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Nowhere is media's influence on social attitudes more evident than among the millions of fans following Star Wars. Decades after the franchise's creator, George Lucas, made his first iteration of the fictional galaxy filled with aliens, Stormtroopers, and the Force, his vision has captivated fans with countless iconic moments.
With the most widely-celebrated winter holidays quickly approaching, test your knowledge of the cultural history and traditions that started these festivities. For example, what does Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer have to do with Father Christmas? What are the key principles honored by lighting Kwanzaa candles?
On 12 January 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Tamla Records in Detroit, Michigan. A year later it would be incorporated with a new name that became synonymous with a sound, style, and generation of music: Motown. All this week we’re looking the great artists and tracks that emerged from those recording studios. Previously, we spoke to Charles Randolph-Wright, the Director of Broadway’s Motown the Musical, which closes on Sunday, 18 January 2015; Larvester Gaither examined the role of Duets, Girl Groups, and Solo artists in Motown.
More than half a century after its founding, Motown is still remembered by fans, musicians, and historians as the mover and shaker of its generation. From The Temptations’ “My Girl” to Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” its reverberating influence is recognized even today, echoed in modern hits like Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ wildly popular “Uptown Funk.” Revisit the soulful croons, hypnotic hooks, and infectious beats that kickstarted not only a record label, but a revolutionary musical movement. Get on up and move your feet to these funky grooves and classic Motown beats!
On 12 January 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Tamla Records in Detroit, Michigan. A year later it would be incorporated with a new name that became synonymous with a sound, style, and generation of music: Motown. All this week we’re looking the great artists and tracks that emerged from those recording studios. Previously, we spoke to Charles Randolph-Wright, the Director of Broadway’s Motown the Musical, which closes on Sunday, 18 January 2015; Larvester Gaither examined the role of Duets and Girl Groups in Motown.
Starting in the early 1960s, female artists embarked upon solo careers with the Motown label. The first to be signed to the label was Mable John, a blues vocalist born in Bastrop, Louisiana. Slow melodic songs like “No Love” and “Who Wouldn’t Love a Man Like That” stood firmly in the blues genre yet only appealed to a limited, mature audience and did not translate into commercial success. Additionally, the success of The Miracles and The Marvalettes helped steer Gordy in another direction if, in fact, he wasn’t already searching for a newer sound. John would sing background for other groups on the label but her tenure with Motown ended in 1962. Nevertheless, John was a musical pioneer who influenced numerous artists, including contemporary blues musician Robert Cray, who covers “Your Good Thing is About to End” on his 2014 In My Soul album.
Mary Wells was Motown’s first successful female soloist. Born in Detroit, she signed with the label in 1960. Her first release, “Bye Bye Baby,” peaked at number 8 on the R&B charts in 1961 and later reached 45 on the pop chart. Although John preceded her in signing with Motown, Wells was viewed as the “Queen” since she was the first to achieve stardom. In fact, the success of “You Beat Me To the Punch” made Wells the first Motown artists regardless of gender to be nominated for an R&B Grammy. Nevertheless, while Wells enjoyed a string of successful releases during her tenure with Motown, her relationship with the company lasted only until 1964. Unsatisfied with the Gordy’s marketing strategy, which channeled resources built from her success towards developing The Supremes, she left Motown for 20th Century Fox Records in 1965.
While at Motown, however, she made a huge impact, exemplifying for other up and coming artists the expectations of a successful female artist. Additionally, the success of “My Guy,” a song penned by Smokey Robinson, established her as Motown’s first international superstar and laid the template for the sound Motown would find success with. Prior to leaving Motown, she also recorded a duet album with label mate Marvin Gaye, who was a rising star at the time. Consisting of slow ballads and standards, Together created a winning formula that Motown would emulate with other females artists throughout the remainder of the sixties decade.
With the departure of Wells, Motown looked to Brenda Holloway as her ideal successor. Holloway inherited many of the songs written for Wells and achieved only moderate success with them despite the fact that she was probably one of Motown’s most talented artists. Like Wells, she opened for The Beatles, and Dick Clark considered her America’s most talented vocalist. Born in Atascadero, California, she began singing professionally at the age of 14 and seemed already primed for stardom when she met Gordy at the age of 17. Her contract with Motown in 1964 allowed for her to record from Los Angeles where she resided. Her first recording, “Every Little Bit Hurts,” reached number 13 on the Billboard, establishing her as a rising force to be reckoned with. Still, her tenure with Motown was short-lived as she became disillusioned with what increasingly appeared to be a tumultuous atmosphere at Motown, which had yet to fully recover from the departure of Wells. A few months prior to her departure in 1968, The Artistry of Brenda Holloway was released and achieved moderate success in the United States as well as the United Kingdom.
Several other female artists contributed to Motown’s rise, including Carolyn Crawford, Gladys Knight (she achieved success as a lead female singer with 3 male singers providing background vocals), Patrice Holloway (Brenda’s younger sibling who co-wrote “You Made Me So Very Happy,” a tune Blood, Sweat and Tears took to #3), Reba Jeanette Smith (commonly known as Debbie Dean and Motown’s first white female soloist), Barbara Randolph, and others.
