Bunny Wailer, born Neville O’Riley Livingston, died on March 2nd. He was an original member of The Wailers along with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, and a lifelong standard-bearer of reggae music.
“The Wailers are to reggae what the Beatles are to rock ‘n roll and pop music,” according to Jamaican music-business veteran Copeland Forbes.
This collection is devoted to the work of The Wailers, and the solo work of Rita Marley, Peter Tosh, and of Bunny Wailer himself.
In the 1960s The Wailers hit their initial stride with Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One label, often called Jamaica’s Motown. They recorded for several producers, including Leslie Kong and, most notably, Lee “Scratch” Perry.
I’ve included several of those songs, and ones The Wailers went on to release on their own Wail ‘N Soul ‘M and Tuff Gong labels.
By 1974, Tosh and Wailer both would leave the group for solo careers. Bob Marley would use The Wailers name for his backup band.
Hope you enjoy this collection of music by greats artist done together and separately.
Stay stay, sane, and kind, you all. Until such time.
With today’s Good Black News Spotify playlist, we salute a true ally of the Black musical community, the late Christine Marie Brockert a/k/a the one and only Teena Marie, on what would have been her 65th birthday.
Teena Marie is a singularly unique presence in music – a white female artist who, over the course of an entire successful career, always felt most at home in Black music.
In fact, when Motown Records released her first album Wild and Peaceful in 1979, the cover consisted simply of a photo of clouds over an ocean – completely avoiding showing her racial identity so as not to bias listeners towards her soulful singing. (Interestingly, this was the reverse of a trick they had previously employed in the early ’60s, using random graphics instead of artist photos on album covers for Mary Wells and The Marvelettes down South to avoid showing Black faces.)
Along with Rick James‘ production, just focusing on Marie’s voice and not her image worked – by the time Black listeners learned Teena Marie was white, she had already won them over with her songs and commitment to Black music, and classic soul fans embraced her fully.
Growing up in the late ’70s, I first remember Teena Marie for her uptempo funk/dance hits – “Square Biz,” “I Need Your Lovin’, “and my personal fave, “Behind the Groove.”
But over time, I realized that Teena’s truest connection to R&B was in her ballads – dramatic, long, lushly orchestrated, poetic, sensuous. She wrote and sang many bedroom classics over the course of a 30+ years, before her untimely death at the young age of 54 back in 2010.
Today’s playlist is entitled “Fire & Desire: Teena Marie’s 40 Best Ballads”. This playlist consists of hits and album tracks from across her career. “Deju Vu,” “Casanova Brown,” “Portuguese Love,” “If I Were a Bell,” “Out on a Limb,” “Aladdin’s Lamp” “Dear Lover,” “Irons in the Fire” – we’ve got them all here, along with her Rick James duets.
But we’ve also got stripped-down ballads like ‘The Greatest Love of All Time.” Released on the collection First Class Love: Rare Teena Marie, this acoustic ballad was one of the demo tracks Teena created prior to her first Motown album – and it’s clear to see that her talent was fully formed even then.
And we’ve got tracks you may not have heard from her end-of-career resurgence with the albums La Dona, Congo Square, Sapphire, and posthumous effort, Beautiful.
We hope you’ll check out our one-woman Quiet Storm session, and, in the process remember a true groundbreaker, musical innovator, and truly unique singer – a woman like no other – Lady T.
Internationally renowned, Grammy Award-winning, Rock N Roll Hall of Fame inductee Janet Jackson will be the focus of an upcoming documentary on Lifetime and A&E Networks in 2022.
The two-night, four-hour documentary will coincide with the 40th anniversary of Jackson’s first album – no, not Control – that 1986 juggernaut was her third LP and first collaboration with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis – but rather 1982’s eponymous Janet Jackson, which was released on the A&M records label and offered her early R&B hits “Say You Do” and “Young Love.”
Jackson is an executive producer with Randy Jackson, and according to Variety.com, producing teams from Workerbee and Associated Entertainment Corporation already have been working on the project with Janet for over three years.
The doc follows Janet as her family is going through the loss of her father, Joseph, the patriarch of the Jackson dynasty who passed in 2018. Producers were granted exclusive access to archival footage and never-before-seen home videos while developing the documentary for the past three years.
