9631. TAKE MY HANGING BASKET - pt. one

TAKE MY HANGING BASKET

-the Jazz Loft, pt. one, 1967-

Thelonious Monk wrote 'Crepuscular With

Nellie'. It was 1957 maybe, a real take-off

year for 50's modern jazz. I didn't know

much about it then, but maybe 8 years later

it was, I knew a bunch  -  having landed

myself squat-set in the middle of a few

jazz lofts in the w20s, and teens. There

wasn't anything like that before  -  you

can have your hippie wing-ding love-ins

and being-fests and happenings and

nude-o-ramas. Jazz, man back then it

was the real thing. None of that fusion

crap and light jazz and radio-play jazz

junk that now passes for something.

Car music while you sit there squirming

in Parkway traffic on your way to some

funked-out beach with skinny-in-the-brain-

department people wading in their custard

wallow. That's not this jazz. This jazz had

needles and spikes and had be-bop and hops

and dulcimated duo-solos running wild. It

was tops  -  made by mad men in lofts that

always had dripping faucets and cut-up

bathrooms and a guy downstairs always

watching out. The bottom floors, in the

daytime they were just all Puerto Rican

loading-dock guys flinging freight and

cargo about, mostly fabrics and hangers

and hats and coats, or huge rolls of cloth,

with trucks backed up waiting all over the

street and horns honking everywhere. A

real syncopation, like a jazz recreation.

-

It was in the evenings, later, that things

would change  -  those dark November

evenings early rolling into night. Once all

deliver trucks and freight and cargo, cars and

horns blaring and back-up everywhere, were

gone the tome changed. Sometimes I'd be

there for that. First the women would start

arriving, swanky enough, just to stand

around and watch, or flirt, or be picked over.

The the black cars would roll in, men would

get out, jive guys, hats and shoes, carrying

coronets or trumpets, some with larger

instruments wrapped in bags or carrying

cases; they'd step out, jive-walk around a

bit, almost in-place, greeting one another.

Cigarettes. Bottles. And the rest. It would

all get upstairs, the subdued half-noises of

feet scraping stairs, or a freight elevator cable

slapping and a door sliding. You'd hear all

sorts of things. I'd be let up, because they

already knew me  -  to watch things, keep

an eye on things, take maybe coats and

belongings as they were handed over  - or

run out for this or that, coffee, cold stuff,

by the need. I was an 18 year old nobody

in another world I'd never even imagined

existed. 'Stick around, kid, listen and watch

You're OK, but this'll make you good. When

you're good, this'll someday maybe make

you great.' So I'd stay. Witness. Observe.

-

Being as I was that 'kid,' useless and all, I

found I could never understand why all the

other idiot-fools of my age were falling all

over themselves for 'rock n' roll,' as it was

being called  -  a rather perverse, effeminate,

moon-June graduated plaster of words and

noise that made never any sense to me. Most

especially when put up alongside jazz here.

This was real stuff, while all that other crap

was institutional communion music. I didn't

ever like words put to that kind of use  -  it

always just seemed a big mistake by ignorant

people, and it just got worse later with all

that coy and biting irony of pop group of

rebel singers with rhyming couplets for

a snaggle-toothed groan that all got called

'poetry' and later even literature. For songbird

assholes mostly, always  -  jazz here was

something different. These guys were solid,

they were men of an unencumbered force,

except maybe sometimes broken too and

beaten down  by addictions and foibles.

All hard, that all was; but it came out

in their sound too, just as much.

Different. Troubled. Proud.

-

Angry never made much sense, so they

never were much angry, except maybe

James Baldwin; he came around once I

remember. Twice maybe. I never got

much out of him; he seemed a goon, sort

of goggle-eyed and precious. But he had

all this one-liner anti-whitey stuff always

going. I never understood much of it, and

never really listened. He gave me the

creeps just to be around. He seemed a

good fit for jazz, yeah, but he never

really was. Maybe the Paris stuff, but

that wasn't ever New York jazzy. That

was just Paris, another thing. People like

him, sometimes they talked, I s'd swear,

just to be heard. Same old crap, layered

over itself. Or, well, maybe I just didn't

get 'race,' racial stuff. It never mattered

to me  -  it as more than just black Americans,

all those Malcolm X blacks, strivers sometimes,

and fakes just as much. I seen some other

kinds of Negroes  -  royal, discrete, really

sound and solid. Ancient African lineages,

transplanted to places like the Sorbonne

or other odd names, continental names.

They'd be different. I'd see them, and

I'd see some beautiful black ladies too,

naked. There were some, that all just

went with their being, a sort of consciousness

of elevation. Sensuality and sexuality too.

It was just the way they did things, with

the territory. And you weren't really to

make anything of it. Just the way they

were; like seeing Nina Simone come in

one day, with a Japanese silk robe, colored

beautifully, reds and blues, with nothing

on underneath it; and she just undrapes it

and sits down at the piano. That was that.

I'd see, I'd see what went on. I just had

to understand it yet, that was all. Growing

up, even in one's own mind, you mostly

just get one side of the story and that's the

side you're forced and taught to accept.

Supposed to make all the sense in the world,

except it never does. There's always another 

story, and this was it, and I was in it.
-
Nina Simone? The people would look at her,
listening, and just say she was quite weird
but a special individual  -  'The lady is a
singular sensation'  -  that being the first time
I'd ever heard that phrase, which later became
just another tired old advertising phrase. She
had a song she sang that did catch my
ear : 'My Name is Peaches' I think it was.
A totally strange song, almost grating, not
quite right. I can't say I ever liked it  -  about
house-slave or maid or something who put up 
with all sorts of things, racial stuff and the rest,
who acted nice and stayed pleasant but who
secretly harbored hatred and hideous feelings
about her keepers. Peaches was their 'name' 
for her. She'd sing that song, in like a studio 
set-up they had, and it always sounded OK, 
different most each time, but OK, and it was 
eventually recorded again, somewhere. The 
whole thing was rare, as I said, no one ever
'sang' in this place, except her, here, in this 
instance a few times. That was her thing.
-
The guys just took it as a job, something to do
for the lost, spacey lady. It was, again, all racial.
She was angry, she was black, and proud and 
the rest. I never said a thing. I had to be careful.
Anyway, the song always reminded me of
another one I'd hard, far better, by Kurt Weil,
Bertolt Brecht, that bunch. That one was
called 'Pirate Jenny.' Same sort of song, but 
better, not just about black and slave. It was
more seething, a lady does the cleaning, people
look down on her, she plots a silent revenge as
she does their chores, cleans their places and
all that. The song was darker, and more sensible 
 -  the lady keeps announcing, whether imagined 
or no, this 'ship,' the black freighter, that 
was coming around into the harbor, and was 
going to blow everything t smithereens  and
bring to her a sort of due-justice. It was almost
a scary, dark song  -  from The Threepenny Opera.
-
I caught all this stuff, just never commented or
said much. Couldn't really. Simone was living,
then, in Newark, I think in the same house with
Leroy Jones, Amiri Baraka, whatever he was
calling himself then. A lot of them were just
changing their names as they became radicalized,
Islamicized, like Cassius Clay too. They took on
other references, Ali, and Baraka. I always
liked their old names better but I was told once
that there was a real power, a certain strength, in 
taking back one's name, one's self, or sense of,
by proclaiming and re-naming oneself, the new
self, and growing strong just from that.
Forget all that downtrodden crap.