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Posts tagged as “Duke Ellington”

#BornOnThisDay in 1899: Duke Ellington, American Composer and Synesthete (LISTEN)

#BornOnThisDay in 1899: Duke Ellington, American Composer and Synesthete (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 29, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Although we dropped in on Duke Ellington earlier this month on April 6th when we shared a quote from him and a snapshot of his career and contributions, today, on his birthday, this prolific composer and musician gets a much-deserved second look, because one thing we didn’t share last time about the Black, Brown and Beige maestro?

He had synesthesia, the neurological condition where sounds and colors blend.

To read about Ellington, read on. To hear about him, press PLAY:

[You can subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or listen every day here on the main page. Full transcript below]:

Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Friday, April 29th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

Although we dropped in on Duke Ellington earlier this month on April 6th when we shared a quote from him and a snapshot of his career and contributions, today this prolific composer and musician gets a much-deserved second look:

Born on this day in 1899, Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington made an indelible mark on American music for more than six decades. A pianist, composer and bandleader, Ellington created such now-classic standards as “Prelude to a Kiss,” “Mood Indigo,” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing”– as well as full-length compositions such as Black, Brown and Beige and Jump For Joy and film scores for Anatomy of a Murder and Paris Blues.

Perhaps there were so many hues to Duke’s music because he had synesthesia, the neurological condition where sounds and colors blend. Other noted musicians who are also reported to be synesthetes are Pharrell Williams, Mary J. Blige, Frank Ocean and Kanye West.

To learn more about Ellington, check out our April 6th daily drop and its resources, and if you want to learn more about synesthesia, check out the links provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.

Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

Excerpts from Black, Brown & Beige, Part 1 composed by Duke Ellington are included under fair use.

If you like these Daily Drops, follow us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon,Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

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MUSIC MONDAY: Born #OnThisDay in 1917 — “First Lady of Song” Ella Fitzgerald (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: Born #OnThisDay in 1917 — “First Lady of Song” Ella Fitzgerald (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 25, 2022

[Photo: Ella Fitzgerald via ellafitzgerald.com]

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

GBN is pulling a trifecta today — celebrating #MusicMonday, #JazzAppreciationMonth, and dropping in on absolutely one of the best singers past, present — or ever — Ella Fitzgerald!

Born 105 years ago #OnThisDay, through her stunningly timeless gifts (and vast catalog), Ella Fitzgerald is still surprising and delighting music lovers and casual fans alike.

To read about her, read on. To hear about her, press PLAY:

[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:

Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Monday, April 25th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

Today, we offer a quote from the “First Lady of Song” born 105 years ago on this date, the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald.

“The only thing better than singing is more singing.”

Born in 1917 in Newport News, Virginia, Ella Fitzgerald’s earliest artistic ambitions were to become a dancer.

When the loss of her mother when she was 15 lead to a relocation to Harlem to live with her aunt and stints in an orphanage and a state reformatory school for girls, Fitzgerald hustled to get by on the streets and at 17 took her terpsichorean talents to Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater.

But when she saw two sisters with a dance act go on before her and wow the crowd, Ella didn’t think she could compete so she switched up her talent from dancing to singing and took to the stage to sing “Judy” and “The Object of My Affection” and won first prize in 1934.

Although she didn’t record either at the time, in 1968 Ella gave “The Object of My Affection” another onstage go when she sang it for her Live At Chautauqua, Volume 1 LP:

[Excerpt from “The Object of My Affection”]

Ella’s Amateur night win lead to an audition with Chick Webb to become the girl singer in his orchestra, and one of the best collaborations between bandleader and singer in the swing era.

Webb and Ella had hits with “Love and Kisses,” “(If You Can’t Sing It) You’ll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)” and the classic turn on a nursery rhyme co-written by Ella that become of the best-selling songs in it’s decade, “A Tisket, A Tasket”:

[Excerpt from “A Tisket, A Tasket”]

Even as Chick Webb took the young Ella under his wing, his serious health challenges ended his life way too soon in 1939.