As the 1960s came to a close, female artists continued to play a major role both at Motown, in music more generally, and in culture globally. Early Motown female solo acts continue to exert an influence today, for example on pop sensation Alicia Keys, who covered “Every Little Bit Hurts” on her Unplugged album in 2011.
On 12 January 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Tamla Records in Detroit, Michigan. A year later it would be incorporated with a new name that became synonymous with a sound, style, and generation of music: Motown. All this week we’re looking the great artists and tracks that emerged from those recording studios. Previously, we spoke to Charles Randolph-Wright, the Director of Broadway’s Motown the Musical, which closes on Sunday, 18 January 2015; Larvester Gaither examined the role of Duets in Motown.
The Marvalettes, a girl group consisting of Gladys Horton, Katherine Anderson, Georgeanna Tillman, Juanita Cowart and Wanda Young, recorded Motown’s first number one pop hit, “Please Mr. Postman.” The upbeat song topped both the pop and R&B charts, making the Marvalettes one of the first all-girl groups in the industry to achieve such a feat. Thus, from its beginning, women would play a pivotal role in shaping Motown’s collective yet multifaceted identity. No less than 60% of the top 100 singles released by girl groups during the sixties emanated from Hitsville, U.S.A., as Motown came to be known. Even with the monumental success of its male artists who comprised roughly 60% of the label’s talent during this period, the same could not be said.
One of Motown’s key ingredients for success was the collaborative effort Gordy managed to convey to his organization’s artists, musicians, writers, producers and singers. In this regard, girl group The Andantes was the secret ingredient to Motown’s rise to prominence during the sixties.
Comprised of Detroit natives Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow and Louvain Demps, the versatile and multitalented session group provided background vocals for nearly 80 percent of the hit records produced by Motown during the sixties. Five songs including them as background vocals topped the Billboard’s popular music chart: Mary Well’s “My Guy,” Four Top’s “Reach Out I’ll Be There” and “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” Diana Ross & The Supremes’ “Love Child” and “Someday We’ll be Together.” No doubt, many of the acts during the first half of the sixties decade benefitted from the highly acclaimed production team consisting of Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, and a talented group of musicians nicknamed The Funk Brothers. Yet, a cursory listen to tunes created by the Holland-Dozier-Holland team reveals how heavily they relied upon the Andantes. In fact, they were featured on literally all of the Four Top’s hit singles.
In addition to singing background vocals, Barrow sometimes stood in for Florence Ballard of The Supremes during concerts and between 1968–69, substituted for Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong on the Supremes’ recordings. From 1965–67, the Andantes replaced the Marvalettes in the studio; the group’s final album The Return of the Marvalettes could have been titled Wanda Young and the Andantes, as Young was the only remaining original member of The Marvalettes. The Andantes dissolved as a group once Gordy relocated the company to Los Angeles in 1972, but they could be heard by a new generation as late as 2002 on rap musician Jay Z’s album, Blueprint 2: The Gift and the Curse, as he sampled “The Marvalettes” cover of Smokey Robinson’s “All of Me” on the single “Poppin Tags.”
The Marvalettes
The Marvalettes’ “Please Mr. Postman” remains a classic in popular culture. Early on, The Beatles, The Carpenters, and Diana Ross & The Supremes covered it; more recently, popular rap artist Lil Wayne sampled The Carpenters’ version on a track titled “Mr. Postman.” They are considered one of the top girl groups of all time and, to a large extent, rivaled Motown’s most successful group, The Supremes. Aside from being Motown’s first successful girl group, they actually wrote some of their earlier hits. For example, their second top 10 single, “Playboy,” was written by member Gladys Horton. However, The Marvalettes were reluctant to veer too far away from the R&B genre. When the Holland-Dozier-Holland team wrote “Where Did Our Love Go,” it was originally intended for them but was passed on to The Supremes because they were looking for a hit.
The Supremes (Diana Ross & The Supremes) was not only Motown’s most successful girl group but also one of the most popular groups of the twentieth century, at their height rivaling the Beatles. Diana Ross, Florence Ballard, and Mary Wilson were teenagers from Inkster, Michigan when they signed with Motown in 1961. Ironically, their rise to stardom was not as meteoric as previous Motown girl groups but eventually far exceeded the others in terms of commercial success and international acclaim. It would take three years for the group to make a dent in the industry.
The first eight singles released by The Supremes were only moderately successful, just enough to keep the teenagers motivated; after all, they were signed with Detroit’s biggest record company and they could occasionally hear their songs playing on local radio stations. However only one of these singles, “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes,” reached higher than 75 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at 30. When the Holland-Dozier-Holland team presented the teens with a tune that had been turned down by The Marvalettes, they lacked such leverage and had no choice but to accept the challenge of turning what also appeared to them a childish song into a hit. Instead of the usual, intricate harmonic patterns Wilson and Ballard were growing accustomed to, with “Where Did Our Love Go,” the refrain was simply, “Baby Baby, Where did our love go?” and, thus, relied heavily Diana Ross’s stylistic interpretations of the song’s lyrics to make it meaningful.
