IN HONOR OF THE LATE GREAT JAZZMAN RED MITCHELL'S BIRTHDAY (AND WITH A NOD TO THE LATE GREAT JAZZMAN LEX HUMPRIES)

[from my book THE VILLAGE SONNETS about the years 1959-62 when I was a teenager trying to make it in Greenwich Village as a jazz musician from Jersey]

9

I crashed a Village party with street bros where

Red Mitchell was playing with a small combo.

When they took a break I stood his bass up and

played the melody to MOANIN’. Red made it

clear he didn’t dig strangers playing his ax. I

laid it down but drunkenly tripped, putting a

tiny crack in it with my pointy-toed boot and

was thrown out. For a long time hip Villagers

knew me as the little J.D. who kicked a hole in

Red Mitchell’s bass. At a Brooklyn party Lex

Humphries loaned me a rubber when I asked,

cause Princess insisted. We went up to the

roof, but it was tilted and covered in pebbles

that dug into our backs as we almost rolled off.