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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, March 22, 2004 - 7:44 pm
Happy Birthday George Benson!
Born 22 March 1943 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. This guitarist and singer successfully planted his feet in both the modern jazz and easy-listening pop camps in the mid-70s when jazz pop as well as jazz rock became a most lucrative proposition. Before a move to New York in 1963, he had played in various R&B outfits local to Pittsburgh, including the Altairs and the Four Counts, and recorded a single, "It Should Have Been Me". By 1965, Benson was an established jazz guitarist, having worked with Brother Jack McDuff, Herbie Hancock - and, crucially, Wes Montgomery, whose repertoire was drawn largely from pop, light classical and other non-jazz sources. When Montgomery died in 1969, critics predicted that Benson - contracted to Columbia Records in 1966 - would be his stylistic successor. Further testament to Benson's prestige was the presence of Hancock, Earl Klugh, Miles Davis, Joe Farrell and other jazz musicians on his early albums. Four of these were produced by Creed Taylor, who signed Benson to his own CTI label in 1971. Benson was impressing audiences in concert with extrapolations of songs such as "California Dreamin'", "Come Together" and, digging deeper into mainstream pop, "Cry Me A River" and "Unchained Melody". From Beyond The Blue Horizon, an arrangement of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit' was a turntable hit, and chart success seemed inevitable - especially as he was now recording a majority of vocal items. After Bad Benson reached the US album lists and, via disco floors, the title song of Supership cracked European charts, he was well placed to negotiate a favourable contract with Warner Brothers Records, who immediately reaped a Grammy-winning harvest with 1976's Breezin" (and its memorable "This Masquerade"). As a result, companies with rights to the prolific Benson's earlier product cashed in, with reissues such as The Other Side Of Abbey Road, a track-for-track interpretation of the entire Beatles album. Profit from film themes such as "The Greatest Love Of All' (from the Muhammed Ali biopic The Greatest), the million-selling Give Me The Night and the television-advertised The Love Songs have allowed Benson to indulge artistic whims, including a nod to his jazz roots via 1987"s excellent Collaboration with Earl Klugh, and a more commercial merger with Aretha Franklin on "Love All The Hurt Away". Moreover, a fondness for pop standards has also proved marketable, epitomized by revivals of "On Broadway' - a US Top 10 single from 1978"s Weekend In LA - and Bobby Darin's "Beyond The Sea" ("La Mer"). Like Darin, Benson also found success with Nat "King" Cole's "Nature Boy" (a single from In Flight) - and a lesser hit with Cole's "Tenderly" in 1989, another balance of sophistication, hard-bought professionalism and intelligent response to chart climate. In 1990, he staged a full-length collaboration with the Count Basie Orchestra, accompanied by a sell-out UK tour. In the mid-90s Benson moved to the GRP Records label, debuting with the excellent That's Right. The follow-up Standing Together was a disappointing contemporary R&B collection, and Benson wisely returned to instrumentals on Absolute Benson. Benson is one of a handful of artists who have achieved major critical and commercial success in different genres, and this pedigree makes him one of the most respected performers of the past 30 years. VH1 Biography Grammy Awards This Masquerade-Record of the Year (1976) Breezin'-Best Pop Instrumental Performance (1976) Theme from Good King Bad-Best Rhythm & Blues Instrumental Performance (1976) On Broadway-Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male (1978) Give Me The Night-Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male (1980) Off Broadway-Best R&B Instrumental Performance (1980) Moody's Mood-Best Jazz Vocal Performance (1980) Being With You-Best Pop Instrumental Performance (1983) Awarded Honorary Doctorate Degree in Music from Berklee College of Music (1990) The Official George Benson Website
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, March 22, 2004 - 7:59 pm
Brown Univ. to Probe its Slavery Links Monday, March 22, 2004 Posted: 10:48 AM EST (1548 GMT) Ruth Simmons, the first black president of an Ivy League college, took the unprecedented step of directing Brown to study its early links to slave owners and traders and recommend whether and how the college should take responsibility for that connection. http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/03/22/brown.university.ap/index.html
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 8:48 pm
Black Facts that happened on March the 23th: 1916 Marcus Mosiah Garvey arrives in America from Jamaica. 1942 Politician, writer and activist Walter Rodney is born 1954 National Basketball Association star, Moses Malone is born in Petersburg, Virginia. 1968 Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a former aide of Martin Luther King Jr., became the first nonvoting congressional delegate from the District of Columbia since the Reconstruction period. 1985 Patricia Roberts Harris, Housing and Urban Development Secretary and, in 1965, ambassador to Luxembourg during the Carter Administration, died in Washington, D.C. Black Facts Online
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Essence
Member
01-12-2002
| Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 6:54 am
March 24: 1837 Blacks win the right to vote in Canada Blacks win the right to vote in Canada. 1941 "Native Son," a play adapted from Richard Wright's novel of the same name, opens at the St. James Theatre in New York City. 1958 Bill Russell, center for the Boston Celtics, becomes the NBA's MVP. 2002 Halle Berry wins Oscar Halle Berry becomes the first black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the movie "Monster's Ball."
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Essence
Member
01-12-2002
| Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 6:57 am
Spike Lee
"Fight the Power," the theme song to his 1989 film Do the Right Thing, could easily be Spike Lee's personal motto. From his earliest days as a student filmmaker to his $33 million epic Malcolm X and beyond, Lee has shown a willingness to tackle prickly issues of relevance to the black community and has savored every ounce of controversy his films invariably produce. "Spike loves to fight," the filmmaker's friend and business associate Nelson George told Vanity Fair. "There's a gleeful look he gets, a certain kind of excitement in his eyes when [things are] being stirred up." "I guess you could call me an instigator," Lee admitted in an interview with Vogue. Once the bane of Hollywood executives, Lee has proven through his creativity and resolve that films by and about African Americans can be both profitable and universally appealing. And almost singlehandedly, he has generated an industry-wide awareness of a neglected market niche, the black moviegoing public. Following the unforeseen box-office success of Lee's earliest films, Hollywood's gates have opened to a new generation of young African American filmmakers. "Spike put this trend in vogue," Warner Bros. executive vice-president Mark Canton told Time. "His talent opened the door for others." Lee relishes his role as path-paver. "Every time there is a success," he explained to Ebony, "it makes it easier for other blacks. The industry is more receptive than it has ever been for black films and black actors. We have so many stories to tell, but we can't do them all. We just need more black filmmakers." Aware of his identity Shelton Jackson Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 20, 1957 the eve of the civil rights era. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, an area that figures largely in his work as a mature filmmaker. Lee's awareness of his African American identity was established at an early age. His mother, Jacquelyn, instilled in her children a schoolteacher's enthusiasm for black art and literature. "I was forced to read Langston Hughes, that kind of stuff," Lee told Vanity Fair. "And I'm glad my mother made me do that." His father, Bill, an accomplished jazz musician, introduced him to African American jazz and folk legends like Miles Davis and Odetta, respectively. By the time he was old enough to attend school, the already independent Lee had earned the nickname his mother had given him as an infant, Spike an allusion to his toughness. When he and his siblings were offered the option of attending the predominantly white private school where his mother taught, Lee opted instead to go the public route, where he would be assured of the companionship of black peers. "Spike used to point out the differences in our friends," recalled his sister Joie, who was a private school student. "By the time I was a senior," she told Mother Jones, "I was being channeled into white colleges." Lee chose to go to his father and grandfather's all-black alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he majored in mass communications. Pursued film career It was at Morehouse that Lee found his calling. Following the unexpected death of his mother in 1977, Lee's friends tried to cheer him with frequent trips to the movies. He quickly became a fan of directors Bernardo Bertolucci, Martin Scorsese, and Akira Kurosawa. But it wasn't until he had seen Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter that Lee knew the die was cast. His friend John Wilson recalled their conversation on the ride home from the film in an interview with Vanity Fair. "John, I know what I want to do," Lee had said. "I want to make films." But not just any films: Lee wanted to make films that would capture the black experience, and he was willing to do so by whatever means necessary. "Spike didn't just want to get in the door of the house," Wilson explained. "He wanted to get in, rearrange the furniture then go back and publicize the password." He pursued his passion at New York University, where he enrolled in the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program. One of only a handful of African American students, he wasted no time incurring the wrath of his instructors with his affinity for "rearranging the furniture." As his first-year project, Lee produced a ten-minute short, The Answer, in which a black screenwriter is assigned to remake D. W. Griffith's classic film The Birth of a Nation. The Answer was panned. Although the film program's director, Eleanor Hamerow, told the New York Times, "It's hard to redo Birth of a Nation in ten minutes," Lee suspected that his critics were offended by his digs at the legendary director's stereotypical portrayals of black characters. "I was told I was whiskers away from being kicked out," he told Mother Jones. "They really didn't like me saying anything bad about D. W. Griffith, for sure." Short film wins award Hardly deterred, Lee went on to produce a 45-minute film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads that won him the 1983 Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Student Academy Award. Although the honor enhanced his credibility as a director, it didn't pay the bills. Faced with the reality of survival, Lee worked for a movie distribution house while hustling funds for a semiautobiographical film, The Messenger. A coming-of-age story about a young bicycle messenger, The Messenger was aborted prematurely when sufficient funding failed to materialize. "We were in pre-production the entire summer of 1984, waiting on this money to come, and it never did," Lee told Vanity Fair. "Then, finally, I pulled the plug. I let a lot of people down, crew members and actors that turned down work. I wasn't the most popular person. We were devastated." But all was not lost; Lee had learned his lesson. "I saw I made the classic mistakes of a young filmmaker, to be overly ambitious, do something beyond my means and capabilities," he said. "Going through the fire just made me more hungry, more determined that I couldn't fail again." Scored a surprise hit with She's Gotta Have It When he filmed She's Gotta Have It a year later, Lee's determination paid off. Made on a shoestring $175,000 budget in just 12 days, the black-and-white picture was shot on one location with a limited cast and edited on a rented machine in Lee's apartment. By the time it was completed, Lee was so deeply in debt that the processing lab he'd used threatened to auction off the film's negative. After Island Pictures agreed to distribute it, She's Gotta Have It finally opened in 1986. A light comedy centering on artist Nola Darling and her relationships with three men, the film pokes fun at gender relations and offers an insightful spin on stereotypically macho male roles. It packed houses not only with the black audience Lee had anticipated, but also with a crossover, art-house crowd. Grossing over $7 million, the low-budget film was a surprise hit. With the success of She's Gotta Have It, Lee became known in cinematic circles not only as a director, but also as a comic actor. Mars Blackmon one of Nola's lovers, played by Lee won an instant following with his now-famous line, "Please baby, please baby, please baby, baby, baby, please." "After She's Gotta Have It, Spike could've gone a long way with Mars Blackmon," the film's co-producer Monty Ross told Mother Jones. "He could've done Mars Blackmon the Sequel, Mars Blackmon Part 5." Not anxious to be typecast, though, Lee "said to the studios Mars Blackmon is dead.'" School Daze: more than a picture of black campus life With a major hit under his belt and the backing of Island Pictures, Lee had more latitude with his next film, a musical called School Daze. An exposι of color discrimination within the black community, School Daze draws on Lee's years at Morehouse. "The people with the money, " he told the New York Times, "most of them have light skin. They have the Porsches, the B.M.W.'s, the quote good hair unquote. The others, the kids from the rural south, have bad, kinky hair. When I was in school, we saw all this going on." This black caste system, Lee explained to Newsweek, was not a limited phenomenon. "I used the black college as a microcosm of black life." School Daze created a brouhaha in the black community: while many applauded Lee's efforts to explore a complex social problem, others were offended by his willingness to "air dirty laundry." Everyone agreed that the film was controversial. When production costs reached $4 million, Island Pictures got cold feet and pulled out. Within two days, Lee had arranged a deal with Columbia Pictures that included an additional $2 million in production funds. But Columbia, then under the direction of David Puttnam, apparently misunderstood the film's true nature. "They saw music, they saw dancing, they saw comedy," Lee told Mother Jones. By the time School Daze was released in 1988, Puttnam had been ousted. Despite the fact that the studio's new management failed to promote it, the film grossed $15 million. Explored racial tensions in Do the Right Thing School Daze established Lee's reputation as a director ready to seize heady issues by the horns. Do the Right Thing, released in 1989, confirmed it. The story of simmering racial tension between Italian and African Americans in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, the film becomes a call to arms when violence erupts in response to the killing of a black man by white police officers. It ends on a note of apparent uncertainty with two opposing quotes: Martin Luther King's "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind," followed by Malcolm X's "I am not against violence in self defense. I don't even call it violence when it's self-defense. I call it intelligence." The meaning of "the right thing," Lee told People, is not vague. "Black America is tired of having their brothers and sisters murdered by the police for no reason other than being black." "I'm not advocating violence," he continued. "I'm saying I can understand it. If the people are frustrated and feel oppressed and feel this is the only way they can act, I understand." Critical response to the film was both enthusiastic and wary. Media critic Roger Ebert called it "the most honest, complex and unblinking film I have ever seen about the subject of racism." Others voiced warnings of possible violence. New York magazine said, "Lee appears to be endorsing the outcome, and if some audiences go wild he's partly responsible." Striking a balance: Mo' Better Blues Despite the fact that Do the Right Thing failed to inspire the predicted violence, Lee chose a lighter topic for his next film a romance. The film portrays the saga of a self-centered jazz trumpeter, Bleek Gilliam, whose personal life plays second fiddle to his music. "Mo' Better Blues is about relationships," Lee explained to Ebony. "It's not only about man-woman relationships, but about relationships in general Bleek's relationship to his father and his manager, and his relationship with two female friends. Bleek's true love is music, and he is trying to find the right balance." Bleek's character was inspired by Lee's jazz-musician father, Bill Lee, who wrote the film's score. "Bleek is my father's nickname," Lee told People. The character's dilemma the need to temper the obsessive nature of the creative act however, has universal relevance. That theme, Newsweek suggested, is one with which the director himself can readily identify. Although recognized for its technical mastery and snappy score partially the result of a $10 million budget Mo' Better Blues received lukewarm reviews. "The movie is all notions and no shape," said the New Yorker, "hard, fierce blowing rather than real music." And more than one critic took offense at Lee's shallow treatment of female characters and ethnic stereotyping of Jewish jazz club owners Moe and Josh Flatbush. Examined interracial love in Jungle Fever In his next film, Jungle Fever, Lee explored the theme of romance further but this time, from a more provocative slant. Inspired by the 1989 murder of black teenager Yusuf Hawkins by a mob of Italian American youths, Jungle Fever examines interracial romance. "Yusuf was killed because they thought he was the black boyfriend of one of the girls in