Lyrical Somerville – May 27

On May 27, 2015, in Latest News, by The Somerville Times

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I have had a love affair with the great jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong ever since I heard him sing the line (in that wonderful, worldly rasping voice of his his), “Take your shoes off Lucy, and let’s get juicy,” from Baby, It’s Cold Outside. Poet Matthew Sisson does a riff on this late Jazz great. Matthew Sisson’s poetry has appeared in magazines and journals ranging from the Harvard Review Online, to JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he is the former poetry editor of the trade journal Modern Steel Construction. His first book, Please, Call Me Moby, was published by the Pecan Grove Press, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio Texas in March of 2015, and is available at his website, matthewsissonpoetry.com, and on Amazon.

sisson_webLouis Armstrong Sings “Lazy River”

An opening chord, a bass thump
like a wooden spoon slapping butcher block,
and before the second spoonular thump
that trumpet shouting: “All right, ALL RIGHT.”
The sax section grabs the melody, singing
sassy, in short skirts, and Mr. Armstrong sasses back:
Ah-Ha, Sure, Ah-Ha, imploring Way Down, Way Down.
And then- he begins to sing:
A circular, Wheel Of Fate singing,
a forward driving force singing,
grabbing and ignoring lyrics from
the ether as he pleases. And his scatting-
melody invented with the ease of God breathing
life into clay, with the joy of Freud discovering
the unconscious. He stops, laughs, that music
streaming through: Oh, you dog, he says. Boy if I ain’t
riffin this evening-
Over and over he prays:
Oh, you river, Oh you dog, finally exhorting:
Swing out there on them ivories boy.
That piano solo punting across the keyboard
relaxedly as any boater on the Thames.
His trumpet returns with a glissando as big as
Moby Dick, and each musician, one at a time,
enters the final chord, a cymbal crash, and this
towering vernacular folly collapses-

Ask yourself-
Who among us will ever step into that river again?

— Matthew Sisson

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