GEE BILLY. Spoken-word-jazz-poem by BILL ARNOTT
she would go about her way, tending to everyone while Billy and his bandmates they would jam and stray but always they’d come home to stay
THE STORY OF CLARENCE by BILL ARNOTT
You see Clarence wore an old “Lou” reed like a bamboo cravat and a fine felt suit of ebony the colour of half the keys on a honkytonk piano named Hank
… AND THE BASSMAN PLAYS. Words by Bill Arnott. Music by Michael Averill
Flashback to the sixties, people living in the cities you got beatniks crossed with hippies sporting horizontal stripes and small goatees play a jazzy, minor chord, learn to smoke, renounce the lord
GROOVE by Bill Arnott
headlights splay across a country roadway/ single lane both ways in groovy groovin’ grooves/ to the smooth, smooth sound of billie holiday
ST JAMES INFIRMARY by LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND HIS SAVOY BALLROOM FIVE. Reflection by Kevin Densley
For a long time, I wanted to buy a particular set of classic jazz recordings, Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Sevens, which he recorded with various ensembles from 1925-1929.
THE WORLD IS A GHETTO by WAR. Memoir by Arnold Zable
In the light of the horror—and the resistance— taking place in raw USA, and elsewhere, over Black Lives Matter, Arnold Zable takes us to a better time, a better place, a different war.
WALTZ FOR DEBBY by BILL EVANS Story by N.T. McQueen
Even before the idea of children, the words haunted me. A porcelain pure girl who leaves her dolls and her prince and her silly old bear when adulthood corrupts her imagination.
TIN MEN AND THE TELEPHONE at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, July 2017 Poem by Hazel Smith
so often a jazz performance /only swings with sub-Coltrane licks/but experimentalism is the whipping boy/ of evolution
ON THE ROAD by JACK KEROUAC Story by Stephen Andrew
Kerouac’s bebop fills my body. His mellifluous slurring cha-cha-cha’s itself into a new instrument, floating notes like his beloved Charlie Parker saxophone...
A certain song by Van Morrison. Story by Rijn Collins
With a scowl that could scorch the tops of crème brûlée, I would stalk through the bar to the alleyway to glower outside until the song ended. Even the rotting potato peels and pools of stale beer were preferable to hearing it again.