'A Joyousness That Brings Joy to This Room'

One of the unexpected joys of landing a job more than forty years ago as court reporter for the Palladium-Item newspaper in Richmond, Ind., was the opportunity to explore the remains of the Gennett Record Co., a pile of bricks and mortar on the east bank of the Whitewater River. The company was founded in 1917 as a subsidiary of the Starr Piano Co. In the following decade, Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Earl Hines, Hoagy Carmichael, Muggsy Spanier, Johnny Dodds and other jazz pioneers, as well as country, blues and gospel artists, recorded there. Most importantly, on April 6, 1923, Joe “King” Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band boarded a train in Chicago and rode to Richmond to record nine songs, among them “Chimes Blues,” featuring Louis Armstrong’s first recorded solo. 

Seeing the remains of the Gennett studio added a piquancy to the records. Heaps of rubble and part of a standing wall was all that remained of a sacred place in American culture. A long-abandoned railroad line ran near the factory and I’m told that the sound of a passing train can be heard on one of bluesman Charley Patton’s 1929 recordings. (The narrator of that video is Rick Kennedy, a former reporting colleague at the Palladium-Item , jazz scholar and first-rate piano player.) Often there’s a ghostly quality to early recordings and mystery about who is actually playing. The late Warren Hope published “The Unknown Trumpeter” in the March 1987 issue of Chronicles, preceded by an epigraph:

 

“‘There is an unknown second trumpet man.’

— from notes to a Louis Armstrong album”

 

“For all I know he spends his nights on grates

Clinging to clouds of steam.

Trying to sleep and, maybe, dream

Of when he traveled widely playing dates.

 

“Or it could be he's been retired for years—

Tucked in a nursing home

Where a rare visitor will come

To speak to him and wonder at his tears.

 

“But it seems much more likely he is dead,

A fading memory

Among old friends and family

That soon will fail to trouble any head.

 

“No matter how he lives or how he died.

His life has one plain meaning.

The jubilation of his playing,

A joyousness that will not be denied—

 

“A joyousness that brings joy to this room.

Making me offer thanks

To one who from the nameless ranks

Raises sweet riffs tinged with a sense of doom.”

 

Hope died (an interesting phrase) on May 23, 2022, at age seventy-seven. He captures the poignant sound of old recordings: “A joyousness that brings joy to this room.”

 

In the same issue of Chronicles, the “Letter from the Heartland” column by the late poet Jane Greer is published. Jane died on July 22 at age seventy-two. Like Hope’s poem, Jane’s essay is a meditation, in part, on mortality:

 

“Let’s face it: Self-preservation is not our strongest instinct; is, in fact, an impossibility. We know we’re only tourists here, so why not see the sights before the bus pulls out? Our innocent vices and our mulishness where it matters least are a large part of what makes us human. Humanhood alone has the wits to luxuriate in the status quo—to understand that life is a gift, meant to be enjoyed—and the raw determination to sometimes transgress that status quo if it means a real reward. Humanhood alone can look up from a plate of fried chicken livers, light a cigar, drain the last of the wine, and, perfectly aware that such habits are unhealthy for the body, say, with conviction, I AM okay! You ARE okay!—and be correct. The feast of the soul is a strictly human event.”