The 4th Pip: Ronnie – Part VII

Our story concludes on the big stage at the Apollo Theater.

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186 Beats per Minute

There is a reasonable limit to the number of consecutive times you can play Midnight Train to Georgia, and our newly constituted group of Pips veered dangerously close to it. Even The Sandman lifted his chin off his broom and started to worry he’d have to go to work sweeping the four of them off the stage.

On the other hand, they were glorious.

Not that there weren’t practical matters to work out on the spot. For starters, it took several passes to figure out who should stand where. With David and Carolyn both north of the 6’ high water mark and Frank and Red well south of the heights on their drivers’ licenses, this took some creative shuffling. Red and Frank also both wanted the coveted stage right “4th” spot.

“Keep this up, you two, and neither of you will get the outside spot,” Carolyn said. Eyebrows shot up throughout the theater. Her bossiness was effective, but took getting used to. “Besides I need time to think. David, please tap dance, and keep them engaged.”

David had a single tap dancing move, one that his mother taught him. You may recall her post office hunched over run in place windmill arms. David added an athletic variation in tempo to it. His version began raindrop slow at 48 bpm, steadily accelerated to 120 bpm outside your rosin circle, and at 186 bpm culminated in what Carolyn aptly called the runaway roller skater. It was a show stopper, but not necessarily in a masterful way.

Still, David’s tap dancing kept the audience engaged, required no backing music, and bought Carolyn time to rejigger positions.

She tried tall on the outside and short inside.

“Fangs,” Carolyn announced.

They tried tall inside and short outside.

“Baby teeth.”

She was stuck. In the end, Frank had to step in. He was even bossier than Carolyn. By a show of Midnight Train to Georgia horn pulls, Frank had the audience whoo-hoo their way to the final arrangement. This perhaps not surprisingly situated him in the coveted stage right spot, then Carolyn, then Red with David parked behind Gladys’ empty microphone stand.

Truth be told, the audience would have taken any arrangement. They were primarily concerned about David, because he was hitting a breakneck 186 beats per minute and drifting sideways.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Whips** with two asterisks,” announced Carolyn with a broad sweep of her arm and a deep Musketeer bow for some reason.

Frozen Tiptoes

“Hey, you know everybody’s talking about the good old days, the good old days…”

Gladys Knight’s empty microphone stand began to speak. The audience stared at the microphone stand. The Whips** stared at it. The Sandman stared at it.

The offstage voice was Frank’s interviewer, The Himalayan Cat Lady, a marginally friendlier nickname than her day-to-day name The Bulldog.

She was reciting the opening monologue to The Way We Were/Try to Remember, possibly the best thing that happened in the year 1974. This live recording reached the divine pinnacle of the Gladys Knight & the Pips catalog, a signature song, a legacy song, a song that shall-not-be-covered-by-anyone-else-ever-not-even-in-an-abbreviated-medley. The Way We Were/Try to Remember is and forever shall remain reserved for the Empress of Song. All of which is to say that The Bulldog Cat Lady had stepped into dangerous, dangerous territory.

“As bad as we think they are, these will become the good old days for our children…”

David found matching choreography immediately. He began to sweep the floor with an imaginary broom. (He liked to sweep.) Within moments, the four of them joined in, sweeping in perfect unison.

sweep #1 backwards fred astaire apex arm lift, front slide, michael jackson on frozen tiptoes…

“The grass was greener, the skies were bluer and smiles were…”

Wait for it…

michael jackson still on frozen tiptoes…

The entire audience lifted up onto their own toes like marionettes.

Holding, holding, holding…

Smiles were, smiles were, smiles were…

“… bright,” she finished.

Release. Plop.

Wow.

Sing, Girl, Sing

This milk and honey moment was followed by an ungodly brouhaha in the wings.

“Don’t you dare push me with that dirty old broom.”

The Sandman was sweeping The Bulldog from the wings onto the stage. This had to be a first for the Apollo Theater’s human gong. But if there was one thing The Sandman knew how to do it was to sweep singers in the opposite direction from where they wanted to go.

“I’ll sing from where I please,” The Bulldog said, but she was losing the battle, walking backwards, and stomping, grimacing, and pumping her shoulders up and down. “Pistoning,” you might say, as she began the lyrics to The Way We Were.

