Taking a break to celebrate the musical birthdays of Michael Jackson, Dinah Washington and Charlie Parker
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
The world is going to hell in a handbasket. Praying for folks in Texas, Donald Trump gets crazier and more destructive every day, folks are headed out on a March to Washington from Charlottesville to protest white supremacy, and I’m angry, heartsick and settled in for a long fight. At times like these I need medicine for the soul and the only thing that can supply it for me is music. Since today is the joint birthday of three musicians who had an impact on my formative years — figgered I’d play hooky from the problems of the world and soothe myself with song. Join me.
That’s a picture up there of young Michael Jackson, from the days when he was the darling centerpiece of his musical family group The Jackson 5. They were the first black pop group to crossover into the white pop market — big time.
Some background:
Michael Joseph Jackson was born on August 29, 1958. He was the eighth of ten children in the Jackson family, a working-class African-American family living in a two-bedroom house on Jackson Street in Gary, Indiana, an industrial city in the Chicago metropolitan area. His mother, Katherine Esther Scruse, was a devout Jehovah's Witness. She played clarinet and piano and once aspired to be a country-and-western performer, but worked part-time at Sears to support the family. Michael's father, Joseph Walter "Joe" Jackson, a former boxer, was a steelworker at U.S. Steel. Joe performed on guitar with a local rhythm and blues band, the Falcons, to supplement the family's income. Michael grew up with three sisters (Rebbie, La Toya, and Janet) and five brothers (Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Randy). A sixth
brother, Marlon's twin Brandon, died shortly after birth.
Suzanne De Passe, who I knew during my young adult years — took me backstage to watch her young charges perform in NYC and I will never forget it. For those of you who are too young to remember them, except via oldies radio — they were phenomenal — and were the launching pad for Michael’s later career and international stardom.
Here’s the Ed Sullivan show performance Suzanne mentions — with Michael in the pink hat.
In 1964, Michael and Marlon joined the Jackson Brothers—a band formed by their father which included brothers Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine—as backup musicians playing congas and tambourine.[38] In 1965, Michael began sharing lead vocals with his older brother Jermaine, and the group's name was changed to the Jackson 5. The following year, the group won a major local talent show with Jackson performing the dance to Robert Parker's 1965 hit "Barefootin'". From 1966 to 1968 they toured the Midwest, frequently performing at a string of black clubs known as the "chitlin' circuit" as the opening act for artists such as Sam & Dave, the O'Jays, Gladys Knight, and Etta James. The Jackson 5 also performed at clubs and cocktail lounges, where striptease shows and other adult acts were featured, and at local auditoriums and high school dances.[40][41] In August 1967, while touring the East coast, the group won a weekly amateur night concert at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
The Jackson 5 recorded several songs, including their first single "Big Boy" (1968), for Steeltown Records, a Gary record label, before signing with Motown in 1969. They left Gary in 1969 and relocated to Los Angeles, where they continued to record music for Motown. Rolling Stone later described the young Michael as "a prodigy" with "overwhelming musical gifts" who "quickly emerged as the main draw and lead singer." The group set a chart record when its first four singles—"I Want You Back" (1969), "ABC" (1970), "The Love You Save" (1970), and "I'll Be There" (1970)—peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
In May 1971, the Jackson family moved into a large home on two-acre estate in Encino, California. During this period, Michael evolved from child performer into a teen idol. As Jackson began to emerge as a solo performer in the early 1970s, he maintained ties to the Jackson 5 and Motown. Between 1972 and 1975, Michael released four solo studio albums with Motown: Got to Be There (1972), Ben (1972), Music & Me (1973), and Forever, Michael (1975). "Got to Be There" and "Ben", the title tracks from his first two solo albums, became successful singles, as did a cover of Bobby Day's "Rockin' Robin".
He sang “Ben” at the Oscar’s.
