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Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. This edition is dedicated to saxophone players and the mood scenes that instrument creates.
...December 2nd, 2025
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.
...December 1st, 2025
Sound and colors, a phenomenal marriage.
Flows smoothly, amuses nature enthusiasts.
It tells of all the beauty and love.
Roses – red in the garden bed,
November 28th, 2025
Connecting an old photograph owned since the 1970’s to gratitude for friends, family, artists, creators, website readers and contributors – (a redux)
...November 26th, 2025
Watching Sarah Vaughan perform “Misty”
live in Sweden in ’64 must have
made some folks wonder about the failed cooling system onstage
that made her perspire so—
November 22nd, 2025
A playlist of 14 songs by the likes of Samara Joy, Brad Mehldau, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Branford Marsalis, the Yellowjackets and other Grammy Award nominees, assembled by Martin Mueller, the former Dean of the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York.
...November 21st, 2025
The writer recalls a special experience with the great pianist Barry Harris.
...November 19th, 2025
“The Weeping Tree” arises from the poet listening to (and watching) Sinne Eeg & Thomas Fonnesbæk perform “Willow Weep For Me”
...December 13th, 2022
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.
...November 19th, 2022
Besides being one of the first to be influenced by Charlie Christian, in 1944 this electric guitarist employed Charlie Parker on his first recording date and eventually led an R&B-oriented group “The Rockin’ Highlanders” that featured the saxophonist Red Prysock (pictured). Who is he?
...November 10th, 2022
They are gathering now
all along the shoreline.
Their bones sing October!
Their wings cry out Go south!
I walk with my banjo
down to the water’s edge.
What can I play for geese
who carry their own tunes
November 4th, 2022
News concerning a new collection of jazz poetry by Michael L. Newell
...November 3rd, 2022
Light sculptures made up of a variety of found objects, including musical instruments, are the focus of Sanford Kogan’s work
...November 2nd, 2022
Joe Maita, publisher of the website Jerry Jazz Musician, is interviewed on “The Buzz,” the podcast of the Jazz Journalists Association
...November 1st, 2022
Musicians
make conversation
around the notes
warm up before leaving terra firma,
say goodbye to familiar places.
Soar.
October 28th, 2022
That inner sense of freedom,
a natural balance
with an impulse
to preserve the day,
as the equinox
tilts from a window
with a view of leaves on fire.
October 18th, 2022
You listen to Karrin Allyson sing “Blame It on My Youth,” you picture her in the throes of its May-December scenario. You picture her on a college campus. Columbia University, the steps in front of Low, a pleated skirt, a short bob, the full flush of love on her cheeks.
...September 7th, 2022
My country, right or wrong
I call it home, the land my forefathers
Help built, but got little credit
July 23rd, 2022
This pianist – known for his tasteful swinging and bop-based style – was Ella Fitzgerald’s regular accompanist from 1963 – 1965, and again from 1968 – 1978. Who was he?
...July 22nd, 2022
A neo-noir story of a young singer snuffed out by the music business early in her career, either by chance or malice…
...July 15th, 2022
. . Distributed by Joe Glaser’s Associated Booking Corporation. Photographer uncredited and unknown., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Chet Baker, 1955 . . Always Cool Alison weaves on her loom in the living room. Fifth floor walk up. Manhattan. Chet plays on the stereo; a trumpet divinely graced, caressed like a stunning woman’s body, soft … Continue reading ““Always Cool” — a poem by Judith Vaughn”
...June 29th, 2022
A selection of poems from Michael L. Newell’s new collection of poetry, Still the World Beckons: New and Selected Poems (cyberwit.net)
...May 25th, 2022
Two poets reflect on the May 14, 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York
...May 16th, 2022
first light skims on green wing
like sprouts strobing for ray
climbs from soils of night,
through damask-leafed curtain
a gateless gate, come home
from crescendo of star-gazing
to dew of earth shiver
May 5th, 2022
Tall girl walks around
With a violin worn
Across her back
Her red hair carries
The fire of spring
April 30th, 2022
In this edition, producer Tommy LiPuma talks with Jarrett about working with guitarist George Benson on his 1976 Warner Brothers recording Breezin’
...April 26th, 2022
While we were waiting in the wings____
tuning our instruments,
From clefs to choruses, ominous portents
reared their ugly heads.
