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Smothering parents, heavy-handed school officials, and a dead President conspire to keep a close-knit group of smalltown junior high kids from breaking loose. But the discovery of a song on late-night radio — one supposedly loaded with dirty words — changes everything.
...June 10th, 2025
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.
...May 26th, 2025
The story – a short-listed entry in the recently concluded 68th Short Fiction Contest – is about a saxophonist who moves away from playing bebop to experimenting with free jazz, discovering its liberating potential and possible pitfalls along the way…
...May 23rd, 2025
The author’s story – a short-listed entrant in the recently concluded 68th Short Fiction Contest – is about a couple coming to terms with the unimaginable; the loss of a child…
...May 12th, 2025
The story – a short-listed entrant in our recently concluded 68th Short Fiction Contest – is about a family struggle with poverty during occupied Taiwan, and how the present of a record fills a young family member with hope.
...April 29th, 2025
It’s somewhat surprising that Claudia ever came into the shop where I worked. Of the two main record stores in the mid-sized college city, ours was the decidedly inferior place.
...April 22nd, 2025
Aminata, a displaced Malian living in Paris, is haunted by vivid memories of her homeland. Through a supernatural encounter with her grandmother, she realizes that preserving her musical heritage through performance is an act of resistance that can transform her grief into art rather than running from it.
...April 2nd, 2025
Most bands know how to make music. They learn to play together so that it sounds good and maybe even get some gigs. Most bands know that you have your chord progressions and your 4/4 beat and your verses and bridges. Some bands even have a guy (or a woman, like Chrissy Hynde) who writes songs.
...February 10th, 2025
A young trumpet player in Chicago struggles with the challenges of finding his own voice as an artist
...January 7th, 2025
The author’s award-winning story is a semi-satirical mood piece about a heartbroken man in Europe listening to Toots Thielemans while under the influence of a mind-altering substance.
...December 5th, 2024
The story – a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – explores the intersection of nourishing oneself with music, and finding a soul mate
...December 2nd, 2024
The world-renowned saxophonist Deja Blue grew up a sad, melancholy person who could only express his feelings through his music. When he meets a beautiful woman who sweeps him off his feet, will his reluctance to share his feelings and emotion cost him the love of his life?
...November 25th, 2024
In this story – a short listed entry in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – a private investigator tries to help a homeless friend after his saxophone is stolen.
...November 18th, 2024
Tucker works as a jazz pianist aboard the deep space luxury cruiser, the Royal Nebula. A flirtatious interlude pushes his new emotional software to its limits and beyond, and he learns the hard way what it means to be human.
...November 15th, 2024
The story – finalist in the recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – describes the first lesson at a music conservatory of a freshman piano-performance major who is more accustomed to improvising than reading music. It is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress.
...November 4th, 2024
Harlan has an addiction. A most illegal addiction. It drives him from morning until night. He dreams of it. How can he escape it before it brings him into the arms of the law? Down a dark alley he will find out just how far he is willing to go.
...October 21st, 2024
The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – focuses on two people whose passion for music infuses their lives… and their chance at love.
...October 15th, 2024
In the story, a short listed entrant in the recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest, a 60-year-man has lost his job as a newspaper reporter, and is left with few options.
...October 9th, 2024
The story – a short-listed entry in the recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – is an exaggerated version of the dynamism of domestic/romantic relationships between spouses and the difficulty to sustain a family.
...October 2nd, 2024
The story – a short-listed entrant in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – centers on the effects of COVID on an interracial, interfaith family…
...September 17th, 2024
The story – a short-listed entrant in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – explores the notion of where dreams end and reality begins through the lives of three people living in New Orleans
...September 9th, 2024
In this story – a finalist in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest – a Black magician reveals his life’s complexity to a white therapist who questions his ability to address it.
...August 27th, 2024
A story about a Jewish kid coming of age in Alabama and discovering his identity through music, in particular the interstellar sound of Sun Ra.
...August 9th, 2024
The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest – concerns a father’s determined commitment to demonstrate his values to his family through a spontaneous personal action
...August 1st, 2024
In this story – a finalist in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest – a missing guitar leads to the dissolution of a chart-topping band. Years later their subsequent reconciliation reverberates across generations.
...July 22nd, 2024
The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest – concerns a heart-broken man trying to deal with his sadness via journaling and jazz.
...July 17th, 2024
The author’s story – a finalist in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest – describes the unlikely and circuitous route by which, against all odds, he became a jazz musician.
...July 11th, 2024
The story – a finalist in the 65th Short Fiction Contest – is about a young man who cares for his grandmother after she is discovered wandering in her neighborhood, which gives him a chance to be away from his mother and her new and intolerant partner.
...July 5th, 2024
The story – a finalist in the 65th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest – describes a practice routine of a young conservatory student eager to sate his feeling of destiny.
...June 20th, 2024
A short-listed entrant in the 65th Short Fiction Contest is a story about an accidental audition…
...June 11th, 2024
A short-listed entrant in the 65th Short Fiction Contest is about a lonely writer in New York City who descends into madness upon realizing she is the only person who can hear the jazz music playing under her apartment.
...June 6th, 2024
A short-listed entry in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest concerns a child’s courage in the face of abuse, displayed in her solemn ritual of burying her stuffed toys.
...May 22nd, 2024
The story – a finalist in the recently concluded 65th Short Fiction Contest – is about a woman who finds a rare saxophone in a New York City cab, and refuses to hand it over
...May 15th, 2024
Glenn Gould’s famous recording impacts a young couple’s enthusiasm for a dorm room make-out session…
...May 7th, 2024
The author’s award-winning story is about the power of connections – between father and child, music and art, and the past, present and future
...April 24th, 2024
.He answered my personal ad: “Classy rebel wishes to meet man of principle.” In the 80’s, it wasn’t normal to find love through advertisements, so I kept my effort a secret. At our first encounter in an Indian restaurant, he said. “I’m not sure if my principles are the right ones. You’re likely to find me at socialist meetings in church basements.” Though I was just a run of the mill, east coast liberal, I was over forty, so I decided to give him a chance. In fact, his commitment to left wing causes intrigued me; I wanted to hear more.
...April 2nd, 2024
Floyd grabbed his cane and stepped out of his air-conditioned car into the late August heat. The afternoon sun warmed his stiff joints. It felt good. From the Honda’s back seat he pulled a battered guitar case, locked the car and shambled down Monterey Street to Premier Music Store. Its front door stood closed against blasts of hot Santa Ana winds.
...March 22nd, 2024
It was the first Friday in months that we didn’t both have our own gigs lined up, so my friend Paul invited me out to one of his favorite haunts on 8th Avenue. He promised me the food was good, but told me that the real draw was the live music. Honestly, I tried not to roll my eyes when he dropped that detail on me in the cab. I mean, I love music and all–I’d have to if I was going to work this hard at it–but I kind of was looking forward to giving my ears the night off.
...March 12th, 2024
The trumpet melody glided on a cloud of clarinet and trombone notes. All three instruments dipped and soared over a rhythmical sea of piano, bass, and drums.
...March 3rd, 2024
This story, a finalist in the recently concluded 64th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest, tells the tell of Uncle Cheapskate and Aunt Whiner, those pesky relatives you love to hate and hate to love.
...February 26th, 2024
“Afloat” – a finalist in the 64th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest – is about a troubled man in his 40s who lessens his worries by envisioning himself and loved ones on a boat that provides safety and ease for all of them.
...February 19th, 2024
Following a failed relationship, a Barstow man is left in the desolate town with only his guitar and the familiar music of Mozart to help him cope with it all…
...February 12th, 2024
The story, a finalist in the recently concluded 64th Short Fiction Contest, is inspired by the classic Bob Dylan song “Tangled Up in Blue” which speculates about what might have been the back story to the song.
...January 30th, 2024
A short-listed entry in the recently concluded 64th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest, the story is a heartfelt, grateful monologue to one Italian composer, dead and immortal of course, whose oeuvre means so much to so many of us.
...January 16th, 2024
This story — a finalist in the recently concluded 64th Short Fiction Contest — harkens back to Richard Brautigan’s fiction of the ’70s, and explores modern day co-worker relationships/friendship and the politics of for profit “Universities”
...January 2nd, 2024
A story that takes place over the course of a young man’s life, looking specifically at all the women he’s loved and how the presence of a derelict building informs those relationships.
...December 18th, 2023
Four elderly women gather in a church for poetry readings, but they haven’t found a good rhythm yet. Finally, the woman who runs the poetry circle decides to personalize the experience.
...November 20th, 2023
This story, a finalist in the 63rd Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest, looks at the hopes one man has that a woman he meets the night before he leaves for Camp Devens will keep him alive during World War I so he can return and take her out for dinner.
...November 7th, 2023
Ms. Tanner’s story, a finalist in the recently concluded 63rd Short Fiction Contest, is about a war correspondent’s haunting revelations after she comes across musicians in a refugee camp.
...October 26th, 2023
Because of his childhood experiences, the story’s narrator loses his singing voice and as an adult neither sings nor dances. But when his marriage falls apart he meets a ‘song and dance man’ who turns out to be Iris, a woman with multiple sclerosis. With her help, he comes to grip with his inhibitions.
...October 10th, 2023
When a marketing writer gets a new neighbor, she finds herself dreading the 2:00 practice sessions of The Musician. In Rear Window fashion, The Writer is kept apprised of The Musician’s life happenings through a combination of watching out the window and listening to the story told through her music. When a crisis entangles the two women, they form a bond that penetrates the wall that stands between them – despite never having met.
...September 26th, 2023
A story revolving around a jazz record which means so much to a couple that they risk being discovered while attempting to escape the Soviet Union.
...September 12th, 2023
Neil Young stumbled off the stage more exhausted than usual. It had been a trying gig, watching Danny Whitten teeter from chord to chord on a heroin-fueled high-wire act that just seemed to get more perilous as the night wore on. It was fine that Danny blew some chords—everyone blew chords in this band. That was what made Crazy Horse special in the first place. If Neil wanted every note pure and perfect, he could have stuck with Crosby, Stills, and Nash. But what would have been the point of that? It was like playing a benediction for your own immaculate coffin.
...August 30th, 2023
A man once asked me about ambition, not in a typical sense of family and lifetime accomplishments, more of a rhetorical artistic conversation. To me, it wasn’t a topic which warranted a structured answer let alone a real plan, God forbid life would be linear and predictable. Now, over two decades later, I am found in Notting Hill’s Rooftop Cafe, writing a story which could possibly address the subject unintentionally.
...August 17th, 2023
20-year-old Priscilla Habel lives with her wannabe flapper mother who remains stuck in the jazz age 40 years later. Life is monotonous and sad until Cil meets Willie Flasterstain, a beatnik lesbian who offers an escape from her mother’s ever-imposing shadow.
...August 4th, 2023
The story – a finalist in the F. Scott Fitzgerald 2022 Short Story Contest – follows a laid-off silent-era screenwriter’s career shift after she’s forced to pawn her typewriter.
