Jazz Poems

THE SYNCOPATED CAKEWALK

In it, I see Miss Hand and her Five Daughters

rubbing myback and the backs of my legs

Nat King Cole provides the music and the words

It’s 1949, Finished with them, I take off

on a river boat, down the Mississippi, looking for work.

On deck the got the Original Dixieland Jazz Band

doing “Big Butter and Egg Man.”

A guru haas the cabin next to mine and everybody

who visits him whimpers something terrible!

Stood on deck after dinner watching the clouds

form faces and arms. The Shadow went

by giggling to himself.

An Illinois Central ticket fell from his pocket.

Snake Hips picked it up, ran.

Texas Shuffle, who sat in with the Band last night,

this morning, dropped his fiddlecases

in the ocean and did the Lindy all the way

to the dinning room

I got off at Freak Lips Harbor.

Boy from Springfield said he’d talk like Satch for me

for a dime. I gave him a Bird,

and an introductory note to the Duke of Ellington.

Found my way to the Ida B. Wells Youth Center.

Girl named Ella said I’d have to wait to see Mister B.

Everybody else was out to lunch.

In the waiting room got into a conversation

with a horse thief from Jump Back. Told him:

My past life is a Saturday morning cartoon.

In it, I’m jumping Rock Island freight cars, skipping

Peoria with Leadbelly; running from the man,

trying to prove my innocence. Accused of being

too complex to handle.

Meanwhile, Zoot, Sassy, Getz, Prez, Cootie, everybody

gives me a hand.

Finally, Mister B comes in. Asks about my future.

All I can say is, I can do the Cow Cow Boogie

on the ocean and hold my own in a chase chorus

Fine, says Mister B, you start seven in the morning!

CLARENCE MAJOR

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ricard Roda was born November 13, 1931 in Barcelona, Spain and he studied at the Barcelonas Conservatorium alongside his close friend Tete Montoliu. He began playing jazz in 1947 having started when he was only seventeen in the Crazy Boys orchestra in 1948. While working at Jamboree Club he played with visiting musicians such as Tony Scott, Art Farmer and Lucky Thompson.

During the Seventies he was a member of Orquestra Mirasol Colores in 1974 and were pioneers of jazz rock fusion in his hometown. He would go on to play popular music in orchestras led by Xavier Cugat, Frank Pourcel and Orquestra Latina Americana. Ricard worked with Catalònia Jazz Quiartet, Frank Miller y Su Hispania Soul, and Latin Combo.

His vast experience in the local jazz scene didn’t limit him to the genre. He also played with musicians outside the jazz scene like Joan Manuel Serrat and Liza Minelli. Alto saxophonist Ricard Roda died on November 18, 2010 in Barcelona, five days after his seventy-ninth birthday.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Mario Pavone was born on November 11, 1940 in Waterbury, Connecticut and attended B. W. Tinker grammar school, Leavenworth High School, and the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where he graduated with a B.S. in engineering. When his neighbor, guitarist Joe Diorio, recognized him as an unrealized musician Mario was inspired to take up the bass. Primarily self-taught, he was a natural on his instrument. Pavone began playing bass soon after witnessing John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard in 1961.

Pavone’s career took off during the Sixties when he toured Europe and was involved in the jazz loft era, playing in jam sessions nightly in New York City. From the late in the decade into the early Seventies he was a member of Paul Bley’s trio. The New Haven based Creative Musicians Improvising Forum (CMIF) was founded in 1975 by Pavone, Wadada Leo Smith, and Gerry Hemingway was influenced by Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. His venture into composition began here.

In 1979 Mario recorded his debut album as a leader and was a member of Bill Dixon’s trio during the 1980s. He also performed with Barry Altschul, Smith, and Hemingway. In 1980 he began an 18-year musical relationship with saxophonist Thomas Chapin. With drummer Michael Sarin, the group recorded seven albums for Knitting Factory Records, which also released an eight-CD box set of these albums plus a live recording following Chapin’s death in 1998.

He co-led a group with Anthony Braxton in the early 1990s, with Braxton on piano rather than his usual saxophones. His groups have included Matt Wilson, Gerald Cleaver, Peter Madsen, Joshua Redman, Tony Malaby, Dave Douglas, Steven Bernstein, George Schuller, Craig Taborn, and Jimmy Greene.

