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Nobody wanted his handmade harmonicas; then Dean Martin played one and everything changed.

by Bien Tap Vien•

The morning had not started well for Dean Martin. It had started, as difficult mornings often do, with a room full of people who were absolutely certain they were right. The conference room on the fourth floor of the NBC building on Sunset Boulevard was bright and cold. Dean had arrived at 9:00 wearing a gray sport coat and no tie, carrying a cup of coffee from the cart downstairs, and the three men already seated had looked at him with the expression of people who had prepared extensively for a meeting they

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were not sure would go well. They were right to be unsure. The meeting was about the show. Specifically, it was about what the network called broadening the appeal of the Dean Martin show, which had been on the air just over a year and was doing well enough that the network was now very interested in telling Dean how to make it better.

There were charts. There was a man named Gerald Hoffman who had flown in from New York to explain that the show needed more high-energy segments and fewer moments where Dean simply stood at the microphone and sang. Dean had listened to all of this for approximately 11 minutes.

Then he set down his coffee and said, very quietly, “You’re telling me to be less myself.” Hoffman had a rebuttal prepared. We’re telling you to be more of yourself. A bigger version. Gerald, the people who watch this show watch it because they feel like they’re sitting in a room with a friend. The moment I start performing at them instead of for them, they’ll know, and they’ll go find something else to watch.

He picked up his coffee. I appreciate the charts. He was in the elevator by 9:17. His driver, Tommy, was waiting at the curb. Dean got in, sat back, looked out the window. He didn’t say anything for two blocks. Then, Tommy, just drive for a while. They ended up in the Fairfax district almost by accident, or at least that was how it would seem in the retelling.

The Fairfax street market ran on Saturday mornings along a stretch of the neighborhood that smelled of bread and coffee and old wood. Vendors with produce and second-hand furniture and things that had outlasted their original purpose and were waiting for someone who understood what they were. Dean told Tommy to pull over.

He kept his cap low and put on plain dark glasses. He moved through the market slowly, hands in his coat pockets, not looking at anything in particular, which meant he was looking at everything. The table was in the last row against the chain-link fence that marked the edge of the market grounds. Half the size of the surrounding tables.

No sign, no banner, just a piece of dark burgundy cloth, and on that cloth, 17 harmonicas arranged in a precise row, each one different, each one made by hand. Behind the table, in a folding chair with a green canvas seat, sat an old man. He was perhaps 70, perhaps older. His white hair was thin and combed carefully to one side, his face weathered and lined with a life that had contained a great deal of both laughter and its opposite.

His hands, resting on his knees, were large and thick-fingered. The hands of someone who worked with small, precise things,  carrying a permanent tension between power and delicacy. He wore a white shirt with a slightly frayed collar, a dark vest, trousers pressed with care. He looked like a man who had dressed for an occasion that had not yet materialized. Look at him.

His name was Carmelo Esposito. Born in a small town in the province of Reggio Calabria in 1895, he had come to America in 1921 with a suitcase that contained, among other things, his father’s woodworking tools. For 45 years he had made things with wood, furniture at first, harmonicas for the last 30, made the way his grandfather had made them in Calabria, by hand, each reed cut and tuned individually, the body shaped and sanded until it sat in the palm like something that had always existed and simply waited to be found. He sold them at the

Fairfax Market on Saturday mornings. His price was $25, what 3 days of work and 45 years of craft were worth, and he was not in the business of negotiating that number downward. The man at the next table sold plastic harmonicas from Ohio for $2 a piece, and Carmelo did not think about this more than necessary.

He was adjusting the position of one of the harmonicas, a slightly larger one in the key of G, walnut body, a piece he’d been saving for 2 years, when he became aware that someone had stopped in front of his table. He finished what he was doing, then looked up. The man in front of him was wearing a dark cap and plain dark glasses and a coat that was good quality, but worn casually, the way men wear good things when they’re trying not to be noticed.

He was looking at the harmonicas with an expression Carmelo could not quite read. Not the polite blankness of someone killing time, and not the performative interest of someone about to ask the price and walk away. Something else. Something that looked like recognition. “Good morning.” Carmelo said. His English carried the particular music of someone who had learned it as an adult, the vowels slightly elongated, the consonants careful. “Morning.

” The man’s voice was low and relaxed with a trace of something in it, not quite an accent, more like the ghost of one. “Did you make these?” “Yes. Each one by hand. The body is walnut, mostly. The reeds are brass, cut and tuned individually. It takes me 3 days to make one.” The man nodded slowly. He reached out and picked up the C harmonica.

Medium-sized, chestnut-colored body with a small geometric pattern carved along the side. He turned it over with a slowness Carmelo recognized. Most people who picked up the harmonicas handled them with aggressive curiosity, turning them quickly as if looking for a defect. This man turned it over slowly, the way you handle something when you’re listening to it with your hands.

“Can I play it?” he said. “Do you play?” The man’s mouth moved in something almost a smile. “A little. Go ahead.” Carmelo said. The man brought the harmonica to his lips. He held it with both hands the way you hold one when you’ve held one before. Thumbs underneath, fingers curved over the top, not gripping but cradling, and then he breathed in and played a single note.

It was a D note, clean and warm, and it came out of that harmonica the way a note comes out when both the instrument and the player are right for each other. Not loud, not showy, just present. Carmelo’s hands resting on his knees went very still. Then the man began to play a melody. It was slow and old, the kind of melody that doesn’t announce itself but arrives the way certain weather arrives, gradually and then all at once.

Carmelo had heard it before, a very long time ago, in a village in the province of Reggio Calabria where the hills went down to the sea and the evening smelled of salt and wood smoke, where his grandfather used to sit on a stone step after dinner and sing it so quietly you had to be close to hear it.

Carmelo did not move. The man played eight bars, maybe 10, then stopped. The last note held for a moment in the cool morning air and then was gone. He lowered the harmonica and looked at Carmelo. Carmelo was looking back with an expression the man had not expected. Not surprise, exactly. something older than surprise.

Where did you learn that? Carmelo said. His voice was very quiet. My father used to sing it, the man said, when I was small. We were from Ohio, but his family was from Italy. He used to sing it in the evening sometimes when he thought nobody was paying attention. A pause. I always paid attention. Carmelo was quiet for a moment. That melody is from Calabria, from a very small village.

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