 Journal: Jimmy Blue Eyes
-------------------------------------------Mood: BuriedThis is a piece from the Radio Program "CBS Radio Workshop" originally broadcast March 23, 1956. It's a spectacular piece of performed poetry. If you want an mp3, PM me.
The Legend of Jimmy Blue Eyes
In Storyville, where blues are born
There’s a legend of a golden horn
And a hard-lipped kid, blue-eyed and fair
Who tried for a note that wasn’t there
So come along, Padido Street
Where the hot licks tickle dancing feet
That shuffle in patent leather shoes
Where Jimmy Blue-Eyes blew the blues
Now Jimmy Blue-Eyes came on earth
A child of hunger from his birth
He played all day around the street of sin
And they spiked his milk with Old Tom gin
He second lined each funeral band
Rushed the can when they made a stand
He held their horns with love and care
While his face lit up like a county fair
He followed the tailgate players ‘roun’
When the wagons rolled through, back of town
And the only prayers he ever knew
Were the kind a blue note trumpet blew
He roamed the streets from sun to moon
His bare feet beat to each talky tune
As he crept through the gin mill swinging doors
And the sawdust danced on the white tile floors
He stole free lunch from bell house places
And hustled a buck at the fairgrounds races
He talked to dice like a lover can
And he aimed for the life of a sportin’ man
When Jimmy Blue-Eyes turned sixteen
He joined Odd Jill, a blues song queen
Jill dressed him like a special prize
This Dixie kid with the soft blue eyes
He’d twenty suits and a Stetson skimmer
A box backed coat and a diamond glimmer
A gold chain draped his fancy vest
He went first class, he was the best
Now Jimmy Blue-Eyes loved to dally
At a card room down along Pig Alley
He could riffle the deck with gambler’s ease
Clean a cotch game like a breeze
One night a player met his raise
With a silver horn from better days
Jim showed his win to his lovin’ Jill
In her fancy flat in the morning still
“Sweet Jill, I’m sure no fancy Dan
But I’m a dead bang, natural music man
I‘ll take this battered, silver horn
And make it talk, come Mardi gras morn.”
“Jimmy, my love, since I was born,
I loved the music of a horn.
You learn to make it weep and shout
I’ll love you ‘till the starts burn out”
“Why me and the blues are kid and candy
St. Louis and Memphis and Mr. Handy
If you stuck a pin in my heart it’s true
A drop of my blood would come out pure blue”
But summers came and winters went
And Jimmy’s lovin’ heart was bent
As ‘fore he hit that master blow
His sweet Jill blew with Hot-Lips Joe
Now Hot-Lips Joe, he had no peer
He could shave the head from a glass of beer
With a wail from his educated horn
Just as sure as you were born
The kiss off gave poor Jim a jolt
He loaded up his blue steel colt
And headed for the circus house
To croak that double crossin’ louse
Hot-lips Joe was holdin’ the floor
When the Colt spit lead, type 44
The bullet sang around his head
Jim killed a tourist guide instead
In sheer disgust, the gun he slammed
Upon the floor and then he lammed
Along the streets with jazz mad night
While whistles blew to halt his flight
And back at Minnie’s Circus house
Hot-Lips Joe, that heart thief louse
Cased the sucker on the floor
And smiled and whispered “Never more"
"No never more will Jimmy Blue-Eyes
Catch me with a lead surprise.
This hog wild kid is through, for fair
A synch to dance upon the air
Before he ever got a mile
Poor Jim was nailed and brought to trial
The old judge burned him with a look
And up and hit him with a book
In the cell where Jimmy, locked
Steel secured and granite blocked
He played a music, rich, apart
The gift God gives a contrite heart
Long summers came, long winters went
And all of Jimmy’s time was spent
To reach a chord, to cut the air
To blow that note that wasn’t there
The sun went down in Storyville
When love went out with Jim and Jill
First war came, then prohibition
And a district went to quick perdition
And diehards died on bathtub gin
But the music lived like hidden sin
To tickle toes in northern lands
With the advent of the Dixie bands
But New Orleans was much alive
In the year of 1935
Jim took the long road home at last
The dark and bitter days were past
Now when Jimmy Blue-Eyes hit the sticks
He was the master of hot licks
His trumpet clawed and tore the air
In search of a note that wasn’t there
He played the hottest spots in town
Hell, he blew the ceilings down
When his encores all were done
They said “That man is Gabriel’s son”
The chrome money fell at Jimmy’s feet
In full blown gale of silver sleet
He smiled and he played right on until
His mind ran back to his heartbeat, Jill
Now you show me an artist, fine or fair
Who seeks a note that isn’t there
And I’ll show a guy that most men ain’t
He’s alone in the clouds, an uncrowned saint
For he scatters joy to his fellow man
Though he might wind up an also-ran
It’s a drive past glory, fortune, fame
It’s nirvana sure, but a heartbreak game
When Jimmy’s heart and soul sent out
The soft, sweet tones of his trumpet shout
He blew it hot and low and high
He hit the fringe of heaven’s sky
The multiplying strains made naught
He couldn’t reach the peak he sought
He blew until the notes were bane,
Elastic stretches of his brain
