Artist:Arielle Silver Hometown: Finding the answer to that question has been a lifelong quest. My childhood was spent in Florida, NYC, and New Jersey. Boston raised me from late teens through most of my twenties, but I did a few stints in PA, TN, and NC. Something brought me to Los Angeles a while back, and it’s now been my hometown longer than anywhere else. I’m rather attached – and detached – from a lot of places, but I think I love LA and Boston the most. Song: “Soft On the Shoulder” Album:Watershed Release Date: October 6, 2023
In Their Words: “Inspired by the Laurel Canyon music of the ’70s and the cultural activism that came about after the murder of George Floyd, ‘Soft On the Shoulder’ is a song largely about self-culpability. I was reflecting on the place of music amid cultural change and its place in political activism and social engagement. I was also thinking about the ways that I – as a white-presenting woman – have unwittingly participated in systemic wrongs. While initially inspired by thoughts sparked by the BLM movement, this song applies to any personal or cultural circumstance where we are asked to examine our long-held beliefs and consider another person’s perspective.
“Having grown up listening to records, cassettes, and CDs, I am very album-oriented. I felt that ‘Soft On The Shoulder,’ which opens the Watershed album with the words, ‘It starts with a witness…’ and is threaded with the mantra ‘love more, fear less,’ captures the compassion and reflective nature of this entire collection of songs.” – Arielle Silver
Hello Folks! My name is Chris Pierce. I’m a musician, songwriter and storyteller. My new album, Let All Who Will, was created to offer a message of resilience and empowerment – and to remind those who have been pressed to never give up the good fight for justice and equality. The songs are there for folks to hear, dissect and discuss. They also offer suggestions of ways to speak up and move together from a place of common ground. I believe that compassion is the only way forward. I fight with compassion. I sing with compassion. For this Mixtape, let’s explore a theme of the healing powers of music. Songs of liberation, pain, encouragement, empowerment and togetherness. – Chris Pierce
Reverend Gary Davis – “Let Us Get Together Right Down Here”
Starting with a song from Rev. Gary Davis – also known as Blind Gary Davis (born on April 30, 1896) – a blues and gospel singer who was also proficient on the banjo, guitar, and harmonica. Born in Laurens, South Carolina, and blind since infancy, Davis first performed professionally in the Piedmont blues scene of Durham, North Carolina, in the 1930s.After relocating to New York in the 1940s, Davis experienced a career rebirth as part of the American folk music revival that peaked through the 1960s. I’ve always been particularly moved by this song by Rev. Davis as it draws the listener in right away and encourages us all to “get together” as part of the great congregation of humanity.
Nina Simone – “Backlash Blues”
Growing up, my mother was an English teacher and I was fortunate enough to have access to books by some of the greatest writers of our time.I gravitated towards studying Langston Hughes from the time I was around 10 years old and the inspiration from reading his profound works is one of the reasons that I became a songwriter. “Backlash Blues” is one of his poems that was given a melody and was sung by the high priestess of soul, Nina Simone. It was written as a sign of hope for Black people during times of segregation.
Chris Pierce – “It’s Been Burning for a While”
This song is a response to the furor surrounding the tragic death of George Floyd in 2020. It was beyond puzzling to see how surprised many voices were, in the media and beyond, at the anger people felt. My co-writer and I collaborated on this song in an effort to point out that while all these stories have been making the headlines a lot recently, repression of the marginalized is nothing new.
Richie Havens – “Handsome Johnny”
Richie Havens’ music has elements of folk, soul and rhythm and blues. He had an intense and rhythmic guitar style and often played in open tunings. A lot of folks know him from Woodstock, but he continued on playing concerts right up until his passing in 2013.
I’ve been deeply inspired by Richie Havens in my own songwriting and growing up hearing songs like “Handsome Johnny” inspired me to expand my writing. To me, “Handsome Johnny” testifies about the sacrifices and inner struggles of the soldier and describes soldiers of all kinds going off to fight for what they believe in.
Lead Belly – “In the Pines” / “Black Girl” / “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”
I’ve studied Lead Belly’s songs throughout my journey as a songwriter. His songs covered a wide range of genres and topics including gospel music; love, loss, liquor, prison life and racism; and folk songs about cowboys, prison, work, sailors, cattle herding and dancing. His version of “In The Pines” is one of the most widely known.
“In the Pines” is an American folk song originating from two songs, “In the Pines” and “The Longest Train,” both of whose authorship is unknown and date back to at least the 1870s. The songs originated in the Southern Appalachian area of the United States. Historians have said this song was probably born from African Americans living along or east of the Appalachian Mountains around the turn of the 20th century. Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, recorded over half-a-dozen versions between 1944 and 1948, most often under the title “Black Girl” or “Black Gal.” His first rendition, recorded for Musicraft Records in New York City in February 1944, is arguably his most familiar.
Odetta – “Got My Mind on Freedom”
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, is an inspiration to all. Born in Birmingham, Alabama on December 31, 1930, her voice has inspired hearts all over the world and she is often referred to as “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement.” Odetta truly embodied a voice that inspired change. Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music.
