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Listening recently to Chet Baker play and sing
“I’ve Never Been in Love Before”
on the local public radio jazz stream in Sacramento
sends me, thrills me, saddens me, deepens me
I want to jump in
I want to be there
the trumpet solo
the wondrous sound of notes.
December 21st, 2024
A hazy clip from Finnish TV,
the year he died
Shot in a dimly-lit studio
Evans has just finished a concert and the interviewer,
reverently holds an oversized microphone
December 20th, 2024
Looking a little sad and alone in an upper bin of the produce section – a handful of red celery-like stalks of rhubarb. They are still crisp – not yet wilted by the soft terror of avoidance too often rhubarb’s after life.
...December 19th, 2024
Mingus howling, his bass rumbling in their faces,
Shouting yeah! Yeah, oh yeah! The insistent barking growl.
Their chains beat loose by the savage blues that chases.
December 14th, 2024
Four poets react to the results of the 2024 election…
...December 14th, 2024
The evening burns,
riffs clinking glasses
dance to what is
not there.
My finger travels along the old
family photograph, 33 stern faces.
Forest cats in clan den, spotted,
camouflaged. Before I was born.
Who are they? No one knows.
December 12th, 2024
Maybe, whisper of your voice
could bring home
your far away love
before icicles begin to form.
It could be so.
December 11th, 2024
The vast and beautiful quiet of the weekend,
a weak dawn bleeds over the skyline’s edge.
She gropes her pockets to find a single cigarette
as she waits for that moment
December 7th, 2024
The author’s award-winning story is a semi-satirical mood piece about a heartbroken man in Europe listening to Toots Thielemans while under the influence of a mind-altering substance.
...December 5th, 2024
The story – a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – explores the intersection of nourishing oneself with music, and finding a soul mate
...December 2nd, 2024
For speed and power, use the pick.
One side of the mountain,
Then jump to the other side.
Open mike nights I learned in real time,
Rehearsal studios we never wanted to leave, still young.
But time left, and everyone left me.
November 30th, 2024
The writer suggests taking to music during these divisive times – specifically the composer Guillermo Lago’s piece “Sarajevo”
...November 30th, 2024
the sound became a poem
after happening into
Kenny Burrell leading
an arranged Gil Evans
below a full moon
...November 29th, 2024
Tenuous
It’s probably always
been tenuous
The notion
The concept
of democracy and
how it was designed
to protect us
November 27th, 2024
Art Tatum plays fast
fast as Sundays
fast as sunset in November
fast as a hurry up offense
fast as a 20 dollar bill flying down the street
November 26th, 2024
The world-renowned saxophonist Deja Blue grew up a sad, melancholy person who could only express his feelings through his music. When he meets a beautiful woman who sweeps him off his feet, will his reluctance to share his feelings and emotion cost him the love of his life?
...November 25th, 2024
Lauren, my high school sweetheart, and I
drive down Fifth Avenue in NYC, not in my
mother’s blue 1967 Cadilac, but in my polished
silver Caddy. This is after our group, The Kansas
City Soul Association, makes it big and I, their
drummer, can afford such a ride.
November 23rd, 2024
. . photo via pickpik.com . . The Sounds Outside My Window ………(for Jack Kerouac) So the drunk old genius of the road once wrote that the sounds outside his window were worthy of his poetical consideration but right now, out of mine, all I can hear are seagulls squawking and sirens wailing and, in … Continue reading ““The Sounds Outside My Window” – a poem by Bradford Middleton”
...November 21st, 2024
The conductor passed the notes around — birds strung out on wires —
Pieces they all knew well, nothing too inspired.
He checked his troops, baton raised, then marched them down the street.
Was it a groove, or was it a rut, that curbed their marching feet?
November 19th, 2024
In this story – a short listed entry in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – a private investigator tries to help a homeless friend after his saxophone is stolen.
...November 18th, 2024
I cranked the Woody Shaw Jr.
“Every Time I See You”
Marveling at the range
Authentic modal with a hint
November 16th, 2024
notice was received at the Final Arms Hotel
stating simply
expect Lou soon
& the buzz began
Good gracious!
Big John and Grant grinned
each to the other
with Hammond & Gibson harmony
November 15th, 2024
Tucker works as a jazz pianist aboard the deep space luxury cruiser, the Royal Nebula. A flirtatious interlude pushes his new emotional software to its limits and beyond, and he learns the hard way what it means to be human.
...November 15th, 2024
I am the sound,
the spontaneous voice you hear
beyond the melodic trance,
an array of multi-timbred,
fragmented, impetuous harmonies and rhythms
to carry you into an alternate dimension,
November 10th, 2024
Flip day for night then lose the glossy crooner
Let the trumpet solo drain the oil from showbiz lake
Cruise a lowdown hungry blues
Along the Great White Way
To citizens’ arrest on Lower Broadway
November 6th, 2024
The story – finalist in the recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – describes the first lesson at a music conservatory of a freshman piano-performance major who is more accustomed to improvising than reading music. It is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress.
...November 4th, 2024
He jazzed his way into my heart
with pulsing beats that have surpassed
the resounding rhythm of the jungle drums.
November 2nd, 2024
Drizzly droplets
Dripping from balcony rails,
Slipping down window panes
As I listen to Stevie Ray
Play Lenny. Man that
Cat could sweat as he
Plucks magic from
Six thin strings.
October 30th, 2024
I present you with a disgusting floor,
covered with ocher lumps of puke,
piles of paper refuse, cigarette butts,
all swimming in a sea of black water.
October 26th, 2024
Harlan has an addiction. A most illegal addiction. It drives him from morning until night. He dreams of it. How can he escape it before it brings him into the arms of the law? Down a dark alley he will find out just how far he is willing to go.
...October 21st, 2024
A raggedy man lived for music and Nina Simone,
called himself “Mr. Bojangles,”
played jazz on his secondhand sax,
tap-danced for tips and smiles.
October 19th, 2024
“Big egos,” they now say –
Basie, Armstrong, Ellington
Did Louis Armstrong
Possess an outsized ego
October 17th, 2024
The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – focuses on two people whose passion for music infuses their lives… and their chance at love.
...October 15th, 2024
Jazz is a journey. The
listening keeps us
envisioning how creativity
is transformative. Jazz is a
journey, a sound, a tune, a note,
October 12th, 2024
Nostalgia
it’s the feeling that brought us here
a bit of joy / sweet glide to a hallowed space
and Fats Navarro is already here
October 10th, 2024
In this edition, Rife writes about jazz novels and short stories that feature a theme of “mystery.”
...October 10th, 2024
In the story, a short listed entrant in the recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest, a 60-year-man has lost his job as a newspaper reporter, and is left with few options.
...October 9th, 2024
Antonio, steal me away from him
with a mango slice
on the tip of your knife
October 6th, 2024
The story – a short-listed entry in the recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – is an exaggerated version of the dynamism of domestic/romantic relationships between spouses and the difficulty to sustain a family.
...October 2nd, 2024
Leaving residence
At the Final Arms Hotel
For a misty boulevard stroll
Could be I see you
(Maybe on your way
To meet up with Wes
To go Bumpin’ On Sunset)
October 2nd, 2024
When he entered a club ‘round midnight,
all 88 keys would break into a grin
and the stool would slide out from under
to invite him to sit down and play.
September 28th, 2024
Sometime before September ends
I will capture your love
among the flaming
fuchsia, paprika, mustard colored
leaves, blowing in wind on a journey
to somewhere close to where you are.
September 27th, 2024
An essay remembering the late jazz musician Michael “Dodo” Marmarosa, awarded Esquire Magazine’s New Star Award in 1947, and who critics predicted would dominate the jazz scene for the next 30 years.
...September 25th, 2024
Prisms resound, glow dissonant—
refracted word-dyes salvaged from malaise.
A bleeding swatch of rainbow,
cordless stains on muslin,
stacks of frightened tightropes,
my slippers thin and worn –
September 21st, 2024
. . Mallory1180, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons . . Donald Byrd’s Late Night Lullaby The Worker Bee finds a home In the honeyed tones of a trumpet As the sun sets earlier, answering Fall’s call, she stands sometimes Sturdy as a birch tree, the trumpet’s Wail suits her majestically. Jazz is The … Continue reading ““Donald Byrd’s Late Night Lullaby” – a poem by Erren Kelly”
...September 19th, 2024
The story – a short-listed entrant in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – centers on the effects of COVID on an interracial, interfaith family…
...September 17th, 2024
When that first rumbling bass line
Tells me I’m listening to Gordon Goodwin’s
Big Phat Band playing “Jazz Police,”
I can’t help it, I always see an LAPD squad car
swinging out of the station
flipping on that groovy trumpet siren
as they join a pursuit with the whole horn section.
September 14th, 2024
The deadline for entering stories in the 67th edition of the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest is September 30.
...September 13th, 2024
This edition of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film is written in response to Oliver Nelson’s 1961 recording The Blues and the Abstract Truth
...September 11th, 2024
The story – a short-listed entrant in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – explores the notion of where dreams end and reality begins through the lives of three people living in New Orleans
...September 9th, 2024
If ever
I am subjected to
Further medical exploration
& something
Identified as Bio
Is discovered
September 7th, 2024
John Coltrane was the absolute
the decorated, the preternatural
and acknowledged master of what fury
can pour out of the body of a saxophone.
September 3rd, 2024
Hurrying to a dental appointment
I didn’t want to go to in the first place
an interminable red light and honking traffic
and the curve where people merge
20 MPH faster than necessary
four lanes into two
not a good day overall
though Sonny Rollins is playing loud;
August 31st, 2024
The first time Benny Goodman heard Bix Beiderbecke play cornet, he recalled, he wondered, “My God, what planet, what galaxy, did this guy come from?” (Skretvedt)
...August 30th, 2024
In this story – a finalist in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – a Black magician reveals his life’s complexity to a white therapist who questions his ability to address it.
...August 27th, 2024
Sheets of music laid across a checkered table cloth
spread out like streets across the city.
Like the quarter notes on page one, a crescent moon
is seen rising in the ink dark sky.
August 24th, 2024
cohen says there are major falls
and minor lifts that come before
the fourths and fifths and i suppose
he’s probably right, most likely right
but this is not about some hallelujah
August 17th, 2024
Scattered discordant
Symbols woven into lines
Across blank white pages
August 16th, 2024
Woke up this morning to the Bugle Call Rag,
Straight no chasers made my head real bad.
Nothing left for breakfast … goodbye pork pie hat,
Dressed with chilies (ah um) – never hotter than that!
August 10th, 2024
A story about a Jewish kid coming of age in Alabama and discovering his identity through music, in particular the interstellar sound of Sun Ra.
...August 9th, 2024
The flute floats a legato stream of notes,
blood from the heart pouring in a lucent stream,
brilliant as a harvest moon filling the sky
with radiance such as the flutist releases
into the concert hall, notes carried on breath
August 7th, 2024
During a brief respite from the hard rain,
I heard a music born of spring and sunsets
coming from spinning black platters.
Their weighty cadence, their spry
crackling fireworks
August 3rd, 2024
In postcards to his sister Paula
He described what it felt like
To feel free
In America, he was
A disrupter of the peace
In a thickly-padded FBI dossier
August 2nd, 2024
The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest – concerns a father’s determined commitment to demonstrate his values to his family through a spontaneous personal action
...August 1st, 2024
On the Cape in P-town
August ‘55
Billie, Eartha, Ella vocals
Filled shoreline evening skies
Entrancing soaring seagulls
With jazzy siren song
July 27th, 2024
Remembering the genius of the multi-instrumentalist who played with the likes of Bix Beiderbecke, Benny Goodman, Red Nichols, Miff Mole, and Joe Venuti
...July 25th, 2024
In this story – a finalist in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest – a missing guitar leads to the dissolution of a chart-topping band. Years later their subsequent reconciliation reverberates across generations.
...July 22nd, 2024
because Jupiter is 1300 times the volume of the Earth
because milkweeds in the yard are as beautiful as
“Hushabye”
because on clear nights the moon pours in my window
like a spotlight and makes me think
.Paul Simon’s in the room
July 20th, 2024
The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest – concerns a heart-broken man trying to deal with his sadness via journaling and jazz.
...July 17th, 2024
In which poets connect the swing of the bat with that of the bandstand…
...July 16th, 2024
When he plays he wears invisible glasses
picks his keys with patience and purpose
a tornado with time on his hands
while in walks light
July 13th, 2024
The author’s story – a finalist in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest – describes the unlikely and circuitous route by which, against all odds, he became a jazz musician.
...July 11th, 2024
…From “Fatha” Hines to Brad Mehldau, poets open themselves up to their experiences with and reverence for great jazz pianists…
...July 11th, 2024
Surely Sonny still gets blue at times
I mean he’s a human being after all
isn’t he although sometimes he
seems more superhuman celestial
take now for instance as he bends
nearly all the way to the stage in
his 80s and plays and plays
and plays and plays and plays
July 6th, 2024
The story – a finalist in the 65th Short Fiction Contest – is about a young man who cares for his grandmother after she is discovered wandering in her neighborhood, which gives him a chance to be away from his mother and her new and intolerant partner.
...July 5th, 2024
Audible pain
Introspective
Like the composition he wrote called
Alabama about the 4 little girls from
Birmingham:
July 2nd, 2024
Stripped down standards
ache the air. Keith Jarrett
with chronic fatigue
recorded “I Got It Bad
(And That Ain’t Good)”
in sessions so short
he sometimes ended
before the song.
June 29th, 2024
While consuming Mary K O’Melveny’s remarkable work in this digital album of poetry, readings and music, readers will discover that she is moved by the mastery of legendary musicians, the wings of a monarch butterfly, the climate and political crisis, the mysteries of space exploration, and by the freedom of jazz music that can lead to what she calls “the magic of the unknown.”
...June 25th, 2024
Mingus flipped the kitchen switch,
flooding the room with light,
just as, seeking purchase in the slippery sink,
I tumbled through the unlocked window.
June 22nd, 2024
In this, the 17th major collection of jazz poetry published on Jerry Jazz Musician, 50 poets from all over the world again demonstrate the ongoing influence the music and its associated culture has on their creative lives.
...June 21st, 2024
The story – a finalist in the 65th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest – describes a practice routine of a young conservatory student eager to sate his feeling of destiny.
...June 20th, 2024
Nested into each other,
We listened to Dolphy play “Truth”
as softly as the bedding that held us.
June 19th, 2024
. . This space on Sunday is generally reserved for a single poet to read one of their works, but this week’s issue -Father’s Day – features 23 poets who weigh in on the complexity of their relationship with their father, revealing love, warmth, regret, sorrow – and in many cases a strong connection … Continue reading “The Sunday Poem(s): 23 Poets remember their father…”
...June 15th, 2024
A short-listed entrant in the 65th Short Fiction Contest is a story about an accidental audition…
...June 11th, 2024
He often remembered
how it used to be with her,
his former lover,
who would sing him a song
every night before bed
then teach him each line
June 8th, 2024
The hardest skill to learn
is to listen.
Always one wants to interrupt,
to explain, to contradict, to deny.
June 8th, 2024
A short-listed entrant in the 65th Short Fiction Contest is about a lonely writer in New York City who descends into madness upon realizing she is the only person who can hear the jazz music playing under her apartment.
...June 6th, 2024
Think of a river
Turned into
A Diamond,
June 5th, 2024
Entertain us, entertain us all
Give, give, give with your sassy voice, your young body
Despite the migraines…
At 11, on a North Philly street, gang raped
By three creeps
It starts there, the cracks
The headache
June 1st, 2024
My high school girlfriend’s older brother
lived in a garret in the Village, like something
out of La Boheme, and she said maybe if we
went there, he’d leave us alone and we could
…well, you know
May 25th, 2024
A short-listed entry in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest concerns a child’s courage in the face of abuse, displayed in her solemn ritual of burying her stuffed toys.
...May 22nd, 2024
my claim to jazz fame:
I have had fun telling people …
I got to know david sanborn
in high school band.
May 20th, 2024
She was four, just waking to the world.
Aware of rain and blue air, of singsong words,
of a low trill as she drifted into night. Abruptly
she was lifted
into unfamiliar voices
May 19th, 2024
A myriad of styles and experiences displayed in eight thoughtful and provocative poems about jazz music…
...May 16th, 2024
The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest – is about a woman who finds a rare saxophone in a New York City cab, and refuses to hand it over
...May 15th, 2024
We’ll have a little brunch for you —
pecan-crusted French toast,
oysters, smoked salmon,
a charcuterie board.
May 11th, 2024
That Black Olive near the back providing shade
a steady venue for beak & feather songsters
roaming around the leaves
as if they were tables at the Club Aviary
May 8th, 2024
Glenn Gould’s famous recording impacts a young couple’s enthusiasm for a dorm room make-out session…
...May 7th, 2024
I was preparing to make my exit from Heaven back to Earth,
And it was late March, so the lounge had transitioned
To their hot jazz band after playing the cool for months.
May 4th, 2024
. . The cover of the 1987 Mosaic Records collection of The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Herbie Nichols . . Thinking of Herbie I was thinking about jazz masters who died too young– private accolades for America’s unknown legion, perished by addiction, illness or accident— Herbie Nichols I didn’t forget you. Dead of … Continue reading ““Thinking of Herbie” – a poem by Daniel W. Brown”
...May 1st, 2024
A woman sits in a window frame
of old carved birds, listening to her
grandson in his jeans playing fig leaf music
in her home in Koshidekha,
a village in Nepal.
April 27th, 2024
The author’s award-winning story is about the power of connections – between father and child, music and art, and the past, present and future
...April 24th, 2024
I saw some crows in low and noisy flight.
I watched them until they were out of sight.
And I have heard, at times, the calling geese,
above and unseen in the autumn night,
April 24th, 2024
You punched him in his chin
Jimmy not her kin
can’t let a bully
do her in.
April 21st, 2024
Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. This edition is written in response to the music of Wayne Shorter.
...April 18th, 2024
At the bar of the
Towne Tavern, once
Toronto’s finest jazz club,
stage facing me,
sipping my one beer,
knowing even then
in my twenty-third year
I was witness to
a never forgotten gig.
April 13th, 2024
Cacophonous —
The honk, the blare of the tenor sax
And the scream! The guttural cry
Who are you, man…who are
You? “I’m nobody,” is my
Only reply
April 10th, 2024
The pollen is flying like mad –
frantic, crazy, amorphously Daliesque –
sort of like our trio the other day,
rollicking and lollygagging through Monk’s
Brilliant Corners, losing it so completely
that when Marty flung a stick at my head
April 6th, 2024
Dexter Gordon blew blue
blue notes for hours in his visit
to my CD player,
accompanied by wicked syncopations
rapped on window and roof
by bursts of rain as it came and went
April 3rd, 2024
.He answered my personal ad: “Classy rebel wishes to meet man of principle.” In the 80’s, it wasn’t normal to find love through advertisements, so I kept my effort a secret. At our first encounter in an Indian restaurant, he said. “I’m not sure if my principles are the right ones. You’re likely to find me at socialist meetings in church basements.” Though I was just a run of the mill, east coast liberal, I was over forty, so I decided to give him a chance. In fact, his commitment to left wing causes intrigued me; I wanted to hear more.
...April 2nd, 2024
washes up
on the keyboard.
Bill Evans’ glasses too.
I put Monk’s hat on
and suddenly feel
like the captain of a ship.
March 30th, 2024
Even if you never drank black coffee, that won’t stop you from drinking in the feelings that filter across a room whenever Sarah Vaughan sings Black Coffee. One could drown in that bottomless, inky liquid, that heartache-laden brew,
...March 27th, 2024
Soultrane came out when Ike governed.
1958. Before our nation
Would build up its war machine to invade
Viet Nam, training its Green Berets
March 23rd, 2024
Floyd grabbed his cane and stepped out of his air-conditioned car into the late August heat. The afternoon sun warmed his stiff joints. It felt good. From the Honda’s back seat he pulled a battered guitar case, locked the car and shambled down Monterey Street to Premier Music Store. Its front door stood closed against blasts of hot Santa Ana winds.
...March 22nd, 2024
She plays slow, haunting
notes that linger and flow
around her voice, unearths
the story that lies between
the words of each song –
March 20th, 2024
My friend is a Blues singer,
I am a Jazz drinker,
boozing shots after shots,
I never get drunk with Jazz.
March 16th, 2024
I was streaming The Fabulous Baker Boys
the other night and thought
it reminded me of the times I drank to
Mose Allison — in Boston, in DC —
and how righteous he was singing
Everybody Cries Mercy
March 14th, 2024
It was the first Friday in months that we didn’t both have our own gigs lined up, so my friend Paul invited me out to one of his favorite haunts on 8th Avenue. He promised me the food was good, but told me that the real draw was the live music. Honestly, I tried not to roll my eyes when he dropped that detail on me in the cab. I mean, I love music and all–I’d have to if I was going to work this hard at it–but I kind of was looking forward to giving my ears the night off.
...March 12th, 2024
I admit I’d never heard of “Watermelon Man” before Harry Reid came to my kids’ elementary school to put together a concert band. He wasn’t a salaried teacher, but a part-time outsider brought in by the PTA.
...March 10th, 2024
I’ve never seen much of Spain.
A business trip to Barcelona.
A commuter ride to Girona. Salvador
Dali’s museum. A stop in Sitges
where ivory beach sand abets
a shimmered turquoise sea.
March 8th, 2024
The Portland, Oregon poet Emmet Wheatfall – whose jazz poetry has been published on Jerry Jazz Musician – talks about the connection between poetry and the environment, and the impact of climate change on poets and other artists, and the rest of humanity.
...March 7th, 2024
The trumpet melody glided on a cloud of clarinet and trombone notes. All three instruments dipped and soared over a rhythmical sea of piano, bass, and drums.
...March 3rd, 2024
gentle the footprints go
up through the wilderness
to the heart-shaped night
short of breath, shorter, inches away on my speakers
miles inside
a sphere of glad- sad melancholy, dark tree twilights
March 2nd, 2024
These poems are new submissions by five poets relatively new to Jerry Jazz Musician, and are an example of the writing I have the privilege of encountering on a regular basis.
...February 28th, 2024
This story, a finalist in the recently concluded 64th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest, tells the tell of Uncle Cheapskate and Aunt Whiner, those pesky relatives you love to hate and hate to love.
...February 26th, 2024
Evergreens and pink lawn
chairs sang through my windowpane
until silenced by grime
and retinal leakage.
I pass my good eye
back and forth;
February 24th, 2024
Marginalized, itinerant
Brilliance barely compensated
You want to save them all; you
Particularly want to save him
February 22nd, 2024
The 19 poets included in this collection effectively share their reverence for jazz music and its culture with passion and brevity.
...February 20th, 2024
“Afloat” – a finalist in the 64th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest – is about a troubled man in his 40s who lessens his worries by envisioning himself and loved ones on a boat that provides safety and ease for all of them.
...February 19th, 2024
Your father and I admonished you
for walking ahead on the craggy mountain ridge.
You defended your eager steps,
saying you were musing
on the musical styles
of Mingus, Parker, and Shorter,
February 17th, 2024
A relaxed, familiar comfort emerges from the poet Terrance Underwood’s language of intellectual acuity, wit, and space – a feeling similar to one gets while listening to Monk, or Jamal, or Miles. I have long wanted to share his gifts as a poet on an expanded platform, and this 33-poem collection – woven among his audio readings, music he considers significant to his story, and brief personal comments – fulfills my desire to do so.
...February 14th, 2024
Following a failed relationship, a Barstow man is left in the desolate town with only his guitar and the familiar music of Mozart to help him cope with it all…
...February 12th, 2024
Morning is dream time—
inns, strip clubs, and shops
are all eye-closed,
a hobo huddles
under a gray blanket
at a storefront,
neon signs illuminating
the strip all night long
February 10th, 2024
it seems like thousands
of nights hunkered
over dark beer and jazz
with my Guru
the janitor who taught
jazz to the novice
February 9th, 2024
when first he was asked
spring buds had yet to fully open
now rising out of autumn heath
that tenor sax strides deep
February 7th, 2024
Tad Richards is a prolific visual artist, poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer who has been active for over four decades. ..He frequently writes about poetry, and the following piece about the history of the connection of jazz and American poetry first appeared in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry (2005). It is published with the permission of the author.
...February 6th, 2024
Both of them put up with fools
until they didn’t
and the sea that men parted
collapsed under their stares.
February 3rd, 2024
The story, a finalist in the recently concluded 64th Short Fiction Contest, is inspired by the classic Bob Dylan song “Tangled Up in Blue” which speculates about what might have been the back story to the song.
...January 30th, 2024
shouts and dances in church
and thumbs its nose at shame
covers its body in brand names
and doesn’t worry about the future
holds hands and kiss shameslessly
in public; they call it p.d.a
January 28th, 2024
Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. This edition is influenced by Stillpoint, the 2021 album by Zen practitioner Barrett Martin
...January 24th, 2024
Take tonight, for instance.
I can’t ask you for the moon
the way Sinatra commands it
with his first-class confidence.
Let alone Jupiter or Mars.
January 21st, 2024
One-third of the Winter, 2024 collection of jazz poetry is made up of poets who have only come to my attention since the publication of the Summer, 2023 collection. What this says about jazz music and jazz poetry – and this community – is that the connection between the two art forms is inspirational and enduring, and that poets are finding a place for their voice within these virtual pages.
...January 18th, 2024
A short-listed entry in the recently concluded 64th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest, the story is a heartfelt, grateful monologue to one Italian composer, dead and immortal of course, whose oeuvre means so much to so many of us.
...January 16th, 2024
Sensational
Largely unsung
Dorothy Donegan
Known by jazz insiders as
The female Art Tatum
His protégé
The one who made him say:
“She is the only woman who can
Make me practice.”
January 14th, 2024
Takes on love and loss, and memories of Lady Day, Prez, Monk, Dolphy and others…
...January 10th, 2024
I jammed
with the Afro-American Jazz Band
in the old Off Plaza on McAllister,
and with the blind Black pianist whose name I can’t remember
in the club we knew as The Question Mark
whose sign on Haight Street was just a neon ?,
when the club was straight and featured jazz
January 7th, 2024
It’s Les McCann & Eddie Harris
heard it back in ’69, heard it now
not once but twice, so nice, but
sadness got me tonight, hit me hard,
January 4th, 2024
We begin to study Uncle George
in a cavern of disintegration.
A hospital bed wrenched through
a narrow doorway. Shag carpeting
cauterized and peeled from the concrete floor.
A hoyer lift wheeled in. A pully installed
so George can shift from horizontal to vertical.
January 3rd, 2024
This story — a finalist in the recently concluded 64th Short Fiction Contest — harkens back to Richard Brautigan’s fiction of the ’70s, and explores modern day co-worker relationships/friendship and the politics of for profit “Universities”
...January 2nd, 2024
Your chair is a kitten chasing a bird.
Hans Brinker skates across
your living room.
December 31st, 2023
Each year offered
a little blue box.
Trinket from a window.
December 24th, 2023
Dusk’s deep waters envelop me
with the quiet embrace of a Bill
Evans solo, the piano so low,
yet so all encompassing (drowning
me in beauty, beauty, beauty —
December 21st, 2023
A story that takes place over the course of a young man’s life, looking specifically at all the women he’s loved and how the presence of a derelict building informs those relationships.
...December 18th, 2023
I take my daughter to the ballet studio
at a former convent in Marin.
She will be dancing for hours.
At the edge of the church’s property
is an old gymnasium.
December 17th, 2023
Her first note wails amber
smoke near overhead pipes above
the guitars. It wavers
and rolls r’s better than spring.
December 10th, 2023
How can somebody so blue, Grant, be named
Green? How can the ocean current
and its waves? Simple. Immediate. Each note comes
from you slow as underwater speech. Say
a fish tank and pufferfish hugging the glass. Imagine
being trapped. Gravel pumped through the gills
December 8th, 2023
Yours is the sound of smoke
I love to inhale
the sound of a humid
summer night
its cool breeze
December 3rd, 2023
Hammers in a construction site
sound like a band warming up,
weird solos by a bunch of drummers.
Jimmy Smith comes down draped in groove,
sermonizing your stride,
clouds chest-out like they know something.
A man standing in front of a house,
shouting, I got nothing from you!
November 29th, 2023
Mamacita
with round brown
hips
roll and sway
sway and roll
slow that stroll
she sings
to ease
her sticky soul
November 26th, 2023
Four elderly women gather in a church for poetry readings, but they haven’t found a good rhythm yet. Finally, the woman who runs the poetry circle decides to personalize the experience.
