For #JazzAppreciationMonth, we explore the term “bop” — a word often used today to describe a song with a good groove. I
ts musical reference origins however, are rooted in the early 1940s when “bop” was used to describe an new and exciting intricate form of jazz. To read about it, read on. To hear about it, press PLAY:
[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. 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 Tuesday, April 26th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
It’s in the category we call “Lemme Break It Down,” where we explore the origins and meanings of words and phrases rooted in the Black Lexicon and Black culture. Today’s phrase is another one in honor of #JazzAppreciationMonth… “Bop.”
“Bop” is a slang term most currently used to mean a really good song, but originally used to reference the jazz genre “bebop,” “rebop” or “hard bop.”
Invented in the 1940s and 1950s by musicians like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Christian, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Mary Lou Williams and Thelonious Monk – right now you’re listening to the song called “Be-Bop” by Dizzy Gillespie, originally written, recorded and released by him in 1945.
The “bop” style of playing consisted of intricate phrasings and harmonic improvisations over chord melodies of standards as well as original compositions. Dizzy Gillespie even titled his 1979 autobiography To Be or Not to Bop.
To learn more about the term “bop,” links to sources are provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.
Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
The excerpt from “Be Bop” by Dizzy Gillespie is 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.
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In continued celebration of #JazzAppreciationMonth, today we drop in on virtuoso vocalist Sarah Vaughan, who hailed from Newark, New Jersey, and was dubbed “Sassy” for her salty conversation and “The Divine One” for the heavenly and serene singing feats she accomplished with her three octave range.
To read about Vaughan, read on. To hear about her, press PLAY:
[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. 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 Wednesday, April 13th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Today, we offer a quote from one of the finest vocalists and musicians ever to do it, she’s known as “Sassy,” “The Divine One,” she’s Ms. Sarah Vaughan:
“When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don’t even notice.”
Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1924, Sarah Lois Vaughan’s musical talent first revealed itself in church when she would clamor to sit with the organist instead of her mother.
As a teenager Vaughan snuck into local nightclubs to play piano, sing and perform. In 1942, she entered the famed Apollo Theater Amateur Night contest in New York and captivated the audience with her stunning performance of “Body and Soul.”
Here’s a version Vaughan later recorded of the song that was her calling card to her career:=
[Excerpt of “Body and Soul”]
Vaughan’s Apollo contest win lead quickly to a stint singing with the Earl Hines Orchestra before she joined fellow singer Billy Eckstine’s orchestra when he quit Hines to form his own big band.
In Mr. B’s outfit, Vaughan played, sang and improvised with burgeoning bebop innovators Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker before eventually going solo herself.
Vaughan carried the bebop style into her vocals, as can be heard in her version of “Lover Man” with Gillespie’s Septet from 1946:
[Excerpt of “Lover Man” 1946]
From the 1940s through the 1960s, Vaughan recorded with various labels, big and small, including Columbia, Roulette, Mercury, and Mercury’s jazz subsidiary, EmArcy.
Whether singing sweet pop or hot jazz, Vaughan’s vocals remained innovative, impressive and unparalleled. In 1947 she was the first singer to record and release “Tenderly,” establishing the standard for the standard:
[Excerpt of “Tenderly”]
Vaughan literally could sing anything – and did. She scored her first gold record with pop and R&B hit “Broken Hearted Melody”:
[Excerpt of “Broken Hearted Melody”]
And kept her jazz chops tight with her renditions of songs like “Nice Work If You Can Get It”:
[Excerpt of “Nice Work If You Can Get It”]
“Black Coffee”:
[Excerpt of “Black Coffee”]
And turned tunes like Erroll Garner’s “Misty,” which she recorded for her 1959 Vaughan and Violins album orchestrated and arranged by Quincy Jones, into something altogether ethereal:
[Excerpt of “Misty”]
In the 1960s and 1970s however, Vaughan experienced differing troubles with different record labels that didn’t know how to present or frankly even respect Vaughan in the changing musical times.
Just take one look at the clown with an afro photo on the cover of her 1974 Send in The Clowns album on Mainstream Records and you’ll get it.
