“Silent Soundtrack” — a short story by Bari Lynn Hein

Chris Chisholm’s suit jacket landed beside his foot in a black pinstriped heap. He studied his fragmented reflection in a mosaic of mirrors, raised his eyebrows and his glass and said, “A toast!”

            There was only one other person within view, within earshot. Phil the bartender stood beneath a clock whose hands were both pointed to the number one. “What’re we toasting, Chi Chi?”

            Chris opened his mouth to say, “To Reggie!” But what came out were the lyrics of a Led Zeppelin song: “The cup is raised, the toast is made again…” He trailed off, humming, as if he’d forgotten the rest. He hadn’t.

            Phil smirked and reinserted a rag into the glass he’d been drying. “Thanks a lot. Now I’ll have that love song stuck in my

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A collection of poetic responses to the events of 2025

Forty poets describe their experiences with the tumultuous events of 2025, resulting in a remarkable collection of work made up of writers who may differ on what inspired them to participate, but who universally share a desire for their voice to be heard amid a changing America.

...

21 jazz poems on the 21st of November, 2025

An ongoing series designed to share the quality of jazz poetry continuously submitted to Jerry Jazz Musician. This edition features poems communicating the emotional appeal of jazz music, as well as nods to the likes of Miles Davis, Regina Carter, Maynard Ferguson, Ornette Coleman, and Max Roach, 

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21 jazz poems on the 21st of April, 2025

An ongoing series designed to share the quality of jazz poetry continuously submitted to Jerry Jazz Musician.

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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 these virtual pages.

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A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Summer, 2023 Edition

This edition features poetry chosen from hundreds of recent submissions, and from a wide range of voices known – and unknown – to readers of these collections.  The work is unified by the poets’ ability to capture the abundance of jazz music, and their experience with consuming it.

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A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Spring, 2023 Edition

This is the 14th extensive collection of jazz poetry published on Jerry Jazz Musician since the fall of 2019, when the concept was initiated. Like all previous volumes, the beauty of this edition is not solely evident in the general excellence of the published works; it also rests in the hearts of the individuals from diverse backgrounds who possess a mutual desire to reveal their life experiences and interactions with the music, its character, and its culture.

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A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Fall/Winter, 2022-23 Edition

.This collection of jazz poetry – the largest yet assembled on Jerry Jazz Musician – demonstrates how poets who are also listeners of jazz music experience and interact with the spontaneous art that arises from jazz improvisation, which often shows up in the soul and rhythm of their poetic language.

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21 jazz poems on the 21st of October, 2025

An ongoing series designed to share the quality of jazz poetry continuously submitted to Jerry Jazz Musician. This edition features poems inspired by the late Chuck Mangione, several on other trumpeters, the blues, and nods to Monk, Ornette Coleman,  Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins.  

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Monk, as seen by Gottlieb, Dorsett and 16 poets – an ekphrastic poetry collection

Poets write about Thelonious Monk – inspired by William Gottlieb’s photograph and Rhonda R. Dorsett’s artistic impression of it.

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From the Interview Archive: Paul Desmond biographer Doug Ramsey

In a 2005 Jerry Jazz Musician interview, Paul Desmond biographer Doug Ramsey discusses his subject – a jazz artist who transcended genres to establish one of the most immediately recognizable sounds in all of music.

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“Steven and Mira: Paris May 1968” – a short story by Steven P. Unger

The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 68th Short Fiction Contest – is a semiautobiographical tale of a café-hopping tour of Paris in the revolutionary summer of 1968, and a romance cut short by the overwhelming realities of national strikes, police violence at home and abroad, and finally the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

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“What one song best represents your expectations for 2025?” Readers respond…

What are your hopes, anxieties, expectations for 2025?  How do you see it playing out? 50 readers respond to the question, What one song best represents your expectations for 2025?

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If You Want to Go to Heaven, Follow a Songbird – Mary K O’Melveny’s album of poetry and music

While consuming Mary K O’Melveny’s remarkable work in this digital album of poetry, readings and music, readers will discover that she is moved by the mastery of legendary musicians, the wings of a monarch butterfly, the climate and political crisis, the mysteries of space exploration, and by the freedom of jazz music that can lead to what she calls “the magic of the unknown.”