Released in 1964, the song’s success was also owed to the group’s superb stage presence. That summer, Motown’s Brenda Holloway had achieved success with “Every Little Bit Hurts” and radio and television personality Dick Clark was lining up acts for his Caravan of Stars. Clark seemed in awe of Holloway’s voice and approached Motown intent on including her as a headliner, but Gordy insisted that The Supremes be attached to the deal. Clark reluctantly agreed, yet during the tour The Supremes were billed simply as “and others.” Nevertheless, as they won over concert audiences around the country, the song steadily climbed the charts, eventually peaking at Billboard’s top spot. With the success of “Where Did Our Love Go,” The Supremes began touring abroad, and within a few months had achieved their second number one hit with “Baby Love.” “Baby Love,” topped charts in both the United States and Britain. Europe would quickly follow suit, making The Supremes’ an international phenomenon that would score unprecedented five consecutive number one hits. Altogether, 12 of their singles during the sixties topped the Billboard 100.
Martha and the Vandellas originally consisted of Rosalind Ashford, Annette Beard, and Gloria Williams. With Williams’s departure in 1962, Martha Reeves joined the group and became its lead singer. The group recorded all their singles for Motown’s Gordy imprint. Very talented singers, the group’s repertoire spanned rock, pop, blues, and R&B. Once signed in 1962, it didn’t take the Vandellas long to find success with Motown, as they were the first group to benefit from the Holland-Dozier-Holland production team. “Come and Get the Memories” peaked at 25 and 6 respectively on Billboard’s Hot 100 Pop and R&B charts. “Heat Wave,” a song about a women’s heated desire for a guy she’s in love with, climbed to number 4 on the pop chart and earned The Vandellas the distinction of becoming the first Motown group to be nominated for a Grammy.
Their most popular song, however, was “Dancing in the Streets,” a song written by William “Mickey” Stevenson, Ivy Jo Hunter, and Marvin Gaye. The song’s principal writer, Stevenson, was inspired to write the song after witnessing people dancing in the streets of Detroit, often times opening fire hydrants to cool off. But while the song’s lyrics and up-tempo rhythms were meant to convey a feeling of optimism and fun-spiritedness—a song people could dance to—others believed the song was a call to riot. As cities burned that summer, “Dancing in the Streets” became a metaphor for riotous protest born of despair and indignation. The song would aptly capture the mood of youthful rebellion at the height of the Civil Rights movement, climbing to the second spot on the Billboard Pop chart and number 4 on UK’s pop chart, all the while becoming a fiery anthem for youth throughout the United States.
The Velvelettes were formed in 1961 and its original members consisted of Bertha Barbee McNeal, Mildred Gill Arbor, Carolyn Gill, Norma Barbee, and Betty Kelly. Sandra Tilley joined the group in 1966 but left a year later to replace Rosalind Ashford of the Vandellas. Signed in 1962, the group recorded “There He Goes” and “That’s the Reason Why” in 1963. However, their breakthrough came in 1964 with the release of “Needle in A Haystack,” a single that reached 45 on Billboard’s Hot 100 that year. But by 1964, Motown was expending its focus on The Supremes. Nevertheless, the group continued to perform concerts during this period and recorded in the studio for Motown up until their final release “These Things Will Keep Me Loving You,” an R&B song that reached the top 50. The Supremes and Martha and the Vandellas also recorded some of The Velvelettes’ material during this period. The Velvelettes finally dissolved as group in 1967 but played a pivotal part in the overall scheme of Motown’s success between 1962-67.
Though the girl group phenomenon of the 1960s faded, female musicians continued to be successful and influential at Motown and in music generally.
On 12 January 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Tamla Records in Detroit, Michigan. A year later it would be incorporated with a new name that became synonymous with a sound, style, and generation of music: Motown. All this week we’re looking the great artists and tracks that emerged from those recording studios. Yesterday, we spoke to Charles Randolph-Wright, the Director of Broadway’s Motown the Musical, which closes on Sunday, 18 January 2015.
Perhaps no other record label in America’s music history performed a more significant role in fashioning Rhythm and Blues’ assimilation into the country’s popular culture than Motown Records. Founded by Detroit songwriter Berry Gordy, Jr. in 1959, Motown (originally named Tamla Records) began producing hit records almost from its inception and continued to do so throughout the sixties. During this period, Motown and its subsidiary labels recorded 110 top 10 hit songs and became the standard bearer for black music. As Motown evolved from a small African American record label into a colossal, international industry giant with unprecedented crossover appeal, several women played noteworthy roles in shaping its storied development.
While Motown carved out a niche for itself for effectively crafting successful girl groups, some female artists, notably Mary Wells and Brenda Holloway, triumphed as soloists. In addition, female artists contributed to the company’s overall success as writers and as background vocalists for fellow label artists. Many left a lasting impression through duets with male artists.