The Jackson 5 were later described as "a cutting-edge example of black crossover artists." Although the group's sales began to decline in 1973, and the members chafed under Motown's refusal to allow them creative input, they achieved several top 40 hits, including the top five single "Dancing Machine" (1974), before leaving Motown in 1975. In June 1975, the Jackson 5 signed with Epic Records, a subsidiary of CBS Records,[51] and renamed themselves the Jacksons. Younger brother Randy formally joined the band around this time, while Jermaine chose to stay with Motown and pursue a solo career. The Jacksons continued to tour internationally, and released six more albums between 1976 and 1984. Michael, the group's lead songwriter during this time, wrote hits such as "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)" (1979), "This Place Hotel" (1980), and "Can You Feel It" (1980).
All good things come to an end — and launch new beginnings. But before the now older Jackson’s broke up — before Micheal became known for “Beat It” and “Billie Jean” and “Thriller” the Jackson 5 released “I am Love.” It was their last big Motown hit The tune was seven minutes long.
Shifting gears we go back in time to the voice of a woman who didn’t live long enough — but packed everyting she could into her life on earth. Miss Dinah Washington.
Dinah Washington (born Ruth Lee Jones; August 29, 1924 – December 14, 1963) was an American singer and pianist, who has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s".[2] Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music,[2] and gave herself the title of "Queen of the Blues".[3] She was a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame,[4] and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
Ruth Lee Jones was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Alice Jones,[5] and moved to Chicago as a child. She became deeply involved in gospel and played piano for the choir in St. Luke's Baptist Church while still in elementary school. She sang gospel music in church and played piano, directing her church choir in her teens and being a member of the Sallie Martin Gospel Singers.[6] She sang lead with the first female gospel singers formed by Ms. Martin, who was co-founder of the Gospel Singers Convention. Her involvement with the gospel choir occurred after she won an amateur contest at Chicago's Regal Theater where she sang "I Can't Face the Music". After winning a talent contest at the age of 15, she began performing in clubs. By 1941–42 she was performing in such Chicago clubs as Dave's Rhumboogie and the Downbeat Room of the Sherman Hotel (with Fats Waller). She was playing at the Three Deuces, a jazz club, when a friend took her to hear Billie Holiday at the Garrick Stage Bar. Club owner Joe Sherman was so impressed with her singing of "I Understand", backed by the Cats and the Fiddle, who were appearing in the Garrick's upstairs room, that he hired her. During her year at the Garrick – she sang upstairs while Holiday performed in the downstairs room – she acquired the name by which she became known. She credited Joe Sherman with suggesting the change from Ruth Jones, made before Lionel Hampton came to hear Dinah at the Garrick.[7] Hampton's visit brought an offer, and Washington worked as his female band vocalist after she had sung with the band for its opening at the Chicago Regal Theatre.
She made her recording debut for the Keynote label that December with "Evil Gal Blues", written by Leonard Feather and backed by Hampton and musicians from his band, including Joe Morris (trumpet) and Milt Buckner (piano). Both that record and its follow-up, "Salty Papa Blues", made Billboard's "Harlem Hit Parade" in 1944. She stayed with Hampton's band until 1946, after the Keynote label folded, signed for Mercury Records as a solo singer. Her first record for Mercury, a version of Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'", was another hit, starting a long string of success. Between 1948 and 1955, she had 27 R&B top ten hits, making her one of the most popular and successful singers of the period. Both "Am I Asking Too Much" (1948) and "Baby Get Lost" (1949) reached Number 1 on the R&B chart, and her version of "I Wanna Be Loved" (1950) crossed over to reach Number 22 on the US pop chart.[10] Her hit recordings included blues, standards, novelties, pop covers, and even a version of Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart" (R&B Number 3, 1951). At the same time as her biggest popular success, she also recorded sessions with many leading jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown and Clark Terry on the album Dinah Jams (1954), and also recorded with Cannonball Adderley and Ben Webster.
In 1959, she had her first top ten pop hit, with a version of "What a Diff'rence a Day Made",[11] which made Number 4 on the US pop chart. Her band at that time included arranger Belford Hendricks, with Kenny Burrell (guitar), Joe Zawinul (piano), and Panama Francis (drums). She followed it up with a version of Irving Gordon's "Unforgettable", and then two highly successful duets in 1960 with Brook Benton, "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)" (No. 5 Pop, No. 1 R&B) and "A Rockin' Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall in Love)" (No. 7 Pop, No. 1 R&B). Her last big hit was "September in the Rain" in 1961 (No. 23 Pop, No. 5 R&B)]
I got a special request from my sister Yasuragi to play her favorite Washington tune — so here it is.
