Alive Soul

Break...

Thu, 10 May 2012 10:13:00 -0400

I won’t be posting for awhile…need a break to recalibrate, get some life issues in order. While I’m gone I entrust you to spread love, fight for justice, play jazz, and post thought provoking shit.

Thanks.

Alive Soul

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any."

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:07:05 -0400

““The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.””

- Alice Walker

Monk’s Mood - Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane Album -...

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:04:28 -0400

Monk’s Mood - Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane

Album - At Carnegie Hall

Soujourner Truth, Abolitionist, Women’s Rights...

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:01:35 -0400

Soujourner Truth, Abolitionist, Women’s Rights Activist

Alive Soul Note: On this day, May 9, 1867 Soujourner Truth Addressed the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association in New York City.Below is text of her address:

My friends, I am rejoiced that you are glad, but I don’t know how you will feel when I get through. I come from another field-the country of the slave. They have got their liberty-so much good luck to have slavery partly destroyed; not entirely. I want it root and branch destroyed. Then we will all be free indeed. I feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much as a man. There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to got it going again. White women are a great deal smarter, and know more than colored women, while colored women do not know scarcely anything. They go out washing, which is about as high as a colored woman gets, and their men go about idle, strutting up and down; and when the women come home, they ask for their money and take it all, and then scold because there is no food. I want you to consider on that, chil’n I call you chil’n; you are somebody’s chil’n and I am old enough to be mother of all that is here. I want women to have their rights. In the courts women have no right, no voice; nobody speaks for them. I wish woman to have her voice there among the pettifoggers. If it is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there.

I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free, and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. I suppose I am kept here because something remains for me to do, I suppose I am yet to help to break the chain. I have done a great deal of work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the German women. They work in the field and do as much work, but do not got the pay. We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked. What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough in our own pockets; and may be you will ask us for money. But help us now until we get it. It is a good consolation to know that when we have got this battle once fought we shall not be coming to you any more. You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again. I have been in Washington about three years, seeing about these colored people. Now colored men have the right to vote. There ought to be equal rights now more than ever, since colored people have got their freedom. I am going to talk several times while I am here; so now I will do a little singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.

Accordingly, suiting the action to the word, Sojourner sang, “We are going home.” “There, children,” said she, “in heaven we shall rest from all our labors; first do all we have to do here. There I am determined to go, not to stop short of that beautiful place, and I do not mean to stop till I get there, and meet you there, too.”

Speech courtesy of UCLA.EDU

Photo: Public Domain

in any language….

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:00:49 -0400

in any language….

Member of the Black Student Movement at UNC Chapel Hill, 1969 no...

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:59:34 -0400

Member of the Black Student Movement at UNC Chapel Hill, 1969 no photo credit given

In the fall 1967, the UNC Admissions Office reported 113 African American students enrolled out of a total of 13,352. That semester, during a regular meeting of the campus chapter of the NAACP, student Preston Dobbins introduced a motion to abolish the NAACP chapter and regroup as the Black Student Movement (BSM). The BSM was officially recognized by the UNC administration in December 1967.

Oscalypso - Curtis Fuller Album - The Opener

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:57:40 -0400

Oscalypso - Curtis Fuller

Album - The Opener

Happy Birthday! Mary Lou Williams, Pianist Imagine a pianist...

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:56:38 -0400

Happy Birthday! Mary Lou Williams, Pianist

Imagine a pianist playing concerts with Benny Goodman and Cecil Taylor in successive years (1977-78). That pianist was Mary Lou Williams. In a career which spanned over fifty years Mary was always on the cutting edge.

