tagged w/ Rhythm & Blues
-
CNN...
.
How Don Cornelius became the 'pope of soul'
By John Blake and Todd Leopold, CNN
updated 4:34 PM EST, Wed February 1, 2012
Don Cornelius' impact on America went beyond music. "Soul Train" united white and black America together.
.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
"Soul Train" host Don Cornelius' impact on America was bigger than music
"He was an ambassador, the pope of soul," one sociologist says
Show's message was "I'm black and I'm proud," Gladys Knight says
Stars and fans praised his cool persona, boldness and cultural "tightrope" act
.
PART ONE...
.
(CNN) -- Don Cornelius never led a civil rights march, launched a boycott or gave a speech before a cheering crowd of protesters.
But his impact on America was as profound as virtually any civil rights leader, says Shayne Lee, a sociologist who grew up watching "Soul Train."
Cornelius' groundbreaking TV show didn't just captivate African-Americans -- it tied white and black America together in a way that had not been done before, says Lee, who teaches a course on hip-hop at the University of Houston.
"He was an ambassador, the pope of soul," Lee said. "For a lot of suburban whites living in segregated America, this was their first exposure to this exiting new world of movement and energy. He made black culture more accessible."
Cornelius, who hosted "Soul Train" for 22 of its 36 years on the air, died Tuesday. He was 75. Police reports indicate he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The suave Cornelius was known by an entire generation of African-Americans as the dapper host of "Soul Train" who signed off each show by blowing a kiss and declaring, "We wish you love, peace and souuuullll."
Most of the tributes to Cornelius that poured in following his death focused on his contribution to music. Others said his legacy was bigger than sound.
Cultural impact of 'Soul Train'
Kenny Gamble, co-founder of Philadelphia International Records, which produced the theme song for "Soul Train," says Cornelius was a great contributor to American, not just black, culture.
"Soul Train," like Apple and Coca-Cola, is an American brand, Gamble says.
"Soul Train" traditions, like dancers gathering to cheer on fellow dancers as they shimmied down a dance line, are now a part of pop culture.
"No matter where you go in this world, people are doing the 'Soul Train' dance line," he said. "What's a party without the 'Soul Train' dance line?"
Gamble still sounded stunned after hearing the news about Cornelius.
"Unbelievable," he said. "That was my man."
Singer Gladys Knight told CNN that Cornelius was an unsung hero whose show amplified the message, "I'm black and I'm proud."
"He encouraged us to be ourselves," she said. "We're going to give you this platform and you go out and do your thing."
Sociologist Lee said that message -- be black and proud -- drove the civil rights movement. And just as the civil rights movement overturned segregation, Cornelius erased cultural barriers that separated white and black Americans living apart in their own cultural cocoons.
"I see Cornelius as a civil rights activist," said Lee, author of "Erotic Revolutionaries."
"The civil rights movement changed the legal structure; Cornelius changed the cultural structure. Changing the culture can change hearts in a way that protests can't."
Cornelius first changed television.
TV had not been known as friendly terrain for African-Americans before "Soul Train." Blacks were often seen in caricatured roles -- as minstrels, servants or outlaws. They were seen through the lens of white America.
"Soul Train" changed the focus. It lifted the veil on black America and showed blacks being themselves, and not as whites imagined them, said Lee.
"The show introduced the notion that blacks were creative, we have something to offer and we're not going anywhere. And if you give us a chance, you might like some of our moves," Lee said.
Cornelius offered white America a new way to see black men, Lee says. He wasn't a sidekick or servant, nor was he angry.
"He walked a tightrope," Lee said. "If he was too in-your-face, he would have been offensive on television, or too accommodating he would have been perceived as an Uncle Tom.
"He was soooo cool."
The cool apparently wasn't an act to those who knew him and knew how he launched "Soul Train."
.
CONTINUED...
.CNN...
.
How Don Cornelius became the 'pope of soul'
By John... more
-
-
Los Angeles Times...
.
Public viewing scheduled for Etta James
January 25, 2012
.
A public viewing will be held Friday in Inglewood for R&B great Etta James, who died last week at the age of 73, a family representative said.
