Bix Beiderbecke 1903-1931
young man with a horn
drunk on riverboat whiskey
blew seminal jazz
(originally posted April 2013)
Trumpet
All posts tagged Trumpet
Unknown Artist
relaxing the ride
out and back
fluid phrases
free-slip in and out
ghosting melody
breathlessly
improvised
grace-notes
hang ornaments
up and down
quicksilver bones
cached in clusters
of chord tones in
rhythmic progressions
with slurred
syncopation
that’s felt by the ears
and heard by the skin
true jazz virtuosos
perform
one-on-one
in a roomful of ones
carry on
closed-eyed
intimate dialogues
with no one
but you
(originally posted November 2013)
“Jazz Trumpet” by David Ridley
mellow tone
yellowed artistry
burnished by brass
bending air
curving sound
to the ear
that wants only to hear
an exalted b-flat
transposition resolve
equal temperament
lithe intonations
climb agile among
rich harmonics
resounding in
bold stunning register
carried of voices
that speak every
human expression
convey every
audibly palpable mood
a phenomenal range
of intensity vibrates
impossibly reaching
across seven c’s
gifts of aperture
embouchure
shaping the pitch
tending timbre
with resonant
rounded fat vowels
legatos of grief
keening deep
in the bowels
of quivering marrow
or sharp pointed
consonant spears
fierce staccatos
delivering triple-tongue
violent fears
piercing heights of
unreachable frequency
able to shatter
tall biblical walls
but for me in my time
in full blood of my prime
it was part of me
metal flesh pulsing
with passion for jazz
sultry organon instrument
warm to the hand
to the lips
with intoxicant taste
of a hundred-year history
bourbon street beale street
and twelfth street
then down along
eighteenth and vine
in the speakeasies
blues joints and supper clubs
inside and underneath
downtown and uptown
manhattan chicago
saint louis detroit
music made from
the ravage and rapture
indigenous forms
never twice played the same
ever born in
the bellies of moments
free-breathing
free-feeling
free-flying
interpreted improvised
given to no one
yet everyone knows that
this worn golden horn is the
terrible wonderful grail
of authentic emotion
“Trumpet” by Brian Ray Cameron
(Originally posted here June 2013)
mellow brass traces
tawny fingers of ambience
slender and shivering
silk-threaded sounds
along clavicle ridgelines
pulling at pulses below milky ears
receptively conscious of
cool burnished riffs
a cascading caress
down through untraveled channels
between tender ribs
caging newborn emotion
Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong by LeRoy Neiman
he was someone I wanted to be
jazz regimes couldn’t hold him
any more than did poverty
abandonment or bias
just two generations
descended from slaves
it was music that saved him
the dancehalls and brothels
of Storyville leaving their
belly-bounce imprints of sound
on his eager young mind
his cornet and trumpet
enlivened all genres
of popular taste
his affable life-loving spirit
endeared him to coalminers
cardsharps and kings
his incomparable
technical skills and
a tone clean as crystal
expressed a new spectrum
of human emotions
interpreting songs
with inflections of genius
he added his deep umber
gravelly voice like a poet
reciting in swoon of the jive
in a syncopate meter
ambassador carrying
unique American culture
around this good globe
the first and the best of his kind
he was someone I wanted to be
(for any of you who are close readers of mine, I replaced the phrase “inventions of style” with “inflections of genius” – afterthoughts can plague us poets)
Painting by Debra Hurd
From artistsoftexas.com
sometimes it all just
becomes too unbearable
smile for the crowd
take that horn make it cry
as if for some healed-over wound
“Beale Street Blues”
Painting by Diane Millsap
From ebsqart.com
notes weep from old horns
roll into the riverboat flow
indigenous sounds
liquid embouchure sorrows
blues with a bottle of Beam
Bix Beiderbecke 1903-1931
Jazz Cornetist
Photo from bix beiderbecke.com
young man with a horn
drunk on riverboat whiskey
blew seminal jazz
Poesy plus Polemics 