THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF JAHLAUNE IN THE LAND OF TRUE URBAN HAVOC

2012-01-09T04:01:00.000-05:00

Early life Wale was born Olubowale Victor Akintimehin in Washington, D.C. on September 21, 1984.[1] His parents are of the Yoruba ethnic group of southwestern Nigeria and came to the United States from Austria in 1979. Wale's family first lived in Northwest Washington DC before moving to Montgomery County when Wale was 10. He graduated from Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland in 2001 and later moved to Largo, Maryland.[2] Wale attended Robert Morris University and Virginia State University on football scholarships, then transferred to Bowie State University but dropped out.[3][1] Wale's love of the game of football and the Washington Redskins has led to a longstanding rumor that Wale had a tattoo of tight end Chris Cooley.[4] He is also the cousin of actor Gbenga Akinnagbe. [edit] Career [edit] Beginnings Wale's first recording was called "Rhyme of the Century".It was his first song to ever be played on local radio. He was featured in the "Unsigned Hype" column of The Source magazine in 2006. He was signed to a local label called Studio 43 in 2006. "Dig Dug (Shake It)" became popular in Washington, D.C, Maryland and Virginia and was a tribute to Ronald "Dig Dug" Dixon, percussion player for the go-go band Northeast Groovers.[3] The song became the most requested song by a local artist in D.C. radio history and Wale was the first local artist to get any BDS spins since DJ Kool in the early 1990s. The song was included in Wale's first mixtape, Paint a Picture. In July 2006, Wale found representation in Daniel Weisman, a former club DJ and promoter who had no previous experience in management.[5] Weisman had been tipped off about the rapper by a friend in Washington, D.C and connected with him through Myspace.[5] In September 2006, after dropping another go-go influenced single, "Breakdown", sampled from Huck-a-Bucks "Sexy Girl" and getting a mention in The Washington Post,[6] Wale released his first non-go-go original single, "Uptown Roamers." On September 14, 2006, "Uptown Roamers" debuted on XM Radio Channel 66 and was played twice in one day. Both "Breakdown" and "Uptown Roamers" were on Wale's second mixtape, Hate Is the New Love. Wale's song "Breakdown," was featured on the video game Madden NFL 2009. Wale won the award for "D.C. Metro Breakthrough Artist of the Year" at WKYS's Go-Go Awards in November 2006.[7] On December 15, The Fader magazine associate editor Nick "Catchdubs" Barat visited Wale for an interview and photo shoot which appeared in the March 2007 issue of The Fader.[8] Manager Weisman told HitQuarters that the Fader feature, given the magazine's music/culture/fashion orientation, laid an important foundation for Wale to position himself as a "cool, smart, up-and-coming hip-hop artist".[5] In January 2007, Wale released a new single to radio called "Good Girls" produced by Gerard Thomas and Demario Bridges for TeamMusicGroup. Wale later appeared on Mark Ronson's remix of Lily Allen's "Smile"[9] and was a headliner on Ronson's UK tour that year promoting Ronson's second album Version.[10][11] In June 2007, Wale signed to a production deal with Ronson's Allido Records.[3] In May 2010, Wale abruptly canceled a scheduled performance at DC Black Pride, an annual black gay pride event. In an email to the event's organizer, Wale's manager claimed he was unaware it was a gay event when he agreed to perform. However, on May 28, 2010, it was announced he would perform alongside the headliner for free.[12] [edit] National attention and major label signing Wale released his third mixtape, 100 Miles & Running, on July 11, 2007 as a free download on his Myspace page. This mixtape includes features from Mark Ronson, Daniel Merriweather, Amy Winehouse, and Lily Allen. It was released on the same day as his performance at the Highline Ballroom, in Manhattan. The Highline show was to promote the US release of Mark Ronson's album and included performances by Mark Ronson, Wale, Saigon, and Daniel Merriweather. Jay-Z, Beyonce, Kanye West, Maroon 5, Clive Davis, Eve and Danny Masterson were all in attendance. There, Wale was interviewed by MTV News correspondent J.D. Tuminski for his first national TV feature on August 16, 2007.[13] With Ronson, Wale performed "W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E.", a remix of Justice's "D.A.N.C.E." from Wale's 100 Miles mixtape, at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada.[14] The Washington Post profiled Wale on the front page of the Sunday Style section in the October 21, 2007 edition.[1] Wale was featured on the cover of the 150th issue of URB along with French electro group Justice. In March 2008, Wale signed a joint venture deal with Mark Ronson's Allido Records and Interscope, joining Rhymefest and Daniel Merriweather as Allido artists.[15] Epic Records, Atlantic Records, and Def Jam all competed to sign Wale.[3] On May 30, Wale released his fourth mixtapeThe Mixtape About Nothing, heavily produced by Best Kept Secret.[16] Wale said that the television show Seinfeld inspired The Mixtape About Nothing: "the TV show's 'honest dialogue' mirrors his lyrical style, which frequently references pop culture and politics while avoiding gangster-rap bluster".[17] After signing with Interscope, Wale began recording tracks for his major label debut: in a 2008 interview with Express, a newspaper published by the Washington Post Company, Wale announced that he was recording a song with Chrisette Michele called "Shades", which discusses inter-black racism.[18] Wale also appeared on Interscope label mate DJ Greg Street's single "Dope Boys" which samples Hip Hop classic T.R.O.Y. alongside Lupe Fiasco and Kardinal Offishall.[19] Rapper Young Chris of rap duo Young Gunz also began plans for a collaboration mixtape with Wale.[20] On June 19, 2009, Wale released his fifth mixtape, Back to the Feature, on which eleven of the tracks were produced by 9th Wonder, with contributions also coming from Mark Ronson and others.[21] The album's title, a play off the name of the movie Back to the Future, referred to the fact that a lengthy list of rappers joined Wale on the songs, including K'naan, Talib Kweli, Joell Ortiz, Beanie Sigel, Curren$y, J. Cole and Bun B.[22] The mixtape received positive reviews from Vibe magazine[22] and website Pitchfork Media,[23] but Colin McGowan of Cokemachineglow commented that it represented neither "a step forward or back [for the artist] so much as shouting-in-place."[24] Wale did a guest performance on "Change", a song by the Australian singer/songwriter Daniel Merriweather. It was written by Merriweather and Andrew Wyatt and produced by Jayceon Dolinh and Mark Ronson. It was released on January 30, 2009, in the United States and Canada, and February 2, 2009, in the UK (where the song peaked at no.8). The song is included on Merriweather's album Love & War. On September 13, Wale, alongside the DC-based musicians of UCB (Uncalled 4 Band)- The Board Administration artists, served as the official house band for the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.[25] [edit] Attention: Deficit (2009) Wale performing at Georgetown University's 2010 Midnight Madness On November 10, 2009 Wale's debut album, Attention Deficit, had primarily positive reception. It debuted at the number 21 spot on the Billboard 200 and sold 28,000 copies in its first week. Interscope claimed that the LP was undershipped and that was the reason for the low sales numbers. Daniel Weisman, Wale's manager, claimed that Interscope didn't ship enough copies of the album.[26] The first single off Attention Deficit was "Chillin", featuring Lady Gaga, followed by "Pretty Girls" featuring Gucci Mane and Weensey and "World Tour" featuring Jazmine Sullivan. Other guest artists on the album included Pharrell; Bun B; Chrisette Michele; K'Naan; Marsha Ambrosius; J. Cole; and Melanie Fiona.[27] In March 2010, Rapper Wale announced he and K'Naan would kick off a short co-headlining tour across the east coast of the US, beginning at the end of March in New York City.[28] According to Wale, he is in the studio with Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame, Roscoe Dash, Sean Garrett, and Drumma Boy. On August 3, 2010, Wale released sixth mixtape, More About Nothing hosted by DJ Omega a follow-up to his critically acclaimed The Mixtape About Nothing under The Board Administration[29] - an independent label co founded with Marketing Executive Le'Greg O. Harrison. More About Nothing took the internet by storm resulting in 100,000 plus downloads in 90 minutes.[30] More About Nothing creatively integrates sitcom material with rhyme and wordplay to present Wale's frustrations on his plight to reach mainstream acceptance and success. Features include Wiz Khalifa, Waka Flocka, Daniel Merriweather, UCB, Board Administration Artists' Tiara Thomas, Black Cobain, Fat Trel, and NBA Player and DC Native Kevin Durant. In the last half of 2010, inspired by Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Fridays project, Wale started re-release a track from one of his previous mixtapes for free-download on his own website every Thursday, calling this enterprise "Throwback Thursday". From then, guests on those tracks included Bun B, Pusha T, John Mayer, Lil Wayne and K'Naan. On February 5, 2011, during Super Bowl XVL festivities he announced his signing to artist Rick Ross, Maybach Music Group.[31] He states that he will still continue to be able to put out the music that he believes in behind the support of Rick Ross. Wale currently since 2009 has been signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation for management along with other artists such as J. Cole, Mark Ronson, Melanie Fiona and Rihanna. [edit] Ambition (2011) May 6, 2011, Wale shared plans with MTV Networks regarding the potential release of two albums in 2011. Later the same month, he confirmed Pre Production efforts for Ambition his second album slated for Fall 2011 release under Maybach and Warner Music Groups. Production for Ambition took place at ZAC Recording, in Atlanta, Georgia with The Board Administration Producer Tone P. Anticipation for Ambition was incited through the release and heavy viral promotion of Mixtape, The Eleven One Eleven Theory done under Wale's label, The Board Administration. The Eleven One Eleven Theory debuted August 17, 2011 on Life and Times in honor of Wale's Twitter milestone of reaching one million followers and was purposefully made with the intent to build widespread anticipation for November 1, 2011 the scheduled release date of Ambition.[32] This marketing strategy was the brainchild of The Board Administration CEO Greg Harrison and was executed through savvy social media integration resulting in the first shut down of renowned file sharing site Hulkshare in the first 4 seconds of posting the link.[33] Wale is the first mainstream artist to officially crash Hulkshare.[34] September 7, 2011 Wale announced plans for a 32-city domestic tour titled The Ambition Tour, which initiated October 2, 2011 in Minneapolis Minnesota and has dates through December 2011.[35] The Board Administration artist Black Cobain is the official opening act for each date and is followed by a rotation of various artists in select markets which include: Rick Ross, Meek Mill, Pusha T, J. Cole, Big Sean, Miguel, and more.[35] September 28, 2011, Wale revealed Ambition was complete and released single "Lotus Flower Bomb", featuring Miguel on Twitter.[36] September 29, 2011, Funk Master Flex debuted Wale's song "Tats On My Arms", featuring Rick Ross.[37] The next day Wale released the album cover for Ambition.[38] October 14, 2011, Wale released single "Focused", featuring Kid Cudi.[39] The official Ambition track listing includes 15 songs.[40] The Board Administration launched a robust social media campaign integrating never-seen-before social media strategy and savvy to virally promote Ambition. The promotional campaign included a five-part making of documentary; a Twitter campaign centered on a hashtag blitz–aptly named #Ambition and daily new music and video releases from Wale; and promotional materials for purchase through Warner Music Group and Maybach Music Group such as Ambition wristbands and graphic tees.[41]These efforts were also supported through televised making of episodes through networks such as MTV that hosted Sucker Free Road to Release.[42] The never-seen-before element of Wale’s Ambition promo blitz included a partnership formed between the current most popular file sharing site Hulkshare and The Board Administration.[41] Greater than 3 million footsteps frequent Hulkshare daily in pursuit of the hottest new music, and through this collaboration could view banner ads on practically every Hulkshare download page, each rectangular space flanked with Wale’s profile and a clock counting down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the album comes out.[43] October 27, 2011 Wale unveiled an Ambition snippet sampler on Youtube for people to preview the album.[44] Later the same day, a private Ambition media listening event, held at the Gansevoort Hotel of Chelsea New York, was attended by music executives, bloggers, various artists, and hip hop heads.[44] On November 2, 2011, Myspace and Hot 97 will presented a complimentary Wale and friends midnight Ambition release show at The Highline Ballroom in New York City. The event was hosted by Miss Info and featured special guest DJ Funk Master Flex.[45] The album debuted number two on the Billboard 200 selling 162,600 copies in its first week.[46] The album received mixed reviews, including a negative one in Wale's local Washington City Paper.[47] On November 25, 2011 shortly after the release of Ambition, Wale announced on twitter that he has already begun working on his third album.[48] [edit] Musical style In an interview with Flavorwire, Wale said that he incorporates elements of go-go in his music.[49] Cyril Cordor of allmusic described go-go as "a more raw, percussion-driven offshoot of disco" that originated in the Washington, D.C. area. Wale's early singles that were played primarily in his local metropolitan area heavily sampled 1990s go-go records.[3] Reviewing Attention Deficit, David Jeffries of allmusic remarked that Wale had a "post-Kanye, post-Lil Wayne, alternative-meets-hardcore style" and commented that Wale's single "Chillin'", which featured Lady Gaga, "crafts an instant floor-filler out of a sample from the '70s hit 'Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye'".[50]

100 YEARS OF HISTORY IN TEN MINUTES

2012-01-02T20:32:00.001-05:00

The Strange Thing About The Johnsons

2011-12-21T10:57:00.001-05:00

This is a student film. Unbelievably complex, undeniably dark. It deals with a young man who is molesting someone in his family. Ill keep the mystery because once you learn who u will no doubt be sickened but still watch....feeling guilty every minute. However alot has been made of this student film and I give huge kudos to actor Brandon Greenhouse for his acting prowess hes studying acting at Northern Illionis University. I think Mr. Greenhouse is definately someone to remember in the future if he chosses cinema. The writer and director is Ari Aster and for a student film it is wonderfully easy to watch, clear crisp and as good photography wise as any of the ig studio pictures Ive seen lately.....Enjoy

Bold Negro from Nash County scares the Klan

2011-11-28T10:42:00.004-05:00

Otis Baker? Humph where can I begin? When i read an article online about people thinking the Obamas were somewhat uppity I immediately thought of a story my father told me some years ago about a man from North Carolina, Nash County North Carolina He was a colored feller ( as my father would say) My father, grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930s and my grandfather was a share cropper for Otha Baker (Not related to Otis Baker.) Those times were hard times especially for a black man of color as my father would say "Especially in North Carolina" and probably even more so in Nash County which was then known as a one horse town

Otis Baker by fathers account was a nice lookin feller all even and light had some Indian in em, all Negros did back then that were light well he was downtown in the drug store and a bunch of the local white men swore he was looking at a white woman ( my father said he probably was things were quite intergrated when a white woman had a yen for a colored feller segregation flew out of the window as they found a placed to do as he called it "that thing") so as he was making leave to get back to his farm the white man said "Uppity Nigger we seen you looking at Missy So and so and we will be round to see you tonight" My Daddy said Otis coolly told them "You may but the first one come round that bend is gon be mine!" and he took his leave.

When they told you they would "see ya" that was code for your black ass was gonna be lynched, beaten or get a good tar and feathering, your house would be burned and your crops while your daughters would probably be raped. That was the antidote for dealing with a negro that didnt know his place.

No one came that night cause no one wanted to be first. Otis had a reputation for being a brawler his family picked up and moved before night fell the next night

Tim "KingFish" Moore "Boy! What A Girl"

2011-11-26T16:49:00.001-05:00

Before I had ever seen the Amos and Andy show I saw Boy What A Girl in 2005 at the website that holds movies which have lost their copy right. I remember putting it on my IPOD and watching it on the TV at home with my 82 year old mother who actually had seen it the first time around and she said "Oh that's one of King Fishs movies" however I had no idea who the hell Kingfish was and at that time could care less. It wasn't until less than a week ago that I was in a old fashion mood ( An affectionate term my mate uses when I want to see a 20's, 30's or 40's pic) when I noticed the search engine picture ( as photographed above) but I opted to finally see if I could find Amos and Andy well I did and actually to my households dismay stayed up until 5:00 AM watching episodes on youtube.com this channel had so many hilarious episodes of this TV classic that I well, sort of over dosed! Check it out it's a scream! http://youtu.be/RrG6bRlVxiw and while your there why not give the owner a subscription and check out his wares!

Tim Moore (December 9, 1887 – December 13, 1958) was a celebrated African-American vaudevillian and comic actor of the first half of the 20th century. He gained his greatest recognition in the starring role of George "Kingfish" Stevens in the CBS television series, Amos 'n' Andy. He proudly stated, "I've made it a point never to tell a joke on stage that I couldn't tell in front of my mother."

Biography

[edit] Early years

Moore was born Harry Roscoe Moore in Rock Island, Illinois, one of 13 children of Harry and Cynthia Moore.[1][2] His father was a night watchman at a brewery. Tim Moore dropped out of high school to work at odd jobs in town and even danced for pennies in the streets with his friend, Romeo Washburn.[3][4]

In 1898, Moore and Washburn went into vaudeville in an act called "Cora Miskel and Her Gold Dust Twins." It was booked by agents and travelled through the United States and even Great Britain.[5][6][7] By 1904, the act had performed with the Barnum & Bailey Circus.[8] As Moore and Washburn grew older, the act became less effective and Miss Miskel sent them back to their parents in Rock Island. Shortly after this, Moore joined the medicine show of "Doctor Mick", a charlatan who sold a quack remedy called "Puritia." Doctor Mick travelled through the Midwestern states, with songs and dances provided by Moore and four Kickapoo Indians.[3][9] The young man also worked in a carnival sideshow and gave guided tours as a native tour guide in Hawaii.[3]

[edit] Boxer and entertainer

Early photo of Tim Moore.
Moore left Doctor Mick, first to become a stableboy and later a jockey. He also tried his hand as a boxer.[10][11] He returned to performing about 1906, with a troupe of minstrels called "The Rabbit's Foot Company."[12] By 1908, he was back in vaudeville and had met and married his first wife, Hester. They performed as a team, "The Moores - Tim & Hester", appearing in the United States and abroad.[13] In 1910, the couple was part of an act called the Four Moores.[14] They next performed together in "Georgia Sunflowers," a minstrel show that played the southern vaudeville circuit.[15] The Moores drew glowing reviews, Hester for her singing and Tim for his comedy.[16][17] By 1914, both Moores were part of an act with Tim Moore and Tom Delaney & Co.. Tim played the tuba and Hester played drums as part of a band. Moore's own stock company was responsible for all aspects of it.[18] The couple toured China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands and Hawaii with a vaudeville troupe.[15] The marriage ended in 1915, and Moore married a vaudeville actress named Gertrude.[19] He returned to boxing as "Young Klondike", training in New Zealand. He fought there and in Australia, England, and Scotland.[20] Before this, Moore fought as "Kid Klondike" in the US, with Jack Johnson and Sam Langford as some of his opponents.[21] Moore also made his way into films by 1915, playing the part of an egotistical musician in His Inspiration.[22] Tim and Gertie also entertained in New Zealand. A story in The Evening Post from 28 May 1917, goes on to say, "Another "star" item will be that of Tim and Gertie Moore, who have earned a big reputation in America, and were booked for Fuller's direct from the well-known Orpheum circuit."[23] Moore became well known for his one-man presentation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, where he would play the role of both Simon Legree and Uncle Tom, applying white chalk to half his face, and burnt cork to the other.[9][15][24][25] Moore literally took his act into the street for the sale of War Stamps in 1918.[26]

Having made $141,000 with his fists, in 1921 Moore and his wife returned to vaudeville.[1][27][28] He formed his Chicago Follies troupe and was a favorite on the Theater Owners Bookers Association vaudeville circuit during the Roaring Twenties.[4][29][30] In 1923, Moore and his wife co-starred with Sandy Burns, Walter Long, and Bobby Smart in a silent film comedy, His Great Chance (North State Films).[9] The following year, the Moores toured together in "Aces and Queens".

[edit] Broadway

In June 1925, Tim Moore made his Broadway debut as the star of Lucky Sambo (based on "Aces and Queens'). However, the show closed after only a few performances. He was a success in 1926 with the hit show Rarin' to Go, followed in 1927 with The Southland Revue.[31] Moore wrote all of his own material and also did some writing for other performers; a Moore skit called, Not a Fit Night for Man nor Beast, was bought by W.C. Fields.[3][24][25] He also did some writing for the radio show of the Two Black Crows comedy team. Moore was brought to New York to sign a writing contract but before this was done, Charles Mack of the team was killed in an auto accident, thus ending the act.[20] Moore wrote sketches which became part of Lew Leslie's "Blackbirds" revues as well.[32]

In 1928, Moore left vaudeville altogether for Broadway. This time he met with enormous success as the star comedian of Lew Leslie's hit musical comedy revue, the Blackbirds of 1928.[33] Moore's co-stars were singers Adelaide Hall and Aida Ward and renowned tap dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.[34] The hit musical scored high in Paris and London as well as on the road throughout the states. In 1931, Moore and his vaudeville straight man, Andrew Tribble,[35] performed one of their funniest routines in Oscar Micheaux's first talking picture, The Darktown Revue. After a disagreement with Lew Leslie, Moore starred in two unsuccessful Broadway revues, Fast and Furious (1931),[36] and The Blackberries of 1932.[37] In the former, Moore wrote some of the skits along with his friend and co-star Zora Neale Hurston.[38] Moore and fellow comedian Morton left the show in April, 1932, refusing to perform what were termed "dirty lines".[39] Needing each other, he and Leslie patched up their differences and Moore resumed his position as star comedian in the Blackbirds revues of 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939. Politics played a role in the demise of the 1936 edition of the Blackbirds, causing the London run to be shut down. At the time the troupe was booked in the United Kingdom, King Edward VIII had just abdicated the British throne for love of American Wallis Simpson. There was a wave of anti-Americanism, with women picketing performances of the Blackbirds, carrying signs disparaging American women.[40] In this last of the Blackbirds (1939), the principal singing star was Lena Horne.[41][42] Moore's last Broadway show was Harlem Cavalcade (1942), produced by Ed Sullivan and Noble Sissle.[43] During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Moore was one of the top comedians headlining at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.[44] He also performed on radio as a dramatic actor.[3][45][46]

In 1946, he starred as Bumpsie in the musical comedy film, Boy! What a Girl!.[9][47] He made some appearances on Ed Sullivan's television show, Toast of the Town, and at the Apollo Theater; Moore then retired from show business.[3][9][48] His wife Gertrude having died in 1934, Moore settled down with his third wife, Benzonia Davis Moore (1889–1956), in his home town of Rock Island, working the night shift at the Servus Rubber company, where boots and shoes were made.[4][9] The couple was married in 1941 and initially made their home in Baltimore.[1]

[edit] Television stardom

In 1951, Moore was recommended by his old vaudeville friend, Flournoy Miller, for the role of George "Kingfish" Stevens, a role which was voiced on radio by white actor Freeman Gosden.[25] He was called out of retirement by the Columbia Broadcasting System to star in a new television adaptation of Amos 'n' Andy.[49][50] As the radio series had developed in prior years, the scheming but henpecked Kingfish had become the central focus of most of the plots. In the television version, Moore played the character more broadly, with louder and more forceful delivery and a distinctive Georgia drawl, exaggerated for comic effect. Moore's Kingfish dominated the calmer and soft-spoken "Amos 'n' Andy" characters. Early in his career, Moore had developed a "con-man" routine he used for many years while in vaudeville; re-working some aspects of his old act produced the television character Kingfish.[25]

Moore was very popular in the show and for the first time in his career became a national celebrity as well as the first African American to win stardom on television. When leaving a train in Albuquerque to buy some Native American pottery, the proprietor recognized him immediately, saying, "You, you Kingfish." This was the first time it happened in Moore's 52 years in show business.[51] The show aired on prime-time TV from June 1951 to June 1953. Although quite popular, the series was eventually canceled due to complaints about ethnic stereotyping. Shortly after the television show left the air, there were plans to turn it into a vaudeville act in August 1953, with Moore, Williams, and Childress playing the same characters.[52] It is not known if this was ever realized. After the series was canceled, it was shown in syndication until 1966 when increasing condemnation and pressure from the NAACP persuaded the show's owners (CBS, which still owns the copyrights) to withdraw it from further exhibition. It was resurrected in the early days of home videotape through public domain video dealers who had acquired episodes from collectors of used 16mm TV prints, although the copyright was never in the public domain. Illegally produced copies continue to be sold over the internet.

Many of the episodes revolved around Moore's Kingfish character, supported by Ernestine Wade as his level-headed, emotionally strong wife Sapphire, and Amanda Randolph as his openly aggressive mother-in-law, without the participation of Amos or Andy. These Kingfish-only episodes were originally produced as a spinoff series, The Adventures of Kingfish, which made its debut on CBS on January 4, 1955 but lasted only a few episodes.[53][54] When the Amos 'n' Andy half-hours went into syndication, the Adventures of Kingfish shows were added to the syndicated package under the Amos 'n' Andy series title.

