Saturday, October 3, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
lu
Lu Watters (1911 – 1989)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lucius "Lu" Watters (December 19, 1911 in Santa Cruz, California – November 5, 1989 in Santa Rosa, California) was a trumpeter and bandleader of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band in the "West Coast revival" of Dixieland music. This is relational to trad jazz as the musicians tended to be white and had little or no actual connections to New Orleans.
He played trumpet by the age of 11 and had his first work on a cruise ship. He then worked for Bob Crosby before deciding to form a Dixieland-style band. He founded the Yerba Buena Jazz Band in 1939 and it would be a leading force in the Dixieland revival for the next 11 years, with a small off-period caused by the war. In 1950 he broke up the band and in 1957 he retired from full-time playing.
In his life after music, he studied geology and lectured on the subject at Sonoma State University. His main area of interest was coastal earthquake conditions. He also became a chef.
In 1963 he made a bit of a return by playing with Turk Murphy at anti-nuclear rallies. He opposed building a nuclear plant on the San Andreas Fault. This related to his interest in geology and study of earthquakes. After this he returned to his life as a geologist and chef.
CD 1: Lu Watters
01 Figety Feet
02 Figety Feet – Alternate
03 Milenberg Joys
04 High Society
05 High Society - Alternate
06 Hot House Rag
07 Come Back
08 Daddy Do
09 Daddy Do – Alternate
10 Tiger Rag
11 London Cafe Blues
12 London Cafe Blues - Alternate
13 Terrible Blues
14 Muskrat Ramble
15 Muskrat Ramble - Alternate
16 Temptation Rag
17 Sunset Cafe Stomp
18 Sunset Cafe Stomp - Alternate
19 Riverside Blues
20 Cake Walking Babies From Home
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lucius "Lu" Watters (December 19, 1911 in Santa Cruz, California – November 5, 1989 in Santa Rosa, California) was a trumpeter and bandleader of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band in the "West Coast revival" of Dixieland music. This is relational to trad jazz as the musicians tended to be white and had little or no actual connections to New Orleans.
He played trumpet by the age of 11 and had his first work on a cruise ship. He then worked for Bob Crosby before deciding to form a Dixieland-style band. He founded the Yerba Buena Jazz Band in 1939 and it would be a leading force in the Dixieland revival for the next 11 years, with a small off-period caused by the war. In 1950 he broke up the band and in 1957 he retired from full-time playing.
In his life after music, he studied geology and lectured on the subject at Sonoma State University. His main area of interest was coastal earthquake conditions. He also became a chef.
In 1963 he made a bit of a return by playing with Turk Murphy at anti-nuclear rallies. He opposed building a nuclear plant on the San Andreas Fault. This related to his interest in geology and study of earthquakes. After this he returned to his life as a geologist and chef.
CD 1: Lu Watters
01 Figety Feet
02 Figety Feet – Alternate
03 Milenberg Joys
04 High Society
05 High Society - Alternate
06 Hot House Rag
07 Come Back
08 Daddy Do
09 Daddy Do – Alternate
10 Tiger Rag
11 London Cafe Blues
12 London Cafe Blues - Alternate
13 Terrible Blues
14 Muskrat Ramble
15 Muskrat Ramble - Alternate
16 Temptation Rag
17 Sunset Cafe Stomp
18 Sunset Cafe Stomp - Alternate
19 Riverside Blues
20 Cake Walking Babies From Home
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Freethought of the Day
Freethought of the Day
July 2, 2009
There are 2 entries for this date: Barbara G. Walker and George Sand.
Barbara G. Walker
On this date in 1930, Barbara G. Walker was born in Philadelphia. In early childhood, she had her first disappointment with religion, when a minister told Barbara her deceased pet dog wouldn't go to heaven. She threw an uncharacteristic tantrum, telling him: "I don't want anything to do with your rotten old God and nasty old heaven." First reading the King James bible as a young teenager, she decided: "It sounded cruel. A God who would not forgive the world until his son had been tortured to death--that did not strike me as the kind of father I would want to relate to." She majored in journalism at the university of Pennsylvania, married research chemist Gordon Walker, and moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked at the Washington Star. Relocating to Morristown, New Jersey, she taught the Martha Graham dance technique. She is a knitting expert, writing ten volumes, including the classics, Treasury of Knitting Patterns and A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. In the mid-seventies she became part of the "new feminist wave," writing the monumental feminist/freethought sourcebook, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983). Her many other books, published by Harper & Row, include The Skeptical Feminist. An atheist, she has also specialized in debunking irresponsible, New Age assertions about crystals.
In the mid-seventies she became part of the "new feminist wave," writing the monumental feminist/freethought sourcebook, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983), which is often banned, according to the American Library Association’s Banned Books (1998), because the book “is of no benefit to anyone.”
Her many other books include The Skeptical Feminist, in which she wrote,
* . . . the very fears and guilts imposed by religious training are responsible for some of history's most brutal wars, crusades, pogroms, and persecutions, including five centuries of almost unimaginable terrorism under Europe's Inquisition and the unthinkably sadistic legal murder of nearly nine million women. History doesn't say much very good about God.
In that book, she found “the archetypical Goddess image” to be of psychological importance to women and calls fortune-telling “just a parlor trick.”
Walker was named 1993 Humanist Heroine by the American Humanist Association. An atheist, she has also specialized in debunking irresponsible, New Age assertions about crystals.
“Our culture,” she has written, “has been deeply penetrated by the notion that ‘man’ . . . not woman . . . is created in the image of god. This notion persists, despite the likelihood that the creation goes in the other direction: that god is a human projection of the image of man.”
July 2, 2009
There are 2 entries for this date: Barbara G. Walker and George Sand.
Barbara G. Walker
On this date in 1930, Barbara G. Walker was born in Philadelphia. In early childhood, she had her first disappointment with religion, when a minister told Barbara her deceased pet dog wouldn't go to heaven. She threw an uncharacteristic tantrum, telling him: "I don't want anything to do with your rotten old God and nasty old heaven." First reading the King James bible as a young teenager, she decided: "It sounded cruel. A God who would not forgive the world until his son had been tortured to death--that did not strike me as the kind of father I would want to relate to." She majored in journalism at the university of Pennsylvania, married research chemist Gordon Walker, and moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked at the Washington Star. Relocating to Morristown, New Jersey, she taught the Martha Graham dance technique. She is a knitting expert, writing ten volumes, including the classics, Treasury of Knitting Patterns and A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. In the mid-seventies she became part of the "new feminist wave," writing the monumental feminist/freethought sourcebook, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983). Her many other books, published by Harper & Row, include The Skeptical Feminist. An atheist, she has also specialized in debunking irresponsible, New Age assertions about crystals.
In the mid-seventies she became part of the "new feminist wave," writing the monumental feminist/freethought sourcebook, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983), which is often banned, according to the American Library Association’s Banned Books (1998), because the book “is of no benefit to anyone.”
Her many other books include The Skeptical Feminist, in which she wrote,
* . . . the very fears and guilts imposed by religious training are responsible for some of history's most brutal wars, crusades, pogroms, and persecutions, including five centuries of almost unimaginable terrorism under Europe's Inquisition and the unthinkably sadistic legal murder of nearly nine million women. History doesn't say much very good about God.
In that book, she found “the archetypical Goddess image” to be of psychological importance to women and calls fortune-telling “just a parlor trick.”
Walker was named 1993 Humanist Heroine by the American Humanist Association. An atheist, she has also specialized in debunking irresponsible, New Age assertions about crystals.
“Our culture,” she has written, “has been deeply penetrated by the notion that ‘man’ . . . not woman . . . is created in the image of god. This notion persists, despite the likelihood that the creation goes in the other direction: that god is a human projection of the image of man.”
Barbara G. Walker
Barbara G. Walker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Barbara G. Walker (born July 2, 1930, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a U.S. author and feminist. She writes about religion, cultural anthropology, spirituality, and mythology from the viewpoint of Pre-Indo-European neolithic matriarchies. She often uses the imagery of the Mother Goddess to discuss these Neolithic Matriarchies. Her most important book is The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983). She also is an influential knitting expert and the author of several classic encyclopedic knitting references.
Barbara G. Walker describes herself as an atheist. In the book, The Skeptical Feminist: Discovering the Virgin, Mother, and Crone, she writes about her belief that there is no deity. However, she believes that people, and woman in particular, can use the image of the Goddess in their day-to-day lives. Her book Woman's Rituals: A Sourcebook is an attempt to show how she puts her "meditation techniques" into practice, and is meant as a guide for other women to do the same thing.