“Can it be it was all so simple then? Or has time rewritten every line…”

Exquisite vocally, but for all the reasons we’ve previously covered, the contortions and flailing made for tough sledding with an Apollo Theater audience. Predictable nervous laughter ripped through the crowd and only escalated from there — as it had from her very first performance in her apartment hallway.

Nevertheless, The Whips** continued to dance. They swept left, swept right, astaire apex, michael jackson tiptoes. The four were momentarily thrown by The Bulldog’s spastic movements and grimacing, but they gamely recovered.

As for the audience, they’d moved from nervous laughter to the beginning of the “doing impressions phase” with encourage-them howling.

“Tell me… would we? … could we?” she sang, her voice trailed off, and then she stopped, suddenly, cold.

The mockery had at long last become too much for her.

The Bulldog turned to look back at the four Whips** that could have been, but never would be, her own Pips. Her brief dream while standing in the wings moments before was ridiculous.

“Of course it was ridiculous,” she reminded herself in a whisper.

Her body softened into defeat, her head fell, her shoulders sagged. The Way We Were line cues for the remainder of the first verse came and went in silence.

When the Chainsmokers reached the second verse, she rallied one last time. She stomped her feet and thrust her shoulders up and down like a petulant child, and made horrible faces, but still she produced no sound.

She couldn’t do it.

She couldn’t sing.

“Sing, girl, sing,” she whispered to herself, but she had run out of fight.

Everyone.

It was Wilfred Frank who heard her whispering.

“Sing, girl, sing,” he began to whisper hoarsely under his breath as he swept. “Sing, girl, sing. Come on, now.”

Still she did not move. Wilfred looked with panic to Red who seemed like he could do something here. The boy seemed good like that.

Red nodded affirmatively.

It was Red’s genius, and, as much as he didn’t like the phrase, it was his “sensitive side” that unlocked the moment. At the tippy-tip summit of the michael jackson on tiptoe freeze, Red let loose a two bar C# for the ages with the word “sing…” and before the Whips** heels hit the ground, they sang “sing, girl, sing” in four-part-harmony.

That’s what tipped her over. All she needed were Pips. Her own Pips.

Everyone needs their own Pips.

She looked up to face her audience, but at peace now, without even a trace of fight. She was somewhere beyond bravery.

She didn’t care if everyone in the audience of the most important stage in the world laughed at her. She would sing her song with her Pips. Because otherwise, she really didn’t know what she would do with all of the sound inside herself.

And The Bulldog began to piston. And shake. And convulse.

“Sing, girl, sing,” sang her Pips in four-part harmony.

And out came that golden voice. Gladys was in the room, but more than Gladys now. Even Gladys would have told you that there is — theoretically anyway — room for two Empresses of Soul.

“Memories…. light the corners of my mind…”

The laughter, of course, did not go away. It was what it always was. But this time The Bulldog could not be stopped. She sang for everyone who’d ever been swept off of a stage, any stage, which, burly as she was, was a lot to carry on a single person’s shoulders.

“Can it be it was all so simple then? Or has time rewritten every line?”

(She no longer cared one way or the other.)

Let them howl.

She was free.

An Akimbo-Plié

It was Carolyn that broke imaginary broom sweep formation. She stopped sweeping right smack in the middle of the final verse.

She rubbed her chin. She looked to the floor, she looked to the ceiling, and then, with great seriousness, looked at The Bulldog pistoning and shaking.

And she bowed her head a second time and rubbed her chin some more, and again she looked at The Bulldog pistoning and shaking. Then she looked at the audience for an even longer time and listened to them howling, and at last she solved whatever puzzle it was she was working.

She got back into the imaginary broom sweep formation, and began pumping herself up and down on her toes, knees sideways, elbows out, like an akimbo-plié, or possibly, say, an engine piston. Carolyn knew a thing or two about awkward bodies.

Up and down she pumped, faster and faster. Then all four Whips** began to piston together with near-automotive precision. Fangs up and baby teeth down. Then vice versa. You couldn’t say it was pretty.

They shook with The Bulldog.

They convulsed with her.

They trembled and seized and grimaced with her.

