JOSEPHINE BAKER, A FRENCH ICON

Entertainer and exotic dancer Josephine Baker was a force of nature.  Writer Ernest Hemmingway once called her, “…the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.” Others nicknamed her Black Pearl, Creole Goddess, and Black Venus.  She was all of that and more; trendsetter, civil rights fighter, French government spy.      

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, June 3, 1906 as Freda Josephine McDonald, Baker’s road at birth was a far cry from the one she would travel.  Her mother was Carrie McDonald and her father was Eddie Carson, a vaudeville performer, who left the family early after Baker was born.  However, there is some speculation that Baker’s father was not Carson, but some other man for whom Baker’s mother once did domestic work. 

Though her mother would eventually remarry to Arthur Miller and the family would grow to include a son and two more daughters, Baker ran away from home at age 13. She got a job waitressing tables at The Old Chauffer’s Club where she would meet her first husband, Willie Wells. 

The two were married in 1919.  Their union would last a year. 

Also during this time, Baker started touring with The Jones Family Band and The Dixie Steppers doing comical skits and dancing.  Though she was rejected from chorus lines because she was thought to be too dark and skinny, while working as a dresser she learned some of showgirls’ routines.  By chance when one of the performers happened to leave, she conviently got a job filling in as the replacement.

In 1920, Baker met and married Howard Baker, a Pullman Porter.  Their union would last three years, although his last name was the one Baker would retain as her own.

At the advent of the Harlem Renissance, Baker headed to New York where she performed at the Plantation Club.  She also danced in the Broadway productions of Shuffle Along (1921) and The Chocolate Dandies (1924).  Baker started to routinely be featured as the last dancer in chorus lines, a position of honor; it required the performer to not only be entertaining in a comedic manner, but also to execute the dance routines with more precision and intensity.   

Yet, Baker’s destiny seemed to lay in France when she and her dancer partner, Joe Alex, performed for a new venture, La Revue Nègre. The dye was cast on her career.  Dancing in nothing but a feather skirt, Alex and she drove the audiences into a frenzy with their Danse Sauvage.   The French audiences had never seen something so sensual and exotic.  Baker’s early overseas performances made her a virtual star overnight.

After La Revue Nègre closed, Baker performed in La Folie du Jour at the Follies-Bergére Theater.  Her breath-taking performance, performed in the her now famous bananas skirt—16 bananas strung together—cemented celebrity status.  Although Baker is also credited with being a movie star, she only made a total of three films—Siren of the Tropics (1927), Zouzou (1934), and Princesse Tam Tam (1935)

However, no matter how high her star climbed in France and in Europe, America would never embrace her so lovingly.  When Baker returned to the United States in 1936 to star in the Ziegfield Follies, American audiences rejected her.  Indeed, the New York Times called her a “…Negro wench…”.  Brokenhearted, Baker would return to Europe.

In 1937, she would marry Jean Lion, a French sugar magnate.  Their union would last a year, although from this marriage Baker would aquire French citizenship.  All in all, Baker would marry four times.  She had no children of her own—having had several miscarriages—but she did adopt 12 children of various races that she called The Rainbow Tribe. 

During World War II, Baker became a spy for the French government.  Though she performed for French troops, she also did undercover work—smuggling secret messages written on her music sheets and under her dresses.  After the war, she would be the first American-born woman to receive France’s highest military honor, the Croix de Guerre.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Baker several times visited the United States to fight racism. She refused to perform in segregated clubs—being responsible for integrating several in Las Vegas—and 1963 she spoke at the March on Washington by Martin Luther King Jr.’s side.

On April 8, 1975, Baker performed one last time at the Bobino Theater in Paris, France.  The event was financed by Prince Rainer, Princess Grace, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  Celebrities in the audience included Mick Jagger, Sophia Loren, Diana Ross, and Liza Minneli.  Baker received rave reviews for her performance.  Four days later, after she was surrounded by good reviews of her show, Baker was found lying in her bed in a coma, having suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.  She was taken to a hospital where she died at 68 years old.