Terry Callier – “Spin, Spin, Spin”
Terry Callier was born in the North Side of Chicago. He was a childhood friend of Curtis Mayfield, Major Lance and Jerry Butler and he sang in doo-wop groups in his teens. In 1964 he recorded his debut album on Prestige Records.The album wasn’t released until 1968 as The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier. A dear musician friend of mine gifted me a copy of the album around 20 years ago and it’s been in steady rotation in my house ever since. My opinion, widely shared, is that Terry Callier didn’t get the popular recognition his varied talents deserved. Nonetheless, he released a string of enduring and influential albums.
Josh White – “Southern Exposure”
When I was in the 6th grade, I wrote a book report on the music of Josh White. I remember heading to the library in Claremont, California, and finding a treasure chest of literature and recordings by White. I dove in and was deeply inspired by the man, the songwriter, guitarist and civil rights activist that he was. White grew up in the South during the 1920s and 1930s. He released a prolific output of recordings in genres including Piedmont blues, country blues, gospel music and social protest songs. His music went on to influence several generations of artists, including yours truly.White’s album, Southern Exposure, is known as a political blues album and dealt with issues of Jim Crow. The album as a whole, to me, is a protest album of protest albums.
Bob Dylan – “Only a Pawn in Their Game”
Bob Dylan sang a stirring solo performance of “Only a Pawn In Their Game,” at The March on Washington, a retelling of the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. The lyrics attribute blame for the killing and other racial violence to the rich white politicians and authorities who manipulated poor whites into directing their anger and hatred at Black people. The song suggests that Evers’ killer does not deserve to be remembered by name, unlike the man he murdered (“They lowered him down as a king”), because he was “only a pawn in their game.”
Chris Pierce – “Mr. McMartin”
My song, “Mr. McMartin” from my new album, Let All Who Will, is about a street sweeper who has seen a lot of what human beings are capable of in the past 40 years on the job. He sweeps after celebrations, uprisings, political rallies, parades, holidays and catastrophes. As he sweeps on through the years, he wonders if we are capable of real change or just broken promises and broken prayer.
This week on the show, we talk to a startling new talent placing a gut-punch into the folk and blues scene, the Milwaukee-raised and now Austin-based singer-songwriter Buffalo Nichols.
Growing up learning on his sister’s dreadnought guitar and then traveling widely through West Africa after high school drinking up the sounds of the kora and percussion players in Senegal, Carl Nichols began finding his voice and playing style in the haunting open and minor tunings first heard from bluesmen like Skip James, who he covers in his remarkable self-titled debut collection. Buffalo Nichols, which came in 2021, is a stark departure from what Carl would call the cheery “opinionless beer commercial blues” that has come to dominate the genre. Nichols’ work is often sparse and direct – just a man with his guitar and a microphone. The stories told in standout songs like “Another Man” and “Living Hell” don’t flinch from comparing how the experience of his elders a hundred years ago in the South may not look much different from men like George Floyd dying on that Minneapolis pavement. Is there catharsis or hope in the songs? Are they a call to action? Maybe that’s up to us to decide.
Carl will admit that it can be tricky trying play his songs like the searing album opener “Lost And Lonesome” in loud bars where people may just want to have a good time and not dive into the backroad history of racial injustice and institutionalized police violence. Thankfully his writing doesn’t hide behind niceties and the recordings aren’t veiled by sonic artifice – Nichols speaks directly to the isolation and danger of being a young Black man in America, and trying to navigate the unease of bringing his stories to an often mostly white Americana-adjacent audience. Even more upbeat numbers like “Back On Top” call to mind the ominous juke-joint growl of John Lee Hooker, bringing us into dimly lit scenes where even late-night pleasure may have its next-morning consequences.
If there’s one thing we learned during this taping, it’s that Carl doesn’t want to just “write songs to make people feel good” – but he does want to tell stories that make the isolated and lost feel less so. Maybe that is the most important function of music truly steeped in the blues tradition: the ability to transform pain into progress. The messages may not be what people always want to hear, but the groundswell rising behind Carl’s stark timeless tales is indeed growing. With recent appearances on Late Night With Stephen Colbert, NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts and big time dates like Lollapalooza on the books for the summer, folks will be hearing a lot more from Buffalo Nichols.
Artist:Crys Matthews Hometown: Richlands, North Carolina (currently Washington, D.C.) Song: “Call Them In” Album:Changemakers Release Date: March 26, 2021
In Their Words: “As a social-justice songwriter, my approach to songs has always been to lead with love and hope, even when it is hard to do, especially when it is hard to do. That message is at the heart of ‘Call Them In.’ It is so easy for those of us committed to justice to do the work of calling out injustice, but it is much harder to take that next step and try to invite people in. But that is the charge, that is the task before us. Not a lot of people did that better than John Lewis.
