Ray was opening for the house band at The Caverns—The JFK Quintet—and he’d dropped by the table to chat. Ray was quite the hipster in those days…that night he sported a Post-Beatnik outfit, complete with a salt & pepper van dyke, a black turtleneck, jeans, and work boots…even a beret…and his style was very much apparent as he lit a Lucky Strike with a flourish of his Dunhill lighter.

 

            Arnie asked Ray what his set would be like that night. Ray took a drag and smiled…“Gonna’ be some of my tunes and some Be-Bop classics, maybe with a Brazilian thing th’own in just cuz it’s timely, you dig..?” He flicked a long ash with his middle finger and laughed. “You wanna’ sit in?”

 

            Arnie made a face. “Left my reeds on the dresser, Ray. Maybe next time.” He signaled the waiter, holding up three fingers, then over his shoulder, "I’ll bring my charts…”

 

            “That’s cool,” Ray said. He leaned the chair back on two legs and smiled. “Solid.”

 

 

             Ray opened at The Village Gate in New York in  1965 and we'd share a pitcher at the Kettle of Fish from time to time. I’d taken a studio-and-a-half on Jane Street and it was a short walk to Thompson & Bleeker where tourists went slumming on weekends  to look for Bob Dylan. Ray would be standing outside The Gate, smoking a cigarette and talking to the patrons.

 

            Ray loved To talk...

 

 

            A year later I was giggin ' with a jazz vocal trio at Paul's Mall on Boylston Street in Boston and Ray was headlining at The Jazz Workshop next door. He was doing his Bossa Nova Show and after closing on Saturday night we drove down to Wood's Hole and caught the morning ferry to Martha's Vineyard.

 

            The little island was quite rustic in those days…hippies hung out on the narrow streets of Oak Bluffs, artsy-fartsies communed in Gay Head, while The Rich White Folk kept to Edgartown.

 

            So we headed for Edgartown where we sat on the porch at The Edgartown Yacht Club drinking gin & tonics, watching the sun reflecting off Chappaquidick across the channel… It was a peaceful day…Ray was mellow…"if that island wasn't there we'd have a nice view."

 

            I was quiet for a moment. “If we had some dynamite we could blow it up."

            My grandfather blew shit up, man." Ray said. "In Mexico, mostly...Cuba too."

 

            I plucked the twisted lime from my drink and sucked on it. "Where you goin' with this, Ray?"

 

            He adjusted his sunglasses, crossed his legs…”Back about a hundred and some years ago Grampy jumped ship in Vera Cruz."

 

            "Grampy?"

  

            "He had beaucoups of cash, man. And left us all some. So Grampy it was." He rolled his eyes. “I’d of remembered him as Motherfarmer if he'd wanted us to, you dig?” He nodded his head a few times as if savoring the image he’d conjured up…"He fell in with some of Juarez's soldiers and they taught him how to blow bridges up."

 

            I propped my feet on the porch rail and watched a brown-skinned girl in a black bikini walk down the pier and jump in the water. “My great-grandfather was a blacksmith who loved women and Irish Whisky," I said. "He fathered eight daughters and dropped dead at forty-six."

 

            Ray laughed. "Families, eh...can't live in 'em, can't kill 'em and eat 'em. Whatcha' gonna' do." He finished his drink, ordered another round, leaned back, and closed his eyes. "Little Rhode Island Monteith. Blowin’ up shit for Juarez. Runnin’ Ol’ Maximilian out of Mexico.”

 

            Ray was off in the story now and I decided to go with him. "Little Rhode Island Monteith?" Only Ray could have that ancestor. "His father evidently had a sense of humor..."

 

            Ray smiled. "His daddy had twelve children and named each kid for one of the first thirteen states."

 

            Which one got left out?"

 

            "None of 'em. The last one was a daughter and he named her Fair Carolina. Two birds with one stone."

 

            I shook my head. "We need more alcohol."

 

            Apparently Rhody - as he was known in the family - turned up in Mobile, Alabama in 1881 with a big pile of money, a Mexican wife, and three unruly sons, the youngest being Ray's father, Zapata.

 

            Rhody followed Teddy Roosevelt into Cuba in '98.

 

            Teddy shipped his body back after San Juan Hill with a letter extolling Major Rhody Monteith's skill with a stick of dynamite. Except for that last railroad bridge over the Aguadores River. The only word that was inscribed on Grampy's gravestone was..