Kim Weston and Marvin Gaye
Kim Weston achieved success as a soloist but it was her duets with the legendary Marvin Gaye that etched her name in the annals of Motown. Her stint with the company began in 1961 with the single, “Love Me All the Way,” a high pitched, blues song that reached 24 and 88 on Billboard’s R&B and Pop charts respectively. In 1964, Motown released “What Good Am I Without You,” a moderately successful duet with Marvin Gaye. During the following year, in 1965, soulful dance hit “Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)” reached number 4 on the R&B and peaked at 50 on the pop chart. But “It Takes Two” was Weston’s greatest contribution to Motown. The song peaked at 4 on the R&B chart, 14 on the pop, and 16 on the UK. Released in 1966, the duet album with Weston was also Gaye’s most successful musical achievement up to that point and laid the basis for his subsequent duets with Tammy Terrell, who was hired by Motown after Weston left the label for MGM in 1967.
Gaye would perform with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, and Diana Ross but his best, most lasting material came from duets with Terrell. Born Thomasina Winifred Montgomery, Terrell and Gaye recorded three albums for Motown. United and You’re All I Need both reached the top five on Billboard’s R&B chart but, more importantly, the pair achieved a charismatic presence on stage that was augmented by numerous television appearances. While performing onstage at a concert in Hamden-Sydney College in October of 1967, Terrell collapsed in Gaye’s arms and was diagnosed with a malignant tumor shortly after. Terrell and Gaye recorded a third album titled Easy that was released in 1969.
By the end of the sixties, female artists would continue to play a defining role not only at Motown but also in the broader industry. No doubt, they would continue to face challenges, many of which their male counterparts didn’t have to face. Nevertheless, they should be credited with opening the doors for later female artists and ensuring black music’s ongoing impact upon global popular culture.
On 12 January 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Tamla Records in Detroit, Michigan. A year later it would be incorporated with a new name that became synonymous with a sound, style, and generation of music: Motown. All this week we’re looking the great artists and tracks that emerged from those recording studios. To kick us off, we spoke to Charles Randolph-Wright, the Director of Broadway’s Motown the Musical, which closes on Sunday, 18 January 2015.
Can you name your top five favorite Motown songs?
No. They change daily and some of them are only album tracks that many may not know.
You’ve talked about how “What’s Going On” is one of your favorite songs from this project because of its message of hope and change. Do you see this theme of social justice reemerging in popular music today?
I hope that theme is remerging because it is necessary. Motown was more than just music. It was a movement. Music has the power to change, to encourage, to heal. We need that now more than ever.
How have some of the legends of Motown responded to the show?
They have loved it, and seen it several times, which attests to their feelings about it. It was most important to me that we honor them because they opened the doors through which we now all walk. Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Mary Wilson, Martha Reeves, and so many others have been there supporting us—and not just the performers, also writers like Holland Dozier and people behind the scenes, people behind the records have given us their stamp of approval. That means everything to us.
Throughout the show you get to see a great number of female artists that came through Hitsville U.S.A. What role do you think women played in Motown’s growth and success?
Motown was one of the first companies where women were in charge. Many women at Motown were in key positions, including Berry Gordy’s sisters (who had a label before him). Women like Suzanne DePasse and Edna Anderson (both represented in the show) still continue to have a major voice in the entertainment industry. Motown opened so many different doors, and continues that legacy.
Brandon Victor Dixon and the Original Broadway Cast of Motown the Musical. Courtesy of Motown the Musical
The show has attracted many people from near and far, of all ages showing the power of good music. Do you think that a show like Motown serves as a gateway for younger individuals to learn about and appreciate classics from artists like Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, and other Motown artists whose influence are still heard in today’s music?
Absolutely, and it is an aspect that gives me great pride. Watching all ages, all colors, all political persuasions singing and dancing together gives me hope.
Can you describe Motown’s lasting legacy using lyrics from a Hitsville song?
The legacy of Motown can best be described using the lyrics from an original song that Berry Gordy wrote for the show:
“IT COULD HAVE THE GREATEST SOUND BUT WHEN YOU PUT THAT NEEDLE DOWN IT’S WHAT’S IN THE GROOVES THAT COUNTS!”
Stay tuned for new articles every day this week celebrating Motown.
Headline image credit: Marva Hicks, Brandon Victor Dixon, and the Original Broadway Cast of Motown the Musical. Courtesy of Motown the Musical.
Josephine Baker, the mid-20th century performance artist, provocatrix, and muse, led a fascinating transatlantic life. I recently had the opportunity to pose a few questions to Anne A. Cheng, Professor of English and African American Literature at Princeton University and author of the book Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface, about her research into Baker’s life, work, influence, and legacy.
Josephine Baker, as photographed by Carl Von Vechten in 1949. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Baker made her career in Europe and notably inspired a number of European artists and architects, including Picasso and Le Corbusier. What was it about Baker that spoke to Europeans? What did she represent for them?