“As a fellow Black southerner, I grew up hearing about the freedom songs people would sing (like ‘Eyes on the Prize’) as they marched for justice, and I wanted this song to feel like something they would be proud of and maybe march to, which is why I wanted to build a choir into the song. Fellow social-justice songwriters Kyshona Armstrong and Heather Mae, who are singing on the track, definitely helped me achieve that. I hope that this song passes on a little of the love and hope that he and Dr. King passed on to me and so many others. May we never stop believing in good trouble, or in the vision of America that Congressman Lewis bled for on that bridge all those years ago.
“In the summer of 2020, while the entire world was learning how to live through a global pandemic, America was in the middle of a reckoning nearly 400 years in the making. George Floyd’s brutal killing at the hands of police in Minnesota sparked the kind of national outrage that had been sparked decades ago when John Lewis and so many others were brutalized on Bloody Sunday. And while George Floyd was not the first and, in some ways, not even the most horrific of these all too frequent instances of police brutality, he woke so many people up to the reality at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“In an interview he gave on The TODAY Show, Congressman Lewis said that he thought Dr. King would be very proud of how many Americans were standing up for justice, and speaking out for better. Lewis said, ‘He’s looking down and he’s saying to each and every one of us, keep it up, and never give up, never give in, but to keep the faith and to keep your eyes on the prize.’ At 80 years old, and after having suffered so much cruelty and brutality, this great man was still doing the work of calling out injustice while simultaneously calling in more allies, more willing change agents, more of what Dr. King called ‘drum majors for justice.’ So when he died on July 17, 2020, I knew that I wanted to honor him. It is my sincere hope that ‘Call Them In’ does just that.” — Crys Matthews
At BGS, we firmly believe that Black history is American roots music history. Full stop.
Last year, following the extrajudicial murder of George Floyd and the civil unrest, protests, and rebellions against racial injustice and systemic inequality in this country, we realized that that belief wasn’t present enough in our daily content and editorial. We knew that it needed to be overt, expressed within every aspect of what we do.
Which is why this month, we’ve invited you to celebrate Black History Month as we always do, by denoting that celebrating Black contributions in bluegrass, country, and old-time — and roots music as a whole — requires centering Black creators, artists, musicians, and perspectives in our community daily, not just in February. (Though, for the entire month we’ve been sharing music, stories, and songs featuring Black artists every day, too!)
In the past year we’ve recommitted ourselves to fully incorporating Black Voices into everything we do and we hope that our readers and listeners, our followers and fans, and our family of artists constantly celebrate, acknowledge, and pay credit to Blackness and Black folks, who we have to thank for everything we love about American roots music. To bid adieu to Black History Month 2021, we’re spotlighting Black artists who have graced our pages in the last year in a two-part roundup.
Fresh off of an appearance at President Biden’s inauguration, Grammy nominees Black Pumas are our current Artist of the Month honorees, but they aren’t the only ones to hold down our most prestigious monthly series and editorial spotlight. Drawing on folk songwriting as much as soul groove, both men agree that the term “American Roots” fits their sound well. The Americana Music Association seconds that notion, as the duo picked up that organization’s Emerging Act of the Year award in late 2020.
Modern blues legend Shemekia Copeland was our Artist of the Month in November, when we celebrated her latest release, Uncivil War from Alligator Records. The song sequence offers quite a few topical numbers ranging from gun rights (“Apple Pie and a .45”) to LGBT affirmation (“She Don’t Wear Pink”). But a standout is certainly the title track, Copeland’s most bluegrassy foray yet, which features Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas
Song-interpreter extraordinaire Bettye LaVette held down the AOTM post in August, reminding us of the value of persistence, perseverance, and perspective – especially by Black women. Her interpretation of the ubiquitous “Blackbird” recalls the fact that Paul McCartney wrote the song about a Black woman (as British slang refers to a girl as a “bird”). In LaVette’s rendition, though, she is the one who’s been waiting… and waiting… and waiting for this moment to arrive. And, in a specific allusion to this moment in history, to be free.
On the Cover
Both country & western crooner Charley Crockett and old-time banjoist, fiddler, and ethnomusicologist Jake Blount graced our digital covers in the past year, demonstrating the width, depth, and breadth of Black contributions to American roots music across the country and drawing from various regions and traditions.
In our interview and on his most recent release, Crockett doesn’t just reckon with the current historical moment. With Welcome to Hard Times, which is comprised of 13 tracks of searing anguish set to slick, ’60s-style, country-western production, he’s also examining his own place in this moment, and how his music has a different impact with different audiences. Even as he — a man living somewhere between Black and white, privileged and not — feels that his message is obvious.
Queer old-time musician and scholar Jake Blount is intimately familiar with the history of Black artists in the twentieth century who spoke out against white supremacy and often paid for it with their lives. He sees his music — and his most recent album, Spider Tales — within that subversive, radical lineage, and rightly so. A critically acclaimed project that landed on seemingly dozens of year-end lists in 2020, Blount’s carefully curated tunes convey that racial inequality in this country is a long, self-feeding cycle and this current iteration of the civil rights movement was neither surprising nor unpredictable. In a year defined by music created in response to current events or simply passively shaped by them, Blount’s Spider Tales stands out, an example of action rather than reaction.
