Undercover Black Man

A free Kermit Ruffins download

2009-11-22T03:57:00.000-08:00

Bandleader Kermit Ruffins is the de facto goodwill ambassador of New Orleans... except he rarely travels to ambassadorize. You will see him blow, sing, act and barbecue on HBO when “Treme” debuts next April.

Kermit has a new Christmas album out. And I got a FREE MP3 for you.

Click here to hear “A Saints Christmas” on my Vox blog. To download it, click the song title below.

“A Saints Christmas” (MP3)
Album available at iTunes Music Store

Saturday morning cartoon

2009-11-21T06:58:00.001-08:00

This one’s for me.

2009-11-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

Playlist: Songs you didn’t know black people wrote

2009-11-19T09:13:00.000-08:00

I like this concept, y’all. I like it a lot. If you know other songs that belong on this list, let me know in the comments section.

1. “Anna (Go to Him)” – The Beatles

Early in their nightclub and recording careers, the Beatles performed many songs by black songwriters. Not only hall-of-famers like Chuck Berry and Smokey Robinson, but forgotten artists such as Larry Williams, Roy Lee Johnson and Arthur Alexander.

Alexander wrote and recorded “Anna (Go to Him)” in 1962. The next year, John Lennon sang it for the very first Beatles album. (Click here to hear Arthur Alexander’s version.)

2. “Java” – Al Hirt

If you’re old enough to remember “middle of the road” pop music, then surely you know this melody. To me, it’s as quintessentially ’60s as Herb Alpert’s “Spanish Flea.” And just as corny.

Come to find out it was written by New Orleans R&B legend Allen Toussaint when he was 20 years old. (Click here for Toussaint’s original cut. The drummer sounds like he got three arms. He’s killin’!)

3. “Hard Headed Woman” – Elvis Presley

A No. 1 hit for Elvis in 1958, “Hard Headed Woman” was written for him by Claude Demetrius, a successful black songwriter who had worked with Louis Jordan. (Click here to hear “I Like ’Em Fat Like That,” a tune Demetrius wrote with Jordan.)

According to Wikipedia, “Hard Headed Woman” was the first rock ’n’ roll 45 to be officially designated a “gold record.”

4. “It’s All Over Now” – The Rolling Stones

This was the Stones’ very first No. 1 single in Britain. “It’s All Over Now” has since been covered by the likes of Rod Stewart, the Grateful Dead and the Chambers Brothers. In New Orleans, the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth brass bands have turned it into a familiar parade number.

The song was written by Bobby Womack and his sister-in-law, Shirley Jean, for Womack’s family group, the Valentinos. (Click here to hear the Valentinos original.)

5. “Oh Dem Golden Slippers” – The Sing-A-Long Gang

Remember those Golden Grahams commercials from the ’70s? Oh, those Golden Grahams. Oh, those Golden Grahams... Yep, a black guy wrote that melody... 130 years ago.

I grew up knowing “Oh Dem Golden Slippers” as a piece of Americana, like “Sweet Adeline.” Never knew that it used to be sung in blackface. And that it was written by Negro minstrel James A. Bland, who also wrote “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.”

Born before the Civil War to a free and educated black family in Flushing, N.Y., Bland graduated from Howard University in 1873 and spent 20 years performing in London.

Today, there are housing projects named after Mr. Bland in Flushing, Queens, and Alexandria, Virginia.

(Click here to hear Nina Simone sing another of Bland’s enduring tunes, “In the Evening by the Moonlight.”)

Random hipness

2009-11-19T00:42:00.001-08:00

Best news I’ve heard today.

2009-11-18T15:43:00.001-08:00

A new CD from the Carolina Chocolate Drops is coming in February! It’s called “Genuine Negro Jig” (a front-runner for album title of the decade).

Follow this link to Nonesuch Records to see the track listing.

The album was produced by Joe Henry, the Daniel Lanois of the new millennium. He has produced Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann, Solomon Burke and other top talents.

All the critics love Joe Henry, which means “Genuine Negro Jig” will get lots of attention. So 2010 could be a breakout year for the Chocolate Drops. They’ll get on Letterman or “The Tonight Show” for sure.

If you haven’t seen my previous posts about this band and wonder why I’m excited, check out the video below. It was recorded three months ago at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Goofing on Sarah (Slight Return)

2009-11-18T09:54:00.000-08:00

Dreams from his father

2009-11-17T15:16:00.001-08:00

I knew a right-wing reaction was coming. But I clutched my pearls when I read today’s opinion piece by Wesley Pruden, former editor- in-chief of the Washington Times, about President Obama bowing to the Japanese emperor.

Mr. Pruden concluded with perhaps the most racially provocative paragraph written by a legitimate American journalist in the 21st century. To wit:

“It’s no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what [America] is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared... in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.”

I worked at the Washington Times during the 1980s. I’ve had a conversation or two with Wes Pruden. I couldn’t believe that graph. He is on some Lawrence Auster shit.

