Bert Williams

This is a link to a very well prepared site on the music of Bert Williams.   Thanks Chris.

Treemonisha by Scott Joplin

In Dahomey (1901) by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Will Marion Cook and Jesse Shipp and Treemonisha (1911) by Scott Joplin belong in the pre-history of African American jazz and blues.

Generally they are not included in the credits for the early blues, particularly since this material is clearly influenced by European musical precedents.  Both are considered more of a bow to our blackface minstrelsy tradition, a history we would rather not contemplate although so much of our performance practices were filtered through blackface and its ancillary performance practices.

Treemonisha has rarely been performed for the public.  I am just learning about it thanks to a student in my class at the grad center who reported on this undeservedly forgotten American opera, perhaps the first in 1911.  I really like the music and I like the story, particularly as performed by Obba Babatunde with the Houston Grand Opera in the mid 1970s.

As for In Dahomey written by Paul Lawrence Dunbar and performed by Bert Williams, David Walker, both of their wives and Abbie Mitchell, it was one of the first successful black musicals on Broadway.  It travelled abroad as well.   Others to followed, including perhaps most notably Porgy and Bess, which was not written by anybody black but George Gershwin. The international success of Porgy and Bess since its first production in the mid 30s was and is unprecedented.  I am told it is always being performed somewhere and it holds the spot as the key African American opera as opposed to Treemonisha.  


Not sure why except that Gershwin is Gershwin and his songs have been so widely and expertly performed by so many great African American artists.  I really don't know why the lag in producing Treemonisha except black folk are still trying to get their due on the cultural front in music.  Nevermind stage, screen and the visual arts.

Often there hangs over African American efforts in the performing arts, particularly where music is involved, a funky shroud of shame and prejudice based upon the constant worry that the blacks who came before us didn't always conduct themselves with dignity.  Always the question that is asked is, was it too European?  Then, perhaps it wasn't European enough?  How can African Americans performer artists ever win a place for themselves in the history of American culture with criteria like these.  

Music is music.  American music is American music.  

To see more information concerning links to sheet music of Scott Joplin, see http://blackandbluespeople.blogspot.com/2009/03/treemonisha-by-scott-joplin.html.

Gil Scott Heron

This is a Gil Scott Heron site.  The author of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and a performer and musician from the 60s. There is also interesting stuff at kalamu.com, what with Gil Scott Heron being a practicing and unrepentant drug user, he cuts an interesting figure in these times. Still quite political.

American Blues Festivals in England in the 60s

"Recorded live in a small TV studio in Germany," as reported via the Reelin in the Years Production in association with Experience Hendrix as issued via Volumes One and Two in association apparently with Hipo Records.  The trail of credits and trademarks on this wonderful set of dvds gets confusing but it is well worth it.  Herein I am sharing a link to some copies of these sessions on youtube.

Extremely influential set of recordings unavailable in the United States for many years but these performances nonetheless managed to leave a trail throughout subsequent rock and roll, r&b and "what not" (as Big Mama Thornton might say) from that time on.  This would appear at least retrospectively to be some serious "root" music at this point.

 Really great stuff on so many levels, about which there will be more to be said later perhaps but will be showing some of this in class tomorrow now that I've got my technology together at City College at least: T Bone Walker Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Memphis Slim, John Lee Hooker, Eddie Boyd, Junior Wells, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters and Victoria Spivey.

This material can also be purchased very reasonably via Hipo Records on DVD Video.  They are also listed on my Amazon Blues People List.

