Lester Young: Live at Birdland

Around the same time that the Billie Holiday Rare Live Recordings set came out, ESP also released Lester Young Live at Birdland, rare live 1950s radio performances broadcast from the legendary New York jazz club, Birdland.

Lester Young classics like Lester Leaps In and Three Little Words are mixed with great renditions of popular standards like These Foolish Things and my grandparents' favorite, Polkadots and Moonbeams (apparently, my grandmother was quite the "pug-nosed dream" back in the day!)

Billie Holiday often said that she tried to sing like Lester Young's horn. In an article called Lester Young: Master of Jive, Douglas Henry Daniels quotes Holiday saying:

I always try to sing like a horn--a trumpet or tenor sax, and I think Lester is just the opposite. He likes to play like a voice...Lester sings with his horn. You listen to him and you can almost hear the words.

That's definitely apparent on these live recordings. Young's smooth, sweet, lyrical sound is unmistakable. The disc is peppered with announcements encouraging listeners to invest in U.S. Savings Bonds (the radio series was sponsored by the U.S. Treasury, of all things), and the gooney announcer cuts in with his own 1950's flourishes like "Ca-rraaaa-zy!" which give the recordings a nice blast-from-the-past feel. I like imagining what it would have been like tuning in each week to Birdland on the radio. I suppose years from now people will say the same about old American Idol (or hopefully even Austin City Limits) episodes.

Here's another little taste of Lester Young. He's missing his porkpie hat in this one, but you can't miss the charming, cockeyed way he holds his sax:

Women of the Harlem Renaissance

Browsing at Poets.org, I came across an interesting article by Anthony Walton titled Double Bind: Three Women of the Harlem Renaissance. When I think of poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, I almost always think of Langston Hughes or Countee Cullen. But this article brings our attention to three women poets of the Harlem Renaissance: Jessie Redmon Fauset, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Georgia Douglas Johnson.

In the decades following World War I, the double bind that Walton writes about (the fact that these poets were both black and female) made it almost impossible for them to gain "success" in their writing careers. Walton writes that the women poets of the Harlem Renaissance have,

in the history that has been written since, been relegated to the precincts of specialists in African American literature. Yet, in the face of what must have been corrosive psychic costs, in terms of the circumscription of their true ambitions and selves, the achievements of Fauset, Bennett, Johnson, the other women poets of the Harlem Renaissance stand among the most heroic in the twentieth century American poetry.

These women paved the way for great poets I've written about recently like Lucille Clifton and Elizabeth Alexander. Here are some poems from those women of the Harlem Renaissance:

Dead Fires
by Jessie Redmon Fauset

If this is peace, this dead and leaden thing,
Then better far the hateful fret, the sting.
Better the wound forever seeking balm
Than this gray calm!

Is this pain's surcease? Better far the ache,
The long-drawn dreary day, the night's white wake,
Better the choking sigh, the sobbing breath
Than passion's death!


Quatrains
by Gwendolyn Bennett

1
Brushes and paints are all I have
To speak the music in my soul—
While silently there laughs at me
A copper jar beside a pale green bowl.

2
How strange that grass should sing—
Grass is so still a thing ...
And strange the swift surprise of snow
So soft it falls and slow.


Black Woman
by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Don’t knock at the door, little child,
I cannot let you in,
You know not what a world this is
Of cruelty and sin.
Wait in the still eternity
Until I come to you,
The world is cruel, cruel, child,
I cannot let you in!

Don’t knock at my heart, little one,
I cannot bear the pain
Of turning deaf-ear to your call
Time and time again!
You do not know the monster men
Inhabiting the earth,
Be still, be still, my precious child,
I must not give you birth!

Here are some links to biographies and additional information:
Gwendolyn Bennett
Georgia Douglas Johnson
Jessie Redmon Fauset

Billie Holiday: Rare Live Recordings 1934-1959

ESP Music recently put out a 5-disc set of Rare Live Recordings from Billie Holiday. Now, I laughed when I read the opening comment of Ted Gioia's review of the set on Jazz.com:

"When I see the words 'Rare Live Recordings' on the cover of a jazz CD, I generally run in the other direction."

It's true. The sound is generally awful, performances sometimes subpar, and the material can be too obscure, repetitive, or just plain lame. But with these recordings, I found myself listening with rapt attention to each disc.

First off, the sound quality is great. So that worry can be relieved.

