Sinéad's Talking Blues, Della's Talking Soul...
Sinéad's Talking Blues, Della's Talking Soul...
...I'm Talking Dub, Daniel's Talking 2 Tone, and Marian & Eddie are singing before Presidents.
First up, if you are new here - and I am getting more subscribers (and followers) every day - welcome to the camp. Do we all know why we’re here? I’m Tony, I’ve written some books, I’ve done a few other things over a pretty fun (and sometimes not fun-) filled life, and I’m on Substack to write about music, pop culture, and occasionally politics, running and whatever else takes my fancy, including the personal reflective pieces that readers seem to enjoy as much as any. During the week, I either offer recommendations and observations linked together thematically like this post, or something short(er) and sweet to write about; at weekends I post something long(er). These weekend posts can include transcripts from past interviews, and those and a few other pieces I do offer as incentive and bonus for paid-up subscribers. My own life is over-subscribed at the moment with college courses and “creative” (i.e. barely-paid) work, and I keep this Wordsmith thingy going largely based on your largesse. I am grateful both to friends and strangers who have taken the leap into becoming a paid-up subscriber. You get access to over 100 previous posts and nine (and counting) episodes of the Crossed Channels podcast I host with
. Next week we’ll be talking MC5. So, Kick Out The Jams, Motherf***ers and let’s get moving…YOU WON’T FOOL THE CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION
I appreciate that my post last weekend about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt got some of you to appreciate either or both of their contributions to our lives. I was reminded after my article went up, by my better half, of a historical action undertaken by Eleanor while her husband was in his second term as President that we had learned about by visiting the FDR Museum and Library.
In 1939, the great contralto singer Marian Anderson was invited to perform in Washington D.C. by Howard University. Because of her renown, Howard intended for her to perform not on campus but at Constitution Hall. But the Daughters of the Revolution owned Constitution Hall and their contracts had a white-artist-only clause. And yes, Anderson was Black.
Eleanor Roosevelt had been a member of the Daughters; presumably, it had seemed the right Society for her to join at some point. But because the Daughters wouldn’t adjust their position of discrimination and segregation, she made this a point over and the point at which to resign - publicly, publishing her letter of resignation and writing about in her widely-read syndicated column, “My Day.” The letter is below:
The concert ended up taking place. Thanks to the engagement of the NAACP, whose Walter White apparently came up with the idea, Anderson ended up singing not at Constitution Hall but at the Lincoln Memorial. Though D.C. was indeed heavily segregated at the time - considered part of “The South” - the Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes signed off on the event and on April 9, 1939, as Hitler’s Nazi troops continued a surge across Europe in the cause of fascism, Marian Anderson confronted the biggest audience of her 42-years-and-counting life: some 75,000 people. Perhaps understanding that controversy around her D.C. concert had propelled the arc of justice to move that bit further towards progress in the USA, she opened with “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” The image of her singing in front of that Lincoln statue is a stirring one. So, but of course, is the performance.
You can read more about the events surrounding the concert here. And read the Daughters of the Revolution’s hand-written response to Eleanor Roosevelt’s resignation at this wonderfully clunky National Archives site.
SINÉAD’S TALKING BLUES
Regular readers know I’m forever singing the praises of The Face Radio and occasionally I dip into a show I don’t know. Such was the case with Pete Mitchell’s ‘Soul Time’ show last Sunday, Sep 14 - which I did not imagine was a six-year old “repeat” until I heard him introduce my own favourite female voice of all time, that of Sinéad O’Connor, discussing the blues and picking six choice cuts in the process.
Sinéad was a musical magpie of the best kind, making authentic albums of dub-influenced reggae and traditional Irish music amidst her own songs in that multi-faceted, often brilliant and occasionally tragic career. But who knew she knew so much about the blues? She did: in this conversation, she is in deep. She knows what she likes (the Chicago Electric Blues), she loves it, she appreciates it, and she can talk about Magic Sam all day long, sending one straight to YouTube for what she said back in 2018 was the only clip of him performing that has made it online:
Additionally, O’Connor knows to keep a respectful distance from this music - no reaching out to B.B. King for a duet, even if some of us wish she had. I find Mitchell’s own voice far too Smashie and Nicey (i.e. daytime Radio 1 of yore) for my liking, but Sinéad’s… She could talk through the phone book and I’d have attended. You can listen on Mixcloud here.