But if you can’t do that right now, take a listen to the ‘70s vanilla pop/light disco production of the title track to get the point:
[Excerpt of “Send in the Clowns” – 1974]
After Vaughan sued Mainstream over the album cover and other issues, she signed with Norman Granz’s Pablo label and released albums of jazz standards and bossa nova inflected music, two of which were nominated for Grammys.
She also re-arranged and re-recorded “Send in the Clowns,” which went from being lawsuit-worthy to another of her signature songs:
[Excerpt of “Send in the Clowns” 1981]
Vaughan continued to lean into bossa nova-style music in the 1980s, and recorded her last full album, 1987’s A Brazilian Romance, with Sergio Mendes producing. A personal favorite of mine from that LP is the languidly stunning “So Many Stars”:
[Excerpt of “So Many Stars”]
In her lifetime, Vaughan received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame and received the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award in 1989. Vaughan passed in 1990 and in 1998, her recording of “If You Could See Me Now,”composed specifically for her by Tad Dameron four decades earlier, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
[Excerpt of “If You Could See Me Now”]
In 2002, Sarah Vaughan’s “Whatever Lola Wants” was a standout on the Verve Remixed2compilation, introducing her timeless voice to a whole new generation:
[Excerpt of “Whatever Lola Wants – Gotan Project Remix”]
In 2012, Vaughan was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, and for over a decade, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center has held an annual International Jazz Vocal Competition, nicknamed “The SASSY Awards” in honor of the one and only, the incomparable Sarah Vaughan.
Stream or buy on DVD the music documentary of her performing live 1958 and 1964 called Sarah Vaughan: The Divine One in 1958, watch the 1991 biographical American Masters documentary Sarah Vaughan “The Divine One” currently available on YouTube, watch clips of her live performances on YouTube and of course, buy or stream as much Sarah Vaughan music as you can online.
Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
And let’s hear Sarah Vaughan’s voice one more time – her speaking voice – from her 1964 live performance in Sweden of “Misty”:
“Thank you very very much ladies and gentlemen. I’m very nervous up here I got a cold today. The day I got to do TV I got a cold. That’s fine. But anyway I do you want to enjoy our show and right now I like to do a little tune that I recorded while I was over here and not in Stockholm but while I was in Paris in ’58. A tune that was written by Erroll Garner. I do hope you enjoy “Misty.”
This has been a 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.
Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
All excerpts of Sarah Vaughan’s music included are 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.
Happy #JazzAppreciationMonth, good people! For most the word “Jazz” conjures up images of the giants like Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, and Louis Armstrong.
Though this collection, “Ear Food: A New Jazz Playlist“ features a new school of Jazz artists re-imagining and reinventing Jazz for today:
They are staying true to the game while infusing a spectrum of R&B, Hip-Hop and other influences.
Many will recognize names like Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, Meshell Ndegeocello, Esperanza Spalding, and the late Roy Hargrove, but this collection features some new talents that are not as well-known.
I hope you’ll dig artists like: Ezra Collective, Al Strong, Steam Down, Somi, Nubya Garcia, Tom Misch, and Moses Boyd, too.
It’s great to see and hear a new generation adopt and reinvent the sound of a timeless genre, proving that Jazz not only still lives, but thrives.
While I’ve generally moved to monthly offerings, I’ll be back during this month devoted to Jazz appreciation with another collection next week.
In today’s Daily Drop, for #JazzAppreciationMonth we offer a quote from jazz legend and pioneer, the unparalleled saxophonist, composer and musician, North Carolina native John Coltrane. To hear it (and more on Coltrane), press PLAY:
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. Full transcript below:
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 Sunday, April 3rd, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Today, we offer a quote from jazz legend and pioneer, the unparalleled saxophonist, composer and musician, John Coltrane:
“That’s what music is to me—it’s just another way of saying this is a big, beautiful universe we live in, that’s been given to us, and here’s an example of just how magnificent and encompassing it is.”
It makes complete poetic sense that the name of the band John Coltrane played in while enlisted in the U.S. Navy was the Melody Masters.
With Johnny Hodges and Dexter Gordon as musical heroes and from a young age in thrall to big band music and its emerging successor, bebop, a young Coltrane dedicated himself to hours upon hours upon hours of practice, gigging whenever and wherever he could, and learning from whoever he could learn from.
