Andre Williams Passes Away

I wrote before about Andre Williams here. He was one of the last of the old time rock-n-rollers/R&B giants. He just passed away at 82. If you happen to like old school R&B/jump blues/rock-n-roll and don't mind an occasional little lyrical smuttiness/nastiness in music then you might want to give his music a listen. 

As people have pointed out the Good Lord wouldn't have given you a tail feather in the first place if He didn't want you to shake it from time to time. RIP to a Detroit musical giant and one of the dirtiest old men who ever walked the planet. Andre Williams, who carved out a place in the 1950s rhythm-and-blues scene with earthy songs distinctively delivered, then fell on hard times as a result of addiction before enjoying a late-career resurgence, died on Sunday in Chicago. He was 82.

His son Derrick Williams said the cause was cancer.
In a decade when mainstream white audiences were watching “Father Knows Best” on television, Mr. Williams was recording provocative songs like “Jail Bait” (1957), a sly warning to men inclined to date teenage girls. It ends with a narrator pleading with a judge for leniency and promising to abandon his lecherous ways:
I ain’t gonna bother none 15,
I ain’t gonna bother none 16,
I ain’t gonna bother none 17,
I ain’t gonna mess with none 18,
I’m gonna leave them 20-year-old ones alone too,
Gonna get me a girl about 42.

Muhammad Ali

There aren't too many giants left who walk the earth. Muhammad Ali was one such man. I was sad when I heard the news of his June 3 passing at the age of 74 but at the same time I wasn't. Ali was a man who lived his life in line with his beliefs and principles. I wish he had lived longer. However often times when someone passes our sadness is more about how we're affected and not the end of that person's life. Ali stood up at a time when it was much easier to duck and hide. He paid a price for that. Maybe it's always much easier to duck and hide. I don't know if the later battles Ali had against fellow boxing titans Frazier, Foreman, Holmes and Norton brought on or worsened his Parkinson's Disease. I do recollect that even pacifist relatives who were otherwise steadfastly opposed to boxing tuned in to watch an Ali bout. Ali was larger than life. Unfortunately most of my memories of Ali boxing were when his skills had already visibly deteriorated. But even then there was always a glimpse of the speed, grace and power that made him the Greatest, as he would have been the first to tell you. But more than the classic fights which I was mostly too young to remember what I remember about Ali is how he made people I knew, especially the men in my family, feel. Ali was a Black man who defiantly seized and kept the right to name himself. He made his own decisions about what was good and what wasn't. He made Black people feel good about being Black. This is still a controversial stance today. Ali said I'm not going to have a European name based in slavery because I'm not European. I'm going to love myself. And he refused to join a war he didn't believe in, even though he likely would have been kept far away from any danger. He threw away three years of his career at the top just to stand on principle. How many of us would do that? How many of today's athletes would make that sacrifice? Ali helped to start a change in how Black athletes were perceived, how they performed and how they were marketed, one that is still going on today. Ali wasn't perfect. None of us are. And certainly there are probably some people who were more comfortable with the aged man who could barely speak than the young brash "Mouth Of The South" who cut opponents up with verbal wit even quicker than he did with his fists. But for my money Ali truly was The Greatest.

I’m the greatest thing that ever lived! I’m the king of the world! I’m a bad man. I’m the prettiest thing that ever lived.

It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.

Prince Dead at 57

The jacked up thing about getting older or perhaps about life in general is that eventually all of your youthful heroes pass away.  Prince died today at age 57. That seems far too young of course. But you never know what's going on in someone else's life. And like the Mississippi Fred McDowell song points out, no matter what your plans might be, when your time is up "You gotta move". Prince was a huge part of the soundtrack to my misspent youth. They say that people often keep a special spot in their heart for the music of their teens and early adulthood. I have most of Prince's albums. I definitely have everything he did in his classic period from the late seventies to the early nineties. This is sad but it is what it is. Prince was one of the most exciting and eclectic performers, composers, musicians and guitarists out there. I don't think he ever fully got the credit he deserved from the rock press, who often dismissed him as a "pop" star or "R&B" star. On guitar Prince could play circles around many people but I think his true instrument was his band. Condolences to his family.
(CNN)The artist known as Prince, who pioneered "the Minneapolis sound" and took on the music industry in his fight for creative freedom, died Thursday at age 57, according to his publicist. "It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer, Prince Rogers Nelson, has died at his Paisley Park residence this morning at the age of 57," said Yvette Noel-Schure.
Earlier Thursday, police said they were investigating a death Paisley Park studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota. Earlier this month, Prince said he wasn't feeling well, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and canceled at least one concert in the city. Some days later, he took the stage in Atlanta to perform. After that concert, the singer's plane made an emergency landing, Noel-Schure told CNN. At the time she said, "He is fine and at home."