It has been traditionally understood that Baker represents a “primitive” figure for male European artists and architects who found in Baker an example of black animality and regressiveness; that is, she was their primitive muse. Yet this view cannot account for why many famous female artists were also fascinated by her, nor does it explain why Baker in particular would come to be the figure of so much profound artistic investment. I would argue that it is in fact Baker’s “modernity” (itself understood as an expression of hybrid and borrowed art forms) rather than her “primitiveness” that made her such a magnetic figure. In short, the modernists did not go to her to watch a projection of an alienating blackness; rather, they were held in thrall by a reflection of their own art’s racially complex roots. This is another way of saying that, when someone like Picasso looked at a tribal African mask or a figure like Baker who mimics Western ideas of Africa, what he saw was not just radical otherness but a much more ambivalent mirror of the West’s own complicity in constructing and imagining that “otherness.”
Baker was present at the March on Washington in August 1963 and stood with Martin Luther King Jr. as he gave his “I have a dream” speech. What did Baker contribute to the struggle for civil rights? How was her success in foreign countries understood within the African American community?
These are well-known facts about Baker’s biography: in the latter part of her life, Baker became a very public figure for the causes of social justice and equality. During World War II, she served as an intelligence liaison and an ambulance driver for the French Resistance and was awarded the Medal of the Resistance and the Legion of Honor. Soon after the war, Baker toured the United States again and won respect and praise from African Americans for her support of the civil rights movement. In 1951, she refused to play to segregated audiences and, as a result, the NAACP named her its Most Outstanding Woman of the Year. She gave a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall for the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality in 1963.
What is fascinating as well, however, is the complication that Baker represents to and for the African American community. Prior to the war and her more public engagement with the civil rights movement, she was not always a welcome figure either in the African American community or for the larger mainstream American public. Her sensational fame abroad was not duplicated in the states, and her association with primitivism made her at times an embarrassment for the African American community. A couple of times before the war, Baker returned to perform in the United States and was not well received, much to her grief. I would suggest that Baker should be celebrated not only for her more recognizable civil rights activism, but also for her art: performances which far exceed the simplistic labels that have been placed on them and which few have actually examined as art. These performances, when looked at more closely, embody and generate powerful and intricate political meditations about what it means to be a black female body on stage.
Did your research into Baker’s life uncover any surprising or unexpected bits of information? What was the greatest challenge you experienced in carrying out your research?
I was repeatedly stunned by how much writing has been generated about her life (from facts to gossip) but how little attention has been paid to really analyzing her work, be it on stage or in film. The work itself is so idiosyncratic and layered and complex that this critical oversight is really a testament to how much we have been blinded by our received image of her. I was also surprised to learn how insecure she was about her singing voice when it is in fact a very unique voice with great adaptability. Baker’s voice can be deep and sonorous or high and pitchy, depending on the context of each performance. In the film Zou Zou, for example, Baker is shown dressed in feathers, singing while swinging inside a giant gilded bird cage. Many reviewers criticized her performance as jittery and staccato. But I suggest that her voice was actually mimicking the sounds that would be made, not by a real bird, but by a mechanical bird and, in doing so, reminding us that we are not seeing naturalized primitive animality at all, but its mechanical reconstruction.
For me, the challenge of writing the story of Baker rests in learning how to delineate a material history of race that forgoes the facticity of race. The very visible figure of Baker has taught me a counterintuitive lesson: that the history of race, while being very material and with very material impacts, is nonetheless crucially a history of the unseen and the ineffable. The other great challenge is the question of style. I wanted to write a book about Baker that imitates or at least acknowledges the fluidity that is Baker. This is why, in these essays, Baker appears, disappears, and reappears to allow into view the enigmas of the visual experience that I think Baker offers.
Baker’s naked skin famously scandalized audiences in Paris, and your book is, in many respects, an extended analysis of the significance of Baker’s skin. Why study Josephine Baker and her skin today? What does she represent for the study of art, race, and American history? Did your interest in studying Baker develop gradually, or were you immediately intrigued by her?
I started out writing a book about the politics of race and beauty. Then, as part of this larger research, I forced myself to watch Josephine Baker’s films. I say “forced” because I was dreading seeing exactly the kind of racist images and performances that I have heard so much about. But what I saw stunned, puzzled, and haunted me. Could this strange, moving, and coated figure of skin, clothes, feathers, dirt, gold, oil, and synthetic sheen be the simple “black animal” that everyone says she is? I started writing about her, essay after essay, until a dear friend pointed out that I was in fact writing a book about Baker.
Tim Allen is an Assistant Editor for the Oxford African American Studies Center. You can follow him on Twitter @timDallen.
The Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture.
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When I was approached by the good folks at Oxford University Press to write some entries on jazz artists, I noticed that while the biggest names (Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc.) were already covered, many other artists were also deserving of entries. There were several qualities that I looked for in musicians before suggesting that they be written about. Each musician had to have a distinctive sound (always a prerequisite before any artist is considered a significant jazz musician), a strong body of work, and recordings that sound enjoyable today. It did not matter if the musician’s prime was in the 1920s or today. If their recordings still sounded good, they were eligible to be given prestigious entries in the African American National Biography.
