Miles' Delight by Ted Joans

Miles' Delight



Miles Davis
said he would like a little boy
with a black face
of no certain race but human

Miles Davis
said he would like this little boy
to have red hair
whose religion does he dig? Miles don't care

Miles Davis
said he would like this little boy
to have green eyes
and be hip, and laugh loud and tell no lies

Miles Davis
said he would like this little boy
to play piano
in a style with lots of space
and blow good jazz
and be a credit to the human race

Miles Davis
is that man that walks on egg shells
without breaking his sound
he is cool . . . . . . but heaven knows that he ain't no

cold clown

Miles Davis
with his silver blue horn
Miles Davis has been true blue since he was born
Miles Davis blowing his sophisticated funk Miles
Davis
refusing to mix jazz with junk, Miles Davis

Miles Davis
said he wants this little boy
that no one could call a son of a bitch
but they could only call him son of Miles
So I heard the marvelous Miles Davis story
Hallelujah . . solos to good glory
So I being a good God almighty with a brush
created this boy that mister Miles wanted in a rush
with red hair with green eyes and for Miles Davis
it had a black face and blows good jazz and is a
credit to the entire human race.















originally published in ALL OF TED JOANS AND NO MORE

Greil Marcus on A New Literary History of America

http://kdvs.ucdavis.edu/archives/2010-05-23_1176_128kbps.mp3

http://kdvs.ucdavis.edu/archives/2010-05-23_1176_192kbps.mp3

http://kdvs.ucdavis.edu/archives/2010-05-23_1176_320kbps.mp3

Show description for Sunday 5/23/2010 @ 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Greil Marcus joins the broadcast this week, on the 4 o'clock hour, to discuss his recent book, A New Literary History of America, co-edited with Werner Sollors.

New Day Jazz

Justin Desmangles

Jazz music for lovers and the lonely.

Genre

Jazz

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Track	Artist	Song	Album	Label	Comments
	Julian "Cannonball" Adderley	Autumn Leaves	Alison's Uncle (12" single)	Blue Note - Japan
	Bud Powell	Blue Pearl (alternate take)	Blue Pearl (12" single)	Blue Note - Japan
	Bud Powell	Blue Pearl	Blue Pearl (12" single)	Blue Note - Japan
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Kenny Burrell	My Heart Stood Still	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
	Thad Jones	Something To Remember You By	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
	Lou Donaldson	The Things We Did Last Summer	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
	Lou Donaldson	There Will Never Be Another You	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Johnny Griffin	The Way You Look Tonight	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
	Johnny Griffin	Cherokee	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
	Herbie Nichols	Argumentative Variation	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
	Herbie Nichols	Riff Primatiff	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Bud Powell	John's Abbey (alternate take)	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
	Interview with Greil Marcus by Justin Desmangles
	Bud Powell	Cleopatra's Dream	Blue Pearl (12" single)	Blue Note - Japan
	Julian "Cannonball" Adderley	Alison's Uncle	Alison's Uncle (12" single)	Blue Note - Japan
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	The Smiths	Still Ill	Hatful of Hollow	Rough Trade

Karintha by Jean Toomer

Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon,
O cant you see it, O cant you see it,
Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon
... When the sun goes down.

Men had always wanted her, this Karintha, even as a child, Karintha carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. Old men rode her hobby-horse upon their knees. Young men danced with her at frolics when they should have been dancing with their grown-up girls. God grant us youth, secretly prayed the old men. The young fellows counted the time to pass before she would be old enough to mate with them. This interest of the male, who wishes to ripen a growing thing too soon, could mean no good to her.

Karintha, at twelve, was a wild flash that told the other folks just what it was to live. At sunset, when there was no wind, and the pine-smoke from over by the sawmill hugged the earth, and you couldnt see more than a few feet in front, her sudden darting past you was a bit of vivid color, like a black bird that flashes in light. With the other children one could hear, some distance off, their feet flopping in the two-inch dust. Karintha's running was a whir. It had the sound of the red dust that sometimes makes a spiral in the road. At dusk, during the hush just after the sawmill had closed down, and before any of the women had started their supper-getting-ready songs, her voice, high-pitched, shrill, would put one's ears to itching. But no one ever thought to make her stop because of it. She stoned the cows, and beat her dog, and fought the other children... Even the preacher, who caught her at mischief, told himself that she was as innocently lovely as a November cotton flower. Already, rumors were out about her. Homes in Georgia are most often built on the two-room plan. In one, you cook and eat, in the other you sleep, and there love goes on. Karintha had seen or heard, perhaps she had felt her parents loving. One could but imitate one's parents, for to follow them was the way of God. She played "home" with a small boy who was not afraid to do her bidding. That started the whole thing. Old men could no longer ride her hobby-horse upon their knees. But young men counted faster.

