“Silent City” — a short story by Adam Murray

November 19th, 2014

Although only one story wins our thrice yearly Short Fiction Contest, since we typically receive well over 100 entrants, often times there are several worthy of publication. Our last competition, our 37th, was won by Kenneth Levine.  His short story “Homage” — about the effect Chet Baker’s drug addiction had on a father and son relationship —  was published on November 4.

A finalist in the competition was Adam Murray’s “Silent City,” an excellent story about “how we can’t have the things we can no longer have because they no longer exist.”  In this case, what we can’t have again is the 1940’s jazz laboratory known as Minton’s Playhouse.  When I sent an email to Murray requesting his permission to allow me to publish “Silent City,” he wrote back and agreed, informing me that he had written this story specifically for Jerry Jazz Musician and “from there just kinda’ crossed my fingers.” In that same email, Murray wrote; “I’m currently homeless in Australia and penned this piece with my back to the brickwork behind a little jazz joint here called Ellington’s, digging on the swing, the night and the street, so your acceptance is a fitting coda for me. I’d be honoured to appear in your publication with like minded souls and voices.”

Murray’s email is an extraordinary reminder to me about the quality of character involved in the arts — someone who will often sacrifice so much and go to such great lengths to create it. His experience writing this piece while homeless, with his back to the brick wall of a jazz joint, “digging on the swing,” is evidence (as if we need more) of how tentative creative artists are financially everywhere in the world, and how even more tentative our world would be without them.

I am so very appreciative of all who participate in our Short Fiction Contest. Murray’s piece — and his personal journey — is all the the inspiration I need to keep this modest platform for aspiring writers open for business.   Click here for details on how you can submit your story for consideration in our next competition.

 

*

Adam Murray describes himself…

I’m a noir/science fiction genre writer who left Melbourne where I lived in jazz bars to spend the last 2 years sequestrated in the rainforest of Indonesia.   In a bamboo hut, in jungle seclusion I used a vintage typewriter to write while roasting squirrel and cobra on an open fire and bathing in a volcanic river. I have returned to Australia where I now live on the streets and use every means possible to publish my growing body of work, which includes 2 novels, a book of poetry and an anthology of short stories and prose.

Adam Murray’s website

 

 

_____

 

SILENT CITY

by Adam Murray

  He met her there. At Frank’s. Below the pizzeria floorboards, in the wine cellar. Underground. A real femme fatale devil doll seesawing a high six heel on a wooden chair that rode her pencil hem just over a stocking knee.

Her bent elbow riding it, holding an Old Gold straight up she watched him enter and cocked an eyebrow under bangs of mahogany that matched her lips perfectly. The other hand limp on a glass of Jack Daniels, slender fingers bell caging the hooch, a gull wing collar and a diamond brooch in the shape of the Tournée Du Chat Noir cat.

She was the first dame he’d seen in a long time with that feline look in her eyes. And the last. A woman harder than the hatchet goons camping on Frank’s payroll. She was someone that barely skated the ruse of her place in a world of gin mills and crude thugs, barely containing her hunger to easily rule them all.

Sure, with some smooth suave and a few dozen cheap lines he laid her and she died for that. In concrete pumps she sunk into the layers of obsidian, orange peels, sick fish, bloated dogs and pistols pounded flat on anvils. Yeah, she sunk but good. And he beat the heat because he hightailed it back to nowhere, total anonymity in another gaping metropolis. But hell, now he could never go back to Motor City, Detroit. Not ever.

Man, a broad like that could really love and she could have owned the city. Well she was Frank’s business partner, the brains and beauty of the bootleg operation. Gone, real gone. And for what? A moments intense explosive ecstasy from the limp piece of deli meat he pisses through. He tightens his fists feeling everything slip through his fingers. Everything. Nothing.

And then he’s somewhere else in this flat lining city where everything smells like whiskey and sin and the monster in a man’s eyes dances with neon perversion. He’s thinking about how we can’t have the things we can no longer have because they no longer exist. He’d push back the door of this little jazz joint in Harlem, Minton’s Playhouse, a jazz laboratory for experimental musicians. Maybe ten years ago, Parker, Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Christian and Kenny Clarke used to jam here. Midnight lubrication at 3 cents a shot and a Jew girl from the slums. Faces torn by strange lusts on a summer night where everything is flung wide open and everybody suffers without showing it. Abdicated flesh under a yellow bulb, crushed butts smouldering in a green glass ashtray on the Steinway baby grand and his second-hand Studebaker curb mounted. He’d sit back to the bar dangling a beer and experience the rhythm of things we can’t explain but feel through music. The first place in the world he felt truly at peace, at home, himself.