Ella stepped up and lead and toured with the orchestra for a few more years until she went solo as jazz turned increasingly towards the newer sounds of bebop.

It was around this time, while working with Dizzy Gillespie and his band, Ella developed her scat singing style, lauded on songs such as “Oh, Lady Be Good” and “Flying Home”:

[Excerpt from “Flying Home”]

Ella not only navigated and interpreted jazz standards with dazzling dexterity and clarity, during her heyday, she, like her quote implied, sang and sang and sang some more.

Ella took on several of America’s most popular composers with her unparalleled series of “songbooks,” where she devoted entire albums to covering the songs of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hart, Johnny Mercer, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin.

You can’t go wrong with any of these incredible recordings, so I’ll share a personal favorite from Ella Sings Gershwin – Ella’s plaintively tender version of “Someone to Watch Over Me”:

[Excerpt of “Someone to Watch Over Me”]

Ella also paired up with jazz royalty, recording an album with Count Basie, three with Louis Armstrong, four with guitarist Joe Pass and four with Duke Ellington, one which included her version of – I can’t think of any better word than “banging” because Ella just goes so hard in “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”:

[Excerpt of “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”]

From big band to bebop to Broadway, standards, pop and R&B, throughout her career, Ella Fitzgerald recorded over 200 albums and 2,000 songs.

Because frankly, with a voice like hers, the only thing better than Ella singing was more Ella singing. I’m going to put a link to a much longer Ella playlist in the show notes, but let’s hear from her one more time, in 1977, when one of her biggest fans, Stevie Wonder, lovingly sings her praises right before she helps him sing his song:

[Excerpt of “You Are the Sunshine Of My Life”]

To learn more about Ella Fitzgerald, watch the 2019 documentary Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things now streaming on Netflix, the 1999 American Masters biography on Ella called Something To Live For currently posted on YouTube, read ELLA: A Biography of the Legendary Ella Fitzgerald by Geoffrey Mark from 2018, Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz by Stuart Nicholson from 1994.Watch incredible clips of her on YouTube performing with Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra and Count Basie.

And of course, buy or stream as much of her music as you can. Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and in the episodes full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.

Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

All excerpts of Ella Fitzgerald’s music are included under Fair Use.

If you like these Daily Drops, follow us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources:

Lady Writes The Blues: Billie Holiday’s Singing and Songwriting Artistry (LISTEN)

Lady Writes The Blues: Billie Holiday’s Singing and Songwriting Artistry (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 19, 2022

[Billie Holiday, from March 23, 1949. Photographer: Carl Van Vechten. from the Yale University Archives at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library]

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

In continued celebration of #JazzAppreciationMonth, today we drop in on Billie Holiday, the singer and artist who not only influenced peers and progeny alike with her innovative interpretation of and phrasing in songs, but also composed several of her signature songs which became jazz and blues standards in the decades that followed.

To read about Holiday, read on. To hear about her, press PLAY:

[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:

Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Tuesday, April 19th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

Billie Holiday famously said she styled her singing after two major influences – blues empress Bessie Smith and jazz trumpeter and legend Louis Armstrong.

The alchemy Holiday found by combining her favorites inspired many of her contemporaries as well as subsequent generations of singers, who were impressed with her pioneering phrasing and improvisation.

What is less often praised about Holiday is her songwriting skill. She wrote several signature songs that are now standards. Let’s start with “Fine and Mellow,” which Holiday first recorded in 1939:

[Excerpt of “Fine and Mellow”]

MUSIC MONDAY: “A Love Supreme” – The Best of Sacred Jazz (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: “A Love Supreme” – The Best of Sacred Jazz (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 18, 2022

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Twitter: @marlonw IG: stlmarlonwest Spotify: marlonwest)

It’s Music Monday! In celebration of Easter and #JazzAppreciationMonth, here is a collection of Sacred Jazz.

