Half-Blood Blues

In 1939 Berlin, Sid and Paul Butterstein, the Jewish pianist for the Hot-Time Swingers, the jazz sextet that Chip, Sid, and Hiero also play in, take a trolley to a practice session at a local club called the Hound, which has been shut down for “degenerate sympathies” (79). As they pass a crowded square, they catch sight of Ernst von Haselberg, the group’s manager and clarinet player, as well as the owner of the Hound, with a woman they don’t recognize, who wears a headwrap. A Nazi party member gets on the train and talks to Paul, mistaking him for a fellow Nazi. Paul converses with him nonchalantly, but Sid notices his anger afterward.

Arriving at the club, Paul and Sid start a practice session with Hiero, who repeatedly requests that they rehearse one of Sid’s entrances, much to Sid’s annoyance. Ernst arrives with the woman Sid and Paul saw from the train, whom he introduces as Delilah Brown, a jazz singer associated with Louis Armstrong. She invites them to come to Paris to record with Armstrong, telling them that it is a chance to get away from Berlin’s increasingly oppressive political climate.