More than 20,000 people filled the streets of Paris to watch the funeral procession.  The French government honored her with a 21-gun salute, making Baker the first American woman to be buried in France with military honors.   

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Jimi Hendrix: Kiss The Sky

Long before Rocker Osszy Osborn actually decapitated a bat’s head with his mouth onstage, long before the group Kiss ever disguised themselves with makeup, there was Jimi Hendrix. He was the epitome of Rock and Roll music; sudden, bombastic, innovative, tragic. Often thought of as the greatest electric guitarist of all time, his is a mythos that has remained for almost 40 years after his tragic death. Some even speculate whether or not Hendrix was destined to live a long life.

Like similar others in pop culture lore—such as James Dean—his flame burned all too brightly, too quickly. Yet he left an indelible impression, not only on Rock and Roll, but several other music forms as well. As writer Ann Powers said in a New York Times October 13, 2000 article, “…the three genres Hendrix helped found—heavy metal, jazz fusion, and funk—have evolved beyond his contributions.”

But Hendrix did more than this. He was the catalyst for the blues guitar, bringing it in with the modern age of Rock and Roll.

The man who would become Jimi Hendrix was born Johnny Marshall Hendrix on November 27, 1942 in Seattle, Washington. Hendrix would only see his mother, Lucille Hendrix nèe Jeter, sporadically before her death in 1958. She was 17 when she had Hendrix and she had a tumultuous relationship with his father, James Allen ‘Al’ Hendrix. After his birth, she put Hendrix in temporary care with relatives in California.

James Hendrix was stationed at an army base in Oklahoma when his son was born. After his release there, he united with his son, taking him and changing his name to James Marshall Hendrix, supposedly in memory of Hendrix’ deceased brother, Leon Marshall Hendrix. For a brief period, James Hendrix also reunited with Lucille.

The couple had several more children together: Joseph, Kathy, and Pamela. Born with physical ailments, Joseph was given to the state to care for when he was three. Hendrix’s sisters wouldn’t fare much better as they were also given up to the state and for adoption. Kathy was born blind and Pamela—like Joseph—was born with physical disabilities.

The Hendrix’s divorced when Jimi was nine. Though he was not raised with a silver spoon in his mouth, he did grow up around diverse cultures. It is said that his high school, “…had a relatively equitable mix of African, European (including Jews), and Asian (Japanese, Filipino and Chinese) Americans.” Growing up with such diversity is perhaps what later led Hendrix to caution against racial barriers in music.

Ironically, Hendrix didn’t pick up his first guitar until he was 15 years old. At 14, he had seen Elvis Presley perform and had taken to mimicking him, playing a broomstick in imitation, for about a year. Once the acoustic guitar was in his hands, however, he took to it like a fish to water.

From constant practice—through osmosis of watching others play and taking tips from experienced guitarists—Hendrix honed his craft. He also received additional guitar tutelage from listening to his father’s Muddy Waters and B.B. King records.

Though Hendrix would become known for his musicianship, he was also become known for wild antics onstage. Being a leftie, but playing a right-handed guitar, made him a standout. Some, however, did not like such showboating. Hendrix was fired from his first formal band, The Velvetones, for his guitar theatrics.

After a brief stint in the Army, Hendrix continued to pursue a musical career; working as a session musician, backing up Little Richards, Sam Cooke, and the Isley Brothers. For a brief period, he even worked with Ike and Tina Turner. Yet, it wasn’t until he was discovered by Chas Chandler—the former bassist for the Animals—in a Greenwich Village club in New York that doors began to open for him.

When he heard Hendrix play, Chandler, spilling a milkshake on himself, had an epiphany. He begged Hendrix to come to England so that he could introduce him to some other musicians. Hendrix only agreed to come if Chandler could introduce him to Eric Clapton. Through sheer luck and destiny, Hendrix went overseas, played at key clubs, and met the right people at English music venues.