In each case, in addition to including the musicians’ basic biographical information, key associations, and recordings, I have included a few sentences that place each artist in their historic perspective, talking about how they fit into their era, describing their style, and discussing their accomplishments. Some musicians had only a brief but important prime period, but there is a surprising number of artists whose careers lasted over 50 years. In the case of Benny Carter, the alto saxophonist/arranger was in his musical prime for a remarkable 70 years, still sounding great when he retired after his 90th birthday.
Jazz, whether from 90 years ago or today, has always overflowed with exciting talents. While jazz history books often simplify events, making it seem as if there were only a handful of giants, the number of jazz greats is actually in the hundreds. There was more to the 1920s than Louis Armstrong, more to the swing era than Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller, and more to the classic bebop era than Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. For example, while Duke Ellington is justly celebrated, during the 49 years that he led his orchestra, he often had as many as ten major soloists in his band at one time, all of whom had colorful and interesting lives.
Because jazz has had such a rich history, it is easy for reference books and encyclopedias to overlook the very viable scene of today. The music did not stop with the death of John Coltrane in 1967 or the end of the fusion years in the late 1970s. Because the evolution of jazz was so rapid between 1920 and 1980, continuing in almost a straight line as the music became freer and more advanced, it is easy (but inaccurate) to say that the music has not continued evolving. What has happened during the past 35 years is that instead of developing in one basic way, the music evolved in a number of directions. The music world became smaller and many artists utilized aspects of World and folk music to create new types of “fusions.” Some musicians explored earlier styles in creative ways, ranging from 1920s jazz to hard bop. The avant-garde or free jazz scene introduced many new musicians, often on small label releases. And some of the most adventurous players combined elements of past styles — such as utilizing plunger mutes on horns or engaging in collective improvisations — to create something altogether new.
While many veteran listeners might call one period or another jazz’s “golden age,” the truth is that the music has been in its prime since around 1920 (when records became more widely available) and is still in its golden age today. While jazz deserves a much larger audience, there is no shortage of creative young musicians of all styles and approaches on the scene today. The future of jazz is quite bright and the African American National Biography’s many entries on jazz greats reflect that optimism.
Scott Yanow is the author of eleven books on jazz, including The Great Jazz Guitarists, The Jazz Singers, Trumpet Kings, Jazz On Record 1917-76, and Jazz On Film.
The Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. It provides students, scholars and librarians with more than 10,000 articles by top scholars in the field.
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Subscribe to only American history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS. Image Credit: Kenny Barron 2001, Munich/Germany. Photo by Sven.petersen, public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Emancipation was problematic, indeed disastrous, for so many freedpeople, particularly in terms of their health. What was the connection between newfound freedom and health?
I would not say that emancipation was problematic; it was a critical and necessary step in ending slavery. I would first argue that emancipation was not an ending point but part of a protracted process that began with the collapse of slavery. By examining freedpeople’s health conditions, we can see how that process unfolded—we can see how enslaved people liberated themselves from the shackles of Southern plantations but then were confronted with a number of questions: How would they survive? Where would they get their next meal? Where were they to live? How would they survive in a country torn apart by war and disease?
Due to the fact that freedpeople lacked many of these basic necessities, hundreds of thousands of former slaves became sick and died.
The traditional narrative of emancipation begins with liberation from slavery in 1862-63 and follows freedpeople returning to Southern plantations after the war for employment in 1865 and then culminates with grassroots political mobilization that led to the Reconstruction Amendments in the late 1860s. This story places formal politics as the central organizing principle in the destruction of slavery and the movement toward citizenship without considering the realities of freedpeople’s lives during this seven- to eight- year period. By investigating freedpeople’s health conditions, we first notice that many formerly enslaved people died during this period and did not live to see the amendments that granted citizenship and suffrage. They survived slavery but perished during emancipation—a fact that few historians have considered. Additionally, for those that did survive both slavery and emancipation, it was not such a triumphant story; without food, clothing, shelter, and medicine, emancipation unleashed a number of insurmountable challenges for the newly freed.
Was the health crisis that befell freedpeople after emancipation any person, government, or organization’s fault? Was the lack of a sufficient social support system a product of ignorance or, rather, a lack of concern?
The health crises that befell freedpeople after emancipation resulted largely from the mere fact that no one considered how freedpeople would survive the war and emancipation; no one was prepared for the human realities of emancipation. Congress and the President focused on the political question that emancipation raised: what was the status of formerly enslaved people in the Republic?
When the federal government did consider freedpeople’s condition in the final years of the war, they thought the solution was to simply return freedpeople to Southern plantations as laborers. Yet, no one in Washington thought through the process of agricultural production: Where was the fertile land? (Much of it was destroyed during the war; and countless acres were depleted before the war, which was why Southern planters wanted to move west.) How long would crops grow? How would freedpeople survive in the meantime?