 

                                                                          BOOM!

 

            "So how'd you become 'de Ajan'?

 

            Ray looked around. Like he didn't want the word to get out. "Made it up," he said. "My real name's Ramon Q. Monteith y Obregon." He was quiet for a moment. "Don't tell anybody."

 

            "Who would I tell?" I smiled. "What's the 'Q' stand for?"

 

            “Quetzalcoatl. Now you know why I drink so much.”

 

            “I like it, Ramon,” I said, enjoying the moment. “Man with a name like ‘Ramon Quetzalcoatl’ could rule the Afro-Cuban Jazz Scene. Or maybe get shot by a firing squad in Monterrey.”

 

            Ray stood up. “Let’s get another bottle of gin and find a sand dune…” Ray always had good ideas…

 

 

            We crossed paths in Buffalo a few years later. Ray was on the road with Les McCann, playing bass this time. We caught Jon Hendricks’ Show at a club in Niagara and the three of us  wound up doing a My Dinner With Andre at a steak joint near The Falls. I remember the bar had Ballantine Ale on tap. It was a class establishment…

 

            I sat back and listened as those two icons reminisced about their days working with The Bands of the late Forties—Jon had been a drummer and Ray an arranger for any number of bands-until both made the transition into the club scene. Hendricks  developed a scat-singing style he called ’Vocalese’. His work with Dave Lambert and Annie Ross set the jazz world on its ear in the late Fifties. Jon was…still is…a genius. Ray was just a genius at being Ray de Ajan. He stayed on the road, did a little session work, but jazz gigs were drying up and he was just barely scraping along.

 

            Jon laid his fork down and smiled. "So how you doin', Ray? Still with the Brazilian repertoire?" He tilted his head, patted the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

 

            "I'm gettin' by. I saw where Dave died. Annie still in New York?"

 

            "Back to London. She got off the path, if you catch my drift. I'm thinkin' ‘bout putting a  blues thing together." He tapped out a wicked tempo with his fingers. "Sort of a one-man show." Then he sang…

 

            "Shap-de-blam. Dweedlee-ee-dweedle-daydoe. Sha-blap, blam, diddledee -ay-ay-ayyyyy."

 

            Ray joined in. "Shooga-dooga-dwa-a-ay...blapadee-blabadoop-diggedy-bebop."

 

            He laughed...Jon smiled.

 

            I was just happy to be there. Even though I had to pick up the tab…

 

 

            I lost track of Ray sometime in the mid-70’s. So many of the musicians in those days either fried their brains or died outright or made the transition into real estate or insurance…the straight life...but Ray just disappeared.  Gone like a train…            I heard he’d been in Paris for a couple years and sometime in the Eighties, when I was starting a family in Mississippi…Ray turned up in Australia doing TV with Dave Guard, late of The Kingston Trio…life's weird sometimes.

 

 

            I’d followed the music to the Southern Mountains, worked through some hard times...and finally settled in West Alabama selling real estate, the last stop for a washed-up Lounge Lizard. Late last year I was showing a house to nice little 1st Time Home Buyer when my cell phone rang. It was Ray.

 

            “You still playin’,” he said?

 

            “Playin’ what?”

 

            “Tunes, man!” It was The Ray Voice, older, croakier, but still Ray.

 

            “I’m retired,” I said. Played some local gigs with my man Ralph the last couple years but ya’ know it just doesn’t do it for me anymore.” I moved the phone to my other ear. “Climbin’ back on The Stand just ain’t no fun.”

 

            “You gettin’ old, hey?”

 

            “Maybe so, Ray. Maybe so…But I do still record.”

 

            The voice on the other end coughed. “You?”

 

            “Yeah, me. I use a ProTools Format. Digital. Play all the instruments, do all the vocals, and y’know Ray, I’m playin’ better than ever.” In a moment of complete madness I added, “we should get together and lay down some tracks.”

 

            I felt a pause. One of those longer-than-it-should-be time lags.

 

            “Yeah, Baby. Maybe I’ll come over and we’ll do somethin'…”

 

           

            In early January Ray appeared at my kitchen door with a beat up guitar case and an eighty year old smile. “I always knew you’d wind up in a ranch house," he said. “But it’s nice, man. Solid”

 

            Then he hugged me and looked around…“wanna’ lay down some tunes...?”

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