36 Jazz at 77

Reading:

Jazz at 77
In memory N. G.

‘E flat; medium pace.
But keep it swinging. Not too fast!
I’ll set the beat. One, two, three, four!’ 
A right foot stomps on a front room floor.
Thimbled fingers thrash a washboard, keeping time.
A schoolboy kicks off with a left hand thumping 
His best imitation of Fats Waller’s stride
Joe Sullivan’s barrelhouse on top.
Hard to get the joint jumping!
N’s clarinet then comes apart.
Sticks it together with Elastoplast. 
Blackboard squeak then nanny-goat bleat
Before he gets the reed fixed right.
And now we’ve lost the melody. 
Music stutters to a stop. 
OK. 
Once more then.
This time fingers click the tempo:
One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! 
Feet beat the rhythm on Battersea lino, 
Four thousand miles from dreamed-of Chicago,
Of Eddie Condon and some of the boys…
‘Rosetta, my Rosetta, 
There’s no one in the whole world but you.’
Left hand solid, he takes first solo.
‘You’re going great. But keep it tight!’
A mother turns the corner of a street,
Starts back as she hears the noise.
‘Is that row coming from my place?
What’ll the Next Doors say? I nearly died!’
True we were loud that day and, going full belt,
We didn’t give a hoot what the neighbours felt!
It would be years before I got truly nifty
With the changes on those Dixieland tunes.
But what fun we had on gloomy afternoons
In the post-war London of nineteen-fifty!