In the 1960s and 1970s, she authored several volumes of knitting references which have become landmarks for their comprehensiveness and clarity.[citation needed] Her knitting treasury series documents over a thousand different knitting stitches. Other books considered mosaic knitting, for producing multicolored designs while knitting only one color per row, and constructing knitted garments from the top-down rather than the usual bottom-up method used in western knitting tradition. Her legacy continues with the reprinting of most of her knitting books, starting in the mid-1990s, as well as the publication of new contributions to the knitting literature.
Barbara G. Walker studied journalism at the University of Pennsylvania and began working for the Washington Star in Washington, D.C. While serving on a local hotline in the mid 1970s, helping battered women and pregnant teens, she became interested in feminism. The American Humanist Association named her "Humanist Heroine" in 1993, and in 1995 she received the "Women Making Herstory" award from the New Jersey NOW.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Barbara G. Walker (born July 2, 1930, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a U.S. author and feminist. She writes about religion, cultural anthropology, spirituality, and mythology from the viewpoint of Pre-Indo-European neolithic matriarchies. She often uses the imagery of the Mother Goddess to discuss these Neolithic Matriarchies. Her most important book is The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983). She also is an influential knitting expert and the author of several classic encyclopedic knitting references.
Barbara G. Walker describes herself as an atheist. In the book, The Skeptical Feminist: Discovering the Virgin, Mother, and Crone, she writes about her belief that there is no deity. However, she believes that people, and woman in particular, can use the image of the Goddess in their day-to-day lives. Her book Woman's Rituals: A Sourcebook is an attempt to show how she puts her "meditation techniques" into practice, and is meant as a guide for other women to do the same thing.
In the 1960s and 1970s, she authored several volumes of knitting references which have become landmarks for their comprehensiveness and clarity.[citation needed] Her knitting treasury series documents over a thousand different knitting stitches. Other books considered mosaic knitting, for producing multicolored designs while knitting only one color per row, and constructing knitted garments from the top-down rather than the usual bottom-up method used in western knitting tradition. Her legacy continues with the reprinting of most of her knitting books, starting in the mid-1990s, as well as the publication of new contributions to the knitting literature.
Barbara G. Walker studied journalism at the University of Pennsylvania and began working for the Washington Star in Washington, D.C. While serving on a local hotline in the mid 1970s, helping battered women and pregnant teens, she became interested in feminism. The American Humanist Association named her "Humanist Heroine" in 1993, and in 1995 she received the "Women Making Herstory" award from the New Jersey NOW.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Turk & Lu: West Coast Classic Jazz in Concert
Turk & Lu: West Coast Classic Jazz in Concert
They called their music 'The Truth'—real, righteous Traditional Jazz. Its champions were the powerful brassmen, Turk Murphy and Lu Watters. In the 40s, West Coast 'true believers' in Traditional Jazz preached their gospel at the Dawn Club on San Francisco’s Annie Street, a little alleyway near the old Palace Hotel. They held forth at Hambone Kelly’s across the Bay and later at the Hangover Club and Earthquake McGoon’s. More Photos and Music at www.riverwalkjazz.org
They called their music 'The Truth'—real, righteous Traditional Jazz. By the early 1940s, its champions were the powerful West Coast brassmen Turk Murphy and Lu Watters.
Disciples of 'The Real Stuff' themselves, The Jim Cullum Jazz Band presents their concert tribute to The West Coast Classic Jazz Revival at the Stanford Jazz Festival in California, this week on Riverwalk Jazz.
West Coast 'true believers' in Traditional Jazz preached their gospel at the Dawn Club on San Francisco's Annie Street, a little alleyway near the old Palace Hotel. They held forth at Hambone Kelly's across the Bay and later at the Hangover Club and Earthquake McGoon's. Beginning in 1939, bandleader and cornetist Lu Watters—and trombonist Turk Murphy—gave the movement its impetus, and it kept right on rolling across the country well into the 1970s.
These revivalists didn't learn their stuff only by sitting around listening to scratchy records. They were veteran jazzmen, bored with working in bloated Swing bands playing tangos, fox-trots —and precious little jazz. They were enchanted with the excitement of music from a bygone era. They brought a muscular, inventive approach to the roots of jazz, and made it their own. A second generation continues to this day, including many jazz artists who have appeared on the Riverwalk Jazz radio series in the past 20 years.
The authenticity of Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Stompers set the group apart from other small, 'hot' Swing-oriented ensembles of the era. Both Watters and Murphy were serious students of early jazz. Watters wrote many new arrangements of the old tunes, breathing new life into them. Almost all the tunes in their playbook— "Shake that Thing," "Cakewalkin' Babies From Home," "Froggie Moore Rag," "That's a Plenty," and others—hearkened back to New Orleans and repertoire created by King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, W.C. Handy, and Clarence Williams. They created originals, too. "Emperor Norton's Hunch" and "Big Bear Stomp" were inspired by people and places in the Bay Area.
The instrumentation and performance practices of the Yerba Buena band might well be considered "antique"—the use of banjo (instead of guitar), tuba (instead of string bass), ragtime piano, snare-drum oriented drumming (instead of ride or sock cymbals), and two-to-the-bar bass. The horns produced a rough-edged, blues-drenched sound inspired by King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Kid Ory, and others.
At the heart of the 'West Coast' style was the jazz ensemble—all horns blowing improvised jazz at once, in a spirited conversation. Jim Cullum says, "Like the King Oliver band, the basis of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band was ensemble playing. Lu's vision drove the band sound." And Jim's extensive use of the jazz ensemble in his own band is a defining quality that sets it apart from others on today's jazz scene.
By the mid-1940s, several 'originals' of early New Orleans jazz—Bunk Johnson, George Lewis, Pops Foster and Kid Ory—settled in San Francisco. Their hot, boisterous and slightly chaotic "ensemble" style of jazz had been all but forgotten with the advent of Swing ten years earlier. The older New Orleans men quickly became the heroes and patron saints of the new Classic Jazz Revival.
Lu Watters said the foundation of the traditional jazz he played was dancing. Just like his model, King Oliver, who got the crowds up on their feet at Chicago's Lincoln Gardens, Lu liked to play to a packed dance floor.
But, late at night, after last call, with the tables strewn with empty glasses and the lights low, the band would wind down with a haunting, slow blues by W. C. Handy—"Friendless Blues," a tune often heard today at The Landing in San Antonio.
Text based on script by Margaret Pick
Copyright 2009 Riverwalk Jazz
They called their music 'The Truth'—real, righteous Traditional Jazz. Its champions were the powerful brassmen, Turk Murphy and Lu Watters. In the 40s, West Coast 'true believers' in Traditional Jazz preached their gospel at the Dawn Club on San Francisco’s Annie Street, a little alleyway near the old Palace Hotel. They held forth at Hambone Kelly’s across the Bay and later at the Hangover Club and Earthquake McGoon’s. More Photos and Music at www.riverwalkjazz.org
They called their music 'The Truth'—real, righteous Traditional Jazz. By the early 1940s, its champions were the powerful West Coast brassmen Turk Murphy and Lu Watters.
Disciples of 'The Real Stuff' themselves, The Jim Cullum Jazz Band presents their concert tribute to The West Coast Classic Jazz Revival at the Stanford Jazz Festival in California, this week on Riverwalk Jazz.
West Coast 'true believers' in Traditional Jazz preached their gospel at the Dawn Club on San Francisco's Annie Street, a little alleyway near the old Palace Hotel. They held forth at Hambone Kelly's across the Bay and later at the Hangover Club and Earthquake McGoon's. Beginning in 1939, bandleader and cornetist Lu Watters—and trombonist Turk Murphy—gave the movement its impetus, and it kept right on rolling across the country well into the 1970s.
These revivalists didn't learn their stuff only by sitting around listening to scratchy records. They were veteran jazzmen, bored with working in bloated Swing bands playing tangos, fox-trots —and precious little jazz. They were enchanted with the excitement of music from a bygone era. They brought a muscular, inventive approach to the roots of jazz, and made it their own. A second generation continues to this day, including many jazz artists who have appeared on the Riverwalk Jazz radio series in the past 20 years.