In 1956, Moore and his fellow cast mates Spencer Williams, Alvin Childress and Lillian Randolph with her choir, tried a tour of personal appearances as "The TV Stars of Amos 'n' Andy". The tour was halted by CBS, who viewed this as infringing on their exclusivity.[44] Moore, and fellow cast members Williams, Childress and Lee, were able to perform for one night in 1957 in Windsor, Ontario, apparently without legal action being taken against them.[55]

[edit] Later years

Moore married his last wife Vivian (1912–1988) eight months after Benzonia's death; they had been performing as a comedy team for some time before marrying in 1957.[10][56][57] This marriage won him considerable publicity thanks to the "Roast Beef Scandal" of January 1958. Moore fired a gunshot in his home because of his "mooching in-laws" (stepson, stepdaughter, and her husband) when he found that the last of the New Year's roast beef had been eaten by them.[44] Moore related, "These free-loaders have eaten everything in the house. My wife protects them and every time we talk about it, we get into an argument. The argument got a little loud and the next thing I knew, the big boy (his stepson Hubbard) jumped out of his chair. I ran upstairs and got out my old pistol. I didn't want to hit anybody."[58]

When the police arrived at the home, Moore, pistol still in his belt, told them, "I'm the old Kingfish, boys. I'm the one you want. I fired that shot. I didn't want to hit anyone, although I could have. Anyway, you should have seen the in-laws scatter when I fired that gun." [59] The shot Moore fired hit the china cabinet; he was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon, with police calling him the "funniest prisoner in police history."[58] Moore was initially ordered held on $1,000 bond; the judge changed his mind and released Moore on his own recognizance.[59] Tim and his wife reconciled, with Vivian's pleading for the charges to be dropped.[60][61] Moore entered a not guilty plea before the case went to trial on March 24.[62] He received a $100 fine and a year's probation as his sentence.[63]

When the story broke, local television personality and columnist Paul Coates invited Tim Moore to appear on his KTTV television show; Moore explained the situation in two guest appearances. Coates was promptly taken to task for Moore's appearances on his show by Stanley Robertson, a journalist for the African-American newspaper, the Los Angeles Sentinel, calling Moore "disgraceful" and labeling the two shows with Moore as "television's darkest hour." Coates replied to his critic in his January 29, 1958 Los Angeles Times column, calling Moore "a pretty wonderful, sincere man" and saying he strongly resented Robertson's attack on him.[59]

Because of the "Roast Beef Scandal," Moore was once more in demand and even received a testimonial tribute dinner from the Friars Club of Beverly Hills, and appearing on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar.[64] The publicity also won him an extended performance engagement at the prominent Mocambo nightclub.[4]

[edit] Death

Moore died at age 71 on December 13, 1958 of pulmonary tuberculosis in Los Angeles, California, four days after his birthday. There was no money to pay for his hospital care or for his funeral, Moore having received his final $65.00 residual payment from Amos 'n' Andy in January, 1958. At one time Moore made $700 per week.[1][65][66]

After a large funeral at Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, he was buried at Rosedale Cemetery. 10,000 fans and mourners passed his open coffin; attendees included Freeman F. Gosden, Charles Correll, Spencer Williams, Jr., Alvin Childress, Ernestine Wade, Amanda Randolph, Johnny Lee, Lillian Randolph, Sammy Davis, Jr., Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Andy Razaf, Roy Glenn, Mantan Moreland, Earl Grant.[67][68] Sammy Davis, Jr. later related that Frank Sinatra organized the effort to pay Tim Moore's funeral expenses.[69] Moore's grave remained unmarked from the time of his burial until 1983; fellow comedians Redd Foxx and George Kirby raised funds for a headstone.[70] There is now one marking the graves of Moore and his wife, Vivian, who died in 1988.[71][72]

Paying tribute to one of its favorite sons, the Rock Island Public Library held "Tim Moore Day" July 16, 2008. Moore's relatives in the area participated by sharing their memories of his life and work.[3]

[edit] References
Notes
1.^ a b c d e Johnson, Lillian (22 February 1941). "Played Best Theatres Of The World". The Afro-American. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
2.^ "Photo of Tim Moore with his parents and six of his seven brothers". Rock Island Argus. 13 August 1995. Retrieved 3 June 2011.
3.^ a b c d e f g "Celebrate Tim Moore Day at the Library". Rock Island Public Library. 1 July 2008. Retrieved 20 January 2011. (PDF)
4.^ a b c d "Tim Moore". BlackPast.org. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
5.^ "Tim Moore". Black-face.com. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
6.^ "Tim Moore: The Gold Dust Twins". Yoda'sLair.com. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
7.^ "New York City-(Brooklyn)-Fulton Street Theater". The New York Clipper. 2 April 1904. Retrieved 12 June 2011. (PDF)
8.^ "Vaudeville and Minstrel". The New York Clipper. 22 October 1904. Retrieved 12 June 2011. (PDF)
9.^ a b c d e f "Tim Moore". Yoda'sLair.com. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
10.^ a b "TV Amos 'n' Andy Kingfish is Dead". Tri City Herald. 15 December 1958. Retrieved 11 October 2010.
11.^ Tyler, George (21 February 1931). "Harlem Rambles-Down Memory Lane With Tim Moore". The Afro American. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
12.^ "The Rabbit Foot Company". The Freeman. 1 August 1908. Retrieved 9 November 2010.
13.^ "Tim and Hester Moore Presenting 'In Dark Town Suffragette'". The Freeman. 8 November 1913. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
14.^ "The Pekin, Richmond, VA.". The Freeman. 1 October 1910. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
15.^ a b c Peterson, Bernard L., ed (1997). The African American Theatre Directory, 1816-1960: A Comprehensive Guide to Early Black Theatre Organizations, Companies, Theatres, and Performing Groups. Greenwood Press. pp. 336. ISBN 0313295379. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
16.^ "Tim and Hester Moore". The Freeman. 21 December 1912. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
17.^ "Tim Moore and Wife as a Heavy Box Office Attraction at the Monogram". The Freeman. 27 January 1912. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
18.^ "Dayton, Ohio". The Freeman. 9 May 1914. Retrieved 9 November 2010.
19.^ "50th Year for Lincoln Theater". Baltimore Afro American. 12 September 1959. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
20.^ a b "Two Comedians". The Afro American. 23 June 1934. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
21.^ Williams, Joe (8 February 1951). "Joe Williams says". The Pittsburgh Press. Retrieved 20 April 2011.
22.^ "'His Inspiration'". The Evening Independent. 18 January 1915. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
23.^ "His Majesty's Theatre". The Evening Post. 28 May 1917. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
24.^ a b "More than the Kingfish, Actor Tim Moore". African American Registry. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
25.^ a b c d Wintz, Cary D.; Finkelman, Paul, eds (2004). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance: Volume 2. Routledge. pp. 1392. ISBN 157958389X. Retrieved 28 November 2010.
26.^ "The Jose". The Freeman. 13 August 1918. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
27.^ McCollum, Obie (21 May 1927). "Says 'Dead' Chinese Actors Rise to Bow to Audiences". The Afro American. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
28.^ Why the Stars Go Broke. Ebony. July 1963. Retrieved 8 March 2011.
29.^ "Tim Moore's Chicago Follies Co.". The Afro American. 21 December 1923. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
30.^ "What the Stage Stars Were Doing 10 Years Ago". The Afro American. 27 February 1932. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
31.^ "Rarin' To Go". The Toledo News-Bee. 6 September 1926. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
32.^ "This Week in the Theatres". The Afro American. 14 July 1928. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
33.^ "Tim Moore To Be 'Blackbird'". The Afro American. 21 April 1928. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
34.^ "Sees Aida Ward As Future 'Flo' Mills". The Afro American. 26 May 1928. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
35.^ Tyler, George (14 February 1931). "Harlem Rambles". The Afro American. Retrieved 16 February 2010.
36.^ "3 Leading Comedians Neither Sing Nor Dance; But Are Hits". The Afro American. 10 October 1931. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
37.^ "1932: In Which Father Time Puts on The Worst Act Of His Career". The Afro American. 24 December 1932. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
38.^ "Many New Plays Slated To Run On Broadway". The Afro American. 8 August 1931. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
39.^ "Wouldn't Be Dirty, Comedians Quit Show". The Afro American. 7 May 1932. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
40.^ Matthews, Ralph (13 February 1937). "Who Killed Mr. Leslie's Blackbirds?". The Afro American. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
41.^ "New Romantic Opera". The Glasgow Herald. 19 March 1937. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
42.^ "'Blackbirds' To Get Another Try". Washington Afro-American. 11 February 1939. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
43.^ Wilson, Cleon (5 may 1942). "Cavalcade Scores On Broadway". The Afro American. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
44.^ a b c Clayton, Edward T. (October 1961). The Tragedy of Amos 'n' Andy. Ebony. Retrieved 27 September 2010.
45.^ "Eva Jessye In Radio Play". The Afro American. 8 April 1933. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
46.^ Bowen, Charles I. (22 April 1933). "On The Air-Eva Jessye, Radio Actress". The Afro American. Retrieved 23 November 2010.
47.^ "Marva Forced Out of New Film By Infected Throat". The Afro American. 28 September 1946. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
48.^ "Amos 'n' Andy Look For Exit As They Plan New TV Show". Reading Eagle. 17 June 1951. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
49.^ "Amos And Andy Name Subs For Television Roles". St. Petersburg Times. 18 June 1951. Retrieved 11 October 2010.
50.^ "Radio's Veteran Comics Smash Hit on Television". Eugene Register-Guard. 14 April 1954. Retrieved 12 March 2011.
51.^ Lyons, Leonard (11 August 1951). "The Lyons Den". St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
52.^ "'Amos 'n' Andy' Set for Vaude". Baltimore Afro-American. 4 August 1953. Retrieved 20 April 2011.
53.^ New 'Kingfish' Series To Make TV Debut Jan. 4. Jet. 6 January 1955. Retrieved 10 October 2010.
54.^ Kantor, Michael; Maslon, Lawrence, eds (2008). Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America. Twelve. pp. 384. ISBN 9780446505314. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
55.^ Gardiner, John (25 June 1957). "The Theatre and its People". The Windsor Daily Star. Retrieved 12 March 2011.
56.^ "Amos 'n' Andy Show Figure To Wed Today". The Sun. 6 June 1957. Retrieved 10 November 2010. Pay Per View-"Tim Moore. 69. a widower, obtained the license with Mrs. Vivian J. Gravens. 39. and said they plan to be married tomorrow."
57.^ "Casino Features Chinese Dancer". The Pittsburgh Press. 12 December 1945. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
58.^ a b TV Kingfish and His Sapphire in Real-Life Domestic Brawl. Jet. 16 January 1958. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
59.^ a b c "The Daily Mirror". Los Angeles Times. 29 January 2008. Retrieved 8 December 2010.
60.^ Kingfish Dismissal Plea Denied, 2 Make Up. Jet. 30 January 1958. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
61.^ "Kingfish Arrested On Assault Charge". Associated Press. January 1958. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
62.^ Kingfish Pleads Not Guilty In Gun Fracas. Jet. 27 February 1958. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
63.^ Kingfish Fined $100 For Roast Beef Fracas. Jet. 10 April 1958. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
64.^ Words Of The Week. Jet. 23 January 1958. Retrieved 10 October 2010.
65.^ Critically Ill, Kingfish Tells Wife Of Fears, Disappointments. Jet. 18 December 1958. Retrieved 10 October 2010.
66.^ "Kingfish Succumbs". Baltimore Afro-American. 16 December 1958. Retrieved 11 November 2010.
67.^ 10,000 Mourners See TV's Kingfish Buried In style. Jet. 8 January 1959. Retrieved 10 October 2010.
68.^ Harry Moore, TV's Kingfish. Jet. 25 December 1958. Retrieved 10 October 2010.
69.^ Sinatra A Complex, Honest Guy, Says Sammy. Jet. 12 March 1959. Retrieved 10 October 2010.
70.^ Kingfish Discovery. Jet. 15 August 1983. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
71.^ "Tim and Vivian Moore Headstone". Find A Grave. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
72.^ "Vivian Moore, 75, Widow of Television's Kingfish". Los Angeles Daily News. 14 January 1988. Retrieved 23 January 2011."The widow of "Amos 'n' Andy" television star Tim "The Kingfish" Moore has died of heart failure after a lengthy illness at age 75, her son said Wednesday. Vivian Moore, whose husband was a vaudeville and Broadway star before securing his most famous role as George Stevens on "Amos 'n' Andy," died at her home in Los Angeles Saturday, said son Paul" (pay per view)
Works cited Bogle, Donald. Blacks in American Films and Television: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Ely, Melvin Patrick. The Adventures of Amos 'n' Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon, The Free Press, 1991

[edit] External links
Tim Moore at the Internet Movie Database
Tim Moore biography
Tim Moore (comedian) at the Internet Broadway Database
Tim Moore (comedian) at Find a Grave

[edit] Watch
Amos 'n' Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy at Internet Movie Database-Video by Hulu
Boy! What a Girl! at Internet Archive.

Remembering Tondelyo Levy

2011-11-22T17:25:00.002-05:00

The hardest thing about doing a blog that deals 90% with the obscure artists of yester year is the research. This one proved to date the hardest of all but finally we are introducing you to Ms. Tondelyo Levy.

I first learned of her years ago when researching Billie Holiday. In the late 1940's Billie took up with John Levy a very light skinned Arican American who described him self as half Jew, half Black. Cnferring with my usual sources for entertainers of days gone by ( BTW that list is getting shorter and shorter due to the Grimm reaper! and father Time) I was told that Tondaleyos was a club, another person told me why thats a character that Hedy LaMarr played years ago. Then my #1 all things Billie source said " Why Tondelyo Levy good god I havent heard that name in years she was beautiful made a film but was mostly a shake dancer and a very shrewed business woman but her name is really Willemenia Grey I believe the Levy was a married named. She was married and I believe had a baby by John Levy" I of course immediately put on my thinking cap was he talking about John Levy the bassist and former manager of nancy Wilson? Or Billie Holidays alledgly brutal pimp/manager boyfriend John Levy. I asked Which John Levy you talking about Mr. Hugh? He looked at me with a gleam in his eye that still makes me laugh to this day " Billies" I remember a slight intake of air and then a gasp! Mr. Hugh enjoying my effect went on speaking " Oh yes Tondelyo was married to John Levy and he use to beat her like he did all his womens and she was really a beautiful woman did her just like Lady Day and the thing is all of them knew each other from 133rd street days in harlem. John was a junkie an opium smoker and gambler finally Tonda got sick and tired of it and I think she escaped I forget how but she left that misreable, cheap SOB." He went , " I think well Im pretty sure she was in the Cotton Club Chorus kine way back in the 1930's. She and Levy opened a nightclub on W.52nd Street called Tondelyos.

Fasinating so I Googled Tondelyo nothing then Tondelyo Levy and I found but one actual write up but I did and I share with you here a movie she performed in ( Not dancing) but acting called "Sepia Cinderella" and yes she outlived them all

She was never a big star but more a popular local star it seems. I have but one question I wondered why she used her married name right up to her death. Who was the child? so many questions....enjoy

She Danced Around Fame In Her Art And Especially In Her Life, Tondalayo Levy Made Her Mark

BY DAVID HINCKLEY CRITIC-AT-LARGE

Sunday, January 18, 1998

When Don Henley of the Eagles was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the Waldorf-Astoria on Monday, he told a sellout crowd he had mixed feelings about the honor, largely because of what the word "fame" has come to mean.

"The line between fame and accomplishment is becoming very, very blurred," he said. "If you're willing to be really obnoxious in public and make a complete fool of yourself, you too can be famous. . . . It's an ugly thing."

Henley's ruminations, mildly jarring at the Waldorf, are nonetheless quite true, and they echoed less than 12 hours later at a very different occasion and place: a funeral at Memorial Baptist Church on W. 115th St. for Tondalayo Levy. Never famous in today's manner of a tabloid-TV guest, Tondalayo was nonetheless an important and glamorous figure in New York nightlife from the '30s into the '50s.
Nobody upstaged Tonda," said Leroi Myers, who leads a magnificent band of old-time tap dancers called the Copasetics. "She sat in the back seat for no one."

She filled most of the seats at Memorial Baptist, and everybody had a Tonda story. After the service David Pagan, her son-in-law, talked about going to dinner with her at Lundy's in Sheepshead Bay.

"Now, when you went out with Tonda, you didn't wear just anything," he explained. "You passed inspection. And she was wearing a new full-length mink coat.

"You know Lundy's a thousand people, sawdust on the floor. Well, Tonda takes off that coat and drags it behind her. Right in the sawdust. And a thousand people are saying, 'Who is that woman?'

"She knew how to make an entrance."

Tondalayo took her stage name as a teenage chorus girl. Film fans know it as the name of Hedy Lamarr's character in "White Cargo," but in clubs here it was the property of Tondalayo Levy, who called her sultry, exotic moves "shake dancing."

Sepia Cinderella (1947)

70 min - Musical - 25 July 1947 (USA)

5.6

Your rating:
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Ratings: 5.6/10 from 16 users
Reviews: 2 user

The 2nd in a series of films, produced by Jack Goldberg and Arthur Leonard, made primarily for the 684 theatres (in 1947) that catered exclusively to Black audiences that were kept out... See full summary »

Director:
Arthur H. Leonard

Writer:
Vincent Valentini

Stars:
Billy Daniels, Sheila Guyse and Tondaleyo

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Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:

Billy Daniels

...

Bob (as Billy Daniel)

Sheila Guyse

...

Barbara

Tondaleyo

...

Vivian

Ruble Blakey

...

Barney

Jack Carter

...

Ralph

Dusty Freeman

...

Mooney

George Williams

...

Sonny

Fred Gordon

...

Press Agent

Harold Norton

...

Night Club Master of Ceremonies

Hilda Offley

...

Mama Keyes (as Hilda Offley Thompson)

Emory Richardson

...

Great Joseph

Percy Verwayen

...

MacMillan

Al Young

...

Chinaman

Deek Watson

...

Himself (as Deek Watson and the Brown Dots)

Gertrude Saunders

...

Mrs. Dryden

Full cast and crew »

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Storyline

The 2nd in a series of films, produced by Jack Goldberg and Arthur Leonard, made primarily for the 684 theatres (in 1947) that catered exclusively to Black audiences that were kept out, or placed in a special balcony section, in most of the theatres in segregated America. Plot concerns a struggling band leader's rise to fame after overcoming many obstacles, including a bad-girl vs. good-girl situation. For reasons unknown, Freddie Bartholomew makes a guest-cameo appearnce at the night club, and was featured in the ads and posters for the film, but the producers were barking up an empty tree if the thought was that he would sell any extra tickets in any of the booking situations...black or white. Tondaleyo (the "bad girl") dances, and musical numbers feature Deek Watson and his Brown Dots, Walter Fuller's orchestra, John Kirby's band and Ruble Blakey, former soloist with Lionel Hampton. Written by Les Adams
Plot Summary | Add Synopsis
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Plot Keywords:
Cinderella
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Genres:
Musical
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Details

Country:
USA

Language:
English

Release Date:
25 July 1947 (USA) See more »
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Company Credits

Production Co:
Herald Pictures See more »
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Technical Specs

Runtime:
70 min | USA: 75 min (original release)

Sound Mix:
Mono

Color:
Black and White

Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 See full technical specs »

Remembering Leonard Reed (Shim Sham Shimmy)

2011-11-21T01:42:00.001-05:00

My great grandfather whom we called Pop use to have a little verse he use to say it went "Shim Sham Shim Sham Shimmy, Shim Sham, Shim Sham Shimmy now its to the left, now its too the right Mr. Charlie Mr. Charlie Aint treatin me right shim Sham Shim sham shimmy!"

Now looking at Leonard Reed you know he's mixed hes black white and Choctaw (native American) and was born in 1907. He was a vaudevillian that played in black face but because of his complexion he played in black vaudeville casts and all white casts. Usually passing as white but more often then not he was found out and at various time run completely out of town considering the times in which he lived one can barely blame him. Much better money was paid to white performers during that era.
That color issue among blacks was something else and still prevails today. Light
skin good dark skin bad. Unlike vaudeville, some things never go Bye-bye

American Dance Legends

Leonard Reed

Leonard Reed, 97,
Tap Dancer Known for
Shim Sham Shimmy, Dies

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 10, 2004

Leonard Reed, a tap dance pioneer who was co-creator of the famous Shim Sham Shimmy dance routine, died here on Monday. He was 97.

The cause was heart failure, his family said.

Mr. Reed, with his dance partner, Willie Bryant, invented the shimmy routine as a flashy finale to their dance act in the late 1920's.

In their book "Jazz Dance," Marshall Winslow Stearns and Jean Stearns describe it as "a one-chorus routine to a 32-bar tune, with eight bars each," consisting of the double shuffle, crossover, an up-and-back shuffle and then another move, characterized as "falling off a log."

Mr. Reed was born in Lightning Creek, Okla., on Jan. 7, 1907. He was of black, white and Choctaw descent. His mother died of pneumonia when he was 2, and he never knew his father.

Reared by relatives and other guardians in Kansas City, Mo., he won contests dancing the Charleston and performed the dance at carnivals during the summers. He attended Cornell University but dropped out to pursue a dance career.

Mr. Reed paired with Bryant in a vaudeville act they called "Brains as Well as Feet."

"Dancing has been my only love," he said in an interview with The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "But I didn't let dancing stop me from doing other things. I had the ability to be multitalented."

Mr. Reed produced shows at the Cotton Club in Chicago and was master of ceremonies for 20 years at the Apollo Theater in New York. When he was not dancing, he was a songwriter, bandleader and comedian.

In the 1960's, Mr. Reed began producing for record companies and helped start the career of the singer Dinah Washington.

He once said his long, active life could be credited to "women, golf and show business," but not necessarily in that order.

In 2000 Mr. Reed received a lifetime achievement award from the American Music Awards. Two years later he received an honorary doctor of performing arts degree from Oklahoma City University.

He is survived by his wife, Barbara; a daughter; a granddaughter; and two great-grandchildren.

Leonard Reed

Telegraph
Published: April 10, 2004

Leonard Reed, who died on April 5 aged 97, was one of the greatest tap dancers of the 20th century, and the creator, with his partner Willie Bryant, of its most widely popularised form, the Shim Sham Shimmy.

Reed's professional career was short, lasting only from 1922 until 1933. The tremendous success that he achieved in that period, and the reason it came to an end, had a common origin: the tall, fair-complexioned, blue-eyed Reed was in fact of mixed black and white blood. Until he was exposed, he was able to pass for both races and, in the age of segregation, worked both the black theatres that were the laboratories of tap, as well as the more lucrative - but white - vaudeville venues.

He began in entertainment as a specialist Charleston dancer, doing three-minute slots in the shows that toured the black theatre circuits of the South and Mid-West. He learned to tap by watching other performers, and while appearing in a revue called Hits and Bits of 1922 was forced to parade his new skills when its star, Travis Tucker, was found to be too drunk to appear. Reed was 15.

Soon he was a regular visitor to the Hoofers Club, on 7th Avenue in Harlem, where dancers such as Bill Robinson traded steps and styles with all comers. Reed started working for the Whitman Sisters, who were acknowledged to have the best black revue, and formed a partnership with the similarly light-skinned Willie Bryant: "Reed & Bryant - Brains as well as Feet".

In about 1930, Reed and Bryant devised a new finale for their eight-minute show, a step of simple heel-and-toe combinations danced to four eight-bar choruses - tunes such as Tuxedo Junction or Ain't What You Do. Like most forms of tap, it was probably an adaptation of an earlier dance, but at some point Reed, who always retained traces of his flamboyant Charleston style in his taps, added a shimmy of the shoulders, perhaps at the prompting of the Whitman girls.

He and Bryant originally called it "Goofus", but it became known as the Shim Sham after a club where they regularly appeared. Its simplicity, and suitability as a line dance, especially with the newly popular swing music, meant that it was quickly picked up and disseminated by clubgoers. It has endured ever since, and has been called the anthem of tap.

For the next three years Reed and Bryant were never out of work, appearing in both black and white venues, notably the Palace Theatre, New York.

While a teenager at a white dance contest, Reed had once been revealed as black by an usherette and had been chased from the hall. In 1933, the secret of his mixed blood again slipped out, and he found himself barred from the white vaudeville circuit.

He and Bryant broke up, and at the age of 26 he largely retired from dancing, becoming instead a producer at the Cotton Club.

Nonetheless, his elegant, spacious tap style remained the dominant influence on such dancers as Maceo Anderson and the Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold, whom Fred Astaire considered to be the greatest exponents of the form and who, in the 1940s, would immortalise many of Reed's own moves in the Hollywood films in which they starred.

Leonard Reed was born in a tepee at Lightning Creek, Oklahoma, on January 7 1907. His mother, who died when he was two, was half-Choctaw Cherokee Indian and half-black. She had been raped by his father, who was white, and whom he also never knew. He was raised by his great-grandmother until he was 11, when he was placed in a foster home in Kansas City, Missouri.

He was soon running with the wrong crowd, and at the age of 13 was threatened with a four-year stretch in reform school for buying alcohol under-age. However, the headmaster of his high school knew that Leonard was being habitually assaulted by the guardian of the foster home, and offered to adopt him if he were not jailed.

By 15, Leonard had a weekend job selling popcorn at a theatre in Kansas City. The Charleston craze was sweeping the United States, and he learned how to dance it by copying the performers on stage.

Soon Reed was good enough to win local Charleston contests and spent the summer of 1922 as the barker for a black "tent show", or travelling revue.

He began to work for the likes of Travis Tucker in his holidays and then, at 18, while in New York visiting his prospective university, Cornell, entered and won a Charleston competition for whites. The victory proved to be his passport to the white theatres as well.