...November 20th, 2023
. . The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work. Bryan Franco reads his poem at its conclusion. . . ___ . . . . How I Achieved Levitation They all lived in the Walnut Building. Satchmo blew the roof off the house. Fats Waller tickled ivories. … Continue reading “The Sunday Poem: “How I Achieved Levitation” by Bryan Franco”
...November 19th, 2023
It tickles my fancy the way
francophone announcers
ornately say the names
of jazzmen in those live recordings
put to reel in Montreux.
Jack DeJohnette in particular
tickles me, perhaps because
it is a french-like sort of name.
November 16th, 2023
Hearing Rahsaan Roland Kirk recordings
you could likely miss
the pleasure of that reedman’s kisser,
import of his so unique technique.
November 12th, 2023
Seven poets combine and art of jazz with an act of love…
...November 7th, 2023
This story, a finalist in the 63rd Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest, looks at the hopes one man has that a woman he meets the night before he leaves for Camp Devens will keep him alive during World War I so he can return and take her out for dinner.
...November 7th, 2023
The Young Turk disregarded the old trumpeter
labeled him a vaudevillian minstrel
because he shucked and grinned,
having no privy to old man’s roiling anger within
fueled by slights and shames endured for years
despite his lauded, storied career.
November 5th, 2023
Jazz divinity
The Divine One on hot, fevered wings
That fly east of the sun and west of
The moon
November 3rd, 2023
She is mesmerizing
flying in the air with the music,
ignoring gravity.
What is she thinking?
October 31st, 2023
La La Love,
even when the cold raindrops
pounded against the window,
we snuggled close like fuzzy cats,
purring with Thelonious Monk
as we drank our Guinness.
October 29th, 2023
Ms. Tanner’s story, a finalist in the recently concluded 63rd Short Fiction Contest, is about a war correspondent’s haunting revelations after she comes across musicians in a refugee camp.
...October 26th, 2023
I don’t know where it starts, he said, but can you imagine
watching They Cloned Tyrone and the music playing,
almost the whole dance club version of Love Hangover,
I can’t even watch anything, my mind looks through the settings,
the dialogue is like a crowd talking in a club and I want to listen in,
go into that Diana Ross whisper singing love voice
October 24th, 2023
My eyes were faster dreaming
a drum kit in bed with me
Rapid Eye Movement Disorder
disturbing my sleep and my wife
moving away with her cellphone
camera watch my arms begin to move
October 22nd, 2023
A poetic appreciation for the work of the legendary pianist
...October 21st, 2023
You ever heard of a Zoot Suit?
Do you own a Zoot Suit ?
What about the Zoot Suit Riots
you ever heard of them?
October 18th, 2023
I blame Chet Baker
For opening a window into my past
Sensing that phantom trumpet in my capable hands
The smooth curves of the hard brass, the cold
Mouthpiece against my buzzing lips
Bright melodies blaring
From carefree days of my youth
October 15th, 2023
A collection of Connie Johnson’s poetry is woven among her audio readings, a personal narrative of her journey and music she considers significant to it, providing readers the chance to experience the full value of her gifts.
...October 11th, 2023
Because of his childhood experiences, the story’s narrator loses his singing voice and as an adult neither sings nor dances. But when his marriage falls apart he meets a ‘song and dance man’ who turns out to be Iris, a woman with multiple sclerosis. With her help, he comes to grip with his inhibitions.
...October 10th, 2023
Ce soir l’anniversaire
we defeat the oppressor
with our horns, our magic
here to bury us or set us free
October 8th, 2023
. . “Tree”(1924) photo by Alfred Stieglitz/via Raw Pixel/CC0 1.0 Deed . . Song of the Poplar Tree The song playing always catches me off guard. My trembling fingers quicken to remove the old vinyl record. I must stop her voice from singing. Even the wispy quality carries the heavy weight. I weep. Not … Continue reading ““Song of the Poplar Tree” – a poem by Jerrice Baptiste”
...October 5th, 2023
The woodshed was the hunting ground for wings of notes.
Black suits and ties, hipster hats and smoke rings of notes.
Was Robert Johnson alone, hellhound on his trail?
Was a deal made? Was Bird Satan’s plaything of notes.
October 1st, 2023
. . photo by Bernard Gotfryd/Library of Congress/PDM 1.0 Thelonious Monk, 1968 . ___ . Thelonious Monk and Mama Thelonious Monk paints a picture of Mama with his piano, the way Monet or Matisse would, with paint: loud, bright colorful notes that are a Rorschach test, screaming on the page. Perhaps, Mama would’ve modeled … Continue reading ““Thelonious Monk and Mama” – a poem by Erren Kelly”
...September 30th, 2023
Earlier this year I invited poets to submit jazz-themed poetry that didn’t need to strictly follow the 5-7-5 syllabic structure of formal haiku, but had to at least be faithful to the spirit of it (i.e. no more than three lines, brief, expressive, emotionally insightful).
This collection, featuring 22 poets, is a good example of how much love, humor, sentimentality, reverence, joy and sorrow poets can fit into their haiku devoted to jazz.
...September 27th, 2023
When a marketing writer gets a new neighbor, she finds herself dreading the 2:00 practice sessions of The Musician. In Rear Window fashion, The Writer is kept apprised of The Musician’s life happenings through a combination of watching out the window and listening to the story told through her music. When a crisis entangles the two women, they form a bond that penetrates the wall that stands between them – despite never having met.
...September 26th, 2023
I’m whistling a tune about
a woman’s broken heart,
down a long and empty
hallway, just to hear it
move itself along,
September 24th, 2023
Barstow to Boron, bound for Bakersfield
we fly across the Mojave Desert, will wind
through and over the Tehachapis
only to come to rest in another desert
on the rim of the sink of California.
September 22nd, 2023
Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. In this edition, the poet connects the recordings of Jessica Williams’ “Little Waltz” and Gene Harris’ “Summertime.”
...September 20th, 2023
From a third floor window I imagine
I can almost see the cracked black
& white tile welcoming Penn Avenue
to the long-closed Kappel’s Jewelers.
September 17th, 2023
Ella Fitzgerald is whispering
to me: “sit here and enjoy your dinner with my
sweet honey voice,” eternal bloom of time,
filling the corner of the street where I eat
with a Golden Age long gone but that remains
like an idea, lingering, like the steam of a
hot bath leaving
traces of fingers on the mirror
September 13th, 2023
A story revolving around a jazz record which means so much to a couple that they risk being discovered while attempting to escape the Soviet Union.
...September 12th, 2023
Strains of Charlie Parker’s alto sax fill
the empty apartment song-after-song –
“Dancing in the Dark,” “Loverman,”
“Embraceable You.”
Between every note I wish.
September 10th, 2023
Coltrane said a prayer to his musical God
Straight through the horn of his saxophone.
Not a metaphor; he spoke the words
Through the reed and the music into the air.
September 3rd, 2023
There are two types of clubs
Highfalutin hoity-toity stuck up clubs
And gritty grimy dingy dank dungeons
I prefer the latter, for obvious reasons
Clubs must be weathered
Crackled paint & nicotine stained
August 31st, 2023
Neil Young stumbled off the stage more exhausted than usual. It had been a trying gig, watching Danny Whitten teeter from chord to chord on a heroin-fueled high-wire act that just seemed to get more perilous as the night wore on. It was fine that Danny blew some chords—everyone blew chords in this band. That was what made Crazy Horse special in the first place. If Neil wanted every note pure and perfect, he could have stuck with Crosby, Stills, and Nash. But what would have been the point of that? It was like playing a benediction for your own immaculate coffin.
...August 30th, 2023
The shadow from the brick facade
of Central High School did not seem
to spread much shade on the streets
of our Little Rock neighborhood.
August 27th, 2023
This edition features poetry chosen from hundreds of recent submissions, and from a wide range of voices known – and unknown – to readers of these collections. The work is unified by the poets’ ability to capture the abundance of jazz music, and their experience with consuming it.
...August 22nd, 2023
once said I’d marry a man
Who could hum the first four bars
Of Cal Tjader’s “Doxy.”
We say these foolish things
When we’re young and
Still learning the ways of the world.
August 20th, 2023
n On the Road, Jack & Neal raced Rocky Mount to Ozone Park,
speeding dark quiet American roads
Today, 2023. I drive the new superhighways, continuous sterile green
at median & shoulders,
August 18th, 2023
A man once asked me about ambition, not in a typical sense of family and lifetime accomplishments, more of a rhetorical artistic conversation. To me, it wasn’t a topic which warranted a structured answer let alone a real plan, God forbid life would be linear and predictable. Now, over two decades later, I am found in Notting Hill’s Rooftop Cafe, writing a story which could possibly address the subject unintentionally.
...August 17th, 2023
Shrouded in smoke and cigarette spheres
Jazzy speakeasy on a summer slog of a night
Where hips ramble in tandem,
Slide and slip in an out of rhythm
Juke Joint shifting with an uneven floor
Naked feet shuffling and colliding
August 13th, 2023
Vivaldi, especially “The Four Seasons,”
keeps showing up in forms of jazz:
a hint, a structure—but try unraveling
any musical DNA you go straight back
to singing and to drum, voice and poetry—
August 10th, 2023
free
what
bars?
intra-
views,
posit-
ions
o-
pen.
August 6th, 2023
20-year-old Priscilla Habel lives with her wannabe flapper mother who remains stuck in the jazz age 40 years later. Life is monotonous and sad until Cil meets Willie Flasterstain, a beatnik lesbian who offers an escape from her mother’s ever-imposing shadow.
...August 4th, 2023
Smooth. Jazz. Chill.
Write. Think. Build.
Listen. Vibe. Poetically
design.
Spend time with jazzy
sounds elevating the
mind. Jazz is smooth.
Jazz is chill.
July 30th, 2023
Did you dream up the orange golden sun of Aruanda?
Seashells far from your mother, you would no longer need
to whisper, “Take Me to Aruanda.”
...July 27th, 2023
The poet covers the spirit of the music, and the likes of Coltrane, Handy, and Ella…
...July 24th, 2023
The light aspires to be equatorial
but each eroded moment quiets otherwise.
The twilight Superior shore fills
with pine smoke from fire pits
just as Coltrane played in the
smoldering light at the Village Vanguard.
July 23rd, 2023
. . Lester Young, 1946 . . Solace I relish the cultivation of my Lester afternoons an endeavor still absorbing at my age captive in that garden of ambient sound …………………that Young tenor breath ………………………….a zephyr expulsion stirring atmosphere rare these days for this climate caressing time & movement with a tone to stream still … Continue reading ““Solace” – a poem by Terrance Underwood”
...July 18th, 2023
During that electric dawn
when I first heard
a bracelet of notes
which traced a subtle rhythm
within an hourglass of music
and sharpened the silence with sound,
July 16th, 2023
It’s 1958
and the epitome of 50s style
Anita O’Day steps onto
the stage, white gloves
to her elbows, black hat
crowned with white feathers,
slim black dress and finger clicks
the band into sound and dynamic
jazz minors and majors.
July 14th, 2023
A fantasy involving a spider and Miles Davis’ recording of “All Blues”
...July 12th, 2023
in jazz composition
everybody knows where the one is
even when nobody chooses to play it
if the space is quiet enough
you can hear blood racing
July 11th, 2023
The story – a finalist in the F. Scott Fitzgerald 2022 Short Story Contest – follows a laid-off silent-era screenwriter’s career shift after she’s forced to pawn her typewriter.
...July 10th, 2023
It’s one of those moments.
She only has ears for Miles Davis.
Reflecting on things that never came to be—
July 9th, 2023
A violin player and enthusiast makes a crucial decision regarding where his violin will go next.
...July 6th, 2023
In anticipation of a collection of jazz haiku — to be published sometime in August, 2023 — a small sampling of the jazz haiku received so far is published here.
...July 5th, 2023
he was/
a flightless bird/
bright as sky/
full of natural lies/
and sweet conflict/
when speaking the/
jazz
July 2nd, 2023
The poet describes his joyful experience of listening to “Mumbles,” a 1964 recording by Oscar Peterson with Clark Terry
...June 28th, 2023
Naturally, his lyrics are cued a cappella./“I’m home” slips from his lips,/sizzles like the taste of what I’m baking in the oven,/as he unwinds his day.
...June 25th, 2023
Two poems devoted to Steely Dan’s 1977 recording of “Aja”
...June 22nd, 2023
Bennie and his mother live alone together, and know each other through simple but profound rituals they have created…
...June 20th, 2023
The poet Alan Yount and son Arlan write about a live 1964 performance by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
...June 18th, 2023
The poet recalls an evening when he serendipitously encountered jazz in “The Point” neighborhood of Boston
...June 15th, 2023
All damn day/
talk — talk — talk/
I told him, son/
why not fit those fingers/
down that damn gullet/
and make it a proper/
squawk squawk squawk —/
June 11th, 2023
What if you love music…but you can no longer hear? Ms. Flock’s story contemplates the paralleled loss of the protagonist’s hearing and her husband, where music fits into her life now, and attempts to forge a new relationship being deaf.
...June 8th, 2023
Poets honor jazz as an international music in five atmospheric poems
...June 7th, 2023
The poet recalls a live performance he witnessed by the Timeless All Stars
...June 4th, 2023
This busy bee, at the end of a life like clockwork,
a symphony of service to everything but herself—
wings snatched in a world blinded by the way it is—
slowly expiring in the sweet nectar of stillness,
May 31st, 2023
When the water and sand dance, whence (whence?)/their music? What is that music? What /jazz, what syncopation surfs itself in?
...May 28th, 2023
. . “Guy Ryan,” a short story by Alice Sherman Simpson, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 62nd Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author. . This story is a chapter from author’s book-in-progress, One For Sorrow. . . ___ . . photo by Lalesh Aldarwish/via Pexels … Continue reading ““Guy Ryan” – a short story by Alice Sherman Simpson”
...May 22nd, 2023
That feeling when everything makes you sad/Nothing you can think of would make you glad/No matter how hard you try to remove yourself/From this blue funk
...May 21st, 2023
A call-out for submissions for upcoming poetry collections to be published on Jerry Jazz Musician
...May 19th, 2023
The poet writes a profile of the jazz drummer Elvin Jones, inspired by a photograph by Lee Tanner
...May 18th, 2023
The poets Richard Radcliffe and Svi A. Sesling share their experience of listening to and interacting with to the music of John Coltrane
...May 18th, 2023
Nine poets, nine poems on the leading figure in the development of bebop…
...May 17th, 2023
The poet writes a fantasy about Parker’s time in the California asylum Camarillo…a 15 song playlist accompanies the poem
...May 16th, 2023
. . The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work. Ms. Baptiste reads her poem at its conclusion. . . ___ . . David Dellepiane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons . . Jazz Within Me I like Jazz playing within me. ……………….Record that never skips. Since age sixteen, … Continue reading “The Sunday Poem: “Jazz Within Me” by Jerrice Baptiste”
...May 13th, 2023
A short story based on a recollection of the author’s mother from a night many years ago, when Gene Krupa’s sticks gave everything back its beat.
...May 13th, 2023
A woman’s fingers explored/piano keys, as though bairns/plowing through snow drifts/in search of hidden life;
...May 11th, 2023
An abstract poetic view of an abstract jazz recording…
...May 10th, 2023
A remembrance of incidents in the Bronx, Harlem and at Bop City…
...May 9th, 2023
The poet describes the clear, crisp sound of listening to jazz music on vinyl
...May 7th, 2023
Poet musings on Ellington — and big band music, by the poets Claire Andreani, Russell duPont, Laurinda Lind and Terrance Underwood
...May 4th, 2023
The poet remember jazz pianist Horace Tapscott
...May 2nd, 2023
A “jazz detective” uncovers a murder via a riddle involving a photo of Dizzy Gillespie
...May 1st, 2023
The poet recalls an encounter with Carmen McRae at a Hollywood shoe store
...April 30th, 2023
The poets share their love of jazz through personal narratives, and memories of live performances
...April 28th, 2023
A poem and an essay devoted to the legendary jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery
...April 27th, 2023
. . “The Occasional Girl,” a short story by Mark Bruce, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 62nd Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author. . . ___ . . Photo: Kubat Sydykov / World Bank/CC By-NC-ND-2.0 . The Occasional Girl by Mark Bruce . … Continue reading ““The Occasional Girl” – a short story by Mark Bruce”
...April 24th, 2023
The poet writes about the depth of the trumpeter’s playing, and the connections to many of the great trumpeters before him
...April 23rd, 2023
Several poems devoted to the pianist Ahmad Jamal, who died on April 16, 2023 at the age of 92.
...April 21st, 2023
In five poems, the poet writes of the music and complexity of trumpeter Chet Baker
...April 20th, 2023
The poet writes about the significance of Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue”, and why it is the “it” jazz recording…
...April 18th, 2023
The poet describes the impact of pianist Ahmad Jamal on a cherished evening, and beyond
...April 17th, 2023
The poet reflects on loss, fate, remembrance, and hopefulness
...April 16th, 2023
This is the 14th extensive collection of jazz poetry published on Jerry Jazz Musician since the fall of 2019, when the concept was initiated. Like all previous volumes, the beauty of this edition is not solely evident in the general excellence of the published works; it also rests in the hearts of the individuals from diverse backgrounds who possess a mutual desire to reveal their life experiences and interactions with the music, its character, and its culture.
...April 13th, 2023
. . “Modus Dualis,” by Martel Chapman . . Riff ‘n’ Tiff There was no time signature to save Louis Armstrong from the shivery brine. Monk volunteered to heave his piano overboard to give the lifeboat more zest but it wouldn’t budge or stay in tune for that matter. Moisture had initiated a rift between … Continue reading ““Riff ‘n’ Tiff” – humor by Dig Wayne”
...April 12th, 2023
A nurse is on the verge of selling everything before heading to WWI France, where a woman she is in love with awaits her arrival, forcing her to come to terms with what that means.
...April 10th, 2023
The poet recalls her early-life friendship with the pianist/composer Dave Frishberg
...April 9th, 2023
The poet writes on how a musician putting their heart into their playing is a key to a great solo
...April 7th, 2023
The poet recalls Miles Davis’ depth of character and musicianship during a particularly complex era of his career
...April 6th, 2023
The poet writes about the impact Jimi Hendrix’s performance of “Star Spangled Banner” had on America
...April 3rd, 2023
This narrative poem is informed by quotes and stories in What Happened, Miss Simone? the 2015 Netflix biographical documentary about the singer/artist’s life and art
...April 2nd, 2023
A tale of two Michael Cohens — one is Trump’s former “fixer,” the other is an important voice in LGBTQ history
...March 29th, 2023
Thoughts of sadness and hope in the wake of the March 27, 2023 school shooting in Nashville
...March 28th, 2023
A young Parisian girl comes of age during the Nazi Occupation, a time when social and political upheaval create drastic consequences for her youthful naïveté.
...March 27th, 2023
The poet profiles the larger-than-life figure of the legendary jazz bassist Charles Mingus
...March 26th, 2023
The poet writes about the changing sound of jazz in the 1970s through the work of Wayne Shorter
...March 24th, 2023
The poets Amy Barone and Mark Fogarty share personal thoughts and memories of the bassist Jaco Pastorius
...March 21st, 2023
The poet writes of youthful memories conjured up from listening to Chick Corea and Return to Forever’s 1973 album, “Light as a Feather.”
...March 19th, 2023
Poetic narratives by six women experiencing the blues.
...March 16th, 2023
A saxophonist and his teenage daughter – a drummer –bond over their club performance of John Coltrane’s “Mr. P.C,” but it doesn’t come without its parental challenges, and the father’s warm remembrance of her childhood.
...March 13th, 2023
The poet writes about the origins of our personal blues, and how they can affect us…
...March 12th, 2023
In this edition, the poet writes about attending a McCoy Tyner performance (or “ceremony”), and hearing the musician’s one word philosophy of music.
...March 9th, 2023
The author writes about his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, and some of the musicians and events that made up that city’s thriving music scene during the mid-20th century
...March 8th, 2023
The poet writes of a dreamlike, mystical evening experience
...March 7th, 2023
The poet honors his friend, the late jazz pianist Janice Scroggins, and reads his poem while Ms. Scroggins accompanies him
...March 5th, 2023
A poem honoring the greatness of the saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter, who died today at the age of 89
...March 2nd, 2023
The poet reflects on winter, its moon, and the playing of saxophonist Art Pepper
...March 2nd, 2023
The poet is inspired by John Coltrane’s 1961 recording, “Ole”
...February 26th, 2023
The author describes the emotional experience of listening to the music of Nina Simone
...February 24th, 2023
The poet is inspired by the 1956 recording of “St. Thomas,” by Sonny Rollins
...February 23rd, 2023
In this short listed entry from the 61st Short Fiction Contest, a man’s eating habits alter along with the cycles of his love life.
...February 20th, 2023
The poet suggests better music could have accompanied the final scene in the film “Casablanca”
...February 19th, 2023
The poet’s humorous look at the importance of musicians showing up, and on time, for their performance!
...February 16th, 2023
A brief history of Rodgers and Hart’s composition “My Funny Valentine,” and a poem by George Held, who reflects on the song
...February 14th, 2023
The poet recalls the impact of Chet Baker’s music on her late, earlier life friend
...February 12th, 2023
The poet tells the complex and tragic story of jazz pianist Bud Powell
...February 9th, 2023
A minor regional writer walks into a hometown bar and confronts his past – and present – when he encounters an old classmate
...February 6th, 2023
Meanwhile, digging
the scene
a sultry
walking hip-step
bop that
fell to the
sweetest
moody!
...February 5th, 2023
A sampling of recent submissions from six poets who, until now, have not had their work published on Jerry Jazz Musician
...February 2nd, 2023
first light skims on green wing like sprouts strobing for ray
...January 29th, 2023
A collection in which over 30 poets communicate their appreciation for jazz music in poems no longer than seven lines.
...January 27th, 2023
The poet writes of the blues of Billie Holiday…
...January 25th, 2023
A wealthy art dealer discovers that his grandfather purchased art confiscated from Jewish families before and after World War II, and meets an elderly woman who was affected by the grandfather’s actions.
...January 24th, 2023
The poet writes about the complexity of pianist Cecil Taylor’s music, and the liberation he feels from listening to it
...January 22nd, 2023
The poet writes of how the desire for love can be distilled into one golden wail of a Billy Strayhorn declaration.
...January 20th, 2023
Picasso paints a portrait based on what he sees in his model’s soul, much to the ego-centric subject’s chagrin
...January 18th, 2023
“Blow by Blow” is a portrait of Berkeley, California in the 1970’s, and the fusion jazz that was finding its way onto the scene at that time.
...January 17th, 2023
The poet imagines being a monarch butterfly, inspired to movement by the music of Django Reinhardt
...January 15th, 2023
A bluesman finds that his girlfriend is making him too happy. So he fobs her off on a no-talent rival, with unpredictable results.
...January 13th, 2023
The poet uses the winter snow for inspiration and self-reflection
...January 12th, 2023
The poet shares a memory of the jazz pianist Carla Bley
...January 8th, 2023
The author considers John Coltrane’s intensity and tenderness, and how these two qualities intertwine in his improvisations.
...January 6th, 2023
Four poets share their appreciation for jazz in poems seven lines or fewer
...January 5th, 2023
A young man finds solace in his late fathers’ guitar and finds a new way to live through the blues and a life on the road.
...January 3rd, 2023
The poet reveres the power and beauty and historical significance of Black women, and reads his poem
...January 1st, 2023
The poet brings in the new year, with the virtuoso sounds of pianist Art Tatum
...December 30th, 2022
Every day should be Kwanzaa, you ask me,
given our shared African heritage,
December 26th, 2022
The poet writes of a flute and London at Christmas time
...December 24th, 2022
The poet writes of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s hit song, and offers an 18 song version playlist
...December 21st, 2022
“Footsteps of Spring” was a short-listed entry in the 61st Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
...December 20th, 2022
.This collection of jazz poetry – the largest yet assembled on Jerry Jazz Musician – demonstrates how poets who are also listeners of jazz music experience and interact with the spontaneous art that arises from jazz improvisation, which often shows up in the soul and rhythm of their poetic language.
...December 16th, 2022
“The Weeping Tree” arises from the poet listening to (and watching) Sinne Eeg & Thomas Fonnesbæk perform “Willow Weep For Me”
...December 13th, 2022
Chuck Sweetman and Patricia Carragon write two very different poems, both inspired by Frank Sinatra
...December 9th, 2022
Mr. Robbins’ story was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 61st Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
...December 7th, 2022
The poet writes of a visitor to his listening of Louis Armstrong’s “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue”
...December 4th, 2022
The poet celebrates the sights and sounds of the New Orleans French Quarter
...December 2nd, 2022
The poets D.H. Jenkins and Stephen Bett on the jazz guitarist Pat Metheny
...November 28th, 2022
Salsa musicians Tony Martinez and Sal Rodriguez are determined to get paid by Billy Barata, their notoriously dishonest bandleader.
...November 21st, 2022
The fierce resistance…to Revelation! Disordered
listeners. The forest clearing in the thicket… The
Universe expanding on the Theme… The
Future finally right
now?
November 20th, 2022
In the winter of 1981 we were hired to play Downtown—
a performance in Greenwich Village billed “Frank Zappa Presents:
a Musical Tribute to Edgard Varèse.” I sat on stage,
wearing black, tuning my violin, warming up,
looking out at the audience milling around, most of them
covered in tattoos and piercings of every body part
November 14th, 2022
A poem about what’s at stake in the Nov 8 2022 midterm election
...November 8th, 2022
The winner of the the 61st edition of the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest is a story of reflection on a coming-of-age mentorship, gone awry.
...November 7th, 2022
They are gathering now
all along the shoreline.
Their bones sing October!
Their wings cry out Go south!
I walk with my banjo
down to the water’s edge.
What can I play for geese
who carry their own tunes
November 4th, 2022
News concerning a new collection of jazz poetry by Michael L. Newell
...November 3rd, 2022
Musicians
make conversation
around the notes
warm up before leaving terra firma,
say goodbye to familiar places.
Soar.
October 28th, 2022
“Fire From Heaven” arises from the poet Douglas Cole listening to John Coltrane’s 1964 album A Love Supreme
...October 24th, 2022
That inner sense of freedom,
a natural balance
with an impulse
to preserve the day,
as the equinox
tilts from a window
with a view of leaves on fire.
October 18th, 2022
In five separate poems, poets write of Robert Johnson, Beethoven, Ornette Coleman, Duke Fakir and The Band
...October 10th, 2022
Old photos link the narrator to his mother’s love and strength, and thanks her while humming Billie Holiday’s “All the Way”
...October 4th, 2022
The poet honors the late Pharoah Sanders
...September 30th, 2022
Mr. Donnelly’s “The Sweatshop” is a memoir about about his time working in a music accessory sweatshop by day, and slogging it out on the club circuit by night…
...September 29th, 2022
Jazz and poetry…Mingling Yeats, Dylan Thomas and Coleman Hawkins — and communicating a lifelong passion for music
...September 26th, 2022
I was there to see The Trio:
Ramsey Lewis, Eldee Young,
Red Holt. The darkened space
lived up to its name. It felt edgy,
sophisticated, high voltage.
September 21st, 2022
Cool, cool, ineffably cool,
his trumpet grieves with
a restraint barely able to be
embraced by listeners, his music
is pain on ice, whiskey frozen
September 13th, 2022
As if the stars contained wood ticks
on fire. As if there were forests within
forests. Trees within stones. Stones
folded over into water.
The most secret nocturnal animals
walk around during the day, unseen.
September 11th, 2022
You listen to Karrin Allyson sing “Blame It on My Youth,” you picture her in the throes of its May-December scenario. You picture her on a college campus. Columbia University, the steps in front of Low, a pleated skirt, a short bob, the full flush of love on her cheeks.
...September 7th, 2022
My friend and I are talking indignant politics
as we head across the Mid-Hudson bridge,
steel sky above, chilly water below,
when a cloud of birds twists, spins above us.
They seek every bare branch, fill them
as if they were summer leaves, then scatter
again like confetti in wind. No one is in charge,
yet balance animates all.
September 5th, 2022
It’s
sittin’ in the corner knowing what others don’t get and smile-noddin’ over scotch and coda after a day bounced you about like Buddy’s snare and high hat clamped you down to sweet Georgia brown dirt in the Summertime wailed by Sidney Bechet
August 31st, 2022
A former contemporary dancer struggles to find her place in both the world and her own body after leaving her discipline behind for a career in software development.
...August 29th, 2022
Forgotten poems fly here and there
like birds that circle aimlessly
high in the thin and chilly air
till, willy-nilly, they come down
August 28th, 2022
“The Ghost Note” arises from the poet listening to “From Paris With Love” from Melody Gardot’s 2020 album Sunset in the Blue
...August 23rd, 2022
Through your horn’s dark pieties,
the glamor of its golden mouth, a youth
lost to the call and response of too many needle-nights,
too many dumps, too many dives,
you play a mudwater music, slow-flowing under an old iron bridge,
so sad, so far gone, it wings away never to come back.
August 18th, 2022
A woman stands up for her ex-boyfriend when her new lover disparages music by Art Tatum, a favorite artist of his.
...August 16th, 2022
A broad collection of jazz poetry authored by an impressive assemblage of regular contributors and established poets new to this publication – all of whom open their imagination and hearts to the abundant creative experience they derive from this art.
...August 14th, 2022
I rise, change the sheets on the bed
that used to be in Mother’s basement.
I step into her body or she into mine,
attempt to line the blanket and spread
evenly, to tuck in the ends the “military”
square-corner-way and then, I remember
Mother doing chores to jazz, blues
August 12th, 2022
Was it something she said? about
the famous Charlie Parker drawers
He — himself a drawer —
illustrator, declaimer of conclusions —
commenced to rapping
about terrorists
on LA flight
demanding underwear
August 8th, 2022
The poet’s tender remembrance of his father’s passion for the clarinet
...August 5th, 2022
My mother used to take me here. It’s different in the dark; the metal frames lurk like gallows and the railings remind me of prison bars. I don’t remember her pushing me in the bucket seat, but I believe she did. I do remember the big girls’ swing: hours and hours we spent. She took the seat beside me; we leant and pulled together, stretched pointed toes, forwards and backwards, rising and falling, higher and higher, hands gripped on chains and our bottoms lifting as we peaked. I pick at the paint on a rusted spear and nick my finger. Blood trickles onto my palm. I lick it off and the taste is metallic, as if my flesh is made from city. Perhaps the city took over, where my mother left off.
...August 4th, 2022
Through the art of meditation,
I become transfixed—transported
to the days of Baldwin & Joplin,
the Black Renaissance of Harlem— the resurrection
of a muse, Langston Hughes,
...August 2nd, 2022
bass
piano
blues
low
down
blues
and higher now
12 bar blues
right now
cliché
like
“a little bit a soda”
but not.
July 27th, 2022
My country, right or wrong
I call it home, the land my forefathers
Help built, but got little credit
July 23rd, 2022
Give the man a toothpick,
he is dying!
Perhaps his teeth need cleaning,
Sweet starchy deposits of his life trapped
and pleading for rescue
from the dying body
July 18th, 2022
A neo-noir story of a young singer snuffed out by the music business early in her career, either by chance or malice…
...July 15th, 2022
He’s a-stagger the patrilineous
hillside grove wonder tunnels
street black ribbons going bower-deep
with sunlight glitter punctuations
feeling the great payoff on the way
July 11th, 2022
When I hear Sketches of Spain or Kind of Blue – Miles Davis masterpieces from his earlier career – I am always calmed, thrilled by the ways that music can take over every portion of a person from head to toe, from inside to outside, from innermost mind to outermost layer of skin.
...July 6th, 2022
. . Distributed by Joe Glaser’s Associated Booking Corporation. Photographer uncredited and unknown., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Chet Baker, 1955 . . Always Cool Alison weaves on her loom in the living room. Fifth floor walk up. Manhattan. Chet plays on the stereo; a trumpet divinely graced, caressed like a stunning woman’s body, soft … Continue reading ““Always Cool” — a poem by Judith Vaughn”
...June 29th, 2022
The Club is almost ready to open.
It’s clean, the bar stocked, piano
polished and the crowd is lined
up down the street.
June 19th, 2022
Throughout the day, the sky has bled
boatloads of water to drown the streets,
a level of grief I have not known
since the day the e-mail arrived
with the heading, “Landing gear down,”
a note from a brother informing me
of my father’s passing in Oregon
June 19th, 2022
The poet writes about the 1956 collaboration of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
...June 17th, 2022
The poet reflects on a childhood of the 1960s
...June 12th, 2022
The poet recalls a special night on the town, listening to Les Paul
...June 4th, 2022
When in spring/Miles’s horn awakens/The nodding giant of the streets…
...June 2nd, 2022
The poet reveres the jazz drummer and musical mentor to many, Art Blakey
...May 31st, 2022
The poem “Convergence” rises from listening to the 1960 album, “Stan Getz Quartet at Large”
...May 28th, 2022
A selection of poems from Michael L. Newell’s new collection of poetry, Still the World Beckons: New and Selected Poems (cyberwit.net)
...May 25th, 2022
The wind sandpapered John’s cheeks the instant he opened the swing door. By the time he’d stepped down from Bill’s Billiards into the street he was shivering.
He hadn’t been good on stage: every second tune had reminded him of Riley, the turd.
There was no traffic and even the pizza place had closed, and he missed its earlier smells of warm mozzarella and meat. The chill air did, however, carry the hint of something, a snatch of melody from a passing car or a distant open window, and he listened, seeking its source.
...May 19th, 2022
Two poets reflect on the May 14, 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York
...May 16th, 2022
The poet writes of the collaboration of Ellington, Roach and Mingus on the 1962 album “Money Jungle”
...May 13th, 2022
first light skims on green wing
like sprouts strobing for ray
climbs from soils of night,
through damask-leafed curtain
a gateless gate, come home
from crescendo of star-gazing
to dew of earth shiver
May 5th, 2022
A story of a young man working in a music store who is asked to record the ramblings of a deranged customer. He agrees, but comes to regret his decision.
...May 2nd, 2022
Tall girl walks around
With a violin worn
Across her back
Her red hair carries
The fire of spring
April 30th, 2022
Mamacita with round brown hips roll and sway sway and roll slow that stroll
...April 27th, 2022
While we were waiting in the wings____
tuning our instruments,
From clefs to choruses, ominous portents
reared their ugly heads.
We didn’t see them, though.
We were cowering in dark corners,
hiding from the apparition
screaming through the night.
April 23rd, 2022
The voice comes down from the bedroom, winding down the stairs, crankily.
It does not at once compel in the manner of one of my “favorite singers” on the radio. I am a person, to use the word loosely, who does not own record albums, or a record player. What I hear from upstairs at her house, wailing down from the steps in that unassimilable voice, is the whine of the prairie. A rusty gate. A barroom complaint…
April 18th, 2022
Mr. Cole’s suite consists of eight poems, all interpretations from songs on pianist Tommy Flanagan’s album Sunset and the Mockingbird Suite
...April 14th, 2022
Over 60 poets from all over the world celebrate their love of jazz…in poetry.
...April 7th, 2022
From a dark corner, night crawls across a wood-board floor
warped from a life beneath boots and spilled beer.
Her music is a moan, a collection of sorrows,
lost love, broken hearts, and illegal dreams.
April 7th, 2022
A story about two American musicians in Paris for the summer–both of whom are on the brink of a breakdown.
...April 4th, 2022
Inspired by the essays collected in the jazz and cultural critic Nat Hentoff’s 2010 book At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene, in this series of poems Sean Howard uncovers new relationships and resonances in the author’s writing – reusing, recycling, and remixing text from the book as poetry – while allowing him the opportunity to pay a personal tribute to a writer he reveres.
...March 29th, 2022
The earth has got a fever of 103, and I’ve
found Langston Hughes languishing
on the sidewalks of NYC.
Piano keys were dancing in the wind;
Thelonious Monk was bluer than blue,
his slouch hat rolling to Timbuktu.
March 24th, 2022
. . “Opus One,” a story by Amadea Tanner, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 59th Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author . . ___ . . photo by Gordon Parks/Library of Congress . Opus One By Amadea Tanner . …..The Dempsey Quintet pulsed eight to … Continue reading ““Opus One” — a short story by Amadea Tanner”
...March 22nd, 2022
a trumpet cries over orchestral waves
trumpet mourns like a wounded beast
trumpet demands attention
orchestra swells trumpet riding its waves
silence then trumpet reappears softly in distance
March 17th, 2022
It’s the darkness, man, the
Darkness
that laughs with the evil of the vamp.
It’s the wildness, man, the
Wildness
that greets the gray of dawn.
March 15th, 2022
We hear it from the street corner
as someone’s fingers begin to
pray the tune on the alto sax.
…..Let our rejoicing rise
…..High as the listening skies…
March 10th, 2022
Gail’s days on the bandstand are behind her now, London nights swapped for the life of a farmer’s wife back in Devon. But if an intriguing young man with a love of Billy Strayhorn wants sax lessons, who is she to deny him the chance to experience what she has given up?
...March 7th, 2022
The poet Erren Kelly honors the voting and women’s rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer
...March 4th, 2022
Gene Hyde’s poem connects nature and the moon to the music of John Coltrane
...March 1st, 2022
Set forth beautiful one
open sea and open sky
as far as your eye can see
full wind filling the sails
pushing those hesitant steps
three at a time before
the cymbal crash of wave
February 25th, 2022
Now when I start telling you about John Jones Sr., I don’t want you to go and get the wrong idea on me. And I don’t want anyone else to hear about it because I’ll deny it sure as I blow hella on this old harp. There are things that he knows about me that only your Pop can know. For that I got to love him. Even though times are when he gives it to me good.
...February 22nd, 2022
do you hear the wind?
see that scarlet leaf
dance on concrete?
I am that wind
I am that leaf
I am that dance
February 17th, 2022
hands do talk
to me they do
& after shaking his
some years back
clasping those long digits
expecting ivory key smoothness
I was stopped short by
their cement block
& long handle roughness
February 12th, 2022
They stretch octaves
across the sheet music
and the decades
of “Charleston Rag”
fingers like twisted bent tree trunks–
remembered rivers of antiquity
flowing through his veins–
February 8th, 2022
Tonight, I am alone,
lost in a dream,
and the dulcet tones
of Grappelli’s violin
glide lazily across
the twilight of my mind,
February 1st, 2022
It was a summer of jazz leaking out through shuttered windows; of breaking glass and rage from the anonymous facades of brick apartments; of winged girls trying to fly from atop the Cathedral of St. Louis; of women trying to take back the night from jugglers and mimes and the men who lurked and looked too long. And through all of this, we walked hand in hand, visitors from a planet where soybean fields bookmarked the horizon and the sweet smell of corn danced across the dusk.
...January 31st, 2022
A concert for lovers
Romantic space
For an eternal memory.
Well-dressed musicians
Well decorated scene.
.
Each note inspires exact words
To win Ghislaine’s heart,
The beauty of my youth.
January 29th, 2022
Remember when
the music saved
your life?
It’s different now.
Snow chills and hope,
like the rhythm section,
is subdued.
January 24th, 2022
Horace Silver’s got a grove. Just listen to that left hand,
like a heart skipping a beat or jumping up to a double-beat,
like beholding something so beautiful you can hardly believe it.
January 19th, 2022
Dressed in a tight-fitting black suit, Rosario Cino, flanked by his son Mario and his nephew Charlie, also in black suits, exited the cool of All Souls Church and stepped into a rank wall of unseasonably warm and humid air. They and a handful of friends and relatives had just sat through the funeral of Guido Tutolo, a former bookie, loan shark, and paisan—and last of the old gang, as Rosario had said repeatedly to his son and nephew, neither of whom seemed torn up about the death, their connection to Guido limited, their youthfulness of course looking forward.
...January 18th, 2022
wind whispers song of grief
its version of
Ben Webster’s sorrowful solos
January 12th, 2022
So long ago, before Ornette Coleman,
Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane—
all those free spirits running up and down
the alphabet of jazz, there was old
J.S. Bach, running through the changes.
I always picture him, and hear him,
at the pipe organ in Tomas Kirsche
all by himself,
January 7th, 2022
A 34-year old childless bachelor reluctantly agrees to babysit the nine-year old daughter of a friend of his on a Saturday night in September. The experience leads to a life-changing revelation.
...January 3rd, 2022
Between the notes
lies the silenced passion and pain
of a people
too enormous for lyric expression
though the black dots on the page
attempt to decode the encrypted message.
January 1st, 2022
In the cold vastness of space without end,
we swirl through time, around the sun,
alone, unknown, unknowable, lonely
collections of stardust, certain we matter,
but vague as to why and how, unable
to prove our value, yet convinced we must
December 23rd, 2021
The woodshed was the hunting ground for wings of notes.
Black suits and ties, hipster hats and smoke rings of notes.
Was Robert Johnson alone, hellhound on his trail?
Was a deal made? Was Bird Satan’s plaything of notes?
December 21st, 2021
In a modern literary retelling of The Little Mermaid, Pearl, a talented singer, leaves her tiny seaside town to enter the music business. She must let go of everything she thought she wanted to discover her true worth.
...December 20th, 2021
Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. This poem is written to the 1957 Coleman Hawkins recording of “Juicy Fruit.”
...December 17th, 2021
I live inside Erik Satie’s piano
with my dog.
Every day is early morning autumn here
The leaves never fall
inside Erik Satie’s piano – they dance
December 14th, 2021
Molly Larson Cook’s abstract-expressionist paintings accompany the 50 poets contributing to this collection. Her art has much in common with the poetry and music found within it; all three art forms can be described as “landscapes of the imagination,” created by artists from all over the world who are inspired in a meaningful way by jazz music, and whose work can be uniquely interpreted and appreciated (or not!) by those who consume it.
...December 10th, 2021
It was probably Dean who was responsible for him being where he was right now, he thought as he sat across the table from his fiancée listening to her talk about the wedding and the gifts they were registered for and the reception. He had discovered an album he didn’t approve of – Barbra Streisand – among Dean’s records when he went to stay with him shortly after he got married to a woman from Cleveland.
...December 9th, 2021
One of my greatest joys for decades
was exploring unknown record shops.
I once walked into a newly opened used
shop around the corner from my university
and discovered a used album, apparently
the improvisatory result of a session
set up by Norman Granz that included
December 8th, 2021
I never did read the news, though I don’t suppose
it made a splash in the Post or Herald Tribune–
with maybe just a line or two
among the baseball stats, divorces,
and the marches picking up
deep down in the Cotton States.
December 3rd, 2021
I sit on a balcony,
a cup of coffee held for warmth
on a chill spring morning,
as waxwings and vireos flit and flash,
percolating with song.
November 26th, 2021
“What I have to say now stays between us.”
The Chairman’s face flushed a little. I sensed one of his rants was coming, and I was not disappointed:
“In my opinion, Jakub Hoch is a pseudo-liberal loudmouth of minimal talent who has no place as Musical Director of this orchestra.”
...November 23rd, 2021
I had a little radio up on top of the refrigerator, and I turned it on as the sunlight went and the world filled up with darkness. I listened to a jazz station and smoked a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window.
...November 18th, 2021
the
horns
blow
melodies
seduce
hairs
on the
back
of
necks
November 14th, 2021
You Supremes in your long black robes
are at it again, sitting as though on Olympus, while we
soulfully wait to hear if you’re in tune with our needs.
We know You Can’t Hurry Love, but
we’re anxious to see your next decree.
...November 9th, 2021
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work. Emily Jon Tobias of Dana Point, California is the winner of the 58th Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award. In “Mouth Organ,” Monk is a young musician who comes of age within his family domain, first by falling in love with girlfriend Gloria, and then having to face an unreconciled past with his mother, Bunny.
...November 8th, 2021
Julie London purrs.
Smooth, sultry, classy, sexy.
Temperatures rise.
November 5th, 2021
Wind sweeps through screen into living room;
papers dance across desk and floor;
an old woman’s hair floats,
a tattered flag of silver and gray;
November 2nd, 2021
On my walks alone lately I fantasize
that I’ll come across a woman my age
give or take a few years.
She’ll be listening to Miles, or Monk,
or Horace Silver, and reading
one of my poetry books.
October 29th, 2021
if i could
i’d ride the trains
again
just to make it all go
away
like that phone call i
got that evening
from sis
or that last conversation
we had
October 15th, 2021
The jazz DJ you listened to each morning
Is broadcasting from another sphere.
Perhaps you and Phil are parsing
Charlie Parker together.
His nasal voiced juicy lisp that spilled
details of Parker, Lester Young, and Coltrane,
no longer flies the airwaves in Birdflight.
October 12th, 2021
Having invented jazz, Buddy Bolden
Tried to imagine what else he’d invent,
Maybe the light bulb or dry cereal,
A cure for syphilis or dementia
Praecox, something he was familiar
With, but he stuck with jazz, American
And quintessential as coffee with milk
...October 3rd, 2021
Maebelle had been surprised when, in 1934, a scout for the American Record Corporation invited her to come and sing at the General Store, “for our field recordings.”
“Field recordings?” she’d joked. “They wanna hear the Boll Weevil, close up?” She was recalling the Charley Patton song.
...September 29th, 2021
Ferlinghetti at 101 took the cosmic bus home
this week. A life abundant, blessed with
art, poetry, creativity, and a lot of fun.
RingMaster for the poetry revolution,
Mr. San Francisco Big Daddy!
City Lights! The Mecca of hip!
September 28th, 2021
Dear Miss Ella, song supreme,
Improvisations sovereign –
I, swayed and moved by.
She, both modest, shy
Yet spoke of love (and what’s above),
Deserving place in poetry
Centered around her artistry –
The art of spontaneity;
A musicality called jazz!
September 21st, 2021
It’s never easy to say goodbye, especially when you didn’t get there in time. Dad was hours away from me and I didn’t have a car and it was the middle of the night when I got word. Words. Sung off-key.
...September 18th, 2021
a strange caribbean woman
kneeled down
very close to me,
in my hospital recovery bed.
she seemed very animated
also even sensory
she gradually came closer
as she put her face next to mine.
September 16th, 2021
Dim dusk breaks down
the receding light and one after another
strands of the passing hour unravel
leaving behind an existence beyond time
that opens the doors to another world:
It’s late in the evening in a foreign metropolis
September 10th, 2021
High overhead (turned turned and turned
again) a bird defines wind currents.
Branches crackle wildly gesticulate
a confusion of gusts.
With grace and ease a student
navigates school rapids until
September 5th, 2021
. . “Catbelly Heat On My Knees,” a story by Ewing Eugene Baldwin, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 57th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author. . . photo via hippopx/CC0 1.0 Universal . Catbelly Heat on My Knees by Ewing Eugene Baldwin . ___ . … Continue reading ““Catbelly Heat on My Knees” — a story by Ewing Eugene Baldwin”
...September 3rd, 2021
Missa brevis —a little requiem. At most I know
perhaps forty Latin words and have already used up
four of them. Maybe not too bad for a Jew boy.
And besides, editors of poetry are always carping:
Keep it short.
August 23rd, 2021
One of the best things about my life is that in the course of it I had the chance to see the great Blind Lemon Jefferson on eleven different occasions. This was especially gratifying because for me he was the finest blues singer who ever lived, even better than Robert Johnson or Charlie Patton or Bessie Smith.
...August 21st, 2021
“It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.”
-Herbie Hancock
.
And…this spirit is not limited to the musicians, because celebrating jazz is rich in creative opportunity for writers and visual artists as well. The 54 poets who contribute to this poetry collection are living proof of that.
As always, thanks to the poets, and I hope you enjoy…
Joe
...August 19th, 2021
Almost sixty years
have passed yet
it could be today
she sings murder
oppression
protest in the streets
school children
sitting in jail
August 9th, 2021
water
cold
pleating
over
against
rock
planted
August 5th, 2021
“Eerie Moan” is a flash improv off the haunting 1933 Duke Ellington track…
...July 26th, 2021
Blossom Dearie sings Mad About The Boy.
Her fingers quicken over black & white bars.
A young man & woman fall in love during summer.
Moon climbs up the mountain, lips quiver
during their first kiss under stars.
...July 24th, 2021
“Space for Nothing” a story by Pamela Nocerino, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 57th Short Fiction Contest.
...July 21st, 2021
My mouth hungry
ravenous lips slathered
with Radiant Ruby gloss
I dine on the very edges
of the celestial universe.
Ingest illumination
until my voice box
awakens antiquities,
beguiling even the moon.
July 15th, 2021
Sidney Bechet was a nasty man
ill-tempered and suspicious
– anything but jolly –
a man of hot and steamy trade
wielding the iron all morning
in his New York basement tailor shop
July 11th, 2021
Information about two newly published books by the poet Michael L. Newell
...July 9th, 2021
Taking Forster’s bucket
into the unknown
like Keith Jarrett
in Bremen sailing
into pianissimo
July 8th, 2021
In the closing weeks of 1949, the consensus of New York’s cognoscenti was unanimous: the American debut of London’s Sadler’s Wells Ballet was the triumph of the post-war era. The praise and attention lavished upon the visiting artists was unrelenting; the Yanks’ sudden passion for tutus, Tchaikovsky, and entrechat quatres bordered on obsession. And yet, three weeks into their engagement, with four performances at The Met remaining, their company’s esteemed music director and conductor Constant Lambert was bored to tears.
...July 6th, 2021
Stella sticks her toes in the grass
and she don’t know the impact—
the moonlight bending on the bowing blades of grass
casting long shadows like tracks
I follow her, relaxed.
July 3rd, 2021
On my birthday in 1917, Jazz
was first recorded.
The time of Jelly Roll Morton was at
hand—the king of Blues,
June 29th, 2021
He hovers,
flesh and presence,
round the story of midnight jazz….
a single note hangs, suspended
in a cigarette-whiskey haze
as ears perk open, anticipate
the pleasure of surprise
June 24th, 2021
Prague, Christmas Eve, 1994. Midwinter. Snow. Anna and I have a room in the Grand Hotel Europa, which is not grand in the least but run-down and cramped, still bearing the stamp of its Warsaw Pact years. The floral wallpaper is worn and the carpet threadbare; the room is mostly taken up with the big double bed.
...June 22nd, 2021
I’ll first catch “Song for My Father”
as Steely Dan churning in a tape deck between
the thin walls of this two-room cabin, biting
what I’ll later come to dig–Horace Silver’s opening bass notes,
June 19th, 2021
Spring rains watercolor the earth leaf, daffodil, violet,
then soften to a blue-gray mist,
and clear. Day’s begun transitioning, sky-bright blue to
lapis lazuli. Moon dreams in the north.
June 14th, 2021
Brent didn’t really go to Japan as a tourist. He went to Japan as a record hunter. The “Land of the Rising Sun” was known to house some of the best record stores for free jazz and that, my friends, was more important than any shrine, temple or giant Buddha statue.
...June 8th, 2021
a Saturday night
Blue Note
jam session
chaotic improvisation
settling into discordant conjunction
June 4th, 2021
Golden Gate
shadow arms
ocean and steel
ships of souls
harbors deep waters
avenues of piers
city welcome
the blood of youth
May 29th, 2021
Few artists inspire creativity like Miles Davis. This collection of poetry by 50 poets from all over the world is evidence of that.
...May 27th, 2021
A young man was walking up one of the roads that climbed out of the town, into the hills. He was tall, probably in his late teens, appeared fit and strong – looked like he’d pass a physical. Dark curly hair which was too long, but that could be easily taken care of, of course – give him a haircut, swap the t-shirt and shorts for an olive green uniform, the glasses for a pair of regulation army specs, and he’d look the part.
...May 25th, 2021
Your blood, poisoned by neither drink nor drugs,
but the ravening appetite of some fickle force
we can’t fathom; the way hearts attack us or else
our systems are assailed by cells made to invade.
May 21st, 2021
“What’s he even mean by that,” my son asked the other day.
Whose love? What love? And for whom?
May 16th, 2021
. . Polydor Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Chick Corea, 1976 . . In Summa Summit ……………in memory of Chick Corea Pretty, I’ve got a postcard picture mind that finds windows inside a supermax where lost time and space are a double bind — the phenomenology of the sax remembered from all-night pot-toked jazz … Continue reading ““In Summa Summit” — a sonnet (in memory of Chick Corea) by John Kendall Hawkins”
...May 15th, 2021
“Ensemble”—I had heard the director use the term on many occasions, and thought it just meant some undefined collection of musicians. My Jr-high classmates were asked “to meet for ensemble,” or were told that “the ensemble session will be at 10:10 today.” In school, if you joined the band you just started playing; there was no course in Orientation to Band 101 to explain these concepts to us.
...May 13th, 2021
It was the sixties.
“It’s cool,” he said.
“You’ll dig it.”
A row of attached
and run-down
brick three-stories
on a dark side-street
May 11th, 2021
The first time I tried to convince Veronica that we’ve met before, it was a dark summer night, honeyed and sulky, and beneath my feet, the earth was still swollen with rain. Under my right arm, I carried one of her paintings in a wooden case, while my left hand held the scrap of paper bearing the Trevisan family home’s address, given to me in a brief yet frantic call from her aunt.
...May 10th, 2021
My homing pigeon heart
Eternally it wings me
On a long journey back through time
We follow the north star to the lake
Of Neptune’s song and mermaid hair
And land beside that ramshackle cottage
May 8th, 2021
My mother’s ghost comes to me whenever I smoke one of my innumerable cigarettes, when I am re-reading one of her favorite books – like Jane Austen’s Emma – or even when I’m walking, careless and carefree, down the street. And her ghost always arrives when I hear certain music.
...May 5th, 2021
Sailing through a midnight sky,
entangled in pine branches,
a golden full moon graces
the night with a beauty
comparable to a Bill Evans
or Duke Ellington solo,
nothing needed to expand
the floating vision;
May 2nd, 2021
Mike finished washing his face just as he knew Tomas, his son, would start the journey over to visit him. He wasn’t home yet, that place he called “home.” East to his son’s West.
...April 26th, 2021
I believed you were still
in that orange plaid upholstered rocker
in the sunroom.
We danced our mutually agreed upon waltz.
You pretended you knew who I was. And I pretended
you hadn’t forgotten me.
April 23rd, 2021
On the day Miss Lena took her reward
I’m breaking bread w/Eddie
who shoveled her sidewalk as a kid
and picked Miss Ella’s roses.
High-fived Cootie runnin’ scales ’n
JB takin’ the bridge.
April 15th, 2021
In all honesty, my father had been known to tell more than a few tall tales in his time. Yet, whenever I’d try to catch him on one he would pause, nod his head patiently, and then politely remind me there were always two sides to every story.
...April 11th, 2021
I can see you sitting outside the Reno
where the Mob’s tight hold makes dollars spin.
You are scuffling the dust, then homing in
whenever Lester launches his solo.
April 6th, 2021
Gareth Davey writes a fictional account of the tragic death of the jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan
...April 1st, 2021
A poem by Michael Amitin celebrating John Coltrane’s classic “A Love Supreme” recording
...March 29th, 2021
A collection of the poet Erren Kelly’s unconstrained, improvisational and provocative poetry written during the era of COVID
...March 19th, 2021
Are you singing on balconies these days?
Do you still sing only in your car, radio tuned
to hot, blistering jazz?
March 15th, 2021
He drove uptown on Riverside Drive, the motor noise magnificent. Traffic increased as he approached Harlem. Other drivers jostling to get ahead noticed the car first. A red Ferrari was not subtle in gray Manhattan, and the engine roared money and power and European elegance. Then neighbors would study the man in outsized sunglasses. Some recognized him, smiling or shaking their heads in disbelief. Others looked aggrieved, even outraged that a person like him could be driving a vehicle like that. Ferrari only built three-hundred of their 275 GTB.
...March 12th, 2021
The poets Terrence Underwood and George Held write about the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk
...March 7th, 2021
In this winter collection of diverse themes and poetic styles, 55 poets wander the musical landscape to explore their spirit and enthusiasm for jazz music, its historic figures, and the passion, sadness, humor and joy it arouses.
...February 25th, 2021
The first flat of my own in Stockholm was
really small but in a nice area on one of
the islands south of the old town.
My girlfriend often stayed with me,
since her own flat was way out
in the suburbs.
February 13th, 2021
Yesterday removed from the warm artery of time
And the ground beneath my feet shrinking
Falling
Falling
Falling
into the ramshackle cottages
leaning together on the streets with no names
February 11th, 2021
Round Midnight at the Silver Seas Hotel
and falling stars parade through
an espresso black sky in Ocho Rios.
Caribbean waves lap against the sea wall
like brushes swishing against a snare.
February 7th, 2021
Wading through the gloaming, almost majestic,
looking ready for a coronation, the bird stretches
wings as though sweeping night air from his regal
January 27th, 2021
“An Archaeologically Authenticated, Gastro-Musicological Historical Artifact: The Menu For The Jazz Brunch At Jack’s Tea Garden” is excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled “The Hip Man Letters, vol. 2: Dear Morty.”
...January 26th, 2021
a lot of the trumpet players
I used to go hear, are all gone now
or too old to play.
clark terry
miles & maynard:
ray anthony’s still around though.
January 22nd, 2021
In this fifth collection of poetry reflecting these times, 33 poets offer their perspectives…
...January 20th, 2021
. . Inside the Village Vanguard, November, 2016 . ___ . . To The Audience Members Who Chatted During The Recording Of Bill Evans Trio Live At The Village Vanguard, June 25, 1961 . Relax, I will never scold, don’t shush. All music, like all moments, is soon lost. It’s vocal … Continue reading ““To The Audience Members Who Chatted During The Recording Of Bill Evans Trio Live At The Village Vanguard, June 25, 1961″ — a poem by John Riley”
...January 18th, 2021
He told us we were required to freeze everything in our lives and find the nearest house or store or restaurant or motor lodge. Don’t knock. Go in. Get comfortable. Wait for further instructions.
...January 11th, 2021
Way back in the ‘40s,
she had a cat
black as night
and named it . . .
Well, you know.
This was the ‘40s
January 9th, 2021
a quid pro quo threw knives
into the government’s heart
a coup to reinstate an orange plague
almost happened
combustion
fueled by messianic idiocy
used privilege to smash windows
& attempt abduction of evidence for a nation’s choice
January 8th, 2021
Bobbin’ an’ weavin’
schuckin’ an’ jivin’
I’m comin’ up.
I’m comin’ up.
Down the corridor, I walk—
square ring stage
Garden audience awaits.
January 4th, 2021
Thank you dogs that started barking
who made me turn the jazz up on New Year’s Eve
loud
loud
loud
so mutilated America would hear what horns are supposed to sound like
December 30th, 2020
All of a sudden, I began to experience an unusual perspiration. A perspiration that altered the rhythm of my heartbeat. The more the rhythm was thrown off, the more rapid my heartbeat pounded. I listened with displeasure as my heartbeat produced discordant tunes. The tunes were unpleasant to the ears.
...December 28th, 2020
Never up first, he was always
downstairs first, his four little boys
aligned like ascending angels
up the polished staircase, already
dressed, eager to see the tree,
December 23rd, 2020
Bethlehem lies far away from here
and home is a speck in the eyes of dreamers
we had to getaway to get our
peace on earth
December 18th, 2020
Halyards play jazz
snapping rhythm
against sailboat masts.
Floating docks moan.
The sloop rocks.
December 16th, 2020
Frank’s day begins as so many have in the last decade, a decade lost to a job, a way of life, as his phone wakes him with the bourbon-drenched tones of Tom Waits announcing he ‘can’t wait to get off work.’ Frank knows he will have that sentiment lingering in his mind until he returns home later, much later in fact, after another shift at the tavern of ill-repute. Beginning his day as he has almost every other he moves to his chair with a piping hot mug of tea and proceeds to construct and then smoke a big fat joint.
...December 15th, 2020
Imagine the ocean
and holding it
Back
with only two hands,
and one outsized mind.
Only God,
or the moon,
can move the tides.
December 9th, 2020
Jazz and poetry have always had a symbiotic relationship. Their creative languages share the common soil of imagination and improvisation, from which their audiences discover inspiration and spirit, and perhaps even a renewed faith in life itself.
This collection features 50 gifted poets from places as disparate as Ohio and Nepal, Estonia and Boston, Guyana and Pittsburgh, each publicly sharing their inner world reverence for the culture of jazz music.
...December 3rd, 2020
. . “Sphinx,” a story by Brian Greene, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 55th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author . . . “Lucy XV,” by Vakseen . Sphinx by Brian Greene . 1. …..I met Leonor when I was 23 and she was 51. … Continue reading ““Sphinx” — a short story by Brian Greene”
...December 1st, 2020
In the mountains
trees practice for winter,
dropping their leaves.
Birds, like thin farmhands,
sweep down on rutted back roads,
begging for food.
It’s Thanksgiving.
November 26th, 2020
To where have our better angels flown
Instead of wings, ghoulish shadows darken our skies
So___ past the book stalls and flower carts
And down the Champs-Elysees stretch
naked tables and vacant chairs
November 24th, 2020
We tripped through the parking lot and fell into the Woods—
Brown Amphitheater, then rested a bit as musicians tuned up.
When John McLaughlin’s first eerie notes of “Birds of Fire”
came through, we were taken by surprise. I’d thought
we were going to India, instead it was a caravanserai
to hear the scream of the butterfly.
November 20th, 2020
The evidence against Monk was overwhelming. As he spun in circles, his beard greeted all the be-boos and scat tops with a whiff of singular restraint, knowing the blue minor chord could only hold so much dissonance before the black harmonies started some fragile shite.
...November 19th, 2020
Beautiful skin,
infinite shades & tones
deep black to crescent white,
golden yellow to indigenous red.
November 17th, 2020
He still has his father’s old records.
That single cardboard box is all that Ken has left of the man. That and memories. He remembers those swirling blue winter nights: sitting on the living room rug, right between the full-blast radiator and Dad’s battered old armchair, watching the record turn around and around and fill the room with Duke Ellington’s piano. The summer Sundays, where the warm breeze came in through the window, and the cleaning of their apartment turned into a game backed by Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, deep orange-pink like strawberry lemonade.
...November 16th, 2020
Too many miles, far away from
home, my girl’s photo in my pocket
mine in her gold locket, above
my bunk, Lena smiling down on
me, my girl, she don’t mind
she knows I love her, she knows
she too is fine
November 11th, 2020
Another new time is upon us
We must again touch the mobile of life
So the parts may re-wed in a new balance
November 3rd, 2020
On the cusp of an election of consequence the likes of which America hasn’t experienced for 150 years, and in the midst of continued Black Lives Matter protests and an indisputable surge of COVID, 29 poets sharing perspectives from all over the world contribute to this volume of poetry reflecting our tumultuous, unsettling era…
...October 29th, 2020
Grandma’s mother had gifted her the bracelet on her tenth birthday. It hung upon her forearm every hour of the day, until her wedding. When the vermillion filled the parting in her scalp, she lost the permission to wear it. Her new husband adored the drink, and loathed the ornaments she carried from her mother’s house.
...October 29th, 2020
in evening western sky, golden clouds pile
beneath sinking crimson sun and spill
toward river and ocean with the beauty
and rhythmic precision of notes tumbling
from a vibraphone during a dazzling
improvisation by Milt Jackson
October 26th, 2020
No Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, King Oliver, Satch Mo’ and his velvety horn, No royalty of Jazz! No A Train taking us uptown, no Langston Hughes, or Zora Neale Hurston. No Chuck Berry and rock and roll
...October 20th, 2020
She started to scat, I started to cry.
My tears taste like salt baked on my lips.
I hear her soft voice
like the river I walk to each morning.
I carry a jar to give her the river.
October 16th, 2020
I methodically walk along. Stepping in tune to the pulsing soundtrack spilling out of the passing nightclub, littering the sidewalk. The electric guitar wailing something menacingly slow and strong. Almost soulful but still all the while punk at its core and insisting itself to be anything but a love song. I wouldn’t be surprised to catch a glimpse of Lux dancing inside as I pass. Lux, used to be Grace, and I almost miss the days when she was.
...October 13th, 2020
He closed almost every show with that tune.
It was so like him.
After giving us more than we ever knew
could be coaxed from a piano
or a trombone…
he thanked us.
October 9th, 2020
I am probably being
followed online by
the CIA
because I have listened
to your poems on YouTube,
you were just that
revolutionary! You were
just that powerful of a poet
my teacher
October 7th, 2020
a touch of salt
peppered with depth
the bang of delivery
served up
as cymbals sizzle
in smoke clouds
of madness
October 4th, 2020
. . “Bella by Barlight,” a story by Steve Young, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 54th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author . . photo by-crosspraha- / CC BY-SA . Bella by Barlight by Steve Young . ___ , …..The Pocono Lounge, in the basement … Continue reading ““Bella by Barlight” — a short story by Steve Young”
...September 28th, 2020
An invitation was extended recently to poets to submit work that reflects this time of COVID, Black Lives Matter, and a heated political season. In this third volume, 33 poets contribute…
...September 25th, 2020
September’s breeze slightly more than a whisper
rubs shoulders with a tired overheated August sky
summer makes its exit seeks retirement
from a year struck by ten swords
September 23rd, 2020
My Motherland, like:
Jack Kerouac
like
blow-on-subject-seas-of-thought like
hip hip Ginsberg clackin’ right at it, like
eye on the rug, boy
September 19th, 2020
“Album Unfinished,” a story by Geoffrey Polk, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 54th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author
...September 16th, 2020
The herd, now scattered, tired, and thinned
lies down in the electric wind
which cools the summer air and ground
so sleep may come, however sound
September 15th, 2020
There it was
On the waterfront bench
Tempting me
In this Summer of
Covid inspired fears
A little flower framed heart
With the message
Free! Enjoy!
Smile
September 10th, 2020
1963 and Mingus and his mighty band
of musicians play and sing “Freedom,”
as marchers for freedom fill streets
throughout the South,
August 30th, 2020
. . “Satin Doll,” a story by Jack Tasker, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 54th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author . . photo Creative Commons CC0 . Satin Doll by Jack Tasker . The Pianist and The Cabbie . …..When the music stops … Continue reading ““Satin Doll” — a short story by Jack Tasker”
...August 26th, 2020
. . “Clifford Brown” is a painting by Warren Goodson, a Saxapahaw, North Carolina artist whose work is driven by his appreciation for Black culture. With his gracious consent, Mr. Goodson’s art is featured throughout this collection. . . _____ . . “Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.” -Lawrence Ferlinghetti … Continue reading “A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Summer, 2020 Edition”
...August 24th, 2020
The needle drops on Charlie Parker
playing “Relaxin’ at Camarillo”
the boy lies on the floor
of his room and listens to the gorgeous ease
the affirmation
buoyant love song
August 14th, 2020
During the blaze at the Radio Flyer factory, Louis Armstrong was responsible for saving the lives of every man, woman and child on the ball bearing line.
...August 10th, 2020
A marker for memory,
a last thought,
for the trumpet that opened the gates
at the end of the world,
and passed on into forever.
August 9th, 2020
Pedestrians all around me narrow their eyes at the harassing wind and lower their umbrellas to help protect against the assault.
Not me. I lift my chin towards the grey skies and allow the wind to caress my face and to set my scarf dancing around my neck.
...August 4th, 2020
23 poets contribute 26 poems that speak to the era of COVID, Black Lives Matter, and a heated political season
...July 30th, 2020
The loss of Annie Ross
Is loss indeed.
I was a teen in ’53.
Mom owned along with Slim Gaillard
The first jazz club in all Long Island.
July 25th, 2020
If the sea keeps rising
it will reach Pittsburgh tomorrow
and I will put on new clothes
and forget Myrtle Beach
and Charleston
and the Outer Banks
July 20th, 2020
He’s here again, his mossy hair visible at the back of the crowd. I’ve seen him a few times before and it’s always the same: he leans against a pillar, arms crossed, a hungry look in his eyes. There’s a bit of rebel in him. I don’t know if it’s the cigarette or the rimless sunglasses perched on the edge of his nose, but he doesn’t fit in with the polished and the proper.
...July 13th, 2020
Music
gathers all our grief and rage,
transforms it into rhythmic dots
that dance across an open page,
which hearts and mouths and fingers strive
to share upon the human stage.
July 10th, 2020
A story of coming to terms with old age…
...July 7th, 2020
Must I retrieve my black leather
jacket from the chest in my closet
My Afro pick, discarded in a
forgotten drawer?
July 4th, 2020
Despite the many trials
and tribulations of black folks
here in America, as a means of survival
my people have learned to laugh and smile
in the face of adversity.
June 27th, 2020
I recently extended an invitation to poets to submit work that reflects this time of COVID, Black Lives Matter, and a heated political season.
What follows are some of those submitted. More will appear in the future.
-Joe Maita/Editor and Publisher
...June 18th, 2020
but tonight they’re here, on a street off seventh avenue, holding a thermos of coffee, following a jazz guitar. The music comes from a doorway beneath a brownstone on the next block.
...June 16th, 2020
. . photo by Tengilorg / CC BY . . While Playing A Vinyl Record Music lightens blue mood. It softens mind like feather floating towards earth, then brushes against cheek, chin and ear. Body sways with Jazz in air. A tickle on skin, sensations cradled in ears, harvesting goodness like wheat to enjoy … Continue reading “Poetry by Jerrice Baptiste and Moe Seager”
...June 12th, 2020
“One ticket please,” David said aloud to Gladys.
Studying him with eyes peering over her glasses, the ticket seller, Gladys, squinted with disbelief at the sense of disproportion standing before her; David’s battered face and tortured eyes, so contradictory to his features of lapidary refinement.
...June 12th, 2020
. . © Veryl Oakland Bill Evans, Berkeley, California; April, 1969 . . Listening to Bill Evans, June 2020 First the piano by itself— after months of darkness after a Winter of clouds and wind after discontent after lies and lies explaining lies and prayers and ice and rivers forgetting to … Continue reading ““Listening to Bill Evans, June 2020” — a poem by John Stupp”
...June 12th, 2020
. . photo/National Park Service South Kaibab Trail in Grand Canyon National Park . ___ . At the Grand Canyon A white man and a black man stand side by side on this precipice, silently looking across the Grand Canyon, watching the revolutionary ravens surf the deep blue ocean of sky and … Continue reading ““At the Grand Canyon” — a poem by T.S. Davis”
...June 5th, 2020
no wars
no greed
no famine
no disease
just rainbows
and blessings
May 31st, 2020
His face gave it away. Standing in front of the painting, his ice-blue eyes like tiny bejewelled pinpricks, mouth gaping and tongue hanging out, he basked in the portrait’s aura like a skinned lizard under a desert sun.
...May 26th, 2020
. . photo Bret Stewart/Wikimedia Commons . . Afterwards …………………….For the Spring of 2020 . …………………..“The World Breaks Everyone, And Afterwards, ……………………Many Are Stronger At The Broken Places.” …………………………………………………………….– Ernest Hemingway. . many, many, years ago …………I was in need …………………..of some extra money. I had decided …………to sell my upright 1940’s ………………….. kay … Continue reading ““Afterwards — For the Spring, 2020” — a poem by Alan Yount”
...May 23rd, 2020
. . . …..The poet Michael L. Newell, whose work has often appeared in the pages of Jerry Jazz Musician, has informed me that his new book, Wandering, is now available. Published by cyberwit.net, the book features selections of his poetry from the past fifty years. …..Michael draws readers into his lyrical, vast world with … Continue reading “News about the poet Michael L. Newell”
...May 22nd, 2020
No one knew why he did it. Why early one August morning, the day after I turned eleven, when stores were just pulling up their metal gates, and delivery trucks were double parked in front of them, when as Mama said the sun was so oppressive you could fry an egg on the sidewalk, Mr. Carmichael left his seventh-floor apartment right above ours in The Bridgeton Apartments…
...May 14th, 2020
33 poets from all over the globe contribute 47 poems. Expect to read of love, loss, memoir, worship, freedom, heartbreak and hope – all collected here, in the heart of this unsettling spring.
...May 12th, 2020
The flute floats a legato stream of notes,
blood from the heart pouring in a lucent stream,
brilliant as a harvest moon filling the sky
with radiance such as the flutist releases
May 6th, 2020
. . “Searching Alex,” a story by Robert Knox, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 53rd Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author . . . © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons/Flicker/CC BY-SA 4.0 . . . “Searching Alex” by Robert Knox . …..He remembered a happy … Continue reading ““Searching Alex” — a short story by Robert Knox”
...May 4th, 2020
Which to recue first:
The Human right or the human left?
No, neither
But the human heart
From every human center
May 3rd, 2020
That massive blind face, rough hewn
As any one of Michelangelo’s Captives,
Fills the cover of his first Columbia LP.
White beard. Capped head.
The cloak a part of the costume he wore
As “the Viking of 6th Avenue,”
May 2nd, 2020
Deborah lost her wallet. Most of us have at one time or another. It’s one of the awful feelings, TMW you know you don’t know. Or the last time you knew … anything. It swallows you, that feeling. Utter loss. Utter failure. All the work it will take to regain lost ground. All the effort. If.
...April 27th, 2020
In the late late light of the Delta
I look up to see the tugs glide by
above the levy
flying high above the Quarter
as if to shrug and say
What else you gonna do?
April 25th, 2020
now frequent outside
bouyant butterflies drift
through a rush of hot breeze
…………blending
with dry yellow
Black Olive leaves
...April 21st, 2020
Speak memory—
of the cunning hero
from Little Italy
the archtop carver
the workshop magician
blown off course time and again
April 15th, 2020
The Saturn V mega rocket had a problem with syncopation from the get go. The uber squares shipped in the highest foreheads and keenest flat tops money could buy but the translunar queso bullseye refused to step and fetch it.
...April 14th, 2020
Doesn’t every house have its own unique smell? How is that, when everyone’s mom cooked the same pot roast, used the same cleaning powder? And why is it that you never notice your own house’s smell, but you’ll recognize it. Like a false memory. Deja vu.
...April 13th, 2020
the rhythmic flow
that trills and travels—
a saxophone
exploring sound—
the making time
to trace each riff,
watching it wander
all around
April 10th, 2020
rain’s elegant tap dance
across rooftop across
windowpane has sorrowful
joy of old
folk tune plucked
April 8th, 2020
Her granddad shook Bridgett awake. He was sniffling.
“What’s the matter? Are you sick?” She propped herself on her elbows.
“It’s Morrison. Gone.“ He was standing there in a faded tie-dyed shirt, smelling musty. His thinning gray hair, reaching past his waist, had not been tied back, but he was wearing his love beads.
...April 7th, 2020
i listen to wallace roney
as i watch the sun rise
i make a safe haven out of
jazz
this music is social
but right now, i am alone
April 4th, 2020
What is an arpeggio
…………….that it sails
…………………………….so quickly –
…………………………………………ear to heart,
April 3rd, 2020
sits on a shelf, forgotten save when I open
the closet, and feel my aching knees complain
of hours spent crouched behind home plate
where I had no thought of any consequence
other than winning or losing
April 2nd, 2020
There is a great banging coming from inside the brewery
while out here in the sun my blood knocks at the blue
ceilings of my veins like an irate tenant in the apartment
one floor down unprepared for that first blast of Lee
Morgan’s trumpet
March 31st, 2020
.I’m in bed, my windows open to the summer breeze, when I hear the guy outside again, singing. The curtains shift, as if with his voice, and glow a little, from the streetlight nearby. I’m thinking about the Apollo nose cone bobbing in the waves, about catching a tennis ball thrown high over the road. My dog’s on the floor, wedged between my bed and the dresser. He’s a Dalmatian, a big one. He got mean for a while—for weeks he’d try to bite whoever came near us.
...March 30th, 2020
that intro, dat bass
a Mount Rushmore of jazz players
listen how Miles
utilises space in his solo
humanity reached its peak in evolution
at 1:32—the best cymbal crash
into a laid-back groove ever
March 28th, 2020
Chet Baker’s trumpet sings
unrestricted airwaves
in a senseless world
lonely trees by the promenade
wooden arms and hands
feel wind’s breath
March 26th, 2020
I wasn’t expecting the sound of seagulls
& water when I popped out of 2 train
at 135th Street
Randy birds mating,
attacking trash bags
outside of Harlem Medical Center
March 18th, 2020
You walk on the rose-colored strip of concrete that starts on the sidewalk, goes under the big black awning with the street light shining on it, and stops at the two heavy wood doors inviting in all of Central Ave. You pause long enough for Walt, the bouncer you should never irritate to the degree of getting his exclusive attention, to nod you inside even though he knows you.
...March 15th, 2020
“Doc, here’s my dizzy symptom:
I’m buying these skinny books
like they’re jazz CD’s—
rackin’ ‘em up on the changer,
five at a time, punchin’ in
‘All Disks’ and ‘Shuffle,’
March 13th, 2020
Do you believe in God
after hearing McCoy Tyner
on My Favorite Things
who wouldn’t
hallowed be his holy name
March 6th, 2020
They slip in from the sidewalk one by one
as the day dims to brown. Some stake tables
near the stage, some lean against the bar.
March 4th, 2020
Rain sang off the roof for hours. The ancient on the porch rocked, strummed his guitar, whispered, “Make Me a Pallet on the Floor,” one minute sounding like Sam Chatmon, the next his licks would have made Mance Lipscomb proud.
...March 2nd, 2020
It’s a shame that, in the 21st century, there are still men of my age who do not know who fathered them.
...February 23rd, 2020
Walking on the wall around Jerusalem’s Old City
I meet Gary, a potter from New Orleans.
He tells me he’s hitchhiking to Africa
but talks mostly about music—
February 21st, 2020
The winter collection of poetry offers readers a look at the culture of jazz music through the imaginative writings of its 32 contributors. Within these 41 poems, writers express their deep connection to the music – and those who play it – in their own inventive and often philosophical language that communicates much, but especially love, sentiment, struggle, loss, and joy.
...February 17th, 2020
Dancing with you
I’m not aware that one leg is
shorter than the other
or perhaps one leg is longer
than the other,
February 14th, 2020
Shepp, believing in the immortality
of Malcolm’s significance, murmurs,
a few weeks after his murder,
“Semper Malcolm” over disjointed jazz,
February 11th, 2020
over the image of a city sidewalk
broadly peopled like in
tight dollied crane shots
topcoat thick with
jump notes coming in swarms
February 5th, 2020
even in winter, she is a fire blazing, her eyes are
like the the clearest lake or the best dream or
like an opal, where night finds its song
January 29th, 2020
After a New Year
not the first sunrise
not the first cold bus
not the first trip along the Ohio
not the first day at work
not any of those things
there is nothing special about this morning
January 22nd, 2020
Don’t be surprised when kindred spirits meet each other at the right place at just the right time. People need people, even if they try to deny it. How many times do you see two people together and wonder, ‘Why do they get along so well?’ You see these people and they don’t look good or don’t seem to fit together; it baffles what should just be familiar.
...January 16th, 2020
I got da bones
of jazz
scratched out
in diners
back alleys
and cellar stairs
January 11th, 2020
And the clouds
unfastened their seat belts
and fell across the roads and rivers
so Pittsburgh looked like it was a flying pig
January 6th, 2020
. . . We Call Him Man-Man ……………In honor of my grandson, Domonic His name is Domonic, we call him Man-Man Only 13, but whatever he wants to do he can He has music running through his veins Beats, rhythms, melodies on his brain At 6 he played the drums in the school drumline moving … Continue reading ““We Call Him Man-Man” — a poem by Aurora M. Lewis”
...January 5th, 2020
stepping up the stairway
I carry my trumpet up here
*****
up here in the partial dark
at seventy-two years
December 31st, 2019
There will be no presents, wrapped or not.
Gifts can be sought, bought, ought to
Anytime, occasion rhyming with a need one’s own.
Food? By all means, and of course!
Lots of courses, for it’s fun to cook,
Break traditions, keeping some.
Summing up a feel and food one’s own.
December 24th, 2019
Arlena Sawyer’s mother had spent all seventeen years of her life warning her against what seemed like every last thing under God’s creation. With her thin, trilling voice she had done her best to hammer fear and caution into her only daughter’s head like the beak of a woodpecker into a tree.
...December 17th, 2019
What song sings the earth’s Requiem
The end note in the last stanza of the final chorus
A screaming sax? A trumpet’s ache?
In the Amazon, in California, blazes of wildfires
...December 14th, 2019
In Central Park, New York,
a vigil for dead Lennon.
Sandra, living in Merthyr Tydfil
(the kids now ten and eight),
shooshes them, and Barry’s said
he’ll get them off to bed.
December 8th, 2019
I have had the privilege of publishing John Stupp’s poetry for several years now. Every time he gifts me with an email stuffed with submissions, I eagerly open it like a kid unwrapping the shiniest package under the tree. His creativity is really, honestly, that special.
...December 4th, 2019
The stars would burn out before the Constellation Club would fall silent.
No matter the hour, no matter the day, a constant hum of life echoed through the walls.
...December 2nd, 2019
It was a rainy Thanksgiving when
everyone I was related to
or knew even somewhat
were out of town.
I found some semi-edible
turkey at Hughes Market, along
with frozen stuffing that proved
reasonably tasty, adequate
November 28th, 2019
Few people knew that the great jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong was also an accomplished ballet dancer. It was said that his Arabesque variations were breathtaking.
...November 24th, 2019
I remember a Polish jazz combo I once saw in a movie
about Jews and nuns and suicide. It was after the war
and the band played in basement clubs –
November 20th, 2019
I’ve been bitter a long time. It’s like sucking a wedge of lemon on and on and on, pulp disintegrating, everything dissolving until the flavor turns mellow and mild, almost sweet. I’ve been bitter so long it’s hard to know anymore how anything should feel, or which part of me navigating the world each day is tainted with bitterness and which part is how I always was, even before Ty Greggor smashed through my life.
...November 13th, 2019
Twenty-eight poets contribute 37 poems to the Jerry Jazz Musician Fall Poetry Collection, living proof that the energy and spirit of jazz is alive — and quite well.
(Featuring the art of Russell Dupont)
.
...November 11th, 2019
. . Boston-based writer Con Chapman is the author of two novels, over thirty stage plays, and fifty books of humor. Most recently, he is the author of Rabbit’s Blues, The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges. I had the good fortune of interviewing Mr. Chapman recently about Hodges. That discussion will be published in … Continue reading ““Father Kniest, Jazz Priest”…a short story by Con Chapman”
...November 7th, 2019
gee baby
hurt is just
…………………a thought away;
let the blue the color
of your true love’s eyes
…………….as you slow dance
with their departing memory.
October 25th, 2019
My striking wife
is the cat’s strut—
cello sass
with a syncopated
escalator to
move
October 19th, 2019
Jonathan was only eight years old the first time he fell. It was the first winter in the new house, and he wasn’t used to the biting cold yet. It was a large, Gothic structure that scared him at first, but he had grown accustomed to the imposing house on the hill.
...October 14th, 2019
Like the song,
“Autumn Leaves,”
thoughts of him
drifted by her windowsill.
October 11th, 2019
The girl lived on the outskirts of town. It was mainly deserted, save for a few wild beasts that roamed the lands. But she lived with the wolves, and couldn`t breathe without feeling their fur across her lips and teeth. She asked them: what would you do if I left? And the wolves shook their grey eyes and stared at her until she cried.
...September 30th, 2019
Where blood pulses, where
nerves thrum, fingertips
hum with scrape of strings,
September 20th, 2019
There’s a new song going around, with a maddening refrain as catchy as that flu plotting its course around the world, killing venerable ancients and babies newly out of the womb. You hear it everywhere and, no matter how much you hate it, you’ll find it bursting out of your head.
...September 15th, 2019
It’s all about the jazz…
Sonny Fortune at Boomer’s
Illinois Jacquet on 58th Street
Duvivier and Cheatham at Highlights
September 12th, 2019
They
start
right now.
Something new?
Some chords, progression.
...September 8th, 2019
warped certified gold hangs over the shoulder,
…………………………………blue on the wall,
……………..notes on Trane (Coltrane).
September 7th, 2019
Zoot blew this earth
into a friendlier place—
I can still see,
at the Half Note,
his rough angel face
September 3rd, 2019
Robert Shines lifted his sweat stained fedora just enough to wipe his brow. Stuffing his handkerchief back into his breast pocket he repositioned his hat at a slight angle, rakish style, just enough for a breeze to cool his skin, should one happen by. As luck would have it the Mississippi air was stagnant and sticky this August evening.
...September 3rd, 2019
. . CC0 Public Domain Power house mechanic working on steam pump photo by Lewis Hine, 1920. . . . Vespers In the foundry men made engine blocks ate dirt ate sand made fire Henry Ford was the captain and his word was law when a shift was done there was a … Continue reading ““Vespers” — a poem by John Stupp”
...September 2nd, 2019
Bent over his guitar, bobbing
to its rhythm, he sits on the center wall
that runs the length of the breakwater
August 24th, 2019
Being slight of build and juvenile looking was a mixed blessing for Alicia. On the one hand, people tended to be cloyingly condescending towards her – as if she were nine years old instead of seventeen.
...August 20th, 2019
. . Photo by. Marco Chilese .on. Unsplash . . Prayer to the Three Rivers in Pittsburgh . Who I love who I pray for more than anyone but my wife and children do you think of me beautiful Allegheny when you reach the Gulf of Mexico? Monongahela what about you? and … Continue reading “Poetry by Michael L. Newell and John Stupp”
...August 14th, 2019
. . “Oswald,” a story by Rolli, was a finalist in our recently concluded 51st Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author. . . . Photo by. Jolanda van der Meer .on. Unsplash . Oswald by Rolli . _____ . …..Mom was talking to the guy behind the … Continue reading ““Oswald” — a short story by Rolli”
...August 5th, 2019
. . Rahsaan Roland Kirk at the Jazz Workshop, San Francisco April, 1967 (photo by permission Veryl Oakland) . . FROM FLYTOWN When I die I want them to play the Black and Crazy Blues, I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot and I want beautiful people to smoke me … Continue reading “Poems for Rahsaan Roland Kirk — by John L. Stanizzi”
...August 1st, 2019
Seventeen poets contribute to a collection of jazz poetry reflecting an array of energy, emotion and improvisation
...July 25th, 2019
. . . Climate Change If the sea keeps rising it will reach Pittsburgh tomorrow and I will put on new clothes and forget Myrtle Beach and Charleston and the Outer Banks and I will pray with the fish over rusty mills and trade places with ore cars and cranes roses are red … Continue reading ““Climate Change” — a poem by John Stupp”
...July 20th, 2019
Do you ever have a time in your life when you feel like you’re about to step off a cliff?