As for material, yes there are a fair number of song repeats. Fine and Mellow shows up four times. But they're repeats worth listening to. The way that Ms. Holiday sings "Fine and Mellow" when she is 22 is not the same way she sings it toward the end of her career. In one of the short interview bits included in the set, she says:

There are two kinds of blues: happy blues and sad blues....Blues is kind of a mixed up thing. You just have to feel it.

I loved hearing the differences in the song depending on how she "felt it" that day.

But I think what I enjoyed the most about this set was the *performance* aspect of the live recordings. Not just Billie Holiday's incredible voice, intense delivery, or ability to give Count Basie's band a run for their money. I loved hearing the crowd go crazy. Really crazy. Screaming, shouting out, being moved by the music. I've listened to Billie Holiday's *voice* for so long. It's easy to disconnect that voice from the real person who was up there on stage, doing a sound check, trying to keep track of the set list, and singing her heart out to try and make a connection and share something with her audience.

In one song, her voice is drowned out for a while by a plane passing overhead. It was just a short moment, but it made me stop and imagine the scene. It gave me a second to think about history not just as something that is preserved and remembered in a book or on a CD, but as a living moment that happened once to living people. That's what things like Black History Month are really supposed to be about, right?

Here's an essay by Stuart Nicholson on Billie Holiday.

And here are Stuart Nicholson's top 12 Billie Holiday recordings.

Here is another live video. This one is with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1952. It starts with Billie Holiday's own heartbreaking composition, "God Bless the Child," and moves on to the swingy "Now Baby or Never." Enjoy!

Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color: Elizabeth Alexander & Marilyn Nelson

I picked up Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color on the recommendation of Elaine over at Wild Rose Reader (Elaine has some *very* extensive and cool Black History Month book lists piling up over there). This one caught my eye because it was co-authored by the poet Elizabeth Alexander, who I've mentioned very briefly here. Ms. Alexander is a rigorous, well-respected poet in every right, and her 2005 book, American Sublime, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

So I know this makes three children's book reviews in a row, but hey, it's a theme month, so we might as well have a theme-within-a-theme, right?

Miss Crandall's School is based on the true story of Prudence Crandall who, in the early 1830's, opened a private finishing school for young ladies ages 8-18 in Canterbury, CT. The school was quite popular and well attended until Ms. Crandall admitted an African American student who had hopes of becoming a teacher.

When the town responded by pulling all their children out of the school and waging massive protests, Ms. Crandall did something unusual. She put an ad in an Abolitionist newspaper advertising her new school for "Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color." Students came from all over New England to receive an education that was not available for young black girls at the time. For many, it was the first time they had left home, and the opportunity seemed enormous.

The town, however, lashed back in unspeakably horrible ways. Beyond passing a "Black Law" prohibiting the education of African American children in the state, the townspeople also refused to sell food to Ms. Crandall and her students, they poisoned the well water, they left dead animals on the doorstep. Ms. Crandall, a true heroine, kept the school going as long as she could, teaching her girls reading, writing, and arithmetic until, in 1834 a mob attacked the school and set it on fire. At this point, Ms. Crandall decided that she could not ensure the safety of the young girls in her care and closed the school down. Two years later, Connecticut's Black Law was repealed, and 50 years after that, the state awarded Ms. Crandall a small teacher's pension as an acknowledgment and token of reparations for the crimes committed against the school.

In Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color, poets Elizabeth Alexander & Marilyn Nelson explore this story from different angles and different points of view. They don't try to tell the whole story in a typical linear fashion. Rather, the book is divided into 6 parts made up of 4 sonnets each, illustrated in a lovely, dreamlike fashion by Floyd Cooper. The poems give us a glimpse of what might have been going on in the minds of the students, of what the small details of their lives might have been like, what their fears and hopes may have been. In one poem, where a mother and father are sending their daughter off to the school, the second stanza begins:

Does "good-bye" mean we hope or mean we weep?

Here is one of the more striking poems from the series that blends that mix of hope and fear so well:

We (by Elizabeth Alexander)

Colored are new to these townsfolk, who say
we have come to take white husbands, but we
are young girls who do not think of such things.
They see us horned, tailed, befeathered, with
enormous bottoms and jaws that snap, red-
devil eyes that could hex a man and make him
leave home. Though the state has said no to slavery,
we know how it happens with colored girls
and white men, their red-devil eyes and tentacles.
Our mothers have taught us remarkably
to blot out these fears, black them out, and flood
our minds with light and God's great face.
We think about that which we cannot see:
something opening wide and bright, a key.