The viewing will be from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the Manchester Chapel at Inglewood Cemetery Mortuary, 3801 W. Manchester Blvd.
The Rev. Al Sharpton will lead a private memorial service for the singer Saturday.
—Phil Willon
.
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/arts/music/etta-james-singer-dies-at-73.html
The New York Times...
.
Etta James, Powerful Voice Behind ‘At Last,’ Dies at 73
.
PHOTO:
Etta James in the studio in Chicago with the Chess Records founder Phil Chess, left, and the producer Ralph Bass in 1960.
.
By PETER KEEPNEWS
Published: January 20, 2012
.
Etta James, whose powerful, versatile and emotionally direct voice could enliven the raunchiest blues as well as the subtlest love songs, most indelibly in her signature hit, “At Last,” died Friday morning in Riverside, Calif. She was 73.
Her manager, Lupe De Leon, said that the cause was complications of leukemia. Ms. James, who died at Riverside Community Hospital, had been undergoing treatment for some time for a number of conditions, including leukemia and dementia. She also lived in Riverside.
Ms. James was not easy to pigeonhole. She is most often referred to as a rhythm and blues singer, and that is how she made her name in the 1950s with records like “Good Rockin’ Daddy.” She is in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame.
She was also comfortable, and convincing, singing pop standards, as she did in 1961 with “At Last,” which was written in 1941 and originally recorded by Glenn Miller’s orchestra. And among her four Grammy Awards (including a lifetime-achievement honor in 2003) was one for best jazz vocal performance, which she won in 1995 for the album “Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday.”
Regardless of how she was categorized, she was admired. Expressing a common sentiment, Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote in 1990 that she had “one of the great voices in American popular music, with a huge range, a multiplicity of tones and vast reserves of volume.”
For all her accomplishments, Ms. James had an up-and-down career, partly because of changing audience tastes but largely because of drug problems. She developed a heroin habit in the 1960s; after she overcame it in the 1970s, she began using cocaine. She candidly described her struggles with addiction and her many trips to rehab in her autobiography, “Rage to Survive,” written with David Ritz (1995).
Etta James was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles on Jan. 25, 1938. Her mother, Dorothy Hawkins, was 14 at the time; her father was long gone, and Ms. James never knew for sure who he was, although she recalled her mother telling her that he was the celebrated pool player Rudolf Wanderone, better known as Minnesota Fats. She was reared by foster parents and moved to San Francisco with her mother when she was 12.
She began singing at the St. Paul Baptist Church in Los Angeles at 5 and turned to secular music as a teenager, forming a vocal group with two friends. She was 15 when she made her first record, “Roll With Me Henry,” which set her own lyrics to the tune of Hank Ballard and the Midnighters’ recent hit “Work With Me Annie.” When some disc jockeys complained that the title was too suggestive, the name was changed to “The Wallflower,” although the record itself was not.
“The Wallflower” rose to No. 2 on the rhythm-and-blues charts in 1954. As was often the case in those days with records by black performers, a toned-down version was soon recorded by a white singer and found a wider audience: Georgia Gibbs’s version, with the title and lyric changed to “Dance With Me, Henry,” was a No. 1 pop hit in 1955. (Its success was not entirely bad news for Ms. James. She shared the songwriting royalties with Mr. Ballard and the bandleader and talent scout Johnny Otis, who had arranged for her recording session. (Mr. Otis died on Tuesday.)
In 1960 Ms. James was signed by Chess Records, the Chicago label that was home to Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and other leading lights of black music. She quickly had a string of hits, including “All I Could Do Was Cry,” “Trust in Me” and “At Last,” which established her as Chess’s first major female star.
She remained with Chess well into the 1970s, reappearing on the charts after a long absence in 1967 with the funky and high-spirited “Tell Mama.” In the late ’70s and early ’80s she was an opening act for the Rolling Stones.
After decades of touring, recording for various labels and drifting in and out of the public eye, Ms. James found herself in the news in 2009 after Beyoncé Knowles recorded a version of “At Last” closely modeled on hers. (Ms. Knowles played Ms. James in the 2008 movie “Cadillac Records,” a fictionalized account of the rise and fall of Chess.) Ms. Knowles also performed “At Last” at an inaugural ball for President Obama in Washington.