the neighborhood," Lee told Newsweek. Jungle Fever looks at issues of race, class, and gender by focusing on community response to the office affair of a married, black architect and his Italian American secretary. Lee concludes that interracial relationships are fueled by culturally based, stereotypical expectations. "You were curious about black ... I was curious about white," the architect explains when the couple parts ways. But Lee insisted in an interview with Newsweek that the film does not advocate separatism. The characters aren't meant "to represent every interracial couple. This is just one couple that came together because of sexual mythology." Although it received mixed reviews, Jungle Fever succeeded in whetting the appetite of Lee fans for further controversy. Lee's next film, on civil rights activist Malcolm X, satisfied even the most hungry. Malcolm X The making of Malcolm X, a movie that sparked controversy from the moment of its inception, became a personal mission for Lee, who had long been an admirer of the legendary black leader. Vowing to cut no corners, Lee planned a biographical film of epic proportions that required months of research, numerous interviews, and even an unprecedented trip to Saudi Arabia for authentic-looking footage of Malcolm's pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. Taken shortly before his assassination in 1965, this journey caused a significant change in Malcolm's political and religious outlook. The final product, a three-hour-and-21-minute production, traces Malcolm X's development from his impoverished, rural roots to his final years as an electrifying speaker and leader. "I knew this was going to be the toughest thing I ever did," Lee told Time. "The film is huge in the canvas we had to cover and in the complexity of Malcolm X." Lee fought tooth and nail to win the right to direct the film and to defend his vision of Malcolm X from the start. When he learned of plans by Warner Bros. to make Malcolm X, Norman Jewison had already been chosen as its director. After Lee told the New York Times that he had a "big problem" with a white man directing the film, Jewison agreed to bow out. Opposition to film builds Lee, however, faced considerable resistance to his role as director of the film. Led by poet and activist Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones), a focus group that called itself the United Front to Preserve the Memory of Malcolm X and the Cultural Revolution voiced its opposition to Lee's direction in an open letter. "Our distress about Spike's making a film on Malcolm is based on our analysis of the [exploitative] films he has already made," Ebony quoted the group as saying. But Lee's spat with Baraka was only a momentary setback. He still had to deal with reworking an unsatisfactory script, which had been started by African American novelist James Baldwin shortly before his death and completed by writer Amold Perl. And when Lee first locked horns with Warner Bros. over Malcolm X's budget, he was bracing for another prolonged battle. Initially, the director had requested $40 million for the film an amount that was necessary, he claimed, in order to accurately portray all of the phases of his subject's life. The studio countered with a $20 million offer, prompting Lee to raise an additional $8.5 million by selling foreign rights to the film, kicking in a portion of his $3 million salary, and, to make up the difference, acquiring the backing of a host of black celebrities, including Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Janet Jackson, and Prince much to the studio's embarrassment. "It didn't look good for Warner Bros. that Spike had to go to prominent African Americans to finish the movie," noted Entertainment Weekly. When the film was completed, Barry Reardon, the studio's president of distribution, conceded, "Spike did a fabulous job. He knows theaters, he's very smart. This is Oscars all the way." Although Malcolm X received no Oscars, the film played a significant role in the elevation of the black leader to mythic status; it also spawned a cultural phenomenon often referred to as "Malcolm-mania." By the time the movie was released, its logo, a bold "X," was pasted on everything from baseball caps to posters, postcards, and T-shirts. What's more, a wealth of spin-off products were born, ranging from serious scholarly studies to a plastic Malcolm X doll, complete with podium and audio cassette. Promotional merchandise for the film was marketed by Lee himself through Spike's Joint, a chain of stores that comprise a portion of the director's growing business empire. Accused of commercialism Lee is quick to defend himself against charges of commercialism. In fact, he says, Malcolm X's philosophy that African Americans need to build their own economic base is the motivation for his business investments. "I think we've done more to hold ourselves back than anybody," Lee told Esquire. "If anybody's seen all my films, I put most of the blame on our shoulders and say, 'Look, we're gonna have to do for ourselves.'... I feel we really have to address our financial base as a people." Lee's innate ability to "do for himself," his father suggested in an interview with Mother Jones, is the key to his success as a filmmaker. "Spike was kind of chosen," he explained. "I think there was something spiritual about it. He inherited it from his family. [The ability] to make a statement." Fellow filmmaker John Singleton, writing in Essence, said of Lee, "No other Black contemporary entertainer can claim to enlighten so many young Black people." But, as he stated in the New York Times, Lee wants even more to prove "that an all-black film directed by a black person can still be universal." Picture of his youth In mid-1993 Lee began shooting his seventh feature film, Crooklyn, a profile of an African-American middle class family growing up in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1970s. This coming-of-age story, a joint effort between Lee and his siblings Joie and Cinque, was Lee's least politically charged film to date. He managed to take a break from filming, however, in order to marry Linette Lewis. Lewis, a lawyer, had been romantically linked to Lee for the year prior to their wedding. Crooklyn was released in 1994 to mixed reviews and a tepid reception at the box office. The following year, Lee returned to making a statement about violence and other negative conditions facing the African American community when he filmed Clockers. The motion picture tells the story of two brothers one a drug dealer, the other a straight-laced family man who become suspects in a mysterious murder investigation in the black community. Critic Richard Schickel, writing in Time, stated that the film "is more than a murder mystery and more than a study in character conflict. At its best, it is an intense and complex portrait of an urban landscape on which the movies' gaze has not often fallen." Lee released two movies in 1996, Girl 6 and Get on the Bus. The first of these was the story of a frustrated young actress who takes a job as a phone-sex worker. It received decidedly mixed reviews. Better received was Get on the Bus, which was a series of character studies out of a busload of black men heading from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., for the Million Man March (an event in October 1995 that was organized by Louis Farrakhan, the controversial head of the Nation of Islam). 4 Little Girls In 1997 Lee produced a documentary, 4 Little Girls, which was nominated for but did not win an Academy Award. The film tells the story of the victims of a bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in September 1963 which killed three girls aged fourteen and one aged eleven. Time reviewer James Collins stated that "Lee's eloquent film does justice to the young martyrs and to those who guaranteed that the girl's deaths, while tragic, would not also be meaningless." The following year the filmmaker directed and wrote He Got Game, which centered around the troubled relationship between a high school basketball phenom and his long-absent father. Played by Denzel Washington, the father is a convict in the Attica prison but is temporarily released by the governor who wants the father to talk his son into attending the governor's alma mater. The basketball star son is played quite convincingly by professional basketball star Ray Allen. Janet Maslin, writing in the New York Times, contends that "Mr. Lee now returns full blast to what he does best. Basketball, bold urban landscapes, larger-than-life characters, and red-hot visual pyrotechnics are the strong points of Mr. Lee's three-ring circus, not to mention the central presence of Denzel Washington." In 1999 Lee explored the underworld of the city once again with Summer of Sam, in which the brief appearances of the famous serial killer only punctuate the smoldering rage and heat all over the Bronx in the summer of 1977. The movie met with mixed reviews bold, dark, and well acted, it irritated many with its stereotypes of Italian Americans, women, and gays. Gale Website
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 11:13 am
Happy Birthday Aretha!
The Queen Of Soul Aretha Franklin The daughter of the Rev.C.L.Franklin, Aretha was born in Memphis, Tennessee on March 25, 1942. Aretha Franklin is one of the giants of soul music, and indeed of American pop as a whole. More than any other performer, she epitomized soul at its most gospel-charged. Her astonishing run of late-'60s hits with Atlantic Records--"Respect," "I Never Loved a Man," "Chain of Fools," "Baby I Love You," "I Say a Little Prayer," "Think," "The House That Jack Built," and several others--earned her the title "Lady Soul," which she has worn uncontested ever since. Yet as much of an international institution as she's become, much of her work--outside of her recordings for Atlantic in the late '60s and early '70s--is erratic and only fitfully inspired, making discretion a necessity when collecting her records. Franklin's roots in gospel ran extremely deep. With her sisters Carolyn and Erma (both of whom would also have recording careers), she sang at the Detroit church of her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, while growing up in the 1950s. In fact, she made her first recordings as a gospel artist at the age of 14. It has also been reported that Motown was interested in signing Aretha back in the days when it was a tiny start-up. Ultimately, however, Franklin ended up with Columbia, to which she was signed by the renowned talent scout John Hammond. Franklin would record for Columbia constantly throughout the first half of the '60s, notching occasional R&B hits (and one Top Forty single, "Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody"), but never truly breaking out as a star. The Columbia period continues to generate considerable controversy among critics, many of whom feel that Aretha's true aspirations were being blunted by pop-oriented material and production. In fact there's a reasonable amount of fine items to be found on the Columbia sides, including the occasional song ("Lee Cross," "Soulville") where she belts out soul with real gusto. It's undeniably true, though, that her work at Columbia was considerably tamer than what was to follow, and suffered in general from a lack of direction and an apparent emphasis on trying to develop her as an all-around entertainer, rather than as an R&B/soul singer. When Franklin left Columbia for Atlantic, producer Jerry Wexler was determined to bring out her most soulful, fiery traits. As part of that plan, he had her record her first single, "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)," at Muscle Shoals in Alabama with esteemed Southern R&B musicians. In fact, that was to be her only session actually at Muscle Shoals, but much of the remainder of her '60s work would be recorded with the Muscle Shoals Sound Rhythm Section, although the sessions would actually take place in New York City. The combination was one of those magic instances of musical alchemy in pop: the backup musicians provided a much grittier, soulful, and R&B-based accompaniment for Aretha's voice, which soared with a passion and intensity suggesting a spirit that had been allowed to fly loose for the first time. In the late '60s, Franklin became one of the biggest international recording stars in all of pop. Many also saw Franklin as a symbol of Black America itself, reflecting the increased confidence and pride of African-Americans in the decade of the civil rights movements and other triumphs for he Black community. The chart statistics are impressive in and of themselves: ten Top Ten hits in a roughly 18-month span between early 1967 and late 1968, for instance, and a steady stream of solid mid-to-large-size hits for the next five years after that. Her Atlantic albums were also huge sellers, and far more consistent artistically than those of most soul stars of the era. Franklin was able to maintain creative momentum, in part, because of her eclectic choice of material, which encompassed first-class originals and gospel, blues, pop, and rock covers, from the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel to Sam Cooke and the Drifters. She was also a fine, forceful, and somewhat underrated keyboardist. Franklin's commercial and artistic success was unabated in the early '70s, during which she landed more huge hits with "Spanish Harlem," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and "Day Dreaming." She also produced two of her most respected, and earthiest, album releases with Live at Fillmore West and Amazing Grace. The latter, a 1972 double LP, was a reinvestigation of her gospel roots, recorded with James Cleveland & the Southern California Community Choir. Remarkably, it made the Top Ten, counting as one of the greatest gospel-pop crossover smashes of all time. Franklin had a few more hits over the next few years--"Angel" and the Stevie Wonder cover "Until You Come Back to Me"--being the most notable--but generally her artistic inspiration seemed to be tapering off, and her focus drifting toward more pop-oriented material. Her Atlantic contract ended at the end of the 1970s, and since then she's managed to get intermittent hits -- "Who's Zooming Who" and "Jump to It" are among the most famous. In a career spanning more than forty years, the woman Time magazine named "one of the most influential people of the last century," The Wall Street Journal called "the most powerful singer alive" and VH1, "the greatest woman in rock n roll," continues to find new ways to inspire and amaze. http://www.georgwa.demon.co.uk/aretha_franklin.htm http://www.aristarec.com/aristaweb/ArethaFranklin/ http://www.aretha-franklin.com/bio.htm
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 11:22 am
Black Facts that happened on March the 25th: 1871 Kentucky Citizens file a petition challenging the violent acts of the kkk. 1887 Samori, the builder of the Wasulu Empire, signs with the French the treaty of Bisnadugu. 1910 Liberian Commission recommended financial aid to Liberia and the establishment of a U.S. Navy coaling station in the African country. 1931 Death of Ida B.Wells-Barnett. Her biography can be found here 1931 The Scottsboro Boys, nine young African Americans, were falsely charged with rape and collectively served more than 100 years in prison. The right of African Americans to serve on juries was established by their case. 1942 Aretha Franklin, singer, the "Queen of Soul", is born. 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. along with other notable civil rights leaders and thousands of supporters reach Montgomery Alabama after marching 4 days from Selma. 1967 Debi Thomas, the 1988 Olympic Bronze medalist in figure skating is born. Black Facts Online
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Essence
Member
01-12-2002
| Friday, March 26, 2004 - 7:24 am
March 26: 1872 Thomas J. Martin is awarded a patent for the fire extinguisher. 1910 William H. Lewis is appointed assistant attorney general of the United States. 1937 William Hastie is appointed to a federal judgeship in the Virgin Islands. With the appointment, Hastie becomes the first African American to serve on the federal bench in the U.S. or its territories. 1991 The Reverend Emanuel Cleaver becomes the first African American mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. 1995 Former diplomat-turned-radio talk show host Alan Keyes enters the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
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Essence
Member
01-12-2002
| Friday, March 26, 2004 - 7:25 am
Richard Pryor
In the 1970s and 1980s Richard Pryor was one of America's top comedians, an actor, writer, and stand-up artist whose irreverent albums sold in the millions. Pryor mined both personal and social tragedy for his comic material and peppered his appearances with outrageous language and adult humor. Even at the peak of his popularity, however, he suffered the dire consequences of drug and alcohol abuse a heart attack, a suicide attempt, and the onset of multiple sclerosis. Since the early 1990s, he has lived a reclusive life in his Bel Air home, reportedly almost unable to walk and rarely seeing any but a small cadre of friends. One of Pryor's ex-wives, Jennifer Lee, told Premiere magazine: "Richard's so isolated from the human race. When you're with him now, you feel a kind of solitude you don't even feel when you're by yourself." Pryor's is indeed the tragic story of a talented personality who took a path of self-destruction, a comic who could draw laughs from his own misfortunes but who was powerless to change his habits until the damage had been done. Premiere correspondent David Handelman theorized: "Like many celebrities, Pryor turned to drugs in part out of insecurity about his fame. But he had the added guilt trip of being perhaps the most successful black man in a country of disenfranchised blacks." Pryor was not the first black comedian to succeed as a stand-up comic. He followed in the footsteps of Bill Cosby and Dick Gregory, among others. He became unique and a pioneer in his own right when he created a bold new comedy of character, turning black American life into humorous performance art without softening either the message or its delivery. He could glide effortlessly from portraying an elderly wino to mimicking a cheetah poised to bag a gazelle. With an astounding repertoire of accents and body lingo, Pryor often played a predator one moment and a victim the next. His was a comedy forged from life's tragic moments. Pryor's audience included a number of comics who have since risen to fame. "I just dreamed about being like Richard Pryor," Keenen Ivory Wayans told Premiere. "Pryor started it all. He's Yoda. If Pryor had not come along, there would not be an Eddie Murphy or a Keenen Ivory Wayans or a Damon Wayans or an Arsenio Hall or even a [white comedian like] Sam Kinison, for that matter. He made the blueprint for the progressive thinking of black comedians, unlocked that irreverent style." A Tragic Background Bill Cosby told People magazine: "For Richard, the line between comedy and tragedy is as fine as you can paint it." Given Pryor's background, it is not surprising that he entwined comedy and tragedy so brilliantly. He was born in Peoria, Illinois, in December, 1940, to an unwed mother. He has always claimed that he was raised in his grandmother's brothel, where his mother worked as a prostitute. His parents, LeRoy and Gertrude Pryor, married when he was three, but the union did not last. Ultimately he chose to live with his grandmother, who was not shy about administering beatings. At the height of his fame, Pryor declared that he had no bitterness about his unconventional upbringing. He revealed to People that his mother "wasn't very strong, but she tried. At least she didn't flush me down the toilet, like some." He added: "The