Last week, we celebrated the grand opening of the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville with a feature that explores the ways Music City has always been a major player in the African American music world — from the days of the Fisk Jubilee Singers to radio station WLAC breaking R&B, soul, and blues hits, and the Jefferson Street nightclub scene providing both valuable training for emerging artists and a vital showcase for established ones. The 56,000-square-foot museum, something of a musical equivalent to the the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. (definitely with the same level of visual splendor and attractiveness) is a testament to the Black, African American, and Afro contributions that have touched, impacted, and influenced every sphere of American pop culture and art.The striking marquee of the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, TN
The BGS Podcast Network
Over the course of the past year, the BGS Podcast Network has been proud to feature many Black artists over our shows about bluegrass, Americana, touring, wellness, and of course, music. On Harmonics season one, three Black women joined host Beth Behrs to talk about living through so much stress and tumult and how self-care, wellness, and music are all woven so tightly together.
Country singer and 2020 breakout star Mickey Guyton (who, for the record, has been a recording artist for more than a decade despite her recent meteoric rise) appeared on Episode 3, talking about writing “Black Like Me” — a song about her pain and struggles growing up as a Black woman in America — amidst the protests against police brutality across the nation. They also discuss country artists speaking out against racism and injustice, the power and importance of “three chords and the truth” in the midst of Music Row fluff, lifting other women up as a form of therapy, and, of course, Dolly Parton.
Two of Behrs’ closest friends, sisters Tichina & Zenay Arnold also appeared on the show. Tichina, Behr’s co-star on CBS’s The Neighborhood, and her sister are something like spiritual coaches for Beth. The three discuss the spirituality of music and the musicality of comedy, the timeliness of The Neighborhood as well as the pure spirit on the set, the absolutely necessity of open conversation in active anti-racism, balancing professional and familial relationships, and much more.
Finally, Birds of Chicago frontwoman and multi-instrumentalist Allison Russell decided to dig deep into her childhood traumas, the healing power of music and artistic community, the history of the banjo, and the intersectionality of the honest conversations in our culture on her episode of Harmonics. In addition to her career with Birds of Chicago, Russell is one quarter of the supergroup Our Native Daughters, with Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, and Leyla McCalla, and is preparing to release her first solo album.
On The Show On The Road, host Z. Lupetin curated a special episode last summer featuring clips and snippets from past editions of the show featuring Sunny War, Bobby Rush, Dom Flemons, and more. As he put it, “I’ve been lucky to talk with truly amazing Black artists, songwriters, and performers in the two years I’ve been creating The Show on the Road. I ask you to go back into our archives and listen to these voices.”
Later in the season, SOTR episodes featured Leyla McCalla — a talented, multilingual cellist, banjoist, and singer-songwriter and member of Our Native Daughters — and a special podcast swap with Under The Radar featuring truly fantastic Oakland-based artist, Fantastic Negrito. And just a couple of weeks ago, the show dropped an episode honoring Black History Month, featuring an interview with Jimmy Carter and Ricky McKinnie of the legendary Blind Boys of Alabama.
Plus, on the String, Craig Havighurst interviewed new lead singer for the Time Jumpers, Wendy Moten, and southern Gothic poet, songwriter, and Americana-blues wizard Adia Victoria.
And, not to be left out, the BGS Radio Hour always includes music, premieres, and features of Black artists every week, as we round-up the best stories from our pages to include on the airwaves. Like this week, Allison Russell’s Sade cover and Valerie June’s cosmic new single, “Call Me a Fool” — which features Stax soul legend Carla Thomas — both appear on the show. And, on Episode 194, Chris Pierce, our Whiskey Sour Happy Hour friend Ben Harper, and Charley Crockett all make the playlist as well.
Shout & Shine
Our annual IBMA showcase celebrating representation and diversity in 2020 focused entirely on Black performers, building upon our collaboration with PineCone, who co-presents the event each year. Brandi Pace of Decolonizing the Music Room curated the lineup, showing our audience how seamlessly our missions intersect and build off of each other. The showcase lineup included Rissi Palmer, Tray Wellington, Stephanie Anne Johnson, Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton, and more, drawing a direct line between Black musicians and bluegrass while highlighting the important role Black folks played in the genre’s creation as well as influencing all of its contemporary forms.
To build on this intention, we retooled our monthly column version of Shout & Shine as well, turning the interview series into a regular livestream event. Sponsored by Preston Thompson Guitars, each episode includes thirty-plus minutes of exclusive performances by Lizzie No, Sunny War, Julian Taylor, and Jackie Venson with more to come. Each set of music — and each interview as well — reinforces just how vibrant and varied roots music created by Black musicians and songwriters can be and just how valuable the perspectives and lived experiences of all kinds of people are to our communities.
Photo credit (L to R): Shemekia Copeland by Mike White; Rissi Palmer courtesy of the artist; Bettye LaVette by Joseph A. Rosen; and Mickey Guyton by Chelsea Thompson.