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A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Spring/Summer, 2024 Edition

In this, the 17th major collection of jazz poetry published on Jerry Jazz Musician,  50 poets from all over the world again demonstrate the ongoing influence the music and its associated culture has on their creative lives.

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Interview with Joanna Scutts, author of Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism

A conversation about women who formed a group that became known as “Heterodoxy,” whose members were fired up by a desire to change their world, and who became public ambassadors of a brand-new philosophy; feminism.

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Two poems (for the birds) by Mary K O’Melveny

My friend and I are talking indignant politics
as we head across the Mid-Hudson bridge,
steel sky above, chilly water below,
when a cloud of birds twists, spins above us.

They seek every bare branch, fill them
as if they were summer leaves, then scatter
again like confetti in wind. No one is in charge,
yet balance animates all.

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“All Blues: The Story of a Lost Friendship” — a true jazz story by Bob Hecht

…..I have to wonder how many friendships have been forged over mutual love of Miles Davis’ album, Kind of Blue. The one I want to tell you about came to pass in an unlikely setting back during the winter of 1963…

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Paul Desmond:  A Life Told in Pictures, Music and Memories

Doug Ramsey’s biography of saxophonist Paul Desmond is a lavish, detailedwork of art, filled with photographs, letters, and memories of a complexand frequently inspiring life. “Paul Desmond: A Life Told in Pictures,Music and Memories,” a Jerry Jazz Musician production published in cooperation with Ramsey and Parkside Publications, features photographs and excerpts from the book, as well as sound samples of Desmond’s music.

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Interview with Doug Ramsey, author of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond

Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond is the story of a jazz artist who transcended genres to establish one of the most immediately recognizable sounds in all of music. Long before his success as the alto saxophonist with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, decades before he wrote “Take Five ,” Desmond determined that he would be himself, never a disciple or an imitator, whatever the cost.

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Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Eleven: What were five of your favorite record albums (or CD’s) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CD’s today?

“Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of “edu-tainment.” As often as possible, we pose one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.

What were five of your favorite record albums (or CD’s) when you were twenty years old, and what are five of your favorite CD’s today?

Featuring Peter Erskine, Rufus Reid, Terri Lynne Carrington, Ben Ratliff, Steve Khan and others…

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Reminiscing in Tempo: Memories and Opinion/Volume Seven: What do you recall about the first live music performance you ever attended?

“Reminiscing in Tempo” is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of “edu-tainment.” As often as possible, we pose one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.

What do you recall about the first live music performance you ever attended?

Featuring Alan Broadbent, Cyrus Chestnut, Dave Frishberg, David Evanier, and others…

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Peter Levinson, author of Tommy Dorsey: Livin’ in a Great Big Way

No musician evokes the time of the Big Band era more strikingly than Tommy Dorsey (1905 – 1956), whose towering trombone style and smash hits created legions of fans and influenced popular music for decades. Peter Levinson, the author of criticially acclaimed biographies of Harry James and Nelson Riddle, has now written the definitive account of this icon of jazz, drawing on exhaustive new research and scores of interviews with the musicians and others who knew him best.

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Interview with jazz historian Dan Morgenstern, author of Living with Jazz

Buying a vinyl long playing jazz album in the format’s heyday — from the 1950s through the 1980s — was a three-step sensual process that stirred an almost irrational enthusiasm for the entire culture the music ignited. The record industry’s flair for creating passionate cover art seduced the imagination, the sounds etched into the grooves promised diversion and surprise, and the densely-typed liner notes on the back cover fired up an eagerness for enlightenment. The process continued at the turntable, where the cut of a stylus transformed the listener into an aural witness to the performer’s character and improvisational skills. It was, quite simply, a bonding experience.

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Jeffrey Magee, author of Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz: The Uncrowned King of Swing

If Benny Goodman was the “King of Swing,” then Fletcher Henderson was the power behind the throne. Not only did Henderson arrange the music that powered Goodman’s meteoric rise, he also helped launch the careers of Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins, among others. In Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz: The Uncrowned King of Swing, Jeffrey Magee offers a fascinating account of this pivotal bandleader, throwing new light on the emergence of modern jazz and the world that created it.