You many not be able to play this whole documentary now but if you are a blues, r&b an jazz vocal fan — make sure you get a chance to see the whole thing.
Last, but not least we have the late, great Charles “Yardbird” Parker who was born on August 29, 1920, in Kansas City, Kansas and raised in Kansas City, Missouri.
At age eleven, he had just begun to play the saxophone. At age twenty he was leading a revolution in modern jazz music. At thirty-four, he was dead from years of drug and alcohol use. Today, Charlie “Yardbird” Parker is considered one of the great musical innovators of the 20th century. A father of bebop, he influenced generations of musicians, and sparked the fire of one of the most important and successful American artistic movements. Born in 1920 in Kansas City, Kansas, Charlie Parker grew up just across the river in Kansas City, Missouri. By age twelve he was playing in the high school marching band and in local dance hall combos. It was then that he first heard the new sounds of jazz. Hanging around the Kansas City clubs, the young Parker went to hear every new musician to pass through. Some of his earliest idols were Jimmy Dorsey, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Ben Webster, and Louis Armstrong. As a teenager he married his childhood sweetheart, Rebecca Parker Davis. Living in Kansas City, they had a child, but as Kansas City declined as a center for jazz, Parker longed to leave his hometown for New York. So, just around age twenty, Parker sold his horn, left his family, and hopped on a train to New York, where he was destined to change the face of American music forever.
In New York, Parker had difficulty finding work at first, but playing with Jay McShann’s band he began to develop his fiercely original solo style. Within a short while he was the talk of the town and Dizzy Gillespie and other members of the Earl Hines band convinced Hines to hire him. Gillespie and Parker became close friends and collaborators. Of the time Gillespie recalled, “New York is the place, and both of us blossomed.” Leaving Hines, the two moved on to Billy Eckstine’s band, where they were able to expand their range of experimentation.
The seeds of modern jazz, or “bebop,” as the new style came to be called, were also being sown by now legendary pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, drummers Kenny Clark and Max Roach, and trumpeter Miles Davis. All were frequent Parker collaborators on recordings and in the lively 52nd Street clubs that were the jazz center of the mid-1940s. Beyond his amazing technical capacity, Parker was able to invent a more complex and individual music by disregarding the four- and eight-bar standards of jazz and creating solos that were both fluid and harsh.Though the experiments of jazz were being heard worldwide, in the United States much of the popular media ignored the music and concentrated on the culture — the berets, horn-rimmed glasses, goatees, and language that characterized the bebop style. Jazz critic Leonard Feather noted, “There was no serious attention paid to Charlie Parker as a great creative musician … in any of the media. It was just horrifying how really miserably he was treated. And this goes for the way Dizzy Gillespie was treated — and everybody.” Due in part to dissatisfaction with the amount of critical attention he was receiving and in part to his years of on and off drug use, Parker slipped into serious addiction. On a two-year tour of California, his drinking and drug addiction worsened, and for six months he was in a Los Angeles rehabilitation center.
It was not until his tour of Europe that Parker began to receive the attention he deserved. Visiting Paris in 1949, Parker was greeted with an almost cult status. His European trips also encouraged him to expand his musical arrangements, including backing strings for both touring and recording. However, as continuing personal and creative pressures mounted, he went into a tailspin: drinking, behaving erratically, and even being banned from “Birdland,” the legendary 52nd Street club named in his honor. Throughout this time, however, one thing remained intact — Parker’s playing continued to exhibit the same technical genius and emotional investment that had made him great.
It is a truism — that without Bird there would have been no be-bop. Check out this documentary — and then listen to some of his legendary performances.
I’m adding this last vocal performance by Bob Dorough — simply because I loved that he took Bird’s Yardbird Suite and told a story about Bird with his lyrics.
Feel free to post your favorite tunes by any of the celebrants in comments.