You can learn about the Prudence Crandall Museum here.

Billie Holiday, Lester Young: Fine and Mellow (1957)

My favorite jazz duo of all time has to be Billie Holiday and Lester Young. I swear there was something magical in the way the mellow tone of his saxophone mixed with the melancholy in her voice. In the next couple weeks, in honor of Black History Month, I'll write a bit about some new Lester Young and Billie Holiday live and rare recordings that were released last month.

But to start things off, here's a great video of Billie Holiday singing "Fine and Mellow" in 1957. Lester Young is the second sax solo (though he's missing his signature pork pie hat). The rest of the amazing line-up of musicians includes: Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Gerry Mulligan, Roy Eldridge, Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Danny Barker, Milt Hinton, and Mal Waldron. It doesn't really get much better than that...

Ashley Bryan: Let it Shine

Last week, I wrote about the winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award, but have you seen the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner, Let it Shine?

Let it Shine is an illustrated collection of three popular spirituals: "This Little Light of Mine," "Oh When the Saints Go Marching In," and "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands." Each page is filled with rollicking, brightly colored construction paper cutouts that truly make the lyrics shine.

I've been using Ashely Bryan's illustrated song collections for years, and I'm so glad to see this new, gorgeous collection get some attention. Not that Mr. Bryan is any stranger to the Coretta Scott King Award. This is his third book to win the award, and five other Bryan books have won the Coretta Scott King Honor Award (which is basically runner-up).

Bryan has been illustrating poetry, African folk tales, spirituals and more since the early 1970's, and he is a great advocate for preserving traditional storytelling and song. I found this great Ashley Bryan quote in a 1998 Washington Post article:

"Be strongly rooted in who you are – your people and what they have had to offer, then reach out and draw upon the gifts of other peoples of the world."

Here are my two very favorite Ashley Bryan books:

All Night, All Day: A Child's First Book of African American Spirituals (This is where I first learned the song Great Big Stars, which is now one of my favorite songs of all time.)

What a Morning: The Christmas Story in Black Spirituals (This is where I learned Mary Had a Baby.)

Apparently, Ashley Bryan lives on an island off the coast of Maine, and this article about his storytelling performances makes me want to be sure to keep my eye out for any readings he might do in the area. "I don't just read the words, I try to roll them up to Heaven," Bryan says.

Here are some great reviews of Let it Shine:
Fuse #8
Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Christopher Paul Curtis: Elijah of Buxton

It's going to be hard for me to write about this book without resorting to blatant gushing, but I'll do my best. Elijah of Buxton is one of those books that kept popping up on all the lists this year. When it won both the Newbery Honor and the Coretta Scott King Award, I thought I'd better pick it up and give it a shot.

Now I had read Christopher Paul Curtis' Bud, Not Buddy when it won the Newbery Medal in 2000, and I liked it quite a bit, but I have to admit I wasn't completely blown away. I didn't rush out and recommend it to everyone I knew. Elijah of Buxton is another story.

The book is set in the mid 1860's in Buxton, Canada--one of the early Black settlements of escaped slaves from the United States. Elijah, the book's fictional hero, is the first free-born child in the settlement.

In some ways, it's a basic coming of age story. Elijah is what his mother calls a "fra-gile" child, and he is trying very hard to learn how to become more grown-up. In other ways, it's an amazing glimpse into what life on one of these settlements could have been like. There is a poignant juxtaposition between the young children in the settlement who've known nothing but freedom, and the adults, who have each risked everything to be free and carry heavy wounds and scars that the children can't begin to comprehend.

Mostly what I loved about this book, besides the beautiful writing and engaging story, is that it is ultimately a story about community. It is about how people can come together to try to make the world a better place, not just for themselves, but for one another. When Elijah, who goes to school and can read and write, is asked to read a letter to Mrs. Holton, informing her that her husband has been whipped to death by a slave owner, the women of the settlement go with him:

Mostly I think I didn't bawl 'cause once Ma and them women bunched up 'round Mrs. Holton with their watching, waiting eyes and hands, it felt like a whole slew of soldiers was ringing that parlour with swords drawed and waren't no sorrow so powerful it could bust through.

