August in paradise

jelly roll morton and king oliver from new orleans are biographies in free form verse that poet ray bisso calls jazz bio-poems. they depict the joys, sorrows, successes, and defeats in the lives of these classic american jazz masters. the creative days of pioneer new orleans jazzmen are long gone. we are fortunate to have the recordings of great musicians like jelly roll morton and king oliver. however, accounts of these early musicians are sketchy and we rely heavily on word of mouth and legend for knowledge of their daily lives. our contemporary jazz musicians are inclined to cannibalize the musical ideas of their previous era's jazzmen and then discard the traditional body of their work in favor of current jazz styles. it remains for historians, biographers, and poets to retain the facts and legend surrounding the lives of these often neglected or forgotten jazz innovators. these two bio-poems combine biography and legend to capture the spirit and inner voices of our early jazzmen.