Bassist Mario Pavone, who has over 40 recordings and several films documenting his compositions and performances, died from carcinoid cancer in Madeira Beach, Florida on May 15, 2021 at the age of 80.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Alfredo Remus was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on November 9, 1938. In 1964 he participated as the double bassist on the historic album La Misa Criolla by Ariel Ramírez.

He has accompanied important musicians and groups such as Paul Gonsalves, Vinícius de Moraes, Maria Bethânia, Enrique “Mono” Villegas, Gato Barbieri, Mercedes Sosa, Tony Bennett, Ariel Ramírez, Víctor Heredia, Alberto Cortez, Trio Los Panchos, Raphael, Zupay Quartet, Dyango, Leonardo Favio, Sandro, Susana Rinaldi, and Antonio Carlos Jobim , among others.

He was a regular participant in a series of informal folklore improvisation and experimentation meetings at Eduardo Lagos’s house, humorously baptized by Hugo Díaz as folkloréishons, which in the style of jazz jam sessions, used to bring together Lagos, Astor Piazzolla and Díaz.

With other musicians, Remus played with Oscar Cardozo Ocampo, Domingo Cura and Oscar López Ruiz among others. He recorded nine albums as a leader with his debut album Trauma released in 1968 and his final recording Tribute To Bill Evans in 2006.

Double bassist Alfredo Remus, who performed various genres of American popular music, that included but not limited to tango,  jazz, Argentine folklore, bossa nova and post-bop,  died in Buenos Aires on September 28, 2022.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Fionna Duncan was born on November 5, 1939 in a temperance hotel in Garelochhead, Scotland a few weeks into the Second World War. The doctor had refused to come to the family home in Portincaple, on the shores of Loch Long, because a blackout was in operation. The youngest of three, she initially preferred to sing, although she later began to accompany herself on guitar and ukulele.

When she was six, the family moved to Rutherglen and it was there, thanks to Rutherglen Academy’s ballads and blues club, that she added folk and skiffle songs to the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas she sang at the local music society. By sixteen, while still at school, she was singing in talent competitions and with local jazz bands. One competition win resulted in an audition for television and the chance to make a recording.

A family trip to the United States had her singing on radio and television, and Riverside Records offered Fionna a recording contract. Not wanting to live in the States, a stipulation of the deal, she turned it down along with the chance to become label-mates with pianists Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans, and saxophonists Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane. Back in Glasgow, Scotland appearances on the weekly TV show Skiffle Club with the Joe Gordon Folk Four, singing with the Steadfast Jazz Band, and another talent competition win and auditions, she met clarinettist Forrie Cairns.

With her mother’s blessing Fionna joined Cairns’ All-Stars whom she would go on to work into the 2000s. In 1959 she and Forrie were invited to join the Clyde Valley Stompers, a traditional jazz band and recorded the album, Have Tartan Will Trad.

She won the JazzBeat Award for Top Singer in 1960 met Louis Armstrong at his own insistence when they shared a bill, and also met Lena Horne and the Beatles. She continued touring until 1964, then took up residence in London, where she hosted the Georgian Nightclub in the West End, singing with Kenny Ball and Humphrey Lyttelton, among other prominent musicians of the time. Suffering five slipped discs and being hospitalized for a year, Fionna changed careers and trained as a hairdresser. However,  the lure of the microphone and telling stories in song pulled her back to performing.

In 1985 she put together her own group with her partner, bassist Ronnie Rae, Ronnie’s son John on drums and Brian Kellock on piano. Together they became the house trio for Fionna’s Vocal Jazz Workshops, where she became a supportive mentor. if also quite a tough critic to a veritable legion of budding jazz singers as her workshops developed into a regular feature at Glasgow Jazz Festival. The festival’s late-night club also benefited from Fionna’s ‘strict but fair’ hosting skills for several years.

Vocalist Fionna Duncan continued to sing and teach into her seventies, was voted Best Jazz Vocalist and received a Lifetime Achievement award at the Scottish Jazz Awards, died at 83 on December 6, 2022.

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