...July 10th, 2023
A violin player and enthusiast makes a crucial decision regarding where his violin will go next.
...July 6th, 2023
Bennie and his mother live alone together, and know each other through simple but profound rituals they have created…
...June 20th, 2023
What if you love music…but you can no longer hear? Ms. Flock’s story contemplates the paralleled loss of the protagonist’s hearing and her husband, where music fits into her life now, and attempts to forge a new relationship being deaf.
...June 8th, 2023
. . “Guy Ryan,” a short story by Alice Sherman Simpson, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 62nd Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author. . This story is a chapter from author’s book-in-progress, One For Sorrow. . . ___ . . photo by Lalesh Aldarwish/via Pexels … Continue reading ““Guy Ryan” – a short story by Alice Sherman Simpson”
...May 22nd, 2023
A short story based on a recollection of the author’s mother from a night many years ago, when Gene Krupa’s sticks gave everything back its beat.
...May 13th, 2023
A “jazz detective” uncovers a murder via a riddle involving a photo of Dizzy Gillespie
...May 1st, 2023
. . “The Occasional Girl,” a short story by Mark Bruce, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 62nd Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author. . . ___ . . Photo: Kubat Sydykov / World Bank/CC By-NC-ND-2.0 . The Occasional Girl by Mark Bruce . … Continue reading ““The Occasional Girl” – a short story by Mark Bruce”
...April 24th, 2023
A nurse is on the verge of selling everything before heading to WWI France, where a woman she is in love with awaits her arrival, forcing her to come to terms with what that means.
...April 10th, 2023
A young Parisian girl comes of age during the Nazi Occupation, a time when social and political upheaval create drastic consequences for her youthful naïveté.
...March 27th, 2023
A saxophonist and his teenage daughter – a drummer –bond over their club performance of John Coltrane’s “Mr. P.C,” but it doesn’t come without its parental challenges, and the father’s warm remembrance of her childhood.
...March 13th, 2023
In this short listed entry from the 61st Short Fiction Contest, a man’s eating habits alter along with the cycles of his love life.
...February 20th, 2023
A minor regional writer walks into a hometown bar and confronts his past – and present – when he encounters an old classmate
...February 6th, 2023
A wealthy art dealer discovers that his grandfather purchased art confiscated from Jewish families before and after World War II, and meets an elderly woman who was affected by the grandfather’s actions.
...January 24th, 2023
Picasso paints a portrait based on what he sees in his model’s soul, much to the ego-centric subject’s chagrin
...January 18th, 2023
A bluesman finds that his girlfriend is making him too happy. So he fobs her off on a no-talent rival, with unpredictable results.
...January 13th, 2023
A young man finds solace in his late fathers’ guitar and finds a new way to live through the blues and a life on the road.
...January 3rd, 2023
“Footsteps of Spring” was a short-listed entry in the 61st Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
...December 20th, 2022
Mr. Robbins’ story was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 61st Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
...December 7th, 2022
Salsa musicians Tony Martinez and Sal Rodriguez are determined to get paid by Billy Barata, their notoriously dishonest bandleader.
...November 21st, 2022
The winner of the the 61st edition of the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest is a story of reflection on a coming-of-age mentorship, gone awry.
...November 7th, 2022
A former contemporary dancer struggles to find her place in both the world and her own body after leaving her discipline behind for a career in software development.
...August 29th, 2022
A woman stands up for her ex-boyfriend when her new lover disparages music by Art Tatum, a favorite artist of his.
...August 16th, 2022
My mother used to take me here. It’s different in the dark; the metal frames lurk like gallows and the railings remind me of prison bars. I don’t remember her pushing me in the bucket seat, but I believe she did. I do remember the big girls’ swing: hours and hours we spent. She took the seat beside me; we leant and pulled together, stretched pointed toes, forwards and backwards, rising and falling, higher and higher, hands gripped on chains and our bottoms lifting as we peaked. I pick at the paint on a rusted spear and nick my finger. Blood trickles onto my palm. I lick it off and the taste is metallic, as if my flesh is made from city. Perhaps the city took over, where my mother left off.
...August 4th, 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
The wind sandpapered John’s cheeks the instant he opened the swing door. By the time he’d stepped down from Bill’s Billiards into the street he was shivering.
He hadn’t been good on stage: every second tune had reminded him of Riley, the turd.
There was no traffic and even the pizza place had closed, and he missed its earlier smells of warm mozzarella and meat. The chill air did, however, carry the hint of something, a snatch of melody from a passing car or a distant open window, and he listened, seeking its source.
...May 19th, 2022
A story of a young man working in a music store who is asked to record the ramblings of a deranged customer. He agrees, but comes to regret his decision.
...May 2nd, 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
A story about two American musicians in Paris for the summer–both of whom are on the brink of a breakdown.
...April 4th, 2022
. . “Opus One,” a story by Amadea Tanner, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 59th Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author . . ___ . . photo by Gordon Parks/Library of Congress . Opus One By Amadea Tanner . …..The Dempsey Quintet pulsed eight to … Continue reading ““Opus One” — a short story by Amadea Tanner”
...March 22nd, 2022
Gail’s days on the bandstand are behind her now, London nights swapped for the life of a farmer’s wife back in Devon. But if an intriguing young man with a love of Billy Strayhorn wants sax lessons, who is she to deny him the chance to experience what she has given up?
...March 7th, 2022
Now when I start telling you about John Jones Sr., I don’t want you to go and get the wrong idea on me. And I don’t want anyone else to hear about it because I’ll deny it sure as I blow hella on this old harp. There are things that he knows about me that only your Pop can know. For that I got to love him. Even though times are when he gives it to me good.
...February 22nd, 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
Dressed in a tight-fitting black suit, Rosario Cino, flanked by his son Mario and his nephew Charlie, also in black suits, exited the cool of All Souls Church and stepped into a rank wall of unseasonably warm and humid air. They and a handful of friends and relatives had just sat through the funeral of Guido Tutolo, a former bookie, loan shark, and paisan—and last of the old gang, as Rosario had said repeatedly to his son and nephew, neither of whom seemed torn up about the death, their connection to Guido limited, their youthfulness of course looking forward.
...January 18th, 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
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
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
“What I have to say now stays between us.”
The Chairman’s face flushed a little. I sensed one of his rants was coming, and I was not disappointed:
“In my opinion, Jakub Hoch is a pseudo-liberal loudmouth of minimal talent who has no place as Musical Director of this orchestra.”
...November 23rd, 2021
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work. Emily Jon Tobias of Dana Point, California is the winner of the 58th Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award. In “Mouth Organ,” Monk is a young musician who comes of age within his family domain, first by falling in love with girlfriend Gloria, and then having to face an unreconciled past with his mother, Bunny.
...November 8th, 2021
Maebelle had been surprised when, in 1934, a scout for the American Record Corporation invited her to come and sing at the General Store, “for our field recordings.”
“Field recordings?” she’d joked. “They wanna hear the Boll Weevil, close up?” She was recalling the Charley Patton song.
...September 29th, 2021
It’s never easy to say goodbye, especially when you didn’t get there in time. Dad was hours away from me and I didn’t have a car and it was the middle of the night when I got word. Words. Sung off-key.
...September 18th, 2021
. . “Catbelly Heat On My Knees,” a story by Ewing Eugene Baldwin, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 57th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author. . . photo via hippopx/CC0 1.0 Universal . Catbelly Heat on My Knees by Ewing Eugene Baldwin . ___ . … Continue reading ““Catbelly Heat on My Knees” — a story by Ewing Eugene Baldwin”
...September 3rd, 2021
One of the best things about my life is that in the course of it I had the chance to see the great Blind Lemon Jefferson on eleven different occasions. This was especially gratifying because for me he was the finest blues singer who ever lived, even better than Robert Johnson or Charlie Patton or Bessie Smith.
...August 21st, 2021
“Eerie Moan” is a flash improv off the haunting 1933 Duke Ellington track…
...July 26th, 2021
“Space for Nothing” a story by Pamela Nocerino, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 57th Short Fiction Contest.
...July 21st, 2021
In the closing weeks of 1949, the consensus of New York’s cognoscenti was unanimous: the American debut of London’s Sadler’s Wells Ballet was the triumph of the post-war era. The praise and attention lavished upon the visiting artists was unrelenting; the Yanks’ sudden passion for tutus, Tchaikovsky, and entrechat quatres bordered on obsession. And yet, three weeks into their engagement, with four performances at The Met remaining, their company’s esteemed music director and conductor Constant Lambert was bored to tears.
...July 6th, 2021
Prague, Christmas Eve, 1994. Midwinter. Snow. Anna and I have a room in the Grand Hotel Europa, which is not grand in the least but run-down and cramped, still bearing the stamp of its Warsaw Pact years. The floral wallpaper is worn and the carpet threadbare; the room is mostly taken up with the big double bed.
...June 22nd, 2021
Brent didn’t really go to Japan as a tourist. He went to Japan as a record hunter. The “Land of the Rising Sun” was known to house some of the best record stores for free jazz and that, my friends, was more important than any shrine, temple or giant Buddha statue.
...June 8th, 2021
A young man was walking up one of the roads that climbed out of the town, into the hills. He was tall, probably in his late teens, appeared fit and strong – looked like he’d pass a physical. Dark curly hair which was too long, but that could be easily taken care of, of course – give him a haircut, swap the t-shirt and shorts for an olive green uniform, the glasses for a pair of regulation army specs, and he’d look the part.
...May 25th, 2021
The first time I tried to convince Veronica that we’ve met before, it was a dark summer night, honeyed and sulky, and beneath my feet, the earth was still swollen with rain. Under my right arm, I carried one of her paintings in a wooden case, while my left hand held the scrap of paper bearing the Trevisan family home’s address, given to me in a brief yet frantic call from her aunt.
...May 10th, 2021
Mike finished washing his face just as he knew Tomas, his son, would start the journey over to visit him. He wasn’t home yet, that place he called “home.” East to his son’s West.
...April 26th, 2021
In all honesty, my father had been known to tell more than a few tall tales in his time. Yet, whenever I’d try to catch him on one he would pause, nod his head patiently, and then politely remind me there were always two sides to every story.
...April 11th, 2021
Gareth Davey writes a fictional account of the tragic death of the jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan
...April 1st, 2021
He drove uptown on Riverside Drive, the motor noise magnificent. Traffic increased as he approached Harlem. Other drivers jostling to get ahead noticed the car first. A red Ferrari was not subtle in gray Manhattan, and the engine roared money and power and European elegance. Then neighbors would study the man in outsized sunglasses. Some recognized him, smiling or shaking their heads in disbelief. Others looked aggrieved, even outraged that a person like him could be driving a vehicle like that. Ferrari only built three-hundred of their 275 GTB.
