Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Anniversaries”

MUSIC MONDAY: “SINNERS Playlist” (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: “SINNERS Playlist” (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on May 5, 2025

by Marlon West (Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social, Spotify: marlonwest)

MUSIC MONDAY: “Everyday People”: The Essential Sly and the Family Stone Collection (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: “Everyday People”: The Essential Sly and the Family Stone Collection (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 7, 2025

by Marlon West (Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social, Spotify: marlonwest)

WHM: “Spirit In The Dark” – Celebrating the Brilliant Voice and Pen of Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, Born #OnThisDay

WHM: “Spirit In The Dark” – Celebrating the Brilliant Voice and Pen of Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, Born #OnThisDay

By goodblacknews on March 25, 2025

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder and Editor-in-Chief

It’s commonly known if Aretha Franklin covered a song you wrote and/or recorded, it would from her recording forward be known as her song.

Otis Redding, composer and original performer of “Respect”, said as much at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967: “a girl took [‘Respect’] away from me, a friend of mine, this girl she just took this song.”

Other examples of this usurpation include “I Say A Little Prayer” (composed by Burt Bacharach/Hal David and recorded by Dionne Warwick), “Until You Come Back To Me”(composed by Stevie Wonder) and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (composed by Simon and  Garfunkel).

If you want to hear her versions of these songs along with even more evidence of Aretha’s virtuoso mastery of covers, check the link to my playlist “How I Got Over”: Aretha Franklin’s Cover Songs right here.

But today, on what would have been her 83rd birthday, I’m drawn to the songs that Franklin herself composed or co-wrote — ones that shaped her sound and offered insights into her own mind and soul. A collection of those gems, “Rock Steady”: Songs Aretha Franklin Wrote is included below:

While her classic bangers “Think”, “Dr. Feelgood” and “Rock Steady” contain, comment and reflect upon the energy of the civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s — movements rooted in opposing and dismantling white supremacy and patriarchy — and are more relevant than ever in the current political climate, it’s “Spirit in the Dark” that’s hitting hardest for me today.

Granted, “Spirit in the Dark” is an all-time Aretha favorite of mine, because it is simultaneously the most and least gospel gospel song I’ve ever heard.

It’s mind-blowing, really. The slow, rocking gospel intro, the lift into the chorus, the transition into the hyped up “get the spirit” section – the compositional structure is masterfully classic – yet also feels completely secular and modern in how Franklin arranges it.

The lyrics are as uplifting as they are raunchy and Aretha’s delivery of the song is deliciously desirous and divine. This intentional blurring of what were traditionally thought of as separate lines/sounds/philosophies/lifestyles brings a wholeness, a completeness and a joyousness to both the sacred and profane.

Because really, at the end of the day, life is life, love is love, joy is joy and rapture is rapture. All avenues to it that don’t harm others are all good and it is my strong belief that Aretha knew this and was expressing precisely this in this original song of hers – and throughout her life.

“Spirit in the Dark” expresses for me what I’ve been feeling since the fully disappointing result of the 2024 Presidential Election – the desire to connect to real spirit or be a real spirit amid the collective darkness and doom. To live our truths no matter what systemic forces attempt to proscribe or prohibit for us.

Also, it gave me the glorious excuse to rewatch and share the 15 minute video above of the live 1971 performance of “Spirit In The Dark” at the Filmore West where Aretha plays the Wurlitzer, spirit dances across the stage (damn if she doesn’t do an early version of the moonwalk in here!) and spontaneously brings up Ray Charles to riff and workout on the track as well.

As I wrote several years ago in elegy to her 2018 passing, among so many other things, Aretha Franklin was a Black woman from Detroit by way of Memphis who forever looked like my grandmother, my mother, my auntie, my deacon – and lived in the kind of body brought to this nation solely to serve this nation, not to sway it.

Yet that’s exactly what she did, with the breadth of a brilliance that will be revered and remembered forever.

WHM: How Evangelist and Guitar Pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Turned Her Rock of Ages into Rock N Roll

WHM: How Evangelist and Guitar Pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Turned Her Rock of Ages into Rock N Roll

By goodblacknews on March 20, 2025

Born on this day in 1915, Rosetta Tharpe revolutionized the sound of electric guitar by using distortion with her unique phrasing & picking, inspiring Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Johnny Cash & Elvis Presley

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief

Born in 1915 in Cotton Plant, Arkansas to musical parents who also worked as cotton pickers, Tharpe was a musical prodigy who is reported to have picked up a guitar at four and began performing at age six with her mother, Katie Bell Nubin, a traveling evangelist and mandolin player for the Church of God in Christ.

