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.
Happy Music Monday! In the weeks since Beyoncé’s recent Country releases, there’s been much debate on her Country bona fides, though the sista has never been shy about voicing her Texas pride.
From Beyoncé’s history with the genre, from the song “Daddy Lessons”, from her 2016 album Lemonade, to the Stetsons worn by Destiny’s Child, many Country devotees ignore her roots and those of other Black artists.
While talking to a good friend and colleague last week, he pointed out that it’s not musicians that draw designations often based on race, it’s the so-called fans. It is also music writers and editors who act as gatekeepers.
Ray Charles, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, Aerosmith, Love, Brittany Howard, Lola, Valerie June and so many others can’t be bothered. Music is music.
It has been a long-running theme of my playlist and missives here on GBN, that the roots and current impact of Black artists on Country Music and Rock ’n Roll is deep and continuing.
Rhiannon Giddens is present playing the banjo (an instrument whose roots go back to Africa), on “Texas Hold ‘Em”, and with The Carolina Chocolate Drops. As is Lil Nas X, who was also soundly rebuffed by Country music gatekeepers initially.
I’ve included The Black Pumas, TV On The Radio, Clarence Clemons, Tracy Chapman and of course Lenny Kravitz, who all reject rock music being the domain of white artists.
So, please enjoy this collection of artists that aren’t inclined to be labeled and defy labels.
Welcome to the holiday season, Good Black News family! We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving – and are counting down the 25 days of Christmas now that it’s December.
In what’s become a holiday tradition, we’ve updated our now massive Black Christmas music Spotify playlist with a whole heap of new songs. The month of November was spent searching far and wide across the internet for new releases, old classics now on Spotify, and other tunes and artists we missed in previous years.
We’ve now got over 700 songs across 40+ hours (and we’ll add more if some crucial tunes get released in the next few weeks) – with the goal to be one of the most definitive Black Christmas playlists around.
If you’re still subscribed to the list from a previous year, we’re here to let you know it’s now updated and bigger/better than ever.
If you’ve not subscribed, check it out while you are wrapping presents, baking cookies, decorating your tree, or just sitting cozily in front of a nice roaring fire, with football on mute in the next room.
As a reminder, we set out to make a mainstream Christmas radio station that you can use in the background all season long. But in the GBN tradition, the focus is on Black artists (plus occasional duet partners and a little Robin Thicke).
While other holiday radio focuses on Brenda Lee and Bing Crosby, we’ve got Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole. When they play Michael Buble, we play John Legend, or Hamilton star Leslie Odom.
Of course, we’ve got The Jackson 5, Donny Hathaway, the original Eartha Kitt version of “Santa Baby,”Stevie Wonder, and two different renditions of The Temptations doing “Silent Night.” And just like everyone else, Mariah Carey!
We’ve sequenced the list carefully – so that you don’t overload on the same songs, tempos or artists too frequently. You can just let it play – or hit shuffle. Or you can even use it as a base of songs to edit down into your own personal list of favorites.
In addition to soul and pop, there’s some jazz, some gospel, some blues, some a capella, and even disco, reggae and Black country in the mix. Hopefully you find all the classics you need, and some brand new surprises you didn’t know you wanted.
This year’s big new Christmas releases include albums from Brandy (currently starring in the new Netflix hit Best. Christmas. Ever!), jazz star Gregory Porter, and hot new soul star October London.
Ace producer Adam Blackstone has assembled an album with friends that include Keke Palmer and Boyz II Men. And on the traditional side, Grammy-winning Best New Artist Samara Joy has issued an EP, and the legendary Johnny Mathis has issued new tracks as well. We’ve got a couple songs from all of these.
Mavis Staples is eighty-four years old as I peck these words. She has been a gospel and soul singer longer than Elizabeth II wore the crown.
Many R&B vocalists started in gospel music, though she and her family have always kept a foot in both worlds. The Staple Singers have brought their spirituality, and devotion to civil rights to all of their studio and stage offerings.
From the churches across the South Side of Chicago and the Rock ‘n Stages with artists a third her age, Mavis Staples has brought her unique smokey voice to audiences for decades.
This collection brings together her many works with The Staple Singers from 1948 until 1999, and her own solo offerings from 1969 to the present.
