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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Midnight (EST) deadline, blues contest entries

Prizes of Jazz at Lincoln Center tix for this weekend and dvds of Wynton Marsalis with Willie Nelson for the best blues lyrics or prose poem will be determined at 12:01 tonight (11/11/09). Several stunning (!?!) efforts have been received — via the comments box below — but I’m not publishing any of them until all the tries are in and the winners have been chosen. Is it hard to write a blues lyric? See my examples from yesterday, or search the web for classics, which are plentiful. Three to five choruses fitting a standard 12-bar blues form, or a bluesy prose poem of 100 to 150 words are what I want to see — alto sax soulman Maceo Parker playing in the elegant Allen Room, and Wynton leading the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in music by Mary Lou Williams, with featured soloists Geri Allen and Geoff Keezer are first prizes; second and third are dvds of Wynton and Willie (with guest Norah Jones), autographed by Mr. Jazz at Lincoln Center himself. 

Submit your blues now! Don’t delay and cry like this – 

I didn’t send my entry to see a weekend show

Didn’t send my entry to hear ol’ Maceo blow

Now it’s Saturday, I’m lonely, and got no place to go.

I coulda been at Lincoln Center, listening with the jazz elite

The Allen Room or Rose Hall, as music halls they’re sweet.

Could be watching Wynton ‘n’ Willie, even that would be a treat.

If I’d writ a blues or poem, I wouldn’t be here now

If I’d write a blues or poem, I wouldn’t be here now.

Awful glad I had a chance though, thanks to Mandel anyhow.

howardmandel.com
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Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

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