I don’t normally have those moments. If I could organize my entire life playing by the rules, I think I could mosey along and get through living just fine. I am the student my teachers wish me to be. I am the daughter my parents desire. I am the perfect best friend to the girls in my class. According to choirmaster, I am one of the best sopranos in the church choir.
...July 9th, 2019
There can be bebop and billowing skirts,
hot pastrami and cold beer, but only if
we’re good.
July 8th, 2019
all night I dreamed I was lost
at sea in an alley on a battlefield
in a junkyard in a waterfront dive
when suddenly I found a room
filled with music where fear
was eased where losses were mourned
June 28th, 2019
Jazz
is
a charged trap in chill-charmed, ginger jams.
Chaz
says
their charts changed the channel from the jejune chants.
June 25th, 2019
Nineteen-seventies half-heard-of place.
You needed to tread up through the garlic
and the raspberry canes to the hall,
a sort of hall, with a lovely grained
and golden floor. Sometimes committees
of a kind would sit around there
June 17th, 2019
my grandmother always said
my father had all the luck.
he was in all the right places
at the right time.
June 15th, 2019
Harry Delaney is a night janitor, and he is teaching himself to fly. As he works his mop up and down the dim corridors of Waterville Public High School, he can feel what it would be like, floating, say, four feet above the floor, moving easily through the air, though not fast.
...June 15th, 2019
In this month’s collection, with great jazz artists at the core of their work, 16 poets remember, revere, ponder, laugh, dream, and listen
...June 6th, 2019
swollen with spring rain
creek sings in crooked path round
boulders trees down mountainside
a song wild as Coltrane solo
...June 1st, 2019
A low tide
in South Carolina recedes
like the end of a Sonny Rollins solo
until
sand leaves its resume in the inlet
or until
pelicans take the remaining choruses
out where the ocean says I am the God
May 24th, 2019
Watching the documentary
I CALLED HIM MORGAN
it began to gnaw at me
that I’d been unfair to Helen
May 15th, 2019
We had many excellent entrants in our recently concluded 50th Short Fiction Contest. In addition to publishing the winning story on March 11, with the consent of the authors, we have published several of the short-listed stories…
...May 12th, 2019
This empty quarter inside him,
inside his still-beating heart,
was full of song and fun.
There was loud pizzicato music
and air and spirits flying about
all bright things in sight.
May 12th, 2019
Stelle eyed herself in the bathroom mirror, nodded firmly at her reflection, and tore her wig off.
Her new shingle cut was so sharp it could have sliced through paper like scissors, and it gleamed the same glossy hue as ink. She smoothed the pads of her thumbs against her head to straighten the curls that had bloomed beneath the wig, and examined herself with satisfaction.
May 9th, 2019
This month, in a special collection of poetry, eight poets contribute seventeen poems focused on stories about family, and honoring mothers and fathers
...May 8th, 2019
. . . . Trajet Introspeculative — to Sun Ra, Saturday night: on one (actually, Sun Da morning) — terrible swift disin- clination to forgive the equally terrible tyranny of time signa- ture, attesting to what can, which must not — that, that ken abundant wherever choi- ces be told: rs, joints, and drums, … Continue reading “Two poems by John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper”
...May 7th, 2019
On my second date with Samantha, I told her, “We shouldn’t fall for each other.”
...May 6th, 2019
choirs of insects serenade night
couples bury faces in lovers’ hair
distant train’s cry soars through dark
May 2nd, 2019
“The Cardinal Club” a story by Carole Ackelson, was a finalist in our recently concluded 50th Short Fiction Contest.
...April 30th, 2019
It sounded like, “Che ate Pat’s grandma”!
And I’m like…. Before I forget, the “Check Engine”
April 27th, 2019
She aimed her horn at my left ear and blasted it for 16 seconds that lasted the rest of my life. Even though the trumpet was pressed to her lips, I could see the smirk her mouthpiece couldn’t quite hide.
...April 23rd, 2019
I only rose after I heard the horn
Good Mary gave up
On me
But my soul only knows the
Song Miles sing
He made it with notes
April 21st, 2019
Steve Dalachinsky, a New York poet whose work is often published on Jerry Jazz Musician, is currently in Paris, and contributes two timely poems…
...April 20th, 2019
I’ve suffered Winter
enough America says
shoveling the 1930’s
and scraping
and shivering
April 19th, 2019
Galinsky was killing my buzz. I could not see his face behind a fuming joint, clenched between his tarry teeth, but I could see his hands—one holding a deck of playing cards, one opened gesturally. They wove with the languid rhythm of a Greek rhetorician as Galinsky droned on about the pratfalls of legalized cannabis: how the government had screwed up a good thing, how the government was greedy, how the government had put the kibosh on a thriving subculture—a tribe to which we after all, at this game, belonged. The black market had provided a beautiful service, in his words, without all the red tape and
...April 13th, 2019
it was inevitable that eventually the voodoo would run you down
catch you and carry you away so you left with him on the sorcerer’s train
April 12th, 2019
Seventeen poets contribute 21 poems in this month’s edition…
...April 10th, 2019
The poets Ed Coletti, Arlene Corwin, Roger Singer and Michael Keshigian celebrate jazz music…
...April 3rd, 2019
“Strings of Solace” was a finalist in our recently concluded 50th Short Fiction Contest.
...March 31st, 2019
has 10 Picasso’s in Timbuktu
says the sand dunes in the sahara are
sensual & soft
refers to that desert as “she”
carries secrets in his water sack
March 29th, 2019
Weathered and calm,
A slight, gray haired saxophonist,
Peers out at the world around him,
He steps forward,
and begins a conversational discourse,
March 22nd, 2019
It is tempting to say that this story took place a long time ago, but that would not be accurate. The place where this story unfolds did not suffer Time as we know it—the linear time of beginnings and endings, of what once was, of what might never be.
...March 20th, 2019
. . . . Miles In five notes …all the sadness of life A pause___ long enough …for another sorrow ………to slip in And then___ a note so piercing, …it hurts . by Susandale . . ___ . . . Susandale’s poems and fiction are on .WestWard Quarterly, Mad Swirl, Penman … Continue reading ““Miles” — a poem by Susandale”
...March 15th, 2019
And so we left for Paris, you in the green jacket I’d made you with the picture collar and turned back cuffs, and I in my blue pinstripe, which made me look like a handsome young man.
“You look like a boy,” you said, laughing as we stumbled to our carriage on the train.
“I suppose it would be easier if I were.”
“Not at all, darling,” you said, and pulled the window shade down so you could kiss me. “Anyway, who wants it to be easy?”
March 11th, 2019
18 poets contribute 20 poems to the March collection
...March 8th, 2019
in the toilette
in front of gate 73
Louis Armstrong sings & plays
i can’t see him but i know he’s here
he’s soloing
March 7th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 45 – 49
...March 4th, 2019
I intended to be up there – way up there –
Vermont, perhaps,
playing jazz
into the blue
predawn hours
sipping something strong.
March 1st, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 39 – 44
...February 25th, 2019
Storyville a bit of hell in the city of Saints
Piano men played ragtime and honky-tonk
It was there Buddy Bolden with his cornet
February 22nd, 2019
Like rivers
bubbling to the surface
he brings
the vibrations
of jazz
blending into
shadowed corners
where light pushes in
February 19th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 35 – 38
...February 18th, 2019
when thinking
of this idea,
I always,
think of someone playing
February 14th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 29 – 34
...February 11th, 2019
It is the silent song
inside his head
inside his heart
inside his ear,
February 10th, 2019
John Coltrane
A bitter wind blows thru A LOVE SUPREME
& people are still waiting for the Ascension
with their eyes closed teeth clenched & fingers crossed
February 5th, 2019
Twelve poets contribute 15 poems to this month’s collection
...February 5th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 24 – 28
...February 4th, 2019
. . . . SERENDIPITY As I walk down the dirt road from my job, headed slowly home, I pass a few people wandering here and there as their work day ends; I amble past an old home with a corrugated metal roof, bricks holding down the sheets of metal from blowing away, a … Continue reading ““Serendipity” — a poem by Michael L. Newell”
...February 1st, 2019
Apollo Blue, come blow harmonica.
The blues in the meadow, the brass in the horn.
The drum hammers beating where thunder is born.
January 29th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 17- 23
...January 28th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 12 – 16
...January 21st, 2019
The snow flows
across the night
each flake a note
one pure blues note
unrepeated unequalled
throughout all recorded time
January 17th, 2019
Guitar has provenance:
American women, Baez, Mitchell,
lingered over thrumming strings,
hair flopped in absorption.
January 14th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 7 – 11
...January 14th, 2019
. . “The Wailing Wall” by Justin Short was the winner of the 48th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest. It was originally published in July, 2018, and is one of six pieces published on. Jerry Jazz Musician. in 2018 nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize . . __________ . . . … Continue reading ““The Wailing Wall” — a short story by Justin Short”
...January 11th, 2019
. . “Billie Holiday” by Steve Dalachinsky . . Billie Holiday someone’s special greatness hides inside us somewhere like a strange fruit……..unexplainable hard ripe rotten..fine..fractured but mellow filled with love…disappointment & solitude & heavy like…a rock in one’s heart you may make it or you may die in your room overlooking the park….or an … Continue reading ““Billie Holiday” — a poem (with collage) by Steve Dalachinsky”
...January 7th, 2019
. . In this collection, nine poets contribute ten poems celebrating jazz in poems as unique as the music itself . . . . I Am Jazz . I Am Jazz. It is my nature to evolve, to change and adapt. I’m restless. I move towards a future I cannot see or predict. … Continue reading “A collection of poetry celebrating the culture of jazz — January, 2019”
...January 7th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 1 – 6
...January 7th, 2019
. . . . AS DAY ENDS . Clark Terry’s horn unleashes a silvery note ……………….that ascends ………………………ever higher ………………………………to join a golden full moon ………………………………………rising into early evening orbit. When the note ends, listeners discover they have forgotten ……………….to breathe, ………………………and slowly rejoin ………………………………………their quiet neighborhood and prepare for sleep ………where they will drift … Continue reading “Two poems for the New Year…by Alan Yount and Michael L. Newell”
...December 31st, 2018
. . “Arabesque,” a story by Anisha Johnson, was a finalist in our recently concluded 49th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author. . . . Arabesque by Anisha Johnson . ___ . …..The first notes of Debussy’s First Arabesque soared through the air, each note so light … Continue reading ““Arabesque” — a short story by Anisha Johnson”
...December 27th, 2018
. . . . . He Wrote a Song for Tina Monk’s first love was Ruby, McCoy Tyner wrote of Aisha, Miles, Back Seat Betty and he wrote a song for Tina the one who broke his heart, led astray only to creep back in again with someone else’s baby, I nursed his wounds gave … Continue reading ““He Wrote a Song for Tina” — a poem by Aurora Lewis”
...December 26th, 2018
. . . Cool Blue He leaned back, closed his eyesand blew and knewthat next to him a string bass twirled,was plucked and plinked, and the drumwas a follow-up man with a tin cancollecting coins from flat handsmeeting in the darkto celebrate the soulfulsound of his breathbecause the moon was fulland the night cooland … Continue reading “Three poems by Phyllis Wax”
...December 19th, 2018
. . 12 poets contribute 19 poems dedicated to the culture of jazz music, and to the holiday season… . . Collage by Steve Dalachinsky John Stupp’s third poetry collection Pawleys Island was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press. His manuscript Summer Job won the 2017 Cathy Smith Bowers Poetry Prize and will … Continue reading “Poetry celebrating jazz and the holiday season”
...December 14th, 2018
SONGBIRD a blues note broken in the middle the songbird in the brambles startled into silence shame for the intrusion all autumn I have wandered in search of a music which would still this dull grief for every person I see wandering alone every child I see looking at the world with a … Continue reading ““Songbird” — a poem by Michael L. Newell”
...December 14th, 2018
“The Man Who Lives in My Head,” a story by Luke Bergvist, was a finalist in our recently concluded 49th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author. The Man Who Lives in My Head by Luke Bergvist ___ {A handwritten manuscript, fished from the … Continue reading ““The Man Who Lives in My Head” — a short story by Luke Bergvist”
...December 13th, 2018
Uncle Joey Blows Trombone at Le Jazz Hot by Lawrence J. Klumas _____ You would think that for such a momentous occasion my memory would be crystal clear. This is not so. I have no personal memory of hearing my Uncle Joey at Le Jazz Hot, that Friday night on … Continue reading ““Uncle Joey Blows Trombone at Le Jazz Hot” – a short story by Lawrence J. Klumas”
...December 4th, 2018
Jerry Jazz Musician is fortunate to have had hundreds of accomplished writers and poets submit their work for consideration of publication during this calendar year. Many thanks to everyone who thinks enough of this website to desire sharing their creative vision with our readers. The works published are outstanding examples of the connections that exist between jazz music, its culture, and the literary arts.
I am proud to report that I have nominated six exceptional published pieces for the prestigious
...December 4th, 2018
I drifted off into the best sleep I’ve had in weeks. In months even. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get into Fat Daddy’s as a regular. It’s the hottest – no, it’s the coolest jazz club there is. On any given night you’d find the club cradled with sweet melodies and rocked by spoken word poetry. And on Friday nights, you used to be able to catch us…
Thing is, my band and I got banned last year. But before then, we had lines out the door with folks wanting to hear us play. The whites, the blacks, the browns and those that fell in between because their parents had jungle fever. The attention can become quite addicting. There wasn’t any fortune though, it’s a small town.
Fast forward to now – a year later. I managed to befriend
...November 26th, 2018
So many great poetry submissions of late, for which I am incredibly thankful. The spirit within every poem received — whether published or not — is evident and cheered and appreciated.
Here are three recent arrivals…
Happy Thanksgiving, peace and blessings to all.
_____
The Keyboard Player
by Robert Nisbet
Daily, he worked from nine o’clock till five.
His life and family and things were fine.
For some the moment, the anticipatory one,
...November 21st, 2018
Those interested in the power and possibility of mingling poetry and music – especially jazz music – will find great joy in a 10 minute conversation between Brazilian singer and composer Luciana Souza and NPR’s Lisa Mullins, in which Souza discusses her 2018 album, The Book of Longing. The album features poems by
...November 17th, 2018
In honor of Veterans Day
Eight poets — John Stupp, Aurora Lewis, Michael L. Newell, Robert Nisbet, Alan Yount, Roger Singer, dan smith and Joan Donovan — write about the era of World War II
...
November 12th, 2018
two hepcats scat sing
drum the hippest
of hip music
advertise “Love for Sale”
in wild musical riffs
dancing through air
nothing held back
all is passion
imagination
total physical commitment
November 9th, 2018
The first time I saw her, she was puffing softly on a cigarette in the girls’ bathroom. She looked all too much the devil incarnate, with tattered jeans and a band shirt that left no doubt at all that their songs would consist of guitar smashing and angsty screaming. She had dyed her hair this brilliant shade of blue that was almost black it was so dark. Upon her exhale, a long strand of smoke twirled from her ruby stained lips and curled around a nose ring that
...November 7th, 2018
I saw the nod of the piano-man —
Launched into the written introduction
Of melody & theme weaving practiced notes
Inside and around the bass & percussion’s tempo.
Delightful eight bars — an in-unison quartet
November 5th, 2018
You were reading Bukowski.
The trio was playing Imagine.
Pretty sounds for our satisfaction.
I said Bukowski was a tough mother.
October 31st, 2018
Ilya Bernstein, Freddington, Michael L. Newell, Stephen R. Walsh and Dan Franch contribute to this fine collection of poetry…
...October 8th, 2018
FULL OF FAT From discarded crumbs, like falling stars onto stage horns and strings form dreams from blues and tears, where fear has no place and lies provides promises past midnight while jazz makes people hungry and rhythm tops off the soul like cities next to rivers smothering the seeds of … Continue reading “Two new Roger Singer poems”
...September 26th, 2018
Time is all time
for the player in cosmic space.
Undo the bolts & let fly
or jump back in the box
and die.
These are your reality implications
on any day of earth-clinging.
But as to the progressive continuance
of organic life on this orb,
September 19th, 2018
Nothing can spoil today, not even our Sue. It’s the third Saturday in September, 1978. I’m 11 years old and like every other girl in our street, (and some of the boys), I’ve waited months for this. I know all the singles off by heart, I’ve watched the videos on Top of the Pops, posters of John Travolta have replaced Starsky and Hutch on my bedroom wall, and finally, FINALLY, after hearing the songs all Summer, the people of England can go to the cinema and watch Grease.
All the Brook Street lot are going; kids from six different families with four of their mums; The Thompsons, the Maguires, the Connollys, the Yips, the Browns and us. I’m as excited as the rest of them, but the difference is, I can’t tell anyone who the flutters in my stomach are for.
We all get the bus together. It’s packed and we have to stand in the aisle, fingers slippery on the
...September 18th, 2018
charlie parker
sits on the end
of my bed
holding his alto sax.
and for pete’s sake! mr. traps:
buddy rich was also there,
getting his drum kit ready
by the end of the bed.
then ray brown’s there
and making a
September 13th, 2018
Baltimore, Maryland. 1960. DAVID, a white boy in his late teens, is standing in the rain under an umbrella, waiting for the morning school bus. There is a bench behind him. Enter CLARE, a black girl his age.
CLARE
It’s so cold.
Long pause. DAVID is uncomfortable.
CLARE
Would you mind sharing your umbrella?
...September 11th, 2018
In early morning silence,
breathing is audible.
Steam rises from tea.
A train’s whistle moans
in the distance, and I
whisper to the night
secrets I share with
...September 6th, 2018
there’s new Coltrane out
lost recordings tootin’ the devil’s horn
and while I’ve been leery
of these “new” releases, how
wrong can John Go?
even John on scat is pure
...August 29th, 2018
You’ve played this gig at the Tennyson Lodge at least a hundred times by now you figure—three years times twice a week, Wednesdays and Thursdays. You just took a solo and now The Kid is thumping on his oversized instrument, oversized by comparison to his body. He’s a five-foot-nothing of a chubby student bassist having joined the quartet two weeks prior. His dark, stylishly teased hair is stuck in place by product, his eyes just barely open and he rocks left to right in a manner offensive to you for some reason.
You don’t need a reason. You’ve been doing this long enough to call it like you see it and The Kid is nothing more than a vaguely promising hack. You might want to talk to him on break, get a better idea where his head is at, but meanwhile he’s wiggling around and you kind of hope he gets caught under a
...August 28th, 2018
Concert postings and colored stickers on the crossbeams,
black-clad cyclists crossing East River—
I remember when nobody pedaled
past your grim entrance—around 1985,
when Garden Cafeteria had to close
to keep the junkies out.
They even shut you down in ’88,
said you were
August 21st, 2018
In the underground of how it used to be, in days long ago when things were quite good, when the only bad thing, if you want to call it bad, was poverty, which was longstanding, a dull ache of years that traveled with you through good times and bad and sometimes sang you to sleep like a sad horn, bwa la la la (high note) bwa la la la (high note) bwa la la, in that time, the song of poverty that belonged to everyone belonged also to Noname.
Noname, pronounced Noh-nameh, ran the bleak streets then 60 years ago when the world was kinder, a better place, where murder was just, well, murder, and horror, ordinary, conceivable, and every person, regardless of how they appeared, who they were, part of a diverse evolving unique American gyroscopic system. Even the most jaded soul understood being different was natural, even if your difference was made of so many facets, no one thing stood alone and nothing alone could capture it–save poverty herself, true interpreter of shades and depths of differences, which we celebrated on saxophone streets, in piano bars and when looking to the heavens for inspiration in the form of
...August 14th, 2018
In July of 2012, Arya Jenkins’ short story “So What”—a story about an adolescent girl who attempts to connect to her absent father through his record collection – was chosen as the 30th winner of the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest. When that outstanding work was soon followed up with another quality entry with jazz music at its core, I invited her to contribute her fiction to this website on a more regular basis. We agreed to a commission of three stories per year, and tomorrow’s publication of “The Piano Whisperer” is her 15th story to appear on Jerry Jazz Musician.
I recently received word from Ms. Jenkins that Fomite Press, a small, independent publisher out of Vermont whose focus is on exposing high level literary work, will be publishing these stories in a collection titled Blue Songs in an Open Key. Publication date is
...August 13th, 2018
Eight poets — Michael L. Newell, Aurora Lewis, Roger Singer, Lawrence J. Klumas, Freddington, Victor Enns, dan smith and John Stupp — connect their poems to the spirit of jazz in this eight page collection…
...August 10th, 2018
Gas lamps lined the street lifting their warmth out into the world to stave off the night. Their flickering orange reflected in the puddles along the curb and the cobble still shiny with rain long gone. A storm had passed. Leaves now settled in clumps along the gutters and at the feet of a slumped musician folded forward on a stoop. The curve of his instrument’s dark case towered above him, concealing an elegant bass within.
Brownstones framed the scene extending stoops from hidden entryways. A newspaper fat with rain hung over a wrought-iron rail, the upside-down words “Congress Overrides Veto of Taft-Hartley” visible even in the obscurity of predawn. A five-and-dime, closed for business until morning, hosted a shadowy window display advertising dry shampoo and
...August 6th, 2018
Weave for me a basket of brotherhood.
For the frame choose a hardy bark
of inclusiveness
And within the waters of redemption
Soak long the grasses and stalks
To strip racism from their barks
To make pliable their
August 2nd, 2018
wind howls through trees round
corners shaking bushes windows eaves
lightning fractures night and all
you locked up in memory too fragile
to be handled comes tumbling out
July 26th, 2018
Chris Chisholm’s suit jacket landed beside his foot in a black pinstriped heap. He studied his fragmented reflection in a mosaic of mirrors, raised his eyebrows and his glass and said, “A toast!”
There was only one other person within view, within earshot. Phil the bartender stood beneath a clock whose hands were both pointed to the number one. “What’re we toasting, Chi Chi?”
Chris opened his mouth to say, “To Reggie!” But what came out were the lyrics of a Led Zeppelin song: “The cup is raised, the toast is made again…” He trailed off, humming, as if he’d forgotten the rest. He hadn’t.
Phil smirked and reinserted a rag into the glass he’d been drying. “Thanks a lot. Now I’ll have that love song stuck in my
...July 25th, 2018
Wizard of Cool
Eyes liken to a bird of prey
having seen, what we would
never see as he blew phenomenal
madness into the heavens
taking our breath away
On a level, others tried to perpetrate
my first time, Live at the Blackhawk
July 20th, 2018
There’s a pawnshop in Tarzana
Called Thrifty Pawn & Loan.
And propped up in the window
Is a haunted saxophone.
The tag says “50 dollars-
A sweet and honeyed tone”
But fifty bucks ain’t all you pay
July 16th, 2018
When they came to build the wall, I played Mingus.
I stood in the blistering sun, watched them arrive, and did my best to blow my lungs clean out. They climbed down from hissing dew-sprinkled trucks, adjusted their hard hats, and went to work setting up the barricades. They ignored me completely.
They didn’t ignore me long. I was off-key, and I was loud. Ain’t always about hitting all the right notes, man. A clarinet’s gotta be raw. Real. None of that philharmonic fast food commercial stuff.
I could almost hear Tony taking the high notes right beside me. He would have, too. He always loved a good
...July 13th, 2018
Her name practically scats itself,
Say it out loud, and you’re on your way,
It’s a grand stand big band criss-cross delivery,
An overnight town to town swing set deluxe,
July 9th, 2018
Midnight and we sail on a boundless sea
nothing in sight but a vast pool of black
dimly lit by starlight sprawled without end
June 28th, 2018
Camp looked through glass doors and across the shoulderless highway. A patch of grass across the road was covered with white trailers washed clean by the rain. He stared out a side window at the brown back of a gas station. A red and yellow sign, mounted so high he had to twist his neck to see it, seemed like it should have been turning but sat still against a gray sky.
What do you find in a bus station? Long waits under dirty fluorescents, grimy floor and seats, gloom on scattered faces. Soup, coffee and candy vending machines. If someone could gather it up, all the pieces a bus station’s handed down through the years, you could start a museum. You could cover the walls with black and white photos, pictures of a million people. Pick out any one person, nobody special, just someone with some
...June 27th, 2018
This ground is mine.
I sweat it into growing.
My eyes water the sound
while my hands grasp
the dirt,
holding its generations
of dust and stone
with a blending of
June 21st, 2018
Seen from above, the motion probably exhibited some coherence. Like how the particles on the surface of a liquid jiggled around each other. What did they call it? Brownian motion. Seen from a distance, the mass of people no doubt also swirled in patterns that had a great deal of regularity. Was there perhaps even a meaning in the group activity, a secret swaying cadence that couldn’t be discerned just from watching the constituent parts?
Carl found how he engaged in metaphysical speculations when in these situations distressing.
But God, you had to do something.
Or else this dance club, The Edge of The World, the apotheosis of all that he had come to hate during this year and a half spent in
...June 18th, 2018
sitting on the top of my dad’s tombstone
… in sedalia, missouri,
I was thinking
of how much
we practiced
our horns together.
you played
...June 17th, 2018
Oh Lord
I was thinking is there anything better
than chorus girls dancing in unison to Thelonius Monk
I beseech thee Lord on my deathbed kick my
June 15th, 2018
When the needle touches
the wax that will sing
the collected prayers
of A Love Supreme, it’s
like the
June 11th, 2018
“How dare you play it like that!”
I look up from my sight-reading piece, certain I had correctly executed all of the rhythms and notes, all of the articulations and embellishments. My questioning eyes found a passionate face, lined with wrinkles that were now quivering in angst.
“I don’t care if you play a couple wrong notes here and there, but to play it so flat like that… so dull… that is inexcusable.”
“Play it again.”
I started again, trying to sense the life behind the ink, and I felt like the blind fool who
...June 8th, 2018
The carpenter (whose hands have grown
too large for the twenty house town
he was born in) sticks out his thumb
and catches a jet to Los Angeles where
he drowns off the Santa Monica beach trying
to ride a wave to beautiful downtown Burbank.
II.
His sister stays home and marries
the county’s star high school running back
who turns into the
June 2nd, 2018
Here in this place
forces are in motion.
Truth is in the notation.
Beauty in improvisation.
Forward, forward, forward
speak the drums
to our spirituality.
The ritual function of
May 26th, 2018
You are amused
by my passion
for taxicabs.
Their drivers know
where we are
going.
We don’t need a
...May 19th, 2018
“Who,” you ask.
“Chris Connor,” I repeat.
“Oh, sure, right,” you say
(with little enthusiasm.)
“You have to listen, really listen,” I say.
“O.K.” (an acquiescence).
I carefully place the vinyl record
on the Rek-O-Kut turntable.
May 15th, 2018
Jacko the Jazzman, office hack,
computer screen by day. At nights
he roams the pubs and village halls,
blowing his sax’s rise and fall.
May 10th, 2018
The wind blew all afternoon,
blue my mood, moody the blues
on the box, bleak and blue when
Robert Johnson took over the airwaves;
the wind blew louder and then
May 3rd, 2018
Albert Ayler, the Cleveland-born saxophonist whose unorthodox style was inspirational to a generation of free jazz-era and contemporary musicians, is noted in four poems, by four poets
...May 1st, 2018
He had beautiful hands — hands with long, slender fingers meant to caress ivory piano keys. Knuckles, she knew, were never the most flattering part of anyone’s body — gnarled and raisin-like skin stretched over delicate bones. And yet, there was a certain beauty in the way his knuckles bent and flexed over the piano, so she protested bitterly when he became a mechanic to make ends meet.
“We’ve got bills to pay,” he said with a matter-of-fact shrug, “And I can always
...April 28th, 2018
It doesn’t help
that my guitar starts complaining
ok
a 1935 Epiphone Broadway
probably had owners who were better players before me
sure
and probably was in show business
when there was such a business
and probably
April 24th, 2018
One afternoon at the age of ten, lightning strikes.
