The holiday season fast approaches, and I’m back with a collection to gather around the table with family and friends.
Here’s a Thanksgiving playlist that includes new music by Rihanna from the BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER soundtrack, and food-centered classics like Cab Calloway’s “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House” from way back in the day.
This musical journey features soul, jazz, reggae, and gospel, all good music to cook, eat, and clean that kitchen to.
Here’s Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole singing songs about autumn, and several artists like Sly Stone, Massive Attack, and Otis Redding offering songs of thanks.
Plus Little Eva, Fantasia, Louis Jordan and others praising grits, stuffed turkey, mashed potatoes, greens, cornbread, and collards to name a few. Hungry yet?
Happy Early Thanksgiving, y’all. I’ll see you soon with a funky holiday season offering next month.
Soul, Reggae, Funk, Jazz, and movie soundtracks make up this collection. There are midcentury classics, plus brand new and previously unreleased tracks.
Michael Abels’ music from Jordan Peele’s neo-Western science fiction horror film, NOPE, serves as a through line for this mix.
It features Beyoncé, The Weekend, Ella Fitzgerald, Little Simz, Exuma, King Tubby, and long-lost collaborations with the late Ranking Roger and The Clash.
I freely admit to casting a very wide net for this playlist. It won’t scare kids off your porch on the 31st, but it might have you shaking a tail feather from now until then.
Please enjoy this collection that offers, witches, ghost, werewolves, and monsters both real and imagined.
Happy Monday, you all. It’s your friend and selector, Marlon West, back with another dose of fine music.
Earlier this month we lost jazz legend, Ramsey Lewis. He can be credited with extending the life of jazz on the pop charts with his cover of Dobie Gray’s “The ‘In’ Crowd.”
It spent 16 weeks on the Billboard Top 100 and rose as high as No. 5. The album spent 12 weeks in the top spot among best-selling R&B albums.
Throughout his decades-long career, Lewis was the maestro of jazz crossover. Ramsey Lewis’ trio included bassist Eldee Young and drummer Red Holt.
They received not only chart success with “The ‘In’ Crowd” but also cultural acclamation: the cut earned him the Grammy award for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance.
“Improvisation that should swing, have some forward motion to it, even if it’s a ballad, to have some movement about it. Where are you going to find that spontaneous improvisation in the moment except in jazz?” Lewis told Molly Murphy in a 2006 interview for the National Endowment For the Arts.
Lewis was born in Chicago on May 27, 1935 and grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project. He started taking piano lessons at a young age and played at church, where his father was choir director.
Throughout his life he always returned to his hometown and as a teacher and mentor. Here’s some of the best of Ramsey Lewis. Enjoy!
“See” ya next month! Just in time for a soulful and funky Halloween offering.
Happy Monday, you all. It’s your friend and selector, Marlon West.
I’ve been away for a while, and now I’m back. August 9th would have been the 59th birthday of Whitney Houston.
Sista was one of the biggest pop stars of all time. Her accomplishments as a performer were extraordinary, becoming the first artist to have seven consecutive singles hit number one, from “Saving All My Love for You” (1985) through “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” (1988). Her version of Dolly Parton‘s “I Will Always Love You” (1992) became the biggest hit single in rock history.
Whitney Houston and Whitney, her first two albums, each went diamond platinum. She followed them with a string of additional multi-platinum LPs including the likewise diamond-earning soundtrack for The Bodyguard.
Houston was able to handle stylish dance-pop, adult contemporary ballads, and slick contemporary R&B with equal dexterity.
The result was an across-the-board appeal that was matched by few artists of her era and helped her become one of the first Black artists to find success on MTV.
Over time, she developed a virtuosic singing style given over to swooping, flashy melodic embellishments. The shadow of Houston’s style and technique still looms large over nearly every pop and R&B diva to this day. Please enjoy this collection of the best of Whitney Houston.
Since 2020, West has been drawing and posting ink tributes on his social media of African-American people slain by police or targeted by racists, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland and Michael Brown, to name a few.
“For many of us Black nerds, Marvel’s characters are particularly relatable. They are often hated and hunted by the powers that be,” West said. “There isn’t a more American form of portraiture than black ‘inks’ over white, to honor those that faced this nation’s fear and loathing of the Black body.”