News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Here’s a riddle for you: Three young black men are walking alongside a Louisiana road when they get hit by a passing vehicle. Who gets charged?
If you guessed “the driver, of course, duh,” then you guessed wrong, because apparently nothing makes sense anymore.
According to KATC, three young men from Ville Platte, La., are still recovering from their injuries after being hit by a truck while walking along North Chataignier Street. However, to add insult to injury, the three are now facing charges, while the driver is not. Deonte Williams, 21; Cody Mayes, 19; and Tevin Wilson, 17, are all nursing scrapes, bruises and staples, but they are even more upset that they have been fined for not wearing reflective clothing at night and are also facing charges of obstructing a public passage.
“For me to find out that this guy gets to just go home—we all get some misdemeanors and nothing happened to him,” Williams told the news station, “I’m upset about it.” The incident occurred around 8 p.m. Tuesday along the road, which does not have any sidewalks, KATC notes.
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Science fiction fans who crave live-action content from creators of color will find a lot to like about “Keloid.” The YouTube series’ first seven-episode season follows the show’s titular protagonist, a Black teen whose life goes topsy-turvy when he discovers supernatural abilities to control electricity and teleport. They are powers his mother apparently kept secret from him, and now they threaten to put both of their lives in danger as police try to connect Keloid to a classmate’s disappearance.
Now, after an acclaimed first season that generated a cult following and landed positive profiles from publications like Black Girl Nerds and Ebony, “Keloid’s” creators and crew look to support the second season via Indiegogo.
“I wanted to give people who look like us, and who also love a good story, the chance to immerse themselves in this supernatural drama we’d created,” writes “Keloid” creator Huriyyah Muhammad in the campaign page’s description.
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For years developers eyed Vila Autódromo — a favela, or informal, low-income neighborhood — as prime real estate on the shores of Lake Jacarepaguá amidst fast-growing Barra da Tijuca with its Miami-style shopping centers, car dealerships and luxury highrises in the west zone of Rio de Janeiro. Nearby favelas had been removed beginning in the 1990s, ostensibly because the communities were causing environmental damage.
And when Rio de Janeiro won its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, it seemed that would be the fate of Vila Autódromo’s 600 families, too, because their neighborhood sat in the path of access roads and parking for Olympic Park.
To make way for Olympic and transportation construction, tens of thousands of Rio residents were dislocated. Most of them lived in poor or working-class neighborhoods. Their Olympic legacy has been forced remoções (removals).
Part of the social legacy of the Olympics was supposed to be the upgrading of all Rio’s favelas with more than 100 homes, bringing them social services, land titling, and improved water and sewer systems. But critics contend little was done under the Morar Cariocaprogram and some upgrades that carried the Morar Carioca stamp were actually done during a previous favela program.
“Instead, evictions became a huge problem,” said Theresa Williamson, a city planner who is executive director of a nonprofit called Catalytic Communities. Its goal is to give greater visibility to favela voices. During the run-up to the Olympics, it frequently published stories on its news site, Rio On Watch, about how construction was impacting the favelas — home to about a quarter of Rio’s population.
The number of evictions eventually reached 80,000 as a result of preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the Olympics, Williamson said. They included people displaced to make way for the TransOeste bus rapid transit line and removal of those living in the Metro Mangueira favela, which was deemed too close to Maracanã Stadium. Since the Olympics, the soccer stadium was closed and vandalized. It’s reopened now but only being lightly used.
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THE Mugabe brothers are having a night out again. Here they are showing off their outfits: distressed white denim, high-top sneakers, statement sunglasses. Now they’re in a VIP booth at a club, swaying and swigging from bottles of Moët & Chandon while the music pumps. At some point they will post a flame emoji, indicating that the evening is “lit”.
Like many millennials, Robert Mugabe junior and Bellarmine, his younger brother, shamelessly chronicle their days (and late nights) on Instagram, a social-media site for sharing pictures. Uniquely, however, their 93-year-old father is the president of Zimbabwe. The steady stream of photos and videos they post offers an unusual and oddly intimate window into their privileged personal lives. Lately the two brothers appear to be spending much of their time in Johannesburg. Life is more “lit” there than back home in Zimbabwe, where their father has ruined the economy.
