Duke & Strays On The Air (click to enlarge text!)

Billie's Detour (Dedicated to a genius)

Here is a recent play-list from a broadcast at KDVS in Davis, Ca. I was very graciously joined at the end of the show by the great pianist Matthew Shipp and poet Steve Dalachinsky. The version of Day Dream at the start of the show was the original recording. I followed it with a very interesting arrangement of the Strayhorn composition by pianist Dick Katz for Helen Merrill from the Milestone album, The Feeling Is Mutual. This very fine record has just recently been reissued by Mosaic as a CD with the other album Ms. Merrill recorded with the Katz group for Milestone. The highlight of the show, for me, was the 1951 recording by Billie Holiday of Detour Ahead. From her only session for Alladdin, accompanied by the Tiny Grimes Sextet, the lyric and delivery thereof, have Lady Day at her existential best! Also on this show was the always astounding Mingus Sextet of 1964. This particular group featured Eric Dolphy on alto sax, Johnny Coles at the trumpet, Clifford Jordan on tenor sax, Jaki Byard on piano and Dannie Richmond, of course, on drums. I played the relatively scarce double album Concertgebouw Amsterdam April 10th 1964. I chose Ow (Dedicated to a genius), which is an homage to Charlie Parker. Though I played some Bird before this cut, and even the original Anthropology from Dizzy Gillespie and Don Byas, I realized a musical ambiance more conducive to Ow (Dedicated to a genius) could have been created. I think in the future I will do a show only on Bird and his music concluding with this Mingus masterpiece. As Mingus said at the time, "We're trying to make him live a little bit, here."


Day Dream - Johnny Hodges & His Orchestra
Day Dream - Helen Merrill & Dick Katz
Deep In A Dream - Helen Merrill (duet with Jim Hall)
Something To Remember You By - Thad Jones (duet with Kenny Burrell)
Billie Holiday - Detour Ahead
Billie Holiday - Be Fair To Me Baby
Billie Holiday - Blue Turning Grey Over You
Johnny Griffin Quartet - I Remember You
Louis Smith - Au Privave
Annie Ross - This Time's The Dreams On Me
Annie Ross - Let There Be Love
Chet Baker & Art Pepper - Resonant Emotions
The Metronome All-Stars - Victory Ball
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet - Anthropology
Charles Mingus Sextet - Ow (Dedicated to a genius)
Matthew Shipp Trio - Light
Matthew Shipp & Steve Dalachinsky Interview Part 1
Duke Ellington & His Orchestra - The Clothed Woman
Matthew Shipp & Steve Dalachinsky Interview Part 2
Matthew Shipp Trio - When The Curtain Falls On The Jazz Theatre

Morning Joy

Morning Joy


Piano buttons, stitched on morning lights.
Jazz wakes the day,
As I awaken with jazz, love lit the night.
Eyes appear and disappear,
To lead me once more to a green moon.
Streets paved with opal sadness,
Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy,
And jazz.



by Bob Kaufman

Dreaming of the Masters

This is the playlist from this mornings broadcast on KDVS. You can listen to it where it is archived under New Day Jazz - Justin Desmangles at kdvs.org

The over all tone and trajectory of the show was really, as you can see, motivated by the spirit of the great Charles Mingus.

The love affair with America's First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald continues!

Special thanks to comedian, writer, actor and friend Paul Mooney

Charles Mingus - East Coasting
Charles Mingus -Hearts Beat And Shades Of Physical Embraces
Charles Mingus -(Soul Fusion) Freewoman
Lenny Bruce - Three Commercials
Ella Fitzgerald - Blues In The Night
Ella Fitzgerald & Ellis Larkins - I've Got A Crush On You
Randy Weston - African Village/Bedford Stuyvesant
Bud Powell - Collard Greens & Black-eyed Peas
Herbie Nichols - Argumentative Variation
Johnny Griffin - Cherokee
Betty Carter - My Shining Hour
Betty Carter - Something Wonderful
Helen Merrill (duet with Jim Hall) - Deep In A Dream
Billie Holiday - Am I Blue?
Teddy Wilson featuring Billie Holiday - I Cover The Waterfront
Billie Holiday - Billie's Blues
Margaret Walker - Old Molly Means
Bennie Green featuring Babs Gonzalez - Soul Stirrin'
Barney Bigard - Brown Suede
Interview with Paul Mooney by Justin Desmangles (live)
Duke Ellington Trio - Jumpin' Room Only
Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn - Tonk
Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn - Drawingroom Blues
Gil Evans Orchestra - Where Flamingos Fly
Lenny Bruce - How To Relax Your Colored Friends At Parties
Charles Mingus - Stop! Look! and Listen, Sinner Jim Whitney
Charles Mingus - Fifty-First Street Blues
Margaret Walker - Kissie Lee
Art Pepper - Why Are We Afraid?

Happy Birthday Lenny Bruce, We Miss You Terribly

Dear Lenny,

We sure could use you these days. You turned out to be right about just about everything. I am not sure that's a good thing. I do know I wish more people had listened, and that those who did had listened a lot closer. You wouldn't believe what's going on these days. Or maybe you would, seeing as you all but predicted it. Remember that joke you made in Berkeley? The one about the church being like a franchise? A Howard Johnson's I think you said. The real reason why we were in Vietnam. Well now its Iraq. Robbing the cradle of civilization. I am sure you'd have a riff on that. You were one of the few geniuses of our age. You showed us ourselves in a stark yet forgiving light. That word "genius" though, not funny is it? That was another thing you demonstrated, that word is not an accolade. It is, as it was with Bird, with Mingus, another of society's labels for "danger-danger." The sacrifice you made! My lord, you gave everything for freedom, and the dignity of truth unadorned. It's your birthday today and I just really wanted to say thanks somehow. Thanks to Sally Marr, too. Hey man, I know this is small, too small a thanks for all you have done. I will work on something more and get back at you. But for now, happy birthday Lenny!

Justin Desmangles

Roy Eldridge, Little Jazz

ROY ELDRIDGE, LITTLE JAZZ


A hard look and a fake I.D. won't get you
into the Metropole, but at 15 you can stand under
the marquee's heat lamps outside to listen.

That epithetical "little" must've
implied something synedochial
together with a downright

brevity. Eldridge was his own quintessence:
as Billy Tenant expressed it, "the guy who
could squeeze anything out of a trumpet."

His playing contains no stunts or slurs.
Each bitten phrase meted out with compact dignity.
Where the trumpet blares, its pointed elevation -

zigguratic high notes, chomps
goading (in Kenny Clarke, for one) a concomitant
reach in rhythm (the ride cymbal rose

in prominence) -
with an aspiration like the Chrysler Building
clinches the night air.




by Bill Berkson
from the book Fugue State

WCW takes a shot at Old Possum

"I'm glad you like his verse; but I'm warning you, the only reason it doesn't smell is that it's synthetic. Maybe I'm wrong, but I distrust that bastard more than any writer I know in the world today. He can write, granted, but it's like walking into a church to me."


- William Carlos Williams writing to James Laughlin regarding T.S. Eliot.


Williams, of course, turned out to be right about Eliot. A euro-centric cultist of the first order, Eliot was not only a royalist but a racist and fascist sympathizer.

The pessimism of The Wasteland was met with condemnation by some and admiration by others. It inspired resistance as well. Among the most successful examples of this would be the joy expressed in Hart Crane's masterpiece, The Bridge.

The above quote was taken from The Way It Wasn't, an "auto-bug-offery" by the late James Laughlin, founder and publisher of New Directions.