.
.
New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer: Fisher, Alan, photographer., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Fats Waller, 1938
,
.
Wild Music
The Club is almost ready to open.
It’s clean, the bar stocked, piano
polished and the crowd is lined
up down the street.
Everyone wants a drink.
Everyone wants to move their feet.
People can’t wait to shake
their booties to the wild beats.
Check your weapons at the door.
Fats muses. The joint is jumpin’…
Fifty feet stomping, sliding and gliding
across the floor sound like brushes
on taut drum skins.
Twirling bodies wind tablecloths
and curtains, everything waves
in the hurried movements of the throes
setting themselves free through the piano
players tickling of the ivories.
.
.
___
.
.
Catherine Perkins, resident of Lexington, KY, has poems printed in numerous locally published anthologies. She wrote for the Jazz Arts Foundation blog, briefly, in 2016. Catherine was brought up listening to jazz, blues and swing and owes her deep connection to music and the arts to her mother, Antoinette.
.
.
Listen to Fats Waller play “The Joint is Jumpin'” [BMG]
.
.
___
.
.
Click here for information about how to submit your poetry
Click here to learn how to subscribe to the Jerry Jazz Musician newsletter
.
.
.
