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HEAVENLY JAM III: jazzer meets 2 jokes in heaven

from ASSORTED ONE​-​OFFS, 1997​-​2023 by Tom Ross

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This is my third whack at this 1988 song with two jokes about the afterlife.

Joke 1: Two guys decide that the one who dies first will communicate with the other from the beyond. One dies. After a while the living gets a phone call:

D: Hey man, it's me!

L: Wow! Tell me what it's like!

D: Oh, it's great. I get up and have some grass, make some love, have a snack, take a nap, have more grass, have lunch, make love, have more grass, snack, make love, have dinner, have more grass, make love . . . and the next day it's the same thing all over again. I love it!

L: I didn't know Heaven was like that!

D: What do you mean, Heaven? I'm a buffalo in Montana!

Joke 2: A jazz musician dies and meets St. Peter. The gatekeeper says there's good news and bad news. Good: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Muddy Waters, Benny Goodman, Charlie Mingus, and many more are having a jam session tonight, and they want you to play! The bad news: Jesus has this girlfriend, and she thinks she can sing.

The first version of "Heavenly Jam", on one of the Treble in Paradise albums, is hard to beat. The second is no slouch, but I had fun with this third version. It's very baroque: pour on the parts, for Thomas Tallis and BaBenzele pygmies! Some of the 'creme du fromage', (the cream of the cheesy) sounds contribute, recalling a polyphony I favored in the '80s.

lyrics

listen Mr. Peter: I love the sound of sin
if that is devil's music, won't you please let me through?
I'm not even dead yet, but it came out of the blue
they're jamming up in Heaven, and I'm dying to sit in

lots of grass and makin' love is what I see beyond
a buffalo already has that all day through
but Montana never was a place of which I'm fond
when the firmament is counting down a blues for me and you

there's Duke and Satch-a-mo and Lady Day and Jelly Roll
Mingus and the Yardbird, the Goodman and the Monk
Miles Davis, Muddy Waters, Basie, Miff the Mole,
celestializing blues with bebop, dixie, swing and funk!

truck on through, but know I've got some good news and some bad
first the good news, it may help to ease the sting
the most cosmic vouting session you ever had
but Jesus has this girlfriend and she thinks she can sing

credits

from ASSORTED ONE​-​OFFS, 1997​-​2023, track released August 29, 2014

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Tom Ross Colorado Springs, Colorado

Music, art, poetry spoken here!

As E Dickinson says:

Nature is what we know
but have no art to say
so impotent our wisdom is
to her simplicity

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