In old New Orleans
Musical lumberjacks
Legitimizing their axes;
Just piano, clarinet,
Bass and the drums.
Bringing jazz back
And then some.
The cat could play
That skinny long black horn,
Hotter clarinet than
Anybody ever born,
He kept hitting notes
So pure and high
We felt each note
In our eyes!
And, if you chance by
Remember this,
They don’t allow dancing.
But when the drummer
Makes works those skins
And makes them talk out
There is plenty of toe-tapping
And nobody ever walks out.
Then, when the guy
Plays that bass fiddle
He adds an underscore
To top bottom and middle.
It’s an underbeat of grace
That will fill the rest space
And the hearts of all
In this overcrowded place.
Vintage jazz roars out
Of an old, old piano
Played by a happy madman
With fingers afire, he knows
He’s got them hooked;
He’s making them wild
As he wails on those keys
He looks out and smiles
And he puts the Satchmo touch
On those old-timey songs
And once in a while
They ask us to sing along.
For the past forty-six years
Those ugly plastered walls
Have never hear so many
Gratefully rendered curtain calls
From an audience of clerks and swells.
On Bourbon Street’s Fritzel’s.
Through hurricanes and beers
Like stepping back a hundred years.
Fats is still playing, Bessie singing
Original jazz music is still swinging.