Well after they tore it down because the American Federation of Musicians had a strike over a royalty payments disagreement and a lot of the black jazz pioneers were enlisted in the war it all just became Sinatra in every house, in every mall, everywhere. Sure, he couldn’t listen to jazz no more. Sinatra, and everything suddenly sounded like Christmas and that was the whole point. A CIA plant in the home of every American crooning them into a false sense of security. Yep Sinatra, a government plot making every day Christmas. So we ate, drank, shopped and spent like it and look at us now, bloated with sedentary life and dropping like flies from over-consumption of absolutely everything. Sinatra, Christmas, mind control, Roswell, consumerism, hell it was all the same thing.

And Minton’s, just like that, gone.

Like they surgically cut something out of him by demolishing the jump joint. Like somehow the defeat of the black jazz big band and bebop movement had become his defeat too. Old Minton’s gone forever and he’s always longed to get back to that feeling but never could. How can he get back to that now it’s gone right? It’s impossible. Like some kinda’ space vortex between him and his previous happiness and contentment and all those sounds he’s never heard since. That time in his life, those feelings inspired in him, well they’re gone too. It’s all so futile and increasingly barren.

Some things you can never reclaim once they’re taken from you, that’s what this life is, irreclaimable actions and events that move us forward away from them into an uncertain future. Future, sure, what was that? Flying cars and robot butlers and pills to make you live forever. Yeah, live forever moving forward further and further away from the time that made you happiest. Progress and progression. Living, what a farce. For the birds, dig?

So he guesses he’ll stay here awhile living without living in this flophouse, in front of this typewriter with Armstrong on the wireless and a gallon of Mad Dog rotgut in the electric icebox. Sure, because it’s Satchmo now but pretty soon it’ll all be bubblegum.

Jazz is like that to him, irretrievably lost, like the dame that sunk in cement shoes, gone. So he walks the night rain of cemetery city in a fedora and a wool three piece listening to the songs of the street, watching the tuneless animals move without feeling. Waiting for a throaty ride on a tenor sax, wearing himself down with longing. Past boarded up cinemas and bars, into the unforgiving emptiness inside him where once swing music used to arouse his bones. Forward, into the silent void.

 

_________

 

Short Fiction Contest Details

Short Fiction by commissioned jazz writer Arya Jenkins

 

 

Share this:

4 comments on ““Silent City” — a short story by Adam Murray”

  1. Great piece. Just one correction on the photo in front of Minton’s that was misidentified on ParisMatch’s site. The man on the far right is Teddy Hill, my grandfather and the manager of Minton’s at the time. It’s not Willie Bryant.

  2. Great piece. Just one correction on the photo in front of Minton’s that was misidentified on ParisMatch’s site. The man on the far right is Teddy Hill, my grandfather and the manager of Minton’s at the time. It’s not Willie Bryant.

Comment on this article:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

In This Issue

"Nina" by Marsha Hammel
A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Winter, 2024 Edition...One-third of the Winter, 2024 collection of jazz poetry is made up of poets who have only come to my attention since the publication of the Summer, 2023 collection. What this says about jazz music and jazz poetry – and this community – is that the connection between the two art forms is inspirational and enduring, and that poets are finding a place for their voice within the pages of this website. (Featuring the art of Marsha Hammel)

The Sunday Poem

The cover of John Coltrane's 1958 album "Soultrane"
“Soultrane” by George Held

Poetry

Proceeding From Behind: A collection of poems grounded in the rhythmic, relating to the remarkable, by Terrance Underwood...A relaxed, familiar comfort emerges from the poet Terrance Underwood’s language of intellectual acuity, wit, and space – a feeling similar to one gets while listening to Monk, or Jamal, or Miles. I have long wanted to share his gifts as a poet on an expanded platform, and this 33-poem collection – woven among his audio readings, music he considers significant to his story, and brief personal comments – fulfills my desire to do so.

Feature

Jamie Branch's 2023 album "Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))"
On the Turntable— The “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” in 2023 jazz recordings...A year-end compilation of jazz albums oft mentioned by a wide range of critics as being the best of 2023 - including the late trumpeter Jamie Branch's Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))

Poetry

Ali Yahya ayahya09, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
“Black Coffee Blues” – a poem by Mary O’Melveny

Essay

"Lester Leaps In" by Tad Richards
"Jazz and American Poetry," an essay by Tad Richards...In an essay that first appeared in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry in 2005, Tad Richards - a prolific visual artist, poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer who has been active for over four decades – writes about the history of the connection of jazz and American poetry.

