First Lady of Song Ella Fitzgerald swinging with the band at The Downbeat Club in New York City, 1949. (photo by Herman Leonard from Sanatblog.com)





The following post was originally presented as…

(“Day Surrendering Unto Night” artwork by Sheila Wolk )







“It was a savage scene, and we stayed there for a long time, watching life feed on itself, the silence interrupted only by the crack of bone or the rush of wind, or the hard thump of a vulture’s wings as it strained to lift itself into the current, until it finally found the…

One arm is a crystal-blue saxophone,

the other a platinum-feathered keyboard—

yours is the music that colors our dreams.



Sunday afternoon and the jazz angel cometh

tap-dancing philosophies of the drum-roll

over a…

Often they open my eyes and shut down my fears.



Sometimes eat lunch naked on the White House lawn.



Build gigabyte nests in my heart like virtual swans.



Will not give you an STD or murder your grandparents.



Will not hack your heartbeat or…

(VT memorial photo courtesy of “the Masked Blogger”)







Anxious and ancient scratches tore the air

with fingers eager to have their say,

pulling me out of bed, they cast and re-cast

nets of lexicons deep inside the womb

of the river’s roaring belly, hauling up myths

born in Georgia and legends sung in Carolina,

the wind howled visions that burned the night.



Wind of April 15, 2007,…

(Artwork courtesy of Everett Spruill at http://www.everettspruill.50megs.com/ )







To jumpstart my personal celebration of National Poetry and Jazz Appreciation Month 2008, I accepted an invitation to join the Global Jazz Network and for one of my first blogs on the site, posted the poem “Philosophy of the Midnight Skylark in a Jazz Suite Mode.” It was impossible for me to…

Multiple Oscar-winning song man Johnny Mercer.





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The existence of music itself is reason enough for some of us to approach each day with an attitude of gratitude but––some of its more accomplished craftsmen and craftswomen provide us with real opportunities to stop, look, listen, and celebrate, especially with Jazz Appreciation Month only a few days away. That’s exactly…

It’s a special event when a singer of Carmen Lundy’s vocal prowess and dramatic gifts releases a CD boldly entitled “Jazz and the New Songbook,” then successfully substantiates that title with a solid two-disc set recorded live. It’s even more wonderful when that same singer follows such a grand performance with COME HOME, a winning collection of twelve songs that further demonstrate Lundy’s artistic finesse and very impressive musical…

Poetry and Jazz Music have been friendly kissing cousins at least since the 1920s during the United States’ great jazz age and the very famous worldwide Harlem Renaissance. That was when the great author Langston Hughes and others thrilled themselves and their friends by reciting and recording poetry to the beats of jazz. Many more––Jack Kerouac, Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, Sekou Sundiata, June Jordan, etc––later followed their…