...March 12th, 2021
“An Archaeologically Authenticated, Gastro-Musicological Historical Artifact: The Menu For The Jazz Brunch At Jack’s Tea Garden” is excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled “The Hip Man Letters, vol. 2: Dear Morty.”
...January 26th, 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
All of a sudden, I began to experience an unusual perspiration. A perspiration that altered the rhythm of my heartbeat. The more the rhythm was thrown off, the more rapid my heartbeat pounded. I listened with displeasure as my heartbeat produced discordant tunes. The tunes were unpleasant to the ears.
...December 28th, 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
. . “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
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
He still has his father’s old records.
That single cardboard box is all that Ken has left of the man. That and memories. He remembers those swirling blue winter nights: sitting on the living room rug, right between the full-blast radiator and Dad’s battered old armchair, watching the record turn around and around and fill the room with Duke Ellington’s piano. The summer Sundays, where the warm breeze came in through the window, and the cleaning of their apartment turned into a game backed by Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, deep orange-pink like strawberry lemonade.
...November 16th, 2020
Grandma’s mother had gifted her the bracelet on her tenth birthday. It hung upon her forearm every hour of the day, until her wedding. When the vermillion filled the parting in her scalp, she lost the permission to wear it. Her new husband adored the drink, and loathed the ornaments she carried from her mother’s house.
...October 29th, 2020
I methodically walk along. Stepping in tune to the pulsing soundtrack spilling out of the passing nightclub, littering the sidewalk. The electric guitar wailing something menacingly slow and strong. Almost soulful but still all the while punk at its core and insisting itself to be anything but a love song. I wouldn’t be surprised to catch a glimpse of Lux dancing inside as I pass. Lux, used to be Grace, and I almost miss the days when she was.
...October 13th, 2020
. . “Bella by Barlight,” a story by Steve Young, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 54th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author . . photo by-crosspraha- / CC BY-SA . Bella by Barlight by Steve Young . ___ , …..The Pocono Lounge, in the basement … Continue reading ““Bella by Barlight” — a short story by Steve Young”
...September 28th, 2020
“Album Unfinished,” a story by Geoffrey Polk, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 54th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author
...September 16th, 2020
. . “Satin Doll,” a story by Jack Tasker, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 54th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author . . photo Creative Commons CC0 . Satin Doll by Jack Tasker . The Pianist and The Cabbie . …..When the music stops … Continue reading ““Satin Doll” — a short story by Jack Tasker”
...August 26th, 2020
During the blaze at the Radio Flyer factory, Louis Armstrong was responsible for saving the lives of every man, woman and child on the ball bearing line.
...August 10th, 2020
Pedestrians all around me narrow their eyes at the harassing wind and lower their umbrellas to help protect against the assault.
Not me. I lift my chin towards the grey skies and allow the wind to caress my face and to set my scarf dancing around my neck.
...August 4th, 2020
He’s here again, his mossy hair visible at the back of the crowd. I’ve seen him a few times before and it’s always the same: he leans against a pillar, arms crossed, a hungry look in his eyes. There’s a bit of rebel in him. I don’t know if it’s the cigarette or the rimless sunglasses perched on the edge of his nose, but he doesn’t fit in with the polished and the proper.
...July 13th, 2020
A story of coming to terms with old age…
...July 7th, 2020
but tonight they’re here, on a street off seventh avenue, holding a thermos of coffee, following a jazz guitar. The music comes from a doorway beneath a brownstone on the next block.
...June 16th, 2020
“One ticket please,” David said aloud to Gladys.
Studying him with eyes peering over her glasses, the ticket seller, Gladys, squinted with disbelief at the sense of disproportion standing before her; David’s battered face and tortured eyes, so contradictory to his features of lapidary refinement.
...June 12th, 2020
His face gave it away. Standing in front of the painting, his ice-blue eyes like tiny bejewelled pinpricks, mouth gaping and tongue hanging out, he basked in the portrait’s aura like a skinned lizard under a desert sun.
...May 26th, 2020
No one knew why he did it. Why early one August morning, the day after I turned eleven, when stores were just pulling up their metal gates, and delivery trucks were double parked in front of them, when as Mama said the sun was so oppressive you could fry an egg on the sidewalk, Mr. Carmichael left his seventh-floor apartment right above ours in The Bridgeton Apartments…
...May 14th, 2020
. . “Searching Alex,” a story by Robert Knox, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 53rd Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author . . . © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons/Flicker/CC BY-SA 4.0 . . . “Searching Alex” by Robert Knox . …..He remembered a happy … Continue reading ““Searching Alex” — a short story by Robert Knox”
...May 4th, 2020
Deborah lost her wallet. Most of us have at one time or another. It’s one of the awful feelings, TMW you know you don’t know. Or the last time you knew … anything. It swallows you, that feeling. Utter loss. Utter failure. All the work it will take to regain lost ground. All the effort. If.
...April 27th, 2020
The Saturn V mega rocket had a problem with syncopation from the get go. The uber squares shipped in the highest foreheads and keenest flat tops money could buy but the translunar queso bullseye refused to step and fetch it.
...April 14th, 2020
Doesn’t every house have its own unique smell? How is that, when everyone’s mom cooked the same pot roast, used the same cleaning powder? And why is it that you never notice your own house’s smell, but you’ll recognize it. Like a false memory. Deja vu.
...April 13th, 2020
Her granddad shook Bridgett awake. He was sniffling.
“What’s the matter? Are you sick?” She propped herself on her elbows.
“It’s Morrison. Gone.“ He was standing there in a faded tie-dyed shirt, smelling musty. His thinning gray hair, reaching past his waist, had not been tied back, but he was wearing his love beads.
...April 7th, 2020
.I’m in bed, my windows open to the summer breeze, when I hear the guy outside again, singing. The curtains shift, as if with his voice, and glow a little, from the streetlight nearby. I’m thinking about the Apollo nose cone bobbing in the waves, about catching a tennis ball thrown high over the road. My dog’s on the floor, wedged between my bed and the dresser. He’s a Dalmatian, a big one. He got mean for a while—for weeks he’d try to bite whoever came near us.
...March 30th, 2020
You walk on the rose-colored strip of concrete that starts on the sidewalk, goes under the big black awning with the street light shining on it, and stops at the two heavy wood doors inviting in all of Central Ave. You pause long enough for Walt, the bouncer you should never irritate to the degree of getting his exclusive attention, to nod you inside even though he knows you.
...March 15th, 2020
Rain sang off the roof for hours. The ancient on the porch rocked, strummed his guitar, whispered, “Make Me a Pallet on the Floor,” one minute sounding like Sam Chatmon, the next his licks would have made Mance Lipscomb proud.
...March 2nd, 2020
It’s a shame that, in the 21st century, there are still men of my age who do not know who fathered them.
...February 23rd, 2020
Don’t be surprised when kindred spirits meet each other at the right place at just the right time. People need people, even if they try to deny it. How many times do you see two people together and wonder, ‘Why do they get along so well?’ You see these people and they don’t look good or don’t seem to fit together; it baffles what should just be familiar.
...January 16th, 2020
Arlena Sawyer’s mother had spent all seventeen years of her life warning her against what seemed like every last thing under God’s creation. With her thin, trilling voice she had done her best to hammer fear and caution into her only daughter’s head like the beak of a woodpecker into a tree.
...December 17th, 2019
The stars would burn out before the Constellation Club would fall silent.
No matter the hour, no matter the day, a constant hum of life echoed through the walls.
...December 2nd, 2019
Few people knew that the great jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong was also an accomplished ballet dancer. It was said that his Arabesque variations were breathtaking.
...November 24th, 2019
I’ve been bitter a long time. It’s like sucking a wedge of lemon on and on and on, pulp disintegrating, everything dissolving until the flavor turns mellow and mild, almost sweet. I’ve been bitter so long it’s hard to know anymore how anything should feel, or which part of me navigating the world each day is tainted with bitterness and which part is how I always was, even before Ty Greggor smashed through my life.
...November 13th, 2019
. . Boston-based writer Con Chapman is the author of two novels, over thirty stage plays, and fifty books of humor. Most recently, he is the author of Rabbit’s Blues, The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges. I had the good fortune of interviewing Mr. Chapman recently about Hodges. That discussion will be published in … Continue reading ““Father Kniest, Jazz Priest”…a short story by Con Chapman”
...November 7th, 2019
Jonathan was only eight years old the first time he fell. It was the first winter in the new house, and he wasn’t used to the biting cold yet. It was a large, Gothic structure that scared him at first, but he had grown accustomed to the imposing house on the hill.
...October 14th, 2019
The girl lived on the outskirts of town. It was mainly deserted, save for a few wild beasts that roamed the lands. But she lived with the wolves, and couldn`t breathe without feeling their fur across her lips and teeth. She asked them: what would you do if I left? And the wolves shook their grey eyes and stared at her until she cried.
...September 30th, 2019
There’s a new song going around, with a maddening refrain as catchy as that flu plotting its course around the world, killing venerable ancients and babies newly out of the womb. You hear it everywhere and, no matter how much you hate it, you’ll find it bursting out of your head.
...September 15th, 2019
Robert Shines lifted his sweat stained fedora just enough to wipe his brow. Stuffing his handkerchief back into his breast pocket he repositioned his hat at a slight angle, rakish style, just enough for a breeze to cool his skin, should one happen by. As luck would have it the Mississippi air was stagnant and sticky this August evening.
...September 3rd, 2019
Being slight of build and juvenile looking was a mixed blessing for Alicia. On the one hand, people tended to be cloyingly condescending towards her – as if she were nine years old instead of seventeen.
...August 20th, 2019
. . “Oswald,” a story by Rolli, was a finalist in our recently concluded 51st Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author. . . . Photo by. Jolanda van der Meer .on. Unsplash . Oswald by Rolli . _____ . …..Mom was talking to the guy behind the … Continue reading ““Oswald” — a short story by Rolli”
...August 5th, 2019
Do you ever have a time in your life when you feel like you’re about to step off a cliff?
I don’t normally have those moments. If I could organize my entire life playing by the rules, I think I could mosey along and get through living just fine. I am the student my teachers wish me to be. I am the daughter my parents desire. I am the perfect best friend to the girls in my class. According to choirmaster, I am one of the best sopranos in the church choir.
...July 9th, 2019
Harry Delaney is a night janitor, and he is teaching himself to fly. As he works his mop up and down the dim corridors of Waterville Public High School, he can feel what it would be like, floating, say, four feet above the floor, moving easily through the air, though not fast.
...June 15th, 2019
We had many excellent entrants in our recently concluded 50th Short Fiction Contest. In addition to publishing the winning story on March 11, with the consent of the authors, we have published several of the short-listed stories…
...May 12th, 2019
Stelle eyed herself in the bathroom mirror, nodded firmly at her reflection, and tore her wig off.
Her new shingle cut was so sharp it could have sliced through paper like scissors, and it gleamed the same glossy hue as ink. She smoothed the pads of her thumbs against her head to straighten the curls that had bloomed beneath the wig, and examined herself with satisfaction.