He tried a Hungan and Mambo pills
But they wouldn’t bring a trumpet trills
He killed a quart of rye each day
And it didn’t help for his high note play
“Jimmy boy, your case is tragic
You’d best resort to Mammy Magic
She cooks a pot like jungle stew
There’s conjure in her devil’s brew”
Now Mammy Magic was her name
A voodoo witch of power and fame
Her spells as famous as the blues
From New Orleans to Newport News
“I tell you Jimmy on the level
You got to see my boss the Devil
You’re asking one thing I can’t do
Despite the magic of my brew”
So Mammy Magic cast a spell
To summon up the king of hell
He came in a flame of smoke and thunder
That almost tore the town asunder
He smelled like absinthe and smoke and mud
His eyes were rubies, pigeon blood
He stood erect in a manner bold
And his tail was 80 carat gold
So the red king made a deal with him
And a secret locked inside of Jim
Then with an evil art of old
Red turned that silver horn to gold
Jimmy Blue-Eyes walked on feet
Which never touched upon the street
He wore a broad smile upon his face
For that never never note was his
That long elusive note was there
The most immortal anywhere
But when he blew it, come what may
He had an awful price to pay
Oh Hot Lips had just come down
From a long run in Chicago town
He’d been the world’s top trumpet king
For twenty years come one more spring
The jazz folk down in New Orleans
Dug folding money from their jeans
To bet on Jim or Hot-Lips Joe
To contest for the master blow
“Money, marbles, chalk and beans
On Jimmy, the pride of New Orleans”
“Who’ll cover five G’s with cash, not pork
It’s Jimmy Blue-Eyes for old New York”
Most every parish up and down
Bet scads on Jimmy’s horn renown
The high and low of fortune’s birth
Came on from every end of earth
The joint was jammed and 88
Was under the dukes of a solid gate
Their sorrow sign hung outside
And there was Hot-Lips Joe and his beauty bride
Sweet Jill, the nightingale of song
But dead wrong broad, dead wrong, dead wrong
Playing the puff at a ringside table
Sipping an amber, draped in sable
Then Joe took the stage with a massive pride
And cut his trumpet open wide
He blew hot notes heard ‘round about
He turned that trumpet inside out
He blew till all the glass was broken
He blew so hot the joint was smokin’
His horn turned inside out and curled,
The last note heard around the world
When Joe sat down, the cheering sounds
Bust tombstones in the burial grounds
His look told Jim with unfeigned joy
“Go peddle your papers, little boy”
Jim took the stage and struck a stance
Bold for a guy with a Chinamen’s chance
He warmed the hot notes, let ‘em fry
To a whispered tone, like strong men cry
They felt his lonely bitter years
As the horn wept soft, metallic tears
Then quick, mad laughter with a cheer
Go cry in your beer, go cry in your beer
Now switchblade gashes and razor slashes
Blend with whiskey bottle crashes
Culminating in a wail
From the foul, deep bowel of a tall walled jail
He ran the scale of man’s emotions
Like changing tides upon the oceans
A harsh note cursed, another prayed
Lord have mercy brother, I’m so afraid
His horn sang smooth and educated
And blue and true and dedicated
The music of that Dixie man
Was greater than the pipes of Pan
The high soft sigh of a trumpet’s cry
Can tell what magic words can’t try
For the horn sings true as it only can
Unmatched by nature, bird or man
Man sings his heart with tongue or pen
Words give and live through time again
But his very heart and soul ring clear
When a true horn speaks for all to hear
The crowd sat frozen round a gaff
Jim split the ceiling right in half
He blew the walls down and the doors
He raised the carpets off the floors
Yeah, this genius boy from a land of cotton
This disinherited, misbegotten
Son of a slum in sin and gin
Blew that scatter outside in
And yet, he seemed like a tired life goin’ home
From a weary earth in a heartbreak roam
To that promised land of a fairer clime
Out there on the other side of time
"Play it for Jill, sweet. Play er high!
And you're my love until I die"
So Jimmy Blue-Eyes hit some bars
And blew out half a million stars
And then that never never note went clear
Ten gillion miles to heaven’s ear
And when it faded, died and broke
That blue-eyed kid went up in smoke
No some rounders claim they're in the know
That Jimmy Blue-Eyes fries down below
But in New Orleans, they’ll lay you odds
He’s playing trumpet with the Gods
For a deacon man was there who preached
Before the last note cut and reached
The edges of eternity and died
“Father forgive me” his trumpet cried
No matter where or when hot music blows
If you've not have, ask dad, he knows
Jim’s golden horn, the love of faithless Jill
When blues and we were young in Storyville
Now Jimmy Blue-Eyes came on earth
A child of hunger from his birth
They spiked his milk with Old Tom gin
And he played all day around the street of sin
So come along, Padido Street
Where the hot licks tickle dancing feet
That shuffle in patent leather shoes
Where Jimmy Blue-Eyes blew the blues
In Storyville, where jazz was born
Is the legend of the golden horn
And a hot-lipped kid with blue eyes and fair
Who hit that note that wasn’t there
...Created 2006-08-22 18:25:17 |
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