Ted Joans

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Theodore "Ted" Joans (July 4, 1928 - April 25, 2003) was an American trumpeter, jazz poet and painter.

Born on a riverboat in Cairo, Illinois, Joans earned a degree in fine arts from Indiana University. He later associated with writers of the Beat Generation in Greenwich Village and San Francisco. He was a contemporary and friend of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. In the 1960s, Joans had a house in Timbuktu. He claimed to be a brother of Leroi Jones, despite the spelling difference, but this appears to be apocryphal.

Joans' painting Bird Lives hangs in the De Young Museum in San Francisco. He was also the originator of the "Bird Lives" legend and graffiti in New York City after the death of Charlie Parker in March 1955. Joans invented the technique of outagraphy, in which the subject of a photograph is cut out of the image.

Joans died in Vancouver, British Columbia due to complications of diabetes.

[edit] Published works

  • Funky Jazz Poems (1959) Rhino Review, New York.
  • Beat Poems (1959)
  • All of T.J. and No More (1959)
  • The Truth (1960)
  • The Hipsters (1961)
  • A Black Pow-Wow Of Jazz Poems (1969)
  • Afrodisia (1970)
  • Razzle Dazzle (1984)
  • Teducation (1999)
  • Our Thang (2001)

[edit] External links