Check out this link for just some of the wonderful stuff from the various Blues Festivals abroad, including here John Lee Hooker singing Hobo Blues at an earlier link on this page:


http://blackandbluesmusic.blogspot.com/2010/05/john-lee-hooker-hobo-blues.html

The Magnificence of the Temptations

David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks were the decisive and formative members of The Temptations, to me the key men's group of the 60s and of the Motown factory.  Reviewing their careers and the development of the Temptations saga over the years, particularly using the resources made available by YouTube, I've come to see the stories and the artistry of Ruffin and Kendricks in particular--the relationship of their music to their lives and the blues experience--as crucial and formative to the concept of a blues life.  Or in other words, of African American life and culture.  Both threw down on each and every occasion they ever appeared.  I loved them when I was a girl at the Apollo and I love them still.  Although the reason I know them is because of what they did and sang in the 60s.  Yet, there are many beautiful moments in their work captured on video of their lives in the 70s and 80s up until their deaths, Ruffin of a drug overdose and Kendricks of lung cancer.  I think it is important that young people should always know them and the beautiful, positive things they did.

olympia2x has shared a video playlist with you on YouTube. David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks
© 2009 YouTube, LLC

60s and 70s Blues Miscellaneous

60s-70s Blues People
© 2009 YouTube, LLC

This selection begins with Amy Winehouse doing a cover of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" written by Carole King back in the day.  Beautifully done.  See further discussion at:
http://blackandbluesmusic.blogspot.com/2009/01/amy-winehous-2004-in-british-soundtrack.html

This is followed by the Shirelles version from 1961.  Makes me think about Vietnam and all the boys leaving their girlfriends one last time.

Howling Wolf, "How Many More Years" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966.

Big Mama Thorton performing Hound Dog with Buddy Guy at the Blues Festival in London in 1965.

Koko Taylor and Little Walter doing Wang Dang Doodle at the 1967 Blues Festival in London.

Little Walter singing his hit "My Baby."

The list winds up with several pieces of Abby Lincoln singing through the years, more recently in a documentary I've never seen elsewhere (hope it gets released) and in 1966 with Max Roach in Baden Baden, including the Freedom Suite.  Also there are two clips of Max Roach doing his classic Drum Waltz more recently before his death and in 1966 in Baden Baden. 

This is a great selection of stuff, if I do say so myself, to which I hope to add further.

John Mellencamp: On My Mind: The State of the Music Business

John Mellencamp: On My Mind: The State of the Music Business http://www.new.facebook.com/p.php?i=694893412&k=4ZD46ZR5433M5GMETCZYQR

The Impressions

For Your Precious Love was written and performed by Jerry Butler, lead singer of the Impressions in 1957.





People Get Ready written and performed by Curtis Mayfield in 1965.

The Temptations

(I Know) I'm Losing You with lead sung by David Ruffin, which became number 1 on the Billboard Chart in 1966.

The saga of The Temptations is an extraordinary one of perseverance, fame and tragedy combined with superlative talent and ability. The group rose to the very top of r&b accomplishment and continue to perform today despite the loss of all but one of the legendary members of the 60s. The songs, themselves--My Girl, I Wish It Would Rain and others--together with the uniquely smooth performance style continues to epitomize the African American blend of blues, rock and roll, 60s dance and fashion (even more so than The Supreme in my opinion), which has been exported and translated into cultural forms throughout the world.

David Ruffin My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me) 1969. This song was released at the focal point of David Ruffin's solo career after his 1968 expulsion from The Temptations.

Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls - Bring It On Home To Me 1962

"Cooke was a ground breaking black music capitalist. He owned his own record label (SAR/Derby), music publishing company (Kags Music), and management firm with offices in the Warner Brothers Building in Hollywood. His influences can be heard in the work of artists as varied as Michael Jackson and the Heptones, but is most profoundly felt in the singing of Otis Redding, Rod Stewart, and Al Green. The 1994 compilation Sam Cooke's SAR Records Story 1959-1964 suggests that his impact as a producer, though less widely recognized, was no less important.

Sam Cooke was a true superstar in his lifetime. After his death [in 1964], his legend became even larger. His influence can be heard in the precise phrasing of Smokey Robinson, in the conscientious songwriting of Marvin Gaye, in the raw emotion of Lou Rawls and in Aretha Franklin's controlled passion." Ref. History of Rock

Sam Cooke's last composition, A Change is Gonna Come, a protest song and his response to the 1960's Civil Rights Struggle, was posthumously released and is considered to be his greatest hit.