She was born Mary Scruggs in 1910 Atlanta. Her mother was a single parent who worked as a domestic and played spirituals and ragtime on piano and organ. At age three Mary shocked her by reaching up from her mother’s lap to pick out a tune on the keyboard. Rather than hiring a teacher (for fear the child would lose the ability to improvise) Mary’s mother invited professional musicians to their home. By watching, listening and heeding their advice, Mary learned well, especially the importance of a strong left hand. By age six, dubbed “The Little Piano Girl of East Liberty”, she was playing for money around her new home of Pittsburgh, Pa. Her early years included listening to piano rolls of James P. Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith, records of Jelly Roll Morton and seeing Earl Hines play at youth dances. At age twelve she went on the road during school vacations with a vaudeville show. Three years later she quit high school to join the very successful vaudeville team Seymour and Jeanette. Here she met saxophonist John Williams, whom she married at sixteen. When John got the call to join Terrence Holder’s band in Oklahoma, Mary took charge of his band, the Synco-Jazzers, in Memphis (Jimmie Lunceford was a member).

By the time Mary joined John out West, Holder was out and Andy Kirk had become the leader of the Twelve Clouds of Joy. Because the band already had a pianist, Mary just filled in. By day, however, she was feeding tunes and arranging ideas to Kirk (at this point she had little knowledge of theory or notation). She soon tired of this process and began writing arrangments herself, influenced by the style of Don Redman. Contrary to Kirk’s advice she wrote sixth …Expand to read entire bio >chords and unlike most arrangers of the time combined instruments from different sections. Ultimately she would become the band’s full-time pianist, primary soloist and arranger. During the ‘30’s she also wrote arrangements for Goodman (Roll ‘Em, Camel Hop), Lunceford (What’s Your Story, Morning Glory?), the Dorseys, Casa Loma, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and others.

Kirk’s band was a scuffling territory band in its early days. But the band was based in a place Mary called “a heavenly city”, Kansas City. With fifty clubs and a political machine tied to bootlegging and gambling interests, the city was nearly Depression-proof for jazz musicians. The best musicians from the Southwest and Midwest flocked there and many nationally-known musicians stopped there to jam while on tour (this is depicted in Robert Altman’s movie “Kansas City”, with pianist Geri Allen playing the part of Mary Lou). Mary participated in the jams often, including the famous night when Coleman Hawkins tried to cut the local tenor men, including Ben Webster, Lester Young and Herschel Evans.

The Kirk band became nationally prominent after a 1936 Decca recording. Mary stayed another six years, at which point she was tired of touring and pay inequities. David Baker has said “Particularly given those years, 1929-42, it was almost without precedence to have a female in the band who wasn’t a singer and secondarily for that female to virtually all the musical decisions in her hands. Mary Lou Williams had the enviable position of being the person who shaped virtually the entire history of a band”. Of her piano prowess in Kansas City, Count Basie said “Anytime she was in the neighborhood I used to find myself another little territory, because Mary Lou was tearin’ everybody up”. Saxophonist Buddy Tate seconded this in Joanne Burke’s documentary on Mary Lou when he said “She was outplaying all those men. She didn’t think so but they thought so”. Read More

Photo by Paul Slaughter

Bio courtesy of All About Jazz

auradacity-of: and now back to our regularly schedule tumblr...

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:55:06 -0400

auradacity-of:

and now back to our regularly schedule tumblr already in progress

"Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life."

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:54:29 -0400

“Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life.”

- Walter Scott

"You can shed tears that she is gone, or you can smile because she has lived. You can close your..."

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:59:18 -0400

““You can shed tears that she is gone,
or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she’ll come back,
or you can open your eyes and see all she’s left.
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her,
or you can be full of the love you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.
You can remember her only that she is gone,
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back.
Or you can do what she’d want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on.””

- David Harkin

El Sino - Doug Watkins & Donald Byrd Album - The Transition...

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:58:41 -0400

El Sino - Doug Watkins & Donald Byrd

Album - The Transition Sessions

Otis F. Boykin, Inventor Otis F. Boykin was born on August 29,...