Artist:Tania Joy Hometown: Uxbridge, Ontario Single: “Planks and Marietta” Release Date: February 16, 2021
In Their Words: “’Planks and Marietta’ is a song I needed to write about the difficult relationship between me and racism. I’ve always needed to talk about it, but I rarely have. George Floyd brought it all back, and now after a very dark period I am able to start the conversation, even if it’s only with myself, in ‘Planks and Marietta’. The title taken from a racist incident that occurred at two cross streets in my hometown, is a call out to many others in many towns all over the world. It’s my protest song about all of the little stories that get swept under the rug until they can no longer be ignored.” — Tania Joy
Artist:Anya Hinkle featuring Graham Sharp Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina Song: “What’s It Gonna Take” Release Date: February 12, 2021 Label: Organic Records
In Their Words: “On May 26th, 2020, my neighbor Graham Sharp and I had planned to get together to do some songwriting. On that day, we had all woken up to the new reality, the first day without George Floyd in this world. ‘What should we write about?’ we asked each other, and we began to process the horror of his death through a song. We asked, what’s it gonna take? How can we speak to the brokenness of our country and our complicity in that? As we watched the nation convulse, we continued to write, trying to comprehend the pain we saw on display in the soul of our country and in ourselves.
“When we went into the studio to cut the single, we asked a master of the sacred steel, DaShawn Hickman, and gospel singer Wendy Hickman to join us in asking ‘what’s it gonna take?’ Bringing in their voices was an important part of processing the difficult summer, building trust and beauty through song. Only by listening to Black voices are we going to know what it is gonna take. We are still so divided and will remain ignorant until we can absorb what it’s like to be Black in America.” — Anya Hinkle
When Bettye LaVette sings “I Hold No Grudge,” she brings the weight of all her years to it. The 74-year-old vocalist draws out certain notes, delivers certain lines almost in a speaking voice, as though she wants to show us how difficult, but also how essential, it can be to let things go. “Deep inside me there ain’t no regrets,” she declares, “but a woman who’s been forgotten may forgive but never, never forget.” She draws out that second “never” to underscore its harsh finality, to remind you that she’ll live with the memory of this slighting forever.
“I Hold No Grudge” has never been merely a song about romantic betrayal — not when Nina Simone recorded it for her landmark 1967 album, High Priestess of Soul, and not when LaVette recorded it more than sixty years later. This new version sounds like it’s addressed to anyone who stood in LaVette’s way so many years ago, in particular those executives at Atlantic Records who saw fit to shelve her debut album in 1972 without so much as explanation, much less an apology. That decision crushed her and thwarted her promising career. “That’s exactly what it is,” says LaVette. “I probably have some grudges, but they aren’t big enough to make me stop. I’ve not been defeated. I’m extending the olive branch once again.”
“I Hold No Grudge” opens her latest album, Blackbirds, which collects her interpretations of songs made famous by Black women in the 1940s and 1950s, including Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, Nancy Wilson, and Billie Holiday. She calls them “the bridge I came across on,” referring to that era between big band blues of the 1940s and rhythm & blues of the 1960s, when these artists were pushing popular music in new directions.
With a small band led by producer-arranger Steve Jordan, LaVette runs through deep cuts like “Blues for the Weepers,” a song first sung by Ruth Brown (and later made famous by Lou Rawls). It’s a song dedicated to “all the soft-singing sisters and torch-bearing misters,” she sings. “They just come to listen and dream.” She understands that we go to songs now for the same reasons we did sixty or seventy years ago: to find sympathy and solace, but also to find a way forward, perhaps some promise of a better life.
The most familiar tune on Blackbirds is likely “Strange Fruit,” popularized by Billie Holiday ninety years ago at Café Society in New York City and covered by countless singers ever since. As a result it’s difficult to make the song sound new and urgent, yet LaVette manages to do just that. Against her band’s dolefully trudging rhythm, she tilts the melody forward just slightly, as though pulling us toward some horrific destination, and she shreds the syllables of the song’s climactic declaration: “Here is a strange and bitter crop.”
That middle word is frayed almost beyond recognition – “stra-ya-ange” – to make the song’s metaphor sound tragically real. LaVette recorded it nearly a year ago and was startled when it became so heavily relevant again. To hear her sing “Strange Fruit” in 2020 is to be reminded that the injustices so many Americans are protesting — the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many other Black men and women — are not new or specific to the current era.
In the second installment of our Artist of the Month coverage, LaVette talks about growing up with a jukebox in her living room, giving these formative artists their due, and how Paul McCartney fits into all this.
BGS: This record is rooted in the history of popular music. Can you tell me about this particular period and what it means to you?
LaVette: People — especially white people — they throw “rhythm and blues” and “blues” together a lot. And now today, they’re throwing “rhythm and blues” toward young blacks and young whites who want to sound black. When people talk about rhythm and blues, they go back about as far as Etta James, but these women are the bridge that Etta came across on as well. Rhythm and blues was a music that came from blues, of course, and from gospel. When people ask me the difference between “blues” and “rhythm and blues,” I always tell them that you can cry to blues, but you can dance and cry to rhythm and blues.
