Blog Rerun: Duke Ellington & Mahalia Jackson: Come Sunday

I'm taking a couple days off for the holidays, but here's a blog rerun of a gorgeous Mahalia Jackson song. I also wanted to add a link to a live recording of Come Sunday from the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival at the top here. Enjoy!

Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson: Come Sunday (Originally posted November 29, 2006)

I have the good fortune this winter of singing as a guest vocalist for the Richard Nelson Quintet, a jazz quintet based here in Maine. We’re doing a holiday-ish concert in December that Richard is calling “A Concert in the Spirit of Peace and Serenity” (concert details are on my website). One of the first songs Richard asked me to sing for this show is one of my favorite melodies written by Duke Ellington: Come Sunday.

Besides the fact that “Come Sunday” has a gorgeous melody sung by one of my musical heroines, Mahalia Jackson, I’ve always been intrigued by the album it came from, Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige. It’s interesting to me because we tend to see people in certain ways. When they move outside of that view we’ve created it can be, well, disconcerting to say the least.

Up until the 1940’s Duke Ellington was known pretty specifically for his big band and for popular songs like “Take the A Train” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got that Swing.” Ellington was an extremely talented composer, and he began to experiment with even more complex music. In 1943, he performed an original symphony at Carnegie Hall: “Black, Brown, and Beige” which

"represented the story of African Americans in the United States. Black presented the people at work and at prayer, brown celebrated black soldiers who fought in American wars, and beige depicted African American music of Harlem." (Doris Greer)

The symphony wasn’t exactly jazz music, and it wasn’t exactly classical music. The critics couldn’t fit it into any set category of music, and their reviews and responses were so fiercely negative that Ellington never performed the entire piece in public again.

Luckily, he later recorded some of the music from this concert (though never the entire repertoire) on the album Black, Brown, and Beige, and it is there that we can here the lovely Mahalia Jackson singing Part IV: Come Sunday.

More information on Duke Ellington:
The “official” website
Ellington on Wikepedia
Smithsonian Jazz

How I Got Over!

I'll admit it. I got teary-eyed as I filled out my ballot yesterday. And I shed more than one tear watching the results come in. I woke up this morning and walked outside, and the clouds were all lit up with morning light, and I had to choke back the tears again.

I just kept thinking about what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would think if he were alive. And I thought of all those individual people who stood and marched and fought with Dr. King, many of whom *are* alive today. Did they ever think they would live to see a black man elected president?

I tried to think of words, but I just have to go back to that Mahalia Jackson song I posted last month. The one she sang just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his I Have a Dream speech.

How I got over
How did I make it over
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over?

Don't get me wrong. We still have a lot of work to do in this country. We can't just sit back and say, "We did it!" and that's that. But I think for this morning, it's ok to be quiet for a moment and watch the sunlight coming through the clouds. It's a new day.

Mahalia Jackson: How I Got Over

It's a dreary, rainy, cup-of-tea morning in Maine and I felt like I needed a little Mahalia to get me going. The quality of this video goes in and out, but it is *so* worth it.

How I Got Over is my favorite Mahalia Jackson song. She sang it at the March on Washington just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963. This particular video is live from a performance in Chicago.

No one can nail this song like Mahalia Jackson. (Well, no one can nail *any* gospel song like Mahalia Jackson.) I love how she creates this slow build and by the time she gets to "I feel like shouting" at the end, she can hardly stand still (and neither, apparently, can the audience). As the song gets worked up, watch the smiles start to spread!

Mahalia Jackson: Silent Night

You know how people always ask that question about if you could meet anyone, alive or dead? Mahalia Jackson would have to be at the top of my list. And I don't think Christmas songs get much better than Mahalia Jackson singing Silent Night. This is just perfect.

(You can see my version of Silent Night here.)

Christmas Music: Mahalia Jackson & Bing Crosby

Generally, when it comes to Christmas music, my family listened to various-artists albums. Depending on the decade, we'd listen to old Time Life records, A Very Special Christmas on tape, the latest Starbucks Christmas CD compilation, or most recently, my dad's self-designed mp3 compilation including everything from the Cocteau Twins to Johnny Mathis. We always liked a good mix, lots of variety, never a dull moment. I pretty much had favorite Christmas songs, not Christmas albums.

Recently, though, I've been enjoying listening to a couple single-artist Christmas albums...one sound, one person's take on the familiar tunes from beginning to end. Here are the two (both from the Laserlight label) that have been in rotation in my house this week:
Bing Crosby's White Christmas is of course a classic. This particular disc is made up of old radio recordings, so there's a bit of hiss, and a fair amount of radio banter and chatting. It's nice & cozy, like Bing & I are having a little talk about what Christmas means to him. It's a quiet, joyful, sit around the fire and play cards kind of Christmas album that the whole family can enjoy.

I wouldn't call this one cozy. If Mahalia Jackson can't get your blood boiling, you might want to check your pulse. Gospel Christmas/Silent Night is exactly what it sounds like...a gospel Christmas celebration. Again, these are live cuts, so there is talking (preaching!) and hiss, and Mahalia wrings these old hymns dry and then breathes new life into them again. This is a decorating the tree, baking cookies, get-ready! kind of Christmas album.

Click HERE to view my husband Kevin's favorite childhood Christmas album. I bet we all secretly enjoyed this one at one point or another! How about you? Any favorite albums? Please post a comment & share the joy!

Duke Ellington: Come Sunday

I have the good fortune this winter of singing as a guest vocalist for the Richard Nelson Quintet, a jazz quintet based here in Maine. We’re doing a holiday-ish concert in December that Richard is calling “A Concert in the Spirit of Peace and Serenity” (concert details are on my website). One of the first songs Richard asked me to sing for this show is one of my favorite melodies written by Duke Ellington: Come Sunday.

Besides the fact that “Come Sunday” has a gorgeous melody sung by one of my musical heroines, Mahalia Jackson, I’ve always been intrigued by the album it came from, Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige. It’s interesting to me because we tend to see people in certain ways. When they move outside of that view we’ve created it can be, well, disconcerting to say the least.

Up until the 1940’s Duke Ellington was known pretty specifically for his big band and for popular songs like “Take the A Train” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got that Swing.” Ellington was an extremely talented composer, and he began to experiment with even more complex music. In 1943, he performed an original symphony at Carnegie Hall: “Black, Brown, and Beige” which

"represented the story of African Americans in the United States. Black presented the people at work and at prayer, brown celebrated black soldiers who fought in American wars, and beige depicted African American music of Harlem." (Doris Greer)

The symphony wasn’t exactly jazz music, and it wasn’t exactly classical music. The critics couldn’t fit it into any set category of music, and their reviews and responses were so fiercely negative that Ellington never performed the entire piece in public again.

Luckily, he later recorded some of the music from this concert (though never the entire repertoire) on the album Black, Brown, and Beige, and it is there that we can here the lovely Mahalia Jackson singing Part IV: Come Sunday.

More information on Duke Ellington:
The “official” website
Ellington on Wikepedia
Smithsonian Jazz