Though strictly a gospel performer at the outset, by early adulthood, Tharpe started blending spiritual lyrics with the secular sounds of the time, bringing gospel music into nightclubs, while introducing elements of rhythm and blues to church audiences.

At 23, Tharpe started recording her genre-bending sound for Decca Records, resulting in hits such as “Rock Me” and “That’s All”. Tharpe was hired by Lucky Millinder in 1941 to sing and play with his swing band, and toured with them for years performing even more worldly material, including uptempo dance numbers such as “I Want A Tall Skinny Papa”.

Though considered transgressive and controversial at the time, causing an uproar among the gospel community, this boundary-crossing by Tharpe ultimately cemented her legacy as “Godmother of Rock and Roll.”

Though it was rare for women to play guitar in the 1930s and 1940s, Tharpe was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, and her picking technique and phrasing influenced countless artists who followed, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash.

Little Richard cited Tharpe as one of his major influences, and Chuck Berry once said his career was “one long Rosetta Tharpe impression.”

When you hear Tharpe-penned songs like “That’s All”, “This Train”, “I Want To Live So God Can Use Me” or her covers of gospel tunes like “Just A Closer Walk With Thee”, “Precious Lord, Hold My Hand”, “I Want Jesus To Walk Around My Bedside”or “Strange Things Happening Every Day”, you know neither Richard nor Berry were exaggerating.

Tharpe synthesized blues, hokum, hillbilly, gospel and swing music into her own rocking brand of strumming, bending, picking and vocalizing.

Tharpe’s inclusion on the brief-but-innovative track “Smoke Hour ⭐️ Willie Nelson” on Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning LP Cowboy Carter (2024) inspired me to revisit Tharpe’s foundational, liminal music last year via The Decca Singles, Volumes 1-5compilation series (streaming on Spotify and Apple Music), which covers her early recordings plus her big band, Trio and her later work.

“Smoke Hour ⭐️ Willie Nelson” features a radio dial switching between yodeling, blues, gospel & 50s rock n roll until we land on K-N-T-R-Y station DJ Willie Nelson teeing up Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” into this lineage. The lone female voice heard among the dial turns? Tharpe singing her iconic version of “Down By The Riverside”.

Tharpe was known for her exuberant performances (secular & non-secular) & often her only accompaniment was her own dynamic guitar playing.

A personal Tharpe favorite is “Didn’t It Rain”), where she’s backed by the Sam Price Trio, trades vocals with frequent collaborator Marie Knight and rips an electrifying guitar solo – this song goes so hard and is still so infectious, I can’t help myself from bopping along every time I hear it.

Below is video of her famous live 1966 performance of it in France:

Tharpe was finally inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, and in 2024 Gibson Guitars debuted the Rosetta Tharpe Collection of merchandise in tribute to her (including a miniature replica of the iconic 1961 Les Paul she used to play, but she is still not well-known enough for her vital contributions to American music, even with the Cowboy Carter hat tip.

To learn more about Tharpe, check out the 2008 biography Shout, Sister, Shout: The Untold Story of Rock-And-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle Wald, watch the 2011 documentary The Godmother of Rock and Roll – Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Gibson Guitars-produced short documentary Shout, Sister, Shout: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, as well as performance clips of her available on YouTube.

Sources:

MUSIC MONDAY: “The Essential Jimmy Scott” Playlist (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: “The Essential Jimmy Scott” Playlist (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on February 17, 2025

by Marlon West (Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social, Spotify: marlonwest)

Marlon West (photo courtesy Marlon West)
The History of Black History Month and Why Dr. Carter G. Woodson is Known as “The Father of Black History”

The History of Black History Month and Why Dr. Carter G. Woodson is Known as “The Father of Black History”

By goodblacknews on February 1, 2025

Born in 1875 in Virginia to formerly enslaved parents who were never taught to read and write, Carter G. Woodson often had to forgo school for farm or mining work to make ends meet, but was encouraged to learn independently and eventually earned advanced degrees from the University of Chicago and Harvard.

It was at these lauded institutions of higher education where Dr. Woodson began to realize these new educational opportunities for Negroes were potentially as damaging as they were helpful, if not more so, as much of the curriculum was biased and steeped in white supremacy.