Interview

photo of Pepper Adams/courtesy of Pepper Adams Estate
Interview with Gary Carner, author of Pepper Adams: Saxophone Trailblazer...The author speaks with Bob Hecht about his book and his decades-long dedication to the genius of Pepper Adams, the stellar baritone saxophonist whose hard-swinging bebop style inspired many of the top-tier modern baritone players.

Poetry

Three poets and Sketches of Spain

Interview

IISG, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Interview with Judith Tick, author of Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song...The author discusses her book, a rich, emotionally stirring, exceptional work that explores every element of Ella’s legacy in great depth, reminding readers that she was not only a great singing artist, but also a musical visionary and social activist.

Poetry

Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. This edition is influenced by Stillpoint, the 2021 album by Zen practitioner Barrett Martin

Review

Jason Innocent, on “3”, Abdullah Ibrahim’s latest album... Album reviews are rarely published on Jerry Jazz Musician, but Jason Innocent’s experience with the pianist Abdullah Ibrahim’s new recording captures the essence of this artist’s creative brilliance.

Short Fiction

Christerajet, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Short Fiction Contest-winning story #64 — “The Old Casino” by J.B. Marlow...The author's award-winning story takes place over the course of a young man's life, looking at all the women he's loved and how the presence of a derelict building informs those relationships.

Feature

George Shearing/Associated Booking Corporation/James Kriegsmann, New York, via Wikimedia Commons
True Jazz Stories: “An Evening With George,” by Terry Sanville...The writer tells his story of playing guitar with a symphony orchestra, backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

Short Fiction

photo via PxHere/CC0 Public Domain
“An Un-played Instrument” – a story by Terry Sanville

Poetry

The poet Connie Johnson in 1981
In a Place of Dreams: Connie Johnson’s album of jazz poetry, music, and life stories...A collection of the remarkable poet's work is woven among her audio readings, a personal narrative of her journey and music she considers significant to it, providing readers the chance to experience the full value of her gifts.

Short Fiction

“Sayir” – a short story by Ron Perovich

Poetry

"Jazz Trio" by Samuel Dixon
A collection of jazz haiku, Vol. 2...The 19 poets included in this collection effectively share their reverence for jazz music and its culture with passion and brevity.

Poetry

“Remembering Mose,” a poem by John Kendall Hawkins

Jazz History Quiz #170

photo of Dexter Gordon by Brian McMillen
This bassist played with (among others) Charlie Parker, Erroll Garner, Nat King Cole and Dexter Gordon (pictured), was one of the earliest modern jazz tuba soloists, and was the only player to turn down offers to join both Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and the Louis Armstrong All-Stars. Who is he?

Community

FOTO:FORTEPAN / Kölcsey Ferenc Dunakeszi Városi Könyvtár / Petanovics fényképek, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
.“Community Bookshelf, #1"...a twice-yearly space where writers who have been published on Jerry Jazz Musician can share news about their recently authored books. This edition includes information about books published within the last six months or so…

Contributing Writers

Click the image to view the writers, poets and artists whose work has been published on Jerry Jazz Musician, and find links to their work

Coming Soon

An interview with Tad Richards, author of Jazz With a Beat: Small Group Swing, 1940 - 1960;  an interview with Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz, authors of But Will You Love Me Tomorrow? An Oral History of the 60's Girl Groups;  a new collection of jazz poetry; a collection of jazz haiku; a new Jazz History Quiz; short fiction; poetry; photography; interviews; playlists; and lots more in the works...

Interview Archive

Eubie Blake
Click to view the complete 22 year archive of Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, including those recently published with Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom on Eubie Blake (pictured); Richard Brent Turner on jazz and Islam; Alyn Shipton on the art of jazz; Shawn Levy on the original queens of standup comedy; Travis Atria on the expatriate trumpeter Arthur Briggs; Kitt Shapiro on her life with her mother, Eartha Kitt; Will Friedwald on Nat King Cole; Wayne Enstice on the drummer Dottie Dodgion; the drummer Joe La Barbera on Bill Evans; Philip Clark on Dave Brubeck; Nicholas Buccola on James Baldwin and William F. Buckley; Ricky Riccardi on Louis Armstrong; Dan Morgenstern and Christian Sands on Erroll Garner; Maria Golia on Ornette Coleman.

Site Archive