biggest moment of my life was when my grandmother was with me on the Mike Douglas Show." On the other hand, Pryor's former bodyguard and spiritual adviser Rashon Khan told Premiere that Pryor was sometimes sexually abused in his childhood environment and was often "exposed to a lot of crazy stuff." Khan suggested that these childhood traumas helped set the stage for Pryor's drug abuse even before he became established in his career. "The problem that Richard was having with Richard was what happened when he was a kid," Khan said. "It created a void so big, it didn't matter how famous he got." In school Pryor was often in trouble with the authorities. His one positive experience came when he was eleven. One of his teachers, Juliette Whittaker, cast him in a community theater performance and then let him entertain his classmates with his antics. Years later, Pryor gave Whittaker the Emmy Award he earned writing comedy for a Lily Tomlin special. Pryor was expelled from high school after striking a teacher. He never returned. Instead he sought work in a packing house and then, in 1958, joined the army. He spent his two-year hitch in West Germany, once again clashing with his superiors. Pryor returned home to Peoria in 1960, married the first of his five wives, and fathered his second child, Richard Pryor, Jr. His first child, daughter Renee, was born three years earlier. Early Career Moves The owner of a popular black nightclub in Peoria gave Pryor his first professional opportunity. By the early 1960s the comedian was performing on a circuit that included East St. Louis, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh. Then, in 1963, Pryor decided to move to New York City. He settled briefly in Greenwich Village, where he performed an act with strong similarities to Bill Cosby's. Pryor told People: "I'll never forget going up to Harlem and seeing all those black people. Jesus, just knowing there were that many of us made me feel better." Pryor broke into television in New York City in 1964 when he appeared on a series called On Broadway Tonight. Other offers followed, including a couple from The Ed Sullivan Show and the Merv Griffin Show. Pryor pulled up stakes and moved to Los Angeles, where he supported himself with bit parts in movies such as The Green Berets, starring John Wayne, and Wild in the Streets, a teen-exploitation film. He also continued to play to live audiences, especially in Las Vegas showrooms. "In his early days there was a lot of Bill Cosby in Richard's act," Cosby himself noted in People. "Then one evening I was in the audience when Richard took on a whole new persona his own, in front of me and everyone else. Richard killed the Bill Cosby in his act, made people hate it. Then he worked on them, doing pure Richard Pryor, and it was the most astonishing metamorphosis I have ever seen. He was magnificent." Fame Brought Its Own Troubles By the late 1960s Pryor was already indulging in one hundred dollars worth of cocaine a day. While his new, more personal act found followers, it also alienated the management in Las Vegas. Pryor clashed with landlords and hotel clerks, was audited by the Internal Revenue Service for nonpayment of taxes between 1967 and 1970, and was sued for battery by one of his wives. He disappeared into the counterculture community in Berkeley, California, and did not work for several years. Then he resurfaced in 1972 with a new stand-up act and a supporting role in the film Lady Sings the Blues, a drama for which he earned an Academy Award nomination. Pryor also contributed his writing talents to other comics. He wrote bits for The Flip Wilson Show and Sanford and Son and helped Mel Brooks to write the classic Western film comedy Blazing Saddles. In 1973 he earned an Emmy Award for the special Lily, starring Lily Tomlin. That provocative show also proved a vehicle for Pryor, when he teamed with Tomlin for a skit about a raggedy black wino and a prim, "tasteful lady." In 1976 Pryor wrote and starred in Bingo Long and the Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings. He made a bigger splash, however, in the film Silver Streak, a mixture of comedy and suspense that centers on a murderous train ride. Even though he had only a supporting role in this 1976 release starring Gene Wilder, Pryor earned the bulk of the critics' attention. The film grossed $30 million at the box office, and it opened new venues for the versatile Pryor. Lonely at the Top Pryor was at the height of his form as a live comedian by the late 1970s. He had earned Grammy Awards for the 1974 album That Nigger's Crazy and the 1976 work Bicentennial Nigger. Both of the albums went platinum in sales. In all, Pryor earned five Grammy Awards for best comedy album, but the 1979 movie Richard Pryor Live in Concert remains his "indisputable moment of glory," to quote Handelman. In the New York Times Magazine, James McPherson claimed that Pryor was creating a whole new style in American comedy, a style born more of the theater than of traditional humor. The characters, McPherson wrote, "are winos, junkies, , street fighters, blue-collar drunks, pool hustlers all the failures who are an embarrassment to the black middle class and stereotypes in the minds of most whites. The black middle class fears the glorification of those images and most whites fear them in general. Pryor talks like them; he imitates their styles.... He enters into his people and allows whatever is comic in them, whatever is human, to evolve out of what they say and how they look into a total scene. It is part of Richard Pryor's genius that, through the selective use of facial expressions, gestures, ... speech and movements, he can create a scene that is comic and at the same time recognizable as profoundly human." Some of those "profoundly human" comedy scenes were based on unhappy events in Pryor's life. He had a serious heart attack in 1978 and underwent yet another divorce after a violent episode on New Year's Eve that culminated in his riddling his wife's car with bullets. These two grave incidents are given the full comic treatment in Richard Pryor Live in Concert. At a point in the act, Pryor "becomes" his heart itself during the attack, with asides from other parts of his body. He also "becomes" his ex-wife's car under attack. The theme would be recreated two years later after an even more dangerous event. By 1980 Pryor was freebasing cocaine, using volatile ether to help light the drug for smoking. No one is clear about exactly what happened on June 9, 1980. At first Pryor claimed the fire was started during the freebasing process. Later he stated that he poured rum on himself and set himself on fire. At any rate, he nearly burned himself to death, suffering severe injuries to half his body. Early reports told of his untimely death, but he survived and underwent an anguishing rehabilitation. The healing process did not speak to his addiction, however. He took painkillers in the hospital and returned to freebasing when he was released. Nevertheless, he began to see the fatal consequences of drug use, and this attitude is evident in his final concert movie, Live on Sunset Strip. The film contains the well-known Pryor routine about his accident, his drug use, and his stay in the hospital. New York magazine contributor David Denby called Live on Sunset Strip "a perfect entertainment." The critic added: "Richard Pryor works directly with the life around him, and he digs deeper into fear and lust and anger and pain than many of the novelists and playwrights now taken seriously. Like any great actor, he dramatizes emotion with his whole body, but his mind is so quick and his moods so volatile, he's light-years ahead of any actor delivering a text. Working from deep inside his own experience and understanding of what a human being is and is capable of, he can shake you to your roots." A Second Chance Live on Sunset Strip was released in 1982. The following year Pryor made concerted efforts to clear his system of drugs and alcohol. He joined a rehabilitation program and worked with other addicts to overcome his problems. He also tackled a project that was daring indeed he co-wrote, directed, and starred in the 1985 film Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling. A thinly veiled autobiography, Jo Jo Dancer stars Pryor as a comedian who relives his life immediately following a near fatal accident. Critics praised the intentions of the movie especially the fact that Pryor hired black workers for every aspect of the production but the film was not a hit. Detroit Free Press critic Catherine Rambeau, for instance, cited the work for its "honorable premise," but faulted it for a "lack of focus." Los Angeles Times reviewer Peter Rainer speculated that, as far as movies in general are concerned, Pryor "seems to have taken a wrong turn." A number of Pryor's movies did brisk business at the box office, but in Rainer's words, they led Pryor "into creative oblivion." Films such as The Toy, Brewster's Millions, Stir Crazy, and Bustin' Loose show a Pryor who "is resignedly bland.... Anything malign or threatening has been bleached out," to quote Rainer. Pryor's ex-wife Jennifer Lee told Premiere: "Don't bother looking for a pattern to Richard's movies.... He's lazy, he took the money, he doesn't care." Fans Remained Loyal Others held greater respect for Pryor, however. Eddie Murphy asked Pryor to co-star in the 1989 movie Harlem Nights and more recently organized a huge comedy concert in Pryor's honor. Commenting in Premiere on the restrictive social atmosphere that existed during Pryor's rise to fame, comedienne Lily Tomlin expressed astonishment over his ability to achieve anything at all. "Richard lost jobs, was blackballed and everything else," Tomlin said, "because people thought he was too hard to deal with or incorrigible or out of control. Now people's careers are built on drug use or rehab. And I can't imagine anything happening to Eddie Murphy like what's happened to Richard. Richard paid the price for using language on the stage, ... and Eddie has been celebrated for it. And I don't think Eddie would ever be conflicted the way Richard was about playing [Las] Vegas, playing white clubs with white managers and taking white money. It was a different consciousness." The pioneer of that change in consciousness is now in virtual retirement. Doctors diagnosed Pryor as having multiple sclerosis in 1986, and his later movies show him to be thin, frail, and weak. Pryor's ill health has been compounded by further heart trouble he has had triple bypass surgery and is often confined to a wheelchair. His most frequent visitors are his four children, his ex-wife Lee, and Jan Gaye, widow of singer Marvin Gaye. Pryor's current ill health does not detract from the body of work he has left behind, though a half-dozen million-selling albums, two classic concert videos, several creditable dramatic performances, and of course the daring live routines with their uncensored social and psychological commentary. Progressive contributor Michael H. Seitz noted that Pryor grounded his comedy "on human feelings, often the most intimate sort." Handelman concluded: "Even though his best work had nothing to do with one-liners, Pryor is unquestionably still the most important and influential stand-up comedian of the past 25 years. Using raw street language, he [turned] black American life into breathtaking one-man theater, his rubbery face, multioctave voice, and lithe body physicalizing every situation." Gale Resources
