Thursday, February 28, 2013
Memphis Slim at the Trois Mailletz
In 1972 I was living in the centre of Paris in the Marais quarter in a tiny flat. The toilet was a half flight down, a squat toilet also known as a "Turkish" toilet and you had to take a torch with you when you went there. The woman I was living with, and whom I was in love with, had just returned in the last hour or so from a visit to London. I knew that the superb blues pianist Memphis Slim was playing at the cellar club in the Latin Quarter known as Aux Trois Mailletz on the Rue Galande. Leo Ferre , the great chansonnier, had performed there in 1948 , the year of my birth. I tentatively suggested , with no hope whatsoever of acceptance, that we attend this gig. This suggestion was met with a wonderful smile and joyful acquiescence. It was a warm evening. The cellar club was the size of a largish living room. Amazingly we got a table right behind where Memphis Slim would be sitting at the piano. He gave his usual highly professional performance and I was able to look over his shoulder and clock his extraordinarily long fingers dancing on the ivories as he played the blues. It was , for me, a memorable evening. I wonder if it is remembered in the same way by that woman?
Labels: Aux Trois Mailletz, Memphis Slim, Paris