Mavis Staples is still an in-demand guest vocalist to boot. She has dueted or sung background with Mahalia Jackson, The Band, Gorillaz, Jon Batiste, Run the Jewels, Hozier, Benjamin Booker, Sheryl Crow, Abraham Alexander and so many others.
Mavis Staples is the only subject of one of these playlists that I have had the pleasure of spending any meaningful time with. Back in 2012 I was honored to be one of the Alumni Of The Year at Columbia College Chicago. She received an honorary doctorate from the college.
I was delighted to spend hours visiting with her that graduation weekend. She could not have been more warm, insightful, and kind.
Please enjoy this collection featuring decades of Doctor Mavis’ work with The Staple Singers, as a solo artist, and generous collaborator.
The holiday season fast approaches, and I’m back with a collection to gather around the table with family and friends.
Here’s a Thanksgiving playlist that includes new music by Rihanna from the BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER soundtrack, and food-centered classics like Cab Calloway’s “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House” from way back in the day.
This musical journey features soul, jazz, reggae, and gospel, all good music to cook, eat, and clean that kitchen to.
Here’s Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole singing songs about autumn, and several artists like Sly Stone, Massive Attack, and Otis Redding offering songs of thanks.
Plus Little Eva, Fantasia, Louis Jordan and others praising grits, stuffed turkey, mashed potatoes, greens, cornbread, and collards to name a few. Hungry yet?
Happy Early Thanksgiving, y’all. I’ll see you soon with a funky holiday season offering next month.
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.
On Easter Sunday, GBN celebrates Thomas A. Dorsey, who once worked as Ma Rainey‘s pianist and musical director, and wrote and sang blues songs as the “Georgia Tom” half of the Georgia Tom and Tampa Red duo before revolutionizing gospel music by integrating the feeling of the blues into sacred songs.
To read about Dorsey, 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.comor 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 Sunday, April 17, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Gospel music existed before Georgia native Thomas Dorsey turned his ear and pen to it, but it was never the same after.
Working most famously as the piano player and musical director for blues legend Gertrude “Ma” Rainey in the 1920s under the moniker “Georgia Tom.” Despite this success, Dorsey fell into a prolonged period of depression for almost two years and barely performed.
In 1928, Dorsey attended a spirited church service where he claimed a minister pulled a live serpent from his throat. From that point on, Dorsey vowed to dedicate himself to composing gospel music. Dorsey wrote “If You See My Savior” in honor of a friend who passed, which combined a blues feeling into a more traditional hymnal structure:
[Excerpt of “If You See My Savior”]
Dorsey tried to sell his new sacred songs directly to publishers and churches but initially had no luck and returned to writing the blues. With duet partner Tampa Red, as “Georgia Tom” Dorsey had a big hit in 1928, selling over seven million copies of “It’s Tight Like That”:
[Excerpt of “It’s Tight Like That”]
This type of “dirty blues” or “Hokum” songs proved to be popular and the duo recorded and performed for years until Dorsey finally turned to gospel music for good.
He formed a gospel blues choir in Chicago, which helped the new style catch on, and soon became the musical director for Pilgrim Baptist Church and running his own music publishing company.
Dorsey worked with a young Mahalia Jackson in the late 1920s and originally composed for Jackson what became a beloved song not only in gospel blues circles, but country & western as well.
[Excerpt of “Peace in the Valley” by Red Foley & the Sunshine Boys]
“Peace in the Valley” has been recorded by over the decades by artists such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Little Richard, Red Foley & the Sunshine Boys, Johnny Cash,Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton.
And while he was still in his gospel group in the 1960s, Sam Cooke and his Soul Stirrers took their turn in the valley as well:
[Excerpt of “Peace in the Valley” by Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers]
In Dorsey’s lifetime, which was long – he lived to 93 – Dorsey composed over 3,000 songs, including the one Martin Luther King, Jr. said was his favorite, the one Mahalia Jackson ended up singing at his funeral, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”:
[Excerpt of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”]
Dorsey’s songs changed the sound of sacred music and influenced generations to come, which is why he is often called “The Father of Gospel Music.”
Dorsey has been inducted into the Gospel Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2002, the Library of Congress honored Dorsey by adding his album Precious Lord: New Recordings of the Great Songs of Thomas A. Dorsey, to the United States National Recording Registry.
You can also watch 2005’s The Story of Gospel Musicdocumentary, which is currently available on DVD.