Additionally, not only did Hendrix get to meet Clapton, who at that time was in the band Cream, he was able to play for him. Says Charles R. Cross of Hendrix, in the article The Legend of Jimi Hendrix, in Rolling Stone magazine July 28, 2005, “He had spent 23 years of his life struggling in an America where black musicians were outcasts within rock music. In one single day in London, his entire life had permanently been recast.”

Later paired with musicians Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, Hendrix created The Jimi Hendrix Experience, a band that made admirers out of England’s music royalty: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Eric Clapton. In 1967, the band released its first single, Hey Joe. It was an instant smash in England and was followed by Purple Haze and The Wind Cried Mary.

Part of Hendrix’s popularity came because of his guitar proclivity, to be sure, but Hendrix also harbored a certain sensual aura about himself. As writer Pete Townshend said, “To a man watching, he was erotic like Mick Jagger is erotic. It was a high form or eroticism, almost spiritual in quality. There was a sense of wanting to possess him and wanting to be a part of him, to know how he did what he did because he was so powerfully affecting.”

Still, there were two sides of the coin. While Hendrix was light-hearted and free-spirited, he was heavy into drug use. Though he allegedly had never tried any psychedelic drugs, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) until he met Linda Keith, Hendrix had a voracious appetite for cannabis and alcohol. Later, he would acquire a predilection for heroin and amphetamines.

Accordingly, Hendrix was infamous for episodes where he became belligerent after consuming a lot of alcohol. Former girlfriend Kathy Etchingham says an inebriated Hendrix assaulted her with a telephone headset, thinking she was calling another man on the pay phone; another ex-girlfriend, Carmen Borrero, claims she had to have stitches after he became jealous and struck her with a bottle.

Despite the Experience achieving success in Europe, the group had yet to duplicate it in America. Their chance came when Paul McCartney suggested the band to organizers of the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 (the start of the Summer of Love) on the fairgrounds of Monterey, California. There, Hendrix gave an electrifying performance, doing a rendition of Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor (1965) and B.B. King’s Rock Me Baby (1964), among others. He ended the act by lighting his guitar on fire.

American audiences started to take notice of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The group scored again in 1968 with another album, Axis: Bold as Love, followed up by another later that year, Electric Ladyland, which featured the smash hit All Along the Watchtower, written by Bob Dylan. The Jimi Hendrix Experience continued to tour until 1969 when it split up, mainly due to creative differences.

That same year, after Hendrix attempted unsuccessfully to create a new group—Band of Gypsys—he performed at the Woodstock Festival, in the little town of Wallkill, New York. It was here that perhaps his legend was etched in stone after he gave one of the most memorable renditions of the Star-Spangled Banner ever performed.

After restructuring the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1970 and doing a European leg of a tour, Hendrix returned to London and talked about parting ways with his manager, Michael Jeffery, to Chandler and several others. Several days later, September 18, 1970, Hendrix died. The cause was ruled to be barbiturate intoxication and inhalation of vomit. An ambulance crew found his body in the Samarkand Hotel, west London, in the room of a woman called Monika Dannemann, whom he had known only a few days.

Some theorize, however, that Jeffrey killed Hendrix to collect on a multi-million dollar insurance policy he had taken out on the musician before Hendrix could fire him. Supposedly, Jeffrey drunkenly confessed in 1971 to stuffing pills and pouring red wine down Hendrix’s mouth, but nothing was ever proved. Jeffrey died in a plane crash in 1973.

Whatever the cause for Hendrix’s demise, it could never eclipse how he affected Rock and Roll and the impact he had on music overall. Even in death, his legend seemingly grows. Hendrix continues to kiss the sky.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HERBIE HANCOCK

-© 2011, n.m. shabazz-

Jazz musician Herbert Jeffery Hancock—better known as Herbie Hancock—has reinvented himself more times than Cher or Madonna.  Having a career that began in the early 1960’s, he has gone from performing hard-bop to post-bop and jazz fusion to contemporary jazz.  At 71 years old, the baby-faced music legend is still as poised and exuberant as ever.  Hancock, who was a part of Miles Davis’ “second great quintet”, was born in Chicago, Illinois, April 12, 1940.  Considered a child prodigy at an early age, he originally took up classical music education.  His instrument of choice was the piano.

