RD-B was involved in a bar room brawl. He (very proudly) told me about it. When RD-B tells a story, he doesn't just sit still. He acts out the story.

I don't remember now where it happened, whether at the Village Vanguard or at the Ruban Bleu. He performed in both. He would do one set at one place and then race across town to do another set in the other place.

The brawl started when one member of a group of drunken patrons approached the piano player who was performing at that time. The drunk wanted to play. This was not allowed by the management. The drunk was persistent. RD-B approached the piano to help to explain the policy. The drunk pushed RD-B to the floor. "All hell broke loose," as the saying goes.

One participant was Burl Ives who was hit on the teeth by a swung chair. The chair broke into pieces. But Ives' teeth survived. (Ives's had played football in college.) Another participant was Melvene Dyer-Bennet who jumped on the back of another drunk who was about to hit RD-B.

The drunken group abruptly left after the first few blows. But Ives, apparently more experienced in these matters than the others, said that they would be back. Ives armed himself with a chair and stood guard near the door.

The drunks did come back. One had a kitchen knife that he threw at Ives. The knife buried itself in the chair that Ives held. The fight continued. Eventually the drunks left.

Not a mirror was left unbroken. Tables and chairs were scattered all over. Bottles, broken or spilled, were on the floor. Melvene tended to the cuts, scratches and bruises of RD-B and his friends. All the other patrons had fled at the first signs of combat. But a group of British sailors stayed. They thought, it seemed, that this was how the locals spent their evenings: there was no reason to leave.   

The bar manager did not report the brawl to the police. That would have been bad for business. The next night plywood had replaced the mirrors. RD-B and his friends were back to perform. Leadbelly was there, too, but he had missed the brawl. He listened to RD-B's account of the brawl.

"The next time something like that happens, this is what you should do," Leadbelly said. (He had been jailed once on the charge of murder. He had also been jailed for knifing another man.)

Leadbelly took a chair and held it so that its legs faced outwards much like a lion tamer holds a chair before his lions. Then he took a bottle of beer by the neck and smashed its base on the edge of a table. Then Leadbelly approached RD-B, crouching slightly, chair in one hand and broken beer bottle in the other.

From the other end of the room came the manager's anguished cry: "Jesus Christ! Not again!"