The Great New Orleans Jass Concert is a musical sketchbook in verse of the development of jazz in New Orleans and the unique cultural context in which it was brewed. Spellman, both a renowned poet and jazz critic, brings his knowledge and skills in both genres to bear in this poetry book whose structure is a musical performance. The book opens with overture and prelude, followed by eight sets and two intermezzos devoted to major characters and topics which comprise the narrative arc: Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Black Benny, Louis Armstrong, Octoroons, Storyville, Voodoo, and Robert Charles. This panoramic view traces the birth of jazz, the postbellum sex trade, occult religious practices, and the abiding postbellum violence of racism. International juxtapositions appear as reverberations in a coda set in a simultaneous period in Europe. The heart-rending encore underscores the unresolved issues on the home front with Plessy v Ferguson. The musical expertise and poetic prowess of A.B. Spellman are exquisitely rendered in a poetry collection that could only have been created by a virtuoso in both art forms. All the poems in this volume were written during the past four years and are previously unpublished.

[SAMPLE POEM]

Jelly Roll the Sweetback Man

if you wanted to be a sweetback man
you had to know how to dress
never match your pants with your blue coat
always a stripe in pants so tight
the top button could never close

lean your body as far away from the post
as you can so your pants stay pressed &
shirt open to flash your red flannel undershirt
when you walk shoot a good agate hands
at the side index finger straight out & strut
smooth & slow in your stetson hat & st louis flats
with cork soles that turned up at the toes
mine bent damn near to my ankles
light bulbs in the toes & switches in the pocket
the women went crazy when you flashed
your shoes at them then you was a sweetback man