The authenticity of Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Stompers set the group apart from other small, 'hot' Swing-oriented ensembles of the era. Both Watters and Murphy were serious students of early jazz. Watters wrote many new arrangements of the old tunes, breathing new life into them. Almost all the tunes in their playbook— "Shake that Thing," "Cakewalkin' Babies From Home," "Froggie Moore Rag," "That's a Plenty," and others—hearkened back to New Orleans and repertoire created by King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, W.C. Handy, and Clarence Williams. They created originals, too. "Emperor Norton's Hunch" and "Big Bear Stomp" were inspired by people and places in the Bay Area.
The instrumentation and performance practices of the Yerba Buena band might well be considered "antique"—the use of banjo (instead of guitar), tuba (instead of string bass), ragtime piano, snare-drum oriented drumming (instead of ride or sock cymbals), and two-to-the-bar bass. The horns produced a rough-edged, blues-drenched sound inspired by King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Kid Ory, and others.
At the heart of the 'West Coast' style was the jazz ensemble—all horns blowing improvised jazz at once, in a spirited conversation. Jim Cullum says, "Like the King Oliver band, the basis of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band was ensemble playing. Lu's vision drove the band sound." And Jim's extensive use of the jazz ensemble in his own band is a defining quality that sets it apart from others on today's jazz scene.
By the mid-1940s, several 'originals' of early New Orleans jazz—Bunk Johnson, George Lewis, Pops Foster and Kid Ory—settled in San Francisco. Their hot, boisterous and slightly chaotic "ensemble" style of jazz had been all but forgotten with the advent of Swing ten years earlier. The older New Orleans men quickly became the heroes and patron saints of the new Classic Jazz Revival.
Lu Watters said the foundation of the traditional jazz he played was dancing. Just like his model, King Oliver, who got the crowds up on their feet at Chicago's Lincoln Gardens, Lu liked to play to a packed dance floor.
But, late at night, after last call, with the tables strewn with empty glasses and the lights low, the band would wind down with a haunting, slow blues by W. C. Handy—"Friendless Blues," a tune often heard today at The Landing in San Antonio.
Text based on script by Margaret Pick
Copyright 2009 Riverwalk Jazz
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
lu watters
Lu Watters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band
by Jerry Stanton
Before I start I should say that on this subject The Source, capital S, is Bob Helm. Of those of us from the dinosaur days still around, he’s the one who lived and knew it all. He has to: he’s ten or more years ahead of me, as Wally was, and knew Lu in the band’s formative stage in the late 1930s.
When did I come into the movie? It seems like a movie now looking back—a long one and a very memorable one. I came in the summer of ‘39, together with my brother Tom Stanton (he was christened Peter Thomas Stanton and in his ‘30s wanted to be only Peter, then P. T. But when you’ve grown up with a brother Tom, at work and play, you’re never going to call him anything but Tom).
But Tom wasn’t with me on the late summer afternoon at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island when I left the close of the daily Benny Goodman big band open air concert in the Temple Compound on the south side of the island and strolled along a road full of fairground attractions. Across from one of them, Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch, was another: The Corral. Drinking, eating, and jazz from a trio consisting of Bob Helm, pianist Forrest Brown and Freddy Higuera drums. I stayed, of course, then introduced myself, and that was the start of friendships which in Bob’s case have lasted sixty years to the present writing.
I didn’t talk long enough to Bob that day to hear what was coming in the Bay Area jazz scene—maybe Lu’s plans weren’t quite finalized. But a couple of months later, September or October, l939, the equivalent of a musical atomic bomb detonated Bay Area, California—make it all of U. S. A.: righteous jazz. The Yerba Buena Jazz Band opened at the Dawn Club, 20 Annie Street in San Francisco.
Nothing like it had ever hit town before. It’s true that the King Oliver Band played The City in the mid-1920s, maybe more than once, on their West Coast tours. But they weren’t there long enough to make the impact they deserved, and anyway by 1939, with the advent of the big band era and hundreds of smaller bands the classic Oliver sounds were forgotten, if they’d ever been remembered long in rousting, live-it-up San Francisco balling the livelong nights.
The Dawn Club changed all that, because Lu had really done his homework. The band was brilliant, without making a fuss about being that way. It was highly professional, disciplined, with a fabulous repertoire including Lu’s originals and arrangements, yet still gave you the feeling they were fresh on the scene and playing for your New Year’s Eve party. Spontaneity was in the air, not least because Lu had selected the Dawn Club for its spacious dance floor—the ‘30s on the way out had been a great dancing era all over America, in thousands of clubs, halls, ballrooms, hotels, fairgrounds—you name it. They even got up and did it in theater aisles when the band on stage got hot enough. Me included.
Okay, I’ve opened with atmosphere, and now for some facts. You turned off Market Street, walked maybe fifty feet along Annie Street, more like an alley, next to the Palace Hotel. You went in the club and down a long steepish flight of stairs. At the bottom you bought your admission from a guy who in return handed you a long single-sheet program. Genial idea of Lu’s: every number to be played that night was listed by sets (five, sometimes six).
You were early, in your early-teenage anticipation, the way we of the kid Golden Gate Jazz Band (Tom dubbed it that) were, and some trepidation because there was no guarantee we were going to get a real drink at our tender ages. Who were we? Tom Stanton, trumpet and cornet; Pete Allen, clarinet; Bill Bardin, trombone; Jerry Stanton, piano and George Clark, drums. Larry Grey, bass, too but not always, and Tom Dowd, our booker, poster designer and general tub-thumper. We were sponsored by Augie Giretto, Lu’s manager and master of the lease on the Dawn Club—and had the approval of the real master himself, Lu, who smiled benignly on our efforts and gave us genuine encouragement. He also, in his quiet savvy way showed us where in the dim recesses of the spacious back room of the club we could cluster in a corner and get served firewater—for hard cash, of course, nobody could afford to be in the business of charity in those days. So for four bits—you heard it—we got our gin and juices. For a couple of bucks each we could join the rollicking spirits of the long night, trip the light fantastic with a gal, and still go home sober with the sounds of an amazing band ringing in our ears.
Brass players stayed constant in the band, both before and after World War Two: Lu, Bob Scobey and Turk, but clarinet duties were divided between Ellis Horne and Helm, more Ellis in ‘39 and ‘40, and more Helm in ‘41, ‘46 and ‘47. Wally, too, was a constant, though Forrest Brown was in before the war on piano awhile at the Dawn. Bill Dart was a constant on drums, Dick Lammi on tuba and string bass as well, but there were several banjo men on duty: the inimitable and unforgettable Clancy Hayes, doing his great jazz singing, and Harry Mordecai and Russ Bennett.
The Dawn Club, as you no doubt know, was not invented suddenly in 1939. It had a pretty riotous life as a Prohibition speakeasy, or “Speak,” all through the ‘20s and early ‘30s behind it. The long brass rail bar was one of the longest, if not the longest in San Francisco. Another contender for that distinction was Breen’s, the classic early-S. F. style Irish-flavored bar off Third and Market, in an alley behind the Examiner Building, and an off-duty favorite of Lu’s. I lifted more than one beer mug with him there.
The atmosphere with the band was infectious at the Dawn, and it was always full of dancers and listeners. There was a lot of dark wood there and a mellow dim decor— plenty of tables and oodles of atmosphere in the style of the times. The whole cast of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon,” that director John Huston was filming on location in The City was often there: Huston, Humph Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet etc. Probably not only for the music but because they felt they hadn’t left the movie sets: the Dawn was just like one of them.
After the war in 1947 Orson Welles was often there, with his current flame Rita Hayworth. Welles loved the music. I can remember seeing and hearing him cry out “That’s the Black and White Rag!” when Wally was playing it, then grab Rita and swing her high, wide and handsome around the floor. And he shouted: That’s-a-Plenty! Great!“
A whole lot of other notable people, not only Hollywood but from the professions, big business and politics etc. came regularly to the Dawn. And of course Herb Caen, a legend in his own lifetime. He often put some anecdote about the club in his columns, in the Examiner and the Chronicle (he shifted gears several times in his life). Everybody danced. Lu said the foundation of everything was to have people dancing, and when he moved the band in 1948 to El Cerrito he stayed firm to that principle.
A word must be said at this point about Lu Watters the man, because he was as well put-together as a human being as he was as a jazz musician. You could call him the Rock of Gibraltar: while all the waves and storms and winds lapped and whirled around him, he was always unflappable and unruffled. He’d gone through the rough-and-tough mill of the orchestra business as it was in the ‘20s when he started at 16 with his first job as second or third trumpet in a section, Anno Domini 1926. He toured the country with various bands of all sizes and styles of the time. He built up a lot of general musical savvy until he gradually separated the wheat from the chaff and knew what he wanted to do on his own.
