Jazz--Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold

[fridayam]

Forgive the title--a song by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band A thread for Jazz poems.

"Ruby My Dear" (Take 3)

Monk tries the keys
one by one from
the big bunch
on his fingers,
each one jangling with
possibilities:
what if I went there?
It started so simple but
the trying is what is
torture and fun because
there are so many chords
between those written.

 

[Angeline]

Tenor Sonnet

Faded tenor man,
why must you be so
mean to me baby? You jump,
sigh, then moan circle
hollow but insistent as though
every star waltzed from the sky
alone to pour like butter
from your golden
bell.

Your breath to my heart,
rhapsody in blues
from some old ghost
who casts in me a spell of pain
of passed of nothing left to lose.

Prez at the window, nodding
at the bar or scraping heels
along some avenue
measured in years. So near
yet far away from me
lost in the fog
of you.

I ain't got nothin but the muse, baby
bitter deep and sweet as blues, baby.


This has been reworked some more and submitted as Blue Lester. The original was submitted years ago as Tenor Sonnet.

 

[fridayam]

An ornery Texan playing plastic
like a New Orleans funeral band
on speed,
frightening at first
until the soulfulness got you
and the swing,
because they never buried you in New Orleans
without swing.

 

[Fuckette]

please post more, thank you

 

[butters]

like butter from your golden bell



yes, please post more - this stuff is way beyond me, but reading it, hearing its musicality, is wonderful

 

[The_Fool]

This one is published somewhere. Maybe more than one place.

Slow Burn Blues

The piano soft and muted
A velvet sound from far away.

Sitting at a corner table,
Intimate for two, lonely for one,
He looks around
At faces leaning close together,
Conversation intimate and low.
He takes a drink

Just to feel the heat,
To feel the fire,
All the way down.
His eyes begin to water
From the whiskey, from the smoke.
Rubbing his eyes, so tired.

Rhythmic and low
The bass throbs out the beat.
A brushed snare offers counterpoint.
The heartbeat of the music,
Muffled and low,
Steady and hypnotic.

He shakes off the malaise
And reaches for his cigarette
Already burned down to nothing.
Lighting a new one off the butt,
He takes a drag, exhales,
Then sets it down, forgotten.

Her voice penetrates the smoky haze.
She sings about her honey,
She sings about her bad, bad man.
Sad and caressing, intimate and caring,
Her voice a long lingering goodbye kiss
From a lover leaving.

He knows all about being bad
He knows all about that cheating, that lying.
He remembers fondly
Those warm, welcome arms
A lover pulling him close
Who now pushes him away.

A slow saxophone pierces his thoughts
Wailing out its loneliness.
His loneliness.
His hands start to shake,
His body starts to tremble,
He reaches for his whiskey

And drinks it down.
To feel the burn
The slow steady burn
Down his throat to his belly
To match the burning shame
Within his soul.

Unable to take it,
He starts to stand.
A hand pushes him gently back down,
Puts a full glass in front of him,
And takes the empty away.
He sighs and takes a long deep drink.

It’s too dark to see his tears,
It’s too late for her to see him cry.

 

[The_Fool]

This one I wrote for Angeline on a lark.

Hey Bartender, Pour Me Another Sestina

That upright piano sings out its tinny song
An old black man lends to it his whiskey voice
A half drank beer holds his sheet music in place
A cigarette, half ashes, makes him a wreath of smoke
His eyes, half closed see only far away
The music that he makes can only be called the blues

I listen to him play, I know all about them blues.
I hear what he's a singin', but already know that song.
I wish this bottle of whiskey would help me get away.
The singing that I hear is not that haunting voice,
The tears that fill my eyes are not because of smoke,
What makes me want to cry is no one in this place.

She left me. She left me an empty place.
"She left me, She left me longin' for the blues.
I look around and see her face in trails of smoke.
She left me. She left me singin' a sad, sad song.
I'm haunted. I'm haunted by her sweet, sweet voice.
I done said it, whiskey, take me far from here, take me away.