We didn’t see them, though.
We were cowering in dark corners,
hiding from the apparition
screaming through the night.
April 23rd, 2022
Bob Hecht recalls his experience of first hearing “Kind of Blue,” the 1959 jazz album by trumpeter Miles Davis
...April 21st, 2022
The voice comes down from the bedroom, winding down the stairs, crankily.
It does not at once compel in the manner of one of my “favorite singers” on the radio. I am a person, to use the word loosely, who does not own record albums, or a record player. What I hear from upstairs at her house, wailing down from the steps in that unassimilable voice, is the whine of the prairie. A rusty gate. A barroom complaint…
April 18th, 2022
This Texas tenor player – whose style straddled the boundaries between swing and R&B – succeeded Illinois Jacquet in Lionel Hampton’s orchestra in 1942. Who is he?
...April 15th, 2022
Mr. Cole’s suite consists of eight poems, all interpretations from songs on pianist Tommy Flanagan’s album Sunset and the Mockingbird Suite
...April 14th, 2022
. . Richard Brent Turner is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the African American Studies Program at the University of Iowa, and the author of Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism [New York University Press] . . ___ . . …..In Richard Brent Turner’s … Continue reading “Interview with Richard Brent Turner, author of Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism“
...April 1st, 2022
Carla Kaplan, editor of Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, talks about the novelist, anthropologist, playwright, folklorist, essayist and poet
...March 28th, 2022
It’s the darkness, man, the
Darkness
that laughs with the evil of the vamp.
It’s the wildness, man, the
Wildness
that greets the gray of dawn.
March 15th, 2022
The poet Erren Kelly honors the voting and women’s rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer
...March 4th, 2022
The author’s experience with racism, ignorance, poverty, and jazz in the American South of the 1960s.
...March 2nd, 2022
Set forth beautiful one
open sea and open sky
as far as your eye can see
full wind filling the sails
pushing those hesitant steps
three at a time before
the cymbal crash of wave
February 25th, 2022
In The Fire is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America, author Nicholas Buccola tells the story of the historic 1965 Cambridge Union debate between Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and Buckley, a staunch opponent of the movement and founder in 1955 of National Review, the leading conservative publication. The evening’s debate topic? “The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.”
Buccola discusses his book in a July 23, 2020 interview with Jerry Jazz Musician editor/publisher Joe Maita
...February 15th, 2022
hands do talk
to me they do
& after shaking his
some years back
clasping those long digits
expecting ivory key smoothness
I was stopped short by
their cement block
& long handle roughness
February 12th, 2022
It was a summer of jazz leaking out through shuttered windows; of breaking glass and rage from the anonymous facades of brick apartments; of winged girls trying to fly from atop the Cathedral of St. Louis; of women trying to take back the night from jugglers and mimes and the men who lurked and looked too long. And through all of this, we walked hand in hand, visitors from a planet where soybean fields bookmarked the horizon and the sweet smell of corn danced across the dusk.
...January 31st, 2022
A concert for lovers
Romantic space
For an eternal memory.
Well-dressed musicians
Well decorated scene.
.
Each note inspires exact words
To win Ghislaine’s heart,
The beauty of my youth.
January 29th, 2022
Horace Silver’s got a grove. Just listen to that left hand,
like a heart skipping a beat or jumping up to a double-beat,
like beholding something so beautiful you can hardly believe it.
January 19th, 2022
Contributing writer Bob Hecht discusses Bill Evans’ enduring compositional genius, and has assembled an extensive Spotify playlist that includes many of his tunes.
