Jazz Singer

A short piece and poem about Jazz singers and their ability to convey tragedy.

There’s something about jazz and blues singers that know emotional pain.

They talk to you like a friend sat across from you in a bar. Commiserating, sympathising……chucking you their shabby four leaf clover -which is actually a nettle, through the squint of a drunk.

They moon.

I like that word ‘mooning’. It’s not used so much in this context anymore, is it? I embrace the idea of aimlessly wallowing in matters of the heart as having qualities of moon-like reflection.

I adore Billie Holiday, good old ‘Lady Day’.

“Lover Man” balms my soul like fish and chip paper. The initial way it absorbs the floating, dirty, grease of your mind, gives way to the smarting and hideous sting of salt and vinegar as her musings become heartfelt plea.

Another favourite of mine is Chet Baker.

The ‘in the room’ caramel closeness of his voice, for me, defines tragedy. It pours into my ear as bereaved lovebird who wants to sing me the sorrow of his empty cage. His ‘Everything happens to me’ is a song I play when I want to indulge in self pity. He describes his experience of feeling like the unluckiest guy in the world. So much so, that by the end of it, after having listened to him whinge about ‘catching colds and missing trains’, I start to see the dark humour of my own situation.

Sometimes I want to honour the mistreated vamp inside of me, and Peggy Lee’s rendition of ‘Black Coffee’ fits the bill.

I channel my chain smoking siren in pointy bra, lacy nightgown, kohl bleeding from her anxious eyes, ‘Scotch on the rocks’ in hand, aching for her cruel lover to return…..

I give you my little poem I have written in honour of these wonderful artists who sketch our pain with their voices, sharing late night melancholy, when no-one else does…..

Jazz Singer

My jazz singer is back again

With her throaty notes of woe

She sinks her blues into a pink

My smoky eyes can’t know

The crackle of her weary drawl

Snakes through me as a ladder

I beg the stars to blunt their blades

For night’s shawls to hold my shudder

She plies my pained, glazed, window wife

With cigarettes and patience

She sings about Black Coffee

And chokes on heady fragrance

Of men who smell of spice and night

Forbidden beds with satin covers

Of women who plant angry slaps

On guilty cheeks of latin lovers

Tell me, is he coming back?

Must I keep watching this clock?

Jazz singer, what’s your advice?

Does he love me……..not?