Percy Sledge

Characteristic of the many mainstream covers of black r&b hits, Percy Sledge's When a Man Loves A Woman (Atlantic 1966) provides the basis for the instrumental for Procol Harum's 1967 hit, A Whiter Shade of Pale.

Music producer Jerry Wexler dubbed When a Man Loves a Woman “a transcendent moment, a holy love hymn.” There had been many such equivalent moments in r&b and blues recordings, many of which would go down in history as massive hits for a galaxy of white stars of rock and roll.

Otis Redding

These Arms of Mine - 1962


Otis Redding wrote this song himself. Otis Redding left behind a legacy of recordings that lasted for four years -- from 1963 to his death in a plane crash in 1967. He wrote Respect and re-recorded the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction.

Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song) - 1967

Otis Redding wrote this song.

Richie Havens

Richie Havens opened the Woodstock Festival in 1969, the emblematic event of cultural revolution in the late 60s, although he was initially scheduled to appear fifth on the bill.  His performance received continuous ovations in response to which he kept playing encores until he ran out of songs. Finally, he decided to weave together a version of the slave spiritual "Motherless Child," to which he added a repeated refrain of freedom.* The song became an international hit and Havens has continued to perform it for audiences until this day. 

*Motherless Child links to explanatory text in Wikepedia outlining the extensive interpretations and covers of the slave spiritual, stemming back to its performance by the 

Fisk Jubilee Singers in the late 1880s.

Rufus Thomas

Rufus Thomas's first and biggest hit was Walking the Dog (1963).

Amy Winehouse

Rehab was her recent hit and the beginning of my awareness of this talented young lady with the troubled life. But when I heard this song, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? which is a classic of the 60s girl groups--in particular the Shirelles--it sent me reeling back to those times.

When the Shirelles sang it in 1961, making it one of the first black r&b (crossover) hits of the 1960s, I was 9 and we were on our way to Europe on the S.S. Liberte, a cruise ship. I was on the brink of the happiest adventure of my life. In the background, were considerations raised by this song. Would I ever meet a boy I liked and who liked me? What would the children be like in Europe, my head swimming with the legends of love in Paris. It is true I was only nine years old but I had lots of fantasies that summer already of what it would be like to be a fully formed teenager (I was not. I was even small and under-developed for my age). To make it all even worse, I had eczema on my arms and my neck, although it would not spread to my face until the following year.

We had great fun with the other kids on the boat exploring the different classes with the friendly assistance of the boat staff but they were all clearly kids. We were in the tourist class, which was still quite lavish to my American eyes although the cabins were very compact. There was also a Cabin Class, a Second Class and a First Class as I recall with minute differentiations in the accommodations and services at each level--larger dining rooms, larger more lavishly furnished sitting rooms, bigger bathrooms, everything looking increasingly as though it wasn't on a ship at all.  Thanks to the congenial atmosphere of the boat, our band of kids were allowed to roam everywhere unfettered.

Actually, we were looking for Bob Hope who was rumored to be on the boat in First Class.  He was on the boat but we never found him, or rather he never presented himself to us.  I have since met somebody who was on that boat in First Class then who spent some time with Bob Hope on that voyage.  From what I hear we didn't miss much. 

When we got to Paris, we realized we weren't going to see many children close-up for Parisian parents sent all their children to the country in the summers. Sometimes we saw large herds of French children being carefully chaperoned to an unknown destination, maybe a camp. But we met one little girl in Paris whose mother lived in the West Bank hotel where we stayed from whom I promptly began to learn French.

As for Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow (one of Carole King's great hits) and the position it occupies in my memories of the 60s, to me it was or it became about young black girls kissing their young boyfriends goodbye as they left for the battlefields of Vietnam, not knowing whether he would ever return or things would ever be the same and having to make the decision quickly, on a moonlit temperate night with some degree of privacy, as to whether she should have sex with him on the basis of immediate demand.

Would he still love me tomorrow? It wasn't considered morally acceptable to have sex with him if she was not married or even if she was only engaged although lots of girls did--of course I would not have known all of that at nine or ten or eleven or twelve maybe.