Alone in our ramshackle wood-frame house in Hartford, I decide to listen to some of my parents’ 45 RPM records. I watch one slide down the fat spindle and plop onto the turntable to receive the tone arm and needle. The music starts and like a bolt captures not just my ears but my whole being. It’s a guy with a gravelly voice singing something about
...April 17th, 2018
April 15th, 2018
This is one of those parties I’ve heard about, thrown by people with new money in a house they don’t own; like Hipster Gatsby. This is not to disparage our host: he is a sincere human. When one finds one’s self in a cliché, the moment should be chronicled. I’m sitting on a mausoleum chair in the foyer of an upscale Seattle home with my glass of vodka perched on a music stand, chronicling.
The jazz musicians in the living room are playing “Some Day My Prince Will Come.”
“Oh, good, it’s the Disney segment,” I say to nobody in particular. The drunk woman who earlier complimented my
...April 10th, 2018
And a daughter is not enough or a son
or be a couple with someone who would stick thru all the shit
or the idea of a family
and god or the belief to a higher being is not enough.
The cheap girls and empty sex are always there but never
April 9th, 2018
The sightless pianist,
Presents the information,
The ideas,
Ornate and complex,
yet always grounded in logic,
The practical applications
of a mountain of details,
and the harmony hidden
April 5th, 2018
Tansy steps up to the microphone, and the world shifts into slow motion. Behind her, the band pulsates, big brass, booming beat, and howling saxophones like foreplay. Before her, the shadowy movement of caliginous figures, backlit to opacity, a murky mob breathing as though one, daring her to entertain with the melodies stored in her throat and heart, perversely seeking the pleasure to be derived from her anticipated failure to enthrall.
The mike’s silver orb becomes her focus, its aura a tight dome that pulls at her breath, sucking the notes from her depths, the rushing air inverting her
...April 3rd, 2018
Snow & Ridge our rock n roll Mecca.
The Tastee Shoppe jukebox our holy of holies
best for miles around was our Kaaba
where Elmore James’s Dust My Broom
sent shock waves through my hormone addled brain
& Night Train by Rusty Bryant & his Carolyn Club orchestra
was a bump & grind fantasy of rockin’ & rollin’ ecstasy.
April 2nd, 2018
I was recently at a speakeasy in Tbilisi, drinking wine and tapping my foot in time with a jazz quartet, when I noticed a dishevelled French magician approach the mysterious black-haired girl I’d had my eye on for the past ten minutes. This irked me less than it might have, because the Frenchman was clearly a drunkard of dubious repute, and the girl was plainly uninterested in him, not deigning to respond to his advances with so much as a word. He performed endless coin tricks and card tricks for her, and loudly complimented her exotic
...March 26th, 2018
a girl dances alone in a room
to an old blues tune sung
on a boom box by Mance Lipscomb
she whirls leaps and floats
on her toes with
March 25th, 2018
At the piano
his two hands pump fingers
wide in unison
one hand does one thing
the other another
his eyes fixed on the sheet
music sheathed in
March 19th, 2018
“Repeat after me: I will not hunt alligators while Désirée runs deliveries.”
Léon blinks at me, rich hickory eyes peering up from a face darker than any glancing touch of the sun could produce. He wriggles in a barely-perceptible fashion, bare heels grinding ringlets into the muddy deck, a creature of obstinacy and faux innocence whose smile mystically exiles all suspicion from my mind.
“’course, Dezzy,” he says. “There aren’t any alligators around right now, you know—they ain’t come out ‘til nighttime.”
“They don’t come out ‘til nighttime,” I correct him, swiping a hand over the top of his
...March 15th, 2018
March 14th, 2018
Theirs’ was a kind of mediation between then and now
No, it was a meditation on their only freedom: the deliverance of their music
No, no: a melding. One musician calling out: another answering.
Or maybe, a metaphor for the chorus of life
The way Lady-Day lamented the brief glory of
February 27th, 2018
Excursions in free-fixed melodic,
A quirk-offering; dust of suitcase-bearing dreams
Plucking away sobriety in taps of steps
Blending day chords with night rhythms
An immediate perfume, instinctively
February 19th, 2018
In anticipation of Valentine’s Day, I recently invited many of our contributing poets to submit work that combines the themes of jazz music and love, with the result being a collection of voices expressing their own contributions to the language of love…
Dozens of writers submitted over 100 poems, and the best of the submissions — 29 poems by 18 poets — are found on the following 12 pages. Advance through the selections by utilizing the page monitor at the bottom of each page.
Many thanks to everyone who submitted their work.
JJM
...February 14th, 2018
the music’s so profound
so round & loud
& full of love
her word not mine
how stupid to argue over little
nothings
stupid to wrap ourselves around
February 6th, 2018
I like the jazz because it plays in different colors: deep green and blue, translucent purple, ivory black; city storefronts, magenta sunsets; watercolor splashes here and there like a yellow crocus on snow or an orange goldfish tail — sudden, surprising, but always carefully placed.
Like the way people come in different colors — they just don’t know it. People walk along in darkness daily, ignorant of the color that’s surrounding them or the beat their music plays. That’s what I’m lying here thinking about, in my dark bedroom between the folds of cotton sheets. Africans, Asians, Seminoles they all come in different colors — not their skins, but their insides. Each person glows from deep within, from a well that springs out of
...February 2nd, 2018
Jazz rich,
falling water
a stream of story’s
open bleeding
years releasing pain
backside alleys
whispers without words
tan and white
February 1st, 2018
A wealth of excellent poetry has been submitted recently. Poems by Steven Dalachinsky, Michael L. Newell, John Stupp, Ron Kolm, and Freddington are examples…
...January 29th, 2018
Godmother of the gypsy tramp
half-breed goddess, unparalleled queen
of less is more, effortless weaver
of that old black magic—
your strength lay in the space between
the screaming sax and the scatting singer.
If midnight blue velvet were sound,
January 24th, 2018
(in response to an invitation
musical and raucous from the fingers
of Wild Bill Davis tickling the keys
of his organ seeking a musical response
by someone and something of equal stature)
Illinois I say accepted the challenge and blew
some blue some very blue blue blue notes
that set listeners
January 19th, 2018
Poetry is a courageous art form. No poet can possibly succeed without the willingness to create a completely transparent window into his or her soul. A poet rarely achieves by faking it.
A successful poet’s thoughts are naked to the world, and this full-on exposure — because it is so often blunt and painful for the poet — leaves the reader with a reasonable understanding of lives led and footsteps taken (or not). These revelations build a rewarding and intimate connection.
I have never met or spoken to Mike Faran, whose poetry I occasionally publish on Jerry Jazz Musician. I only outwardly know him by the short biography he sent me — retired lobster trap builder from Ventura who has had some work published in journals around the country. That’s it, really. I don’t even have a photo of him.
He has periodically sent me emails with a poem or two attached to them, seeking my interest in publishing them. (“Here is another poem that I hope will meet with your approval.”) Although I haven’t published them all, they almost always
...January 17th, 2018
Miles boils his bitches brew
in a night of worlds much blacker than black
His demons and angels let out slack
January 14th, 2018
I.
All those good times
might’ve been what Duke
had in mind when vamping
his silky-fingered B-flats,
letting Coltrane counter
until tenor notes cluster
close to the
...January 9th, 2018
The winter I ran away, I moved into a garret in Provincetown, where I wrote poetry under the light of a candle far into the wee hours. Out my window, two stories up, I could see snow glistening on slanted rooftops that led like an uneven staircase to the bay. Below me, a twisted narrow path led to Commercial Street, peaceful and stark as an unwritten page. It was 1973 and I had run to the end of the world as I knew it to find freedom.
I knew Provincetown from spending summers with my dad and Grandma Tess in her cottage in Truro. It seemed she’d lived most of her life since Grandpa’s passing as a beachcomber. I liked following behind her when we collected
...January 8th, 2018
Halema
with the soulful jazz eyes
deep dreaming the notes
January 5th, 2018
croons “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire;”
voice velvety as cocoa butter
warms listeners, seats them round a hearth;
every word, every idea, clear as a bell,
...December 25th, 2017
Jazz rained down in rivers
catching out strong soul
and soft hands
rising to the call of music prayers
among blind angels
who fail on color
and possess
December 22nd, 2017
The slow tumble of snow past
my partially open window
recalls the year in Amman
I sat for hours watching
a bleak whiteness deepen
all through the abandoned farm fields
surrounding my apartment
while the cool sound of Miles
gave shape and form to my grief
thousands of miles from
December 19th, 2017
It’s like talking of a lemon light, a blue mist,
a pale moonlight. In this case a pink rain.
It was something to do with Christmas
and I was leaving the supermarket,
buzzed, bugged, by muzak’s soothe and slink.
I walked out, into December,
...December 14th, 2017
snow fell
like notes from
Jan Garbarek’s saxophone
as we stood in Raekoja Plats
drinking mulled wine and marveling
at the size of the Christmas tree.
It was crowded and festive; somewhat loud
sure, there was a
...December 12th, 2017
December 6th, 2017
Near the end of high school I thought myself sophisticated, a fan of Pink Floyd and King Crimson and Kevin Ayers, but at a Weather Report Concert in 1972 I had a nearly religious conversion. It was as though a stranger had run up to me and said, “hold this for minute” and ran off. Then the music exploded. I had never heard anything like this. Everything changed.
It was as though I grew hair in secret places and a new appendage. I became a different creature. After that night few of my suburban DC white friends’ guitar and lyrics-oriented ears could hear what mine could; the joy and heartbreak in this unfamiliar and ebonic timbre, this canvas painted in horn, acoustic bass, and polyrhythm; this blues, this brokenness, this homesickness.
There it was, though, for anyone who had ears for it—there, in the absence of verse, in the uncertainty and unpredictability of lengthy solos, in the timelessness of power beyond the moment from which
...December 1st, 2017
That old red Dodge maybe
has a new muffler –
sounds like soft jazz
Ol’ Leroy Gathercole thinks
he’s still in his
forties or fifties;
wears a bright yellow beret &
drives with one hand –
plays the blues if he can find
November 30th, 2017
Jerry Jazz Musician is fortunate to have had hundreds of accomplished writers and poets submit their work for consideration of publication during this calendar year. Thanks to everyone who thinks enough of this website to desire sharing their creative vision with our readers. The works published are outstanding examples of the connections that exist between jazz music, its culture, and the literary arts.
I am proud to report that I have nominated six exceptional published pieces for the prestigious Pushcart Prize, and they are
...November 29th, 2017
Gifts and Messages. Which
the more important?
Dissonance launches
me listening feels
more like I’m playing that
swooping of sax waiting counterbal-
answer slowly fading
November 24th, 2017
Tonight I’m spinning
the ugly, unhip
jazzmen of Beehive records,
sweating in their transition shades,
mustaches sincere and wide,
collared tapestry shirts,
hair erupting from ears and noses
and they’re killing—
bellicose ogre grunts
November 22nd, 2017
At risen angles my furniture sits
each chair fills with blood
with a pulse that could strike, may cease.
Blue couch slants toward vibration
my black arms embracing, hold on
for the dark clots of bass hammering
initials into the
November 19th, 2017
This was all her fault, Sarah thought, as she watched the Victory Lounge clear out. She should have known Branchville wasn’t ready for improv jazz. But the bass player, Tommy Williams, had been so supportive after the workshop with the graduate wind students. Sarah had gotten so interested in the group’s ideas about jazz and improvising that she had gone straight to the practice room after the workshop and found their website. Earbuds in both ears, she was improvising to one of the rhythmic bass tracks there when she happened to raise the bell of her clarinet on a long high note the way she’d seen the quartet’s wind players do, and there was Tommy knocking on the door.
He had been so just what a jazz bass player from Chicago should be, Sarah thought, with his dusky skin and his smoky voice, and his rakish fedora tipped over one eye. And at the same time he had been so genuinely
...November 18th, 2017
From red kite country, driving South,
Dai Grandpa, fresh from yesterday,
such yesterday. Only when the
June sun sank, had Dai – dudein’
up my shirt front, puttin’ on
the shirt studs – reached evening’s land
– and such a yester-e’en. (Dai caught
the breeze, his ship came home.)
He breakfasts now in wild kite
November 13th, 2017
Henry Bell wished the actress on the TV interview show wouldn’t smile so much. Most show folk, he thought, were not memorable. They were things, as he had written in one of his songs, made on the cheap from neon and crepe. Sometimes he believed it too. Then he’d remind himself that human beings wrote all kinds of wonderful tunes, like “The Wind” — the number that had made his mind reel when he was very young and made him think he could write songs.
“The Wind” was eight, maybe nine, minutes of continuous jamming colored in with jazzy chords, an understated vocal and poetry. As a kid, listening to Dick Summer’s Subway show late at night on his transistor radio, stuck under the pillow to muzzle its volume, he thought he could trek into “The Wind” and the journey through its changes would be endless.
Now, nearly forty, he wasn’t a kid anymore, and jazz-inflected rock music wasn’t his thing. At some point too, he’d decided that Circus Maximus was a pretty dumb name for a
...November 11th, 2017
we all were
three fifteen year olds
along with one of our fathers.
we were
the only white guys
in the club.
it was at dino’s club
in st.louis, in the fall of 1962
at the corner of
November 10th, 2017
Oh, to see back into the beginning,
To 1944, and 52nd street,
To Minton’s Playhouse, and the Royal Roost,
To Monk and Bud’s first rehearsals,
To see the fever spread,
To see the disciples line up to sit in,
November 7th, 2017
At first, I simply sit on the front steps of my building, letting the summer sun bake my knees while I’m planning my getaway, trying to decide which subway to take to get to Caroline’s place faster. I know nobody will miss me. Nobody will even notice. Not like the first time I ran away.
The first time I ran away – OK, maybe I didn’t exactly run away, as the only thing I did was leave my house in the morning to go down to New Utrecht Avenue to sit in a subway station. But I didn’t come back. I wasn’t going to. I sat there all day, until it got late and dark, and eventually even darker and so late that it was time for my mom to come home. And when she did and saw that I’m gone, she called the cops and they found me instantly. Picture a pink haired girl sitting on a bench in an all Hasidic neighborhood. Not a rocket science to spot my cotton candy stack of hair even in the middle of a dark subway station. So I was brought home that same night, safe and sound, and feeling like an
...November 5th, 2017
His voice, cucumber-crisp,
coaxes silence to step aside
Sates the air with tender words
suspended in song’s sweet
November 4th, 2017
October 27th, 2017
When Miles Davis gets back into his mood
I go where I need to be in my own
somewhere in or near Mal Waldron’s Love Span
over the River Tender where moons flow
reflecting piano keys rippling night
October 17th, 2017
Eric Dolphy blowing out little curlicues
Booker Little baby-burping back to him
trumpeted weird diminutive 2-way messaging
thump thump thump and thump again
bass bass you grandfather clock clocking
October 6th, 2017
September 28th, 2017
This truly foreign language
absorbs me into its differences,
rosetta stone hidden
in a cave of similarities
certain words share
with those of spanish
September 16th, 2017
Allie drove her taxi with a smart ass attitude, smacking gum ceaselessly, and wore a Yankees cap backwards on her head on the job, even though she’d never watched a baseball game in her life, didn’t even like the game. Her dad had named her after a pitcher who’d won five straight World Series and Allie was always grateful that pitcher hadn’t been named Lefty or something like that.
Allie’s father had been the true baseball fan and Allie wore his cap in his memory. His real gift to her was love of music, jazz in particular. In her cab, she listened to WBGO, 88.3, remembering times she hung out with her dad in the garage listening to Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, experiments in sound, beautiful chaos while he fixed things. The garage was Bert’s space and his peace, or rather, the music was, and the smoke and silence that rose between them accentuated this. Whenever the strangers she drove around asked about her father, Allie always told them, “He went the way of the Marlboro man.” Cancer.
It surprised people to hear that she, a Millennial should enjoy jazz. “Jazz was like my Gerber food,” she liked to say. As a teen she dug hip hop enough to explore its fusion with jazz, but the fusion didn’t
...September 8th, 2017
A deep, raspy New Orleans jazz
Its staccato notes shoot up my pulse
My legs shiver from that long, wavy vibrato
Born-again in your love, I cry like a baby
Yearning to be
September 7th, 2017
all day a light breeze baptizes the landscape
gentle and captivating as a Paul Desmond solo
bushes rap windows and walls with rhythms
unusual and unexpected that Joe Morello would
approve would groove to and trees sway with
...September 1st, 2017
In the hazy glow of streetlights through the window
the jazz man sits
drinking in the music
sipping slowly with his mind
He thinks of all the past loves
the broken promises
the unpaid
August 24th, 2017
WHY HE ASKED
Bereft of family, his only voice
a sax that created a neighborhood
of lost love and no future,
he slipped into memory where his story
was etched into daguerreotypes,
sketches of abandonment and hints of
...August 2nd, 2017
I edit my life
clothesline pins & clips
hang to dry,
dirty laundry,
I turn poetic hedonistic
in my early 70’s
reviewing the joys
and the
July 30th, 2017
Clear my palate
so my mind wanders.
Flap down sweet
childhood memories.
Bare endless fields
of willowy cotton.
Open up vistas
of
July 22nd, 2017
dressed to slay
smokes and drinks every note
as if the night was terminal
and her table never lacks
for attention
July 20th, 2017
Wade missed the sweat. The sticky air that hugged you like a fat friend. The languid, dirty stench of swampy gutters. Of Bourbon street piss and puke. Of Dat Dogs at three in the morning, and the street mutts that cawed at the Mississippi. The rats and cockroaches scuttling around your shoes. The humidity. The heat.
He missed all of it.
New York was cold. Not just the weather, but the people, too. Hardened pedestrians crushed the MTA platforms like stone statues, eyes glazed onto their phones or the wall or the floor. No smiles. No inward space given away to strangers. They hugged into their
...July 18th, 2017
piano dances listeners down the street
feet must move to keep up
crowds gather round
street life jumping this way and that
...July 1st, 2017
Zorida had two fingers wrapped
around the stem of her wine glass
but never took a sip
Few of us did
while ol’ Leroy Wilcox blew the
shit out of
his
...June 28th, 2017
Shit was flying everywhere
like sparks from welders’ tools.
They were putting something
together up there on stage –
June 26th, 2017
when you fell out of a window
… you made me give up on you.
(maybe I shouldn’t have).
when the movie about you
recently came out: all of us
believed ethan hawke
was you, in “born to
June 22nd, 2017
The purpose of motion begins,
A clear mind, aware and in focus,
Ahead, the optical pathway lies empty and silent,
Slow at the start, breathing steady,
Stepping through the changes,
Favouring a motif,
Blowing hard,
As the intensity builds,
June 18th, 2017
Swoosh! Shhh. Shhhhh! I hear the ear numbing screech and the train finally stops moving. Nine seconds and the loud beep will announce the door opening. Heels clack against the icy early morning pavement. The mass of cigarette smoke hazes my sense of direction until we finally reach the end of the Binario 12 and my ears welcome the familiar sound of strings.
It’s distant and quite mellow but I can still make out the song. It’s a new one. He’s only played it a few times. I know it. Everyone loves it because it’s from that movie. The one with
...June 15th, 2017
Them knees,
full of bees again,
two gates
flapping in a stuttering breeze,
hands rapping
tables, thighs,
high up on
...June 12th, 2017
You bring out the jazz in me
The art blakey, max roach the roy haynes in me
Seeing you shake your hips like
Congas…the way you move your hips to a mamba
My heart pounding like drums inside my head
But this fever won’t put me in bed
Instead I get out on the dance floor
June 11th, 2017
That winter we lived among mice in the Berkshires, in a little cabin set not far from a large white clapboard house that belonged to the owner Betty, who was a widow. Two steps up to the cabin did nothing to keep the mice away. Their constant tweaking and bustle made me feel I was living in an indoor forest. Betty, who was a nice old lady, warned us. “You’ll never be able to keep the mice out. If you can stand them, the place is yours.”
We had come up to the Berkshires figuring we might have to rough it, but had no idea. Van and I had been together about two years then. The summer before we had been married on a beach in
...June 6th, 2017
Michael continued down the darkening street. A gust of wind blew off the Lake. His eyes watered. He turned his back to the wind, and the wind blew hard, unfurling his coat and his pant legs. He bent into it to soften its assault, but he soon turned his back to protect his face against the onslaught. A man and a woman hurried across the street, almost bumping into him, holding hands as if one would fly away. The lid blew off of a trashcan and crashed wildly into the street; a car rattled by up ahead at the intersection. When at last the street was empty with no more cars and no more men or women about, Michael found himself alone but for a few
...May 24th, 2017
In the circus mind of my dying spirit
I listen for the tinkling keys of Monk-
Yeah, Monk Mingus moonlight madness
I long to be, though tonight it’s a new
moon, meaning no moon and my madness
May 19th, 2017
May 18th, 2017
It’s the anybody;
the horned rimmed glasses,
book reader, bus rider, bow tie,
felt hat or tattoo that holds the
jazz. Distilled in flavor, an aroma
gentle and fierce. Its nail scratching,
May 13th, 2017
The wordsmith paints a picture,
A kind of bebop exchange,
Rambling around the neighbourhood,
Conversing apropos,
Curbside to parkside,
Phrasing with style,
May 8th, 2017
Somewhere between the wide open spaces
And those tiny, secret places in the heart,
The sound of nursery rhymes and temple chimes
Mingle with incense and nonsense
Until even the air has to smile.
That’s where you’ll find me, in my hiding place,
Making up rhymes and trying to keep time
To the pace of the
May 4th, 2017
the kitchen sits
in fruit soup…
steamed apricot
mango shadow
down thru spinning
smoke into hot light
blink beat
body ends dangle
April 29th, 2017
Watch her closely; loosen your clothes.
Her quiet storm makes love to listeners
in the heat of each performance,
cuts through crap, produces mystic music…
She’ll seduce you with contralto soul
until you lose your mind,
...April 19th, 2017
IT WAS ALL ABOUT SAX
when man said the wind man
blowing when does the wind do
its voodoo upon leaf and bud
bloody the morning the storm
warning it is on its way its windy
winding wickedly roaring crack
thunder and snap way paving
the air for
April 12th, 2017
Saxophone Girl
She sat comfortably cross-legged
On a straightback chair,
Outside the small studio practice room
...April 7th, 2017
The dank and chilly hall echoed with a Marksmen rehearsal taking place. Lea and her spanking-new group rehearsed their music on a stage bordered by tables holding overturned chairs. And as David sat unnoticed in the dark hall, Lea’s caramel voice melted to run down the walls, and warm the empty pockets in his heart.
*Daydreams, I’ve got daydreams galore.
Cigarette ashes, there they go on the floor.”
Scooting around, he wrestled with the chair’s wooden slats and wobbly legs versus his long limbs.
And while Lea was singing the third stanza, *”Let them laugh, let them frown … “ David was plotting his exit from the trailer. He was so engrossed with his plans that he didn’t notice the
...April 5th, 2017
Unlike New York City
L.A. is a woman who will love you back
But she gives her love freely and often
On a not so beautiful morning,
I went to the movies and thought
about you as the credits rolled.
Tried to wash you out of my hair,
but love lingers like a
April 2nd, 2017
Someone in the back of my
VW bus said it would be good to
turn our rock & roll band
into a jazz trio.
I turned off the radio. Complete
silence except for
the whistle of wheat as we swept
through Nebraska
Then Pete said that he could
...March 31st, 2017
swing swagger and sway
she bop she bop drift those feet
first one way then another
swirl round and round and back again
light up the floor fly up above
March 13th, 2017
Years later he became a professor, a scholar—wrote a well-received book on epistemology. But back then he was just a guy in love.
They’d taken a cheap room in Venice for the summer, a run-down place a couple of blocks from Dockweiler Beach. You could always smell the sea, its powerful mix of salt freshness and rot. He’d never lived with a woman before; she’d had other boyfriends. She was from back-county San Diego, told him she’d come to L.A. looking for a real life. He’d just graduated from
...March 11th, 2017
Thank you
For showing me
That black comes in
All shades
That being corny can
Be cool
That even
March 8th, 2017
I wake up when the door opens. Instant-awake, alert. I’m staring at the ceiling, at the ornate medallion in its center. Late-night city glow from the windows casts awkward shadows on the plaster. The light clicks on, and I hear a gasp. I feel a sympathetic shot of adrenaline hit my chest. I look toward the door, and there’s a woman there, a stranger. A beauty, too, dressed in a black pants-suit, purse slung over a shoulder, the jacket cut and fitted to her slim waist matador-style. Beneath the jacket, she’s wearing a white blouse with an enormous collar that flares out over her shoulders and breast, like gull wings. Her hair is loose, brown, shoulder-length, streaked with bits of blonde, her face around her dark eyes a mix of fear and puzzlement.
“Who are you?” she says, her hand still on the light switch. “What are you doing here?” Her voice quivers.
I look around. The ceiling looks like my
...March 4th, 2017
Yes, it is hot,
night sweats beneath
Spanish moss and the terror in trees
now knowing no cover of darkness
to greet a Sunday morning
10:22 a.m.
under the stairs
16th Street Baptist Church.
“Three minutes”
and the siren wails
February 19th, 2017
Wind-swept sheets of rain, notes
gusting from Oscar Peterson’s fingers, grounded,
soaked up by rock-steady Ray
February 13th, 2017
She didn’t want to drink
anymore
so we walked hand-in-hand
half-way home before
it dawned on us that we had
a car
parked behind the
February 11th, 2017
Jeffrey’s fingers hovered inches above the ivory. His heart pounded. The oak bench creaked as he leaned forward, only the toes of his scuffed leather shoes making contact with the floor. The hand-written notes on the page in front of him bounced up and down with every panting breath. He recognized most of the squiggles and lines cascading up and down the staff, but he couldn’t read a single word that surrounded them. Ms. Joetta’s voice echoed in his head, reverberated out of the hole in his threadbare fedora. Play, son. The first chance you get, and don’t look back. He could feel lightning in his fingers, almost driving him past the fear deep in his
...January 28th, 2017
His fingers move
with sounds of rain,
while clouds roll
within eyes of long years.
Sweat marks the work undone,
A river hammer beats
streams of jazz
into his
January 12th, 2017
a leaf flutters rises and glides
to its rest a blues note
in autumn as a slow rain falls
at the end of a windy day
and a scattering of distant
voices creates
January 11th, 2017
At the abandoned jazz club,
where I once debuted,
only spiders and rodents
reside behind the acoustical panels
that once resonated my dreams.
I see my distorted image
reflected upon the scarred ride cymbal
of a headless drum set
and feel like an intruder,
disrupting a Buddy Rich riff
when he
December 16th, 2016
Where have all the flowers gone?
Have I been asleep?
Gone
The brilliant yellow sunshine crispness of
June Christy….
The seductive red rouge intimacy of
Jeri Southern…
The smooth rich rose caress of
December 14th, 2016
Her voice shredded, turned to gravel
by cigarettes and whiskey, she navigates
grocery aisles and checkout lines
as sotto voce she sings old songs
both jazz and country. People stare
in amazement as her ruined voice
elicits tears from listening bystanders.
In her living room she croons with
December 10th, 2016
“What a shame,” people always said whenever they saw the two of them, Jeremy and Jade. What a shame the beauty of the boy had escaped the girl, who had her mother’s small oval face and father’s prominent nose and small dark eyes that were filled with a peculiar, almost unnatural intensity. “Such a shame,” relatives observed unabashedly at family gatherings. The remaining phrase that hung in air unspoken was, ”that she isn’t the beautiful one. “
To herself in the mirror, Jade’s own face and visage seemed fine, just a part of her, not even all that consequential. Didn’t brains and character matter more? She was striking much in the way Zelda Fitzgerald had been—a beauty you could not capture in photographs, more in movement, gesture, articulation. Somewhere, not far from the small, provincial town where Jade lived, where people stared at you if you did not fit a mold, there were people like her who were different and proud of their differences and she looked forward to meeting them one day. In the meantime, she would have to deal with challenges.
Growing up, many of them had to do with her brother, who was two years older. Although Jade garnered high marks in school, not much was made of it so
...December 8th, 2016
after playing, my upright
kay bass, my fingers
still loving, the birds eye maple
neck & strings:
my left arm
hurt the next day.
after playing my old
...November 14th, 2016
I had them
all down
pat
from the winged
Studebaker
to the old
Henry J
November 10th, 2016
“Miles & Me”
slash here
semi-colon there
dash and a
period
comma down to
colon
lead me back
to quotes
November 6th, 2016
In the back of a closet, on top of a shelf, under two empty shoeboxes, and behind a small, carry-on bag lurked a humped, black, plastic case. Years of knocking about in the backs of vans and offstage in smoky clubs had etched lines into its surface. Every song had scuffed another memory: Dewey Redman’s “Imagination” or Clifford Brown’s “Night in Tunisia”. An accidental kick from a ska fan had left a dent even after the shell had popped back into place. For twenty years, it had remained closed, a relic of temptation, while inside a saxophone slumbered, waiting for its silent call to beckon again. It was patient. It had time.
