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.
Last week our fearless leader here at GBN, Lori Lakin Hutcherson, suggested a playlist celebrating Black History Month. I joked that every Music Monday at Good Black News is celebrating Black history.
Though a free-wheeling offer celebrating a century of Black music is definitely the thing to do. Here is a collection of African American music ranging from Mamie Smith to Marvin Gaye to J. Cole – from gospel, to hip hop, to jazz, to blues – and all points in between.
Massive Attack was formed in Bristol, England, in the late 1980s, coalescing out of a sound-system culture of D.J.s and musicians.
It is hard to overstate the impact his collective, originally known as The Wild Bunch, would go on to have on electronic and popular music. They would knit together previously disparate styles of hip-hop, post-punk, dub reggae, electronica and just enough pop to provide melodic discipline and skeletal structure.
Their first three records Blue Lines, Protection, and Mezzanine were part of the vanguard of artists that created the “Trip Hop” movement. The group launched Tricky and collaborated with others like Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins and the reggae songwriter Horace Andy.
Cooke’s magical voice animated a long string of hits that came to a sudden end, when he was shot and killed in a motel manager’s office in 1964. The brotha was 33.
As the lead singer of the gospel group, The Soul Stirrers, and a solo artist he was a writer and singer of great impact. Today folks still speculate about his violent and senseless death.
Certainly director Regina King and writer Kemp Power’s One Night in Miamiwill introduce a new generation to Cooke though the beautiful performance of Leslie Odom Jr. Please enjoy this collection of Sam Cooke’s finest offerings.
More than 50 years after his death, I can only wonder what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would think of the upheaval of 2020; of the push back on the sentiment that “Black Lives Matter,” and a white supremacist insurgency in our nation’s capital.
Would-be nazis and neo-confederates beating and murdering police on their way into storming the people’s house. We have come far as a nation, and yet what Brotha Ta-Nehisi Coates calls the “beautiful struggle” continues unabated.
As well all celebrate, serve, and/or reflect on this special of American holidays, here’s a collection of music for your mind, heart, and soul. (And in some cases, dat booty too.)
Many are classics that inspired the Freedom Riders during the civil rights movement, and others were written in the wake of George Floyd‘s murder and the protests that followed.
For my money 2020 was a good year for films by and Black people, as well as the sounds from them. One Night In Miami, Sylvie’s Love, Soul, and the Small Axe series to name but a few. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Da 5 Bloods both featured posthumous performances by the great Chadwick Boseman.
Here’s more than 17 hours of music to help steel you for the days, weeks, and months 2021 is certain to bring.
I plan to be back with more next week, y’all. Stay safe, sane, and kind.
For many of you riding along with these weekly playlists, some of these “points” may sound familiar.
The popular narrative of the originals of Rhythm & Blues and Rock and Roll leans heavily on the hardscrabble southern bluesman narrative.
The mythic trip to the crossroads and the juke joint circuit stories promoted by so many historians and rock legends leaves out the urban sophistication of Jump Blues artists and their contribution to the music we all love today.
Jump blues evolved from the music of big bands like those of Lionel Hampton and Lucky Millinder. These groups of the early 1940s produced musicians such as Louis Jordan, Jack McVea, Earl Bostic, and Arnett Cobb that would start their own smaller groups.
These Jump groups became hugely popular in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Artists such as Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, Big Joe Turner, Roy Brown, Charles Brown, Ruth Brown, Helen Humes, T-Bone Walker, Roy Milton, Billy Wright, Wynonie Harris, Buddy Johnson, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and others produced hard-driving dance music that contributes mightily to the birth of Soul and Rock.
This is another collection that comes with a “Rumpshaker Warning” Enjoy!
I hope 2021 is treating you all well, so far. Here is one more obligation to 2020. It is a companion piece to last week’s remembrance of the artists lost during that last year. This offering is a collection the music released during 2020.
Lockdown did not stop dozens of artists from creating great music. Long established artists and emerging ones all released music last year. As is my style, this is another free-wheeling collection of music, featuring jazz, soul, reggae, country music, and other genres.
Maybe it’s the history of caroling in December. Or maybe its half a dozen years of NBC’s hit musical competition show The Sing Off – which also usually took place in December. In any case, beyond just Christmas music, December has us in the mood for some good a cappella music.
Today is also the sixth day of Kwanzaa where the principle of Kuumba — Creativity — is celebrated. So we’ve taken a different approach to today’s GBN playlist – combining a cappella singing with that superstar with the deep catalog of hits that we saluted here at Good Black News this past spring, Stevie Wonder (after all, we’re still in his 70th birthday year!)
So, if you are still in the mood for something cheery and fun to brighten up the waning moments of 2020 and welcome in the New Year, please check out “A Stevie Wonder Sing Off – The Wonders of A Cappella,” a playlist devoted to Stevie Wonder remakes done with voices only. Early in the playlist Stevie himself joins the all-male group Straight No Chaser on his iconic hit “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours).”
With The Sing Off in the early 2010s, and with hit musical dramedy series Glee and the trio of Pitch Perfect movies, vocal a cappella music hasn’t always been so culturally ubiquitous.
In the late 1970s, there was the famous vocal group Manhattan Transfer – but their hit “Boy From New York City,” while featuring doo wop styles, also featured plenty of instruments playing behind them. And then there was Bobby McFerrin‘s memorable “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” – which ultimately seemed to be a fun novelty more than a musical movement.
For many of us, though, college was where we were first exposed us to a cappella singing. It was at a Northeastern campus where this author first met GBN founder Lori Lakin Hutcherson, that we first ran into preppie kids in jackets and ties at Harvard and Yale singing in choral groups on campus that mixed contemporary pop songs with corny classics like “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo.”
Harvard’s Krokodiloes and Yale’s Whiffenpoofs date back to 1946 and 1909, respectively, but the Fisk Jubilee Singers, established in 1871, were among the first American (and African American) college choral ensembles to gain international prominence for their a cappella prowess.
Contemporary versions of the Krokodiloes and Whiffenpoofs are featured in today’s playlist (no Jubilee Singers – they primarily perform traditional spirituals), along with groups from Howard, Dartmouth, Stanford, Syracuse, Duke and MIT and other colleges.
Boyz II Men, the all-Black group Committed (Season 2 winners of The Sing Off) and other non-collegiate a cappella purveyors like The Nylons and Rockapella are also represented.
So, we hope you’re in the mood to take a slightly different approach to the holidays with this uplifting list of year-round classics from Stevie and this list of a cappella masters. And if you don’t mind just a little more holiday cheer, we couldn’t resist throwing a cappella versions of Stevie’s “What Christmas Means to Me” and “Someday at Christmas” onto the list too.
And, a friendly reminder, for those who still haven’t jumped on the Christmas music train, but want to, you can also check out GBN’s already published holiday playlists:
Last week our fearless leader here at GBN, Lori Lakin Hutcherson, suggested a playlist celebrating Black History Month. I joked that every Music Monday at Good Black News is celebrating Black history.