May 9th, 2019
On my second date with Samantha, I told her, “We shouldn’t fall for each other.”
...May 6th, 2019
“The Cardinal Club” a story by Carole Ackelson, was a finalist in our recently concluded 50th Short Fiction Contest.
...April 30th, 2019
She aimed her horn at my left ear and blasted it for 16 seconds that lasted the rest of my life. Even though the trumpet was pressed to her lips, I could see the smirk her mouthpiece couldn’t quite hide.
...April 23rd, 2019
Galinsky was killing my buzz. I could not see his face behind a fuming joint, clenched between his tarry teeth, but I could see his hands—one holding a deck of playing cards, one opened gesturally. They wove with the languid rhythm of a Greek rhetorician as Galinsky droned on about the pratfalls of legalized cannabis: how the government had screwed up a good thing, how the government was greedy, how the government had put the kibosh on a thriving subculture—a tribe to which we after all, at this game, belonged. The black market had provided a beautiful service, in his words, without all the red tape and
...April 13th, 2019
“Strings of Solace” was a finalist in our recently concluded 50th Short Fiction Contest.
...March 31st, 2019
It is tempting to say that this story took place a long time ago, but that would not be accurate. The place where this story unfolds did not suffer Time as we know it—the linear time of beginnings and endings, of what once was, of what might never be.
...March 20th, 2019
And so we left for Paris, you in the green jacket I’d made you with the picture collar and turned back cuffs, and I in my blue pinstripe, which made me look like a handsome young man.
“You look like a boy,” you said, laughing as we stumbled to our carriage on the train.
“I suppose it would be easier if I were.”
“Not at all, darling,” you said, and pulled the window shade down so you could kiss me. “Anyway, who wants it to be easy?”
March 11th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 45 – 49
...March 4th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 39 – 44
...February 25th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 35 – 38
...February 18th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 29 – 34
...February 11th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 24 – 28
...February 4th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 17- 23
...January 28th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 12 – 16
...January 21st, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 7 – 11
...January 14th, 2019
. . “The Wailing Wall” by Justin Short was the winner of the 48th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest. It was originally published in July, 2018, and is one of six pieces published on. Jerry Jazz Musician. in 2018 nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize . . __________ . . . … Continue reading ““The Wailing Wall” — a short story by Justin Short”
...January 11th, 2019
On March 11, 2019, .Jerry Jazz Musician.will publish the 50th.winning story in our thrice-yearly Short Fiction Contest. To celebrate this landmark event, we have asked all the previous winners (dating to 2002) to reflect on their own winning story, and how their lives have since unfolded.
This week’s edition covers authors of winning stories #’s 1 – 6
...January 7th, 2019
. . “Arabesque,” a story by Anisha Johnson, was a finalist in our recently concluded 49th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author. . . . Arabesque by Anisha Johnson . ___ . …..The first notes of Debussy’s First Arabesque soared through the air, each note so light … Continue reading ““Arabesque” — a short story by Anisha Johnson”
...December 27th, 2018
“The Man Who Lives in My Head,” a story by Luke Bergvist, was a finalist in our recently concluded 49th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author. The Man Who Lives in My Head by Luke Bergvist ___ {A handwritten manuscript, fished from the … Continue reading ““The Man Who Lives in My Head” — a short story by Luke Bergvist”
...December 13th, 2018
Uncle Joey Blows Trombone at Le Jazz Hot by Lawrence J. Klumas _____ You would think that for such a momentous occasion my memory would be crystal clear. This is not so. I have no personal memory of hearing my Uncle Joey at Le Jazz Hot, that Friday night on … Continue reading ““Uncle Joey Blows Trombone at Le Jazz Hot” – a short story by Lawrence J. Klumas”
...December 4th, 2018
I drifted off into the best sleep I’ve had in weeks. In months even. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get into Fat Daddy’s as a regular. It’s the hottest – no, it’s the coolest jazz club there is. On any given night you’d find the club cradled with sweet melodies and rocked by spoken word poetry. And on Friday nights, you used to be able to catch us…
Thing is, my band and I got banned last year. But before then, we had lines out the door with folks wanting to hear us play. The whites, the blacks, the browns and those that fell in between because their parents had jungle fever. The attention can become quite addicting. There wasn’t any fortune though, it’s a small town.
Fast forward to now – a year later. I managed to befriend
...November 26th, 2018
The first time I saw her, she was puffing softly on a cigarette in the girls’ bathroom. She looked all too much the devil incarnate, with tattered jeans and a band shirt that left no doubt at all that their songs would consist of guitar smashing and angsty screaming. She had dyed her hair this brilliant shade of blue that was almost black it was so dark. Upon her exhale, a long strand of smoke twirled from her ruby stained lips and curled around a nose ring that
...November 7th, 2018
Nothing can spoil today, not even our Sue. It’s the third Saturday in September, 1978. I’m 11 years old and like every other girl in our street, (and some of the boys), I’ve waited months for this. I know all the singles off by heart, I’ve watched the videos on Top of the Pops, posters of John Travolta have replaced Starsky and Hutch on my bedroom wall, and finally, FINALLY, after hearing the songs all Summer, the people of England can go to the cinema and watch Grease.
All the Brook Street lot are going; kids from six different families with four of their mums; The Thompsons, the Maguires, the Connollys, the Yips, the Browns and us. I’m as excited as the rest of them, but the difference is, I can’t tell anyone who the flutters in my stomach are for.
We all get the bus together. It’s packed and we have to stand in the aisle, fingers slippery on the
...September 18th, 2018
Baltimore, Maryland. 1960. DAVID, a white boy in his late teens, is standing in the rain under an umbrella, waiting for the morning school bus. There is a bench behind him. Enter CLARE, a black girl his age.
CLARE
It’s so cold.
Long pause. DAVID is uncomfortable.
CLARE
Would you mind sharing your umbrella?
...September 11th, 2018
You’ve played this gig at the Tennyson Lodge at least a hundred times by now you figure—three years times twice a week, Wednesdays and Thursdays. You just took a solo and now The Kid is thumping on his oversized instrument, oversized by comparison to his body. He’s a five-foot-nothing of a chubby student bassist having joined the quartet two weeks prior. His dark, stylishly teased hair is stuck in place by product, his eyes just barely open and he rocks left to right in a manner offensive to you for some reason.
You don’t need a reason. You’ve been doing this long enough to call it like you see it and The Kid is nothing more than a vaguely promising hack. You might want to talk to him on break, get a better idea where his head is at, but meanwhile he’s wiggling around and you kind of hope he gets caught under a
...August 28th, 2018
Gas lamps lined the street lifting their warmth out into the world to stave off the night. Their flickering orange reflected in the puddles along the curb and the cobble still shiny with rain long gone. A storm had passed. Leaves now settled in clumps along the gutters and at the feet of a slumped musician folded forward on a stoop. The curve of his instrument’s dark case towered above him, concealing an elegant bass within.
Brownstones framed the scene extending stoops from hidden entryways. A newspaper fat with rain hung over a wrought-iron rail, the upside-down words “Congress Overrides Veto of Taft-Hartley” visible even in the obscurity of predawn. A five-and-dime, closed for business until morning, hosted a shadowy window display advertising dry shampoo and
...August 6th, 2018
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
...July 25th, 2018
When they came to build the wall, I played Mingus.
I stood in the blistering sun, watched them arrive, and did my best to blow my lungs clean out. They climbed down from hissing dew-sprinkled trucks, adjusted their hard hats, and went to work setting up the barricades. They ignored me completely.
They didn’t ignore me long. I was off-key, and I was loud. Ain’t always about hitting all the right notes, man. A clarinet’s gotta be raw. Real. None of that philharmonic fast food commercial stuff.
I could almost hear Tony taking the high notes right beside me. He would have, too. He always loved a good
...July 13th, 2018
Camp looked through glass doors and across the shoulderless highway. A patch of grass across the road was covered with white trailers washed clean by the rain. He stared out a side window at the brown back of a gas station. A red and yellow sign, mounted so high he had to twist his neck to see it, seemed like it should have been turning but sat still against a gray sky.
What do you find in a bus station? Long waits under dirty fluorescents, grimy floor and seats, gloom on scattered faces. Soup, coffee and candy vending machines. If someone could gather it up, all the pieces a bus station’s handed down through the years, you could start a museum. You could cover the walls with black and white photos, pictures of a million people. Pick out any one person, nobody special, just someone with some
...June 27th, 2018
Seen from above, the motion probably exhibited some coherence. Like how the particles on the surface of a liquid jiggled around each other. What did they call it? Brownian motion. Seen from a distance, the mass of people no doubt also swirled in patterns that had a great deal of regularity. Was there perhaps even a meaning in the group activity, a secret swaying cadence that couldn’t be discerned just from watching the constituent parts?
Carl found how he engaged in metaphysical speculations when in these situations distressing.
But God, you had to do something.
Or else this dance club, The Edge of The World, the apotheosis of all that he had come to hate during this year and a half spent in
...June 18th, 2018
“How dare you play it like that!”
I look up from my sight-reading piece, certain I had correctly executed all of the rhythms and notes, all of the articulations and embellishments. My questioning eyes found a passionate face, lined with wrinkles that were now quivering in angst.
“I don’t care if you play a couple wrong notes here and there, but to play it so flat like that… so dull… that is inexcusable.”
“Play it again.”
I started again, trying to sense the life behind the ink, and I felt like the blind fool who
...June 8th, 2018
He had beautiful hands — hands with long, slender fingers meant to caress ivory piano keys. Knuckles, she knew, were never the most flattering part of anyone’s body — gnarled and raisin-like skin stretched over delicate bones. And yet, there was a certain beauty in the way his knuckles bent and flexed over the piano, so she protested bitterly when he became a mechanic to make ends meet.
“We’ve got bills to pay,” he said with a matter-of-fact shrug, “And I can always
...April 28th, 2018
This is one of those parties I’ve heard about, thrown by people with new money in a house they don’t own; like Hipster Gatsby. This is not to disparage our host: he is a sincere human. When one finds one’s self in a cliché, the moment should be chronicled. I’m sitting on a mausoleum chair in the foyer of an upscale Seattle home with my glass of vodka perched on a music stand, chronicling.
The jazz musicians in the living room are playing “Some Day My Prince Will Come.”
“Oh, good, it’s the Disney segment,” I say to nobody in particular. The drunk woman who earlier complimented my
...April 10th, 2018
Tansy steps up to the microphone, and the world shifts into slow motion. Behind her, the band pulsates, big brass, booming beat, and howling saxophones like foreplay. Before her, the shadowy movement of caliginous figures, backlit to opacity, a murky mob breathing as though one, daring her to entertain with the melodies stored in her throat and heart, perversely seeking the pleasure to be derived from her anticipated failure to enthrall.
