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Happy 100th, Ella! American Musical Legend Ella Fitzgerald Born on this Day in 1917

By goodblacknews on April 25, 2017
Early Hardship Couldn't Muffle Ella Fitzgerald's Joy
Legendary singer Ella Fitzgerald (photo via npr.org)

article by Tom Vitale via npr.org

Ella Fitzgerald, who would have turned 100 today, was one of the most beloved and versatile singers of the 20th century. In a career that spanned six decades, Fitzgerald recorded hundreds of songs, including definitive versions of many standards. Along the way, she influenced generations of singers.
But the first thing that strikes you about Fitzgerald is that voice.
Cécile McLorin Salvant, who won a Grammy last year for Best Jazz Vocal Album, says a combination of qualities made Fitzgerald’s voice unique. “When you hear the tone of her voice — which has kind of a brightness, kind of a breathiness, but it also has this really great depth, and kind of a laser-like, really clear quality to it — it hits you,” she says.

Salvant, 27, says she learned to sing jazz standards by listening to Fitzgerald’s versions.
“I remember being 17 and living in France and feeling really homesick and wanting to go back to Miami, and listening to Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,’ ” Salvant says. “And I would listen to that all day. All day. For, like, weeks. And it felt — it created a home for me.”
Fitzgerald had perfect pitch, impeccable diction and a remarkable sense of rhythm. And it all came naturally to her, as she told the CBC in 1974.  “What I sing is only what I feel,” she said. “I had some lady ask me the other day about music lessons and I never — except for what I had to learn for my half-credit in school — I’ve never given it a thought. I’ve never taken breathing lessons. I had to go for myself, and I guess that’s how I got a style.”

That style was an immediate hit. Fitzgerald was discovered at an amateur contest and began her professional career when she was only 16, singing with the Chick Webb Orchestra at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. When she was 21, she became internationally famous with a hit record based on a nursery rhyme, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket.”
Tony Bennett says that when he was starting out as a young singer, Ella Fitzgerald was his idol. “She was a complete swinger,” he says. “She just understood the whole art of jazz phrasing.”

Photo of Jazz Legend Ella Fitzgerald Going on Display at National Portrait Gallery Museum in D.C.

By goodblacknews on April 15, 2017

via blackamericaweb.com
WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Portrait Gallery is putting up a photograph of American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, often referred to as “The First Lady of Song.”
The portrait is on view beginning Thursday, ahead of the 100th anniversary of Fitzgerald’s birth. Fitzgerald, who died in 1996 at the age of 79, would have celebrated her 100th birthday April 25.
The National Portrait Gallery said in a statement the photograph on display is of Fitzgerald in performance flanked by Ray Brown, Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Jackson. It was taken around 1974 by William Gottlieb, who learned to use a camera to take pictures to accompany his weekly music column for The Washington Post. It’s the first time the photograph has been displayed at the museum.
It will be on view through May 14.
Source: Photo Of Ella Fitzgerald Going On Display At DC Museum | Black America Web