Her skin is like dusk,
O cant you see it,
Her skin is like dusk,
When the sun goes down.

Karintha is a woman. She who carries beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. She has been married many times. Old men remind her that a few years back they rode her hobby-horse upon their knees. Karintha smiles, and indulges them when she is in the mood for it. She has contempt for them. Karintha is a woman. Young men run stills to make her money. Young men go to the big cities and run on the road. Young men go away to college. They all want to bring her money. These are the young men who thought that all they had to do was to count time. But Karintha is a woman, and she has had a child. A child fell out of her womb onto a bed of pine-needles in the forest. Pine-needles are smooth and sweet. They are elastic to the feet of rabbits... A sawmill was nearby. Its pyramidal sawdust pile smouldered. It is a year before one completely burns. Meanwhile, the smoke curls up and hangs in odd wraiths about the trees, curls up, and spreads itself out over the valley... Weeks after Karintha returned home the smoke was so heavy you tasted it in water. Some one made a song:

Smoke is on the hills. Rise up.
Smoke is on the hills, O rise
And take my soul to Jesus.

Karintha is a woman. Men do not know that the soul of her was a growing thing ripened too soon. They will bring their money; they will die not having found it out... Karintha at twenty, carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. Karintha...

Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon,
O cant you see it, O cant you see it,
Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon
... When the sun goes down.

Goes down...

Karintha appears as section one of Jean Toomers masterpiece Cane

The illustration is a collage by the great Romare Bearden, Calabash

Ishmael Reed on Barack Obama & the Jim Crow Media

Show description for Sunday 5/9/2010 @ 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

This afternoon on the 4 o'clock hour, poet, essayist, novelist and playwright, Ishmael Reed, returns to New Day Jazz, to discuss his most recent collection of essays, Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers.

A towering presence in international arts and letters, Mr. Reed is one of a handfull of artists who have been instrumental in the development of English language literature over the past 40 years.

http://www.ishmaelreedpub.com/

http://www.barakabooks.com/catalogue/barack-obama-and-the-jim-crow-media/

“Brilliant.” Jill Nelson, journalist, novelist, American Book Award winner.

For Ishmael Reed, Barack Obama, like Michelangelo’s St. Anthony, is a tormented man, haunted by modern reincarnations of the demonic spirits used to break slaves. These were the “Nigger Breakers”—men like Edward Covey, who was handed the job of breaking Frederick Douglass. “Isn’t it ironic,” writes Reed: “A media that scolded the Jim Crow South in the 1960s now finds itself hosting the bird.” In this collection, which includes several unpublished essays, Ishmael Reed brings to bear his grasp of the four-centuries-long African-American experience as he turns his penetrating gaze on Barack Obama’s election and first year in power—establishing himself as the conscience of a country that was once moved by Martin Luther King’s dream.

“Amazed at the many fronts on which [Ishmael Reed] has gathered little-reported facts…. I hope his book will lead to more journalistic self-reflection and intellectual honesty. ” — Werner Sollors, Professor of English Literature and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University

“In the past 40 years, Reed has published more than 20 books and has also made his mark as an editor, publisher, critic, journalist, songwriter, librettist and fearsome letter-to-the-editor writer…. Reed is among the most American of American writers, if by ‘American’ we mean a quality defined by its indefinability and its perpetual transformations as new ideas, influences and traditions enter our cultural conversation.” — The New York Times

“With Ishmael Reed, the most persistent myths and prejudice crumble under powerful unrelenting jabs and razor-sharp insight.” — Le Devoir, Montreal

“Among American writers, Ishmael Reed is probably the one
whose sensibility is closest to jazz.” — The New York Times

Ishmael Reed is an essayist, novelist, poet and playwright, and a prize-winner in all categories. He taught at the University of California (Berkeley) for thirty-five years, as well as at Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth. Reed is a member of Harvard’s Signet Society and Yale’s Calhoun Society. He lives in Oakland, California.

Ishmael Reed talks about this book with Phil Taylor of the Taylor Report

New Day Jazz

Justin Desmangles

Jazz music for lovers and the lonely.

