BERLIN BERLIN!

Lee Konitz & Charlie Parker

MINGUS MINGUS MINGUS!

FOR DAVID STEPHENSON

David Stephenson was a deep friend,

I met him through books.

He came from Carlisle

with that intense and craggy look.

We studied life together,

smoked Full Strength

and sipped Real Ale.

He liked his women big.

I learnt from him

to visit pubs at lunchtimes

to end up pissed in lectures

but, most of all,

to read the letters of Van Gogh,

the diaries of Franz Kafka,

to go inside 

the jazz 

of Ornette Coleman

and Cecil Taylor.

David told me that 

‘Most people are thick’

and, as a socialist of a kind,

I sometimes think he had a point.

I wonder where he is today.

Back across country I surmise,

smoking and looking at the sunrise,

with a fat woman kissing his neck,

listening to Mingus 

and the sky.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Charles Mingus

Painting is 2ft x 2ft, mixed media on board.

OSCAR!

JOHN COLTRANE

A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM

A Great Day in Harlem or Harlem 1958 is a 1958 black and white group portrait of 57 notable jazz musicians photographed in front of a Brownstone in Harlem, New York City. The photo has remained an important object in the study of the history of jazz.

Art Kane, a freelance photographer working for Esquire magazine, took the picture around 10 a.m. on August 12 in the summer of 1958. The musicians had gathered at 17 East 126th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Harlem. Esquire published the photo in its January 1959 issue. Kane calls it "the greatest picture of that era of musicians ever taken."

Jean Bach, a radio producer of New York, recounted the story behind it in her 1994 documentary film, A Great Day in Harlem. The film was nominated in 1995 for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

As of April 2013, only 4 of the 57 musicians who participated are still living (see starred names in the list below.)

Red Allen

Buster Bailey

Count Basie

Emmett Berry

Art Blakey

Lawrence Brown

Scoville Browne

Buck Clayton

Bill Crump

Vic Dickenson

Roy Eldridge

Art Farmer

Bud Freeman

Dizzy Gillespie

Tyree Glenn

Benny Golson*

Sonny Greer

Johnny Griffin

Gigi Gryce

Coleman Hawkins

J.C. Heard

Jay C. Higginbotham

Milt Hinton

Chubby Jackson

Hilton Jefferson

Osie Johnson

Hank Jones

Jo Jones

Jimmy Jones

Taft Jordan

Max Kaminsky

Gene Krupa

Eddie Locke

Marian McPartland*

Charles Mingus

Miff Mole

Thelonious Monk

Gerry Mulligan

Oscar Pettiford

Rudy Powell

Luckey Roberts

Sonny Rollins*

Jimmy Rushing

Pee Wee Russell

Sahib Shihab

Horace Silver*

Zutty Singleton

Stuff Smith

Rex Stewart

Maxine Sullivan

Joe Thomas

Wilbur Ware

Dickie Wells

George Wettling

Ernie Wilkins

Mary Lou Williams

Lester Young

EARL 'FATHA' HINES!

24"x 24" mixed media

LESTER YOUNG ON TOUR

CHET BAKER IN MILAN

DOWN AT THE OLD BELL & BUCKET!

Regular Tuesday afternoon session at the  Bell & Bucket, North Shields - in the Tyne Delta!

NINA!

NINA SIMONE

48" x 24"  mixed media on board.

THE HAWK!

MAL WALDRON

We encounterd Mal at the Corner House in Newcastle upon Tyne - many moons ago!

The Day Lady Died

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   

in Ghana are doing these days

                                           I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)   

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life   

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do   

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or   

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Frank O’Hara, from Lunch Poems.

MONK IN DURHAM!

HUMPH!

ORNETTE SINGS!

ORNETTE!

11"x11" ink and gouche on art paper

THOSE PORTHOLE BLUES AGAIN!

photo: lance liddle

It’s Tuesday again

and the sun in the Stella is shining.

Yellow dust fills 

the dappled Porthole

with a Golden Fleece

and the jazz, hot jazz, 

belts out

raging

from this pulsating lounge.

The saints and ghosts of ancient seamen

go marching in.

Let the liquid trumpet

pour out,

my legs slide to the floor

with the trombone lilt.

Cry me this river,

lurch for the ferry.

I will ping the dart

of a blue note

through your soul.

I am only a poet,

a saxophone with words,

an improvising shantyman

thanking the landlord

for still serving me:

despite all

this poetry slurping,

this lovely drivel

dribbling

from my wicked Geordie tongue.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

SATCHMO!

Young Louis Armstrong

oil on board, 2ft x 2ft

KEITH & CHET

WELCOME!

Welcome to the Armstrong-Dixon Line where North East England based writer Keith Armstrong and artist Peter Dixon share their views on the world and all that surrounds it.

Expect rants, politics, poetry, history, photography and all sorts of........stuff.

Lets start with the genius Chet Baker. Artwork by Peter for a possible exhibition.

24" x 24" acrylic on board