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Saturday, March 27, 2004 - 6:12 pm
Black Facts that happened on March the 27th: 1861 Black demonstrators in Charleston staged ride-ins on streetcars. On May 1, the Charleston City Railway Company adopted a resolution guaranteeing the right of all persons to ride in streetcars. 1924 Jazz singer Sarah Vaughn was born in Newark, New Jersey. 1934 Arthur Mitchell, first African American principal of the New York City Ballet Company and founder, Dance Theatre of Harlem, born. 1969 Black Academy of Arts and Letters founded at Boston meeting. 1969 Dr. C. Eric Lincoln, professor of religion and sociology at Union Theological Seminary, was elected president of the organization. 1970 Mariah Carey, singer, born 1984 Ahmed Sekou Toure, first president of Guinea, dies. 1997 Pamela Gordon, Bermuda's first woman prime minister, is sworn into office. www.blackfacts.com
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Sunday, March 28, 2004 - 8:35 pm
Black Facts that happened on March the 28th: 1925 Poet Countee Cullen wins Phi Beta Kappa honors at New York University. 1925 Ed Wilson, award winning sculptor, born 1949 Track and Field athlete Ronnie Ray Smith born in Los Angeles. 1966 Bill Russell named head coach of the Boston Celtics, becoming the first African American to coach an NBA team. 1968 Race riot in Memphis, Tenn. interrupted protest march led by Martin Luther King Jr. in support of striking sanitation workers. National Guard called up. 1972 Two surviving Soledad Brothers, Fleeta Dumgo and John Cluchette, acquitted by an all-white jury of charges that they killed a white guard at Soledad Prison in 1970. Third Soledad Brother, George Jackson, was killed in August, 1971, in alleged escape attempt. 1984 Benjamin Mays, President of Morehouse College, dies http://www.blackfacts.com
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Sunday, March 28, 2004 - 8:45 pm
Countee Cullen
(1903-1946) American poet, a leading figure with Langston Hughes in the Harlem Renaissance. This 1920s artistic movement produced the first large body of work in the United States written by African Americans. However, Cullen considered poetry raceless, although his 'The Black Christ' took a racial theme, lynching of a black youth for a crime he did not commit. Countee Cullen was very secretive about his life. According to different sources, he was born in Louisville, Kentucy or Baltimore, Md. Cullen was possibly abandoned by his mother, and reared by a woman named Mrs. Porter, who was probably his paternal grandmother. Cullen once said that he was born in New York City - perhaps he did not mean it literally. Porter brought young Countee to Harlem when he was nine. She died in 1918. At the age of 15, Cullen was adopted unofficially by the Reverend F.A. Cullen, minister of Salem M.E. Church, one of the largest congregations of Harlem. Later Reverend Cullen became the head of the Harlem chapter of NAACP. His real mother did not contact him until he became famous in the 1920s. As a schoolboy, Cullen won a citywide poetry contest and saw his winning stanzas widely reprinted. With the help of Reverend Cullen, he attended the prestigious De Witt Clinton High School in Manhattan. After graduating, he entered New York University, where his works attracted critical attention. Cullen's first collection of poems, COLOR (1925), was published in the same year he graduated from NYU. Written in a careful, traditional style, the work celebrated black beauty and deplored the effects of racism. The book included 'Heritage' and 'Incident', probably his most famous poems. 'Yet Do I Marvel', about racial identity and injustice, showed the influence of the literary expression of William Wordsworth and William Blake, but its subject was far from the world of their Romantic sonnets. The poet accepts that there is God, and 'God is good, well-meaning, kind', but he finds a contradiction of his own plight in a racist society: he is black and a poet. A brilliant student, Cullen graduated from New York University Phi Beta Kappa. He attended Harvard, earning his masters degree in 1926. He worked as assistant editor for Opportunity magazine, where his column, 'The Dark Tower,' increased his literary reputation. Cullen's poetry collections THE BALLAD OF THE BROWN GIRL (1927) and COPPER SUN (1927) explored similar themes as Colour, but they were not so well received. Cullen's Guggenheim Fellowship of 1928 enabled him to study and write abroad. He married in April 1928 Nina Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. DuBois, the leading black intellectual. At that time Yolande was involved romantically with a popular band leader. Between the years 1928 and 1934, Cullen travelled back and forth between France and the United States. By 1929 Cullen had published four volumes of poetry. The title poem of THE BLACK CHRIST AND OTHER POEMS (1929) was criticized for the use of Christian religious imagery - Cullen compared the lynching of a black man to Christ's crucification. His marriage did not succeed and he divorced in 1930. Extra load for the marriage was Cullen's and Harold Jackman's close friendship. Jackman was a a teacher whom the writer Carl Van Vechten had used as model in his novel Nigger Heaven (1926). In 1940 Cullen married Ida Mae Robertson; they had known each other for ten years. As well as writing books himself, Cullen promoted the work of other black writers. But in the late 1920s Cullen's reputation as a poet waned. In 1932 appeared his only novel, ONE WAY TO HEAVEN, a social comedy of lower-class blacks and the bourgeoisie in New York City. From 1934 until the end of his life he taught English, French, and creative writing at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in the New York City. During this period he also wrote two works for young readers: THE LOST ZOO (1940), poems about the animals who perished in the Flood, and MY LIVES AND HOW I LOST THEM, an autobiography of his cat. In the last years of his life Cullen wrote mostly for the theatre. With Arna Bontemps he adapted her novel, God Sends Sunday (1931), entitled ST. LOUIS WOMAN (1946, publ. 1971) for the musical stage. Its score was composed by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, both white. The Broadway musical, set in poor black neighborhood in St. Louis, was criticized by black intellectuals for creating a negative image of black Americans. Cullen also translated the Greek tragedy Medea by Euripides, which was published in THE MEDEA AND SOME POEMS (1935), with a collection of sonnets and short lyrics. As a poet Cullen was conservative: he did not ignore racial themes, but based his works on the Romantic poets, especially Keats, and often used the traditional sonnet form. "Not writ in water nor in mist, / Sweet lyric throat, thy name. / Thy singing lips that cold death kissed / Have seared his own with flame." ('2. For John Keats, Apostle of Beauty') However, Cullen also enjoyed Langston Hughes's black jazz rhythms, but more he loved "the measured line and the skillful rhyme" of the 19th century poetry. After the early 1930s Cullen avoided racial themes. Cullen's later publications include ON THESE I STAND (1947), a collection of his favorite poems, and the play THE THIRD FOURTH OF JULY (publ. 1946). Cullen died of uremic poisoning in New York City on January 9, 1946. Private about his life, he left behind no autobiography. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ccullen.htm
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Sunday, March 28, 2004 - 8:47 pm
Yet Do I Marvel By Countee Cullen I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are, and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand. Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
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Essence
Member
01-12-2002
| Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:55 am
March 29: 1918 Pearl Mae Bailey was born in Newport News, Virginia. She achieved tremendous success as a stage and film actress, recording artist, nightclub headliner, and television performer. Among her most notable movies were "Porgy and Bess" and "Carmen Jones" and she received a Tony Award for her starring role in an all-African-American version of "Hello Dolly." Bailey was widely honored, including being named special advisor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died on August 17, 1990. 1940 Joe Louis knocks out Johnny Paycheck to retain his heavyweight boxing title. 1945 Walt Frazier was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He became a basketball player and, as a guard for the New York Knicks, lead his team to NBA championships in 1970 and 1973. He also earned the nickname "Clyde" (from the movie Bonnie and Clyde) for his stylish wardrobe and flamboyant lifestyle off the court. Frazier scored 15,581 points (18.9 ppg) during his career, led the Knicks in scoring five times, dished out 5,040 assists (6.1 apg), and led the Knicks in assists 10 straight years. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1987. 1955 Earl Christian Campbell is born in Tyler, Texas. He became a star football player at the University of Texas and amassed 4,444 rushing yards in his college career. He won the 1977 Heisman Trophy and went on to become the first player taken in the 1978 NFL draft. As a star running back for the Houston Oilers, he became NFL rushing champion, Player of Year, All-Pro, Pro Bowl choice in 1978, 1979, and 1980. His career-high was 1,934 yards rushing, including four 200-yard rushing games in 1980. His career statistics were: 9,407 yards, 74 TDs rushing, 121 receptions for 806 yards and five Pro Bowls. He retired after nine seasons and was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1991. 1968 Students seize building on the campus of Bowie State College in Bowie, Maryland. 1990 Houston's Hakeem Olajuwan scores the 3rd NBA quadruple double consisting of 18 points, 16 rebounds, 10 assists & 11 blocked shots vs the Milwaukee Bucks.