“JANET” will also detail the most talked-about moments of her life, including her 2004 Super Bowl appearance with Justin Timberlake in which she inadvertently exposed a portion of her breast, sparking controversy that would hover for more than a decade. The docu will also explore Jackson’s reaction to the death of her brother, the legendary and also controversial Michael Jackson, and her process of becoming a mother.
It’s about time the impact of Janet Jackson and her legacy on popular music and culture will be realized in-depth and, as a major Janet stan since even before her first LP – I’m talking Good Times and Fame days, people – I can’t wait! And I’m sure I’m not alone.
Bunny Wailer, a founding member of the Wailers and a reggae music titan whose career spanned seven decades, died today at the age of 73, according to the Jamaica Observer.
Wailer’s manager Maxine Stowe confirmed that Wailer died at the Medical Associates Hospital in Kingston, Jamaica (via the Jamaica Observer). No cause of death has been named so far, but Wailer had been in and out of the hospital since suffering his second stroke, in 2020.
Wailer, born Neville Livingston — before adopting his famous moniker — was a member of the original Wailers trio with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.
While Marley and Livingston were being mentored by Joe Higgs, “the Godfather of Reggae,” they met Higgs’ fellow student Peter Tosh; the then-trio ventured to Kingston. Soon after, they were joined by singer Junior Braithwaite and backup vocalists Beverley Kelso and Cherry Smith. Following a string of name changes that included the Teenagers and the Wailing Wailers, the Wailers aligned with Coxsone Dodd’s sound system and Studio One label — which employed songwriters and producers like Lee “Scratch” Perry and Jackie Mittoo — and released the Marley-penned “Simmer Down,” a Number One hit in Jamaica.
Braithwaite, Kelso, and Smith soon departed the Wailers, leaving the nucleus of Marley, Livingston, and Tosh intact; that trio recorded the band’s debut LP, 1965’s The Wailing Wailers, a collection of tracks the band recorded during the mid-Sixties. The Wailers then went on hiatus as Marley married his wife Rita and joined his mother in Wilmington, Delaware; during this period, Livingston served a yearlong sentence for marijuana possession. However, the three principle Wailers reunited upon Marley’s return to Jamaica.
While Marley and Tosh served as the Wailers’ primary singers and songwriters, Livingston played an indispensable role in providing harmonies to the trio’s songs. The Wailers next teamed with Perry and his Upsetters for 1970’s Soul Rebels and 1971’s Soul Revolution; around that time, Livingston wrote and recorded one of his signature songs, “Dreamland,” a track he revisited when he released his solo LP Blackheart Man in 1976.
International supermodel, activist and philanthropist Naomi Campbell welcomes musician, record producer, songwriter, singer, fashion designer and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams for an iconic conversation on “No Filter with Naomi,” a limited-time series under her “Being Naomi” YouTube channel, live today at 3pm EST / 12pm PST.
With more than 500,000 views, the web series has invited fans to #stayhome during this pandemic to save lives and has focused on intimate conversations on multiple topics between Naomi and a diverse collection of her friends, including a variety of designers, musicians, activists, actors and media personalities. Recently, during Black History Month 2021, Campbell used her platform to highlight the “New Black Talent You Need to Know in the Fashion Industry”:
The series debuted on April 6, 2020 and has since featured guests Tracee Ellis Ross, Demi Moore,Mariah Carey,Chelsea Handler,Cameron Diaz, Lenny Kravitz, Whoopi Goldberg,James Charles,Charlamagne Tha God,Mary J. Blige,Gabrielle Union,Kate Hudson,Cynthia Erivo, Cindy Crawford, Marc Jacobs, Nicole Richie, Ashley Graham, Pierpaolo Piccoli, LeeDaniels, Christy Turlington, Adut Akech, Sharon Stone, Paris Hilton, Serena Williams and Venus Williams, Karlie Kloss, Anna Wintour, and Sean “Diddy” Combs.
The “No Filter with Naomi” series returned after hiatus on June 23rd and featured a select group of episodes focused on impactful conversations dedicated to #BlackLivesMatter, social justice issues, racial and human inequalities. These critical conversations included featured guests: Opal Tometi, Rev. Al Sharpton, Alphonso Reed, Cleo Wade, Bethann Hardison, Tyler Mitchell, Indya Moore, Chase Strangio and Tori Cooper.