Nathan Gold heard the call. It was a Saturday morning in mid-spring as he returned from racing his mountain bike along the Long Beach boardwalk. Pumping the pedals, he glided up the
...November 1st, 2016
… a great song
by frank loesser
played by gene harris, piano,
& his quartet.
played by two black guys
& two white guys …
jazz brothers, in the
...October 18th, 2016
A marsh harrier soars above the Norfolk broads
circling higher and higher
rather like a Gillespie trumpet solo that rises and rises
to dizzying heights of pitch and volume
eventually the bird slides behind billowing clouds
and vanishes into distance
so the trumpet reaches and
...October 4th, 2016
Carlito Dumas didn’t leave his
drums at intermission,
just lit a cigarette and stared
into space
From our small candle-lit tables
some of us glanced at him —
Would he rattle off a jazzy solo
as a legacy, his
September 27th, 2016
There had to be hundreds of people standing in the rain, waiting to get into Misty’s Supper Club on Lenox Avenue for my brother Ishmael’s memorial. I swallowed the lump of grief in the back of my throat and surveyed the crowd, fans and protégé’s of his music, as varied as a pot of jambalaya.
Some people recognized me from seeing
...September 20th, 2016
For years, the autobiography proved elusive,
speeding east like the double-jointed run
that skipped from white keys to black,
soldiers chased from Central Avenue battles.
Then the book took a rest, hiding out
in a nondescript store among academic texts,
tomes whose covers bore geometric shapes.
Cardboard screamed orange, red, and white,
the slow burn of a
September 13th, 2016
I watch my hand remove the phone from the wall above the couch’s arm and there is a sweat in my ear as I hear a distant Miles Davis. I am called by the distorted voice of Miles Davis rasping my name.
John, he says, are you busy?
I let my eyes blur into my mother’s sofa, melting a monotonous no out of my mouth toward the receiver. I feel the room sloshing peacefully in waves around me and the buzzing of my lips from my mouthpiece and reed. My saxophone sits strewn across the floor along with my
...September 3rd, 2016
Long ago
in quiet caverns,
summer breezes
wrought with song
brought secrets
of the forest–
shared earth songs
nurtured through
...September 2nd, 2016
Rikki spun, spun
and leaped, twirled
and dipped,
James Brown
on the jukebox, the small
bar filled with smoke, clinking
glasses, Filipinas in short dresses,
and a couple dozen G.I.’s profane,
obscene, and three-quarters in the bag;
Rikki, half-black, half-
Filipino, ten, living
in alleys and under bars, danced
August 25th, 2016
“I don’t know…I still don’t see it.” I grumble to myself, sloping my head down in a perfectly coordinated position with the rest of my body. Slope. Coordinated. It all just makes me think of math. Math. “That’s it,” I tell myself silently, still looking around the empty halls, though no one is there. I sigh. I suppose it may not really be a fact, but everyone knows that statistically minded people, like me, see numbers. But people like her – well, I guess they see what I’m looking at. “No,” I run a hand through my gelled hair. She would see it all differently. What did she say again? I check my phone and then casually hold up what she said it would look like to the picture. “A black parked car with white windows near the dock in a blazing sunlight overlooking the ocean.” I focus on the
...August 13th, 2016
He was becoming the ground.
Saturating the soil with jazz sweat
as he loosened the lines to men
and women and the breaths that seek
the flame of him
and the fire shared to ears that hear.
August 11th, 2016
The faraway trumpet’s trill drifted into the home we shared. The tune stirred the heavy air. It should have been spring weather, but a heatwave had taken over our parish. It made the air heavy and made us languid during the days.
Mama hummed along with the hand-me-down song while she worked, stirring the wash or cooking supper or mixing herbs. Her mama taught her to hear it, same as she taught me. It was as constant as the wind.
Mama’s gray strands peeked from beneath a dark blue kerchief, the majority braided then twirled in an age-thinned bun. She didn’t know how old she was. Best she could figure, she was
...August 1st, 2016
Playing bottleneck guitar, an octogenarian.
His arthritic fingers coax a life’s history,
ring changes of love and loss,
sketch joy’s birth in pain,
the rhythm an invitation
...July 25th, 2016
I was playing my weekly gig at Café Reinhardt when Bella, one of the waitresses, whispered in my ear, “They want you out back.”
She had disturbed me from a zone. I had been through all of my arrangements and was improving on the chords to “Minor Swing.”
“They?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. Straight to the point, no small talk, Bella was my kind of gal. In the second it took to place my guitar on my guitar stand a million thoughts circled around in my mind. Did Chad, the drummer, want to borrow money again? Had the musician’s union caught on to the fact I wasn’t paying my dues? Another one of the agent Jimmy’s scams? Groupies? Oh yeah, jazz musicians haven’t had groupies under the age of forty-five since the 1940s.
I stood up, and as Bella was strolling to a table near the front door, she said, “Take your guitar.”
Ah, nothing complicated just someone wanting to test out my chops before a gig. People can be peculiar when it comes to inviting musicians into their home. They want to meet you, form a relationship, and get the feel for
...July 20th, 2016
I wonder if it will take another body to stream into the Infinite….
For this was the odd idea that stirred me eerie
Like a push into the wild past from my future spirit to relive my final day,
Or a siren calling me to steal the virtuose of fire.
I was looking for Charlie Parker that night,
Improvising my footsteps under porch lights which spotted
July 13th, 2016
T-Bone Williams was the first
to use the
double-D harmonica &
he employed some lyrics that
seemed compatible —
this was way before Bobby
Dylan
sometime in the late ‘40s when
he did his 12-string
guitar experiments
July 11th, 2016
It was a persistent and gentle nudge—always was. He knew who was prodding him and what she would say without turning, so he continued to run his fingers up and down the keys—there was a major seventh followed by a fifth interval; repeat several times, arpeggiate, transpose—
“Sir? I’m sorry sir—”
The nudging again. He spoke as if distracted—which he was: “Yes?”
“Some of the people are trying to work,” she said.
“Have them come and talk to me,” he replied, and continued to play.
The barista was put-off for a moment, but she jostled him again. “If you could just play a little quieter—”
The words were like daggers. They weren’t new, they weren’t original, and they brought hate like bile to his mind and body; coursing in and throughout him like a thousand
...July 9th, 2016
Why is my race your foe needling you to lord over me, saving me from my own savagery?
Why is my skin color a phobia gnawing at your innards,
making door locks snap as I approach?
Why is my punishment swift revealing deep seated prejudices, exposing unrecognized biases?
Why is my street flashing “blue”
when verdicts and fines from the 2008 meltdown are reversed?
Why is my excessive “heat” normal
...July 7th, 2016
Young and Gifted and Little Girl Blue
wants only to play classical ways of
Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven,
but Curtis – Philly, perhaps Carnegie too, whether prejudice or preference,
doesn’t think her particular hue
belongs with the masters, so she skips circus tents, every star in the sky,
June 24th, 2016
Barnacles scratch the hull of a voice
that grinds coral to grit in salty water
while a tune plays the tide
which whispers sandy beaches
and blows free on the wind.
Ships far from port halt in the night
to hear the fog-horn song,
to feel, to know and share
June 7th, 2016
Chet Baker Sang
in velvety slender voice
thin on gender identification
thick with fracture-able delicacy
scared it could fall away forever at it’s very next note.
Wispy high clouds of mellifluous tones,
...May 25th, 2016
Grabbing the blue basket of bottles I’d promised
to take to a recycle plant and then forgotten,
I drove too fast down a twisting mountain road,
safe in a young man’s faith that death is abstract
truth until a radio voice — speaking over Johnny Hodges’
sweet tenor on his “Take the A Train” — intones,
May 17th, 2016
PIANO MAN BLUES
Back room –
I sit & light a cigarette,
staring at my hands;
I can barely feel them
Doc says it’s neuropathy
probably pre-diabetic
I tell him there is
numbness in the
May 2nd, 2016
“Liner Notes for ‘Stardust’ — In Seven Choruses” is a cycle of short poems framed as imaginary liner notes and prompted by poet Doug Fowler’s favorite musical covers of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust.” In essence, according to Fowler, they are “imaginary liner notes for a real song about an imaginary song about love.”
The cycle is also partially a tribute to Chu Berry, who died as the result of a car accident in Conneaut, Ohio, in 1941, not far from where Fowler lives.
...April 25th, 2016
I’ll have it spare as the reverence you feel for silence
in your long melodic lines, where the music cries
in the sacred spaces you leave between the notes…
I’ll have the long curve of your back bending over
your shadow on the keys as you play “Turn Out
the Stars”, written for your father when he died,
Blue Notes stretching out as if you’d have them last
...April 15th, 2016
Oh, Mister Silver, please please please,
don’t make me beat my feet
no more no more no more.
I’ve been finger poppin’, thinking
about Juicy Lucy, dreaming
of some sweet stuff,
wanting to come on home to some
...April 9th, 2016
Some lives turn out healthy and long, some more fulfilled than long. Bro was sick and much older. He passed away last spring, so his voice sounds both new and familiar to me, as it whispers,
“Go to my place and visit my old room.”
“Why?”
“I’ll let you know.”
An ascending airliner outside wakes me up, and I realize I was dreaming. I’m still yawning as I look up a weekend bus, but the online timetable shows more blanks than connections.
It’s dry September weather, so I grab my key to his door, fill up my water bottle, and make this a bike trip in heat haze instead, like the
...April 6th, 2016
No trickster god,
demon, savior, saint or
train wreck, but human, very.
Not irrational, primal,
primitive, dark unconscious,
exile or martyr.
No more priapic
than your Sunday morning
erection. Not lost or liminal.
March 26th, 2016
Man of the blues,
Sing me a song
Plead, moan and holler those blues.
Sing…
Of love and passion
And joy and sadness;
Of being alone
and being together;
Of payback to enemies,
March 18th, 2016
Gerry Mulligan
My Funny Valentine
What is There to Say?
Swinging baritone sax
soaring trumpet
wrap my
funny valentine
in cool love
...March 16th, 2016
Elvin Jones
the Bear
He surrounded us with his sound
He was the safety net when the tightrope
walkers began
Can you hear him?
There is a new thunder in the sky
March 8th, 2016
The port of Casablanca was crammed with Vichy officers, soldiers, cops, thieves and criminals. Each night I slept behind sand dunes, and each morning, washed in the freezing sea and shook myself dry in the winter wind. My shirt and trousers were stiff with salt and stuck to my chest, arms and legs. I figured it would be easy to steal a sweater or coat, grab it off a café chair while its owner ate and drank. But each time I stuck my head inside a restaurant and started weaving between tables, the owner threatened to call the cops.
No cops, no officers, no father whipping me, never again. I’d lie low, steal what I needed, and owe no one a damned thing.
Ten days after I arrived in Casablanca, a shipload of
...March 2nd, 2016
naked
her scar
Miles’ howling horn
spring morning sparrow
tripping across my sun-splashed lawn
Thelonious kisses the keys
February 16th, 2016
Miles’ horn blows
thru my head
down to my toes
down baby down
i need to blow
my bleeding nose
a red note bleeding
dododowaaaah
a smile with my heart
she just tore me apart
wuwuwuwaaaah
don’t know myself no more
February 12th, 2016
INSIDE THE LANDSCAPE LOUNGE
We drank bourbon & listened to
Hank Gathercole on sax
cutting a throat
through heavy pink clouds of
cigarette smoke
Man was he cuttin’ it!
& all the while his feet were sliding
February 5th, 2016
She stood in a room at The Met glancing at the painting on the wall, which was of two women kissing. From her vantage point, standing slightly away and to the side, the two women lying together interlocked in bed appeared cushioned awkwardly in space, free-floating yet connected.
The painting was by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, the alcoholic French dwarf artist, and she tried to imagine what it was like living when he did in Paris at the time of the painting, 1892, and what it might have been like for these two prostitutes and others like them who often turned to one another for relief from a world of men then.
Mireille, it was reported, was one of the girls in the brothel in the Rue d’Amboise, when Lautrec was commissioned to create a series of panels about the lives of the girls there, and she was one of his favorites. He visited the salons of the brothels in the Rue des Moulins and Rue d’Amboise many times to study and paint the women, who felt very free to be
...February 2nd, 2016
Drive that engine, all eight
cylinders, ripping down the open
road faster than can be
clocked, hurricane in our faces,
thunder from the wheels, open
throated, full voiced whole body
January 27th, 2016
Put the Blame on Mame Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946)
There was never quite a dame as hot as Rita in Put the Blame on Mame
Gilda with luscious red locks
And strapless slit dress
We can imagine her while dancing in a state of undress -but I digress
Hair wanton and free expressing sexuality
In ample quantity
Gilda/Rita undulating to jazzy accompaniment in sultry climes
A time capsule of those forties’ times
January 25th, 2016
Songs overflow from doors
opening to the sidewalk
where neon lights
baptize the weak, stirring the curiosity of
a night strung tight
while others pray in alleys
whispering their sins
under a celestial curtain as
stars cross behind the black
of space where not
a molecule is out of place
January 16th, 2016
ray’s voice
is what a brotha
feels like after he’s had
a good piece of
pussy
i know now why mama didn’t want us
playing secular music in her home
and why white kids love
r and b so much
it was heroin
for your ears
ray was the only brotha
January 15th, 2016
uncle ping made my lemon chicken sing
with dueling jazzaphones
and unexpected tunes
there was no moon cake after
but the honey walnut prawns
laid down their own
January 11th, 2016
We like to immortalize talent in this culture, and in so doing, often decontextualize it, absolving it of complexity and stains. Media especially likes to make angels out of demons, and vice versa, stripping the truth out of images and ideas.
In the case of Chet Baker, William Claxton’s photographs helped especially to immortalize the singer and trumpeter, fixing him in time and space, freezing an idea of him as beautiful, ethereal, ideal.
Chet Baker is almost always remembered as the
...January 10th, 2016
this young girl playing
trumpet in all the supermarket
parking-lots
so loud the sun showers
gleams
of gold
January 5th, 2016
the pain contained within those
seemingly effortless sounds
lifts us from our couches
to applaud years
after the event
the tone arches stretches slinks struts
leaps to fence tops and deftly prances
December 18th, 2015
the lion.
man, this cat could play
formin’ the stride
a jazz musician of the times-
sophistication-harmony._____
enter the lion
...December 10th, 2015
The music theory professors
took their treatises
to the dumpster,
their pianos to the tuner,
then took themselves
and their students
into the fields
where timbres circled
November 25th, 2015
Camp looked through glass doors and across the shoulderless highway. A patch of grass across the road was covered with white trailers washed clean by the rain. He stared out a side window at the brown back of a gas station. A red and yellow sign, mounted so high he had to twist his neck to see it, seemed like it should have been turning but sat still against a gray sky.
What do you find in a bus station? Long waits under dirty fluorescents, grimy floor and seats, gloom on scattered faces. Soup, coffee and candy vending machines. If someone could gather it up, all the pieces a bus station’s handed down through the years, you could start a museum. You could cover the walls with
...November 16th, 2015
LITTLE LIZA JANE
Sing me up. Bring the jazz
for the baptizing of souls,
living strong, breathing cool
fires from river running out of
the Ohio snaking down mightily
to Louisiana where the steps
get wide and songs speak
of folks left behind, walking
river banks, looking south,
November 11th, 2015
HARRY AT THE PARK
Today the trees
in constant motion, you’ve
seen the same thing
at cocktail parties, in restaurants,
on the beach, bodies
moving to the breath
of the world, do wop,
November 3rd, 2015
She was born into a family of musicians. Her father had played bass in a jazz band and traveled with Dizzy until an accident had cost him his arm and his career. Getting out of a limousine that had stalled on the highway en route to a gig in Chicago, he opened the car door to get out at the wrong time, just as a truck was passing.
“C’est la vie” he always said about that, as if it meant something. He had to go on, a musician without a limb, without his instrument, because he was a man and had children and a legacy to uphold through them, but inside, where nothing touched him, he felt as torn as his shoulder had been that night. Something had shifted. Only his wife, his gentle, meek and attendant wife who saw him sitting at the edge of their bed each night head bowed counting his blessings, all but one, only she knew what
...November 1st, 2015
Dizzy in Thurston Howell garb steps samba-like
through the airport exit. On film, he and his entourage
move like dancers tapping clave in a Las Vegas
revue called A Night in Havana. His embrace
of space defies ground and grounding.
Amiri, you called him high priest, royalty,
a monarch who flew you from dusty bebop
October 24th, 2015
Slow slow slooooooooooooooow; the river was practically dry, a river in name only, a few puddles on the mudflats where standing water reflected the cottony clouds that moved perpetually east, dropping nothing anymore but empty promises. Unsettling in the most literal sense. Many people sold their houses or just abandoned them, heading north, and those who stayed finally got serious about
...August 22nd, 2015
Roger Singer, our most prolific and accomplished contributing poet, recently submitted three new poems for our consideration, which we proudly publish here. Singer reports that he has now had almost 800 poems published in magazines, periodicals and online journals — 400 of which are jazz poems — and has recently self-published a Kindle edition of his book of jazz poetry called Poetic Jazz.
“Jazz poetry flows out with such ease,” Singer writes on his blog. “The people and places, the alleys and sawdust jazz clubs. The stories that bring jazz alive with horns and voices, from sadness and grief to
...August 18th, 2015
Tumbling out of the second story window —
an accident, I swear — passing the first floor,
and, “You’ll never make it as a musician, Chet!”,
an endless string of notes plays by my ear,
one solo interlude strung out forever,
reaching, reaching, for the ultimate chord,
my sideman lost in a tinkle of piano keys,
the percussion of the vibraphone,
July 10th, 2015
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work.
John Hyde Barnard of Los Angeles, California is the winner of the 39th Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first time on July 3, 2015.
*
“The Lot”
by John Hyde Barnard
He brought the cigarette up to his lips. As he took a hit the orange
glow briefly lit his face and faded back into shadow as he slowly exhaled
a cloud of blue smoke. He crushed the butt on the windowsill, sparks and
dying embers leaving a trail that quickly became black and cold. As he
flicked the butt into the night air he glanced over the rooftops. It
seemed the horizon was a shade lighter. Had he been sitting there that
long?
Unable to sleep since arriving at the apartment some hours earlier,
he sat at the open window: musing, arguing, longing and laughing with his
thoughts. He had not discovered an epiphany or revelation, only a comfort
with the warm night. It was the first warm night of the season; the
unmistakable promise of
July 3rd, 2015
Paula Hackett’s four newly published poems include pieces on Max Roach, Billie Holiday and Milt Jackson…
_______
Billie Holiday
(lullaby)
Sometimes when nature is quiet
and the moon shines just where you are
I can hear you singing the spirit world to rest
I remember as a child, your voice would
wrap me in cotton
as you felt the blows for all of us
Born into a country that tried to
make your voice illegal
poise and elegance was your response
And tonight like so many
June 20th, 2015
Chantal Doolittle wasn’t like anybody else she knew. Who else, for example, would stand transfixed before a record player or stereo, still as stone while listening to music — not merely attending to it — her very cells taking in the song, calculating and absorbing. “That girl is special,” Nana Esther always said.
When she was a kid and Motown was the thing, Chan would sing Marvin Gaye’s tunes to her grandmother in their high ceilinged apartment, where, more often than not it was soul music, the harmonizing voices of The Four Tops, The Temptations, The Supremes, drifting in from the surrounding windows and disappearing into the sky that was perennially a washed out gray, as if there was an invisible flag always at half mast, hanging outside heaven. From the time she was five or six, all Chan had to do was hear a song once and she would know it. She knew all the Motown tunes word for word, and sang them right on key, perfectly, which is why Nana Esther dubbed her, “my little songbird.”
Of course, there was nothing little about Chantal, but, being her grandmother’s one and only, she was “a little one” to her. Chantal was tall, big for her age, and when she developed as a young woman, busty too. She stood out even before she opened her mouth, due to her attitude. Her nana had taught her to be “confident as a man,” and she had seemingly
...May 30th, 2015
His jazz is thick,
mantled in hair
black with twists
rich with shine
absorbing the lights
as his hands
push the track of
strings
chasing
demons
of his love
while fingers
May 27th, 2015
Baseball’s back
It’s crackling on a radio
Sitting by a canning jar filled with fireflies
A barefoot summer, always afternoon in voluptuous-full July.
The screen door slams and flies scatter
A stick and ball routine with umpteen possibilities
Written in the DNA of the Americas
...April 6th, 2015
Three cars honked almost in union. Then successively, each a blare in order, one two three, then two three one three four with the line through, beat ripitum boom, ba, riptum boom, now hear it a little faster, just a little faster, lips to instrument, trumpet, three valves, infinite notes to jot to sing to blow, perched lips, fat cheeks, cosmic energy of the union, the intertwined with keys of ivory.
Marcus Breck was recalling stepping on stage the first time. Nervousness rising from toes to a tingling head. Dry mouth, the initial silence of the room that precedes the beginning of
...March 31st, 2015
I like The Jazz
We listened to Roland Kirk
and Eric Burdon sing of
Roland Kirk
And the hum of the freezer
Roland borrowed a phrase from Coltrane
and I borrowed a phrase from
March 19th, 2015
New Short Fiction Award
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work.
Don Dewey of Jamaica, New York is the winner of the 38th Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first time on March 5, 2015.
Till’s Piano Lesson
by
Don Dewey
_______________________________
“You’re early, Till. I told you never come early.”
“Sorry. I guess my watch is off.”
“Buy a new one.”
Klein refit the crutches under his armpits and swung his crabbed legs back toward the studio, leaving Till to enter the living room for himself. Till didn’t like living rooms. He thought them banal in their predictable assembly of tables, chairs, lamps, and rugs. What he wanted to see someday was a living room with people who dropped dead as soon as they put a foot outside it. Living rooms should have been what they claimed to be.
Klein’s pupil in the studio seemed to be trying to erase his presence through sheer aggression. Had Mozart started that way? Till didn’t think so.
...March 5th, 2015
I recall you
dream weaver
I remember you
You’re the one
who makes most dreams
come true
Sir Charles
just not your own
when the sax
ceases dreadfully
heroes fall
trumpets screech
Max Roach calls you
to attention
Sir Charles
listen to Diz
man just don’t fade man!
I hear Lover again
Bird you’re with me
like my mother’s voice
February 26th, 2015
Club Havana was known for hosting decent Afro-Cuban jazz bands. There was dancing Thursdays through Sundays, and Sunday afternoons, the management handed out free cigars. Hector became close to the house band, whose rhythm section inspired him. He thought the drummer Manny was off the charts. Completely bald, he wore leather bands that cinched his pump wrists as if to keep his hands from flying off his body whenever he played fast and furious. A skinny, short guy played bongos, and a drunk worked the tumbadoras. Jorge, Carlos and Javier, all dapper guys, played horns. As if to distinguish themselves, one wore a mustache; another, a hat; and the other, wire rimmed glasses. Additionally, there was a young Julliard graduate on piano, a white-haired Cubano on flute, and a sax player who looked exactly like Lester Young. One afternoon, before their gig, Manny and Hector got to talking, and Hector started messing around on the tumbadoras, imitating what he had so often seen and heard. Manny raised his eyebrows and cocked his head. He liked this kid, and his sound was good.
“Why don’t you come hang with us this weekend. A few of us like to jam at Columbus Circle. Come along and let’s see how you work those congas in a group.”
Over the course of the summer, Hector hung out in the park. It was there he met
...February 18th, 2015
They must have materialized at the open mike
out of carbon and nitrogen in the air,
those poets you’d never see in a jazz club.
A guy in Roman-helmet-like Mohawk
reads three-chord rhymes about Mingus,
an MC in Phat Farm jeans
fires machine gun words about Miles,
and a woman in high collar and sensible shoes
chops Art Blakey into fourteen lines of ten syllables.
Seems you can’t be a real poet
unless you
February 12th, 2015
“Masters of the Jazz Kazoo” is a short story by Con Chapman about a man whose goal was to make it in New York’s cutthroat world of the jazz kazoo!
_____
Like all jazz kazoo players, getting to New York City was always my goal. To turn the Sinatra song on its head, until you made it there, you hadn’t made it anywhere.
Yes, I’d cut every kazooist in the Quad Cities, the sub-metropolitan area of Iowa that from the air appears to be what it is full of — squares. Then I’d moved on to Chicago, like Louis Armstrong, where I found a wider audience for my “kool kazoo” stylings. It may be America’s “Second City” (actually third, but who’s counting) but landing on my feet there was like a
...February 4th, 2015
Lazy humid Lake Pontchartrain
breezes slip sideways
through turquoise louvered doors
past a cat, on a stool with its legs hanging
like green tangled moss
as the man, deep with pillow worship
lays still, breathing soft, his hands open and flat
holds court with dreams of last night
the jazz holding tight
the band cutting through
January 22nd, 2015
“Father Kniest, Jazz Priest” is a short story by Con Chapman about “a man of the cloth…deputized by a higher power to save jazzmen’s souls from the lures and wiles and temptations of bad taste.”
_____
I’m getting too old for this, I thought as I made my way down Boylston Street, my tambourine in one hand, the Good Book in the other. I started ministering to the jazz scene in Boston back when Estelle Slavin and Her Swinging Brunettes were the house band at Izzy Ort’s Coney Island Club on Essex Street. Floogie Williams and the Unquenchables were ensconced at the Tip-Top Lounge, which didn’t sit well with the sconces that came with the place as trade fixtures, but so what? We were young and crazy for jazz — we didn’t care.
But now I’m closing in on eighty, and eighty’s looking over its shoulder, nervous as hell. I’ll catch it soon enough — if I don’t die first.
Back in ’55 I was just out of the seminary and was assigned by my
...January 7th, 2015
Whitewalls better,
blackwalls cheaper.
White collar
has fines.
Inner city
December 22nd, 2014
“Night of the living dead,” a voice screamed in Tom’s head. A softer voice pointed out it was still late afternoon. It sure wasn’t life as he wanted to know it. In reality, it was just another long Thursday afternoon of monthly staff meetings, with new mandates and standards flowing downhill from the top. All the nodding mannequins around the conference room would take it all in, shoot a few inane, brown nose comments back at the presenter, then go back to do their jobs tomorrow the same as always.
Sylvia’s attention was on the crochet hoop in her lap. Jack’s eyes had been closed for the better part of 45 minutes. Tom’s life support system came through the cord fed neatly up beneath the lapel, to the headphones partially obscured by thick sideburns and abundant head of hair. A collection of earpieces was present among these old codgers, but his was connected to the brand new cassette player in his suit coat pocket.
The tape Mikki turned him on to seemed to emanate from a place beyond his routine, tired existence. It was as if the music offered a
...December 16th, 2014
Tunes come to me at morning
prayer, after flax sunflower
seeds jammed in a coffee can;
when we went to Japan
I prayed at the shrine
for the war dead broken
at Nagasaki;
the tears on the lip of my soprano
glistened in the sun.
In interviews
I talked about my music’s
voice of praise to our oneness,
them getting caught up in techniques
of the electronic school
lifting us into assault;
in live sessions, without an audience
I see faces on the flues of the piano,
cymbals driving me into ecstasies on my knees,
the demonic angel, Elvin,
answering my prayers on African drum,
December 11th, 2014
1. Savoy Blues
Mercies would have put blues on the menu if it could, but that was a province of the kitchen, where I worked four and a half months too many. I heard actual blues music and caught a gust of air conditioning whenever I snuck through the dining area early in my shift to use the guest bathroom before customers arrived, passing the line of booths next to the orange and black walls on which hung colorful modern paintings of jazz musicians and the
...December 3rd, 2014
Although only one story wins our thrice yearly Short Fiction Contest, since we typically receive well over 100 entrants, often times there are several worthy of publication. Our last competition, our 37th, was won by Kenneth Levine. His short story “Homage” — about the effect Chet Baker’s drug addiction had on a father and son relationship — was published on November 4.
A finalist in the competition was Adam Murray’s “Silent City,” an excellent story about “how we can’t have the things we can no longer have because they no longer exist.” In this case, what we can’t have again is the 1940’s jazz laboratory known as Minton’s Playhouse. When I sent an email to Murray requesting his permission to allow me to publish “Silent City,” he wrote back and agreed, informing me that he had written this story specifically for Jerry Jazz Musician and “from there just kinda’ crossed my fingers.” In that same email, Murray wrote; “I’m currently homeless in Australia and penned this piece with my back to the brickwork behind a little jazz joint here called Ellington’s, digging on the swing, the night and the street, so your acceptance is a fitting coda for me. I’d be honoured to appear in your publication with like minded souls and voices.”
Murray’s email is an extraordinary reminder
...November 19th, 2014
New Short Fiction Award
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work.