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Conversations with Gary Giddins: on Underrated Jazz Musicians, Part One

In the final column of his thirty year career as jazz critic of the Village Voice, Gary Giddins wrote, “I’m as besotted with jazz as ever, and expect to write about it till last call, albeit in other formats. Indeed, much in the way being hanged is said to focus the mind, this finale has made me conscious of the columns I never wrote.”

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Robert Cohen, author of The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960’s

“Berkeley in the sixties.” Depending on your point of view, that phrase may recall thoughts of a place and time to run toward with enthusiasm, or flee from in fear. It was a place where the traditional university curriculum gave way to the students’ pursuit of the free exchange of ideas, and was the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement of 1964.

The Movement was the event that ignited the first clash of generations in a turbulent, historic decade. Its values shaped who many in America are today, its actions the genesis of the new left and new right.

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Site Archive

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Click here to read about plans for the future of Jerry Jazz Musician.

In this Issue

A collection of poetic responses to the events of 2025...Forty poets describe their experiences with the tumultuous events of 2025, resulting in a remarkable collection of work made up of writers who may differ on what inspired them to participate, but who universally share a desire for their voice to be heard amid a changing America.

The Sunday Poem

photo by Garry Knight/CC BY 2.0

”Six String Sizzle” by Ian Mullins

The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work...

Jerry Jazz Musician editor Joe Maita reads Ian Mullins’ poem at its conclusion


Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem

Interview

photo by Warren Fowler
Interview with John Gennari, author of The Jazz Barn: Music Inn, the Berkshires, and the Place of Jazz in American Life...The author discusses how in the 1950s the Berkshires – historic home to the likes of Hawthorne, Melville, Wharton, Rockwell, and Tanglewood – became a crucial space for the performance, study, and mainstreaming of jazz, and eventually an epicenter of the genre’s avant-garde.

Poetry

photo of Red Allen by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
21 jazz poems on the 21st of February, 2026...An ongoing series designed to share the quality of jazz poetry continuously submitted to Jerry Jazz Musician. This edition features poets – several new to readers of this website – writing about their appreciation for the music, how it shows up in their daily lives, and displaying their reverence for the likes of Billy Strayhorn, Joe Henderson, Ernestine Anderson, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Red Garland.

Feature

photo by Laura Stanley via Pexels.com.
Trading Fours, with Douglas Cole, No. 28: “Little Samba”...Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. This edition is based largely on a documentary – They Shot the Piano Player – about Tenório Junior, a Latin jazz musician who only produced one album (1964) before he “disappeared” in 1976.

Poetry

photo by Lorie Shaull/CC BY 4.0
“Poetry written in the midst of our time” – Vol. 2...Poets within this community of writers are feeling this moment in time, and writing about it...

Poetry

photo via Wikimedia Commons
“Empire State of GRIME” – a poem by Camille R.E....The author’s free-verse poem is written as an informal letter to tourists from a native New Yorker, (and sparing no bitter opinion).

Short Fiction

photo via Freerange/CCO
Short Fiction Contest-winning story #70 – “The Sound of Becoming,” by J.C. Michaels...The story explores the inner life of a young Southeast Asian man as he navigates the tension between Eastern tradition and Western modernity.

Poetry

art by Martel Chapman
"Ancestral Suite" - A 3-Poem Collection by Connie Johnson...The poet pays homage to three giants of mid-century post-bop jazz – Booker Ervin, Lou Donaldson, and Little Jimmy Scott

Feature

“Bohemian Spirit” – A Remembrance of 1970’s Venice Beach, by Daniel Miltz...The writer recalls 1970’s Venice Beach, where creatives chased a kind of freedom that didn’t fit inside four walls…

Feature

Boris Yaro, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
“The Bowie Summer” – a personal memory, and how art can fundamentally reshape identity, by G.D. Newton-Wade

Poetry

photo via NOAA
“Taking The Littlenecks” – a prose poem by Robert Alan Felt...Expressing the joy and sorrow of life at age 71 with grace, wisdom, and appreciation.

Short Fiction

photo by Iryna Olar/pexels.com 
“The Fading” – a short story by Noah Wilson...The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 70th Short Fiction Contest – examines the impact of genetic illness on a family of musicians and artists.