It’s a short bridge, from about 1948 or ’49 to the burgeoning of Atlantic and Motown’s rhythm and blues, which was about ’61 or ’62. That’s when I came along. We took away the saxophones and added more guitars. We took the blues guitar and sped it up and put it in our tunes. The people who took us from the late ‘40s into the early ‘60s are rarely mentioned, and that’s why I chose this group of women.
I didn’t even know there were Black women who sang, other than Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge. And then, hearing LaVern Baker and Ruth Brown and Little Esther, I don’t know whether it gave me hope or whatever, but it really surprised me. I didn’t know that women who sung in such a bawdy way even existed.
When did you first hear these women?
When rhythm and blues came about, that was when I was young and I was dancing. That was when I was coming up and my sister was a teenager. We had a jukebox in our living room in Muskegon, Michigan, which is where I was born, and it had all the current tunes of the day, which my sister played daily when she got out of school. They were all rhythm and blues songs. You know, they weren’t into jazz — they were either blues or rhythm and blues songs on the jukebox. And gospel and country-western, no less. At one point, my favorite singers used to be Doris Day and Dale Evans.
Wait, you had a jukebox in your living room?
My parents sold corn liquor in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Muskegon was extremely segregated, so if you wanted a drink after dinner or after work, you had to come by my house. These were homes that had been built for the soldiers returning from the Second World War. So they were theoretically projects, but they hadn’t started making them out of brick yet. They looked more like barracks, and everybody’s house was just alike.
It was living room, dining room, small kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. My parents sold corn liquor and chicken sandwiches and barbeque sandwiches. There was no gambling. Nobody could cuss but my mother. But they could get shots and pints and half pints. And the jukebox was there in the living room where most people’s couch probably was. I was about 18 months old when I learned all the songs on the jukebox — all of them.
How did you choose the songs for this record?
I keep several files. Or, I should say, my husband keeps them for me. I’ve got all kinds of files. I’ve got a country and western file. I’ve got a strictly George Jones file. What I do is, I offer my label two or three ideas based on these files, and they tell me which one they like best. So I have some ideas that I like, and that way I don’t have to take their suggestions. If they find one they believe in and are willing to spend money on, I’ve got the songs already in.
I had this file here of standards, some of which I had done when I did little gigs in places around, just me and a keyboard player. Some of them, like Nancy Wilson’s “Save Your Love for Me,” I had done in other venues that most people haven’t seen me in, because they didn’t come where I was. A song like “I Hold No Grudge, which I heard eighteen years ago, it’s been in my file since then. I thought, if I ever get a chance to do that kind of album, I will do that tune. I wasn’t going to throw it away.
When did you discover that song?
I was living in Detroit, and I was getting my hair done. Usually in Black salons, there’s a radio on that plays Black music, and this song came on. I had never heard it before! And because Detroit is one of the places where I can pick up the phone and call whoever is playing whatever it is and I’ll know them, I called them up and she told me it was Nina Simone. And I said, well, if I ever get the chance, I’m gonna record that tune. That was eighteen years ago.
Just a few years ago I performed at a party for David Lynch, the movie producer, and this gentleman came up to me and said, “I loved your performance. My name is Angelo Badalamenti, and I do all the music for David Lynch’s films.” My husband, who loves David Lynch’s films, was ecstatic. Angelo says, “I have a tune. Years ago, I used to work with Nina Simone, and I wrote this tune for her that I think would be perfect for you.” I said, “What’s the name of it?” “‘I Hold No Grudge.’” I said, “I know you aren’t going to believe this, but I’ve had plans to do that tune for the last fifteen years!” So when I got the opportunity to do this album for Verve, I got in touch with Angelo and sent it to him, and he said he could hear Nina listening to it, closing her eyes, and saying, “Yeah, she got it.” Of course that made me feel very good.
Another song I wanted to ask you about is “Strange Fruit,” which seems sadly very timely right now.
But it just became timely! When we recorded it back in August, it was one of the oldest tunes on the album. And then all of this mess broke out, and the tune became timely! But all of this wasn’t going on when we recorded it. That’s not why we recorded it. We recorded it to fill in the Billie Holiday slot. While we were waiting for the album to come out, all of this happened. And it was just timely — as if we went to look for a tune to describe what’s going on now. So it’s bad that it’s timely — it’s awful that it’s timely — but it’s timely.
I knew the tune had not lost any of its power, and I knew I had to do it completely different from Billie. I’m blessed to work with Steve Jordan because he doesn’t hear these songs the way they were originally recorded. He hears them the way I sing them, because his age is closer to mine. He was born and raised in Harlem, and he grew up with these rhythm and blues tunes. He knew that I wanted “Strange Fruit” to be terse and sad and black and dark, and when we finished recording the music, I said, “Steve! I didn’t want it to sound exactly like they’re standing by the tree playing this song,” but it does. It’s just haunting. That’s the thing that makes Steve so important to me.
The outlier on the album is your interpretation of the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” What made that song fit this project?
The reason that I chose it — and I chose it for the title — is because many Americans don’t know that Brits call their women birds, and Paul is talking about a Black girl that he saw standing up on a picnic table singing one night in a park. He’s talking about a Black girl singing and I thought that that would just be perfect for it.
