for wayne shorter (13)

for wayne shorter

(1933 -- )

perhaps the music’s greatest living
composer, yr organic conceptions
of fissioning melody, harmony,
& rhythm took the state of play in a
fresh direction. one of the few young
composers who could take a piece
to miles & get it back unchanged;
get the band to play it like u wrote
it, conforming precisely to its often
bopish, sometimes modal structure,
swiveling where it said to swivel,
snaking where it said to snake,
crossing over the tonic center from
the consonant right or weaving back

over the new middle from the
dissonant left in densely dreaded
unison plaits that changed the sound
of jazz, that changed fluidly, like yr
own rollins-like tenor style, with its
ripping, runaway trane asymmetries
to the coruscating color of yr rhythmic,
interval leaping soprano solo voice
chanting its own mystical name &
transfiguring signature, its new motifs
& alternate insights assigned to
randomness, new denouements &
meticulous untyings of personal meaning –
rushing in where boppers fear to tread!

© Joseph McNair; 2010

for hubert laws (12)

for hubert laws
(1939 -- )

from the start, when it was the instrument of the wood-god pan,
the flute has been associated with pure (some might say impure)
energy. its sound releases something naturally untamed..."
--seamus heaney

the iconic miss mary’s place,
a hoary houston honky tonk
prominently placed because
it pinpoints a precise location
for yr musical roots, soul sourced
in an urban manifestation &
a perceptible revelation of the
jook, ribald cake & whiskey
cousin to the beans & bacon
blues with a stepped up tempo
that sulky soaked the late night
& early morning air across the
street from yr house, combined
with yr mama’s gospel piano
& yr daddy’s harmonica riffs,
the basis of yr own funky, secular
testimony, the crucible where
rhythm & blues, classical julliard,
& the spiritual, weighed & mixed
in proper amounts, given time to
season, fluxed down, solve et
coagula, & transmuted into the
sweetest, purest melodic &
multicolored jazz flute tone
ever proffered, ever played.

© Joseph McNair; 2010

for bennie carter (11)

for bennie carter
(1907 -2003)

the only musician to have recorded in eight
different decades, yr life, a symphony in riffs
pouring out of yr trumpet, out of yr alto, out
yr head & captured on vinyl, on tape, on compact
disc living & playing thru’ yr legend making,
writing it in the tales yr music told. yr rites of
passage & the sheparding process where those at a
higher level of understanding guided u to
& thru’ a greater exposure to the music. rex
stewart, sidney bechet, fatha hines, fats waller,
willie the lion smith, james p. johnson & the duke
transferred their powers to u, caused a change in yr
existential condition; freed u from profane time.

freed u to recapitulate the history of
the music that thru this recapitulation u
might sanctify the music anew, reveal its deep
meanings to the new generations, help them own &
assume the responsibility of mystical
vocation. u took time to befriend & mentor miles
when he had no friends; to mentor q when like u, he
wanted to write scores for film, to be there for j.j.
johnson, art pepper & max roach as they each increased
in stature & in favor. & u also took time
to teach yr alto to sing. yr signature sound was
smooth as silk, flowing like a lazy river that might
race like a rapid or be still like a honeyed pool.

© Joseph McNair; 2010

for ben webster (10)

for ben webster
(1909 – 1973)

and i heard charlie parker for the first time & that
was quite a thrill. this guy scared me to death!
ben webster

what johnnie hodges was to the alto, u were in
spades to the tenor & when froggie went a’courting,
uh hunh, yr warm, breathy, sensual tone slickly slipped
like a tongue up under a stray hemline to caress
a fleshy thigh, make it surely shake with tremulous
waves of hurt-so-good need or turn brutish on a stomp,
ferally fecund, growling, rasping, rooted in the
blues. u were one of yr era’s three tenors, before
the sunrise of bebop, when the hawk & prez prowled the
bandstands seeking whom they might cut up. but when they tried
to cut u, they had to bring their lunch & dinner too.
u enjoyed a reign as king of the tenors, that is,
until bird came – then nothing else was ever the same.

© Joseph McNair;2010

for sidney bechet (9)

for sidney bechet

(1897 -1959)

it is the world of your own soul that

you seek. only within yourself

exists that other reality

for which you long.

herman hesse

a double kwansaba

"le dieu," a sound force given into our
keeping, casting off tonic light from yr
spirit heat. yr sugary sweet improvs like
a savory beignet reek crawdad & shrimp;
yr vibrato at once wide in affect
cajoles octave joy, searing sorrow, fear &
creole from yr sax, yr mage’s wand.

twas a world of yr own sound
that u sought, that u dared to
draw us into, with its halls of
mirrors & endless doors, that magic odeum
within for which u did surely long;
that made u wolfly stalk jazz’s outer
steppes, its first great soprano soloist!

