I can't leave that book without putting this down......
From ON THE ROAD, Jack Kerouac
"They piled right up into a saloon and we followed them. There we were! The leader was a slender, drooping, curly-haired pursy-mouthed tenorman, thin of shoulder, draped loose in a sports shirt, cool in the warm night, self-indulgence written in his eyes, who picked up his horn and frowned in it, and blew cool and complex, and was dainty stamping his foot to catch ideas, and ducked to miss others - and said, "Blow," very quietly when the other boys took solos. Then there was Prez, a handsome, husky blond, like a freckled boxer, meticulously wrapped inside his sharkskin plaid suit with the collar falling back and the tie undone for exact sharpness and casualness, sweating and hitching up his horn and writhing into it, and a tone just like Lester Young himself. 'You see, man, Prez has the technical anxieties of a money-making musician, he's the only one who's well dressed, see him grow worried when he blows a clinker, but the leader, that cool cat, tells him not to worry and just blow and blow - the mere sound and serious exuberance of the music is all HE cares about. He's an artist. He's teaching young Prez the boxer. Now the others dig!' The third sax was an alto, eighteen-year-old cool, contemplative young Charlie Parker type Negro from high school, with a broadgash mouth, taller than the rest, grave. He raised his horn and blew into it quietly and thoughtfully and elicited birdlike phrases and architectural Miles Davis logics. These were the children of the great bop innovators.
Stranger flowers yet - for as the Negro alto mused over everyone's head with dignity, the young, tall, slender blond kid from Curtis Street, Denver, jeans and studded belt, sucked on his mouthpiece while waiting for the others to finish; and when they did he started, and you had to look around to see where the solo was coming from, for it came from the angelic smiling lips upon the mouthpiece and it was a soft, sweet fairy-tale solo on an alto. Lonely as America, the throat-pierced sound in the night."
I wish I could go on. He goes on for another couple of pages about the music that was playing that night. I like him because he writes so that you are there. It brings back memories, for me, of being in jazz clubs in the 60s, with my parents. I love him because he feels it like I do.
From ON THE ROAD, Jack Kerouac
"They piled right up into a saloon and we followed them. There we were! The leader was a slender, drooping, curly-haired pursy-mouthed tenorman, thin of shoulder, draped loose in a sports shirt, cool in the warm night, self-indulgence written in his eyes, who picked up his horn and frowned in it, and blew cool and complex, and was dainty stamping his foot to catch ideas, and ducked to miss others - and said, "Blow," very quietly when the other boys took solos. Then there was Prez, a handsome, husky blond, like a freckled boxer, meticulously wrapped inside his sharkskin plaid suit with the collar falling back and the tie undone for exact sharpness and casualness, sweating and hitching up his horn and writhing into it, and a tone just like Lester Young himself. 'You see, man, Prez has the technical anxieties of a money-making musician, he's the only one who's well dressed, see him grow worried when he blows a clinker, but the leader, that cool cat, tells him not to worry and just blow and blow - the mere sound and serious exuberance of the music is all HE cares about. He's an artist. He's teaching young Prez the boxer. Now the others dig!' The third sax was an alto, eighteen-year-old cool, contemplative young Charlie Parker type Negro from high school, with a broadgash mouth, taller than the rest, grave. He raised his horn and blew into it quietly and thoughtfully and elicited birdlike phrases and architectural Miles Davis logics. These were the children of the great bop innovators.
Stranger flowers yet - for as the Negro alto mused over everyone's head with dignity, the young, tall, slender blond kid from Curtis Street, Denver, jeans and studded belt, sucked on his mouthpiece while waiting for the others to finish; and when they did he started, and you had to look around to see where the solo was coming from, for it came from the angelic smiling lips upon the mouthpiece and it was a soft, sweet fairy-tale solo on an alto. Lonely as America, the throat-pierced sound in the night."
I wish I could go on. He goes on for another couple of pages about the music that was playing that night. I like him because he writes so that you are there. It brings back memories, for me, of being in jazz clubs in the 60s, with my parents. I love him because he feels it like I do.
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