I suppose if you go to your grave without hearing
“Hey Pete, Let’s Eat Mo’ Meat”
you can still say you have lived,
but I’d consider such a life incomplete.
Or, playing the fool,
you could deliberately pass up
“Ool Ya Kool”
but I wouldn’t if I were you.
If you’d like to lose the top of your head instead
I have a live version of “Manteca” that will blow
it off for you–no drugs required
just a stew of Latin rhythms and Dizzy too.
I used to have his take on Fats Waller’s
“Jitterbug Waltz” but that song went the
sad way of all vinyl–at the end it would
hiss and pop like bacon frying on a griddle.
I saw John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie just once
before he died, at Sandy’s in Beverly, Mass.,
playing that cantilevered horn of his with the
the squirrel-getting-ready-for-winter cheeks–
that was Diz.
