At the Sax Summit, a Funky Bubba Chorus of 'Stand by Me' Here they all were, a couple of thousand people waiting in the Harlem sun for former President Bill Clinton. There were schoolgirls and workingmen, boys playing cards on concrete benches and seniors squinting from wheelchairs. A handsome first-grader posed for his grandfather's camera. A sharply dressed young woman licked an ice cream cone. A young man pushed twin daughters in a stroller. Clinton was moving into his office in Harlem, giving additional proof to the remark by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison that he was the first black President of the United States. "He got it," said a thirtysomething woman named Laurette Williams, from 146th St. "He understood black folks, and enjoyed our company. You could tell by how relaxed he was. He got the music. He got the culture." Some Harlemites were worried that Clinton's presence will escalate commercial rents, driving away black small businessmen. The chains are already here: Payless Shoes, Strawberry's, Lane Bryant, along with MetLife and Sprint and Magic Johnson's multiplex. Clinton will make it even hipper to be on 125th St. Already, whites are competing with African-Americans for the many splendid brownstones in the area. Clinton could make it hipper than ever to have a store on 125th St. and fashionable to live in Harlem again. Most of the people I talked to didn't see this as a terrible problem. "It's gotta be a good thing," said a man named Robert Jenkins, 42, of 118th St. "Harlem is already in much better shape than eight years ago, and Clinton being here should keep the momentum going." Another said, "If gentrification means getting the junkies out of the hall, I'm for it." Reveling in the Show As the local politicians began to fill the stage rigged across the entrance to the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, a small group of dissenters was staking out a position in the crowd. They called themselves the New Black Panther Party. Twelve men and four women, with a leader dressed in a kind of Salvation Army uniform. They looked like extras in a bad movie about the '60, complete with Huey Newton black berets, and the wraparound shades that Eldridge Cleaver favored in the years before he opened his pants shop. Four held signs that read: CLINTON = GENTRIFICATION (The White Takeover of Black Harlem). And when the program started, with various speakers introduced by the marvelous Cicely Tyson, they started chanting: "Keep Harlem Black! Keep Harlem Black! Keep Harlem ..." But although the heckling went on and on, Harlem had no interest in this racist rubbish. It was an old movie. At one point, when they actually started chanting "Black power! Black power!" one of the Women With the Hats turned to them at last. Such women have been the true moral muscle of Harlem, and arbiters of its excellent manners, since Adam Powell was preaching at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. The woman gazed at them with furious eyes, and said: "Shut up!" They immediately shut up. The rest of the crowd seemed to revel in the show. Women stirred the air in front of their faces with WBLS cardboard fans. Many moved to the music of a fine singer named Etta Jones, and a gospel group, and the Boys Choir of Harlem. The last group did two songs. One was "Take the A Train," the second, "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)," both by Duke Ellington. And I remembered an afternoon long ago when I was walking toward Eighth Ave. on 125th St., and out of Frank's restaurant stepped Edward Kennedy Ellington himself. Dressed impeccably. His pouchy, intelligent eyes glancing about him, smiling widely as he spotted a friend. That day I realized there was, after all, an American aristocracy, and the Duke was its leader. Forty years later, I still can't take the A train without seeing his elegant face. Now, through these young men, Ellington was welcoming Clinton to Harlem. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan), who suggested this Harlem base to Clinton after the uproar over the extravagant costs of an office on 57th St., seemed authentically joyous. His voice these days sounds as if he gargles with pebbles, but his remarks were full of laughter and eloquence. Clinton was seated behind him, looking younger than in recent memory, sunburned, the white hair tossed by the breeze. Hillary Clinton, New York's freshman Democratic senator, was not there; her mother was undergoing a cancer operation. When it was time, Rangel introduced Clinton as "the last President [we] ever had that was elected ..." and the crowd cheered and laughed. A Sustained Friendship Clinton's remarks were brief and good-humored, with a hair of seriousness. He thanked Harlem for being with him "on the good days and the darkest days." He said he'd never been able to play his saxophone at the Apollo, "but I have eaten at Sylvia's." And then added, "I ain't dead yet. I might play there yet." All laughed, except the guys in black costumes. He said we were living in "the age of interdependence." That meant, "We all need each other. We all need other people." And he added, "I don't want small businesspeople to be driven out because I'm moving in." Under it all lay the emotional debt of friendship sustained through good days and bad. The dark days of impeachment and Monica and special prosecutors seemed to have happened decades ago, but everybody knew what Clinton meant. In Harlem, they had special resonance. After all, the high musical art of African-Americans acknowledged human frailty long ago, while too many white Americans were locked into decades of puritanical denial. If every man and woman behaved absolutely perfectly in this world, nobody would have invented the blues. And so it was fitting on a day when Bill Clinton made Harlem a large part of the rest of his life that nine saxophone players would march on stage, the Harlem Sax Summit, some wearing hats, some gray with years, holding altos and tenors, and then begin to play. It was music from places where it's always 2 o'clock in the morning, and remorseful men push change around on bars. Clinton smiled, and then they went into "Stand by Me." And the 42nd President of the United States punched the air and began to sing the words: Whenever I'm in trouble, Will you, Stand by me, Just staaaand by me ... In that joyous moment, he really did look as if he'd made it home.