When jazz emerged in the first half of the 20th century as music of liberation, entertainment and modernism, it provoked a backlash among cultural and religious-establishment figures.

Many of them went so far as to call it “the music of the devil.” By the middle 1950s, jazz had found its way into the church, sometimes employed in the ritualistic proceedings of liturgies and other traditional ceremonies, or presented in other thematic ways in overt religious homage.

Religion, in some respects, was there from the jump. Many African-American musicians grew up attending and performing in church services, and the imprint of that experience can be found in albums ranging from John Coltrane‘s landmark 1965 LP A Love Supreme to Miles Davis‘ Kind Of Blue.

It was inspired in part, in the words of Davis, “some other kind of sound I remembered from being back in Arkansas, when we were walking home from church and playing these bad gospels.”

This collection features Mahalia Jackson and Rosetta Tharpe contributions to gospel and sacred jazz, along with pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams, known for her Jazz Masses in the 1950s.

Duke Ellington, Kamasi Washington, Pharaoh Sanders, The Free Nationals and many others are on hand too.

Do enjoy.  As always, stay safe, sane, and kind.

Marlon West (photo courtesy Marlon West)
Celebrating Jazz Piano Virtuoso Oscar Peterson for #JazzAppreciationMonth (LISTEN)

Celebrating Jazz Piano Virtuoso Oscar Peterson for #JazzAppreciationMonth (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 11, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

In continued celebration of #JazzAppreciationMonth, today we drop in on virtuoso pianist Oscar Peterson, who hailed from Canada, composed the de facto Civil Rights Movement anthem “Hymn to Freedom,” and was dubbed the “Maharaja of the Keyboard” by none other than fellow piano master Duke Ellington.

To read about Peterson, read on. To hear about him, press PLAY:

[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Monday, April 11, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

Being called the “Maharaja of the Keyboard” by Duke Ellington was a lot for Canadian-born jazz pianist Oscar Peterson to live up to – and he did.

In a career spanning over six decades, the classically trained Peterson showed off his virtuosity and dexterity in his compositions such as 1964’s Canadiana Suite and 1962’s “Hymn to Freedom,” which was embraced by people around the world as the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement:

[Excerpt from “Hymn to Freedom”]

Peterson also excelled as accompanist to greats like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, and as front man of his world-renowned Oscar Peterson Trio in the 1950s, who recorded such treasures such as “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars”:

[Excerpt of “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars”]

“Something’s Coming” from West Side Story:

[Excerpt of “Something’s Coming”]

and “C Jam Blues”:

[Excerpt of “C Jam Blues”]

Peterson won eight Grammy awards and was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1978 and the International Jazz Hall of Fame in 1997.

Later this month over the April 22nd weekend, the  Oscar Peterson International Jazz Festival will be held in Toronto, Canada and feature contemporary jazz artists Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, Brad Mehldau and Brian Blade, among others.

To learn more about Oscar Peterson, read his 2002 autobiography A Jazz Odyssey: The Life of Oscar Peterson, Oscar Peterson: The Man and His Jazz by Jack Batten from 2012 and Oscar Peterson: The Will to Swing by Gene Lees, and watch the 2021 documentary Oscar Peterson: Black + White, currently streaming on Hulu.

And, of course, buy or stream as much of Oscar Peterson’s music as you can, including the latest 2021 posthumous release, A Time For Love, a recording of Peterson’s quartet live concert in Helsinki in 1987, which you can get on 180 gram blue vinyl if you’re into that through oscarpeterson.com.

Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing.

Intro and outro provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

All excerpts of Oscar Peterson’s music included are permitted under Fair Use.