When the movie was released, Ms. James had kind words for Ms. Knowles’s portrayal. But in February 2009, referring specifically to the Washington performance, she told an audience, “I can’t stand Beyoncé,” and threatened to “whip” the younger singer for singing “At Last.” She later said she had been joking, but she did add that she wished she had been invited to sing the song herself for the new president.
Ms. James’s survivors include her husband of 42 years, Artis Mills; two sons, Donto and Sametto James; and four grandchildren.
.
Though her life had its share of troubles to the end — her husband and sons were locked in a long-running battle over control of her estate, which was resolved in her husband’s favor only weeks before her death — Ms. James said she wanted her music to transcend unhappiness rather than reflect it.
“A lot of people think the blues is depressing,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1992, “but that’s not the blues I’m singing. When I’m singing blues, I’m singing life. People that can’t stand to listen to the blues, they’ve got to be phonies.”
.
http://collegecandy.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/etta-james.jpg?w=600&h=337
.Los Angeles Times...
.
Public viewing scheduled for Etta James
January... more
-
-
The New York Times...
.
Johnny Otis Has Died
.
Johnny Otis, ‘Godfather of Rhythm and Blues,’ Dies at 90
.
By IHSAN TAYLOR
Published: January 19, 2012
Johnny Otis, the musician, bandleader, songwriter, impresario, disc jockey and talent scout who was often called “the godfather of rhythm and blues,” died on Tuesday at his home in Altadena, Calif. He was 90.
His death was confirmed by his manager, Terry Gould.
Leading a band in the late 1940s that combined the high musical standards of big band jazz with the raw urgency of gospel music and the blues, Mr. Otis played an important role in creating a new sound for a new audience of young urban blacks. Within a few years it would form the foundation of rock ’n’ roll.
With a keen ear for talent, he helped steer a long list of performers to stardom, among them Etta James, Jackie Wilson, Esther Phillips and Big Mama Thornton — whose hit recording of “Hound Dog,” made in 1952, four years before Elvis Presley’s, was produced by Mr. Otis and featured him on drums.
At Mr. Otis’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, Ms. James referred to him as her “guru.” (He received similar honors from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation and the Blues Foundation.)
Mr. Otis was also a political activist, a preacher, an artist, an author and even, late in life, an organic farmer. But it was in music that he left his most lasting mark.
Despite being a mover and shaker in the world of black music, Mr. Otis was not black, which as far as he was concerned was simply an accident of birth. He was immersed in African-American culture from an early age and said he considered himself “black by persuasion.”
“Genetically, I’m pure Greek,” he told The San Jose Mercury News in 1994. “Psychologically, environmentally, culturally, by choice, I’m a member of the black community.”
As a musician (he played piano and vibraphone in addition to drums) Mr. Otis can be heard on Johnny Ace’s “Pledging My Love,” Charles Brown’s “Drifting Blues” and other seminal rhythm and blues records, as well as on jazz recordings by Lester Young and Illinois Jacquet. As a bandleader and occasional vocalist, he had a string of rhythm and blues hits in the early 1950s and a Top 10 pop hit in 1958 with his composition “Willie and the Hand Jive,” later covered by Eric Clapton and others. His many other compositions included “Every Beat of My Heart,” a Top 10 hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1961.
As a disc jockey (he was on the radio for decades starting in the 1950s and had his own Los Angeles television show from 1954 to 1961) he helped bring black vernacular music into the American mainstream.
Johnny Otis was born John Alexander Veliotes (some sources give his first name as Ioannis) on Dec. 28, 1921, in Vallejo, Calif., the son of Greek immigrants who ran a grocery. He grew up in a predominantly black area of Berkeley. Mr. Otis began his career as a drummer in 1939. In 1945 he formed a 16-piece band and recorded his first hit, “Harlem Nocturne.”
As big bands fell out of fashion, Mr. Otis stripped the ensemble down to just a few horns and a rhythm section and stepped to the forefront of the emerging rhythm and blues scene. In 1948 he and a partner opened a nightclub, the Barrelhouse, in the Watts section of Los Angeles.
