Ptah Williams

YOU GOTTA SEE PTAH!

One night in the fall of this past election year I'd been working along, half listening to the music drifting back from my own bar, the lovely, bluesy voice and mellow piano sound of Beth Tuttle. Suddenly, I heard the piano erupt in to a high intensity firestorm of free-form jazz, the barest hint of a melody line from a familiar jazz standard, propelled by these fantastic, crystalline, finger-flying, gravity-defying riffs that swooped and gyrated the length of the entire keyboard. Now, Beth is a fine piano player who had been entertaining folks at Riddle's for years but certainly, this was not Beth playing now!

I shot up to the bar in time to see a diminutive stranger standing in at the electric keyboard, eyes closed, his entire body moving to the frenetic tempo he was creating with his lightning fast fingers. He commanded the keys, he owned them. He pounded, he caressed, he played with a frenzy, sometimes percussive, sometimes melodic, with a movement and a volume of notes - not the volume of sound, but the sheer number of keystrokes - that seemed impossible to be produced by a single individual musician. He would look up from a particularly intense riff and break into a big grin, then laugh out loud while he went on playing in a different direction. The crowd broke into applause, but quickly returned their complete attention to see what would happen next.

What happened next was that he did it again. This time the theme was a vaguely familiar one from a classical symphonic piece that I recognized but couldn't name, maybe because it was being delivered at double time with Joplinesque ragtime decorations that fit the baroque melody like a chrome bumper fits a '58 Fleetwood. He came to a crescendo, his hands pumping in a blur of motion like the pistons of a gasoline engine. The applause began again and he jumped back from the piano as if he might be unable to stop playing if he didn't get out of arms reach of the keys. He smiled, gave a little "aw, shucks" wave and ducked out the front door.

"Who was that guy?", I wondered out loud and a customer told me. "That's Ptah Williams. He's the best jazz piano player in town."

I was impressed. So now it comes to pass that Wednesday's are Ptah Williams Night at Riddle's. I'm really happy about it and, evidently, so is Ptah. "Andy, man," he tells me, "I really love playin here. I have a blast. It's a real mellow place, you know? Got good vibes. Spiritual vibes. I love playin here. Reminds me of playin in Europe."

So here's the deal for you, gentle reader. Every Wednesday night we do our regular thing here at Riddle's with the food and the drink, but over and above that Ptah does his thing in the bar from nine until midnight or a little after. It's the kind of show where you just have to wonder how in the heck you can walk into a little club on a weekday - no cover - and hear a truly world-class musician who enjoys nothing more than watching your mouth drop open when he lets loose with his pyrotechnical display of musical virtuosity that sweeps across the room from his magical fingers to your astonished ears. Believe me, it's worth staying up late for.

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