Tag: jazz

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Thoughts on Short Stories: Charles Beaumont’s “Black Country” (1955)

“Black Country” is one of those stories that I pull out when I just want to enjoy words at their most direct. The clean, crisp stuff that grabs you right away. Relentless movement can clear a lot of garbage out of your head.

Also, pretty much every time I read it, I buy some jazz CDs afterward. 

“Black Country” is a jazz story and Charles Beaumont is all hopped up on it. His prose darts this way and that. There’s ferocious energy to it, a luminous joy even, as it deals with difficult people.

Our narrator is a drummer in a jazz combo, which is perfect. His words are blunt, but always musical. He sees everything. He’s always there, keeping time, driving the rhythm. The people in this story never have heart-to-heart conversations–at least not in words. They communicate with music and, thanks to this guy, we don’t miss a thing.

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Things I Will Keep #20: BUD POWELL, Broadcast Performances 1953, Vol. 1

Bud Powell
Broadcast Performances 1953, Vol. 1
1973, ESP-Disk

Even at my advanced age, I still feel that someday I will be into jazz. Someday I’ll be a guy who references Miles Davis and knows what the fuck he’s talking about. Someday I’ll have strong opinions about alto saxophone players. Someday I’ll put on a jazz record and follow the notes like each one is a hundred dollar bill blowing by in the wind. Someday I’ll hear the emotion in these sounds that dart through the air faster than summer wasps. Someday it’s all gonna hit me.

Until then, I just “like” jazz. I like it when it twinkles in the background. I’m your regular dilletante, a total bird-brain and a complete fuckface. I enjoy jazz, but I’m not conversant in it. I’m like a guy who has a picture of the Eiffel Tower hanging in his living room, but hasn’t spent more than a day or two in Paris.

Someday, though…

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Things I Will Keep #19: JIMMY SCOTT, The Source

Jimmy Scott
The Source
1970, Atlantic Records

You ever get lonely? I’m talking about that big, dark feeling where no one cares about you and the serpent is about to strike. That bleak silence. That cold wind that blows through your soul.

Nothing seems important anymore. Nothing matters. The daytime sun hurts your eyes. The night is too dark. Nothing is satisfying. You don’t belong.

It’s a big, big world, but somehow there’s no room in it for you.

Maybe in the past you had some ideas about how this life could all work out, but that fell apart somewhere along the way. Maybe you know exactly when that happened. Or maybe you have no idea. It just happened. 

A million dollars couldn’t solve it. You don’t even know how to talk about it.

You’re broken, baby. And nobody knows how to put you back together. Not even you know how to do it.

I can’t think of a single singer on Earth who conjures up that feeling better than Jimmy Scott.

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