Meanwhile, a drought erupted in the immediate aftermath of the war that thwarted even the most earnest attempts to develop a free labor economy in the South. Therefore, as a historian, I am less invested in arguing that someone is at fault, and more committed to understanding the various economic and political forces that led to the outbreak of sickness and suffering. Creating a new economic system in the South required time and planning; it could not be accomplished simply by sending freedpeople back to Southern plantations and farms. And in the interim of this process, which seemed like a good plan by federal leaders in Washington, a different reality unfolded on the ground in the postwar South. Land and labor did not offer an immediate panacea to the war’s destruction, the process of emancipation, and the ultimate rebuilding of the South. Consequently, freedpeople suffered during this period.
When the federal government did establish the Medical Division of the Freedmen’s Bureau – an agency that established over 40 hospitals in the South, employed over 120 physicians, and treated an estimated one million freedpeople — the institution often lacked the finances, personnel, and resources to stop the spread of disease. In sum, the government did not create this division with a humanitarian — or to use 19th century parlance, “benevolence” — mission, but rather designed this institution with the hope of creating a healthy labor force.
So, if an epidemic broke out, the Bureau would do its best to stop its spread. Yet, as soon as the number of patients declined, the Bureau shut down the hospital. The Bureau relied on a system of statistical reporting that dictated the lifespan of a hospital. When a physician reported a declining number of patients treated, admitted, or died in the hospital, Washington officials would order the hospital to be closed. However, the statistical report failed to capture the actual behavior of a virus, like smallpox. Just because the numbers declined in a given period did not mean that the virus stopped spreading among susceptible freedpeople. Often, it continued to infect formerly enslaved people, but because the initial symptoms of smallpox got confused with other illnesses it was overlooked. Or, as was often the case, the Bureau doctor in an isolated region noticed a decline among a handful of patients, but not too far away in a neighboring plantation or town, where the Bureau doctor did not visit, smallpox spread and remained unreported. Yet, according to the documentation at a particular moment the virus seemed to dissipate, which was not the case. So, even when the government, in the shape of Bureau doctors, tried to do its best to halt the spread of the disease, there were not enough doctors stationed throughout the South to monitor the virus, and their methods of reporting on smallpox were problematic.
You draw an interesting distinction between the terms refugee and freedmen as they were applied to emancipated slaves at different times. What did the term refugee entail and how was it a problematic description?
I actually think that freedmen or freedpeople could be a somewhat misleading term, because it defines formerly enslaved people purely in terms of their political status—the term freed places a polish on their condition and glosses over their experience during the war in which the military and federal government defined them as both contraband and refugees. Often forced to live in “contraband camps,” which were makeshift camps that surrounded the perimeter of Union camps, former slaves’ experience resembled a condition more associated with that of refugees. More to the point, the term freed does not seem to jibe with what I uncovered in the records—the Union Army treats formerly enslaved people with contempt, they assign them to laborious work, they feed them scraps, they relegate them to muddy camps where they are lucky if they can use a discarded army tent to protect themselves against the cold and rain. The term freedpeople does not seem applicable to those conditions.
That said, I struggle with my usage of these terms, because on one level they are politically no longer enslaved, but they are not “freed” in the ways in which the prevailing history defines them as politically mobile and autonomous. And then on a simply rhetorical level, freedpeople is a less awkward and clumsy expression than constantly writing formerly enslaved people.
Finally, during the war abolitionists and federal officials argued over these terms and classifications and in the records. During the war years, the Union army referred to the formerly enslaved as refugees, contraband, and even fugitives. When the war ended, the federal government classified formerly enslaved people as freedmen, and used the term refugee to refer to white Southerners displaced by the war. This is fascinating because it implies that white people can be dislocated and strung out but that formerly enslaved people can’t be—and if they are it does not matter, because they are “free.”
Based on your understanding of the historical record, what were Lincoln’s (and the federal government’s) goals in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation? Do you see any differences between these goals and the way in which the Emancipation Proclamation is popularly understood?
The Emancipation Proclamation was a military tactic to deplete the Southern labor force. This was Lincoln’s main goal—it invariably, according to many historians, shifted the focus of the war from a war for the Union to a war of emancipation. I never really understood what that meant, or why there was such a fuss over this distinction, largely because enslaved people had already begun to free themselves before the Emancipation Proclamation and many continued to do so after it without always knowing about the formal proclamation.
The implicit claim historians make when explaining how the motivation for the war shifted seems to imply that the Union soldiers thusly cared about emancipation so that the idea that it was a military tactic fades from view and instead we are placed in a position of imagining Union soldiers entering the Confederacy to destroy slavery—that they were somehow concerned about black people. Yet, what I continue to find in the record is case after case of Union officials making no distinction about the objective of the war and rounding up formerly enslaved people and shuffling them into former slave pens, barricading them in refugee camps, sending them on death marches to regions in need of laborers. I begin to lose my patience when various historians prop up the image of the Union army (or even Lincoln) as great emancipators when on the ground they literally turned their backs on children who starved to death; children who froze to death; children whose bodies were covered with smallpox. So, from where I stand, I see the Emancipation Proclamation as a central, important, and critical document that served a valuable purpose, but the sources quickly divert my attention to the suffering and sickness that defined freedpeople’s experience on the ground.
