The Jazz Band Coffee Shop

By Joshua D. Glawson

It was a cold, wet night. Streetlights and brightly lit business signs reflected off the collected puddles on the dark, black pavement.

The hard rain clattered a symphony on the concrete sidewalks and tapped a constant ticking on the cars that were huddled and scattered along the street.

It certainly wasn’t summertime or April in Paris, the last of autumn leaves clung like strange fruit to their branches in this land of red clay.

The early nights of winter made it feel like midnight with a mood indigo — ambiance — but I was ready for the one o’clock jump.

An occasional car would slosh slowly as they passed. A few cars were idle, emitting warm exhaust billowing into clouds that dissipated into the breeze and pummeled out by the rain. Streams cascaded down the sidewinder streets along the gutters into storm drains.

People prepped themselves by their car’s hearth for their final moment before leaping into the frigid precipitation. Red brake lights and distant white and yellow headlights shined in the darkness like the eyes of twisted prowling wild cats.

The smell of a lone cigar on a rainy night was the incense that greeted the senses with the pleasing idea of possibilities.

On one side of the street stood a 2-story brick building, and from the downstairs unit, the coffee shop emitted an alluring, amber, warm glow. Dispensed from a large window framing the face of the building was where the magic broke the stillness of the night.

Each corner of the glass window was fogged over from the coziness inside, starkly contrasting with the stricken outdoors. Rain pinged against the glass and cascaded to the sidewalk. It was in a sentimental mood that the tone of the evening was initially set.

Through this kaleidoscope of a window, the movement could be seen as amorphous, organic shapes. A vibracious spectrum of brown, beige, cream, and golden colors moved in a harmonious spectacle. Metallic bells jingled and chimed when the glass door next to the window opened.

Occasional, sharp tings of dishware clanking clung to the light escaping out the door. I took giant steps towards the voodoo magic while I was struttin’ with some BBQ.

Sensing from deep within the walls, a progressing, pulsating, rhythmic bass could be felt in the cool air, like a heartbeat injecting a soulful melody of life into the veined streets.

Puffs of steam snuck through the crisp winter night with each breath and with every hastened stride toward the living jukebox. Heavy thuds and splashes beneath my feet helped a rushed pace with the building percussion.

As I approached the swinging door, I reached out with my left hand, palm down, steadily grasping the door handle to hold it open. The bells’ tintinnabulation jingled and jangled.

Raising my right hand, I waved and smiled, showing my teeth, beckoning a caravan of others following suit. I struck my composure upon entering while grinning ear to ear.

“One, two… one, two, three, four,” I counted aloud the footprints like milestones along with the number of people entering with me. Somewhere between four on six: take five.

Hiss! Squish! Pssh! Shew! The misty caterwauls of the sloshing espresso machine splashed like high hats and cymbals into a decrescendo.

Click. Clap. Clack. Kick. The clopping of mixing spoons and cups maintained the staggered timing like woodblocks and claves.

The exquisitely rich, evocative aroma of freshly ground coffee filled the atmosphere.

Ambrosial vanilla and sweet cream, sultry butterscotch, warm homely sugar, intoxicating cocoa notes with piquant hints of cinnamon, and velvety chocolate all swung to the natural timbre of the room. Delicious enough to drink straight, no chaser.

Warm lights descended from the ceiling fans. The walls were whimsically decorated with posters of Coltrane and Holiday, tchotchkes, string lights, old kettles, and local photography, my favorite things. The ceiling and the walls embraced the quaint coffee shop’s inhabitants as life was feeling good, vivaciously reinvigorated from the inside out.

In the far left corner of the coffee house was the live jazz band brewing, west end blues. A band consisting of a trumpeter, saxophonist, drummer, guitarist, upright bassist, and keyboardist played in a staggered position on a one-foot high stage. Dressed in full-on suits, fedoras, pork pies, and newsboy hats, the band commanded attention.

The drummer’s steel brushes grazed his drum set. With every soft push and pull, there came a thudding tap with a seiching whisper. The juggling stuttered rhythm of the snares felt lost but persisted to find itself.

The upright bassist gently and steadily plucked, slapped, and tugged along the percussion as it was to take a train. His smiles, nods, and searching eyes read the room like a waltz as he was steadily bumpin’.

Quick, flashy smiles were generously given to each person in the room as the trumpeter, wearing blue in green, prepared his lips and puffed his cheeks for stolen moments to come.

The fedora-dawning saxophonist dressed in all blues like a blue monk delicately embraced his brass.

The room froze in precipitous anticipation.

The chords struck. Each member of the jazz band began playing at once. Each instrument is in harmonious rhythm with the next.

There came a count.

A balance between playfully vacillating, losing the tune, and whimsically rediscovering it.

The room swayed with the movements of the band, and the mood was elated.

Although there were no lyrics to sing, sing, sing, so what? It still felt like a night in Tunisia.

Contagious cheer spread through the walls as this supernova of an experience exploded gloriously. Time and space felt like a moment of pause.

The band was moanin’ at the epicenter of the imploding star as gravity concaved around them.

Their stardust sound cast out from within them like a joy spring and marvelously reached into the bodies and souls of their eagerly captive audience- the in-crowd.

God bless the child that danced.

The listeners would have suggested you cast your fate to the wind as it was a euphonic reception. Through the café, their music danced and swung as a beguine, past vivacious wafts of freshly ground coffee, leading to the world outside and pattered out by the gelid rain.

The universe shifted and morphed around the jazz band and on into the night.

No coffee shop would be the same without the lush life of the jazz band- it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Mercy, mercy, mercy: no coffee would taste as sweet.

Timelessly encapsulated, the jazz band monumentally and universally resuscitated the room and the world encompassing them.

The arctic rain, the thrumming rain, contrasting light, aromatic bouquets of coffee, and the buoyant band enlivened and aroused the senses beyond their ability to deliver a return to what was lackluster prior.

Any other coffee shop would helplessly become a void, a black hole. Where the band was paired with coffee, it would be the hub of the cosmos.

Originally Published on Medium.