Ode to Buddy Bolden

Play on! Buddy Bolden
with your sweet cornet
and the big fourth note
(ba-dum, bum, clack, Bee-AT!)

If only America had the chance
to hear you play again
or -- at least one more time.

Unrecorded and lost in time
they say you were the cool cat
who first played Jazz.

Playing in many halls in the very
early part of the Twentieth Century
You could play it ALL
and you could play it HOT!!!

Playing in the counter-culture Red-Light District.
In Storyville, New Orleans
the children head you eternally practicing
and quickly called you King.

If only we could hear you once more
we thought -- as you walked away from that
one parade -- and found yourself within
the pristine padded walls of the institution
we know as the mentally insane.

And America wept as we slowly
found out we would never hear your soulful sound
again -- in the Kasbah of North America -- or anywhere.
All that is left is one blurry picture
and a legend to last a lifetime.

And Resonating through your legend
are powerful heavy notes --
played loudly and unpolitely;
the new music of the soul.
It is simply what you did --
..and it was beautiful.