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Reiki
Member
08-12-2000
| Monday, March 29, 2004 - 2:26 pm
Oh I just loved Earl Campbell! Thanks again for keeping this thread going. I may not say so everyday, but I do check in here. I love when I have the opportunity to learn something new, plus I love it when someone who has touched my life in some way (like Earl) is honored here.
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Hippyt
Member
09-10-2001
| Monday, March 29, 2004 - 3:05 pm
I love Earl too. He is a great Houstonian,does so much for our city. I really respect that.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, March 29, 2004 - 7:01 pm
E.R.' Actor Allegedly Shot by Father
NEW YORK (AP) - An actor who has appeared on episodes of ``ER'' and ``The Drew Carey Show'' was shot twice by his father while he was eating lunch, police said. Vincent Ford Jr., 42, who uses the professional name Keith Diamond, had flown home to Queens to visit his ailing mother, police said. He was eating in the family's kitchen Sunday afternoon when his father, Vincent Ford Sr., 81, walked in and shot him in the chin and torso, police said. The actor was taken to Mary Immaculate Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition Sunday night, said Detective Bernard Gifford, a police spokesman. Police arrested the senior Ford on charges of first-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon. A .32-caliber revolver was found at the scene. The motive in the shooting was unknown, but neighbors said Vincent Ford Sr. had Alzheimer's disease or dementia, according to published reports. Beside his TV work, the actor has appeared in feature films such as ``Dr. Giggles'' (1992) and ``Biker Boyz'' (2003). The Link
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Monday, March 29, 2004 - 7:29 pm
Oh my. I hope he pulls thru ok.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - 8:49 am
Black Facts that happened on March the 31st: 1741 Succession of suspicious fires and reports of slave conspiracies created hysteria in New York in March and April. Thirty-one slaves and five whites were executed. 1797 Olaudah Equiano dies in London without ever getting to see Africa again. 1850 Massachusetts Supreme Court rejected the argument of Charles Sumner in the Boston school integration suit and established the "separate but equal" precedent. 1856 Henry Ossian Flipper, the first African American graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was born in Thomasville, Georgia. 1901 Navy Seaman Alphonse Gerandy wins Medal of Honor. U.S. Navy Seaman Alphonse Gerandy, serving on the US Petrel, risked his own life to safe crewmen during a fire. His Medal of Honor was presented in 1902. 1930 President Hoover nominated Judge John J. Parker of North Carolina for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The NAACP launched a national campaign against the appointment. Parker was not confirmed by the Senate. 1931 Cab Calloway recorded "Minnie the Moocher"-the first jazz album to sell a million copies. 1948 A. Phillip Randolph told Senate Armed Services Committee that unless segregation and discrimination were banned in draft programs he would urge Black youths to resist induction by civil disobedience. 1960 Eighteen students suspended by Southern University. Southern University students rebelled March 31, boycotted classes and requested withdrawal slips. Rebellion collapsed after death of professor from heart attack. 1960 Laurian Rugambwa of Tanzania becomes the first black Roman Catholic Cardinal. 1980 Death of Jesse Owens (66), who won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, 1936, in Tuscon, Arizona. 1988 Toni Morrison wins the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved www.blackfacts.com
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - 9:02 am
I posted this here, but it belongs here, too. History was made last night when Candace Parker was the first woman to win the McDonalds High School All-American Slam Dunk Contest. Go Candace!!

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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Thursday, April 01, 2004 - 8:29 am
Black Facts that happened on April the 1st: 1867 Blacks voted in municipal election in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Military officials set aside the election pending clarification on electoral procedures. 1868 Hampton University was established in 1868 as a school for blacks. Hampton University was known prior to August 1984 as Hampton Institute. 1905 Birthday of Clara McBride Hale in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hale founded Hale House, a home for infant children of drug addicts located in Harlem, NY. 1917 Scott Joplin dies in New York City. Joplin was one of the early developers of ragtime and the author of "Maple Leaf Rag". He also created several rag-time and grand operas, the most noteworthy was Treemonisha. 1929 Morehouse College, Spelman College and Atlanta University affiliated, creating a new Atlanta University. John Hope of Morehouse College, was named president. 1930 Zawditu, the first reigning female monarch of Ethiopia, dies. 1950 Death of Charles R. Drew (45), surgeon and developer of the blood bank concept, after an automobile accident near Burlington, North Carolina. Previous posting of biography can be found here 1951 Oscar Micheaux, film producer, dies 1966 Through the 24th, First world festival of Black art held in Dakar, Senegal. One of the largest delegations came from Black America. 1984 Marvin Gaye dies in his parents Los Angeles home. Marvin attacked his father for verbally abusing his mother. His father responded by shooting his son to death. Since his death, the power and reach of Marvins music has increased. http://www.blackfacts.com/
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Essence
Member
01-12-2002
| Thursday, April 01, 2004 - 8:52 am
I remember when Marvin Gaye was killed, it was announced on the radio. We all thought it was some sort of April Fool's joke. That was awful.
