The Recording of “Bleeker Street”

Listening to the recording

of a jazz group:

guitar, drums, bass,

trumpet, piano, and tenor sax:

Houston Person on tenor,

his session for an album called

Moment to Moment.

The tune is Bleeker Street.

So why do these old players

keep playing:

because once in a while

the muse attacks

dropping a bit of magic

on a recording or a line or melody

that makes the musician wonder

where it came from.

He'll think,

“Not me,

but I've just been blessed

with the touch of eternity."

How many times does it happen

on a musicians riff,

a painter's canvas,

a line of poetry,

for someone really great?

For pros, it happens more often

than you think.

Most listeners

won't hear it,

won't see it,

won't read it.

The artist keeps moving

from note to note,

session to session,

club to club,

in the hopes of finding

that feeling.

Oh, they'll repeat their finery

they know is perfect.

It's how they make

the loaf of bread

everybody needs to butter.

For the common artist

it might not happen so often,

but when it does

they might not make their crust,

but all that practice of bad notes,

writing of senseless phrases,

painting that seems like the sides of a building,

yeah, all of that

will shrug off like so much dust

that suddenly turns to silver flakes

mixed with gold,

and a few diamonds

for good measure.

Nope, it doesn't happen often,

but that's how

Person looks in his pictures,

with common notes whitening his temples

and gray phrases pushing out his mustache;

trying once again to find

that quavering shower of electrostatic staffs

notated with holy water.

Houston Person

is the cleanest tenor sax player

on the radio this night,

and I've just been washed

after his notes went

down the drain

on top of me...

oh Lordy, my soul is rinsed.

Barry G. Wick