Some of you made it through my summarization of the musical career of the Cats and the Fiddle Jazz combo this week, but even though I was writing about music, we didn’t add much poetry there. One little thing I found out since I wrote that summary: that eBay matchbook collector item should have tipped me off about the site of one of those young Chicago kids’ gigs — a way stop on a trip to Hollywood to try breaking into the movies. It wasn’t at the “Airplane Café Club” as Marv Goldberg had it from his research, but the “Aeroplane  Café. I’ve found a postcard. Looks pretty swanky. I wonder how the Cats act went down there in 1936 — did the Denver white swing kids dig their act? Four or five years later I’d give our band of audacious teenagers better odds on that.

Well, however they were received, they were young, they had dreams of a career ahead of them.

Looking at what musical acts were playing Denver at this club and elsewhere during the ‘30s, it was mostly white bands for dancing. Black bands started appearing on the bills in the ‘40s. My research said the Aeroplane Cafe lasted until the ‘80s, hosting in its last years rockabilly bands.

.

So, let’s combine some literary poetry with music, Parlando style today. The words are by Langston Hughes, one of the first poets to recognize that Blues and Jazz were poetic, suitable for praise in poems, suitable to combine with Jazz words he’d contribute. When the young Hughes wrote today’s words for publication, he called the short poem “Dreams.”   I heard it as a kind of Blues, a Blues with a sorrowful side, but with an admonishment to endure. If some reading this are having a February of backlash and disappointment tempting despair, this is after all Black History Month. Afro-American poet Hughes knew that dreams may well be knocked down, ignored, belittled. Yes, I know the word “woke” is a word in present contention. I find it odd it is used by those who smirk and dismiss the word as they speak it, aiming it toward those who know very well the reasons that dreams are extinguished.

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

I’m looking at a bare and snowy landscape out my window this evening. I rode to breakfast in 10 degrees with a cold wind this morning. I read the newspaper when I got to the cafe, because I’m a man who still spills eggs and hot sauce on the news in the morning. None of the news was good.

I spent my last couple of days making the musical piece work as well as I could make it, tickling an old guitar that I played when I was young, playing piano the way I can: a finger or two on the keys, tracking the left and right hand parts separately to disguise my ham-handedness — because music may find a way. I sang Langston Hughes’ words quietly, mouth up near the microphone. I had to, it was near midnight when I sang them, and my family was asleep and I want them to keep their dreams.

I want you too to keep the sweeter of your dreams. Waking right now can script all the nightmares and anxiety dreams that need no help. When the best mysteries come under the eyelids, ones almost too good to remember, I want you to keep them, even just the sense of them.

The audio player to hear my adaptation of Hughes’ poem I call “Langston’s Blues”  can be heard with the audio player gadget below. No gadget? It’s off dreaming, but you can also use this highlighted link which will open a new tab with its own audio player.

I’m planning to return in a few days with more on why I wanted to work at figuring out all I could about that young Jazz combo of the 1930s and ‘40s.