I'll warn you, I bawled. I cried straight through the entire last three chapters. But it's not just sadness that makes you cry, it's the redemption and grace and joy mixed up in the sadness that is so affecting. This is a beautiful story and I know it won all the "literature for young people" awards, but I would recommend it to adults as well. A good story's a good story, after all.

You can visit the real Buxton Museum website here.

You can read about Christopher Paul Curtis' R.E.A.D Program and Kenya School Project here.

Stevie Wonder for Kids

I thought for the last day of Black History Month, I'd talk about something purely fun. I get a lot of requests from parents looking for children's music that won't drive them batty. These parents have ususally spent insane amounts of time listening to the typical, vacant, sing-songy variety of kids music that permeates the genre (you know the kind I'm talking about). It's usually when they catch themselves humming it on the way to work that they realize they would rather scrape melted gummy worms off the sofa than listen to another minute of this stuff.

Aside from sending them to Zooglobble and Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child, I have another miracle cure for these desperate parents:

Stevie Wonder
(Cue angel choir and light streaming down from heaven)

First of all, Stevie Wonder was signed to Motown Records when he was just 11 years old. That is supercool by anybody's standards.

Second of all, go to iTunes and listen to/download Uptight. What kid wouldn't love to dance around to this song? What parent wouldn't love to dance around to this song? See? Problem solved!

A special treat:
This is from the 1973 season of Sesame Street. Now this is music! Pure energy. The video quality isn't the best, but YouTube has confiscated all the versions that were clear due to the recent lawsuits. Hm. A topic for another day. Enjoy this one while it lasts:

Two African American Poetry Anthologies

NOTE: Throughout this post, if you click on a poet's name, it will take you to the Academy of American Poets where you can read about their lives, their poetry, and in most cases listen to the poets read their own work.

I have two anthologies of African American poetry that I love to read. The first, I discovered in college: Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep, titled after the old African American Proverb. This is a collection of poets since 1945, and begins with selections from stalwarts Robert Hayden (one of my very favorite poets...see last week's post on Runagate Runagate for more) and Gwendolyn Brooks. It continues forward in chronological order to well-known poets like Audre Lorde and Rita Dove, and to talented younger poets like Cornelius Eady and Elizabeth Alexander.

Six years later, the same editors (poets Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton) came out with a comprehensive volume containing 2 centuries worth of African American Poetry: The Vintage Book of African American Poetry. This book introduces us to African American poets from the 1800's like George Horton (who hoped to purchase his freedom from slavery through the sale of his poetry), and the early 1900's like Sterling Brown (who deserves many more blog posts all his own). It features classic favorites like Langston Hughes as well as modern and post-modern poets like Yusef Komunyakaa.

I, Too, Sing America
by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

New Orleans' Preservation Hall Jazz Band & Support Live Jazz!

Louis Armstrong once said: Preservation Hall. Now that's where you'll find all of the greats. Since yesterday was Fat Tuesday, the last day of the Mardi Gras Carnival, I thought I'd spend some time on Preservation Hall & live jazz.

Preservation Hall opened its doors in New Orleans in 1961. At that time, the once vibrant, live New Orleans Jazz scene had lost a lot of its popularity. People were listening to Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Elvis, or Frankie Avalon, not old-time, old-style dixieland jazz. Most of the musicians who were still playing New Orleans Jazz were getting old, and many people thought that the music would die off with them.

So Preservation Hall was opened to try to preserve and honor the tradition. They have been putting on live New Orleans Jazz concerts ever since, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band has been performing and touring all over the world, featuring talented jazz musicians, both young and old.

There is a very cool video about Preservation Hall with lots of great live clips and music on the official website. It's about 10 minutes long, and it's worth watching if only for the toe-tapping, get-up-and-dance version of "When the Saints Go Marching In" at the end. (Choose the "Watch Movie" option on the homepage.)

During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Preservation Hall strongly supported the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund, which has now been transformed into the Renew Our Music Fund. If you would like to help rebuild, renew, and revive the New Orleans live music scene, please visit the website to find out what you can do.

Click here to find out when the Preservation Hall Jazz Band might be coming to your home town. I saw them a couple years back when they came to Camden, Maine, and it was *well* worth the 90 minute drive!

Or maybe this weekend, you could get out and support local jazz musicians right there in your own area. Check your local listings. Get out of the house. Relax. Tap your toes.

If you live in LA, find out who's playing at the Jazz Bakery (they always have 1/2 price tickets for students!).