Kenneth Levine of Wethersfield, Connecticut is the winner of the thirty-seventh Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first time on November 5, 2014.
Homage
by
Kenneth Levine
_______________________________
I deplaned in Amsterdam to confront my father. In 1990, the year I was born, after the likes of Stan Getz and Freddie Hubbard dubbed him “the reincarnation of Chet Baker,” he quit his part-time job repairing cars in Gilbert, Iowa to go on a worldwide tour from which he never returned.
From the airport I boarded a train to Centraal Station, across from which the Prins Hendrik hotel is situated at the Northern end of Zeedijk Straat, and by early evening I had navigated through the designated lanes over which walkers, bicyclists, and motorists coursed to stand before a bronze tablet on the hotel’s brick front that featured a haggard Chet Baker playing the trumpet over an inscription that read: “Trumpet player and singer Chet Baker died here on May 13th, 1988. He will live on in his music for anyone
...November 5th, 2014
Her rhythms are held by open
waves of blue strength.
Faces cool under a crescent moon.
The insides of listeners turn red
with passion. The crowd reaches
for her flavor.
Words birth from her as the children
of sound. Fingers tap to the
October 10th, 2014
O you sweet be-
spectacled bird!
you’re too cool for me
sitting there perched
in your wild catbird seat
with your sleek black
beatnik goatee &
blindman’s shades
pulled down low over
your hot orange
djellabiya while you
spill out shrill jazz
riffs and raffs
October 3rd, 2014
A finalist in our recent Short Fiction Contest, Willard Manus’ “When the World Was Young” is a love story between a man and a woman, and a woman and her musical inspiration — Clifford Brown
...September 25th, 2014
The stem pipe was cracked
he told me gently
as if I were an anxious relative
in a hospital waiting room
The craftsman nursed my boy’s trumpet
deciding it needed more oil, too
And while he was at it, fashioned a screw
replacing one long missing
September 17th, 2014
Great “black” poet?
Is Robert Frost identified as “white” as snow?
I devoured every heart fired revolutionary syllable
Each righteous rectifying rhyme a mountainous memorial in time
Barefaced truth like Emit Till’s open casket
A little Harlem hustle humor
August 22nd, 2014
not even schroeder from the peanuts
comic strip
is as dedicated to the piano
and he has a bust of beethoven
gracing his steinway!
you pull sounds out of the air
making something out of nothing
you call it improvisation:
i say, god’s just using you as
a transmitter for his thoughts…
August 8th, 2014
The publication of Arya Jenkins’ “Broad Street” is the fourth in a series of short stories she has been commissioned to write for Jerry Jazz Musician. For information about her column, please see our September 12 “Letter From the Publisher.”
For Ms. Jenkins’ introduction to her work, read “Coming to Jazz.”
__________
The day I moved into Broad Street, the roiling waters of the Long Island Sound burst over sea walls along the Connecticut coast from New Haven to Greenwich, flooding Bridgeport so badly, a poor, emotionally disturbed man actually drowned in a sewer. At Seaside Park, water rushed across two parking lots, swirled around a few skimpy trees and headed straight for the historic set of row houses that included my basement apartment. It was early December as I arrived, two knapsacks in tow, only to find my new landlady Rosie and my neighbor Alice knee-deep in galoshes in muck, hauling out my furniture.
A week earlier, Alice had lured me with, “There’s a vacancy next door and it’s yours. Everybody’s an artist here. You belong.” I had felt that the studio with its cozy rooms
...August 5th, 2014
Guess who I saw today
The last one left
To sing the scales from butterscotch tease
To the willows that wept
A slippery taunt, toffee sweet
...July 23rd, 2014
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work.
Yvonne McBride of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is the winner of the thirty-sixth Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first time on July 12, 2014.
Fever
by
Yvonne McBride
_______________________________
Royal had studied her from the bandstand each and every night since their first gig. Such a little thing she was. Nicely curved, tightly packaged — but such a small little thing he had a notion she would break if even his fingertips glazed her. And he had tried. To touch her. Had been trying to get close to her for the past two and all night long.
July 12th, 2014
Still tingling with Basie’s hard cooking,
between sets I stood at the bar
when the man next to me ordered
scotch and milk. I looked to see who had
this stray taste and almost swooned
when I saw it was the master.
Basie knocked his shot back,
then, when he saw me gaping,
raised his milk to my peachy face
and rolled out his complete smile
June 18th, 2014
Coltrane
by Alan Patterson
His Voice
crying in the wilderness
sighing, screeching, singing,
of soul secrets and sufferings
stark, silent sound
invoking Heaven’s muse
and Purgatory’s cleansing fire.
Who, speaking in toungues
created new language
who captured Eternity’s essence
June 5th, 2014
“The Weary Blues” — a poem about the importance of music and the blues in everyday life — is a signature work of Langston Hughes, the Harlem Renaissance writer whose poetry helped change the way art created by African Americans was viewed, and influenced the writers of the beat generation. Written in 1925, the melancholy poem is set in a Harlem bar where a piano player plays the blues, and is one of the first poems to mix poetry and music.
Besides being a great writer, Hughes was an eloquent communicator, and it is a wonderful experience to hear him read his own poetry.. This 1958 film shows him reading “The Weary Blues” to the accompaniment of a Canadian group led by pianist Doug Parker.
...June 3rd, 2014
STAR WORSHIPPING
Her message encouraged
tears from hiding, like light
exposing corners; no emotion
remains uncovered.
She walked a line through resistance.
The eyes and hands of judging formed
May 5th, 2014
The morning glory —
another thing
that will never be my friend.
— Basho
Rain has a way of darkening the bark on trees,
deepening the wood cracks in fences.
Grass appears softer, envious of clouds
that tease with their rootlessness,
their promise of travel and a good night’s sleep.
Normally, I’d have a little Johnny Hodges
playing in the background or Casablanca
splashing silvery-blue against a wall,
April 19th, 2014
The publication of Arya Jenkins’ “Epistrophy” is the third in a series of short stories she has been commissioned to write for Jerry Jazz Musician. For information about her column, please see our September 12 “Letter From the Publisher.” For Ms. Jenkins’ introduction to her work, read “Coming to Jazz.”
__________
Disenchanted leaves fell early through the trees the summer I left my life for an ashram. The path to the ashram snaked into the woods not far from Tanglewood and reminded me less of where I had been than where I was going with its rotund emphasis on kindness and formality-Within a year I would be studying Buddhism in a monastery and teaching English at Cornell in Ithaca.
I was attempting to put a punto finale to the moneyed nonsense in which I’d lived too long in Fairfield County, and wanted to quell my fulminating instinct, my destructive fires and find some kind of peace and stability, even at the expense of boredom–which may have been expecting too much.
...April 16th, 2014
You Can Be A Genius And Be Sane
Watching Monk and watching self,
One senses that one can have genius
And be sane.
You can
Be odd,
The brain its own,
To nail the themes
Your thought-extremes deem right.
Monk plays and pounds
In rhythmic spasms;
March 30th, 2014
I’m lonely most nights. It’s part of my job. You can’t be happy if you want to play the blues. But there were some nights that made my misery worth it, where I felt light for once and everything fit together. I’m sure it was the absence of thought that did it. When I think about things, I realize how awful they are. But when I float out of my chains, having known what they were like, the freedom is all the sweeter.
January 8th was such a night.
...March 15th, 2014
It’s light on silver-black and white,
Grainy footage of a smoky room,
A woman at the keys. A spotlight
As perfectly round as the moon
Frames her form. She picks at a tune.
This is jazz, now, it’s uncertain.
Her fingers stop, hover, resume.
She stands, walks behind a curtain.
Years later — in color now –her
Faith allows her to break that long
Silence, permits her to
March 5th, 2014
Show me a clarinet, teacher,
one from a distant continent’s wood
that has suckled nourishment
from a heated, morning sun
then show me the reed,
the dried, shallow, vibrating stick,
that will tickle sound
through many dark nights
when those with flicking tongues
articulate their passion
between panted breaths.
Show me the silver,
flailing fingers have mined
with a synchronized motion
February 18th, 2014
Names like
Little Bird & Bicycle Horn
missed your tracking
Parker solos faster
backward to the future,
higher than Shaker Heights,
further than armies marching
to spiritual masterlocks
missing the Trane
to the Future Truth
marching in.
French Mayonnaise
sustained journeys
to Sweden & Denmark
where pickup players
kept standard time
while you advanced
February 13th, 2014
ON DIVISIDERO
A hill with faces
and sidewalks,
green shoes and sneakers
without laces,
chalkboard menus,
peppers and onions
and bicycles passing
apartments with yellow
shutters and
terracotta pots with
flowers reaching over
touching heads
as buses crawl
and street cars
February 2nd, 2014
In anticipation of our very soon-to-be-published interview with Charlie Parker biographer Stanley Crouch (see the preview below), poet Erren Kelly defends Parker from the caricature portrayed in Clint Eastwood’s 1989 film Bird.
Bird Read Beckett
bird read samuel beckett
he read novels and plays
he lived his life as one long
exstitential episode
he prided himself on being
intellectual
bird loved his fried chicken
and preferred his gin
to go down smooth
like his solos
mr. eastwood,
take that lie back
and apologize!
January 21st, 2014
My friend Carl lived in a house full of ghosts with an evil sonofabitch brother who stole his shit, I mean all of it. But Carl himself, man, Carl was good as gold. He would give you the shirt off his back–everything, and did.
I moved in with my ex-old lady across the street from him in the late 80s when I was drying out and desperate for change. Marcy took me in, even after I had been such a dick. She knew it was the booze made me sleep around, and even though she kicked my drunken ass out on the curb, she took me in once she saw I was sober and clean. By then, she was already shacked up with a polite, fat, slob who was everything I wasn’t or would ever be.
Homestead Avenue, where we lived, was a pleasant street in a nice section of Fairfield called Black Rock, near the water. At the time, people were starting to navigate to the hood, although since then real estate prices have dropped due to the many storms–there have been too many storms in the area, man. But because of Black Rock’s proximity to the sound, which is like the sea, artists and strange people gravitate there.
I noticed Carl right off the bat. You couldn’t help but see him sitting on his porch with his supersized feet, head and limbs, a Franken monster. So I crossed the street one day to meet my neighbor, who looked a sorry sight–blackish long hair
...January 14th, 2014
1
Man is the animal that knows
the clarinet
makes his living
on the docks, a stevedore,
110lbs., carrying what loads
he can
the Depression comes along,
his teeth rot, no money and
he has to accept silence
January 3rd, 2014
In memory of George Lewis, Great Jazzman
1
Man is the animal that knows
the clarinet
makes his living
on the docks, a stevedore,
110lbs., carrying what loads
he can
December 27th, 2013
In the introduction to The Jazz Fiction Anthology, editors Sascha Feinstein and David Rife cite James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” as “the most famous jazz short story ever written,” and is pointed to by Baldwin biographer David Leeming as “the prologue to a dominant fictional motif in the overall Baldwin story, the relationship between two brothers that takes much of its energy from the close relationship between James and [brother] David Baldwin.” The story, originally published in Partisan Review in 1957, centers on the narrator’s need to, in Leeming’s words, “save his brother [Sonny] from the precariousness of his life as an artist.” Sonny, in turn, finds his voice by playing bebop in the Village, which results, according to Leeming,
...December 6th, 2013
In a little town in Illinois, in a bar near the Wisconsin border, one man blew honey-dripping sounds from his saxophone. A woman’s body swayed in time with the sweetness emitting from that horn. She kept time with the beat and moved like melodic notes going up and down the scale. I imagined blowing musical sounds into her ear.
I crossed the wooden dance floor where she whirled, grabbed her hand and began to spin. Like musical notes, one black, one white, we danced all night. I softly sang into her ear, “Imagine how we’d dance in bed.”
She laughed in a low contralto voice, and changed it to a soprano when the high notes flowed.
...November 19th, 2013
my funny valentine
by ed corrigan
Miles’ horn blows
thru my head
down to my toes
down baby down
i need to blow
my bleeding nose
a red note bleeding
dododowaaaah
a smile with my heart
she just tore me apart
November 12th, 2013
THE BIRTH OF JAZZ
Syncopated sounds
mingle in bayous,
roll with Mississippi currents,
splash in Lake Pontchartrain.
The haunting melody
sleeps in pine forests,
nestles in the cypress,
sways with willows,
stands with oaks.
November 1st, 2013
Coltrane, Dig?
I suppose what it is with trane and me is
he takes all the time he wants to take
even outside of time, sidereal time,
stardust time, bessie blue time,
through-and-through-him time,
trancey groove time, even arranged time.
October 19th, 2013
While in the midst of reviewing the stories from the over 100 entrants in our current Short Fiction Contest, I have been impressed by the spirit of creativity that shines through in virtually every submission. No matter the story theme, the creative energy and spontaneity is as frequently evident in the writer’s turn of a phrase as it is in a jazz musician’s harmonic progression.
The other day I got into a conversation about how jazz musicians of the 1950’s and the Beat era writers shared an artistic language and had similar creative values that showed up in a variety of examples. The one that came to mind first was in Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” where Kerouac is inspired by a jazz performance in Chicago…This is what he writes:
...October 15th, 2013
Lots of interesting new poems have been published this week…
Here is a sampling:
DAVE BRUBECK
You can hear the youth of his heart
in the rhythmic pouncing of his block
chords. He’s a kitten when it comes
to his ball of twine. He’s in his ninetieth
October 9th, 2013
I find comfort in a downpour.
The sound of intermittent pings
is almost a sonata, lulling me.
If Beethoven played on tin,
it would sound like the rain on my roof
October 1st, 2013
For years, we have been publishing work by poets from all over the world who are dedicated to putting into words their relationship with jazz music. Our most prolific poet is Roger Singer, a living, breathing example of fire and love and brilliance. His contribution to the art of jazz is here – all 26 pages of it – in full glory, waiting for interested readers to discover.
Here is a new poem of his, just published today…
...September 20th, 2013
I am a bastard son of the late great Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who came to this country in 1970, amassed many followers and bedded many women, among them, my dear mother. My parents never married. My mother left my father and moved with me to the Big Apple when I was still a toddler. While my mother met and married a broker named Irv and had my sister Pearl, my own father went on to become a famous teacher and big lush.
...September 15th, 2013
On the occasion of my 12th or 13th birthday, my father presented me with my own copy of a favorite album of his, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out and said, “This music is going to change your life.” The music sounded like nothing I’d ever heard. It was original and different and piqued my curiosity although I would not embrace it until later in my life. In the early 90s, when I was reading my poems in cafes that often played jazz in Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts, I started really listening to the music, and found it captivating.
...September 15th, 2013
For 11 years, Jerry Jazz Musician has sponsored 33 Short Fiction Contests resulting in 30 different contest winners. During that time, I estimate that I have read and considered over 3,000 short stories.
The stories vary in content and quality, of course, and it has been my goal to publish the best story regardless of its theme. This has at times led to confusion by some writers over the years who believe that, since Jerry Jazz Musician’s focus is on jazz history – and in particular within the confines and culture of mid-20th Century America – the winning story should always be about jazz or a character within that setting.
...September 12th, 2013
“Fine,” she says. “Give me your hand.”
Look up.
Empty spaces, open and promising for my skin to slip into, lie between the pale fingers that wag impatiently in my direction. I want to either kiss those milky tips or break the digits one by one. But my hand has no conflict and longs for nothing more than to fill those gaps left by her fingers. It knows where it belongs, and I watch as it begins to reach out, a thin layer of cold sweat over the palm.
...July 3rd, 2013
Loving Adverbs
I know I should love
nouns more than adverbs but
I definitely
don’t. The same weighty expectation
accompanies phenomena like the Beatles,
Harry Potter, or sushi. My loves never seem
to be trendy, and I say this with confusion,
not pride.
June 24th, 2013
In this June, 2013 essay, Scott Shachter shares many of the creative and business challenges he had to overcome before the first copy of his novel Outside In was pressed. It is a story many of our finest writers share today — that of remaining authentic in spirit and vision in a world where formula is most often rewarded.
...June 18th, 2013
Disparity in River City
THE MUSIC MAN (1962):
Robert Preston,
the picture’s star,
extols “76 Trombones”,
spots “Trouble in River City”,
earning immortality in the process.
June 9th, 2013
THE PATH
Real time straight jazz
curved the room.
Its ribbons of play formed justice
to notes,
releasing streams of fever.
May 26th, 2013
CRESCENT CITY LULLABY
Bbooooooo bboooooo,
Two octaves below a deep bass voice
river boat horns quake on the water.
Night scrambles the groan
with croaks of frogs, barks of herons,
gator cries and splashing fish.
April 28th, 2013
Valentine
Listen to the music
Listen to the sound
Turn off your thoughts
Tune in turn on
Gather round
Miles Davis is calling you
Gather round
Listen to the sound
April 15th, 2013
Bad Luck Moan
Hard luck and trouble have hounded me all my days.
Oh yes, hard luck and trouble have hounded me all my days.
If I got some good news, I could change my ways.
April 15th, 2013
So Much To Do, So Little Time To Do It In
For Michel Petrucciani
A little man, glass bones disease.
A la Lautrec: two prodigies.
At thirty-six his lungs gave out.
We cried, we would not be consoled.
April 6th, 2013
Bowl of Black Petunias (Version 2)
If you must leave me, please
leave me for something special,
like a beautiful bowl of black petunias
for when the memories leak
April 4th, 2013
Coltrane, Dig?
I suppose what it is with trane and me is
he takes all the time he wants to take
even outside of time, sidereal time,
stardust time, bessie blue time,
April 4th, 2013
SOUTHERN ELEGY
Just two “good ole boys”,
Levon from the Arkansas delta, Harry south Georgia,
gone within a month of each other,
both with big obits in The New York Times.
Who said we don’t honor earthiness!
April 3rd, 2013
BLUE SMOKE
The last yellowed leaves
from the Norway maple spiral,
dive and pirouette to ground –
hours of raking pyramid after
pyramid, the tedium of stuffing
bag after bag, the impulse
to light a match, to resurrect
the late fall smells from boyhood –
April 3rd, 2013
BURGLAR
Two days ago
the sun caught me stealing
the cardinal’s song
to construct a melody,
demanded restitution,
then reported me
to Mother Nature
April 1st, 2013
THE SAINTS LIVE
Live from Lincoln Center New Orleans jazz
reaches for higher ground.
Musical dynasty family Marsalis
Show the world that Dixie still lives.
March 28th, 2013
She didn’t dance to the music; she danced with it. The melody wrapped his arms around her and the chords ran ivory fingers through her curls. Harmony whispered in her ear and she laughed at all his jokes. She twirled up and down scales with him, the hem of her skirt swirling a single syncopated beat behind her. Her form in her red dress was as curvaceous as the treble clef, and her quick smile flashed staccato at the other dancers and drinkers, lingering largo in the hearts of those who were gifted with the lively beats.
...March 8th, 2013
Tommy
Tommy sweeps the floor
Content at his task
Is it wrong to ask
For a little more
A temporary worker at minimum wage
Not exactly where you’d expect to find
March 5th, 2013
Hudson and Landry 45, 1973 (drunks is funny)
Bowling alley lounge
Liquor license
We’re served our burgers
Served our cokes
We laugh and horse
Enough to be warned
We’re not one-tenth as loud as the adults
We also did not vanquish Hitler,
Precious quarters, Vegas addict,
February 26th, 2013
Three times a year, Jerry Jazz Musician awards a writer who submits, in ouropinion, the best original, previously unpublished work of approximatelyone – five thousand words. The winner will be announced via a specialmailing of our Jerry Jazz Musician newsletter. Publishers, artists,musicians and interested readers are among those who subscribe to the newsletter.Addit ionally, the work will be published on the home page of JerryJazz Musician and featured there for at least four weeks.
...February 22nd, 2013
Footprints ( for Wayne Shorter )
you speak no evil
when you talk about the miles
you traveled, the
way your sax sounded
like a thunderstorm
or spoke like a child
November 22nd, 2012
When my doctor released me from the asylum in Saint-Remy, he warned me to stay away from absinthe or my hallucinations would worsen. I didn’t tell him I had no need for absinthe to hallucinate. I often had company, even when there wasn’t anyone with me.
I’d spent some of my time in the asylum playing billiards. Everyone assured me that I was a natural, the best player they’d ever seen. Maybe, instead of painting, I’d play billiards for a living. As soon as I walked past the gates of the asylum,
...November 8th, 2012
Scales
My fingers flying like the wind
Dexterous and all so disciplined
From the bottom to the top and back
In a flash and right on track
November 7th, 2012
Whenever I’m pissed off, I escape to the pit. Out the kitchen door, fists deep in the pockets of my tight ass jeans, I head towards the woods back of the house.
I cross the backyard, past Moreno, the poor chained up son-of-a-bitch boxer. Rosa clinches his leash, pulling him close like a kid. The poor son-of-a-bitch tenses as I go by, his spindly legs and stubby tail shivering at my wrath, ears perked, head cocked – Was up girl, grounded again?
...July 15th, 2012
The Jazz Singer
Looking over some old tapes.
Is that really me on the stage?
The Peoria boys jazzing away behind,
performing for a village hall audience.
A monthly gig that, for a short while,
takes them back to the time when…
April 22nd, 2012
The garden by the sea is just beginning to grow into itself. Its green has started to spill out over the fence and tumble onto the walk that lines the side of the shore house. The weather is warming, and combined with the rich soil of the ground, the plants reap the favor of the earth, led to grow lush and vibrant across the expanse. The tendrils of the cucumbers have travelled far up their trellises, continuing to curl out into the air, while the bushes of basil nearby explode into a happy, bright leafed green.
...March 8th, 2012
MONK WAS RIGHT
( A letter to Thelonius Monk )
Dear Thelonius,
I first heard you
In the darkness of stinky music rooms, toe-tappers’ tombs
where out-of-tone tunes played,
and where you prayed to the God of old blue smoke
to please choke the life out of those who said jazz was a joke,
February 22nd, 2012
Special 20
A breath in the silence
Playing on the silver
Wailing the words of lost souls
Notes burning like a fire
Under molded hands
Moving fingers
Reed notes risin’ like the wind
February 20th, 2012
Minstrel
North Beach evening
Listening to Lonnie Johnson
Through an open door
I didn’t have enough money
To go in
Car noise took away
Many of the notes
February 17th, 2012
ELEGY FOR HART, IN THE KEY OF CRANE
The pipe-organ sea on-drones a dirge for you
as it will for the last whale’s final soundings.
Deep in the ocean’s heart, Hart has found a home.
Before his final voyage, from the shore he watched
the breakers as they slipped each blow, master
February 10th, 2012
MY GRANDMOTHERS WAR
It was the war
She said,
As she laid her head
On the pillow next
To my fathers bed
In a raspy voice
From her cigarettes.
How she loved all that
February 1st, 2012
Naming of Hops
(July 30, 2009)
Today there will be naming of hops.
Today they’ll have a beer outside
the oval office of the White House.
Likewise our planet rotates with an oval orbit
around the sun of no determinate God,
whose purity and innocence informs
the white bars on the American flag.
January 12th, 2012
JUST ANOTHER PUNK ROCKER WRITING ABOUT JAZZ
They must have materialized at the open mike
out of carbon and nitrogen in the air,
those poets you’d never see in a jazz club.
A guy in Roman-helmet-like Mohawk
reads three-chord rhymes about Mingus,
an MC in Phat Farm jeans
November 14th, 2011
Blues Man
His calloused fingers fret the chord
The juke-joint crowd is hushed and still
His song is beautiful reward
He plays it with such easy skill.
November 14th, 2011
A game of cards
If you ever wanted to know about my grandfather
and his three younger brothers,
you should have paid a visit while my grandmother still lived.
All you had to do was ask.
November 13th, 2011
It’s a shame that, in the 21st century, there are still men of my age who do not know who fathered them. Setting aside the moral issues, I need to know about my family medical history and bloodlines. What if, through twisted fate, my one true love were revealed to be my half sister? Or find out, while facing an ill-informed press, that I am the progeny of some great hero, or desperate criminal, and under the presumption of similar habits. At forty-eight, I still don’t know if I should be honoring the birth of a savior, celebrating the miracle of lights or dancing naked in the woods on the dark of the moon.
...November 8th, 2011
I Dreamt I Was Here
Yes, I’m here in this hospital bed
But not having breakfast, like my dream said
I was sitting having Bran Flakes
And hot toast and tea
Twice I woke up having dreamt I was here
‘Twas beginning to quite confuse me
November 3rd, 2011
Chopin: Heroic Polonaise
It may be all
we’re looking for
It may be as simple
as that. As cramming the
sky into a jar, as catching the
milky way in the palm of your hand
October 31st, 2011
Untitled
God was laughing when he made you.
He held you up and pressed his lips against your skin
till you laughed, too.
October 20th, 2011
Ignition
my friend,
how you want to see the light
…be the light
but everyone that shines
dines with the whore of envy
October 19th, 2011
Comprehension of Music
You understand me
every emotion that’s buried into my heart
that lives in my soul trying to find
the right way to express itself to a world
that lacks true understanding of someone’s feelings
so I turn to you to create life into misunderstanding
and o how I love how you grasp it
September 7th, 2011
Singularity
That morning, you were overwhelmed
by the crunch of dawn
beneath your feet;
you wouldn’t believe me when I said,
...August 6th, 2011
And Now I Know
You just don’t do that! my daddy would say,
defining the line between father, son.
No new learning could change or make him sway
from using words like, Yisstidy, and Yurn,
July 17th, 2011
THE PENCIL OF NATURE
Imagine Talbot walking into a museum today-
how his eyes would pop at a toy fork
stuck in a cardboard refrigerator
or a towering hotel lobby,
its plaza digitally erased of people
and its colors pumped up
July 8th, 2011
ten minutes into sound and I have begun to lean, to lean forward in these shared chairs towards glissando, towards pluck and sizzle and crash. Ellen is a grace note, a cello curve beside me in this dark, lovely, smitten club of jazz.
that I know it’s Ellen’s thigh and hip accompanying mine is a testament to the radii of our ring fingers, the shiny bands there that play so seriously at patience and time.
July 8th, 2011
Crouching Sofa, Hidden Remote
Culprit Philosophy our kids behold
Media shuns us into our cold world
Therapeutic weapons couldn’t wrestle them all and
The broken lids, Therapeutic guns penetrate
Their anti-establishment walls, which crawl
With love shattered kids
June 19th, 2011
The Trip
we used to pile into my dad’s van, drive
all the way from Nebraska to Texas
mostly in
silence, because complaining about the unbearable
heat would just make my dad turn the car back
around, and home
April 8th, 2011
Impromptu Blues
The bass player was out of synch
tonight while the singer was on fire.
But she had to wait while he shuffled
through page after page of music;
the drummer tap tap tapped his drum
...March 29th, 2011
MYSTIC
Jam on
she said, and
I played until night suffocated my trees
the garden was weary
and the sun had just died
March 29th, 2011
Morning’s Song
Sleepy summer eyes
wake, greeting crimson rays,
while swaying stalks waltz silently
on gentle rolling waves.
Tranquil, faded paths
weathered, beaten barn
both eagerly awaiting
March 29th, 2011
Everyone is afraid to knock on the door when they hear the trumpet behind it. A closed door is like an On Air sign or a red light outside a dark room. Still, they have to talk to him. Sonny is nowhere to be found. And Thibodeau is too busy eye-fucking the women at the hotel bar to practice. And Baldwin is just tired.
They wait for a lull, a break. Three minutes waiting outside the door, and it comes. They knock soft, one of those we didn’t want to have to bother you but didn’t see any other recourse knocks; a musician has a way of using sound, its timbre, its breadth, to say everything. Knocking is no different.
...March 4th, 2011
¡Oh, Put On Another Record And Bring Me A Drink!
I like The Jazz
We listened to Roland Kirk
and Eric Burdon sing of
Roland Kirk
March 2nd, 2011
Mist Past:
put tears of sun into glass of tears
raining impoverished soliloquies
balance falling curious symbols
slice the sea into
symmetrical colors
while you rip apart elastic
February 28th, 2011
BLUES AT SUNRISE
Sunrise Thinking of you
Slowly rising from sleep
All my thoughts irrational
Waking dreams
Farewell
To daft wishing
And hopes of one true love
All I’ve known and seen before
Fades away
February 22nd, 2011
ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: THE APOTHEOSIS OF MARY LOU WILLIAMS
It’s light on silver-black and white,
Grainy footage of a smoky room,
A woman at the keys. A spotlight
As perfectly round as the moon
...January 15th, 2011
”“Mingus au Paradis” by Manuel J. Grimaldi
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work.... Manuel J. Grimaldi reads his poem at its conclusion
Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem
Click here to read more book excerpts published on Jerry Jazz Musician
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