By age of 11, Hancock was gifted enough to play with the Chicago Symphony, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 5. Influenced by Oscar Peterson and George Shearing records, he started playing jazz in high school. It was also in high school that he started to show an uncanny predilection for electronic science.  When Hancock later went to Grinnell College, he took a double major in music and electrical engineering (he left before completing his degrees).

In 1960, Hancock was discovered by jazz legend Donald Byrd and joined his band.  It was Byrd who initially opened doors for Hancock, introducing him to Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records.  After two years of session work, Hancock was signed as a solo artist.  His debut album, Takin’ Off (1963), was an immediate success, spawning Watermelon Man, which was a big hit on the Jazz and Rhythm and Blues charts.

Hancock’ star was rising and other musicians were taking notice.  In 1963, he received a call to join the Holy Grail of jazz music; Davis’ second great quintet that was composed of Ron Carter (bassist), Tony Williams (drummer), Wayne Shorter on (tenor sax), and Hancock on piano. He would contribute to Davis gems such as E.S.P., Miles Smiles, Nefertiti, and Filles de Kilimanjaro.  Though Hancock would come to make a name for himself within Davis’ band, he also kept recording on his own for Blue Note.  His albums, Empyrean Isles (1964) and Maiden Voyage (1965) were considered seminal works and effectively influenced jazz music in the 1960’s.

In 1966, Hancock was asked to compose a musical score to Michelangelo Antonioni’s film, “Blow Up”.  This helped Hancock to receive more offers to compose music for other feature films and television series. In 1969, he composed the soundtrack for the Emmy-winning animated children’s television show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which he named Fat Albert Rotunda. Hancock, who would win an Oscar in 1986 for his musical score in the film “‘Round Midnight”, would also go on to compose music for the movies “Colors”, “Jo Jo Dancer”, “Action Jackson”, and “Harlem Nights”.

By the time Hancock left Davis’ quintet in 1968, he had started incorporating technology into his music.  He had his first taste of the electric piano—a Wurlitzer—while working with Davis in a session. On Davis’ Miles in the Sky (1968), he would use the Fender Rhodes electric piano. He began to become more fascinated with musical gadgets and toys.

Hancock left Blue Note in 1969 and signed with Warner Brothers.  It was at this time that he started to push the musical boundaries of jazz by incorporating synthesizers and electronic music into his compositions.  The result was Mwandishi (1970).  Like Davis’ Bitches Brew (1970), Mwandishi was a seismic shift in the way jazz musicians approached their craft.

Going toward more “earthy”, “funky” music, Hancock formed the musical group, The Headhunters, which released Head Hunters (1974).  This album spawned the Sly Stone-influenced hit single, Chameleon.  Head Hunters, Hancock’s first foray into jazz fusion was one of the best selling jazz albums of all time.  Despite the album’s commercial success, however, there were charges among jazz purists that Hancock was selling out.  Although the group would release several more commercially viable albums—Thrust (1974) and Flood (1975)—by the late 1970’s Hancock was again looking elsewhere to test musical boundaries.

He found it in 1983 with the platinum selling album Future Shock, which produced the hit single Rockit.  Its new, infectious sound featured perhaps the first recorded use of scratching and won a Grammy for Best Rhythm and Blues Instrumental.  The video, created from the track also went on to win five MTV awards.

Fast-forwarding two decades, Hancock is still confounding the music critics.  In 2008, he won a controversial award over Amy Winehouse and Kanye West for Album of the Year, for River: The Joni Letters (2007) at the Grammys.  It was the first time in 43 years that a jazz musician had won the award.  And he still refuses to be pigeonholed.  Though many say what Hancock records nowadays is not jazz—and in many instances he agrees—he rebukes their pomposity.