After the discovery of his racial origins, Reed turned to production and choreography. In 1934, he staged Rhythm Bound, with 40 singers, at the Harlem Opera House, and from the mid-Thirties worked in-house at the Cotton Club, arranging music and producing shows for Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, Billie Holiday and the Nicholases.

In 1937, he was injured in a car accident and so was unfit for service during the Second World War, which he spent entertaining troops. He later wrote music for Lionel Hampton and Ella Fitzgerald, and then from 1950 until 1960 was the manager of the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, then greatly celebrated for its talent shows. Among those that Reed helped to unearth was Dinah Washington. During the 1960s, he choreographed dances for Motown stars.

For many years, Reed was also the manager of Joe Louis's personal appearances, and helped the boxer work up the nightclub comedy act for which he was also known.

Both Reed and Louis were good golf players, and Reed is credited with having become the first black player to have taken part in a PGA tournament when, in San Diego in the mid-1940s, he was accidentally given a tour card by an official who thought he was white. Tiger Woods recently praised Reed's many years of work against segregation in golf.

Leonard Reed lived in southern California, and until his late nineties continued to teach tap dancing.

He married, in 1951, Barbara De Costa.

Discovering brooklyn New Yorks Jazz History part 1

2011-11-20T15:23:00.006-05:00

More and more of the clubs that use to define Brooklyn, New York from the swing era till the 1960's are slowly becoming empty vacant buildings whispering a whine to tell their past. Well, always willing to oblige the obsolete ghosts of yesterdays for the next few weeks we will explore a number of closed bars here in Brooklyn, NY and hopefully uncover their contribution to jazz history...here is a interesing article from the American Music review to get us started:

American Music Review

Formerly the Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter

H. Wiley Hitchcock for Studies in American Music
Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York

Volume XXXVI I I

No. 2 Spring 2009

Charles Ives and His Tunes, review by Tom C. Owens
Across the East River: Searching for Brooklyn’s Jazz History

by

Jeffrey Taylor

The Night of the Cookers (Blue Note Records, 1965)

On 9 and 10 April 1965, a series of musical performances took place at Brooklyn’s Club La Marchal, located at Nostrand Avenue and President Street. The event was sponsored by “Jest Us,” an enterprising group of women who happened to be the wives of trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, pianists and composers Cedar Walton, Bobby Timmons, and several other of the era’s best-know jazz performers. Hubbard, who had replaced Lee Morgan in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers three years earlier, was the headliner (his name is highlighted on the original album cover) but he is joined by a unique gathering of jazz individuals, most from his own band at the time: reed and wind player James Spaulding, pianist Harold Mabern, bass player Larry Ridley, Pete La Roca on drums, Big Black (Daniel Ray) on congas, and, perhaps most importantly, Morgan himself. The performances were recorded by Blue Note and issued as The Night of the Cookers.

The Night of the Cookers is a remarkable aural document. Each tune lasts twenty minutes or more, which forced Blue Note to issue the recording in two volumes (it is now available on a 2-CD reissue, Blue Note/EMI 7243 5 94323 2 8), and it shows, better than most live recordings, the potent relationship between audience and performer. As the original liner notes by Alfred Davis observes: “Throughout this album you will become more and more aware of the total freedom, almost to the point where the artists and audience become one in their appreciation of each other.” But most jazz fans relish the two cuts that feature both Morgan and Hubbard in cordial exchanges. In the opening track, Clare Fischer’s Latin-tinged “Pensativa,” (an Art Blakey standard) a muted solo by Morgan gives way to an open-horn improvisation by Hubbard; after a solo by Mabern, Morgan removes his mute and engages in a lengthy conversation with Hubbard, the two throwing ideas back and forth (“Camptown Races” makes several appearances, for some reason). The performance gives listeners a rare opportunity to hear these two great artists, born the same year, play side by side, with Hubbard’s famous warm tone making a perfect foil for Morgan’s slightly edgy, bluesier sound. Though the tune builds in intensity until brought to a close by James Spaulding’s return on flute, there is less a sense of competition here than of friendly exchange and the occasional humorous tweak. And throughout the audience is a partner in the proceedings, yelling out encouragement and laughing at the witty jibes.

Night of the Cookers is undoubtedly the most famous jazz album recorded in Brooklyn, but few know about the musical setting in which the events of that evening took place. Hubbard, whom we sadly lost last December, had immortalized that scene—especially in the mostly African-American neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant—three years earlier with “Nostrand and Fulton,” a catchy tune deftly combining hard bop motives and a lilting waltz. The trumpeter, who lived in the borough during the 1960s, was only one of dozens of jazz artists who were fixtures in Brooklyn jazz during what some call the “glory days” of jazz in the borough, from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. But scan the “Nightclubs and Other Venues” section of The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and one finds only three references to Brooklyn among the dozens of Manhattan clubs listed (and all three are out of business). There is not even an entry for the Blue Coronet, a long-running club on Fulton Street that hosted John Coltrane in the 1950s while he was playing at Manhattan’s Five Spot with Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis in the late 1960s just as he was embarking on his controversial “Bitches Brew” period (a bootleg recording of the latter’s performance there has circulated for years). Nor is there mention of Putnam Central, a men’s social club that featured Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, J.J. Johnson, and many others. Then again, much of what made Brooklyn’s jazz community special were not the performance venues, but the musicians’ homes, where innumerable jam sessions took place, or the long-gone Bickford’s Coffee Shop, where players would meet after gigs to socialize and discuss music.

It is hardly surprising that Manhattan’s jazz history has overshadowed that of Brooklyn, for the latter borough had nothing like the organized entertainment industry that took root on Broadway or 52nd Street. But just ask those who lived in Brooklyn during those glory days—most notably pianist, composer and bandleader Randy Weston—and you will get an earful: not just about the clubs, though there were many, but about community, about a social network that existed among jazz musicians of which most historians are completely unaware. Weston is a walking dictionary of Brooklyn jazz history, and his autobiography, due out next year, will no doubt begin to give the borough a privileged place in the story of this music. Yet, a conversation with this famous Brooklyn son, still inexhaustibly robust at 83, only confirms that there is much more to be discovered about Brooklyn’s role in jazz’s development.

In our Spring 2004 issue,1 Robin D. G. Kelley discussed Brooklyn’s recent “jazz renaissance,” focusing primarily on organizations such as the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium as he framed the revitalization of the scene as largely a local community project. And just this spring, during our Brooklyn jazz symposium, (see p. 2), Kelley showed how Thelonious Monk was influenced by the time he spent immersed in Brooklyn’s jazz community, though he lived in Manhattan. Weston, in turn, was of course influenced by Monk’s idiosyncratic approach to the piano. Yet though the lively community remembered by Monk and Weston is only beginning to be fully appreciated, the history of jazz in Brooklyn goes back much further, to the early years of the twentieth century.

One might begin before jazz even arrives, with the work of ragtime pianists and composers who made Brooklyn their home. Of particular importance is Joseph F. Lamb who, along with Scott Joplin and James Scott, is considered one of the greatest composers of advanced “classical” ragtime. Though Lamb was born in New Jersey, he moved to Brooklyn after his marriage in 1911, and remained there until his death in 1960. I often walk by his modest house in Sheepshead Bay, built when much of Brooklyn was still farmland, and the local elementary school has been renamed in his honor.

Another ragtime and popular song composer with ties to Brooklyn is James Hubert “Eubie” Blake (1887-1983). Blake was born in Baltimore and spent much of his career in Manhattan, where he had an immense impact on the New York entertainment scene, particularly with his all-black show “Shuffle Along” of 1921, co-written with his partner Noble Sissle. Blake moved to Brooklyn around 1940 after his wife Avis died, and the borough can lay claim to many of his later works, including “Rhapsody in Ragtime” and the hauntingly beautiful “Eubie’s Classical Rag.” He boasts a plaque on the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s “Walk of Fame,” alongside the likes of Aaron Copland, Barbra Streisand, and George Gershwin.

The story of jazz in Brooklyn seems to begin in earnest at Coney Island, a thriving amusement park and beach getaway in the 1910s and 20s. The area boasted a vigorous nightlife, much of it built up by Frankie Yale, an infamous Brooklyn underworld figure and associate of Al Capone. The best-known of Yale’s clubs was the College Inn (not to be confused with the famous Chicago club of the same name), where the Original Dixieland Jazz Band played after their famous gig at Reisenweber’s in 1917. Throughout the late 1910s and 1920s, a variety of performers that often featured jazz held forth at Coney Island, including Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante. Further research will be needed to learn more about this club scene, though we do know that not all the performers were white: we have learned from Lawrence Gushee’s research that the Creole Band played at Coney Island in 1915.2 One can’t help wondering, too, if any of the famous early jazz musicians who were active in Manhattan in the 1920s made it down to this popular playground on a hot summer day. Did Louis Armstrong take the train out there in 1924, perhaps, with his cornet tucked under his arm?

During the swing-crazed 1930s and 40s, the greatest big bands of the day worked at the Brooklyn Paramount (called that to distinguish it from the Paramount in Manhattan). Built in 1928, the Paramount was located in downtown Brooklyn, at the current site of Long Island University at DeKalb and Flatbush Avenues (part of the ballroom—and the organ—still exist, though most of the building was absorbed by LIU’s gymnasium). Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway were among the stars who brought their orchestras into this imposing structure in the 1930s, and later Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Miles Davis appeared there as well. In the 1950s, the Paramount became famous for Alan Freed’s broadcast live rock ‘n roll shows, which featured Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and others—making it something of an epicenter for the development of modern popular music. But during the Swing Era, one can’t help wonder if the publicity given the Brooklyn Paramount obscured other Brooklyn venues that might have provided music and dancing space to Depression-weary audiences. It’s not difficult to imagine that other perhaps less prestigious venues offered music for dancers and listeners, perhaps performed by local musicians.

Which brings us to the previously-mentioned glory days of the late 1940s through the 1960s discussed by Robin Kelley, the world experienced by Weston, Monk, Hubbard, Max Roach, and others. This musical scene is, of course, still vividly remembered by many, though their numbers are quickly disappearing. Interviews with musicians, club owners, and audiences, as well as examination of advertisements and reviews await the ambitious researcher. But time is pressing; in the next decade most of the first-hand accounts of this time will no longer be available to us. Luckily, the Brooklyn Historical Society, as well as some other institutions, are working to preserve the living legacy of Brooklyn’s jazz history. We hope these efforts, combined with a careful look at how jazz arose and flourished in this borough, will help us better understand a story that has long been overlooked to the detriment of jazz scholarship everywhere.

As this project, now obviously in its early stages, moves forward, I invite readers who may be able to shed light on Brooklyn’s jazz scene to contact us. For too long it has been assumed that Manhattan remained the only borough worth investigating by jazz historians. But it is now clear that just across the river there is a vital part of the music’s story waiting to be discovered.

—Jeffrey Taylor

Notes

1 Robin D. G. Kelly, “Brooklyn’s Jazz Renaissance,” I.S.A.M. Newsletter 23, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 4-5; 14.

2 Lawrence Gushee, Pioneers of Jazz: the Story of The Creole Band (Oxford University Press, 2005), 180-181.

A Hot Time In Old Town Tonight ( Pictures from Alabama University with video) and Lavwern Baker

2011-11-20T01:39:00.003-05:00

THERE'LL BE A HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN TONIGHT
Theodore M Metz (m) Joseph Hayden (l)

As Sung By:

Bessie Smith rec Mar 2nd 1927 New York
The Carter Family '31
Bing Crosby w Jack Halloran's Orch & Chorus '59
Ottilie Patterson w Chris Barber's Jazz Band
Lavern Baker

Come along, get ready, wear your grand brand-new gown,
For there's going to be a meeting in this good good old town.
When you know everybody and they all know you,
And you get a rabbit's foot to keep away them hoodoos.

When you hear the preachin' has begin,
Bend down low for to drive away your sin;
When you get religion you'll wanna shout and sing,
There'll be a hot time in old town tonight!

My baby, when you hear them bells go dingaling,
All turn around and sweetly you must sing.
When the birds dance too, and the poets will all join in,
There'll be a hot time in old town tonight!

There'll be girls for everybody in this good good old town,
There's Miss Gonzola Davis and Miss Gondoola Brown,
There's Miss Henrietta Caesar, and she's all dressed in red;
I just hug and kiss her, and to me then she said;

"Please, oh please, oh do not let me fall,
You are mine and I love you best of all!
You be my man, I'll have no man at all,
There'll be a hot time in old town tonight!"

My baby, when you hear them bells go dingaling,
All join around and sweetly you must sing.
When the birds dance too, and the poets will all join in,
There'll be a hot time in old town tonight!

One of my favorite songs of all time. I love that line " You must be my man or ill have no man at all!"

Oh sing a song unto our selves "Stump and Stumpy"

2011-11-19T02:02:00.007-05:00

Doing some research at the local libary I read a fasinating interview that Linda Kuel had with James Cross from the Stump and Stumpy team. After wondering what this guy looked like that was a name dropper and seemingly over the top character who seemed to know everything about anyone who was some one in Harlems heyday I finally decided to buckle down and take a moment to write it out ( or rather type it out) so I could share a wonderful clip and a bit of obscure Harlem history

Stump and Stumpy were a dance/comedy/acting duo popular from the mid 1930s to the 1950s, consisting of James "Stump" Cross, and either Eddie Hartman or Harold Cromer as "Stumpy". Their act was mostly jazz tap, and comedy expressed through song and movement.

This two man comedy dance act, big in nightclubs, radio, television and films in the 40s and 50s, was a tremendous influence on many other performers, including Martin and Lewis, and Larry Storch, who had a night club act prior to his best known role as Cpl. Agarn on F Troop. Originally consisting of James “Stump” Cross (whose birthday it is today) and Eddie “Stumpy” Hartman,the team started out on the all-black vaudeville circuits before debuting at the Apollo Theatre (where they became a staple for decades) in 1938. Harold Cromer (himself already a show biz veteran) replaced Eddie Hartman as “Stumpy” in the late 40s. Harold continued performing long after Cross dropped out — his last movie was 1984′s The Cotton Club, and you can see him perform live in about a month at the Jersey Tap Fest. You can see the team at the peak of their hilarious form here.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble,

What Do You Know About Singer Pha Terrell "Until the real thing comes along"

2011-11-18T15:26:00.009-05:00

So what do you know about singer Pha Terrell best known in some circles for "Until The Real Thing Comes along" with the great Andy Kirk band of the 1930s. Also he was a young Billie Holidays boyfriend and had a beautiful voice....can you say obscure? hes definately obscure today
My mother remembered this singer and her remark was No one ever sang that song like Pha and he was a cute cat

Best known as a vocalist for Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy, the unusual first name of this artist would become an item on a Vietnamese restaurant menu if the proper vowel were switched. Pha Terrell, sometimes known to his friends as Elmer, was discovered by Kirk in the early '30s while toiling as a combination of dancer, singer, and semi-hustler at a Kansas City club. Terrell sang with the Kirk band between 1933 and 1941, after which he headed for Indianapolis, at that time a thriving jazz center. He worked there in smoochy Clarence Love's Orchestra, often tying knots in whatever strings of one-nighters were available to this type of territory band. Like just about any standup singer, Terrell eventually decided to go it alone, a career move that in his case he made out on the West Coast. A kidney ailment took him down when he was just getting started.

Available recordings by this singer can basically be evenly split between Kirk collections and various compilations based on themes such as early R&B and the Kansas City scene. His biggest hit with the Kirk outfit was the patient "Until the Real Thing Comes Along" in 1936. "All the Jive Is Gone" is another of Terrell's finest moments -- hippies will say it is "Pha Out!" -- yet listeners who find the singer's high tenor voice eerie and/or obnoxious may think the song's title best describes Terrell's departure from the Kirk band

Until the Real Thing Comes Along
(Cahn, Chaplin, Freeman, Holiner, Nichols)

Transcribed from Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, vocal by Ben Thigpen, recorded March 11, 1936.
From Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, 1936-1937, Chronological Classics vol. 573.

I would work for you, slave for you,
Work my body to a grave for you;
If that ain't love, it's got to do,
Until the real thing comes along.

I would moan for you, groan for you,
Work my fingers to the bones for you,
If that ain't love, it's got to do,
Until the real thing comes along.

Maybe someday, I'll go far away,
I should leave, you know I won't stay;
I need you now more than ever, somehow,
If you should leave, you know we'd both grieve.

I would rob, steal, beg, borrow, and I'd lie for you,
Lay my body down and die for you,
If that ain't love, it's got to do,
Until the real thing comes along.

Maybe someday, I'll go far away,
I should leave, you know I won't stay,
I need you now more than ever, somehow,
If you should leave, you know we'd both grieve.

I would rob, steal, beg, borrow, and I'd lie for you,
Lay my body down and die for you,
If that ain't love, it's got to do,
Until the real thing comes along.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

what little is on the internet about this man:Elmer "Pha" Terrell (May 25, 1910, Kansas City, Missouri - October 14, 1945, Los Angeles) was an American jazz singer.

Terrell was working in nightclubs locally in Kansas City in the early 1930s as a singer, dancer, and emcee when he was discovered by Andy Kirk, who hired him to be the vocalist for his group the Twelve Clouds of Joy. Terrell sang with Kirk for eight years, from 1933 to 1941, and recorded with him extensively for Decca Records, singing hits such as 1936's "Until the Real Thing Comes Along".

After 1941 Terrell moved to Indianapolis to play with Clarence Love's territory band, then moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a soloist. Terrell died of kidney failure in 1945.

Doc Cheatham

2011-11-18T14:59:00.002-05:00

Cheatham was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He noted there was no jazz music there in his youth; like many in the United States he was introduced to the style by early recordings and touring groups at the end of the 1910s. He abandoned his family's plans for him to be a pharmacist (although retaining the medically inspired nickname "Doc") to play music, initially playing soprano and tenor saxophone in addition to trumpet in Nashville's African American Vaudeville theater. Cheatham later toured in band accompanying blues singers on the Theater Owners Booking Association circuit.[1] His early jazz influences included Henry Busse and Johnny Dunn, but when he moved to Chicago in 1924 he heard King Oliver. Oliver's playing was a revelation to Cheatham. Cheatham followed the jazz King around. Oliver gave young Cheatham a mute which Cheatham treasured and performed with for the rest of his career. A further revelation came the following year when Louis Armstrong returned to Chicago. Armstrong would be a lifelong influence on Cheatham.

[edit] Working with the name bands

Cheatham played in Albert Wynn's band (and occasionally substituted for Armstrong at the Vendome Theater), and recorded on sax with Ma Rainey before moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1927, where he worked with the bands of Bobby Lee and Wilber de Paris before moving to New York City the following year. After a short stint with Chick Webb he left to tour Europe with Sam Wooding's band.

Cheatham returned to the United States in 1930, and played with Marion Handy and McKinney's Cotton Pickers before landing a job with Cab Calloway. Cheatham was Calloway's lead trumpeter from 1932 through 1939.

He performed with Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Fletcher Henderson, and Claude Hopkins in the 1940s; after World War II he started working regularly with Latin bands in New York City, including the bands of Perez Prado, Marcelino Guerra, Ricardo Ray (on whose catchy, hook-laden album "Jala, Jala Boogaloo, Volume II", he played exquisitely (but uncredited), particularly on the track "Mr. Trumpet Man"), Machito, and others. In addition to continuing Latin gigs, he played again with Wilbur de Paris and Sammy Price. He led his own band on Broadway for five years starting in 1960, after which he toured with Benny Goodman.

[edit] Later work

In the 1970s, Doc Cheatham made a vigorous self-assessment to improve his playing, including taping himself and critically listening to the recordings, then endeavoring to eliminate all clichés from his playing. The discipline paid off, and Doc received ever-improving critical attention.

His singing career began almost by accident in a Paris recording studio on 2 May 1977. As a level and microphone check at the start of a recording session with Sammy Price's band, Cheatham sang and scatted his way through a couple of choruses of "What Can I Say Dear After I Say I'm Sorry". The miking happened to be good from the start and the tape machine was already rolling, and the track was issued on the LP Doc Cheatham: Good for What Ails You. His singing was well received and Cheatham continued to sing in addition to play music for the rest of his career.

Cheatham toured widely in addition to his regular Sunday gig leading the band at Sweet Basil in Manhattan's Greenwich Village in his final decade. During one of his frequent trips to New Orleans, Louisiana he met and befriended young trumpet virtuoso Nicholas Payton. In 1996 the two trumpeters and pianist Butch Thompson recorded a CD for Verve Records, Doc Cheatham and Nicholas Payton, which won them a Grammy Award.

Doc Cheatham continued playing until two days before his death, eleven days shy of his 92nd birthday.[2]

Who was Billie Holidays boyfriend Joe Guy and what happened to him?

2011-11-11T01:51:00.005-05:00

Billie Holiday and her men. One thing can be said about Lady, she could pick a handsome cat. Her first husband Jimmy Monroe was a frail pimply looking cat who had been married to none other than Nina Mae McKinney (Think Halleijuah and Pinky)rumour has it he got Nina involved in drug use too hell, all parties are dead now but Jimmy was the brother of Clark Monroe who ran Monroes in Harlem which later became Mintons ( The home of bop) still their too! You know Clarke he also dated Billie, Havent been able to lay hands on a picture of clarke yet I know they exsist im just lazy as hell. Joeseph Luke Guy was Jimmys suscessor and he seems to have been by all accounts a weak man. Heres the lowdown: Joe Guy had a brief and rather odd career. A promising trumpeter who was heavily influenced by Roy Eldridge, Guy's style looked ahead towards bop. However due to his heroin use, he never developed beyond a certain intermediate level and the results, although fiery, consistently sounded uncomfortable. Guy played briefly with Teddy Hill's Orchestra in 1938 (succeeding Dizzy Gillespie) and was a key soloist with the short-lived Coleman Hawkins big band of 1940. During 1940-42 Guy played regularly at Minton's Playhouse and he appeared on many privately recorded (and later released) jam sessions. His long solos, heard next to Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk, Hot Lips Page and Roy Eldridge, usually failed to hold their own since he was not on their level; but then again he was just in his very early twenties. Guy worked with the big bands of Lucky Millinder, Charlie Barnet and Cootie Williams (in 1942 he encouraged Williams to use some of Monk's compositions). During 1945-46 was closely associated (both musically and personally) with Billie Holiday. However Joe Guy was eventually busted for drug possession and after 1947 very little was heard from him. He died in obscurity in his home town of Birmingham at the age of 41. ~ Scott Yanow, Rovi

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/joe-guy#ixzz1dNRKlA00 definately a Bama.

Little Miss Cornshucks So Long

2011-06-09T04:04:00.000-04:00

IT'S IN OUR HANDS - PREVENTING BLACK SGL ["gay/lesbian"] ISOLATION & SUI...

2011-06-07T05:23:00.000-04:00

Panama studio session

2011-06-07T04:29:00.000-04:00

Fab Men Panama & DJ Boy Wonder Interview Part 4

2011-06-07T04:17:00.000-04:00

Fab Men Panama & DJ Boy Wonder Interview Part 3

2011-06-07T04:15:00.000-04:00

Fab Men Panama & DJ Boy Wonder Interview Part 2

2011-06-07T04:14:00.000-04:00

Fab Men Panama & DJ Boy Wonder Interview Part 1

2011-06-07T04:13:00.000-04:00

Conrad Hilton Biography - Biography.com

2011-06-05T05:10:00.000-04:00

Conrad Hilton Biography - Biography.com

LITTLE MISS. CORNSHUCKS AKA MILDRED CUMMINGS

2011-06-04T02:52:00.001-04:00

As a kid the music was always pumping in our house even though it was the 80s it always sounded like it was the 1940's or 50's that was when my parents were young and "Hip". However their was one song " How Long" by Mildred Cummings AKA Cornshucks...Obscure today but Id like to share her story with you!

LITTLE MISS CORNSHUCKS (By Dave Penny)

Born Mildred Cummings, 26 May 1923, Dayton, Ohio
Died 11 November 1999, Indianapolis, Indiana

"In 1943, when I was 19 or so years old, I went to a nightclub in the northeast black ghetto section of Washington and heard a singer whose name was Little Miss Cornshucks and I thought, "My God!!!" She was better than anything I'd ever heard. She would come out like a country girl with a bandana around her head, a basket in her hand, and so forth, which she'd set aside fairly early on into the show. She could sing the blues better than anybody I've ever heard to this day. I asked her that night if she would mind if I made a record of her for myself. We cut "Kansas City" along with some other blues and she also sang a song called "So Long". She had such a wonderful sound and I remember just thinking, "My God! My God!" And I didn't have a record company, I just made those records for myself."

Ahmet Ertegun, from What'd I Say: The Atlantic Story (page 15).

Born Mildred Cummings in Dayton, Ohio, on 26th May 1923, Little Miss Cornshucks - with her cute "rural maid" routine - became a major attraction at Chicago's Club De Lisa by the time she was 18, and began appearing at the Rhumboogie Club from its opening in 1942. By the following year she was touring nationwide and being recorded privately by Ahmet Ertegun; which not only germinated the seed of Ahmet owning his own record company, but also provided him with one of his first major successes with Russ Morgan's 1940 hit "So Long", recorded by Ruth Brown in 1949.