©Joseph McNair;2010

for mccoy tyner (8)

for mccoy tyner
(1938 -- )

u were twenty-two when u joined the john coltrane quartet,
but clearly the real mccoy. trane knew this, kept u five years
close, at the core of this most seminal of jazz experiments.
from where did that transcendent piano style come? from
what holy place within? & where did u learn that unique
two-handed harmonic attack & rhythmic charge – yr block
chording low bass left hand stacking fourths & yr staccato
right hand flying thru pentatonic scales, modal structures,
inverted triads & multi-fingered runs – new voicings &
vocabulary for virtuoso jazz piano & growing each time u
played. u shadowed trane thru’ his scales, chordal structures,
melodic phrasings & rhythms, playing mantrically, intuiting
the sacred audible tones to help elevate each consciousness-
raising performance, drawing garrison & jones to u,
transcending & integrating all that had been played before,
fastened securely to his coattails, to his ascension. he took
u to the pinnacle of god consciousness, let u glimpse the
final & highest abode of ishwara, the ultimate revelation of
the self in perfect radiance & release. he would have taken
u further, into formless consciousness & boundless radiance.
but u did not like the free; were not yet ready for the street
of pefume sellers, &like the vagrant who was overcome by
the heady aromas on that street, who could only be revived
by a fecal sal volatile from the street’s gutters, u said all u
heard was noise; that u had no feeling for the new music.
turned away, turned back to yr unabsorbed present, to yr
raw blues & passionate pentatonic; turned back to comfortable
virtuosity, but haunted by an audible image of a seed syllable
where all sound, all music dissolves into perfect radiance &
release & a memory of not a means to an end but the means
& the end.

© Joseph McNair; 2010

for armando “chick” corea (7)

for armando “chick” corea

(1941 --

a villenelle

angular melodies, latin-swing rhythms, extended, structured compositions,
hard bop proclivities & avante garde dispositions roiled in yr musician soul,
transient, finite, existing in time, negating the negation, defying definitions.

classical music was a just way to learn to play, but jazz allowed u the juxtapositions
u sought of tempo, virtuosity & improvisation, a way to fuse competing feels in
angular melodies, latin-swing rhythms, extended, structured compositions.

cathartic best describes the change that leads to turning points. contradictions
spiral, effervescent progressive rock stirs up the mix, makes the music helical,
transient, finite, existing in time, negating the negation, defying definitions.

u give yr passion wings. yr spanish heart pilots yr sonorous explorations
sometimes charted, sometimes floated; whatever the heart feels, pours into yr
angular melodies, latin-swing rhythms, extended, structured compositions.

redemption at the keyboards. blurring the line between yr many dispositions,
& freeform outbursts, fusion & rock; a synthesis is realized, a new u steps forth
transient, finite, existing in time, negating the negation, defying definitions.

yr voracious musical appetites compelled u to blithe quixotic explorations
of a wider musical world, while evolving a distinctive & venerable voice within
angular melodies, latin-swing rhythms, extended, structured compositions;
transient, finite, existing in time, negating the negation, defying definitions.

© Joseph McNair

julian “cannonball” adderley (6)

for julian “cannonball” adderley

(1928 –1975)

yr chromatic & continuous lines, a cutting
tone & voracious spirit devouring the changes,
like a cannibal [not cannonball] with a fertile
fang in the new hardbop thang got u thru the fifties,
established yr street creds. u couldn’t be the new bird, the
naturally occurring vacuum in those big shoes
nearly sucked the life out of bebop & would not be
filled. but u were u, good enough to replace rollins,
play on the same bandstand with trane, make miles salute yr
talent. but u could not be contained for long in a
group not yr own. so u grabbed yr brother, nat, called on
the great ones who knew u, had played with u, to help u
lay down yr ha' mercy blues-based, soul jazz legacy.