In 1916, Dr. Woodson helped found the Journal of Negro History with Jesse E. Moreland, intent on providing scholarly records and analysis of all aspects of the African-American experience that were lacking in his collegiate studies.

As Dr. Woodson researched and chronicled civilizations in Africa and their historical advancements in mathematics, science, language and literature that were rarely discussed in academic circles, he also criticized the systematic ways Black people post-Civil War were being “educated” into subjugation and self-oppression:

“The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worthwhile, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples. The Negro thus educated is a hopeless liability of the race.”

In 1926, Dr. Woodson began promoting the second week of February as Negro History Week. He chose this week in February intentionally, as it overlapped the birthdays of abolitionist activist Frederick Douglass (February 14) and President Abraham Lincoln (February 12) aka “The Great Emancipator.”

MUSIC MONDAY: “Ultimate Soul of the Season” – The Black Christmas Soundtrack for 2024 (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: “Ultimate Soul of the Season” – The Black Christmas Soundtrack for 2024 (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on December 16, 2024

by Jeff Meier (FB: Jeff.Meier.90)

Hey Good Black News Fam – it’s time for a bonus playlist – this year’s edition of “Ultimate Soul of the Season – The Black Christmas Soundtrack 2024 Edition,” which you can click here: Ultimate Soul of the Season – The Black Christmas Soundtrack – Expanded for 2024

Each year, we’ve updated our popular holiday music song mix by adding a selection of new releases and new discoveries, and though we’re a little late this year, better late than never.

Now reaching over 45 hours long, it’s intended to be a mainstream background for your Christmas season – like those radio stations that turn holiday music 24/7 – except that all the music is done by Black artists (with an occasional duet with a soulful ally).

The big new Black holiday release this year comes from Jennifer Hudson (from her album The Gift of Love), but there are also new yule tunes from Mary J. Blige, Kanye West’s Sunday Service Choir, H.E.R., and other American Idol vets like Ruben Studdard and Jordin Sparks, modern jazz master Robert Glasper featuring Wicked superstar Cynthia Erivo, ‘it’ girls Coco Jones and Saweetie.

Broadway stars Norm Lewis and Ariana DeBose are also represented, along with veteran Black Brits Rebecca Ferguson, Craig David and Deniece Pearson (of Five Star fame), Tower of Power, Eric Roberson and gospel stars Anthony Evans, Jonathan McReynolds, Naomi Raine, BeBe Winans and CeCe Winans.

Fourteen Years Ago Today: Good Black News Was Founded

Fourteen Years Ago Today: Good Black News Was Founded

By goodblacknews on March 18, 2024

Every year on March 18, Good Black News celebrates the day of its founding. We continue that tradition today, fourteen years after GBN’s inception.

Even though the last two years have been challenging (details here), and changes in how people consume content (eg. TikTok, IG, IG Stories, Reels) have led to way fewer postings on the main goodblacknews.org site, we are still exceedingly proud of all we’ve offered and accomplished over the years, even as we continue to find our footing as we attempt to evolve and forge ahead into the future.

We are slowly sharing more content on GBN’s Instagram, Facebook, Threads and BlueSky profiles, figuring out what we can offer on TikTok, and every month we are still happy to offer new and/or updated Music Monday playlists from our incredible music contributors Marlon West and Jeff Meier.

I also want to acknowledge 2023’s other volunteer contributors in alphabetical order: Julie Bibb, Gina Fattore, Julie Fishman, Michael Giltz, Warren Hutcherson, Fred Johnson, Epiphany Jordan, Brenda Lakin, Joyce Lakin, John Levinson, Dena Loverde, Catherine Metcalf, Flynn Richardson, Maeve Richardson, Becky Schonbrun, and Teddy Tenenbaum. 

You are all deeply, greatly appreciated.

But what truly keeps me, my co-editor Lesa Lakin and all of GBN’s wonderful volunteer contributors going is the appreciation you’ve shown us over the years and still show via follows, likes, comments, shares, reblogs, DMs and e-mails (even when we are overwhelmed and can’t respond to them all).

Your support means the world, and inspires me as Editor-in-Chief to keep working to find ways to keep GBN alive here on the main page as well as on Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, RSS feed, LinkedIn and Flipboard, and yeah, our sometime-y GBN newsletter you may get via email.

We are looking into switching over from a newsletter to a GBN Substack, so if you are interested in that, please consider joining our e-mail list via our “Contact Us” tab on goodblacknews.org. We will only use this list for GBN. And, of course, you may opt out whenever you like.

