Tambourines to Glory Read online

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  The Colonel’s Dream

  by Charles W. Chesnutt

  The Heart of Happy Hollow: Stories

  by Paul Laurence Dunbar

  The Quest of the Silver Fleece: A Novel

  by W.E.B. Du Bois

  Pride of Family: Four Generations of American Women of Color

  by Carole Ione

  White Rat

  by Gayl Jones

  soulscript: A Collection of African American Poetry

  edited by June Jordan

  Voices in the Mirror—An Autobiography

  by Gordon Parks

  Contents

  Introduction by Herb Boyd

  TAMBOURINES TO GLORY

  1. PALM SUNDAY

  2. BLUE MONDAY

  3. VISIONS OF A ROCK

  4. NATURALLY WEAK

  5. WHEN SAP RISES

  6. THE CALL

  7. BIBLE AND BONUS

  8. POINTED QUESTIONS

  9. ENTER BIRDIE LEE

  10. THE FIX

  11. ETHIOPIAN EDEN

  12. DYED-IN-THE-WOOL

  13. LIKKER AND LOOT

  14. ENTER BUDDY

  15. ENTER MARTY

  16. THE DEVIL’S HAM

  17. LIGHTS OUT

  18. STRAY CATS, STRAY DOGS

  19. GOD’S MARQUEE

  20. STRONG BRANCH

  21. ENTER MARIETTA

  22. STEAK FOR DINNER

  23. LUCKY TEXTS

  24. SET TO ASCEND

  25. ONE LOST LAMB

  26. MOON OVER HARLEM

  27. SHOWER

  28. CROSS TO BEAR

  29. APPLE OF EVIL

  30. RASCAL OF GOD

  31. EVERLASTING ARM

  32. JUDAS IN SCARLET

  33. WATCH WITH ME

  34. ONE OF THE LEAST

  35. AS IN A DREAM

  36. JUBILATION

  Reading Group Companion

  Introduction

  Tambourines to Glory is an old-fashioned but modernized morality play or tale based in Harlem where good and evil tussle over souls. At the core is the tug-of-war between the “likker”-drenched hustler Laura Wright Reed and the stolid, God-fearing Essie Belle Johnson. Though both trace their roots to somewhere in the South, they represent the clash of urban slickness with backwoods purity and simplicity. Both have had their share of “no-good men.”

  It’s Laura’s scheme for the two women to get some tambourines and become street-corner evangelists in order to raise money to pay the rent, to buy “likker,” and to get rich quick. That Langston Hughes chose to focus on gospel and storefront churches probably stemmed from what he saw happening around him in Harlem in the late 1950s.

  While the civil rights movement was beginning to flex its muscles in the South, Harlem was still caught in the throes of an unrelenting slump where unemployment, dilapidated buildings, rampant racism, and police brutality combined to nullify hope and progress among most of the community’s destitute residents. The real-life counterparts of Laura and Essie didn’t experience the avenues of opportunity until the careers of New York political leaders like Hulan Jack and J. Raymond Jones fully blossomed in the 1960s. This was also a time when many singers were crossing over from gospel to rhythm and blues or rock and roll. Hughes makes several references to this trend in the novel.

  Laura and Essie are so successful at preaching that they soon are no longer on the street corner but are the proud proprietors of a rundown theater that they renovate into their church. As they prosper, the size of their congregation increases, attracting an assortment of misfits, including Big-Eyed Buddy Lomax, who seduces Laura (or does she seduce him?).

  Tambourines to Glory, first published in 1958, was Hughes’s second novel, though unlike his Not Without Laughter (1930), it is rarely mentioned. This oversight may stem from the fact that Not Without Laughter was written first and almost a generation before Tambourines to Glory; thus, it would appear on more lists and bibliographies than the later published novel. In addition, it’s possible that many readers and critics perceive Tambourines more as a play than a novel.

