The Darkness, the Song and Me

We've been working our way through the book of Langston for about 3 months, now.  And as always, there's so much things to say that for now we'll only one or two:  Like Pops, Langston runs past our expectations, no matter how high they are, no matter how low they are.  He doesn't get penned up neatly in a book.  As he moved from from one project to another (like the troubador), he defied those who's expectations would have him a poet, or a novelist, or a communist, or a gospel songwriter.  We are compelled to say that he is none of these jobs -- lines of work -- because he is all of them.  So high you can't see over it; so low you can't get under it.

W/ this job defying tendency in mind, we have been looking up the word music in the book of Langston.  Yes, yes.  We find Langston, blues poet, Langston, poet of song, Langston, poet teacher encouraging his spanish language colleagues to do the same; Langston, pop songwriter, Langston, maker of musical theatre, Langston, maker of historical operas, Langston, jazz performer, Langston,  jazz historian, Langston, groove theorist.  His trick is to be all of this.

How does Langston play this trick?  We don't know.  That's why it's a trick, we figure.  The devils are in the details.  Not a little bit here and a little bit there, but in the details everywhere.  This morning we're'a call up a spell to Papa Guéudé and ask him to help straighten out what we know about Langston, 'cause he's the one we ask about the ancestors when we need to keep them straightened out.  We want his guidance when we're trynta leave true memories behind.

R& gives us the prompt.  He tells us that Langston worked the Village Vanguard w/ Charles Mingus/Phineas Newborn, and later Ben Webster, and later w/ Randy Weston @ the Village Gate.  He catches the ups and downs of Langston's views from an interview w/ the Toronto Star.  "Jazz gives poetry a much wider following and poetry brings to jazz that greater respectability people seem to think it needs.  I don't think jazz needs it, but most people seem to."  We want a piece of this action.  There's ideas running in every direction, and we need help so we don't overstand this.

So this morning, we offer up The Weary Blues and Other Poems Read by Langston Hughes.  Really, it's two sets in one, both produced by Leonard Feather.  The first is w/ dixieland elder Red Allen (tp) and veteran sessionmen Vic Dickenson (tb), Sam Taylor, Al Williams, Milt Hinton (b) and Osie Johnson (d).  It's easy for the afficianado to write off this session as Langston and the moldy figs, but we're long over that distinction, and we find a number of the performances, especially "Testament," to be full of Langston's bigsoul.  We have no date on this session , except we infer from the date in the Mingus discography that this one takes place in the same year.  The second, recorded March 18, 1958, includes Charles Mingus (b), Shafi Hadi (ts), Jimmy Knepper (tb), Horace Parlan (p, who gets leader credit on the album jacket), and Kenny Dennis (d).  We cannot live on tomorrow forever.  We need to take up the past and make a new present understanding.  Take it on the download and listen hard.  You may remember your ancestors straight.

• "Hey (Night)/Too Blue," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)
• "Note on Commercial Theater," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)
• "The Weary Blues," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)
• "Blues at Dawn," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)
• "Six Bit Blues," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)
• "Morning After," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)
• "Could Be/Bad Luck Card," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)
• "Life is Fine," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)
• "Hey Hey," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)
• "Testament," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)

• "Consider Me," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)
• "Warning: Augmented," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)
• "Motto/Dead in There," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)
• "Final Curve," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)
• "Boogie: 1 AM," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)
• "Bed Time," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)
• "Day Break," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)
• "Tell Me," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)
• "Good Morning/Harlem," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)
• "Same in Blues/Comment on Curb," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)
• "Democracy/Island," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)

All this makes us wish for more recordings.  Those Mingus nights, those Webster nights, they must've been, as the kids say, dope.  There must be tapes boxed up at Yale or Schomburg or the LoC.  You won't be finding them be in the old or the new Smithsonian collections, and they won't be in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, or even the three volume version.  The details.  This is what we hear when we listen to Allen Lowe asking us to listen to That Devilin' Tune.  And that's certainly what we wanna hear.

So we ask The Baron to help us find the devils.  They'll get our ancestors straight.  The Devils?  Could be.  Must be.