Coltrane mastered and some even say transcended what was understood or known about the structure and composition of jazz music in the 1950s and 60s. After stints working with and learning from Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman, among others, Coltrane began creating and recording with his own band.
Not only could Coltrane reimagine, reinvigorate and repopularize standards such as My Favorite Things, he composed the bulk of classic works such as Blue Train, Giant Steps, and his undisputed masterpiece recorded one day in 1965, A Love Supreme.
Coltrane passed in 1967 but his music and legacy live on.
In 1995, the United States Postal Service created a commemorative John Coltrane postage stamp and in 1997, the Grammys honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts chose “My Favorite Things” for its list of 360 Songs of the Century, and in 2007, Coltrane was awarded a Pulitzer Prize as a Special Citation for a lifetime of innovative and influential work.
And of course, perhaps most importantly, buy or stream Coltrane’s music. 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 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.
Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
Excerpts from “Blue Train,” “My Favorite Things” and “A Love Supreme, Pt. 1: Acknowledgement” performed by John Coltrane are included 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, you can check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
No fooling, in the U.S. April 1st denotes the start of Jazz Appreciation Month (aka “JAM”), where the art form born out of Congo Square in New Orleans became a unique and true African American and American musical expression that continues to evolve across the decades and centuries.
Started by the Smithsonian Museum of American History in 2001, “JAM is intended to stimulate and encourage people of all ages to participate in jazz – to study the music, attend concerts, listen to jazz on radio and recordings, read books about jazz, and more.”
To hear our Drop about it, press PLAY:
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. Full transcript below:
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, April 1st, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
No fooling, April 1st in the United States also kicks off Jazz Appreciation Month. It’s a time to savor the musical gumbo first cooked up in early 20th century New Orleans by master chefs including Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver, and Louis “Pops” Armstrong.
During the 1930s and ‘40s, bandleaders such as Lionel Hampton, Chick Webb, Count Basie and Duke Ellington swung the nation and defined the sound–as did singers Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine.
Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane were the vanguard through the 1950s and 60s, leading to the free jazz of Ornette Coleman, Taj Mahal, the Jazz Messengers and today’s pot stirrers Kamasi Washington, Esperanza Spalding and MacArthur “genius” Cecile McLorin Salvant.
To quote Wynton Marsalis, the most famous trumpet player in modern times and the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center:
“Jazz is the nobility of the race put into sound; it is the sensuousness of romance in our dialect; it is the picture of the people in all their glory.”
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 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.
Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
“Dippermouth Blues” by King Oliver’s Jazz Band and composed by Oliver and Louis Armstrong is used with permission under Public Domain.
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, you can check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
We close out #WomensHistoryMonth with Mary Lou Williams, one of the most talented and revered pianists, composers, and arrangers in jazz music history.
Williams, who grew up in Pittsburgh, was a self-taught musical prodigy who cited Lovie Austin, who we did a daily drop on yesterday, as her greatest influence.
Since 1996, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC has held an annualMary Lou Williams Jazz Festival – this year’s will be held in May. To hear our Drop on her, press play:
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. Full transcript below:
Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, still a little stuffed up, but here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Thursday, March 31st, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
One of the first renowned female players, composers and arrangers in jazz, Williams was a working musician by the age of 15, and by 18 had joined the Andy Kirk Orchestra based out of Kansas City, Missouri.By the 1940s she had her own weekly radio show, Mary Lou Williams’s Piano Workshop, where she mentored Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
In 1945, Williams composed one of her most noted works, Zodiac Suite, which she said was inspired by the astrological signs of famous friends in the jazz world. “Aries” which you are hearing now, was inspired by Billie Holiday and Ben Webster.
[Excerpt from “Aries”]
After converting to Catholicism in the 1950s, Williams quit performing to aid musicians with addictions, even turning her home into a halfway house.
When she returned to music years later, Williams composed sacred works such as 1971’s acclaimed Mary Lou’s Massand supported musicians in need by tithing her proceeds for the rest of her life.
Even with her self-imposed break, in her lifetime, Williams composed over 350 songs and recorded over 35 albums. Williams passed in 1981 and in 1983, Duke University established the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture.