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:57:26 -0400

Otis F. Boykin, Inventor

Otis F. Boykin was born on August 29, 1920 in Dallas, Texas. After graduating high school, he attended Fisk College in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated in 1941 and took a job as a laboratory assistant with the Majestic Radio and TV Corporation in Chicago, Illinois. He undertook various tasks but excelled at testing automatic aircraft controls, ultimately serving as a supervisor. Three years laster he left Majestic and took a position as a research engineer with the P.J. Nilsen Reseach Laboratories. Soon thereafter, he decided to try to develop a business of his own a founded Boykin-Fruth, Incorporated. At the same time, he decided to continue his education, pursuing graduate studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois. He attended classes in 1946 and 1947 but was forced to drop out because he lacked the funds to pay the next year’s tuition.

Despite this setback, Boykin realized that a Masters Degree was not a pre-requisite for inventive competence. He set out to work on project that he had contemplated while in school.

At the time, the field of electronics was very popular among the science community and Boykin took a special interest in working with resistors. A resistor is an electronic component that slows the flow of an electrical current. This is necessary to prevent too much electricity from passing through a component than is necessary or even safe. Boykin sought and received a patent for a wire precision resistor on June 16, 1959. This resistor allowed for a specific amounts of current to flow through for a specific purpose and would be used in radios and televisions. Two years later, he created another resistor that could be manufactured very inexpensively. It was a breakthrough device as it could withstand extreme changes in temperature and tolerate and withstand various levels of pressure and physical trauma without impairing its effectiveness. The chip was cheaper and more reliable than others on the market. Not surprisingly, it was in great demand as he received orders from consumer electronics manufacturers, the United States military and electronics behemoth IBM.

In 1964, Boykin moved to Paris, creating electronic innovations for a new market of customers. Most of these creations involved electrical resistance components (including small component thick-film resistors used in computers and variable resistors used in guided missile systems) but he also created other important products including a chemical air filter and a burglarproof cash register. His most famous invention, however, was a control unit for the pacemaker, which used electrical impulses to stimulate the heart and create a steady heartbeat. In a tragic irony, Boykin died in 1982 as a result of heart failure.

Otis Boykin proved that the setback of having to drop out of school was not enough to deter him from his dream of becoming an inventor and having a long-lasting effect on the world.

Bio: blackinventor.com

Photo: Public Domain

Born In The Bronx: A Visual Record Of The Early Days of Hip...

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:56:29 -0400

Born In The Bronx: A Visual Record Of The Early Days of Hip Hop by Johan Kugelberg

(Have to check this out…have not seen this)

atane: Born on this day: Ron Carter Photo by Francis Wolff

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:15:03 -0400

atane:

Born on this day: Ron Carter

Photo by Francis Wolff

mmmmm hmmmm

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:14:44 -0400

mmmmm hmmmm

Evidence - Bobby Broom Album - Bobby Broom plays for Monk

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:12:12 -0400

Evidence - Bobby Broom

Album - Bobby Broom plays for Monk

W. C. Handy “Father of the Blues” William...

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:10:00 -0400

W. C. Handy “Father of the Blues”

William Christopher Handy was born on November 16, 1873, in Florence, Alabama. He grew up in a log cabin that his grandfather had built on what is now called College Street. As a young child, he displayed a keen interest in music and his intuitive ear could catalog the musical notes of songbirds, the whistles from nearby river boats, and even the rhythms of the Tennessee River. However, musical talent, especially the playing of musical instruments, was frowned upon by his family and church.

Despite Handy’s lack of encouragement, he longed to own a guitar that he had seen in a local shop window and he secretly saved the money he made by picking berries and nuts and making lye soap. When he had finally saved enough money to buy the guitar, he proudly brought it home to his shocked and dismayed family. Handy’s father made him take the guitar back and exchange it for a dictionary.

Handy joined a local blues band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow bandmember and spent every free minute practicing it. An exceptional student in school, he placed near the top of his class. In September of 1892, Handy traveled to Birmingham to take a teaching exam, which he passed easily. He obtained a teaching job in Birmingham but soon learned that the teaching profession paid poorly. He quit the position and found work at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer.