Thank you again for your support, and we look forward to providing you with more Good Black News on as many platforms as we can in the coming months and beyond!

Warmly,

Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief
Thirteen Years Ago Today: Good Black News Was Founded

Thirteen Years Ago Today: Good Black News Was Founded

By goodblacknews on March 18, 2023

Every year on March 18, Good Black News celebrates the day of its founding. We continue that tradition today, thirteen years after GBN’s inception.

Even though this past year has been particularly challenging (details here), and led to way fewer postings on the main goodblacknews.org site as well as the cessation of the GBN Daily Drop Podcast, we are still exceedingly proud of all we’ve offered and accomplished over the years, even as we continue to search for our new footing as we forge ahead into the future.

We were glad to publish “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day Calendar for 2023” via Page-A-Day.com, of which we are sharing some of the contents on GBN’s Instagram, Facebook and Twitter (it’s still available in its entirety for a limited time on Amazon.com).

And although it’s no longer weekly, every month we are happy to offer new and/or updated Music Monday playlists from our incredible music contributors Marlon West and Jeff Meier.

I also want to acknowledge 2022’s other volunteer contributors in alphabetical order: Julie Bibb, Gina Fattore, Julie Fishman, Michael Giltz, Warren Hutcherson, Fred Johnson, Epiphany Jordan, Brenda Lakin, Joyce Lakin, John Levinson, Dena Loverde, Catherine Metcalf, Flynn Richardson, Maeve Richardson, Becky Schonbrun, and Teddy Tenenbaum. 

You are all deeply, greatly appreciated.

But what truly keeps me, my co-editor Lesa Lakin and all of GBN’s wonderful volunteer contributors going is the appreciation you’ve shown us over the years and still show via follows, likes, comments, shares, reblogs, DMs and e-mails (even when we are overwhelmed and can’t respond to them all).

Your support means the world, and inspires me as Editor-in-Chief to keep working to find ways to improve GBN on the main page as well as on Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, RSS feed, LinkedIn and Flipboard, and yeah, our sometime-y GBN newsletter you can get via email.

Please continue to help us spread GBN by sharing, liking, re-tweeting and commenting, and consider following GBN on the main page, as well as wherever you are on social media.

Please also consider joining our e-mail list via our “Contact Us” tab on goodblacknews.org. We will only use this list to keep you updated on GBN and send you our e-newsletter from time to time. And, of course, you may opt out whenever you like.

Thank you again for your support, and we look forward to providing you with more Good Black News in the coming months and beyond!

Warmly,

Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief
GBN’s Daily Drop: Good Black News Was Founded 12 Years Ago Today (LISTEN)

GBN’s Daily Drop: Good Black News Was Founded 12 Years Ago Today (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on March 18, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Today’s GBN Daily Drop podcast is all about… GBN! Good Black News was founded 12 years ago today, and I celebrate it and our volunteer contributors proudly in the Friday, March 18 entry from the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022:

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 (transcript below):

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

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, March 18th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

On March 18, 2010, Good Black News was founded as a Facebook page. Within two years, it grew into goodblacknews.org –– a website dedicated to curating and creating posts focused on the good things Black people do, give, and receive all over the world. Reader support for the site across all forms of social media has led to the lovely calendar you are experiencing now, so thank you (or whoever gifted you) – and please continue to spread the word!

Okay, so what I just read was the calendar entry for this day, but I really have so much to add to it. Every year I write a post celebrating the date Good Black News was founded, reflecting on where Good Black News came from – and I’ll post a link to our origin story and how Good Black News was born from an off-hand conversation I had with Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back best-selling author and screenwriter Terry McMillan —  and what we’ve most recently accomplished.

I’d say for this past year, seeing the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022 get published by Workman Publishing, and me starting this podcast based on it, are the biggest ways we’ve grown over the past 12 months. And I hope to grow even more and expand this podcast beyond the calendar when I have more time and opportunity to do so.

Good Black News also managed to get a little press in 2021 when we were featured in an abcnews10 piece on positive news. Also, last month I officially resumed the Q&A column I started in 2020 entitled “Dear Lori” where I respond to questions about white privilege and race that I’ve been asked by readers over the years.

But what truly keeps me, my co-editor Lesa Lakin and all of GBN’s wonderful volunteer contributors going is the outpouring of appreciation you’ve shown us over the years via follows, likes, comments, shares, reblogs, DMs and e-mails (even when we are overwhelmed and can’t respond to them all) and now, listens.