WHERE: Streaming live on Naomi Campbell’s YouTube Channel. View all “No Filter with Naomi” episodes here.
African popular music (often called Afropop, Afro-pop or Afro pop), like African traditional music, is vast and varied.
This playlist centered contemporary genres of African music build the cross-pollination with western popular music like: rhythm & blues, hip-hop, jazz, salsa, and reggae.
Afrobeats (not to be confused, as I was, with Afrobeat) and Afro-pop is less of a style and more of a descriptor for the fusion of sounds flowing out of Ghana and Nigeria.
Here’s a collection of mainly recent releases from a variety of artists. Hope you enjoy.
Today’s Mardi Gras is unlike practically any other in recent times. With the COVID 19 pandemic still rampant in the U.S. and most of the world, no parades are scheduled, public gatherings are prohibited, bars are shut down and most significantly, Bourbon Street in New Orleans, the epicenter of U.S. Mardi Gras celebrations, is closed.
For those who still want a way to celebrate safely as they enjoy king cake, Good Black News is happy to re-post a playlist by Marlon West entitled “Working in the Coal Mine: A Collection of New Orleans Funk and Soul”:
This collection of New Orleans Funk features acknowledges masters next to some of the earlier artists who shaped the meaning of funk. It covers the period from the emergence of New Orleans Funk in the early 1960s through to the present day.
[This] mix offers The Meters, Queen Ida, Eddie Bo, Professor Longhair, Lee Dorsey, Wild Magnolias and many more.
New Orleans is a port town. Originally owned by the French. Many of the Africans who ended up there came from Haiti and brought with them the religion of Voodoo and its drums and music.
The Crescent City became one of the first parts of America to develop a strong African-American culture leading to the invention of Jazz.
This playlist offers the sound of the New Orleans Funeral March Bands, Mardi Gras Indian Tribes and Saturday Night Fish Fries.
We hope this playlist helps you access the spirit of New Orleans and Mardi Gras. We also hope that in 2022, you can do so in a communal way as well.
Earlier this month was the 76th anniversary of the birth of Robert Nesta Marley.
It is hard to overstate his impact on popular music and culture. Marley was a Rastafari icon, and he infused his music with a sense of social consciousness and spirituality.
He is still a global symbol of Jamaican music, culture, and Pan-Africanism. He co-founded The Wailers vocal group with Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Beverley Kelso and Junior Braithwaite.
They created early ska and rocksteady in the studios of legendary producers Coxsone Dodd and Lee “Scratch” Perry.
Marley would go on to bring reggae music to an international audience, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Rolling Stone has ranked him No. 11 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Here’s a collection includes his many classics, early recordings, live performances, and remixes, and dub reworkings. This playlist is a testament to the lasting impact of Bob Marley.
Happy Valentine’s Weekend, Good Black News readers! We are celebrating the holiday (and the long weekend) with a Spotify playlist of love ballads entitled: “Valentine Love – The Best Classic Soul Duets Ever“:
In honor of the 14th of February, we’ve filled the playlist with 140 classic soul duets from the 1950s through the 1990s.
We worked hard to include all your favorites from masters of romance including Luther Vandross, Johnny Mathis, Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway, Dionne Warwick, Peabo Bryson, Teena Marie, Teddy Pendergrass, Mariah Carey, Babyface, James Ingram and the undeniable King of Duets, Mr. Marvin Gaye. We’ve included his partnerships with Kim Weston, Diana Ross, Mary Wells, and of course, Tammi Terrell.
We’ve also got songs from groups like Atlantic Starr, Shalamar, The Independents and Loose Ends that feature a male/female lead singer combo.
Hopefully, you’ll find a lot of your favorites, along with some others you haven’t heard in awhile – and some deep crate classics you may be hearing for the first time.
So if you have the opportunity to grab a glass of wine – and a loved one – hit play to set the mood for romantic weekend filled with music by R&B/soul greats.
Today at Good Black News, we pay tribute to the musical legacy of Mary Wilson, who died Monday night at the age of 76 at her home in Las Vegas.
Wilson was the heart and soul of The Supremes, perhaps the world’s most successful girl group ever, and the archetype for Destiny’s Child, TLC, En Vogue and all the other subsequent soulful girl groups who’ve hit the charts in the decades since the Detroit trio ruled over the charts in the 1960s.
