the birth of rock and roll (part 2)

and then america gives birth to the blues
spirituals and field hollers moan into form
the flattened note and twelve bar bones are
the skeleton for their sad and suffering songs…
well i can hear that freight train coming
it goes rolling through my head
i can hear that freight train coming mama
as it goes rolling through my head
and if i aint on that train by morning
then the lawman bound to shoot me dead.

the vaudevillian minstrel and medicine shows
the steamboats churning the big muddy and
popularizing these sounds in the cities
where w c handy and his band of brothers
are publishing st louis blues memphis blues
and it spreads quickly from city to city
bending the blue third in the musical scale
and capturing the ears of our imagination
this major minor tension stirred up from
memphis st louis and down to new orleans.

and in the crescent city a new rhythm is rising
like bubbles blurping up from a homemade stew
a lazy but insistent black cajun creole mix
of blues folk dixieland rag and something else…
legend has it that the great buddy bolden
once held a drunken trumpet to his lips
and blew the perfect countermelody
and that was the beginning of jazz
but he died a psychotic alcoholic derelict
so i guess we will never really know for sure.

and now the war is over hooray and welcome to
the roaring twenties fueled by bathtub gin
and the great black orchestras that swing
like basie duke and fletcher henderson
making this decadent decade jump baby jump
with their step-up-front instrumental solos
and their crazy jazz riff accompaniments
paving the road for what will later come
and like the inevitable evolutionary creep
our tastes adapt to this aural reconstruction.