During his free time, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read notes. He formed a quartet called the “Lauzetta Quartet”. When the group read about the upcoming World’s Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. The trip to Chicago was long and arduous. To pay their way, group members performed at odd jobs along the way. They finally arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World’s Fair had been postponed for a year. The group then headed to St. Louis but working conditions there proved to be very bad. The Laurzetta Quartet disbanded and Handy subsequently left St. Louis for Evansville, Indiana.

In Evansville, Handy’s luck changed dramatically. He joined a successful band which performed throughout the neighboring cities and states. While performing at a barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, he met Elizabeth Price, and they married shortly afterwards (on July 19, 1896).

Handy received a letter from a musician friend in August of 1896, inviting him to join a minstrel group called “Mahara’s Minstrels.” He saw this as a great opportunity even though minstrel groups (traveling bands that roamed from city to city) were not highly regarded. Handy and his new wife Elizabeth traveled to Chicago where Handy took the job with Mahara’s Minstrels at a salary of $6 per week. The three-year minstrel tour took them throughout the southwestern states of Texas and Oklahoma, across the Southeast through Tennessee and Georgia, and south to Florida and eventually to Cuba. Life on the road was not an easy way to make a living and Elizabeth especially grew weary of it. Following their return from Cuba, the group headed north again, stopping along the way for a performance in Huntsville, Alabama. Handy decided to stay in Florence with his family for a much needed rest.

While in Florence, Elizabeth gave birth to the first of six children (a daughter named Lucille) on June 29, 1900 in Florence. During this time, Handy was approached by W.H. Councill, President of Agricultural and Mechanical College in Normal, Alabama, about a teaching position. The university was one of two black colleges in the state of Alabama at the time (the other being Tuskegee University). Handy accepted the offer and became a faculty member in September of that year.

He was soon disheartened to discover that American music was often cast aside by the college and instead emphasized inferior foreign music considered to be “classical”. It also became apparent that Handy was being underpaid and he could make much more money touring with the minstrel group. After a dispute with President Councill, Handy resigned his position and rejoined the Mahara Minstrels to tour states in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. In 1903, he received an offer to direct a black band called the Knights of Pythias in Clarksdale, Mississippi. This job proved to be very rewarding and Handy remained there for six years.

In 1909, Handy and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee where they established their headquarters on the famous Beale Street. Handy’s years of observing the reactions of white people to native black music as well as his own study of the music, habits and attitudes of his race, began to affect his music sparking the beginnings of what would later be called “the blues.” The first composition of this type was a campaign song that Handy composed for E. H. Crump, a Memphis candidate for mayor who was running on a reform platform. The song, “Mr. Crump,” was later titled “Memphis Blues” and became very popular.

“Memphis Blues” was such a huge success that Handy published it in 1912. Although he sold the rights to the song for a mere $100, his musical style had been asserted and in 1914, at the age of 40, he published his most famous composition, “St. Louis Blues.” Handy began to write and publish prolifically and his popularity soared. He opened his own publishing business and worked steadily throughout the 1920s and 1930s despite problems with his vision. His eyes had been sensitive since childhood and the heavy demands of his career took their toll on his vision. In 1943, he lost his balance and fell from a subway station which caused him to go totally blind.

In addition to composing, Handy worked laboriously at compiling blues tunes which he published in a book called Blues: An Anthology in 1926. He later published Negro Authors And Composers of the United States (1935), and Unsung Americans Sung (1944). His biography, Father of the Blues was published in 1941.

Handy’s wife, Elizabeth, died in 1937. Handy later married Irma Louise Logan in 1954 at the age of 80. He suffered a stroke one year later and was confined to a wheelchair. Still a very popular figure, Handy’s 84th birthday party was held at the Waldorf-Astoria with more than 800 people attending.

He died on March 28, 1958 of acute bronchial pneumonia at the age of 84. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York with many notables attending the funeral service and an estimated 150,000 people along the funeral route.

