His fingers owned the strings releasing freely treasures slipping to earth. Notes competing with stars lighted dark skies like Christmas every night. His head snapped to the beats bursting in air then settled slow into soft. Sweat channeled long with drips from his passion as he breathed out the jazz.
In the jam of the group one note sets the tone, created within smoky circles the sound complete, a tight message of music, fingers pulling the jazz, drums striking up a beat, brushing the day aside, as the horn digs deep, the sax pushes out a raspy scratch and the bass mellows into an undercurrent … More SIDEWAYS
The music had change and stretch, marching the sidewalks, turning heels and heads, twisting the jazz in into shadows with snap and burning where fingers speak a language of black tar streets and perfume rolls on the sweat of hands born into the arms of people stacked in apartments that … More A CITY MOVING
A blue grey smoky air rolls over faces while voices speak in a hush as the band breathes between songs. Exhausted heels and tired ties melt into chairs without music; uncomfortable, they wait with anxious fingers tapping and shoes looking for space. Slivered clear ice rattles like chains in glasses of promise, as a captured … More BETWEEN SONGS
He knows trouble. and the songs and loss. The nights past mornings where the jazz patiently waits for him like a faithful dog with good eyes waiting for a chance to release. He knows about black moons and shadows whispering and back doors of places he called home for … More FAITHFUL WITH TROUBLE
The notes rattled the chains in his head; souls marching, singing the pain of long days lost to labor for another man’s dream. Tears jaggedly cut his dusted cheeks, coursing rivers equal with oceans once crossed, added up and stacked onto the forever of years lost. Dust and sand kick up from under the shoes … More WITH SONG
The molasses of sound dripped slow flavoring him since youth when jazz got onto his ear like a propeller wash of beats making a whirr and buzz like coffee all night and golden arms with trumpets slivering the truth out of him surfacing with a suddenness like food slipping from the fingers of angels into … More YOU GOT ME RIGHT
The notes sing to me. A grandma spiritual; warm evenings, bugs buzzing on yellow lights, a fever of warmth. Night solid with dark; the breath of men gasp tired. I see my youth. A ball of knots. Tied up in love, broken under the weight of tears; running eyes, inhaling life into my soul. The … More I SING THE REMEMBERS
Rising golden and draining warm onto painted houses and wooden wharfs long streaks of sun touch Coit’s tower and sacred hills. Down on Fillmore and Columbus with class where jazz sits strong and grows pulling like lines of hungry fish snapping at sourdough. Across the golden arms and from … More SOURDOUGH JAZZ
From the chairs faces brightly shine like early Sunday clothed to watch and rightly bathed in song and word like baptisms sprinkled fresh over righteous hungry souls. Her jazzy words float like flowers cast on oceans where souls rest far below where lonely ears patiently wait to be freed. … More HER JAZZY VOICE
Roger Singer 