The mike’s silver orb becomes her focus, its aura a tight dome that pulls at her breath, sucking the notes from her depths, the rushing air inverting her
...April 3rd, 2018
I was recently at a speakeasy in Tbilisi, drinking wine and tapping my foot in time with a jazz quartet, when I noticed a dishevelled French magician approach the mysterious black-haired girl I’d had my eye on for the past ten minutes. This irked me less than it might have, because the Frenchman was clearly a drunkard of dubious repute, and the girl was plainly uninterested in him, not deigning to respond to his advances with so much as a word. He performed endless coin tricks and card tricks for her, and loudly complimented her exotic
...March 26th, 2018
“Repeat after me: I will not hunt alligators while Désirée runs deliveries.”
Léon blinks at me, rich hickory eyes peering up from a face darker than any glancing touch of the sun could produce. He wriggles in a barely-perceptible fashion, bare heels grinding ringlets into the muddy deck, a creature of obstinacy and faux innocence whose smile mystically exiles all suspicion from my mind.
“’course, Dezzy,” he says. “There aren’t any alligators around right now, you know—they ain’t come out ‘til nighttime.”
“They don’t come out ‘til nighttime,” I correct him, swiping a hand over the top of his
...March 15th, 2018
I like the jazz because it plays in different colors: deep green and blue, translucent purple, ivory black; city storefronts, magenta sunsets; watercolor splashes here and there like a yellow crocus on snow or an orange goldfish tail — sudden, surprising, but always carefully placed.
Like the way people come in different colors — they just don’t know it. People walk along in darkness daily, ignorant of the color that’s surrounding them or the beat their music plays. That’s what I’m lying here thinking about, in my dark bedroom between the folds of cotton sheets. Africans, Asians, Seminoles they all come in different colors — not their skins, but their insides. Each person glows from deep within, from a well that springs out of
...February 2nd, 2018
Near the end of high school I thought myself sophisticated, a fan of Pink Floyd and King Crimson and Kevin Ayers, but at a Weather Report Concert in 1972 I had a nearly religious conversion. It was as though a stranger had run up to me and said, “hold this for minute” and ran off. Then the music exploded. I had never heard anything like this. Everything changed.
It was as though I grew hair in secret places and a new appendage. I became a different creature. After that night few of my suburban DC white friends’ guitar and lyrics-oriented ears could hear what mine could; the joy and heartbreak in this unfamiliar and ebonic timbre, this canvas painted in horn, acoustic bass, and polyrhythm; this blues, this brokenness, this homesickness.
There it was, though, for anyone who had ears for it—there, in the absence of verse, in the uncertainty and unpredictability of lengthy solos, in the timelessness of power beyond the moment from which
...December 1st, 2017
This was all her fault, Sarah thought, as she watched the Victory Lounge clear out. She should have known Branchville wasn’t ready for improv jazz. But the bass player, Tommy Williams, had been so supportive after the workshop with the graduate wind students. Sarah had gotten so interested in the group’s ideas about jazz and improvising that she had gone straight to the practice room after the workshop and found their website. Earbuds in both ears, she was improvising to one of the rhythmic bass tracks there when she happened to raise the bell of her clarinet on a long high note the way she’d seen the quartet’s wind players do, and there was Tommy knocking on the door.
He had been so just what a jazz bass player from Chicago should be, Sarah thought, with his dusky skin and his smoky voice, and his rakish fedora tipped over one eye. And at the same time he had been so genuinely
...November 18th, 2017
Henry Bell wished the actress on the TV interview show wouldn’t smile so much. Most show folk, he thought, were not memorable. They were things, as he had written in one of his songs, made on the cheap from neon and crepe. Sometimes he believed it too. Then he’d remind himself that human beings wrote all kinds of wonderful tunes, like “The Wind” — the number that had made his mind reel when he was very young and made him think he could write songs.
“The Wind” was eight, maybe nine, minutes of continuous jamming colored in with jazzy chords, an understated vocal and poetry. As a kid, listening to Dick Summer’s Subway show late at night on his transistor radio, stuck under the pillow to muzzle its volume, he thought he could trek into “The Wind” and the journey through its changes would be endless.
Now, nearly forty, he wasn’t a kid anymore, and jazz-inflected rock music wasn’t his thing. At some point too, he’d decided that Circus Maximus was a pretty dumb name for a
...November 11th, 2017
At first, I simply sit on the front steps of my building, letting the summer sun bake my knees while I’m planning my getaway, trying to decide which subway to take to get to Caroline’s place faster. I know nobody will miss me. Nobody will even notice. Not like the first time I ran away.
The first time I ran away – OK, maybe I didn’t exactly run away, as the only thing I did was leave my house in the morning to go down to New Utrecht Avenue to sit in a subway station. But I didn’t come back. I wasn’t going to. I sat there all day, until it got late and dark, and eventually even darker and so late that it was time for my mom to come home. And when she did and saw that I’m gone, she called the cops and they found me instantly. Picture a pink haired girl sitting on a bench in an all Hasidic neighborhood. Not a rocket science to spot my cotton candy stack of hair even in the middle of a dark subway station. So I was brought home that same night, safe and sound, and feeling like an
...November 5th, 2017
Wade missed the sweat. The sticky air that hugged you like a fat friend. The languid, dirty stench of swampy gutters. Of Bourbon street piss and puke. Of Dat Dogs at three in the morning, and the street mutts that cawed at the Mississippi. The rats and cockroaches scuttling around your shoes. The humidity. The heat.
He missed all of it.
New York was cold. Not just the weather, but the people, too. Hardened pedestrians crushed the MTA platforms like stone statues, eyes glazed onto their phones or the wall or the floor. No smiles. No inward space given away to strangers. They hugged into their
...July 18th, 2017
Swoosh! Shhh. Shhhhh! I hear the ear numbing screech and the train finally stops moving. Nine seconds and the loud beep will announce the door opening. Heels clack against the icy early morning pavement. The mass of cigarette smoke hazes my sense of direction until we finally reach the end of the Binario 12 and my ears welcome the familiar sound of strings.
It’s distant and quite mellow but I can still make out the song. It’s a new one. He’s only played it a few times. I know it. Everyone loves it because it’s from that movie. The one with
...June 15th, 2017
Michael continued down the darkening street. A gust of wind blew off the Lake. His eyes watered. He turned his back to the wind, and the wind blew hard, unfurling his coat and his pant legs. He bent into it to soften its assault, but he soon turned his back to protect his face against the onslaught. A man and a woman hurried across the street, almost bumping into him, holding hands as if one would fly away. The lid blew off of a trashcan and crashed wildly into the street; a car rattled by up ahead at the intersection. When at last the street was empty with no more cars and no more men or women about, Michael found himself alone but for a few
...May 24th, 2017
The dank and chilly hall echoed with a Marksmen rehearsal taking place. Lea and her spanking-new group rehearsed their music on a stage bordered by tables holding overturned chairs. And as David sat unnoticed in the dark hall, Lea’s caramel voice melted to run down the walls, and warm the empty pockets in his heart.
*Daydreams, I’ve got daydreams galore.
Cigarette ashes, there they go on the floor.”
Scooting around, he wrestled with the chair’s wooden slats and wobbly legs versus his long limbs.
And while Lea was singing the third stanza, *”Let them laugh, let them frown … “ David was plotting his exit from the trailer. He was so engrossed with his plans that he didn’t notice the
...April 5th, 2017
Years later he became a professor, a scholar—wrote a well-received book on epistemology. But back then he was just a guy in love.
They’d taken a cheap room in Venice for the summer, a run-down place a couple of blocks from Dockweiler Beach. You could always smell the sea, its powerful mix of salt freshness and rot. He’d never lived with a woman before; she’d had other boyfriends. She was from back-county San Diego, told him she’d come to L.A. looking for a real life. He’d just graduated from
...March 11th, 2017
I wake up when the door opens. Instant-awake, alert. I’m staring at the ceiling, at the ornate medallion in its center. Late-night city glow from the windows casts awkward shadows on the plaster. The light clicks on, and I hear a gasp. I feel a sympathetic shot of adrenaline hit my chest. I look toward the door, and there’s a woman there, a stranger. A beauty, too, dressed in a black pants-suit, purse slung over a shoulder, the jacket cut and fitted to her slim waist matador-style. Beneath the jacket, she’s wearing a white blouse with an enormous collar that flares out over her shoulders and breast, like gull wings. Her hair is loose, brown, shoulder-length, streaked with bits of blonde, her face around her dark eyes a mix of fear and puzzlement.
“Who are you?” she says, her hand still on the light switch. “What are you doing here?” Her voice quivers.
I look around. The ceiling looks like my
...March 4th, 2017
Jeffrey’s fingers hovered inches above the ivory. His heart pounded. The oak bench creaked as he leaned forward, only the toes of his scuffed leather shoes making contact with the floor. The hand-written notes on the page in front of him bounced up and down with every panting breath. He recognized most of the squiggles and lines cascading up and down the staff, but he couldn’t read a single word that surrounded them. Ms. Joetta’s voice echoed in his head, reverberated out of the hole in his threadbare fedora. Play, son. The first chance you get, and don’t look back. He could feel lightning in his fingers, almost driving him past the fear deep in his
...January 28th, 2017
In the back of a closet, on top of a shelf, under two empty shoeboxes, and behind a small, carry-on bag lurked a humped, black, plastic case. Years of knocking about in the backs of vans and offstage in smoky clubs had etched lines into its surface. Every song had scuffed another memory: Dewey Redman’s “Imagination” or Clifford Brown’s “Night in Tunisia”. An accidental kick from a ska fan had left a dent even after the shell had popped back into place. For twenty years, it had remained closed, a relic of temptation, while inside a saxophone slumbered, waiting for its silent call to beckon again. It was patient. It had time.
Nathan Gold heard the call. It was a Saturday morning in mid-spring as he returned from racing his mountain bike along the Long Beach boardwalk. Pumping the pedals, he glided up the
...November 1st, 2016
There had to be hundreds of people standing in the rain, waiting to get into Misty’s Supper Club on Lenox Avenue for my brother Ishmael’s memorial. I swallowed the lump of grief in the back of my throat and surveyed the crowd, fans and protégé’s of his music, as varied as a pot of jambalaya.
Some people recognized me from seeing
...September 20th, 2016
I watch my hand remove the phone from the wall above the couch’s arm and there is a sweat in my ear as I hear a distant Miles Davis. I am called by the distorted voice of Miles Davis rasping my name.
John, he says, are you busy?