...January 13th, 2022
wind whispers song of grief
its version of
Ben Webster’s sorrowful solos
January 12th, 2022
Three in the morning in the Hollywood Hills feels like five in the morning anywhere else. The coyotes and owls cross the northern boundaries and stray down under the big HOLLYWOOD sign that glistens in the moonlight at the top of Beachwood Canyon. Field mice, possum, snakes, and house cats become fair game for the wild intruders that prowl the narrow streets and canyons for a quick kill and a quiet meal with the family.
...January 11th, 2022
So long ago, before Ornette Coleman,
Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane—
all those free spirits running up and down
the alphabet of jazz, there was old
J.S. Bach, running through the changes.
I always picture him, and hear him,
at the pipe organ in Tomas Kirsche
all by himself,
January 7th, 2022
December has once again produced a large number of year-end “Best Of” lists, and the goal of this post is to present those albums oft mentioned by the critics. While these 21 albums hardly constitute a comprehensive assessment of the “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” lists, it does provide some guidance about 2021 recordings critics seemed to agree about, and suggest we check out more thoroughly.
...January 5th, 2022
“Mrs. Swing”’s most famous recording was written by Hoagy Carmichael, and was recorded with a small group of musicians from Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. Who was “Mrs. Swing”?
...January 4th, 2022
A 34-year old childless bachelor reluctantly agrees to babysit the nine-year old daughter of a friend of his on a Saturday night in September. The experience leads to a life-changing revelation.
...January 3rd, 2022
Between the notes
lies the silenced passion and pain
of a people
too enormous for lyric expression
though the black dots on the page
attempt to decode the encrypted message.
January 1st, 2022
Some thoughts about the challenges of 2021, and hopes for 2022…
...December 29th, 2021
In the cold vastness of space without end,
we swirl through time, around the sun,
alone, unknown, unknowable, lonely
collections of stardust, certain we matter,
but vague as to why and how, unable
to prove our value, yet convinced we must
December 23rd, 2021
The woodshed was the hunting ground for wings of notes.
Black suits and ties, hipster hats and smoke rings of notes.
Was Robert Johnson alone, hellhound on his trail?
Was a deal made? Was Bird Satan’s plaything of notes?
December 21st, 2021
In a modern literary retelling of The Little Mermaid, Pearl, a talented singer, leaves her tiny seaside town to enter the music business. She must let go of everything she thought she wanted to discover her true worth.
...December 20th, 2021
Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. This poem is written to the 1957 Coleman Hawkins recording of “Juicy Fruit.”
...December 17th, 2021
Virtually all recordings of this influential trumpet player are available, but the only known film footage of him is in a 1955 appearance on the Soupy Sales variety show, which was one year before his death. Who is he?
...December 16th, 2021
I live inside Erik Satie’s piano
with my dog.
Every day is early morning autumn here
The leaves never fall
inside Erik Satie’s piano – they dance
December 14th, 2021
Molly Larson Cook’s abstract-expressionist paintings accompany the 50 poets contributing to this collection. Her art has much in common with the poetry and music found within it; all three art forms can be described as “landscapes of the imagination,” created by artists from all over the world who are inspired in a meaningful way by jazz music, and whose work can be uniquely interpreted and appreciated (or not!) by those who consume it.
...December 10th, 2021
It was probably Dean who was responsible for him being where he was right now, he thought as he sat across the table from his fiancée listening to her talk about the wedding and the gifts they were registered for and the reception. He had discovered an album he didn’t approve of – Barbra Streisand – among Dean’s records when he went to stay with him shortly after he got married to a woman from Cleveland.
...December 9th, 2021
One of my greatest joys for decades
was exploring unknown record shops.
I once walked into a newly opened used
shop around the corner from my university
and discovered a used album, apparently
the improvisatory result of a session
set up by Norman Granz that included
December 8th, 2021
Being the daughter of an international celebrity is sure to have its rewards and challenges, particularly when the mother – in this case Eartha Kitt – grew up motherless and in extreme poverty in the South, and who as an adult, broke hardened and racist societal barriers with her intense inner drive, determination, and strength of character. In a November, 2021 Jerry Jazz Musician interview, Ms. Kitt’s daughter Kitt Shapiro, author of Eartha & Kitt: A Daughter’s Love Story in Black & White, talks about Eartha’s legacy as a mother, the life and career challenges they both faced, and her book—a moving account of a heartfelt mother/daughter relationship.
