
Why, oh, why can't I?”

I bowed and walked off the stage as the crowd roared. I passed Aretha and said, “They're all yours—Go get 'em!” I was still enamored but digging deep to remain respectful, because what I really wanted to say was “Top that, bitch!” However, I suspected that she would, indeed, “top that,” and probably wipe the floor with me.

Aretha Franklin was about to walk onstage and erase any memory of my existence.

Her overture began. I took a seat just inside the wings, two feet behind Miss Franklin, so I could study her every move. She puffed and shifted back and forth, waiting for her entrance. I caught my breath, still tingling from the oddest episode of my career. I took the moment in.

And then I took her in.

Aretha Franklin, who was all of 250 pounds, was wearing a pinkish tube minidress that was tassled from her ginormous, hazardous breasts to her vast upper thighs. No one in her court had told her this was a bad choice and that she looked like a blood sausage stuffed into a 1920s flapper Halloween costume. I remembered the floor-length fur she'd worn earlier and thought that would have been a better option. But it probably would have been equally wrong to flaunt a luxuriously warm mink at an audience who'd been standing in the hypothermic, polar chill for untold hours.

As her overture built to its endless finish, the announcer proclaimed: “Ladies and gentlemen—the Queen of Soul!” Aretha stubbed out her cigarette, pushed up her breasts, grabbed the mic, walked onto the stage, and unemotionally said, “I feel. You feel. The important thing is we feel together.”

And then the audience booed.

They booed Aretha Franklin.

She acted like she didn't hear it. The band started “Respect” and she went on as if it were any other night. Maybe it was. But I was sure that once that voice started wailing “
What you want, baby, I got it,
” all would be forgiven. Then, just as she was about to start the first verse, Aretha waved to the band.

“Stop!! Stop!” she said, shaking her head.

Barnum signaled a cutoff and the band petered out in a slow, confused melt of noise. This was it. She was going to face the elephant in the room. The big, pink tasseled elephant.

Then she yelled out, “I don't want to sing that song. I want to sing ‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life'!”

Barnum stood, stunned.

“You heard me!” she reinforced, and the band rifled through their folders to find the music while Aretha blithely took a drink of water. The grumbling, confused, occasionally shouting crowd went unacknowledged. Barnum raised his hands and an upbeat introduction began to a song that, to my knowledge, Aretha had never recorded or even sung.

The boos started up again.

And a solid third of the audience got up and walked out, shouting at her up the aisles. Black audiences are the best, most dedicated audiences in the world. They are also the most honest. And they knew. They somehow knew everything. And they were not having it. They were looking for a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Aretha cut her show down to a scant half hour, about the same amount of time I had been on. She sang four or five of her big hits, but the overture was the only true acknowledgment of her extraordinary contribution to the American pop scene. When she finished, the mayor came onstage and awarded her the key to the city. I was called out for a final bow and saw that fewer than half the audience remained. The mayor, Aretha, and I walked off the stage together with nary a word. Then I told her I thought she was the greatest singer ever and she mumbled a simple “Thank you.” As we parted to our respective dressing rooms, the next frozen audience was being hustled into the theater while the previous one exited, and I heard Jim Welcome politely ask Aretha if she could please stay at the theater. We'd be going up as soon as possible.

For the second show, I repeated my story about the airline losing my charts and decided to sing “Rainbow” as my opener, thinking the audience would be more apt to accept uncharted (literally) a cappella territory if I gave them something they wanted first. As I was about to begin, the piano player, drummer, and bass player poked their heads from the wings and offered to play. They knew what I'd been through and I was honored to have their support. They were consummate, magnificent, following my every move.

Halfway through the song, I glimpsed over at the wings and saw my idol standing, staring, one hand holding a cigarette, the other firmly on her tasseled hip. This was a major moment for me and I knew it. I was singing for Aretha Franklin. I smiled at her like a smitten schoolboy.

She didn't smile back.

I revved up for the big finish and milked, or rather
drenched,
the last eight bars for every bit of heart I could muster. At the end of the last note, which I held for about as long as Aretha's overture, I gestured the cutoff and threw my arms out and my head back. The audience gave even more to me than I had given them. Yes, I was showing off. I was showing off for Aretha Franklin, for the incredibly patient crowd, and for me. I was showing off to prove that I could handle anything, and that as long as I was honest onstage, it would all be okay.

I looked to the wings for Aretha's reaction in time to see her squash her cigarette under her kitten heel, gesture angrily to Jim Welcome, and turn away.

Her back glared at me.

I took a bow and was about to go into my next songs when I got the big
wrap it up
heave-ho signal from Jim Welcome. It was clear she wanted me off. Now!

I shouted my good-byes and left the stage. Barnum began her overture. I didn't feel comfortable standing in the wings with Aretha, so I went to my dressing room, shaking and a bit winded.

