Robert Gibbons: Moanin’
***
When Django Reinhardt came on
in out of the Blue, I misread it
as Improvisation #1, but then
settled on Body & Soul,
forgiving myself
in the process,
especially
when
the image
of having seen
Stéphane Grappelli
at Sandy’s in Beverly
on Cabot, which street
I crossed all by my lonesome
on the way to 1st & 2d grades at
the Abraham Edwards elementary
school, a dungeon if there ever was
one there in the bottom of the bottom
floor in 1951 & 1952 to be specific &
resentful at the same time, but I was urged
on past Sandy’s standing there to the 5-6-year
old, as if it didn’t exist at all, by a nickel box of
pretzels at the corner store, until much later taking
Marilyn Crispell there to hear Illinois Jacquet openly
accuse Sandy of burning down Lennies on the Turnpike,
that kind of sleazy entrepreneurial musical control in cahoots
with the State against highs acquired illicitly by Bird & Mingus
& many others hounded out of their ghords, freedom, & cabaret cards, for what?
No, at 5 & 6, I didn’t know.
So,
haphazardly
Mingus comes on
in out of the Blue on
Moanin’ with obscure baritone
sax by Pepper Adams, & no loss
at all of any kind of Freedom, band
as gang, John Handy on alto for crying
out loud, the great Mal Waldron, who played
piano for Billie in O’Hara’s recollection of seeing
her Death as Headline in the papers, although I remember
the so-called insanity of Mingus & Monk, their unique, artistic
individuation thwarted by the Powers-That-Be along with the likes
of aforesaid Holiday, or Chet Baker, & Jackie McLean, here on Moanin’
on alto, not to mention Lenny Bruce, who also sang in his own way, all busted.
Moanin’ by Mingus comes on in
out of the Blue, & yet once more makes
one think of Kerouac downthere in Denver,
Lowell, San Francisco, Mexico City, at the edge
of Utah, hearing God say, Go thou across the ground;
go moan for man; go moan, go groan, go groan alone go
roll your bones, alone; gothou and be little beneath my sight;
go thou, and be minute and as seed in the pod…