I let my eyes blur into my mother’s sofa, melting a monotonous no out of my mouth toward the receiver. I feel the room sloshing peacefully in waves around me and the buzzing of my lips from my mouthpiece and reed. My saxophone sits strewn across the floor along with my
...September 3rd, 2016
“I don’t know…I still don’t see it.” I grumble to myself, sloping my head down in a perfectly coordinated position with the rest of my body. Slope. Coordinated. It all just makes me think of math. Math. “That’s it,” I tell myself silently, still looking around the empty halls, though no one is there. I sigh. I suppose it may not really be a fact, but everyone knows that statistically minded people, like me, see numbers. But people like her – well, I guess they see what I’m looking at. “No,” I run a hand through my gelled hair. She would see it all differently. What did she say again? I check my phone and then casually hold up what she said it would look like to the picture. “A black parked car with white windows near the dock in a blazing sunlight overlooking the ocean.” I focus on the
...August 13th, 2016
The faraway trumpet’s trill drifted into the home we shared. The tune stirred the heavy air. It should have been spring weather, but a heatwave had taken over our parish. It made the air heavy and made us languid during the days.
Mama hummed along with the hand-me-down song while she worked, stirring the wash or cooking supper or mixing herbs. Her mama taught her to hear it, same as she taught me. It was as constant as the wind.
Mama’s gray strands peeked from beneath a dark blue kerchief, the majority braided then twirled in an age-thinned bun. She didn’t know how old she was. Best she could figure, she was
...August 1st, 2016
I was playing my weekly gig at Café Reinhardt when Bella, one of the waitresses, whispered in my ear, “They want you out back.”
She had disturbed me from a zone. I had been through all of my arrangements and was improving on the chords to “Minor Swing.”
“They?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. Straight to the point, no small talk, Bella was my kind of gal. In the second it took to place my guitar on my guitar stand a million thoughts circled around in my mind. Did Chad, the drummer, want to borrow money again? Had the musician’s union caught on to the fact I wasn’t paying my dues? Another one of the agent Jimmy’s scams? Groupies? Oh yeah, jazz musicians haven’t had groupies under the age of forty-five since the 1940s.
I stood up, and as Bella was strolling to a table near the front door, she said, “Take your guitar.”
Ah, nothing complicated just someone wanting to test out my chops before a gig. People can be peculiar when it comes to inviting musicians into their home. They want to meet you, form a relationship, and get the feel for
...July 20th, 2016
It was a persistent and gentle nudge—always was. He knew who was prodding him and what she would say without turning, so he continued to run his fingers up and down the keys—there was a major seventh followed by a fifth interval; repeat several times, arpeggiate, transpose—
“Sir? I’m sorry sir—”
The nudging again. He spoke as if distracted—which he was: “Yes?”
“Some of the people are trying to work,” she said.
“Have them come and talk to me,” he replied, and continued to play.
The barista was put-off for a moment, but she jostled him again. “If you could just play a little quieter—”
The words were like daggers. They weren’t new, they weren’t original, and they brought hate like bile to his mind and body; coursing in and throughout him like a thousand
...July 9th, 2016
Some lives turn out healthy and long, some more fulfilled than long. Bro was sick and much older. He passed away last spring, so his voice sounds both new and familiar to me, as it whispers,
“Go to my place and visit my old room.”
“Why?”
“I’ll let you know.”
An ascending airliner outside wakes me up, and I realize I was dreaming. I’m still yawning as I look up a weekend bus, but the online timetable shows more blanks than connections.
It’s dry September weather, so I grab my key to his door, fill up my water bottle, and make this a bike trip in heat haze instead, like the
...April 6th, 2016
The port of Casablanca was crammed with Vichy officers, soldiers, cops, thieves and criminals. Each night I slept behind sand dunes, and each morning, washed in the freezing sea and shook myself dry in the winter wind. My shirt and trousers were stiff with salt and stuck to my chest, arms and legs. I figured it would be easy to steal a sweater or coat, grab it off a café chair while its owner ate and drank. But each time I stuck my head inside a restaurant and started weaving between tables, the owner threatened to call the cops.
No cops, no officers, no father whipping me, never again. I’d lie low, steal what I needed, and owe no one a damned thing.
Ten days after I arrived in Casablanca, a shipload of
...March 2nd, 2016
Camp looked through glass doors and across the shoulderless highway. A patch of grass across the road was covered with white trailers washed clean by the rain. He stared out a side window at the brown back of a gas station. A red and yellow sign, mounted so high he had to twist his neck to see it, seemed like it should have been turning but sat still against a gray sky.
What do you find in a bus station? Long waits under dirty fluorescents, grimy floor and seats, gloom on scattered faces. Soup, coffee and candy vending machines. If someone could gather it up, all the pieces a bus station’s handed down through the years, you could start a museum. You could cover the walls with
...November 16th, 2015
Slow slow slooooooooooooooow; the river was practically dry, a river in name only, a few puddles on the mudflats where standing water reflected the cottony clouds that moved perpetually east, dropping nothing anymore but empty promises. Unsettling in the most literal sense. Many people sold their houses or just abandoned them, heading north, and those who stayed finally got serious about
...August 22nd, 2015
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work.
John Hyde Barnard of Los Angeles, California is the winner of the 39th Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first time on July 3, 2015.
*
“The Lot”
by John Hyde Barnard
He brought the cigarette up to his lips. As he took a hit the orange
glow briefly lit his face and faded back into shadow as he slowly exhaled
a cloud of blue smoke. He crushed the butt on the windowsill, sparks and
dying embers leaving a trail that quickly became black and cold. As he
flicked the butt into the night air he glanced over the rooftops. It
seemed the horizon was a shade lighter. Had he been sitting there that
long?
Unable to sleep since arriving at the apartment some hours earlier,
he sat at the open window: musing, arguing, longing and laughing with his
thoughts. He had not discovered an epiphany or revelation, only a comfort
with the warm night. It was the first warm night of the season; the
unmistakable promise of
July 3rd, 2015
Three cars honked almost in union. Then successively, each a blare in order, one two three, then two three one three four with the line through, beat ripitum boom, ba, riptum boom, now hear it a little faster, just a little faster, lips to instrument, trumpet, three valves, infinite notes to jot to sing to blow, perched lips, fat cheeks, cosmic energy of the union, the intertwined with keys of ivory.
Marcus Breck was recalling stepping on stage the first time. Nervousness rising from toes to a tingling head. Dry mouth, the initial silence of the room that precedes the beginning of
...March 31st, 2015
New Short Fiction Award
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work.
Don Dewey of Jamaica, New York is the winner of the 38th Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first time on March 5, 2015.
Till’s Piano Lesson
by
Don Dewey
_______________________________
“You’re early, Till. I told you never come early.”
“Sorry. I guess my watch is off.”
“Buy a new one.”
Klein refit the crutches under his armpits and swung his crabbed legs back toward the studio, leaving Till to enter the living room for himself. Till didn’t like living rooms. He thought them banal in their predictable assembly of tables, chairs, lamps, and rugs. What he wanted to see someday was a living room with people who dropped dead as soon as they put a foot outside it. Living rooms should have been what they claimed to be.
Klein’s pupil in the studio seemed to be trying to erase his presence through sheer aggression. Had Mozart started that way? Till didn’t think so.
...March 5th, 2015
“Masters of the Jazz Kazoo” is a short story by Con Chapman about a man whose goal was to make it in New York’s cutthroat world of the jazz kazoo!
_____
Like all jazz kazoo players, getting to New York City was always my goal. To turn the Sinatra song on its head, until you made it there, you hadn’t made it anywhere.
Yes, I’d cut every kazooist in the Quad Cities, the sub-metropolitan area of Iowa that from the air appears to be what it is full of — squares. Then I’d moved on to Chicago, like Louis Armstrong, where I found a wider audience for my “kool kazoo” stylings. It may be America’s “Second City” (actually third, but who’s counting) but landing on my feet there was like a
...February 4th, 2015
“Father Kniest, Jazz Priest” is a short story by Con Chapman about “a man of the cloth…deputized by a higher power to save jazzmen’s souls from the lures and wiles and temptations of bad taste.”
_____
I’m getting too old for this, I thought as I made my way down Boylston Street, my tambourine in one hand, the Good Book in the other. I started ministering to the jazz scene in Boston back when Estelle Slavin and Her Swinging Brunettes were the house band at Izzy Ort’s Coney Island Club on Essex Street. Floogie Williams and the Unquenchables were ensconced at the Tip-Top Lounge, which didn’t sit well with the sconces that came with the place as trade fixtures, but so what? We were young and crazy for jazz — we didn’t care.
But now I’m closing in on eighty, and eighty’s looking over its shoulder, nervous as hell. I’ll catch it soon enough — if I don’t die first.
Back in ’55 I was just out of the seminary and was assigned by my
...January 7th, 2015
“Night of the living dead,” a voice screamed in Tom’s head. A softer voice pointed out it was still late afternoon. It sure wasn’t life as he wanted to know it. In reality, it was just another long Thursday afternoon of monthly staff meetings, with new mandates and standards flowing downhill from the top. All the nodding mannequins around the conference room would take it all in, shoot a few inane, brown nose comments back at the presenter, then go back to do their jobs tomorrow the same as always.
Sylvia’s attention was on the crochet hoop in her lap. Jack’s eyes had been closed for the better part of 45 minutes. Tom’s life support system came through the cord fed neatly up beneath the lapel, to the headphones partially obscured by thick sideburns and abundant head of hair. A collection of earpieces was present among these old codgers, but his was connected to the brand new cassette player in his suit coat pocket.
The tape Mikki turned him on to seemed to emanate from a place beyond his routine, tired existence. It was as if the music offered a
...December 16th, 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
...November 19th, 2014
New Short Fiction Award
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work.
Kenneth Levine of Wethersfield, Connecticut is the winner of the thirty-seventh Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first time on November 5, 2014.
Homage
by
Kenneth Levine
_______________________________
I deplaned in Amsterdam to confront my father. In 1990, the year I was born, after the likes of Stan Getz and Freddie Hubbard dubbed him “the reincarnation of Chet Baker,” he quit his part-time job repairing cars in Gilbert, Iowa to go on a worldwide tour from which he never returned.
From the airport I boarded a train to Centraal Station, across from which the Prins Hendrik hotel is situated at the Northern end of Zeedijk Straat, and by early evening I had navigated through the designated lanes over which walkers, bicyclists, and motorists coursed to stand before a bronze tablet on the hotel’s brick front that featured a haggard Chet Baker playing the trumpet over an inscription that read: “Trumpet player and singer Chet Baker died here on May 13th, 1988. He will live on in his music for anyone
...November 5th, 2014
A finalist in our recent Short Fiction Contest, Willard Manus’ “When the World Was Young” is a love story between a man and a woman, and a woman and her musical inspiration — Clifford Brown
...September 25th, 2014
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work.
Yvonne McBride of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is the winner of the thirty-sixth Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first time on July 12, 2014.
Fever
by
Yvonne McBride
_______________________________
Royal had studied her from the bandstand each and every night since their first gig. Such a little thing she was. Nicely curved, tightly packaged — but such a small little thing he had a notion she would break if even his fingertips glazed her. And he had tried. To touch her. Had been trying to get close to her for the past two and all night long.