If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources:

(links to amazon books are paid links)

Quote from Jazz Royalty, Duke Ellington, for #JazzAppreciationMonth (LISTEN)

Quote from Jazz Royalty, Duke Ellington, for #JazzAppreciationMonth (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 6, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

As #JazzAppreciationMonth continues, we offer a quote from true jazz royalty, — bandleader, composer, pianist, performer — the superb, sublime Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington. 

To read it, read on. To hear it and more about Ellington, press PLAY:

(You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed.

Or just check it out every day here on the main website.) Full transcript below:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Wednesday, April 6th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

Today, we offer a quote from jazz royalty — bandleader, composer, pianist, performer — the one and only Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington:

“Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.”

Born in Washington D.C. in 1899 to two piano playing parents, Duke Ellington began composing in his teenage years and started landing gigs through his work as a freelance sign painter by offering his band’s services to any club or party he made a sign for.

Ellington later moved to Harlem and landed the gig as the house band for the Cotton Club after King Oliver turned it down, and became a world-renowned big band leader for popular compositions and recordings like 1926’s “East St. Louis Toodle-O” which was the first signature song of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra:

[Excerpt from “East St. Louis Toodle-O”]

Also hugely popular was his composition “Caravan” which was first recorded and released by clarinetist Barney Bigard and his Jazzopaters before Ellington reclaimed it:

[Excerpt from “Caravan”]

“Mood Indigo” for which Barney Bigard is listed as a co-writer:

[Excerpt from “Mood Indigo”]

The classic swing tune “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”:

[Excerpt from “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”]

His 1953 composition with longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn, “Satin Doll”:

[Excerpt from “Satin Doll”]

One of Ellington’s best known songs is one that Strayhorn composed for him, the song that would replace Ellington’s own “East St. Louis Toodle-O” as his orchestra’s signature song, the song titled to tell you how to get to Harlem, Ellington and the Cotton Club… “Take the “A” Train”:

[Excerpt from “Take the “A” Train”]

Ellington also composed beyond the category of jazz, writing orchestral and symphonic works such as Black, Brown, and Beige, and a Concert of Sacred Music, scored the feature films Anatomy of a Murder and Paris Blues, and influenced those who became the vanguard in jazz and bop such as Miles Davis and former orchestra member Charles Mingus.

In 1962, Ellington himself played Scrabble without the vowels when he recorded the album Money Jungle with bassist Mingus and drummer Max Roach, which included a new take on “Caravan”:

[Excerpt from “Caravan” from Money Jungle]

Ellington composed and played up until the last years of his life before passing at the age of 74 in 1974. That same year, his DC hometown renamed its Calvert Street Bridge the Duke Ellington Bridge.

In 1997, an intersection in Harlem in Central Park was renamed Duke Ellington Circle. In 1999 he was posthumously awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for his indelible contribution to art and culture and in 2009 Ellington graced the back of the commemorative District of Columbia quarter, among just a few of the honors Ellington has received since he transcended this life as we know it.

To learn more about Ellington, read his 1973 autobiography Music is My Mistress,  the 1995 biography Beyond Category: The Genius of Duke Ellington by John Edward Hasse, 2016’s Duke Ellington: An American Composer and Icon by Steven Brower, and 2022’s Duke Ellington: The Notes the World Was Not Ready to Hear by Karen S. Barbera and Randall Keith Horton.

You can also watch Ellington in the short film Black and Tan from 1929, Symphony in Black from 1935 featuring Billie Holiday, the mid-1960s documentary Duke Ellington: Love You Madly by Ralph J. Gleason on YouTube, On The Road With Duke Ellington from 1967, currently also on YouTube, the 2016 documentary The Definitive Duke Ellington on Prime Video, and you can also check out the PBS American Masters episode on Duke Ellington from 2002.

And, of course, buy or stream as much of the music as you can from the man lovingly and unforgettably referred to by modern day musical genius Stevie Wonder as “The king of all, Sir Duke.”

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing.

Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot. All excerpts of Duke Ellington’s music included are permitted under Fair Use.