A multi-talented vaudeville performer, whose act incorporated comedy and novelty vocals as much as "serious singing", Little Miss Cornshucks' own commercial recording career began in late 1946 with and for bandleader Marl Young's Chicago-based Sunbeam Records. Young was a highly-regarded jazz pianist from Virginia who had co-owned The Sunbeam Recording Studio since 1941. Five years later he inaugurated the Sunbeam label to showcase his own band and various unrecorded vocalists, including and especially, Little Miss Cornshucks. After her releases for the label, Sunbeam stumbled on for a few more releases but ceased around late 1947, although two of her sides - "So Long" and "For Old Time's Sake" - were acquired by Al Benson's Old Swing-Master Records and reissued in September 1949. By that time Cornshucks had made more recordings on the West Coast during the 1948 AFM recording ban for Roy Milton's Miltone Records with Maxwell Davis and The Blenders, including standards such as "He's Funny That Way" and "Why Was I Born?" as well as more original work and more contemporary covers like Lloyd Glen's "True (You Don't Love Me)", made into a recent hit by both Paul Gayten and Camille Howard.

In 1949 she recorded a one-off session for Aladdin Records, covering Frank Sinatra's 1946 hit "Time After Time" and the Jay McShann/Crown Prince Waterford wailer "You Turned Your Back On Me", while a version of Leroy Carr's "How Long" remains unissued. Aladdin also purchased her Miltone masters, but released just one, the dramatic "Keep Your Hand On Your Heart", while most were also reissued on DeLuxe for the mid-western market. The Decca Records subsidiary, Coral, recorded and issued three releases by Cornshucks between 1950 and 1952, including a reprise of her career song "So Long", after which the releases dried up until she was brought out of retirement for an LP on Chess produced by Sonny Thompson in late 1960.

Although she died in obscurity at her home in Indianapolis on 11th November 1999, her valuable recordings issued between 1947 and 1952 prove the tremendous influence this artist exerted over her peers, and her records would go on to inspire later performers like Billy Wright, Ruth Brown, Johnny Ray, Wynona Carr, and LaVern Baker who would start her career in the late 1940s as Little Miss Sharecropper in emulation of her idol.

Recommended listening: The Chronological Little Miss Cornshucks 1947-1951 - Classics 5059
Chess Blues: Global Roots - Spectrum 5445402 (contains one 1960 Chess recording "It Do Me So Good")

These pages were saved from "This Is My Story" for reference usage only. Please note that these pages were not originally published or written by BlackCat Rockabilly Europe. For comments or information please contact Dik de Heer at dik.de.heer@hetnet.nl

The "Roaring" 1920s

2011-05-20T04:29:00.000-04:00

What was it like to live in the 1920's? Learn about Flappers, Fashion, Music, Politics, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the following Depression years.

Discover what it was like to live under Prohibition or how to dance the Charleston.

View the rapid progress made in transportation by automobiles, trains, ocean liners, airships and aeroplanes. All this and more can be found on 1920-30.com.

The information, taken largely from books and periodicals of the period, captures how life was in the U.S.A and the World during the 1920's - a time that is often referred to as the "Roaring Twenties" - a boisterous period characterized by rapidly changing lifestyles, financial excesses, and the fast pace of technological progress.

Goodnight My Love

2011-05-20T03:47:00.000-04:00

Career

Belvin was born in Texarkana, Texas, and moved with his family to Los Angeles at the age of five. In 1950 he joined saxophonist Big Jay McNeely's backing vocal quartet, Three Dots and a Dash, and featured prominently on their record releases. In 1952 he joined Specialty Records. Although his early solo records were unsuccessful, his fourth record, "Dream Girl", credited to Jesse & Marvin and featuring Marvin Phillips on saxophone, reached #2 on the R&B charts in 1953.[1][2][3]
He was then drafted for a spell in the army, but continued to write songs. His composition "Earth Angel", eventually co-credited to Belvin and Hollywood Flames singers Curtis Williams and Gaynel Hodge after a legal dispute, was recorded by The Penguins, and became one of the first R&B singles to cross over onto the pop charts, selling a million copies in 1954/55.[2]
In 1956, he signed a contract with Modern Records, but also continued to sing for other labels under different names. His biggest hit was "Goodnight My Love", which he co-wrote and which reached #7 on the R&B chart. The piano on the session was reportedly played by the 11 year old Barry White. The song became the closing theme to Alan Freed's rock and roll radio shows.[2]
Belvin’s other recordings for Modern were less successful, and in 1958 he recorded on Dot Records with a group, The Shields, who included lead singer Frankie Ervin and guitarist Johnny "Guitar" Watson. Their record, "You Cheated", reached #15 on the US pop charts.[3]
Inspired by his wife and manager Jo Anne to develop his style, he signed to RCA Records in 1959, and immediately had a Top 40 hit with "Guess Who", written by his wife.[4] He also recorded an album, Just Jesse Belvin, developing a more mature and sophisticated sound on ballads. His style was influenced by Nat "King" Cole and Billy Eckstine, and became a model for Sam Cooke and others. He acquired the nickname "Mr. Easy", and the record company began moulding him as a potential crossover star for white audiences.[2]
He recorded a further series of tracks later in the year, with arranger Marty Paich and an orchestra including saxophonist Art Pepper. The songs included soulful covers of standards like "Blues in the Night", "In the Still of the Night", and "Makin' Whoopee", and were issued on the album Mr. Easy.
However, before the album was issued, and shortly after finishing a performance in Little Rock on a bill with Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and Marv Johnson, Belvin and his wife were killed in a head-on collision at Hope, Arkansas. The concert was the first concert played before an integrated audience in the history of Little Rock, and had been stopped twice by interruptions from whites in the audience, shouting racial epithets and urging the white teenagers in attendance to leave at once. There had been several death threats on Belvin prior to the concert, and there was speculation that Belvin's car had been tampered with prior to the accident, though nothing was ever proved.[5]
See also

27 Club
References

^ Jesse Belvin, Jr. interview
^ a b c d Jesse Belvin at Allmusic
^ a b Jesse Belvin at Soulwalking
^ Honkers And Shouters. The Golden Years Of Rhythm And Blues. Crowell-Collier Press, New York, 1978, pg. 210
^ Jesse Belvin at Findagrave.com
External links

Album sleeve notes by Billy Vera
Jesse Belvin discography
Categories: 1932 births | 1960 deaths | American male singers | African American musicians | Specialty Records artists | Modern Records artists | Kent Records artists | Jamie Records artists | RCA Victor artists | Class Records artists

Tan Magazine Billie Holiday...Comeback Story

2011-05-18T20:03:00.002-04:00

Mal Waldron Interview, he remembers Billie, very touching....

2011-05-16T05:31:00.000-04:00

Fasinating and so beautiful

Billie Holiday Interview-1949-Very Rare.avi

2011-05-16T05:30:00.000-04:00

Rare Billie Holiday Interview Pt. 3

2011-05-16T05:24:00.000-04:00

Rare Billie Holiday Interview Pt. 2

2011-05-16T05:20:00.000-04:00

This Billie Holiday interview was recorded when Billie was working at a long engagement at the Strand Theater with Count Basie in July -August 1948.

RARE Billie Holiday Performance: "You Gotta Show Me" (1950)

2011-05-16T05:15:00.000-04:00

When your in love their is absolutely nothing better than a heaping spoonful of Billie Holiday to make it well.....Just a bit sweeter! Enjoy

Adriana Evans Surrender New song

2011-05-16T05:10:00.000-04:00

I didnt know you in 79 but I love you ill surrender everytime!.....

WHO IN THE HELL WAS CLEO "PATRA " BROWN????

2011-05-14T01:17:00.009-04:00

Live and learn!Class is now in session! I adore the obscure and revel in unlocking mysteries of days gone by! I savor a new glint into anyone who I personally adore past.
Whether it be scurrilous or a genuine, unserving good damn deed!

So, of course you can imagine my glee as I was hanging out on the net I read that they wanted Billie to sing a bit more like Cleo Brown. Of course in my ignorance I was aghast "How dare this writer defame MY Billie! But, something said "Google the name" and I read it for myself.

Now of course we are all familiar with John Hammond and the mysterious powers that be wanting Holiday to resurrect a bunch of Ethel Waters, Clara Smith tunes of the 20's and her classic reply "I don't wanna sing that old shit man its 1935!" Funny now right? But when she walked into the Columbia studios for the now famous "Miss. Brown to you and What a little Moonlight can do sessions they wanted her to sing more in the Cleo Brown "goodtime style which personally, this blogger loathes tho it was the great depression and Im sure they ( like us today) could use a bit o damn cheer! she (Cleo) sounds so goddamn dated I almost expect to hear applause and then see Al freakin Jolson come out and do a Black Bottom dance in full black face.

However Billies record (what a little Moonlighht can do" actually charted #12 in 1935 and the flip side charted at 20. That made the big guys leave her alone and she soon began fronting her own studio orchestra ( which was actually a ad hoc group of some of the greatest musicians that were in NYC at the time).

Cleo Brown? Who the hell is Cleo Brown? Often referred to as Cleo Patra brown ( aint that some smess? well....With the exception of an album that she made in 1987, 1935-1951 is all anyone has heard of the recordings of pianist-singer Cleo Brown. Brown, who has sometimes been cited by Dave Brubeck as an early influence (although the musical connection really cannot be heard), was an excellent pianist and a personable good-time singer. She recorded four sessions for Decca during 1935-36, in which she is backed by guitar, bass, and drums, performing such numbers as "Lookie, Lookie, Lookie, Here Comes Cookie," "The Stuff Is Here And It's Mellow," "Mama Don't Want No Peas An' Rice An' Cocoanut Oil" and the unusual "When Hollywood Goes Black And Tan." In addition, she romps on the solo "Pelican Stomp," her part from a Decca All Star Revue is included, and there is one session apiece from 1949, 1950, and 1951. It seems odd that she never became a big star. Needless to say, this CD is the perfect way to obtain and enjoy this lost legend's recordings. ~ Scott Yanow, All Music Guide Im still investigating this woman who because of her tiny body of work is NEVER even discussed these days and once again thanks to Billie another diamond has been found in the ghetto wasteland of obscure music....Jahlaune Hunt 2011

TRUE URBAN HAVOC ENTERTAINMENT HOUR PRESENTS: HARLEM REVISTED

2011-04-21T21:00:00.003-04:00
SNEAK PEEK FOR OUR BLOG READERS AND FOLLOWS. THIS IS OUR NEW FORMAT WE WILL BE EXPLORING THE MORE OBSCURE ARTISTS OF THE HARLEM RENASANCE AND HOPEFULLY LATER ERAS. HOPING YOU ENJOY THIS LABOR OF LOVE FOR ALL THINGS HARLEM AND OBSCURE

E TO

Who was Monette Moore? 1902-1962

2011-04-21T08:02:00.004-04:00

Other than being the host at Monettes on w.133rd Street where a young Billie Holiday wowed John Hammond what else did she do? That ran thru my mind for years! How awful to have your own sucessses overshadowed by someone elses. So I had to do a little digging!

Monette Moore was never a star but she led a rich and varied life in show business. She began her career accompanying silent films in Kansas City and then toured the vaudeville circuit as a pianist and singer. In the early 1920s she made her way to New York and became active in musical theater. Her recording career began in 1923. Many of her early records were released under the pseudonym of Susie Smith. In 1925, Monette was in the cast of the musical revue "Lucky Sambo". She sang with Charlie Johnson's Orchestra at Small's Paradise Club (229 1/2 7th Avenue at 135th Street) and Connie's Inn (2221 Seventh Avenue at 131st Street) in New York and made some wonderful recordings with the band in 1925. In 1927 and 1928 she was singing with Walter Page's Blue Devils in the mid-West. She returned to New York in 1929 and was very active in musical theater and cabaret work until the late 1930s. In the early 1940s, she moved to Los Angeles and performed in clubs, recorded with Teddy Bunn and the Harmony Girls and had small parts in a couple of films. From 1951 to 1953 she appeared on the Amos 'n Andy television program and recorded with George Lewis. In 1960, she began performing with the Young Men of Dixieland at Disneyland and appeared in the Disney television programs "The Wonderful World of Color" and "Disneyland After Dark".

Unsung Black Beautys Of Another Era

2011-04-21T07:49:00.004-04:00

THE SNAKES CRAWL AT NIGHT by CHARLEY PRIDE

2010-08-23T02:37:00.000-04:00

My mother use to say " thats one handsome Cat!"

PLAYING AROUND WIT OLD PICS FOR TUH

2010-07-29T15:27:00.000-04:00

Wanda Sykes on Gay Marriage

2010-07-19T04:52:00.000-04:00

Many thanks to our listeners

2010-07-17T23:09:00.003-04:00

Im always presently surprised when one of our listeners pops up on my yahoo IM (jahlaune is my yahoo messenger name) and never moreso than today. Just as I was diggin thru the archives ror a episode for this weekend Bayou popped on explaining how long it took to download our show 3 hours and hes overseas in Africa. This was the third complaint about the lengthy time our show takes to download and since I was the only person on deck today (as I am every saturday) I took the time to see if it could be remastered and set to a FM bandwith.
I am listening and I thank you for your sugguestions.
Anthony McCowan i would like to thank you for sharing our Sunday gospel show with so many people on Face Book! The "Just A Closer Walk" Series is close to my heart and yes! I promise to keep the praise and worship at least twice a month on our roster...
Many thanks to our legions of jazz fans! WQe have indeed covered the waterfront the last season with the likes of Mamie Smith, Noble sissle, Count Basie, Ahmad jamal and more and I thank each of you for your kind remarks from our "Live at the Mars Club" PLEASE!!!! Remember that is a virtual club LOL with a really truly name !
I love you all so much and without you I would have given up long ago!

Jahlaune K Hunt

Underneath A Harlem Moon: the Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall

2010-07-05T17:19:00.001-04:00

by
IAIN CAMERON WILLIAMS
with a foreword by Dame Cleo Laine

The first major biography of Adelaide Hall

Often seen as the most important and influential female star of Harlem’s Renaissance, Adelaide Hall dynamically pushed down the barriers that had previously prevented black entertainers from reaching mass recognition. Though she will always be associated with Harlem’s famous Cotton Club and her wordless vocals on some of Duke Ellington’s most famous tunes, it was the astounding media attention Adelaide Hall received on both sides of the Atlantic during her two year starring role in Lew Leslie’s Broadway revue “Blackbirds of 1928″ that turned her into what can only be termed the first modern-day international black female superstar.

With fame came controversy. Her Broadway performance incited a riot. The persecution she encountered from her racist neighbours after purchasing an exclusive estate in Larchmont, a predominantly white suburb in Westchester County, hit national headlines.

Iain Cameron-Williams takes the reader on a fascinating roller-coaster ride from the birth of Adelaide in Brooklyn and her humble childhood in Harlem, through her triumphs on Broadway to the glamour of Paris’ Moulin Rouge, appearances at the most sophisticated and celebrated nightclubs in the world and across two continents on a ground-breaking eighteen month RKO tour. By the end of 1932, Adelaide had performed to millions and in the process had become one of America’s wealthiest black women.

Adelaide’s celebrity status afforded her the privilege of befriending many stars from the world of showbusiness. The book includes many accounts of such friendships including her encounter with Rudolph Valentino, her close acquaintance with Maurice Chevalier, her stormy relationship with the Broadway impresario Lew Leslie, her meetings in Chicago with Al Capone, her amusing account of an evening she spent in the company of Gloria Swanson, her exciting visit to Douglas Fairbanks house “Pickfair” in Beverly Hills and accounts of all the famous black stars she knew from the Harlem Renaissance including Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Sam Wooding, Bojangles, Aida Ward, Florence Mills, Lottie Gee, Valaida Snow etc. The book also explains in depth the continual rivalry and hostility Adelaide received from Josephine Baker. For the first time ever in print the book dates exactly when, where and how Adelaide discovered the blind pianist Art Tatum and also explains Adelaide’s lifetime claim that it was she who helped name New York the “Big Apple.”

In 1935, Adelaide and her husband moved to Europe and set up home in Paris where her career continued to flourish. Here, she opened her own nightclub “La Grosse Pomme” and employed Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli’s Quintette du Hot Club de France as the resident in-house band. Not content with being dubbed the Parisian “Queen of Montmartre” Adelaide set her sights on conquering Britain. The book concludes with her mysterious disappearance in November 1938, which until now has never been publicly explained.

Iain Cameron-Williams
Underneath A Harlem Moon is Iain Cameron-Williams’ first biography, having previously worked as a musician, producer and composer. He released three records under various stage names and co-wrote the song ‘Give Me One More Chance’ which represented the United Kingdom in the 1990 International Song Festival. He was a close friend of Adelaide Hall from 1971 until her death in 1993. He live’s in London’s Notting Hill Gate.

Underneath A Harlem Moon by Iain Cameron-Williams is published by Continuum, 428pp, 75 illustrations, Hardback price ?20.00. ISBN 0826458939. Available from all good bookshops.

From the vaults "Rod Stewart" Gasoline Alley

2010-07-03T23:18:00.001-04:00

From The Vaults! Rod Stewart "Have I told You lately?"

2010-07-03T23:18:00.000-04:00

From the vaults Bette Midler "Wind Beneath My Wings"

2010-07-03T23:16:00.000-04:00

From the vaults " Bette Midler " Under the Boardwalk"

2010-07-03T23:15:00.000-04:00

Where does the show get the music? We welcome you to our vaults!

2010-07-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

Over the next few weeks I will bwe sharing the music from our most remembered shows! Yes we dont use MP3s our archive is very extensive contributed from personal collections and just music we grew up with over the years or stolen from Mommys basement ENJOY!

Co Workers

2010-07-03T22:53:00.000-04:00

This was the greatist team! Never an argument Betwixt us. We appered on some cable show back in early 2002 this was after

Belinda Carlisle - Heaven Is A Place On Earth

2010-07-03T16:50:00.000-04:00

The voice of summer circa 1980's Berlinda from the Go Go's !

TRUE URBAN HAVOC HAVOC ENTERTAINMENT HONORS THE MOTHER OF MODERN JAZZ SINGING "MISS.ETHEL WATERS"

2010-06-18T18:38:00.004-04:00

Authors Note: a special thank you goes out to blogger Corey Jarrell from the "I've got you posted" blog for his corrections which were taken and used to help make this a better, correct blog! Thank you my brother!

This week we will enjoy two clips from Ethel Waters and The Brown Sisters. http://trueurbanehavoc.podOmatic.comFeatruring the song Underneath The Harlem Moon, and Am I Blue ( from on with the show!" By: Jahlaune K: By the early 1930's Ethel Waters was already a huge star. Apperaring on stage and screen and a frequent guest of the top society people in New York (think of author Carl van Vechtin author of the book Nigger Heaven). Her songs such as Dinah! Recorded in the 1920's was already beloved along with so many of her other hits such as, "At the New Jump Steady Ball, Birmingham Bertha and of course Am I Blue?' One of her songs she is famous for and which is rarely heard today is "Underneath The Harlem Moon" by today's standards its consdiered extremly racist but in the early 1930's it was a very popular pop tune recorded (as was the usual in those days) by many diffrent bands and vocalists but I think many people will agree the two definitive versions are by Ethel Waters and The Brown Sisters. On todays Ethel marathon we compare these two video clips back to back. And yes thats a very young Sammy Davis Junior in the clip ( from Rufus Jones for president) with Miss. Waters. visit our new fan page on facebook!!!http://www.facebook.com/pages/True-Urban-Havoc-Entertainment-Hour/132173473467821

Una Mae Carlisle - Walkin' by the River

2010-06-16T15:50:00.000-04:00

Alex cuba band - Dime si despues

2010-05-24T01:23:00.000-04:00

I love this guy this song "Tell nme then...." sums it all up perfectly!

WELCOME TO OUR NEWEST SUNDAY OFFERING! PLAYTIME IS OVER!

2010-05-23T01:48:00.003-04:00
L Description: With all this shouting I offer a very special shout out to my bff Mikey Reidout in Miami Fla, Bernadette Blair- Young In Thomasville, NC and all the others that helped make this project a reality. Their are so many of you : Tammy Dawson who took me to my first all night tarry service in Hempstead New York, The choir and members of Bethel Gospel Tabernacle Church, On New York Blvd in Jamacia, NY. during the time of Bishop Roderik Ceaser, Sr Your Youth For Christ choir is simply AWESOME!All these years later I can still here them making that recording to many years ago to disclose! To Dee Peters from Queens who cant sing but can SANNNNNGGGG! Elder Lawrence Harper who first introduced me to the COGIC church in the Bronx, Thank You! I learned so much in the past few months from COGIC elders, Pentacostals, Holiness, Apostolic and all the various degrees of Protestant. To one of the greatist singing Pastors from my child hood "Uncle Willie" The Rev. Wilfred Quimby from the Christ Gospel Baptist Church of Jamacia New York. Thanking Refuge Baptist Church in Brooklyn, NY for all the great music I listened to NON Stop. This podcast is for all of you! May you enjoy this praise and worship podcast. Featuring: Elder Moore on Organ, and a variety of what I feel is the best praise music I have ever heard in my entire life!

2010-05-22T15:51:00.000-04:00
What a program we have instore for you tomorrow! Its titled "PLAY TIME IS OVER" ITS PRAISE TIME WITH JAHLAUNE AND FRIENDS! We came with the best of the Baptist, COGIC, Pentacostal churches and chiors and even a special performance by one of my favorites "The Roberta Martin Singers!" our line up this week includes: On the praise organ Brother Chris Edwards, The Georgia Mass Chior, Sister Albertina Walker, The Edwin Hawkins Singers, Stephanie Mills, Helen Baylor, The Chicago Mass Chior with Lemmie Battles on lead! and so much more! Your host and yes Im talking! Jahlaune K and friends....only on podomatic.com or click here on blogger to experience this time of praise yourself!

Simply Jazz with Jahlaune K

2010-05-22T00:27:00.002-04:00
What a delcious program we put together today! Totally diffrent than most of our jazz shows!We ventured into the eclectic with the likes of Lester Youngs quartet! Then a bit of Babette Van Veen who I must say is a very capable vocalist. True to True URban Havoc Entertainment form we threw in some Ethel Waters who is a regular at our studio! and of course a tease of Nancy Wilson singing from the Billie Holiday songbook! A great show! Enjoy and share with a friend!

2010-05-22T00:10:00.001-04:00

SIMPLY JAZZ WITH JAHLAUNE K

TRUE URBANE HAVOC ENTERTAINMENT HOUR

IJERK FEATURING LEX EBONI AND THE SMART SET

2010-05-17T23:58:00.000-04:00
IJERK FEATURING LEX EBONI AND THE SMART SET

OL Skool Kool....Meli'sa Morgan - Getting To Know You Better (1986)

2010-05-11T04:09:00.000-04:00
A Blast from the long ago past!

Lex Eboni And The Smart Set

2010-05-07T04:44:00.004-04:00

New podcast featuring DJ Lex Eboni and the smart set. Lex Eboni was born Lexington McCowan May 6, 1984 in Brooklyn NY. Raised in West Babylon NY He began DJing local parties at the age of 13.

Lex Eboni is the current DJ for the True Urban Havoc Entertainment Hour. His first effort is titled Ijerk a 15 plus minute set of jerk tunes a nod to the jerk nation movement.

New Boyz "You're A Jerk" OFFICIAL Music Video HD Extended / Uncensored *...

2010-04-21T14:19:00.000-04:00
IM HOPING THIS SUMMER IS AS FUN AS LAST SUMMER!!! REMEBER THE NEW BOYZ RECORD THAT WAS EVERYWHERE "YOUR A JERK" (THE SKINNY JEANS SONG?...iT TOOK MY AZZ TILL FALL TO LEARN THE DANCE GOOD SO WHATS GONNA BE UP THIS SUMMER!!??? IM DYIN TO KNOW...COME SUMMER COME!

Latest Round-Up of Obama Poll Ratings by State

2010-04-18T18:54:00.000-04:00
Latest Round-Up of Obama Poll Ratings by State

AND THEIR IS THE OTHER ETHEL.....ETHEL BEATTY

2010-02-21T23:08:00.007-05:00

The world of music to me is sometimes as hard to figure out as a oft quoted scripture from the Bible. Music holds a mystery one that many of us long to master yet few are blessed to understand and even fewer are able to leave a mark.

Our series offfers a fun tribute to performers of modern times that share a first name with someone remarkable from quote another era. Yes, we who love and respect jazz know of the legendary Ethel waters and a few of us are fortunate to know of Ethel Beatty.

I became aware of Ethel Beatty the summer of 1984 when going through my mothers vast record collection I stumbled upon the Broadway album "Bubbling Brown Sugar" a revue which my parents had seen in 1976. I remember taking it out of its case. almost reverantly (in our home their were few African American soundtract albums and even fewer that intriqued me. I remember scanning the songlist and seeing titles like "God Bless The Child" and "Honey Suckle Rose" and a song I had just heard on another album...."I Got It Bad"

I quickly took the record from the basement to my second floor bedroom and put it on my stereo sysytem looking at the clock. It was little before 4:00PM I had one hour to hear it and get it out the room or hidden.

Of course at that young age I was about 10 or eleven this music was not suitable My mother bought me "Golden records" those mother goose shits with songs like "little Red Caboose" and the like. My father, who had found religion had denounced all of his records as worldly and strangly enough hadn't thrown them away but set them up by his prehistoric Hi-Fi which was in the basement.