Prince has won seven Grammy Awards, and has earned 30 nominations. Five of his singles have topped the charts and 14 other songs hit the Top 10. He won an Oscar for the original song score to the classic film "Purple Rain." 

The singer's predilection for lavishly kinky story-songs earned him the nickname, His Royal Badness. He is also known as the "Purple One" because of his colorful fashions.
Controversy followed the singer and that, in part, made his fans adore him more. "Darling Nikki," a song that details a one-night stand, prompted the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center. Led by Al Gore's then wife, Tipper, the group encouraged record labels to place advisory labels on albums with explicit lyrics.

Breaking News- Bobby Bland Dies

Bobby "Blue " Bland, who was one of the greatest singers all of time, just passed away at 83. Although he was primarily known as a "blues" singer, his singular style encompassed everything from soul, jazz, blues, funk and gospel , rock-n-roll, and occasionally a little country.  He was one of my favorite singers. I wrote on him here.  I first discovered his music when I was a young teen. It was miles apart from Muddy Waters or Jimi Hendrix which is what I was into at the time so I didn't pay him a lot of mind. It wasn't until I had grown up a bit, gone through some heartbreak of my own and gotten some bass in my voice that I went back to my parents' Bobby Bland records and really listened. I think I also got interested in his music when I learned that he was tight with BB King, who I've always been crazy about. In any event, he's passed on to his ancestors and left a lot of good music behind. In a lot of aspects Bobby Bland was the epitome of cool to me, along with people like Johnny Hartmann, Isaac Hayes and Otis Redding. He could scream if he had to but his crooning baritone voice was something I loved listening to and always tried to emulate. He showed that even in music that was called "blues" there were just a million and one different styles, sounds and approaches. If you weren't hip to him shame on you because you missed out but his music lives on.

LINK

Bobby (Blue) Bland, the debonair balladeer whose sophisticated, emotionally fraught performances helped modernize the blues, died on Sunday in Memphis. He was 83.The cause was complications from an ongoing illness, The Associated Press reported, quoting his son Rodd. Though he possessed gifts on a par with his most consummate peers, Mr. Bland never achieved the popular acclaim enjoyed by contemporaries like Ray Charles and B. B. King. His restrained vocals, punctuated by the occasional squalling shout, nevertheless made him a mainstay on the rhythm-and-blues charts and club circuit for decades. 

Exhibiting a delicacy of phrasing and command of dynamics akin to those of the most urbane pop and jazz crooners, his intimate pleading left its mark on everyone from the soul singers Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett to rock groups like the Allman Brothers and the Band. The rapper Jay-Z sampled Mr. Bland’s 1974 single “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” on his 2001 album, “The Blueprint.”Mr. Bland’s signature mix of blues, jazz, pop, gospel and country music was a good decade in the making. His first recordings, made in the early 1950s, found him working in the lean, unvarnished style of Mr. King, even to the point of employing falsetto vocal leaps patterned after Mr. King’s. Mr. Bland’s mid-50s singles were more accomplished; hits like “It’s My Life, Baby” and “Farther Up the Road” are now regarded as hard-blues classics, but they still featured the driving rhythms and stinging electric guitar favored by Mr. King and others.

It wasn’t until 1958’s “Little Boy Blue,” a record inspired by the homiletic delivery of the Rev. C. L. Franklin, that Mr. Bland arrived at his trademark vocal technique.“That’s where I got my squall from,” Mr. Bland said, referring to the sermons of Mr. Franklin — “Aretha’s daddy,” as he called him — in a 1979 interview with the author Peter Guralnick. “After I had that I lost the high falsetto. I had to get some other kind of gimmick, you know, to be identified with.” 

The corresponding softness in Mr. Bland’s voice, a refinement matched by the elegant formal wear in which he appeared onstage, came from listening to records by pop crooners like Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and Perry Como.Just as crucial to the evolution of Mr. Bland’s sound was his affiliation with the trumpet player and arranger Joe Scott, for years the director of artists and repertory for Duke Records in Houston. Given to writing brass-rich arrangements that built dramatically to a climax, Mr. Scott, who died in 1979, supplied Mr. Bland with intricate musical backdrops that set his supple baritone in vivid emotional relief. The two men accounted for more than 30 Top 20 rhythm-and-blues singles for Duke from 1958 to 1968, including the No. 1 hits “I Pity the Fool” and “That’s the Way Love Is.” Steeped in feelings of vulnerability and regret, many of these performances were particularly enthralling to the female portion of Mr. Bland’s audience.