I've thought hard, I don't know why she went away.
Travelin', I've gone from place to place.
Every place I stop I keep listening for her voice.
Listenin' all the time, for a voice tuned to sing the blues.
The tears begin to flow, when the radio plays our song.
I just keep a dreamin', but my dreams scatter in the smoke.

Reaching for my cigarettes, I light me up a smoke.
A woman comes on by and takes my bottle away.
I'll stay here just a little while, I'll stay for one more song.
There's nothing for me here, there's nothing for me any place.
There's nothing for me anywhere, There's nothing for me but blues.
I can't hear no music, no matter how good the voice.

I've heard that call from that silent voice.
I've seen the words written in smoke.
I've felt in in my bones, that rhythm in the blues.
It's time for me to leave. It time to go away.
Its time to find me another place,
Its time to find another bar that plays a different song.

Blues help me hear her voice.
Song sung far away, hard to catch as smoke.
Away from here I'll travel, to find another lonesome place.

 

[Angeline]

I remember both of them my dear Fool. And I know you have lots more like these. I've always loved the way you sing the blues.

 

[vrosej10]

i detested jazz until I discovered lounge music a couple of years ago. My favourite piece is Harlem Nocturne and I am currently collecting different versions. Any recommends?

 

[Angeline]

i detested jazz until I discovered lounge music a couple of years ago. My favourite piece is Harlem Nocturne and I am currently collecting different versions. Any recommends?

If you Like the Harlem Nocturne, I am guessing you like orchestral sounding jazz. That means you'd probably dig some of Ellington's other more symphonic sounding pieces like Black and Tan Fantasy or the later (and brilliant imo) score he wrote for the film Anatomy of a Murder.

Are you familiar with Gershwin? Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris are his two most famous compositions, but he has other wonderful stuff like the Preludes and the Concerto in F. And Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool as well as his Sketches of Spain (which is based on Roderigo's Concerto for Guitar) and his version of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess are a pleasure to hear. In fact, people who do not recognize that jazz is America's Classical music might change their mind if they listened to this stuff!

I am standing by in case you'd like other jazz info. Consider me your go-to jazz girl.

(Senna Jawa knows his jazz, too. He would probably tell you to listen to Thelonious Monk.)

 

[Senna Jawa]

a stroll across some grammar​

Enjoy,

 

[Tzara]

In fact, people who do not recognize that jazz is America's Classical music might change their mind if they listened to this stuff!

Wynton Marsalis won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in music, and Ornette Coleman won the 2007 Pulitzer. So there is some recognition of jazz as "classical" music by The Powers That Be.

 

[butters]

Wynton Marsalis won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in music, and Ornette Coleman won the 2007 Pulitzer. So there is some recognition of jazz as "classical" music by The Powers That Be.

so that's who friday wrote about. i learn more and more each day at Lit!

 

[Angeline]

Wynton Marsalis won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in music, and Ornette Coleman won the 2007 Pulitzer. So there is some recognition of jazz as "classical" music by The Powers That Be.

This is true but it was a long time coming, that acceptance. Louis Armstrong is America's Bach or Mozart but when he was current the "moldy figs" (as jazzers called them) were looking around and wondering where America's authentic sound could be. They thought it would come from within their ranks. They didn't realize Pops was right there in front of them. And then there was that pesky Jim Crow stuff holding back the recognition, too. Billie Holiday had to use freight elevators when she performed in hotels. She couldn't walk through the lobby lest white folks think she was a paying guest going to a room or to eat.

Now we recognize that even the early modern (20th c.) classical guys like Copeland and Bernstein and others (you know more of them than me, I'm sure), were all influenced by jazz and blues and and American roots music. And of course not just American composers, but musicians all over the world started incorporating American style jazz and blues and folk sounds. Jazz had more recognition as serious music from places like France and Sweden and even Japan than from America until fairly recently.