© Joseph McNair;2010

for freddie hubbard (5)

for freddie hubbard

(1938 -2008)

one foot in tonal jazz, the other in atonal,
a pendulum swing between interest & tension,
stable/passive & unstable/active, u were a
dialectician of sonorous euphony, the
most brilliant horn of a generation of cats who
swung from side to side, to & fro with gravity &
acquired momentum but would not fly off into the
deepest currents of free jazz. had a big beautiful
tone; a canny sense of rhythm & time; a fiery,
exuberant style that pushed u to hit notes higher
& faster than anyone else around or blow up
tense & tumescent to release the contents of yr
very soul in a soft melodic adumbration.

©Joseph McNair; 2010

for quincy Jones (4)

for quincy jones

(1933 --

any writing or telling of the history of
black music without u in it is like the english
alphabet without the letter q, the dominant
missing from the diatonic scale, a volume of
space that is essentially empty! quincy delight,
my, my, my, my! what would have happened if u hadn’t
quit school & gone on the road with hamp? u started yr
career arranging songs for the likes of sarah, duke
dinah & ray, playing with the best known names in jazz.
& for more than sixty years u have burned yr imprint –
records, television, film; seventy-nine grammy
award nominations & twenty-seven grammys,
thirty-three major motion picture scores, an emmy,

seven oscar nominations, hundreds of millions
of records sold to name just a few of yr awards
& accolades – on the consciousness of the nation.
u have ushered american music from the post-
swing era thru’ today’s high-tech, international
multi-media hybridism. u have just like
ellison added yr ten drops of black to the mix,
making the discolored stuff like that the “purest white”
when shaken, like obàtálá’s cloth, & like the arch
divinity, u have molded the unique talents
of an eclectic group of singers & musicians
in yr image & likeness, that pays tribute to u,
the musician, composer, arranger, producer.

© Joseph McNair; 2010

for bud powell (3)

for earl rudolph "bud" powell
(1924 –1966)

standing shoulder to shoulder with monk, u were
one of the twin towers of bop piano.
yr huge comping left hand let the odd bass note
outline the root & fifth, stretch to get the tenth,
& easily include the minor 7th.
yr homophonic right hand -- a storied blur
of dazzling arpeggios often spiced with
elaborations of or substitutions
for those bland white note scale tones -- turning chords out!
u had mad skills, bud. u walked in, the music
got into something, the jump started jointing!

© Joseph McNair; 2010

for max roach (2)

for max roach
(1924 -- 2007)

a double kwansaba

from the great dismal swamp u came
to put fear & awe in the
drummer; to do more than just keep
time. to make magic, play the pulse
of the standard 4 on the ride
& free up the three other limbs
to make real change; to make music.

one of the last bebop giants, u
lived long, long enough to tell yr
whole story -- in solos, mixing up pitches,
timbres, using deft silence or blazing speed--
by making yr drums talk, sing yr
passion song of freedom, human rights, &
change until the very day u died.

© Joseph McNair

for charles “doc” austin (1)

for charles “doc” austin

(1930 --

what turned u around, doc? thirteen is much too young to
die. what about-faced u? snatched u from that blissful peace,
from free floating out of yr body, looking down on
it from above & peristaltically moving
thru’ that surreal tunnel heading inevitably
to the brightest of lights? perhaps it was the music.
those buzzing, ringing near death tonalities that
were surely soundsign auguries pronouncing yr life
course meet & yr destiny in accord with divine
sanction. yr uncle’s second sight informed him, but his
physician’s skill convinced him, & he told yr loved ones
u had turned around, had broken death’s tenacious grip.
resolute, for better or worse, u were coming back.

although the magic city birthed u, fey destiny,
masquerading as the low down dirty blues drove u
from miami, dropped u in memphis in the loving
care of a fairy tale uncle who clothed u, fed u,
kept a roof over yr head, nursed u back from the edge
of pneumonitic death, bought u yr first saxophone,
a shiny soprano to help you strengthen yr lungs.
u poured into that conical tube of thin nickel
plated metal all the rage rending anguish of a
father’s abandonment, all the profound sorrow of
having to leave one’s mother, all the existential
terror of wrestling with death that a thirteen year old
could hold, contain; & u learned to really play that horn!

played so well that u picked up five dollar gigs on beale
street with b.b. king, in the house band at the mitchell
hotel. played the summer “carni” circuit when school let
out, flexing yr big fifteen year old chops from the big
easy to atlanta & points north – coming of age,
meeting diz who nudged u thru’ liminality to
rites of entry – & u won a talent show at the
handy theater & a music scholarship to
philander smith college; transferred to tennessee state
just to attend the school that topped the best jazz band polls.
played at clubs in nashville, for the great glee clubs
at t.s.u. & fisk, learned theory from quentin banks
who taught u how to write & play music differently.