That time didn’t come till much later, in the late 1930s, but by then Lu’d found the players he wanted and knew exactly the results he wanted: continuation, with his own refreshments, of the great New Orleans Oliver and Armstrong two-trumpet tradition in an eight-man band with banjo, tuba, support but not solo drums, and ragtime-tinged piano. And of course a clarinetist in the Dodds, Simeon, Nicholas traditions deeply embedded in the best New Orleans bands. In Turk he’d found the ideal driving bottom line for the front line.
It was a carefully thought-out band, but as already mentioned it had that great feeling of right now, freshness and spontaneity that got people up from their tables right now and out on the dance floor. In the first great flourish of the YBJB at the Dawn—’39, ‘40 and ‘41—a lot of young and very impressionable starting-out musicians, our gang included, formed an enthusiastic and faithful fan support element, which translated out in many ways, the most important being there every night the band played and if possible memorizing every tune they played. That was no easy job since most of the tunes were three and four part numbers, with introductions, interludes, repeats, breaks and codas galore.
All the guys in the YBJB had a lot of previous experience in improvising, but Lu wrote out all his numbers and rehearsed them that way before he let the improvising take wing, as it should in the middle of the tunes. In this way the band stood out from all the Dixieland-style bands that were often good, but long on jamming and short on substance and ensemble quality. It can’t be emphasized enough in a resume of Lu’s impact on the Bay Area, California and national jazz scenes. The band was unique, the band was organized, the band swung, the band was great. Period.
After funding and lease problems, the Dawn Club closed after two successful post WW II years, and in 1948 Lu found a new home for the band at a great big, roomy club, Sally Rand’s, on San Pablo in El Cerrito just over the Albany line. A long rectangular building with a spacious parking lot of its own, band and staff rooms on the other side of it—and a two story house in back with a lot of little rooms for what had obviously been Sally’s hanky-panky trade, never admitted and never officially allowed, though gambling in an upstairs room at the Kona Club nearby went on while the city uncles looked the other way, when they weren’t upstairs themselves taking a flutter.
And then Lu christened it Hambone Kelly’s with a bow to his wife Pat, and the enterprise took off, and how. The big dance floor Lu insisted on was there, a prime factor in the choice. Then he ordered the same dimly-lighted cozy atmosphere of the Dawn, and initiated a unique feature: dozens of names of his tunes were written in script style large on the wall behind the long bar at the front of the club, facing toward San Pablo Avenue. In Manuel, the head bartender, he found an expert, trustworthy man, and Augie Giretto was on hand again to manage the band, the finances and the club. Most important of all, Augie was a dedicated fan of the band and knew his jazz music, with a big record collection at home. 78s in those days, with LPs just emerging on the scene.
For more intimate Hambone reminiscing, check with Bob Helm. Bob had a room there and stayed till the closing New Year’s Eve, 1950. I was there the last year of Hambone’s. I’d replaced Johnny Wittwer who in his turn had replaced Burt Bales—‘48 and ‘49 respectively. Lu had come out to El Sobrante over the hills and out toward Martinez and the Carquinez Bridge, several times where I was working in my brother’s weekend band. Then he asked me to come aboard at Hambone’s and I think I waited about ten seconds to sign on. The band was abbreviated by then, down to Lu and Bob and Lammi and Dart and myself. But Turk hadn’t started his own band yet and often came around to sit in, as did Scobey. Charlie Sonnanstine often came around with his trombone, as did other good players, all of them needing Lu’s careful approval, of course. It was never a jam session. Clancy Hayes came in to play banjo and sing. I must say here that Clancy, along with Lu and Wally, gave me the early strong encouragement, early 1940s, that I badly needed, and that got me over the hump, y’know—that feeling that you’re not going to make it.
Another institution Lu invented was the Sunday afternoon special: inviting names in the jazz world to be guest artists at Hambone’s, with their own support players or with us, depending. He only did it in the summer months when the vacation-time atmosphere and the weather combined to make it worthwhile. I got to meet a lot of memorable people and players: one Sunday or sometimes a pair of consecutive Sundays Lu’d book in the Red Nichols band from L. A. Then another time the Wingy Manone band. Out of that contact I got a job with Wingy two years later. Then Lu brought out members of the Eddie Condon band from New York. And one very memorable week he finagled the presence of master James P. Johnson, Fats Waller’s teacher. Though no longer a young man, James P. played strong stride solos on the big Hambone redwood upright with a resonant sounding board, and I was right there two feet away at his right hand. The slightly elevated bandstand at Hambone’s was a replica of the Dawn Club stand: like a square box, open at two ends but with a big drape at the back for you to come in and out.
FROM ISSUE NO. 10, FALL 1999
by Jerry Stanton
Before I start I should say that on this subject The Source, capital S, is Bob Helm. Of those of us from the dinosaur days still around, he’s the one who lived and knew it all. He has to: he’s ten or more years ahead of me, as Wally was, and knew Lu in the band’s formative stage in the late 1930s.
When did I come into the movie? It seems like a movie now looking back—a long one and a very memorable one. I came in the summer of ‘39, together with my brother Tom Stanton (he was christened Peter Thomas Stanton and in his ‘30s wanted to be only Peter, then P. T. But when you’ve grown up with a brother Tom, at work and play, you’re never going to call him anything but Tom).
But Tom wasn’t with me on the late summer afternoon at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island when I left the close of the daily Benny Goodman big band open air concert in the Temple Compound on the south side of the island and strolled along a road full of fairground attractions. Across from one of them, Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch, was another: The Corral. Drinking, eating, and jazz from a trio consisting of Bob Helm, pianist Forrest Brown and Freddy Higuera drums. I stayed, of course, then introduced myself, and that was the start of friendships which in Bob’s case have lasted sixty years to the present writing.
I didn’t talk long enough to Bob that day to hear what was coming in the Bay Area jazz scene—maybe Lu’s plans weren’t quite finalized. But a couple of months later, September or October, l939, the equivalent of a musical atomic bomb detonated Bay Area, California—make it all of U. S. A.: righteous jazz. The Yerba Buena Jazz Band opened at the Dawn Club, 20 Annie Street in San Francisco.
Nothing like it had ever hit town before. It’s true that the King Oliver Band played The City in the mid-1920s, maybe more than once, on their West Coast tours. But they weren’t there long enough to make the impact they deserved, and anyway by 1939, with the advent of the big band era and hundreds of smaller bands the classic Oliver sounds were forgotten, if they’d ever been remembered long in rousting, live-it-up San Francisco balling the livelong nights.
The Dawn Club changed all that, because Lu had really done his homework. The band was brilliant, without making a fuss about being that way. It was highly professional, disciplined, with a fabulous repertoire including Lu’s originals and arrangements, yet still gave you the feeling they were fresh on the scene and playing for your New Year’s Eve party. Spontaneity was in the air, not least because Lu had selected the Dawn Club for its spacious dance floor—the ‘30s on the way out had been a great dancing era all over America, in thousands of clubs, halls, ballrooms, hotels, fairgrounds—you name it. They even got up and did it in theater aisles when the band on stage got hot enough. Me included.
Okay, I’ve opened with atmosphere, and now for some facts. You turned off Market Street, walked maybe fifty feet along Annie Street, more like an alley, next to the Palace Hotel. You went in the club and down a long steepish flight of stairs. At the bottom you bought your admission from a guy who in return handed you a long single-sheet program. Genial idea of Lu’s: every number to be played that night was listed by sets (five, sometimes six).
You were early, in your early-teenage anticipation, the way we of the kid Golden Gate Jazz Band (Tom dubbed it that) were, and some trepidation because there was no guarantee we were going to get a real drink at our tender ages. Who were we? Tom Stanton, trumpet and cornet; Pete Allen, clarinet; Bill Bardin, trombone; Jerry Stanton, piano and George Clark, drums. Larry Grey, bass, too but not always, and Tom Dowd, our booker, poster designer and general tub-thumper. We were sponsored by Augie Giretto, Lu’s manager and master of the lease on the Dawn Club—and had the approval of the real master himself, Lu, who smiled benignly on our efforts and gave us genuine encouragement. He also, in his quiet savvy way showed us where in the dim recesses of the spacious back room of the club we could cluster in a corner and get served firewater—for hard cash, of course, nobody could afford to be in the business of charity in those days. So for four bits—you heard it—we got our gin and juices. For a couple of bucks each we could join the rollicking spirits of the long night, trip the light fantastic with a gal, and still go home sober with the sounds of an amazing band ringing in our ears.