She hated me.

The dressing room monitor blared her introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen—the Queen of Soul!”

“I feel. You feel. The important thing is we feel together.”

•  •  •

The next morning I was assured by the front desk that the airport was open and traffic was moving in spite of the ice storm from the night before. I dashed to the lobby early to meet my driver. He never came. I called Jim Welcome's room from the reception desk. After twenty or so rings came the fumbling of a pickup and a barely audible, groggy “Ehh?”

“It's Sam Harris. My car isn't here and I'm going to miss my flight.”

He gently replaced the phone in its cradle, perhaps hoping I wouldn't know he'd answered. I called back and after another ten or so rings, I heard him pick up and clumsily lay the phone down on a table.

I convinced the front desk to give me his room number and I rushed to his door. I knocked! I banged! I yelled, “I know you're in there!! Answer the goddamn door and get me a car!”

I could hear him sweating.

He never answered the door.

I raced back to the front desk and was told there were no taxis waiting and it would take a while to get one. There was no way I was going to spend another minute in this fucking place. I persuaded the hotel manager to let a bellboy go off duty and drive me in his own car. We had to wait for what seemed like hours for the bellboy's broken-down Toyota to warm up while he moved piles of dirty laundry from the passenger seat. I thought perhaps this was his home. Not even the sense-numbing cold could block out the stench of pot smoke ingrained in every pore of the vehicle, and I wondered if he was high at that very moment. More so, I wished I was. The bellboy maneuvered the icy freeway like an Olympic luge racer and deposited me at the airport in the nick of time.

The newspaper carried a large photo of Aretha getting the key to the city from the mayor with an article that mentioned “the show was opened by
Star Search
champion Sam Harris.” There was no account of what had happened and I could hardly believe it myself. But 3,500 Clevelanders had been there and I found solace in their anonymous witness.

Back in Los Angeles, I informed my management and rec­ord company that I would never again travel anywhere without someone at my side.

I was never paid for the concert, much less reimbursed for my hotel and taxi costs. I'd also thrown in a crisp fifty for the impromptu pothead bellboy shuttle. But the money was nothing compared to the loss of my hero, my idol, my innocence.

I didn't want that to be the ending to my Aretha story.

One night, a couple of weeks later, I uncorked a bottle of wine and dimmed the lights and pulled out all of my old vinyl Aretha records and stacked them in front of me. I sat on the floor next to the turntable and played them, one by one, every song she ever recorded. And occasionally, I sang along.

Me and Aretha singing together.

I have a new fancy washer and dryer. They are front-loading, bacteria-killing, über-environmentally efficient, space-age works of uncommon art.

They have hundreds of options for every possible fabric in the world. You could wash and dry the Shroud of Turin in these things and it would be guaranteed safe. There are knobs and buttons and digital amber lights and delightful little bell tones that ping with each selection, like the sound of an idea, assuring that you have made a good and apparently very happy choice. They even have a “16-Hour Fresh Hold Option with Dynamic Venting Technology.” I don't know what that is, but it is a good and happy choice.

When dirty clothes are placed in the washer, the door seals shut like a vault—no “Oops, I found another pair of underwear to toss in.” All decisions are final. There is serious work to be done and it begins with a sequence of scientific evaluations. The washer drum tumbles the clothes for a moment. Then back the other way. Then it weighs the contents to determine the exact, proper length of each upcoming cycle for this exact, particular collection of garments. Then it stops again and thinks. You can feel it thinking because it's doing nothing, so it must be thinking. I imagine it analyzing the fabrics: cotton, wool, silk, Lycra, Lurex, nylon, rayon, velvet, mockado, crinoline, angora, chiffon, bombazine, spandex, chambray, crepe, duvetyn, rumchunder, tweed, twill, vicuña, grass, hemp, jute. Hundreds of options. I have no rumchunder and wouldn't be caught dead in bombazine but I appreciate the technology.

After a few empirical, apprehensive moments, the washer has specified the most minuscule amount of water necessary to wash the clothes and save the planet at the same time. It spritzes a fine mist so as not to surprise or shock the clothes. Then it tumbles again. Then back the other way. Then it thinks again. Then it spritzes with a little more pressure. Then a sudden brisk spit. After half an hour of thinking and spritzing and spitting, the silent drum begins to turn with more frequency, slowly at first, so as not to make the clothes dizzy, and then it commits to actual water, or at least the
sound
of water, because you don't actually ever
see
water and it could be another audio accessory like the idea pinging. But you can be sure that whatever water added has been heated or cooled to the exact, perfect temperature for this particular collection of these particular fabrics. It is so environmentally conscious that it can wash a large load of jeans with what appears to be little more than a tablespoon of water. Perfect and perfectly utilized water. As the washer turns, glowing lights fade up from within so that the proud owner can watch the entire hour-long exhibition from start to finish.