A Jazz Portrait: Nina Simone

Nina Simone (1933-2003), born Eunice Kathleen Waymon. She was called by her admirers the High Priestess of Soul. Her many talents included singer, pianist, and songwriter ("Mississippi Goddam"). Simone was also a noted civil rights activist. This portrait of Simone is by Armando Alleyne (born in November 1959), an artist who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

A Humorous Prediction?

Is this a humorous prediction for Sean "P. Diddy" Combs? His 2014 honorary doctorate from Howard University in Washington, D.C., was taken back because of what the administrators called behavior that they considered  "fundamentally incompatible with [the university's] core values and beliefs." In addition, they returned his one-million-dollar contribution.

Combs had been caught on a 2016 hotel surveillance video brutally assaulting his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.

It has also been alleged that he was involved in sex trafficking.

A Desert Island Disc

This Al Jarreau album, Breakin' Away, released in 1981, is one of the jazz albums I would want to have with me if I were stuck on a desert island. (My favorite song on the album is "Roof Garden," a foot-tapping number.)

As you can see, Jarreau, who died in 2017, unlike many men, was not afraid to be seen wearing pink, especially on an album cover.
 

The "Summer Of Soul" Movie

 

Summer of Soul, released in 2021, is a movie I hope to see on a DVD. It's a documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. Among the performers who appeared on stage were Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone, B. B. King, and Mahalia Jackson. The above wall mural appeared on the side of a building that's located on the corner of West 124th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. The building is one block from Mount Morris Park (renamed Marcus Garvey Park), where the historic event took place.

Remake "The Cotton Club" Movie

Prior to seeing Francis Ford Coppola's film, The Cotton Club in 1984, I had interviewed several people who had either worked at the nightclub or knew someone who did. The interviews were for a syndicated article I was writing about the upcoming movie.

Like the film critic Rex Reed, in his Guide to Movies on TV & Video, 1992-1993 Edition (Warner Books, 1992), I had heard a lot about this "Harlem bastion of glamour, sequins, and jazz that characterized the Roaring Twenties in New York night life."

So when I went to see the film I was full of excitement and high expectations. For the first time I would be seeing the fabled night spot on the big screen, and see an exploration of the lives and working conditions of the black performers who worked there in a Jim Crow environment, in, of all places, Harlem.

And, like Reed, I was disappointed. "[W]here," he asked, "is the Cotton Club? Somewhere on the cutting-room floor."

The movie was more focused on the white gangsters who owned the place than it was on the black performers who were its backbone. This was a missed opportunity to explore the racial and socio-economic aspects of the period. Instead of watching this movie, "You [will] learn more about the Cotton Club," wrote Reed, "and the people who made it famous just by listening to old records by Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, and Ethel Waters." Amen.

In the hands of Spike Lee, Kasi Lemmons, Barry Jenkins, Ryan Coogler, Ava DuVernay, or another capable black director the movie would have been more riveting, more incisive, and more thoughtful. It certainly would have been more black-centered.

If there is one movie that deserves a remake, The Cotton Club is it.

Note: I wrote a similar blog post in February 2015.

The 1984 article I wrote was published in this blog as "Exotic Negroes at the Cotton Club " on February 12, 2013.

Harry Belafonte, The King Of Calypso, Dies At 96

Rest in peace and power Harry Belafonte (1927-2023). He was known as a singer, an actor, a civil rights activist, a humanitarian, and a son of Harlem.

Today I dusted off an old paperback biography called Belafonte: A Tough Kid from Harlem Goes to Hollywood by Genia Fogelson (Holloway House Publishing, 1980). The book is probably out of print but has a useful (although obviously incomplete) discography and filmography in the back. (Copies of the book are available on Amazon but not at its original price of $1.95. One copy is priced at $25.00, another is being offered for $28.98.)

John Legend And A Racist Paparazzo

Gossip columnist Rachael Clemmons reported in "The Word" (Metro New York, January 24, 2017) that recently singer John Legend and his wife Chrissy Teigen were approached at JFK airport in New York by "a bonehead paparazzo" [Clemmons's description] who made a racist comment about Legend that Teigen later discussed on Twitter. The paparazzo said to her, "If we evolved from monkeys, why is John Legend still around?"

If that had been said to, say, Spike Lee, no doubt Lee would have gone ballistic. But Legend, being very gracious, told Variety that "I'm not hurt by someone saying that to me because I'm smarter, I'm stronger."

I wish Legend had said something like this to the paparazzo: "I have evolved. Unfortunately, it's primitive people like you who haven't evolved. Otherwise such a stupid, backward, and unnecessary comment like the one you just made wouldn't have come out of your mouth."

Chris Brown And Souljah Boy, Two Palookas

It was reported by Rachael Clemmons in her gossip column "The Word"(Metro New York, January 11, 2017) via the website TMZ that rappers Chris Brown and Soulja Boy dislike each other so much that they have decided to "duke it out" in a boxing ring in Dubai. "Chris Brown is being trained by Mike Tyson," writes Clemmons,"while Soulja Boy is being trained by Floyd Mayweather."

Could it be that the two rappers--described by Clemmons as"man-children" --have record sales that are so low and have a craving for attention that is so high that they need to challenge each other in the ring in order to fill up their bank accounts?

Since both rappers like to post full-frontal nude selfies of themselves on the Internet, maybe they can boost ticket sales by boxing in their birthday suits.

Lena Horne, Cosmetics Entrepreneur

I was cleaning out some old suitcases that once belonged to my late mother and I found two or three cosmetics bottles with Lena Horne's name on each of  the beige and cream-colored labels.

Lena Horne, a major African-American star of stage, screen, and records, had her own cosmetics line in the 1950s and/or 1960s long before current celebrities like Halle Berry and Beyonce ever did. No other black entertainers of that time, as far as I know, had products produced using their name. The one exception that comes to mind would be boxer Archie Moore whose name and likeness appeared on half-gallon milk containers.

I don't know if her cosmetics line is mentioned in any Horne biographies but it would be fascinating to learn how this business came to be and whether or not she was influenced by Madame C.J. Walker, the African-American hair care products entrepreneur. It's the sort of story that should be of interest to a national publication like Black Enterprise or Essence for its historical significance if nothing else.

In the meantime, I'm saving the bottles as collector's items.

A New Cotton Club Movie Is Needed

In the 1992-1993 edition of Rex Reed's Guide to Movies on TV & Video, he stated that "[a]ll my life I've been hearing about the Cotton Club, that Harlem bastion of glamour, sequins, and jazz." So when Reed viewed Francis Ford Coppola's long-awaited 1984 film called The Cotton Club, he had one question, "[b]ut where is the Cotton Club?" His conclusion: "Somewhere on the cutting-room floor." Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide gave it two and a half stars and noted that "the movie isn't nearly as interesting as the published stories about its tumultuous production!"

When I saw the movie during its release, I too was greatly disappointed. Around that time I had written a syndicated article for the Los Angeles Times about the real Cotton Club. The article included interviews with those who had worked there as entertainers.

The movie's version, unfortunately, was too focused on the gangsters who owned and ran the nightspot. If there is ever a remake of The Cotton Club, the lives of and the backstage drama involving the black entertainers should be at the forefront of the story. After all, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, and Ethel Waters were among those who worked there and became household names. (Spike Lee, Lee Daniels, and other black filmmakers, are you listening?) Plus, the Cotton Club was a microcosm of race, class, and colorism. It was a place where blacks were welcome as entertainers, but not as patrons.