Just Jazz

This is as good a place as any to start a fight and let the best man win, or understand that the devil is busy in these last days. I am a pugilist by nature and belted in Judo but I chose peace. I refuse to be a victim of a satanic attack. It is a simple proposition that improvised music is good and anyone who is involved in its propagation is part of the solution. Anyone who speaks against the music and any of its players, promoters, vocalists, clubs that feature is a part of the problem.

They are a part of the Machiavellian mechanism of divide and conquer. I find myself in self sometimes being a part of the problem. There are moments of clarity now and then. This is one of them. The devil is busy at getting former allies of any relationship man-wife, daughter-mother, wife-husband to begin to allow for their differences to make them lose site of the big picture. In the case of improvised music, we have enough to deal with in the "War on Drugs", stations that collect money for jazz then convert to a predominant classical format (KUHF), promoters that call a concert with Rick James jazz (I do like this artist), artists that do not practice and maintain the same repertoire, alcoholism with no sign or effort for recovery, Hip-hop and its means of production (I like the art form) topless clubs, disco ect. It is a part of Jezebelian last day control. It is the same in Misouri, Cali, New York as it is in Houston. Yet Convention Groups collect millions in the hotels from a variation on prostitution and a prostituted art form around the country. Jazz and prostitution do not mix. They are like oil and water


All have taken dollars and resources which used to be utilized for jazz and have diverted them to the aforementioned. All are part of the problem not the solution. Yet we have a solution in Smitty’s, Garry over at Walker’s Barbecue, and the Legend Jazz Café run by Joe Carmouche. They are the closest thing to heaven which I do believe uses improvised music to praise Jesus in heaven now. Yes Dolphy could be praising in heaven on the bass clarinet as we speak. This is just a dress rehearsal that we need to get paid for for survival.

Monday night at Smitty's is a move in the right direction to make a difference. Friday and Saturday at Walker’s with Terry Thomas are a dramatic move to help also as well All that Joe Carmouche is doing at Legend Jazz Café, is also I do not see much else out there on the horizon or elsewhere. The problem as Joe Carmouche says is to provide those who spend the money what they want. We have dealt with the dilemma of worldliness that spends money and an art form that has its primary means of propagation in the clubs. We can’t go to Jones Hall through the week and on weekends. If we could we would. We ain’t cause we cain’t. God bless the child that has his own. People want to dance touch ect. They are not willing to just listen to music especially if Black people are playing it, whether they are black white brown or green.

Smitty has taken the high road in his commitment to jazz. He could just as easy hire a DJ on Monday and make more money. I have seen his Friday’s and Sundays when I could not walk in his place for the patronage. "T" and Carroll are doing a good job of working with him. They have been on the battlefield for some time in perpetuating the art form. Carroll has improved dramatically in the process in her strength and delivery. I am proud of my patients. I can not get mad at anything else. I apologize for any venom that I have perpetuated. “ I can’t get no ……..”

Ralph Douglas said it so well “ This music used to be cursed by the Black Middle Class and was banned by the FBI under Hoover". Preachers were told to preach about it as “devil Music” They had no idea of who Frantz Litz was or that Beethoven’s mother was Black. It was a part of self-hatred and slave mentality as well as exclusion from the church of musicians, that was perpetuated under the Willie Lynch principal .

It is to the resilience of art form of improvised music of which participants are required that this entry is dedicated. I will attempt to add pictures to embellish this love that I have for the art form of which all aforementioned take a part. It is time to bury the hatchet and honor the St. Louis Missouri Compromise. I still need work though. Maybe this is what I need to do for work and practice at home more for my big gig in heaven.

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pete4doc@hotmail