After a first listen to "I got it bad" I figured Ethel Beatty was a old woman with a powerful set of lungs and loved her! I Imaginged she wore wigs and that brown powder and coral lipstick like my mother friends and maybe carried one of those pocketbooks they were always talking about that had 14 compartments and your first and last initial. But I dug her. I just thought she was old.

Over the years I admit I did absolutely no research on the woman. Until I started this blog series imagine my shock when I found out. She was a young good looking woman in the 80's! It nearly blew me away and I will be quite honest I just found this out two days ago.

I quickly listened once again to her moving rendition of the song and checked youtube for some of her other work. I was amazed!

Preassumptions are something are they not?

BIOGRAPHY

ETHEL BEATTY BARNES IS A GRADUATE OFC.W. POST COLLEGE OF LONG ISLAND
UNIVERSITY. SHE OBTAINED HER DEGREE IN MUSIC EDUCATION, SPECIALIZING IN VOCAL
PERFORMANCE, AND VOCAL PEDAGOGY. HER HONORARY DEGREE IN THEOLOGICAL
MUSIC IS A DIVINE GIFT FROM SHILOH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. ETHEL WAS AWARDED
WITH THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF HER TRUTH IN THE USE OF HER WONDROUS
INSTRUMENT. ETHEL HAS SUNG IN DISTINGUISED PLACES SUCH AS THE OPERA HOUSES IN
GUANAJUATO AND GUADALAJARA, MEXICO, THE RENOUND ST. PETER’S BASILICA, THE
MEDICI PALACE AND VATICAN RADIO IN ROME, THE WESTMINSTER ABBEY IN ENGLAND, THE
“PALACE DE VERSAILLES”, THE “CATHEDRAL DE CHARTRES” IN FRANCE AND THE ROYAL
PALACE OF LUXEMBOURG. ETHEL WAS A SOLOIST IN THREE INTERNATIONAL TOURS OF
MADRIGAL AND CHAMBER SINGERS AND A PARTICIPANT IN A CARNEGIE HALL CHORAL
EVENT WITH THE NEW YORK ORCHESTRAL SOCIETY.

ETHEL MADE HER BROADWAY DEBUT AS “ELLA” IN BUBBLING BROWN SUGAR. HER OTHER
BROADWAY CREDITS AS A FEATURED PERFORMER INCLUDE EUBIE, DREAMGIRLS AND
SHOW BOAT. HER OFF BROADWAY CREDITS ARE THE PRODIGAL SISTER, BINGO LONG,
BLUES IN THE NIGHT AND SUGAR HILL. HER MOVIE CREDITS ARE “GARBO TALKS”,
DIRECTED BY SIDNEY LUMET AND FRANCIS FORD COPPOLLA’S “THE COTTON CLUB”.
(FEATURED VOCALIST SINGING, “BANDANA BABIES”.) ETHEL HAS RECORDED WITH THE
GREAT ROY AYERS AND THROUGH HIS DIRECTION OF VOCAL USE AND STYLE VARIATION;
SHE WAS CHOSEN TO SING HIS ARRANGEMENT OF “STAIRWAY TO THE STARS”. THERE
WAS A LENGTH OF TIME WHEN A WELL KNOWN NEW YORK RADIO STATION’S MOST
RENOUND “D.J.” CLOSED OUT EACH NIGHT WITH THAT SONG. THE GREAT PIANIST JOE
KURASZ CHOSE ETHEL TO RECORD A DUET WITH HIM ON HIS CD. THE SONG, “SOFT MUSIC”
IS ONE OF THE FEATURED SELECTIONS. WHENEVER CONTRACTED IN THE STUDIO AS A
BACKGROUND VOCALIST, ETHEL’S GREAT INSTRUMENT HAS ALWAYS BEEN FEATURED.
(HER RESUME LISTS ALL OF THE CREDITS.)

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, ETHEL BEGAN A PERFORMING ENSEMBLE OF CHILDREN RANGING
FROM AGES FOUR THROUGH THIRTEEN. THIS WAS KNOWN AS “PERFORMING ARTS AFTER
SCHOOL”. THE STUDENTS WERE TRAINED TO PERFORM AND WERE FEATURED IN THREE
MUSICAL PRODUCTIONS PER YEAR. THIS HAS BEEN MAINTAINED THROUGH GROWTH AND
LOCATION CHANGES AND IS NOW KNOWN AS “MISS ETHEL’S KIDS!” THERE IS A GREAT CD
OF MESSAGE COMPLETED AND FOUR NEW SINGLES ARE IN PRODUCTION. ETHEL SEES
THE NEED FOR THE COMMITMENT OF PASSING THE ARTS ON TO OUR CHILDREN. SHE
ENCOURAGES OTHER ARTISTS TO DO THE SAME. SHE HAS WRITTEN A WONDERFUL
CHILDREN’S TELEVISION SHOW AND SEVERAL LIVE MUSICALS FOR ENTIRE FAMILIES.

HAVING BOTH THE ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL PERFORMANCE CREDENTIALS, ETHEL IS
HIRED BY ORGANIZATIONS, SCHOOLS AND CORPORATIONS AS A CONSULTANT FOR
FURTHERING THE ARTS AND ADHERING THEM TO THE STIPULATIONS OF GRANTS
RENDERED.

ETHEL HAS CONTINUOUSLY DONATED HER TIME AND HER TALENT TO HER CHURCH
THROUGH PROFESSIONALLY DEVELOPING A DRAMA TEAM, AND A CHILDREN’S CHOIR.
ETHEL IS HONORED AND REQUESTED BY MINISTRIES AS A SOLOIST AND IS REGULARLY
PRESENTED IN CONCERT.

COMPLETE PORTFOLIOS, VIDEOS, AUDIO TAPES AND CDs ARE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.

THE PERFORMING ARTS IS A DIVINING ROD!
HAVE YOU BEEN TOUCHED BY A DIVINING ROD? KNOW THIS… I HAVE

AND THEN THEIR WAS THE OTHER JOSEPHINE....JOSEPHINE PREMICE

2010-02-21T01:45:00.008-05:00

Born on July 21, 1926, in Brooklyn, NY; died on April 13, 2001, in Manhattan, NY; daughter of Lucas Premice; married Timothy Fales, November 14, 1958; children: Enrico, Susan.

Career

Singer, 1950s-1970s; theatrical and television actress, 1943-59, 1965-93.

Life's Work

Josephine Premice was one of the premier stage actresses of the 1940s and 1950s. She appeared in numerous Broadway plays including Blue Holiday, Jamaica, A Hand is on the Gate, and Bubbling Brown Sugar, twice garnering Tony award nominations for her performances. She was also known for her calypso music which she often performed at night clubs between acting stints, and would go on to record for Virgin Records. Though she left the acting business for close to six years in the mid 1960s, she came back strong in the 1970s, performing not only on the stage but branching out into television as well with roles on popular programs such as The Jeffersons and A Different World. When Premice died in 2001, she was hailed by many in the acting industry as a role model of how to survive through adversity and how to change with the times to keep an acting career alive.

Josephine Mary Premice was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 21, 1926. Her parents were Haitian immigrants and part of the aristocracy of their birth country. Her father, Lucas Premice, who allegedly had claim to the title Count de Bodekin, had fled Haiti with his wife when he was part of an unsuccessful coup to try to oust the current dictator of the country. They eventually immigrated to New York where Mr. Premice became a furrier. They were extremely proud people and raised Premice to have a strong belief in her own self worth. At a time when African Americans were considered second-class citizens even in the northern states, Premice and her sister, Adele, were given the education and training of an "at-home finishing school" and treated like part of the elite.

Launched Career on Broadway

As a child, Premice was happy and outgoing. From the very beginning she was a natural performer. She pressured her parents to let her take dancing lessons and eventually she studied with Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham. At 14 she choreographed a Harlem Theatre production of "Jason and the Golden Fleece" for Owen Dodson, a family friend. At 16 she auditioned for and got a part in a performance of Katherine Dunham's dance company, but her aristocratic father literally pulled her off the stage, declaring she was to dance solo, as a star, or not at all. By 1943 she had lived up to his expectations and was acclaimed as an outstanding performer when she danced in the First African Dance Festival at Carnegie Hall to sold-out audiences that included Eleanor Roosevelt. She launched her career from the Village Vanguard, a West Village nightclub where such greats as Harry Belafonte and Judy Holiday launched their careers and many famous stars habitually hung out. It was common to see Charlie Parker, Fred Astaire, or Tallulah Bankhead among the patrons. She also spent seven months performing at the Blue Angel, a swanky East Side nightclub.

Premice was a tall, skinny, sophisticated brown-skinned woman who was often reminded that she wasn't "pretty." She laughed at her detractors and carried herself with so much self-esteem and poise, that she made her own presence. In 1945 she repeated her success, dancing in the Second African Dance Festival at Carnegie Hall and then toured the country with blues singer Josh White.

Her initial Broadway performance was in the 1945 production of Blue Holiday at the Belasco Theatre with Ethel Waters and Josh White. She followed this in 1947 with a performance in Caribbean Carnival at the International Theatre. Richard Watts of the New York Post reviewed the show, noting that it had some good points: "Point one is Josephine Premice ... a fine, tall, delightful girl, who sings amusingly, engagingly and with distinction." In 1954 she opened with the cast of House of Flowers in Philadelphia, but left the cast before it moved to Broadway. House of Flowers also starred Pearl Bailey and Diahann Carroll. She returned to Broadway in 1956 in Mr. Johnson at the Martin Beck Theater. She played the wife of Earl Hyman who starred in the title role.

Marriage Changed Her Career

During 1957 and 1958 Premice performed in over 500 performances of the vastly popular musical Jamaica at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway. The musical starred Lena Horne and Ricardo Montalban. Premice played Horne's best friend. The part earned her a nomination for a Tony Award as Best Featured Performer.

It was during a performance of this play that her future husband, Timothy Fales, saw her and made the instant decision that she would be the mother of his children. Fales was very much a part of the White Anglo-Saxon aristocracy of Upper East Side New York. He was also very rebellious against the very staid, "proper" life that his parents attempted to mold him into. After several months of heavy courtship, the two moved in together and then married in a very quiet ceremony on November 14, 1958. Fales had won over Premice's very strict father by their mutual love for and service on the sea, but Fales' father refused to accept the inter-racial marriage until years later and didn't speak to his son for several years. Premice worked hard to create an environment for her family that would ignore the hatred and prejudices associated with mixed marriages at the time. Because of her star status and his social standing, their marriage made the headlines and caused a lot of negative feelings from some of the more radical groups across the country.

With her marriage, Premice made the decision that her husband and subsequent family were her priority and it affected on her career. Several months after they were married, Fales moved the family to Rome. They lived there for six years while Fales was an executive in a shipping company. Their son, Enrico, was born in 1959 and daughter, Susan, in 1962. Her career, however, never recovered from the break. Broadway producers have short memories, and the six-year break in her career came at a time when she was very successful.

Family Life Degraded as Career Restarted

In 1966, as part of a group of talented black artists, Premice received her second Tony nomination for her performance in A Hand is on the Gate. This was an evening of black poetry and song at the Longacre Theatre. It starred such notables as Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, and Moses Gunn among others. For the next ten years, Premice appeared in a limited fashion in several all-black shows like The Cherry Orchard at the Public Theater in 1973. For the most part, she was a renowned hostess and fundraiser of the social elite. In her personal life, her marriage had deteriorated and her roving husband spent a lot of time away. They maintained a relationship because it was expected of them and the publicity if they had split would have been an embarrassment to both of them. For years, Timothy stayed at home and worked on writing a book. Then he eventually joined the merchant marine and captained ships sailing around the world. He was gone for long periods of time.

In 1976 Premice returned to Broadway with the cast of Bubbling Brown Sugar, which had a full two-year run and almost 800 performances before it closed. A New York Times review of the show said that Premice "can almost make a feather boa come alive." Then in 1978 Lena Horne called and asked her to play the salty sidekick in a new performance of the musical Pal Joey. This seemed to be a chance of a lifetime, but required Premice to move to Los Angeles. For over 20 years she had put her family and children first and curtailed her career by eliminating the ability to travel around the country. Now she hired a governess for her kids since her husband was at sea and took off for California. The show had only limited success and caused a further rift in her marital life. Her performance, however, brought her to the notice of some television executives, and she had roles on The Jeffersons in 1979 as Louise Jeffersons' sister and on A Different World in several roles from 1991 to 1993.

In 1984, as their daughter graduated from Harvard with honors, Premice's marriage received it's final death blow. Fales separated from his wife and moved to Paris where he lived with a 21-year-old girl from Senegal. The separation was a blow to Premice and more than anything else in her life affected her self-esteem and outlook on life. They never divorced, and remained cordial but estranged for the rest of her life. This final break started a downward spiral where Premice neglected her finances and her health, ultimately leading to her losing battle with emphysema. She died on April 13, 2001, at home in her Manhattan apartment. She was survived by her estranged husband, Captain Timothy Fales, her daughter, Susan Fales-Hill, her son, Enrico Fales, and her sister, Adele Premice. Her memorial service was attended by a long list of socialites and stars who paid homage to her talent and spirit. She had spent her years smiling at life and her friend's remembered and loved her for it. In tribute to her mother's illustrious career, Susan Fales-Hill released a moving biography, Always Wear Joy, in 2003.

BLOGGERS NOTE: WE HAVE SHOWCASED JOSEPHINE PREMICE IN OUR PODCAST PRODUCTIONS MOST RECENTLY IN OUR "STARS OVER BROADWAY" REVUE WHERE SHE CAN BE HEARD DOING A DO OR DIE (REALLY IS THEIR ANY OTHER WAY TO COVER A VERSION OF THE ETHEL WATERS SONG?) PERFORMANCE OF "THEY'LL BE SOME CHANGES MADE" WE WILL REPEAT THIS EPISODE APRIL 18,2010.

HOW THE INTERNET BEGAN

2010-02-18T14:29:00.000-05:00
HOW THE INTERNET BEGAN
Click here: Beginning

THE MOST CLEVEREST EMAIL!

2010-02-18T14:26:00.000-05:00
This has got to be one of the cleverest
E-mails I've received in awhile.
Someone out there
must be "deadly" at Scrabble.
(Wait till you see the last one)!

PRESBYTERIAN:
When you rearrange the letters:
BEST IN PRAYER

ASTRONOMER:
When you rearrange the letters:
MOON STARER

DESPERATION:
When you rearrange the letters:
A ROPE ENDS IT

THE EYES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THEY SEE

GEORGE BUSH:
When you rearrange the letters:
HE BUGS GORE

THE MORSE CODE:
When you rearrange the letters:
HERE COME DOTS

DORMITORY:
When you rearrange the letters:
DIRTY ROOM

SLOT MACHINES:
When you rearrange the letters:
CASH LOST IN ME

ANIMOSITY:
When you rearrange the letters:
IS NO AMITY

ELECTION RESULTS:
When you rearrange the letters:
LIES - LET'S RECOUNT

SNOOZE ALARMS:
When you rearrange the letters:
ALAS! NO MORE Z 'S

A DECIMAL POINT:
When you rearrange the letters:
I'M A DOT IN PLACE

THE EARTHQUAKES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THAT QUEER SHAKE

ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
When you rearrange the letters:
TWELVE PLUS ONE

AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE:

MOTHER-IN-LAW:
When you rearrange the letters:
WOMAN HITLER

2010-02-17T18:18:00.000-05:00

SEE ANY STREET, ANY ADDRESS

This is really amazing.
When you enter an address you will see a picture of that place. There's a little map with a little man on it - you can move the little man up and down the block if you need to. I just looked at my childhood home! Really nice website!

http://www.vpike.com/

thatz the way of de world sun

2010-02-17T18:15:00.000-05:00

SUPERBOWL

2010-02-14T10:01:00.000-05:00
John receved a free ticket to the Super Bowl. Unfortunately. John's seat was in the last row in the corner of the stadium. He was closer to the Goodyear Blimp than the stadium. He noticed an empty seat 10 rows up from the 50-yard line. He decides to make his way to the empty seat. As he sits down he asks the man next to him if anyone is sitting there. The man told him no, it was empty. John is very excited to have a seat like this at a Super Bowl and asks why in the world no one is using it? The man replied that it was his wife's seat but she passed away. He said this was the first Super Bowl that they have not attended together since they were married in 1968. John said that it was really sad and asked if he couldn't find someone, a relative or a close friend to take the seat?

"No" replied the man, "They're at her funeral!"

HAPPY PRESIDENTS DAY "ONLY IN AMERICA"

2010-02-14T09:33:00.001-05:00

Only in America ......do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

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Only in America .....do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.

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Only in America ......do banks leave vault doors open and then chain the pens to the counters..

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Only in America ......do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

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Only in America ..........do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight..

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Only in America .....do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

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EVER WONDER ...

Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin?

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Why can't women put on mascara with their mouth closed?

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Why don't you ever see the headline 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?

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Why is 'abbreviated' such a long word?

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Why is it that doctors call what they do 'practice'?

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Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

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Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

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Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

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Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?

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Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitoes?

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Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?

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You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?!

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Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?

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Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?

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If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?

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If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?

black history

2010-02-13T22:52:00.001-05:00

BIRTHDAY

2010-02-13T16:09:00.000-05:00

A BEACH STORY

2010-02-13T16:08:00.000-05:00
A widowed Jewish lady, still in good shape, was sunbathing on a most deserted beach at Ft. Myers Florida.
She looked up and noticed that a man her age, also in good shape, had walked up, placed his blanket on the sand near hers and began reading a book.

Smiling, she attempted to strike up a conversation with him.

"How are you today?"

"Fine, thank you," he responded, and turned back to his book.

"I love the beach. Do you come here often?" she asked.

"First time since my wife passed away 2 years ago," he replied and turned back to his book.

"I'm sorry to hear that. My husband passed away three years ago and it's very lonely," she countered. "Do you live around here?"

"Yes, I live over in Cape Coral," he answered, and again he resumed reading.

Trying to find a topic of common interest, she persisted," Do you like pussy cats?"

With that, the man dropped his book, came over to her blanket, tore off her swimsuit and gave her the most passionate lovemaking of her life.

When the cloud of sand began to settle, she gasped and asked the man, "How did you know that was what I wanted?"

The man replied. "How did you know my name was Katz?"

ALABAMA STATE BAND

2010-02-07T21:18:00.000-05:00

COURTESY OF MY FRIEND TWAN GREAT PHOTOS!

2010-02-06T22:53:00.008-05:00

once again its black history month and as you know I must add a new twist to the Billie Holiday 101 series. Tho I admit I havent listened to her in a year I still love her and always find people coming out of the closest with "new" info fascinating! Enjoy

Volume 52, Number 12 ·
Street Diva
By arthur kempton
In the spring of 1947, Jimmy Fletcher heard from his bosses at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics that it might be a convenient time to visit Billie Holiday at home. Her manager, a former fight-fixer, whoremonger, and running dog in Al Capone's pack, had offered up the celebrated Negro "torchchanteuse" and notorious dope fiend as grist for Harry Anslinger's publicity mill.

Anslinger, the bureau's first and only commissioner, was the public face of America's war on drugs, and he hustled as hard, if not as well, as his envied rival J. Edgar Hoover. Splashy arrests kept the congressional purse holders mindful of who stood between America's schoolchildren and the ravening scourge of narcotics. For doers of the commissioner's bidding, Billie Holiday was "an attractive customer," a reliable source of repeat business.

Fletcher was a veteran black undercover operative who knew Holiday from long years of going around. It fell to him, and a colleague named Cohen, to bring her in. They rousted Billie out of bed in a Harlem residence hotel, and found nothing they were looking for, either in her rooms or among her belongings. Agent Cohen suggested then that a policewoman be brought in to inspect their suspect's body cavities. They could look for themselves, Billie allowed, if they'd agree to leave without her if she proved "clean." Ignoring their demurrals, she stripped bare, straddled the toilet bowl, and urinated. Cohen tried to close the bathroom door. Choosing shamelessness over complicity in her own humiliation, she pushed it back open, "forcing both of them to see her nakedness and her defiance." She never averted her stony eyes from the faces of her onlookers.

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Fletcher knew then that he was in the presence of a thoroughbred—a true-to-the-game "mud-kicker" in the parlance of the streets she came from—who could take life's worst without a snivel. "She sealed herself closer to me that morning," he remembered. "She sealed our friendship."
But fondness couldn't trump his calling. Within a couple of weeks, Fletcher had managed her arrest in New York, on a flimsy drug charge that cost her a year in a West Virginia prison. But at least he felt badly about it, more than could be said of other men she knew better and who used her as currency to exchange with Fletcher and his like for favors, or their freedom.

The very qualities Jimmy Fletcher saw in her and admired on that occasion were regularly disclosed in the performances that won for Billie Holiday the audiences she turned into cult followers during more than a quarter-century of playing the high-class joints, the low-class joints, and even some of the honky-tonks in America's cities and bigger towns. In the four and a half decades since her death, "Lady Day," though venerated in a smaller church, has become almost as much of a cultural icon as Marilyn Monroe, and nearly as written about.

The latest addition, With Billie, authored by the British writer Julia Blackburn, has been assembled from a cache of recorded interviews and documentary scraps left behind by Linda Kuehl, a devotee with a book contract, who spent most of a decade talking to anyone she could find who'd known the singer at any point in her life. Twenty-six years ago, Kuehl plunged out of the window of a Washington hotel room, leaving behind a suicide note and two shoe boxes of "carefully named and numbered" audiotapes, partially transcribed.

These passed through her family's custody into the hands of a private collector. Lately, they have been culled, "untangled," rethreaded, and worked by Blackburn into a tapestry of tales told by persons who worked, hung out, and grew up with Billie Holiday. Blackburn does her best to sort out people's versions of truth with a biographer's sense of duty to the facts, while drawing inferences with a novelist's license. Now and then, she may take a step too far into speculating on states of mind, but Blackburn's way of working her raw material into a narrative gives an impressionistic portrait of her subject which conveys about as much that was true of Billie Holiday as can be had on a printed page.

All accounts of Holiday's life—including her own—are mostly just stories like these that have gotten themselves certified as history: apart from government records and newspaper reports, goods of casual provenance. Even at the source. "Billie had always invented huge chapters of her life," Blackburn writes, "telling stories that made emotional sense, even if they bore no relationship to the facts."

More of the truth of her story was revealed when she sang other people's songs. "She had a very small voice," said Bobby Tucker, a pianist who accompanied Holiday during several years of her late prime, "but she could tell a story, that's what she could do, and she had a thing about how she felt." He guessed that "thing" he was trying to describe "might be her pain."

Blackburn casts light on the origins of that pain in Holiday's shambled childhood. Born in Philadelphia in 1915, raised in Baltimore, her mother's hometown, the girl Eleanor, of variable surname, lived her first eight years mostly in the care of an uncle-in-law's mother. Adjudged a chronic truant and unsupervised child, she spent her ninth year in a reformatory.

About a month after her release, she stopped going to school altogether. Raped by a neighbor at eleven, she used to get drunk on corn whiskey and accost men in the street, then run away, taunting and cussing them until one could be provoked into chasing, catching, and beating her. At fourteen, she joined her mother in New York, where they lived in a Harlem brothel. Within several weeks of Eleanor's arrival, she and her mother were picked up in a police raid.

Facing a judge "notorious for giving harsh sentences [to]...what she called 'wayward minors,'" too-grown-too-fast Eleanor was found guilty of being a "vagrant and dissipated adult." She served six months, chiefly among convicted prostitutes, in the city's workhouse on Welfare Island. When she got out, she "did a little prostitution," waited tables, and sang for money thrown on barroom floors.

At sixteen, she was "a fat thing with big titties," who'd worked her way up to singing in a Harlem saloon for two dollars and tips "in the same [common] dress every night." Around that time, she changed her name to "Billie Holiday," after the actress Billie Dove and her father, Clarence, a guitarist with Fletcher Henderson's band.

As soon as she started working in bars, she'd kept the steady company of musicians, drinking, coupling, and smoking weed. "Lady was always part of the band," the tap dancer and comic James "Stump" Cross later observed. She graduated from the noisome chaos of the street into the irregular rhythms of life as a working musician without any mediating institution but jail in between. She was an unruly ghetto child, a "tackhead" with a transcendent gift.

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A dancer who knew her then attested that even as a fleshy kid "in tacky dresses," Billie "already had something in her voice that struck the public like lightning." Before she turned twenty, she'd acquired a following among cognoscenti and show people drawn uptown to see her at the Hot Cha Club. Holiday was barely twenty-two when she vaulted out of Clark Monroe's "downstairs place on 134th Street and Seventh Avenue" onto the road with Count Basie. A year later, she bore the brunt of integrating Artie Shaw's band on its Southern tour.

At twenty-four, during a nine-week engagement at Café Society, Holiday stirred New York's left-leaning intellectuals and claimed the notice of a wider world when she introduced "Strange Fruit," an anti-lynching song thought subversive by official America's Red-scared, especially Hoover. When it came out in the spring of 1939, her recording of "Strange Fruit" was a fair-sized hit, and eventually sold close to a million copies.

