I wish I spoke jazz

Today the urge came to me to listen to some jazz pieces I haven't heard for years. The other day I found myself listening over and over to Coltrane and Johnny Hartman's Lush Life, a classic to be sure, you would be hard pressed to find a better voice than Hartman.

I went looking for my old Art Blakey tapes, yeah I said tapes. He and the Jazz Messengers do a instrumental version of "Polkadots and Moonbeams" that is simply beautiful and from the first time I heard I fell in love. I listen to a fairly diverse range of music, but nothing comes close to jazz. Instead of just making me tap my toes, it stirs my soul, speaking in such a beautiful and rich language.

Case in point, I'm not one terribly skilled talking to another person. Yes I can joke around and make someone perhaps crack a smile, but I rarely open up to others on what is going on inside me...maybe I don't want to scare them away or I fear they just won't care, either way it would surely get lost in the awkwardness of my presentation, so I've learned to keep it in.

The beauty of jazz to me is the fact that I could spend hour upon hours trying to communicate the different stories of my life, good and bad, or I could play Count Basie's "lil Darlin'" as performed by the Ray Brown Trio and those stories would unfold just like it they do each time to me. Jazz KNOWS me and that is perhaps why I love it so.

Now excuse me while I spend some time with "lil Darlin'"