Not arguin or anything. I'm just fascinated by this subject as you know.

 

[Tzara]

This is true but it was a long time coming, that acceptance. Louis Armstrong is America's Bach or Mozart but when he was current the "moldy figs" (as jazzers called them) were looking around and wondering where America's authentic sound could be. They thought it would come from within their ranks. They didn't realize Pops was right there in front of them. And then there was that pesky Jim Crow stuff holding back the recognition, too. Billie Holiday had to use freight elevators when she performed in hotels. She couldn't walk through the lobby lest white folks think she was a paying guest going to a room or to eat.

Now we recognize that even the early modern (20th c.) classical guys like Copeland and Bernstein and others (you know more of them than me, I'm sure), were all influenced by jazz and blues and and American roots music. And of course not just American composers, but musicians all over the world started incorporating American style jazz and blues and folk sounds. Jazz had more recognition as serious music from places like France and Sweden and even Japan than from America until fairly recently.

Not arguin or anything. I'm just fascinated by this subject as you know.

"America's authentic sound" is a lot of different styles. Charles Ives certainly composed music that seems uniquely American. I was listening a few weeks back to an NPR program on Kitty Wells, and she sure as hell don't sound anything other than American.

Classical composers recognized jazz quite early on, as you note. Copland's Piano Concerto is quite jazz influenced. Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto was originally written with Woody Herman in mind, and often performed by Benny Goodman. Shostakovich wrote a couple of Jazz Suites (one of which is featured on the soundtrack of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut). Gunther Schuller worked extensively with the Modern Jazz Quartet. But it's always tough to know whether they thought of jazz as being serious art or whether they were incorporating it in the same manner they have always incorporated folk music or other popular musics.

One problem, perhaps, is that one might think of jazz as being more a performance thing than a compositional thing--more Bach as a brilliant improvisatory performer than as a composer. Classical music, at least now, is very composer oriented. When we think of Mozart or Liszt, we tend to think of them as composers who were also brilliant performers, not the other way around, or even equally. We tend to think of Monk or Miles more the other way around--brilliant performers who also sometimes composed songs. That likely isn't fair to either the classical composers or the jazz musicians, but how we mostly think of things (we, or at least I, would be unlikely to talk about "classical musicians and jazz composers" and mean Mozart or Bach for the former and Prez or Bird for the latter). Mingus might be an exception to the "jazz composer" label, but I think he's unusual in that.

This mind set is a little odd, considering that almost all of the great classical composers were brilliant improvisors, and often in their day better known for that than for their compositions.

 

[Angeline]

It's true that the the American musical "sound" has many diverse sources, but the way that sound has grown into popular American song, the style of singing, the way a song is constructed comes mainly from Louis Armstrong. There's general agreement on that among American popular music historians though I suppose people in the classical world might see it differently. And although "serious" classical types might disagree, most jazz historians (Gary Giddons, Leonard Feather, Stanley Crouch, Dan Morgenstern and others) see Ellington, Monk and a few others (like Mingus, Miles, Bud Powell, for example) as composers as much as performers. These musicians thought of themselves as composers although the world may not have been ready to accept them as such in their time.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

One key contributor to American music is the Negro Spiritual (is that adjective still politically correct these days). SOme of that leads into the blues, which are now more international.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I've lost my poem inspired by "Great Day in Harlem" or I'd throw it in here, some of the best jazz men, and women, gathered together for one morning.

 

[Tzara]

It's true that the the American musical "sound" has many diverse sources, but the way that sound has grown into popular American song, the style of singing, the way a song is constructed comes mainly from Louis Armstrong. There's general agreement on that among American popular music historians though I suppose people in the classical world might see it differently.

I have not heard/read that, and am (sorry) a bit suspicious about a sweeping statement like that. I suppose it depends on how one defines "the American musical 'sound'", for example.