July 12th, 2014
In the introduction to The Jazz Fiction Anthology, editors Sascha Feinstein and David Rife cite James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” as “the most famous jazz short story ever written,” and is pointed to by Baldwin biographer David Leeming as “the prologue to a dominant fictional motif in the overall Baldwin story, the relationship between two brothers that takes much of its energy from the close relationship between James and [brother] David Baldwin.” The story, originally published in Partisan Review in 1957, centers on the narrator’s need to, in Leeming’s words, “save his brother [Sonny] from the precariousness of his life as an artist.” Sonny, in turn, finds his voice by playing bebop in the Village, which results, according to Leeming,
...December 6th, 2013
In a little town in Illinois, in a bar near the Wisconsin border, one man blew honey-dripping sounds from his saxophone. A woman’s body swayed in time with the sweetness emitting from that horn. She kept time with the beat and moved like melodic notes going up and down the scale. I imagined blowing musical sounds into her ear.
I crossed the wooden dance floor where she whirled, grabbed her hand and began to spin. Like musical notes, one black, one white, we danced all night. I softly sang into her ear, “Imagine how we’d dance in bed.”
She laughed in a low contralto voice, and changed it to a soprano when the high notes flowed.
...November 19th, 2013
While in the midst of reviewing the stories from the over 100 entrants in our current Short Fiction Contest, I have been impressed by the spirit of creativity that shines through in virtually every submission. No matter the story theme, the creative energy and spontaneity is as frequently evident in the writer’s turn of a phrase as it is in a jazz musician’s harmonic progression.
The other day I got into a conversation about how jazz musicians of the 1950’s and the Beat era writers shared an artistic language and had similar creative values that showed up in a variety of examples. The one that came to mind first was in Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” where Kerouac is inspired by a jazz performance in Chicago…This is what he writes:
...October 15th, 2013
I am a bastard son of the late great Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who came to this country in 1970, amassed many followers and bedded many women, among them, my dear mother. My parents never married. My mother left my father and moved with me to the Big Apple when I was still a toddler. While my mother met and married a broker named Irv and had my sister Pearl, my own father went on to become a famous teacher and big lush.
...September 15th, 2013
On the occasion of my 12th or 13th birthday, my father presented me with my own copy of a favorite album of his, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out and said, “This music is going to change your life.” The music sounded like nothing I’d ever heard. It was original and different and piqued my curiosity although I would not embrace it until later in my life. In the early 90s, when I was reading my poems in cafes that often played jazz in Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts, I started really listening to the music, and found it captivating.
...September 15th, 2013
For 11 years, Jerry Jazz Musician has sponsored 33 Short Fiction Contests resulting in 30 different contest winners. During that time, I estimate that I have read and considered over 3,000 short stories.
The stories vary in content and quality, of course, and it has been my goal to publish the best story regardless of its theme. This has at times led to confusion by some writers over the years who believe that, since Jerry Jazz Musician’s focus is on jazz history – and in particular within the confines and culture of mid-20th Century America – the winning story should always be about jazz or a character within that setting.
...September 12th, 2013
“Fine,” she says. “Give me your hand.”
Look up.
Empty spaces, open and promising for my skin to slip into, lie between the pale fingers that wag impatiently in my direction. I want to either kiss those milky tips or break the digits one by one. But my hand has no conflict and longs for nothing more than to fill those gaps left by her fingers. It knows where it belongs, and I watch as it begins to reach out, a thin layer of cold sweat over the palm.
...July 3rd, 2013
In this June, 2013 essay, Scott Shachter shares many of the creative and business challenges he had to overcome before the first copy of his novel Outside In was pressed. It is a story many of our finest writers share today — that of remaining authentic in spirit and vision in a world where formula is most often rewarded.
...June 18th, 2013
She didn’t dance to the music; she danced with it. The melody wrapped his arms around her and the chords ran ivory fingers through her curls. Harmony whispered in her ear and she laughed at all his jokes. She twirled up and down scales with him, the hem of her skirt swirling a single syncopated beat behind her. Her form in her red dress was as curvaceous as the treble clef, and her quick smile flashed staccato at the other dancers and drinkers, lingering largo in the hearts of those who were gifted with the lively beats.
...March 8th, 2013
When my doctor released me from the asylum in Saint-Remy, he warned me to stay away from absinthe or my hallucinations would worsen. I didn’t tell him I had no need for absinthe to hallucinate. I often had company, even when there wasn’t anyone with me.
I’d spent some of my time in the asylum playing billiards. Everyone assured me that I was a natural, the best player they’d ever seen. Maybe, instead of painting, I’d play billiards for a living. As soon as I walked past the gates of the asylum,
...November 8th, 2012
Whenever I’m pissed off, I escape to the pit. Out the kitchen door, fists deep in the pockets of my tight ass jeans, I head towards the woods back of the house.
I cross the backyard, past Moreno, the poor chained up son-of-a-bitch boxer. Rosa clinches his leash, pulling him close like a kid. The poor son-of-a-bitch tenses as I go by, his spindly legs and stubby tail shivering at my wrath, ears perked, head cocked – Was up girl, grounded again?
...July 15th, 2012
The garden by the sea is just beginning to grow into itself. Its green has started to spill out over the fence and tumble onto the walk that lines the side of the shore house. The weather is warming, and combined with the rich soil of the ground, the plants reap the favor of the earth, led to grow lush and vibrant across the expanse. The tendrils of the cucumbers have travelled far up their trellises, continuing to curl out into the air, while the bushes of basil nearby explode into a happy, bright leafed green.
...March 8th, 2012
It’s a shame that, in the 21st century, there are still men of my age who do not know who fathered them. Setting aside the moral issues, I need to know about my family medical history and bloodlines. What if, through twisted fate, my one true love were revealed to be my half sister? Or find out, while facing an ill-informed press, that I am the progeny of some great hero, or desperate criminal, and under the presumption of similar habits. At forty-eight, I still don’t know if I should be honoring the birth of a savior, celebrating the miracle of lights or dancing naked in the woods on the dark of the moon.
...November 8th, 2011
ten minutes into sound and I have begun to lean, to lean forward in these shared chairs towards glissando, towards pluck and sizzle and crash. Ellen is a grace note, a cello curve beside me in this dark, lovely, smitten club of jazz.
that I know it’s Ellen’s thigh and hip accompanying mine is a testament to the radii of our ring fingers, the shiny bands there that play so seriously at patience and time.
July 8th, 2011
Everyone is afraid to knock on the door when they hear the trumpet behind it. A closed door is like an On Air sign or a red light outside a dark room. Still, they have to talk to him. Sonny is nowhere to be found. And Thibodeau is too busy eye-fucking the women at the hotel bar to practice. And Baldwin is just tired.
They wait for a lull, a break. Three minutes waiting outside the door, and it comes. They knock soft, one of those we didn’t want to have to bother you but didn’t see any other recourse knocks; a musician has a way of using sound, its timbre, its breadth, to say everything. Knocking is no different.
...March 4th, 2011
A trumpet squealed in the hospital halls. The note, like a brass rabbit, zipped past room 334. Moments later Mr. Fahrenheit watched two orderlies jog past the open door: not too fast, not real slow. It appeared to be the speed of indicated hurry. A few more notes from the trumpet whizzed down the hall before they too slowed to a jog, and then drew themselves out into expressions of gold, blue, green then stopped before Mr. Fahrenheit could call the name of the song to mind. The next few notes he tapped out on the back of the hand he held in his own. His wife did not respond. Even he had begun to forget to expect a response. She inhaled. She exhaled. The eyes beneath her blue lids quivered and shimmered.
...November 1st, 2010
When I was ten, I was in a movie. It was a very famous movie. It ran in theaters for over a month, bringing in more and more revenue for the production company. When it finally came out on VHS (it was old enough that it was a tape, with reels inside it), the film grossed in the millions. The director was hailed as “visionary”, the actors as “superb”. The film itself became famous for having been one of the best horror movies of the year (1992). Critics said that it had “truly ushered in a new era of horror, one in which the innocent and benign murder recklessly”. The review that held these words was taped to my wall, for I’d been mentioned by name, praised, and it was a very well known newspaper, indeed. “Sharon Ellis, a real child actor who will no doubt amount to something great, gives a phenomenal debut performance. Her emotion and sensual expression are truly remarkable for such a young girl so new to the scene.” I used to read those words, over and over again, and imagine the critic who had written them watching me on the big screen before them.
...July 10th, 2010
One black leather pump hides under the sofa; the other skidded behind the front door, keeled over in shock. Stockings lie limp on the carpet, slim legs broken, and shrunken feet awry at the heels, pale rungs shred up the thigh, as jagged and useless as fear. A gold chain lies coiled like a snake, broken beyond repair, not sparkling, just stunned.
In the bathroom, water gushes wild and wide from the metal spigot, creeps up the sides of steep white porcelain an inch at a time, swirls with thick steam and current from the source, a dank basement room, a mystery pumping system, a light hum in the pipes and a bill at the end of the month. She squeezes her lashes then twists the tap shut. Leg poised, she dips a foot
...March 10th, 2010
Thanksgiving, 1968. I can’t remember what I ate for dinner last night, but I see that day as clearly as if I’m watching it on an old Magnavox. My mother Rose buzzes around our cramped two-bedroom apartment in Queens, New York, her hair in rollers, no makeup. She’s beautiful though, anyone would agree. It’s early in the day. She retrieves the tablecloth my grandmother embroidered when a teenager herself from the back of the hall closet, and sets the dining table in the foyer with her best dishes (black and white Noritake), silver plate from Fortunoff’s, and real cloth napkins in a tasty shade of pumpkin. She’s been up since five cooking; pies were baked the night before. But although her culinary plans are running smoothly, my mother’s mood is lethal.
...November 10th, 2009
In the fall of 1991 I believed I would be the next Charlie Parker. Few of the bands on campus had even heard of Bird, and the few that had did not want a flute player. This did not deter me. I was out on the commons at UCLA riffing on “Confirmation” when Nadine found me.
“That makes my nipples hard.” She smiled.
I lowered my flute and stared. She was wearing a man’s dress shirt, as if she’d spent the night away. The shirt did little to hide the truth of her statement. But that wasn’t what got my attention. It was her face. She had the knack of smiling with her whole face – eyes, cheeks, lips, nose. Everything got into the act.
...July 15th, 2009
There’s this painting she keeps staring at.
She imbibes it, absorbs everything it has to offer. A lilting shade of lavender, it features fourteen flawless flowers arranged with a meandering dissonance that flies in the face of the frame’s four square corners. They make its math seem maddening, symmetry superfluous.
“I like it,” she says quietly, tucking long brown strands of slightly curly hair behind her ears. She turns towards me slowly then, notes the slight adversarial something in my eyes. Intimately familiar with my proclivity for irreverent mocking, she now offers a slight smirk that seems just one shade shy of sly. Aware of my antagonism,
...March 15th, 2009
If Mom and Dad had heard about my friend Benny and all that jazz from me, they’d have handled it. But when my fifth grade teacher ratted on us, it became a big, fat deal. Mom had to meet me in the front office after school and we silently trudged back to my classroom, both taking refuge in our own mental world.
