NIGHTCLUBS: This Is My Lip

Diners near the bandstand could hear the squeal of the buzz mute being fitted into the bell of the horn. The pudgy little man with the wispy mustache lifted the tarnished trumpet, looked right to the piano player, back to the drummer. Then Trumpeter Jonah Jones patted out two measures with a soft left foot and took the first three pickup notes of I Could Have Danced All Night.

The scene last week was The Embers in Manhattan, but it could have been anywhere along the big-time jazz belt that stretches from New York to Chicago’s London House to The Sands in Las Vegas. Slowly the tide of conversation washes back through the murky rooms, slowly Jonah works his muted way through the numbers his fans want to hear—Rose Room, 76 Trombones, Too Close for Comfort, and his signature, Mack the Knife. Throughout, Jonah juggles the symbols of his success—the bagful of mutes through which he makes his trumpet whisper and wail, growl, shiver and soar.

The Good, Happy Style. Jonah used to blow his horn open, and no man in the business blew it better. But Jonah’s clarion trumpet call sounded too loud over the tinkle of cocktail conversation, and for most of his career he was never able to make it into the plush jazz caves where the money lies. Then in 1955 he had an offer to fill in at The Embers, reluctantly agreed to play with a mute, and quickly evolved the “good, happy style” that has brought the crowds running to him ever since.

A superb technician, Jonah makes the weariest material sound fresh; he can float out a beautifully fluid legato with every note fully etched, or rasp out a low, “dirty” tone while keeping the melody under rigid control, or punch out a bright, high note and linger over it with a heavy vibrato. The arrangements are so simple that the customers, as Chicago Disk Jockey Marty Faye notes, “can sit at a table and chat and still enjoy Jonah.”

Out of the Pit. Success was a long time coming. Jonah was born roughly 50 years ago in Louisville. The son of a fireman, he had little interest in music until one day “I was standing on the corner, and a kid band was coming along, and I saw them trombones out in front. They were the shiniest, prettiest things I ever did see.” Jonah’s arms were too short to play the trombone, but he took up the trumpet, eventually graduated to the small Louisville combos—Tinsley’s Royal Aces, Perdue’s Pirates, etc. After that he “gigged around” with most of the famous bands of the ’20s and ‘303—Jimmie Lunceford, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Galloway—but eventually all the jobs seemed to peter out, and by the time The Embers offer came along, Jonah had been playing in Broadway pit orchestras.

Success has left Jonah with one big worry: that his lip will go. Blowing into a mute all night is a tough assignment, requires twice as much air power as playing an unmuted instrument. Long ago Jonah developed what fellow trumpeters call a “big-band lip,” but he still finds the going tough if he does not carefully pace himself. “These people come in with requests,” he says, “like I Can’t Get Started, and I’m thinking about that F sharp on the end, and I think, ‘Man, you can request, but this is my lip, man.’ “