FEATURE: Rev. Nathaniel Dixon Preaches the Gospel, Jazz Riffs and All

By goodblacknews on April 9, 2017


article by Corey Kilgannon via nytimes.com
While a soulful organist welcomed church congregants last Sunday, the Rev. Nathaniel Dixon stood in his office in a natty pinstriped suit, looking more like a hip jazz musician about to hit the bandstand than a pastor preparing to take the pulpit.His office, in St. Stephen’s United Methodist Church in the Marble Hill section of Manhattan, bore signs of both Jesus and jazz. Its walls had framed photographs of Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday, and religious literature shared space with saxophones, keyboards and guitars.
After pulling on his white pastor’s robe, Mr. Dixon grabbed a box of saxophone reeds and his microphone.“ Edmar, let’s bring that tenor down, man,” he said to his assistant, Edmar Flores, who carried Mr. Dixon’s tenor saxophone to the sanctuary. As the service heated up, with his band backing him, Mr. Dixon picked up his horn and played from the pulpit.“My Lord, my God — you are my savior,” he sang, his voice swelling up to the church’s majestic rafters. Then he took up his saxophone.
The pastor’s playing style was spare and insistent, reminiscent of one of John Coltrane’s spiritual songs. “People who aren’t used to seeing a preacher playing the saxophone are surprised,” he said. “And when they see I can actually play, they’re more surprised.” As a young jazz musician, Mr. Dixon was seasoned in Harlem clubs, and played with the likes of the guitarist George Benson, the saxophonist Sam Rivers, the pianist Kenny Kirkland and the drummer Chico Hamilton.
Back then, he played bebop. Today, it is mostly GoJa, his name for a blend of gospel and jazz that swings with a spiritually uplifting message.Mr. Dixon said he tried to match one of his songs to his sermon every Sunday. Last Sunday, it was his composition “My Lord, My God,” a lyrical ode that recalls the spiritual style of the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. The tune helped illustrate a point he was making about the Apostle Thomas’s reaction when called upon by Jesus.“I like Jesus because he calls you out,” Mr. Dixon said, before describing Thomas’s recognition of Jesus as his “eternal God.”“Somebody ought to clap right there,” he told the spare congregation, which included older women in ornate hats and ushers in white outfits.Applause went up and seemed to mingle with the morning sunlight filtering through the stained glass windows.
During the song, Mr. Dixon pointed to members of the band, directing each to perform a solo, then adding through the microphone, “Give the drummer some.”He told the congregation he wrote “My Lord, My God” while sitting in the church alone, “just me and the Lord.”“I like to doodle on the piano,” he said. “That’s where you get a chance to hear God speaking to you.”Mr. Dixon said he grew up in public housing in the Bronx and attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. Struggling to land and keep gigs at jazz clubs in Harlem, like Smalls Paradise and Showman’s, taught him how to fend off other musicians looking to replace him.
“Just because Jesus said to turn the other cheek doesn’t mean you have to let people walk all over you,” he said.The saxophonist Stanley Turrentine taught him to play with no excuses, and the alto player Lou Donaldson helped him choose a better mouthpiece. Connecting with a jazz club audience helped prepare him to connect with a congregation, said Mr. Dixon, who worked nearly 30 years as a teacher and administrator in New York City public schools. At one middle school in the Bronx, he was allowed to keep a cot so he could head there after late-night gigs, he said.
Before retiring from teaching in 2005, he began studying for his ordination as a Methodist minister. He told the congregation on Sunday that he was “happy minding my own business, but God said, ‘I ain’t finished with you yet.’”His latest CD, “Made in New York City: Nat Dixon and Friends,” includes a version of “My Lord, My God,” with vocals by the Rev. Lori Hartman, daughter of the jazz singer Johnny Hartman and herself a pastor, at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Jamaica, Queens.
To read full article, go to: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/nyregion/preaching-the-gospel-jazz-riffs-and-all.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ur_20170409&nl=nytoday&nlid=58278902&ref=headline&_r=0

Essence Unveils Night-By-Night Schedule for 2017 Concert Series at Superdome this Summer

By goodblacknews on April 7, 2017

 article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
The 2017 ESSENCE Festival has announced the all-star, night-by-night schedule for its concert series, from June 30 to July 2 at the Superdome in New Orleans, LA.
Single-night tickets are now on sale and are priced starting at $50 per person per night.
The concerts will feature more than 40 acts across five stages in the Superdome throughout the weekend on the festival’s renowned Mainstage and in the intimate Superlounges. Festival first-timers Diana Ross and Chance the Rapper will open and close the weekend concert series with headlining performances on Friday and Sunday night respectively – along with a special all-female Saturday night lineup, inspired by headliner Mary J. Blige’s forthcoming album Strength of A Woman.

Other well-known performers in this year’s line-up include John Legend, india.arie, Jill Scott, Chaka Khan and Solange.

Roy Wood Jr. from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” will serve as the Mainstage host for the weekend, with more surprise guest performances to be announced.
For more information about ticket sales and accommodations and for the latest news about the ESSENCE Festival®, visit www.essencefestival.com, join the festival community by following us on Twitter @essencefest #EssenceFest and become a fan of 2017 ESSENCE Festival® on Facebook.

