Category: Jazz

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The music in the audio version of the poem is “Buddy Bolden’s Blues” performed by Sidney Bechet.

I never heard Buddy Bolden say a goddamned thing

never saw Count Basie swing
never felt Duke love me madly
never heard Prez bend a note so sadly
never saw Miles though I was alive
never watched Mingus struggle to survive
never danced round and round with Monk
never moved to Lockjaw’s roundhouse funk
never smelled the flower in Billie’s hair
never tasted Coltrane’s thickly burning air
never swung my girl to Chick Webb’s drums
never stared amazed at Tatum’s thumbs
never laughed as Ella made up the words
never cried as Lacy called down the birds
never asked Jackie what made him tick
never nursed Charlie when he was sick
never bopped when Dizzy beed
never copped what Dexter’d need
never thought they had it made
never forget a note they played

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More photos:

I had the pleasure tonight of performing a featured poetry set with the Poets Jazz Trio — poet Dan Wilcox on saxophone and percussion, poet Tom Corrado on bass, and me reading my poems and playing saxophone and percussion. We played as part of the Dan’s Third Thursday Poetry Series at the Social Justice Center in Albany. Many fine poets came out for the open mic and it was a joy to see them all. In this post, you’ll find photos from the event taken by poet Alan Catlin, along with an audio recording of the set that you can listen to with the player at the top of this post.

Thanks to Dan and Tom, and to Jason Parker of oneworkingmusician.com for his transcription assistance.

Tonight’s show was dedicated to the late jazz organist Gene Ludwig and to his wife, Pattye.

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Art Pepper is my favorite alto saxophonist and one of my favorite musicians, period. I wrote this while listening to Stuttgart May 25, 1981 – Unreleased Art Vol. V. Art’s wife, Laurie, has been on The Jazz Session twice. If you’d like to learn more about Art, please listen to her appearances in 2007 and 2009.

The Truth About Art Pepper

Art’s life is Synanonymous with art, the making of
with the alto saxophone, the playing of
with Ginsberg’s angel-headed hipsters, the slaying of

Art’s sound is a soaring cry that no bird of prey can outshine
he is a misty-morning muezzin atop the minaret calling the faithful
to the temple of pure emotion, architecture without artifice

Art is the inmate released, outpouring pent-up desire
archetype of the madness that bound those bound by the 50s
survivor of the plain old lives that crashed in the purple mountains

Art for Art’s sake, one foot hokey-pokeying on the ledge
the people like ants – aren’t they always? – far below
(although Art was never one to put himself above the people)

Art could play a ballad like he had Cupid’s arrow lodged between his ribs
could play the blues like he’d been struck down on a dusty road
could blaze like the nucleus of the sun, irradiating the audience with love

Art was the original Comeback Kid, cutman in his corner dabbing
his sweaty brow with a towel, handing him a new reed soaked
in the jar of blood and guts beside the ring

Art could take a punch, roll with it, let the kinetic energy of the blow
travel from his gut to his spine, slide up to his brain
there to spark the next invention, the next flight of fancy

Art is beauty and beauty is truth and therefore Art was the truth
he was the news that stays news, the last dispatch from the battlefront
Art could make the shooting stop, could arrest breath and pause time

Art’s most magical reality was that he was purely human
not carved from marble by a holy sculptor with a careful eye
but made from the same clay as we all, gifted with the breath of music

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A poem dedicated to the jazz musician Sun Ra, written after reading an article by Nate Chinen.

to swing you in the arms of the stars

you don’t need a rocket to get there
there wouldn’t be any there there if you got there
anyway

but HE would be there in a long robe
dime store rhinestones a glittering milky way
HE is a high priest with a congregation of everyone

arms lifted to create a horizon, the sun medallion
set into HIS space pope’s mitre
your eyelids are getting heavy, it’s all getting heavy

doo-wop be-bop swing and free
Space Is The Place for you and me
and HE and we and Muhammad Ali

the Black Christ descends from the highest peak
of the Andes, looks around slowly, sees
nothing of interest, climbs back to the summit

for some, it is just too much chaos
but there was order, too, and beauty, and reason
a cover story for those long kept under the great white thumb

isn’t the homesickness of 746 million miles
better than the sickness of a home in Alabama
where being a little green man would be preferable to being what HE is?

sure, HE had a name, HE was her man, her little boy
a baby from a womb not covered in stars
but released in blood and tears like all the rest

pushed into a world not of HIS choosing, HE chose not to be of this world
adopted for HIMSELF a new birth in the undiscovered country
fell from a new womb with the slight bounce of nine percent less gravity

as has been previously noted, we are spinning on a marble
that is whirling around a fire
the hole in the middle of the universe surrounded by black wax

HE pressed grooves into that wax and drew forth sound from the needle
while the tables turned – the polarity reversed – up was down
the black man was a cosmic prince, the king of the moonlit desert

couldn’t Pat Patrick wail over this awakening?
couldn’t John Gilmore swing you in the arms of the stars?
couldn’t HE tell you what your blood knows but your brain fears?

on the summit of the highest peak of the Andes
the Black Christ is clearing brush to make a landing place
for the ninth rocket, the one that will carry him away

we travel the spaceways from planet to planet
humming a tune born of a south too deep to bear
midwifed in stardust and held up in the harsh light of the sun for all to see

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I wasn’t going to write about the passing of jazz pianist Hank Jones until I saw this article in the New York Times.