  “Did I tell you I’ve just finished a little novel called Tambourines to Glory about the goings-on in gospel churches?” Hughes wrote in a letter to his friend Carl Van Vechten. “Also made a play of it with a Tambourine Chorus and two women preacher-songsters, one sweet, one naughty …”

  This letter from Hughes to one of his literary mentors was written in September 1956. However, we know from Arnold Rampersad, in his two-volume study of Hughes’s life, that there was earlier correspondence between Hughes and his lifelong friend and collaborator Arna Bontemps about Tambourines to Glory suggesting the play preceded the novel.

  According to Rampersad, Hughes began working on the “drama” on July 14, 1956, and finished it in ten days. It was entitled Tambourines to Glory: A Play with Songs. In his letter to Bontemps he exclaimed: “It’s a singing, shouting, wailing, drama of the old conflict between blatant Evil and quiet Good, with the Devil driving a Cadillac.”

  (It should be noted that there are several places in the novel where stage directions appear to be vestiges of the play. Or, Hughes may have deliberately added them to set the scenes in a stylized way.)

  Whether the novel preceded the play or vice versa may be a moot point since there is no dramatic difference between them. There is a difference, though, in the time in which they reached the public. The novel was published in 1958, while the play, after enduring a troubled and delayed arrival, did not appear on Broadway until 1963, lasting only twenty-five performances. Most of the reviews lambasted the play, citing it as “slapped together” and containing a “shifting point of view.”

  On the other hand, reviews of the novel were comparatively generous. “As a literary work,” wrote Gilbert Millstein of the New York Times, “Tambourines to Glory is skillful and engaging—the consistently high quality of Hughes’s production over the years is, considering its great quantity, a remarkable phenomenon and the mark of an exuberant professionalism.”

  If, in essence, the play and the novel are the same, why would one be so woefully dismissed and the other praised? It might be the portrayals of the characters, the perception of the critics, or, as I propose, the play’s inability to capture all the humor, irony, subtleties, nuances, figures of speech, folklore, and cultural references that enliven the novel. Not only does Hughes develop compelling characters—and more than one literary critic has noted the similarities between the protagonists, Laura Reed and Essie, and Zarita and Joyce from the “Simple” tales—he gives them settings and contexts in which to express colorful language, and in which Hughes can show vital musical correlations.

  Thinking about the play, I don’t recall the wealth of verbal exchanges between Laura and Essie that abound in the novel, the sharp contrasts they draw between the black urban and rural experiences. Nor is it possible to capture in the play format Hughes’s omniscient narrator, who repeatedly invokes jazz metaphors, likening the tambourine players’ beat to the drums of Cozy Cole, or Eve’s complexion in a Garden of Eden mural to that of Sarah Vaughan.

  The novel allows readers to create their own images of the characters, and Hughes was a master at sparking a reader’s imagination, teasing us with hilarious concoctions, clever sayings, and memorable folks. Many of us know somebody like Birdie Lee, Big-Eyed Buddy Lomax, and Chicken Crow-For-Day. But, above all, there is the simple, lyrical quality of Hughes’s writing that never strains the reader’s credulity, to paraphrase the late Darwin Turner.

  There is no need here to overwhelm you with some of the more interesting turns in the plot or the redemptive surprises; I leave those for you to laugh at and to mull over. Just a
s Tambourines to Glory the play has been variously revived, now its predecessor—or successor, depending on the source—is being reissued. And it may be in the theater of your mind that this Hughes creation is best realized.

  HERB BOYD

  HARLEM

  DECEMBER 15, 2005

  To Irene

  Upon this Rock I build my

  Church and the gates of hell

  shall not prevail against it.

  ST. MATTHEW 16:18

  1

  PALM SUNDAY

  It was a chilly Palm Sunday and Essie Belle Johnson did not have a palm. Several of the other kitchenette dwellers in her lodgings had been to church that day and returned with leaves, sheaves and even large sprays of palm straw to stick up in their mirrors or in one corner of the frame of Mama’s picture.

  “I used to always go to church on Palm Sunday when I were a child,” Essie said, “as well as Easter, too.”