And his words are ricocheting all over the Web. The liberal watchdogs at Media Matters sent out an email alert. The Huffington Post piled on.

Media gossip site Gawker is running a poll on whether Pruden’s piece is more outrageous than some shit Glenn Beck said about Roman Polanski and health-care reform. (Pruden is ahead three-to-one.)

Now, before even 24 hours have passed, the “blood impulse” column is mentioned on Wesley Pruden’s Wikipedia page.

On a biological level, the idea that one’s comprehension of (and respect for) America depends upon the birthplace of one’s father, or to whom one’s mother was sexually attracted... I mean, that’s plain silly.

On a metaphorical level, though, everyone understands what Pruden means by a “blood impulse.” He means that white Americans are the best Americans. The only true Americans. Non-whites can become good Americans maybe... but it’s not “natural” for them, not instinctive.

So then. Pruden wants to bring mamas and daddies into it? Let’s talk about his father... the Rev. Wesley Pruden, Sr. (pictured below).

As the anti-racist Southern Poverty Law Center has pointed out, Pruden the Elder was a staunch segregationist in Little Rock, Arkansas. The New York Times once described him as “a hot-eyed pastor.”

According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Pastor Pruden pumped up the white mobs in front of Central High School in 1957, “verbally encouraging them, according to [journalist Roy] Reed, ‘to fight niggers, communists, and cops!’ ”

Here’s what the New York Times reported when Rev. Pruden’s Broadmoor Baptist Church was kicked out of the Pulaski County Baptist Association in 1959:

“Mr. Pruden is the chaplain and former president of the Capital Citizens Council, which has promoted resistance to the racial integration of Little Rock’s public high schools. He has also directed ‘freedom fund’ collections for the legal defense of persons arrested in segregationist demonstrations.”

So when Wesley Pruden, Jr., talks about having a blood-borne understanding of what America is all about... I am led to wonder about his natural instincts.

After all, his great-grandfather David was a corporal in the Confederate army. His great-great-grandfather – John H. Pruden – owned slaves in North Carolina. Can’t get more American than that, I reckon.

Leave my face out of the conversation.

2009-11-17T07:43:00.001-08:00

So I’m sitting in the men’s room at work, and I happen to read the wrapper on the Precious brand toilet paper. It says “facial quality.”

I’m thinking, “You know... I would be perfectly satisfied with ‘butthole quality.’ ”

Tuesday 12-inch Flashback: ‘Contact’

2009-11-17T05:31:00.000-08:00

All right, I admit it. I’m running out of 12-inch clips worth flashing back to.

A free Taana Gardner download

2009-11-16T07:46:00.000-08:00

I am such a fan of Taana Gardner’s 1981 funky hit record “Heartbeat,” I used it in my TV show “Kingpin.” Put it under a gunfight in a strip club. It was hot.

Last week, West End Records digitally reissued Ms. Gardner’s debut album from 1979. I’ve got a FREE MP3 of her first club hit, “Work That Body” (written by Kenton Nix, who would later create “Heartbeat” and another all-time great jam, Gwen McCrae’s “Funky Sensation”).

Click here to hear “Work That Body” on my Vox blog. To download it, click the song title below.

I just learned something I didn’t know about Taana Gardner. There’s a Kid Creole connection!

In ’79, she was recruited to sing with a studio project called Aural Exciters. One song they cut was “Maladie D’Amour,” written by August Darnell and Andy Hernandez... and later recorded by them for the first Kid Creole & the Coconuts LP.

Click here to hear Taana Gardner singing “Maladie D’Amour.”

“Work That Body” (MP3)
Album available at iTunes Music Store

About that bow...

2009-11-15T18:53:00.001-08:00

Seeing that most commenters here are cool with Obama’s bow to the Japanese Emperor – as a sign of cultural respect – I wonder what actual Japanese people are saying about it.

Thank God for the internets, where bilingual folks can read Japanese online forums... and blog about it in English.

Such as Joshua Williams. His “Japanese Headlines Examiner” blog is on Examiner.com. Here are a few online comments Williams says he translated from Japanese:

“What a bow!”

“Such a deep bow from Obama, what a fine guy.”

“I’m surprised he bowed. He’s really trying hard to meet the Japanese way!”

“President Obama is a top-class person, isn’t he? Amazing!”

“I laughed because it was a much better bow than I had imagined.”

“Obama has more of a true Japanese heart than most Japanese do.”

But then a commenter at Examiner.com, one Ted Nakagawa, replied:

“What we are not getting translated [by Williams] are these Japanese blogs with posters to whom the Obama Tokyo bow is somewhat ‘going to their nationalist heads’.

“All kinds of nationalist comments such as amazement that a nation defeated would be bowed at in this manner, and ‘Long Live the Emperor!’, and also abject surprise at Obama bowing like this -- racial ephitets are also made about Mr. Obama in disdain (for example, referring to him as ‘kuronbo’ (or ‘little black boy’)...