The Mugabe brothers are not the only scions of African strongmen who are tactless about what they share on social media. Lawrence Lual Malong Yor junior, the stepson of a South Sudanese general, documents his love of luxury on Facebook with photos of himself flying first-class and getting hot-stone massages. One video shows him lying in a pile of $100 bills (which he claims make up $1m that he will donate to charity).
Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the son of the president of Equatorial Guinea (and coincidently also the vice-president) posts photos of himself luxuriating in private jets, posing behind the wheels of fancy cars, at parties and on exotic foreign trips. A photo from his recent 1920s-themed birthday bash shows a woman jumping out of a giant cake. He appears undeterred by his trial in France, where he is accused of embezzling more than $100m from public funds and spending it on his high-flying lifestyle. Mr Obiang claimed that he has immunity from prosecution. A verdict is expected in October.
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Black Lives Matter came into existence following the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, an African-American teen, by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla. The group became known nationally amid protests in Ferguson, Mo., after a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man.
Since then, the organization founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi has been on the front lines of protests against what it calls "the sustained and increasingly visible violence against black communities."
While its prominence appears to have waned in recent months, Cullors, 32, a native of Van Nuys who lives in Los Angeles, insisted that the movement is today more relevant than ever.
It has swelled to 40 chapters, including branches in Canada and Britain. In November, the group will receive the Sydney Peace Prize, Australia's leading award for peacemakers.
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Voices and Soul
by
Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
The reason Jesus is not frightening to White America is because Jesus looks just like them, and it’s not by accident either. If Jesus were depicted as anything other than a light brown-haired, blue-eyed aesthete, Televangelist Profits(tm) would cease grifting from the televangelist pulpit, there would be no more sermons in basketball auditorium tent revival meetings during the Great Storm on how rising tithes raises all yachts. It’s really hard to part rubes from their money when they are frightened by how their savior looks, even during a biblical flood. Everybody who saw spiritual salvation as a growth industry knows that.
It is said, those who control the past, control the present. Dixie monuments are a constant reminder of that paradigm. What is often ignored, though, is the wiping out of history, not just a rewriting, but a wholesale destruction of memory. It starts with a cosmetic granite face lift to straighten and thin the nose of Nefertiti, then sand blast rock chisels straightening the hair of Osiris and the Oracle at Delphi, on to acid wash brushes lightening the ceramic-fired skin and eyes of Zulu warriors, and ultimately, landed gentry foundations Europeanizing the broken face of the Great Sphinx. Monumental efforts not to control the present, but to control the future.
Who was it said
the reason why
you never see
Black Folks properly
e-v-e-r on film or TV
is ’cause White Folks
“find them threatening”?
Whopei! Abae-o-o-o!
We always thought
our beautiful black skin
was
the Problem.
So
Afia and Ola
Eye-leen, Lola, and Tapu
bleached and blotched
their skins ugly
to please our masters and our masters’ servants.
Now
don’t come telling me
flat noses,
thick lips, and
small ears
must also disappear
to put the world at ease?
That must explain
why the Princess Nefertiti
and the youthful King Tut
were dragged to
Michael Jackson’s beauty doctor
long before
Young Michael was born,
and also why
the Sphinx
who looked like
Great Ancestor King Khafre
is being redone!
We should have known
we were in trouble
the day we heard
a Corsican general traveled to Giza
by way of Paris and a crown
to shoot
the Sphinx’s nose off
for not-at-all-looking like
his.
Enfin! Helas!! Mon Dieu!!!
Ebusuafo,
for years
the Sphinx stood
massive eternal
riddled with wisdom and all
very thick-lipped
very flat-nosed.
We never saw him photographed head-on.
But in the year 2020
the New Sphinx will be unveiled
full visage on view
straight nose raised
thin lips tight
and even, maybe, blue-eyed:
a perfect image of the men
who vested so much interest
in his changing face.
You see, Wekumei,
when folks figure
you are their slave
your past belongs to them.
And mind you, the Man will try
to grab our future too.
Shall we let him?
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH