Archie Shepp
Four For Trane

I wonder if now that I've quit smoking, my hazy conception of Jazz will fade away just like a little puff of smoke that dissolves into the air after a satisfying drag. Because, in the end, the romantic notion of the smoky Jazz Club is still tethered to the past.

Perhaps that's why I quit smoking, after last month, in a club in Bologna, after the fateful question from the waiter, "smokers or non-smokers?", my lady and I, upon responding "smokers", were parked in a sort of annex attached to the venue but obviously separated from it by walls and glass. Result: I saw little (one could hear the wind instruments, though visibly they were ghosts as they were below the level of the... wall), I heard less (the waiter passing back and forth, opening the door, was a breath of freedom), and once out of the venue, the temperature change, after spending the evening with one of those ambient heaters that seem like incandescent candelabras pointed at your face, left me with a whopping fever and, included in the price, a bronchitis from which I'm still feeling the aftershocks. I wonder now, at the sight of the historic smoky photo capturing Dexter Gordon, if the same emotion will always be there after having seen and experienced it for the umpteenth time.

On the cover of "Four for Trane" by Archie Shepp, masterpiece of the Florida saxophonist where he revisits ("revisits" is an understatement: let's say the tracks acquire additional but different magic, if that is possible when dealing with the Art of someone like John Coltrane) Trane's tracks, including "Naima" and "Cousin Mary," an album that practically traces the footsteps of the legendary "Giant Steps" by Trane with more "Rufus" by Shepp, there's Shepp himself smoking a pipe sitting atop stairs. Trane observes him through the banister of the staircase; then you open the Impulse! gatefold and on the cover there's Trane himself, who after sitting beside Shepp, holds a cigarette between his fingers, which in Coltrane's hand achieve the status of Humanity's heritage, unlike fingers dedicated to mere autoeroticism by common people... Even if Trane's fingers on his saxophone were perhaps the most sublime and closest example to the purest and most essential autoeroticism. Trane, affected by his ailments, did not seek treatment because he didn't want to, his religious beliefs and such led him to this choice; but I, being a mere mortal without a legendary aura to pass on to future generations, and who at my departure would only be missed by a small family and a handful of friends, gladly had some check-ups, and after ruling out issues beyond the bronchitis, I decided to quit the alluring blondes. There's already a DeRece of the album in the BungaBase of DeBaser, but I wrote it because I quit smoking...

Ah, the album is fabulous of course, and I’ve said everything by saying practically nothing. She’s sleeping in my bed, in front of me. She still smokes: yesterday I would have admired her sleeping, merrily smoking, contemplating the night with masterpieces of this kind in the headphones; but today I limit myself to listening. Listening. They recommended the cigar to me, but then I would dunk it inside my harmonious and decisive crystal of Lucky Joe, and it would still hurt me...