"Song" means something quite different in the classical world and is, I think, not relevant here.

I admit to having some problem, though, in finding the derivation from Pops to, say, Mother Maybelle Carter or The Four Seasons or Eminem. You want to suggest a book? (Not trying to be confrontational here, just curious.)

And although "serious" classical types might disagree, most jazz historians (Gary Giddons, Leonard Feather, Stanley Crouch, Dan Morgenstern and others) see Ellington, Monk and a few others (like Mingus, Miles, Bud Powell, for example) as composers as much as performers. These musicians thought of themselves as composers although the world may not have been ready to accept them as such in their time.

I give you Ellington, gladly. Should have thought of him. And it is not my intent to demean the compositional skills of other jazz people, but composition does not, I think, mean the same thing in the jazz world that it, at least currently, does in classical music. Not that that is bad or inferior, just that it is different.

So, for example: Would one set a group down to perform a fixed Bud Powell score in the way that one would set a group down to perform a Brahms Piano Quintet? I think that if that occurred, jazz musicians would think that performance unsatisfying, to say the least. Bad, more likely--even incompetent. You'd be expected to improvise off the line Powell set down.

Usually, in classical music (and the sixties had many exceptions to this), one would be expected to play the notes as set down by the composer. The performer has limited leeway to alter the composition--tempo, perhaps. Attack. But you gotta play the notes as written and somewhere close to the time signature or you'll get reamed as incompetent in the newspaper review of the concert.

Jazz values something different. Inventiveness, spontaneity. I suspect a jazz performer whose solo on "Mood Indigo" was exactly the same each night would be considered uninteresting. The same might be true to a pianist who performed Barber's Piano Concerto on successive nights, but the range of allowed variation is nowhere near the same.

I think all I'm saying is that the traditions value different skills. And trying to perhaps explain why jazz does not fit into an award structure oriented towards classical music.

I mean, I wouldn't expect Down Beat to be reviewing the latest composition by, say, Aaron Jay Kernis or Michael Daugherty. (Well, maybe Daugherty, depending.)

Anyway, you know I love jazz. Well, until maybe 1965 or so.

 

[Angeline]

First I will give you a really easy resource. If you happen to have Netflix and a source to stream it into your home (or you could rent it) get Ken Burn's Jazz and watch Episode 2 (might be 3 but I think it's 2). It's called The Gift and is about Armstrong. Some of the things I've mentioned here about his shaping of American song and American musical style is discussed in that episode by Wynton Marsalis, Gary Giddins, Gerald Early and Tony Bennet, among others.

Also if you get the Ovation television channel (we have it on DirectTV) they've beening running a special about Armstrong (might be a PBS American Masters thing). I've seen it advertised a few times in recent months. That addresses some of it, too.

If you want to read a very accessible (and recent) biography with lots of discussion about Armstrong's influence on popular song and American culture, Terry Teachout's Pops is a great read.

And here are a few short excepts from Gary Giddins great book, Visions of Jazz:

He [Armstrong] manifested the rhythmic gait known as "swing," transformed a polyphonic folk music into a soloist's art, established the expressive profundity of blues tonality, demonstrated the durable power of melodic/harmonic improvisation, and infused it all with an irreverent wit--for to enter the world of Louis Armstrong is, as Constance Rourke wrote of Whitman, "to touch the spirit of American popular comedy"

He was not a virtuoso in the conventional sense in that he did not play the conventional trumpet repertory. Yet the unrivaled brilliance of his sound, complimented by his economical style, transformed the instrument's timbre and range not only in jazz, but in symphony orchestras and dance bands. He popularized the trumpet's upper range and unknowingly set in motion a revised model for the mastery of playing lead in a brass section. His career was in its early stages when musicians began to covet his authenticity and power, mimicking his personal manner; pundits routinely likened him to Gabriel. Philharmonic orchestras that once favored concision now used a heavier vibrato (the conductor Maurice Peress recalled that when he studied trumpet his teacher made him listen to Armstrong records). Miles Davis said, "You know you can't play anything on the horn that Louis hasn't played--I mean even modern."

