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The Mississippi Corpse - CyberCorpse 12

From: "Eos Dawn" <eos_d@hotmail.com>

Here's some river history and maybe folklore, too. I'm sure you know that Louis Armstrong played on Mississippi River excursion boats for the Fate Marable Orchestra. Marable, who worked for the Streckfus Steamer Company, took a chance on Armstrong who at the time--it's said--couldn't read a note. Marable, who also played steam calliope, allegedly taught Armstrong to read music.

These steamboats, which Louis played on for five seasons from 1918 to 1922 (before he went on to Chicago, "King" Joe Oliver, and American iconography) traveled between Nawlins and Rock Island, Illinois. I see their northbound journeys as mythic, carrying Dixieland culture upriver through the American heartland, corrupting "decent" youngsters, leading them astray to the debauchery of the Jazz Age, and thus giving birth to some of the best music that time (and the present, for that matter) offers.

There is a--perhaps apocryphal--story that the young Bix Beiderbeck, then of Davenport Iowa, heard these showboats and Marable's Orchestra and the incredible tone of a then-unknown horn player who hit notes higher and cleaner than Bix had imagined possible. The rest, as they say, is all that jazz.

I think this is a marvelous aspect of Mississippi lore and hope you'll consider using it. I've written a poem that captures--for me--what I've described, and hope you'll consider using *that* too in the documentary or perhaps in Exquisite Corpse. It would be a real honor (and uh way cool) for me to be a part of either. Also, here are two wonderful resources should you want to explore this idea:

1. From the Steamboatin Website, some delicious calliope sound samples (whistle samples, too)

http://www.steamboats.org/ecaliope.htm

2. Capt. Clarke C. 'Doc' Hawley, perhaps the top riverboat historian alive today, lives in your neck of the woods. He has worked on several excursion boats, including the Streckfus' President. As a calliope player, he is very knowledgeable about Fate Marable and I believe may have even worked with him. Hawley now works with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company

http://www.deltaqueen.com

and resides at: 639 Barracks New Orleans, LA 70116.

Please consider my poem. I'm holding my breath (and passing out soon).

Hopefully yours,
Shara Faskowitz


Upriver

Daylight fades and steam floats over the river,
the sun retreats, strikes its last orange notes
against the brown water flowing south
as shadows move forward denying the current

of convention moving in clumsy grace upriver
northward, slapping wet plashes on carved spokes,
the wheel leads like a masthead turning circles,
singing through eddies and clumps of reed.

Darkness falls and tons of iron chuff chug,
stoked by heat building in an angry cage
and burping up puffs through the stack
in cloud bursts that thin and curl over water,
weaving dank smoky threads through trees.

Darkness falls and gulls caw warnings,
leading faint frog choruses that will rise
in the night to insectile whirrs and the last
hungry splash of trout feeding, blending
against the heartbeat of the wheel the breath

of shifting water is held and released
in a thick whistle stretching across night air,
wheezing to silence paused until the first
giddy notes spill thin as reeds and giggle
the cooler air in silly calliope confections.

Waitin for the Robert E Lee! Dixie!
If You Knew Susie! Stars and Stripes Forever!

Laugh sultry in deep siren syncopation,
exploding horns and drumbeats into black.

The day is done and jazz struts dixie style
up the Mississippi. She rambles shoutin
Looka here! Calling past Fate's baton,
flying high as notes can leap from Louis'
horn and whizz over the wheel, over water,

past the riverbank, arrows of jazz shot
through the night sail through farmhouse
windows and into the hearts of young men
still sleeping in innocent beds, but filled
with lusty dreams of cities, sin, and song.

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