Alive Soul Note: So I’m walking to work today and notice that West 52nd Street is also known as WC Handy’s Place. I thought, “Okaaaay, but ain’t this Charlie Parker’s block?” So, ever the student, I decided to do some fact searching on Mr. Handy, I mean, anyone that can usurp “Bird” on 52nd must be something else…he was…

Bio Courtesy of biography.com

Photo by: PhotoQuest/Getty Images

WORD.

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:09:11 -0400

WORD.

Grand Jury Clears Cop Who Shot Unarmed Marine Vet In His Home [Gothamist]

Thu, 03 May 2012 19:13:20 -0400

Grand Jury Clears Cop Who Shot Unarmed Marine Vet In His Home [Gothamist]:

mybutbeautiful:

auradacity-of:

str8nochaser:

liquornspice:

crankyskirt:

Oh, make me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands

Rest in power, Mr. Chamberlain.

A Westchester County grand jury has decided not to indict the White Plains officer who fatally shot an unarmed chronically ill elderly black man. There will be no trial for Officer Anthony Carelli, who shot Marine veteran Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr. during a tense confrontation last November. “After due deliberation on the evidence presented in this matter, the grand jury found that there was no reasonable cause to vote an indictment,” said Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore, who added that the case was “a tragedy on many levels.”

Carelli, an officer since 2004 who is also on trial in a separate police brutality case, shot Chamberlain Sr. on Nov. 19 after an hour-long standoff with police. Chamberlain Sr., who suffered from a chronic heart condition and wore a pendant to signal LifeAid, had mistakenly triggered his medical alert that evening—police insisted on entering his apartment, although he said he was fine. Tensions grew as one officer allegedly used the N-word, another officer was reportedly heard yelling, “I need to use your bathroom to pee!” and others were allegedly mocking Chamberlain’s military service after they discovered he was a former Marine.

The lawyer for the family of Chamberlain Sr., who has reviewed the LifeAid audiobox recording (which picked up every sound inside the apartment during the fatal confrontation) and the security camera video, said: “The minute they got in the house, they didn’t even give him one command. They never mentioned ‘put your hands up.’ They never told him to lay down on the bed. The first thing they did…you could see the Taser light up…and you could see it going directly toward him.” Police claim Chamberlain was an “emotionally disturbed” man who first appeared to have a hatchet during the standoff, then later came at them with a knife—which wasn’t captured on video—when Carelli fired two shots. Chamberlain died a few hours later in surgery from his wounds.

“We believe the evidence confirming Officer Carelli’s actions were justified was overwhelming,” attorney Andrew Quinn said. “While it’s always tragic when a civilian loses his life, Officer Carelli’s actions in this matter were clearly justified.” DiFiore had received criticism throughout the case because of her initial reluctance to release the name of the officer.
“My family and I are profoundly saddened at the fact that there was no indictment in the murder of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.,” the victim’s son Kenneth Chamberlain Jr. said in the statement. “I have a hard time putting my trust in a system that I feel has failed me already.” The family has also said the medical examiner’s autopsy report’s description of the path of the bullet shows that Chamberlain could not have been raising his arm to stab an officer when he was shot. Chamberlain family lawyers Randolph McLaughlin and Mayo Bartlett have notified the city of their intention to file a civil lawsuit in the case.

I can’t. I just cannot. Thank you for quoting Marvin. I need that song.

I hate this world.

Somebody make sure to send the memos out when the marches and letter writing campaigns and the phone calls to the ‘powers that be’ (that we OBVIOUSLY had little to nothing to do with them being placed in offices unfortunately because WE DIDN’T TAKE THE TIME TO REALLY GIVING A FUCK ABOUT WHO’S SITTING IN OUR CITY AND STATE LEGISLATURE OFFICES) pleading with ‘them’ to save our lives…

and we get down to business!

AMERICA…. Your occupy movements don’t mean shit to me until white men can no longer kill black folks with impunity, badge or no badge.

In YOUR America, a black man has no rights a white man is bound to respect… and that includes his life.