Artist:Tré Burt Hometown: Sacramento, California Song: “Undead God of War” Album:Caught It From the Rye Label: Oh Boy Records
In Their Words: “I was living in Australia during the 2016 elections and the BLM protests responding to Black lives murdered by police officers, namely Philando Castile and Keith Lamont Scott. The country was wailing in pain, rage and unrest and I could hear it from across the world. With everything in me I wanted to go back home and mourn with my community during such a pivotal time in transition, but I couldn’t yet afford a plane ticket. In the garage shed I was renting out one night I wrote this song, ‘Undead God of War,’ in a state of catharsis. I figure if I couldn’t be home the next best thing I could do was to put it to song. Fast forward four years to the present and nothing’s changed. Today, we are fighting for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmed Aubrey, Stephon Clark and the countless others. The Undead God of War is as alive now as it was when colonialists first stole this land and took it for their own. We are not surprised by this, for this is the America we are introduced to as children. It is also the America that I fight for, my first love, my demise, my home.” — Tré Burt
For Black Americans, this day, Juneteenth, has long been a celebration of the momentous historical event of emancipation from slavery — and the nearly two and a half years it took for that news to reach all enslaved peoples in this country. Juneteenth is belatedly gaining wider recognition and arrives at a time of reckoning with systemic patterns of white supremacy, especially police brutality, that remain deeply entrenched.
Like many waves of national protest before it, the uprising in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and many others has spurred the creation of its own soundtrack, and the following list spotlights the contributions of seven roots-savvy, Black music makers. Some draw on lessons learned from how songs gave spiritual succor to those on the front lines of the 1960s Civil Rights struggle, with righteously raised fists and declarations of passion and purpose. Others opt for expression that feels far more personalized or particular, articulating an adamantly complex range of emotions and letting profoundly unsettled, and unsettling, questions hang in the air. All of them are fleshing out their own vivid, timely incarnations of movement music.
Leon Bridges specializes in sophisticated soul, sometimes artfully retro in presentation and other times landing at the thoroughly contemporary end of that musical lineage. His new song “Sweeter” is an example of the latter, two minutes and 50 seconds during which his buttery vocals glide over a lean drum machine pattern, delicate, gospel-dusted bits of guitar, keyboard, piano and bass and Terrace Martin’s saxophone figures. Bridges’ words land with the devastated finality of a black man whose life is leaving his body, taken from him by police. “I thought we moved on from the darker days,” he sings, his cadence fluttery and tone ruminative. “Did the words of the King disappear in the air, like a butterfly?” The blame-laying next line arrives in a burst: “Somebody should hand you a felony.”
Then, Bridges elongates his phrasing with righteous indignation, before steadying himself to spell out the loss: “‘Cause you stole from me/my chance to be.” The elegance he chose gives his performance subtly striking, emotional heft. “From adolescence we are taught how to conduct ourselves when we encounter police to avoid the consequences of being racially profiled,” Bridges wrote in a statement. “I have been numb for too long, calloused when it came to the issues of police brutality. The death of George Floyd was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. It was the first time I wept for a man I never met. I am George Floyd, my brothers are George Floyd, and my sisters are George Floyd. I cannot and will not be silent any longer. Just as Abel’s blood was crying out to God, George Floyd is crying out to me.”
Chastity Brown has been honing her ability to create space for emotional resistance within her songs for a while now. She draws on the pointed, confessional potential of folk and soul and the digital texturing techniques of contemporary pop and hip-hop, while depicting the patient pursuit and safekeeping of self-knowledge as a sign of strength — one that differs wildly from the sort of dominance modeled by systemic power.
In her new song “Golden,” created on her iPad in her garage studio and shared with the world this week, Brown sounds willfully unhurried singing over a skittery programmed beat: “I’ve got joy, even when I’m a target/If ya think that’s political, don’t get me started/You know I’m golden and I flaunt it.” That savoring of selfhood is in striking contrast to the furious question she circles around during the chorus: “Why have I got to be angry?”
In the artist notes accompanying the song, Brown explained that she began writing it when her nephew was beaten by four white cops while walking home in Harlem, mere weeks before George Floyd died in her adopted hometown. “This collective trauma that black, indigenous, immigrant, and queer/trans folk feel is real,” she spelled out. “It’s every god damn day. Yet, we still thrive and flourish in our nature beauty, we still have swag and songs for days. We still have wild and wondrous imaginations like we are all the children of Octavia [Butler]. …This is for me, my people, and the UPRISING to defund police here in Minneapolis and thereby set a new standard for how communities want to be protected.”
Shemekia Copeland, one of the brightest stars in contemporary blues, has been deliberate for years about broadening her repertoire and approach to encompass countrified styles, singer-songwriter song sources and statement-making folk and soul sensibilities and, in the process, positioning herself in the midst of roots music discourse. That’s the insightful perspective she brings to her just-released “Uncivil War,” whose string band style accompaniment boasts the contributions of Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas.
