Black History, Music
Lena Horne
b. 1917 – Lena Home is known and loved not only for her musical and dramatic talents but also for her continual interest in and support of many humane causes. She started in show business with the chorus line at the Cotton Club in 1933. From there she toured with Noble Sissle’s orchestra, and she later joined Charlie Barnett’s band, with which she made her first records.
In the early 1940s Home went to Hollywood, where she became the first black woman to sign a term contract in film. Her films include Panama Hattie (1942), Cabin in the Sky (1943), and Stormy Weather (1943). (more…)
Black History, Music, The Arts
Miles Davis
What is cool? At its very essence, cool is all about what’s happening next. In popular culture, what’s happening next is a kaleidoscope encompassing past, present and future: that which is about to happen may be cool, and that which happened in the distant past may also be cool. This timeless quality, when it applies to music, allows minimalist debate with few exceptions, that which has been cool will always be cool.
For nearly six decades, Miles Davis has embodied all that is cool – in his music (and most especially jazz), in his art, fashion, romance, and in his international, if not intergalactic, presence that looms strong as ever today. (more…)
Black History, Music
The Story of Thomas Bethune also known as Thomas Wiggins
also known as “Blind Tom” (1849 – 1908) by Barbara Schmidt
Safely tucked away in a few scattered archives across the nation are pages of sheet music–compositions with titles such as “Battle of Manassas” and “Virginia Polka” that are dormant testimony to the life of the child named Tom who composed them–a child who lived a century past and whose musical abilities still remain a medical and scientific mystery. One common thread of explanation found in all attempts to explain Tom by those who witnessed his performances is that he embodied the spirit of a higher power. (more…)
Black History, Music, The Arts
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was a true artist of her day and rose as a social phenomenon in the 1950s. Her soulful, unique singing voice and her ability to boldly turn any material that she confronted into her own music made her a superstar of her time. Today, Holiday is remembered for her masterpieces, creativity and vivacity, as many of Holiday’s songs are as well known today as they were decades ago. Holiday’s poignant voice is still considered to be one of the greatest jazz voices of all time.
Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan) grew up in jazz talent-rich Baltimore in the 1920s. As a young teenager, Holiday served the beginning part of her so-called “apprenticeship� by singing along with records by Bessie Smith or Louis Armstrong in after-hours jazz clubs. When Holiday’s mother, Sadie Fagan, moved to New York in search of a better job, Billie eventually went with her. She made her true singing debut in obscure Harlem nightclubs and borrowed her professional name – Billie Holiday – from screen star Billie Dove.
Although she never underwent any technical training and never even so much as learned how to read music, Holiday quickly became an active participant in what was then one of the most vibrant jazz scenes in the country. She would move from one club to another, working for tips. She would sometimes sing with the accompaniment of a house piano player while other times she would work as part of a group of performers. (more…)
Music
Eubie Blake, ragtime composer and performer, was born on February 7,1883 in Baltimore, Md. When he was around four or five, Blake began playing his family’s pump organ. Noticing his interest in music, Blake’s parents signed him up for piano lessons with a neighborhood teacher. In 1898, at the age of 15, Blake became interested in ragtime, to his mother’s dismay. Against her wishes and without her knowing, he began his professional music career by playing ragtime piano in Baltimore brothels, honky tonks and bars. He later played in clubs and saloons. Blake’s work led him to meet the major musicians of the time. One of whom, Noble Sissle, would later become his partner.
The pair met in 1915. Sissle joined Blake’s band as a singer. Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake created an vaudeville act, the Dixie Duo. They wrote songs and performed. Sophie Tucker sang their first song, “It’s all your fault.” The song was an instant hit. Then Blake and Sissle teamed up with another duo to create Shuffle Along The Broadway all-star cast included Josephine Baker Florence Mills and Paul Robeson. Many of Blake’s most famous songs come from Shuffle Along including “I’m Just Wild about Harry” and “Love Will Find a Way”. The play was so popular that in 1921 it was being performed by three different touring companies. After the success of Shuffle Along ,
Blake and Sissle collaborated on Elsie and Chocolat Dandies. Blake also created some shows on his own including Swing It, Blackbirds and Eubie! Then, as the popularity of ragtime faded, Eubie Blake took a twenty-three year break from show business. In 1969, at the age of 56 he returned. Blake toured the world playing piano and giving lectures on ragtime music. He made an album called The Fifty-six Years of Blake and he formed his own company. Just over one hundred years after his life began, on February 12, 1983, Eubie Blake died in Brooklyn, New York.
Music
James Weldon Johnson had as much to do with the rise of that cultural movement as any one person.. Indeed, he was the epitome of the classic Renaissance man himself–poet, composer, author, government official, teacher, and influential civil rights activist.
Johnson’s mother sparked his early interest in drawing, literature, and music. Consequently, Johnson, as lyricist, and his brother, Rosamond, as composer, wrote and staged musical comedies and light operas from 1901 to 1906, producing such enduring songs as “Since You Went Away” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” now widely adopted as the African-American national anthem.. This remarkably versatile man crowned his contributions to society by becoming field secretary for the fledgling NAACP in 1916. As a social thinker, Johnson was an early advocate of Booker T. Washington’s self-help philosophy.
But he later supported thee NAACP’s frontal attacks on segregation and discrimination, organizing the 1917 silent protest parade in New York City that condemned the massacre of African-Americans in east St. Louis, and fighting for passage of the 1921 Dyer Anti-Lynching bill, during 144 years of NAACP service.. After becoming the first African-American man to be admitted to the bar (in 1897) too practice law in Jacksonville, Florida, he moved to New York City to pursue a theatrical career.
Campaigning for Teddy Roosevelt’s successful presidential bid in 19044 earned Johnson an appointment as U.S. Consul to Venezuela (1906-8) and Nicaragua (1909-12). In 1913 he returned to New York and plunged into cultural life there by writing God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse and The Book of American Negro Poetry. Johnson was a literature instructor at Fisk University in Tennessee when he died in an automobile crash in 1938.