...December 4th, 2021
I never did read the news, though I don’t suppose
it made a splash in the Post or Herald Tribune–
with maybe just a line or two
among the baseball stats, divorces,
and the marches picking up
deep down in the Cotton States.
December 3rd, 2021
Announcing the six writers nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize…
...December 1st, 2021
In a dream,
I walked by
what once were
rows of brownstones,
along 52nd Street;
past the ghosts
of Jimmy Ryan’s,
Spotlite, The Onyx
and 3 Deuces.
November 30th, 2021
In this edition, Veryl Oakland’s photographs and stories feature the singers Sarah Vaughan and Betty Carter
...November 29th, 2021
I sit on a balcony,
a cup of coffee held for warmth
on a chill spring morning,
as waxwings and vireos flit and flash,
percolating with song.
November 26th, 2021
Bob Hecht has created an extensive Spotify playlist he calls “Jazz Tributes” that also serves as a kind of “Thanksgiving” greeting – compositions and performances by jazz musicians, for jazz musicians.
...November 25th, 2021
Friends remember Al Summ, whose love and appreciation of jazz showed up in a variety of ways. His artwork was found (and rescued) by his friends Dan Brown, Dave Watson, Bob Crimi and “Andy” – a.k.a. “The Gang of Four”.
This remembrance is a reminder of how jazz and its culture can touch the soul of an enthusiast, and a demonstration of a longtime, devoted friendship. I am proud to assist the “Gang” in sharing their heartfelt connection to their departed friend.
...November 24th, 2021
a thin man
speaking the talk
with low eyes
snake hands
soft pale skin
empty pockets
at a table
in the back
November 21st, 2021
In this edition, producer Jean-Phillippe Allard talks with Michael Jarrett, author of Pressed For All Time: Producing the Great Jazz Albums from Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday to Miles Davis and Diana Krall about working with the singer Abbey Lincoln on her 1990 Verve album The World is Falling Down
...November 19th, 2021
In this fifth collection of poetry reflecting these times, 33 poets offer their perspectives…
...January 20th, 2021
Kevin Whitehead, the longtime jazz critic for NPR’s Fresh Air, discusses jazz music and the movies – the “natural allies” that both grew out of existing creative traditions, and, since the mid-1920’s have told stories about “child prodigies, naturals who pick up the music the first time they hear it, hard workers with a painstaking practice regimen, talented players diverted into soul-killing commercial work, and even non-improvisers taught to fake it.”
...January 15th, 2021
You just never know what you’ll run into in the midst of a crazed world – sometimes even a calm beauty has a way of unexpectedly showing up, and when it does, you want to share it.
...January 13th, 2021
He told us we were required to freeze everything in our lives and find the nearest house or store or restaurant or motor lodge. Don’t knock. Go in. Get comfortable. Wait for further instructions.
...January 11th, 2021
Way back in the ‘40s,
she had a cat
black as night
and named it . . .
Well, you know.
This was the ‘40s
January 9th, 2021
a quid pro quo threw knives
into the government’s heart
a coup to reinstate an orange plague
almost happened
combustion
fueled by messianic idiocy
used privilege to smash windows
& attempt abduction of evidence for a nation’s choice
January 8th, 2021
December has brought the tradition of year-end “Best Of” lists, and the consensus among critics is that – as difficult as it may be to understand given the challenging circumstances – 2020 was a banner year for new jazz recordings.
...January 2nd, 2021
Thank you dogs that started barking
who made me turn the jazz up on New Year’s Eve
loud
loud
loud
so mutilated America would hear what horns are supposed to sound like
December 30th, 2020
Never up first, he was always
downstairs first, his four little boys
aligned like ascending angels
up the polished staircase, already
dressed, eager to see the tree,
December 23rd, 2020
In a November 16, 2020 interview with Jerry Jazz Musician, Riccardi discusses his vital book and Armstrong’s enormous and underappreciated achievements during the era he led his big band.