Mrs. Drake motioned us to identical chairs in front of her desk. “I don’t want to alarm you. This isn’t an emergency, Mrs. McKenzie.” She forced her goosy face into a sympathetic mask. “Cathy’s not a problem child by any means.”
Mom’s shoulders relaxed under her starched cotton housedress, but her hands clutched the white gloves and tooled leather pocketbook positioned mid-lap.
...November 7th, 2008
The first of my notes read I’M IN A STATE OF DISBELIEF. I left this one on top of a counter at a place where many of the thousands of people who worked in the same building as I did went to get their coffees and pastries in the morning.
The second note went AN ANGEL GOT IN BED WITH ME LAST NIGHT — OR MAYBE IT WASN’T AN ANGEL. I taped this one to the inside of the door of one of the stalls in the public bathroom of the same building.
...July 10th, 2008
I can’t fight. I’m not made for it. When I’m backed into a corner I can run, and that’s what I’m good at. I can’t gather myself to put up an opposition. I begin to quake and crumble and the parts of myself split into ever-smaller parts that want to get away as fast as possible. I’m an explosion, a spectacle to momentarily confuse the enemy. Also a physical wreck. The only movement that suits me is flight. My parts will converge into a fluid line of energy, but only in movement. It’s the way I’m made. If I held my hand out, lengthened my fingers for you and attempted to keep as still as possible, you would marvel at the trembling. But then give me a guitar and this same hand will produce a line no less marvelous in fluid grace.
...March 5th, 2008
It had been warm all day, the type of day where the heavy air presses into you and makes it hard to move. It didn’t help that her shift had been spent calling customers and listening to endless streams of why they couldn’t make their hydro payments. And they would yell, swear at her as if she had caused their loss of job, their alcoholism, their way of life. She absorbed it all, the words sinking through the membrane in her ear and resonating within the membrane of her mind long after the calls had stopped.
If there’d been a breeze, or a slight coolness to the air, then those words could have lifted from her. They heated her, churning and boiling within so that by the time she got the apartment door open her flesh looked glossy with the sweat.
...November 1st, 2007
Stories burst out of her as a magician’s trick pulls out scarves; multi-colored patterns, solids and conservative checks spilled out of her mouth and hands when she least expected it. In the end, of course, she recognized it as it was. These were the stories of all our lives, every human soul’s experience could produce that knotted, impossibly long scarf string that sprung out of the local magician.
Yet, most people did not have a new story to tell very often at all. At first, this was a wonder to her — why did all the interesting things happen only to her? But of course, this was self-centered, she realized. These things do happen to all of us on this earth. It was just that few people noticed the stories as they blossomed. It’s in the observation of it, she discovered, that one finds a good story.
...July 15th, 2007
I have a problem, Father.
No, no “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” and the rest. Not this time.
And that’s it, really: I’m here again, in confession with you, as I have been for a long time, but I don’t think I’ve sinned.
Yes, of course, Father, I understand about confession. Penance, really, because that’s a sacrament, that’s how a person gets forgiveness of sins. There is absolution by a priest, but you I, because I am sitting here now have to have true sorrow and confess your sins, and do something about your behavior. You really have to mean it, not just want a pass for what you’ve done and may do again, unless you’re genuine in your confession and really want to change.
...March 15th, 2007
January 30, 1946 — Allied Headquarters, Paris, France
“What is it, Captain? I’m very busy.”
“Sorry to disturb you, Colonel, but you said you wanted a report as soon as I completed my investigation.”
Colonel Washburn searched his desk muttering, “Yes, yes. I’ll read your report as soon as you’ve filed it.”
...November 10th, 2006
Megan Watson pushes open the front door of the old house, escaping the cold. On the left, a welcome mat, wet from snow, rests before the entrance to a vegetarian restaurant. Shes not hungry. Turning to the dry stairwell with the faded violin painted on the wall, she begins her ascent to the shop upstairs.
Paper taped at the top stair reads, “Press Doorbell.” When the door draws open, an older gentleman with a full, white mustache, smiles down at her. Running his palm over the top of his head, he looks tired, but curious.
...July 18th, 2006
The whole stalking thing started with the footprints. They were so large that his size twelve’s fit easily into the indents in the snow, and the space between them was so wide that following them forced him into an awkward little step-jump. Large paw prints ran parallel to the human prints. He assumed that they belonged to a dog. What else could they be? Yet, what did he know about the customs or recreational habits of these Northern Maine people? For all he knew they strutted through the pines chatting with bears.
...March 8th, 2006
My father died quickly and cleanly in the waning days of autumn, just two months before the arrival of the millennium. A massive neural hemorrhage took him — his brain, drowned in blood, was gone within hours. It was ironic that his own blood finally accomplished what years of alcoholism had not: heavy as his drinking was, he remained utterly lucid and sharp until the early morning hours of a late October Tuesday, when a tiny blood vessel in his head gave way, loosening the flood of fluid that killed him. Until then, his memory, both short and long-term, remained unimpaired. True, his body was falling apart; his liver and heart were bad, he suffered from diabetes, gout, macular degeneration — you name it, he had it — but his mind remained as sharp as the day he graduated with a PhD from Harvard.
...November 1st, 2005
(One)
She has begun to daydream about having an affair.
She imagines herself with the men she sits next to at dinner parties, their wives across the table pulling down their mouths as she engages their husbands intensely in conversation, as she lays her hand on their arms and smiles over her wine glass. Then she looks away, smiles at her own husband seated two or three or four people away from her, nods and smiles, raises an eyebrow.
...July 1st, 2005
The rigid wooden slats of the park bench press relentlessly against the length of my goose-pimpled back. A stocking cap rides low over my ears and most of my forehead, and a wool blanket — cocooned around my prone body — laps over my chin and tucks snugly around the sides of my face. Only my eyes, nose, and weather-cracked lips brave the raw chill. I gaze skyward as the frozen minutes slowly pass. I wouldn’t normally choose to rest here in the dead of winter, but tonight I didn’t have a choice. In life you are either a have or a have-not. Mike and I are have-not’s.
...March 15th, 2005
The workers at Jackson’s favorite record store wear bumble-bee striped tights, black plastic glasses, leather boots that lace straight up their thighs. Jackson’s wearing the purple beret he always wears, with his blond hair sticking out in back, and his cords, and his corduroy jacket that smells like him. It’s April, too warm for corduroy, but Jackson always wears corduroy, along with T-shirts that tell the world he’s been to every blues concert and jazz festival you could think of.
To me, it all sounds the same — jazz, the blues, whatever — it’s all horns, but Jackson’s got two hundred seventeen records — vinyl, he calls them — and a saxophone, too. Clearly, he’s got music in his blood. His dad also plays the saxophone, at bars in Harvard Square, and they kind of look alike, only Jackson’s dad has eyes like power drills that would tear your clothes clean-open if you didn’t look away in time.
...November 1st, 2004
Today, Celina is going tolive up to the promise she made to him fifteen years ago, that November dayin the neurologist’s parking lot, when he told her, “When my voice goes,I go.”
Ray can still hear the pitter-patter of raindrops onthe umbrella they’d shared that day, drumming out the minutes that passedas they stood, emotionally and physically immobile, terrified at the thoughtof taking another step. And he can still recall the wet wool smell of hersweater when he tucked his face into the hollow of her neck to hide his tears.But he thought Celina had chosen to forget that day and her vow, until twomonths ago when she asked him if he’d changed his mind. “Squeeze my arm ifyou still want to,” she’d told him.
...July 1st, 2004
There are coyote in The Balcones Canyonlands Preserve in West Travis County, Texas. One family; with three cubs. As always, the alpha female is the only one to breed, her two sisters will help her rear the cubs to maturity. She is a young female, less than two years old, and her sisters are her littermates: this family, barely more than striplings themselves, have fought hard to establish themselves in this reserve, managed for deer and birds, but not for coyote. Most Texans still shoot first, and ask themselves only afterwards if the beautiful golden corpse in front of them could possibly have posed a risk to livestock or pets.
...March 5th, 2004
One. Anacostia lay there. Two. Three. Counting gunshots. Four. Five. He imagined the bullets cutting the sky, wondered how this tradition had begun. Six. The first time he held a gun, fired his first shot, he was six years old. It was on this same night — New Year’s Eve — thirteen years ago, just after midnight. Seven.
* * *
His father’s yellowy, roach-burnt fingertips stretched and folded his hand, his small fingers, barely skilled using a pencil, around the handle and trigger. I’m gonna make you a man. A chill shook his small body. He had never felt anything so cold, not a popsicle fresh from the ice cream truck, not the cold air gushing from inside the fridge onto his face in summer. Not even snow was this cold. When he had finished molding the boy’s hand to the gun, he let go. It fell immediately to Anacostia’s knees. A flat, open palm, smacked the back of his head. You ain’t no bitch. Lift that gun up, boy!
...October 15th, 2003
Though she sat alone, Mira wasn’t lonely. Woman, chair, patio, trees and sky merged in her nightly meditation. Mira finished her prayer, touching the crown of her head, forehead and heart center with folded hands, crossed herself, and opened her eyes to the East, observing in one smooth movement her indigenous heritage, Catholic upbringing, and conversion to Buddhism.
Gathering and tossing her long raven-wing hair over one shoulder, Mira shifted her weight from one hip to the other, rubbing her ample belly. She turned over mental stones from the last few months, examining the process of shock, resignation, and acceptance that marked this pregnancy. The youngest of five daughters, she ruefully watched her older sisters succumb one by one to the entanglements of family life. She vowed while still a teenager to never clip her wings.
...June 15th, 2003
Donna walked into the student union on the evening of the Kent State shootings while thunderheads roiled over the Toledo River. They invoked little-girl notions that God brought storms until she checked herself with the atheism sweeping the Milestone College campus that semester. In the foyer mirror she stroked long chestnut hair and nodded terse approval of her denim mini-skirt, leotards, and khaki jacket.
Descending the circular staircase to the basement, Donna replayed the scene in the dining commons–Chris, flanked by his entourage, requesting that she report after dinner; how girl friends had flashed wide-eyed grins that heightened her excitement–“God, Donna! No freshman poly-sci’s ever been invited to work with him before!”
...February 10th, 2003
I like the jazz because it plays in different colors: deep green and blue, translucent purple, ivory black; city storefronts, magenta sunsets; watercolor splashes here and there like a yellow crocus on snow or an orange goldfish tail — sudden, surprising, but always carefully placed.
Like the way people come in different colors — they just don’t know it. People walk along in darkness daily, ignorant of the color that’s surrounding them or the beat their music plays. That’s what I’m lying here thinking about, in my dark bedroom between the folds of cotton sheets. Africans, Asians, Seminoles they all come in different colors — not their skins, but their insides.
...October 4th, 2002
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”Vamping’” by Michel Krug
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work....
Michel Krug reads his poem at its conclusion
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