Jack

"Out we jumped in the warm, mad night, hearing a wild tenorman bawling horn across the way, going 'EE-YAH!  EE-YAH!  EE-YAH!' and hands clapping to the beat and folks yelling, 'Go, go, go!'... The behatted tenorman was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory free idea, a rising and falling riff that went from 'EE-yah!' to a crazier 'EE-de-lee-yah!' and blasted along to the rolling crash of butt-scarred drums hammered by a big brutal Negro with a bullneck who didn't give a damn about anything but punishing his busted tubs, crash, rattle-ti-boom, crash.  Uproars of music and the tenorman had it and everybody knew he had it...  

"Boom, kick, that drummer was kicking his drums down the cellar and rolling the beat upstairs with his murderous sticks, rattlety-boom!... The pianist was only pounding the keys with spread-eagled fingers, chords, at intervals when the great tenorman was drawing breath for another blast- Chinese chords, shuddering the piano in every timber, chink, and wire, boing!... finally the tenorman decided to blow his top and crouched down and held a note in high C for a long time as everything else crashed along and the cries increased and I thought the cops would come swarming from the nearest precinct...

"Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America."

from

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

1955