Dexter Was Dale

Dexter Was Dale

ROUND MIDNIGHT (1986) Directed by Bertrand Tavernier

Amazing how a French director
and some black American jazz musicians
could make a French film
that comes closer to capturing
the tortured soul of a jazzman
than anything flickering before or after.

Dexter Gordon playing Dale Turner,
dedicated to Lester and Bud,
with Herbie composing, arranging
and acting in it.

Dexter dominated every frame,
giving a bravura performance
when he still had the chords for it,
part Charlie Parker, part Brando,
but never for an instant
were we ever aware that
he was acting; for
Dexter was Dale.

Dale : “Yeah, I sleep--
but not really.
There are always those dreams.
You know--the music.”

Eddie Wayne : “If you had seen
Hershell and Dale play together, Francis,
it's something that you could never forget.
They were so new and so different
and yet so close. Maybe it was all those memories
that made Dale leave for Paris that Friday morning.
Maybe what he saw in Hershell's eyes
was too frightening and too familiar.”

A big bear going bald
light-skinned black man
blowing cool round midnight
at the Blue Note
in the Paris of the 1950’s.

Dale: “You can’t get style
from off a tree somewhere.
It’s got to be inside you,
growing on its own tree,
naturally. I tell you
happiness is
a wet Rico reed.”

A toothy grin that disarms you,
makes you vulnerable
to his pitch for a glass of spirits;
and the next time,
and the next--
but definitely the look of a man
that the ladies laid down for
before he developed his paunch.

“You know, man,......the music,”
he’d growl in a deep voice sounding
like leather soles grinding on gravel,
with his strong thick fingers miming
the embrace of his tenor sax.

Dale: “Exploring, always searching
for the new places, expanding until
there isn’t anything else;
just the music.”

Black pork pie hat,
plain blackish sunglasses,
hunched up big shoulders,
moving in a strange gait,
part strut and part stagger;
always appearing
to be slightly off-balance,
lurching from room to room,
and out of the rain
into the shadows of a club.

Dale: “It's funny how the world is
inside of nothing. I mean you have
your heart and soul inside of you.
Babies are inside of their mothers.
Fish are out there... in the water.
But the world... is inside of nothing.
I don't know if I like this or not,
but you'd better write it down.”

Only time that his shoulders relaxed
and he straightened up
to his full height, was when
his axe was in his hands
and his hungry fingers
stroked its brass body.

Dale: “A cat came up to me one time
in Brooklyn and stared at me playing,
you know--the way a lot of dudes do,
and then he says: I’m a jazzman too
and I play you better
than you do!”

Then, on stage, between licks
his smile was genuine,
and the blue joy
of who he really was
married itself to the music,
shacked up and jelly-tight.

Dale: “I hope, Lady Francis,
that we live long enough to see
an avenue named after Charlie Parker,
a Lester Young Park,
a Duke Ellington Square.
And even, a street named Dale Turner.”

The seeds of his darkness settled deep
in his sad puffy eyes--
that had done too much dope
and seen the naked bottom
of too many whores
and brown whiskey bottles--
goddamn eyes that only shined,
only came to life when he played,
or talked about playing.

Dale: “Tired? Yeah, I’m tired
of everything but the music.”

So we leave him sweating
on a greasy club stage,
blowing hard and hot
riffs, swells, and solos
with the beat
pounding
in his own temples,
for he worshipped a trollop
called Music, letting it become
his everything, and even though
the bitch knew what he liked
he always understood
it could not be
his salvation.

Glenn Buttkus October 2010

Dexter Gordon

Would you like to hear the Author read this poem?