  “I seldom went,” said Laura, “and never regular. My mother was too beat out from Saturday night to get me up in time to go to church. My step-pa sold whiskey—you know, I growed up in bootleg days. My schooling came from bathtub likker, with some small change left over sometimes to go to movies, buy Eskimo pies.”

  “My mama always woke me up on the Sabbath before she went to work,” mused Essie. “Her white folks only gave her one Sunday off a month. She’d give me a nickel to put in Sunday school and a dime for church, then leave something in the pot for me to eat when I got back home. In the evening, Mama would go to services by herself and turn out the light and leave me in bed until I got teen-age. Then I went to church at night, too. I loved those songs, ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand.’ Oh, but that’s pretty! Let’s go to church Easter, Laura.”

  “Which one, Sanctified or Baptist?”

  “Where the singing is best,” said Essie.

  “Sanctified,” said Laura. “But you know I ain’t got nothing to wear to church. On Easter Sunday I should decorate my headlights proper. Man told me last week, said, ‘Woman, you got bubbies like the headlights on a Packard car sticking out like two forty-fours. Stop shooting me in the eyes that way with what you carries in front of you.’ ” Laura drew herself up proudly.

  “An out-of-shape woman can get by with some poor rags. But you got a good figure, Laura. If you didn’t put so much money into the bottle, you could get yourself some clothes.”

  “Girl, hush! Chilly as it is tonight, I had to get a little wine. Being Sunday, I had to pay more for it bootleg. There ought to be some heat in this old rat-hole.”

  “You could have got yourself a hat with what you paid for that wine.”

  “An Easter bonnet with a blue ribbon on it,” sang Laura. “Pshaw, child, by this time next Sunday I might have a new hat. Who knows? Maybe my new man will buy me one.”

  “If he does, it will be mighty near the first time. You one of these women always buying men something, instead of letting them do for you. You sure are crazy about men, Laura.”

  “One nice thing about being on relief is, it leaves you plenty time to be sweet to your daddy, have him something ready to eat when he comes from work, have your own head combed. I don’t see much sense in a woman working, long as the Home Relief mails out checks. Of course, sometimes I has more energy being idle than I know what to do with. Essie, if I could just set on my haunches and be content like you! You don’t even want a drink—just set and get fat, and you’re happy.”

  “I ain’t all that happy, Laura. I want my daughter with me. I get lonesome. If it wasn’t for you dropping in all the time, I’d be more lonesome. Sure glad you’re my neighbor, Laura, even if I can’t keep you company with no bottle.”

  “A few swallows of this and you’d forget about being lonesome. You ought to learn to drink a little, Essie.”

  “I hate that old raw wine, Laura. It makes me sick at the stomach.”

  “Your life is empty and your belly, too. You ought to do something. At least, get yourself a man, girl, somebody, anybody.”

  “A man?” cried Essie. “No! Not to beat me all over the head. I’m cranky. I’m getting set in my ways. And I been long disgusted with men, low-down, no-good as they are.”

  “Well, smoke a reefer then. Try a little goopher dust. Dope, nope? Live out your life, instead of just setting here gathering pounds. Excite yourself, get high and fly.”

  “Somehow I kinder like to keep my head clear. Even if I am beat, I like to know it.”

  “Woman, you sound right simple,” declared Laura.

  “Anyhow, where would I get the money for them bad habits you’re talking about, even if I wanted them?”

  “The Lord helps them that helps themselves,” declared Laura, shaking the last drop of sherry out of her pint bottle and laying it flat on the porcelain table. “Essie, don’t you want no kind of pleasure out of living? You ain’t that old. You still got breasts, legs, and what God give you. No fun, you might as well die.”

  “Sometimes I think so, rooming all by myself like this and living off the Welfare. About all I can do nowadays is ask the Lord to take my hand.”

  “Well, why don’t you do that then? Get holy, sanctify yourself. The Lord is no respecter of persons if He takes a pimp’s hand and makes a bishop out of him, like he did with Bishop Longjohn over there on Lenox Avenue. That saint had three whores on the block ten years ago. He’s got a better racket now, the Gospel! And a rock and roll band out of this world in front of the pulpit with a piano player that beats Teddy Wilson. That bishop’s found himself a great shill.”