left college for the navy, joined a vice admiral’s
flagship jazz band, even played the ed sullivan show.
did some woodshedding, studied theory with dave brubeck’s
brother. kept up with what diz was doing & listening
to & returned to tennessee state to finish yr
degrees. came home to miami-dade, reunited
with yr mother. married, had children, taught school during
the day, starred in the jazz band at the hampton house at
night, where mlk & malcolm x stayed when in the
magic city, where everyone who was anyone in jazz came
to play. u were the first black jazz man to integrate
miami beach, the eden roc & the fountainbleau
hotels – a living miami legend in yr time.

dizzy told u that when he first heard the music of
the pygmies, with their dense contrapuntal communal
improvisations & complex polyphony, he
thought he was hearing music that he had written. for
u, it was the mystical & distinctive sound of
the japanese five toned scales, the tonal images
that reconstructed stravinski’s fleeting vision of
a pagan ritual where a young girl danced herself
to death, those asymmetrical rhythms, percussive
dissonance, polyrhythms, polytonality;
the layering of persistently repeating themes
& melodic fragments that reeked of west africa;
that sent u creatively spinning, zoning, fuguing!

seek & ye shall find & u found all of those sounds &
blends & complements in the moog synthesizer. when
wendy carlos was switching on bach, u switched on
joe galivan & the two of u realized a
mutualistic symbiosis between woodwind, reed
& moog. galivan’s digital rhythm section freed
up yr restless saxophones, yr flutes, yr english horn
& oboe; freed u up to go where too few save trane,
pharoah, shepp & ayler dared to go. u gave him real
percussive freedom – to play melodies, chordal bass
lines, let him erase the boundaries of rhythm &
beat – freed him from just keeping time! the music took the
two of you to europe – communist romania.

under nixon’s cold war policy u won a state
department grant & were selected to play at the
opening of the new american library
in august ’69 in a pre-war mansion near
the heart of bucharest. booked with no less than the great
american composer, george crumb, & the winners
of the tchaikovsky piano competition. u
& galivan fired those romanians up with yr
music, had them screaming for more! a foreshadowing
of the university college london’s yearly
saxophone festival in the early seventies
where u were the only american saxophone
player invited back for ten consecutive years!

u have had a fully elaborated life, doc,
& at every stage a peak experience. u have
known & played with some of the great musicians of our
time, have won acclaim as a player, conductor &
creator. u have followed yr muse, explored the edgy, outer
limits of yr creativity, but found the time to
provide for & raise yr own children, eschewing the
lucrative & salacious enticements of the road.
u always came home, spared them the angst of abandonment
that u knew all too well & they grew to make u proud.
& those other children, the very ones u taught, trained
& mentored? that u touched their lives with music is worth
more than any honor or award bestowed on u.

© Joseph McNair;2010

for herbie hancock (30)

for herbie hancock

(1940 --

there is nothing that music cannot undertake to do,

or dare, or portray, provided it continues

to charm & always remain music…

mozart

a remarkable creator, the step beyond bud
or monk – incredible synthesis of disparate
styles. a metamorphic with an uncanny knack for
soaking up life but remaining original like
ravel – who infused jazz into his concertos &
embraced the gypsy’s rhapsodic joy, trepidation,
& awe in his symphonic poems – u, herbie, a
miles davis wunderkin, brought glittering passages,
chordal melodies & enriched unisons to the
blues, webs of figurations to hard, edgy bop,
playing it funky, playing it electric but more
than that, feathering a cozy nest for unroosted
rock, rap & electronica to find their way home.

u have transcended limits & genre; absorbed deep
structures, the defining forms of classical, bebop
rock & soul; followed a brilliant path of transformation
upwards, shifting yr identity into even
higher order structures, enabling yr consciousness
to operate on, integrate the former in the
unimaginable spaces of yr genius – where
u have amamnestically come to know a deep,
fundamental frequency, an intonation, the
wombsound that birthed all music that u pray/praise when u
play, much like the laws of life u pray/praise when u chant
the sacred syllables nam-myōhō-renge-kyō,
the lotus sutra & symbol of yr transcendence.