If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources:

[Photo credit: Duke Ellington, Scurlock Photographic Collection, National Museum of American History]

(amazon links are paid links)

Welcome to Jazz Appreciation Month 2022 (LISTEN)

Welcome to Jazz Appreciation Month 2022 (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 1, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

No fooling, in the U.S. April 1st denotes the start of Jazz Appreciation Month (aka “JAM”), where the art form born out of Congo Square in New Orleans became a unique and true African American and American musical expression that continues to evolve across the decades and centuries.

Started by the Smithsonian Museum of American History in 2001, “JAM is intended to stimulate and encourage people of all ages to participate in jazz – to study the music, attend concerts, listen to jazz on radio and recordings, read books about jazz, and more.”

To hear our Drop about it, press PLAY:

You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Friday, April 1st, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

No fooling, April 1st in the United States also kicks off Jazz Appreciation Month. It’s a time to savor the musical gumbo first cooked up in early 20th century New Orleans by master chefs including Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver, and Louis “Pops” Armstrong.

During the 1930s and ‘40s, bandleaders such as Lionel Hampton, Chick Webb, Count Basie and Duke Ellington swung the nation and defined the sound­–as did singers Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine.

Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane were the vanguard through the 1950s and 60s, leading to the free jazz of Ornette Coleman, Taj Mahal, the Jazz Messengers and today’s pot stirrers Kamasi Washington, Esperanza Spalding and MacArthur “genius” Cecile McLorin Salvant.

To quote Wynton Marsalis, the most famous trumpet player in modern times and the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center:

“Jazz is the nobility of the race put into sound; it is the sensuousness of romance in our dialect; it is the picture of the people in all their glory.”

To learn more about Jazz music and its history, read Jazz: A History of America’s Music by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, which is the companion book to the 10-part documentary miniseries Jazz on PBS, read Downbeat Magazine’s The Great Jazz Interviews – A 75 Year Anthology edited by Frank Alkyer, check out jazzinamerica.org’s timeline on the development and evolution of jazz, the 1987 album from Smithsonian Folkways entitled The History of Jazz by Mary Lou Williams.

And if you are feeling hands-on and adventurous, check out Herbie Hancock’s MasterClass in Jazz online.

Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing.

Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

“Dippermouth Blues” by King Oliver’s Jazz Band and composed by Oliver and Louis Armstrong is used with permission under Public Domain.

If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, you can check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources:

(paid links)

MUSIC MONDAY: “Cool Yule” – A Jazzy Christmas Collection (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: “Cool Yule” – A Jazzy Christmas Collection (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on November 29, 2021

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

With Thanksgiving firmly in our rearview, it is officially time to bring on the peppermint, egg nog and, best of all (at least in my mind), Christmas music playlists!

This season Good Black News is starting off with a playlist chestnut we dropped last Christmas Eve, perhaps missed by anyone who was traveling, already out and about or otherwise engaged in the spirit. So one more again, I am happy to bring to you “Cool Yule”: A Jazzy Christmas Collection:

From Take 6 to Duke Ellington to Geri Allen to Oscar Peterson, this playlist includes vocal and instrumental jazz renditions of traditional and modern Christmas and end-of-year classics for all to enjoy.

Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, Betty Carter, Dianne Reeves, Etta James, Dinah Washington, Esperanza Spalding and Billie Holiday are among the female jazz vocalists represented on “Cool Yule,” with Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Leslie Odom, Jr. and Louis Armstrong lending their deeper pipes to the playlist.

Also represented are jazz titans Miles Davis, John Coltrane, the Count Basie Orchestra, Benny Carter, Kenny Burrell, Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, the McCoy Tyner Trio, Jimmy Smith, the Elvin Jones Quintet and the Ramsey Lewis Trio.

Wishing you all the best as we warm into the winter season, and in the coming new year. Enjoy!