And every year, Dorsey’s hometown of Villa Rica, Georgia holds an annual Thomas A. Dorsey Birthplace Heritage Festivalof gospel music. This year’s will be held on June 25thand 26th.
Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
And before we go, let’s hear a clip of Thomas Dorsey himself speaking on the meaning of gospel:
“Down through the ages gospel – what? What did they say was? You mean to tell me you don’t know that good news? On down to the ages, gospel was good news. Now if you don’t know that I’ll rush you out of here myself.”
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by yours truly, Lori Lakin Hutcherson. Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
“Roll Jordan Roll” by the Fisk Jubilee Singers is in the Public Domain.
Excerpts of songs composed by Thomas A. Dorsey 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.
There was a great moment that happened at last night’s Academy Awards, but because it happened directly after a shocking moment, it’s not getting the all the flowers and love it should.
So for this #MusicMonday, we are fully celebrating the fact that Summer of Soul, the feature documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival directed by The Roots co-founder and musical impresario Questlove, won a much-deserved Oscar. And if you (like so many of us) missed his acceptance speech, here it is:
https://youtu.be/IPbOF4wpEVw
Still streaming on Hulu and available on DVD, Summer of Soul is an education and gift to the eyes and ears and if you don’t currently have access to Summer of Soul, the movie, listening to the music from the acts featured in the film is the next best thing:
I’ve included the playlist of the official soundtrack album along with an extended playlist.
From Sly and the Family Stone to the Fifth Dimension,Stevie Wonder,Nina Simone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, The Edwin Hawkins Singers, The Staples Singers, Mongo Santamaria,David Ruffin,Mahalia Jackson,Mavis Staples and others, the music on display and the stories behind the event are close to (if not completely) mind-blowing.
And if you need another push to check it out (or revisit it), here’s the trailer of the documentary:
Thank you, again, Questlove and all the artists involved that helped bring the “Summer of Soul” into our lives for all seasons. You all truly made — and resurrected — important cultural history.
Today’s GBN Daily Drop podcast is a bonus episode about rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe who was born #OnThisDay in 1915, for Sunday, March 20 and based on the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022 format:
You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor 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 bonus daily drop of Good Black News for Sunday, March 20th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
When gospel and R&B guitar sensation Sister Rosetta Tharpe reportedly said, “Can’t no man play like me,” she might not have had a clue how many would actually try.
Little Richard cited Tharpe as one of his major influences, and Chuck Berry once said his career was “one long Rosetta Tharpe impression.”
Born on this day in 1915, Arkansas native Tharpe’s 1930s and 1940s recordings of “Rock Me”:
[Excerpt of “Rock Me”]
“Strange Things Happening Every Day”:
[Excerpt of “Strange Things Happening Every Day”]
“I Want A Tall Skinny Papa”:
[Excerpt of “I Want A Tall Skinny Papa”]
and the classic “Didn’t It Rain”:
[Excerpt of “Didn’t It Rain”]
These songs melded gospel, jazz and Rhythm and Blues into what was soon and would forever be called rock n roll. In 2018, Tharpe was finally and rightfully inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her musicianship and influence.
This February, Gibson Guitars also 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.
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 bonus 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.
Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot. Excerpts of songs by Rosetta Tharpe 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.
Mickey Guyton’s 2020 song “Black Like Me,” released amid the national racial justice protests, was nominated for a Grammy, making her the first Black solo female artist to be nominated in a country music category.
A recent study from the University of Ottawa found a mere .03 percent of all songs on country radio from 2002 to 2020 were by Black women. Less than 1 percent of the over 400 artists signed to the three major country music labels are people of color, according to that study.
Still, Black women artists are making a mark. Valerie June, Yola, Brittney Spencer, and Yasmin Williams are just a few sisters resonating with existing country music lovers, and with an entirely new group of fans.
Many historically turned off a genre that has almost exclusively been marketed to white audiences. They see the industry changing and say their music can resonate not only with existing country music lovers, but with an entirely new group of fans who have been turned off by a genre that has almost exclusively been marketed to white audiences.
There are many emerging artists on this playlist actively shifting conversations in country music around inclusion and diversity. I’ve also included to long-standing artists like Tina Turner and Mavis Staples that have made an impact on country music.
Hope you all enjoy my GBN contribution Women’s History Month. I’ll be back next month. And as always, stay safe, sane, and kind.