Would he still love her when he came back from Vietnam? Would he still marry her once he had been with Vietnam babes and white girls, which would almost certainly occur in his travels?

And unspoken but nonetheless the most important thing of all--would he be worth marrying and sticking with for the rest of her life? What would be her life? Would she regret her choices--of having sex with him, or marrying him or marrying somebody else? Probably. But the logic of the irresistible romance about the possibilities could only make sense to a pre-adolescent female mind at the dawn of the 60s Sexual Revolution. Or so I thought back then and since then.

But Winehouse's version is stunning to me. It's about entirely different stuff as well it should be after all we've been through--STDs and HIV and cervical cancer and vaginal warts and what not (as Big Mama Thornton might say!) The earlier Shirelles and the 60s discourse is woven in there, at least for me for whom the whole listening experience is a time bubble.

But Winehouse does her very very slow version (slowing it down is a great blues technique for only the masters such as the Marvin Gayes or the Aretha Franklins, with a song everybody has heard a million times), with an orchestral arrangement made in heaven, serious drums and such. Deeply beautiful and yet simple, which is the core strength of the song since the beginning. But then this is a very hard song to mess up, both short and sweet, one of those miracles of popular songwriting.

As for the sociological/psychological aspect--which has shifted slightly from the 60s through the first decade of the 21st century, Winehouse has already had sex with her man, and moreover she is actually talking about a more fully realized love between a man and a woman, sexual and then some but more than likely not forever, not that eternal love. In fact, she specifies tomorrow not forever. The still relevant question remains what's love got to do, got to do with it?

Will you still love me tomorrow?

Do you even love me tonight?

Are you able to love?

Am I?

Also, from a young woman's point of view, what is wrong with men that they can't get this anyway?

This song as recorded here by Winehouse in 2004 I've discovered, comes from the British version of a movie soundtrack still not released in the US, which I am assuming is why this single recording is popping up all over Youtube like daisies in the springtime.  Had to buy the whole album to get the song. But it was worth it. 

Big Mama Thornton

Big Mama Thornton singing "You Ain't Nothing But A Hound Dog (1965) at The American Folk Blues Festival in Britain with Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker.  She is always Hot.

The Shirelles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbxxkwBQk_o

This is a sample of the Shirelles doing Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? on a TV show around the time of the hit in 1961. When the lead singer first heard the song, she thought it was too sexy. They played it for her with the violins doing the refrain and she changed her mind. Superb.

Fontella Bass

Fontella Bass singing her hit Rescue Me on television in 1965.  With largely white background musicians, a sure sign of a crossover hit on the charts.

Carla Thomas

Gee Whiz (Look At His Eyes) recorded in 1961


 In 1961, Carla Thomas made a hit recording with Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes), which reached #5 on the R&B chart and #10 on the Pop chart on the Stax Records label. 

Aretha Franklin

Since 1961, Franklin has scored a total of 45 "Top 40" hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. She was the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Her stardom began decisively in the 60s when she made what many of us think were her greatest hits.

I Ain't Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)


Chain of Fools (1967)

Patti Labelle

"In January, 1964, Patti LaBelle and the Blue Bells released Rodgers and Hammersteins' classic "You'll Never Walk Alone, which went to #34 on both the Pop and R & B charts. "You'll Never Walk Alone" established LaBelle as one of the most powerful and distinctive vocalists on the 60s scene.

Ike & Tina Turner - Proud Mary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XRNQ2C2xO

Please substitute Proud Mary with Ike and Tina..

Martha & The Vandellas

Dancing in the Street (1964)

The Marvelettes

Please Mr. Postman" was the debut single by The Marvelettes for the Tamla (Motown) label, notable as the first Motown song to reach the number-one position on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart. The single achieved this position in late 1961; it hit number-one on the R&B chart as well. "Please Mr. Postman" became a number-one hit again in early 1975, when The Carpenters' cover of the song also reached the top position of the Billboard Hot 100