Coming from Copeland, and delivered with measured, dignified vibrato, the simple flipping of the name of the nation’s most notorious war to “uncivil” slyly strips a veneer of respectability from the racist and romanticized Lost Cause religion. She strikes a tone of weary but resolute optimism throughout. “It’s not just a song,” she clarified in a statement. “I’m trying to put the ‘united’ back in the United States. Like many people, I miss the days when we treated each other better. For me, this country’s all about people with differences coming together to be part of something we all love. That’s what really makes America beautiful.”
Kam Franklin, on her own and with her Houston horn band The Suffers, has the wide-ranging musical instincts, imagination, nerve, and ear for earthy verisimilitude to make big statements while zeroing in on small interactions. A couple of weeks back, she posted a brand new, self-recorded song fragment to SoundCloud, a platform well suited to off-the-cuff expression, and with it, this comment: “I saw a photo of Breonna Taylor with her homegirls earlier today, and it gutted me. I won’t forget her. I wrote this birthday song for her, her friends that wondered where she was before the news came out, and everyone that loved her.”
Titled “Happy Birthday Breonna,” it’s a pensive, sinuous bit of ‘70s soul that drives home the fact that Taylor was ripped from a web of close relationships. The first, and only verse, lands like a voicemail from a friend who grew worried when she couldn’t reach Taylor. Franklin’s graceful trills and softly insistent phrasing have an understatement that suggests fretful preoccupation. Then she moves into a point-counterpoint refrain, murmuring birthday wishes to Taylor in her breathy upper register and making a devastating declaration beneath: “You should be here.”
Singer-guitarist and actor Celisse Henderson began work on writing, recording, and filming a video for her song “FREEDOM” four years ago, following the slayings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, and watched as black deaths and protest momentum multiplied before she finally completed and released her project earlier this month.
In a message on her website, Henderson explained, “I, along with millions of people, watched video footage of these unarmed black men losing their lives in the most horrific ways. The truth that these unjust deaths revealed about our country, including the systemic failings of our criminal justice system, became my personal call-to-action. Then the 2016 election night happened, and the results added a whole new layer to the purpose of this song and project. Now, almost four years later, too little has been done, and the story remains the same. With the horrific and unjust killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd weighing heavily on our hearts and minds, it is time to release ‘FREEDOM’ as a rallying cry and a call to action to stand up and fight for our freedom.”
Historic footage of the March on Washington that opens the clip is a reminder of the buoying role that spirituals played in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and serves the narrative function of positioning Henderson to measure the too-meager progress for Black Americans since. The track is gospel-schooled and hard-rocking, powered by a thunderous, syncopated drum pattern and grinding electric guitar attack. With gospel fervor and a touch of theatrical flourish, Henderson summons a spirit of urgency and extends a broad welcome to all who are affected or disturbed by injustice.
Joy Oladokun, a Nigerian-American singer-songwriter who’s quietly carving out her place in Nashville’s professional songwriting community with introspective, melancholy warmth, steered a co-writing appointment with Natalie Hemby toward an expression of grief. The result was “Who Do I Turn To?” a naked airing of fear and distrust.
Oladokun’s reedy, plaintive performance is accompanied only by minimal piano chords. She spends the chorus adding up horrifying realizations that lead her to a resounding question: “If I can’t save myself/If it’s all black and white/If I can’t call for help/in the middle of the night/If I can’t turn to god/If I can’t turn to you/Who do I turn to?” Her voice subtly catches on the word “help,” as though knowing that life-giving protection is unavailable to her constricts her breath. Oladokun underscored the importance of the chorus lyrics to an interviewer: “[I]t’s illustrating that I don’t trust the police since I’m black. I don’t trust the police enough to know that they would think I’m not robbing my own home. I don’t think a lot of people understand what that is like. The feeling sucks.” In a separate statement she summarized her intent: “I wanted to write a firsthand account of how I feel and the question black people like me ask when this happens over and over again while nothing changes. I want it out now to help an already traumatized people cope, heal, and put words to their struggle.”
Wyatt Waddell, a young Chicago music-maker who’s been expertly, wittily, and self-sufficiently arranging home recordings of classic covers and singer-songwriter soul originals for the past few years, wrote “FIGHT!” as an anthem of admiration and uplift for young, Black Americans putting their bodies on the line in the streets and facing off against police force to agitate for change. “This song is me looking at what’s happening and what I’d tell the people protesting,” he specified in a statement. “I had to look outside of myself at what’s going on and how people are being affected. Hearing people’s fears, anxieties, and watching everything happening on TV really helped me write the song. I hope that it can be an anthem for my people as they’re fighting for a better America.”
Waddell begins with gospel-style repetition, creating a call-and-response pattern made up of his own layered vocals over a churchly foot stomp and hand clap groove: “There’s already so much pain/So much pain/So much pain/There’s already so much pain/And there ain’t nothin’ else we can do.” It seems like he could be building up to a confession of helplessness; instead, his funky refrain is bolstered by a sense of resolve and inevitability: “Nothin’ to do but fight.”
Photo credit: (L to R) Shemekia Copeland by Mike White; Chastity Brown by Wale Agboola; Leon Bridges by Jack McKain.
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