Bolcom: Black Max (Neil Balfour)

Neil Balfour performing Black Max (as told by the De Kooning Boys) words by Arnold Weinstein and music by William Bolcom.

The audio & video in this performance was a continuous LIVE recording for artsongstory.

Music & Performance: Neil Balfour (www.neilbalfour.com)
Audio & Video: Ben Rawles
Piano: Jenny Martins

ABOUT
One day in the 1950s Arnold was visiting his friend Willem de Kooning's studio. William's brother had come to visit from Rotterdam, where they had both grown up - they had not seen each other for 30 years - and for Arnold's benefit they reminisced about the bohemian life in their home city in the 1930s.

(Much of medieval Rotterdam was bombed flat by the Nazis in the Second World War and rebuilt in the fifties in the same ugly style as much of Germany.)

The artists' and prostitutes' section of the city was the same quarter, with a lively street life. One of the most picturesque characters on the Rotterdam street was "Zwarte Max"; this is Black Max's portrait "as told be the de Kooning boys."

LYRICS
He was always dressed in black
Long black jacket, broad black hat
Sometimes a cape
And as thin, and as thin as rubber tape:
Black Max

He would raise that big black hat
To the big shots of the town
Who raised their hats right back
Never knew they were bowing to
Black Max

I'm talking about night in Rotterdam
When the right night people of all the town
Would find what they could
In the night neighborhood of
Black Max

There were women in the windows
With bodies for sale
Dressed in curls like little girls
In little dollhouse jails
When the women walked the street
With the beds upon their backs
Who was lifting up his brim to them?
Black Max!

And there were looks for sale
The art of the smile --
(Only certain people walked that mystery mile:
Artists, charlatans, vaudevillians
Men of mathematics, acrobatics and civilians)
There was knitting-needle music
From a lady organ-grinder
With all her sons behind her
Marco, Vito, Benno
(Was he strong! Though he walked like a woman)
And Carlo, who was five
He must be still alive!

Ah, poor Marco had the syph, and if
You didn't take the terrible cure those days
You went crazy and died and he did
And at the coffin
Before they closed the lid
Who raised his lid?
Black Max!

I was climbing on the train
One day going far away
To the good old U.S.A
When I heard some music
Underneath the tracks
Standing there beneath the bridge
Long black jacket, broad black hat
Playing the harmonica, one hand free
To lift that hat to me:
Black Max

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Видео Bolcom: Black Max (Neil Balfour) канала artsongstory