Do you see any parallels between the situation of post-Civil War freedpeople and the plights of currently distressed populations in the United States and abroad? What can we learn about public health crises, marginalized groups, etc.?
Yes, I do, but I would prefer to put this discussion on hold momentarily and simply say that we can see parallels today, right now. For example, there is a massive outbreak of the flu spreading across the country. Some are even referring to it as an epidemic. Yet in Harlem, New York, the pharmacies are currently operating with a policy that they cannot administer flu shots to children under the age of 17, which means that if a mother took time off from work and made it to Rite Aid, she can’t get her children their necessary shots. Given that all pharmacies in that region follow a particular policy, she and her children are stuck. In Connecticut, Kathy Lee Gifford of NBC’s Today Show relayed a similar problem, but she explained that she continued to travel throughout the state until she could find a pharmacy to administer her husband a flu shot. The mother in Harlem, who relies on the bus or subway, has to wait until Rite Aid revises its policy. Rite Aid is revising the policy now, as I write this response, but this means that everyday that it takes for a well-intentioned, well-meaning pharmacy to amend its rules, the mother in Harlem or mother in any other impoverished area must continue to send her children to school without the flu shot, where they remain susceptible to the virus.
In the Civil War records, I saw a similar health crisis unfold: people were not dying from complicated, unknown illnesses but rather from the failures of a bureaucracy, from the inability to provide basic medical relief to those in need, and from the fact that their economic status greatly determined their access to basic health care.
Tim Allen is an Assistant Editor for the Oxford African American Studies Center.
The Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. It provides students, scholars and librarians with more than 10,000 articles by top scholars in the field.
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On this day forty years ago, the African American psychologist Robert Williams coined the term “Ebonics” during an education conference held at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri. At the time, his audience was receptive to, even enthusiastic about, the word. But invoke the word “Ebonics” today and you’ll have no trouble raising the hackles of educators, journalists, linguists, and anyone else who might have an opinion about how people speak. (That basically accounts for all of us, right?) The meaning of the controversial term, however, has never been entirely stable.
For Williams, Ebonics encompassed not only the language of African Americans, but also their social and cultural histories. Williams fashioned the word “Ebonics”—a portmanteau of the words “ebony” (black) and “phonics” (sounds)—in order to address a perceived lack of understanding of the shared linguistic heritage of those who are descended from African slaves, whether in North America, the Caribbean, or Africa. Williams and several other scholars in attendance at the 1973 conference felt that the then-prevalent term “Black English” was insufficient to describe the totality of this legacy.
Ebonics managed to stay under the radar for the next couple of decades, but then re-emerged at the center of a national controversy surrounding linguistic, cultural, and racial diversity in late 1996. At that time, the Oakland, California school board, in an attempt to address some of the challenges of effectively teaching standard American English to African American schoolchildren, passed a resolution recognizing the utility of Ebonics in the classroom. The resolution suggested that teachers should acknowledge the legitimacy of the language that their students actually spoke and use it as a sort of tool in Standard English instruction. Many critics understood this idea as a lowering of standards and an endorsement of “slang”, but the proposed use of Ebonics in the classroom did not strike most linguists or educators as particularly troublesome. However, the resolution also initially characterized Ebonics as a language nearly entirely separate from English. (For example, the primary advocate of this theory, Ernie Smith, has called Ebonics “an antonym for Black English.” (Beyond Ebonics, p. 21)) The divisive idea that “Ebonics” could be considered its own language—not an English dialect but more closely related to West African languages—rubbed many people the wrong way and gave a number of detractors additional fodder for their derision.
Linguists were quick to respond to the controversy and offer their own understanding of “Ebonics”. In the midst of the Oakland debate, the Linguistic Society of America resolved that Ebonics is a speech variety that is “systematic and rule-governed like all natural speech varieties. […] Characterizations of Ebonics as “slang,” “mutant,” ” lazy,” “defective,” “ungrammatical,” or “broken English” are incorrect and demeaning.” The linguists refused to make a pronouncement on the status of Ebonics as either a language or dialect, stating that the distinction was largely a political or social one. However, most linguists agree on the notion that the linguistic features described by “Ebonics” compose a dialect of English that they would more likely call “African American Vernacular English” (AAVE) or perhaps “Black English Vernacular”. This dialect is one among many American English dialects, including Chicano English, Southern English, and New England English.
And if the meaning of “Ebonics” weren’t muddy enough, a fourth perspective on the term emerged around the time of the Oakland debate. Developed by Professor Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay, this idea takes the original view of Ebonics as a descriptive term for languages spoken by the descendants of West African slaves and expands it to cover the language of anyone from Africa or in the African diaspora. Her Afrocentric vision of Ebonics, in linguist John Baugh’s estimation, “elevates racial unity, but it does so at the expense of linguistic accuracy.” (Beyond Ebonics, p. 23)
Tim Allen is an Assistant Editor for the Oxford African American Studies Center.
The Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. It provides students, scholars and librarians with more than 10,000 articles by top scholars in the field.
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