Brass players stayed constant in the band, both before and after World War Two: Lu, Bob Scobey and Turk, but clarinet duties were divided between Ellis Horne and Helm, more Ellis in ‘39 and ‘40, and more Helm in ‘41, ‘46 and ‘47. Wally, too, was a constant, though Forrest Brown was in before the war on piano awhile at the Dawn. Bill Dart was a constant on drums, Dick Lammi on tuba and string bass as well, but there were several banjo men on duty: the inimitable and unforgettable Clancy Hayes, doing his great jazz singing, and Harry Mordecai and Russ Bennett.
The Dawn Club, as you no doubt know, was not invented suddenly in 1939. It had a pretty riotous life as a Prohibition speakeasy, or “Speak,” all through the ‘20s and early ‘30s behind it. The long brass rail bar was one of the longest, if not the longest in San Francisco. Another contender for that distinction was Breen’s, the classic early-S. F. style Irish-flavored bar off Third and Market, in an alley behind the Examiner Building, and an off-duty favorite of Lu’s. I lifted more than one beer mug with him there.
The atmosphere with the band was infectious at the Dawn, and it was always full of dancers and listeners. There was a lot of dark wood there and a mellow dim decor— plenty of tables and oodles of atmosphere in the style of the times. The whole cast of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon,” that director John Huston was filming on location in The City was often there: Huston, Humph Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet etc. Probably not only for the music but because they felt they hadn’t left the movie sets: the Dawn was just like one of them.
After the war in 1947 Orson Welles was often there, with his current flame Rita Hayworth. Welles loved the music. I can remember seeing and hearing him cry out “That’s the Black and White Rag!” when Wally was playing it, then grab Rita and swing her high, wide and handsome around the floor. And he shouted: That’s-a-Plenty! Great!“
A whole lot of other notable people, not only Hollywood but from the professions, big business and politics etc. came regularly to the Dawn. And of course Herb Caen, a legend in his own lifetime. He often put some anecdote about the club in his columns, in the Examiner and the Chronicle (he shifted gears several times in his life). Everybody danced. Lu said the foundation of everything was to have people dancing, and when he moved the band in 1948 to El Cerrito he stayed firm to that principle.
A word must be said at this point about Lu Watters the man, because he was as well put-together as a human being as he was as a jazz musician. You could call him the Rock of Gibraltar: while all the waves and storms and winds lapped and whirled around him, he was always unflappable and unruffled. He’d gone through the rough-and-tough mill of the orchestra business as it was in the ‘20s when he started at 16 with his first job as second or third trumpet in a section, Anno Domini 1926. He toured the country with various bands of all sizes and styles of the time. He built up a lot of general musical savvy until he gradually separated the wheat from the chaff and knew what he wanted to do on his own.
That time didn’t come till much later, in the late 1930s, but by then Lu’d found the players he wanted and knew exactly the results he wanted: continuation, with his own refreshments, of the great New Orleans Oliver and Armstrong two-trumpet tradition in an eight-man band with banjo, tuba, support but not solo drums, and ragtime-tinged piano. And of course a clarinetist in the Dodds, Simeon, Nicholas traditions deeply embedded in the best New Orleans bands. In Turk he’d found the ideal driving bottom line for the front line.
It was a carefully thought-out band, but as already mentioned it had that great feeling of right now, freshness and spontaneity that got people up from their tables right now and out on the dance floor. In the first great flourish of the YBJB at the Dawn—’39, ‘40 and ‘41—a lot of young and very impressionable starting-out musicians, our gang included, formed an enthusiastic and faithful fan support element, which translated out in many ways, the most important being there every night the band played and if possible memorizing every tune they played. That was no easy job since most of the tunes were three and four part numbers, with introductions, interludes, repeats, breaks and codas galore.
All the guys in the YBJB had a lot of previous experience in improvising, but Lu wrote out all his numbers and rehearsed them that way before he let the improvising take wing, as it should in the middle of the tunes. In this way the band stood out from all the Dixieland-style bands that were often good, but long on jamming and short on substance and ensemble quality. It can’t be emphasized enough in a resume of Lu’s impact on the Bay Area, California and national jazz scenes. The band was unique, the band was organized, the band swung, the band was great. Period.
After funding and lease problems, the Dawn Club closed after two successful post WW II years, and in 1948 Lu found a new home for the band at a great big, roomy club, Sally Rand’s, on San Pablo in El Cerrito just over the Albany line. A long rectangular building with a spacious parking lot of its own, band and staff rooms on the other side of it—and a two story house in back with a lot of little rooms for what had obviously been Sally’s hanky-panky trade, never admitted and never officially allowed, though gambling in an upstairs room at the Kona Club nearby went on while the city uncles looked the other way, when they weren’t upstairs themselves taking a flutter.
And then Lu christened it Hambone Kelly’s with a bow to his wife Pat, and the enterprise took off, and how. The big dance floor Lu insisted on was there, a prime factor in the choice. Then he ordered the same dimly-lighted cozy atmosphere of the Dawn, and initiated a unique feature: dozens of names of his tunes were written in script style large on the wall behind the long bar at the front of the club, facing toward San Pablo Avenue. In Manuel, the head bartender, he found an expert, trustworthy man, and Augie Giretto was on hand again to manage the band, the finances and the club. Most important of all, Augie was a dedicated fan of the band and knew his jazz music, with a big record collection at home. 78s in those days, with LPs just emerging on the scene.
For more intimate Hambone reminiscing, check with Bob Helm. Bob had a room there and stayed till the closing New Year’s Eve, 1950. I was there the last year of Hambone’s. I’d replaced Johnny Wittwer who in his turn had replaced Burt Bales—‘48 and ‘49 respectively. Lu had come out to El Sobrante over the hills and out toward Martinez and the Carquinez Bridge, several times where I was working in my brother’s weekend band. Then he asked me to come aboard at Hambone’s and I think I waited about ten seconds to sign on. The band was abbreviated by then, down to Lu and Bob and Lammi and Dart and myself. But Turk hadn’t started his own band yet and often came around to sit in, as did Scobey. Charlie Sonnanstine often came around with his trombone, as did other good players, all of them needing Lu’s careful approval, of course. It was never a jam session. Clancy Hayes came in to play banjo and sing. I must say here that Clancy, along with Lu and Wally, gave me the early strong encouragement, early 1940s, that I badly needed, and that got me over the hump, y’know—that feeling that you’re not going to make it.
Another institution Lu invented was the Sunday afternoon special: inviting names in the jazz world to be guest artists at Hambone’s, with their own support players or with us, depending. He only did it in the summer months when the vacation-time atmosphere and the weather combined to make it worthwhile. I got to meet a lot of memorable people and players: one Sunday or sometimes a pair of consecutive Sundays Lu’d book in the Red Nichols band from L. A. Then another time the Wingy Manone band. Out of that contact I got a job with Wingy two years later. Then Lu brought out members of the Eddie Condon band from New York. And one very memorable week he finagled the presence of master James P. Johnson, Fats Waller’s teacher. Though no longer a young man, James P. played strong stride solos on the big Hambone redwood upright with a resonant sounding board, and I was right there two feet away at his right hand. The slightly elevated bandstand at Hambone’s was a replica of the Dawn Club stand: like a square box, open at two ends but with a big drape at the back for you to come in and out.
FROM ISSUE NO. 10, FALL 1999
lu watters
Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band
Cornetist Lu Watters began his career as a cruise ship musician. During the 1930s he worked with the Carol Lofner Orchestra and led his own big band at Sweet's Ballroom in Oakland. In 1940 he formed a new outfit, the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. Watters' new group rejected all modern forms of jazz and embraced the older New Orleans sound. In their effort to return to the pure roots of jazz, they ignored even the white bands of the 1920s and instead focused on such artists as King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. However, Yerba Buena wasn't just an attempt to recreate the past; the group also added a great deal of local San Francisco flavor to its music, producing its own unique style.
The Yerba Buena Jazz Band spent its lifetime in San Francisco, settling in the Dawn Club until WWII broke out. During the war Watters led a twenty-piece Navy band in Hawaii. After the war he reformed Yerba Buena, again taking up residence at the Dawn Club. In 1947 Watters opened his own jazz club, Hambone Kelly's in San Francisco, where the group remained until its breakup in 1950. After that Watters retired from the music business to study geology but formed a new band later that decade. He retired again in the late 1950s.