“One Japanese poster is questioning if this kind of Obama [bow] to the Emperor is not a violation of US diplomatic protocol, and another one predicts that Americans, despite what Japanese might think -- are going to get mad over this...”

In another comment, Nakagawa added:

“Comments (in Japanese) on the same Japanese blog that were NOT fawning over Obama and his controversial ‘ojigi’ before the Emperor, some in fact questioning it and suspecting it insincere, have apparantly been purposely left out of this journalist's translations and report.”

I am not looking forward to a week’s worth of talk-radio and cable- news folderol over The Bow, curious as I am about the actual protocol. The signal-to-noise ratio is gonna suck!

UBM's World of Glamour and Fame

2009-11-15T11:38:00.000-08:00

This morning I saw Steve Harvey playing roulette at the Harrah’s New Orleans. (He performed last night at New Orleans Arena.) Sharp- dressed man... except for the sunglasses worn indoors.

As for me... I didn’t wanna deal with the poker room waiting list, so I messed around on the slot machines. Walked outta there $90 ahead. Woo-hoo!

That’s like a free bag of groceries from Whole Foods.

WTF??

2009-11-14T14:22:00.001-08:00

I know Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck will trash him next week for this... but dammit, look at this picture of our president.

Who-da-hell told Barack Obama that he, as President of the United States, should ever bow down to a foreigner?

I don’t like this, y’all. Makes Obama look chumpish. (And I had already started wondering whether he’s a lightweight.)

I’ve only spent a little time in New Orleans, but I can tell you... a Mardi Gras Indian wouldn’t bow down to the Emperor of Japan. Nor to anyone else. (If you don’t understand what I mean, listen to this.)

Who is Obama gonna bow down to next? Ice Cube?

A free Henry Threadgill download

2009-11-14T11:47:00.000-08:00

Avant-garde jazzman Henry Threadgill has been described as “one of the most original jazz composers of his generation.” But his music isn’t for everybody.

Threadgill has a brand new CD out... with his ensemble Zooid, which combines instruments such as tuba and acoustic guitar. I got a FREE MP3 off the new album featuring Mr. Threadgill on flute.

Click here to hear “White Wednesday Off the Wall” on my Vox blog. To download it, click the title below.

(By the way... this is my 400th FREE MP3 post!)

“White Wednesday Off The Wall” (MP3)
Album available at iTunes Music Store

Saturday morning cartoon

2009-11-14T03:49:00.001-08:00

Can you relate?

2009-11-13T16:07:00.000-08:00

Can you relate?

2009-11-12T04:28:00.000-08:00

Random blackness

2009-11-11T05:45:00.001-08:00

Seriously, you will never see a Russian or Korean baby acting this way. (Hat-tip: Denmark Vesey.)

Tuesday 10-inch Flashback: ‘Oh, Didn’t He Ramble’

2009-11-10T05:53:00.001-08:00

Random wrongness...

2009-11-09T05:56:00.000-08:00

... New Orleans style.

A free Ramsey Lewis download

2009-11-08T04:31:00.000-08:00

Pianist Ramsey Lewis, who’s been making records since the 1950s, has a new jazz album out... “Songs from the Heart: Ramsey Plays Ramsey.”

If you’re registered at AllAboutJazz.com, you can cop a FREE MP3.

Click here to hear “Touching, Feeling, Knowing” on my Vox blog. To download the track, follow this link to AllAboutJazz.

Trivia time: When Eldee Young and Red Holt left the Ramsey Lewis Trio in 1966 (eventually to become the Young-Holt Unlimited), who was Ramsey Lewis’s new drummer? Hint: He later became very famous.

The answer is in the comments section.

Saturday morning cartoon

2009-11-07T01:08:00.000-08:00

Random genius

2009-11-06T04:51:00.000-08:00

Seriously... how brilliant is Erika Brooks Adickman?

(By the way, I blogged eight months ago about the legend of Stagger Lee and its musical byproducts. Case you missed it.)

A free Apache flute download

2009-11-05T18:00:00.001-08:00

President Obama today addressed more than 500 Indian chiefs in Washington, D.C. This reminds me to point out that November is American Indian Heritage Month.

Not to pat myself on the back... but last year, on this blog, I rocked the balls off of American Indian Heritage Month. Some of you might remember.

If not, you can still read about rock ’n’ roll Indians... or the Mohawk ironworkers... or the famous orator Chief Red Jacket... or Afro-Navajo recording artist Radmilla Cody... or the fascinating history of Canada’s oldest Christmas carol.

I won’t be kicking it like that this year. As a blogger, I’m a shell of my former self. Because now I got a real job.

Anyhoo... for American Indian Heritage Month 2009, the least I can do is point to a FREE MP3. Hope y’all dig Apache flute music.

Click here to hear “Flying Free” on my Vox blog. The artist is Andrew Vasquez. To download the track, click the title below.

“Flying Free” (MP3)
Album available at iTunes Music Store
Album available at eMusic
Album available at Amazon MP3