Once she became a star in the early Forties, Blackburn notes, Holiday "gave [money] away as fast as she earnt it." In her autobiography Billie described the Harlem apartment she shared with her mother as a "combination YMCA, boardinghouse for broke musicians, soup kitchen for anyone with a hard-luck story, community center, and after-hours joint where a couple of bucks would get you a shot of whiskey and the most fabulous fried chicken breakfast, lunch or dinner anywhere in town."

Among its clientele was Babs Gonzales, an avant-garde scat singer who never did much business. "Any musician could go there and eat and get money for the subway or to go to the movies," he recalled, "and if she was out of town she would leave money with mother." "[Billie] always respected musicians," one of her bass players told Linda Kuehl. "She was always trying to keep a hard front... [but] she was generous to a fault."

"She romanced everybody in the band, so far as friendship was concerned," fellow Basieite Harry "Sweets" Edison remembered. "Because she was your friend." Billie was ever one of the boys, even when she could afford to wrap herself in $17,000 worth of blue mink. "No matter how much of a star she was," a childhood friend reminisced, she never had an entourage, preferring the fellowship of players and the caterers of her bad habits. "She'd go down in the slums, in the bars, and she'd have her mink... and she'd just throw it on the chair and sit down with a little booze and buy for everyone else. And say 'bitch' and 'motherfucker'...and...tell jokes in different voices...."

And always, "behind the pimps and the parasites," "Stump" Cross remarked, "were these virtuoso piano players that loved her secretly." She had an affinity for piano players, and a knack for picking them. One said he loved to play for her because "you could go anywhere and she'd be there...." "[Billie] could find a groove wherever you put it. Wherever it was, she could float on top of it." In 1939, she'd told an interviewer, "I don't think I'm singing...I feel like I'm playing a horn."

Holiday once advised an awestruck, twenty-year-old pianist who was playing with her for the first time, "You don't have to worry about my music. If you can play 'The Man I Love,' you can play for me...." Her accompanists enjoyed their working conditions, because even though she "didn't know one note of music," Billie was every bit the musician they were.

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If she favored piano players as road partners and confidants, she mostly chose lovers from other sections of the band, and husbands of the outlaw caste. The first of these was Jimmy Monroe, "a suave sort of cat...a very fair-complexioned, nice-looking, frail type," a hustler lately returned to Harlem from several years in Paris. He was married to an actress when Billie met him, and reputedly pimping whores on the side. It's said he introduced Billie to smoking opium and sniffing cocaine. She broke with her mother over Monroe, which soon became a source of regret, since the marriage lasted less than a year. Monroe left for California with "most of Billie's money," which he apparently used to "set himself up with a stable of women there." In 1942, he was arrested for drug smuggling, and sentenced to a year in prison. She paid for his lawyers, but divorced him as soon as he got out.

By then, Holiday was twenty-eight and the toast of New York, where she was celebrated as the "Queen of 52nd Street." She'd moved on to a dope-fiend bass player named John Simmons, and had begun to recoil at the approaches of strangers who presumed to think that because they knew something of her they knew who she was. "She got to the point," Simmons said, "where she thought everyone was trying to use her and so she said 'Fuck the world!'" She'd decided by then, Blackburn says, "that nothing really changed, no matter how successful she became."

In 1947, at the height of her career, Billie was "a sometimes addict" being hounded cross-country by federal narcotics police. She was making about $50,000 a year, and keeping next to none of it. At the time, she was living with another "hop head," the trumpeter Joe Guy. She and Guy eluded an attempt to arrest them in Philadelphia, but a couple of weeks later, in New York, a small amount of his heroin was found by law enforcers outside the window of their room at the Grampion Hotel.

Holiday wasn't present and wasn't charged, but was held anyway, as a material witness. Under questioning, she took responsibility for the drugs that had been found in their hastily vacated Philadelphia hotel room, thus sparing Guy. Disdaining a lawyer—on advice of the same manager who'd sold her out to the Bureau of Narcotics—she was in a courtroom within hours to enter a guilty plea, asking only that the judge send her to a hospital for treatment.

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In fact, Holiday was never the hope-to-die heroin addict she was made out to be. Cannabis and alcohol were truly her drugs of choice. "Billie's heroin addiction was never particularly dramatic," Blackburn suggests. "Few people ever saw her injecting and it seems that whenever she stopped using heroin, ...she always managed to avoid the usual traumas of withdrawal...." Nevertheless, she was sentenced to a year and a day in a federal reformatory for women. Joe Guy was tried and acquitted. Her career was never the same, or her state of mind. "A lot of people go to jail," Bobby Tucker told Linda Kuehl, "but Billie took it personally."

When she came out of prison in 1948, she felt herself the target of any crimebuster who needed to look busy in public. Once she became a federal parolee, the local authorities revoked her license to work any place in New York City where alcohol was sold. In the center of her commercial universe, she was only allowed to sing in theaters and concert halls and so was forced into full-time itinerancy to make a steady income.

That year, she hooked up with John Levy, an "Italian-looking," yellow Lincoln Continental–driving, opium-addicted, self-described "half-Negro, half Jew" from Chicago. One of her piano players characterized Levy as a "sadistic pimp," then added, "and Billie admired pimps." Levy became her "manager," and kept her humping, kept her high, and kept her broke, since he was handling all her business and he was the one her employers paid. "If she asked him for fifty dollars," another of her piano players recalled, "he'd say, 'Don't ask for money in public,' and he'd knock her down literally, with his fist in her face, in the stomach, anywhere."
Four days into 1949, federal agents broke in on the couple in their San Francisco hotel room, catching Billie in the act of trying to flush away the opium and pipe John Levy had put in her hands. Clad in white silk pajamas, Levy, an inveterate police informer, bargained, while she "sat there... sober and clear-headed...very quiet and passive." He avoided prosecution and fled California, leaving Holiday in San Francisco to finish her engagement there, and face her trouble alone.

"We could have indicted Levy if we had wanted to," the district attorney there reportedly told her lawyer, "but Billie Holiday is the name and we want to get some publicity." She appeared for trial, two months later, with an eye blackened by Levy, and "no trace of drugs...in her system." Holiday's lawyer contended that Levy had conspired with a federal agent in her arrest, and produced a photograph of the two men chatting amiably at a table in the local night spot where she was working at the time of the raid. "[Levy] was turning Billie over," he suggested. "[He] wanted to get rid of her. He had cleaned her out of money...."

In court, she "act[ed] dumb," Blackburn reports, and "simply said that John Levy was her man and she loved him so." She beat the case. A month and a half later, when she was back in town, working at the same place, she was arrested again on the charge for which she'd already been acquitted. "The police and other government agents were always at her shows," Blackburn says, "...heckling, threatening, raiding her dressing room, making embarrassing enquiries at her hotel and spreading rumours at the clubs where she was booked to sing."

"I came out [of jail] expecting to be allowed to go to work and to start with a clean slate," Holiday told Ebony magazine. "But the police have been particularly vindictive, hounding... and harassing me.... They have allowed me no peace...." According to Bobby Tucker,

Billie's sense of insecurity was worse than ever. She was amazed that people hadn't forgotten her, but she was afraid they had only come to see what a woman prisoner looked like.
No matter her states of mind or being, Billie stayed out on the road, grinding away. John Levy once told Carl Drinkard, Holiday's piano player du jour, "You gotta keep your foot up them bitches...otherwise they get lazy on you...."

"Throughout the 1950s," Blackburn writes, "Billie was...on the move more or less all the time. Three weeks in San Francisco, one week in Los Angeles, back to New York for a single performance...." She was home for only four months of 1950 and 1951. John Levy had bought with her money a house among those of the other stars of jazz who'd settled in St. Albans, Queens, and held it in his name. He wasn't there much when she was, since he was busy gambling, tending his night club, juggling "property deals and at least two other women...." They were no longer together when Levy died of a brain hemorrhage late in 1956. Upon hearing of his death, Billie declared it "the best Christmas present I ever got." By then, she'd moved on to her terminal husband, Louis McKay. He was "the real true man she always dreamed of," Carl Drinkard believed. "He could knock her unconscious with a single blow...."

"For Billie," the "other" John Levy—this one a bassist—concluded, "her manager must be her man or her husband." Louis McKay became her man and manager in 1951. They were married six years later. Some said McKay was a bit better than preceding others, but he was nothing like the helpmeet Billy Dee Williams portrayed in the movie version of Billie's "autobiography," Lady Sings the Blues.

Blackburn reproduces "a slightly shortened version" of the transcription of a telephone conversation that was secretly recorded early in 1958. The participants were Louis McKay and Maely Dufty, the wife of Billie's ghostwriter Bill, and herself a manager of jazz musicians. McKay was just back in town, and looking for his wife. Apparently, she'd misspent some money he gave her. He was ranting, and his interlocutor was goading him on under the guise of calming him down. "You know I got the wire," he fumed, at one point in their exchange.

I know what this woman done.... Fuck the seven hundred dollars.... I want some of her ass this morning for playing me cheap. If I got a whore, I get some money from her or I don't have nothing to do with the bitch....
Basing her account on Holiday's accompanist, Blackburn has Billie wondering ruefully why she'd known

so many men...who were good and kind and gentle...but instead... had been drawn irresistibly to the hustlers and the pimps; she had chosen to be cheated and beaten and humiliated, and shared with other women and discarded when she was no longer useful.
To Carl Drinkard the reason seemed clear enough. "She'd grown up in that pimp-whore environment," he said, "[and] felt and believed that if a woman was making money, the man should have it...." If she hadn't been able to sing, Holiday would likely have been whoring, or thieving, or jailing for most of a short life, like thousands of other hard-knocked and tenderhearted females who came from the same places she did, and never got out. However far she got beyond the low places she was bred to, Billie could never view life from any other outlook than the one she'd acquired when higher ground seemed unreachable.

But for all the hard men she submitted herself to, the softer men with whom she engaged in a "little light housekeeping," and numberless others she merely laid down with, her truest love was never her lover. The most important of Holiday's relationships was the one she had with Lester Young, a player of the tenor saxophone who was among the twentieth century's great masters. They met in New York in 1936, where he lodged for a time with Holiday and her mother. They worked and recorded together regularly during the late Thirties.

Young was an eccentric: idiosyncratic and bohemian, down to his dress and bearing. A colleague, the pianist Bobby Scott, described his walk as having "something Asiatic about it, a reticence to barge in. It was in keeping with the side-door quality of his nature." But, as with the tale-telling about Holiday's addictions, legends about Young's peculiarities have ripened into myth, and masked such of his authentic characteristics as discipline, wit, intelligence, and perceptiveness. Fiercely private, inclined to melancholy, his sensibilities, like Billie's, were easily abraded by contact with the world.

There was no one of whom she ever spoke more highly, or fondly, or to whom she was more loyal, or liked as much. Blackburn characterizes them as being "like a brother and sister who shared many character traits." Claire Lievenson, a neighborhood pharmacist's wife who befriended Billie in the mid-Thirties, remembered that "when they saw each other they wouldn't kiss, but their faces would just light up." Holiday used to call Lester Young "the greatest motherfucker she ever met." Blackburn quotes Jimmy Rowles, a pianist who'd played with both Young and Holiday over the years, describing what it had been like between them whenever "they'd bump into each other."

Lester would say, "How are you, Miss Lady Day? Lady Day?" Puffing out his pale cheeks and bobbing up and down in a long dark coat, a milk glass full of old Schenley bond proof whiskey clasped in his hand, and the flat black porkpie hat fixed to his head as if it grew there.
And Billie would say, "Hey, Buppa Baby, you motherfucker!" and they'd be smiling and weaving and touching....
On records, the interplay between her voice and his horn can seem like a private conversation between two halves of a Platonic whole. "Sometimes I would sit down and listen to myself and it would sound like two of the same voices," Young once said of those recordings. "[He] used to know all the words to all the verses of a song," Blackburn asserts, "thinking with them as he played."

Holiday told Bill Dufty, who wrote her autobiography, "Lester sings with his horn. You listen to him, and you can almost hear the words." She said that when she sang, nobody but Young could "fill up the windows" behind her voice. Their collaboration was a form of intimate congress. In art and life, they moved through each other's interior spaces with the ease and grace of swans.

3.
With Billie ends with an evocation of Holiday's three-and-a-half-minute performance of a signature song, "Fine and Mellow," on a television program called The Sound of Jazz, accompanied by an all-star cast comprised mostly of old friends. Blackburn relies on the accounts of writer Nat Hentoff and a couple of the participants, in setting the scene at rehearsal on the day before the broadcast in early December of 1957. "Even Lester Young had made it," Blackburn writes, "although he was sitting by himself on a bench and wearing carpet slippers because his feet hurt...looking much older than his forty-eight years." The trumpeter Doc Cheathem noticed that Young "just kept to himself, sat apart. He was very quiet and sad that day." By then, he was sick, doing bad, willing himself out of life. He hadn't used alcohol before he knew Billie; now, a bit more than twenty years later, he was almost finished drinking himself to death.

During the show, when Young's turn to solo came, the camera moved to his face, and, as Blackburn says, "Lester looks as though he has been crying for weeks, his eyes are so swollen and puffy." Once, years before, "Stump" Cross had been struck by "the look in his eyes when he played for her.... He'd play his whole soul." That night, Young's brief solo was slow and spare, the silences between notes seeming to throb with ache. As he was playing, the camera mostly gazed at Billie gazing at him.

All the meanings her face bespoke can never be known, but it can be said that she bore him a look of unspeakable tenderness. "Sitting in the control room I felt tears," Nat Hentoff wrote, "and saw tears in the eyes of most of the others there." Later, when asked about Young by a magazine writer, Billie pledged her allegiance: "Lester's always been the President to me. He's my boy."

Both Lester Young and Billie Holiday died in 1959, within four months of each other. He went first, right on the edge of winter and spring. Back in New York from a last-gasp engagement in Paris, he sat in an armchair by the window of his room at the Alvin Hotel "for half a day and half the night and drank a bottle of vodka and most of a bottle of bourbon. Then he went to bed and died at around 3 a.m...." Billie wanted to sing at his funeral, but his wife "stopped her, saying that she might make a fuss and cause trouble."

She'd become as famous for her troubles as her singing. "I have no understudy," she reportedly said, wearied and resigned near the end of her life. "Every time I do a show I'm up against everything that's ever been written about me." By then, she'd been three years saddled with what she'd ostensibly written about herself in an "autobiography" that both she and her ghostwriter would later characterize as largely fiction. Laced with titillating revelations, Lady Sings the Blues quickly became a best seller, and has never since been out of print.[*]

Billie died at forty-four, from the effects of liver cirrhosis. While she was in the hospital for the last time, a nurse who may have been an undercover policewoman reported the discovery of a "suspicious white powder." Holiday was arrested and denied bail. A police detail was posted day and night to guard at the door of her room. Her deathbed arraignment marked the fourth time since she'd gotten out of prison in 1948 that Billie had been detained on vaporous drug charges. Plans were made to transfer her to a prison ward as soon as she was well enough to move, and a court date was set for which she was never able to appear.

Cardinal Spellman denied a request to hold her funeral mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. No matter how high she rose, from the viewpoint of official America, Billie Holiday would always be regarded as a lawbreaker and never a citizen. She left behind most of what there is to know of her authentic self in the grooves impressed into the shellac and vinyl on which her voice was preserved. Her recordings disclose the innate refinement of the street urchin who became an artist famously expressive of tender feeling, and a woman whose "first and last word was always 'bitch.'"

Notes
For as long as he lived, William Dufty railed against Doubleday, its publisher, for offenses done to his book. Written in a month, based on newspaper articles and a few days of conversation he had with Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues, though nominally an "as told to" autobiography, was very much Dufty's creation. She didn't see a copy, didn't know what was in it, until weeks after "her" book was in stores.

Dufty set out to write a confessional, and suggested the dope-fiend angle as a commercial "gimmick." But he later complained that Doubleday's prissiness about language deprived him of Billie's authentic voice. Then, after she got arrested again within days of the original publication date, "instead of cashing in," as Dufty put it, the publisher "panicked and, on the advice of lawyers, hacked the book to pieces, taking out anything which they felt might cause trouble." According to Blackburn, the book's editor, Lee Barker, agreed with Dufty, saying that as a result of these cuts "almost everyone of note disappeared [from it] without a trace."

GOODBYE REV. IKE "Luxury-loving Rev. Ike is dead at 74"

2009-11-13T15:45:00.000-05:00

REV. IKE WAS A PART OF NEW YORK LIFE WE ALL MADE JOKES ABOUT HIM BUT HE WAS A PART OF MOST OF OUR LIVES COMING UP AS KIDS IN THE 1980'S WE ALL PRAYED OUR MAMAS AND AUNTIES AINT SEND HIM NO MONEY. HE USE TO SAY ON HIS SHOW "DONT SEND ME NO CHANGE CHANGE MAKES ME NERVOUS" IT WAS RUMOURED HIS CHURCH UPTOWN HAD SOLID GOLD ALTERS!!

Luxury-loving Rev. Ike is dead at 74

The Rev. Frederick Eikerenkoetter, known as Rev. Ike to a legion of followers here and across the nation to whom he preached the blessings of prosperity while making millions from their donations, has died. He was 74.

A family spokesman said he died Tuesday in a Los Angeles hospital, two years after he suffered astroke from which he never recovered.

Rev. Ike's ministry reached its peak in the mid-1970s, when his sermons were carried on 1,770 radio stations to an audience estimated at 2.5 million.

He also preached his philosophy of self-empowerment on television and the Internet, in books and magazines, and on audiotapes and videotapes.

From the stage of the former Loews movie theater on 175th St. in Washington Heights, which he restored and transformed into his United Church Science of Living Institute, Rev. Ike would tell thousands of parishioners "this is the do-it-yourself church. The only savior in this philosophy is God in you."

He then would exhort the believers to "close your eyes and see green ... money up to your armpits, a roomful of money, and there you are, just tossing around in it like a swimming pool."

As payback for spiritual inspiration, Rev. Ike asked for cash donations from the faithful - preferably in bills not coins. "Change makes your minister nervous in the service," he would say.

Critics called Rev. Ike a con man, saying the only point of his ministry was getting rich from the donations.

They noted that he made a show of sumptuous clothes, jewelry, posh residences and exotic cars. "My garages runneth over," he would boast.

But his supporters said Rev. Ike's love of luxury had roots both in the traditions of African-American evangelism and the philosophies of mind over matter.

Rev. Ike was born in Ridgeland, S.C., to a father who was a Baptist minister and a mother who taught elementary school. They divorced when he was 5.

At 14, he became an assistant pastor for his father's congregation. He briefly preached in Boston before coming to New York.

He leaves his wife, Eula, and son, Xavier Frederick.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/07/30/2009-07-30_luxuryloving_rev_ike_is_dead.html#ixzz0WnIdvgON

B4 the election

2009-11-13T13:33:00.000-05:00

Is this what they mean when they say that a lot of pavement gets laid just before an election ?

2009-11-13T00:23:00.002-05:00

Wasalu Muhammad Jaco (born February 17, 1982), better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco (pronounced [ˈluːpeɪ], LOO-pay), is an American recording artist, producer and CEO of 1st and 15th Entertainment. He rose to fame in 2006 following the success of his critically acclaimed debut album, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor. Prominent hip hop mogul Jay-Z describes him as a "breath of fresh air"—in a new hip hop world that is characterized by mainstream pop and glamor, he is a throwback to the lyricism-focused rap of the 1990s; critics have called him a "hip-hop Generation Next vanguard

1982–2005: Early life and career beginnings
Fiasco was born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco on February 17, 1982, in Chicago, Illinois.[2] Born of West African descent,[3] he was one of nine children to Shirley, a gourmet chef, and Gregory, an engineer.[2][4] His father, who was a member of the Black Panther Party,[5] was a prolific African drummer, karate teacher and owner of karate schools and army surplus stores.[6] Fiasco was raised Muslim on the West side of Chicago.[7][8] At the age of three, Fiasco began taking martial arts classes.[9] By age 10, he earned his first black belt.[4] He attended Thornton Township High School in Harvey, Illinois.[10] He initially "hated" hip hop music for its use of vulgarity.[7] He began rapping when he was in the eighth grade, and upon hearing Nas' 1996 album, It Was Written, began to pursue hip hop.[8][6][11]

Growing up, Fiasco was given the nickname "Lu", the last part of his first name, by his mother. "Lupe" is an extension of this nickname, which he borrowed from a friend from high school. "Fiasco," he says, "came from the Firm album. They had the song, 'Firm Fiasco'. I just liked the way it looked on paper."[10]

At age 19, Fiasco was in a group called Da Pak. They signed to Epic Records and released one single before splitting up.[12] Fiasco later signed a solo deal with Arista Records, but was dropped when president and CEO L. A. Reid was fired.[12] During this time, he had guest appearances on singles on Tha' Rayne's "Kiss Me" and "Didn't You Know" and also K Foxx's 2004 "This Life". He also released the song "Coulda Been" on a compilation of MTV's Advance Warning.[13] In 2005, he was featured on Kanye West's single, "Touch the Sky".

[edit] 2006–2007: Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor

Fiasco at the 2006 Intonation Music Festival in IllinoisDuring this time, rapper and mogul Jay-Z heard Fiasco and assisted him in the production of what would become his debut album Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor.[14] Soon after, he released his first single "Kick, Push", a song heavily influenced by skateboarding. As his popularity steadily increased, so did anticipation for his upcoming album Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor. The album was officially released on September 19, 2006. The album featured production from Jay-Z, Kanye West, Mike Shinoda, The Neptunes, Prolyfic, and more. Singles from the album were "Kick, Push," "I Gotcha" and "Daydreamin'" featuring Jill Scott. The critically lauded album was later nominated for three Grammy Awards including Best Rap Album. In the same year, he was voted by GQ magazine as the "Breakout Man of the Year."[15]

[edit] 2007–2008: Lupe Fiasco's The Cool
In 2007, Fiasco announced his second album, Lupe Fiasco's The Cool, a concept album that expands on the story of the track of the same name on his first album. While recording the album, Fiasco's father had died and his business partner, Charles "Chilli" Patton, was convicted of attempting to supply heroin and was sentenced to 44 years in prison.[5] The album was released in December 2007 in United States. The first single and video from the album, "Superstar", featuring Matthew Santos, was released the first week of November 2007. Baseball's Hanley Ramirez, Troy Tulowitzki, Ryan Zimmerman, Gerald Laird and Ryan Braun have used "Superstar" as their at-bat song.[16] The song has also been featured in HBO's Hard Knocks TV show. The songs "Put You on Game" and "Little Weapon" are featured in the movie Street Kings in the latest trailer.[citation needed]

Fiasco performing in Melbourne, Australia, 2009Also in 2007, it was revealed that Fiasco, Kanye West and Pharrell Williams had formed a group known as Child Rebel Soldier.[17][18] CRS has so far released one single, entitled "US Placers" and featuring a Thom Yorke sample. Since its release and the ensuing Glow in the Dark Tour, the group has not yet been spoken of any further.

In an interview with The Village Voice, Fiasco revealed that he was writing a novel about a window washer[19] aptly titled Reflections of a Window Washer. In 2008, Fiasco and his band 1500 or Nothin joined West's Glow in the Dark Tour, which also features Rihanna and N.E.R.D. The tour stopped in several cities, including his hometown of Chicago. In 2008, MTV named Fiasco the 7th Hottest MC in the Game[20] and announced that he was remixing The Cool with French electro house act Justice.[21] Fiasco's "Superstar" has been included in the video game Lips.[22]

[edit] 2009–present: Lasers

Fiasco performing in Melbourne, Australia, 2009Fiasco announced at a Chicago concert late in 2008 that his next and most likely final album will be a three disc album and that the first disc "Everywhere" would come out in June 2009. The trio was going to be named LupE.N.D.[23] On January 30, 2009, Lupe Fiasco originally announced that LupE.N.D. will be postponed indefinitely. Instead, he would release three albums; The Great American Rap Album in June 2009, two following albums in December 2009 and June 2010, with LupE.N.D. following afterward.[24] However, it was announced by Fiasco that his next album would instead be titled, "We Are Lasers"; yet later his official rep announced and confirmed that it would instead be titled simply "Lasers".[25] On June 26th, Fiasco announced at the Chicago Theater that the album would be released fourth quarter 2009, most likely in December.[26] The album's first single, "Shining Down," features Matthew Santos and is produced by Soundtrakk.[27] The single was released on July 7, 2009.[28] There were a few snippets of songs that have been released as of August 24, 2009. The songs unofficial titles are "Army Girl," "Ladies And Gentlemen," and "2 Ways."[29]Lupe Fiasco has a bonus track called Solar Midnite on iTunes for the New Moon soundtrack. On October 7th 2009, Lupe released a song in response to the release of MTV's 2009 "Top 10 Hottest Rapper List," on which he was absent. The track, entitled "Fire", is as Lupe stated, a taste of why he will take the number 1 spot on next years list.[30] In October 2009 Lupe released two freestyles. The first titled "Turnt Up" and the second over the Timbaland song "Say Something".