...December 20th, 2020
Bethlehem lies far away from here
and home is a speck in the eyes of dreamers
we had to getaway to get our
peace on earth
December 18th, 2020
Halyards play jazz
snapping rhythm
against sailboat masts.
Floating docks moan.
The sloop rocks.
December 16th, 2020
Frank’s day begins as so many have in the last decade, a decade lost to a job, a way of life, as his phone wakes him with the bourbon-drenched tones of Tom Waits announcing he ‘can’t wait to get off work.’ Frank knows he will have that sentiment lingering in his mind until he returns home later, much later in fact, after another shift at the tavern of ill-repute. Beginning his day as he has almost every other he moves to his chair with a piping hot mug of tea and proceeds to construct and then smoke a big fat joint.
...December 15th, 2020
The author weaves the classic song “White Christmas” into a story about remembering and longing for better days
...December 11th, 2020
Imagine the ocean
and holding it
Back
with only two hands,
and one outsized mind.
Only God,
or the moon,
can move the tides.
December 9th, 2020
Gift offer on Veryl Oakland’s book Jazz in Available Light, one of the most impressive jazz photography books to be published in a long time.
...December 8th, 2020
I belong to a jazz listening group and this month’s topic has been the music of Gerry Mulligan and other baritone saxophone players. A rich, engrossing experience that has offered me the chance to wade deep into Mulligan’s career, and to rediscover great baritone players like Leo Parker, Pepper Adams, Hamiet Bluiett, Nick Brignola, Serge Chaloff, Ronnie Cuber and Scott Robinson.
Along the way I found a terrific 90 minute documentary of Mulligan’s life that I recommend as an antidote to cabin fever and as a temporary diversion from the many contemporary films/series found on Netflix, Hulu, et al.
...December 7th, 2020
With the aid of good fortune and health, life has a way of going on, even when external forces distract and alarm. Amid yet another flurry of extreme presidential chaos and the unending nightmare of COVID, I recently closed down the office space I have worked out of since 2000.
...December 2nd, 2020
. . “Sphinx,” a story by Brian Greene, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 55th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author . . . “Lucy XV,” by Vakseen . Sphinx by Brian Greene . 1. …..I met Leonor when I was 23 and she was 51. … Continue reading ““Sphinx” — a short story by Brian Greene”
...December 1st, 2020
We tripped through the parking lot and fell into the Woods—
Brown Amphitheater, then rested a bit as musicians tuned up.
When John McLaughlin’s first eerie notes of “Birds of Fire”
came through, we were taken by surprise. I’d thought
we were going to India, instead it was a caravanserai
to hear the scream of the butterfly.
November 20th, 2020
The evidence against Monk was overwhelming. As he spun in circles, his beard greeted all the be-boos and scat tops with a whiff of singular restraint, knowing the blue minor chord could only hold so much dissonance before the black harmonies started some fragile shite.
...November 19th, 2020
In the book’s prologue, “Bigger Than Jazz”– a portion of which is published here with the consent of the publisher, Oxford University Press – Riccardi writes about Armstrong’s Apollo Theater performances of 1935 (marking his comeback from an 18 month stay in Europe), his final big band performance of 1947, and subsequent appearances there with his integrated small group, the All Stars.
...November 18th, 2020
Beautiful skin,
infinite shades & tones
deep black to crescent white,
golden yellow to indigenous red.
November 17th, 2020
Too many miles, far away from
home, my girl’s photo in my pocket
mine in her gold locket, above
my bunk, Lena smiling down on
me, my girl, she don’t mind
she knows I love her, she knows
she too is fine
November 11th, 2020
Click here to read about plans for the future of Jerry Jazz Musician.
A miniature by Barbara Anna Gaiardoni
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work.... Barbara Anna Gaiardoni reads her poem at its conclusion
Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem
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