West has also posted ink tributes to civil rights leaders and protestors like John Lewis and Gloria Richardson Dandridge (seen below).
West, who is also a contributor to GBN (check out his prolific and eclectic Music Monday playlists on this site), recently did a Q&A with us to share more insight into the process and journey that led to his drawings and the upcoming exhibit:
GBN: When you started posting and sharing your drawings on social media, what was the response?
Marlon West: The response was very positive. They were met with surprise from many, as I had limited myself to drawing only effects and instructional drawovers for decades. It took being on lockdown, away from some of the best artists on the planet, and feeling the despair that so many of us did around George Floyd’s murder to move to draw what I initially thought would be four drawings. I’ve done more than 40.
Marlon West (photo courtesy Marlon West)
When you decided who you were going to draw, how did you decide what image of them to use?
Almost all of them are based on photos that have been widely seen. Many are in fact selfies taken by the subjects themselves. It felt very intimate to draw them, staring into their eyes while I did so. It was often tear inducing to do so for the hours it took to do each one. But I found it cathartic to sit alone and try to honor each one.
Did you ever receive any feedback from any family or loved ones of your subjects?
A good friend knows Michael Brown Sr. I created, until this exhibit, the only physical copy of any of them to give to him. He was thankful, but understandably guarded.
How did the museum display of your work come about?
My friend and colleague reached out to the museum regarding them. They were very receptive to the idea. I am super flattered and honored. They are also leaning into presenting them in the comic style nature that I drew them.
The iconic “A Great Day in Harlem” photograph of 57 jazz musicians taken by Art Kane in 1958 was the inspiration for the recently recreated “A Great Day in Animation” photo of 54 Black professionals in animation.
The homage was the brainchild of Disney visual effects supervisor Marlon West (who GBN is exceedingly proud to have as a regular contributor – check out his latest #MusicMonday playlist for Juneteeth here), and was taken just a few weeks ago by Randy Shropshire with Jeff Vespa as production lead.
For decades, West has been moved by “A Great Day in Harlem,” as well as Jean Bach’s Oscar-nominated film of the same name, which documents how the photo came to be.
“I’ve had a framed copy of that photo in my office or somewhere for 30 years,” West tells Variety. “And I thought it would be cool to do the same thing with Black animators.”
Aided by his friends and colleagues Bruce Smith, Peter Ramsey and Everett Downing Jr., West began putting together a list of animation professionals to include, aiming for legends like Floyd Norman, whose work on 1959’s “Sleeping Beauty” made him Disney’s first-ever Black animator, and his close collaborator Leo D. Sullivan.
“In the original photo, Coleman Hawkins is standing front and center. He was one of the elders of those folks,” West explains. “I just envisioned Floyd Norman standing in Coleman Hawkins’ spot, and all of us radiating out from him, and Leo Sullivan and other grandmasters who have upped the game.”
It was also important to West to invite up-and-comers such as Latoya Raveneau, who recently directed “The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder” and Chrystin Garland, a background painter and designer on series like “Solar Opposites.”
“If people look at this photo 10 or 20 years from now, [I hope] they’re like, ‘There’s so-and-so when they were just starting out!” West says.
(2022 photo: Pictured above: Aaron Spurgeon, Abelle Hayford, Ayo Davis, Breana Williams, Brie E Henderson, Bruce W. Smith, Camille Eden, Carole Holliday, Chris Copeland, Chrystin Garland, Constance Allen, Deborah Anderson, Devin Crane, Eric, Ramsey, Everett Downing Jr., Floyd Norman, Frank Abney, Jay Francis, Justin Copeland, Kaela Lash, Kai Akira, Karen Toliver, Kelley Gardner, Kemp Powers, Kenny Thompkins, Kwesi Davis, Latoya Raveneau, Layron DeJarnette, Lennie Graves, Lenord Robinson, Leo D. Sullivan, Leo Sullivan Jr., Lyndon Barrois Jr., Lynne Southerland, Maimuna Venzant, Marcella Brown, Marlon West, Marshall Toomey, Morenike Dosu, Peter Ramsey, Pixote Hunt, Ralph Farquhar, Reginald Hudlin, Robert Tyler, Ron Husband, Ron Myrick, Shabrayia Cleaver, Shari B. Ellis, Shavonne Cherry, Shay Stone, Sidney Clifton, Swinton Scott, Tara Nicole Whitaker, Tyree Dillihay, Umaimah Damakka)
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done a #Juneteenth playlist for GBN. This year it shares a Sunday with Father’s Day.