And since 1996, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC has held an annual Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival. The next one will be held this May.
And if you really want to deep dive, like I know I do, you can listen to and read all seven tapes and transcripts of Mary Lou Williams’ interviews from the 1973 Jazz Oral History project where her archives are stored at Rutgers University.
And, of course, you can buy or stream her music on Apple Music or Spotify. 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 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.
Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
Excerpts from “Aries” from Zodiac Suite and “Credo” (Instrumental) from Mary Lou’s Mass by Mary Lou Williams are included 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, you can check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
Happy Memorial Day, you all. I also need to acknowledge the 100th anniversary of the Black Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Last week included the 95th anniversary of the birth of Miles Davis. His hometown of East St. Louis, Missouri was the site of another race massacre in 1917.
So much has been written about Miles Davis. Including is his own autobiography. There have been documentaries long and short about him, so I won’t go on.
At over 10 hours this collection is still the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes his creative output. Miles was a giant in American music, and one of this nation’s most iconic and influential figures in music and culture.
In a career that spanned five decades, he kept at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz. From being of the vanguards of bebop and blazing the trail of electric jazz.
The list of his collaborators is far too long, but here are just a few: Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Max Roach, Gil Evans, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, and Joe Zawinul.
Miles Davis gave many of these now-legendary artists, who all appear on this playlist, their first break. Davis was tough as nails from all reports, though he seemed more than willing to imbue great vulnerability and tenderness in his playing.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Charlie Parker started playing as a boy, when his mother gave him a saxophone to cheer him up after his father left. He went on to spearhead a musical revolution. Charlie “Bird” Parker was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. In his brief life, Parker created a new sound on the alto saxophone and spearheaded a revolution in harmony and improvisation that pushed popular music from the swing era to bebop and modern jazz. In Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, scholar and author Stanley Crouch tells the story of Parker’s early years and his rise to prominence. But Crouch says he didn’t want to tell the same old story of young black musicians overcoming obstacles. “These guys, they thought about life,” he says. “Oh yes, they thought about being colored, but they also thought about life. And people came to hear you because you played life. It wasn’t because you played, ‘Oh, I’m just a poor colored man over here, just doing some poor colored things. I’m thinking about my poor colored girl and how the white man is not going to let us blah blah.’ That wasn’t what they were playing.” ‘I Put Quite A Bit Of Study Into The Horn’ Crouch’s bookopens with a triumphant moment in Parker’s career. It’s February 1942 and the 21-year-old alto player is on the bandstand at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, performing with the Jay McShann Orchestra for a live radio broadcast. He steps up to solo and Crouch explains what happens next:
When the band started throwing up stock riffs behind him, Parker sidestepped the familiar shapes, issuing his responses from deep in left field. … Each chorus was getting hotter; it was clear, from the position of his body and the sound of his horn, that Charlie Parker was not going to give in. All the nights he had worked on it, the flubs, the fumblings, the sore lips, mouth, and tongue, the cramped fingers — they all paid off that afternoon. Suddenly, the man with the headphones was signaling McShann, Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Keep on playing!
In 1980, the late pianist and bandleader Jay McShann described how Parker’s sound grabbed him the first time he heard it. “One particular night, I happened to be coming through the streets and I heard the sound coming out. And this was a different sound, so I went inside to see who was blowing,” he said. “So I walked up to Charlie after he finished playing and I asked him, I said, ‘Say man,’ I said, ‘where are you from?’ I said, ‘I thought I met most of the musicians around here.’ Well, he says, ‘I’m from Kansas City.’ But he says, ‘I’ve been gone for the last two or three months. Been down to the Ozarks woodshedding.’ “
Ninety-five years ago today, jazz trumpet innovator and bebop pioneer John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. Gillespie, who famously lead his own orchestra as well as recorded with Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, is best known for his compositions “Salt Peanuts,” “Woody N’ You” and “A Night In Tunisia,” as well as popularizing Afro-Cuban jazz in the United States. Learn more about his life and music by clicking here and watch his “Manteca” above.
Stream or buy on DVD the music documentary of her performing live 1958 and 1964 called 
By the 1940s she 