If you're in Chicago, you could peek into the legendary Green Mill or visit the extensive ChicagoJazz.com site for the scoop on the hippest clubs in town.

Even if you happen to be live all the way out in Maine (like me), there is great live jazz to be found. The Steve Grover Septet is having their annual weekend-long Birthday Bash. It should be a great concert and maybe I'll see you there! You can check out the details here.

Download Preservation Hall Jazz Band's version of the rousing New Orleans favorite, "When the Saints Go Marching In"

Robert Hayden: "Runagate Runagate"

This is one of my favorite poems. "Runagate Runagate" is a tribute to the runaway slaves who risked their lives to escape oppression. Robert Hayden's language is so well-crafted, you can feel the urgency, the fear, the hope. Read it outloud and you'll feel the quickened heartbeat, breath, and anticipation in the rhythm of the words.

You can read the whole poem here or check out Robert Hayden's Collected Poems from the library or on Amazon.

Robert Hayden had a trying childhood. He grew up with foster parents in a Detroit ghetto. He probably knew a thing or two about wanting to run away, to escape. He went on to become the first black American Poet Laureate. He taught at Fisk University (see A Band of Angels) and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Read more about Robert Hayden's life on Wikipedia. There is also an interesting lengthy biography on Answers.com.

Friday Extra: Black History in Europe

Thank you to Bill over at Jewels in the Jungle for his link to my post about Valaida Snow. Bill, Jörg Wolf (from Altantic Review), and their team of scholars are working on a very interesting project about Black History in Europe.

Grab Bag Friday: 2008 Election--Get Involved!

I was reading Britt Bravo's Have Fun Do Good blog last week & she featured this 2 minute campaign announcement preview. No matter what your politics, I was struck by Senator Obama's message.
It's true. We get so jaded. We think: politics are corrupt, the world is a mess, it's up to the rich and powerful to change it, and they never will.

But as Senator Obama points out, there is another possibility.
The possibility that we could reengage.

Odds are, one person might not make too much of a difference (though, thankfully, there are always the Mother Theresas and Paul Farmers out there to prove me wrong). But, if you engage a little, and your family engages a little, and your friends and neighbors engage a little...

This is how change occurs. Little by little. Day by day.

The same way that messes get cleaned up.

So whoever you're pulling for in 2008...

Let's roll up our sleeves.

Let's get involved!

Barack Obama Official Website

Etta James: A Sunday Kind of Love

Happy Valentine's Day!
In honor of the day, I thought I'd share one of the truest love songs I know: A Sunday Kind of Love, sung by the queen of romance, Etta James. Aside from the gorgeous melody and Ms. James' emotional delivery, it's the lyrics I love about this song. It's a pop song about love that isn't all hyped up and idealized and glam. It's simple and true and real. Who doesn't want love like this?

I want a Sunday kind of love
A love to last past Saturday night
I'd like to know it's more than love at first sight
I want a Sunday kind of love

Download from iTunes here

Listen to new Etta James tunes (including her version of "Purple Rain") on the Etta James Official Website

Side note: my husband took me to an Etta James concert the night he proposed to me...smart guy, huh?

Ruby Bridges: Through My Eyes

Most of us know the story of Ruby Bridges. The little girl in the Norman Rockwell painting who was the first black student in the all white elementary school in New Orleans. What you may not know is that in 1999, the grown-up Ruby Bridges wrote a stunning children's book about her experiences during the now-famous integration of that school.

I picked up Through My Eyes a few years ago and was completely swept up in the story told by the child who walked through so much hatred every day at 6 years old. Ruby Bridges takes you right back in history and in simple, eloquent text, lets you know what it felt like to be her. Not as an adult looking back, but as a child, right there in the middle of things, bewildered, hopeful, and sometimes scared. It's an absolutely fascinating book that will give any child or adult a fresh and very real perspective on an old story we've probably become too familiar and comfortable with.

To read more on Ruby Bridges and her efforts to promote diversity in her adult life, please visit the Ruby Bridges Foundation website. Ms. Bridges now works with elementary schools to fight intolorance and injustice in the schools. There are some great quotes from kids on the site, like this one from a 4th grade student in Los Angeles:

I used to be rude to people before being in the program. Now, I can start being nice to new people I meet. I also had some racist feelings toward a Latina who had hurt my feelings. When I was angry, the first thought I had was that I didn’t like her because she was Latina, not that she was just mean. Now, I think about not being racist, even when I’m angry.