“I never signed in my own blood that the only records I’d make were jazz records,” Hancock said in a December 2010 interview with writer Andrew Bruss.  “I can make any kind of records I want to make.  I like making music.  It doesn’t have to be jazz.  It doesn’t have to have a label.”

Etta James’ Rage To Survive

©2011, N.M. Shabazz

Blues music is about experiences, the joys and pains of life.  As a little kid, though, I never appreciated that form of music.  I now know it was because I had not experienced enough of life— its joys or pains—to wrap my mind around the concept about what the artists where singing.

Etta James, one of those old school souls who is able to sing both jazz and blues, understands the latter all too well.  Throughout her early career, she experienced much heartache and pain.  Her autobiography, Rage To Survive, by David Ritz and Etta James, 2003 Da Capo Press, is raw and visceral.

The book is a compelling read as James is like a wisened sage telling an age old story: a person from a confusing, challenging background rises to greatness—despite her self destructive tendencies and the adversities in her way.

Born Jamesetta Hawkins on January 25, 1938, in Los Angeles, California, James was wisked to Sacremento soon after she was born to go live with her aunt Cozzetta and uncle James.  They were of better mind to raise her than her mother, becoming legal guardians.  James’ mother, Dorothy, lived a transient lifestyle and seemed too preoccupied with her own ambitions to properly raise a child.

However, there is an old adage that goes, “…the fruit doesn’t fall too far from the tree…” and Etta proved to be her mother’s daughter, a wild child in every right.  Rage To Survive chronicles Etta’s musical procolotivity starting in the church, to her days as part of a trio, The Peaches, over to her recordings with Chess Records, and modern day life.

A drug addict even into the early 1970’s, James states she was so into herroin at one point there was no vien on her that hadn’t been poked by a needle.  She even injected herroin into a vien in her forehead.  James, who has often struggled with obesity throughout much of her life, states one of the reasons she liked herroin so much was that it helped to keep her thin.

James also talks about being drawn to abusive men.  Much like her drug addiction, she had an affinity for them.  Her husband, Artis Miles, whom she met in Alaska, was the one who finally broke the cycle.

Unlike James’ depiction in Cadillac Records, a character that singer Beyoncé Knowles portrays in the film, James never talks about a romance between its principal owner, Leonard Chess, and herself.  She does, however, give him credit for getting her out of tight spots and saving her house from her signature-forging mother.

The book is a cornocopia of music history, with famous and infamous muscicians in the mix—Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Guitar Watson, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, and a cast of others.  James even admits to once sleeping with Ike Turner despite Tina and she being friends.  Indeed, in terms of intimacy and whom she’s loved, James is quite revealing.

She’s also quite funny in her storytelling, sharing how James Brown—whom she called a dictator—once wanted to fire her from a music tour and how her big mouth almost got several of her entourage killed when they had stopped in a small town in Texas to refuel.

James, inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, proves to be quite a character.  Perhaps she was destined to live such a unique life; she needed it as experience to sing the blues.  She needed it as energy so she could rage to survive.

THE SMOOTH JAZZ DEBATE

-© 2011, N.M. Shabazz-

Jazz music has always seemingly been about the cerebral.  Thus, for anyone wanting to appear hip, it’s been chic to say they’re into jazz.  Since it’s perceived as a “deep” musical art form, by saying this the implications a person makes is that they’re cultured and refined.  In many eyes, jazz music is reserved for the intelligentsia; those intellectuals who spend their time sipping wine, pondering the adversities of life and its solutions.

This perception has always been a part of jazz’s problem, its musical complexities not being easily palatable to the masses.  Though jazz is about spontaneity and improvisation, to be labeled a jazz musician is, at times, marginalizing.   Take Miles Davis, for instance.  Forty years ago, he approached the head of Columbia Records, Clive Davis (no relation), and told him that if he stopped promoting him as a jazz musician then he would sell more records.

