Leo, a third-year jazz history doctoral student with calloused fingertips and a broken bank account, stood shivering in the alley. He’d spent six months tracking down leads about Club Seventeen. His thesis advisor called it a “folklore rabbit hole.” Leo called it his last chance.
The question is: what will you leave behind?
Leo slid into a booth. A waitress appeared, her beehive hair impossibly high. “What’ll it be, hon?” club seventeen classic
Leo’s hands trembled as he reached for the disc. “Can I hear it?”
“You’ve got the ears of a gravedigger,” The Seventeenth said, his voice a gravelly whisper. “Listening for things that are buried.” Leo, a third-year jazz history doctoral student with
“Black snake moan,” he said to Silas.
Leo sat alone in the booth as the trio struck up “St. James Infirmary.” The waitress with the beehive hair slid him a matchbook. On the inside flap, someone had written an address in pencil: 4327 Lowerline St. The question is: what will you leave behind
On the night our story begins, the phrase was “Black snake moan.”
He hailed a cab.
He took Leo to the back room—a tiny recording booth lined with peeling soundproof foam. In the center stood a Victrola with a ruby horn. The Seventeen placed the needle on the shellac. Static first. Then a cough. Then a single piano chord that hung in the air like a held breath. And then Blind Willie Jefferson began to sing.