Jazz and poetry... Ira Sadoff

I believe that music was created to help us experience emotions. Nothing moves me quite like music. 




At the Half-Note cafe
                               for Gene Ammons

Once I heard him play
"Willow Weep For Me"
in a tone so full
and sentimental, I felt
a gap between my ribs
and lungs, a dearth of air,
sorrow soon enough would fill.
I found the blues unfair
to boys like me who came to bars
unprepared for grief
that wasn't strictly personal ...

By Ira Sadoff


Maybe one of the hardest things we face is to feel joy in the midst of pain, but I do believe God desires us to feel emotions as pancakes.  They come in stacks, not just one at a time.  We tell ourselves it is wrong to be happy or the pain of an event masks the joyful moment that fills the present moment.  In 1956 Gene Ammons gathered with some of the best to record some music.

 here is the title track, The Happy Blues...




Individual musicians touch our lives and when they pass away tributes emerge.  Here is one made for Etta James, in which she sings the song, which touched Ira Sadoff, when it emerged from Gene Ammons horn...