And because any excuse to read about, write about or listen to Sinéad is a good one, I’m going to share back out this tribute to O’Connor after her sad passing last year, in which I used her cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” as my starting point. I have removed it for now from the paywall:
DUB REGGAE INTERVENTION
I’ve always maintained that dub reggae can cure not just the blues, but pretty much any ailment, and after my brain hemorrhage in 2021, it was all I listened to for a couple of weeks. As I moved back into vocal reggae music too, I ended up asking Facebook friends for their top reggae track of all time and compiled this playlist from the results. It is a little commercial, yes, but it’s certainly eclectic. I allowed my own personal fave reggae song of all time to open proceedings:
And for those who like to dig deeper into their dub, I put together the following playlist to help me when I wrote a college paper about ‘The Studio As Instrument in Jamaican Dub Reggae’ just last year. (I am hoping it may yet get published in full in the appropriate journal.) It assembles music from the ‘Dub Reggae Pioneers,’ including a couple of the very first dub albums to come out of Kingston, JA, and it’s only 11 hours long.
2 TONE RULES!
We had an amazing event at the Orpheum Theater just ten days ago, when I hosted Daniel Rachel to talk about his book Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story, newly published in the USA, in hardback, by Akashic Books which lists buying options here. The original idea had been to show the movie Dance Craze as part of The Orpheum’s weekly Monday night music movie series, but we ended up doing something way better: having Daniel discuss the 2 Tone story via a series of videos I selected - none of which he knew about (though a couple of which he had recommended) in advance. I’m happy to share the Playlist: there is some astonishing footage here, and it brought back so many wonderful memories. Also, to be frank - and I frankly discussed my own experiences in the room given that Daniel is just a few years younger than me - it brought back less wonderful memories of the tribal violence and outright racism that turned many a dancehall haunted. The music, thank your higher force, lives on in eternity.
KAMALA VISITS DELLA SOUL
If you watched her DNC Convention Speech (a reminder from last Sunday’s post that until FDR in 1932, Presidential candidates did not traditionally show for the Convention), you’ll know that Kamala Harris dropped references to “Aretha, Coltrane, and Miles.” These weren’t mere soundbite props, but genuine props. In her 2019 political memoir The Truths We Hold (the one she wrote in advance of a Presidential campaign and the one I recently picked up free at a neighborhood Little Library), she talks extensively of growing up surrounded by jazz, blues, gospel and soul, namechecking specific records and artists.
As such, I was going to share out the clip of her visiting a Black-owned D.C. record shop recently, but the event feels somewhat staged. However, searching for that clip, I found a much better one, of the VP’s unannounced stop at the first Black-Female-owned record shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during a trip to the city back in February, long before the current campaign trail. Although maybe the TV cameras got there in time to find her eagerly showing off her newly acquired George Clinton doll outside the shop, there were no TV cameras inside, only selfies. Fortunately, a local channel did the right thing and interviewed the store’s owner afterwards (but then disabled the share option: the video is here, please do have a look): she (the store owner, not Kamala in this instance) is wonderful on camera, her back story is great, and the shop looks just beautiful. And hey, if I was going to open a record store largely dedicated to Soul Music and my first name was Della, I’d call the place Della Soul too! Here is Della’s selfie; her IG account is here and her shop ships worldwide.
BLACK MUSIC IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Quite regardless of the political reasons, an added bonus of having Kamala Harris in the White House as of next year would be knowing that she’d bring music back to the residence. There’s a long history of the Arts being recognized by US Presidents, which appeared to reach its zenith with Obama’s two terms, and though you could easily argue it then dipped into its nadir with the unsophisticated Trump, I don’t believe Joe Biden has hosted many concerts or other Arts events either. So here’s to bringing back music - Black, white, multi-cultural and musically multi-dimensional - to the White House.
And here’s an appropriate clip and a suitable quote to leave us off on. When I co-wrote Eddie Floyd’s autobiography Knock-Knock-Knock On Wood! My Life In Soul, Eddie talked of this following performance, how he switched into an unexpected soul-clap on his signature song, and how Barack Obama “switched right with me - Leaned his head sideways and got into the groove. He knew his soul music.’’
Peace.