And just like one violin by itself can be pretty unpleasant and screechy, somehow five violins screeching together can make for quite the string section.

The Bulldog had no idea what was going on behind her, but the audience was no longer mocking her. Their world had flipped inside out. Bless their hearts, but audiences are always the last to get it.

Now they cheered for her shoulder pumping and her face grimacing and her hand trembling. They cheered for the Whips** that carried her, supported her, pistoned and shook and convulsed behind her.

And the more out of formation the Whips** fell, and the harder they shook, and the higher they pumped, and the more they trembled and seized and pistoned and waved their arms, the more beautiful their sound became.

The five of them became a gushing engine of balladry.

A Pure, Tremolo-Free Run

As for the audience, it was, of course, inevitable.

Their own pistoning started in the balcony and spread like wildfire until the mezzanine and orchestra and box seats were also pounding and trembling and seizing.

And when every last Apollo Theater audience member surrendered into spastic motion, the very last-man-standing, the Chainsmoker drummer, succumbed to the spirit with a resounding crash on the ride cymbal that knocked its stand over.

At that precise moment, The Bulldog’s body fell completely still.

Not a twitch.

And she sang into her stillness while the world trembled and gyrated about her.

She let loose a single, glorious, never-to-happen-again-not-even-one-single-time pure, tremolo-free run.

“Oh, it’s the laughter we will remember, whenever we remember…. the way we were,” she sang.

Of course, that had to be the line.

Amen

When the long silence faded and the spirit settled in the hall, no one, not even Carolyn, knew what to do. Red took the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Red said in his lowest Carolyn voice. “I am proud to introduce…”

He realized he had no idea what The Bulldog’s name was. He leaned over to her, and she told him, but with considerable attitude. To be honest, even seconds after all of this, there was already more than a bit of Bulldog restored in her. Rehearsals were going to be interesting.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Red repeated. “I am proud to introduce…”

“Ronnie…”

Holding, holding, holding…

“Ronnie & The Whips**.”

Ronnie was The Bulldog’s true name, the name only her mother used, a name she barely answered to anymore, but there it was out in the wild again.

The Handle of an Old Broom

“No, no, no, and no,” said Frank.

And when you thought he was finished, he said it again. “No.”

“Ronnie & The Bips!” corrected Wilfred, stabbing his finger in the air, at the fine borderline with outright yelling. He had no patience with the direction the group’s name was heading. “I spent my whole life being an asterisk, and I certainly ain’t a Whip.”

A fair point.

“Then Bips it is with two asterisks,” chimed in David looking towards Carolyn and Red with a hint of “how do you like them apples?” He’d proposed this exact name months ago, but had been outvoted 2:1.

“We’re asterisks! We’re asterisks!” Carolyn cried out with something approaching joy.

“I have no intrinsic objection,” Red said, formally as always. Then he completed his trademark mic kick-down #8, toe bounce leverage pop, mic snap back, snap mic pass left, snap mic pass right, eyes stage right #2b and…

… Elvis freeze.

“Amen,” cried the balcony.

“Amen,” yelled the mezzanine.

“Amen,” whispered The Sandman, who had taken his place again in the wings.

The Sandman looked out towards the stage with the side of his face pressed softly onto his folded hands at the top of his broom.

And, thoughtfully, while looking at the tall handsome tap dancer, he rubbed his thumb over a serrated $2 stamp of migratory birds. It was a stamp that he had pasted — long, long ago — onto the handle of his old broom.

The 4th Pip Song List:

Please bow. A jewel for the ages. This is the actual live performance that became the recording of The Way We Were/Try to Remember.

Listen to the original recording of Neither One of Us. It’s like listening to yourself falling in love. Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)

This has the solid gold Whoo-hoo. The Pips in this video are so great.

And a tiny bit of trivia if you read this far: this entire piece was inspired by the backup in this song. I noticed that she’s singing her heart out about this guy, and they aren’t quite there with her. They aren’t so sure about him, ever so faintly drifting into sarcasm. 14 thousand words later you are ready this. Midnight Train to Georgia

Omg, she is so cute here I want to tickle her. Heard it through the Grapevine

For my mother, Gail Westgate, who brought her love for Gladys Knight & The Pips into our home and hearts.