From 1950 to 1952 Mr. Otis had 15 singles on Billboard’s rhythm and blues Top 40, including “Double Crossing Blues,” which was No. 1 for nine weeks. On the strength of that success he crisscrossed the country with his California Rhythm and Blues Caravan, featuring singers like Ms. Phillips, billed as Little Esther — whom he had discovered at a talent contest at his nightclub — and Hank Ballard, who a decade later would record the original version of “The Twist,” the song that ushered in a national dance craze.
Around this time Mr. Otis became a D.J. on the Los Angeles-area radio station KFOX. He was an immediate success, and soon had his own local television show as well. He had a weekly program on the Pacifica Radio Network in California from the 1970s until 2005.
Hundreds of Mr. Otis’s radio and television shows are archived at Indiana University. In addition, he is the subject of a coming documentary film, “Every Beat of My Heart: The Johnny Otis Story,” directed by Bruce Schmiechen, and a biography, “Midnight at the Barrelhouse,” by George Lipsitz, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2010.
While he never stopped making music as long as his health allowed, Mr. Otis focused much of his attention in the 1960s on politics and the civil rights movement. He ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the California State Assembly and served on the staff of Mervyn M. Dymally, a Democratic assemblyman who later became a United States representative and California’s first black lieutenant governor.
Mr. Otis’s first book, “Listen to the Lambs” (1968), was largely a reflection on the political and social significance of the 1965 Watts riots.
In the mid-1970s Mr. Otis branched out further when he was ordained as a minister and opened the nondenominational Landmark Community Church in Los Angeles. While he acknowledged that some people attended just “to see what Reverend Hand Jive was talking about,” he took his position seriously and in his decade as pastor was involved in charitable work including feeding the homeless.
In the early 1990s he moved to Sebastopol, an agricultural town in northern California, and became an organic farmer, a career detour that he said was motivated by his concern for the environment. For several years he made and sold his own brand of apple juice in a store he opened to sell the produce he grew with his son Nick. The store doubled as a nightclub where Mr. Otis and his band performed.
Later that decade he published three more books: “Upside Your Head!: Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue” (1993), a memoir of his musical life; “Colors and Chords” (1995), a collection of his paintings, sculptures, wood carvings and cartoons (his interest in art had begun when he started sketching cartoons on his tour bus in the 1950s to amuse his band); and “Red Beans & Rice and Other Rock ’n’ Roll Recipes” (1997), a cookbook.
Mr. Otis continued to record and perform into the 21st century. His bands often included family members: his son John Jr., known as Shuggie, is a celebrated guitarist who played with him for many years, and Nick was his longtime drummer. Two grandsons, Lucky and Eric Otis, also played guitar with him.
In addition to his sons, he is survived by his wife of 70 years, the former Phyllis Walker; two daughters, Janice Johnson and Laura Johnson; nine grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandchild.
Long after he was a force on the rhythm and blues charts, Mr. Otis was a familiar presence at blues and even jazz festivals. What people wanted to call his music, he said, was of no concern to him.
“Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it’s all African-American music,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1993. “The music isn’t just the notes, it’s the culture — the way Grandma cooked, the way Grandpa told stories, the way the kids walked and talked.”
.The New York Times...
.
Johnny Otis Has Died
.
Johnny Otis,... more
-
-
The long-lost Roy Milton and His Solid Senders recording from the first Rhythm & Blues Jubilee, 1950. You get to hear it here first.The long-lost Roy Milton and His Solid Senders recording from the first Rhythm &... more
-
-
(CNN) -- R&B Legend Teddy Pendergrass died Wednesday evening, his publicist said. He was 59.
Pendergrass, known for smash love ballads such as "Turn Off the Lights" and "Love TKO," died after after a long illness, according to Lisa Barbaris, who described herself as a close friend and his last publicist.
"His beloved family surrounded him. The world has lost one of it's greatest voices and performers," a statement from Barbaris said.(CNN) -- R&B Legend Teddy Pendergrass died Wednesday evening, his publicist said.... more
-
