The Tenor Man by Adrian Green
Pottering around the stage, a hyperactive ancient in his own backyard - independent of the band it seems.
Disrhythmic shuffling of ashtray, beer, a pack of cigarettes, adjusting microphones,
then in the middle eight he draws, exhales, and catches breath, stoops forward to the mouthpiece
and blows, a tumbling counterpoint, scales soaring from his horn.
The melody flows
until the break, and then he shoulders arms, a truce between the music and his ailing lungs.
Between choruses he sits apart to light another cigarette, a sideman counting out the bars until he rises for the coda - this Lazarus of swing.
|