Now that's real work!

On the Official Ruby Bridges Website you can:

• View pictures from newspapers during the de-segregation in New Orleans
• Read articles about Ruby Bridges
• Get your school involved with Ruby Bridges' new book project!
• Request school visits or speaking engagements
• Download a Lori McKenna song about Ruby Bridges

View Norman Rockwell's painting The Problem We All Live With at Wikipedia

Grab Bag Friday: Songwriting for Kids Club

When I was a kid, a few of my friends & I had a club creatively called Kids Club. We had weekly meetings, took minutes, and did various odd, entrepreneurial things like paint pencils and create food items (peas, carrrots, potatoes) out of clay, and then go door to door in our neighborhood trying to sell them to sympathetic (and probably baffled) housewives. We even had a clubhouse. The goal, of course, was candy. Every cent we earned went toward trips to "The Little Store" for brown bags filled with Skor bars, Jolly Ranchers, and Big League Chew.

Well, now I'm a full grown adult and apparently I still want to be in a club. This one is called Songwriting for Kids Club (notice the similarity...eh?) We won't have weekly meetings or sell stuff for candy, but there will be some fun, interactive, creative things to do, contests to enter, prizes to win. And most importantly, we're going to create lots of music!

We don't have a clubhouse yet, but one of the first things that I've started as part of this club is the Songwriting for Kids Club Blog. This is a "monthly newsletter for creative kids" and the February post has, of course, a Black History Month theme. Visit the blog to find out how you can take a trip on the Underground Railroad, or join a jazz band, or learn about the life stories of Billie Holliday, Charlie Parker, and Louis Armstrong.

If you want to join the Songwriting for Kids Club, you can sign up right there on the blog or on the SFK website, and we'll make bee-you-tiful music together! Please spread the word to all the creative kids in your life. It's so fun to be part of a club! (Maybe we can even find a way to get some Jolly Ranchers out of the deal!)

Marvin Gaye: What's Going On

An album that is definitely in my all time top 5, is Marvin Gaye's soulful What's Going On. The title song honestly gives me a lump in my throat every time I hear it, and that's pretty nuts considering how often I listen to this album. The song is not only moving in light of when it was written (1971) and the world events that were going on at the time, but it is still relevant and moving today.

There's a pretty good, extensive biography of Marvin Gaye on Wikipedia, including this interesting tidbit about "What's Going On":

"Gaye wanted to release "What's Going On". Motown head Berry Gordy refused, however, calling the single "uncommercial". Gaye refused to record any more until Gordy gave in and the song became a surprise hit in January 1971. Gordy subsequently requested an entire album of similar tracks from Gaye."

I found this video on YouTube from brainchild. It's an excerpt from the recently released DVD of some of Marvin's greatest live performances on TV and film, Real Thing: In Performance 1964-1981. According to the YouTube page, this live performance comes from the long out-of-circulation 1973 film, "Save The Children" with James Jamerson on bass.

Marvin Gaye - What's Going On Lyrics
(Al Cleveland/Marvin Gaye/Renaldo Benson)

Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today - Ya

Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on
What's going on
Ya, what's going on
Ah, what's going on

In the mean time
Right on, baby
Right on
Right on

Father, father, everybody thinks we're wrong
Oh, but who are they to judge us
Simply because our hair is long
Oh, you know we've got to find a way
To bring some understanding here today

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me
So you can see
What's going on
Ya, what's going on
Tell me what's going on
I'll tell you what's going on - Uh
Right on baby
Right on baby

Anthony Walton: Mississippi

One of the reasons we celebrate Black History Month is that we need to acknowledge our history (the good with the bad) so that we can live with it, and learn from it, and understand more about who we are, have been, and who we can become. It's simple to say "the past is past" but each and every one of us are shaped by our collective past. Where would pop music be today without the Mississippi bluesmen of the past? What would your life be like if your great-grandfather stayed in Virginia instead of heading West? What would it feel like to live in a country where lynchings never happened? Or where they never stopped? Our country's history, and its history of African-Americans especially, has shaped the day to day lives of of every American, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

In Mississippi , author Anthony Walton, a middle class African-American who grew up in the comfort of the Chicago suburbs, travels to Mississippi to learn more about his family's past, and to learn more about the past of the American South. What comes of the trip is a beautiful memoir that covers the often vicious history of the state from explorers/settlers, to the Civil War, to present day Mississipi. Walton encounters his own family history with a very honest balance of delicacy, disappointment, love, outrage, and grace.