More than 50 years after their last #1, The Supremes still rank second only to The Beatles in garnering the most chart-toppers of any group – With a dozen #1 pop hits in the United States.
If Florence Ballard was the Supremes soulful & brassy blues mama and Diana Ross its demure pop ingenue, the late Mary Wilson was the group’s sultry glamour gal. The three of them together evoke the memories of a time when a group of persistent girls from the local neighborhood high school could encounter the right producer and launch themselves into a whirlwind of global superstardom.
In the process, The Supremes would help change the world’s perception of Blackness. Diana, Florence and Mary were the epitome of Berry Gordy‘s grand Motown crossover experiment – they weren’t just stars of the soul chart, but rather they were ‘the sound of young America’.
They toured Japan and Europe, played Las Vegas and the Copacabana nightclub – venues previously reserved for mostly older white artists.
Mary Wilson (photo via Facebook)
Their classy choreography and gorgeous gowns belied their youthful age. And, back in an era when few Black celebrities were seen with frequency on TV, neighborhoods of Black families from coast to coast were abuzz with pride every time the trio appeared on the popular Ed Sullivan Showin front of the whole nation.
By now, most everyone knows the story of The Supremes. Ballard left the group amid scandal in the mid-1960s (to be replaced by Cindy Birdsong). Ross left in 1970 to pursue a solo career that would make her arguably the biggest Black female star of her era.
But Mary Wilson stayed with the group until the very end, through a litany of other member changes, serving as the steadfast backup to two subsequent lead singers. Following the group’s demise, she performed solo concerts all over the world, wrote two best-selling books about her years with The Supremes and even participated in ‘Dancing With the Stars’.
But all the while, she was determined to preserve the legacy of The Supremes, including battling in court to stop unaffiliated groups from touring under the group’s name. To the end she was almost always identified as ‘Mary Wilson of The Supremes.’
Over the course of 15 years of Supremes recordings, Wilson didn’t get to sing lead often. But we’ve gathered those all those official lead/co-lead vocals here, along with a couple solo tracks and some rare ‘from-the-vaults’ tunes released in more recent years.
Look for nice renditions of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You“ (which frequently served as her solo on tour dates), “Our Day Will Come” and her version of the Martha & the Vandellas hit “Come and Get These Memories” from the Diana years.
By the ’70s, Mary’s veteran status was rewarded with a few more lead vocals, including a shared spotlight on singles like “Floy Joy,” “Automatically Sunshine,” and ‘Touch” as well as a heartfelt vocal on Jimmy Webb‘s standard “I Keep It Hid” and a whispery, plaintive adaptation of the Spinners/Phyllis Hyman number “I Don’t Want To Lose You.”
Following an initial half dozen Wilson-lead or co-lead tracks, we’ve taken the opportunity on our playlist to dive wholeheartedly into the chronological history of the entire span of The Supremes – the Diana Ross, Jean Terrell and Scherrie Payne years all in one – because ALL those years were the Mary Wilson years.
Along with all Mary’s lead vocals, we’ve included all the Motown Supremes singles on which Mary actually sang back-up (including the group’s singles with The Temptations and The Four Tops).
Interestingly, in the late ’60s, there were multiple Supremes hits recorded by Ross with Motown’s house back-up singers taking on the role of The Supremes – including “Love Child,””Forever Came Today,” “I’m Livin’ in Shame” and the group’s final #1 “Someday We’ll Be Together”.
Yes, ironically, on their iconic song about togetherness, the Supremes were not actually together (Mary and Cindy did still appear on the album covers, and of course, sang back-up on the songs during live concerts).
We’ve not included those Wilson-less singles here – although we have included later “Love Child” and “Someday We’ll Be Together” live renditions recorded from the group’s final January 1970 concert, where Mary and Cindy Birdsong did sing the background vocals on the songs they never had recorded in studio.
After the chronological rundown of Supremes singles, we’ve concluded our playlist with the rest of Wilson’s lead vocals on album tracks from the ’70s Supremes albums.
By then, The Supremes rule over the pop charts was a memory – and the group was no longer being paired with Motown’s hottest producers.
But Mary’s passionate vocals help to elevate otherwise ordinary ballads into something worth listening to. We hope you’ll check out our playlist and ‘come and get these memories’ of Mary Wilson, another legend gone too soon. Someday, we’ll be together.
