Poems inspired by, and borrowing titles from, the jazz legend. Written in the early and mid 1980s following several years of poetic inactivity. Sinclair performed these pieces both solo and with his backing band, the Blues Scholars; an album version of the verse sequence would eventually be released in 1996. Though colophon states the book “will be published […] in a first trade edition of 500 copies,” we find none in trade (August 2018) and only one location in OCLC (BL), which suggests to us that only these privately circulated editions (there was also an “author’s manuscript edition” of 26) were ever produced. Rare.