Cornetist Lu Watters began his career as a cruise ship musician. During the 1930s he worked with the Carol Lofner Orchestra and led his own big band at Sweet's Ballroom in Oakland. In 1940 he formed a new outfit, the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. Watters' new group rejected all modern forms of jazz and embraced the older New Orleans sound. In their effort to return to the pure roots of jazz, they ignored even the white bands of the 1920s and instead focused on such artists as King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. However, Yerba Buena wasn't just an attempt to recreate the past; the group also added a great deal of local San Francisco flavor to its music, producing its own unique style.
The Yerba Buena Jazz Band spent its lifetime in San Francisco, settling in the Dawn Club until WWII broke out. During the war Watters led a twenty-piece Navy band in Hawaii. After the war he reformed Yerba Buena, again taking up residence at the Dawn Club. In 1947 Watters opened his own jazz club, Hambone Kelly's in San Francisco, where the group remained until its breakup in 1950. After that Watters retired from the music business to study geology but formed a new band later that decade. He retired again in the late 1950s.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
poetry
1
count not the ways
not the words
not the days
my love
begins
ends
2
see the darkness
hear the silence
shadows
light
high pitch
low bass
mute
3
stars lost sights
sun its head
moon her skin
winds die
rain wet
deny
4
words loud
mind shouts
eyes open
mouth shuts
smiles drop
count not the ways
not the words
not the days
my love
begins
ends
2
see the darkness
hear the silence
shadows
light
high pitch
low bass
mute
3
stars lost sights
sun its head
moon her skin
winds die
rain wet
deny
4
words loud
mind shouts
eyes open
mouth shuts
smiles drop
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
haiku7---by Louise Zhang
Technorati Tags: haiku 7 by louise zhang
1
chatty raindrops
keep up the wet monologue
all night long
2
in the process of dying
no one knows what's in the mind of the dying
he is on his own
3
with wintry fury
ocean waves assault the morning coast
an indifferent shore
4
what do you see
looking into the kaleidoscope of death
a shattered heaven
5
a drugged mind
a stormy landscape of psychic chaos
artificially tranquillized
6
dances
endeavour to visualize the nonverbal
for the eyes
7
shelter residents
under the roof of organized benevolence
sleep with hope
8
ripe apples fall
knocking the intelligence of Isaac Newton
out of grandpa's head
9
waking from a dream
I remember I am speaking English
oh, an American dream
10
mossy hangings
from the winter's old oak trees
green dreadlocks
11
Roman fountain
up shoots its ancient memories
from marble basin
12
locking himself indoors
the bemused poet wrestles
to gain sublimity
13
the restroom
a place to hurry into and
out, at ease
14
have lived
in a dream and died
out of it
15
knitting by the window
Mrs. Wallstreet appears unmistakably Chinese
as on Ibsen's stage
Notes: A Doll House: Helmer commenting on Mrs. Linde: You know what? You should embroider instead. .... Yes, because it's a lot prettier. See here, one holds the embroidery so, in the left hand, and then one guides the needle with the right--so--in an easy, sweeping curve---right? ......But, on the other hand, knitting--it can never be anything but ugly. Look, see, here, the arms tucked in, the knitting needles going up and down--
there's something Chinese about it.
16
little birds in the rain
chirp away on the tree's wet branches
rinsing their notes
17
thick snow lies
on the huge frosty pane of skylight
a blocked view
18
Vincent Van Gogh
fires his deliriums of yellow and blue
onto a starry night
19
a lonely boat
tossed violently in the swift white water
holding its unstable mind
20
on a backlit stage
muted figures appear tiptoeing back and forth
then retreat
21
the condemned bandit
executed in water colour
date unknown
22
cat sculptures
free flowing contours hardened into stone
solid fur
23
with relentless enthusiasm
peach and pear trees in spring
pop up their buds
24
a pleasant anarchy
oil tubes vomit their tainted emotion onto canvas
modern abstract painting
25
a studio artist
hijacks a piece of nature to his canvas
and sells the fugitive
26
a foreclosed house
filled with emptied space and evicted presence
on the market again
27
many an American dream
ripped open at their seams and stitches
demands needle work
28
the undefeated poet
forces his muse to advance with her invasion
claims three lines of new territory
29
she follows her heart
like the blind following inner dark luminosity
with steady gaze
30
the best seller
regurgitates violence and perverted sexuality
feeding a starved readership
31
rain lets up for a while
giving the wet world a moment of change
yes, it can
32
Vincent Van Gogh
enriched by the poor and the deprived
shoots his own heart
33
the figure drawing artist
enlarges the breasts of the model on stage
a personal intervention
34
a group of beer bottles
emptied of contents by last night's gathering
wordless in solidarity
35
a Buddhist monk
picks a single blade of grass from the field
does he hear Emerson?
36
dark furrows of land
stretch as far as the eye can see
vines of growth
37
a seal of his personality
the artist spreads a layer of oil paint
then a first class stamp
38
she smiles broadly
stretching the lines over her cheekbones
a smoother expression
39
a singer laments
her smoky voice smells cigarettes and beer
a cowboy's story
40
grandpa is dozing
no one knows what dreams he now dreams
just that he is dreaming
Friday, February 13, 2009
haiku 6 -- by Louise Zhang
1.
palmetto fan
stirs tropical breeze over faces
leafy cool delights
2.
a defiant cat
within striking distance of my thoughts
refuses to turn her cheek
3.
blue range of mountains
silently pledges to stand on their feet
forever and forever
4.
you can live with us
but if you get bored that is
your own burden
5.
thoughts flourish
turning a mind into a jungle
the thinker gets lost
6.
near and dear
the children are close to Heaven,
until they find hell
7.
a vow of secrecy
the most powerful bondage
enslaves and redeems
8.
a cat in my face
no matter how hard I gaze
it remains a cat
9.
boyfriend asks girl
did you kiss him last night
o... yes, but I don't like it
10.
a certifiable mind
tries to wiretap its own impulses
self shrinking
11.
on a very crowded bus
a carefully dressed lady looks around
niches into a window seat
12.
parties come and go
the interests of Nation alone stand
dictates to a president
13.
"Lady Chatterly's Lover"
lies steamy in the hot sun
wears jacket
14.
a tight smile
stretches with effort to express
a deep reluctance
15.
unsettled self conscience
munches away at her aging girlishness
delights an onlooker
16.
old wooden planks
broken and rotten with age
a cat walks them
17.
wifedom and motherhood
one more function to the female trinity
breadwinner
18.
modern drama
is delivered in A Doll House
audiences watching
19.
the poet cries
when he comes up with the following
a line drops dead
20.
sipping black coffee
his thoughts get darker and stronger
he adds milk and sugar
21.
a happy housewife
cooks meals and English haiku
without seaweed
22.
his writings
smelling of strong tobacco
cough out of pages
23.
window
closes out wind and rain
closes in sunshine
haiku 5--by Louise Zhang
Technorati Tags: haiku by Louise Zhang (5)
1.
a little baby
cries when nipples are withdrawn
big sorrows
2.
thunder rolls
rain dumps down on dry lands
a wet apologia
3.
classical books on mantle
silently display to the old clock
their staying power
4.
oil pipes are on
petroleum rushes through to Ukraine
from Russia with love
5.
his fingers drill
notes pop up from the piano keys
an A major
6.
clouds move in
overcast her mood with Oxford gray
English tea time
7.
the green leaves of summer
forever fresh and green in the air
Roger Williams
8.
wind dies down
like a spoiled runaway lover
after a tantrum
9.
piano notes
run wild on airwaves
chased by drumstick
10.
sleepy shoes
tired from long hiking yesterday
still unrested
11.
waves, rocking
the sleepy shores in small hours
deep in blues
12.
a fallen leaf
adrift on a small slow stream
a lingering moment
13.
a tall gray wall
looms through the thick brushes
solidly imposing
14.
the Copeland Creek
going quietly her small way
to join the Russian River
15.
dough rises in the oven
its exaggerated size and texture
settles into a bread
16.
she writes poems in
one line and calls them
lonely ones
17.
the centre of flowers
Nature has placed sexuality
in this proper place
18.
a reservoir
volumes of water pile up
behind the dam
19.
obituaries
register peaceful passages
away in its pages
20.
death is peaceful
after a noisy commotion
to leave the body
21.
a butterfly
does not eat butter, but only
flutters by
22.
camera shutter
aiming at a composition
includes and excludes
23.
tumbling over the curb
she falls over her own shadow
double painful
24.
water dries up
wet mud, twigs and rocks
show themselves
25.
cold dislikes
are not warmed up by hot tea
and exchange of greetings
26.
a tune smith
a nightingale releases a flourish
of tunes into air
27.
a bar stool
still warm before a candle light
alone with the jukebox
28.
a steel guitar
spills notes above the thumping band
a metallic echoing
29.
a cowboy's fingers
pick raw the aching intensity of
a lost soul
30.
mist spreading
its haunting white ambiguity
slowly fills the valley
31.
a dog barks
kick-starts a morning of potentials
with a bad poem
32.
a single bird chirps
like a song that hits home
turns grove blue
33.
a single old oak
shares an ancient moment of solitude
with a blind cow
34.