Miles was right.  His next album, Bitches Brew, went gold after its release in 1969. However, despite that seminal album and a plethora of more heralded music by myriad jazz artists over the years, some pundits have been speaking of jazz’s coming death for decades.  In 2009, Newsweek reported that, “…a National Endowment for the Arts survey found that the number for Americans attending live jazz concerts had declined precipitously and consistently over a 26-year span.”

Enter Smooth Jazz, which was a highly profitable alternative to Traditional Jazz.  Though many definitions of smooth jazz exist, probably the best was offered by writer Will Layman.  “Smooth jazz is probably best understood as a kind of easy-listening contemporary R&B without vocals”. Usually, melody-playing instruments—saxophones or guitars—dominates the tracks.

Though Kenneth Gorelick—better known as Kenny G.—represents the extreme side of the smooth jazz spectrum, there are a slew of other jazz musicians who are respected amongst their peers who can be considered smooth jazz artists, too.  Not as technical or musically complex as traditional or straight-ahead jazz, smooth jazz started gaining in popularity during the 1970’s.

A big reason for this was because of national radio exposure.  After it had bought out New York’s WRVR-FM in 1976, Sonderling Broadcasting tripled that radio station’s listening audience by focusing on artists like George Benson and Pat Metheny.

Later, WRVR radio station programmer Frank Cody would start “The Wave” musical format in Los Angeles (KTWV), San Diego (KIFM), and San Francisco (KKSF) which emphasized a softer sound while drawing on R&B and Pop influences.  Layman states that, “It was through market research conducted by Cody for WNUA that the phrase “smooth jazz” was coined—it apparently came from the mouth of a focus group participant.” 

During the early 1980’s, Smooth Jazz radio stations started replacing New Age radio stations in earnest.    However, not everyone was as thrilled about smooth jazz’s economic or social popularity.

Pianist Ellis Marsalis, Jr., called smooth jazz, “A hooker in an evening gown.”  Such grumblings from the patriarch of the legendary jazz family is understandable.  He and son, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, are jazz purists who dismiss smooth jazz as elevator music.  Wynton, a jazz zealot who once criticized Miles Davis for experimenting with commercial jazz styles later in his life, despises any music that utilizes a repetitive beat (he abhors hip hop music).

Yet, are such diatribes lobbed at smooth jazz artists because of professional preferences or professional jealousy?  The CD’s that smooth jazz artists make don’t buy themselves.  Likewise, not all listeners want to be challenged all of the time whenever music is played.  Sometimes, people just want to relax.

Proponents of smooth jazz call jazz purists and traditionalists snobs. They ask the question, can they help it if they give people what they want?

Plus, smooth jazz artists have probably attracted people to the genre who otherwise would never have bothered listening to the genre because of preconceived perceptions. States traditional jazz saxophonist Gary Bartz, “Maybe somebody will hear Kenny G.  and like the soprano and go get a Coltrane record.”   

Cody adds, “We have to start where the listeners are, then we can teach them.  I’m going to be respectful of the listener, not cynical.”

Consequently, smooth jazz artists such as Grover Washington, Jr., George Benson, Bob James, and several others who are considered jazz juggernauts in their own right are widely regarded by their jazz peers.  Comparing them to smooth jazz artists like Kenny G.—who appears to represent the epitome of instrumental schlock—is perhaps unfair.

However, the debate amongst the two sides may be a mute point.  Both traditional jazz and smooth jazz sales have been in decline in recent years, with the number of smooth jazz stations in the United States declining.

Don’t ring jazz’s death toll just yet, though.  It has proved to be nothing, if not durable since its inception during the 20^th century, spawning several musical art forms—Blues and Rock and Roll.  Jazz has also gone through several other transformations before, from Swing, to Bebop and, later, Hard Bop.  It will endure.

For jazz purists, then, perhaps the lesson to be learned is to meet somewhere in the middle.  It would make jazz’s next evolution…jazzy.