[edit] Ventures
Fiasco is the co-founder and vice-president of 1st & 15th Entertainment, a record label under Atlantic.[6] Fiasco serves as the current CEO. Singer Matthew Santos, as well as Lupe himself are two of the most visible members. In November 2009, Lupe Fiasco "... got rid of the entire First and Fifteenth Record Label." In an interview with Ruby Hornet, Lupe Fiasco stated, "I got rid of, you’re the first to know, I got rid of the entire First and Fifteenth Record Label. Me and Sarah Green are the only artists on the label, like I got rid of the whole label. It was just such a ‘this isn’t right for you right now. This isn’t gonna work for you right now. You need to be focused on you. Do you really want that, do you really have the capacity to do it?’[31]

In January 2006, Fiasco signed with major footwear and apparel corporation Reebok becoming part of the "O.G" marketing campaign, where rap artists such as Lil Wayne and Mike Jones designed their own personal colorway of the Reebok "O.G" model.[32] Fiasco also runs his own fashion label under the name "Trilly & Truly".[33]

BLACK AMERICA LET US BE PROUD INTRODUCINGPilot Officer John Henry Smythe (1915-1996). An unsung hero.

2009-11-11T00:29:00.003-05:00

I AM SHARING THIS BLOG WHICH I AQUIRED FROM A FRIENDS BLOG ON MULTIPLY http://shanewilson.multiply.com/journal/item/128/Pilot_Officer_John_Henry_Smythe_1915-1996._An_unsung_hero.

I WAS AWESTRUCK AND FULL OF PRIDE YOU WILL BE TOO!

They served faithfully in a war that was not their own for the good of all humankind.

Had Hitler and his Nazis won WW2, the consequences for black people everywhere would have been too hideous to contemplate - - - Hitler believed that all black people should be eradicated. Johnny Smythe read Hitler's Mein Kampf before joining the RAF

Pilot Officer John Henry Smythe (1915-1996)

John Henry Smythe was born in Sierra Leone. He served with the Sierra Leone Defence Corps before volunteering for the RAF as a navigator. On the night of 18th November 1943 he was the navigator aboard a Short Stirling III heavy bomber of No 623 Squadron, one of 395 aircraft dispatched to attack the German city of Mannheim. The aircraft was crippled by anti-aircraft fire, and the crew was forced to parachute from the stricken aircraft. They were captured and spent the next 18 months in a prisoner of war camp. After the war Smythe stayed in the RAF until 1951 and in 1978 he received an OBE. He died in 1996 in Thame, Oxfordshire.

Johnny Smythe did not have to go to war.He was one of 55,000 people from Africa who volunteered to help Britain stop Hitler’s Germany. After Johnny’s plane was shot down over Germany, he spent 18 months in a Prisoner of War camp. He remembered what happened after the Russian Army liberated his camp. ‘They took me to a town near the camp and
I watched as they looted. A pretty German woman was crying because they had taken all her valuables. I wanted to help her but the Russians wouldn’t listen. I had hated the Germans and wanted to kill them all, but something changed inside me when I saw
her tears and the hopelessness on her face.’

Johnny was a Royal Air Force navigator who helped pilots flying planes like these Lancaster bombers stay on course during bombing raids. He was shot down over Germany on his 28th mission. Johnny volunteered to join the RAF because he hated Hitler for his racism. Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics but Hitler refused to shake his hand because he was African American. When he was captured, Johhny remembers; ‘The Germans couldn’t believe their eyes.
I’m sure that’s what saved me from being shot immediately. To see a black man – and an officer at that – was more than they could come to terms with. They just stood there gazing.’

Looking down on a Lancaster Bomber attack,Hamburg, 1943 ‘We were flying at 16,000 feet when the fighters came out of nowhere. They raked the fuselage and there were flames everywhere. Then the searchlights caught us. I was hit by shrapnel.

Pieces came from underneath, piercing my abdomen, going through my side. Another came through my seat and into my groin. I heard the pilot ordering us to bail out! We had some rough ones before but this seemed to be the end. I have tried to forget that night for 50 years.’ Stalag Luft I was a prisoner of war camp for almost 9,000 Allied airmen. Johnny helped other
prisoners try to escape but did not try to break out himself. He said, ‘I don’t think a six-foot-five black man would’ve got very far in Pomerania.’ Today there is a memorial at Stalag Luft I. In 2001, veterans and their families from America, Britain, Germany and Russia met at the camp in the spirit of reconciliation.

1915 Born in Freetown capitalof Sierra Leone.1940 Arrives in UK as RAF volunteer
1941 First mission 1943 On 28th mission over Germany, Smythe’s plane gets shot down
1943–1945 Stalag Luft I. POW camp. After the war, worked at Colonial Office
1948 travelled with Empire Windrush to bring 500 West Indian ex-servicemen and workers to UK
1950 Passed law exams; 1951 Married fiancée from Grenada. Sailed back to Freetown;
1961 Solicitor General of Sierra Leone. 1963 Lecture tour of the eastern United States
1978 Receives OBE –Order of the British Empire. 1993 Moved back to England
with his wife and 5 children; 1996 Died in Thame, Oxfordshire.

(Courtesy Imperial War Museum)

ALTERENATIVE LIFESTYLE VERSION "LE REVUE DE COLOUR HOMME"

2009-11-10T21:18:00.007-05:00
TWO VERSIONS OF PROMOS ARE USUALLY MADE THIS IS THE ALTERNATIVE TO LE REVUE DE BURLESQUE TITLED " LE REVUE DE COLOUR HOMME' please remember this an a alternative lifestyle video i.e. gay ( the persons appearing in clips are not nessasarily gay or advocate that lifestyle)

More photos from april 20 2009 Brooklyn, NY

2009-11-10T21:04:00.001-05:00

The Taxi (this is so thought provoking please enjoy and share!)

2009-11-09T13:28:00.000-05:00

To Love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart...
And to sing it to them when they have forgotten.
(Anonymous)
The TAXI:

I arrived at the address where someone had requested a taxi. I honked but no one came out. I honked again, nothing. So I walked to the door and knocked. 'Just a minute', answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.
After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90's stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets..

There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

'Would you carry my bag out to the car?' she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, and then returned to assist the woman..

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness. 'It's nothing', I told her. 'I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated'..
'Oh, you're such a good boy', she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, and then asked, 'Could you drive through downtown?'

'It's not the shortest way,' I answered quickly.
'Oh, I don't mind,' she said.. 'I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice'.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.. 'I don't have any family left,' she continued.. 'The doctor says I don't have very long.' I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.

'What route would you like me to take?' I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, 'I'm tired. Let's go now'

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.

Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

'How much do I owe you?' she asked, reaching into her purse.
'Nothing,' I said

'You have to make a living,' she answered.

'There are other passengers,' I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.

'You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,' she said.

'Thank you.'

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.
I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift?
What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?
On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life..

We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.

But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.
PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, BUT THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.

Thank you, my friend...

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance.

Coming home from work (pictorial)

2009-11-09T12:48:00.000-05:00

Today was just.....perfect

After work I decided to stop at Starbucks on 7th ave and stopped at the park to chat with a few friends the weather in NY was beautiful!!!

I LOVE STORE WINDOWS THIS ONE WAS In THE WEST VILLAGE

WEST SIDE HIGHWAY....THEY HAVE DONE WONDERS WITH IT! IF YOU KEEP DRIVING DOWN SOUTH YOU PASS WHERE THE WORLD TRADE CENTERS ONCE STOOD...

I LOVE AFTER WORK TO LOOK OVER THE WATER AND SEE NEW JERSEY THO I DONT REALLY CARE FOR NEW JERSEY ITS NICE TO LOOK AT

THISIS THE PIER AND TODAY AFTER WORK THE WEATHER WAS BEAUTIFUL AND THE PIER WAS SO PEACEFUL. I LIKE PEACE AFTER A HARD DAY

SOME OF MY CO WORKERS LIKE TO SIT HERE AFTER WORK AND HAVE BEER BUT ONCE I WAS TOLD YOU COULD GET A TICKET. I DRINK ARIZONIA ICE TEA AND HAVE JUST AS MUCH FUN (LOL)

YOU CAN SEE THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING FROM HERE. I USE TO LIVE THREE BLOCKS FROM THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING! DO YOU KNOW I NEVER WENT IN THERE TILL I NEEDED TO GO TO THE BANK!

I RODE THE SUBWAY HOME...SLEPT MOST OF THE WAY...TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY!

Humour (the best medicine)

2009-11-08T13:25:00.001-05:00

THE ORIGNAL QUEENS OF RAUNCH

2009-11-08T00:55:00.004-05:00

THE QUEENS OF RAUNCH AND R&B FEATURING MILLIE JACKSON (FU*K YOU SYMPHONY, THE ORGINAL QUEEN OF COMEDY LaWANDA A GREAT SHOW ORGINALLY AIRED JUNE OF 2009

GET TO KNOW US! (PROMO) 2009a

2009-11-07T23:37:00.004-05:00

A PROMTIONAL MADE 4 FOR TRUE URBAN HAVOC ENTERTAINMENT IN OUR EARLY DAYS. WOW! REMEMBER TUPACS "I GET AROUND" never posted due to last Name mix ups

LE REVUE DE BURLESQUE 4 TRUE URBAN HAVOC

2009-11-07T22:15:00.006-05:00
I HAD SO MUCH FUN MAKING THIS PROMO!!!!!

IF YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN TO A REAL BURLESQUE HOUSE THAN LET THE VIDEO BE YOUR FIRST INTRODUCTION.

IT WASNT WORK AT ALL!! FOR THE GROWN AND SEXY!!!

WELCOME TO THE ADULT WORLD WHERE HOUSE MUSIC MEETS BURLESQUE. PERFORMERS INCLUDE THE CREM DE LA CREM FROM THE WORLD OF BURLESQUE MATCHED TO THE TANTILIZING HOUSE GROOVES OF DJ. DARK GABLE RAMIEREZ. PERFORMERS INCLUDE. DITA VON TEESE FROM HER SHOW AT THE MOULIN ROUGE, THE NEW BOIZS, LA DIVA (BLACK POLE DANCER EXTRODINARRE) STRAWBERRY FIELDS.. TRACKS INCLUDE: LETS GET OUR FREAK ON, LISA MARIE EXPERIENCE, AND MORE

LE REVUE DE BURLESQUE FEATURING DJ DARK GABLE RAMIEREZ

2009-11-07T21:19:00.001-05:00

BURLESQUE AT ITS BEST " DITA VON TEESE" FOR WONDERBRA UK

2009-11-07T16:18:00.000-05:00

THE POWER OF SHOUT! (2 FUNNY)

2009-11-07T11:26:00.003-05:00

ADVENTURES IN COUTURE " THE BILLIE HOLIDAY COLUM DRESS OMG"

2009-11-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

UNIQUE!

Oh My Gosh!! This exiting column dress is made with an original silk screened Billie Holiday photo print.

Full length beauty with short train. It's all stretchy and comfortable to wear. Invisible side zipper! Circle cut bell bottom.

*

Designed by Swiss Native, NYC based designer Idil Vice:

www.idilvice.com

Famous for equipping many superstars (eg. Gwen Stefani, Madonna, Paris, Sarah Jessica Parker, Erykah Badu and even Carrie Underwood !!) with cool Tribute wear.

Here is an opportunity for all you Glamour Fans & Billie Lovers to fetch this unique find. It is really exceptionally handcrafted, beautifully tapered and has a smooth inside and an amazing fit!

Originality & Exclusivity!$449.00 USD

A size large fits around US size 10. Available in size XXS (2), XS (4), S (6), M (8) also. It is hand made with high quality stretchy satin fabric. This dress should be hand washed in cool water hang dry and touched up with a cool iron on the reverse side.

Excellent craftsmanship, soft and comfortable. Brand new with tag.

Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery.

Measurements for size L (relaxed - they will definitely stretch another inch or 2 more):

chest: 38"

waist: 29"

hips: 41"

length front: 59"

length back: 61.5"

Happy Glamorous Shopping!!

NICK CANONS "EX" SELITA EBANKS (MODEL VICTORIAS SECRET)

2009-11-07T09:31:00.003-05:00
CLICK TO ENLARGE PICTURES
Selita Ebanks (born February 15,[1] 1983) is a Caymanian fashion model. She is best known for her work with Victoria's Secret and as a Victoria's Secret Angel from 2005-2009.

Selita Ebanks was born on February 15, 1983 in George Town, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, a British Overseas Territory. She was raised in a large family that includes seven brothers. Influenced by her brothers, Ebanks played many sports growing up, such as basketball, soccer and tennis. The Ebanks family was quite poor, living in what she described as "a little blue, zinc-roof shack on Walkers Road".[citation needed] Often, Ebanks didn't have shoes to wear to George Town primary school.[citation needed] Her family, her mother in particular, encouraged her development through extracurricular programs.[2]

Ebanks moved to the United States, and settled in Staten Island, New York. After moving to New York City she was accepted at Spelman College, Columbia University, and New York University.[2] However, she graduated from none of these institutions. She had planned to study Law before she started modeling.[citation needed]

At 17 years old, while walking through the turnstiles at Six Flags Great Adventure, Ebanks was scouted by an agent from Elite Model Management.[3][4] Ebanks worked with some of the world's most noted photographers, including Peter Lindbergh, Bruce Weber, Steven Klein, Carter Smith and Mikael Jansson, and for some of the most quintessential American fashion campaigns, including Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch, Levi's and Tommy Hilfiger.

Ebanks first modeled for Victoria's Secret for their Ipex Bra line, before being signed as an Angel.[4] She and fellow up-and-coming model Izabel Goulart made their major débuts in the 2005 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show,[4] working as an Angel until early 2009. She views Tyra Banks as a mentor.[citation needed] In 2005, Tyra Banks said she was proud of Ebanks to be representing for black women at Victoria's Secret.[5]

Ebanks made a special guest appearance on How I Met Your Mother (episode: "The Yips") on November 26, 2007 with her fellow Victoria's Secret supermodels (Miranda Kerr, Heidi Klum, Adriana Lima, Marisa Miller, and Alessandra Ambrosio).

She made her first appearance on Sports Illustrated's 2007 Swimsuit Issue.[3]

She has recorded some music[2] and appeared on the UPN-series South Beach.

Selita, while promoting Victoria Secret, was booed at Gillette Stadium while at a New England Patriots vs. Philadelphia Eagles game in Foxboro for a Victoria's Secret promotion. [6][7]

Ebanks was engaged to rapper, actor, and comedian Nick Cannon.[8][9] On October 4, 2007, People magazine announced that the couple ended their engagement.

More photos of Brooklyn NY these were taken in April 20, 2009 Bedford Sty (click to enlarge)

2009-11-06T23:13:00.000-05:00

BEFORE I TAKE PICTURES ITS IMPORTANT FOR ME TO HAVE A FANTASTIC BREKFAST!!
WAFFLES, JAM AND WHIPPED CREAM WITH 3 SCRAMBLED EGGS WORKS FOR THE BOI! AND YEAH IM STILL A 30 WAIST!!!

FRANKLIN AVE AND FULTON STREET

FRANKLIN AVE AND FULTON ST

BED STY

OG'S RALLAH AND MZ. DORIS NOSTRAND AVE AND FULTON (A TRAIN STOP)

WHEN FRIENDS MOVE AWAY

2009-11-06T14:42:00.002-05:00
RECENTLY ONE OF MY OLDEST FRIENDS MOVED TO TAMPA FLORIDA. I USE TO LIVE THEIR TOO AND I MISS HIM! NOT ENOUGH TO MOVE TO FLA BUT MISS HIM.

THEY SAY THE INTERNET HAS MADE THE WORLD SMALLER....HMMM

TEXTING ISNT THE SAME AS HANGING OUT. OR BEING ABLE TO RAZE HELL! SO NOW IM DEPRESSED HIS GIRL IS MOVING NEXT WEEK...I GOTTA FIND TWO NEW MAIN PEEPS... THAT WAS MY CLUB PERSON!!

ONE NIGHT WE HIT 28 JUDUS HOLES ( LIQOUR HOURS/AFTER HOUR SPOTS/GAMBLING DENS IN BROOKLYN ALONE!!!!! AND WE WERENT FALLING DOWN DRUNK!

HOW DO U REPLACE THAT?

PLUS WE BOTH FINISHED COLLEDGE SO ITS NOT LIKE WE HAVENT DONE THE RIGHT THING ITS JUST THEY DONT TAKE THEMSELVES TOO SERIOUSLY...SOME PEOPLE DONT U KNOW JUST PPL THAT CAME FROM SHIT AND WANNA BE SOMETHING MORE THAN TAKE THEMSELVES TOO SERIOUSLY AND MISS OUT ON LIFE AND THE JOY OF LIVING!

Now is this Christmas Spirit or what?

2009-11-06T14:02:00.000-05:00
check out the house on the right!

WHAT ARE THE BEST SPOTS IN NYC TO PARTY?

2009-11-06T13:12:00.001-05:00

THE CHINA CLUB IN TIMES SQUARE NEW YEARS EVE PARTY IS $65.00 SEATED VIP IS 145.00 ITS A GREAT CLUB AND YOU WILL SEE CELEBRITYS.

TRUTH BE PERSONALLY TOLD? I LIKED MARS 2012 BACK IN THE EARLY 2K i USE TO WORK ON 51ST STREET AND ITS RIGHT THERE ON BROADWAY AND 51ST. GREAT MUSIC THEN. PEOPLE STILL GO BUT ITS NOT HOT SO THEY SAY. THEY ARE SOLD OUT FOR NEW YEARS EVE ALREADY THOUGH. BASICALLY STR8 BUT ANYBODY IS IN THERE. HELL i WAS THERE

THE SHADOW ON 28TH IS COOL. I SAW WENDY WILLIAMS THERE ONCE. ITS A KOOL CLUB ITS PREDOMINATELY STR8/MIXED THERE ARE ALOT OF DL DUDES (BARF) THERE AND SOME ALMOST A STAR HIP HOP HEADS POP THRU. HEY ITS RIGHT IN MIDTOWN. ITS ONE OF THOSE PLACES THAT ONCE WAS BUT YOU STILL GO THERE! WARNING THEY LIE THEY MAY SAY ITS HIP HOP NIGHT OR SOMETHING AND ITS BULLSHIT AND THE VARTENDER DOESNT MAKE A DECENT MARTINI. TO ME THEY WERE A BIT SHADY WHEN I CAME IN WITH MY CREW BUT WHEN I CAME THRU WITH MY WHITE AND LATIN FRIENDS....IT WAS A DIFFRENT STORY. I HAVENT BEEN IN A YEAR AND CHANGE...GABE GOES I BELIEVE ...THIS IS A ANYBODYS BAR CEPT I NEVER SEEN A DRAG QUEEN THERE SO ALMOST EVERYBODY WELL MAYBE THEY WERE REALLY REAL LOOKING?? HMMM

NOW IF YOUR GHETTO AS HELL(U KNOW YOU-IS) AND YOU WANT THEE BK PICK UP (THINK CRAIGLIST BOYZ) THEN THE STARLIGHT IN BROOKLYN ON NEW YEARS EVE IS YOUR CHOICE. THAT CLUB IS GHET TO THE O!!

ME GOMEZ USE TO GO AND EVERYTIME

WED GO WE WOULD BE MISERABLE.

ITS A HOOD GAY BAR BEEN AROUND FOREVER. THE STARLIGHT REVUE IS WORTH THE TRIP AND KAROKEE THURSDAYS

JUST DOMT ORDER ANYTHING GRANDER THAN A BEER OR FREAKIN COSMOPOLITIAN . THATS ALL I'M SAYING...

ALSO REMEMBER THE HOMELESS SHELTER IS AROUND THE CORNER AND SOME OF THE HOMELESS TRADES HOPE TO PICK UP A OLD THIRSTY QUEEN AND FIND NEW SHELTER FOR THE WINTER...THATS ALL I'M SAYING. THIS IS A GAY BAR

LANGSTONS IS A POPULAR SPOT I STILL THINK I LIKED THE BROOKLYN CAFE BETTER BUT ITS CLOSED. HELL I KNEW THE SECURITY THERE AND ID GET IN FREE DAMNIT..BUT LANGSTONS I THINK WAS NAMED AFTER LANGSTON HUGHES THE GAY HARLEM RENNASANCE POET? I THINK...ITS OK GREAT DJ'S IF YOU LIKE PARTYING IN BROOKLYN THEN LANGSTONS IS 4 U. I HAVENT BEEN IN EONS SO I CANT COMMENT TOO MUCH. BUT A FEW OF MY FRIENDS STILL GO FAITHFULLY. THIS IS A GAY BAR BUT GIRLS GO THERE TOO U KNOW.

EVERYONE HAS BEEN TO THE WEST VILLAGE HAS SEEN THE MONSTERS THATS THE NAME OF THE BAR NEXT TO SHERIDAN PARK. ITS A MOSTLY WHITE BAR BUT BLACK KIDS GO, DRAG QUEENS, HUSTLERS OLDER PPL. I LIKE THE SHOWS DOWNSTAIRS. I LIKE THOSE DRAG QUEENS I FIND IT GOOD FUN. THEY MAKE EXCELLENT MARTINIS OH MY GOD! I HAVE GOTTEN PLASTERED THERE LISTENING TO THE PIANO PLAYER UPSTAIRS AND DRINKING THOSE 10 DOLLAR DRINKS BUT THE BARTENDERS ARE TOP RATE. MUST SAY SOME OF THE DRAG QUEENS ARE FROM BROADWAY SHOWS AND SING LIVE 2. ITS A NICE SOMEWHAT MIXED AMBIENCE CABARET MUSIC UPSTAIRS DISCO DOWNSTAIRS.

I TALK SHIT ABOUT CHI CHIS ON CHRISTOPHER STREET BUT ME AND SHAWNSKI USE TO GET PLASTERED THERE. HES A SINGER AND A GOOD ONE TOO. BY THE WAY THEY SELL CHICKEN WINGS THAT ARE SOO GOOD. ALL THE BLACK KIDS ARE THERE. THE SOCIAL WORKERS, THE WELFARE CHILDREN, THE HOMELESS KIDS, THE YOUNG SET THE OLD SET.. ITS THE LAST STOP ON CHRISTOPHER EVERYTHING 4 US IS GONE. U WILL FIND COOL AND SHADY PPL THERE HOLD YOUR OWN. WHEN I WAS WEARING THE SNOOP DOGGY DOG LOOK THIS BIG FAG CAME 4 ME FROM NJ SAID I HAD A WEAVE! YOU DO KNOW I HAD TO CHECK HIS ASS. MY PROBLEM IS WHEN I GET LOADED I TAKE SO LIL SHIT SO NOW I'M HARDLY DRINKING LOL AND RARELY GO THE VILLAGE. OH AND ME AND THE QUEEN? WE BECAME COOL FOR A MINUTE BUT THEY WERE FROM nj AND USE TO COME ALL THE WAY TO NY LOOKING FOR A DAMN MAN. WE FINALLY FELL OUT I TOLD THAT FOOL IF HE TRIED WALKING FROM DAMN JERSEY EVERYDAY HE WOULDN'T WEIGH 300 LBS AND HE MIGHT FIND A MAN. HE TOLE ME A MAN WOULD HAVE 2 TAKE HIM AS HE IS...HES STILL SINGLE! TOLE THE DAMN BITCH TO EXERCISE. I SAW HIM SUNDAY AT STARLIGHT I SAID "HELLO" LOL IA INT SHIT SOMETIMES LOL

ESCULITAS ON 39TH AND BROADWAY THE NEW ESQUILITAS IS A NICE SPOT. LATIN MAJORITY AND FUN...SIMPLY FUN! I REMEMBER SEEING TIGER TYSON AND TIGRESS REMEMBER HER? AT THAT SPOT AND THEY RIPPED. THAT WAS SOME TIME AGO. THATS HIM WITH LADY BUNNY. HE DOESNT LOOK SO YOUNG ANYMORE OUT OF THE STUDIO. THATS JUST MY OPINION. HES BEEN AROUND I WONDER HOW OLD HE IS? I BET HES MADE A HEAP OF MONEY IN THE PORN INDUSTRY. PPL LOVE HIM

NOW I LOVE AND IF YOU LOVE DRAG AND CAMP U WILL LOVE LUCKY CHENGS! 25 FIRST AVE HOME OF THE WORST SPAGHETTI AND BEST DRAG SHOWS IN NYC I WONT CARE I SAID IT! I KNOW THEY MAY SAY THEY ARE RACIST BUT THERE ARE BLACK PERFORMERS THERE TOO.

SO ENJOY THERE ARE ALOT OF OTHER SPOTS BUT THATS IT 4 TONIGHT! ONE DAY ILL WRITE ABOUT THE JUDUS HOLES THOSE ARE THE UNDERGROUND CLUBS BUT I PROBABLY WONT CUZ THEY ARE ILLEGAL BUT THEY ARE LIKE GAY LIQUOR HOUSES AND CASINOS ONE IN CROWN HEIGHTS LOOKS JUST LIKE LAS VEGAS!!! OPEN ALMOST 24 HOURS I PLAY THE SLOTS HEIR SOMETIMES BUT I HAVENT BEEN SINCE I WON 400 DOLLARS AND 300 WAS COUNTERFIT! YES!!! I WAS RIGHT BACK UP THERE WITH MY COUSINS AND GOT MY SHIT FROM THEM DAMN DOMINICANS. AHH GOOD MEMORIES

frankie jaxon jazz singer female impersonater

2009-11-06T04:40:00.000-05:00

Frankie Jaxon (1895 - 1944) jazz singer, female impersonator.