UPDATE: Hank Jones’ manager, Jean-Pierre Leduc, posted this in response to the NYT article:

Hank had a huge farm up in Hartwick, NY, and he had most things he needed. He was not unhappy or hermit-like. I wish he had treated himself to a bigger space (he could have lived anywhere), but it was clean and right where he wanted to be — Upper West Side. On tour he had the best suite in the best 5-star hotels, and he was on tour a lot, even very recently. The article in The Times was a clear invasion of privacy.

I considered making revisions to the poem based on this, but I don’t think that’s necessary.

91

“On the cluttered night-table was a book of Sherlock Holmes stories.”
— From a New York Times article on what was found in jazz pianist Hank Jones’ tiny one-room apartment after his death.

the detective used the violin
as a tool to sharpen his thoughts
the pianist practiced on an electric keyboard
using headphones so he wouldn’t disturb the neighbors

91 years is a long time
to be good at something so few understand
unlike Holmes, Hank never got a chance to stand in the parlor
to explain how he’d figured it all out
how he’d arrived at the real answer

he had to depend on ears and brains and beating hearts
to understand the messages pushed into ivory
by two hands, ten fingers, a billion synapses firing

when he died they broke into his room with a hammer
it was locked from the inside
a detail the detective would have appreciated
they found rumpled sheets, accolades
long ago forgotten and newly given
manifestations of his talent not sufficient
to encapsulate the world-altering beauty of it

there is nothing elementary
about 91 years of a black man playing the piano
no sidekick to remark on just how heavily
the odds had been stacked in opposition

could even the most talented sleuth
have pieced together the long road from Detroit?
inspected the dust of a thousand thousand footsteps
and traced the route from segregated hotels
to the grandest stages in the world?

91 years is a long time to breathe in and out,
to push down on the keys, to bear the weight of memory
the memory of waiting for his time in the spotlight

yet he could have walked down any street in America
and no one would have looked twice
he was a king, an 88-keyed deity who could
swing you into the ground and could pass
completely unnoticed among the multitudes
more concerned with the camera flash

in the end he went out playing
in a world that was richer for his footsteps across the stage,
his particular selection of notes
his attention to detail, elegance
and the long slow curve of 91 years of history

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Amputee

“don’t you miss it?”
that’s always the first question

for so many years
that metal was part
of my body, wedded
to my fingertips

I would wiggle my digits
and the conjured spirits
would wail and cry

“not really” I say
fixing my expression
to sell the lie

I’m an amputee, still
feeling the ghost limb

my appendage sits in a case
that the cat peed on
in the room where
I record the voices
of women and men
who would never dream of
allowing the doctor
to complete the operation

they would leap from the table
shove past the nurse’s grasping
hands, trailing the ends of
their open hospital gowns
and screaming “not that!”
as they plunged through the
double doors into the street

me, I catch sight of it
out of the corner of my eye
feel my fingers twitch

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Inspired by Matthew Shipp’s April 1, 2010 performance in Troy, NY.

Gravity
(for Matthew Shipp)

Matthew has to force his hands
back down to the piano
stop them from floating away
maybe from carrying him away, too

when it’s quiet you can hear the machines
tearing up Green Dolphin Street
they smash through the tarmacadam
down to the cobblestones

but then something goes wrong
some failsafe fails, and the machines
plunge on, grinding
into clay and on into the crust

a rock shelf gives way
there’s a long metallic groan
as the biggest digger spirals down
into the molten core

Matthew stands up from the piano bench
when the crashing subsides, then
he pushes against the piano,
forearms lean and tight,

really putting his back into it
slowly, so slowly you almost
don’t notice it at first,
the piano starts rolling

Matthew is sweating now,
his brow damp, his jaw hard
the narrow end of the piano
hits the crash bar and the door opens

flooding the theater with red light
a few dollops of lava
are already cooling on the remnants
of the pavement outside

Matthew pushes the piano through the door
to the edge of the hole
gets down on his hands and knees
and listens, peering into the pit

when he’s sure it’s time, he rises,
pushes the piano again
until the front wheel
clears the edge of the hole

Matthew plays one final chord
as the keyboard lifts off the ground
then watches as the piano tumbles
end over end into the pit

leaning out over the hole
he follows the piano’s path until it’s out of sight
and it’s only then that Matthew realizes
he’s not quite touching the ground

so he lifts his arms to the sky
and the clouds accept him as he rises
welcoming their returning son
as he breaks the tether of gravity

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This poem is the sixth in a series of pieces inspired by bass clarinetist Thomas Savy’s new CD, French Suite (Plus Loin Music, 2009). This particular poem came from his composition “Ouverture.” You can learn more about Thomas Savy at his MySpace page. I’ll be posting more poems in this series in the coming days. You can also read and listen to the first, second, third, fourth and fifth poems in this series.

toujours l’ouverture

cymbal crown church bell
assembles the faithful
center: two dancers
basso profundo
et Fili et Spriritus Sancti
screech strike rumble
circle ’round the cobblestones
white scarf around the waist
falls to the street as he spins
lightly, lightly now
dip and circle, bob and weave
“trouve moi la mélodie, mon amour”
one then another then another
until the street is clear
and the breeze carries the scarf away

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Listen to this poem using the player above.

This poem is the fifth in a series of pieces inspired by bass clarinetist Thomas Savy’s new CD, French Suite (Plus Loin Music, 2009). This particular poem came from his performance of Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday.” You can learn more about Thomas Savy at his MySpace page. I’ll be posting more poems in this series in the coming days. You can also read and listen to the first, second, third and fourth poems in this series.

worship

come, Sunday
and make of us
believers
through the power
of your melody
and the glory
of the chord

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