While I didn’t grow up with the holiday, it’s believed to be the oldest African-American holiday, with annual celebrations on June 19th in some parts of the country dating back to 1866. Well.
Since becoming aware of it, I’ve been all-in for years. As a father and son, I am thrilled with the one-two holiday punch.
I’ve tried to gather a set of tunes that can be enjoyed while the grill is full of food, with folk sitting around the table, or when you’re chilling around the crib.
From its Galveston, Texas roots, is now one of five date-specific federal holidays along with New Year’s Day (January 1), Independence Day (July 4), Veterans Day (November 11), and Christmas Day (December 25).
Juneteenth will coincide with Father’s Day not only this year, but also in 2033, 2039, 2044, and 2050. It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was declared a holiday in 1986.
Do enjoy another free-wheeling and eclectic collection celebrating this uniquely American holiday by your friend and selector.
“With the possible exception of the Beatles, no band in the history of popular music, and certainly no African American act, has left a more substantial legacy on popular music than the Isley Brothers.” — Bob Gulla, Icons of R&B and Soul
While they’re well respected enough to be in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame since 1992, The Isley Brothers are not afforded their proper place of widespread esteem in the pantheon of popular music.
They’re the only group in the history of music to have a demonstrable influence on both the Beatles (who covered the Isleys’ take of “Twist And Shout” for one of their biggest early hits) and Ice Cube (who rapped over “Footsteps In The Dark, Pts. 1 & 2” on “It Was A Good Day”).
Over a 60-year run the group changed – one brother, Vernon, died young, while another, Rudolph, became a church minister, to be replaced by a family member – one aspect has remained constant: Ronald’s instantly recognizable, golden voice.
Ronald Isley (photo: commons.wikipedia.org)
Last month he turned 81 years old. Any listener to the playlists I’ve created for GBN knows I’ll slip an Isley Brothers track into a collection whenever possible.
This one is an unapologetic tribute to the vocalist that fronted the most essential band this nation has produced. He’s mastered a series of genres and has also sung the modern American of songbooks.
Ronald Isley has song standards from Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley. He has gifted us definitive versions of classics penned for the Motown production line by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland, as well as delicate reinterpretations of ballads by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
Enjoy this hours-long collection of the best of one of America’s greatest and most enduring vocalists.
Though a case can be made he is simply the most recorded single jazz artist. Periodt. Meanwhile, he has embraced other genres in his journeys, including classical music, Latin, big band, soul, and hip-hop.
He was introduced to a new generation of fans with his appearance on A Tribe Called Quest‘s 1991 classic album The Low End Theory.
Please enjoy this collection of music from the decades-long career of the great Ron Carter.
In today’s Daily Drop, we explore the term “Afrofuturism” and its origin. To read about it and see links to sources, 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 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, May 3rd, 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 word? “Afrofuturism.”
[Excerpt from “Space Is The Place” by Sun Ra]
“Afrofuturism” is a term that was coined in the 1994 essay “Black to the Future” by Mark Dery that describes a movement within Black culture from the 1950s to the present that employs science fiction and fantasy as frameworks to reimagine the African diaspora in music, art, literature, film, and fashion.
Musicians such as Sun Ra, who you are hearing right now, George Clinton, Janelle Monae, Erykah Badu; visual artists such as David Alabo, Ellen Gallagher, Kerry James Marshall, Kaylan F. Michael; and authors such as Octavia E. Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Tananarive Due and N.K. Jemisin all explore Afrofuturism in their work.
You can also watch the short PBS documentary called Afrofuturism 101 at pbs.org, download the This American Life “We Are The Future” podcast episode on Afrofuturism by Neil Drumming, check out the list of other Afrofuturism-themed podcasts on player.fm, and listen to the awesome “Space is The Place” Afrofuturism playlist curated by Good Black News contributor Marlon West.
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, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.
Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
Excerpts from Sun Ra’s “Space is the Place” are 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.
For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.
West, who is also a contributor to GBN (check out his prolific and eclectic Music Monday playlists on this site), recently did a Q&A with us to share more insight into the process and journey that led to his drawings and the upcoming exhibit:
You can also watch the short PBS documentary called Afrofuturism 101 at