Poetry

Poems on Charlie “Bird” Parker (inspired by a painting by Al Summ) – an ekphrastic poetry collection...A collection of 25 poems inspired by the painting of Charlie Parker by the artist Al Summ.

Short Fiction

Davidmitcha, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
“Blue Monday” – a short story by Ashlee Trahan...The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 70th Short Fiction Contest – is an imagining of a day in the life of the author’s grandfather’s friendship with the legendary Fats Domino.

Poetry

National Archives of Norway, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
“Wonderful World” – a poem by Dan Thompson

A Letter from the Publisher

The gate at Buchenwald. Photo by Rhonda R Dorsett
War. Remembrance. Walls.
The High Price of Authoritarianism– by editor/publisher Joe Maita
...An essay inspired by my recent experiences witnessing the ceremonies commemorating the 80th anniversary of liberation of several World War II concentration camps in Germany.

Jazz History Quiz

photo by Mel Levine/pinelife, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jazz History Quiz #186...While he had a long career in jazz, including stints with, among others, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Sonny Stitt and Stan Getz, he will always be remembered primarily as the pianist in Charlie Parker’s classic 1947 quintet. Who is he?

Playlist

“Darn! All These Dreams!” – a playlist by Bob Hecht...In this edition, the jazz aficionado Bob Hecht’s 13-song playlist centers on one tune, the great Jimmy Van Heusen/Eddie DeLange standard, “Darn That Dream,” with the first song being a solo musician recording and each successive version adding an instrument.

Poetry

Wikimedia Commons
“Dorothy Parker, an Icon of the Jazz Age” – a poem by Jane McCarthy

Short Fiction

“The Mysterious Axeman’s Jazz” – a story by Ruth Knafo Setton...Upon returning from the horrors of World War II to post-war New Orleans, a trumpeter learns of a dark secret that reveals how his family fought their own evil, and uses jazz to bury the ghosts of war and reclaim the light through music.

Feature

photo via Wikimedia Commons
Memorable Quotes – Lawrence Ferlinghetti, on a pitiable nation

Short Fiction

photo by Bowen Liu
“Going” – a short story by D.O. Moore...A short-listed entry in the recently concluded 70th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest, “Going” tells of a traumatic flight experience that breaks a woman out of her self-imposed confines and into an acceptance that she has no control of her destiny.

Community

Nominations for the Pushcart Prize L (50)...Announcing the six writers nominated for the Pushcart Prize v. L (50), whose work appeared on the web pages of Jerry Jazz Musician or within print anthologies I edited during 2025.

Interview

Interview with Tad Richards, author of Listening to Prestige: Chronicling its Classic Jazz Recordings, 1949 – 1972...Richards discusses his book – a long overdue history of Prestige Records that draws readers into stories involving its visionary founder Bob Weinstock, the classic recording sessions he assembled, and the brilliant jazz musicians whose work on Prestige helped shape the direction of post-war music.

Poetry

“Still Wild” – a collection of poems by Connie Johnson...Connie Johnson’s unique and warm vernacular is the framework in which she reminds readers of the foremost contributors of jazz music, while peeling back the layers on the lesser known and of those who find themselves engaged by it, and affected by it. I have proudly published Connie’s poems for over two years and felt the consistency and excellence of her work deserved this 15 poem showcase.

Feature

Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity – A Classic of Our Time, and for All Time – an essay by Peter Valente...On the essence of Albert Ayler’s now classic 1964 album…

Community

Community Bookshelf #5...“Community Bookshelf” is a twice-yearly space where writers who have been published on Jerry Jazz Musician can share news about their recently authored books and/or recordings. This edition includes information about books published within the last six months or so (March, 2025 – September, 2025)

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 Paul Alexander, author of Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year; New poetry collections, Jazz History Quiz, and lots of short fiction; poetry; photography; interviews; playlists; and much more in the works...

Interview Archive

Ella Fitzgerald/IISG, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Click to view the complete 25-year archive of Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, including those recently published with Judith Tick on Ella Fitzgerald (pictured),; Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz on the Girl Groups of the 60's; Tad Richards on Small Group Swing; Stephanie Stein Crease on Chick Webb; Brent Hayes Edwards on Henry Threadgill; Richard Koloda on Albert Ayler; Glenn Mott on Stanley Crouch; Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom on Eubie Blake; 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.