R.I.P. Grammy Award-Winning Jazz, Pop and R&B Vocal Master Al Jarreau

By goodblacknews on February 12, 2017


article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson
According to the New York Times, Al Jarreau, a versatile vocalist who sold millions of records and won numerous Grammys for his work in jazz, pop and R&B, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 76.  Jarreau is perhaps best known for his 1981 album Breakin’ Away, which contained his highest-charting hit “We’re In This Love Forever,”  He also sang the theme song of the late-1980s television series Moonlighting, and was a performer in the 1985 charity song “We Are the World“.

His death was announced by his manager, Joe Gordon, who said Mr. Jarreau had been hospitalized for exhaustion two weeks ago.

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Al Jarreau (photo via amazon.com)

A preacher’s son, Jarreau started singing in public as a boy but did not begin a full-time musical career until the late 1960s, when he was nearly 30. Before that, he had worked as a psychologist and rehabilitation counselor.

By the 1970s he had become a popular jazz singer, touring extensively and appearing on television.  Critics praised his voice, his improvisational skill and, in particular, his virtuosic ability to produce an array of vocalizations, ranging from delicious nonsense to clicks and growls to quasi-instrumental sounds – a more extended form of the jazz style “scatting.”

To learn more about this masterful singer’s life and career, click here.

Hip-Hop Legend Snoop Dogg to Headline Working Californians’ 5th Annual Labor Day Music Festival

Hip-Hop Legend Snoop Dogg to Headline Working Californians’ 5th Annual Labor Day Music Festival

By goodblacknews on September 4, 2016

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Lesa Lakin, GBN Lifestyle
Lesa Lakin, GBN Lifestyle

This Labor Day (September 5, 2016) Working Californians will hold Los Angeles’ fifth annual Labor Day Music Festival featuring hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg, GRAMMY award-winning American Chicano Rock Band Los Lonely Boys; Latin- Jazz musician Poncho Sanchez; The New Orleans All-Star Band featuring Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Dr. John, James Andrews, Herlin Riley and Detroit Brooks; The Dennis Jones Band; The Victor Orlando Orchestra and Fun-Ja-La, and Cuban Funk.
More than 50 Southern California labor organizations will gather on Mondayto celebrate and commemorate both the history and future of Labor Day at Working Californians’ Labor Day Music Festival. This annual event not only benefits working men, women and their families, but also recognizes labor victories made this past year throughout Los Angeles and Southern California.
Concert performances will benefit Working Californians’ non-profit, which fosters social innovation and invests in improving low-income communities in Southern California.
2016 Labor Day Music Festival Featuring: Snoop Dogg
LA Memorial Coliseum’s Exposition Park
3911 S Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA
Monday Sep 5, 2016
Doors: 11:00 AM (ends at 8:30 PM)
$20 & $299
For tickets and more information: http://www.workingcalifornians.org/splash/

Business Titan Robert F. Smith Named Carnegie Hall’s 1st African-American Chairman

By goodblacknews on June 2, 2016
Robert F. Smith, 53, elected chairman of the Carnegie Hall Board of Directors on Thursday. (Credit: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)

article by Michael Cooper and David Gelles via nytimes.com

Robert F. Smith, the private equity titan who was named the richest African-American man by Forbes last year after making a fortune in software, also has a quirky musical side.

He owns one of Elton John’s old pianos. He hired John Legend and Seal — and a youth orchestra — to perform at his wedding last summer on the Amalfi Coast. His youngest sons, Hendrix and Legend, are named after Jimi Hendrix and Mr. Legend. And he bought and refurbished a retreat in the Rocky Mountains that was beloved by jazz musicians, including Duke Ellington.

On Thursday, Mr. Smith’s intersecting worlds of money, philanthropy and music came together when he was named the chairman of Carnegie Hall, the nation’s most prestigious concert stage. He became the first African-American to hold the post at a time when diversity at leading cultural organizations lags — a recent survey of New York’s cultural institutions found that nearly 78 percent of their board members were white.

“Carnegie Hall is perfectly placed to champion not only artistic excellence, but also access and exposure to the best music in the world,” Mr. Smith said in a statement.