Christian crusaders
found One Thousand and One Nights
in Arabian land
35.
courtly love
a knight woos a married woman
worn-out romance
36.
first winter rain
turns the aging hillsides
maiden green
37.
a lady to a gladiator
flesh is mightier than the sword
try me if you doubt
38.
a dark crow
follows a nameless homeless man
to his unmarked grave
39.
winter blizzard
the earth groans under thick snows
white terror reigns
40.
darken with time
the evening sky hastens to
tuck in the sun
Friday, February 6, 2009
haiku4----by Louise Zhang
1.
an old mop
dripping wet tiredness
against the sink
2.
thorny thoughts
fight their way out of
cactus
3.
toasted rice
steeping in hot green tea
brown, relaxing
4.
busy bees
start a communist movement
pollinating flowers
5.
a frog leaps
across my path, claiming
its right of way
6.
puddles of rain
floating fallen leaves
here and there
7.
on the table
one pepper shaker stands
alone
8.
before a mirror
applying thick red lipstick
prepare to love
9.
waves rush in
change shore line
at will
10.
Bush, the installer
democracy made in USA
on your land
11.
large clouds
sink cozily in sunset
puffy satisfaction
12.
Beijing‘s hot pot
charcoals burning in the chimney
heated appetite
13.
grandma dozes off
poems of Yeats rest on her lap
unvoiced
14.
single-minded
the wind has only one duty
blowing
15.
an old junk
rises its rusty bow to the sky
time goes by
16.
seagulls skip
over the white waves
timing the rush
17.
a moon above
an earth beneath
I stand
18.
a homeless mind
finds a bed in Nietzsche's thoughts
lays itself down
19.
jail complex
lights from the bared windows
stare at freedom
20.
a narrow lane
across from the jail house
leads to homeless shelter
21.
wide-eyed headlights
see through thick morning fog
cars and cars
22.
a gust of wind
rushing hoofs of cowboy's horses
over the rocks
23.
old flower tea cozy
in the warm belly of hers
steaming tea
24.
lemon yellow tulips
holding sun's noon restfulness
with long- stem cups
25.
a bright eyed crow
walks among the fallen leaves
thoughtful and intense
26.
coming to terms
with her mortality, she declares
"I could care less"
27.
he writes his will
make sure it is made known that
he refuses to die peacefully
28.
a tumbler half full
with liqueur, leaving the other half
empty of spirit
29.
a cat leaves its footprints
on the door steps of the Sheriff's house
intentionally
30.
a Windsor chair
as gentle as an old New Englander
silent by a tea pot
31.
swollen armchairs
red with old age, restful and sleepy
on carpeted floor
32.
tea cup in hands
she stares into the sunlit space
a sunnier vision
33.
sun light, roaming
settles down in an empty couch
localizes her warmth
34.
candle light flickers
throwing oblong shadows on the wall
willful with perspective
35.
"I am ready", she says
seeing the light, hearing the drum
she passes away
36.
a lizard of thin tail
doing push ups on the rock
when the sun heats it
37.
a small run-down barn
dots the rolling stretches of green grass
with bygone days
38.
widely spaced teeth
stand up on his withered gum
like fence poles
39.
flying in slow circle
a fly makes light buzzes in the air
content to annoy
40.
winding through darkness
a mountain road stretches at every turn
to face a full moon
an old mop
dripping wet tiredness
against the sink
2.
thorny thoughts
fight their way out of
cactus
3.
toasted rice
steeping in hot green tea
brown, relaxing
4.
busy bees
start a communist movement
pollinating flowers
5.
a frog leaps
across my path, claiming
its right of way
6.
puddles of rain
floating fallen leaves
here and there
7.
on the table
one pepper shaker stands
alone
8.
before a mirror
applying thick red lipstick
prepare to love
9.
waves rush in
change shore line
at will
10.
Bush, the installer
democracy made in USA
on your land
11.
large clouds
sink cozily in sunset
puffy satisfaction
12.
Beijing‘s hot pot
charcoals burning in the chimney
heated appetite
13.
grandma dozes off
poems of Yeats rest on her lap
unvoiced
14.
single-minded
the wind has only one duty
blowing
15.
an old junk
rises its rusty bow to the sky
time goes by
16.
seagulls skip
over the white waves
timing the rush
17.
a moon above
an earth beneath
I stand
18.
a homeless mind
finds a bed in Nietzsche's thoughts
lays itself down
19.
jail complex
lights from the bared windows
stare at freedom
20.
a narrow lane
across from the jail house
leads to homeless shelter
21.
wide-eyed headlights
see through thick morning fog
cars and cars
22.
a gust of wind
rushing hoofs of cowboy's horses
over the rocks
23.
old flower tea cozy
in the warm belly of hers
steaming tea
24.
lemon yellow tulips
holding sun's noon restfulness
with long- stem cups
25.
a bright eyed crow
walks among the fallen leaves
thoughtful and intense
26.
coming to terms
with her mortality, she declares
"I could care less"
27.
he writes his will
make sure it is made known that
he refuses to die peacefully
28.
a tumbler half full
with liqueur, leaving the other half
empty of spirit
29.
a cat leaves its footprints
on the door steps of the Sheriff's house
intentionally
30.
a Windsor chair
as gentle as an old New Englander
silent by a tea pot
31.
swollen armchairs
red with old age, restful and sleepy
on carpeted floor
32.
tea cup in hands
she stares into the sunlit space
a sunnier vision
33.
sun light, roaming
settles down in an empty couch
localizes her warmth
34.
candle light flickers
throwing oblong shadows on the wall
willful with perspective
35.
"I am ready", she says
seeing the light, hearing the drum
she passes away
36.
a lizard of thin tail
doing push ups on the rock
when the sun heats it
37.
a small run-down barn
dots the rolling stretches of green grass
with bygone days
38.
widely spaced teeth
stand up on his withered gum
like fence poles
39.
flying in slow circle
a fly makes light buzzes in the air
content to annoy
40.
winding through darkness
a mountain road stretches at every turn
to face a full moon
Thursday, January 29, 2009
a black horse
a black horse
stands by the fence
it can hear
but it can't see
it's a blind horse
it's an old horse
it used to be the fastest horse at the race
A black horse
all alone
its eyes have tears
its head down
its nose cold
its hair long
it is a blind horse
it has seen better days
A blind horse
walks on the grass
sun is soft
birds are away
it remembers the racing days
blind-folded
winds in its ears
it ran like shooting arrow
it's known as black lightning
A blind horse
a burnt out star
an old tale
by the fire place
it can still hear
but it can't see
the blind black horse
stands by the fence
stands by the fence
it can hear
but it can't see
it's a blind horse
it's an old horse
it used to be the fastest horse at the race
A black horse
all alone
its eyes have tears
its head down
its nose cold
its hair long
it is a blind horse
it has seen better days
A blind horse
walks on the grass
sun is soft
birds are away
it remembers the racing days
blind-folded
winds in its ears
it ran like shooting arrow
it's known as black lightning
A blind horse
a burnt out star
an old tale
by the fire place
it can still hear
but it can't see
the blind black horse
stands by the fence
Friday, January 23, 2009
haiku 3--by Louise Zhang
1.
a big tomato
shouts bloody murder through the blender
to a crimson silence
2.
to a roast chicken
oh, Lord, give to each his own death
diner picks up a fork
3.
she rests her cheek
on the page, where an old castle happens
to have crumbled down
4.
when the cat dies
a full bag of its secret wishes
will be completed
5.
winds are blowing
forcing leaves to face their mortality
in a falling rose petal
6.