And one more tidbit from the same article:

Ultimately, his influence on popular and jazz vocal styles was no less sweeping than his impact on instrumentalists.


Another great source for this sort of information is Albert Murray's Stompin the Blues, probably some of his other writings, too, but that's the one I'm most familiar with. Murray is still around I think (and in his 90s) and has a long distinguished career as a jazz critic and biographer. He writes a lot about jazz and 20th century American culture. He is also the co-founder (with Marsalis) of the Jazz at Lincoln Center program.

You may not agree with these sources or with me, but I am far from the only person who believes this stuff.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Blue-Green Blues:

+

Greener Than Blue-Green Blues:

When Miles Davis started using electricity in his concerts, the vigilantes of taste and crosswalks raised a clamour of revolt against the heresy. It was right about then that was announced the protection plan for the trees in my backyard. One day, a minister without cabinet and a sub-secretary of some culture came to tell us they had signed a protocol with nature, the roots and the clouds. And that they could now declare the start of Spring whenever they wanted. After that, vagrant cats started appearing, as well as some dead dogs early in the morning. One of those mornings, a red squirrel was passing by. I asked for the others, and he told me they had took up arms to restore the rights of the birds to sing the dead. Ever since they had started living in a fable, there were too much blood and corpses.​

 

[The_Fool]

Combine the Poetry and Jazz and you've got Langston Hughes Weary Blues. Cannot miss.

 

[fridayam]

Blue-Green Blues:

+

Greener Than Blue-Green Blues:

When Miles Davis started using electricity in his concerts, the vigilantes of taste and crosswalks raised a clamour of revolt against the heresy. It was right about then that was announced the protection plan for the trees in my backyard. One day, a minister without cabinet and a sub-secretary of some culture came to tell us they had signed a protocol with nature, the roots and the clouds. And that they could now declare the start of Spring whenever they wanted. After that, vagrant cats started appearing, as well as some dead dogs early in the morning. One of those mornings, a red squirrel was passing by. I asked for the others, and he told me they had took up arms to restore the rights of the birds to sing the dead. Ever since they had started living in a fable, there were too much blood and corpses.​

Lovely poem and an interesting comment, particularly as I am trying to write my own Miles poem about exactly that moment when electricity began to flow into his music. Thank you.

I have also loved reading the learned discussion between Tzara and Angeline. For what it's worth I think during the whole history of music (since notation was invented) there has been an ebb and flow betweeh composition and improvisation. Neither has ever totally dominated any area of music. All music starts off as improvisation, with the best bits copied out to be remembered--indeed we have Impromptus by various classical composers, impros so loved by everyone that a copy was made.

It's also worth saying that not all composers are gifted players--if you know you can't play something that well then you have to write it down for someone better equiped to play it. A good example of this are the writers of the great Broadway musicals, who were rarely known for performing their work. The Golden Age of jazz happened to coincide with this Golden Age of popular song, and the two to a certain degree fed off each other, with jazz musicians using these songs as hooks for the impros. But composition, if you could do it, was an extra source of income--in fact usually a better one than performing, and so the whole cycle of impro being written down for someone else to perform begins again!

 

[Fuckette]

Jazz was slang for Fuck

much later it evolved into this
http://youtu.be/qlIU-2N7WY4

 

[MyZenTrail]

Django Reinhardt

Django has been a fav of mine for as long as I can remember playing acoustics.
A blend of big city lights and gypsy fire bottle swapping,
not only did he make a guitar sing he did it with three fingers
on his left hand, after a fire left him crippled. His mind was soaked in wine,
his suits stained from smoke filled rooms as he left ears filled with tickles
from cords smoother than velvet.

fender fingers(-.-)bow humble