  “Shill?”

  “Racket, girl, racket.”

  “Religion don’t just have to be a racket, Laura, do it? Maybe he’s converted.”

  “Converted about as much as an atom bomb is converted to peace.”

  “Longjohn might be converted, Laura.”

  “All the money he takes in every Sunday would convert me,” declared Laura. “Money! I sure wish I had some. Say, Essie, why don’t you and me start a church like Mother Bradley’s? We ain’t doing nothing else useful, and it would beat Home Relief. You sing good. I’ll preach. We’ll both take up collection and split it.”

  “What denomination we gonna be?” asked Essie, amused at the idea.

  “Start our own denomination, then we won’t be beholding to nobody else,” said Laura.

  “Where we gonna start it?” asked Essie.

  “Summer’s coming, ain’t it? We’ll start it on the street where the bishop started his, right outdoors this summer, rent free, on the corner.”

  Essie grinned. “You mean, in the gutter where we are.”

  “On the curb above the gutter, girl. We’ll save them lower down than us.”

  “Now, who could they be?”

  “The ones who can do what you can’t do, drink without getting sick, stay high on Sneaky Pete wine. Gamble away their rent. Play up their relief check on the numbers. Lay with each other without getting disgusted, no matter how many unwanted kids they produce. Use the needle, support the dope trade. Them’s the ones we’ll set out to convert.”

  “With what?”

  “With Jesus. He comes free,” cried Laura. “Girl, you know I think I hit upon an idea. Just ask Jesus to take your hand, in public, Essie. Then, next thing you know, somebody will think He’s got your hand, and will put some cash in yours to see if they can make the same contact. Folks is simple. Money they’re going to throw away anyhow, so they might as well throw some our way. Just walk with God, and tell the rest of them to follow you, and pay as they go. Dig?”

  Taking it like an impossible game, Essie murmured, “Um-hum!” But Laura already saw herself as a lady preacher. Besides, the wine was gone. In her new role, she felt like singing, and she did.

  “Precious Lord, take my hand,

  Lead me on, let me stand.

  I am weak, I am tired, I am worn.”

  She had a strange voice, deep, strong, wine-rusty, and wild.

  “Through the storms of the night


  Lead me on to the light.

  Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me on.”

  Essie was moved. “I knowed you could sing blues, Laura, but I never knowed you knew them kind of songs before.”

  “Pick it up with me,” said Laura. “Pick it up, girl.”

  Cooler, higher and sweeter than Laura’s, Essie’s voice picked up the song, and the drab cold kitchenette room filled with melody was no longer cold, no longer drab. Even the light seemed brighter.

  “When my way grows drear,

  Precious Lord, linger near.

  When the day is almost gone,

  Hear my cry, hear my call,

  Guide my feet lest I fall.

  Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me on.”

  “Essie, if I could sing like you, I’d be Mahalia Jackson,” cried Laura. “You’re a songster!”

  “Mahalia is a good woman. I ain’t,” said Essie.

  “To make her money, records and all, I’d be willing to be good myself,” said Laura.

  “It ain’t easy to get hold of money. I’ve tried, Lord knows I’ve tried to get ahead. Ever since I come up North I been scuffling to get enough money to send for my daughter and get a little two-, three-room apartment for her and me to stay in.”

  “Pshaw! For love nor money can’t nobody get no apartment in Harlem, unless you got enough money to pay under the table.”

  “Marietta’s sixteen and ain’t been with me, her mama, not two years hand-running since she were born. I always wanted that child with me. Never had her. Laura, I was borned to bad luck.”

  “Essie, it’s because you don’t use your talents, that’s why,” said Laura, looking at her portly friend with a critical eye. “All you use, like most women, is the what-you-may-call-it that you sets on, your assets instead of your head. Now, me, I got a brain, but I pay it no mind. I hope you will, though, and listen to my advice. Girl, with your voice, raise your fat disgusted self up out of that relief chair and let’s we go make our fortune saving souls.