Frankie Jaxon was born in Montgomery, Alabama, orphaned and raised in Kansas City, Missouri.

At age 15 he became a singer. He worked in medicine shows in Texas and then worked regularly in Atlantic City, Chicago and later New York as a singer, comedian and female impersonator. He was known as “Half-Pint” because he was only 5’2” (1.57m).

He was a female impersonator in Harlem in the 1920s, at the same time as he was a jazz singer appearing with King Oliver, Tampa Red and Georgia Tom Dorsey.

He had a small part in the Duke Ellington film, Black and Tan, 1929.

In the 30s, he was often on radio with his band, the Quarts of Joy. The shows included bawdy humor, and Jaxon often played the women’s roles in the songs. He had a convincing female voice.

In 1941 he retired and worked for the Pentagon in Washington. In 1944 he died in a veterans hospital.

•“Frankie ‘Half Pint’ Jaxon”. Red Hot Jazz. www.redhotjazz.com/jaxon.html.

•“Frankie Jaxon”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Jaxon.

This YouTube clip is of the Midnight Rounders in Chicago on October 9, 1928 --- Frankie Jaxon on vocals.

BARS THAT WERE.....THE GRAVEYARD!

2009-11-06T04:29:00.003-05:00

Im having fun going down memory lane!!!

This page is dedicated to all the Bars and Nightclubs that are no longer with us.

If you are looking for a place to party in Tampa Bay and you know you have been there before but you don't see it listed on the main Bars and Clubs page, chances are it will be listed here in the Bar Grave Yard.

Annex

In Tampa on Kennedy Blvd. Died in 1997. If you liked The Annex, you will like Metropolis.

Angel's

In Tampa on South Dale Mabry. Died in July 1998.

Backstreet Mall

In St. Pete on Fifth St N. Died in the eighties. Backstreet Mall once, Brothers is no longer.

Bedrox

In Treasure Island on Gulf Blvd. Died in the 1997. Bedrox was one of a kind - the only Bar and restaurant in Tampa Bay right on the beach. If you are over on the beach, check out The Backroom Bar.

Bridge Club

In Tampa on Hillsborough. Died several years ago. Bridge Club was the only after hours bottle club in the area.

Brothers

In St. Pete on Fifth Street. Died a long time ago. It was Backstreet Mall after Brothers. Today, Grand Central Station is in the same general neighborhood.

Carousel

In Tampa on Platt. Died a few years ago. The Carousel was a sleazy stripper/cruise bar (the best kind).

Chaps

Chaps was a Country Western bar originally in Pinellas Park on 49th Street (I think it used to be a straight club called 49th Street Mining Company) then moved to Gandy Blvd by the dog track.

Club, The

On Central Ave in St. Pete. Died in the Eighties. Downtown St. Pete currently has one club called Grand Central.

Copa

The Copa was where Chaps (by the dog track) was. The Copa was well known for it's Sunday T Dance. It turned into The Saint, then Bender's and it's now called Club DeNile.

Cove, The

In Tampa on Henderson. Died a few years ago. The Cove changed owners and was then The Wet Spot. Later, it became The Jungle, complete with a big tree behind the bar. In the same building today is City Side. The big tree is now gone.

Dallape's

In Dunedin on Main St. Died several years ago. Dallape's is now 1470 West with new owners and a new look.

El Goya/Tracks

In Tampa's Ybor City on Seventh Ave. Died in the early eighties.

Engine Room, The

In downtown St. Pete. Died many years ago. We are dating ourselves now! Downtown St. Pete currently has one club on Central Ave. called Grand Central.

Flamingo

In downtown Clearwater. Died in the Eighties. Flamingo was a nice little bar and restaurant. There is currently nothing like it in Clearwater.

Flavour

In Ybor City. Died several years ago. Flavour was not around for long. To some, it was around longer than it should have been! It tried too hard to be everything, but not hard enough to be anything.

Golden Arrow, The

In St. Pete. Died late 2001. Was a regular hangout for the over 30 crowd with significant bias towards leather. A bear watering hole, the Arrow was a fun place to hang out, play pool, play darts and meet men. The bar and the infamous play house behind the bar were bull-dozed and removed.

Impulse

In Tampa on S. Nebraska. Later, it became the Tampa Eagle, and then Rain.

Jack's 809

On Pass-a-grille. Was around in the late sixties. The Hurricane (well-known by straight tourists) currently stands in it's place.

Sue remembers:

"[It] had an outside bar open during the days in the summer and on the weekends all year round. Small, intimate club with small light-up dance floor, A place where everybody knew everybody else

-like a neighborhood club. My first gay bar and real "coming out" right after college. I ended up working in the outside bar on weekends there '71-72. A warm and friendly place that really contributed to a positive coming out for me. I really miss that intimacy and friendliness!"

Lighted Tree, The

In Pass A Grille Beach. Died several years ago. This was one of the best beach bars ever. I was a fixture there every Sunday. Although there is currently nothing like it, check out The Backroom Bar in Madeira Beach.

Mangos

In Clearwater on US 19. Died in 1997. This space is currently vacant. The closest thing to Mangos in existence is The Pro Shop.

Marilyn's

In St. Pete. on 4th Street North. Died several years ago. In its place now is The Hideaway (formerly Hank's Hideaway).

Mariposa

In Redington Beach. Died in '97. This place wasn't around very long and I'm not quite sure what happened to it. It was Fort Knox and now is again.

Moody's

In Tampa on Moody (first) then combined with Baxter's on S. Dale Mabry. Died several years ago. Moody's was a restaurant and bar. Currently, the closest thing Tampa has conceptually is Tropics.

New Connection, The

In St. Pete on 31st Street behind the post office. Georgie's Alibi, who gutted, disinfected, and remodeled the building is now in it's place.

Northside Lounge

In Tampa on N Florida. Died in 1998. Northside Lounge is now called Joey's.

Oasis

In Tampa on Dale Mabry. Died in 1997. Oasis was a bar for the ladies. Check out Sahara, Cherokee Club, The Hideaway, or The Sportspage Pub.

Old Plantation (The OP)

In Tampa on Kennedy. Died in the Eighties. This was my first gay bar - and it was for a lot of people. It changed hands and names to Village Station in the Eighties. Neither exist today.

Paradise

In North Tampa on Nebraska. Died a few years ago. No longer in existence. Check out Keith's in the same neighborhood.

Parthenon

In Downtown Tampa. Died several years ago.

Puzzles

In Gulfport on Gulfport Blvd. Died several years ago. It is now called Sharp A's.

Rainbow

In St. Pete. on Gandy and then on US 19. Died several years ago. Rainbow was a club for womyn. Womyn now go to The Hideaway and Sportspage Pub.

Rascals

In Tampa. Died in '99.

Red Zone, The

In Downtown Tampa. Died several years ago. Well known for its Sunday T.

Rene's

In Tampa on Kennedy. Died many years ago. This was once Tampa's premier Drag Queen Club which featured an outdoor swimming pool. There is nothing like it today anywhere!

Sherwood/Wedgewood, The

In downtown St. Pete. on Beach Drive. Died many years ago. A reader who remembers The Sherwood fondly writes:

"The Sherwood was downtown St. Petersburg on Beach Drive, across the street from the St. Pete Yacht Club.

Very popular in the 70's and early 80's. Many LTR got their start there. It was owned by two successive straight couples, Mary and Joe. Then Ed and Sharon and Sharon's parents. Nice people.

The bar clientele was mostly upscale, well-behaved and nicely dressed. It was no dive. The decor was campy Sherwood Forest murals and heavy velvet drapery. It had been a restaurant - "attached" via dumbwaiter to a straight restaurant, 10 Beach Drive, next door.

David Wood, a large and jolly person was a very popular pianist at The Sherwood. He was later killed in an auto crash near Sebring, FL. His death began the demise of the institution. He was wildly popular both as a musician and bringer-together-of-people.

Many older people from out of town always remember The Sherwood and many probably still wonder what ever happened to it. It was a gentleman's bar and, sadly, it's gone. There will probably never be another like it."

Another reader fondly remembers the Wedgewood:

"The Wedgewood was also an old motel. It had a large, glassed in dance floor, and a stream going through the property. One night they found an alligator in the yard! Wedgewood's was where I was taught how to dance the tango. . . all of the upscale dance teachers went there. Of course this was in 1977 (don't tell anybody, Please! I am dating myself!) But it was an exceptionally nice bar. With the piano lounge separated by a large space to the dance floor, it was an excellent place to have come out right out of high school for me! Oh, for the old days!"

Another reader remembers:

": . . .the Wedgewood was where I met my first Love (it may have been a mistake and I do regret the nude pictures) but I could tell you about some of the best times in the world."

Side Trax

In Clearwater on Gulf to Bay Blvd. Died several years ago. This was a video/stripper bar.

Silks

In Downtown Clearwater. Died several years ago. No longer there, but The Pro Shop still is!

Solar

In Downtown Tampa. Died in 1997. Solar was a fun place to dance in Tampa.

Stuffed Pepper, The

In Downtown St. Pete. Died several many years ago. It was then D.T's. It's now called Grand Central..

Triangles

In Clearwater on Roosevelt. Died several years ago. It was then Lost and Found, then Lost Boys..

Turtle Club

In Clearwater by the Airport. This was a straight club that was gay on Sundays and then on Tuesdays. It was bull-dozed and removed.

Wet Spot

In Tampa on Henderson. Died in 1997. It then became The Jungle (with the big tree). In the same building today is City Side, which is nothing like the Wet Spot was.

V.I.P.

In Treasure Island. Died in 1997. This was a combination Mexican Restaurant/gay bar. We really don't have anything quite like it today. On the beaches, check out The Backroom Bar.

TIFFANY ARRIEARGUS AT THE COPA

2009-11-06T04:26:00.000-05:00
OH WOW, THIS IS TIFFANY ARRIERUGUS I HAVE A PICTURE OF HER FROM BACK IN THE DAY. THIS PERFORMER WON MISS FLA CONTINENTAL COOL AND SHE WAS ON MIAMI VICE. SHE WAS REALLY PRETTY IN THE 1990S I IMAGINE SHE HAS TO BE "A QUEEN OF A CERTIN AGE" CAUSE THEY WERE FULL GROWN ADULTS WHEN I WAS A KID BUT THEY ARE STILL HERE! HOW COOL

PENNY HOLIDAY

2009-11-06T04:20:00.000-05:00
THIS WAS A PERFORMER ATTHE OLD MELODY CLUB IN GAINESVILLE FLA. I LIKED GAINESVILLE! IM SURPRISED SOME OF THE PPL ARE STILL HERE. GOD IS GOOD. PENNY USE TO WORK ON FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS AND THEY LOVED HER SHE USE DO ALL THE OLD SONGS LIKE THE POINTER SISTERS AND STUFF. THESE SHOWS WERE THE EQUIVELENT TO THE NYC BALL SCENE. I NEVER RALLY GOT TO KNOW HER MUCH I WAS JUST A KID AND I WASNT REALLY IMPRESSED FOR SOME REASON I GUESS THE MUSIC WAS OLD BUT AS I KEPT GOING I SAW SHE WAS REALLY GOOD AT WHAT SHE DID....

TIFFANY ROSS

2009-11-06T03:49:00.004-05:00
I MET TIFFANY ROSS WHEN I LIVED IN GANIESVILLE FLA. I'D CUT SCHOOL AND THEIR WAS THIS HOUSE ON 5TH WHERE ALL THESE GAY GUYS LIVED A SHIT LOAD OF EM. TIFFANY WAS COOL. OLDER THEY WERE ADULTS I WAS IN 10TH GRADE...THIS IS "HER" NOW. I REMEMBER WHEN I WAS A KID THEY SNUCK ME INTO THEMELODY CLUB AND I SAW HER WIN THE MISS GAY GAINESVILLE PAGENT. THIS WAS A VRY NICE PERSON. I AM GLAD THEY ARE STILL ALIVE AND DOING WHAT IT IS THEY LIKE TO DO

WHY I LOVE BILLIE HOLIDAY

2009-11-06T02:36:00.005-05:00

WHEN I WAS ABOUT TWELEVE I REMEMBER GOING TO THE LIBARY AND THE LIBARY WAS FOR ME WAS SUCHA MAGICAL PLACE! I WOULD READ EVERY AND ANYTHING. I WOULD GO BACK IN TIME SOMETIMES TO THE EARLY 1920'S. iD READ ABOUT SILENT FILMS, HITLER AND SO MUCH MORE!

ON THIS PARTICULAR SATURDAY I WAS LOOKING AT PAPER BACKS AND I SAW A WOMAN WITH A FLOWER BURNING IN HELL AND SINGING IT WAS THE BOOK "LADY SINGS THE BLUES"
I KNEW NOTHING OF BILLIE HOLIDAY OR HER MUSIC OR HER WORLD BUT I OPENED THE BOOK AND READ " MOM AND POP WERE JUST A COUPLE OF KIDS WHEN THEYGOT MARRIED HE WAS 19 SHE WAS SIXTEEN AND I WAS THREE"

WHAT THE HELL???

I HAD NEVER READ SUCH BEFORE! I WAS ALMOST 16 MARRIED, BABIES? WHAT IS THIS. I READ THE ENTIRE BOOK IN LESS THAN 2 HOURS MAYBE THREE ABD TOOK IT HOME.
COMMON SENSE HAD ME HIDE IT MY MOTHER DIDNT APPROVE OF ANYTHING WITH THE FIRES OFHELL ON THE FRONT COVER.(DRAWING ON RIGHT BY TONY COLON BRONX NY 1995)

THIS WOMAN WROTE OF DRUG ADDICTION, JAIL, PROSTITUTION, JAZZ AND IT ALL...SEEMED SO GLAMOROUS TO MY 12 YEAR OLD MIND. I REMEMBER SAYING TO MYSELF "IM GONNA EXPERIENCE EVERY THING LIFE HAS TO OFFER"

IN THE BOOK WERE THE WORDS TO THE SONG "GOD BLESS THE CHILD" I NEVER HEARD THAT SONG BEFORE. IT WOULD BE MANY MONTHS UNTIL I GOT THE CHANCE.

I REMEMBER ASKING EVERY ADULT "WHO WAS BILLIE HOLIDAY? DID YOU KNOW HER?" POP THOMAS WHO LIVED TO BE 99 LIVED AT 415 EDGECOMBE AVE HE OWNED THE BUILDING THE WHOLE DAMN APT BUILDING! TOLD ME HE HAD MET HER MANY TIMES HE WAS A MAIL MAN. HE LIVED IN HARLEM AND HIS WIFE BLANCHE HAD DIED SHE WAS A PIANIST AT ST. PAULS CHURCH IN HARLEM I BELIEVE.

HE GAVE ME A 78 RPM RECORD CALLED "BODY AND SOUL" I THINK IT WAS BY BEN WEBSTER AND HE GAVE ME ANOTHER RECORD I CANT REMEMBER.. I CHERISHED THAT DAMN RECORD UNTIL ONE DAY IT WS ON TOP OF THE MONOPOLY GAME WHICH WAS ON TOP OF THE REFRIGATOR AND I WENT TO GET THE BOX AND THE RECORD SHATTERED.

I HAD NEVER EVEN HEARD THE RECORD PLAY CAUSE I DIDNT HAVE A 78RPM RECORD PLAYER THEY WERE OLD OUTDATED MACHINES.

STILL NO BILLIE. STILL NEVER HEARD JAZZ!! MY MOTHER WAS A NAT COLE FREAK AND MY FATHER DIDNT LISTEN TO NOTING AT ALL! MATTER OF FACT HE NEVER LISTENED TO MUSICTHAT I REMEMBER. HE LIKED HYMNS THO AND HED SING THEM HIMSELF SO THEY WERENT TO JAZZED UP AND WORLDLY.

I FINALLY GOT A HOLD OF A 33RPM RECORD AND IT WAS A COLUMBIA 3 LP SET CALLED BILLIE HOLIDAY THE GOLDEN YEARS VOLUME 3. I GOT IT AT A STORE FOR LIKE 4 BUCKS NEW. I REMEMBER GOING IN MY ROOM, CLOSING THE DOOR AND PUTTING ON THE RECORD.

WTF????

IT SOUNDED LIKE THE SOUNDTRACK TO THE LITTLE RASCALS TV SHOW !

IT WAS SOOOOOOO CORNY! SO DATED...THE SONG WAS CALLED "BACK IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD" AND I HAD NEVER HEARD SUCH SHIT IN MY LIFE I WAS SO MAD! BUT I HAD SPENT 4 BUCKS I ONLY GOT 5 DOLLARS A WEEK ALLOWANCE!

SOMEWAY, SOMEHOW I STARTED TO DIG HER.

I REALLY DID!

I DONT KNOW WHY!!!

OR EVEN HOW...

MY MOTHER OMG, SHE WAS COOL AT FIRST BUT SHE DIDNT PARTICULARY CARE FOR LADY DAY A WHOLE LOT. SHE LIKED LOVERMAN WHICH I HAD NEVER EVER EVEN HEARD AND MY FATHER WAS A BIG FAN OF MY MAN, AND I CRIED FOR YOU. I SHARED THAT I LIKED "TIME ON MY HANDS" ID SING IT ALOT ALONG WITH "SWING BROTHER SWING" SHE DIDNT LIKE LENA HORNE EITHER MY MOTHER WAS A PRODUCT OF HER TIME. IN HER DAY BLACK WOMEN WERE SORE THAT LENA MARRIED SOME WHITE GUY A BAND LEADER NAMED LENNY HAYTON. PPL DONT REMEMBEER BUT LENA FELL OUT OF FAVOR WITH BLACK AMERICA FOR SOMETIME DURING THE LATE 40S. WITH TALK OF HER PURTO RICAN HERITAGE AND THE HUSBAND THEY THOUGHT SHE THOUGHT SHE WAS BETTER THAN...WITH BILLIE SHE FELL OUT OF FAVOR WITH BLACK WOMEN CAUSE HER LIFE AND PAIN MIRRORED THEIR OWN. RE SHE WAS A LIGHT SKINNED, BEAUTIFUL WOMAN A BIG DEAL IN HER DAY AND SHES OUT THERE GETTING ARRESTED AND ACTING THE FOOL...MY MOTHER COULDNT STAND HER SO SAID...SHE LOVED ETHEL WATERS..

MY BEST FRIEND WAS A BI RACIAL CAT NAMED DANNY WERE BEST FRIENDS AS HE LIVED NEXT DOOR HE DIDNT UNDERSTAND MY NEW FOUND LOVE FOR BILLIE HOLIDAY AND WED SIT IN MY ROOM AND LISTEN OVER AND OVER BUT HE NEVER DUG HER HE DID LIKE COUNTBASIES AND BILLIE HOLIDAYS "SWING BROTHER SWING" BUT NOT 2 MUCH.

SOON EVERYDAY I WAS LISTENING TO BILLIE HOLIDAY AND I WAS A FAN...I DIDNT KNOW SHE WAS EVEN DEAD.

MY MOTHER SAID " HONEY SHE BEEN DEAD SINCE WAY B4 YOU WERE EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT BEFORE YOU WAS BORN. WHAT IS IT WITH YOU AND HER??? UHHHH YOU DONT KNOW WHAT GOODMORNING HEARTACHE MEANS OR WHAT "DONT EXPLAIN IS TALKING ABOUT. BUT ONE DAY YOU WILL AND U WILL SEE IT ISNT ABOUT HAPPINESS"

WHAT???
DEAD???

CRAP!!!!

MY MOTHER EXPLAINED SHE (LADY DAY) WAS A WOMAN WITH EXCESSES. SHE TOOK DRUGS AND DRANK LIQOUR AND PROBBLY DIDNT GO TO MASS. SHE ACTUALLY SAID THAT. SHE ALSO SAID "BILLIE HOLIDAY WAS A DISGRACE TO NEGROES"

I ONLY LOVED HER MORE I WAS FASINATED!

YEARS LATER I ASKED MY MOM WHY SHE SAID ALL THOSE MEAN THINGS ABOUT BILLIE HOLIDAY. SHE SAID, SHE WAS WORRIED THAT I LIKED HER TOO MUCH. SHE DINT WANT ME TO TRY AND BE LIKE HER. SHE SAID I EVEN COULD SING LIKE A LIL AND THAT WAS TRUE I DID A GOOD INPERSONATION OF HER TO ANYONE WHO DARED LISTEN. I WAS A KID WITH A NASAL VOICE LOL

MY AUNT LINDA LOVED HER TOO AND SHED BORROW ALL MY RECORDS AND TAPED THEM SHE WAS CHEAP! SHE TOLD ME SHE LISTENED AND SAW HER MANY TIMES AT CLUBS IN HARLEM AND SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL. SHE COULD NAME ALL THE OLD CLUBS TOO. ALSO ESTHER TREDWELL, A PIANIST WHO WAS MARRIED TO A MUSICIAN NAMED GEORGE TREDWELL HE HAD MANAGED SARAH VAUGHN I WAS TOLD AND WAS A GOOD FRIEND OF SINGER JOYA SHERELL WOULD BORROW MY RECORDS AND TELL STORIES OF BILLIE HOLIDAY 2 ME. SHE LIVED IN SAINT ALBANS NY AND SHE SAID BIILIE USE TO LIVE THERE WITH HER MAN/MANAGER. ST ALBANS WAS A BIG DEAL IN THE 1940S SO I HEARD.
I SOAKED IT ALL IN I WAS IN HEAVEN

AS TIME WENT ON I HAD A BILLIE HOLIDAY SCRAPBOOK AND PEOPLE/FRIENDS WHO WERE ARTISTS WOUOLD DRAW PICTURES OF BILLIE HOLIDAY FOR ME.

BUT, WHEN I TURNED 16 BILLIE HOLIDAY SAVED ME FROM BECOMING A DRUG ADDICT. HERION WAS A BIG DEAL AND EVERYONE WAS DOING IT. THEY WERE SHOOTING IT WITH COKE IN THE LOWER EAST SIDE OF NEW YORK. MY BEST FRIEND GOD REST HIS SOUL GOT HOOKED AT 15 AND WE USE TO HANG OUT IN ALL THE BIG TIME DOPE SPOTS IN THE LES AND IN HARLEM. BIG CLAW AND LINDAS ON 115TH STREET, CALVIN CLEINS IN BROOKLYN, MYUNCLE HENRIS ON E 2ND. AT 15 I KNEW EVERY HOE ON HOUSTON STREET, 125TH AND 3RD, AND 11TH AVE IN NYC. ID MAKE RUNS FOR ALL THOSE GIRLS BACK THEN. ID CARRY THEIRDOPE AND EVERYTHING. I USE TO RUNAWAY IN THOSE DAYS BOT BECAUSE I DIDNT LIKE HOME BUT BECAUSE THE WORLS WAS SO INTERESTING. ID SMOKE REEFER, HASH, DRINK LIQOUR AND I WAS YOUNG AND EVERYONE LIKED ME. I WAS SO HAPPY!

IN HER BOOK(BILLIE HOLIDAY) SHE SAID " DOING DOPE WILL KILLYOU THE LONG SLOW HARD WAY AND THOSE YOU LOVE" SHE WAS DAMNNED RIGHT! IT KILLED MY UNCLE HENRY HE WAS A PIMP IN THE 70'S AND 80'S AND A MAINLINER HE CAUGHT HEPITITUS. HE TRIED TO SHOOT ME UP AND I SAID "NO" HE TRIED TO BEAT ME UP. HE HAD TWO BEAUTIFUL HOES BUNNY AND I CANT REMEMBER THE OTHER ONE. HE WASNT A REAL UNCLE HE WAS A FRIEND OF FAMILY. ID RUN AWAY AND HED LET ME LIVE THERE. HE'D TRIED TO MOLEST ME WHEN HE WAS HIGH. BUT HE NEVER DID. HE WAS AN EVVIL OLD BASTARD. A WELFARE CHEAT AND AN ABUSER OF WOMEN AND YOUNG MEN AND A PEDOPHILE. HE WAS A SICK PERSON . WHEN MY MOTHER CAUGHT WIND SHE WAS GOING TO TURN ME OVER TO BE A WARD OF THE STATE INSTEAD THEY SOLD THEI RHOUSE AND MOVED ME AND THEM OUT OF NY FOR A WHILE.

I NEVER GOT INTO THE DOPE....THANK GOD BUT I LOST 16 FRIENDS IN THE 1990S TO AIDS AND DOPE

THEKLA HOLDER
CHRIS KEYES
LEON KESSLER
BRIAN VAUGHN
B. WHITE
RAYMOND M
CHARLES
PATASSA
AND THE LIST GOES ON.....

BILLIE HOLIDAY S WORDS SAVED MY LIFE THATS WHY TILL THIS DAY I LOVE HER SO....

THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED IN LOVING MEMORY TO MY NANA 1923-2008...WHO ALAWYS TRIED TO SHOW ME THE WAY TO BE A DECENT PERSON...SHE ALSO TAUGHT ME HOW TO IGNORE THE HATAS ...AND MAKE EM HATE EVEN MORE WHILE YOU WENT ON WITH THE TASK OF LIVING..THANK YOU I LOVE YOU....

A PICTORIAL WALK THRU BROOKLYN ON A SUMMER DAY pt 3 (click 2 enlarge)

2009-11-06T01:49:00.001-05:00