MUSIC MONDAY: “Phantom of the Panther” – Black Horror Scores and More (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: “Phantom of the Panther” – Black Horror Scores and More (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on October 18, 2021

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Twitter: @marlonw IG: stlmarlonwest Spotify: marlonwest)

Happy Monday, good listeners!

We’re back with another seasonal playlist, this one just might scare kids off your front porch on the 31st.

“Phantom Of The Panther” is a collection of jazz, classical, and soundtrack music. It features spooky tracks from Blacula by Gene Page and the 2021 remake of Candyman by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. There are jazz cuts by Mulatu Astatke and Duke Ellington.

I’ve also included modern classical works by the likes of Pamela Z, Julius Eastman, and others.  And while we usually truck on the works of artists from the African diaspora here at GBN, I’ve included tracks by Phillip Glass from the OG Candyman from 1992 and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ work on HBO’s Watchmen starring Regina King.

And how you gonna not to include a track called “House OF Paincakes” by Marco Beltrami for Wesley Snipes’ Blade II?

Hope you enjoy this stroll through the dark side. Listen with the lights on. Or not.

Until next week, stay safe, sane, and kind.

Marlon West (photo courtesy Marlon West)
MUSIC: Celebrating Stevie Wonder’s 71st Birthday with “Stevie For The Sweeties” – a Kid-Friendly Playlist (LISTEN)

MUSIC: Celebrating Stevie Wonder’s 71st Birthday with “Stevie For The Sweeties” – a Kid-Friendly Playlist (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on May 13, 2021

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

As any regular (or even new) follower of Good Black News may have noticed, we really love music here. Its creators, its history, its present and its future. And days like today – the 71st birthday of musical legend, genius and icon Stevie Wonder – are some of the most exciting, because we get to think of new ways to share about an artist who has given so much to the culture and community.

Last year, in honor of Stevie’s 70th, GBN published a month of differently-themed Stevie playlists, (links to all below). But for the generations who didn’t grow up on Stevie Wonder — particularly the 10-and-under set — where to start? How about right here, with our curated, kid-friendly playlist “Stevie For The Sweeties”:

[spotifyplaybutton play=”spotify:playlist:3f5SgOPWpm8xS7AfrXHiDa”]

I remember exactly when I took my children’s musical education and exposure into my own hands — April 21, 2016 — the day Prince passed. My kids didn’t understand why Mommy was so upset and was playing Prince music all the time — in the car, in the house, on the TV, for weeks — because they didn’t know who he was or why his music was important.

It was a wake-up call for me to make a conscious effort to introduce them to the musical greats. Since they were 8 and 6 at the time, I started putting together kid-friendly playlists on iTunes (the very first I called “Prince for My Patooties”) that they could listen to on their own, with friends, or at school during breaks, without any worries about playing any songs that could be objectionable for language or subject matter, and sequenced in a way to keep their interest.

“Stevie For The Sweeties” starts with “Fun Day,” moves into “Sir Duke” (which has been a magic tonic to my sons ears since he was a toddler, and where Stevie himself does some hat tipping to generational forebears by name checking Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and of course, “Sir” Duke Ellington), “I Wish” (which I remember me, my sister Lesa and my cousins David and Darryl singing to as little kids while we played “Three Flies Up” in my Auntie Brenda’s front yard), and “Fingertips Pts. 1& 2”, where Stevie himself was barely double digits in age.

Those great songs and so many more classics to enjoy with the younger set like “Do I Do” (featuring trumpet-great Dizzy Gillespie on an effervescent solo), “I Love Every Little Thing About You,” “Isn’t She Lovely” (which Stevie wrote about his first-born daughter Iesha), “Bird of Beauty” and “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” are part of “Stevie For The Sweeties.”

I hope you enjoy with the sunshines and lovelies in your life, and thank you, thank you, thank you, Stevie Wonder, for your incredible music and life. We love you. Happy Birthday!

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