Genre

Jazz

Missed the Show?

MP3 Stream 192kpbs, broadband
MP3 Stream 32kpbs, broadband

View Past Shows

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Track	Artist	Song	Album	Label
	Ray Charles	Let the Good Times Roll	The Genius of Ray Charles	Atlantic
	Bennie Green with Babs Gonzalez	Soul Stirrin'	Soul Stirrin'	Blue Note - Japan
	Count Basie with Joe Williams	Roll'em Pete	Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings	Verve
	Count Basie with Joe Williams	Teach Me Tonight	Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings	Verve
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Ted Joans (read by Justin Desmangles)	I, the Graduate	Double Trouble	Editions Bleu Outremer
	Lee Morgan	All at Once You Love Her	Candy	Blue Note
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Louis Smith	Au Privave	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
	Sarah Vaughn	Can't Get Out of This Mood	Sarah Vaughn in Hi-Fi	Columbia
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Ray Charles	Come Rain or Come Shine	The Genius of Ray Charles	Atlantic
	Sonny Clark	Come Rain of Come Shine	Sonny's Crib	Blue Note
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Bud Powell	Collard Greens & Black Eyed Peas	The Amazing Bud Powell Volume 1	Blue Note
	Lou Donaldson	After You're Gone (excerpt)	The Other Side of Blue Note 1500 Series	Blue Note - Japan
	Interview with Ishmael Reed By Justin Desmangles

James Baldwin on Black Music

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story. It is a story which otherwise has yet to be told and which no American is prepared to hear . . .

The story of the Negro in America is the story of America - or, more precisely, it is the story of Americans. It is not a very pretty story: the story of a people is never very pretty. The Negro in America, gloomily referred to as that shadow that lies athwart our national life, is far more than that. He is a series of shadows, self-created, intertwining, which we now helplessly battle . . .

This is why his history and his progress, his relationship to all Americans, has been kept in the social arena. He is a social and not a personal or a human problem; to think of him is to think of statistics, slums, rapes, injustices, remote violence; it is to be confronted with an endless cataloging of losses, gains, skirmishes; it is to feel virtuous, outraged, helpless, as though his continuing status among us were somehow analogous to disease - cancer, perhaps, or tuberculosis - which must be checked, even though it cannot be cured. In this arena the black man acquires quite another aspect from that which he has in life. We do not know what to do with him in life; if he breaks our sociological and sentimental image of him we are panic stricken and we feel ourselves betrayed. When he violates this image, therefore, he stands in the greatest danger (sensing which, we uneasily suspect that he is often playing a part for our benefit); and, what is not always so apparent but is equally true, we are then in some danger ourselves - hence our retreat or blind and immediate retaliation.

James Baldwin, 1951

The Cotton Club By Clarence Major

The Cotton Club




Look at Duke!
He stays up and up.

Stays up in the music.
Up where the music reaches.

Up through the waves of the music.
His waves slicked back.

Duke's staying up all night
so long that time stays up with him.

But you can see the afternoon
in his eyes. Yellow sunlight going down.

And he sleeps late. Slow at home.
Remembering Jungle Nights.

Sailing on the wide wings
of a Blue Bird, sailing light.

And somebody's always saying
Hold it, Duke,

I wanna take your picture,
and they can't even see him.














this poem, originally published in a chapbook of the same name, 1972, reappeared in the collection Configurations: New & Selected Poems 1958-1998 (Copper Canyon Press)

The Last Measure (Poem for Charles Mingus) By Hart Leroy Bibbs

WONDEROUS PEALING FEELING RETICENCE
RESONATE NINE TIMES ACROSS THUNDER
PEAKS. TRI-HALOED BEAUTY LIVES THERE IN
THE SOUNDLAND, SOFTLY PEEPING AROUND A
DARK CLOUD WHOSE BACK IS TURNED UPON
WORLDS DISDAINED. YET IT DARES TO POSSESS
THE TOUCH OF STRINGS WHERE BEAUTY IS
HEARD AND NOT SEEN

unheard is vision for the self within is dead
but the juxtaposition has already been clearly
explained.

GREAT MINGUS IS BOWING THE LAST
MEASURE'S HEAD!

