Ahh…Just a Moment with my Joe…

I was prompted to sit and enjoy the Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues documentary (read about it here and here) this past weekend (which I did) after reading Ted Gioia’s November 11 entry to The Honest Broker. He laments the neglect of historical structures in New Orleans, LA – where Armstrong was born - that at one time were the flats of and performance spaces for the early practitioners of Jazz. No surprise to me at the insouciant attitude.  Look, if Jazz could jump up on a Formica tabletop and draw a crowd, there’d be some changes made in the city’s outlook on preservation. Now, about the doc…for me, the most affecting moment was listening to actor and activist Ozzie Davis reconcile his distaste for the trumpeter’s muggin’ and eye-buggin’ with the empathy he felt during an unscripted moment in Armstrong’s presence. A powerful confession. It’s an insightful doc, narrated from male perspectives, that readdresses Armstrong’s misconstrued public persona. It was a Teflon shield that hid his inner struggles of being Black and blue.

I also revisited Fritz the Cat that turned fifty this month. Clutch your pearls and judge me if you must, but the authenticity of the voice actors (filmmaker Ralph Bakshi’s reasoning for hiring African-Americans was both practical and progressive - and gave some brothers and sisters some work) and the film’s finger to societal norms and niceties grounded me to it. Though not a great film, it does arrest your attention for eighty minutes. And who can ever listen to Charles Earland’s “Black Talk” and Billie Holiday’s “Yesterdays” again without a blushed twinge of cringe?

Now, with forty-eight days left in 2022, what am I supposed to do? Should I brace for the next world cataclysm? Pretend like I care about something? (I do and it’s my next meal.) I think it’ll be something wonderfully musical, enough to excite the body to gyrate. Ah – the new release from Jazz Is Dead with keyboardist and “renegade” Garrett Sarracho should work (anything from Jazz Is Dead will work.) Its coloring will be billiard green, and it will smell of sage and musk.  

Geez, I wish I could be more specific, but that’s it for now…