she avoids cats now
in their inalienable rights to solitudes
she remains unforgiven
7.
an old spinster
is like a single stocking in a drawer
never being matched up
8.
her gluttonous delights
an indulgence in eating donuts, is offset
with a large black coffee
9.
he peed profusely
two ants survived to bear witness
to their world flood
10
time glides into space
old life has advanced into new death
a French challenge
11.
the cat closes its eyes
forcing the world to reckon with
her indifference
12.
black cat Madam Miao
is capable of changing an old woman
into a baby girl
13.
where am I
the boy goes behind the mirror
searching for himself
14.
how far is Heaven
the distance is between the prayers
and the church bell
15.
a romantic soul
the homeless poet recites Rilke in the rain
without an umbrella
16.
the black fat crow
a noisy minstrel, sings to upset
its casual audience
17.
in the last song
of the swan, a death is born
to a ballet story
18.
the curtain of the stage
falls over her eyes, shutting up
the world inside
19.
the world is only
as wide and big as the opening of
his dear little heart
20.
a stone cathedral
holding bishop's penetrating eyes
silently confessional
21.
the cat with green eyes
understands her rhythmic existence
hides out for three days
22.
pregnant with inward thoughts
teapot avails its sprout to the
heated leafy eloquence
23.
the frozen lake
seals all the sounds from the depth
hears an icy silence
24.
calendar on the wall
stares square back day after day
a stubborn insistence
25.
after training, the dog
finds its adopted existence between
having bones and boneless
26.
fleeting intensity
thunder rolls through tree tops, turning
the scared boy into a poet
27.
a full moon hangs low
a dog barks at her bright immediacy
from a balcony
28.
when grandma sees
a cat is taking a nap with a rat
she praises the Lord
29.
if one contemplates hard
yellow pages will turn to deep red
call this poetry making
30.
my black cat lies lazy
watching human dramas acted out daily
nodding, coy and arrogant
31.
freshness after snow storm
fills winter day with spring yawning
a pale green over white
32.
mirror stares back
not to seduce a lover, but to
induce a reflection
33.
old clock strikes one O'clock
the deep aged gaggle of the long dead
a rebuke every afternoon
34.
I open the Bible
angels, pearl gate, a tired ancient God
the Christian Heaven
35.
a bird's noisy singing
recorded by a poet's metered words
immortalizing
36.
an old rusty gate
such a philosophical charm
to stand on its either side
37.
the black cat stays away
too much love from the mistress
without its permission
38.
a pair of homeless eyes
wanders along the contour of houses
finds a door in a Lily
39.
a mop dripping
wet tiredness
against the sink
40.
a familiar face
passes by
stranger
Thursday, January 22, 2009
identity crisis-- a comment on a picture sent by a friend
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comment: identity crisis
omelette
a small plate of egg
a fried piece of potentiality
a cook's interference
Monday, January 19, 2009
haiku 2 --- by Louise Zhang
1.
silent empty thoughts
what a repose from thinking
muted eloquence
2.
on the TV screen
a girl, killed by a gunshot
followed by an ad.
3.
dry apple chips
preserved sweetness of a harvest
still a green taste
4.
cheese toppings
full intensity of aged vitality
bubbles out over heat
5.
no snow on Christmas
grandpa looks out of window
calling it a white lie
6.
reading Emily Dickinson
mountains answer to mountains
moon stands by the sun
7.
she walks back and forth
measures her poetic pacing
five, seven, and five
8.
red is expanding
insecure in such confrontation
I throw in some green
9.
weightless blue above
brought down to bear on you
myth of gravity
10.
stay in all day long
I babysit my thoughts for hours
break only for coffee
11.
no one to rock it
an armchair stands still and alone
counting empty minutes
12.
on a blank page
ideas did not come, an ant did
but it said nothing
13.
gazing into space
to find black hole full to the rim
with secrecy
14.
a prodigious colour
black cups on white tablecloth
demonic intensity
15.
rocking in his chair
the sea still casts salt on his soul
his nautical beard
16.
one moon in the sky
throws reflection on every leaf
pale multitudes
17.
two cars clash
the forward-thrusting momentum
runs into a limit
18.
with little ecstasy
falling leaves land where winds
swept them over to
19.
another dandelion
in bright, well-heated sunlight
prematurely aged
20.
where is the author
tilling his fields of words
in his unfinished work
21.
can never be alone
when one is emptying his thoughts
into his shadow
22.
the old artist died
the cat did not return that night
unsuspecting
23.
lived as a Bohemian
he followed his ideal as its shadow
and died as one
24.
a huge moon rising
up-directing every pair of eyes
remotely compelling
25.
gas knob turns on
a hissing sound seized by a rage
as hot as fire
26.
feeling like God, he
throws colorful temptations on canvas
exacerbating beauty
27.
boiling pot reports
always assertive in its loudness
its steam escapes
28.
the sun is long gone
taking lights with him to home
a darker reflection
29.
that old broken chair
had seen the birth of an idea
one winter evening
30.
biting into the cake
her old coffee cup in one hand
she deforms an art
31.
alone along the trail
some thoughts fall from the trees
some run to the woods
32.
fog, falling gray and wet
as the first wash on a canvas
lies in wait for the sun
33.
framing the clouds
my window leans over the hilltop
hugging distances
34.
a blue jay
jumps on a fence
drops its shadow
35.
sipping coffee
thoughts get darker
warmer and stronger
36.
his writings
smells strong tobacco
coughs out a sentence
37.
a happy housewife
cooks meals
and haiku
38.
she and death
facing each other daily
one on one
39.
happiest time
lying in my husbands'arms
awake
40.
slow slugs
making wet declaration
on cold cement
Saturday, January 17, 2009
haiku 1
1.
an infant, midnight
cries out, gloriously
tender urgency
2.
he picks up anger
to bed, a bitter sweet heart
to cuddle with
3.
a slim moon, new
drops her ancient garment
bright mystery rises
4.
lying perfect still
a flood of muted sounds
deafening my ear
5.
what am I doing
a bird stands on a lamp post
asking the star
6.
the sun rises
an unchanging prophecy
with certainty
7.
with its wings
thousand vibrations
a bird drums
8.
silent night frost
cooling winter pines
a colder thought
9.
radiant waves
travel through nightly air
stars appear
10.
close the blinds
darkness thick as blanket
securely sheltered
11.
a crow crows
suddenly darkness breaks into
a million pieces
12.
on the podium
baton dances up and down
beat the sounds
13.
the hugeness of thoughts
bursts through its tight seams
a drop of sigh
14.
pleasure demands
a labor of willingness from the heart
that lawless agent
15.
brows slowly knitted
into heavy thoughtfulness
a weighty look
16.
lemon tree laden
abundance of yellow gratitude
seasonal sunshine
17.
soft surrender
sunlight to dusky withdrawal
folding the evening
18.
a bee circling
a girl's presence on rose petals
after she smells it
19.
your innocence
in its nightly loud snore
irresistible
20.
in sun's open arms
the cat lies sweet and quiet
entertains no thoughts
21.
writing haiku
the Japanese English poem
thinking in Chinese
22.
frost gathers
all the last night dreams
in its white embrace
23.
the marching night
has chased daylight out of
a cat's eyes
24.
anguish of spring
bursts open all the buds of their
wintry impatience
25.
blooming pleasure
a rose petal brushes a breeze
losing her head
26.
a garden feast
all the birds and worms
come uninvited
27.
rest in love, clouds
lazily stretch in the sky
to east, and to west
28.
grapes on the vines
purple delights hanging heavy
waiting for the church bell
29.
innocent desires
in the gaze of a full moon
who will fall for it？
30.
a pure moment
weeping willow's shadow in the pond
washes her hair
31.
an empty quiet house
ghosts of poetic persuasion
brewing haiku tea
32.
an old blue plate
a fresh bunch of grapes rest
in regal purple
33.
a little ant running
dedicated to its aims
unknown to me
34.
the mouse escaped
after the trap snipped in vain
god bless it
35.
water pot whistles
a happy hissing enterprise
tea leaves paralyzed
36.
solid fresh onion
a daughter of the lily family
sisterhood of pungency
37.
lost in sleep
his heart wanders around
looking for a pillow
38.
peanut butter jar
being invaded every midnight
too creamy to yell
39.
sunlight screams
into dark corners of shadows
hardly audible
40.
no longer remember
silence is bald and tired
lost its voice
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