Since I have been lucky enough to work on various projects with Anthony Walton (who lives here in Maine!), you don't have to trust my (potentially biased) opinion. Here is what the New York Times had to say:

"...if Mississippi has been powerfully inscribed in literature and memory before, nobody has written about it quite the way Mr. Walton does in "Mississippi: An American Journey." This is in large part because of Mr. Walton's skills as a writer and storyteller, which are considerable. But indispensable also is the particular historical moment that he represents. Mr. Walton looks at Mississippi in the way American Jews or Italians or Irish might look back at the old country in Europe, as a place of primal roots that one is glad to be away from and yet toward which one is strangely drawn in the quest for self-understanding."

You can read the full New York Times article here.

Interview with Anthony Walton about his BBC project "Southern Road," also about the American South.

Anthony Walton on Random House

Anthony Walton's recent book, Brothers in Arms (written with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Black History Month: Valaida Snow

Ok, so I'm officially starting Black History Month early (February's a short month, anyway!) All February, I'll be focusing on African American musicians and writers for my Monday book post & Wednesday music post. If you missed Monday's post on the Jubilee Singers, you can catch up here.

To me, Valaida Snow is one of the most interesting musicians of the 1920's & 30's. She was an incredibly talented trumpet player and arranger and had perfect pitch and impeccable timing. The only thing was, girls didn't play in the brass section in those days. It was considered improper, vulgar, far from feminine.

But Valaida had loads of talent and perseverence. She spent years playing in all-girl bands that were ridiculed or hired only as novelty acts, sleeping on floors and getting kicked out of club after club because of her race, her gender, or both. Eventually, she became quite a celebrity (complete with a lavender car and a pet monkey!) and began to spend most of her time touring in Asia and Europe, where many African American musicians found a friendlier social climate than they experienced in the U.S.

Louis Armstrong famously called Valaida Snow the 2nd best trumpet player in the world (next to himself, of course!)

The end of her life is a bit of a tragic mystery. The story I've always heard is that when World War II began and many African Americans in Europe began returning to the U.S. to avoid the Nazi regime, Valaida chose to stay, and in 1940 was detained in a concentration camp in Denmark for two years (this is the story that Valaida stuck to her whole life.) Well, yesterday I was browsing Wikipedia, and they tell quite a different story. Further research on the subject has shown that either story is plausible and could have happened, though no one seems to have any real evidence either way. By any account, she was never the same afterwards. She tried to return to performing, but with very little success and energy.

A good place to begin with Valaida Snow's music is Hot Snow: Queen of Trumpet and Song...it's a great 2 disc set of Valaida Snow's work. Her combination of trumpet playing and singing is full of joy, pizazz, and energy. If you like swing music, I think you'll love it!

A couple random sites with Valaida Snow biographies:
Valaida Snow: Queen of the Trumpet (audio program)
Nina Mae McKinney's "Valaida Snow: The Real Queen of Jazz"

A Band of Angels: The Jubilee Singers

I know I just wrote about a children's book last Monday, but I picked up A Band of Angels (by Deborah Hopkinson, illustrated by Raul Colon) this weekend, and with Black History Month starting this week, I just had to tell you about it.

A Band of Angels is a fictional account based on the real story of the Jubilee Singers. The Jubilee Singers began as a 9-member choral ensemble at Fisk University (the very first American university open to African-Americans). When the school, only 5 years after opening, was in dire financial straits and in danger of closing down, the Jubilee Singers went on the road to raise money for the school. They were the first group to publicly perform slave songs and spirituals, and were often met with extreme hostility. But they kept singing, and eventually made enough money to build Jubilee Hall, the first permanent building on Fisk University's campus.

I've been interested in the Jubilee Singers for a long time, and I was so happy to find a beautifully executed book like this to introduce their story to children. The first time I visited Nashville, I took a pilgrimage to Jubilee Hall at Fisk University. I had that hushed, hold-your-breath feeling you get when you walk into an ordinary building on an ordinary street where very extraordinary things have happened. This book captures that feeling, and besides that...it makes you want to sing!
Read more about the Jubilee Singers
PBS's The American Experience 1999 film & website about the Jubilee Singers
The Current Jubilee Singers