Satchmo

King Oliver of New Orleans has kicked the bucket, but he left behind old Satchmo with his red-hot horn to syncopate the heart and mind. The honky-tonks in Storyville have turned to ashes, have turned to dust, but old Satchmo is still around like Uncle Sam’s IN GOD WE TRUST. Where, oh, where is Bessie Smith, with her heart as big as the blues of truth? Where, oh, where is Mister Jelly Roll, with his Cadillac and diamond tooth? Where, oh, where is Papa Handy With his blue notes a-dragging from bar to bar? Where, oh where is bulletproof Leadbelly with his tall tales and 12-string guitar? Old Hip Cats, when you sang and played the blues the night Satchmo was born, did you know hypodermic needles in Rome couldn’t hoodoo him away from his horn? Wyatt Earp’s legend, John Henry’s, too, is a dare and a bet to old Satchmo when his groovy blues put headlines in the news from the Gold Coast to cold Moscow. Old Satchmo’s gravelly voice and tapping foot and crazy notes set my soul on fire. If I climbed the seventy-seven steps of the Seventh Heaven, Satchmo’s high C would carry me higher! Are you hip to this, Harlem? Are you hip? On Judgment Day, Gabriel will say after he blows his horn: “I’d be the greatest trumpeter in the Universe if old Satchmo had never been born!”