©Joseph McNair;2010

for fela anikulapo kuti (29)

for fela anikulapo kuti

(1938 –1997)

in four kwansabas

he played an under ground spirit game,
he who carried death in his pouch.
his music was the massage, his medium
of social change. but dem sojas come-o,
dey go beat am. make him mad!
who no know go know am today-o
ah-ah! wait-o, make i commot my dress!

olufela, god’s glory, no be shakara oloje
his songs, bullets & he go say:
zombi no go go unless u tell
am to go. but him mama dey
go quench; throw her out the window!
throw her down for ground, na wah-o!
dis african man no dey carry shit.

him fight am back with afro beat
him send his mama’s coffin for head
of state! he dey waka, waka, waka;
he go many places, sef. for his
mama, he dey cry, for his people,
he dey cry, with tenor sax & shekere
endless grooves & yabis, he dey cry!

baba is dead-o! ibà á şẹ baba!
ma a gbo bi awon baba wa
se nwi; listen to our fathers’ voices
in the fatidic sounds of afro beat
in its bodings & its auspice, in
its bitter truth; in the memory of
he who carried death in his pouch!

© Joseph McNair

for cecil taylor (28)

for cecil taylor
(1929 --

roiling clusters of ringing chords
& a sharply percussive attack rewards
yr ever faithful band of devotees.
with an intense, galvanic tease
of freedom, a spirit reach towards

moksha, past the thrall of keyboards,
chord changes & tempo; affords
an ephemeral grasp of totality
at vision’s embrace.

uncompromising creator, yr poetic words
reinvent the free when the last accords
of yr tone poems play, decay, release
the dance & plaintive echoes cease
at vision’s embrace.


© Joseph McNair; 2010

for william "count" basie (27)

for william “count” basie
(1904 --1984)

said u hit it with the rhythm & slid
into the riffs, & the riffs just stuck!
that signature tune aptly represents
yr essential big band sound, that
sound-as- spirit merging tone & time,
a procreative when in the early hours
of the a.m. where stuff just comes
together -- at one o’clock – in those
alchemical moments when worldly
dross is burned away & the mettles
of musicians flux. when their
aptitudes for making accidental,
but fortuitous solo runs & hip flurries
are discovered & profound
statements owned in the moment,
or when sections blend, become
organically one, more than who or
what they are & swing, even jump,
in rhythms that don’t have to be
taught, that take the muscles over
in the ambience of easy u created;
in yr cultivated poise & self-assurance,
in those contrapuntal accents where
u never wasted a note, in that space,
a staging ground for talent, where the
great ones gathered, ethel waters,
lady day, sassy sarah, ella, helen humes,
jimmy rushing, joe williams, prez, ben
webster, bird, diz, miles & countless
others. where none were stepped on,
where each might find what they liked
& needed – an easy swing, just like
cutting butter!




© Joseph McNair;2010

for willie the lion smith (26)

for william henry joseph bonaparte bertholoff smith
aka willie the lion
(1893 -1973)

a derby wearing, cigar puffing legend in his
time, a peerless tickler’s tickler & myth come alive.
on any given night, he might be king of the rent
party, a spellbinding showman in segregated
atlantic city clubs or mentoring savant to
ellington, biederbecke, the dorseys & artie shaw.
a musician’s musician, composer of over
one hundred songs, at his very best favorably
compared to gershwin & the duke himself. his left hand,
the envy of every pianist in jazz. he was
there for all who sought him out -- & gave freely of his
prodigy -- but to the duke, his protégé, bestowed
his special graces, that touch of immortality.

© Joseph McNair;2010

for thomas wright "fats" waller (25)

for thomas wright “fats” waller

(1904 –1943)

only you

can make this world seem right…

the platters

only u, fats, could frustrate yr reverend father’s
holy plans. only u could make him laugh, were surely
his expectation come to nothing; his lovable
incongruity. but divine humor is much less
mysterious than divine movement & yr frames of
reference were engineered to collide, yr shifts in
perspective duly twisted by a laughing god
who loved to hear the music u made. its incessant
shifts from seriousness to play, embodied in yr
syncopated right hand melodies uncannily
paired to a misbehavin’ stride left hand made ole al
“scarface” capone kidnap u at gunpoint & compel
u to play three days for his birthday – only u, fats!

©Joseph McNair; 2010

for james p. Johnson (24)

for james p. johnson

(1894 --1955)

a kwansaba

how do u james p. johnson? well,
u play a four-beat pulse with a
single bass note, an octave, 7th or
a 10th on the first & 3rd
beats, a chord on the 2nd &
4th beats, then let yr left hand
swing, yr right hand blur – that’s stride!

© Joseph mcNair; 2010