SATCHMO
Melvin
B. Tolson
King Oliver of New
Orleans
has kicked the
bucket, but he left behind
old Satchmo with his
red-hot horn
to syncopate the
heart and mind.
The honky-tonks in
Storyville
have turned to ashes,
have turned to dust,
but old Satchmo is
still around
like Uncle Sam's IN
GOD WE TRUST.
Where, oh, where is
Bessie Smith,
with her heart as big
as the blues of truth?
Where, oh, where is
Mister Jelly Roll,
with his Cadillac and
diamond tooth?
Where, oh, where is
Papa Handy
With his blue notes
a-dragging from bar to bar?
Where, oh where is
bulletproof Leadbelly
with his tall tales
and 12-string guitar?
Old Hip Cats,
when you sang and
played the blues
the night Satchmo was
born,
did you know
hypodermic needles in Rome
couldn't hoodoo him
away from his horn?
Wyatt Earp's legend,
John Henry's, too,
is a dare and a bet
to old Satchmo
when his groovy blues
put headlines in the news
from the Gold Coast
to cold Moscow.
Old Satchmo's
gravelly voice and
tapping foot and crazy notes
set my soul on fire.
If I climbed
the seventy-seven
steps of the Seventh
Heaven, Satchmo's
high C would carry me higher!
Are you hip to this,
Harlem? Are you hip?
On Judgement Day,
Gabriel will say
after he blows his
horn:
"I'd be the
greatest trumpeter in the Universe
if old Satchmo had
never been born!"
With sporadic rhymes and
half-rhymes, in four stanzas that run to 8, 9 and 11 lines, both
short and long, Melvin B. Tolson syncopates his way through the early
history of 20th Century jazz, name checking the early
blues and jazz stars and coming to rest on Satchmo's High C, carrying
the poet and the reader to the musical heaven of jazz. Close your
eyes and hear the warmest, neatest treatment of New Orlean's jazz
you're ever likely to hear.
Bing Crosby sings “well,
listen to, well, you know who?” and of course it's Satchmo,
virtuousing out of the morass of the colour mix in mid-twentieth
century America, with the white man leading and telling us what jazz
music is while the black musicians play behind him and Satchmo
himself takes a scat routine, achingly feminine and clownish. Be
careful not to compare it to the monkey scene from Jungle Book,
when the orang-utan shamelessly parodies the great maestro, Louis
Armstrong, and asks to be made fully human. Tolson might ask if that
means the ape wants to be 'white'?
Such parodies appear
long after
King Oliver of New
Orleans
has kicked the
bucket, but he left behind
old Satchmo with his
red-hot horn
to syncopate the
heart and mind.
The red-hot horn that Tolson celebrates grew out of the
honky-tonks now turned to dust and played crazy notes fit to set a
poet's soul on fire.
Melvin B. Tolson is the famous African-American poet,
teacher, academic and labour organiser, celebrated in Denzel
Washington and Opray Winfrey's fine film The
Great Debaters,
Tolson's poetry very often champions
his sense of who he is and how his experience as an American of
African descent charges him with an almost religious fervour for
learning and justice. He urges Harlem,
the locale of Africa in
America to be hip to Satchmo's notes, carrying him higher, high
enough to challenge the angels, even Gabriel himself, who admits he's
second best when it comes to blowing that hot-horn, second best to a
mere human, Satchmo.
The poem is a homage and a warning, in particular to the
dangers of drugs he says were avoided by Satchmo
did you know
hypodermic needles in Rome
couldn't
hoodoo him away from his horn?
But
the euphoria of Seventh Heaven awaits you if you are hip to this
groovy blues,
hip to this
gravelly
voice and tapping foot and crazy notes
The patriotic note at the end of the first stanza
old
Satchmo is still around
like
Uncle Sam's IN GOD WE TRUST.
wonders if the Seventh Heaven Tolson is striving for is
America, and if it has, like Bessie Smith a heart
as big as the blues of truth?
Tolson's poems are edited and collected by Raymond
Nelson and Rita Dove in a University of Virginia Press publication.
Recommended.
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