The election of Mr. Smith, 53, who played an old upright piano while growing up in Denver and was told that with enough practice he might make it to Carnegie one day, brings to an end a low moment at the hall. The billionaire Ronald O. Perelman served as its chairman for less than a year before stepping down last fall after he alienated the board by clashing with the hall’s executive and artistic director, Clive Gillinson.

After shunning the spotlight for years, Mr. Smith, who is based in Austin, Tex., where the private equity firm he founded, Vista Equity Partners, has its headquarters, has recently taken a more public role — starting a foundation, the Fund II Foundation; giving commencement addresses; and donating money. His alma mater, Cornell University, renamed its School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering for him earlier this year after he announced a $50 million gift.

Unlike Carnegie’s most recent chairmen, Mr. Perelman and Sanford I. Weill, the former Citigroup chairman, Mr. Smith does not come from the world of New York finance, and he has not been a major fixture on the city’s social scene — he is more known for flying in to attend events in the city and then flying out. But his work outside the city with investors and tech firms could provide entree to new potential donors in the coming years.

Stevie Wonder's Poignant Reflections on Legend and Friend Prince (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on April 22, 2016

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5mXYQPBJ30&w=560&h=315]

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem Finds a Permanent Home

By goodblacknews on April 10, 2016
The musicians Terri Davis, left, and Bill Saxton at the opening of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. (YANA PASKOVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

article by Nate Chinen via nytimes.com

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem has always been, like the music it honors, a study in adaptability. For the last 15 years, it has operated out of a modest fourth-floor space in East Harlem, while developing big plans for a permanent home. Now, after weathering a few disappointments, the museum has relocated to a new storefront on West 129th Street, in a move that signals not only an improvement to its public facilities but also a renewal of its mission.

“Being in a new space has shifted our approach to what is possible,” Ryan Maloney, the museum’s director of education and programming, said during an opening reception on Tuesday night, as a quartet led by the pianist Marc Cary played a hard-swinging Hank Mobley tune.

The museum now sits off Malcolm X Boulevard, a couple of blocks north of Sylvia’s and Red Rooster, the emblematic culinary institutions of old and new Harlem. It occupies the ground floor of a new condominium building, and while it’s not a large footprint — just under 2,400 square feet, of which 1,900 is devoted to public space — the design and layout were carefully considered.

In some ways, the embrace of that small scale reflects well on the institution. Founded in 1997 by Leonard Garment, former counsel to President Richard M. Nixon, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem began with noble intentions but limited resources. “We flailed around for several years, and while we did, the money ran out,” Mr. Garment wrote in a 2002 article for The New York Times. (He died in 2013.)

The museum found its footing, in incremental steps, under the executive leadership of Loren Schoenberg. A veteran saxophonist, pianist, educator and historian, Mr. Schoenberg brought an air of authority to the museum, while strengthening its bonds with the jazz public and institutions like the Smithsonian. He enlisted two artistic directors, both still actively involved: the bassist Christian McBride and the pianist Jon Batiste. (Mr. McBride is the recently announced new artistic director for the Newport Jazz Festival; Mr. Batiste, the bandleader on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” was one of Mr. Schoenberg’s students at Juilliard.)

John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ and The Supremes' ‘Where Did Our Love Go?' Join National Recording Registry

By goodblacknews on March 23, 2016

The Supremes (l) and John Coltrane (r)
The Supremes (l) and John Coltrane (r)

article by Andrew R. Chow via nytimes.com
John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and The Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go,” are part of the incoming class added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress this year. The diverse crop of new inductees also includes the Vienna Philharmonic’s 1938 recording of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” and live coverage from Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game.
The registry adds 25 recordings — deemed significant to American history and culture — each year. The field this year includes pop, (Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”), classic R&B (“Where Did Our Love Go,” The Impressions’ “People Get Ready”), field recordings (W.H. Stepp’s “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” captured by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax in 1937) and comedy (George Carlin’s “Class Clown”). Joining these performers is Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposing what became known as the Marshall Plan to aid Europe after World War II.

The National Recording Registry now totals 450 recordings, the library said. A full list can be found at www.loc.gov.

To read original article, go to: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/john-coltranes-a-love-supreme-and-billy-joels-piano-man-join-national-recording-registry/?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0