Butch and David Murray at that first floor apartment
207 East 5th (so close to where the old Five Spot jazzed)
the front door right at street level open
David slouched in a folding chair at the dining table
holding his saxophone sideways noodling tones
Butch at the new york tenement upright piano with ringing overtones, fingering notes,
splaying chords, triggering runs--- his off tenor singing on the melody, hitting the notes
with a coronet player's coloring His thick black hair standing straight up skyward. Butch
writing, notating picking out notes notating singing the run --- over and over --- his eyes
closed and then back to the score paper his pencil scratching it all out.
Smoke rising. Music forming, fuming.

Or Butch at that piano, yet another upright, on East 27th Street,
the Highland Hospital block, in East Oakland, composing a requiem after the death of his
father. Singing those sad chords, those sad melodies into the exposed hammers. Butch
ensconced in that dark brown paneled room next to the kitchen cooking music for hours
upon hours saying goodbye to his father.

Butch in Berkeley in a brown shingle home on Benvenue
at yet another old upright (with at least two handfuls of keys out of tune) voicing the
melodies of a person who wrote no music but could hum and sing them. With all the
patience, seemingly, in the world --- making songs, compositions, arrangements out of
nearly nothing.

Butch on East 7th Street in the raw interior of a homesteading tenement off Avenue C. A
long elegantly worn piano taking up nearly the entire room. Butch seated there in a corner
under a yellow light. Shelves of books above him, a double cassette in reaching distance,
the window, a chair for guest at the curve of the piano.
His eyes slitted from the cigarette burning between his lips,
he samples his own work and plays along, extending the idea,
Butch Morris and his melodies ensconced in New York City
the sounds pouring out smooth and low and right on the hit.