Lyrics
Now it's jazz, the place is roaring, all beautiful girls in there
One mad brunette at the bar drunk with her boys, one strange chick I
Remember from somewhere wearing a simple skirt with pockets, her
Hands in there, short haircut, slouched, talking to everybody. Up and
Down the stairs they come, the bartenders and the regular band of
Jack and the heavenly drummer who looks up in the sky with blue eyes
With a beard – he's wailing beer caps of bottles and jamming at the
Cash register and everything is going to the beat, it's the Beat
Generation, it's beat, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the
Heart, it's being beat and down in the world and like old-time
Lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing
Galleys to a beat, and servants spinning pottery to a beat – the
Faces! There's no face to compare with Jack Minger's who's up on the
Bandstand now with a colored trumpeter who outblows him wild and
Dizzy but Jack's face overlooking all the heads and smoke, he has a
Face that looks like everybody you've ever known and seen on the
Street in your time, sweet face, hard to describe, sad eyes, cruel
Lips, expectant gleam, swaying to the beat, tall, majestical, waiting
In front of the drugstore, a face like Hunky's in New York, Hunky
Whom you'll see on Times Square somnolent and alert, sad-sweet, dark
Holy, just out of jail, martyred, tortured by sidewalks, starved for
Sex and companionship, open to anything, ready to introduce a new
World with a shrug. The colored big tenor with the big tone is
Blowing Sonny Stitts clear out of Kansas City roadhouses, clear
Heavy, somewhat dull and unmusical ideas which nevertheless never
Leave the music, always there always far out, the harmony too
Complicated for the motley bums of music understanding in there, but
The musicians hear. The drummer is a sensational twelve-year-old
Negro boy who's not allowed to drink but can play, tremendous
A little lithe childlike Miles Davis kid, like early Fats Navarro
Fans you used to see in Espan Harlem, hep, small, he thunders at
The drums with a beat which is described to me by a near-standing