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Thursday, April 01, 2004 - 7:10 pm
Butterfly McQueen link As Scarlett O'Hara's slave Prissy in Gone with the Wind, Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen probably did more than any other entertainer to further the typecasting of African American actors and actresses in menial roles; as a life-long advocate for racial equality in Hollywood, she certainly did as much as anyone to put an end to such discrimination. One of the most widely recognized black actresses of her era, McQueen's 1947 decision to abandon cinema for a lifetime of menial labor helped pressure the film industry into abandoning its long-standing practice of relegating African Americans to menial roles. Yet throughout her six decade career, McQueen was plagued by her most celebrated on-screen line: Prissy's admission to Miss Scarlett that "I dunno nothin' 'bout birthing babies." Born on January 11, 1911 in Tampa, Florida, to a stevedore and a domestic, Thelma McQueen intended to study nursing in New York City until a high school teacher suggested that she try her hand at acting. After studying under Janet Collins, McQueen danced with the Venezuela Jones Negro Youth Group and debuted on stage in George Abbott's Brown Sugar. Around this time she acquired the nickname "Butterfly"--a tribute to her constantly moving hands--for her performance in the Butterfly Ballet (1935). She then moved on to the large screen where she appeared as Lulu, the cosmetics counter assistant, in The Women (1939). Yet it was as Prissy, the whiny, comic, tearful and almost pathetic house slave in David Selznick's Gone With The Wind, that the 28-year-old actress gained instant acclaim. The part was a minor one. McQueen, originally turned down for the role as too old and too dignified, transformed it into one of the leading character performances of all time. She stole scenes from stars Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable with her careful blend of the sassy and the obsequious. Prissy's admission to Scarlett O'Hara (Leigh) that she can not assist at the child-bed of Melanie Wilkes (Olivia de Haviland) attracted an outpouring of sympathy from white audiences. McQueen, however, instantly regretted her contribution to black stereotyping. "It was not a pleasant part to play," she observed. "I didn't want to be that little slave. But I did my best, my very best." Late in life, she came to terms with the part. "Now I'm happy I did Gone with the Wind," she told The Washington Post in an interview. "I wasn't when I was twenty-eight, but it's a part of black history. You have no idea how hard it is for black actors, but things change, things blossom with time." McQueen contributed to that progress when, after bit parts as maids in Mildred Pierce (1945) and Flame of the Barbary Coast (1945), she abandoned Hollywood to work as a real-life maid, a taxi dispatcher, and a Macy's salesgirl. Although she returned briefly to acting as one of television's first black stars, creating the role of the maid Oriole on The Beulah Show (1950-1953), the proud actress eventually refused to be typecast in demeaning parts and publicly declared her frustration with racial attitudes in the film industry. Her outspoken opposition to discrimination helped open doors for successors such as Paul Robeson and Sidney Poitier. McQueen devoted the remainder of her life to a variety of causes including the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Humane Society. She earned a bachelor's degree in political science from The City College of New York at the age of 64. When McQueen finally returned to cinema, playing Clarice in Amazing Grace (1974) and Ma Kennywick in Mosquito Coast (1986), African American actors ranked among the largest box office draws in the nation. The "Beautiful Butterfly" was killed in a house fire on December 22, 1995. McQueen's plight as an actress paralleled that of many African Americans in the era before the Civil Rights movement. Forced to choose between minor, often subservient parts or complete exclusion from film, McQueen came to believe that no roles were better than regressive ones. "I hated it," she stated. "The part of Prissy was so backward. I was always whining and complaining." Ironically, it was McQueen's complaint against the film industry that helped relegate such parts to the footnotes of history. forthcoming: Hollywood and the "Uncle Tom" stereotype
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Friday, April 02, 2004 - 8:51 am
Black Facts that happened on April the 2nd: 1855 John Mercer Langston, considered the first African American to be elected to public office is elected clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio township 1865 Black soldiers of the Twenty-Fifth Corps were among the first Union soldiers to enter Petersburg. 1918 Charles White Born April 2, 1918. Renowned African-American artist born in Chicago, IL; died October 3, 1979. Charles White began his professional career by painting murals for the WPA during the Depression. He was influenced by Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siquieros. Among his most notable creations are: J'Accuse(1966), a series of charcoal drawings depicting a variety of African-Americans from all ages and walks of life; the Wanted posters(c. 1969), a series of paintings based on old runaway slave posters; and Homage to Langston Hughes(1971) 1932 World famous African American cowboy Willie "Bill" Pickett died in Ponca, Oklahoma, hospital of injuries sustained after he was kicked in the head by a horse on the Miller's Brothers' Fabulous 101 Ranch. 1939 Marvin Gaye is born in Washington, D.C. He will sign with Motown in 1962 and begin a 22-year career that includes hits "Pride and Joy," duets with Mary Wells and Tammi Terrell, as well as best-selling albums exploring his social consciousness (What's Going On) and sexuality (Let's Get It On, Midnight Love). 1984 Coach John Thompson of Georgetown University becomes the first Black coach to win the NCAA basketball tournament. 1987 Engineer Lenell Geter convicted falsely in armed robbery charge. His conviction, which would draw national protest, was finally overturned after having served a 16 month sentence. www.blackfacts.com
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Friday, April 02, 2004 - 9:19 am
Happy Birthday, Marvin Gaye
As the best selling Motown artist of all-time, Marvin Gaye's soulful voice helped shape the "Motown Sound." Born April 2,1939, he grew up in a deeply religious family (his father, Marvin Sr., was an ordained minister). As a young man he traveled first to Chicago and later to Detroit with Harvey Fuqua, the leader of Harvey and the Moonglows, one of the East Coast's most notable doo-wop groups. Marvin, along with the Moonglows, first recorded for Chess Records in 1959 in Chicago. Later, Harvey, with Marvin in tow, eventually landed in Detroit. Under the tutelage and guidance of Motown founder Berry Gordy,Jr., Marvin began recording for Motown in 1961, releasing The Soulful Moods Of Marvin Gaye. With aspirations of becoming the next Nat King Cole, Gaye hit pay dirt in 1964 with his duet album with Mary Wells, on which the tune "My Guy" became Motown's third No. 1 hit. Gaye was repeatedly paired with female performers, including Kim Weston, Tammi Terrell and Diana Ross. On 'What's Going On', a number 1 hit in 1971, and its two chart-topping follow-ups, 'Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)' and 'Inner City Blues', Gaye combined his spiritual beliefs with his increasing concern about poverty, discrimination and political corruption in American society. Gaye evolved a new musical style that influenced a generation of black performers. Built on a heavily percussive base, Gaye's arrangements mingled varying influences into his soul roots, creating an instrumental backdrop for his sensual, almost pleading vocals. These three singles were all contained on 'What's Going On', a masterpiece on which every track contributed to the overall message. Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson say that this is their favourite 'all time' LP Gaye had an unsuccessful marriage to Gordy's sister, Anna. After some toughtimes, he won two Grammy awards--"Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male" and "Best R&B Instrumental Performance"--for the 1982 release Sexual Healing. Persistent reports of his erratic personal conduct and reliance on cocaine fuelled pessimism about his future career. The intensity of his cocaine addiction made it impossible for him to work on another album after releasing the album 'Midnight Love', and he fell into a prolonged bout of depression. He repeatedly announced his wish to commit suicide in the early weeks of 1984, and his abrupt shifts of mood brought him into heated conflict with his father, rekindling animosity that had been there since Gaye's childhood. Gaye was shot to death by his father in 1984, but his albums continue to sell successfully posthumously. Motown and Columbia collaborated to produce two albums based on Gaye's unfinished recordings. 'Dream Of A Lifetime' mixed spiritual ballads from the early 70's with sexually explicit funk songs from a decade later, while 'Romantically Yours' offered a different reading of Gaye's original intentions in 1979 to record an album of big band ballads. In 1997, the album of 'big ballads' was issued under the title of 'Vulnerable'. The album was said to Marvin's favourite record from his long and distinguished resume. Then, as you thought that that was the final word, Motown records embarked on a series of 'Deluxe' releases of Marvin's earlier material. One track, 'Where Are We Going?', created a great deal of interest. Written in part by the Mizell Brothers (Donald Byrd, Taste Of Honey, Bobbi Humphrey, Rance Allen etc.), the tune was heralded as the greatest release, of his, since Marvin's passing some 17 years earlier. Marvin Gaye Albums: The Soulful Moods Of Marvin Gaye (Tamla 1961) That Stubborn Kind Of Fella (Tamla 1963) Recorded Live: On Stage (Tamla 1964) When I'm Alone I Cry (Tamla 1964) with Mary Wells: Together (Motown 1964) Hello Broadway This Is Marvin (Tamla 1965) How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You (Tamla 1965) A Tribute To The Great Nat King Cole (Tamla 1965) Moods Of Marvin Gaye (Tamla 1966) with Kim Weston: Take Two (Tamla 1966) with Tammi Terrell: United (Tamla 1967) In The Groove (Tamla 1968) with Terrell: You're All I Need (Tamla 1968) with Terrell, Weston, Wells: Marvin Gaye Amid His Girls (Tamla 1969) with Terrell: Easy (Tamla 1969) MPG (Tamla 1969) That's The Way Love Is (Tamla 1970) What's Going On (Tamla 1971) Trouble Man-Film Soundtrack (Tamla 1972) Let's Get It On (Tamla 1973) with Diana Ross: Diana And Marvin (Motown 1973) Marvin Gaye Live! (Tamla 1974) I Want You (Tamla 1976) Marvin Gaye Live At The London Palladium (Tamla 1977) Here My Dear (Tamla 1978) In Our Lifetime (Tamla 1981) Midnight Love (Columbia 1982) Dream Of A Lifetime (Columbia 1985) Romantically Yours (Columbia 1985) The Marvin Gaye Collection: Rare, Live And Unreleased (Motown 1990) The Last Concert Tour (Giant 1991) For The Very Last Time (1994) Vulnerable (Motown 1997) The Very Best Of Marvin Gaye (Motown 2001) What's Going On - Deluxe Edition (Motown 2001) Let's Get It On - Deluxe Edition (Motown 2001) http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/bio.asp?oid=3020&cf=3020 http://www.soulwalking.co.uk/Marvin%20Gaye.html
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