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.
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.
With Thanksgiving firmly in our rearview, it is officially time to bring on the peppermint, egg nog and, best of all (at least in my mind), Christmas music playlists!
This season Good Black News is starting off with a playlist chestnut we dropped last Christmas Eve, perhaps missed by anyone who was traveling, already out and about or otherwise engaged in the spirit. So one more again, I am happy to bring to you “Cool Yule”: A Jazzy Christmas Collection:
From Take 6 to Duke Ellington to Geri Allen to Oscar Peterson, this playlist includes vocal and instrumental jazz renditions of traditional and modern Christmas and end-of-year classics for all to enjoy.
Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, Betty Carter, Dianne Reeves, Etta James, Dinah Washington, Esperanza Spalding and Billie Holiday are among the female jazz vocalists represented on “Cool Yule,” with Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Leslie Odom, Jr. and Louis Armstrong lending their deeper pipes to the playlist.
Also represented are jazz titans Miles Davis, John Coltrane, the Count Basie Orchestra, Benny Carter, Kenny Burrell, Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, the McCoy Tyner Trio, Jimmy Smith, the Elvin Jones Quintet and the Ramsey Lewis Trio.
Wishing you all the best as we warm into the winter season, and in the coming new year. Enjoy!
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.
McCoy Tyner, a cornerstone of John Coltrane’s groundbreaking 1960s quartet and one of the most influential pianists in jazz history, died on Friday at his home in New Jersey at age 81, according to the New York Times.
His death was announced by a spokesman for the Tyner family. No other details were provided. Mr. Tyner’s survivors include his wife, Aisha; his son, Nurudeen, who is known as Deen; and his brother, Jarvis.
To quote from the article:
Along with Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and only a few others, Mr. Tyner was one of the main expressways of modern jazz piano. Nearly every jazz pianist since Mr. Tyner’s years with Coltrane has had to learn his lessons, whether they ultimately discarded them or not.
Mr. Tyner’s manner was modest, but his sound was rich, percussive and serious, his lyrical improvisations centered by powerful left-hand chords marking the first beat of the bar and the tonal center of the music.
That sound helped create the atmosphere of Coltrane’s music and, to some extent, all jazz in the 1960s. (When you are thinking of Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things” or “A Love Supreme,” you may be thinking of the sound of Mr. Tyner almost as much as that of Coltrane’s saxophone.)
Mr. Tyner did not find immediate success after leaving Coltrane in 1965. But within a decade his fame had caught up with his influence, and he remained one of the leading bandleaders in jazz as well as one of the most revered pianists for the rest of his life.
Alfred McCoy Tyner was born in Philadelphia on Dec. 11, 1938, to Jarvis and Beatrice Tyner, both natives of North Carolina. His father sang in a church quartet and worked for a company that made medicated cream; his mother was a beautician. Mr. Tyner started taking piano lessons at 13, and a year later his mother bought him his first piano, setting it up in her beauty shop.
He grew up during a spectacular period for jazz in Philadelphia. Among the local musicians who would go on to national prominence were the organist Jimmy Smith, the trumpeter Lee Morgan and the pianists Red Garland, Kenny Barron, Ray Bryant and Richie Powell, who lived in an apartment around the corner from the Tyner family house, and whose brother was the pianist Bud Powell, Mr. Tyner’s idol. (Mr. Tyner recalled that once, as a teenager, while practicing in the beauty shop, he looked out the window and saw Powell listening; he eventually invited the master inside to play.)
Just before Coltrane’s death in 1967, Mr. Tyner signed to Blue Note. He quickly delivered “The Real McCoy,” one of his strongest albums, which included his compositions “Passion Dance,” “Search for Peace” and “Blues on the Corner,” all of which he later revisited on record and kept in his live repertoire.
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.
In 1964, John Coltrane moved from Queens, N.Y., to a brick ranch house on a 31/2 acre wooded lot in the quiet suburb of Dix Hills. This bucolic setting — 40 miles east of the city — is perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a musician creatingthe virtuosic jazz that Coltrane is famous for. “I believe the solitude and the beauty of Long Island gave him something he had not had or experienced before,” he says. “Clearly it affected the way he conceived.”
But Ravi Coltrane, the son of John and Alice Coltrane, who was herself a noted jazz pianist and harpist, says the woods were part of his father’s creative process.
Ravi Coltrane was born in 1965 and lived in the Dix Hills house until he was six.
“This is my sister’s room over here. Michelle — this is her bedroom,” he says. “This was the boys’ room back here; this is the room I shared with my two brothers, John Jr. and Oran.”‘
But, Ravi Coltrane says, not all is as it was: The Coltrane Home in Dix Hills has fallen into disrepair in the 45 years after his father’s death.
Preserving The Property
Many, including Ravi Coltrane, are trying to preserve the historic property. The driving force behind the effort is Steve Fulgoni, a music store owner, amateur saxophonist and a huge Coltrane fan. He first visited the house in 2004.
“I was looking around, and I looked in the corner, which I think was in this room, and all there was was one newspaper,” Fulgoni says. “I picked up the newspaper, and I looked at the date, and the date of the newspaper was July 17, which was the anniversary of his death. And I said to myself, ‘I need to do something.'”
That same year, he founded The Friends of the Coltrane Home. Fulgoni petitioned the town of Huntington, N.Y., to declare the site a historic landmark, and two years later, to purchase the property and designate it a public park.
In 1964, John Coltrane moved from Queens, N.Y., to a brick ranch house on a 31/2 acre wooded lot in the quiet suburb of Dix Hills. This bucolic setting — 40 miles east of the city — is perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a musician creatingthe virtuosic jazz that Coltrane is famous for. “I believe the solitude and the beauty of Long Island gave him something he had not had or experienced before,” he says. “Clearly it affected the way he conceived.”
But Ravi Coltrane, the son of John and Alice Coltrane, who was herself a noted jazz pianist and harpist, says the woods were part of his father’s creative process.
Ravi Coltrane was born in 1965 and lived in the Dix Hills house until he was six.
“This is my sister’s room over here. Michelle — this is her bedroom,” he says. “This was the boys’ room back here; this is the room I shared with my two brothers, John Jr. and Oran.”‘
But, Ravi Coltrane says, not all is as it was: The Coltrane Home in Dix Hills has fallen into disrepair in the 45 years after his father’s death.
Preserving The Property
Many, including Ravi Coltrane, are trying to preserve the historic property. The driving force behind the effort is Steve Fulgoni, a music store owner, amateur saxophonist and a huge Coltrane fan. He first visited the house in 2004.
“I was looking around, and I looked in the corner, which I think was in this room, and all there was was one newspaper,” Fulgoni says. “I picked up the newspaper, and I looked at the date, and the date of the newspaper was July 17, which was the anniversary of his death. And I said to myself, ‘I need to do something.'”
That same year, he founded The Friends of the Coltrane Home. Fulgoni petitioned the town of Huntington, N.Y., to declare the site a historic landmark, and two years later, to purchase the property and designate it a public park.
