BE-BOP DOPE SOUL
"Yo, it’s a swingin’ machine, Man, popin' through the city like a late-night pulse/Soul groove in the gears, a brass-tuned Tower of Power horn section that never clocks out/
Word from Bird slides through the air, quick as a sparrow in the valley of smoky jazz clubs/
Coltrane follows with a long, silver breath, reed-wide open as the horizon sets up the day/
The street becomes a jazz club man, don't ya know/ Soul Shack, sugar shack watch your back jack/
a doorway of rock soul 45s stacked high, where the past nods to the future to be sure/
Break it down, count down, the rhythm rebuilds itself in bricks to the soul jazz tempo/
Nu Jazz banners wave, NEW YORK Monday traffic slows to listen, and the gypsy cab, Latin tinge kool sound to refresh the hot summer day/ each car on their horns like a big band sound section/
Lou Rawls drifts in on a velvet breeze, baritone city slick, smooth in the morning/ His "Lady Love" waits for his embrace/
Philly Joe Jones keeps the clock honest as he jams in hi-fi/ sticks snapping a cadence snare to bass drum that won’t quit/
Settin’ the soul jazz pace, jazz hipsters walk the line between memory and invention, jazz players go toe to toe with the possibility of coming up with the new jazz thing/
Work it out, Mel Torme's "Comin' Home Baby" is out there, some were, every note a workout to dig up a new way to say the same thing/
over and over every chord change every beat every solo every Tenor conclave man, all night long/
Red Garland Quintet threads the Something Else needle on collective Improvisation with swingin' abstract jazz with pocketfuls of tempo logic/
Rellin’ with the Fellin’ in, Man, It's Sonny Rollins he folds space like a drum-major bending time, the horn colossus in his prime/
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