Six Maxims

This February during Black History Month I've been writing about the discovery, history, and my subsequent impressions of a scrapbook featuring the life and career of a mid-20th Century Afro-American musician and singer Lawrence "Hank" Hazlett who played with a swing Jazz quartet The Cats and the Fiddle from Chicago and then with his own Hank Hazlett Trio out of Minneapolis. 

In the scrapbook this creased and folded sheet of 6 numbered inspirational quotes was pasted on a page. They must have been meaningful to him, so I composed some music and read the quotes as a spoken word with music piece this month. The quotes are from (in order) M. B. Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Lloyd C. Douglas, Helen Keller, Herbert Kaufman, and Ambrose Bierce.

The Parlando Project combines various words (usually literary poetry) with original music in differing styles. We've done over 800 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our experiences with the pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org