THE MUSIC'S SHEET READS FOR STRINGS AND
WOODWINDS BUT UNWRITTEN ON HIS CHART
IS GUILT FROM UNSTRUCTURED DOUBT. A RIFF
OF NONCOMMITAL MEASURES THAT ENDS
WHERE GUILT IS NEITHER WITHOUT NOR
WITHIN THAT CONFOUNDS TO CONTAIN ALL
DOUBT.

dumbness mirrors itself to praise what little
and questions the rights of me to have lived and
died. it meddles to make frustration a raga's rage.

MINGUSIANFIED IS BESPOKEN IN THE WHEEL OF
SOUND AND UNSELFISHLY IS THE NEWS
ALREADY OUT OF THE GRACE TO DIVIDE
RHYTHM AND CONQUER METHOD'S PAGE. HELL
NEED NOT FREEZE IN ORDER TO BE
RECOGNIZED ENCOUNTERING HARMONIE'S
POINT OF BITTERNESS NOR THE SERVANT SNAIL
THAT LEADS THE NEW YORK UNI(ONS) CORN
BAND INTO FALSE MEASURE.

when all doubles stop on planet nine, two
octaves cry the blues between the grumbling
crossfire of the cymbals polyrhythmic oneness

COLLECTED EYELIDS OPEN UPON HUMANITY
THAT RAVES TO RECALL BIRD, LADY DAY AND
TRANE. NO MORE SOCIAL REGISTERS FOR
DOLPHY, BECHET NOR RASHAAN. WHAT TIMES
HAD THESE WHORE'S FOR MUSIC'S PLEASURE.
FIGHTING NOTES ON TOP OF PEANUT JOKES
AND MELODIC CONFUSION THAT MADE SEEM
FRIVOLOUS THE FINALITY OF A CLIMAX THAT
LEAPS MINGUSPLEXIAN INTO THE LAST
MEASURE.

legend flavored fumes from massy hall where
music heard of its mythical birth. Saturday happy
blues tuned to bop turned that ball.

IN ECSTASY EYES CLOSED AND JAWS SLACK,
TONGUE UNCONTAINABLE BEHIND THE TEETH
AND GROOVING WITH FATTED UPBEAT'S
SWING. WAILING ECHOES MOURN THROUGH
THE VALLEY OF TRIPLETS, WHERE TEARS TURN
TO FLOWERS AND ORNAMENT EARTHY SPACE
NOTES. 2-2-3-4. One must forever fall on tomorrows
trauma, WHERE THE LAST MEASURE OF
YESTERDAYS FRUSTRATIONS BREED, down by the
riverside, TO GO DOWN MINGING.

five spot features a bass (strad) that sings
of misery dancing on fragile fragrant wood.
knocked down, dragged from the splintered
measure
a mystical cry telling the all time lows,
the dow jones of human spirits without wings.

BLUES MONDAY AND RAINY DAY CONCERTS
SWELL THE TRUTHS OF BLACK TUESDAYS TO
THE GOSPEL RESOLUTION TO REDEEM PURITY
WITH THE COOL, GREEN NOTES AND BREAK ALL
STRAINS INTO A STRING OF REDHOT
HARMONIES. COSMIC UNITY IS THE GRACE
WITH THE VOICE TO SPEAK: YOU NOT ALWAYS
BEAUTIFUL, SACROSANCT, SPIRALLING TRULY
BLESSED ONE. HARD LINED IN UGLY COLDNESS
AND ONLY HALF HUMAN, DEVOTION ONLY
COULD HAVE BEEN YOUR HOME.

the future's last measure is before the tomb
when a little finger reaches round the womb
to strum the umbilical ending.

DOWN IN THE OLD SWIMMING HOLE FISHING.
UNDER THE BASS BRIDGE, GOLD AND DRIPPING
HOARDS. THEN RUN ALL THE WAY HOME, BACK
TO FIRST BASE, TO SHOW MIGUSIAN
PERFECTION WITH MINGUSPLEXIAN CHORDS.
UNO, SENOR EL UNO AND RAISE THE SEVENTH
A STRING TWELVE STOPS OF MUSIC'S CALVARY.
RAISE HELL MING.

vision is the last measure, melodic in its theme
with sweet but cruel notes that leer. The sound
grace is exercising her vocal chords.
















this poem appeared originally in Double Trouble, a collection of work by Ted Joans and Hart Leroy Bibbs, including Bibbs photography. Double Trouble was published in Paris, 1992, by Editons Bleu Outremer: Revue Noire. A truly legendary figure of the jazz world in Paris and New York, Hart Leroy Bibbs lives on in the "space love demands"!