From TheHistoryCompany.com

“The Duke and the Dauphin” by Bill Minor (1987) From “Remembrances of Kalisa Moore” http://kalisas.wordpress.com/ Posted November 16, 2009      My name is Bill Minor. I became an habitué at Kalisa’s from the time I arrived to teach at MPC in 1971 on. I shared piano chores with other fine practitioners (Alan Berman among them), and even accompanied Michael Parks (of “Then Came Bronson” fame) one night when he dropped in and sang. I published a short story called “The Duke and the Dauphin” in the Kansas Quarterly in 1987—a story about two con artist musicians who showed up to play, pretending to be Harry James and Charlie Spivak. I wasn’t sure what Kalisa would think of the piece, so I changed the name of her place to “Boryana’s Café.” She loved the story, and portions of it were included in a very fine article that Steve Turner wrote about Kalisa, called “The Last Character on Cannery Row,” published in West magazine in 1989.      Richard Mayer, who played flute at Kalisa’s in the 60s (while studying Russian at DLI) and I were privileged—honored—to be a part of the Wave Street Studios/Livenetworks.tv “Memories of Cannery Row with Kalisa Moore” series, sharing reminiscence with her on the February 19th, 2009 program. I would like now, by way of written homage, to post the first two pages of “The Duke and the Dauphin,” for I think (I hope!) they catch the flavor of what it was like to enter the magic “space” of Kalisa’s in those days, or what I described as parting “the glass beads that admit one to this Casablanca close-to-home,” never knowing quite what to expect or what you might find on any given night.     The color of Boryana’s Cafe in Cannery Row is outrageous, like the place itself. It’s canary on a bender, mustard gone riotous, ocher seeking revenge. It’s the moldy pewter yolk of a very old egg. And that’s just the outside. The inside is catalyst for a Victorian wet dream. The walls are stained mauve bed sheets. Dripped glass chandeliers, over-sized mirrors, bulbous rosewood framing assault one everywhere. The ceiling–a collage of gold leaf, filigree cherubs and old newspapers–is about to collapse, and the clientele–carnival primped or tourist posh–sometimes (mostly about three in the morning) look that way too.      The owner? She’s an institution, larger than the place itself, commanding. sometimes even accommodating. If she likes you you’re treated like a long-lost son or lover. If she doesn’t, the reception is as dour as dour can be. I have been received both ways, and on the same evening.      Boryana has, or had, an open piano. She attracts some fine practitioners, and some not so fine. I may fall into that last category but, after several years of deserved silence (I used to play professionally) and much discontent with my current job (I won’t go into that but, believe me, it’s discontent), I found myself nibbling away at her ivories one night, to the applause of some Japanese tourists whose delight either spoke of their state of intoxication or their lack of familiarity with jazz–America’s one art. But I was having fun, and fun is mostly what people have at Boryana’s, an institution run on principles as close to anarchy as any paying operation can be.      I played a couple more times after that night. I used up what songs I could remember from dance band days–”These Foolish Things,” “You Are Too Beautiful,” “I Can’t Get Started”–but the attempts must not have displeased the Cafe’s matron. She kept inviting me back and even once (while arguing with a dishwasher who claimed he hadn’t been paid in three months) gave me a free fish salad. It was an elaborate thing in which, among the green stuff, selected herbs and delicious dressing, secret pieces of ling cod and squid were lodged. I closed the place up with a friend that night. Plus a fresh aggregate of Japanese tourists, a guitar player named Sam (who did all the old Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie stuff I love) and Boryana’s daughter, an unsmiling but stately female apparition. Stumbling out into the California Pacific dawn, across the street from the sullen wood lab where Doc once wooed Suzy in Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday–and resisting the urge to pee beside the parked orange hearse that Boryana drives to garage sales–I felt I’d just found a welcome home away from home. I looked forward to returning, and the opportunity came sooner than expected. Two days later I received an urgent phone call. It was Boryana. “Harry James and Charlie Spivak are living in Sand City,” she said. “Right behind K-Mart.”      “You’re kidding,” I said. “The Harry James? The Charlie Spivak?”      “Nobody else but,” she said. “And they’re coming to my place Saturday night, to play.”      “I’ll be there,” I said. “You better be,” she said. “Or you’ll miss it.”      I’d come to expect such tough logic from the matriarch so, when she hung up, I scrawled the date down on my calendar. Harry James? Charlie Spivak? They were two of my favorite big band greats. But what the hell were they doing in Monterey? And behind K-Mart no less! However, Boryana’s not the sort of person you doubt for a second. She’s an odd magic sort who runs an odd magic sort of place that makes you want to believe, again, in just about anything. People came to Boryana’s for some of the same reasons that others go to church: to credit what you would not credit elsewhere–such as the appearance of two legendary musicians. The cafe itself, its wild decor, made this possible, but so did the proprietor. She was a substantial gypsy with the glint of many night fires in her eyes–eyes that, when they fixed you, as they often did, commanded allegiance. They suggested that she’d seen her share of magic and that, if you hung around long enough, you would too. Maybe it’s the thick Bulgarian accent, maybe it’s just her size, but when she told me that James and Spivak were living behind K-Mart, I accepted it. Besides, I’d known too many up-and-down, here-today-and-gone-tomorrow, on-the-skids and quick-to-recover musicians. It came with the territory. It was part of the trade–a trade in which, whatever the catalyst (booze or drugs or the wrong kind of mate), nothing was less surprising than the sudden fall.       I’d also been raised, as a kid, on a steady diet of “downfall” classics–films such as Words and Music and Young Man with a Horn. In short, I am a sucker for self-destruction. I knew the price a fine musician could pay for providing others with incessant pleasure, not because I was a fine musician myself but because I had frequently been so provided. I knew those rare notes never came easy–that they were too often accompanied by self-neglect or even self-abuse. After all, I’d seen Kirk Douglas hit the skids as the young Bix Beiderbecke. I’d seen Mickey Rooney, portraying Larry Hart, go stumbling about in the rain. In such a world, little could make more sense than the swan song. the daily demise, of two more jazz greats. I decided to be on hand at Boryana’s to see it … [And I did--and much more over the years! Thanks, again and again, Kalisa!]

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