[Dixielandjazz] Jazz and poetry

[Robert Greenwood]

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I was interested to see a posting about jazz and poetry.

BBC Radio 3 broadcast a centenary tribute to Langston Hughes last Sunday. It was very good, but I listened in vain for the session Hughes recorded with Red Allen which I’ve never heard.

Are any list members familiar with the work of the poet/novelist/artist Kenneth Patchen? He made a few recordings with more modern musicians and performed with Charles Mingus but was a great fan of New Orleans music. In the 1950s Alden Ashforth, who recorded some superb sides by Emile Barnes, Kid Clayton, Kid Thomas and other New Orleans musicians, made some private recordings of Patchen reading his work accompanied by recordings of Bunk Johnson and George Lewis. In Patchen’s surrealistic novel "Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer" one of the characters draws up a list of essential jazz records. Among classic sides by Louis, Morton, Bunk, George Lewis, Kid Rena etc we find such fictional bands as Midge St Elglade’s Happy Brass Deceivers and the New Orleans Mad Men and Carter. This is not really a jazz book (whatever that is!) but I would highly recommend it.

On this same subject, in the early to mid sixties a literary magazine called The Outsider was published in New Orleans. Edited by Jon Edgar Webb and his wife Gypsy Lou Webb, the magazine published such pre-Beat Generation authors as Patchen and such post-Beat writers as Charles Bukowski. They also included features on the older musicians of New Orleans, illustrated with some wonderful photographs by Florence Mars, none of which I have ever seen published elsewhere. New subscribers to the magazine were given a free single on Icon of Punch Miller’s Long Distance Blues. Have any other subscribers to this list ever seen copies of The Outsider? Because of its status as a literary magazine, I think it has escaped the notice of too many adherents to OKOM. It rates no mention in any accounts of the history and background of New Orleans music in the 1950s/60s and the opening of Preservation Hall and yet it is a crucial document of that particular era.

Robert Greenwood.




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<P><FONT face="Lapidary333 BT">I was interested to see a posting about jazz and poetry.</P>
<P>BBC Radio 3 broadcast a centenary tribute to Langston Hughes last Sunday. It was very good, but I listened in vain for the session Hughes recorded with Red Allen which I’ve never heard.</P>
<P>Are any list members familiar with the work of the poet/novelist/artist Kenneth Patchen? He made a few recordings with more modern musicians and performed with Charles Mingus but was a great fan of New Orleans music. In the 1950s Alden Ashforth, who recorded some superb sides by Emile Barnes, Kid Clayton, Kid Thomas and other New Orleans musicians, made some private recordings of Patchen reading his work accompanied by recordings of Bunk Johnson and George Lewis. In Patchen’s surrealistic novel "Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer" one of the characters draws up a list of essential jazz records. Among classic sides by Louis, Morton, Bunk, George Lewis, Kid Rena etc we find such fictional bands as Midge St Elglade’s Happy Brass Deceivers and the New Orleans Mad Men and Carter. This is not really a jazz book (whatever that is!) but I would highly recommend it.</P>
<P>On this same subject, in the early to mid sixties a literary magazine called The Outsider was published in New Orleans. Edited by Jon Edgar Webb and his wife Gypsy Lou Webb, the magazine published such pre-Beat Generation authors as Patchen and such post-Beat writers as Charles Bukowski. They also included features on the older musicians of New Orleans, illustrated with some wonderful photographs by Florence Mars, none of which I have ever seen published elsewhere. New subscribers to the magazine were given a free single on Icon of Punch Miller’s Long Distance Blues. Have any other subscribers to this list ever seen copies of The Outsider? Because of its status as a literary magazine, I think it has escaped the notice of too many adherents to OKOM. It rates no mention in any accounts of the history and background of New Orleans music in the 1950s/60s and the opening of Preservation Hall and yet it is a crucial document of that particular era.</P>
<P>Robert Greenwood.</P></FONT><p><p><br><hr size=1><a href="http://uk.yahoo.com/mail/tagline_xtra/?http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/mail_storage.html"><b><font face="Arial" size="2">Get a bigger mailbox -- choose a size that fits your needs.</font></b></a><br>
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